An entity crawled into our caller’s bed! Stories of living in haunted apartments, an angel who saved a storyteller and much more on this edition the Campfire!
—
Please support our sponsors as they help make our shows possible. Thank you.
-RAYCON-
Raycon wireless earbuds and audio products are the perfect holiday gift! Right now, go to BUYRAYCON.com/campfire to get 15% off SITEWIDE with code HOLIDAY, plus FREE SHIPPING!
-STAMPS.COM-
Stamps.com takes the pain out of shipping. There’s NO risk. And with my promo code, campfire, you get a special offer that includes a 4-week trial PLUS free postage and a digital shipping scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the TOP of the homepage, and type in campfire.
-POLICYGENIUS-
Policygenius makes it easy to get life insurance done (and done right). You could save 50% or more by comparing quotes, and feel good knowing that your loved ones would be taken care of if anything were to happen. Go to policygenius.com to get started.
TRANSCRIPT
SHANE: No one else was in the house. I was not asleep. I was settling in, my eyes were closed, and then all of a sudden I felt pressure on my wife’s side of the bed.
JIM HAROLD: That’s Shane from Kansas and just the very start of his strange experience, and you’ll be sure to hear more. Stay tuned to the Campfire.
Welcome to our gathering tonight. Here we share stories of ordinary people who have experienced extraordinary things. Sit back, relax, and warm yourself by Jim Harold’s Campfire.
JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold and so glad to be with you once again. You are in the right place if you like to hear spooky stories. Could be ghosts, could be cryptid creatures, could be UFOs or my favorite, headscratchers – but whatever they are, they are real folks telling true stories of strange things that have happened to them, and welcome to our electronic Campfire, whether you’re brand new or you’ve been listening for years.
I do have a little bit of an announcement. I have mentioned this on social media, but I wanted to mention it here as well. We have our Holiday Ornament Contest here at the Spooky Studio going. This is the fourth one that we’ve done. Simply, we have you send in a user-created ornament, and we will have some lucky winners. We’ll be giving away some great prizes. For example, the first prize package is a $75 Amazon gift card, a Jim Harold Campfire t-shirt, and one of my Campfire books, signed personally by myself. Second prize is a $25 Amazon gift card and a Jim Harold Campfire t-shirt, and third prize is a Jim Harold Campfire t-shirt.
It’s a lot of fun. We’ve been doing it for years. What we do is we put the images on Instagram and Facebook and let people see them, and then we have a panel of judges who judge the different great entries. And they’re all great, but there can only be so many winners. So that’s what we do.
Now, we got a little bit of a late start here; I announced this on social media on December 1st and didn’t get a chance to mention it on Campfire, since we’re working ahead these days, until today’s edition of December 8th. So we made the deadline a little later than it usually is. We need to have all entries received by December 22nd. That is December 22nd by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time. The 22nd is on the Thursday before Christmas. What we’re going to try to do is quickly turn that around and have you a winner on the 23rd.
Again, we love doing this; this is so much fun. I’m sorry we started a little bit late this year. It seems like this year we’re late on everything. I don’t know what that is. We’ve got more help than ever. It just seems like there’s so much going on. So Thursday, December 22nd. Now, you may say, “Jim, how do I know where to send it? Where do I get the information?” Very simple. Go to jimharold.com/holiday2022. That is jimharold.com/holiday2022, and some restrictions apply. I encourage you to read all the rules and how we do this. It’s just too much to get in here, but all the applicable rules are there.
We’ve been doing this for years, and people seem to love it. I kind of ripped off the idea from a radio station I used to work for. [laughs] We used to do it, and I just thought it was always so fun. That’s the main reason to do it. I enjoy it. I love seeing the submissions. The audience seems to love it. And thank you for all of you who have in the past sent your entries, and we look forward to your entry this year. Happy holidays to you all.
And now let’s get on to the first great Campfire story.
Next up on the Campfire we have a return caller. He had a great story last time about a haunted hotel. We’re glad to have Shane from Kansas back. So good to have him on the show. You know, bedtime. That’s when you let down your guard, you relax. But you might not after you hear this story. [laughs] Shane, welcome back to the show and tell us about this bedtime experience.
SHANE: Thanks, Jim. The only explanation I can think of is I think this might have something to do with that old deal that I’ve heard you refer to before about when you look into the abyss, the abyss stares back. When you pay enough attention to the paranormal, it begins to pay attention to you.
JIM HAROLD: Right.
SHANE: I’ve always been fascinated with the paranormal. Just like you, I loved to watch In Search Of…, Bigfoot, Nessy, UFOs, ghosts, all of that. About a year ago, I formed my own paranormal investigation team, mostly family and friends. Because of that, I became really immersed. I started watching all these paranormal shows on TV and reading books. I was watching it during my lunch break because I work at home, and at night. My wife even said, “Man, you need to chill a little bit. I’m worried you’re going to start attracting ghosts to the house.”
We’ve lived in this house about seven years and I’ve never, ever felt that it was haunted. And we have lived in a haunted house. I’ve never gotten that impression here. But as I started getting involved in this and really becoming saturated in it, weird stuff started happening. My wife and I both started seeing shadow figures out of the corners of our eyes, and if I’d be here during the day, I’d hear this faint music in the background. I couldn’t make out any lyrics or anything, but it definitely had a melody. I would hear it very faintly.
Then one time I was in the bathroom – our bathroom was right next to our bedroom – and I had the door open, and I saw my wife walk into the bedroom. I said something to her, and I didn’t get a response, so I peeked around into the bedroom and she wasn’t there. I went down and I looked, and she was in the living room. I said, “Were you just in the bedroom?” She said, “No.” So I saw that. Weird stuff started happening.
About this time, too – I’ve been a meditator for about 20 years, and one evening I was meditating, and I felt a presence in the space. Then I started tingling all over. I don’t know how to describe it except – you know how when you stick your tongue on a nine-volt battery, how that feels? It felt like that through my whole body, in waves. I thought maybe it was just something that had to do with the meditation, but then over the weeks, any time I saw something or heard something or sensed it, I would feel that same sort of tingling in parts of my body. I had no explanation for it.
One night, my wife woke up because she heard a male voice whisper in her ear.
JIM HAROLD: Oh boy. And it wasn’t you? [laughs]
SHANE: No, it wasn’t me. I was probably sawing logs. [laughs] So we were intrigued by that. She didn’t feel threatened by it at all or anything. So my whole point of all this is all this is leading up to this weird stuff started happening.
Then one night, I was lying in bed and it was probably about 9:00 or 10:00. I had the door closed and I was lying on my left side, facing the door. My wife was awake. She was down the hall watching television, and I could hear the sound of the TV coming up the hall from the living room. No one else was in the house. I was not asleep. I was settling in, my eyes were closed, and then all of a sudden I felt pressure on my wife’s side of the bed. It was clearly someone coming into the bed.
We have a king size bed, and I felt it crawling closer to me, and then I felt pressure like someone was lying on my right shoulder and my torso. I felt the weight of a body on me. Not my full length of body, but just my torso, like someone had snuggled up and was lying on top of me. Then I heard [breathes out heavily] right in my face, and it was cold air. It was cold air, Jim. It wasn’t hot. And I froze. I knew that this was not a living person in the room with me, and I froze. Finally, I got the nerve – I finally broke free and I flipped over as fast as I could, and nothing was there, of course, and it disappeared.
It freaked me out enough that I got to where I finally said that this is enough. I saged the house the next day. When I went to bed, I started praying to Michael the Archangel to protect us. I don’t even like now sleeping with the door closed. I do. There’s a documentary on right now called The Hat Man, and I watched part of it, but I’m afraid to watch it too much. I’m hesitant to even close the door now because I don’t want to ignite this again.
JIM HAROLD: I don’t blame you.
SHANE: Yeah. I just watch myself. I pace myself. I still watch paranormal stuff. But slowly, all this dissipated. Even the tingling. Everything that happened, as I stopped doing that and started reciting some prayers of protection and mantras and stuff, it gradually dissipated to where we don’t really have much going on now.
JIM HAROLD: Wow. But this goes back for you. You told me in your email that you saw something when you were seven years old, right?
SHANE: Oh yeah, I did, actually. We were living in Kansas and I had a cousin spending the night, and my sister’s bedroom was towards the front of the house. We had a porch. I was on the couch. I don’t know if you recall back in the ’70s how everyone had the drapes and then you had this sheer curtain part in the middle. I had gotten up and I went in and was lying on the couch, and I was wide awake. It was late at night. Everyone else was asleep. I happened to glance up, and in the window, leering at me, was this hideous white face.
JIM HAROLD: Yikes.
SHANE: Yeah. I could see through it, but it was just looking right at me, dead in the eyes, and had this horrible grin on it. I saw no body. Again, I was frozen there until I finally was able to break myself free, and I ran into the dining room, dove under the dining room table for just a few seconds, and then hoofed it right into my mom and dad’s bedroom. I’ve never forgotten that. I’ve carried that with me my whole life. I still remember that.
JIM HAROLD: One last night, because I know you’ve got several other stories. I believe that the supernatural and the paranormal is a continuum, and some things are terrifying and things are scary, like those things that you told us about, and then I think other things are more heartwarming. You have a story about that about your father, right?
SHANE: Yeah. 2007 was a bad year for our family. My wife’s sister lost her husband in an auto accident in January, and then we lost my dad about six weeks later from complications following surgery for a brain aneurysm.
JIM HAROLD: I’m sorry.
SHANE: Thank you. Two or three years ago, we had a friend of ours who had a connection with a medium in Kansas City, and she would bring her to our small town periodically. It was reservation only. They’d only have about 20 people in there. We thought we’d sign up for that. So my sister-in-law, my wife, my mother, and me went to this medium.
We were trying to keep our expectations low, so we went and we saw the medium. I don’t know, we were disappointed when we left because although she seemed to touch on some stuff that might’ve meant we were connecting with my dad or my brother-in-law, Joe, none of it was wowing. It wasn’t definitive to make us go “wow.” So we were a bit disappointed. We understood, but a little disheartened when we left.
About two days later, I’m walking out of my house and in my driveway, Jim, are hundreds of dragonflies. They’re in my driveway. They’re not in my yard, they’re not down the street. It’s this ball of swirling and flying dragonflies. They’re not even going beyond the boundary of the driveway. They’re just contained there. I went in there and I just stood among them and I was like, “What is this?” I even stepped out in the street, I checked down the street to see where they might be coming from. None of them were coming anywhere. They weren’t in any other homes, any other places. They weren’t even in the yard. I thought, “Wow, this is really weird.” I left and they disappeared after a while.
Then I was telling my sister-in-law about it and she said, “Yeah, they were in my driveway yesterday.” She was coming from work and saw them, and they scared her because there were so many of them and they were so intense. But the same thing happened. They were not leaving the confines of the driveway. I looked it up, and dragonflies will swarm if they’re feeding on little insects or if there’s standing water. None of that was here. That situation was not there. I was just so amazed that they weren’t moving beyond anywhere. They stayed contained in an area.
Anyway, we think that it was Dad and Joe saying maybe “Yeah, we were there. Sorry you guys were disappointed, but we were there.”
JIM HAROLD: Well, it’s a strange world we live in, and I think paranormal things happen and some are frightening and some are very reassuring and poignant. Shane, thank you for sharing your stories. I know you have more, and I look forward to hearing them.
SHANE: Thanks for having me, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Amy is on the line from Ohio, and we’re so glad to speak to a fellow Ohioan. She’s going to tell us about an apartment she lived in and the strangeness that ensued. Amy, welcome to the program, thank you for joining us, and please tell us what happened.
AMY: Thank you so much, Jim. Happy to be here. I lived in an apartment – it was actually a duplex, an old house – and I lived upstairs, and there was an older gentleman that lived below me. Just to give a layout of the apartment, you walked in, there was a small kitchen, you came down a hallway, there was a bathroom, the one bedroom, and then you came out, went down the hallway, and there was a living room. Very small.
One night – I always left the hallway light on because I lived by myself and I was a little freaked. [laughs] So I had the light on and I went to sleep, and you know how you have the feeling that somebody’s staring at you? I woke up and there was a little girl standing right by my bed, right by me. Little blonde with, ironically enough, a polka-dotted dress. She was just looking at me, smiling from ear to ear. I said to her, because this wasn’t my first rodeo, “What are you doing?” She just looked at me and tilted her head, and then she disappeared.
JIM HAROLD: You called her bluff, so to speak, huh?
AMY: [laughs] Yeah, I’m like “What are you doing here?” So she disappeared and I’m like, well, it’s an older house. It didn’t freak me out. I went back to sleep. It was a very restless night, apparently, because then I started hearing, maybe a couple hours later, a ball bouncing. I’m like, “Okay…” I woke up and I’m looking around. I forgot to mention this: in the bedroom – it was a big room – there were two walk-in closets right across from each other. I watched this little boy in a white shirt and knickers kick a huge ball out of one door of the closet right into the other. Just disappeared. I’m like, wow, apparently this is playland over here. Who knew? So yeah, apparently it was Chuck E. Cheese. [laughs]
So that was going on. Finally I’m like, “I’ve got to get some sleep, guys. I’ve got to work. Please cut me some slack.” I go back to sleep, and the next thing I know, I felt like again somebody was looking, so I raised up my face, and here is a gentleman standing in the doorway. This is an older man, moustache. This is a grown man. At this point, it didn’t dawn on me that I was seeing a spirit because I thought somebody had done broke in. I grab my cordless phone and I say, “Sir, if you don’t leave, I’m going to call the police!” He just looks at me, kind of smiles, and then vanishes right in front of my face.
JIM HAROLD: “Won’t be necessary. They couldn’t do anything anyway.”
AMY: Right, exactly. [laughs] So I grabbed my phone and did a full search of the perimeter of the home. Of course, nobody was there. To fast forward, the next day I went downstairs and was talking to my elderly neighbor, and he said, “I’ve got a question for you. You’re gone a lot. You stay at your boyfriend’s. But here’s something weird. I always hear little footsteps up there like somebody’s running around in your apartment.” I said, “You do?” I started laughing. He goes, “It’s haunted, isn’t it?” I said, “It absolutely is.” [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: When he said it, was he saying it like “I guess it’s haunted,” or did he say, “Eh, it’s haunted”? In other words, was it like a knowing thing? Was it more of a joke, or did he really believe it was haunted?
AMY: He believed it was haunted. He had a feeling just because of the fact that he knew they weren’t like raccoon steps. He knew that these were people steps he was hearing when nobody was there.
JIM HAROLD: That’s one of those things where it sounds like other people had that experience. Do you think these were past tenants? What do you think they were?
AMY: I do believe that even maybe attached to the actual land – I’m going to do some history on it and see what I can find out, but one thing is for sure: I believe that part of it, the little boy, wasn’t interactive. He was just doing his thing. I was just seeing a recording of the past, I believe. But I believe the girl and the gentleman were interactive because of how they looked at me like they saw me.
JIM HAROLD: Interesting. Very interesting indeed. I’ve got to tell you, I really believe there are places that just have these hauntings. It just exists. Residual energy or whatever it be – or some of them might be sentient. For example, the one you told where you were going to call the police, it sounded like he understood you and knew what was going on.
AMY: Yes.
JIM HAROLD: Whatever it is, they’re absolutely fascinating. We thank you so much, Amy, for calling in and sharing your experience on the Campfire today.
AMY: Thank you so much, Jim. Stay spooky.
JIM HAROLD: Stay spooky!
Andrew is on the line from Georgia. He heard about us from – who else? – Scott and Forrest over at Astonishing Legends, so check out Astonishing Legends if you haven’t done that yet. Andrew is going to take us back to his college days. He lived in an old millhouse and strangeness ensued. Andrew, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and please tell us what happened.
ANDREW: This happened in late 2020 in Athens, Georgia while I was attending the University of Georgia. Like you said, it was an old millhouse on the Oconee River. I believe the house was built sometime in the late 1930s. It’s just a creepy house in general. It was cheap, which was why we picked it, and it had peeling yellow paint on the sides, uneven wooden floorboards. Just generally the stereotypical haunted house look to it.
Around late 2020, we’d been living there for about a year, and we started hearing this really loud, horrific scratching inside of a wall in the bathroom. This bathroom, to be honest with you, looked almost like a prison bathroom. The bathroom was terrifying enough as it is before the scratching. But the scratching would get so loud that it would echo throughout the whole downstairs area. The bathroom was attached to the living room, and there would be times where I would be sitting by myself in the living room in the middle of the day and the only thing I could hear would be this ridiculously loud scratching.
At first I thought it was an animal or something since it’s an old house, and maybe there was an animal that snuck up between a gap in the wall or something. Later on, my friend and I were up late one night at about 4:00, 4:30 in the morning, talking about paranormal stuff, as we like to do sometimes.
That night, we were specifically discussing shadow people, and he decided he was up too late, he had to go to bed, he had class the next morning. So we walk into the bathroom to finish the conversation while he brushes his teeth, and as soon as we walk into the bathroom, we hear what sounds like someone punching from inside the wall at full force, about four times. It made the entire room shake.
JIM HAROLD: Whoa.
ANDREW: Yeah. I assumed at first there was somebody outside, so I go and look out the bathroom window and there’s nobody there. And this was maybe a couple seconds after the noise had started. We were both pretty startled by it, and I remember specifically him telling me, “I’m glad you were in here with me or I would’ve run out screaming.” At that point we decided maybe we weren’t supposed to be having that conversation in that area, so we went to bed.
I woke up about an hour and a half later to go to the bathroom and when I was finished, I walked out of the bathroom, and there was a staircase leading to the upstairs area right next to where the bathroom door connected to the living room, and I heard footsteps going up the stairs. I figured that one of my roommates was out, so I looked up at the stairs, and the footsteps kept going but there was nobody on the stairs. At that point I was a little freaked out and I said, “All right, I’m going to go back to bed.” Surprisingly, I managed to sleep through the night despite that.
After this we pretty much had the scratching every day. I did probably the worst thing I could do, and I started taunting it and talking to the wall. Probably not my sanest moment, but I would go up and say, “Hey, are you going to scratch today?” It would of course start doing it.
JIM HAROLD: Oh man. Oh my gosh.
ANDREW: Yeah. I would knock on the wall and occasionally it would knock back. Not all the time, but sometimes it would. I guess it really concludes when – I never saw anything physical, but my roommates started having these horrible nightmares inside the house where they would see shadow people and occasionally they would have sleep paralysis where they would see shadow people inside the house. I’m not sure if that’s connected or not or if that was just a medical thing, maybe just a sleep hallucination. But I think it is interesting that a couple of them aren’t really prone to having that and it only started happening once they were in the house, and it stopped after they left.
We moved out around I think May of 2021, when we all graduated, and after we moved out my roommate told me that he’d had a nightmare where he was alone in the house and all of a sudden he noticed that there was a room that he had not yet been into the entire time we’d been in the house. In the dream, he thought to himself that this was strange that he’d never been in this room, and he felt like something was enticing him into going into the room. So he walks in there and it’s like a crawlspace below the house. There was no crawlspace under the house in reality, so I’m not sure where this came from. But he said he went under there and he didn’t necessarily see anything, but he could tell that there was something in there with him that wanted him to come down there with it, and that it was physical and that it was evil.
JIM HAROLD: Wow.
ANDREW: Yeah, that’s pretty much the gist of it.
JIM HAROLD: That seems like a highly, highly haunted place. I know it was an old place; do you guys have a fix on what was going on there?
ANDREW: I’m not really sure, to be honest with you. All I know is that the house was occupied by millworkers who worked in a local mill on the Oconee River for a long time. Athens has a lot of weird stuff to it like this, like the University of Georgia is supposed to be particularly haunted. It’s I think the oldest public university in the United States, so I guess it makes sense. But it’s just a lot of weird history in the area.
I don’t know if this is related in any way, but I know there were some pretty famous lynchings that occurred in Athens and Clark County during the early 20th century and late 19th century, but I’m not sure if that had anything to do with it.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my goodness.
ANDREW: But the landlord was an interesting guy. He actually believed himself that the house was haunted and had a piece of art commissioned for it. It was like a little drawing of the pale yellow house and written above it in a Halloween type font was “The Haunted Mansion,” which is kind of funny because the house was the furthest thing from a mansion you can imagine. But it was definitely haunted.
JIM HAROLD: It certainly sounds like it. Well, I appreciate you calling in, Andrew, and thank you for sharing your story on the Campfire.
ANDREW: Thank you. I appreciate it.
JIM HAROLD: Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by Raycon, my earbuds of choice. We are coming up on the holidays. It’s the happiest season… isn’t it? [laughs] Well, it is sometimes, but sometimes it can be, well, something. Let’s be real, between hectic holiday travel, stressing over getting that family recipe just right, and dealing with the family political squabbles, the last thing you want to worry about is finding a great gift for everyone on your list.
So in the spirit of giving, I’m sharing my go-to gift idea: premium audio products from Raycon. Raycon’s wireless earbuds, headphones, and speakers offer premium sound, useful features, and an almost custom comfortable fit, and up to 54 hours of battery life. Anyone you gift them to will find a use for them right away, whether they use the speakers to start a party in the living room or escape the party completely and use the earbuds for some much-needed Zen meditation. And the person gifting them? Well, you’ve got to love that they start at half the price of other premium audio brands.
I love the Everyday Earbuds that they have. They’re fantastic. They’ve got all these great color ways and color combinations, outstanding battery life, they sound great. And as we said, and we’ve said before, you can get them at a significant savings over other premium audio brands. Raycon makes this stressful holiday period easy with holiday gift guides for everyone in your life – Mom, Dad, your coworker, fitness lover, gamer, whoever it might be. And for the next month, the month of December, Raycon will have a Countdown to Christmas with a new pop-up flash deal for you to take advantage of every single day.
You can find Raycons in stores now, like Kohl’s or Walmart, but let me tell you right now, you’re always going to get the best deal at buyraycon.com/campfire. That’s b-u-y-r-a-y-c-o-n dot com slash campfire. Also, the Raycon website offers free shipping, free returns, and “buy now, pay later” options, plus a 30-day happiness guarantee. And, being a little selfish, I’ll mention if you want to support the shows, if you go through the website at buyraycon.com/campfire, we get credit so Raycon knows that people are listening and they’re picking up on their great products. So it helps us too.
So right now, go to buyraycon.com/campfire to get 15% off sitewide with code HOLIDAY, plus free shipping. That’s code HOLIDAY at buyraycon.com/campfire for 15% off your Raycon purchase. Buyraycon.com/campfire. That’s b-u-y-r-a-y-co-n dot come slash campfire, and we thank Raycon for their support of Jim Harold’s Campfire.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays from the Spooky Studio! Now, back to Jim Harold’s Campfire.
JIM HAROLD: Adriel is on the line from the great Northeast, and we’re so glad to speak with her. Her daughter, Annabelle, nine years old, a big fan of the Campfire. So Annabelle, thank you for listening and stay spooky! And actually, the story we’re going to talk about today has to do with Annabelle. Adriel, welcome to the show
ADRIEL: Hi, thanks for having me.
JIM HAROLD: Thanks for raising your kids right. [laughs]
ADRIEL: I try, I try. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: So tell us what happened.
ADRIEL: We were doing a trip down to see family down South, and sometimes you get a little tired of just listening to music, so we put on Campfire. We’re listening to one of the more recent shows from the summer – this happened in early August – and it was one of the episodes on doppelgangers. So we’re listening, and I never know how much they’re listening or coloring, etc., but all of a sudden, from the back of the van, my daughter goes, “Oh, that’s what that was!” I’m like, “I’m sorry, what?”
I pause the show and she proceeds to tell me about an experience that she had in our house. We’ve only been in our house for about three years. It was built in 1962, so it’s not a super old house, but she goes, “I was walking from your room to the living room, and when I looked into my room, I saw Daddy standing looking out the window. But when I turned the corner into the living room, Daddy was sitting in his chair, watching something on his tablet. And he was wearing a different shirt.”
Being the parent that I am, I didn’t want to scare her by asking her a billion questions and I’m like, “Okay, that’s great, honey. Do you have any more details?” She said, “Nope. He was just looking out the window and I guess it was a doppel-blah-blah of him.” She couldn’t say “doppelganger” really great.
I used to work in Gettysburg doing ghost stuff, so they’re well aware of paranormal things, but this was a new one for us because we’ve never had a doppelganger experience. She now feels a bit of comfort from hearing all the other experiences that people had while listening to Campfire, that she was comfortable enough to talk about it – because this actually had happened a few months ago, but she said she was a little nervous to tell me about it. So thank you for having that Campfire show.
JIM HAROLD: Well, thank you. The doppelganger thing always fascinates me. It’s kind of like, what is that all about? And I still haven’t come up with an answer, but I’ve had too many people call on the show and too many stories. It’s just a very, very odd thing.
ADRIEL: It seems to me almost more like a residual energy, because my husband does go and look out her window from time to time. When I listen to a lot of the stories about doppelgangers, there seem to be a few different versions of them. There’s more of that residual energy of someone doing their daily thing, and then there’s the other – sometimes it seems a little more sinister. But this was definitely just like “Oh, Daddy’s looking out the window. Oh wait, he’s been in the living room the whole time.” And there’s no way that he could have walked past her, changed his shirt, and gotten in his little setup from how our hallway in our house is set up. It’s just too small.
JIM HAROLD: Well, I hope that you will come back and tell more stories. I know you said that you used to be a ghost tour guide and you have a lot of them, so we hope you’ll come back on the show. And once again, to Annabelle, thanks for listening and stay spooky.
ADRIEL: Thank you so much for having me.
JIM HAROLD: Nicole is on the line from British Columbia. We’re so glad to speak with her and her friends up north. She’s a Plus Club member. Found out about us from – guess what? – Astonishing Legends. Thank you, Scott and Forrest. She’s going to tell us a story that is unlike anything we’ve heard before on Campfire. She’s listened back to all my podcasts and says “I don’t think you’ve covered a story like this.” I can’t wait to hear it. That’s quite the setup. So Nicole, welcome to the show and tell us what happened.
NICOLE: Thank you, Jim. It was the spring of 1995. I was about 17 years old. It’s springtime, it’s around 8:30 in the evening, and my mom and I had been to visit my uncle in a nearby city. On our way home, we’re driving down a hill and I’m looking out into the sky, and I see a row, almost horizontal, maybe a little diagonal, of five orangish-red lights in the sky. They’re perfectly spaced apar, and they’re just there. They’re just floating. I point it out to my mom; we pulled over, and we sat there for several minutes and we watched these lights.
If you think about flares or you think about paper lanterns or any sort of combustible that you would see up in the air, there’s no way that these were flares because they were stationary for the first couple minutes that we were watching. Then gradually one or two of them would fade out, and you’d almost see this shadow, and you would see them move up or down, and then they’d light up again. But they would always stay in the same immediate area.
I thought to myself, “Okay, so these aren’t flares. They’re not fireworks. There’s no construction where this is taking place. There’s not even any tall buildings.” And even now, today, 2022, almost 30 years, there’s still no tall buildings there. It’s a residential area near a mountain. This is why I pointed it out to my mom because I thought, “What the heck could that be?” So we’re watching this happen and then, rather abruptly, after maybe about five minutes, my mom starts up the car, we pull away, and we go home. The whole way I’m thinking, “What the heck was that?”
She never talked about it. She never brought it up again. I think there might’ve been one time when I mentioned it, and it wasn’t like “No, we can’t talk about this,” but just disinterest or almost as if there’s some kind of “Really? Did that happen?” You know how you hear stories where people talk about they don’t remember it afterwards, and then some people do. It kind of felt like that.
About a year and a half later, we moved to near the area where we’d been visiting my uncle, and near where we saw this. We were on the tenth floor. We had a 180-degree view of the skyline, including the area where we had seen these lights. Now, I had actually, when this happened, thought, “I’m going to hear something about this on the radio. People are going to have seen this. They’ll talk about this. Maybe there’s something in the newspaper.” You couldn’t just look this up on the internet. I never heard anything. After we moved, I didn’t really think about the fact that our bedroom window, our entire apartment looked right out into this area where we saw these lights. It was a one-bedroom apartment, so we had to share a room.
There were quite a few incidents at night – it would be the middle of the night and we’d both be woken up by this loud banging or explosion sound accompanied by a bright flash of what seemed like white light. Now, thinking back on that and knowing now that people talk about exploding head syndrome, you might be tempted to think that’s what that was – except it would happen in the middle of the night, not as we were falling asleep or right after falling asleep, and we’d both be woken up by it. I would wake up and see my mom looking straight at me. We were both awake. We both saw it. The light was bright enough so that when our eyes were closed, you could see the flash of light and be woken up by it.
We didn’t know what to make of this, but the light was right outside our bedroom window. And keep in mind, I said there were no tall buildings around. Our view was completely unobstructed by anything. Where did this flash of light come from? Because we were 100 feet above the ground, facing north, with no buildings in front of us.
I would also frequently wake up with either my blankets pushed to the end of my bed, like maybe I’d gotten up at some point and forgot to pull them back up, or they were on the floor entirely, which was weird for me because never before this time or after have I ever done that. So there’s a couple of odd things going on.
And then one night, I woke up to find myself slowly walking through our kitchen. It was like I had been asleep or sleepwalking, which I’d never done before or since then. I remember noticing that there seemed to be a pretty fierce breeze in the apartment, except that it was silent. There was no noise. There were no windows open. But I remember seeing the curtains – some of them were floor-to-ceiling curtains – waving in this wind. My hair was waving behind me.
You’d think this all sounds like a dream, except for the fact that while I seemed to have woken up and I’m walking through the kitchen, I’m thinking to myself, “Why is there this wind and there’s no sound?” Then I notice, “Wait a second, I’ve got half a dozen parakeets in cages sitting just feet away from me, and they’re silent. They’re not making any noise.” The whole living room and kitchen area was illuminated by this golden, bright light, like something outside the building where we had seen the bright white flashes of light was sitting there. Like there were huge maybe headlights shining into the apartment, except the curtains were closed.
This is really strange because it was very dreamlike except it was also very lucid because it almost felt like everything was in slow motion. The air felt thick, like I was walking through something. None of it made a whole lot of sense. I remember as I’m thinking all these things and I’m not sure, “Am I awake? Am I lucid dreaming? What’s happening?” – do you really think about tall these things if you’re sleepwalking and dreaming? Thinking to yourself, “Why don’t I hear sound? Where is that wind coming from? The windows aren’t open.” It was a clear night in the summer. There was no rain. There was no wind. There were no clouds in the sky, remember. So how was this happening?
As I round the corner around the kitchen wall to get into the living room and near the balcony windows, I don’t remember anything after that. I remember seeing that the north, where we had seen those lights a year before, was where that light was coming from, except it was immediately outside our windows, like something was floating there, shining in. I don’t know what to make of that. [laughs]
And then when we woke up in the morning and came out of the bedroom, on the carpet in front of the door – this is a bit weird; we had no dogs, no cats, no animals around, but on the carpet there was something that had fallen on the floor. I don’t know if it was a fluid or what. Odorless, colorless. It was almost like glue had been dropped on the floor and dried. We don’t know where it came from. I lived there for about two or three years, and after that, nothing like this has ever happened again. So. [laughs] What do you make of that?
JIM HAROLD: I’ve heard reports of people who see a UFO and then there are – not necessarily on the shows, but I’ve read of it and so forth – then paranormal stuff starts happening to them, or other sightings. Do you think that’s what happened to you guys here? That you noticed something and it noticed that you noticed them, to kind of misquote John Keel?
NICOLE: You know what, I actually do think that’s true. However, before, during, and after this, other things have happened to me all through my life. I have nearly 40 stories I could tell about various things that have happened, including in that apartment after this experience. So I think definitely it could be that somehow they noticed we noticed and then they were like, “Hey, there you are.” Interestingly, I have no fear about this. I have a lot of fear about other paranormal things, but I can talk about this with no fear at all. So I don’t know.
There are some elements of my story that seem to align with what I’ve heard other people say in terms of a lack of sound. They see these crafts – I never saw anything that looked like a craft; I just saw lights. But there was no noise. And you hear other people talk about this.
JIM HAROLD: Yes. Actually, when you first started to describe that, it reminded me of – I’m sure, if you’re an Astonishing Legends listener and an aficionado of these topics, you’re familiar with the Phoenix Lights.
NICOLE: No, I’m not. What is that?
JIM HAROLD: Look up the Phoenix Lights. In the 1990s, there was a huge mass sighting, in I believe the early ’90s.
NICOLE: Oh, those! There’s photos of it, right?
JIM HAROLD: Yes.
NICOLE: Yes. Of the lights. I’ve seen those photos. That’s what the lights I saw looked like.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, when you said that, it’s like, oh, the Phoenix Lights. That’s one of those things – gosh, I wish that would’ve happened now because there’s so many more cameras out there with our cellphones and everything. Although at nighttime, those cellphones take honestly crappy pictures. [laughs] But I will say this: I wish that that sighting would’ve happened when we had all these different cameras and stuff. Silent, floating lights very much reminded me of that first scenario that you spelled out for us.
NICOLE: Yeah. That’s where my feelings like, “Whoa, maybe what we actually saw was UFOs” – because it’s sort of tweaking a memory, what you say about the Phoenix Lights. Even just around the time that I sent you my email and I was looking at this stuff and trying to figure out what the heck was this, I found several pictures of what I think you’re talking about, and I again remember looking at them and thinking, “That’s what I saw.” This group of lights, spaced evenly apart, close together up in the sky, very similar color even. Yeah, maybe that was something like that. But I’ve never heard of anything like that in this area, so I guess I’ll have to do some sleuthing.
JIM HAROLD: Very interesting indeed. Well, Nicole, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate it. A really unique and interesting story. And again, folks, we may or may not have submissions open when you hear this because up until January we’re going to have those closed, but we are reopening them in January. Please sign up if you have a UFO experience. We love to hear them. Nicole, thank you for your time today.
NICOLE: Thank you, Jim. Take care.
JIM HAROLD: Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by my friends over at Stamps.com, and we love Stamps.com over here at the Spooky Studio and use it religiously. I must say, ’tis the season, ’tis the season for all the fun stuff about the holidays – decorations, eggnog – but there’s something else. Sometimes, particularly if you have a small business, there is dread, especially for small businesses. But you have a friend in Stamps.com.
Slagging through traffic to the post office? Inbox more like a blizzard than a winter wonderland? Or rushing to send cards and gifts to your loyal clients? Well, it’s never been easier than with Stamps.com. It’s not too late to get your holiday mailing and shipping under control with Stamps.com. Sign up now and you’ll be printing your own postage in minutes.
And I’ve got to say this. Sometimes people hear this and think, “Oh, I’m not a business.” Do you sell on eBay? Do you sell on Shopify? Do you sell on Etsy? Do you shell – sell on these different – seashells by the seashore, excuse me. [laughs] Do you sell on these various platforms? If you do, you are, my friend, a small business. I am a small business. And Stamps.com is your one-stop shop for all your shipping and mailing needs.
For more than 20 years, Stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, and that includes mine. You get access to the USPS and UPS services you need to run your business right from your computer. No lines, no traffic, no hassle, and even better in this economy, you save money with major discounts on USPS and UPS shipping rates up to 86% off.
This is a stress-free solution for every small business. Use Stamps.com to print postage wherever you do business. All you need is a computer and a printer. No fancy special equipment. And if you need a package pickup, you can easily schedule it through your Stamps.com dashboard. We absolutely love it. We love it here at the Spooky Studio and we use it religiously. It has saved me on multiple occasions when I had to get something out quickly. It’s great. And I did want to mention, if you’re running an online store, Stamps.com works seamlessly with all the major shopping carts and marketplaces.
So, this holiday season, trade late nights for silent nights and get started with Stamps.com today. Sign up with promo code CAMPFIRE for a special offer that includes a 4-week trial plus free postage and a free digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the page, and enter code CAMPFIRE. And we thank Stamps.com for their support of the Campfire.
Follow Jim on Twitter and Instagram @TheJimHarold and join our Virtual Campfire Facebook group at VirtualCampfireGroup.com. Now, back to the Campfire.
JIM HAROLD: Rory is on the line from Pennsylvania, and Rory’s going to share a story – it’s very personal – it’s a story of dealing with the challenge of addiction and how the road to recovery started for her, and maybe she had some special help from somewhere. Rory, thank you so much for sharing such a personal and poignant story. I think it’s an important one for people to hear. Please tell us what happened.
RORY: Thank you. I guess somewhere around 10 years ago – I’m not sure of the date – I was in a severe drug addiction. My drug of choice was heroin. As people know, when you don’t use for a little while, you get very sick. Also, when you’re using, emotionally, spiritually, physically, it really breaks you down. So I was at a very, very low point in my life.
I was in Philadelphia and I needed to find some. I ended up in this area – it was kind of an odd area, a lot of industrial buildings and things like that. I was wandering around, just feeling so broken, and all of a sudden this woman appears. I just figured she had come from an alley or something. She looked homeless, but yet again, when I saw her, I got chills, which was odd. She came right up to me and she knew my name. She said, “Rory, you can’t keep doing this. You’re not supposed to be doing this. You’re meant for better things.”
It really hit me, but it also caught me off-guard, so I was taking a second to process it. I looked down for just a second, and she was gone when I looked up. She was completely gone. There’s no way she would’ve been able to get to the next alley over or go in any doors. Everything was locked, basically. It just left me gobsmacked. But at the same time, it gave me a feeling of hope, and I’d never really had that feeling for years anymore. But it gave me so much hope and strength, and I think it all came from her.
I got in my car, I went home, I detoxed myself, and I stopped. I really, really attribute that to seeing her. I believe that she was a guardian angel in that form, because somehow it just hit me, and I had the strength and the hope to carry through with what I needed to do.
I also wanted to say to people out there that could be struggling and everything, there is hope. It’s hard to find in that darkness, but you have to believe and remember that there is hope. And she showed that to me. In a nutshell, I’m very, very happy, and also I feel honored that I was able to experience that. And that’s pretty much it.
JIM HAROLD: I think that is an awesome story. First of all, congratulations.
RORY: Thank you.
JIM HAROLD: I know from everything I’ve ever heard that’s an extremely, extremely difficult thing to do, what you did and coming through that. Congratulations, and I sincerely mean that.
RORY: Thank you very much. Yeah, life is good.
JIM HAROLD: I think it’s important for people who faced a challenge like that to tell other people that it can be done, regardless of the supernatural aspect. It’s just important to know that there is hope and other people have done it, and you’re living proof.
Also, I would say on the supernatural side, is it possible that you had supernatural intervention to help guide you in another path? I absolutely think that it’s possible. This wasn’t anybody you recognized, though, or anything? It wasn’t like a deceased loved one or anything?
RORY: No.
JIM HAROLD: You just think it was a guardian angel, basically?
RORY: Mm-hm, and I think possibly my angel was trying to fit in with the landscape because she did look like she’d been around the block a little bit.
JIM HAROLD: She fit the part.
RORY: But I knew that something was different about her because of how I felt when she looked at me and looked me in the eyes. It was something different. It was scary, but it was also, like I said before, very poignant. It was really directed towards me, in more ways than just talking.
JIM HAROLD: That is so cool. Thank you again so much for being a part of the show and sharing this very important and personal story.
RORY: Thank you for having me.
JIM HAROLD: Gray is on the line from the foothills of North Carolina, and he found us from Tim Dennis of Darkness Radio, so certainly check out all of Tim’s work. He does great stuff and has been doing it for a very long time. I mean, we started at basically the same time, and he just does a great job. Gray is going to take us back a little bit, take us back almost 20 years, and I’ll let him take it from there. Gray, welcome to the show. Please tell us what happened.
GRAY: This was May of 2003. Me and my brother were about 13 years old. There was a tropical storm that was hitting the coast of North Carolina at the time. Like teenagers will do when their parents say “Don’t go outside, it’s lightning, thundering, and raining sideways and there’s a lot of flooding, so stay inside,” we listened to them to the point where we went outside. We grabbed our ponchos and flashlights and we decided we were going to go play round in it. We just loved that type of weather.
Behind our house, we were walking up back there, just looking around, playing around in the rain, and we see a man probably about 50-60 feet away from the back of the house on a hill. Behind that hill is a bunch of apartments. We’d heard our parents say – not to us directly, but to other people – there’s some people that like to get drunk and they’ll be up there making noise. So we saw what we thought was a naked man on the hill. We laughed to each other like, “Look at this, this guy’s out here in the rain squatted down over there.” We thought it’d be funny to shine our flashlights, which were those huge ones that carried a big battery.
So we both shine our flashlights towards him, and then the funny tone changed. When the flashlight struck his eyes, we saw a reflection, almost like you’re shining a light at a nocturnal animal. We thought briefly, “Okay, maybe that’s glasses that he has on his head.” We looked for a second, and then when the lightning struck again, we saw his full body. It was about twilight. It was in the evening, so it was a little bit darker. When the lightning struck, he stood up, and he was probably about – I’m calling it a “he”; I don’t really know what it was. But it was about 6-½ foot tall. Looked starved. The best physical description is if you saw an emaciated person like the images of someone in a concentration camp back in World War II. That visualization. Very, very malnourished looking, but tall. Very long fingers. The eyes, the more it looked at us, the more they had a shimmer to them.
Then our blood ran cold. This thing was huge, long fingers, you could see the gaunt jaw, the sharp teeth. When that happened, we bolt. We’re running back to the house, and as we’re running, we look over our shoulder and it’s walking at a full sprint, just going through the trees like they’re not even there. We’re sprinting, sprinting, sprinting, we reach the house, we get inside, and we’re like, “Okay.” We never even spoke to each other about it after that. We just kept it to each other.
But then, later in the weeks of that summer – we shared the same room because my brother is my twin brother – we hear clawing on the window outside. We thought, “This is an animal.” Now looking back at it, I’m like, no raccoon is going to scratch the window. Then after the scratching, we hear thumping sounds on the roof. We get fed up with it. And we’d hear growling, so that’s why we thought it was a raccoon or something. Even my older brother heard it one time.
So we think, “We’re over this animal doing this.” My brother grabbed a baseball bat, I grabbed a broomstick or a bamboo stick and we’re like, “We’re going to go run this thing off.” We go out the backdoor – this is probably about 2:30 in the morning – and we go out the door, around the corner, and this time – oh, and also, I left off the note that the scream it gave off that caused us to really run was it went from a deep growl like a bear to a woman screaming. That’s what really made us run when we first saw it. Then this is 2:30 at night, we round the corner and we see a big silhouette. Same silhouette, but it looked thicker this time. We couldn’t really see it. We just saw its outer shape. It looked a little bit thicker.
Then it releases the exact same scream, from a deep bear to a woman’s scream, and then just runs up through the woods towards a barbed wire fence that was right there. This thing strikes a miniature pine tree and breaks it in half, so that freaked us out. Then it runs through the fence like it’s nothing. We try to shake that off a little bit, and then the next morning we go up there to see what it’d done. It ripped that barbed wire fence apart. Wrapped around a tree on the right side, wrapped around a fence on the left, and it was matted with black hair.
I don’t know what this thing was. My best description I could say would be – you know people talk of cryptids, like Skinwalkers, crawlers. It’s almost like when we saw it in the summer, it was one of those. And later in the night following a couple weeks into the summer – it was rolling into about September, going into October – earlier I said a few weeks, but really it was a couple months later – it was hairy. At least presumably. We couldn’t see it in the night, but it left dark hair everywhere.
JIM HAROLD: So you think it was the same kind of entity, but maybe it was a shapeshifter of some type?
GRAY: Yes, because same scream, same height, same speed. For years after that – when you see something like that, you try to push it off. Your brain tries to make logic out of it, so you’re like, “Okay, that was maybe in our heads.” Then the last part of it is the home I live in now, my in-laws live down the road, and I was dating my wife at the time. We were out there around a firepit, roasting marshmallows, and I heard that same scream come from the woods, and I noticed that the dogs at her house started freaking out, barking, growling. I just got a cold shiver.
That night, my brother-in-law was camping. He was probably about 12-13 at the time. No, he was 15, sorry. So he was camping that night. I told him to stay and he was like, “Oh yeah, whatever.” They heard some weird noises outside their tent. Tree branch breaks right above his tent, falls, thuds on the ground. Their dog is sleeping in the tent with them, tries to get out, gets out of the tent, runs away. Then he and his friends get out like, “somebody’s out here.” When they look, they look at this truck – it was probably a couple feet away – and they see a white head looking at them. They think, “Oh, there’s a guy messing around out here.”
They run to the truck and they see its eyes shimmer. Runs out from behind the truck, same height. They’re running as fast as they can to catch up to it and they can’t do it. It just runs off in the woods. That was about a decade ago.
JIM HAROLD: So you think this thing, you poked the bear, so to speak, and it poked back and said, “I’m going to mess with you guys. I’m not going to forget that you did this to me.” Do you think that’s what was going on?
GRAY: I think so. The vibe it gave me was almost like we weren’t meant to see it, but we did, and after we did it kind of – I don’t know, it almost followed us for a while. That’s what it gave me. It was almost like we weren’t meant to see this thing and we saw it, and it was like, “Oh, you see me? I’mma see how long this can go on.”
JIM HAROLD: That’s funny. I mean, it’s not funny at the time, but it’s a pretty amazing story indeed. A pretty amazing story. Again, thank you so much, Gray, for sharing this. I think it’s really interesting, and I think there’s some weird things out there and maybe sometimes they don’t want to be seen. But once you engage, it’s game on. Thank you for sharing your story today on the Campfire.
GRAY: Thank you.
JIM HAROLD: Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by Policy Genius. We all hope we never need life insurance, but it is a fact of life. Mortgage payments, childcare, and other expenses just don’t go away when you’re gone. And for my family, it is a very, very important thing.
I know what you’re saying out there, some of you. You might say, “I’ve got life insurance through my workplace.” That’s great. I think that’s a good thing. But it may not offer enough protection for your family’s needs, and it won’t follow you if you leave your job. Since life insurance typically gets more expensive as we age, now is the time to buy. Policy Genius gives you a smarter way to find and buy the right coverage for you and your family.
As I’ve said many times on the commercials, life insurance was a non-negotiable for me. Pretty much Dar and I had been on the page of every single financial decision, good and bad, but that was one where we had a little friction in the very beginning. But I won out on that one, and I’m so glad that I did. Now, I’ve got to tell you, it wasn’t a great experience. We had a life insurance agent come to our home – this was back in the day – and bought a good-sized policy. I’m sure we got overcharged for it. I’m absolutely sure of that because when you’re talking with a representative of one company, naturally that’s what they’re going to push to you. That was the old way. That was the bad way.
But now there is a better way, and that better way is Policy Genius. Policy Genuis is in it for you. Policy Genius was built to modernize the life insurance industry. Their technology makes it easy to compare life insurance quotes from top companies like AIG and Prudential in just a few clicks to find your lowest price. With Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just $17 per month for $500,000 of coverage. And Policy Genius has licensed agents who can help you find options that offer coverage in as little as a week and avoid unnecessary medical exams. They’re not incentivized to recommend one insurer over another, so you can trust their guidance. There are no added fees, and your personal info is private. No wonder they have thousands of 5-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot.
Your loved ones deserve a financial safety net. You deserve a smarter way to find and buy it. Head to policygenius.com or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That’s policygenius.com. Thanks, Policy Genius!
You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.
JIM HAROLD: Trini is on the line from the Cleveland, Ohio area. So glad to have a fellow Clevelander on the line. Trini’s going to talk about how he used his iPad to potentially catch a ghost, and many scary moments in an apartment he believes was haunted. Trini, welcome to the show. Go Browns, go Cavs, go Guardians, and let’s go with your story. [laughs]
TRINI: Sounds good. Thanks for the introduction there, Jim. Big fan.
JIM HAROLD: Thank you.
TRINI: This incident takes place in 2015. I had just met my then-girlfriend; she’s my wife now. We’ve been married for three years. Hi, Nancy. We met at Cedar Point, and we met during HalloWeekends at Cedar Point.
JIM HAROLD: I just went this last year. That’s such a great time.
TRINI: It is a great time. It’s a great time, and it was love at first sight for me. Not so much for her, but she eventually came around.
JIM HAROLD: [laughs] Good work, Trini.
TRINI: Yeah, put the charm on. It was a whirlwind romance, and we went on some dates and everything was clicking along. She finally invited me into her apartment. We were just getting to know each other, watching TV shows and movies and whatnot. We really hit it off really quick. During the time that I would visit and things like that, I never felt any kind of negative vibes or any kind of creepy feelings in the apartment, but things would change after I moved in.
I moved in probably about, I don’t know, maybe four or five months into the relationship. She lived in an apartment complex that I think was like four floors, and she lived on the top floor. It was one of those small efficiency type apartments. It was one bedroom and the living room and the kitchen were kind of in the same room, and then there was a little hallway, and on the left was a bathroom and then the bedroom was right at the end of the hallway, kind of led into the bedroom there.
After I moved in, that’s when I started noticing things. It was a very loud apartment to begin with. It had weird baseboard heating that the metal would expand and contract in the wintertime. It was loud. It would clang and stuff and it’d wake me up in the middle of the night. I was like, “What was that? Did you hear that?” So it started off with like – that wasn’t paranormal.
One night, I remember we were lying in bed and asleep, and I felt the bed shake like somebody was trying to wake us up kind of a feeling. I woke up and I asked my girlfriend, “Did you feel that?” She was like, “Uh-huh.” We didn’t say a word after that. We just went back to sleep. The next day we talked about it ,and we didn’t know what to think about it. Another time – again, a lot of it happened in the bedroom. After I moved in, I always felt like I was being watched in the apartment.
One night, I’m a hot sleeper, so sometimes I’ll kick the covers off at night in the middle of the night, or my feet will poke out of the covers. That’s what happened. I was hot and I poked my feet up out of the covers, and I felt what felt like a finger run up the bottom of my foot.
JIM HAROLD: Ooh, ooh!
TRINI: Yeah, it was a really weird feeling. It was like from the bottom of my foot – it felt like somebody took their index finger and touched the heel of my foot and went straight up towards my toes.
JIM HAROLD: Yikes.
TRINI: Yeah. I instantly woke up and I’m like, “Uh, what was that?” It really freaked me out. I told her about it and I tried to rationalize it, like, was it maybe her foot that touched mine or something? I just couldn’t come up with an explanation, but it freaked me out.
One more thing before I go into the iPad incident. The tenant that lived beneath our apartment, for some reason he would always – you know how some people take a broom and hit their ceiling, which would be your floor of the apartment? Like trying to say maybe “quiet down” or something. Well, this person that lived below us did that a couple different times. I thought it was kind of rude. We would always feel like we had to tiptoe in the apartment, like maybe we were being too loud. He actually called the landlord and complained that we were making a lot of noise at times in the apartment. We’re not loud people; we’re very quiet people and laidback and reserved. We don’t make a lot of noise. We’re not up at all hours of the night or whatever. I just thought it was odd that this person kept hearing all these noises – even when we weren’t there, he would complain about noises coming from our apartment, which I thought was kind of odd.
This leads into the iPad incident. I was in the market for an iPad Mini, and I was trying to be a little thrifty. I’m like, “I don’t think I want to buy a brand new one. I think I’m going to get one used.” I started looking around, and I remembered my local pawn shop sold electronics and computers and stuff like that, so I went to this pawn shop and I found the iPad Mini that I wanted. I brought the iPad home and I got it all set up and downloaded all my apps and got it connected to Wi-Fi and whatnot. I happened to have that day off from work, so I had some time to play around with this iPad.
I started messing around with the camera, and I started taking selfies with it with all the different filters that it had on the iPad. I found a filter that was really weird. You ever go to a carnival and you go into the house of mirrors and they have the mirrors that distort your body?
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, I know, I’ve seen that filter before. It’s like a funhouse.
TRINI: Yeah, exactly, like a mirror filter. So I take this selfie of myself with this filter. I’m looking at all my pictures that I took, and I come across the one with the mirror filter. Jim, it made me look really weird. I mean, I looked like an alien or something. It was weird. But I got to looking at myself, and I noticed something in the picture. I wear glasses, so I noticed this reflection in my glasses. I zoomed in on one area of my lens on my eyeglasses and I saw a face. It had a wide grin. It was smiling.
JIM HAROLD: Ooh. Yikes.
TRINI: It was a white face, and the eyes were black and the mouth was black, and it just had a big old grin on it.
JIM HAROLD: Yikes.
TRINI: Yeah. I’m like, “What is this?” I’m trying to debunk it because that’s just who I am. I want to try to debunk this because I want to make sure it’s – I had the TV on at the time, so I’m thinking maybe it was a reflection from the TV. Maybe there was an image and when I took the picture it caught that reflection off my glasses. I had one of those TVs where you could rewind the live TV, so I rewound the TV for like a minute or two back and I watched it to see if I could see that image that I caught on the TV. That would debunk it, right? Well, I played the TV back a minute or two; I didn’t see that image at all on the TV.
I’m thinking, “Where did this image come from?” It freaked me out, Jim. I texted a couple different people and I asked them, and everybody saw what I saw. To this day, I have no idea. All I know is that I had the creepiest feeling in that apartment. We eventually moved out of there and got another apartment. I actually called a friend of mine who’s a deacon at a church here locally and I asked him to bless the apartment before we moved in because I didn’t want whatever this thing was to follow me there at this apartment.
Real quick before I leave, we eventually bought a house, my wife and I, and we had a couple weird things happen in this house. Just a couple, not a lot. But one thing that was really creepy was my wife and I – we wake up at the same time every morning to get ready for work, and we make breakfast for ourselves before we go to work. Well, one morning we both woke up and we go into the kitchen to make breakfast, and the stove was on. The flame was lit and the pan was already on the flame.
JIM HAROLD: Oh boy, like somebody got things started for you.
TRINI: Yes.
JIM HAROLD: But not in a good way. Don’t help me with fire. I can handle that myself.
TRINI: Yes. Jim, we both looked at each other and I go, “Did you do this?” She’s like, “No!” I’m like, “How did this happen?” I mean, if it would’ve happened the night before – we always prep the night before. We put the pan on the burner so that when we wake up, everything’s ready to go and all we’ve got to do is turn the flame on and start our breakfast and that’s it. I thought maybe one of us turned it on for whatever reason. But if that would’ve been the case, that pan would’ve been so red-hot overnight that we would’ve known it was on. But no. That’s pretty much the freakiest thing that’s happened in this house since we moved in, but it’s been a while. So that’s my story.
JIM HAROLD: Very good story. Trini, thank you so much for sharing it. Always great to speak with a fellow Northeast Ohioan. Thanks for being a part of the Campfire tonight.
TRINI: Thanks, Jim. You have a great day and stay spooky.
JIM HAROLD: Stay spooky!
Robert is on the line from Indiana. He found out about us from the great mothership, Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, and we thank them. They’re always so supportive and help us get the word out about the Campfire. Robert is here, and he has a workplace story for us, and it sounds like a doozy. We’re so glad to have him with us. Robert, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened.
ROBERT: Thank you, Jim, thank you. Yeah, your show is a great show. I love it. I listen to it myself during the evening when I go in to lie down for bed, but you keep me up.
JIM HAROLD: [laughs] We do our best.
ROBERT: That’s great. So anyhow, it goes back a little ways, but it was back in Pennsylvania. I used to do – generally I’m a field service representative for a corporation. I used to go all over the country, Canada, and the Virgin Islands. But I did have a side business when I was home. I used to do electrical and refrigeration work. We got a call one day to do a job about two miles away in another coalmining town in Pennsylvania, where I was originally from. My buddy and I went up there. It was an electrical job doing a new meter base and a 200 amp service into a private residence.
We get there, everything’s going fine. I go down into the basement and I’m telling you – I’ve always had the sense that I can feel when things aren’t right, actually anywhere really, not just in homes. I had a strange feeling, but it didn’t really bother me. It was during the day and I wasn’t really paying any attention to it. Anyhow, the job gets going. Me and my buddy are down there tearing out the old box, taking out the meter base outside. I go back down in the basement myself and I start putting up the new breaker box.
I’m doing the work down there and I get this strange feeling like something’s behind me. I have a sense of familiarity also with the feeling, and I’m confused. I go ahead and do some more work and I feel this sense about me, this presence. It’s behind me. I’m telling you, Jim, it was like there was actually a person there. But I turn around and of course nothing’s there. Now it’s starting to worry me, like, “What’s going on here?”
I keep working and I call for my buddy to come downstairs. He comes down, and he too feels something. He asked me if it was okay if he went back upstairs and if I’d finish off the breaker box. I said, “Sure, no problem.” So I’m down there working, and before you know it, this sense of familiarity turns into a harbinger of doom or something. I’ve got this sense of feeling of hatred and evil. It was just so – I don’t know, so strong, the feeling. I couldn’t work anymore. I actually started getting afraid, I guess you could say. I don’t know what it was. I mean, I’ve been into a lot of situations, and you know coalmining towns have a lot of ghost stories everywhere.
So I’m working on this meter box and this presence came up behind me, and I swear to God it had a hold on the back of my neck. I could feel a pressure on the back of my neck, and I just dropped everything and took off upstairs. I’m talking to my buddy up there and the woman who owns the house is in the kitchen, so we go in the kitchen and I ask the woman, “Is there something strange about this house? Anything strange happen in the past that you know of when you bought it?” She goes, “Yeah, as a matter of fact, there was a young woman here that committed suicide.” I said, “Oh really?”
I explain to her what was going on downstairs and she goes, “I’m familiar with a lot of noises and disruptions during the night. I know there’s something here.” I said, “Well, there is. I feel like it’s a woman, actually.” She goes, “Well, it was a young woman.” I said, “Do you mind if I ask you the name of the person?” She goes, “No, I’ll tell you.” She told me the name, and when she said the name, I nearly fell over. It was an actual cousin of mine that came over from Italy back in the ’50s, I think it was, when my mother came over from Italy. It was a relative of mine that actually committed suicide that the family had kept suppressed all these years.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my.
ROBERT: So when I went out after this was all said and done, after I was done doing the work in the basement – I ran back down there and finished off; I only had about three or four breaks left to put in. And while I was doing it, I’m telling you, I was being harassed mentally. I’m sure she knew who I was. I think she was just upset about all the work that was going on in the house or something. I’m not sure why. I didn’t look into it any further, to be honest with you. I tried to get some information from my family but nobody was willing to give it up. They told me to just forget about that.
JIM HAROLD: Wow.
ROBERT: Yeah, it was strange. It was a strange one.
JIM HAROLD: Do you think the spirit was making itself known because it knew you were there? Or do you think it was aware of who you were?
ROBERT: I think it made itself known because of the work that was going on in the house. The woman who bought the home was having it totally remodeled. But I think once the spirit came out, then I think she realized who I was. I was a relative of hers. I think that’s why I got a lot more of the intensity from it than anybody else did.
JIM HAROLD: Well, quite an interesting story. It’s funny how those little synchronicities work out. I do want to mention this; you mentioned suicide, and any time that comes up, I always want to put this number out there because if somebody’s listening and they need help, call 988. That is the new three-digit number here in the United States. I think it’s such a great thing. It’s 988. It is the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. The lifeline provides 24/7 free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention, and crisis resources for you or your loved ones. I think it’s always a good time to get that message in, Robert, if anybody needs that kind of help.
And thank you so much for sharing this. It’s interesting how you said you can pick up on things. So you probably would say that to some extent, you’re a sensitive person in this regard.
ROBERT: Oh yeah, definitely. Actually, I do cleansings these days for people. I do it for nothing. I don’t do it for a living or anything or for money. I just do it to help people out.
JIM HAROLD: Well there you go, Robert. Thank you so much for listening and for being part of the Campfire.
ROBERT: It was great, Jim. Thanks a lot. You take care.
JIM HAROLD: You too.
Thank you for listening to another edition of the Campfire. I appreciate it. Please tell a friend and leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast app. That helps so much. We appreciate it.
And we have a special birthday shoutout for a very special person. Vicki wanted to know if she could get a birthday shoutout for the 9th of December. She says her husband, Dave, and herself have been fans ever since they got together 11 years ago. “Your podcasts are nightly listens when our son goes to bed,” and Vicki says she would love a mention. So, a big old happy birthday to Vicki, and a stay spooky to Vicki and Dave, and I thank you so much for listening, and we appreciate it.
If you want your own birthday shoutout in video form, or perhaps a kind of electronic stocking stuffer, a greeting from me, you can go over to cameo.com/thejimharold. That’s cameo.com/thejimharold, and book a personalized video with me. I would appreciate it very much. We’ve gotten great reviews over there on Cameo. I’ll just read you a couple. Kate said, “Perfection thank you so much Jim.” Bailey said, “Awesome thank you so much.” Navan said, “It was SO good! Thank you, Jim! He loved every word and was so shocked, something he never expected at all! He loves you even more now. We all do! Thank you so much once again!”
So folks, we’ve got 5-star review over at Cameo with numerous people who have signed up for one. So if you want a unique stocking stuffer for a bigtime Campfire fan, consider it. Cameo.com/thejimharold. C-a-m-e-o dot com slash the jim harold. We really try to make that affordable. It’s much less expensive than what you’ll see from a lot of the people, especially the TV people. So we try to make it something that’s accessible for as many people as possible. I hope you’ll take advantage of it. And of course, it helps support our shows.
Thank you so much for listening. We will talk to you next time. I hope you have a happy holiday season. I hope it’s going well and even getting better. So happy holidays to you, merry Christmas. Don’t forget our ornament contest, and we’ll talk to you next week. Stay spooky! Bye-bye, everybody.
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.
—
For more information on our podcast data policy CLICK HERE