Our first caller encountered a demon, another storyteller grew up in a very haunted house and we discuss the ghosts of the Queen Mary.

This and much more on this week’s edition of Jim Harold’s Campfire!

TRANSCRIPT

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TRANSCRIPT

Did our caller have an encounter with a demon? She says yes – up next on the Campfire.

Welcome to our gathering tonight. Here we share stories of ordinary people who have experienced extraordinary things. Sit back, relax, and warm yourself by Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold and so glad to be with you once again, and we have another great Campfire show for you.

But first, there is a burning question. I think this question has been asked more than any question about a story that we’ve ever had. If you listened to last week’s show, Campfire 561, you may remember that story about the strange rescue. If you have not listened to that episode, maybe tune out for the next, I don’t know, 30 seconds, because I’m going to answer a question that people are asking. We’re going to talk about this story right now.

It was a story of Sue, who was rescued in terms of her car being broken down by a very nice man who gave her a tow and a ride home – and then when she went back the next day, the gas station where he was at was totally boarded up. Looked like it had been abandoned for years. Quite a great story.

The question was, there was a check that Sue gave the man. People asked, was the check cashed? I forgot to ask that, partially because she addressed that in her original email to me. Here’s what she said – and again, if you’ve not heard this story, you might want to tune out for now. It is a spoiler.

Sue said, and I quote: “Do not remember the check ever clearing the bank.” So there you go. Everybody wanted to know the answer, and now you know. And thank you so much for all your reactions. I love it when people get involved and invested in the story. It was so good to see.

Please do tell a friend about the Campfire today. Also make sure to subscribe, follow, and leave a review. That’s really important. These days, huge companies are coming out with new podcasts every day. The competition is so intense, and we really need your help because we don’t have those huge marketing budgets. Yes, I do actually purchase advertising for the show, but I still can’t match what these big, big companies do. So I need your help.

So please do those things. First and foremost, make sure that you follow on the app of your choice. That’s the number one most important thing. Also tell a friend today. Tell a friend online or offline. And then also, those ratings and reviews – I believe those help as well. Thank you so much. And now, on to the Campfire.

Shayanne is on the line from California. We have a lot of different kinds of stories about encounters with different things, ghosts or maybe a message from a past loved one, but one of the scariest kinds of calls that we get is when someone thinks they may have had an encounter with a demonic entity. And Shayanne says yes, that is the case. She thinks that very well may have happened.

Shayanne, welcome to the show. I know you’ve been listening for something like eight years, so thank you so much for that. Please tell us your story.

SHAYANNE: Thank you so much. My story happened a few years back. I want to say it was around the end of 2017 or the beginning of 2018 when I had this experience. I was a broke recent college graduate renting a small room in a two-bedroom apartment. It was owned by a young couple, so they had the master bedroom and I rented the second bedroom in their apartment.

One night, I had gone to bed, like any other normal night, but I ended up waking up in the middle of the night, just feeling absolutely terrified. I didn’t have any bad dreams that I could remember that would’ve caused me to wake up feeling that way. Nothing had happened during the day or that evening before I’d gone to bed, so I really had no explanation for why I woke up feeling afraid.

But the atmosphere in my room just felt incredibly heavy and oppressive. I just had this feeling, like that feeling that something bad was going to happen. I lay in bed for a while, telling myself “Don’t think too much of it, just ignore it.” I finally decided, “Okay, I’m going to try to go back to sleep.”

I roll over onto my side to face the wall, which put my back towards my bedroom door. So I’m facing away from my bedroom door. I lay there, just trying to clear my head, calm myself down, allow myself to fall back to sleep, when suddenly I hear someone turn my doorknob and open my bedroom door.

My doorknob on my door made a very distinct squeaky noise when it was turned, so I knew someone was coming into my room. My first thought is, why are my housemates coming into my room in the middle of the night? Did something happen? Do they need to tell me something? It’s just really strange that they would walk right into my room without knocking or calling my name first or something.

So I’m getting ready to turn around and politely confront whichever one of my roommates had come in when I suddenly got a very strong impression or feeling to just stay put and not turn around. Then the immediate thought that came to mind is “Don’t move.” So now I’m a little freaked out, but still thinking this is just one of my housemates. “I’ll just stay still and pretend to be asleep and see what happens.”

Whoever’s just entered my room starts walking towards my bed, and you can hear their footsteps getting closer. Then they just sit on the edge of my bed, right behind my back.

JIM HAROLD: Yikes.

SHAYANNE: Yeah. I could feel the bed depress under their weight, and I rolled back a little bit from the bed tilting under the weight. At this point, I’m now running a thousand different scenarios in my head and I’m starting to panic because sometimes real people can be scarier than anything paranormal.

JIM HAROLD: That’s right.

SHAYANNE: So I’m trying to gather the courage to flip around and yell at who I assume is one of my housemates, and then whoever’s sitting behind me leans down, right up close to the side of my face – so close that I can feel their hot breath on my ear, just breathing onto my skin. And then, as if things weren’t already terrifying as is, this thing places its hand on the top of my head. I can feel all five fingers splayed out, and it is gripping the top of my skull. And at the end of each of those fingers are long, sharp claws, digging into my forehead and the back of my skull.

JIM HAROLD: So this isn’t like something now where it’s just close to you or anything. It’s physically touching you and squeezing your head.

SHAYANNE: Correct. It wasn’t something that was painful, but the pressure was there. That’s when I knew that this is not one of my housemates. I then got a very overwhelming impression that this presence was not a good one. So now I’m absolutely losing my mind with fear. I am so scared that I didn’t even try to move. I’m completely mortified. The only thing that I can think is “This thing is evil and I’m going to die. This is it. Whatever this is, it’s come to get me.”

When I thought things couldn’t get any worse than that, this being starts speaking to me in the most grotesque, guttural-sounding voice that you could ever imagine, in a language I have never heard before, and to this day I can’t even fathom to exist in my wildest nightmares.

I just start praying. That’s the only thing I have left to do, and that’s probably the most I have ever prayed in my entire life, in that one moment. I prayed everything from the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the rosary. You name it, I started talking to God, begging him to send his son Jesus to save me. I just repeated this over and over and over again. It truly felt like an eternity that I was praying and pleading, and this thing just kept speaking in my ear.

Then in an instant, it was just gone. It just disappeared completely. I sat up in my bed, and I’m completely drenched in sweat, I’m trying to catch my breath, I’m trying to figure out what just happened. Then I immediately rush to turn on the lights. I turned on my TV and I just sat there the rest of the night, worrying if this thing was going to come back or not.

I didn’t stay to find out. By 5 a.m., I had left the house. I think I went to the gym – anywhere that was open, just so I could stay out of the house for the rest of the day because I was so terrified. I spent the next few months sleeping with all the lights on, with my TV on, and I constantly worried if this thing was ever going to come back or if it had somehow possessed me or something. But I’ve never experienced anything as dark and horrifying as that since then, thankfully.

JIM HAROLD: Do you think there was some precipitating event? Any theories as to why this happened at this particular time?

SHAYANNE: I do. I have two theories. When this event happened, I had been living with my housemates in that apartment for a little over a year. As time went on from the beginning until that point, their relationship definitely changed. There was a lot of negativity that was brought in by the two of them. So my first thought after pondering this over and over was, I wonder if something was going on between them and they brought in such a negative bad juju with them or something. There was that.

But on the flipside, I also found myself in a really dark place during that time as well, and I just wonder if because of where I was, if that attracted it or something. But I never experienced something like that again, so I’m thankful for that.

JIM HAROLD: Well, I’ve got to tell you, it’s a remarkable story. Over the years I’ve talked to people – and I’m sure since you’re a longtime listener, you’ve heard me say that – I’ve spoken to people who say, “There’s no such thing as evil. There’s just a lower vibration.” And I’m here to tell you, at least I believe very strongly there’s a lot of good, and there’s some not-so-good and there’s some downright evil.

SHAYANNE: Yes, I agree.

JIM HAROLD: Shayanne, thank you so much for sharing your story tonight on the Campfire.

SHAYANNE: Thank you so much, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Kat is on the line from Illinois. She’s been listening for a few years, but she got away from the show a little bit; then she was reminded by Christine and Em over at And That’s Why We Drink. They are great podcast hosts – superstars, actually – so please, if you haven’t, check their show out. And then Kat heard them talk about Campfire and she’s back. So glad she is. She’s going to talk to us about growing up in a very haunted house. Kat, welcome to the show. Please tell us what happened.

KAT: Thanks for having me. When I was in third grade until I was a sophomore in high school, I lived in a house with my mom in Minooka, Illinois. It was a duplex, and my mom bought the house brand new when I was about eight years old. We had another unit attached to us because it was a duplex, and I vaguely remember when she bought it that there was somebody living in the attached unit. But they moved out, and then the neighbor that lived there the entire time that we did moved in there.

I always felt very uncomfortable in our house. I wasn’t sure how the other side was, but eventually we got to know the neighbor and I was uncomfortable on that side too. When I was younger, I didn’t know quite how to put my finger on it. I just knew that I was uncomfortable and I was scared and very, very fearful in the house. I never saw anything when I was young in the house, but I always had the feeling somebody was watching me or somebody was right next to me, even when I was alone in a room.

It started with me not wanting to shut the lights off whenever I would go in my room, but I was young, so I think my mom always brushed it off as I was afraid of the dark or something like that. I have a lot of very headstrong women in my family, so my mom was always really tough about the house, and we never really talked about it until recently. I told her that I was going to talk about our haunted house on a podcast, and she was like, “Oh, what?” and then we started talking about it.

But like I said, little things that I remember happening in the house at first started with me not wanting to shut the lights off because I was scared. But eventually, as I got older it turned into a complete paralyzation with fear. Essentially, I would go into a room and literally be unable to move my feet. I would have to scream for my mom to come get me, which still to this day blows my mind because I’m not that person. I don’t get scared like that. But it definitely was an issue the entire time I was in that house. Until recently, I thought it was just me. I thought I was just afraid.

So it progressively got worse. I couldn’t explain to my mom that it was never the dark that I was afraid of, but I felt like if the lights were on, I was more comfortable because I felt like whatever it was couldn’t hide or something.

The house was pretty small; it was around 1,200 square feet. When you walked in the front door, the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen were all on the right. They were all a bigger room connected together. Then there was an L-shaped hallway that came off the dining room and cut back around to the entryway of the house where the basement door was. In the hallway, there was a small bathroom, and then my bathroom was right across from it. Right next to my bedroom was my mom’s room, and her bathroom was off that hallway as well, but it was also attached to her room through a closet.

As we were talking about it, I remembered that one of the experiences I had that was more on the creepy side that apparently ended up being a universal experience in this house that I didn’t know about was whenever you would walk through her closet into the bathroom, it felt like somebody was hiding behind her clothes. It felt like you were being watched as you were walking through her closet.

I used to sit on her computer and play games and whatever in her room, and she always had her closet door open because it felt like everything in the house needed to be opening or that something was hiding in it. So I remember sitting on her computer, playing games, and I’d have to get up to go to the bathroom and I would walk through the closet. I remember having this feeling of “Don’t look side to side. Just keep looking forward. Walk through the closet. Do not look to one or other of your sides because you’re going to see something you don’t want to see.”

So I always had that feeling, and it turns out my mom had it too. I was just talking to her actually last night and she confirmed. She was like, “Yeah, my closet was creepy. I always felt like somebody was in it and looking at me from behind my clothes.” So that was one of the more terrifying things that got confirmed. But still pretty mild compared to some of the other stuff I felt in the house.

We were talking about how there were definitely other occurrences every so often when I was younger that maybe I didn’t quite pick up on what was happening. I would always see things out of the corner of my eye. Obviously, that happens; people think they see something and you don’t or whatever. But remember specifically that whenever it would happen to me, my dog would react to it. I would think I was seeing something out of the corner of my eye and I would not look because I was scared, and then all of a sudden my dog would turn and look in that direction. And I would be home alone or in the room alone or whatever.

My dog was not one to bark, but every once in a while my mom said she would have the same experience and my dog would start growling. It seemed like for me, it always happened during the day. If I was home alone during the day, that would happen and my dog would turn its head and start growling. it was definitely at something that was in the house, but I was home alone. So that was always a really nerve-wracking experience.

Like I said, as I got older I started to notice more and more that my friends that were coming over would always turn and look behind them or seem extremely uncomfortable in the house. But they would never say anything. We would always hang out in the basement, even though it was very uncomfortable down there. It was always more comfortable than my bedroom. My bedroom was always a spot that we were all – I think there was a universal understanding of nobody wanted to hang out in my room because we were all so uncomfortable.

Whenever I slept in my bed, I would wake up from somebody saying my name or sometimes screaming my name in my ear. I would also have to sleep with the covers over my head because I was so terrified. And again, progressively got worse as I got older.

It really came to a head when I was about 14. I was still sleeping with covers over my head like I was a little kid. I was so terrified of my room that I would sleep with all the lights on that I could, and I would sleep with my TV on. Almost every night, I would be woken up to the channel changing no my TV. We had a satellite dish, so obviously when the input changes, it goes to complete static and it’s very loud.

So I would wake up to that almost every single night, and I would be completely paralyzed again. I was 14, so you would think a young teenager would be able to not be paralyzed and maybe think rationally about the situation. But I was completely incapable of having a rational thought about anything that was going on, and I would immediately start screaming for my mom because it felt like something was sitting on my chest or watching me. I had that paralyzing fear and I couldn’t move. Even though my mom’s room was right next door, I literally could not get myself out of bed to physically go into her room and wake her up.

I would scream for her and she would literally have to come in my room and grab me, and then we would go in her room and I literally would sleep in my mom’s bed because I was so scared when I was like 14 years old. She told me recently, when I was like, “How crazy is it that I slept in your bed with you when I was 14 because I was so scared?”, she was like, “The funny thing is that I didn’t even care because I was just as scared as you were. So I didn’t mind that you were sleeping in my bed.”

Shortly before my mom sold the house, I finally saw something in the house. I was getting ready to go to a friend’s house and I was in my mom’s bathroom. You could see out of my mom’s bathroom into my bedroom. I remember blow-drying my hair, and I watched a shadow figure glide across my bedroom inside of the room. And I’d had it. I was like, “This is it. I’m done with this house.”

I shut all of the doors to the bathroom and I called my best friend that was supposed to be coming to get me and I was like, “You have to come in this house and get me out of the bathroom because I am not moving.” I told her exactly what I saw, and she was like, “Oh, I see those in your house all the time.” She would literally not stay at my house for a sleepover or whatever. She would always call her mom in the middle of the night to come pick her up and never tell me why.

So it just confirmed everything that I’d been feeling. And then like I said, recently I talked to my mom and my sister about it, because my sister lived with us for a little bit while her and her husband were getting their house built. My sister also confirmed that she used to feel everything that I felt in that house, and she used to see shadow figures walk in and out of my bedroom daily. We all just didn’t talk about it until now. I’m 30, and 15 years later we’re talking about it. We all had the exact same experience in the house.

JIM HAROLD: That was a new house, right?

KAT: It was a brand-new house, yeah. Turns out my neighbor also experienced a lot of stuff on his side of the duplex, and my mom actually witnessed some stuff there as well.

JIM HAROLD: That’s amazing. Very interesting. It’s always a thing if you live in an old house or something, like “Oh, it’s the people who lived there before” or whatever. When you live in a new house, that’s a bit of a headscratcher. Kat, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for telling us your Campfire story today.

KAT: Thanks, Jim.

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JIM HAROLD: Lisa is on the line from New Jersey. She’s also a podcaster, and at the end of the call she’s going to tell us a little bit about her show. But first, she’s going to tell a story about her first husband, who passed some years ago. Lisa, thank you for coming on the show and sharing this very personal story.

LISA: Thank you very much for having me, Jim. This story is very close to my heart because I also do a paranormal show, but this one, a lot of people don’t think of past lives as paranormal. They are, but people don’t really put that into that box.

But years ago, in the late ’80s, I met a young man – I was only 19, he was 22. Very young, fell in love, got married. The issue was he was from North Africa – Algeria, to be exact – and I’m from the Jersey Shore. Being from the Jersey Shore and Algeria are two very different worldviews. They just don’t match. But when you’re young, love conquers all. Love conquers all when you’re a kid. We never really thought about moving forward; it was just get married and go do all the stuff – get married, have kids.

So he came to the United States, and he had a culture shock like I have never seen before. I didn’t expect it. He was very nice to me before we got married, but having been stuck into a culture that he didn’t understand, he was very, very uncomfortable.

Fast forward, we get married, we have two beautiful girls and a boy, and then this nice guy started acting tortured because marriage wasn’t like it was over in his country. Raising kids wasn’t like it was in his country. So there was a bit of abuse that started. You know why, Jim – they come from a “spare the rod, spoil the child” background. When you try to put those two things together, it’s kind of tough.

But he was a nice guy, so he would be tortured. By trying to keep them in line, he was tortured by the things he was doing. He was not allowing the girls to be girls. He was telling my son that he could and couldn’t do these things. They weren’t allowed to do certain things. He would scream at me because I wasn’t being the kind of wife that, in his country, would’ve been a wife.

This went on and on and on, and my kids were unhappy, I was unhappy. But then, in 2005, the unthinkable happened. He was coming home from work and he was killed in a car accident. I had three teenagers, Jim. I don’t even know how to explain to you the horror of having your children walk in and having to say this. But I explained it to them. It was absolutely terrible. It doesn’t help that it was a difficult relationship. It actually made it worse.

So the grieving process, everything goes forward. Forward to 2019, my son falls in love and gets married in the United States and has a beautiful baby boy. I held him in my arms and I looked into this kid’s eyes, and I swear, Jim, I knew this person. I don’t even think I believed in reincarnation. I really didn’t. But I looked into this child’s eyes and I said, “I know him, and he knows me.”

He started getting a little bit bigger. I would babysit, and he would hold my face in his hands and look at me and say, “Grandma,” and just googly eyes like I’ve never seen before. He would pat me. And then he would say things like, “Sorry.” I’d say, “Sorry for what?” and he wouldn’t answer me. It was very, very odd. But every time I looked into his eyes, he would show recognition, like we knew each other. He would run into my arms. He was very close to me, and he still is.

I also remarried, so my grandson sees my husband now as his grandfather. There’s not a lot of talk about his real grandfather, but one day they were going through pictures, old photos and everything, and my three-year-old grandson pulls out a picture of my husband in his early twenties. He looked at his mother and father and said, “Oh, look at this! This is a picture of when I was young!”

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

LISA: My son looked at my daughter-in-law and both of their mouths opened. My daughter-in-law immediately contacted me, and I said, “Well, it makes sense. His grandfather wasn’t a bad guy. He was tortured by the stuff that he was doing because he was so tortured by the culture shock and everything.” I said, “Did he seem serious or was he joking around?” She said, “He was as serious as anything.” And then he looked at her and said, “I’m Algerian,” and she almost fell backwards off her chair. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Oh man. A three-year-old, Algerian.

LISA: Yes. “I’m an Algerian.” It was off the hook.

Now, there is a little addendum to this. I don’t know whether past life memory is inherited, but when the baby’s father, my son, was about 10 years old, he got up at around 12:00 at night, walked downstairs and started putting his shoes on. I said, “Where are you going?” He said, “I’m going home.” I said, “What do you mean, you’re going home? You are home.” He got very upset and he said, “No, this is not my home.” I said, “You are home.” I started getting very upset and I didn’t know what to do because he was trying to walk out the door in the middle of the night. I said, “You’re home, you’re home.”

All of a sudden, he wouldn’t let me touch him. He pulled away. He wouldn’t let me touch him. He said, “I am going home to my mother.” I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to make of it, I didn’t know what to say. I had to calm myself down, and I said, “Okay, I need you to go upstairs. You can go to sleep, and I promise I will leave you alone and I will take you home tomorrow.” He looked at me a little bit askance and he said, “Okay, I’m going to go back upstairs, but don’t come in.” I said, “Okay.”

He went upstairs. He actually locked his door, Jim. So whatever karma is playing out between me and his father – that’s why I was so upset. I kept thinking maybe this stuff is real, like a long time ago. And he remembered nothing. He absolutely remembered nothing about the experience, about having come downstairs, about his memories that he had that night. That’s about it. It was a very weird thing, but I think it’s a real thing.

JIM HAROLD: That’s amazing, the fact he saw that photo and said, “That’s me when I was younger,” and then follows up with, “I am Algerian.” What three-year-old says “I’m Algerian”? That’s amazing. But you know what, we’ve had similar stories, Lisa. We had a story very early on from a caller – Michelle, I think it was, in the UK – that talked about she was sitting in her living room with her little boy, I think that age or a little bit older, and there must’ve been an airshow or something. So there was an old biplane that went by the house, like the old World War I Red Baron type planes. The boy heard it and he said, “Oh, that sounds like the plane that killed me.”

LISA: Oh my gosh. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: “Do you remember when my name was Steven and we used to sit and listen to the radio, and the plane came in and it crashed and there was blood everywhere?” That reminds me so much of your story.

LISA: Oh my gosh, and he was adamant. They kept trying to push him away to see whether he was really saying that or saying that because he had heard something. But they didn’t really talk much about him.

JIM HAROLD: Very interesting. Obviously, this has informed your interest in the paranormal. Give us about a minute about your podcast and where folks can find it.

LISA: You can find it on Apple. There are a bunch of different platforms you can find it on, but if you type into the search engine “That Other Paranormal Show,” or “TOPS,” it should show up. What I do is every week, somebody tells a story and we examine paranormal experiences that other people have. Like today, you have people talking about having past life memories, so one story and then we discuss it together and have other people come in, and they actually give their take on what they think it is. I have skeptics on and stuff like that. It’s a really fun show to do.

JIM HAROLD: Very cool. Folks can find That Other Paranormal Show pretty much anywhere they get podcasts, right?

LISA: Yes, they can.

JIM HAROLD: Lisa, thanks for being a part of the Campfire.

LISA: Thank you so much, Jim.

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Follow Jim on Twitter and Instagram @TheJimHarold and join our virtual Campfire Facebook group at VirtualCampfireGroup.com. Now, back to the Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Next up on the Campfire is Ryan from California. San Diego, California – that’s important to this story. He’s going to talk about his experiences working on the Queen Mary, and of course, that great ship is very haunted, supposedly. We’re going to learn more. Ryan, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us.

RYAN: Hi, Jim. Thanks for having me. So I worked on the Queen Mary for quite a few years. Our team worked on the Halloween event, Dark Harbor. It was a really great project to work on. We were in charge of the theme and all the stories and all the sets and décor and all that. We pulled from a lot of the real ghost stories on the Queen Mary, it being reportedly one of the most haunted ships in the world. We found that was a great resource for any haunted house theme that we could ask for.

In one of our research things we did, we took a private tour on the Queen Mary with a psychic medium.

JIM HAROLD: Interesting.

RYAN: Yeah. She was really great. She worked on the ship quite a bit, and we did work with her over the years of doing the haunt. So our team and a few other people that worked on the project went on this ghost tour with her. She used dowsing rods. On the tour, she gave me the dowsing rods to use and she instructed me in how to use them and what to do, and we embarked on our tour.

She took us to quite a few places on the ship and through her normal tour that she would do, and nothing happened. It was just a completely dead night. She was really apologetic. She was like, “Usually we get something.” Throughout the whole tour, there was nothing. It was just dead. At the end of the tour, she was like, “Well, I don’t know what to say. Is there anywhere you guys want to go on the ship?”

We all looked at each other and had the same idea. There’s this one hallway in the ship that gives everybody the creeps. On top of that, our friend Adam, for some reason his flashlight would always flicker and go out when we walked through this hallway. It happened so consistently that we started to make fun of him about it and joke with him, saying, “Ooh, they’re picking on you again.” She was like, “Great let’s go to this hallway.”

We all make our way down to this hallway, and this hallway is very tight. It’s merely an accessway between two parts of the ship – not a public part of the ship; down in the workings of the ship. So it’s one person across. You couldn’t stand shoulder to shoulder with somebody in this hallway.

So we all file in, and there’s maybe 8 to 10 of us. We all lean up against the wall and face each other. It’s really tight quarters in here. I have the dowsing rods, and we end up contacting a spirit. It was very dramatic from the use of the dowsing rods. Before, they were doing nothing, and once we got into that hallway, their movements were so precise and dramatic, it was shocking.

The way she told us to work with them was to ask “yes” and “no” questions, and to say “Cross the dowsing rods for ‘yes’ and uncross them for ‘no’,” or reverse, so you knew what was going on. They weren’t just waving around; they were doing movements that you’ve asked them to do. That happened so dramatically it was shocking. We ended up contacting a spirit. She guided us through it.

We asked the spirit questions about the haunt, about Dark Harbor, about Adam’s flashlight, and she answered all these questions. Told us that the spirits weren’t very happy with us doing the haunted house on the ship. It lasted about 15-20 minutes, and we asked a handful of questions. It was a pretty exciting experience.

At the end of the session, the last question I asked was, “Where are you standing in this room?” Throughout the experience, we were asking them to cross the dowsing rods or uncross the dowsing rods. So those were the two movements they were doing over and over again, which was pretty cool. But after I asked that question, both dowsing rods shot and pointed in one direction, which they had not done before. Both of the dowsing rods pointed to one space where there was nobody standing. We were all standing next to each other down this hallway, and it just so happened that there was nobody standing where these dowsing rods were pointing.

Everybody went, “Oh my gosh!” and kind of freaked out at that point. It was over at that point. We all shuffled out. Man, that was the kicker. When those dowsing rods pointed to that empty spot where nobody was standing, it was just like, wow, why is nobody standing there? Because we were all shoulder to shoulder, and this was a very tight hallway. There wasn’t much room in there regardless. But for a person space to be in between two people and those dowsing rods to go straight to it just freaked everybody out.

JIM HAROLD: When you think about a ship, lots of close quarters, lots of energy, those kinds of things – a ship like the Queen Mary, tons of energy in it, whether it’s the crew or the cruisers or whoever it might be. They say that ghosts seem to follow where there’s a lot of emotion and psychic energy, so the Queen Mary – and I know there have been many, many reports. I’ve spoken to numerous people who have said they, either as experiencers or as authors or researchers or investigators, have had strange experiences on the Queen Mary. It seems to be universal, almost.

RYAN: Yeah, definitely. In my email to you, I said that I was a skeptical believer, and working on the Queen Mary – being there all the time, I have to say, it’s a big, decaying metal ship that’s sitting in the water, so there’s a lot of creaks and groans and noises that you just have to say “those are ship noises” in order to get some work done. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: But those dowsing rods – that wasn’t a ship’s noise. That was a direct answer, it sounds like.

RYAN: Oh, they were definitely very direct. Just how they would answer – we would ask a question, “Is this yes or no?”, and they would cross so dramatically. It gave me shivers down my spine when it happened, every time it happened.

At the end of the tour, the psychic pulled me aside and she thanked me for staying professional and not goofing off. She said a lot of times on the tours, people act silly and don’t take it seriously, and she said, “We did contact a spirit, and in fact, you contacted the spirit and the spirit was talking through you.” She said, “I like to tell people when this happens, it’s something I call a ‘spirit hangover.’ The next day, you may feel a little tired, a little drained just from all the energy that you went through in this experience.”

At that point we were all pretty giddy and just ran out of there, so I was like, “Oh yeah, okay,” and didn’t really think too much about it. But the next day, Jim, I tell you what, my arms were so sore. They were like I had worked out at the gym all day. I was like, wow, oh my gosh, I really do have a spirit hangover.

JIM HAROLD: That is interesting. Ryan, thank you so much for sharing this story of the haunted Queen Mary.

RYAN: Thank you, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Becky is on the line from the UK. We love to hear from our listeners over across the pond, as they say. She has a workplace story for us. Becky, thank you so much for joining us, and tell us what happened.

BECKY: It’s my pleasure. I worked at a children’s home for children with complex needs, challenging behaviors, up until last July. I’ll keep the place anonymous. It was opened in 1930, operated during the war and everything. It had a real, at the time, cutting-edge approach to special needs. Where a lot of kids would be out of sight, out of mind, they did approach it in a far more humane manner.

The place was like a community. It had live-in staff and all sorts. It’s changed in modern times, but there’s people I know that still work there that actually lived there for some time, so it had a real community element to it. Some of the children, and even some of the staff, when they passed away, if they had no family and things like that, they were cremated and their remains were scattered onsite.

As you can imagine, the nature of that place – there were children that were quite poorly and things like that, and people did die, so it’s got a hell of a lot of history there. I think if anywhere was going to be haunted or have stuff going, it was a good contender.

JIM HAROLD: Sure, absolutely.

BECKY: I had two main experiences there. One was we had a young lady – for the purpose of this, I’m going to call her Daisy. Daisy couldn’t live with other children. She was fantastic; I loved her to death. She was brilliant. But she did have to live in her own little house. She had something – you could describe it as a chalet, and to get to this chalet, you had to walk up this hill that we christened “Cardiac Hill” because it was really, really steep. It was tough to get up there. [laughs]

I was due to go up, and one of my colleagues came and said, “Oh, there’s a dead bird on the path up at the top of Cardiac Hill.” I said, “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll get some gloves and I’ll move it.” So I walked up there with my colleague. Realized when I got to the top I’d forgotten my gloves. But I’m not squeamish; I’ve done taxidermy and all manner of things. Two kids. It doesn’t really matter to me.

So there was this bird, and it was a black bird. Probably a blackbird, I would imagine. So I picked it up, and not wanting to just put it anywhere – there was like a little alcove in the hedge, and I thought I’ll put it in there. It can go back to nature, all that business. So I put it in there. Went and carried on my shift, thought no more about it.

When it got to bedtime for us, which was probably about 10 o’clock, I said to my colleague, “I’ve got to nip out because I forgot my water bottle. I’ve left it in the car,” so I could have something to drink through the night. I nipped out, and as I was walking out to my car, I noticed something behind my car, just under the back bumper. I was walking up and thinking, “What’s that? There’s no way… no, no…” I got there – it was a dead bird. I don’t know if it was the same bird; it looked like the same bird.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

BECKY: Yeah, it was really weird. This bird I’d put in the hedge had transported itself probably, I don’t know, 30 feet to position itself at the back of my car. So it would have to know that I was the one that moved it and stuff. I did check in the morning to see if the bird was in the place I put it, and I couldn’t find it. So that was a little bit weird. I remember walking back to the car and saying, “I think I’m just in a horror film.” [laughs] I was dreading coming out in the morning and finding it back behind my car. I did pick it up and move it into another hedge; I thought, “Maybe it didn’t like where I put it originally. We’ll try somewhere else.” So that was the first one.

Not long after that happened – we used to sleep in at the homes, and I was sleeping in Daisy’s home. You always had to lock yourself in the room at night. Not that she was going to come in and do anything horrible to you, but if she got in, she’d probably mess around and it’d be no fun for anybody. So I was lying in my bed. I was always listening to podcasts. I could’ve been listening to you, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Could’ve been, could’ve been. [laughs]

BECKY: Could’ve well been. So I was lying there with my headphones in, and something woke me up. I didn’t wake up on my own; I was woken up. And as I woke up, I was convinced I heard the keys in the door, jangling. I was lying with my back to the door, and I thought, “Oh God, I haven’t locked the door, and now Daisy’s come in. Oh, we’re going to have five minutes of playing silly beggars. Oh God, here we go.”

So I lay there, and I felt – I honestly felt – somebody was in the room. They walked over to me. I was lying with my back to that side of the room. They leant over me, and I would say examined me. That’s the best way I can put it. I didn’t see anybody, but I knew there was someone leaning over that bed and they were looking at me. I thought, okay, I’m not going to play at this.

I started to roll over with the intention of literally going, “Hello, Daisy. What are you doing?” I started to turn over and probably got as far as “Hel…lo?” and there wasn’t a soul there. I turned the light on; the keys were in the door. The door was locked. No idea.

There’s been a couple of experiences in my life that I know actually happened, it was actually real, and that was one of them. It was really, really strange. Wasn’t frightening. As spooky as this place could get, I was never frightened there. If anything, I always had the impression that whatever was around this particular cottage thought I was all right. It didn’t mind me. [laughs] So yeah, that’s my strange bird and disembodied spirit story.

JIM HAROLD: There you go. Both of them great stories. The first one, I’m like, maybe it was an alternate reality and you jumped realities. That was another thought that I had.

BECKY: I don’t know. It found its way to my car. For whatever reason, it was not satisfied with my original behavior, I don’t think. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: “Don’t put me over there!”

BECKY: Yeah, “I want to be somewhere else.” I did say if I found him again, I was just going to take it home and decide what to do with it. [laughs] Like, okay, it obviously needs me for some reason.

JIM HAROLD: Reality is a weird thing, and that’s part of what I love about doing Campfire. We get stories that make you go “huh,” and that certainly did that. Becky, thank you so much for joining us all the way from the UK today.

BECKY: Absolute pleasure, and I’m sure I’ll probably get in touch again with a couple of others.

JIM HAROLD: Excellent.

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You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Next up is Brian from California, and so glad to talk with him. He and his wife, Sheri, go and look at historic homes, and they’ve had some very interesting things happen. Brian, welcome to the show. I love history, I love spooky stuff, so this is a perfect combination. Tell us some of these spooky places you’ve been.

BRIAN: Awesome, Jim. Thank you so much. We love spooky. We actually love, like you said, historic places. One of those historic places was up in the central coast of California, Camarillo. In Camarillo, there’s a ranch, and that ranch dates back to the late 1800s, the 19th century, and it was interesting. We went in there to take a tour. It was only my wife and I and another family joining us. There were no children.

Well, we were looking at the ranch, and we went out on the veranda to see where they hold weddings and look at the yard. As we came back in, I went to close the door and the docent is like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “Closing the door.” “No, don’t! You’ll lock the little girl out!” I’m like, “The little girl?” She’s like, “Yeah, there’s a little girl that came in with you and you’ll lock her out if you close the door.”

My wife and I looked at each other. That other party that was with us looked at us and looked at the docent as well, because we had no little girl. There was no little girl with us. It was only my wife and I and a few other adults in the group. So obviously, she was seeing something that we weren’t. Later on my wife was like, “We should’ve asked what she was wearing.”

JIM HAROLD: Good point. But not just one, this has happened to you multiple times, right?

BRIAN: It has. Another experience – we were actually in Fresno at a historic home because my wife loves home tours. It was interesting; it was just my wife and I, no one else, with the docent. We looked at the first floor and went up to the second floor, and on the second floor, as you know, Jim, they used to have wakes in these homes. Especially in the 1800s.

She showed us pictures of a wake that they had for a child. She showed us the clothing that the women wore and some other things that were in that case. As she was doing that, I looked over to my left, and there’s a hall. In that hall, Jim, I saw a black mist. It was spooky. I was like, “What is that?” I didn’t say anything, but I saw the black mist move. It went into the next room that we were about to get to.

As it got there, I then heard a jack-in-the-box – ding-ding-ding ding ding-ding-ding-ding… I’m like, “Okay, that’s weird.” Coming from that room. We got to that room, the room was empty. The docent didn’t say anything. As my wife and I finished this tour, I asked my wife, “Hey Sheri, did you hear anything?” She’s like, “Yeah. You mean that jack-in-the-box toy sounding thing?” “Yeah.” I told her the experience about the black mist moving into the room and hearing that noise, that toy go off. And it was a children’s room. So yeah, that was spooky too, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Very, very spooky indeed. To me, people will say something like, “I love the paranormal stuff, but I don’t care for all of this history,” and I’m like, wait a minute! That’s it, that’s the same thing. It’s kind of part and parcel.

BRIAN: Absolutely. I agree with you, Jim. I love history, we love the historical home tours, and it’s so interesting that it seems like most of the time when we go on these tours, there’s something that happens. Even in Georgia, when we were at a home, the docent said that the room we were in, people felt things. My wife and I clearly felt spirits there. It was this chill that went through us. So yeah, we enjoy that history and knowing that they still may be there, hanging out, or maybe they’re just residual. I don’t know what it is, but it’s always interesting.

JIM HAROLD: Fascinating stuff, for sure. Brian, thank you so much for joining us, and please let us know if you have any more spooky travels.

BRIAN: I’ll do that, Jim. Thanks so much. I appreciate ya. I love your podcast. Thank you so much.

JIM HAROLD: Well, we have a return caller. Mallorie is back on the line. You might recall a while back she called and talked about a ghost experience while living in Japan as a child, but now she’s going to share with us a cryptid story, of all things. Mallorie, welcome back to the show. It just seems like we talked moments ago, but here we are again. Please tell us what happened.

MALLORIE: Thanks, Jim. Last year I was camping with my cousin and my husband at Lake Quinault, which is a beautiful lake here in Washington State. We had a really rare campsite on the lakeshore. They’re usually booked out, but we snagged one. We had a great time; we were swimming, all this fun stuff. We had people around us, but the kids next door to us were pretty old. They weren’t little kids or anything.

So we go to bed, me and my husband, get in our tent, we’re winding down, and we hear this really bizarre air raid siren. But it – I don’t know how to explain it. It sounded mechanical, like somebody had to crank it. It didn’t sound like a digital air raid. It sounded like someone was cranking it, and it was everywhere. It was echoing. I freaked out. My husband was like, “That was super weird.” I was like, “We’re not really near the coast of Washington, but the coast of Washington sometimes has tsunami warnings and stuff. Maybe it was that?” I looked it up on my phone. There were no warnings, nothing. I was like, that’s really creepy.

So we fall asleep, and I wake up maybe a couple hours later to this horrifically scary baby crying. But it sounded like something trying to be a baby, if that makes sense. It was so unnerving and so creepy. It was this like fake baby wailing, and it was so close to our tent. I woke Neil up immediately. Poor Neil was like, “Oh my God” – he doesn’t believe any of this, so he’s like, “Go to sleep.” [laughs] I’m like, “Do you hear this?” He’s like, “Yeah, it’s the campers next door to us.” I was like, “No, Neil, they don’t have a baby. Their kids are early teenagers. They didn’t have a baby.” He’s like, “I don’t know, just go back to sleep.”

My heart is beating super fast, and then a couple hours later we wake up and it’s still the middle of the night, probably really early. I’m like, “Oh man, I really have to use the restroom, but I am too afraid to walk down. I’m scared.” I wake Neil up, and Neil comes with me and stands outside and he’s like, “You’re fine.”

As we come back to our campsite, which is right on the lake, we hear these waves lapping against the lake. We both look at each other and we’re like, “That’s weird.” I was like, “It’s probably just waves.” Then we look at each other again and we’re like, “This is a lake. There’s no wind, there’s no current.” It sounded like something – like when you crawl – not that people are crawling out of a lake, but when you get out of the lake and there’s that lapping sound. That’s what it sounded like.

Then we both looked at each other and froze and ran into our tent and closed it. I think maybe Neil started to believe in that moment, because that was the weird one. So that’s my story. I don’t know what it was; I didn’t see anything. I just heard these three very strange voices.

JIM HAROLD: That’s the thing. When we’re in urban settings and things, you have this façade of security. But when you’re camping in the wilderness of Washington State, the policeman or policewoman on a bicycle is not going to save you in case there’s some kind of wild beastie out there. So it really does make you think. Mallorie, thank you so much for joining us again on the Campfire, and I appreciate it.

MALLORIE: Yeah, thanks.

JIM HAROLD: Next up is Melanie from Michigan. She found out from both Kat and Jethro from Box of Oddities and Dan and Lindsey from Scared to Death – all great podcasters, and we thank them all for spreading the word about Campfire. Melanie does a bit of paranormal investigation, and she has a favorite location where some strangeness has ensued. She’s going to tell us all about it. Melanie, welcome to the show and tell us what happened.

MELANIE: Thank you so much, Jim. Yes, I am part of a group called CMPI, Central Michigan Paranormal Investigations. I’ve been with the group just over a decade, and my favorite place to investigate – and I think most if not all of the team would agree – is the Michigan Theater in Jackson, Michigan. We’ve investigated there multiple times throughout the years, and we keep going back because it never disappoints.

My very first story was I believe 2012 or ’13. It was our first time investigating the Michigan Theater. We had a pretty small group that night, and I was paired up with my Aunt Diane. When it was our turn to go in, we decided to start downstairs in the dressing rooms right below the stage. So we got ourselves situated down there – our camcorder, our visual recorder, our K-II – and got started.

Since it was late at night, there was barely any noise pollution from outside. The occasional car, or a person might walk by, but even those noises were very quiet. And of course, we would note them in our recording so anyone listening to it later wouldn’t confuse it for any paranormal activity.

We’re sitting there, and besides those random noises it’s absolutely silent. It’s to the point where I’m actually starting to get bored. I was relatively new to ghost hunting, and I’m thinking, “I thought this would be a little bit more exciting.” We’re barely getting any hits on the K-II, we’re not seeing anything, we’re not hearing anything. At this point I’m ready to pack up from the basement and check out other locations in the theater.

We did get one scare, which wasn’t what we expected and not what we were looking for. We had just asked a couple of questions and were intently listening for anything when, out of nowhere, this creepy music starts playing. I grab my aunt’s arm, she grabs my arm, we are both shaking, wondering what the heck is going on, where is this music coming from. And then I look down and notice that her pocket is glowing. She forgot to turn off her cellphone, and her ringtone at the time was the theme song from The Walking Dead.

JIM HAROLD: Oh, okay. [laughs]

MELANIE: Once she turned off her phone and we calmed ourselves down a little bit, we got a good laugh and then continued with our investigating. But the rest of our time down there was just silent.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and Rusty, who’s our team leader, had reviewed all of our camera footage and recordings from the night. He got the group back together so we could go over what we captured. I was a little surprised, like, “Oh, we actually caught something? It was really quiet that night.” He said, “Oh yes, we got a few EVPs and they’re really good.”

One of the EVPs that he played for us was Diane and I downstairs in the dressing rooms, when it was so quiet I was bored out of my mind. Imagine my surprise when he starts playing the clip, and you can hear Diane and I talking, and it sounds like we’re standing in the middle of a crowded lobby.

JIM HAROLD: Oh man.

MELANIE: Yeah, there is just conversation all around us. We couldn’t really pick out anything that was being said; it was a little bit muffled, and there was just so much that we couldn’t tell. But my jaw just dropped, and that story has stuck with me through the years. Actually, I remind myself even today, 10 years later, when I’m investigating – because I do still get bored – that just because I can’t hear anything in the moment, doesn’t mean that nothing’s going on. So that’s my first story and my first experience with the Michigan Theater.

JIM HAROLD: A couple things I was going to say. First of all, that’s wild about the recording and it sounded like a lobby full of people. It just makes you wonder how many spirits were milling about.

MELANIE: Right.

JIM HAROLD: And also, to your point about this being one of your favorite locations, to me it seems like a theater would be a great place for a haunting from the standpoint that you’ve got a lot of energy, you’ve got a lot of psychic energy. The audience is amped up because they’re going to go and have a good time at the theater; you’ve got all the emotions that play out on the stage, plus – let’s face it – theater people tend to be a little high-strung. I’m sorry, any theater people out there, but at least in my experience that’s always been the case. Most, not all, but most theater people have big personalities. That’s why they’re so good at what they do. And they tend to be a little high-strung, so you’ve got a lot of energy there.

Not to mention all the emotions that are playing out on stage. You’ve got a comedy, there’s laughter. You’ve got a drama, there’s tears. I mean, it’s the whole gamut, isn’t it?

MELANIE: Absolutely. Like I said, we keep going back because we never leave there disappointed. It’s absolutely amazing, and one of my favorite places – not even just to investigate. I just love to go there. Any chance I can get to attend an event there or see a film, I jump on that chance.

JIM HAROLD: You said you had another story?

MELANIE: Yes. This one takes place a few years later, between 2016 and ’18. We had a slightly larger group that night, and we were getting ready to wrap up our investigation. I was in a group with Rusty and two or three others. For our last time in, we wanted to go down to the dressing rooms, and one in particular that had been active the rest of the night. Any team that went down there had some type of an experience. Whether they felt something or they heard something or seemingly intelligent conversation or communication with the K-II meter, something happened. So we said, “Hey, let’s go down there and see what we can get.”

We head down there and we’re in that dressing room for 10-15 minutes and we are getting nothing. We’re like, “Okay, that’s weird. Everybody else got to experience something. Why can’t we?” So we start bringing in others from our group, one or two at a time, just to see if maybe a certain person will trigger activity.

Eventually we had our whole group in this dressing room with the exception of one guy who stayed out in our van to watch the cameras. As we’re all in this dressing room taking turns asking questions, all of a sudden right above our heads we hear the distinct sound of high heels walking across the stage. Three times, they went back and forth and back again, and immediately we were on our walkie-talkie to the guy saying, “Hey, is there somebody on the stage right now?” He’s like, “I’m looking at it right now. There’s absolutely no one on the stage. There’s no movement. You guys are the only ones in the building.”

To this day, that is my favorite and the coolest experience that I’ve had investigating everywhere.

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, that’s the thing. I’m not an investigator, but I think – to your point before, you were waiting around so much – I’ve equated it, and I think other people have too, like fishing. It’s not all catching the fish. There’s a lot of sitting on the riverbank. So that must make it much more exciting, even, when something remarkable like this does happen.

MELANIE: Yes, it does. That’s what I hope for every time. Like I said, this is the only time that I’ve actually had something happen in real time that I could hear.

JIM HAROLD: Well, please tell us if anything else happens and report back, and thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire.

MELANIE: Absolutely. Thank you, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Next up on the show is Beth. She has been listening, along with her husband, Wes, since the very beginning of our shows, and we appreciate that so much. She’s calling in today from upstate New York. Also, they’ve become podcasters, and she’ll tell us a little bit about that at the end of this call. But first, Beth is going to talk about the historic area she lives in and some strangeness that ensued. Beth, thanks for your longtime support. Tell us what happened.

BETH: Thank you, Jim. The house that we live in was built in 1898 in a rather historic area. The lake right outside our home was instrumental in the Revolutionary War and during the War of 1812. There was a huge naval battle during the War of 1812 out in the bay between us and the British, and the British actually commandeered the home next door to us to use as a hospital. So very historic area.

Typically on the Fourth of July, the parade goes right by the front of our house. We have a nice – I call it a deck, but it’s an open porch on the front of the house. It expands the whole front. Our street is usually lined with cars, and hundreds of people come to watch the parade. And then at night there’s even more people to watch the fireworks.

Last July 4th, because we were still in the thick of COVID, they had to cancel the parade. That night, my husband and I decided to go down on the porch and watch the fireworks. When we went down, the street was completely deserted. There wasn’t a single parked car. There were no people. Usually they congregate at a monument that’s close to our house, hundreds of people. There was no one around; it was completely deserted. We were actually the only two people in our house at the time, too.

My husband was sitting on the left side of the porch, closest to the railing. We had a little tiny side table in between us, and I was to his right. As the fireworks started, usually when the first one goes off, there’s yelling and cheering and things like that. It was just dead silent. You know that kind of whump whump when the firework is first shot off?

JIM HAROLD: Exactly, yes.

BETH: So for whatever reason, in between the whump whump and the explosion, my husband started saying, “Boom!” So we’d hear whump whump and he’d go “Boom!” and then the firework would explode. He did this probably a dozen times, at least. I can’t help it when I’m watching the fireworks; I think of the battle that took place right in our backyard, basically, and I think about the cannon fire and the musket fire and how frightening it had to be.

A couple minutes later, he said, “The battle must’ve been awesome.” I said, “I don’t know about awesome. I think it was probably terrifying.” He said, “Well, I think it was awesome.” Then he went back to saying “Boom!” in between each one, so it was whump whump, “Boom!” and then it would explode. He just kept doing this. Then the finale happened, and of course there’s that great cacophony of noise. When it ended, it was just dead silence. There was no cheering, nothing.

All of a sudden, I felt this pressure against my right side, and I knew there was a child leaning up against me. I just knew it. And directly in my right ear, clear as day, this little girl said, “Go boom?” I had instantaneous cold chills. My eyes welled up with tears. I felt like I was going to vomit. It was just a complete visceral reaction.

I whipped my head to the left and I looked at my husband, and he had this weird look on his face and his eyes were huge, and he said, “Did you hear that?” I said, “Yes. It was right in my ear.” He said, “What did you hear?” I said, “A little girl said, ‘Go boom?’” He was like, “I heard it too.”

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

BETH: So he jumped up and he’s scanning the side yard, and I jumped up and I’m scanning the front yard and the street, and it’s still completely deserted. Absolutely no one there.

JIM HAROLD: With the history of your house, I’m guessing you think that little girl ghost might be somehow connected to the home or the surrounding properties?

BETH: We honestly don’t know, because we’re huge history nerds, and we’ve done a ton of research on this house. It was owned by a very prominent judge and his wife in the late 1800s. We couldn’t find any records of any children passing away. There’s been numerous books written about our town’s involvement in the War of 1812 and the two houses next door. As far as we know, there were no children that were killed during the battle, either. So it’s an absolute mystery.

My gut feeling was that this child was more contemporary than that. And I don’t know why I say that, but it was just a gut feeling that I had.

JIM HAROLD: You said in your note that this was so powerful that even weeks after, every time you thought about it, it had a visceral impact on you physically, right?

BETH: Yeah, it still does. As I’m telling you, I can feel my voice getting shaky. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Sometimes I think we tend to glorify battle or different things, but you’ve got to realize real people were being killed, particularly in these kinds of scenarios where battlefields were right next to people’s homes. It wasn’t all that cool.

BETH: No, not at all. And I guess afterwards there were 300 naval officers where our town, whether they were British or American, they laid them out on the wharf.

JIM HAROLD: My goodness.

BETH: They laid them side by side out of respect.

JIM HAROLD: So with these experiences and so forth, you and your husband have decided to start your own podcast. Give us about a minute of what it’s about and where people can find it.

BETH: Sure. It’s called Where Our Minds Wander, and you can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all of the listening apps. It’s a weekly show, and we each do a different topic that ranges from the supernatural to the naturally weird.

JIM HAROLD: Very cool. Very cool indeed. Well, thanks to you and thanks to Wes for listening all these years, and I wish you the best in your podcast. And thank you for being a part of the Campfire tonight.

BETH: Thank you so much. This has been an absolute pleasure.

JIM HAROLD: Dave is on the line from Massachusetts. We’re so glad to speak with him once again, and a spooky shout-out to his girlfriend, Erin. We appreciate them listening to the show. Dave is going to take us back to a spooky Halloween that he had. Dave, welcome back to the show and tell us what happened.

DAVE: Thank you, Jim. Back when I was in high school, my friend heard a story about a local cemetery. I know it wasn’t true what he said, but I decided to humor him and go, and he decided he wanted to go on Halloween.

We went and everything we saw, he thought was a ghost, like statues. At one point he thought we saw a ghost and I was trying to explain to him it was a rock. As I’m explaining that to him, all of a sudden a guy comes running by and says, “Sorry to startle you.” The weird thing is he was wearing a tank top and shorts, and in Massachusetts at the end of October, it gets pretty cold. This was at like 11 o’clock at night.

I started speaking to my friend again and we looked around, and the guy was nowhere to be found.

JIM HAROLD: So maybe he was a ghost, possibly.

DAVE: That’s what we think because we never saw the guy the rest of the time.

JIM HAROLD: That’s interesting. And that’s the thing; who says that a ghost has to be transparent or anything like that? Possibly a ghost could look like you or me. Maybe, Dave, every day we encounter ghosts and we might not know it. If a person walks past you and you’re in a busy area, you don’t know everybody in the crowd. So if you think about it in that way, ghosts could be walking amongst us every other day and we wouldn’t necessarily know it.

DAVE: That’s very true.

JIM HAROLD: Interesting. I think we think that ghosts always have to be at nighttime and have to be transparent or all of these kinds of things that we’ve grown up to believe because of television and movies and so forth. The thing is, to me, they could take almost any kind of form, I would think. At least, that’s my guess.

DAVE: If we have time, I have another quick one.

JIM HAROLD: Go right ahead.

DAVE: This didn’t happen to me; it happened to a friend of mine. I was driving in a car with a bunch of friends, and there was this weird picture of a little girl holding balloons or flowers, I can’t remember what exactly. It was really creepy. I asked about it, and they told the story of how they came into it.

They were apparently at an abandoned house by one of their houses, and they found it there. One of the guys decided to take it. They felt like they were being followed, so they dropped it and took off, but about a week later they were driving down a local road and saw something on the side of the road against a tree. And it happened to be that same exact picture.

JIM HAROLD: Interesting. It is a strange world, Dave. It is a strange world. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Campfire.

DAVE: Thank you.

JIM HAROLD: Thank you so much for tuning in to the Campfire. I certainly appreciate it.

And a quick note: if you over what we do here at the Campfire, one way that you can support it is by joining our Plus Club. The real benefit is the fact that you’ll get the access to the back catalog going back to 2009. That’s over 500 episodes of the Campfire you cannot get on the free feeds, plus hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of other episodes of everything we do. Check it out at jimharoldplus.com. That is jimharoldplus.com. Click on the banner with my face and use our promo codes, and you can get your first month for 99 cents or your first year for only $49. We think it’s a heck of a deal. Our members agree, and I hope you check it out at jimharoldplus.com.

We thank you so much for taking time today. We appreciate it. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody. Bye-bye. And of course – how could I forget? – stay spooky.

You’ve been listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire. Tune in again next time for more stories of ordinary people who have experienced extraordinary things.