A neighborly ghost, a shadow person, a shared sleep paralysis experience and much more strangeness on this edition of Campfire!
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TRANSCRIPT
MONICA: I suddenly realize that I should not have ever seen Dave sitting on the porch because Dave had actually died like a month before that.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my. The plot thickens.
Indeed it does, on this edition of 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 happy holidays to everyone out there. I hope you’re having a great holiday season. I know we are at the Spooky Studio. We have a lot of fun stuff going on. Before we get to the stories, quickly I want to tell you about a couple of them.
One is our Holiday Ornament Contest we do pretty much every year. If you want to enter, you’ve got about a week now for us to receive your entry. So go over to jimharold.com/holiday2022. That’s jimharold.com/holiday2022 for all of the details. It’s a fun thing that we do and we feature on social media, so I hope that you can participate. Jimharold.com/holiday2022. We’re recording this on December 15th, and we need all entries by December 22nd, so time is wasting. If you want to be a part – we hope that you do – jimharold.com/holiday2022.
And also, I hope you’ll be a part of our Virtual Holiday Party we do every year. That’s coming up this Saturday, December 17th, at 7 p.m. Eastern to 9 p.m. Eastern. We’ll have special guests, we’ll have trivia, just general fun, a get-together to celebrate the holiday season in the Spooky Studio. I hope you’ll join us. The best place to do that is our YouTube channel at youtube.com/jimharold.
And with that, we will get right to these great Campfire stories.
Monica is on the line from Pennsylvania. She is a loyal listener. Been listening since 2008, and she and her one son who is 10 years old, Tyson, listen to the show together. Tyson is a big fan of the show, so Tyson, thanks for listening and stay spooky. And listen to your mom.
Monica’s going to take us back to when she was a teenager and some strangeness that ensued. Monica, welcome to the show. Thank you for listening all these years, and tell us what happened.
MONICA: Thanks, Jim. My story started in about 2003, I think. It was my first year that I had a car during the summer, and my two friends and I wanted to go swimming at the pool. But since I had a car, we were like, “Oh, we don’t want to go to the local pool. We’ll go to the pool in the next town over,” which was right across the street from my aunt’s house. So we get in the car, we drive to my aunt’s house, and her house was kind of the party house. There were always people there, especially on the weekends and during the summer, so it wasn’t odd to se anybody extra hanging out that wasn’t part of the family.
As we pulled up to the side of the house, we went around to the back and that’s where the porch and the patio were, and we saw this man sitting on the porch. I recognized him; his name was Dave. He was this big guy with curly brown hair and glasses, and he just gave us a little wave and got up and walked off the porch and headed down the driveway towards where we would’ve been heading, towards the pool.
He leaves and my friends and I get on the porch; as my foot hits the steps, I suddenly realize that I should not have ever seen Dave sitting on the porch because Dave had actually died like a month before that.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my. The plot thickens.
MONICA: Yes. So I stood there, and my friends, who had never met him before, were just like, “Hey, what’s going on? Are you okay?” I’m like, “There was a guy here, right?” They’re like, “Yeah, what are you talking about?” I’m like, “Okay.” I thought maybe I mistook him and it was somebody else, but I felt it in my bones that it was definitely Dave.
We walked inside and I saw my aunt and said, “Hey, was there anybody here just now?” She was like, “No, I’ve been here by myself all day.” I’m like, “Okay, I don’t want to freak you out, but I think I just saw Dave.” At this point my friends didn’t know what was going on, and my aunt got white and she’s like, “What do you mean?” I was like, “I swear to you I just saw Dave on the porch and he waved to us and walked away.” My friends were like, “What’s going on?” I still didn’t tell them what happened.
My aunt had these big collages of pictures on her wall. She had like four of them, and they were of different people from parties and events. I told my friends, “Hey, pick out the guy from one of these pictures that you just saw,” because I just wanted to confirm for myself too that that was definitely him.
JIM HAROLD: Monica, you were thinking. That was really smart.
MONICA: Yeah. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: And I love the fact you didn’t tell them. Let them pick it out. Great.
MONICA: Yes, I did not tell them. So sure enough, they went to the pictures and they picked out Dave. My aunt was like, “This is not real.” I was like, “No, I swear this was him.” It was definitely Dave. My friends were like, “Okay, you’ve got to tell us what’s going on.” I’m like, “Guys, we just saw a ghost.” They’re like, “What?!” It was just so weird because he was so solid. He looked like he normally did. Yeah, he just got up off the porch and walked away.
My aunt had some experiences after that at the house. She was a super clean, neat person, and she said that one day she came downstairs and all the kitchen cabinets were open. She closed all the cabinets and then she walked away, and then a couple minutes later all the kitchen cabinets were open again. She was like, “Dave, knock it off! Leave me alone!”
She had another experience where she was in the shower, and her son’s room was right next to the bathroom, and she heard a loud bang. He was a teenager; he had a coffee table next to his bed. When she walked into his room, he looked like someone had picked up the coffee table and flipped it up and put it back down, but everything that was on top of the coffee table was perfectly placed on the bottom, on the floor. It’s almost like they were glued to the top of the table. It really freaked her out. She was yelling at Dave saying, “Hey, knock it off! I know you’re here, but you’re really scaring me.” After that things stopped. But that’s my ghost story.
JIM HAROLD: That is a great one. I love it. Now, let me ask you this. He waved to you guys. I would think if he came back and forth a lot like that, I would lean towards the residual haunting, but he waved at you guys like he saw you. Is that right?
MONICA: Yeah, he definitely saw me. He looked right at me. He gave me a smile and a little wave, like a little head nod and wave. Yeah, he definitely saw us.
JIM HAROLD: That is really, really awesome. I love that. That’s a great story. So what do you think? Do you think he was just stopping by to literally wave and say hi? What are your thoughts about this haunting, and what were your family’s thoughts about it?
MONICA: He and I weren’t very close. I was a teenager, so there were adults there all the time that I kind of knew on the fringes, and he was one of them, so I wasn’t particularly close to him. But he was best friends with my uncle growing up, so he was very connected to the family and to my uncle and aunt. He died suddenly. I think he had a heart attack. So I think it was just him lingering around and letting people know he was okay. And he was a trickster, so him flipping things and opening doors, that’s not surprising at all. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: Excellent. I love how you got right to the story. Folks, Monica’s the way she does it. She brings the goods, she tells us a great story and gets us some fabulous content. I just love it. And a great spooky story, too. Monica, thank you, thank Tyson, and stay spooky.
MONICA: Thanks so much. Stay spooky, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Next up on the Campfire is Cody from Ontario. He is also a great podcaster, and he just had me on his show, and he’s going to tell you a little bit about that after the end of this call. But first, he wants to share with us a story about sleep paralysis – but this one has a bit of a twist. Cody, welcome to the show. So good to talk to you on your program, and I can’t wait to hear this story. Tell us what happened.
CODY: Thank you so much for having me. I was with a partner at the time, and we were lying in bed and she was sleeping, and I was watching stuff on my iPad. I’m a bit of a late-night kind of guy. Not that this was too late; it was about 10 p.m., and I was watching a program on my iPad with my headphones on. Out of the corner of my eye, in the room, I could see this dark, shadowy figure start to move. I saw it move at the end of the bed, where it walked all the way around the bed and over to her side and stood there beside her.
JIM HAROLD: Ooh.
CODY: I watched it as it just hovered over her. Now, the figure – I couldn’t see through it, but I could see perfectly around it. My eyes were adapted to the dark at that point, as it wasn’t like it just got dark, so I was able to see around it perfectly and see the shadow of it, but just could not see through it. So I decided to get up and walk around a little bit to see if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me or what it could be. But no matter what angle I took when I stood up, it was still in that same position of a complete figure that I couldn’t see through.
I have had a few experiences over the years and really stuck to my belief that they can’t hurt you. I’m under the belief that it’s more of an empathy thing of making you feel what they’re feeling kind of thing. So I got up and I walked over to it, and being very close, being like face to face, could not see through it, still. I said, “You don’t have any business here. Go away. You don’t have any business here. Stop bothering her. You don’t have business here.” Eventually, I gave up and I walked back to my side of the bed, as it just wasn’t leaving.
Then, all of a sudden, when I lay back down, I saw that it started to fade away, and she woke up. Sleep paralysis was a thing that she’d had a little bit, and we’d talked about it a little bit in the past, but she told me that she was having the experience and that she saw this figure go from the corner of the room, and then it went out of her vision and she could not move, but she felt that it was close and that it was holding her down.
JIM HAROLD: Wow. We have had callers before – I mentioned to you offline – that had the same experience in a dream. We’d had people multiple times call in and say that. I’ve never seen where one person’s seeing what’s happening in the dream or in the sleep paralysis outside of it. That’s really unique. To me, for sleep paralysis, I think there’s certainly at least sometimes a physiological reason. People have apnea or they have medical conditions that cause sleep paralysis. I think that’s an absolute thing that has nothing to do with the paranormal.
But I do wonder if sometimes there can be strange things that happen that are not just medical stuff, but actually paranormal stuff. And certainly your story would lend itself to the latter. That’s really interesting. So when you guys talked about this, what was her reaction?
CODY: She was terrified. She was absolutely terrified. And I was confused because, yeah, like you were saying, it goes against my belief of what sleep paralysis is. I think of it more mental. I’ve watched the documentaries where it’s basically if you talk about it, then you’re more likely to have it because it’s psychological. It was just this unexplainable moment, but it definitely stuck with her. I kind of regret telling her that it happened because now, through life, I’m sure every time she has sleep paralysis, she’s wondering if something’s actually there.
JIM HAROLD: Well, it’s an amazing story, and I’d be interested if anybody else out there – and you can, of course, sign up at jimharold.com/campfire, and if we have submissions closed when you check, make sure to check back. I know starting in January we’re going to have submissions back open. Cody, that’s an interesting story. I think it’s a lot of food for thought and lends itself to my favorite theory that reality is much stranger than we think it might be.
But something that isn’t strange is your podcast that you do with your friend Damien. I just had a chance to be on your show, Spooked! Really enjoyed it. Take a minute or two, tell people about the show and where they can find it.
CODY: Yeah. Spooked! is the improvised scary story podcast where it’s never scary and sometimes a story. We are two dumb-dumb comedians that don’t take things too seriously, but we have an interesting in the paranormal, as my co-host is a skeptic and I’m a believer. So we just have a fun, kind of nonsense, loose time.
JIM HAROLD: Excellent. Cody, I really enjoyed my time with you and Damien, and I hope everybody checks out your podcast, Spooked! Stay spooky.
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Merry Christmas and happy holidays from the Spooky Studio! Now, back to Jim Harold’s Campfire.
JIM HAROLD: Melanie is a return caller from Alabama. We’re so glad to speak with her again, and I love this. This is so funny. We’re going to talk about the Toe Shaker. So Melanie, can’t wait to hear this story. Tell us all about the Toe Shaker.
MELANIE: Thanks, Jim. My boys and I all love your show. You’re a household name, so they begged me to call you and tell you this.
JIM HAROLD: Aww, thank you. And if you want to, you can give them a shoutout by first name.
MELANIE: Hey, Noah and Andy.
JIM HAROLD: Hey, stay spooky, guys.
MELANIE: When I was pregnant with my first son, my husband at the time and I were looking for a little apartment of ours. We found this small studio apartment. We live in a very rural community. The price was right, all of that. We move in and have our son. We had a neighbor nearby; she was an older woman. Didn’t really know her very well, but we would wave at each other in passing as we came in and out.
Time passes, my son was born, and the person that we were renting the studio apartment from called and asked me if I would be interested in moving into the apartment next door. It had an extra bedroom, so more space. The budget was fit, all of that. I told her, “Sure, we’ll go and look at it, and if everything looks okay, we’ll take you up on that.”
My husband and I go into the apartment and we look around. It looks nice, but – it’s kind of difficult to explain this to anybody that doesn’t really feel spirit or pick up on things, but you know that feeling, Jim, when you rub a balloon, almost like the staticky feeling that your hand can feel around it? Like the static charge? It felt like that, but it was cold, in the main bedroom. It creeped me out. I was like, “It’s probably just because I know that that person lived here.” She assured me she didn’t pass away in the house or whatever. So we move in.
My husband at the time worked a job where he worked night shifts a lot, and when he was off he would try to pretty much maintain that routine of staying up and sleeping during the day. It was only a couple of weeks of living there and he started to tell me he would be woken in the middle of the night by someone shaking his big toe. Like someone would grab his big toe and shake it. He would think that it was me, and then he would realize I was asleep beside him and he would just pull his legs up towards him, try to ignore it. I’m a young mom, I’ve just had a baby, I’m tired. I did not have time for that nonsense. I was like, “Don’t tell me that. You know I have to be here by myself,” whatever. [laughs]
Well, one night I fell asleep reading, and I do remember – I feel like he was home at the time, but I’m not sure – yeah, he was. I fell asleep reading, and I had that sensation. It was just like someone grabbed your big toe with their index finger and their thumb and they were wiggling it, just trying to get your attention, wake you up, playful. I woke up, and I looked at the foot of my bed, and the best way to describe this is just this bioluminescent, ethereal version of my former neighbor. She was white; I could see her glasses, I could see her curly hair. She wasn’t standing. She was at the foot, almost kneeling with her arms on the bed, like we’re hanging out and having a chat. She just smiled at me and faded away.
The craziest part is that I was not afraid at all when I saw her, when I woke up. It wasn’t until I realized I was not dreaming, I was awake and that really happened, that I freaked out. I got up and I told him and I was like, “I was so scared.” I told him what I saw and he was like, “I told you.” Fortunately, at this time we had already planned to move. I think we only had like a week or so left before we were going to move out.
I went a long time without ever seeing her. That’s the only time it ever happened, and it was this short and sweet story, but my kids love it – I don’t know, maybe because it’s just funny, like a ghost that shakes your toes. I guess she was just trying to check in. I didn’t really know her, and I don’t really even feel like maybe she was a ghost. I don’t know how to explain it. I just feel like maybe it was just to check in, like “Hey.” I’m not sure. I never saw her again after that. That was the only experience I had when I was there. It didn’t really scare me when I saw her, like some other things that have happened have. It was kind of neat.
JIM HAROLD: That is kind of neat. I love that. That is such a great story. And I love the Toe Shaker thing. That’s very funny. We talk about some wild things here – Skinwalker, Shapeshifter, Toe Shaker. [laughs] I love it. Thank you so much for joining us, and stay spooky to your boys, and thank you for being a part of the Campfire listenership.
MELANIE: Thanks, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Next up on the Campfire, we have a dynamic duo, Lauren and Tina are with us from North Carolina. Lauren is pretty much I would say the listener to the show, but this experience belongs to Tina, and it’s about a shadow person. Tina and Lauren, thank you for joining us on the show. We appreciate it. Please tell us your story.
TINA: Well, I was a child, and me and my stepsister were in the bedroom sleeping and we woke up and we saw this black, tall figure on the wall outside of our bedroom. It went into my stepfather at the time, her father, it went into his bedroom. We closed our eyes because it scared us, but we could still see it. It went into her father’s bedroom and it basically went inside of him.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my gosh.
TINA: He was a very – he was not a nice man, so I don’t know if it was drawn to him because he was not a nice man. I’m not sure. But yeah, I saw it, and for years – for a very long time, I didn’t know what it was. Lauren was listening to this podcast and she had heard the one about the shadow people, and she was like, “Hey, you want to listen to this?” I was like, “Sure.” I was like, dang. It made sense as far as what it was because for a long time I didn’t know what it was.
JIM HAROLD: Lauren told me when she wrote about this – can you explain what happened when you closed your eyes? Because this is a particularly haunting part of the story.
TINA: Me and my stepsister, it woke us both up, and we were lying in the bed together and we closed our eyes and put the cover over our head, and we could still see it walking down the hallway.
JIM HAROLD: So actually, when your eyes were closed, you could still see this thing walking.
TINA: Yeah.
JIM HAROLD: That’s creepy. Did you notice that your stepfather, after this happened – it sounds like he probably wasn’t the most pleasant guy to begin with, as you said, but did he get worse?
TINA: Yeah, I would say he definitely got a lot more violent.
JIM HAROLD: Oh, I’m sorry.
TINA: I mean, it’s fine. But he definitely got a lot more violent. Of course, at the time I just thought that that was him, but now, maybe it wasn’t all him. I don’t know.
LAUREN: Yeah, we had a conversation about it, and it’s like, maybe he was already kind of open to negativity because he wasn’t a good person, so maybe it was attracted to him or it had easier access to him because of that. That’s my thoughts on it. You just don’t know.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, wow. Did you experience, Tina, anything else in that house? Anything else supernatural or paranormal or that could’ve been? Or was that the one and only time?
TINA: That was the only time that I ever saw anything.
JIM HAROLD: Wow. I’ve said this, and I know Lauren said she’s a newer listener, so she may not have heard me say this, but some people don’t believe in good and evil and they don’t believe there’s darker energies or more sinister energies. I believe that there is. I believe there’s great people out there with great spirits and great hearts, and I believe in things like guardian angels and spirits that help us and so forth. But I think that the world of the other side is like the world over here; most people are at least decent. But there are some people who aren’t so decent or aren’t so nice, and I feel the same way: I think there are spirits and entities that do not necessarily wish us well.
LAUREN: We both feel that way.
JIM HAROLD: Well, Lauren and Tina, thank you so much. Lauren, thank you for telling your wife and having her tell the story. I think it’s so neat you found out about us from And That’s Why We Drink, so thanks to Christine and Em. They’re so great, always supporting the Campfire, so please, everybody listen to their show. I know millions of people have listened to their show. Tina and Lauren, thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire, and stay spooky.
LAUREN: Thank you. Stay spooky.
TINA: Thank you.
JIM HAROLD: Kim is on the line from Oregon. She was on a while back; always glad to have repeat callers. She’s going to tell us something that happened after she married her husband. Kim, welcome to the show. Welcome back, I should say. Thank you for joining us, and tell us what happened.
KIM: Thank you, Jim. It’s good to be here. I call this Susan’s story. When I met my current husband, who I call MM, he was a widower of about six months. I learned that his wife had died of breast cancer, and they had no children, but she very much wanted kids. After some time, we got engaged and my kids and I moved into the house that MM had shared with Susan.
Shortly thereafter, he leaves on a business trip and I’m left in the house alone during the day when my kids are off at school. I’m clearing things out of the house, getting ready for us all to live in, and a few times I start getting this strange feeling that someone’s there. I’ve witnessed other paranormal things in my life, so I’d say things like, “Hi, Susan, I hope you’re okay with us being here.”
Since my kids and I have all experienced some paranormal type activities in the past, and being a little bit of a pagan, I’ve always smudged new homes with sage to get rid of bad vibes, bad spirits, whatever. So I got some sage to smudge the house. MM had told me previously that Susan had wanted him to be happy. She knew she was going to die, and she wanted him to remarry. So as I’m smudging, I’m telling her that I’ll be marrying him, and I was okay if she stayed around, so long as she didn’t cause any harm or chaos, and I hoped she was okay that the kids and I were sticking around. We’d all feel her around every now and then, like things might not be in a place we put them, or we’d hear sounds, that sort of thing, but nothing big.
On the first anniversary of Susan’s death, MM went into his home office to listen to a CD that he had put together of Susan’s music. She’d been a beautiful singer, and listening to her songs is his way of grieving and recognizing her on that day. Later that same day that he had been listening to the music, we’re up on the second floor and my eldest daughter came up and said to MM, “Did you leave your CD player on?” It had been a few hours since he’d been down there listening, and we’d been milling about and everything and nobody had heard the music prior to that. He said, “No, I turned it off.” She said, “Well, it’s on now.” When she said that, I got goosebumps.
So MM goes to his office, and sure enough, though he’d placed the CD player back up on a shelf that wasn’t easily reachable by the rest of us, because we’re a bunch of shorties, the button had been pushed on. And these are the kind of buttons – you know in the old days where you had to push it. It wasn’t like the touch buttons.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, like click. I know what they are.
KIM: And none of us heard the music while we were down there, so it was really weird. That was the first time the kids heard her music.
I don’t remember how much later, but my youngest daughter was restless in the middle of the night and went down to get a drink of water, and then she heard music coming from the office again, and it was Susan’s music. She told us about it the next day, so MM checked the CD player out. The cord was firmly plugged in, the buttons weren’t loose, and it turned off and on properly. So again, we couldn’t explain it. And this time he hadn’t been listening to the music prior.
Then we moved into a new house, and of course, he brought the CD player. He’d had a few boxes of Susan’s things that he wanted to keep in the attic, and I was feeling like it was time for him to get rid of the box of things, but I said he should keep the things that were already in the house. But he just wasn’t ready to let go of her stuff yet, so he wasn’t having it. In that same week, my youngest daughter heard something in the basement and went to investigate. In the new house, MM’s office was in the basement. She heard something coming from his office. She quietly knocked on the door, but there was no answer. She opened the door, and one more time, there’s Susan’s music going off.
The CD player eventually did give out, and we haven’t heard it since. It’s not playing on the computer or anything like that. But I feel like the last time we heard it, it was because she was happy that MM wanted to still keep the things to remember her by, and we do keep a photo of her in what I call our Day of the Dead cabinet, so we still honor her.
JIM HAROLD: I think that’s great. It’s a little bit of a challenging situation because, obviously, she was there; now you’re here, but life must go on kind of thing, and she wanted him to be happy. But still, I could see – so it’s an interesting situation, and it seems like you’ve navigated it well and it’s okay.
KIM: Yep. Every now and then my youngest daughter – we’ve got a malfunctioning recliner in our basement that does weird things, and she still thinks it’s Susan, and maybe she’s right. Maybe she’s still talking to the kids.
JIM HAROLD: She still wants you to know she’s around.
KIM: That’s right. I think she specifically talks to the kids.
JIM HAROLD: Well, maybe being younger, they’re more – by nature, not that you’re not open, but just being younger, they’re more reachable in some way, I don’t know. Really interesting. Thank you so much for sharing this story, and thank you for once again being part of the Campfire.
KIM: Thank you, Jim. I appreciate it too.
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Help your family share their story this holiday season with Storyworth. Go to storyworth.com/campfire today and save $10 on your first purchase. That’s s-t-o-r-y-w-o-r-t-h dot com slash campfire to save $10 on your first purchase. Storyworth.com/campfire. And we thank Storyworth for their support of Jim Harold’s 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: Ben is on the line from England, and I was just telling him how glad I am that we get such great support from England and the UK in general. We really, really appreciate it. So glad to have him on the line. He’s going to take us back about three years, when all this started. Ben, welcome to the show, thank you for joining us, and please tell us what happened.
BEN: Hey, Jim. Great to be here. I’m going to cut forward a bit to just this last week, just to give the story a bit of context. I had a dream, a really nice dream of my old farmhouse where I grew up. It was a really big farmhouse divided into four houses that all the family lived in. In this dream, I went through the house; the house itself was surrounded by a bright white light, and I knew what I was going to expect. In the dream, I had a big smile on my face because I knew my Nana was going to be there, cooking Sunday dinner, as we always did.
I walked through the hallway. The kitchen was to the side in the open plan, and then living room / dining room was to the left. I walked in, and there she was sat at the table. I sat down with her and she basically said everything was going to be all right, everything’s fine. The one thing, Jim, that stuck out to me that she said that I remember is, “I am here. I’m here. I’m not there physically,” with me in this realm that we’re on.
I’m now going to go back three years ago. I met my girlfriend – I used to collect cash on nights, and she worked on the bus that I collected cash from. That’s how we met. Once COVID hit, it was basically we were either going to be together or stuck apart for God knows how long that was going to last. So we got together. Fast forward a couple of months, and my girlfriend got pregnant. We started moving really at a fast pace. Nine months later, my little son came along, and we’d moved house, which is the house we’re in now, where all the happenings have been taking place.
There was no signs of it to start with, but as it got about six or seven months in, my son started waking up at three o’clock every morning, bang on the dot. Bang on the dot, every morning, to a point where it became suspicious. We see orbs nightly on the baby monitor, and some of the orbs are so big. They fly through the cot, they hover above him, they go through walls.
Other stuff that’s happened around the house – we’re trying to encourage that we have the family meal around the dinner table. Obviously, that’s important. So when night James is sat with us in his high chair, all of a sudden he’ll start looking around like he’s following something. It’s incredible to watch. All my family’s witnessed this. It’s like there’s someone else in the room he’s physically looking at. He was eating – I can’t remember what he was eating, but he physically turned round behind him, and held his hand out with what he was eating.
JIM HAROLD: Huh. Like he was trying to give some to something, right?
BEN: Absolutely. It’s got quite bad. My friend is a spiritualist. He’s not a professional, but he did dabble in it, and he came round and we did the divining rods and the pendulum, and we figured out that it wasn’t – well, it said it wasn’t human. My partner/girlfriend asked if it wanted to harm us. It said it didn’t. I was sat on the settee, and the door was closed. The settee is next to the door in the living room. She asked it to leave, and Jim, I’ve never been so scared. It scared the living daylights out of me. The door swung open and smashed against the back of the wall like something was angry.
JIM HAROLD: In other words, “I’m not leaving.”
BEN: Exactly. It’s got to a point where I’ve got cameras now in the house, and my partner’s agreed to this, so she’s aware – we’ve got one in my son’s room and one in the kitchen, and we see the orbs that we keep seeing. It’s incredible. One instance in particular, I was cooking the tea one night and my girlfriend was sat in the living room just relaxing. Screamed, told me to come running in. I ran in, and she said she witnessed one of my son’s toys levitate off the floor.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my lord.
BEN: It’s your regular Ghostbusters house. [laughs] It levitated off the floor, and that’s not the only situation. She’s been sat in there – he’s got one of those ball pits with all the plastic balls that you put in, and he plays in that, and one of the balls has come flying out of the pit and rolled across the room. His pram’s moved on its own. We’ve just rocked him off to sleep and we’ve been sat in the kitchen having a cup of tea, and we’ve both witnessed the pram moving on its own.
It’s got to a point where I called a professional spiritualist the other week and he came round and he said there was at least six spirits in this house. Because we’d been going through a lot of problems ourselves. Apparently, he says that the negative energy has attracted negative energy into the house. He managed to expel a few of these spirits, move them on to the light. But the point of the dream at the beginning was, I thought my Nana was here with me in the house, and she isn’t. She was in the dream. So whatever is here in the house is imitating my emotions, thoughts, and feelings.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my goodness. That’s got to be disturbing.
BEN: Very disturbing. We’ve witnessed shadow figures. I’ve been listening since May; I found your podcast in May, and I’ve been caught up as much as I can, and obviously the shadow figure episodes that you do, Jim. We’ve seen them. They’re more like – they haven’t got the hats on that people mentioned in your episodes that I’ve listened to, but these are just shadows. I saw a shadow the other day. When I was rocking my son to sleep, I could see the outline of its head poking around the door, looking at me. So I don’t know. I’m thinking about getting the house blessed and see how we go from there.
JIM HAROLD: I think that would be – I don’t want to tell you what to do because I am not an expert, but I think in your case I would do that. Can’t hurt.
BEN: No, it can’t. It’s just the fact he’s waking up daily at 3 a.m., which is obviously the witching hour. We’ve got the cameras installed now, so we’re going to hopefully see if we can get some proof of what’s happening. But I also don’t want to tempt it into turning into something more negative. I’m definitely going to get the house blessed this next couple of weeks and see how we’re going from there.
Just another note is I got up the other morning – this is quite recently – and again, we’re always up around three o’clock in the morning. I got up and straightaway, I knew that it felt like there was someone in the house. It was a really heavy presence. So heavy – do you know the feeling that you feel unwanted? It was a negative heavy. I like to think I’m a tough guy, and I literally ran across the landing, did what I needed to do in the bathroom, and ran back. I actually woke my partner to tell her there was something in the house. So yeah, there’s something here but I’m not quite sure what it is. I do think it’s negative.
JIM HAROLD: Well, I thank you so much for sharing this, and I really wish you the best with this. I really hope that perhaps the blessing helps and that you’re able to figure this out and go on, because while we’re all interested in the spooky, when it’s something that seems like it’s maybe a little more malevolent or a little more negative, then it is a cause for concern. I can certainly understand that.
BEN: Yeah. Thank you very much, and keep up the good work, Jim, with your podcast. It’s absolutely fantastic.
JIM HAROLD: Thank you, Ben. Thank you very much for being a part of the show.
BEN: Thank you. Bye-bye.
JIM HAROLD: Dawn is back from central Illinois. You might remember a while back, she had a story about Mr. Fingers. She has a couple of stories for us tonight, and it’s good to speak with her again. Dawn, welcome back to the show. Thank you for joining us, and tell us what happened.
DAWN: Thank you. This first one, there are two things that are kind of connected. October of 2019, I did a tour at the West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville, which is a pretty neat location. It was a mid morning tour. We were just on our way back to Illinois and decided to stop off there. There was nothing really unusual going on initially. There were maybe eight people on the tour. We had been outside, where they show you the wagon gate where they used to bring prisoners on, and we’d been out in the yard, wandering around a little bit.
Then you come back into the prison, and as soon as we stepped over the threshold back into this one area, I had the most stabbing pain in my lower back. I couldn’t stand up straight. It came on that quickly. I’m at the back on the group, I’m trying to stretch. All I’m thinking about – I’m almost panicked, thinking, “I’ve got a nine-hour car ride home. What is going on with me?” I’m trying to listen to the tour guide, and he starts telling us this particular area of the prison was where some of the more violent criminals had been held. A lot of things went on there. He pointed out one door that had actually been modified because there was a prisoner in a wheelchair that they had to accommodate. They were very small cells.
The whole time, my back is just killing me. Like I said, I couldn’t even stand up straight. I’m bent over, I’m trying to stretch, and my husband’s looking at me like, “What is wrong with you?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I cannot stand up straight.” Anyway, the tour guide completes that part. I’m, again, thinking, “What am I going to do for the rest of the ride home?” And as soon as we passed out of that area into a cafeteria area, the pain was completely gone. I stood up straight, and I’ve never had pain like that again. And that was three years ago that that happened.
JIM HAROLD: Wow, wow, wow.
DAWN: Then, my next story, Blennerhassett Island is in the middle of the Ohio River outside of Parkersburg, West Virginia, and it has some pretty interesting history. One year ago, 2021, my husband and I did a ghost hunt. It was an overnight ghost hunt. Hidden Marietta is who put it on. They do it a couple times a year. It was my first-ever ghost hunt. I do ghost tours; I love them. But I’d never done a hunt before. Mostly I just wanted to camp out. I mean, the odds of getting to camp out on Blennerhassett Island are pretty slim.
They take you on the little ferry, the little sternwheel ferry, and we had all our camping stuff. Set everything up. They had divided us into groups. The mansion is a big area for activity, so you can’t have everybody – I mean, there were a lot of people that were camping out that night. So we were assigned to groups, and you got a time period that you would hit all the areas of the island. We were free to roam the island, and they had equipment and everything that we could borrow. We were free to roam it all night long if we wanted to. There’s not much electricity out there, so I had a lantern.
Anyway, we were waiting on our turn in the mansion, and we had followed the paranormal investigators who had some equipment out to the Neal Ruins. It was this house that was built I think 1833, I believe is when it was built. Anyway, we followed them out there and they were setting up their equipment and everything. The ruins are fenced off. There’s a huge, very tall chain-link fence around them. But there is a picnic table and some things out there. Again, you’re just walking this island. There’s no cars or anything.
Anyway, we walk out to the ruins, they’re getting all their equipment set up, and one of the things they pulled out were dowsing rods. One of the girls was like, “Hey, does anybody have any experience with these, or do you have any family members who ever used them?” I was like, “Yeah, my grandfather used them to find water,” divining rods or whatever. I remember his set lying on the workbench at our house when I was a kid. She’s like, “Well, sometimes it runs in families. Why don’t you give them a try?” The way the dowsing rods are, there’s almost like a case, I guess I would say, like a cylinder, and then the rods go down in there. So they’re very free-moving. Your hands hold this case, but these rods can spin around and around.
Anyway, it starts off and we’re just asking questions. Cross for yes, open wide for no. Initially, they seemed to think that we were dealing with a child, but it very much – all of a sudden the energy in the area changed. It just felt a little heavier. The air felt maybe a little thicker, and they thought maybe something else had entered into this. Well, at about that time, my left leg between my hip and my knee felt like it was on fire. It was absolutely burning. I didn’t tell anybody; I just started asking questions of whatever it was that supposedly was there. “Did you have an injury? Was it to your leg?” Yes, yes. I asked, “Left leg or right leg?”, and I think I said cross for left, open for right, and it crossed, so it was the same leg.
And then we kept talking, and I explained to them what was going on with me, the investigators. And then as soon as my husband and I moved on because it was our time to go to the mansion, as soon as I walked away, the pain was completely gone. Never had anything like that again. So I don’t know.
JIM HAROLD: It seems like you pick up on these energies in these places, for sure.
DAWN: That’s what I’m wondering. At Moundsville, it did not occur to me that it could be anything paranormal. That just did not enter my mind at all, and then on the way home, my husband was like, “Do you think…?” I thought, gosh, I wish I’d had him take a picture if I’d thought of it. I wonder if there would’ve been anything visible. I don’t know. It was just so strong and so specific to that place, and as soon as we walked out of there, it was gone. And same thing here. My leg truly felt like flames. It felt like it was absolutely on fire.
Then later, when I was talking to the investigators – Mr. Neal, who had built that house, apparently in portraits they have of him, he always has a cane. But they didn’t know if that was a necessity or if it was just fashion. There’s no information on him having suffered any – and we don’t know that it was him or anything. I don’t know what it was. But as soon as I walked away, it was gone, never to return. I haven’t had anything like that in, well, a year, it’s been since we did that.
JIM HAROLD: Dawn, always a great, great story. I thank you so much for being on the show and being a part of the Campfire.
DAWN: Yeah, thanks very much. Have a good day.
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JIM HAROLD: Next up, we have a repeat caller. She’s been on the show – this’ll be her third time, and we certainly appreciate it very, very much. She’s calling from Chicago today, and she’s going to share with us something that happened around the time of her father’s passing. Geri, thank you for joining us, and sorry for your loss. Please tell us what happened.
GERI: Thank you, Jim. This was very, very interesting. When a loved one, a parent, is departing, it’s a complicated time in so many ways, and there was just a lot going on. It was very painful. My mother and my sister and I were all together, trying to keep everything together, and his ailment went on for a little less than a year. About seven months when it got really bad. So it was rough. But he departed in October of 2020, so almost exactly two years ago that he passed away, so I don’t have to reach too far back in the memory. This is very sharp for me.
It was a pretty steep decline, and ultimately we had to make the decision to put him on hospice care. We found this wonderful hospice environment in our neighboring state, Indiana, and we got all established there, and on our first day in this hospice environment, my father was attended by a nurse who was a very wonderful caregiver, but clearly, these are all complete strangers. These are not nurses that had been caring for him or helping us through this period at all. These were brand new people.
I’d say within an hour after his arrival where he’s all tucked in and we’re all sitting there, he said to the nurse in all seriousness – now, my dad did not have dementia. This whole time – this was 2020 and the pandemic was going on, so we couldn’t really get into a hospital and we couldn’t really get a good diagnosis on what was going on with him, so they were quick to say, “He’s old and he must have dementia, so there’s nothing we can do.” He did not have dementia. But his speech was very garbled, but understandable, certainly to me. He said to the nurse in all seriousness, “I saw you last night at a wedding.”
I didn’t know what to make of this. Clearly, we had not attended any social events for some time. I asked him to repeat himself. I’m like, “Dad, what did you say?” He says, “I saw you last night at a wedding,” talking to the nurse. I apologized to the nurse and I said to her, “I’m sorry, I’m not sure what this is about. We certainly didn’t go to a wedding.” The nurse says, “I didn’t go to a wedding last night, but my son got married a year ago, and I was looking through his wedding pictures last night.” [laughs] I said, “That’s strange.” And she said, “Not around here.” Every hair on my body stood straight up. He passed three days later, and that’s what happened.
JIM HAROLD: I’m going to throw something out there, and you tell me what you think. And again, I stress, when I say these things on the show, this is just speculation on my part. I am not an expert. I am not an authority. I’ve interviewed a lot of people who do this kind of work and things and look into things like this, but that doesn’t make me an expert in any way whatsoever, so anything I say now is prefaced with that. But here’s what I was thinking. They say that people, when they’re very close to passing, sometimes can almost be on the other side, like go back and forth. Something I’ve heard is that when people pass, it is said they have the ability to go anywhere and maybe greet anywhere. So is it possible that somehow he became omnipresent?
GERI: I’ll tell you what I think happened. I think at whatever point, wherever he was at that moment in his existence, he was in someplace where the boundaries between the compartments were starting to dissolve. That’s what I think.
JIM HAROLD: I think we’re thinking along the same lines.
GERI: Yeah. Like you, I’m an expert on my area in which I am licensed, but that’s it. We don’t really know what’s on the other side of what we can see. There’s a lot of machinery out there that we don’t have access to, and I think at some point, when his physical equipment was becoming obsolete and he was about to jump out of that vehicle, he could see the boundaries were not quite as clear and as sturdy as they were before.
And even before we got there, I’d say it was a good seven months that it got really serious in the household with the family with him, and as he got sicker and sicker, he kept saying that he heard a woman’s voice calling his name and he heard a baby crying. Now, the only woman in the household other than myself – there were three women in the household. Mom, my sister, and I. But we weren’t the ones he was talking about. He heard a woman’s voice calling him, and he heard a baby crying.
There were two people that he longed to see again. Number one was his mother, and as he got really up there in age, he started to talk about her a lot, just out of the blue. It was like, “Where did that come from, Daddy?” He would go on and say something about his mother that wasn’t connected to any other conversation that we were having. And he heard this baby crying, and the only thing I could think of about that was he had a grandchild who never got here. My sister had a set of twins and one of them didn’t arrive with his brother. My nephew is now in his thirties and doing very well in his life, but he started out in utero as an identical twin, and that twin never came about. He didn’t make it. So I wonder, was that something – because we don’t have kids around us in the household. Where does this baby crying come from?
So that’s what I think. Having had this experience, I have to say, it put my grief process way ahead of the eight ball. You know what I mean? It really helped to alleviate a lot of my suffering for his loss, having had this experience and feeling that there’s something else out there going on that we don’t have the authority to know, and I just have to trust that it’s okay and that whoever was calling his name and that baby who was crying, that he’s hanging out with them, and that’s where he wanted to be.
JIM HAROLD: That’s what I think. I think there is a better place, and I think all of these things very much hint at that. Geri, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing this very personal and poignant story on the Campfire.
GERI: Thank you so much, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Next up on the show is Shandar from North Dakota. She’s a new listener, just started listening in July. She said that she had occasion to be on a long road trip, 13+ hours. She found our shows, hit play, and listened for 14 hours. We’re so grateful for that, and we thank her for joining us today on the Campfire. She’s going to start out by telling us a story about her dad. Shandar, thank you for joining us and please tell us your story.
SHANDAR: Thank you, Jim. I will start with a little backstory. My dad and I didn’t always have a really good relationship growing up. He and my mom got divorced when I was about four and we moved out of state. She got remarried to his best friend. So growing up, not a really good relationship.
In 2004, I actually ended up moving out of my mom’s, back in with my dad, and we were able to start working on having a good relationship. I moved in with my husband in 2007, and my dad actually moved in with us. I got pregnant and had our son, and my dad was there for that. In 2010, we moved from where we lived to where we are now, and my dad came with us. It was really nice having him around. Not getting that relationship growing up, it was really nice to have him around my son because he and his grandson got to have a relationship.
In 2012, he got sick. My dad was a big guy. He was a diabetic, so he was sick a lot. He was about 6’2”, probably 280 pounds, tall, bald head, big belly. I always called him my Buddha. He had a handlebar mustache, and he had a few friends that would call him Mr. Clean. So in 2012 he got sick. I convinced him to go to the ER; found out that he had congestive heart failure, and they had to life flight him to a bigger city because we live in a really small town, so there was no way they could take care of him.
While they were prepping him for the life flight, they had to sedate him and put a breathing tube and stuff in, and they actually lost him in the ER. They got him back, and everything was good. They got him back, they got him life flighted, and he was good to go. He was in ICU for a few days. At that point, he and I talked and I told him, “Dad, I think you need to find someplace to live where somebody’s always going to be around to be able to take care of you. At this moment in my life, I can’t do that.” So he did. He moved back in with some really close friends of the family, and there was always somebody around.
Fast forward to probably the middle to end of May of 2014, I got a phone call from one of the gals that he was living with saying that he was sick and she didn’t know what to do. I told her, “Call the EMTs. Get him to the hospital,” and she did. I drove the three hours down to where he was at and found out that he’d actually been in and out of the hospital – I want to say at least six or seven times already that year. I was really upset with him. I was like, “Dad, why haven’t you been calling me and telling me?” He goes, “All you’re going to do is yell at me anyway, so why am I going to call and tell you?” I said, “Because I’m supposed to yell at you and tell you to take care of yourself. You have a grandson. You need to stick around.”
We decided that I wanted him closer, so I was actually able to get him into a nursing home about a half-hour away from where we live. It was June 9th. My son, who was three at the time, and I got in the car and we drove the three hours down and got to the hospital and got all his stuff together, got him signed out, and we started making the trek back up to where he was going to go, which, with road construction, was like a six-hour drive. It was a pretty long day. We got him to the nursing home, and he was doing good. He was doing really good. He was on kidney dialysis for a couple years, and things had been going okay.
He was complaining because he didn’t have a TV and he didn’t have clothes or nothing like that, so I told him, “Dad, I’m off on Friday. I’ll come over and get you and we’ll go to Walmart and we’ll get a TV and we’ll get you clothes and everything you need to be comfortable and happy here. There’s going to be people around all the time to take care of you, and you won’t have to worry. Nobody’ll have to worry. And I’m a phone call away.” He said okay. He cried a little bit. He was only 52, so it was kind of tough for him, being young, to get put in a nursing home. I gave him a hug and a kiss and I told him, “I’ll call you when I get home.”
About 45 minutes later, I got home and I called him, and we talked just a little bit. He said, “Okay, kiddo. Well, they’re telling me it’s time to go to bed.” I said, “Okay, make sure you call me tomorrow. Let me know how the doctor’s appointment goes with the new doctor and let me know how your dialysis goes.” He said okay, and he said, “Goodnight, kiddo. I love you.” I said, “Love you too, Dad.”
Tuesday came and I hadn’t heard anything, which I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t know when his appointments and stuff were exactly. At the time, I worked at our grocery store in town in the pricing department, and we had inventory on Wednesday. I had to be at work at three o’clock in the morning, so I was in bed pretty early. I woke up about nine o’clock out of the blue, and I noticed that I had a missed phone call from my dad’s cellphone and a missed phone call from the nursing home. I called them back and I asked what was going on, and they asked me if my dad had ever been nonresponsive after dialysis. I said, “He had dialysis three days a week, and they were pulling 20 gallons a day off. He’s usually pretty exhausted.” They said, “No, this is different. He’s at the local hospital if you want to call him.” I called over there and they said he was okay, everything was fine, so I went back to bed.
Woke up about 2:30 and I had a couple missed calls and a voicemail. Two voicemails, actually. One from the hospital and one from the nursing home. One said that they had sent him someplace else, so I had no idea where in the world at that moment, 2:30 in the morning, where my dad was. I called the original hospital that I had went and got him from because that’s where he always went, and they said, “Yep, they had to life flight him. He just got here. I’ll have the doctor call you in a few minutes.” At this point I’m at work and I’m pulling our ad tags, hanging up our new stuff so when inventory crew comes to count, everything’s priced right. Just doing my thing.
She goes, “Hold on a second. The doctor’s right here.” He went over the DNR stuff and all of that and made sure that the Power of Attorney that we had was all correct and what was going on and everything was good to go. A couple hours later, about 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning, I get a phone call from the hospital, and the gal says, “Your dad’s not doing well. You have two options. You can either put him on life support or we can put him in a room and keep him comfortable.” I said, “He wanted me to put him on life support. What’s going on?” She said, “Well, I don’t think life support is going to be good. It’s just going to prolong the process.”
JIM HAROLD: Oh my.
SHANDAR: She said, “When he got here, he had no idea who he was, where he was, what was going on. Vitals weren’t good. You have to make this call. What are you going to do?” I said, “Well, I can’t be selfish. My options are either put him on life support and choose later to take him off, or not let him suffer anymore.” She said, “That’s pretty much it.” I said, “Don’t let him suffer anymore.” I was still at work, and she was like, “You need to go home.” I said, “I’m not going to go home and wait for your phone call. I’m going to finish up and keep my mind busy, and I will come.”
I left work about 6:30, and at 6:55 I got a phone call that he was gone. The gal that called me was actually somebody that I’ve known my entire life. They told her that he was there, and she no more than found out he was there and they had the code go over the intercom, and she grabbed her phone and said, “I have to make the phone call.”
So we drove the three hours down there, got everything taken care of. We got him cremated. I’d told him about two weeks before that, “Dad, when you pass away, you’re going to get cremated. It’s your last chance at a smoking hot body, so I’ll give you that, and I’m going to put you in a Buddha cookie jar.” Well, I couldn’t find a Buddha cookie jar, but I did find a Buddha at a Pier One Imports. Not a whole lot of those exist anymore. He said okay, and that’s what we did.
I lost my dad on the night of June 10th, morning of June 11th. I had planned to have a wake for him that year on June 15th because my husband and my anniversary is on the 14th, and I wasn’t going to do it that day. That year, June 15th just happened to be Father’s Day. I thought, what better day to celebrate my dad than on Father’s Day? So we got everything done, we came home, and I was off work for a few days and went back to work.
I was in an aisle, changing prices. I’m a very big believer in the paranormal. I’ve witnessed a lot. I’ve been part of a lot of things that have happened. My mom lost my sister in ’96; I’ve interacted with her. It’s just part of my everyday life, so when things happen, I don’t get scared because for me, having spirits around me is normal. As weird as that might sound, it’s normal.
Today, my dad knew that this call was happening. He was messing with me at work all day long. We have a bell that goes off every time you come in my liquor store, and the bell was going off and I would hear cooler doors open, and nobody was there. I was like, “Dad stop! Just stop. I’m nervous, stop.” I heard him chuckle.
Anyway, I was hanging those tags and I heard something behind me fall. I didn’t think anything of it, and I got done. I happened to be in the aisle where all the soap and cleaning stuff is. I had to mention the Mr. Clean nickname earlier because when I turned around, lying behind me was a Mr. Clean dry eraser.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my. [laughs]
SHANDAR: I just felt this hug, like this, “You know what, kiddo, I’m okay.” Because I felt really guilty for having to make that choice. I felt, was he mad at me? And in that moment, I knew that it was okay and that he was okay, and that’s all that mattered.
JIM HAROLD: That is what matters, and I do believe our loved ones give us signs, and they give you signs in ways that mean something to you. Somebody else would see that, that wouldn’t mean anything to them, but you knew that was his nickname and he showed you in his own unique way.
SHANDAR: He did.
JIM HAROLD: Shandar, thank you so much for sharing your story. I appreciate it. I know you have more stories, and I hope that you’ll call back and share them on the Campfire. Bless you and bless your father. Those are hard choices to be made, and a fact of life many times for people, but still very, very difficult. I’m glad you got that comfort. Thank you for being a part of the show today.
SHANDAR: Thank you, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Next up on the Campfire is a longtime supporter. Susan is on the line from Washington state. We’re so glad to have her with us, and today we’re going to talk about the passing of her sister and a story that revolves around that. Susan, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate all your support, and please tell us your story.
SUSAN: It’s a pleasure to join you today. As you said, the story concerns my sister. My sister Kathy was 14 months younger than me, and we were very close as adults. I do have a little background. It’s very short. Kathy was always really into dreams, and she did a lot of reading and research on dream interpretation. Whenever I would have a meaningful dream, I’d call and debrief it with her. My family has a history with meaningful dreams as well, both visits from lost relatives and dreams that prepared someone for bad news.
Kathy’s family lives half the time in Northern Washington State and in Southeast Alaska. Her husband and kids are commercial fisherman, so the family generally leave for Alaska in April or May ,and they’re there until October/November. So they have two beautiful homes, one in each location. In the winter of 2021, they generously let a couple from their Alaska community stay in the Washington house while the wife – we’ll call her Leslie – underwent cancer treatment in a nearby metropolitan area. That saved them from considerable travel costs and gave them a home base for the duration of a difficult time.
Of course, we were all very devastated when Kathy died quite suddenly in June of this year. She was fine in the morning and collapsed that afternoon and was just gone. Everyone was beside themselves. Because her passing was so sudden, of course, there was no time to tie up loose ends or pass on information related to any activities that were in process for her. She had told me once that because there was so much activity and traffic in the house during the fishing season in Alaska, things would get moved and lost, so she was very careful about hiding her important paperwork and so forth.
Her husband, my brother-in-law, has pretty much retired from his fishing, but he still goes out to crew for his kids and do a few runs for himself. He has a list of repeat customers that would buy from his catch every year, especially when he fished for halibut. Kathy was always in charge of the orders – the customers, the amounts they wanted, what they owed, etc. Because the family makes all of their annual income during this period of time, it just wasn’t an option for them to stay home and grieve, even though they wanted to.
So shortly after she passed, it came time for my brother-in-law to put together his halibut trip. Consequently, they needed to find the orders that Kathy had already taken. They spent the entire day searching for her documentation for this year’s information and couldn’t find them anywhere. They finally decided that they just had to call the repeat customers, get the orders again, and hope folks would understand given the circumstances.
The next morning after they’d spent the day hunting for this documentation, Leslie, the gal who’d stayed in their Washington house for cancer treatments in 2021, stopped by unexpectedly. She came in and she asked my brother-in-law, “Are you guys looking for something?” Of course, he was very surprised and asked for more information and was thinking about their futile search the day before. Leslie said to him, “Kathy came to me in a dream last night and said, ‘Tell them that the thing they’re looking for is up high. It’s way up high.’”
He was telling us this story and demonstrating, and when he did, he turned around to his kitchen cabinets and held his arms up and he said, “I asked her, ‘Up here? Were they up here?’” She said, “No, there were no soffits,” which to me seems like really specific information to get in a dream. Then the family resumed their search and found Kathy’s notes on the top shelf of the bedroom closet, with no soffits.
JIM HAROLD: I believe it happens. Go ahead.
SUSAN: I was going to say, a couple of other interesting things happened while we were there for her memorial. The whole week we were there, the weather was lousy. Nasty and rainy, unusually so. They kept commenting on it. But the day of the memorial, it dawned bright and clear and glorious, and it held out for the whole day and resumed rain the very next morning.
Also, on the day of the memorial, my brother-in-law went early to the venue to set up things for a fish barbeque. Of course they’re going to barbeque fish. He said the whole time he was setting up, the lights in the pavilion were flashing on and off, on and off, on and off. He asked the owner of the venue, “Does that happen?” She said, “No, it’s never happened before.” He even went there a few days later to try and get it to do it again, and it wouldn’t do it. It just stayed on solidly. He really felt that Kathy was giving him one last romantic gesture. And I think –
JIM HAROLD: It – go ahead.
SUSAN: No, you go ahead.
JIM HAROLD: I was going to say, it seems like to me she’d be that kind of person, from what you’re telling me. Kind of like she kept everything together and had her finger on the pulse and knew everything was going on. I’m assuming that’s the kind of person she was.
SUSAN: She was. She was the heartbeat of that family. She kept everything together. Every time we’d be somewhere together, when her family wasn’t with her, she’d get these phone calls. She’d say, “Oh, it’s my husband. He can’t find something. Oh, it’s one of the kids. They can’t find something.” And it always was. “Mom, where’s my…?” So she was the heartbeat. I think that she used her friend to get some important information to her family and then to send her husband one last gesture of affection. Because our family is so steeped in dreams, I think that’s what she used.
JIM HAROLD: I love the idea, and I think it’s possible. People can, I think, make gestures to get an emotion across or help them find missing documents. I believe that is absolutely true.
SUSAN: I do have one really quick story about my grandmother in a dream, if you’re interested.
JIM HAROLD: Sure, go ahead.
SUSAN: Really short. When I was in high school, my cousin Dale was killed in a car accident on Christmas Eve, and my grandparents always lived right next to us growing up. They were our neighbors. So my aunt, my cousin Dale’s mom, called my mom and said, “Would you please go tell Grandma? I don’t want to tell her over the phone.” Mom said, “Of course,” so she went over there and she said to Grandma, “I have some really bad news.” She said, “I know. It’s Dale. I dreamed about it last night.”
JIM HAROLD: Oh gosh.
SUSAN: I think God was just preparing her for a really hard message that day.
JIM HAROLD: I believe that happens. I absolutely believe that happens. I think there’s such a link between loved ones, blood relatives, or even the spouse, husband, child, parent, whatever it might be, I believe there’s such an attachment that something very much happens. And that makes sense that she would be warned of this ahead of time to prepare herself. My goodness. Well, again, thank you so much for joining us and sharing these great Campfire stories.
SUSAN: You’re welcome. Again, it was delightful to talk to you.
JIM HAROLD: Thank you for joining us on another edition of Campfire. I certainly appreciate it, and I thank you so, so much. We want to remind you of those holiday items we told you at the beginning of the show, but first we have some important business. Brandon emailed me and said, “Jim, could you say happy birthday to my wife, Kylie?” Indeed I can. Today, December 15th, is Kylie’s birthday, and a big happy birthday to her. They are newlyweds; they were just married in late October, so congratulations to both Brandon and Kylie. And they love to listen to the show together, so happy birthday, happy marriage, and happy holidays.
And if you would like your own birthday shoutout from moi, Jim Harold, all you have to do is go over to cameo.com/thejimharold. That’s cameo.com/thejimharold, c-a-m-e-o dot com slash thejimharold, and I can do a video greeting for you or your loved one. Could be a birthday, could be an anniversary or just ’cause. I think we’ve done almost 100 of those over the last year, and people seem to love it, so check it out. Cameo.com/thejimharold.
I hope that if you are into holiday things this holiday time of year that you’ll consider participating in our Holiday Ornament Contest I mentioned at the beginning of the show. You can find those details at jimharold.com/holiday2022. That’s jimharold.com/holiday2022.
And if you are into video and virtual parties and holiday parties, I hope you’ll join us on the evening of Saturday, December 17th at 7 p.m. Eastern. That’s when we’re having our Virtual Holiday Party, and we’d love to have you there. Trivia, special guests, fun and frivolity with the Harold gang, and we’d very much like you to be a part of it. That’s over at youtube.com/jimharold.
We’ll talk to you next time. I hope you have a happy holiday week. Have a great one, and stay spooky!
You’ve been listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire. Tune in again next time for more stories of ordinary people who have experienced extraordinary things.
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