A woman punches a ghost! Another caller sees death coming and much more otherworldly intrigue on this edition of Campfire!

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TRANSCRIPT

JIM HAROLD: Attention Campfire fans in New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia: Get your tickets for my Campfire Live Tour coming up this June! Go to jimharold.com/tour. That’s jimharold.com/tour to get your tickets today, and I’ll see you there!

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 today. If you’re new here, what we do is we share stories, true stories, real stories from real people who have experienced very strange things – people just like you and me. Welcome to our show, and if you’ve been listening for some time, welcome back. Please let your friends know, whether it’s texting them a link to this episode, rating and reviewing, posting it on places like Reddit and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all the social places, we would appreciate it because that’s how we grow and get more great stories.

And speaking of great stories, here are some right now.

Next is Jaclyn. She is a return caller from our nation’s capital, and we’re so glad to have her back on the show. Always love to hear from return callers. She has three short stories for us, ghosty stories, and I’m really glad to hear them. Jaclyn, welcome back to the show. Thank you for joining us, and tell us what happened.

JACLYN: Thank you for having me. The first two are related. When I was young, I would say about three or four years old, I had a great-grandfather that I was really afraid of. His house smelled funny to me and he had a really mean dog, and little kids are often afraid of their grandfathers. I remember one day sitting in the car – we had just left his house, and I remember sitting in the car and looking out the window at the mean little dog barking and thinking, “Man, I hate that dog!” And I heard very clearly, “This is the last time you’re going to see them.” I thought, “Oh, okay, that’s nice.” In my young four-year-old mind, I didn’t really process i beyond that. But unfortunately for my father’s sake, my great-grandfather passed away that week.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my.

JACLYN: Yeah. Things like that kept happening as a child, and I just assumed that that was normal. I never really told anybody anything about it because I just thought that’s the way things went. And then I forgot about it, and it didn’t really occur for most of my adolescence until I was a junior or senior in high school. I was running cross-country at the time, and I went out for a run. It started to storm. My next-door neighbor showed up when it started to lightning to pick me up because he saw me leave the house. We started to go up our hill, and when I was getting out of the car to walk back over to my house, I heard very clearly, “This is the last time you’re going to see him.” I thought, “No, that can’t possibly be right,” because he was only about 50 years old. But the next night, he came home and I believe he had a heart attack on his stairs and passed away.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my goodness.

JACLYN: Then it would’ve been that following summer I was at a fairgrounds with some friends, and a young gentleman who was my age that was an acquaintance that I didn’t really know well came up from behind me and gave me a big hug. I turned around to see, “Who is this person?”, and the very first thing I heard was, “This is the last time you’re going to see him.” That really shook me because he was 17 years old. That week, he died in a motorcycle accident.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my lord.

JACLYN: Yeah. Then finally, the most painful one was that same year, it was my senior year in high school and I went to go visit my grandmother. My cousin, who was a little bit older than me – he was 18, almost 19 years old – was there, and I gave him a hug goodbye, and as I’m pulling away I hear, “This is the last time you’re going to see him.” I kind of want catatonic. This feeling that I couldn’t say anything – I knew it, but I couldn’t say anything to anybody. And that week, he died, unfortunately, getting hit by a train. He was walking on the train tracks and died on impact.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my lord.

JACLYN: Yeah, so that was very hard. And that was about 15 years ago. My family has since come to terms. But my second story is connected to this. I have a three year old now, and we were playing in the living room the other day, and he stopped in his tracks very oddly in the middle of the living room. I’ll say that my cousin’s name is Robert. Let’s just say it’s Robert.

JIM HAROLD: Okay.

JACLYN: He stops in the middle of the living room and he goes, “Robert?” I said, “Huh?” He looks up and his eyes get real big and he goes, “A train!” That blew my mind. I said, “What?” He just went back to playing. My son has never met anybody of my cousin’s name. He doesn’t have any friends with my cousin’s name. He has never – obviously, that was 15 years ago – met my cousin. We weren’t watching anything about trains at all. It blew my mind. And the irony of it was it was exactly the same week that he died 14-15 years ago. So that was very surprising.

JIM HAROLD: Oh my goodness, wow. Is this something that continues for you to this day? Or have you “grown out of it”?

JACLYN: It has not happened for a very long time, and I’m terrified of it. I’ve had instances where I’ve known when somebody was going to be sick, or I’ve known that we were supposed to go to an event and we just end up not going. But nothing to where I knew about death, thank God. I very much don’t want it to ever happen again.

JIM HAROLD: And you have to be concerned for your son, that that might be something your son picks up.

JACLYN: That’s my mother’s fear, that he’ll be able to do and see things that he shouldn’t.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

JACLYN: But my third story is totally unrelated. I was a middle school social studies teacher for a rather affluent Catholic school in Northern Virginia a few years ago. The school would take their students to Colonial Williamsburg every year. We took the seventh graders one day, and if you’ve never been to Colonial Williamsburg, it’s very much like stepping right into the 1700s. Everybody and everything looks or is actually from that time period, the buildings and whatnot. Everyone who works there dresses and acts as if they are from the 1700s.

So we’re walking around a main street that is in front of what is the governor’s mansion, and I see this woman and she catches my eye for two reasons. One, her face is completely covered in these very odd scabs. I’ve never seen leprosy, I’ve never taken the time to look it up, but I would assume it’s something like that. Very red and purple scabs all over her entire face, which is the only skin you could see because of the colonial dress on her. That caught my eye and I thought, “Oh my goodness, poor woman.” But once I really looked at her, the second thing that caught my eye was that she was so clearly sick and sad. She was not like the other people that were working there who were jolly and there for the entertainment of the tourists. She was sad, and she had such a vacant, depressed look on her face.

I wanted to reach out to her and just say hello or something because she pulled my heartstrings, but I was there with my students. So never said anything and just went along my day. Well, at one point we went for our scheduled tour at the governor’s mansion. When you go in, we were going upstairs to the second floor. In those big old mansions there’s a landing on the stairs, and one of the workers was an older gentleman who was very friendly with the kids, and he’s standing at the landing. The kids are shaking his hand. “Hey, how you doing? High five!” He’s being great with the seventh graders.

Then the woman that I had seen on the street is standing right next to this gentleman, and I’m looking at her and I think, “Gosh, maybe I should ask her how her day is.” But then I realized that every single one of my students was completely ignoring this woman. They weren’t shaking her hand, they weren’t telling her good morning. They were being really disrespectful. I’m about to go up to them and say something to them, “You can’t ignore somebody just because they might not look well. That’s very disrespectful. You need to say hello to everyone. She’s standing right next to somebody that’s” – I’m getting ready to scold them, and then I stop and I realize they can’t see her.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

JACLYN: Something clicked and I was like, they’re not ignoring her; she’s not there. It was in that realization that she dissipated and was gone.

JIM HAROLD: Did she disappear in front of you? Or was she just not there suddenly?

JACLYN: If I remember correctly, she made a turn. She never looked at me. We never made eye contact, and I don’t recall her ever making eye contact with another person. I just remember this really straight-faced, vacant look on her and kind of looking downward. I remember having that realization, standing very still, her turning, and then she dissipated within the turn.

JIM HAROLD: Do you think that this also plays into your sensitivity that you have, your foreknowledge you’ve exhibited in the past of deaths? You’re just a very sensitive person spiritually, it sounds like.

JACLYN: Yeah, I’ve seen quite a few things throughout the years; this was definitely not the first time that I had seen something. But it was particularly rememberable because it was funny, because I almost scolded my students about it. And I don’t recall ever seeing anybody so real and solid and tangible. I mean, she was solid. And seeing her multiple times that day – that was what was really unique about that.

JIM HAROLD: Remarkable. Please keep us up to date if you see anything else. Wish you all the best with it. And it sounds like you have a gift, although sometimes it might feel like a little bit of a curse, depending on the situation. But certainly seems like you’re totally tuned in. Jaclyn, thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire. I really appreciate it.

JACLYN: Thank you for having me.

JIM HAROLD: Cynthia is on the line from Maryland. She’s been listening for a few years, and we’re so thankful for that. She’s going to tell us, well, about some early morning hours and some strangeness that happened. We’ve been getting a lot of these kind of stories lately, and I find them fascinating. Cynthia, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. Tell us what happened.

CYNTHIA: Thank you again, Jim. Pleasure to be here. A couple months ago, my little three-and-a-half year old – he’s been sleeping in my room, and during the middle of the night around three in the morning, he wakes up. He starts to whisper to me and he goes, “Mommy, there’s a woman in the room.” At this point, it’s three in the morning; I’m just trying to determine if he’s sleep-talking, is he still dreaming. I tell him, “Little guy, I don’t see anyone in here.” Then he whispers again, “Mommy, she’s right there.” And he points to the corner of the room.

I go and I turn on the lamp on my side of the bed, just because I’m thinking maybe he was seeing a shadow, because I have a nightlight in my room, so I was thinking maybe he’s just seeing the shadow that the nightlight is projecting. He sits up at this point when I have the lights on and he goes, “Mommy, she’s still there. She’s right there.” I don’t want to tell him he’s not seeing what he’s seeing, so I get up just to prove to him that there’s no one there. I walk over to where he’s pointing, and I start jokingly punching the air where this person he thinks is.

He says, “Mom, you’re punching through her.” [laughs] As soon as he says that, the lamp on my side of the bed starts flickering. It starts going on and off, which is freaking me out, and he starts screaming, “Mommy, what’s happening? What’s happening?” I’m trying to remain calm, so I quickly run to the other side of the bed, I turn that light on, and I turn the lamp off. He is just beside himself about what happened with the lady being in the corner of the room. Yeah, that was a very long night.

JIM HAROLD: I could guess so. Who do you think she might’ve been?

CYNTHIA: That’s a good question. I don’t know. I have no idea who she could have been. I’ve lived in my house for over four years now, and I never really felt uncomfortable here or anything like that. I never really felt like somebody was watching me or anything. So I have no idea, but it definitely spooked me when the light started flickering as I was punching the air. I mean, it could’ve been a coincidence.

JIM HAROLD: That’s crazy. You were punching it and it was like, “Okay, you’re going to punch me? Then I’m going to do this! Watch this!” Do you have any sense of – well, I already asked you if you know who it was, but is this something that continued? Or was this just a one-time thing?

CYNTHIA: It was a one-time thing. There were some things that happened I would say when I had my second child, but I’m going to chalk that up to sleep deprivation. [laughs] Being caused by hallucination. But for the most part, like I mentioned earlier, I haven’t felt uncomfortable or anything, and my child hasn’t ever done anything like that since or even before. But it was pretty spooky to be woken up at three in the morning and being told that there’s a lady in the corner of the room.

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, sure is. Well, thank you so much, Cynthia, for being a part of the show. I appreciate it. Please let us know if anything else crops up.

CYNTHIA: Absolutely, will do. You take care.

JIM HAROLD: I can tell you, folks, you want to know something that burns my beans? I’ll tell ya: when I find that I’ve subscribed to something and I’ve had it for months, sometimes years, and I haven’t used it but I forgot about it, and this money has just been escaping from my pocket for years. I hate when that happens. And that’s why you should check into Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills all in one place. And they are the sponsor of today’s edition of Campfire.

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If you love the Campfire, be sure to check out the Paranormal Podcast, where every week Jim interviews experts and authors about strange mysteries. Find it for free wherever you listen to this podcast. Tune in to the Paranormal Podcast today. Now, we return to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Kacie is on the line from Atlanta, Georgia, and we’re so glad to have her with us. She says that she works at night with her business and she likes to listen to spooky podcasts, and that’s how she got into the Campfire. We’re so glad to have her on the show. She’s going to tell us a story that starts with a scary dream, but there’s so much more. Kacie, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened.

KACIE: Thanks, Jim. Glad to be here. Just briefly, I’ve lived in the Metro Atlanta area my whole life, and I’ve always lived in places that are really rich in Civil War history. Right now, my current neighborhood backs up to a battlefield which is now a national park. Always lots of historical stuff around me. That being said, I have never once had any kind of experience, not even negative energy I’ve felt. So I’m either super closed off or something, but I am fine with that. I’m okay with not having any experiences ever. I love to hear about other people’s; I fully believe in the paranormal, definitely interested in it. I’ve just never had any type of experience, even being around these kinds of places.

Anyway, this happened a few months ago and it’s been on my mind since then. I can’t seem to shake it. It does have a lot of different parts to it. I guess at the beginning – I go to bed usually 99% of the time after everyone in my household. My husband and I have four young kids. I’m always the last one, usually, to go to bed. I’m kind of a night owl and I work at night, as you said. So I’m getting in bed, go to sleep.

I start having a pretty scary dream. I’m not going to go into the whole thing, but the ending of it, I’m riding a bike in the dark through a neighborhood and I see what looks to be an old woman come out in my path and get in the way. As I get closer, she’s – I guess it’s as he, I don’t know – you can see a white fluorescent nightgown, white hair, but there’s no face. It’s just black where her face would be. In the dream, I am biking closer and I’m like, “What do you do? This is scary.” In the dream, I slow down and push the figure over on the ground and I bike out. I’m looking back and seeing the figure on the ground and thinking, “Oh, should I have helped that person?”, whatever. Then my eyes are closed and I’m pedaling on this hill in the dark, and in my dream I’m saying, “Open your eyes, open your eyes, open your eyes, open your eyes!”

Then in real life, I open my eyes, wake up, look at the clock. I’ve only been asleep maybe dozing for about 15 minutes. That’s normal for me to doze and wake up and doze and wake up. But I’m thinking, “Wow, that was a scary dream.” I don’t usually have scary dreams. I have weird dreams; I don’t have a lot of things that freak me out.

Our bedroom has three windows, so the moonlight’s coming in and I can see things. I roll over to look at my husband, like, “Someone’s here with me, I don’t have to be sccared.” And as I’m rolling over, I look over him and there is a figure over him. The funny part is that my first thought was, “The Hat Man! Jim Harold’s Campfire!” That was the first thing I thought. [laughs] Tells you how much I’ve been listening, right?

But it wasn’t a Hat Man as described from the show. It was actually not so much a humanoid figure. I think the best way I can describe it is maybe like a Halloween decoration. You have a head, you have arms flying out, and a tattered robe, almost like a Dementor from Harry Potter if you’ve seen that, but smaller. It’s rippling. I would say it was translucent. It was kind of like looking at a bubble. There was a clear outline and I could see through it, but it was not completely clear. It was – I don’t know how to describe it, but it wasn’t a black figure. It was translucent, it was waving around like a bubble would be. But definitely clearly a head with robes, and moving.

I’m looking at it, and as I said before, nothing’s ever happened to me, so I’m like, are my eyes crossed? I’m blinking funny. I’m like, do I have something in my eye? And it stayed there. I blinked a bunch, looked. And then it’s funny because I just rolled over and went back to sleep. I think I was trying to explain it away because nothing’s ever happened to me before. But it stayed there, and I went back to sleep and I woke up and told my husband. He was like, “Gee thanks,” because he’s not a believer at all, so he’s like, “What are you telling me this for?”

But the story continues in the sense that I get up, go about my day – my youngest child’s two. He’s in a crib, and I hear him as I’m getting ready with the other ones, and he’s crying. He never wakes up crying. Not ever. Not since he was maybe an infant. So I’m like, oh my gosh. I usually have to wake this kid up at 8:30. He is my best sleeper. He doesn’t wake up on his own, ever. So he’s crying in his room, so I’m thinking, “What’s wrong with him? Did he fall out? Is his arm stuck in a slat?” He would never wake up crying.

I go in, I’m looking at him, and nothing seems to be wrong with him. He’s not stuck, he’s not tangled up in anything. I said, “What’s wrong, Carter?” He goes, “Scared.” I said, “Scared? What are you scared of?” He says, “Ghost.” I said, “Okay…” So the night after I have this scary dream and see something over my husband, my two year old, who doesn’t talk that much, or he doesn’t have a lot of language skills yet, tells me he’s waking up scared of a ghost. I’m thinking, kids are often described as closer to the veil, the veil’s thinner, the kids can see. Nothing’s ever happened like that.

And I’ll tell you what, Jim, he talks about ghosts nonstop since that day. He is always talking about ghosts. It’s just so strange. A lot of things that had never happened to me all happened to me bing, bang, boom in one night. [laughs] Yeah, I don’t know what any of that was. Haven’t seen anything since then. And again, I stay up really late alone, listening to scary stuff, and I’ve never felt scared in my house. Then that happens and now my two year old is talking about ghosts all the time.

JIM HAROLD: Let me ask you this – and I want you to keep listening, don’t get me wrong, but do you think maybe listening in some way is manifesting these things? Not that you’re imagining it, but it’s actually bringing them to life?

KACIE: Maybe. I think I’ve just heard so many stories, it’s making me more aware, maybe, of what’s out there.

JIM HAROLD: More sensitive, yeah.

KACIE: I’ve been interested forever, but it’s not like I’ve done any research. Aside from watching Unsolved Mysteries and Sightings as a kid in the ’90s, I don’t really…

JIM HAROLD: Good shows. [laughs]

KACIE: Exactly. I don’t have people that I talk to about this. I’m not in any groups or anything. But since I’ve been listening to your show, I’ve heard so many people’s experiences, and I’m fully like, that really happened to that person.

JIM HAROLD: Me too.

KACIE: I don’t know if I’m just more aware of it now, but…

JIM HAROLD: Do you know anything about the history of where you live? I don’t know if it’s an older house or a newer house or if it was built in a certain area. Do you know anything about any of that?

KACIE: Our neighborhood is fairly newer, but the area all around here – this is Kennesaw Mountain, this is battlefields everywhere. We’re really close to the Marietta Square. You had, actually, a guest on your show who talked about a place they worked and it was exactly where I used to work. You interviewed two podcast hosts. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I know exactly where they’re talking about!” I can confirm that that is absolutely a place that would be haunted. There’s just so much in the area that you never know. I’ve had friends who’ve had experiences in their houses that are a few miles away from mine. I mean, who really knows what’s on the properties out here? But it’s definitely a very historic area. Like I said, we can go through my neighborhood and walk onto the national parkland, which is the battlefield.

JIM HAROLD: Very cool indeed. Thank you so much for sharing your story, and if something new happens, can you keep us updated?

KACIE: Absolutely. Hopefully my son will either tell me more about these ghosts or stop talking about them. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Kacie, thanks for being a part of this show, and stay spooky.

KACIE: Thanks, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Nex tup on the show is Amy from Georgia. She’s been listening for a few months, and she’s going to tell us a story about sleep paralysis. Amy, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and tell us what happened.

AMY: Hi, Jim. Thank you for having me. My story started around seventh or eighth grade. We were living in a house that had a lot of paranormal type activity already, so I was used to seeing things and hearing things, and no one else had the sleep paralysis except for me. Yay me. [laughs]

It started with just a physical sleep paralysis. At the time, of course, I was seventh or eighth grade; I didn’t really know what it was, what I was experiencing. Now as an adult, looking back, I understand what it was. But it started with the very typical, you know you’re asleep, you’re very aware of the fact that you’re asleep, but it’s not actually a dream. You know that you’re not able to move, you’re not able to talk, but you have to calm yourself down to come out of it.

So I was very aware of that in the dream. I would lie there, and at first I didn’t see anything. It was just me not being able to move, and I would have to calm myself down and say, “Amy, just calm down. You’ll be able to wake up from this. Calm down. If you can calm yourself down, you’ll be able to wake up and all of this will go away.” I had those for a couple of months before – this would happen several times a week, sometimes two times a night. They were very, very often.

I started seeing in the corner of my room, at some point during the first few months of having these – I had a long, thin bedroom. My bed was tucked in the back corner. In the opposite corner, I started to see this black ball, like if you can imagine a huge ball of yarn about five feet tall. And if you were to snip threads off of the yarn ball so you’ve got a bunch of random threads, and you would put it underwater, how those random threads would just sort of float in the water, if you can imagine what that would look like, that’s what it looked like. I mean, I knew it wasn’t underwater, but it was just a big, black ball. But the black looked like the bad reception on a TV. Like the fuzz on a TV is what it looked like. It didn’t really have much of a form beyond just being a large ball with the threads floating in air.

I saw it in the exact same position, same place every single time. I felt like it was watching me somehow, even though it was just a ball. I don’t know how; I just felt it was watching me. And over time, over the next year or so, it started to develop more into a taller, thinner thing. It still had the appearance of the bad reception on a television, but it started to get a taller, thinner appearance, more like a person, and over time it did form into the shape of a person, but still with that bad reception type appearance to it.

JIM HAROLD: Huh.

AMY: These went on for years. I had these dreams – they started about seventh grade. They went all the way through my senior year of high school. This took a long time. Over time, they started to develop into this thing walking towards me in bed. Every night it was the same thing. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t talk. I could feel my jaw tightening up, and I had to say to myself, “Okay, Amy, just calm down. There’s not really anything in your room. You can wake up from this,” and then I would wake up. There was nothing ever in my room when I woke up.

The thing would get closer and closer to my bed until it was standing right next to me. At this point it still looked like a human form, and I could tell it was looking at me. It didn’t feel especially threatening, but it didn’t feel innocuous either.

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, there’s a thing standing next to your bed.

AMY: Right, and I’m sleeping, and I’m like, what is this thing in my room? Over time it would move to different positions around my bed. One side of my bed was up against the wall, so there were two sides it could move. It would go from my head down to my feet, and then at the foot of my bed. One night, it grabbed my ankles through the blankets. This had never happened. It had never reached out to me before.

JIM HAROLD: Oh boy.

AMY: I had never felt it in any real way besides just seeing it. It had never reached out to touch me or anything. One night – this only happened the one time – it reached out and grabbed my ankles through the blanket. I was able to calm myself down enough to move, but I was still asleep, so it was no longer sleep paralysis, but I was still in that same state where I was aware that I was sleeping but aware that it wasn’t a dream.

So I could feel the hands on my ankles, and then I started to kick my legs because I was able to move. I was kicking my legs so much that I kicked the blankets off. While I was kicking it, it was this very slow, exaggerated moving that it was doing. It wasn’t fighting back; it didn’t feel like I was hurting it in any way. It was just doing this slow – this sort of movement, throwing its hands back really slow, almost like it was in water, like if you were to try to have a fight in water. It was very slow movement. But I didn’t feel like I was hurting it.

I was able to actually get out of bed, and I continued kicking it because I felt like it was a danger to me. Even though it didn’t feel threatening in a way where it was fighting back, I felt like I needed to get this thing out of my room. So I was kicking and kicking, and I was slowly kicking it out of my bedroom. Our bedrooms were attic, so the staircase was in the middle of the house. There was one bedroom at the very end of the house and then a very sharp turn to go into the back of the house where my bedroom was.

So I kicked this thing out of my room, down through this really narrow hallway, around the sharp turn to the top of the staircase, and I actually kicked it down the stairs. I remember just watching it tumble, like a slow tumble down the stairs. I remember seeing its form at the bottom of the stairs. At the time it reminded me of a chalk outline of a dead body on a TV show, just this exaggerated form of a person that’s fallen. That’s what it looked like, but just the black form at the bottom of the staircase.

JIM HAROLD: Huh.

AMY: That was the last one I ever had.

JIM HAROLD: So you kind of kicked its butt. [laughs]

AMY: I did. I feel like I defeated it. That was the last one. I’ve not had one since then. It was very strange.

JIM HAROLD: Do you think it was some kind of actual malevolent spirit and you spiritually defeated it?

AMY: I do. I think I was oppressed by something during that time. I think there was definitely some sort of demonic activity happening in the house, and not just a spirit type activity, based on other things that were happening at the same time. I think there was some oppression type thing going on. I don’t know how I was able to defeat it or why, but I stopped having the dreams and it never happened again.

JIM HAROLD: Wow. Don’t mess with Amy.

AMY: Yeah, right? Even in my sleep.

JIM HAROLD: That’s the moral of this story. Don’t mess with Amy. Amy, I know you have more stories. You’re going to come back on the show at a future time. We appreciate it, and thank you for being a part of the Campfire.

AMY: Thank you, Jim. Stay spooky.

JIM HAROLD: Stay spooky!

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Subscribe or follow Jim Harold’s Campfire today wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate and review, too. It helps so much. Thanks! Now, back to another great Campfire story.

JIM HAROLD: Mark is on the line from Northern Virginia. He found out about us from Darkness Radio and Tim Dennis, so thank you, Tim, and make sure to check out Darkness Radio. I’ve got to tell you, this is another one of those wild scenarios where the show decides it’s going to produce itself. Literally. you just heard the story of Amy and her strange experience. Let me tell you something: Mark signed up by himself. Nobody told him what time to sign up or anything. He signed up for the time right after Amy, and he has a story that I think relates. I’m amazed. Back to back. A lot of times we move calls around. On the show you’ll hear calls from different weeks, sometimes different months. But literally we took these two calls back to back. Mark, welcome to the show and please share your very relevant story.

MARK: Thank you. Yeah, this has happened three times in my life, and there is one major difference, but the first time it happened, I want to say I was eight. I had laid down, woken up from a nap, and there was just this large ball above me. The only thing I can say is it’s like it was folding into itself. If you think about a donut shape with no middle, it just kind of flowed like this. I was able to move and look around, and that’s what stood out to me. I could look to my right or left, but when I looked back at it, it was still there. So it didn’t follow my vision.

That was at, like I said, eight. It happened again when I was 22. When I was eight, I was in South Dakota; 22, I was in Phoenix, Arizona. Same thing. Woke up, just this giant ball above me. It was folding into itself. I kept looking for more, I guess, or just any kind of clues as to what I was looking at. And then the last time was living out here in Northern Virginia, and I was probably 30. Same deal. I’m like, okay, I’m fairly used to this by now. This is the third time I’ve seen this in my life.

But the last time, something different happened. Instead of just fading out and I go about my day trying to piece together what I just saw, it actually got smaller and then stretched out over me and made kind of a honeycomb shape and just like fell into me and faded out. So as soon as I thought I had some answers, I was like, nope, they changed all the questions. Like, what just happened?

JIM HAROLD: Wow. Do you think you know what it was?

MARK: Looking into it, if you subscribe to the idea that your brain can make DMT and that waking stage, you can sometimes still have effects of that, maybe that – the thing that threw me off is I didn’t have the paralysis. I was able to freely move, but like I said, if I looked left or right, it stayed right where it was. It was in that space in time.

JIM HAROLD: So you don’t feel in any way that it was negative or evil or anything like that?

MARK: No. I kind of attribute that to seeing it at such a young age. So much stuff happened when I was young that it was like, okay, none of this hurts, none of this is bad. I never felt that I should associate negative feelings with it. And even when it kind of washed over me that last time, I didn’t necessarily feel anything.

JIM HAROLD: Hmm. Wow. This is a headscratcher. I think in Amy’s call, she actually felt that it was a little more malevolent, and she ended up kicking its butt, so to speak. [laughs] But in this case, it just was there. It was like neutral, right? It wasn’t loving, it wasn’t hating, it wasn’t anything. It was just there.

MARK: Yeah. In every instance it was above me. It wasn’t ever to the side or looking over me or anything. It was just floating above, and then it would either fade out or, like I said, that last time it did something wild.

JIM HAROLD: Man. So where does this leave you? What are your thoughts? Are you glad it happened? Are you sad it happened? Do you hope it happens again? What are your thoughts?

MARK: I do. Weirdly enough, I do hope it happens again. It’s kind of one of those – man, if you get into the paranormal world, there’s so much to dissuade you. For me, it was like a reminder of like, no, what you see is what you see. What you believe in, that stuff is out there. So it does leave you with “Oh, do I have to wait another 10 years before seeing this or before getting another answer or another clue?”

JIM HAROLD: Indeed. Mark, thank you so much for leaving us with this headscratcher and keeping up the theme of the show. [laughs] And thanks for being a part of the Campfire. Stay spooky.

MARK: Thank you, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Next up on the Campfire is Katherine. She is from Illinois, a Plus Club member, and a loyal listener for multiple years, several years. We appreciate it. And she has a story today about “the Ghost Boy.” Katherine, thanks for all your support and please tell us what happened.

KATHERINE: When I was 28, I went with a friend to a psychic fair. I had never seen a psychic before. We grew up very Catholic. At the fair, the gentleman psychic that we saw, because my friend went with me, said that he felt strongly that I was a medium. I have been sensitive all my life, but I thought, being a medium – I don’t know, that felt a little much, but I thought, “Okay, I’ll just listen to what he has to say.”

A few weeks later we went to the psychic fair, my friend called me and said that she had a girlfriend and something weird was going on in her house. She goes, “Why don’t you come over with me and you can flex your psychic skills and see if you sense anything?” I thought, “Oh boy, I don’t know. I don’t want to do anything scary or have something get attached to me.” So I checked in with my guides and everything felt okay, so I thought, all right.

So we headed over to this girl’s house. We walked in and she was showing us around. I’m not really feeling anything. The only thing I can feel is there’s a lightness to this energy, so it didn’t feel negative or scary, which I was so relieved. Because I wouldn’t have known what to do, really. But I felt drawn to go down to the basement. So we head down to the basement, and as we’re down there, I’m honestly kind of spooked. It wasn’t scary at all, but I’m just like – I can feel all this energy happening.

So we’re down there and I can hear children laughing and children playing, but it’s not like a bunch of trapped ghost children or something. It was just residual. This must’ve been where they played. There was the coal chute and a coal room and stuff, and I could just hear them playing. But I didn’t really sense anything other than that. As we headed back up the basement stairs, we got to the landing and I told my friends, “Whoa, I need a minute right here by myself,” because right before me was a little boy. Normally if I get a psychic impression, it’s in my mind or I see it in my mind; this was a full-bodied apparition of a little boy.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

KATHERINE: Yeah. He just sort of stood there, and I stood there for a second, and we just kind of awkwardly looked at each other. Then he started talking to me, and he’s speaking to me psychically, through my mind, but I’m actually talking to him out loud. It was just a very bizarre situation. But anyway, he was so excited to see me. He was thrilled. E was like, “Oh my gosh, finally someone can see me! Someone can play with me!” He was just so happy that someone could see him and finally pay attention to him. He was just overjoyed. I did not know what to do because I don’t know how to play with a ghost child. So I was like, “Hey buddy, why are you still hanging on?” He was like, “No, no, no, I’m so happy you’re here. We can play together! We can play hide-and-seek!” and stuff like that.

JIM HAROLD: Aww.

KATHERINE: Yeah. I’m like, “I don’t know what to do.” I take a second and I tune in with my guides and they show me two things. First my guides show him soaking wet, so I knew that he drowned. There was a lake right across the street, and this is up in Madison, so there’s a couple lakes. I really got the strong feeling that he drowned in the lake. Then the second thing that I saw was to his left, this light comes in, this bright light. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I haven’t seen anything like it since. This light comes in, and from the light, out reaches a hand, and I can see the outline of a man, and psychically I know that this is the little boy’s grandfather.

I said to him, “Honey, your grandpa’s right there. He’s waiting for you.” He looks at me and just shakes his head. I’m like, “All your family’s there. They’re waiting for you, bud.” Just to give you context of what he was wearing – I don’t know if it really matters, but he had on a little striped t-shirt and jeans and shoes, so I don’t think he died a long, long time ago. I got the feeling like ’50s or ’60s. So I said to him, “Let’s make a deal. I can’t really play with you, but when you’re ready to go, you come find me and I’ll help you.” He kind of shrugged. You could tell he was disappointed. That wasn’t what he wanted. But I said, “I’ve got to go, bud.” He’s like, “Okay” and then all of a sudden disappears, everything’s gone, and I’m just standing in a basement stairwell like a wackadoo, like, “What just happened?”

I go and I tell the girl whose house it was and my friend, and as we go to leave, my friend and I are backing out, and as we’re backing out we’re facing the basement door and there’s a window. And I saw him. He went right up to the window, pressed his face up against the wall, pressed his little hands up against the window, and just tapped on the window, like a kid does. I felt terrible. I really just didn’t know what to do. I really didn’t feel like I was some strong medium who was like, “I’m going to pull you to the other side” or something. So we just left.

A week later, one night I have a dream. He comes to me in the dream. I was really excited because I really felt terrible for him, because I felt like he didn’t want to go because he wanted to play, and I think he thought if he left, all the fun playing and hanging out would be over. But there’s other things on the other side. But he comes to me in a dream and he has a backpack on and he says, “I’m ready.” Then I watched him cross over into the light.

JIM HAROLD: Aww. That’s one of the sadder things to me. People get freaked out about scary paranormal stories and those things, but to me the saddest thing is to think that maybe somebody’s actually stuck here, and particularly a child, through no fault of their own or anything, just kind of stuck. That’s something I think about, and it actually bothers me.

KATHERINE: Yeah, it was pretty sad.

JIM HAROLD: I’m glad this boy found the peace he was looking for. Good for you for playing a role in that.

KATHERINE: Yeah. So that was the one and only time that I guess I was a medium. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Well there you have it. Katherine, I know you have another story to share. I’m looking forward to having you on the show again to do that. And thank you so much for all of your support and being a part of the Campfire.

KATHERINE: Thank you.

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You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

JIM HAROLD: Jessica is on the line all the way from Western Australia, and we’re so glad to have her on the program. Today she’s going to tell us about when she and some friends went to a camping spot, but [laughs] they had more than just Campfire stories. They had an experience. Jessica, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. Tell us what happened.

JESSICA: Thank you so much for having me, Jim. This was Halloween of 2021. Me and my friends went to a rural campground. I’d actually been there before when I was a kid, and I’d already had an experience; I heard footsteps out in the hallway, because they have these little houses that you stay in. So I heard footsteps out in the hallway when I was a kid, so that scared me so bad that I was like, “I’ve got to come back here one day.”

For Halloween, I went with my friend Leif, their partner, and another friend. We got there and we were just walking around, and we decided to sit down and have dinner. But while we did that, we pulled out some of our equipment, and immediately it started going off. We were like, “Oh my goodness! This is already crazy.” Leif had actually baked a cake for the spirits that were there, so we offered that, and that made our equipment go off.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

JESSICA: Yeah. I think they really liked that. We started talking to this little girl, and she was really sweet. We were asking her, “Do you like the cake?” and everything, and she was making it go off. So that was a yes.

JIM HAROLD: Were they EMF meters? Is that what you were using?

JESSICA: Yes, it was EMF, sorry. So that was a good experience. Then after that, we went upstairs. There were a few rooms upstairs that we tried in, and all of our equipment was going off. I think we also had cat balls and we brought little candles as well. We went into a back room, and as soon as we sat down, we started getting not very good vibes. The door behind us slammed shut. Our equipment was going off again, but then my friend Leif also got scratched, so we were like, “All right, we should probably move to another room.” But then when we moved to the next room, we got told to get out over a spirit box. So we were like, “Okay, that’s enough for the night.”

JIM HAROLD: Was it like [creepy voice] “Get out, get out”? [laughs]

JESSICA: Kind of, yeah. It was a bit aggressive. So we got a bit scared. We scrambled back downstairs. And because we were staying the night, we were like, “We’ll just have a few drinks and have some fun and go to bed” kind of thing. So that’s what we did. Then the next morning, I decided to keep it going, so I pulled my EMF out again. In the middle of the room, it started going off. And obviously there’s no electricity or anything to make it go off in the middle of the room, so I was like, okay, what is this?

Then I started following it around, and it was going off, and it led me to where my friend was sleeping in his bunk. He was completely passed out, but I was like, oh my goodness, that’s so scary. And later he actually said he felt a pressure on his chest. I was holding the EMF up to him when he was asleep and it was just going off. After that, we went back out in the living room – me, Leif, and their partner – and we were just sitting on the couch having a chat. It was so scary because we heard footsteps come out of the room that we were staying in, go past us, up the stairs, and then in the room above us we heard footsteps stomping around. It was one of those experiences where it’s so scary that it made your eyes water immediately. It was terrifying.

After that we were like, “All right, we have to pull our stuff out again and see what that was.” So that’s what we did. We got the spirit box out again and we lit up little candles and everything. We were asking on the spirit box, “Who was that? Why did you do that?” [laughs] It kept saying, “Leave, leave.” We were asking it, “Do you want us to leave?” and nothing would happen. So then I was like, “Is it saying ‘Leif,’ like Leif’s name?” That’s what I asked. I said, “Are you saying ‘Leif’ and not ‘leave’?” And everything went off. The candle was going crazy and our EMF was just going off.

So that really scared us. Then after that we were like, “Um, all right, we’ve got to leave.” So we booked it out of there. We were like, “Okay, we’re done.”

JIM HAROLD: I can’t say that I blame you. You have more guts to do it to begin with than I do. Was this the first time you had seen these kinds of results in a paranormal investigation?

JESSICA: It was actually our first paranormal investigation. I think we just got lucky because that place is so notorious for being haunted.

JIM HAROLD: So the question, Jessica, is did you go back and do another investigation?

JESSICA: No, but I would love to.

JIM HAROLD: See, you are much braver than I am. And I’m guessing this has increased your belief or your interest in the paranormal?

JESSICA: Yes, it really has.

JIM HAROLD: Indeed, something like that would. Well, Jessica, I know you have more stories. I hope that you will join us another time to tell them, and I thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire.

JESSICA: Thank you, Jim.

JIM HAROLD: Next up on the Campfire is Rick from Tennessee. We’re so glad to have him with us. He’s been listening for a while now, and we are so appreciative. And he has a story about his grandma. We’re so glad to have him on the show. Rick, welcome to the program and tell us what happened.

RICK: Thanks for having me, Jim. This happened probably about three to four months ago. Long story short, backstory a little bit, me and my grandma were really close – my mom’s mom. She passed in 2013. I found a picture one day. I was going through these old photos and I found a picture of me and her in middle school. I was like, “That’s cool.” Put that picture on my dresser so I can look at it and remember her by.

I came home one day – this was after work – and I noticed that the picture wasn’t on my dresser. I was like, that’s really strange, because that’s been there the whole time. I’ve never moved it. I haven’t touched it. I was like, maybe I misplaced it or maybe my wife put it somewhere or whatever. So I asked her, “Hey, did you move this picture?” She said, “No, I didn’t touch the picture. What are you talking about?” I said, “The picture of me and” – I called her Mamaw. I said, “The picture of Mamaw and me from middle school.” She was like, “No, I didn’t touch it.”

I walked into the kitchen and I moved some mail off of the counter, and the picture was right there beneath the mail, right next to the stove. And she didn’t move it, I didn’t touch it. So I guess it’s kind of a headscratcher. I don’t know how that’s possible. [laughs] But yeah, it was pretty crazy.

JIM HAROLD: In your note, you said your wife had a theory what this meant.

RICK: Yeah, she thought maybe it was my grandma’s way of telling me, “Hey, everything’s okay. I’m okay, watching over you.” I kind of think maybe that was her way of doing that in a way, but yeah, it was crazy because literally that picture was on my dresser from the day I found it, sitting there for months, and then I come home and it’s on the kitchen counter. I can’t explain that.

JIM HAROLD: That very much fits with something we’ve been talking about on the shows over the last couple of years. Maybe, Rick, you heard it – JOTT (just one of those things). There’s an author, and she’s sadly passed. I wish she were still around so I could talk with her about this again. We’ve had so many people who have talked about that. It’s Mary Rose Barrington, and she had a book out called JOTT (just one of those things) and talked about this supernatural thing that happens to people where they put something in one place – and it’s not just like you misplace your car keys, it’s like you know that it’s there, just as you knew that picture was where it was at, and then all of a sudden it ends up at someplace else. She did speculate as to possible supernatural explanations for that.

I think that’s as good a way as any to get a message across that your grandma is thinking of you and trying to get some kind of message to you, that she’s still around. I think that’s pretty cool. And I’m assuming you feel the same way. It’s kind of a comfort, right?

RICK: Yeah, it was kind of “Hey, I’m here, I’m watching over you” type thing. It gave me some closure in a way in saying, “Hey, I’m here, everything’s good. Just wanted to give you a heads up.” I think it’s what you call a headscratcher in a way, too.

JIM HAROLD: Yep, indeed.

RICK: It’s one of those things where I don’t know how that happened. I can’t explain that. There’s no way for me to explain that. So I think in a way that’s the reason why.

JIM HAROLD: Very cool indeed. I love headscratchers, and I love ones that have a sweetness about them. I think when we think about Campfire stories, we always think they’re spooky and they’re scary. And there are some that are, no question about it. We love to hear those. But I think my favorites are those where your loved ones say, “Hey! Still around, looking out for you. Don’t forget me.” Rick, thank you so much for sharing this very personal story on the Campfire today.

RICK: Thank you. Stay spooky.

JIM HAROLD: Gus is on the line. He is a longtime listener, big supporter. He’s been on the show many times. We’re so glad to have him on the show. He’s going to tell us about a mediumship session he recently had. Can’t wait to hear about it. Gus, welcome to the show. Thanks for all your support, as always, and tell us what happened.

GUS: Thank you, Jim. Great to chat with you again. As you said, I had a mediumship session not too long ago with my friend Nikki. You may recall on a prior podcast where I mentioned my friends Nikki and Toni, who are the tour guides for the Flemington Ghost Walk that I had created during the pandemic. Nikki had provided her impressions of different spirits she’s seen at the various haunted locations in the town that I live in, Flemington. So I said, why not see what kinds of spirits she sees around me instead of just the town I live in?

So I booked a mediumship session with Nikki, and it was really a fascinating experience. When we got together, we did a little bit of meditation and then we got to business. The first thing she said to me, she goes, “You know, Gus, I see a long line of people waiting to talk to you.” She said it’s like when you go to the bakery the day before Thanksgiving, like pick a number. [laughs]

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

GUS: I said, well, I do know a lot of dead people. You get old enough, you know a lot of dead people. She said different relatives came through. My mom, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and whatnot. But the main focal point of this session was my mother, who was also a focal point of some of the other stories that I’ve shared on Campfire.

Nikki said my mom was a very warm and caring person with a lot of empathy, and that is absolutely true. She felt stomach pain, which matches what my mom had, cancer, before she passed away. She also felt leg pain, which comes from sciatica that my mother had too. Nikki knew about the cancer because of the extra bonus content that I provide on the Flemington Ghost Walk, but she didn’t know about the sciatica.

The other thing Nikki said was my mom was telling her about these photos that are on the wall of my family room, which is a portrait wall. She saw a portrait which was a wedding photo of my wife and I with a big gold frame, and she saw an oil painting on the wall of our family room. I said, “Yep, that’s true.” Nikki had never been to my house before, so there’s no way she knew what was on those walls, yet she told me accurately what was there from what my mother told her.

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

GUS: She also said that she saw small purple flowers, and I said, “That’s got to be lilac,” which were my mom’s favorite flowers. We had lilac bushes and trees in the backyard of my home where I grew up. She also said to let my dad know that he’s getting clumsy and that we can’t change his stubbornness. I said, she’s got that to a T as well. He just turned 94 last Tuesday. She said she was also very thankful that we have him over every Sunday afternoon. We host him, we feed him dinner, give him groceries to go home with and stuff. So she was very, very appreciative of that.

My mother also thought that it was quite humorous that she is part of the extra bonus content that I share at the end of the Flemington Ghost Walk in those tours that I’m able to join in. She thought that was funny.

JIM HAROLD: Oh, that’s neat.

GUS: She also talked about the grandma on her side, my mom’s side, that she was a shorter woman who was shorter than my mom, and that I was taller than my mother, which is all true. She said there was a bigger height difference between my mom and her mom and a lesser difference between me and my mother, and that’s also true. She said my grandmother was a strong woman who went through a lot, but was undaunted. I said, “That’s true,” because she arrived at Ellis Island from Hungary in the early 1900s with two little kids, got remarried, and made a life for herself. Like I said, she’s a very strong woman.

She said for one of my other grandparents, she felt the effects of a stroke. I said, “Yeah, that was true.” My grandma on my dad’s side had multiple strokes and eventually passed away from a stroke. And that the grandfather on my dad’s side was a stocky fellow with a very short neck and he liked to drink dark drinks, and I said, “That’s absolutely correct.” He was a stocky Irishman that loved his rum and cokes.

Then she said for one of my uncles who passed, she felt emphysema. I said, “Yeah, that’s true.” My uncle Paul smoked several packs a day for decades, and that’s eventually what he passed from.

But the part that really resonated the most with me is when I asked Nikki if she saw any of our pets on the other side. She said in fact she did. She said my mom brought forth three dogs, large dogs – a dark one, a medium one, and a light one. It stared to bring tears to my eyes. I said, “That’s got to be our three dogs,” who had passed and crossed the rainbow bridge. Our first dog, Fergus, was a dark brindle. Our second dog was Duffy, a medium brindle, a fawn brindle, which is a medium color dog. And then the most recent one who passed was our dog Ronan, who was a red fawn greyhound. So he was a lighter color dog.

It really gives me great comfort to know that both my relatives, my mom, and our pets are all in there in heaven, waiting for me. And I hope to see them at some point. Hopefully not too soon, but it really gives you comfort to know through this mediumship session and all the stories that I’ve told on Campfire in the past that this is not the end. There’s more to it after we leave this mortal coil. That, again, really gives me a lot of comfort.

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, I think it’s very comforting to know that loved ones are waiting on the other side, and the fact your beloved pets are also waiting on the other side. That is a great thing to know.

GUS: It wouldn’t be heaven without them, right, Jim?

JIM HAROLD: That’s true. The thing is that they really do – they become your family. They become part of your family. Now we have Teddy and Rambo. Before, we had Trouble. When I was growing up, I had my dog Sam that I was very close to. They are a member of your family, and it’s someone you treasure, and each one of them has their own little personality – or big personality if they’re a big dog. Or a cat or whatever pet it may be. It’s just a big part of life. I’m glad you got that affirmation. I’m glad you had that reading, and I want to thank you for sharing it with us today on the Campfire.

GUS: Thank you, Jim. Stay spooky.

JIM HAROLD: Next up on the show is Jules from Texas. I asked him how long he’d listened, and he said the last few months. He said he really doesn’t have much of a choice because his wife, Anne, every time he gets in the car, puts on the Campfire. Anne, that’s the way to do it. [laughs] Forced listening! I like it. So Anne, thank you so much and stay spooky. And Jules, thank you for putting up with the Campfire. I’m glad you’re listening – and see? You’ve got a story for us, one about meditation and some things that happened. Sounds really interesting. Thanks for joining us, and tell us what happened.

JULES: No problem, and thank you for having me. I’ll start with I grew up in a Christian household. There’s a direct correlation to that and what happened. It starts with when my grandfather passed a long time back. During that process, I went through a bit of depression. My grandfather was like my father in a lot of ways. I basically started doing a lot of research and studying. I wanted to get this deeper meaning of life. That was my approach. Especially with the internet, you can go down rabbit holes and find all types of information and communities and things of that nature.

What I essentially ended up doing was getting into meditation. It started kind of docile, very common – mindfulness, being in the moment, different techniques. But then I started going a little deeper into – there’s a way that you can do meditation based on different sounds and frequencies. What you would do is you’d go into YouTube – there’s hundreds of these. You would do these different meditations. My meditation was focused on unlocking or opening my third eye. That is specifically related to – in science, they call it the pineal gland, to understand the connection. I won’t get too deep into that, but those who are into those type of things, like third eye unlocking meditation, they understand what I’m talking about.

There’s a bunch of different practices you can do for that, like not taking fluoride, taking certain supplements, things of that nature. Let’s just say I did all of that. I went through changing my diet, I went through the meditations, the types of meditations changed, and then what happened is – sure, in the moment, I’m like, “All these great things are happening. I feel this tingling sensation, all these other things” – until I did what was called a candlelight meditation.

I won’t get into details, and I say that because I don’t want to spur anyone to go do something like this and it affects them. But a candlelight meditation is pretty powerful. It involves a candle, and you do some ritual things. Nothing out of the ordinary, but what ended up happening was I started to feel a difference in my actual physical body. I started to feel this tingling sensation in the middle of my forehead, basically where someone would say a third eye would be located. Then I started feeling this weird – it’s almost like an electrical feeling. Have you heard of the term Kundalini?

JIM HAROLD: Yes, I have.

JULES: Again, through going down these rabbit holes on the internet, what it is described as is a Kundalini awakening, or in my case a partial awakening. A full awakening would mean you basically are overcome by what is considered this cosmic energy. They call it Shakti in the Buddhist sense. The reason why I bring that up, specifically mentioning the Buddhist aspect of it, is going back to my original statement, these aren’t things that I experience in my culture coming from a Christian household. Both parents are ministers. And I say that because a lot of people believe that some of your reality is based on your belief.

For me, I wouldn’t say this was the case. These are very new things that were happening to me. So that’s why I think they were a little more validated for me. I ended up going to the doctor for these shooting sensations of energy. Felt like my heart was racing at times. Everything came back normal, but I was still having these physical things happen to me.

I’ll even give you one specific story. My wife, Anne, can validate this story. I would go to sleep and I would actually vibrate when I would sleep. The entire bed – my wife would wake up at three in the morning and say, “Hey, are you okay? The whole bed is shaking.” And sure enough, I started getting to a point to where physically, I was having these very noticeable changes.

One of the few practices for addressing Kundalini, since it’s energy – or think of it as electricity – is grounding. What I would do to ground is you literally could go walk barefoot. And these are things people do in general, spiritual-practice-wise. They go walk and touch the earth. You actually can hug a tree. Things of that nature. These are real practices. One of the ones that I do even to this day, but some people might find strange, is even if you eat food that is based on grounding – for example, root vegetables. Beets, carrots. Because they’re in the ground, when I have extreme outflow of this energy, I can go eat carrots and it’ll actually calm the energy because it grounds the energy. Or I could go on a walk barefoot. Or what I used to do is go hug a tree. [laughs]

When I would ground – and this is where it started getting really strange, other than, obviously, the physical changes – it’s almost like I could see – there’s a third and fourth dimension, if I’m not mistaking it. When I would ground, what looked like reality would start to almost look like a cartoon. It’s almost as if by grounding, I’m being a little more in touch with my spiritual side or spiritual sense or something along those lines. I wasn’t too clear.

So getting through all of that, all of these different things happened to me, and then what started happening when I went to sleep is I would have what is called an astral projection. I could actually feel what felt like my spirit separating from my body. I had two situations based on that that I’ll explain. One is I had what I thought was a dream, but it felt more like an out-of-body experience because I was pretty conscious.

I had a friend of mine who was dealing with cancer. When I had this experience, it’s like I opened my eyes and I appeared in what almost looked like this – I would say a brain, but it’s kind of hard to explain in the sense. But I saw this black circle, and I remember speaking to the black circle, saying – basically, in my mind, whatever experience I was having, I knew that this was cancer, and I spoke to this cancer and I said, “Hey, you can’t be here.” And essentially, the cancer, in that moment, shrunk. Then I came back to consciousness and I saw this weird circle of light in front of me, in front of my fan. At that point, I don’t know want happened. That was just a really weird situation.

The next instance is the one that was the biggest one. Essentially, I had an out-of-body experience where I was partially conscious. I went through what looked like this portal of life. It was like a spiral of light. When the spiral disappeared, I could see my room, the exact way it’s laid out. I could see the outline of light in the door. I was separated from my body. I could see Anne beside me. I could see everything in my room, but they all had almost a weird plasma-like feel to them. I could see the actual lettering on my sound bar.

I was trying to will myself completely out of my body, and when I did that, I looked to my right and I saw what looked like this eight-foot black figure made out of black birds. It almost looked like if you could consider the Angel of Death or something, but the actual body was made out of black birds.

JIM HAROLD: Huh. That’s odd.

JULES: Very odd, very odd. When I was reaching for this thing – because I’m assuming this is something positive – these birds came flying at my arm like it was trying to grab my arm. In trying to grab my arm, obviously I’m not grabbing birds, but this was the most vivid, detailed thing that I’ve ever dealt with, and I know for a fact that it wasn’t a dream because, again, the explicit detail of my room – I could see everything. This big figure just stood there. The only thing that moved, I could see the birds pulsating in and out slightly. But it would extend out, trying to grab my arm, and it never could successfully grab my arm, so I couldn’t completely separate from my body, meaning actually float around my room. I was disconnected from my body, but I was still there slightly above my body, sitting upward, like if you’re sitting in a chair, interacting with this being.

What ultimately happened, I said, “You know what, I’m not able to separate completely from my body,” so in my mind, I said, “I want to connect back with my body,” and I actually made myself go completely back into my body. From that point forward, I woke up. And when I woke up, the room wasn’t black the way it was. It went back to the normal room. I said, “Oh my God, what just happened? What was that figure?”

I’ll conclude with this, Jim; that ability to separate from my body at that time when I was deep in meditation, I could do it at will. I could go in my room, I could lie down – as long as I’m not in deep sleep or fully asleep, I had the ability to control if I wanted to leave my body. And that lasted for about I’d say a year, but I would fight the urge to separate, and I would just go to bed hoping that I would get into deep sleep. Because if you’re in deep sleep, it’s a slightly different state of consciousness, so you’re not able to what they call astral project. It’s completely different.

So when people say they have dreams or they’re in a deep dream state, that’s completely different than, from what I’ve read and people have said, astral projection.

JIM HAROLD: How has it changed the way you view the world?

JULES: Oh, tremendously. The whole concept when my grandfather passed, for me, it was questioning, is there a God? Things about religion. At that point I had absolutely no question that I believed – if not a God, there is obviously a world that we’re directly associated with from a spiritual level. When we leave this Earth, I believe we go into a spiritual realm. And I believe that that entity that I saw in that experience was all in the spiritual sense. That’s what I believe.

JIM HAROLD: Well, very interesting indeed, Jules. Thank you so much for being on the show. And also, a big thank you and stay spooky to Anne for bringing you along on the ride.

JULES: I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

JIM HAROLD: Thanks so much for joining us once again on the Campfire. And I have a reminder for our friends up in the Northeast!

Attention Campfire fans in New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia: Get your tickets for my Campfire Live Tour coming up this June! Go to jimharold.com/tour. That’s jimharold.com/tour to get your tickets today, and I’ll see you there!

And if you’re in that area, I sure hope to see you. Jimharold.com/tour. Thank you for joining us today. No matter where you’re from, we’re all friends here at the Campfire. We’ll talk to you next week. Have a great week, everybody, and stay spooky! Bye-bye.

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.

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