A chilling tale of a malevolent spirit who terrorized a young Scout year after year after year. A Beautiful Devil, multiple haunted houses, a bizarre time slip and much more on this edition of Campfire!

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TRANSCRIPT

Jim (00:00:00):

A very strange creeping camping entity headlines this week’s Campfire stories on Jim Harold’s Campfire. 

Announcer 1 (00:00:24):

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 (00:00:35):

Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold. So glad to be with you today, and this is the place where we share spooky stories, not just at Halloween time, but 52 weeks a year without fail, and we do that all the time. So Halloween is nothing new to us, but we love it and we know people love Halloween, so please share the show while you’re listening. For those who’ve been listening a long time, who are faithful listeners, share it with new folks and say, “Hey, do you like spooky stories during Halloween time or anytime of the year? Check out the Campfire.” You can actually share it right from the app you’re listening in, assuming that you’re not driving or anything, don’t do that. But once you’re in a safe place, hit that share button while you’re listening to this very episode and share it to a friend who loves the spooky that would help us so much. 

Jim (00:01:26):

And keeping in mind, Halloween is coming up. On October 28th. It’s 7:00 PM Eastern to 11:00 PM Eastern, we’re going longer this year. We are going to have a great live stream on YouTube, on my YouTube channel. You can find that youtube.com/jimharold. We just have fun. If you’ve not been at it, it’s very interactive. We have trivia. People will come on, callers will come on with costumes on. We have special guests live and prerecorded. We do trivia. It’s basically a huge party that we have every year right before Halloween. This will be Saturday, October 28th on my YouTube channel, and we’ll be live for four hours live streaming. So I hope you’ll join us over there. And you are joining us over here because of the spooky Campfire stories, and this is a very spooky one to start with. 

Next up on the Campfire is Max from Ohio, and Maxwell is here to take us back to his Boy Scout days and something very memorable and very strange happened. Max, thank you for joining us today and tell us what happened. 

Max (00:02:38):

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, back when I first joined my troop, there’s a little camp and I’m more than open to talk about the camp itself, but it’s Camp Miakonda. 

Jim (00:02:51):

Mm, hmm. 

Max (00:02:53):

There was a October campout that was scheduled to occur, and it was one of my first campouts with the troop, and we were sleeping. It’s kind of a one room cabin. I was sleeping in a bottom bunk next to a back door that led down some stairs around the back and then out to a trail, and then that’s sort of the setup, but it was a small one room cabin, and I was on the bottom bunk next to a back door. This back door had a glass window in it, and I think it’s important to set the scene just because of what happened later that night. I hadn’t yet learned to take care of business before going to bed, and so I woke up at about one in the morning needing to use the restroom, nature calls. I got up. I decided, Hey, I’ll slip out this back door. It’s right by my bed. It’ll be fine. So I popped out that back door, kind of ran down the trail a little ways to a bathroom, took care of business. On my way back, I went to break off the main trail again, to kind of go to the back of the cabin. And I got that feeling, and I’m sure people have talked about it before, but it’s the feeling of, “Hey, don’t do that.” The hair rose on the back of my neck. I got goosebumps, and I just got a feeling you should not go to the backside of the cabin. And so I decided to approach the front door. 

Max (00:04:20):

And walked in the front door, kind of little shotgun hallway. Then it’s the one room area where everybody was sleeping. As I was making my way into the entrance of the big one room area, I looked at my bed and my attention immediately got drawn to the window in the back door because backlit by the moon was the silhouette of a man. 

Jim (00:04:46):

Ohhh.

Max (00:04:47):

I couldn’t mistake it even if I wanted to. It was full moon that night. So it was completely backlit. And there was just the shadowy outline of a man in the doorway, kind of just outside that window. 

Jim (00:05:05):

Yikes. 

Max (00:05:07):

Yeah, and I don’t know how I could tell, but I got the overwhelming sense that he was just looking at my empty bunk. 

Jim (00:05:16):

Yikes. 

Max (00:05:17):

It was the head tilt. You could just see the outline, but you could just see the outline of the face just a little bit. It was no details more than that though. 

Jim (00:05:26):

Now, at the time, did you think it was something supernatural or were you thinking it was a person? What was your thought process?

Max (00:05:31):

At the time, I was simply a deer in the headlights. I literally froze and just stared at it for about 20 minutes. 

Jim (00:05:39):

Don’t blame you. 

Max (00:05:40):

An then, yeah, I didn’t break eye contact or, well, I didn’t break line of sight, and it got to the point where I was too scared to move. So I just sat down with my legs crossed until my legs fell asleep, and then I drug myself over to where the adults were sleeping and woke up my Scoutmaster, and we went over there and nothing was there. Smash cut, five, six years later, I’m almost an Eagle Scout. I’ve gone through my paces. I know how to tie knots. I know how to start a fire. I’ve spent many a night out in the woods and well, I’ve seen some other stuff between now and then. It went from this happening when I was 12 to about when I was 17, 17, 18. And we’re at same campground. We’re at Camp Miakonda. We’re in a different part of the camp. We’re playing a game of commando, which the camp is split in half by a creek. And so essentially half the troop breaks off to the opposite side of the creek. And then the goal is to get to the cabin that we’re all staying at. We, me and two other kids, we were on defense, so we had to catch everybody before they got to the cabin. That’s the goal. We broke off kind of out into the woods to the people I was with. They kind of stayed at one spot to keep an eye on that area. And I went off by myself foreshadowing, (laughs)  that some spookiness would happen, but I went off into the woods and kind of propped myself, trying to blend in with the forest as fast as possible. 

Max (00:07:29):

I pressed myself up against the tree and just kind of waited. I didn’t have a flashlight at this point. My eyes had gotten very used to the night. We had been playing for a couple of hours, and I was just kind of keeping an eye out for people sneaking through the forest. After a little bit of time, I kind of got that feeling again. 

Jim (00:07:50):

Oh boy.

Max (00:07:51):

You know, goose bumps on the back of my neck. The hair rose up, and I was like, okay, this is important to note though. I had completely forgotten about the incident that had occurred when I was 12. 

Jim (00:08:03):

Ohhh.

Max (00:08:04):

I had just suppressed it and didn’t remember it anymore. So I’m sitting there, I’m kind of looking out, and it’s fall, so there’s leaves on the ground. So you can hear somebody coming from a mile away, they’re just crunching through the leaves. I’m looking out and I get that feeling. I’m like, okay, I don’t see anybody. Maybe I’m just getting this feeling because they’re behind me. Okay, they’re behind me and I’m getting this feeling, the sense that every human has about danger. So I’m like, okay. I turn around and I don’t see anybody, and I’m kind of scanning the tree line behind me. And then I notice something a little strange about 30 feet off the trail that I’m kind of just in front of. Back through the woods, there’s a series of fallen trees in front of a really tall old oak tree. 

Speaker 3 (00:08:53):

This sounds, sounds like it’s out of central casting. It’s very spooky.

Max (00:08:58):

Yeah. Well, October nights, it’s the Midwest, and this is like a half moon. So we had plenty of light, moonlight, but it was still wind through the trees. It was just like a movie. It was kind of weird. But in between all these fallen trees, and I guess there had been a tree fall or something, there was some stacked up logs, but there was this 10, I can’t remember the exact size of it because again, I was probably a little bit shorter a couple of years ago. But I would say it was about six by 10 feet, and it was this roiling boiling cloud of fog and smoke. 

Jim (00:09:37):

Oh gosh. 

Max (00:09:40):

If you’ve ever seen the movie, “The Mist” and the way the fog enters the town, that movement is kind of what it had. But it was kind of contained within this six to 10 foot, six by 10 foot cloud just kind hovering there. 

Jim (00:09:58):

Whoa. 

Max (00:10:00):

And again, I’m like, okay. Again, I froze. I guess I’m the type of person that just freezes at the (inaudible) of something weird.

Jim (00:10:07):

I think if I would see that I might freeze. I would do one of two things. I would freeze or I would run. So I think either one would be totally understandable. 

Max (00:10:18):

Yeah. The saying is people fight, freeze, or run, and I guess I’m a freezer. 

Jim (00:10:23):

Yeah. There’d be no fighting involved. I’m a coward.

Max (00:10:24):

No, but I am looking at it, I’m like, okay, weird. So I’m just taking it and I’m like, okay, maybe I’m seeing things. Maybe it’s like an albino deer, and I’m just, the nighttime, I’m just staring at it and staring at it, and it’s just sitting there. It’s just hovering there. A good 10 minutes pass by, nothing’s really happening. And then I hear my friends yelling for me back down where they’re at, and they’re like, I don’t know, they’re about a thousand feet back towards the main area that’s closer to our cabin. 

Max (00:11:05):

And so I hear them calling for me, and I just start yelling, “Bring a flashlight!”, just kind of screaming that at them. Well, I’m not breaking eye contact. And eventually I see a flashlight bobbing, and I hear them slowly getting closer and closer, and I’m not breaking eye contact until they kind of flash me in the eyes as they’re running up with the flashlight. And I kind of get blinded for a second and they go, “Dude, what’s going on?” And I didn’t notice it at the time, but they were completely just like they had seen something. 

Jim (00:11:40):

Wow. 

Max (00:11:41):

But I didn’t notice it because I wanted, “Give me the flashlight!” I want to make sure I’m not crazy. So I take the flashlight, I shine it on where the thing was, and it’s just, it’s not there anymore. And somewhere, somewhere between me looking away and me looking back, because when I look back I’m like, huh, it doesn’t look like it’s there anymore. And then I turned it on and it wasn’t there. 

Jim (00:12:04):

Go ahead. Go ahead. 

Max (00:12:06):

I turned back to my friends and I’m like, “Dude, I don’t know what’s going on. There’s something out there in the woods.” And then they went, “Where’s the person that was with you?” And I’m like, “What do you mean ‘where’s the person that was with me’? You know I’m out here by myself. What do you mean?” And they said, “When we were running up in the direction you were looking, we watched the black kind of black outline”, again, like what I saw so many years ago, “walk up to you. And it was standing right in front of you and it looked like you were having a conversation.  

Jim (00:12:40):

Oh my gosh. 

Max (00:12:41):

And when we got up on you and flashed the light on you, it disappeared.” 

Jim (00:12:46):

What, well, first of all, do you think there was a connection between the first event and the second event? 

Max (00:12:58):

Now I do. Yes. I do believe that there is, because I will say though, after I heard that, I just ran out of the woods. 

Jim (00:13:08):

Oh, I don’t blame you.

Max (00:13:09):

Booked it. I booked it. Flight kicked in. Finally. It said, okay, now it’s time to go. And I dipped. But yeah, no, I believe that there’s some sort of connection. I’ve not spent a night at Camp Miakonda since. 

Jim (00:13:23):

Yeah, don’t blame you. Now let me, and is that specifically why you didn’t go back? I mean, did you have the opportunity to go back and you decided not to? 

Max (00:13:31):

It was both timing, and I was about to age out. I got my Eagle Scout, so I ended up aging out, so I wasn’t able to spend time with the troop. 

Jim (00:13:40):

And let me ask you this. What do you think, whether the first, what you think there’s a connection, if you think it’s the same thing or different things connected, what do you think these things were? Or do you have a theory? 

Max (00:13:54):

I’ve kind of got a three parter. 

Jim (00:13:56):

Okay. 

Max (00:13:58):

One’s my hope, the last one’s my fear, and the middle one is kind of more likely. My first one is that I’ve always thought about my guardian angel being my great grandfather and him looking out for me. And I’ve never felt it as a malevolence, so I’m hoping it’s him. And I’m hoping it’s like, “Hey, just checking in on you, bud.” That sort of deal. That’s the hope. The second thing is there’s something maliciously screwing with me and trying to trick me and do something. And the middle one is just somebody who’s consistently trying to talk to me or do something at Camp Miakonda, I don’t know. 

Jim (00:14:46):

Well, I would be very interested if other people have had similar experiences, jimharold.com/Campfire, jimharold.com/Campfire. Of course, we can all discuss it over at the Virtual Campfire group. And please do check that out on Facebook, virtualCampfiregroup.com. VirtualCampfiregroup.com. And before I forget, you are mentioning to me offline that actually folks said that this camp was notoriously haunted. What did they say? 

Max (00:15:19):

Yeah, it’s not talked about a lot outside of people who necessarily work there, but I worked there as a camp counselor for a little bit, and I know people and adults who worked there. And yeah, they’ve told stories of experiencing different things at different places. In the camp, at the Mess Hall, people have talked about how giant these big, heavy fridge doors will just slam shut 

Jim (00:15:44):

Mmmm.

Max (00:15:45):

They’re already on hinges, that, it’s an old camp. I mean, it’s got the third oldest cabin in the country. It’s one of the first Boy Scout camps that was ever established. It’s up there. It’s got some history, and other people have definitely experienced some things there. And almost everybody who’s worked there has a story. 

Jim (00:16:07):

Well, maybe that’s part of your answer, Max. Maybe that’s part of your answer. But I hope you do find those answers. And thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire tonight. 

Max (00:16:18):

Thank you. 

Jim (00:16:18):

Alyssa is on the line from Southern California, and like so many others she found out about the show from Christine and Em over at, “And That’s Why We Drink.” So be sure if you’re among the five or six people listening who have not already listened to that show, because they have a huge hit on their hands there. Please do. Because they’re always great supporters of us and do a great show in their own right. And Alyssa is here to tell us about where she used to live and she thinks where she used to live was a haunted house. Alyssa, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened, and thank you for joining us today. 

Alyssa (00:16:58):

Thank you for having me. Yeah. So when I was about eight or nine, I used to live in this house with my dad and my sister, and we had your usual haunted stuff, cabinets closing and opening on their own. We’d see orbs, footsteps, voices, the whole nine. But there’s two huge things that really stick with me about living in that house. The first was that I used to wake up at about 3:00 AM. I’d always have a terrible nightmare, 

Jim (00:17:29):

Hmm.

Alyssa (00:17:29):

And I would be in a state of sleep paralysis, so I wouldn’t actually be able to open my eyes or move my arms. I wouldn’t know how much time would pass, but when I was able to open my eyes, I would look at the clock and without fail, it would always be about 3:00 AM. And one time I actually had this nightmare that was so horrifying. And when I woke up without even my own meaning to, I said, okay, okay, I am awake. And then I entered that state of sleep paralysis, which just really freaked me out. 

Jim (00:18:03):

Yeah, I was about to say, that had to be really disturbing. 

Alyssa (00:18:07):

And then the second thing that happened, which is probably the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me, my sister and I had this thing where if we were freaked out by something or had a nightmare, we would knock on the other’s door and we would sleep in the same bed. 

Alyssa (00:18:22):

Well, one night my sister came in and she knocks on my door. I opened the door, she’s kind of looking at the floor, and I go, “Are you okay?” And she nods her head yes. And then she climbs into bed with me.  Mind you, I’m like eight years old, I’m half asleep. I don’t think much of it. So I go to sleep. I don’t know how much time passes, but she wakes up suddenly and goes, “I need to go.” And she gets up. And I just remember, I didn’t really see where she exited from. I just saw her get out of the bed really fast. And then a few minutes later, or even seconds, my sister knocks on my door and says she had a nightmare and wants to sleep with me. 

Jim (00:18:56):

Oh boy. So the question is, who were you sleeping with that whole time? It wasn’t your sister. Right? 

Alyssa (00:19:05):

Right. I even looked at my sister and started crying, and I was like, “Please don’t be messing with me.” And her eyes went wide and I could tell that she was not playing a prank on me. She was just as terrified as I was. 

Jim (00:19:15):

So essentially it was a doppelganger, right? It was because it appeared to be and seemed to be your sister, but it wasn’t your sister the first time around. 

Alyssa (00:19:24):

Right. And it only talked to me when it told me it needed to leave. 

Jim (00:19:27):

Oh man. 

Alyssa (00:19:29):

And I just get chills, because like what was laying in bed with me for all that time. 

Jim (00:19:33):

Do you think it wanted you to know, in other words, it did that specifically to plant that seed? So when your real sister came in, you would know I was sleeping with some kind of weird entity. 

Alyssa (00:19:46):

I almost feel like it didn’t expect my sister to need to come sleep with me because of the way it so abruptly left. 

Jim (00:19:55):

Wow, that’s terrifying. 

Alyssa (00:19:57):

It was trying to mimic what my sister does. It was, yeah, I couldn’t sleep for days after that. 

Jim (00:20:04):

There was a story kind of like that where this woman, her husband was serving in the military in Germany or somewhere, and something laid down in the bed next to her and started to spoon her, which is eww, and it was pretending to be her husband, but I think her husband was out on his morning run or something like that. And she realized it wasn’t what it was supposed to be. So she called upon her faith figure and the entity said, “Well, don’t do that.” I think it was Jesus said, “Don’t do that. Don’t say that.” Or something like that. It’s like, Ooh. So it was kind of like as a situation similar to yours, someone who was in the family, someone who was trusted. It’s almost like an imposter kind of thing. And that has always fascinated me because when I first started these shows, I had heard of Doppelgangers, but I didn’t realize it was so associated with the paranormal. And it seems to be relatively common, yet terrifying. 

Alyssa (00:21:10):

Yeah. I’ve definitely heard some other stories listening in on yours and as well as, “And That’s Why We Drink” where similar situations where entities mimic a family member. And it definitely always sends chills down my spine since I have a personal experience with that. 

Jim (00:21:25):

So did that continue the haunting, did that continue all through the years that you lived in that house? 

Alyssa (00:21:32):

Absolutely. So even though fortunately I never had that personal experience, I continued to have sleep paralysis. And I actually had a group of imaginary friends, I guess as you could call them. I was a child, but looking back, I don’t think they were imaginary. 

Jim (00:21:49):

It’s so funny, we just had a call right before yours about imaginary friends, someone who called in and talked about her daughter’s imaginary friends. Were these imaginary friends mischievous? Were they friendly? What were they like? 

Alyssa (00:22:04):

It was sort of a mixture. I do remember almost like that movie, “Sixth Sense”. I once woke up to a woman crying at the end of my bed, and I remember that really scared me. Or sometimes I would just see them walk through. I had one that I would talk to regularly that was also a little girl. And I can never decipher if that was an imaginary friend or I would always see her very clearly. And I did find out later on in life that a lot of my friends said, they’re imaginary friends. It was very clear they’re imaginary. And I was like, no, I actually had full conversations with mine. 

Jim (00:22:32):

Wow. Wow. Now where you’re living now, these things have not followed, it sounds like. 

Alyssa (00:22:40):

No, I did live on my own when I was about 19 in an apartment where I had a couple similar experiences, especially one where my roommate came in and I heard her very distinctly in the bathroom. And then she called me and I realized that she was not in the bathroom. But that’s really the only time that I think I was like, did something follow me? But then I never had any experiences past that. 

Jim (00:23:00):

Well, very, very interesting story, Alyssa, and I’m glad things have kind of calmed down. Thank you for being a part of the Campfire today. Stay Spooky. 

Alyssa (00:23:11):

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I love your podcast. 

Jim (00:23:14):

Jim Harold’s Campfire is sponsored by BetterHelp. Now, there’ve been times in my life when I knew that I was overthinking something or I was kind of working against myself, but my brain kept going and kept worrying. I’ll give you an example. Quite a while ago, it would’ve been about 2007, somewhere in there, I was let go of a job. The only time it ever happened to me in my life. And I knew I had done a good job and I knew I was unfairly treated, and that I don’t think there’s much I could have done to have changed the situation. But yet I kept blaming myself. I kept saying, “Well you should have done this”, or “You should have done that”, or “Should have done the other thing”, or “It’s your fault.” It was like this guilt because when I grew up, I was always told, if you get fired, it’s your own fault. 

Jim (00:24:05):

Well, maybe sometimes, but maybe sometimes ,no. And in this case, definitely not. There wasn’t much I could do about it. I was kind of the victim of external factors basically, when you know what you should do, what’s good for you, but you just can’t do it, well, that’s where therapy can come in. And because therapy can help you figure out what’s holding you back so you can work for yourself instead of against yourself. And I think if you find yourself in that situation where you keep replaying these scripts, I think therapy might be a possible answer. And if you are thinking of giving therapy a try, try BetterHelp. It’s entirely online designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. And if you think about it, what is more important than your mental well being and your mental health? Make your brain your friend with BetterHelp, visit BetterHelp.com/jimharold today to get 10% off your first month. That’s BetterHelp.com/jimharold. That’s BetterHelp.com/jimharold. And we thank BetterHelp for their support of Jim Harold’s Campfire. 

Announcer 2 (00:25:29):

Want the entire Campfire archive going back to 2009 plus much more? Get in on Jim’s Plus Club at jimharoldplus.com. Now back to another great story. 

Jim (00:25:39):

Emily is on the line from New Mexico, and we’re so glad to have her on the program. Now she says she has many, many stories, but this one she’s going to tell us today. She refers to this as her king spooky story and can’t wait to hear it. Emily, thank you for taking time today. Tell us what happened. 

Emily (00:25:58):

Thanks for having me. So this was about 14 years ago. I had always grown up around spooky and paranormal things, and in this house in particular, it had been a long time leading up to this. There had been lots of really intense experiences, but this was a major crowning moment. The spooky stuff didn’t really happen when my dad was around, and he was out of town that particular weekend, and I had a couple of friends over and my mom had her cousin, and they were swimming in the pool outside at night. Me and my friends were down in the basement. We were playing video games because we were 14, and my mom and my cousin came downstairs just angry with us, and they were yelling at us to stop messing with them. Why were we outside? Stuff like that. And we’re all like, “What are you even talking about?”

Jim (00:26:52):

Right.

Emily (00:26:53):

So a couple of the friends I had over, one was my cousin’s friend, and he was a young guy in his twenties, and then I had a young teenage guy friend over. So we sent the boys outside to go investigate. We had a motion activated floodlight near the pool that wasn’t aimed at the pool. So there was no way my mom was setting it off. It was something else outside that was setting it off. 

Emily (00:27:17):

And our neighbor had a young grandson that was mentally impaired, and sometimes he would sneak into our backyard at night and it happened. So we were just kind of looking for him or looking for anything, and there was just nothing there. We went all the way around the house, let the dog out. Dog didn’t alert to anything, but my mom was really freaked and so was my cousin. So they came inside for the rest of the evening. The yard was really weird. It was solid black. It was like there were no shadows. The whole property just felt icky, and we couldn’t just shake this gross feeling.  Inside, the air was really heavy and it just didn’t feel right. So since this had kind been a long time coming, mom started to go room to room and just feeling how we were feeling in all those spaces. 

Emily (00:28:11):

And she decided that it was so gross that she wanted to bless the house. Now, we had no experience with that before, so we just took some olive oil and prayed over it and then started going room to room, anointing all the doorways and all the window ways with the oil that we prayed over and speaking that whatever entity was there, can’t be there anymore. And asking it to leave, telling it to leave. And so we got down to the basement, and the basement by far at that point felt the most intense. And when we put the oil on the wall, the oil turned black on the wall. It was the only wall that we had painted white, and it turned black. So we finished in the basement and we were on our way back up the stairs and we had a large German shepherd mixed dog, and he was coming up the stairs with us, and I turned around to look at him, and all of a sudden I watched all four of his feet get sucked out from underneath him, and he went falling backwards down the stairs. 

Jim (00:29:13):

Whoa. 

Emily (00:29:15):

Down the last six, seven stairs. He’s about halfway up, and he tumbled all the way down to the end. I ran and I got him and he was totally freaked. He refused to go up the stairs and he was like a 70 pound dog. So I carried him up the stairs at 14 and no one could go in the basement the rest of the night. It was awful. We was a split level branch. So we went up the second, the half set of stairs to the bedrooms, and we started doing the same thing in the bedrooms. And it was so, so weird. We got to the end of the hall, which was my parents’ room where my dad slept, and as soon as you stepped into the doorway, it was like you could breathe again. We hadn’t realized how awful we had all been feeling. 

Emily (00:29:59):

It had been creeping on so slowly, but we were all just, our chests were tight and nauseous, and it was like the air was too thick to even breathe until you stepped into that room. And whatever was there that night was 100% not in the room. And whatever it was, it was either afraid of or respected my dad in some capacity because it never messed around when he was there and it was not in his space. And so it was a really weird mentally thing to know that we were the ones being targeted.

Jim (00:30:33):

Yeah, for sure. 

Emily (00:30:35):

And so we stepped back through the doorway and it was just stepping back into it like a torrential downpour. You could just feel every cell in your body just squeezing and wanting back out. And it was so intentious to step back into the rest of the house. So we finished with all of that, and it was probably about 11:00, 11:30. 

Emily (00:30:58):

We all just sat down. We had just been through a pretty major emotional spiritual battle. And it was, nothing ever else got physically violent, but you could just feel it inside your head and inside your chest just constantly. And so we all sat and we sat for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, and my best friend was sitting next to me and she just kind of started giggling, and I’m like, I also kind of started feeling like a little giggly. It was really bizarre out of nowhere. It was very intense. And she looks at me, she goes, “Do you smell pancakes?” And there was this strong aroma of maple, like maply syrup, just kind of starting to fill the room. And my mom’s like, “Oh my gosh, I smell it too.” Then all of a sudden, six of us are smelling this really strong smell, and we all start laughing. I mean, just laughing uncontrollably. So my mom gets up and goes to the front door and it smells like maple. I mean, that’s where it’s emanating from, is from the doors. This maple syrup smell. And then she runs to the back door and it smells like vanilla. And we go to all the doorways and to the house, and they all have a different sweet smell. And then she just grabs her face and starts sobbing. And she goes, “Oh my God, the saints will smell like sweet.” 

Jim (00:32:25):

Ohhhhhh.

Emily (00:32:28):

Yeah. And so we had maple and cinnamon and vanilla and sugar and everything. The whole house just smelled like you were making every delicious dessert available in life. And it was so weird. And then we looked at the clock and it was suddenly two in the morning. We had sat down at 11: 30 for 10 minutes and had entered some time slips, something changed, something gave an hour time perspective because all of a sudden, two and a half hours was just gone. And all six of us experienced it simultaneously. So the last place we checked was we ran outside because the whole yard had just been gross black soup earlier that night. And there were shadows being cast by the streetlights everywhere. And the whole yard was wet. It had rained, and our property was the only property that was wet. We were in suburbia. No other driveways were wet. Nothing was wet. And we looked up and we could see the whole Milky Way. It was the most incredible star site I’d ever seen in a city before. And we all just were relaxed and it was just over. And whatever was there had been banished and filled with something so beautiful afterwards. And that house never experienced anything like that again. 

Jim (00:33:55):

So what do you account for all this? What do you think was going on? 

Emily (00:33:59):

I have no idea. I think that there was something very bad there and something very good came in instead to help us out. And I don’t know, at the time I identified with the Christian faith, I don’t anymore. But at the time, that was what we attributed it to. And for as many big, bad scary things were out there, I think there’s some good things out there too. And I think there’s some benevolence and not just all us versus the great unknown. I think there’s something good in the background too. And whatever that goodness was, it kind of peaked through and it came to our aid that day. 

Jim (00:34:37):

I agree. I think there’s some more sinister forces that do not wish us well. And then I do believe there’s some good forces looking out for us. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. We really appreciate it, Emily. And thank you for taking time out of your busy work schedule. We appreciate it. 

Emily (00:34:54):

Yeah, thank you for having me. 

Jim (00:34:56):

Rebecca is on the line from Louisiana, and she was on our old Soulmate Stories show that we used to do. Dar and I, and now Dar and I have moved on to a show called “You Won’t Believe What Happened to Me”. So if you haven’t had a chance to hear that, please take a listen to that, available wherever you listen to the Campfire. And Rebecca has some quick, but spooky experiences in her childhood home. Rebecca, thanks for joining us. Good to speak with you again, and please tell us what happened. 

Rebecca (00:35:27):

It’s so good to be on the show. Thank you for having me again. I’m still with my soulmate, by the way, but anyway, 

Jim (00:35:33):

Excellent, excellent.

Rebecca (00:35:35):

(laughs) Lemme get to these stories. So these started, I have one kind of main story that really spooked me out along with my sister. So there’s validation there in that one. And then two other instances that aren’t related, but still kind of gave us that creepy feeling. In this house we grew up in, which was a new build, but it was on some old land up in North Jersey where Native American land, all the towns were named after the tribes and everything. So we lived in this house. My little sister and I. I have two sisters. My little sister and I were having a sleepover one night in her room, which we like to do. We had our little cartoon sleeping bags. I don’t know if you remember the ones from the nineties with the Lion King on ’em and Barbie? 

Jim (00:36:26):

Yeah, yeah, sure. 

Rebecca (00:36:27):

They were kind of tacky, but those were ours. So we had ’em on the floor in her room, and her room was a little creepier. She used to say she’d hear things saying her name and stuff. Of course, she was the little sister. So we were like, “Yeah, sure, Katie, whatever.” But we slept in her room that night and we woke up the next morning, we slept side by side. We woke up the next morning and we were in the exact same place that we fell asleep in, still all bundled up, zipped up in our sleeping bag with our stuffed animals and everything, but our sleeping bags were switched. 

Jim (00:37:05):

Wow. 

Rebecca (00:37:07):

Yeah. And we woke up in shock when we looked down and I mean, we were little we were eight and eight and nine maybe, or nine and 10. We didn’t sleepwalk. We didn’t do anything of this sort. My mom is such a light sleeper. She was right outside our room and we woke up and completely switched sleeping bags, and we got so scared. We sprinted downstairs and no one believed us. And so that was probably the scariest thing ever because we were exactly in the same positions. 

Jim (00:37:40):

That’s weird. 

Rebecca (00:37:41):

Zipped up. Yeah, it was creepy. And especially since she had the creepy room. I don’t even know why we chose to sleep in that one. But yeah.

Jim (00:37:49):

And then you had something that happened with your room, right? 

Rebecca (00:37:53):

Yes. Okay. And this is why I think this is paranormal because my mom denies that it is, and she is so afraid that it kind of makes me believe it was paranormal because of how afraid she was to admit that it was. But I came into my room one time. My room was at the end of this long hallway. I came into my room and my entire carpet was soaking wet. Slosh, put my foot down and it water would come up, sloshing wet. And I was so confused at this point. I wasn’t thinking paranormal. I was like, what is this? I asked my mom, she said, I left my window open. And I was like, there’s no way. My little window over there would get the entire room covered in water. It did that squishy sound when you stepped down on it, it was covered in water. And so we ended up, I think we just kind of let it dry. I can’t remember that part, but I remember toxic mold started growing. 

Jim (00:38:58):

Oh gosh. 

Rebecca (00:38:59):

In just my room. Yeah. Nowhere else. It smelled so bad that it was making me sick. I had to move out of my room for a couple months while they ripped up the carpet and did everything. They had no idea where the water came from. It was creepy. And my mom still to this day, I just brought it up last week and she says, I left the window open. I did not leave the window open when it was raining. 

Jim (00:39:23):

(laughs) I know those family arguments. It’s like stuff 20 years later. I remember one time when I was a little kid, I was at my grandma’s had nothing to do with ghosts, and there had been a funeral and I went with someone to walk to a neighbor’s to return a, they had dropped off some food, to return a pot or something or pick up some food. I forget. And I walked through snow and my pants were a mess. 15 years later, I’m hearing about my, (laughs) seems like, I don’t think it was quite 15, but those old arguments die hard. 

Rebecca (00:40:00):

Yes. She will never let it go. I was like, I wasn’t a little kid that opened my window when it was raining. I don’t know why she says that. I think she’s scared. I think that’s why it makes me believe it was paranormal. 

Jim (00:40:12):

And then there was another story about your family. What happened one night? 

Rebecca (00:40:16):

Yes. Okay. So these are my top three stories. There’s always weird creepy feelings going on. I was always scared at home, but these are my top three. So this third one, we were all sleeping. It was about that creepy hour in the night when it’s like one or two or three or whatever that witching hour is. 

Rebecca (00:40:32):

And we hear, and it was right above mine and my little sister’s rooms, they were next to each other. She had the creepier room. I had a creepy room too, but it was right above us. And we had an attic, an unfinished, creepy old attic. And we heard the loudest crash as if this is exactly what I pictured, an entire bookcase falling over with hundreds of books in it crash, the house shook and all our rooms were upstairs. We all ran out of our rooms and stood in the hallway staring at each other, scared to death. What was that? My parents were out there trying to laugh it off. My dad checks the entire house. He even goes up in the attic. And now that I’m thinking back, he went in the attic. He popped his head up. He barely even went in. I think he was petrified. It was so loud that it shook the entire house and nothing was falling. Nothing was even amiss anywhere. So yeah, they’re just weird little head scratchers that I have no idea, no answers to this day of why they kept happening. 

Jim (00:41:39):

So no thoughts as to who it was or what it was or anything like that? 

Rebecca (00:41:43):

No, our family’s a little bit, a lot of them aren’t in the picture anymore, but not because of death, just because of family issues. And we don’t really have any dead relatives. We have a very small family. There used to be a farm on the land that we built our house on. It could have been that. It could have been that there’s three teenage girls in there getting all angry all the time. I don’t know. My guess is the teenage angst thing. 

Jim (00:42:11):

Well, I’ve heard that whether they’re boys or girls. I’ve heard that whole idea that adolescents and teenagers really ramp up the activity. 

Rebecca (00:42:20):

Yeah.

Jim (00:42:20):

And I’ve interviewed people who believe that’s a main nexus of all this. I just recently interviewed Lloyd Auerbach on our other show, the Paranormal Podcast. If folks want to check that out, it’s free. And he’s like, this guy’s forgotten more about this stuff than I’ve ever known. And he said a lot of times hauntings have more to do with the living than they do with the dead. 

Rebecca (00:42:43):

Yes. That is so creepy. And I think that’s true. That’s what clicks for me when I think about it. 

Jim (00:42:48):

Yeah, very interesting indeed. Rebecca, thank you so much for sharing your story today on the Campfire. 

Rebecca (00:42:55):

Thank you for having me. 

Jim (00:42:57):

Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by Firstleaf. Now to say that I’m a bit shook, well, that’s an understatement. I’ve always been a pinot person, Pinot Grigio. But after becoming a member of Firstleaf, it turns out that I can add other varietals to my list of favorites, including Bordeaux Blanc. Firstleaf is an excellent choice if you want to get great wine. Firstleaf knew what wines to send me that felt familiar and delicious and would get me excited about trying new wines. Now, I love Firstleaf because they make it easy to get personalized wine delivered on my schedule right to my door. Since I choose the day my shipment comes, I’m never stressing about missing a delivery. And every selection is backed by Firstleaf’s, 100% satisfaction guarantee. And another great thing about being a member of Firstleaf is that I get to avoid the overwhelmed feeling I used to get in the maze-like aisles in the wine store. 

Jim (00:44:01):

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Announcer 2 (00:45:28):

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 into the Paranormal Podcast today. Now we return to Jim Harold’s Campfire, 

Jim (00:45:44):

A long time listener going all the way back to the Zune. If any of you remember the Microsoft Zune, it was like their competitor to the iPod. Ashley is on the line from Bradenton, Florida, and the thing is, is that she’s so young. I’m like, wow, she remembers the Zune. But I certainly do. And Ashley is here to tell us about some UFO experiences. Ashley, thank you for listening all these years and tell us what happened. 

Ashley (00:46:16):

Thank you, Jim. Yeah, I’ve been listening since I was like 12. 

Jim (00:46:20):

That explains it. That explains it.

Ashley (00:46:23):

So basically what happened, so I grew up in this small town in upstate New York, kind of between Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, there’s apple orchards and farms, that kind of thing. And I was walking, it was like freshman year, and it was like fall. I was walking with my friend back to her house at night because pretty much all there is to do around there is walk around town and look at the cornfields. So we’re on our way back up this hill, and we hear this low sound like, we’re like, “What is that?” And we look to our right and over this barn and the tree line, there’s this triangle just hovering there, and there’s a light at each little vertices, like little at each corner, 

Ashley (00:47:12):

And we’re just staring for a second. When I hear a whoosh and feel it, it feels like a car went past us, even though there was nothing there. At the same time that happens, my friend screams and takes off running, and I’m like, I have no idea what’s going on. So I’m just following her. I’m like, okay, I guess we’re running now. And so we go back to her house, we finally get there. She sits on the floor out of breath, and I’m like,”Why did you scream?” And she’s crying. She’s like,”Something grabbed my arm.” She was like, and she shows me, she takes my arm and she puts her fingers around my wrist. And she’s like, “When they did that, it felt like electricity went through her body.” And I’m just floored, obviously. So that’s when we find out that, and probably most people knew this back then, that that area did have a lot of sightings and a lot of interesting activity like that. That was my first real experience before that I was very interested in paranormal, obviously in the supernatural. But that was my first time going, okay, this stuff is real. 

Jim (00:48:24):

Right, right.

Ashley (00:48:26):

We’re not messing around. So then about a year later, my house that we lived in was a raised ranch back on five acres. We had a long driveway. Pine groves on each side of the end of the driveway. So you have to go kind of past it to get to the road. And on each side there’s also ditches. So I have to take the trash out and I’m a teenager and I don’t want to, so it’s like 10 o’clock at night and I’m like, oh, dang, I have to do that. It’s dark out. I don’t really want to. But okay, so I’m going out there and I have to bring this green can all the way to the end of the driveway past the pine trees, and I bring it to the edge of the road. And I just remember I turned to go back to the house to my left, and there was a eight foot tall dark figure just standing there. I could tell that it was there that, because at first I’m like, am I seeing things? I could tell it was there because we have a floodlight on the side of the house. 

Jim (00:49:33):

Yeah.

Ashley (00:49:33):

So the shadow from the solid being was kind of like, you could see the light come through it, and it had arms like a praying mantis, but I could not see the face. The face…

Jim (00:49:50):

Man!

Ashley (00:49:51):

…everything was just shrouded. It was very, very dark. There’s no lights on that street, that kind of thing. And we just stared at each other for a few seconds. I don’t know how much time actually, but it felt quick, but long at the same time. And whatever tt was, just turned and ran and kind of jumped really quickly and just was gone. The only way I can explain it is they jumped into nothingness and just disappeared. But at the same time, it knew where to go in the nothingness. Very strange. And I ran immediately. As soon as I ran back to my house, locked my door, put my curtains down in my room, no windows. I was like, what just happened? Because I was in high school. And of course I’m trying to tell my mom, and she’s like, oh, okay. You’re listening to too much Jim Harold. (laughing) Pretty much. So that’s kind of what happened. And yeah. 

Jim (00:50:52):

Now let me ask you, do you think the two things are connected? Because more and more we hear these reports and then we hear different kinds of reports. People will see UFOs and then they’ll be supernatural activity. Do you think somehow these two things are connected? 

Ashley (00:51:09):

I’m starting to feel that way, and I didn’t before actually, but lately I’m thinking about when I’ve seen things and what else has happened during that time. And it just seems like it all kind of happens together like that you’re saying. So yeah, I think… 

Jim (00:51:30):

I’m just saying it is interesting. I used to discount that too, but the more I hear, I’m like, Hmm, maybe there’s something to this idea of these coincidences. 

Ashley (00:51:40):

Right, right. And some people think that extraterrestrials, they wouldn’t be able to get here because of physics and stuff. So sometimes I’m like, well, maybe that is the spiritual stuff, and that is all the same thing like you’re saying. So it’s a really interesting thing to think about. But again, obviously I don’t think we’re ever going to know. 

Jim (00:52:05):

You know, I kind of think the same thing, Ashley, maybe we’ll know when we’re hopefully many, many years from now when we’re on the other side, we’ll know. But I don’t know if any of these things are discoverable. I’ve been doing these shows for about 18 years now, and I thought, man, I will do this for six months and I’ll have all those answers. Not so much. Not so much. Ashley, thank you so much for listening all these years and being a loyal supporter of the Campfire and for sharing your story today. 

Ashley (00:52:40):

Of course. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. 

Jim (00:52:42):

Randy is calling from up North, actually, he’s south of Montreal, Quebec. And we’re so glad to have him on the show. And we’re going to talk a little bit about maybe something that may have been supernatural involved IT. I’m always fascinated by these types of things. Randy, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us from Canada. Always glad to speak to our Canadian friends and tell us what happened. 

Randy (00:53:10):

I’m glad to be here today, Jim. So today, as you can tell, I kind of have a way I tell the story. So today I am telling you the story of the Beautiful Devil. So I actually know roughly the dates that this occurred. So in May of 2021, we were, okay, well background, I work in a small community hospital. We were implementing an EMR, which is an electronic medical record system for people who don’t know the terminology. And my job at the time was to provide in-house support for our nurses, our doctors, anybody using the system and answer any questions if something went wrong. So in May of 2021, one of our nurses who’s a home care nurse, was at a client’s house, and she gives me a call and she goes, “Randy, I’m having trouble finding this patient.” And I’m like, “Okay, let me pull up the logging system. Are you currently in their file?”  “Yes.” And I look, I’m like, “Yeah, is this the file number?” “ Yes.” “Okay, well what’s the issue?”  “Is it like so and so?” “ I have the patient in the room with me, but the name I’m seeing is Beautiful Devil.” 

Randy (00:54:21):

And the moment she said that, the patient started cackling and laughing and going on about how that suits her so well. 

Jim (00:54:30):

Oh my!

Randy (00:54:32):

So I literally told the nurse, I’m like, “You have to be kidding me, right? You’re playing a joke on me.” But it’s like also, she’s not very tech savvy, so she can’t really be playing a joke on me. And she goes, “I’ll send you a screenshot.” So she took out her old phone, took a screenshot of the screen using her phone, and texted me the image. And yeah, it said, “Beautiful Devil”. So I went and started saying, let me go look into this. So I went to somebody I work with closely at the hospital, and I asked her, “Can you go to so-and-so’s file and just tell me what you see?” And she goes, “Okay, so-and-so’s file this date, their birthdate, healthcare number.” I’m like, “Okay, good.” And then I showed them the image. I’m like, “This is what the nurse is seeing at the house.” And she took one look at the image and started laughing and said, “That name suits this elder.” This elder is a wonderful mischievous human being. It’s like we all have know our elders 

Jim (00:55:30):

Right.

Randy (00:55:30):

Where I’m at. 

Randy (00:55:32):

And then she stops and goes, “Though it’s a little bit spooky.”  I’m like, okay, you’re confirming that there’s something weird going on here. Let’s check somebody with different access. Let’s go grab the first doctor we see and ask them to log in and tell me what they see. So we turn, and coincidentally, we come across the patient’s doctor. So we ask the doctor, we go, “Can you check your patient’s file and tell me what you see?” And she’s like, “Ah, I don’t know if I have time for this. It’s like, it’s been a bad day.” It’s like, “Fine, I’ll check for you.” And she comes back and it’s so and so, I’m like, “Yes, what do you see?” It’s like, it’s okay. And then I show her the image and she starts to laugh and all that tension she had and all that bad she had, she goes, “Yeah, no, that suits that client because she’s such this mischievous person.” 

Randy (00:56:18):

And she goes, “I could see somebody calling her that.” And she’s like, “But that’s kind of creepy that that’s showing up in the system.” And I’m like, “Yeah, that’s what we’re trying to find out.” So it’s like three of us have confirmed that there’s something going on here. I contact support and I get somebody that I’ve been in contact many times at this point with, troubleshooting issues. So this is the company themselves, and she’s laughing at me like, “Oh, you’re just calling me in with a prank?” And I’m like, no, let me send you the screenshot. And she sees it and she’s like, “Okay, and we’re going to have to investigate. Do you mind if I contact a nurse?” I give her the number, and she goes, “I’ll call you back later.” So we’re sitting there waiting, trying to figure it out ourselves, what could be happening. And when she calls us back, and she goes, “So I logged into their computer remote, logged in as your nurse.” We’re like, okay. “When logged in as the nurse, the patient’s file says Beautiful Devil”, 

Jim (00:57:12):

But everybody else that says her real name, let’s say her name, their real name is Jane Doe…

Randy (00:57:16):

They log out of her profile and log as themselves as a worker of the company, and it shows up as Jane Doe. It shows up as so-and-so. So they start doing all the typical things they do. The clearing of the cache for her 

Jim (00:57:32):

Yeah. 

Randy (00:57:32):

Still Comes up as “Beautiful Devil”. They have her turn off the computer, turn it back on, have them reconnect, still shows up as “Beautiful Devil.” And it’s like they just kept repeating this over and over again. And it was only when the nurse was logged in and then suddenly it just stopped. And then they said they checked their logs. There was nothing going on behind the scenes that would be causing that to happen, that it was all localized solely to this home care nurse’s profile. But they could not replicate it. We couldn’t replicate it in-house either. We couldn’t figure out what was going on or causing this. 

Jim (00:58:11):

Huh! So I just want to be very clear so people understand this is not this person’s name, and it sounds like it’s not anything she was known as. It wasn’t like a nickname or anything else. So we’re not betraying any privacy here. 

Randy (00:58:24):

That’s the only reason why I would’ve came on and told this, because there is no way that this betrays who this patient is in the slightest, 

Jim (00:58:30):

Other than the fact that everybody said she fit this description. Wow. 

Randy  (00:58:34):

Yeah. And as I’ve been thinking about telling you this story, I started seeing little connections to it. It’s like working at a hospital like I have for 10 years. I have an idea of who the patient is. It’s a small community. We see people on a regular basis. We know everybody, know nobody. And that descriptor, yeah, she is mischievous. And then same thing with the other person that I went to see, and then coincidentally, the only doctor available who’s having a bad day is her doctor. And then suddenly her day’s better because she had a good laugh and a little bit of a creeped factor to it, a little bit of spookiness to it. So we have no idea what went on. 

Jim (00:59:14):

So I’m correct that you work in IT, right? 

Randy (00:59:18):

I work specifically in medical records, but yes, I, I’m IT adjacent. 

Jim (00:59:23):

Okay. Do you believe computers can be haunted? 

Randy (00:59:27):

Yes. I do believe that computers can be haunted, though I’ve never seen it, except if you count this, but if we go to, what is it? The Stone Cape theory, like in general like things, it’s like if we can leave it on the world, we can leave it in the code. You can leave it on in the computer themselves.

Jim (00:59:44):

Makes sense to me.

Randy (00:59:46):

In the ether, if we’re all just energy, that’s what wifi is. There’s energy, there’s waves, there’s everything there. 

Jim (00:59:52):

Well, I will tell you, and this is actually something that has been documented in the IT literature, this idea that some people have impact on technology. This is a known thing that has been written in, as I understand it, by real journals. And I see it in my own life because I’m pretty good with tech. I mean, I wouldn’t put myself like, I’m not an IT professional or anything like that, but I’m pretty good with tech, pretty handy with tech. My wife on the other hand, I mean she’s good with it in the sense that she’s smart and she could pick things up quickly and so forth, but it always seems like things that will work for me, will not work for her. 

Jim (01:00:35):

It’s harder for her to get stuff to work. She’ll be, “Well, I’m doing A, B, and C and it’s not working.”  And then I’ll walk over to her computer and I’ll do A, B and C and it works the same thing, the same exact action. It’s almost like the technology is antagonizing her and it’s kind of hostile to her. I’ve heard that, people who are in the presence of printers and they’ll work fine for everybody and then Fred comes up and invariably the printer breaks down. So I do think there’s some kind of interaction with technology that does happen from time to time. We’ve had a very few stories, but some stories on the Campfire about this. 

Randy (01:01:18):

Honestly, what we were talking at, it’s like our big one was we just have somebody be messing with us. Our very first question was, did anybody pass away recently associated with her? And we’re like, no. It’s like it’s the little people. It’s gremlins, it’s somebody just, it’s like everybody who heard the story today were in a bad mood and now they’re not. It’s somebody just messing with us and playing with us and it’s not malicious. 

Jim (01:01:45):

I believe the trickster is real, the trickster is out there and sometimes that likes to have fun with us. And that day it was having fun with “Beautiful Devil.” Randy, 

Randy (01:01:56):

Would you allow me to share my screen with you? I have a heavily redacted shot, like exactly what she sent me, but heavily redacted. Just so you can see.

Jim (01:02:04):

I will take a look at it. I’ll explain it to the audience. We’re audio only, but if you want to show it to me now.

Randy (01:02:12):

I can show you and you’ll laugh at it because like all proof of supernatural, it’s a little bit blurry because it was a flip phone. And so I’m just going to share with you this heavily redacted image.

Jim (01:02:24):

So Randy is showing me the image here and sure enough, “Devil, Beautiful.” There it is. And as he said, completely redacted. So there’s nothing here that I can see that would betray anything, but right there it is. It looks like an electronic medical record, everything redacted of course. And it says, “Devil, Beautiful.” How odd is that? How odd is that? And the thing is, Randy, if it was somebody going in and playing a trick, it should have impacted everybody who logged in, not just that one nurse. 

Randy (01:03:01):

Exactly. And I would’ve seen it in the logs and the support worker offsite would’ve seen it in the logs as well. So it was weird. We still don’t know what it is to this day. 

Jim (01:03:10):

Indeed it is. It is a head scratcher. Randy, thank you for joining us today on the Campfire and Stay Spooky. 

Randy (01:03:16):

You too, Jim. Stay Spooky. 

Jim (01:03:18):

Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by Rocket Money. This blew my mind when I found it out, but did you know over 80% of people have subscriptions they’ve forgotten about? And I’ll raise my hand. I’m in that 80%. And seriously think of how many free trials you’ve subscribed to that you’ve probably never canceled. And that’s why I am such a big fan of Rocket Money. Because Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels all your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills in one place. Another mind blowing stat is that most people think they’re spending $80 on their monthly subscriptions when in reality the number is closer to $200. Now, when you’re signed up for so many things like streaming services, used to watch one show, or free trials for delivery you don’t use, it’s easy to lose track of what you’re paying for, but you have a friend in your corner, Rocket Money. With it, you can easily cancel the ones you don’t want with just the press of a button. 

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

Jim (01:05:35):

Last week we did that show of favorite Campfire stories. That was a lot of fun, but I made a mistake. I omitted one. Now this is a great story that was told in the early days of Campfire by one of our favorite listeners and callers, Sandy. Now the rest of our stories are all new today, but I wanted to make sure I got this one in and it’s a classic.

Well, as you know, I really enjoy having repeat callers on, particularly when it’s a caller who has provided what I think, one of the classic Campfire stories. I guess we’ve only been around a year and a half. I don’t know if you could call anything classic at this point, but in terms of the calls we’ve had, one of the best one is by Sandy from San Diego. She told us about Bull Moose Jackson, and Blues Man from the grave. That was way back, I think in episode nine, and she’s returned to tell us a couple of stories. And Sandy, thanks for coming back on and I hear you’ve got something about time travel that’s kind of wild. Tell us what happened. 

Sandy (01:06:34):

Well, good to see you again, Jim, or I guess, talk to you would be the right phrase. I decided I’d go visit one of my friends and he lived about a mile away from my house, so I decided I’d walk there. I was in my twenties, so I guess a mile didn’t seem all that far. 

Sandy (01:06:53):

It kind of does now, but anyway, it was one of those classic mid-November days where the skies are gray and kind of a little bit of drizzle here and there. The sun was just setting behind me. So it was probably about four o’clock or so in the afternoon, and it was kind of the part of November where there was no leaves left on the trees. You’re going into winter and I’m walking through this suburban neighborhood to get to my friend’s house. And I have a tendency to watch the ground very carefully when I walk because if there’s a possible way to twist my ankle, I will. So I have a tendency just to plod forth and watch the road. And as I’m just about to make a turn on the road that kind of takes a dog leg that turns off to the left, does about a 45 degree angle and straightens out. I’m walking along and all of a sudden I feel my body feeling heated by the sun and I feel the sun washing my body and I’m looking down at the ground still and my feet are bare and I’m on a dirt road. 

Jim (01:08:24):

Well, that’s either some type of out-of-body experience or some kind of example of global warming. I’m not sure which question. No, but that’s pretty wild, I mean. So you felt like you were in a different body, a different place, almost different climate in every way. 

Sandy (01:08:41):

Totally. In every way. I mean, basically it was even the time of year was different and it was more like late spring. So the leaves were fresh and green. They were full open, but fresh and green. And I could see bugs floating around and I was kind of in this wooded area. I was standing in a clearing, I was kind of off of the road a bit, and I was standing there saying, okay, all the houses were gone. And I’m looking up at the sun and the sky is crystal clear blue and it’s early morning, and the air was pristine and beautiful. And I remember I looked back down at my feet, I could feel the dirt underneath them, and I noticed I have a dark brown dress on that’s almost down to my ankles, but not quite. And I thought, what’s kind of funny about that? And I realized that my chest was flat. And so I looked at my hands and I realized I was probably about 11 or 12 years old. 

Jim (01:09:52):

Wow. 

Sandy (01:09:55):

The only thing that was similar was my hair was the same color, but it was tied up in pigtails. I’m like, okay, what is going on? Where am I? And when am I? And who am I? And so I’m standing there kind of contemplating it. And for the briefest flash of a second, I heard my name in my mind, in my mind, but I couldn’t hold onto it. And so it just flashed out of my memory. And so I thought, well, maybe if I just relax a little bit, my name will come back to me. I was really curious, who am I right now? And so as I’m enjoying the scene and because it’s really was quite beautiful, I could hear a horse coming down where the road straightened out the road, oddly enough, followed the same curvature as the asphalt road I had been on, 

Jim (01:10:55):

(laughs)

Sandy (01:10:56):

Which is kind of strange, ok, but I couldn’t see the horses yet or the horse yet because that part of the road was densely wooded. 

Jim (01:11:06):

Okay.

Sandy (01:11:07):

So I thought, okay, well this is good. Somebody’s coming down the road and maybe they’ll know my name and where I live, and so on and so forth. So I was kind of excited and I said, well, and I started to see the horse emerge from the trees, and there was a guy on a wagon and I thought, oh, well maybe I’ll check out his clothes and I’ll look at the hardware and the wagon and maybe I could try to figure out what timeframe I’m at. And I really couldn’t tell anything from what he was wearing at all. So I’m kind of waiting for him to get nearer to me. This took quite a while. The horses just clopping along very slowly, and I just instinctively at one point just raised my hand up and say, “Hi, Mr.”  And I knew his name. And then I said, wow, where did that come from? Of course, over the years, I’ve forgotten what his name was. And so I was all excited and I’m sitting there and standing there and I’m waiting for him to answer me back. So waiting to hear my name, and he just kind of looks over at me like I was really bothering him and just went “Howdy.” I was like, damn. I’m like, so I was thinking to myself, well, maybe I’ll go over to him and I’ll ask him who I am. 

Sandy (01:12:26):

But then I thought about it, that might appear crazy. And they weren’t really nice to crazy people back in. 

Jim (01:12:32):

No, they weren’t. They would put you away in the deep dark place and they’ll ever let you see the light of day again. 

Sandy (01:12:37):

Exactly. So I thought better of that. And plus maybe if he had been a friendlier guy, I might’ve gone over and talked to him, but he seemed kind of mean. So I decided to not pursue that any further. So now I’m just standing there and I’m going, now what do I do? Where do I go? My brain started kicking me into survival mode. I may not go back to the 21st century. 

Sandy (01:13:14):

At this point. I’ve been there 10 or 15 minutes and I’m thinking, okay, now what do I do? And I’m going, well, I’m a little girl, so I have to get somewhere where I can be safe. So I think I’m thinking, well, if I could head towards town, God knows where that is. But if I could head towards a town, I can, maybe somebody will recognize me. I could maybe find a newspaper and find out the dates and the town I’m in because I’m thinking, I want this data. So if I do come back, I want to research this. 

Jim (01:13:49):

Sure.

Sandy (01:13:50):

Of course, I didn’t know which way town was, or I could have been on my own property. My house could have been 300 feet away from me. I didn’t know. Because I didn’t know who I was. So I figured since I was facing the direction where the man had come out of down the road from that, maybe I was headed in that direction. So I decided, well, I might have to walk five or 15 or 20 miles, but I got to start and at least I have the whole day in front of me, and most likely I’ll find a farmhouse somewhere. 

Jim (01:14:25):

Sure.

Speaker 9 (01:14:26):

So I started to proceed to find out the road to who I was. And as quick a flash of a moment and my feet were on the asphalt again, my body was cold, it was drizzling a little bit, and I just stopped where I was and I was back, and I was like, what the heck just happened to me? And I whirled around because I half expected the guy with the horse and the wagon to be behind me. And I turned around to look, and it was a suburban manicured yards. I was back and the sun hadn’t really shifted in the sky at all. It didn’t appear to be and looked down to the ground. And I thought, was I walking as I was doing this? I was on a road, but it appeared like I did it. Whatever happened, it happened in mid step. I was exactly where I was. 

Jim (01:15:26):

Now, I got to ask, I mean, these are two, the story that you told us last, I guess it would’ve been last spring, and this one are among the most, and I don’t mean this in a negative way, but the most incredible ones that we’ve heard. Do you think that you attract this kind of thing? 

Sandy (01:15:44):

Yeah, but I’m kind of like a one-timer. It happens to me once. I have to tell you, as a young child, I had a lot of experiences and I was very contemplative, and I was kind of one of those kids that had astral things happen. So maybe you just have that open kind of nature. I don’t know. 

Jim (01:16:10):

And that’s a remarkable story. So you think that somehow maybe, and I’ve heard this before and we’ve talked about this, I would even throw out the possibility of somehow another dimension. 

Sandy (01:16:20):

Well, that’s what was odd to me to this day. I don’t know whether it was like that where an Einsteinian folded space where, and I walked into some poor girl’s body, or was it a past lifetime that I was re-experiencing? I don’t know the difference because my personality was so big in that body that I couldn’t even remember who I was. So it wasn’t like I felt connected to this little girl at all. I was just kind of disappointed that I couldn’t find more information so I could research on… what was odd is I think that I’ve gone forward in time and seen little snippets of my future, but never back and back how far this was. It had to be probably 1800’s-esque because of my length of my dress. I’m suspecting. 

Jim (01:17:28):

That’s just amazing. Now, you told us that you also had a quick UFO story, and you’re two for two, so the pressure is on. But tell us what happened with the UFO. 

Sandy (01:17:38):

Well, this is just one of those just weird little things that happens. And I was probably about in my twenties again, and a lot of times in the summer nights, summertime, I would go out and when it all would get really dark out, and so you could really see them, you’d even see the Milky Way sometimes and just go out and look at the stars and see if I could find constellations, which I never can find them hardly. I don’t know how people do, frankly, 

Jim (01:18:08):

I’m right with you on that. 

Sandy (01:18:10):

But I would go out and just kind of look at the stars and you’re always hoping for that meteor or something like that. That’s always the best present you can ever get from the universe. And I was just standing there and sure enough, I see a star and it’s way way up there, and it was moving along and I go, “Ooh, a meteor.” So I was all excited and I got my eyes locked on it, and it just keeps going. And you know how meteors usually arc and fall down at some point. This one just kept going straight. So it was almost overhead of me. And then it took a 90 degree angle and went off, and I was kind of like, well, that’s not right. (laughing)

Sandy (01:19:02):

That’s not supposed to happen. And I remember just standing there laughing. I said, I think I had my first UFO. 

Jim (01:19:09):

There you go. 

Sandy (01:19:11):

And I know it wasn’t a plane because it was whatever it was, it was way, it was so far off. It was pretty cool. But that’s as close as I’ve ever gone to a UFO. So that’s my only UFO story. 

Jim (01:19:24):

Well, if you see any, let us know. But thank you so much. I think that might be, I’ve had out of body, I think that might be our first time travel experience that we’ve had on the show. So I certainly appreciate you calling back in again and sharing your story and let us know if anything else comes up. 

Sandy (01:19:42):

Okay. Well thank you so much, Jim. Have a good night. 

Jim (01:19:44):

Alicia is on the line from Massachusetts. She found out about us from “Stories with Sapphire”, that great podcast. So check that out for sure. Sapphire does a great job, and Alicia’s going to tell us about some amazing medium readings. Alicia, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened. 

Alicia (01:20:07):

All right, Jim. I’ve got several little stories and if there’s time, I have a heartwarming recent story that I can finish up with. So my parents moved into this house probably in 2014. It was this old house over a hundred years old, and I had been going through some difficult times in my life, so they had custody of my daughter at the time. So my daughter’s sleeping, her bedroom is directly across the hall from their bedroom. And apparently my mother woke up in the middle of the night one night and looked over and saw a figure standing over my daughter’s bed, and she said it was green glowing, and she was about to get up and go handle it. And she said she got an overwhelming calming feeling and peaceful feeling from it. So she went back to sleep. So she told me about it a couple weeks later and I was like, hold on, you didn’t go check. 

Alicia (01:21:13):

See who was standing over her bed. And she said, “No, I got this really good feeling”, so I’ll go back a little bit. We had had elderly neighbors several years earlier that were like family to us, Charlotte and Bill. They lived basically in our backyard, and they always came over for parties and cookouts, and they were like family. I actually helped them out a lot toward the end of their lives. So cut to a couple of years later, my mom and I went to see this medium, and the first person that came through was our neighbor Bill. And the medium actually said, “You’ve seen him, he watches over your daughter or your granddaughter.” She’d said it to my mother and “he keeps an eye on her. He watches her while she sleeps and makes sure she stays safe.” So we both looked at each other. Holy cow. That was definitely him watching her that night. 

Jim (01:22:17):

That’s interesting. That’s interesting.

Alicia (01:22:19):

Yeah.

Jim (01:22:20):

Yeah, and it’s interesting you form these bonds with people, and I do believe they go on beyond the grave. I do think they do. They do go forward. I don’t think there’s any question about, we’ve heard so many stories over the years. 

Alicia (01:22:34):

Yeah, absolutely. And I’m somebody that I believe I’ve always been into the paranormal, very interested in it, but I’ll always look for the reasonable explanation before I believe something. 

Jim (01:22:50):

No, as long as I do these shows, as long as I’ve done them, honestly, I’m still like that too. And sometimes it’s warranted and sometimes it’s like, Jim, stop trying to overthink. Maybe this actually is supernatural. But even after doing these shows all these times, I always go for that rational explanation. 

Alicia (01:23:10):

Yes, exactly, same. So I’m always searching for the best medium. And I’ve had some really, really amazing readings, and I’ve had some readings where I’m like, well, I wish I could get that hour of my life back. But I found this woman, and this was during Covid, and so it was a phone reading, and she came on and immediately she said, “Who’s Keith?” That’s my husband’s name. He was my boyfriend at the time. She said, “He’s sensitive. Right?” And I said, “Well, he actually is.” He’s told me about his abilities and he doesn’t really like to use them, but he’s got them. So she had pulled up a friend of ours that had passed away. She didn’t have a name and he didn’t want to really talk. It was a drug overdose that killed him. So I brought the tape home from this reading for my husband to listen to, and he went into this place that I’ve never seen a person go into. He was crying, he was shaking. He had this crazy look in his eyes, and he was like, “Well, that was my daughter’s friend.” It was this kid that had passed away. And he said, “I don’t want you getting a reading from this woman again. She’s a witch. She’s got something and I can feel it.” And he actually put out this spoken block from me getting a reading from her. He, so, he said, magic takes something from you. And this woman was practicing magic. 

Alicia (01:24:57):

So of course I didn’t want to listen to him. And I tried getting another reading from her, and she called me up, it was over a year later. She didn’t really know who I was. And she said, “I’ve got a bunch of people here, but they have their hands up and they won’t talk.” 

Jim (01:25:16):

Hmmm. 

Alicia (01:25:16):

She said, “Who’s Keith?” And I said, “Okay, well that’s my husband.” And she said something to do with him and they won’t talk to me. 

Jim (01:25:24):

Oh, interesting. 

Alicia (01:25:26):

Yeah, 

Jim (01:25:28):

So well, they wouldn’t talk to her because he had a bias kind of towards witches. He wasn’t a fan of witches. 

Alicia (01:25:37):

And he put out something into the universe, so I couldn’t communicate with them. So I of course talked with him and I said, please take the block off so I can get a reading. And he didn’t. But then the end of, it was December, 2021, and my mom passed away. So I said to him, “Listen, my dad and I want to get a reading from this woman and take the block off, please. This is the last one I’ll do. I just really want to talk to my mom.” 

Jim (01:26:17):

Understandable. 

Alicia (01:26:20):

And so he did that. He did that for me. And we went in, we met with her in person, and she was explaining to my dad how she did her thing, how she channeled and all that. And as she’s explaining, I see she’s got a notepad in front of her and she’s writing names down. She’s written down Debbie, which is my mom. She’s written down Suzanne, which is my grandmother, Peter, which is my grandfather. And Dave, who’s my uncle, all passed. She’s got these names written down before we even start the reading. 

Jim (01:26:55):

Interesting. 

Alicia (01:26:57):

Yeah. And of course, so I’m thinking about it, was she looking at my Facebook page? Is that where she got the information? But my Facebook is set to private, so you can’t see my posts or anything unless you’re my friend. 

Jim (01:27:11):

Right. 

Alicia (01:27:15):

And just the reading was amazing. I had gotten married after my mom passed, and she knew that. She said, I see wedding bells. She knew that I had done something special with one flower out of my bouquet for my mom. She knew that. And she brought up the wind chimes, and I hadn’t even remembered about this until just a couple of days ago. I re-listened to the recording and when I got married, I got a gift of wind chimes from a friend, and I didn’t open it because I didn’t have somewhere to hang it. So I just saw from the top of the package that it was wind chimes. So I bought a hook about, it was like a week ago, maybe two weeks ago, I bought a hook to hang them, and I take them out of the box and they’re personalized and they have my mom’s name on them. So this reading was back in April, this woman said, what about the wind chimes? 

Jim (01:28:17):

Wow. Wow. That was pretty spot on. 

Alicia (01:28:21):

Yeah, it was crazy. And I mean, so many things that she brought up were just blew my mind. Absolutely blew my mind. 

Jim (01:28:30):

Well, it’s one of those things where I do people believe there are some people that legitimately have a gift. I mean, yeah, there’s some people who claim to be psychic mediums who are not, like any other field of work. There’s bad apples. But I believe there is a gift. It’s not a gift that I have, and I don’t think it’s a gift. I think someone has some level of intuition, and I do think things come to pretty much all of us, but in terms of consistently being able to reach people on the other side, especially for other people and things, I think that truly is a gift. And I think, yeah, the skeptics say, ah, they’re all frauds. I don’t buy that for a minute. I believe there are people with true psychic gifts. It sounds like you ran into or mediumship gifts, and it sounds like you ran into somebody just like that. Alicia, thank you for being on the show. I know you might have more stories. We will catch those next time. But we thank you for being a part of the Campfire. 

Alicia (01:29:29):

Thank you so much. 

Jim (01:29:31):

Thanks for joining us on another Campfire, and thank you to all of our storytellers. We sincerely appreciate them. And if you’d like to share your story, go over to jimharold.com/Campfire. That’s  jimharold.com/Campfire. We’ll probably have that up through the end of October for you to sign up and share your stories. And I very much look forward to speaking with you soon. And please share this show with your friends right from your podcast app when you can get to a safe space to do that. Don’t do it while you’re driving, but if you’re just sitting around or you’re walking or you finish that trip in your car, make sure to hit that share button and share the show out. Last week’s show is a really good one to share because that gives people a feel of what the show is really about. And this one too, of course. And we thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week everybody, and Stay Spooky. Bye-bye. 

Announcer 1

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.