From ghostly encounters in the workplace to heartwarming tales of connections that transcend time and space, these stories will leave you wondering about the nature of our reality.

We’ll explore haunted houses, doppelgangers, and even a miraculous tale about a lost goat that’ll make you believe in the power of intention. Find a cozy spot, dim the lights, and get ready for a journey into the unknown. You won’t want to miss a single moment of this thrilling episode of Jim Harold’s Campfire!

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TRANSCRIPT

Sponsor announcer (00:00:03):

If you are fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, join us every week on our podcast Serial Killers, where we go deep into notorious true crime cases. With significant research and careful analysis, we examine the psyche of a killer, their motives and targets and law enforcement’s pursuit to stop their spree. Follow Serial Killers wherever you get your podcasts and get new episodes every Monday.

Jim Harold (00:00:34):

Well, I’ve heard of a lot of haunted things, but never a haunted cubicle until now on this week’s Campfire.

Announcer (00:00:56):

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 (00:01:08):

Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold. So glad to be with you once again. And if you love spooky stories, ghosts, UFOs, cryptid creatures, head scratchers, life after death, then you are in the right place. And thank you for joining us today on The Campfire. And by the way, if you’ve been a long time fan, you know that in the past we’ve done these compilation books of the Campfire. We’ve done five of them, but the last one was in 2016. Jim, you’re slacking! True. I have been slacking a lot of stuff going on in the last few years, but good news, if you enjoyed those books, there is a new one coming out in May, and we just sent it off to the people who format it and so forth. So excited to get that off our plate, be able to share it with you.

(00:01:53):

look for that in May. It is Jim Harold’s Campfire Six, you’ll be able to find that at Amazon and autographed copies at our Mausoleum of Merch. So stay tuned for that. But you are tuned in today to hear some great new Campfire stories. And that’s what we’ve got, starting with this one right here.

(00:02:12):

Sam is calling us from Florida, and she found us like so many others in the pandemic times, and she has a paranormal story that has to do with her job. And I love this one. I don’t know if we’ve ever, we’ve had a lot of things haunted on the show. I don’t know if we’ve ever had this haunted on the show. Now. I’ll let Sam do the big reveal. Sam, welcome to the show and tell us what happened.

Sam (FL) (00:02:35):

Yeah, thank you. So this was probably about five years ago. At the time, I was working in an office building that had, I think 30 floors or so, and I was up near the top and I had a fairly long commute from where I lived. So I used to leave super early at the crack of dawn. I was usually one of the first ones there, if not the first one. And so I had an adjoining cubicle to mine that was right next to mine, right by the window. And I would always hear when I was logging in and everything and putting my stuff away, I would hear in the cubicle next to me, I would hear tapping on the keyboard, the clicking of a mouse. I would hear backpack unzipping, very distinctive. Sounds not something that could be, oh, that’s just the AC or something. It was very distinct. And so, like I said, I was usually the first one there, at least in this section of the building. And I knew the person who worked next to me, he was a good friend of mine. And so I would always lean over the cubicle and be like, oh, Greg, what are you doing here so early? And there was nobody there.

Jim Harold (00:03:51):

Wow.

Sam (FL) (00:03:53):

Yeah. So this would happen every so often. It would even happen sometimes when other people were there later in the day and it would start to get a little busier. And so I was like oh, it’s just Greg and I would lean over to ask him a question about something we were working on, and he would not be there. And so it was just, we came to call it his cubicle ghost. So there were times where he’d come in later in the day and I’d be like, oh, Greg, your ghost was here this morning. Just getting things started for you. But yeah, that’s pretty much the story. I would hear it periodically and it just kind of became a joke, but it was just, you couldn’t mistake it for anything else.

Jim Harold (00:04:42):

Now, let me ask you this. What was Greg’s reaction? Did he just think it was funny or did it kind of freak him out?

Sam (FL) (00:04:50):

I think in the beginning he didn’t quite believe me, so he kind of thought it was funny. And then there was one time where another coworker of mine was sitting nearby and they actually heard the tapping on the keyboard, so they witnessed it too. So it wasn’t just me. So that kind of gave it some credibility, but he still didn’t seem scared. He just kind of thought it was funny.

Jim Harold (00:05:13):

Well, I have questions. I have more questions. So, okay, now it is my experience, and I always thought this was kind of interesting. Even people when they walk, they do things, when they type on a keyboard. It has been my experience that people have a sound when they’re doing those mundane things in life specific to them. It’s almost like a fingerprint. One person may, I’m thinking of one coworker who I used to work with who really, when he typed on the keyboard, I used to work in a cubicle for years when I was in advertising. And the one guy next to me, he really jammed on those keys and you get a boom boom, like a staccato kind of thing going. Did the sounds of the Ghost Greg match the sounds of the real Greg?

Sam (FL) (00:06:04):

I would say it was pretty similar, but the Ghost Greg, so to speak, always sounded a little bit lighter. It was just faint tapping, faint clicking. Not that Greg was a loud typer by any means, but it just sounded very faint, like something that you really had to perk your ears to hear.

Jim Harold (00:06:26):

So do you think that was the function of it being ghostly, or do you think that was a function of it? Maybe actually not being Greg, being another Ghost?

Sam (FL) (00:06:37):

They dunno. I think maybe it was a little ghostly, just a hint of a whisper of something just to kind of make you question things.

Jim Harold (00:06:43):

Yeah. Well, I really believe that when you’re in a physical place, a lot that you put energy into it. For example, this studio, which has literally 26 sound panels on it years from now, hopefully when I take these down and we sell the house, whoever has this bedroom is going to have some really interesting energy.

Sam (FL) (00:07:08):

Definitely.

Jim Harold (00:07:10):

Do you realize hundreds of scary stories were told in this room? But the point is that I believe that is a thing. So who says all ghosts are necessarily dead? I’ll give you an example. We interviewed and have many times over the years, the great parapsychologist Loyd Auerbach, and he studies this stuff seriously. And he told a story where he did a story for a TV show called Sightings, a very old show going back to probably the nineties and early two thousands. Anyway, basically the gist of it was people visited this murder scene where this person was killed, unfortunately, and they would see the ghost of the murdered, the victim, and the murderer. Now, the person that was murdered was obviously dead. They would see almost like a replay, but the murderer was very much alive and in prison, but they would still see that person’s ghost as well. So to me, I think there’s different kinds of hauntings, and I believe that some of the hauntings might not be the dead, but they might be the living. What do you think?

Sam (FL) (00:08:25):

Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree. This could have been somebody who maybe it was like a replay or maybe they were stuck in some sort of dimension and unfortunately stuck at work forever. That sounds terrible.

Jim Harold (00:08:37):

Well, I got to tell you, I mean, when you are working, I think most of us get in a zone and we put a lot of energy into it. We’re really, it’s very intense. And I think part of what we see with hauntings is simple replays, simple energy. Now, I do think there’s sentient ghosts who interact, but I also think there’s a lot of replays as well, these types of hauntings. So very interesting. First time in 15 years, we’ve had a story, I think about a haunted cubicle. Sam, thank you so much for joining us and stay spooky.

Sam (FL) (00:09:12):

Thank you, Jim, stay spooky.

Jim Harold (00:09:14):

Wendy’s on the line from central Alabama. She’s been listening for about a year, and we’re so glad that she is and also want to give a big shout out to a couple of her oldest kids. Annemarie and Ryland, they’re big fans of the show. We appreciate it. And guys, stay spooky and thank you for listening. And Wendy, thank you for dialing in to tell your story, and it goes back to your childhood years. Tell us what happened.

Wendy (AL) (00:09:39):

So as a kid, we would always go to my great grandparents’ house and we would play outside in the field. They lived on a farm. We would play on the haystacks and things like that. And we would come and go inside the house like kids do, and you’d get the typical “in or out, kids!” So this day I chose to stay in because I was always one to want to hang out with the adults. I was one of those kids.

Jim Harold (00:10:07):

Yeah, me too.

Wendy (AL) (00:10:08):

Yeah. So I didn’t really know my great grandparents because by the time I was old enough to run around and play outside, they were already elderly. And the reason for us going over there mainly was just to take care of ’em. My mom and aunt would mainly do that anyway, so while I was inside the house, I would go from room to room. I would kind of help with my great-grandfather. He was having a little bit of trouble as he got older.

Jim Harold (00:10:43):

Sure.

Wendy (AL) (00:10:44):

And so this particular day, my great grandfather was having a little bit of trouble with his food. He was a little upset about something. So I decided to just go into the living room and sit with my great grandmother. So I was sitting in the living room with my great grandmother. She was working on something, maybe a quilt or something along those lines.

(00:11:04):

She thought, I just remember she was looking down and she was mumbling a little bit, and I was like, Hmm, that’s kind of odd. So I was just watching her and she wasn’t looking up at me or saying anything to me, so I was like, oh, well, I guess she just wants to work on whatever she’s working on. So I get up and go back outside. Well, my great-grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee, and I’m super, super proud of that. So whenever anyone would talk about Native Americans, I would always bring up that story. And how when I got older, I was looking into the Cherokee language and it sounded very similar to what she was saying. When I heard it, it kind of brought back that memory of her sitting there and saying something and it just hit me that’s what she was speaking was Cherokee. So flash forward, I’m 38 now, and I was talking to my stepdad about it, and my mom stops me and says, no, no, no, there’s no way that happened. And I’m like, well, what do you mean? And she was like, your great grandmother passed away the day you were born.

(00:12:23):

And I said, she was there. My mom does not entertain any kind of ghost, any kind of paranormal. She just absolutely refuses. And she was like, you must be thinking of somewhere else. Maybe we were at another relative’s house or something like that. And I said, well, this is what the house looked like that I remember there was a screened-in sunroom. You go in, there’s the kitchen, and to the left is the living room. She said, well, that’s their house, but you didn’t see what you think you saw. And I was like, well, I knew I was young, but I knew it was my great grandmother. I knew that she was there. It was normal for her to be there. So I feel like I had seen her multiple times before because I knew who she was.

Jim Harold (00:13:12):

So it was just like for you, it was just visiting any other grandparent and she just happened to be there. You just didn’t realize she was dead.

Wendy (AL) (00:13:20):

Exactly. Exactly. So when she told me that, I was just floored. I was just completely shocked because I have told this story so many times. Even my oldest daughter who’s 20 was like, what? She just told me this a few months ago. So when I told her, she was like, that’s weird. That is so creepy. And I was like, well, I didn’t feel it was a little creepy at the time because she wasn’t looking at me and she was speaking. She wasn’t using words I understood. So it just kind of gave me a weird vibe. So that’s why I went outside. I was a kid. I was like, oh, well, that was kind of creepy or whatever. Anyway, so apparently she was there, but she wasn’t.

Jim Harold (00:14:11):

Oh, that is cool. I’ve never heard a story like that. I mean, we’ve heard stories of people who interacted with ghosts. They didn’t necessarily realize were ghosts, but that’s one of the coolest. That’s a very neat story. I mean, that’s going to be kind of neat to have that connection with your Cherokee ancestry to be able to have heard that language firsthand, aside from the ghosty stuff.

Wendy (AL) (00:14:41):

Right, right. Yeah, I think it’s really cool. I mean, thinking about it doesn’t really scare me. It’s just something that’s just wild. I think I described it in the email. It’s like I’m in the Twilight Zone. You find out something so many years later, because I know my great-grandfather passed away when I was around seven, so I had to have been before then or we wouldn’t have been going to the house because apparently he was the only one that was there. Wow.

Jim Harold (00:15:12):

That’s a neat story. Thank you so much for sharing it, Wendy. And again, big shout out. Spooky. Shout out to your two oldest kids, Annemarie and Ryland, and to you stay spooky.

Wendy (AL) (00:15:23):

Thank you, Jim.

Jim Harold (00:15:24):

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Announcer (00:17:59):

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

Jim Harold (00:18:09):

Next up on the Campfire is Josiah from Illinois. He says he’s a long time listener. We appreciate it, and he’s going to talk about his house growing up and some strange things that happened. Josiah, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened.

Josiah (IL) (00:18:26):

Hi, Jim. Thank you for having me. My name’s Josiah. I grew up in a house over in Illinois. We had some strange things that happened. I can start off when we moved into the home, I would’ve been about in sixth grade, and the house was just a real standard, like 1950s style ranch home. So it wasn’t the style of house that you’d imagine in your head to be like that quintessential haunted house, just real basic little ranch style house, three bedroom home. So when we moved in, everything seemed to be pretty normal. It was my brother, my older brother, and then it was my mom and then my stepdad. We all moved in together. It seemed to be a pretty normal house. There was a couple strange things that would go on, but we really wouldn’t attribute it to the Paranormal. One of the things that would happen is there was a landline mounted phone and it was mounted in the kitchen, and that phone was one of the rotary ones.

(00:19:29):

And whenever you picked it up day or night, you’d hear somebody on the other end. And it was a lady talking, and I have to think it was probably ham radio interference, but that was just kind of weird. And like I said, that was day or night, so that took place. But we ended up just getting settled in. Everything was pretty normal for the first couple of months, and we had a cat wander up out of nowhere. She was a little black cat and she didn’t have a tail, and we didn’t know if somebody did that to her or we’re not really sure what happened. But we took her in. She was very friendly. We named her Oreo and she lived in the house with us. So it seemed to me that things kind of started after she moved in. Whether or not there’s a correlation, I don’t know for a fact, but things did sort of ramp up after she moved in.

(00:20:19):

So that’s just kind of how I remember it. She came and then things started happening. So my mom was a cosmetologist or she was going to cosmetology school rather. And my stepdad was a night cook in town, and my brother, he played football in the evening. So I was home in the evenings quite often by myself and like a kid at that age would, I’d go down to the playroom and I’d play on the Nintendo. We had a Nintendo 64. I would play on that and then wait until everybody got home. So I was down in that room playing Nintendo, and I heard the front door open and I heard my mom walk in just as plain as day. He’s rattling. She walks in, I hear her call the cat, she goes, Oreo, Oreo, come here, Oreo. And I hopped up thinking, I wonder if she forgot her lunch.

(00:21:13):

I was just kind of curious why she was there and I walked down the hallway and there was not a soul on site.

Jim Harold (00:21:19):

Oh man.

Josiah (IL) (00:21:21):

Yeah, I mean, it was at that point where I’m thinking, okay, this is very bizarre because you kind of know if you hear an inner monologue, if it’s inside your head or if it’s actually audible in the room, and it was 100% in the room. It shook me up so bad that I actually walked out of the front of the house and sat on the stoop and just decided I was going to wait outside for somebody to come home, whoever it may be. Sometimes my brother would get home first, sometimes my mom. So my brother came home and found me out there and is like, what are you doing? And I didn’t really want to explain to him what happened.

(00:22:00):

He was an older brother, might give me some crap about it, but I waited until my mom got home and she could tell that I was pretty shaken. She got home late in the evening, and when she got home, I basically explained to her everything that had happened and she says, Josiah, go ahead and grab your brother. I want to talk to you guys a little bit. So I went and got Jake. We went and sat out on the couch and she says, guys, I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want to scare you. I didn’t want you guys to be weirded out in your new house, but there are times when I hear you boys playing in the daytime when you guys are at school.

Jim Harold (00:22:36):

Oh man. Oh man.

Josiah (IL) (00:22:38):

She hears us playing in that room where I initially heard the cat and she said that a couple of times jumped up out of bed because like I said, she went to school at night, so she slept in a little bit earlier in the morning.

(00:22:51):

So she jumped up out of bed to come and find out why we were skipping school. We weren’t even that type of kid really. I mean, we always loved to go to school. So it was very unusual that we would skip and she would go in that room to try to find us and we weren’t there. And she said it was plain as day. She thought at first maybe it was just she was in that weird state between falling asleep and really getting deep REM sleep. But she said no. A couple of times she was actually awake and heard it. Another thing that happened would be we had a carport that was attached to the house, so it wasn’t a fully enclosed garage. It was just like a long carport that we would pull up into. And at the time my mom drove an older GMC Jimmy, and I know this sounds kind of weird, but she had a catalytic converter cover that was loose. So whenever she would pull into that carport, it reverberated and it was very particular sound. So you know, you get used to the way the vehicle sounds?

Jim Harold (00:23:50):

Oh yeah.

Josiah (IL) (00:23:51):

Jim, I kid you not. We would hear the vehicle pull in, this was all of us. Now we would hear the vehicle pull in and the vehicle wasn’t there, and we would get up and be like, what in the world is going on? My uncle would drop by on occasion, and he had this real particular whistle he would do in the window just to kind of let us know that he was there and he was going to come in. We would hear that all the time, and he was not there. So whatever it was in the house was mimicking not only human beings, but also mimicking vehicular sounds and I think, yeah, I’m sorry. I was just going to say that’s what threw me off so much is not only is it mimicking us, it’s mimicking the sounds of cars that we know.

Jim Harold (00:24:37):

Yeah, that’s kind of crazy if you think about it. Yeah, because the fact that it’s able to do that, what in the world can mimic not only people, but mechanical devices like cars.

Josiah (IL) (00:24:51):

Exactly. And you get so used to the way a car sounds, and we’d be excited and wondering, did you bring us something to eat? Or whatever it may be. And it got to the point where we just basically ignored that. I can tell you that I’ve moved since. So I live in a town about 45 minutes away, but my nieces still live over in Sterling, and I do go over to visit them on occasion. And when I get within a certain proximity of the house, whatever it may be, I feel very drawn to go, not to go up to it, I’ve yet to do that, but to at least just go buy it. And I don’t know what that is, but it’s just a strange feeling in my stomach that draws me there. And unfortunately, the house now is abandoned, or at least what I can tell, it appears to be abandoned. So I don’t know if anybody lived there after us. I do know that I made a Facebook post about it a while ago, Jim, and a girl contacted me and said, Hey, I know the family that lived there after you, and they definitely experienced some strange things. So I went to message her back and all of a sudden she just kind of cut off communication. So I don’t know if maybe she got spooked by something or what, but I’d love to follow up with her on that a little more.

Jim Harold (00:26:04):

Do you know anything about the, and I’m guessing that you don’t, since you were young, do you know anything about the history of the house, anything that might’ve happened in it before you guys were there that might have led to this kind of, I don’t want to say possession, but strangeness?

Josiah (IL) (00:26:20):

That’s an excellent question. Thinking about it, just basically what I would have to go off of would be what the house looked like. The room that we played in had this very pink carpet. The walls were all pink. So I have to imagine maybe there was an older couple that lived there or something to that regard. But unfortunately, I don’t have much detail other than just what I could see with my eyes. It appeared to be that it was an older couple that, like I said, they had the rotary mounted phone that was still in use. So that kind of leads me to believe that it may be somebody older, but I couldn’t say for a fact. My brother did have an experience where he was out in the kitchen, and this is kind of that cliche type of experience, but he was in the kitchen on the phone to his girlfriend at the time, Cassie, I’ll never forget her name, and he was a big football player, big jock type of guy, Jim, and he was out on the phone, that rotary phone, as a matter of fact, talking to her and he heard something growl at him and say, get out.

(00:27:23):

I’ve never experienced that, that anger type thing. But he definitely did, and he was pretty shook by it as well. So who knows, maybe there’s a combination of things going on.

Jim Harold (00:27:35):

Yeah, I got to say just really, really fascinating, and we’ve had not so much inanimate objects, but we’ve had a lot of people, in fact, in this recording session, it may or may not be on this week’s show, but we had someone who had family members who were being mimicked by something. That’s when people say, what kind of story is more prominent that you didn’t expect? It’s this kind of thing. Now yours is a little more extreme because you have the mimicking of the car and things and you have more people, but there’ve been more stories with this kind of theme than I ever thought when I started this show. I’d heard of Doppelgangers a little bit, but man, it really seems to be just a very, very, I don’t want to say common occurrence, but it does seem to crop up a lot on the Campfire.

Josiah (IL) (00:28:30):

Sure. One of my favorite stories is the story of the peanut butter kid. The kid that was making PB and J.

Jim Harold (00:28:36):

Yeah, saw himself both ways.

Josiah (IL) (00:28:37):

I have to enjoy that. Yep, you got it.

Jim Harold (00:28:40):

Well, Josiah, thank you for adding your story to the lexicon of doppelganger stories on the Campfire. Stay spooky.

Josiah (IL) (00:28:48):

Stay spooky, Jim.

Jim Harold (00:28:49):

Sarah is on the line from England, and her friend Ethan told her about the show and she’s been listening for about three years now. So thank you, Ethan, and folks out there listening be like Ethan, spread the word. Because you know what happens? Not only do we get more listeners, we get more great stories like the one we’re going to hear from Sarah today. Sarah, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened, and thanks for joining us.

Sarah (ENG) (00:29:18):

Hi, Jim. Thanks very much for having me on the show. I’d just like to start by saying that Ethan is a skeptic, so he loves to listen to the podcasts and he watches loads of things to do with paranormal activity, but he’s a hundred percent a skeptic until now. So the story’s really simple. It was a lovely sunny day, and we don’t get too many of those in England. So I took the opportunity to go outside and I was sitting on my patio with a glass of cider reading a book, and it may have been a Saturday or a Sunday. I wasn’t working. So it was one of those two days. And then Ethan comes down through the lounge into the garden and says, so what did you want before? And I said, I don’t want you, I haven’t called you. And he said, well, no, you called me. And I said, no, I didn’t. I’ve been sitting here the whole time. I’ve just come out. I’ve been sitting here. I haven’t moved. And he said, no. He said, you definitely called me. And I said, no, I didn’t. And he said, well, you called me and I shouted down and you said, oh, nevermind. And then that was it.

(00:30:39):

And I said, well, it wasn’t me. I don’t know. We were baffled basically, and we didn’t really think much of it. It was, I don’t know, you were dreaming it, whatever. So we didn’t really think much of it until maybe a couple of months later when I was upstairs. And this time I remember it was a Sunday, I was upstairs, so I was sorting some stuff out in my bedroom. He shares the house with me, and he was downstairs, and he’s got quite a distinctive voice. It’s quite deep. It resonates. And I heard him say, as clear as a bell, is that why you’re calling me?

(00:31:26):

And then it went quiet and I was listening, I am a bit nosy. So I was listening and I couldn’t hear anything else. So I finished what I was doing, and then I went downstairs and I said, who are you on the phone to? And he said, nobody. I said, no, I heard you. I heard you talking on the phone. He said, no, I’ve not been on the phone. I’ve been watching telly. And I said, but I heard you say, is that why you are calling me? Which is why I assumed he was on the phone, right? He said, no. Then for some reason, I remembered the previous, I’m guessing it was July, June or July maybe when it was sunny. We don’t have too many sunny days, so I could probably narrow it down. I just remembered that that incident had happened, and I think we’d had some kind of time slip. So I don’t know if that has occurred, that whole kind of scene. I dunno if that’s occurred in full or whether it’s going to come in the future, but if it comes in the future, I’ll definitely be alert to it. Just something that’s just so way out. And so since that incident, he is now, that’s the thing that makes me question that is the thing, because he’s experienced it himself.

Jim Harold (00:32:56):

Right? Kind of like this audio doppelganger kind of thing.

Sarah (ENG) (00:33:00):

Yeah.

Jim Harold (00:33:03):

Now, some people, now, it’s interesting, most people would say, oh, there’s some kind of activity in the house and this is a representation of it, but you kind of gravitate towards the time slip idea, which is interesting and in a way kind of makes sense.

Sarah (ENG) (00:33:18):

Yeah. I mean, the voices were, I guess for him it was exactly me. And for me, it was exactly him. He’s got a very distinctive voice. It couldn’t have been anybody else.

Jim Harold (00:33:33):

And we welcome skeptics. I mean, it’s kind of like one person likes chocolate ice cream, the other person likes vanilla ice cream. I’m not going to not like that person because they like a different kind of ice cream than me. I might say vanilla, you got to be kidding. Actually, probably be the other way around. I’m more of a vanilla ice cream guy. But the point being, we can agree to disagree and be pleasant and be friends and still think the other person is incorrect in their assumption. But it does sometimes very interesting to me when a dyed in the wool skeptic confronts an actual experience, and it does have a way of changing their mind, or at least maybe opening up their mind a crack. And that’s kind of neat to see.

Sarah (ENG) (00:34:16):

Yes, because we’ve been on ghost hunting events since then and had activity, and he’s very dismissive of it. Oh, well, it could be this. It could be that somebody was pushing the glass, but this thing, he can’t explain it.

Jim Harold (00:34:34):

Right, right.

Sarah (ENG) (00:34:35):

Yeah.

Jim Harold (00:34:35):

Excellent. Well, you keep working on him. Listen to that, Ethan.

Sarah (ENG) (00:34:40):

Well, we got another one. We’ve got another little venture coming up in March, so hopefully he’ll just open up to it all a bit more.

Jim Harold (00:34:51):

He’ll see the light. Ethan, sincerely, all joking aside, thank you for telling Sarah about the show. We certainly appreciate it. Sarah, thank you for being a part of the program and stay spooky.

Sarah (ENG) (00:35:03):

Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Stay spooky.

Jim Harold (00:35:06):

Hey, it’s Jim again. Take your love for the Campfire to the next level. If you can’t get enough of this show, join my Paranormal Plus Club because by joining the club, you’ll gain exclusive access to an incredible collection of episodes from two of my most popular shows. That’s right. You’ll be able to unlock over 600 additional episodes of this show, Jim Harold’s Campfire, that are not on the free feeds, going all the way back to 2009. And then you’ll also be able to get more than 800 episodes, the Paranormal Podcast with content on that show going back to 2005. But wait, there’s more. As a Paranormal Plus Club member, you’ll also have access to an additional 1,195 plus episodes on topics we love. Whether you’re intrigued by ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, metaphysics, or even true crime, there’s something in store for every curious mind with our additional plus club content.

(00:36:04):

Now, joining the club could not be easier, especially if you’re an Apple Podcast app user. You can subscribe to the Paranormal Plus Club directly within the Apple Podcasts app. It’s so simple. You just search for the Spooky Studio channel and with a few taps, you’ll be well on your way to discovering a world of exclusive content. Well, you say, Jim, but I’m not an Apple podcast user. No problem. Simply visit JimHaroldplus.com and click on the banner with my smiling face to find the solution for your platform. By becoming a member of the Paranormal Plus Club, you’ll not only gain access to a world of plus content, but you’ll also play a crucial role in supporting the continued production of the Campfire and all of our other shows. Immerse yourself into the spooky. Join my Paranormal Plus club today, and thanks.

Announcer (00:36:57):

You are listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire

Jim Harold (00:37:00):

Kay is on the line from Austin, Texas. She’s been listening for a long time, she says, and we’re so glad that she is. And she says she has forced, and this is one of my favorite kinds of stories, a sweet head scratcher. Kay, welcome to the show. Tell us about this sweet head scratcher.

Kay (TX) (00:37:18):

Thank you so much for having me. And this story, I was about eight or nine years old when this happened. I’m from part of Texas, out rural, out in the country, and lived on a ranch where we had animals and all of that. And on this day, we’re going to get some goats, and the goats were about two hours south of where I grew up. So we drove there and we’re getting these goats, and while we were there, there was this old goat off to the side who kind of scraggly was not like the other goats. And I was interested in her and kept asking questions, and my dad’s friend was there, and he could see that I liked her. So we kind of asked my mom and dad like, Hey, do you want to let Kay have this as a pet? I dunno what I’m going to do with this goat. I think

(00:38:12):

She just kind of came with the other goats. So they were like, okay, yeah, we’ll take her. It wasn’t that big of a deal. We were out in the country. Anyways, so all the way home, I was so excited and I imagined that this goat was going to be my new best friend. I knew she was wild, and she didn’t even like humans. She was not a pet, but I was not deterred. And we get home and we’re getting the other goats set up, but we were going to keep her by the house. And my mom was trying to think of a quick fix because we were burning daylight, as they say, and we did not have a lot of time. So she thought, let’s get her temporarily fixed up near the house, and in the morning we’ll get her better situated in a pen. So she had a quick fix, and it was, let’s get a dog collar on this goat, and a chain, and we will stake her out food and water while we go off and finish for the night. And we’ll come back and in the morning we’ll get her better set up. So we go off. And then when we come back, much to, I’m sure my mom was horrified. I know I, the goat was gone,

(00:39:30):

And we look for her, we get the flashlights out, my mom gets the car with the headlights in the yard, and we just can’t find her. And we finally do see her. She’s on the edge of the property, but she’s disappearing into the night, into the tall grass, and we are surrounded by tall fields and crops, and she’s going off, and my mom, she makes us stop, and she’s like, guys, this goat is scared. She’s wild. She’s dragging that chain. I think we need to just leave her be for the night. It’s dangerous to go out and into the weeds and look for her. So we’ll start out fresh. She probably won’t go far. She knows where her food and water is. So we call it a night, and we get up really early and we look for this goat and we cannot find her. And we live in a part of Texas, or I lived in a part of Texas that was very flat and hardly any trees. You could probably see it for miles in some places, and we just couldn’t see her anywhere.

Jim Harold (00:40:40):

That’s got to be tough for a 9-year-old.

Kay (TX) (00:40:42):

I know. And I, my heart was broken, and we asked our neighbors to keep an eye out. We did keep looking, but everyone was trying to prepare me for the worst because we did live in a part of Texas where there was an infestation of coyotes.

Jim Harold (00:40:59):

Yeah, I figured. I figured. Now, funny, funnily enough, the goat was nine in your email, you said you were nine at the time as well, right?

Kay (TX) (00:41:07):

I don’t know how old the goat was. I know she’s probably really old.

Jim Harold (00:41:10):

Oh, okay. I thought, okay, I misread it. I’m like, okay, but go ahead. I’m sorry.

Kay (TX) (00:41:14):

Yeah, she was probably pretty old though, for sure. And this was probably not, she probably didn’t look like a survivor, so everyone was trying to get me ready to never see her again. But I just held out hope. And I know at least a week went by, probably two weeks. I mean, it was at least a week to two weeks and no goat. And one day we went to town to get groceries, and town is about 25 to 30 minutes away from our home. So on the way back, we got some food to go, and we were eating it in the pickup and we’re eating Kentucky Fried Chicken. And in my chicken, I find a wishbone, and I think I showed my mom, and she’s like, oh, make a wish or something. So all the way home, I know what I’m going to wish for, and I’m sure she did too.

(00:42:06):

I was going to wish for that goat. And in my head, very quietly, I wished all the way home holding this wishbone. And I remember wishing very specifically for angels to come find my goat and guide her home and keep her safe from the coyotes. And I knew she was scared. So I asked them, comfort her, help her find her way. She doesn’t know where she is. She doesn’t even really know me, help her find the house, and I will take care of her and give her the home and the love that she needs. So this was, I just, all the way home, I did this. And then we get home and I’m holding this wishbone, and I’m going into the house, and I just get this feeling like I need to make a final wish, and I wish really hard. And I see a bush by our front porch, and I toss the wishbone under that bush.

(00:42:58):

And then we go inside and I tell my mom and my brother what I did. And my mom was probably trying to be nice. Yes. Who knows, maybe. And my brother was probably like, whatever, little sister. And the next morning we get up and it’s still dark out, and my mom, I hear her open the door to let one of our dogs out, and then I hear her gasp and then shut the door. And she calls me, she’s like, Kay, you have to come over here, get over here. And she picks me up to look out the window. And Jim, there is that goat sitting like a dog on the door mat with her nose pressed against the glass, looking in as if she’s waiting for us. No one has an explanation for it. I don’t know why it happened. I found it like a hopeful story when I was little. I still find it like a hopeful story now that I’m an adult. Yeah. That’s my goat story.

Jim Harold (00:44:07):

So I’m guessing that you guys went on to have a very special relationship.

Kay (TX) (00:44:14):

Yeah, I had her for a long time, and she did get tame and learned that she was safe, and yeah, she was a good goat. I named her Elda, and we had her for a while.

Jim Harold (00:44:26):

Aw, how sweet. Yeah. I’ll tell you, people laugh at this stuff, but believe it happens. And I believe someone or something made sure that got back to you. I have no doubt about it.

Kay (TX) (00:44:38):

Thank you. Thank you.

Jim Harold (00:44:40):

Kay. Thank you for being a part of the Campfire tonight. Stay spooky.

Kay (TX) (00:44:45):

Thank you for having me.

Jim Harold (00:44:47):

Kris is back. You might remember a few weeks ago, he told us about his childhood when he and a friend saw some UFOs. Very interesting. In that story, he just hinted about his aunt and uncle’s house, which very well may have been haunted, and now he’s going to tell us that story. And we’re so glad to have him on the show again. Kris, welcome back. Just seems like we spoke mere moments ago.

Kris (WA) (00:45:12):

Thanks, Jim.

Jim Harold (00:45:14):

Tell us what happened.

Kris (WA) (00:45:17):

So again, I grew up in Connecticut. My uncle and aunt lived on a not, well, it’s not a dead end street, I guess it’s a circle, right? So you drive in, and then there’s a roundabout that it has houses on the outside of the circle, and then houses on the inside of the circle, almost like an island. And this was a very old stone house with slate facade. And I just had a weird vibe about this house every time I was there, and particularly around when you walk in the front door, there was a staircase dead ahead. And again, this staircase, there was always something strange about it, and it often felt like when you would walk past it that somebody was watching you. And when you would look up to the top of the steps and there was nobody there watching, it felt even more disturbing because at least if there had been somebody up there, it wouldn’t have felt so odd. And it got to the point where the dining room and the living room were separated by the stairwell. And if I wanted to go from one of those rooms into the other, rather than walking past the stairwell, I would actually walk around through the entirety of the house, making a U-shape to get there instead of just a straight line.

(00:46:43):

And again, just a weird vibe. Nothing I could pinpoint, nothing I could point to and say like, yep, this is haunted. Just weird energy. So at this point, we had moved away from Connecticut. I had moved to California. I met to be future wife at school, and she moved to New York after I proposed to her. And I stayed in Los Angeles for a few years. And so my uncle and had invited her to come up and spend the weekend at their house. So she said, yeah, that’d be great. So she went up there and as I said, spent the night there. And the next morning, my aunt had asked her, how did you sleep last night? And my fiance at the time, she’s not a person who would ever want to make anybody feel like she was uncomfortable. She kind of would go out of her way to make people know that everything’s cool, nothing’s wrong. And she said something very unusual, which was like, I kind of didn’t sleep well. And my aunt said, oh, yeah, I was afraid the ghosts would keep you awake.

Jim Harold (00:48:05):

Oh.

Kris (WA) (00:48:09):

And said, so cool. So she just started telling my fiance all of these crazy stories about, they had a Christmas tree that just violently shook by itself. One night, they had a cat that seems to almost get picked up and punted out of the room, and it never went back into that ring. TVs floating in the living room, unplugged, but on. Oh man, I’m trying to think. There’s so many stores. My grandmother, who had been visiting from Denmark, woke up one morning and said, I don’t understand Americans. They let their kids run out at all hours of the night. And they’re like, what are you talking about? She’s like, oh. I woke up in the middle of the night and I heard a bunch of kids playing. So I looked out the window and there was a bunch of kids playing around the tree outside. There were no children who lived on the street at this time. Stories about footsteps going up and down the stairs. There was another story about a knock on the front door that was just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And so my uncle got up, went downstairs and went up to the front door, and the front door had a window in it with some Venetian blinds. And the knocking kept going until he turned the Venetian blinds to look out the window. The instant he turned the venetian blinds. It stopped. Oh, what else?

Jim Harold (00:49:40):

You said in your note, you said pots and pans, something about pots and pans.

Kris (WA) (00:49:46):

Yeah, that. Yeah. At one point, all the pots and pans just kind of came out of the kitchen cupboard and smashed together in the center of the room and scattered it everywhere. Oh, they had a big brass table that would bang in the middle of the night. Again, same thing. And it would bang until they walked into the room, and then it would stop.

Jim Harold (00:50:07):

Would you say a possession?

Kris (WA) (00:50:11):

I’m not sure what this was. So basically, this is a very convoluted sort of connection, but my uncle who shares his birthday with his grandson, my uncle used to refinish furniture when he was a young man, or is adult life. And what happened was one day my cousin was sitting at the dining table, everybody was eating, and he was about two, and he was just kind of acting like any 2-year-old was. And then he hopped out of his chair and he went over to a chair in the corner and stroked the arm of it. And in a very mature voice said, when I was a young man, I used to finish furniture as fine as this.

Jim Harold (00:51:06):

Oh my God.

Kris (WA) (00:51:09):

And then he got back in the chair.

Jim Harold (00:51:11):

Sounds like something Frasier Crane would say.

Kris (WA) (00:51:14):

Exactly. He got back in the chair and he just started acting like a 2-year-old again. And this cousin also, he had a friend who lived as many kids do. He had an imaginary friend. He had a friend who lived in the crawl space above the stairwell. So, oh, that was the other story. There was another time when my aunt had gotten locked into the bathroom and she could not get out for the life of it. And my uncle’s son, my first cousin, not my second, not the little second cousin, he had to get a LA and crawl up to the second floor coming through the bathroom window. And when he walked in, he opened the door and it was just like he just looked at his mom, what are you talking about? The door is unlocked.

Jim Harold (00:52:02):

I mean, I don’t know if you got into this with them, but did you get into them what haunted it or why it was haunted?

Kris (WA) (00:52:10):

No, and there’s a strange follow-up to this, which is my fiance and I, after we got married, we got divorced. And so I was kind of trying to re-explore a lot of things that were happening in my life at that point. And one of the things that I did was I reached out to Lorraine Warren, who many of your listeners probably know, I guess, how would you describe her? Jim? Because words are failing me.

Jim Harold (00:52:39):

Kind of the OG paranormal investigator, her and Ed Warren, I mean, and Hans Holzer and people like that,

Kris (WA) (00:52:48):

And the they’re from Connecticut. And so I sent her a letter asking if she had any experience. I gave her the address. I sent her a letter asking if she had any experience with this particular house. And I did get a call from her, but because I was going through the divorce, I never got back to her. Interesting thing that happened was though she called and the message was completely garbled with interference and static, which I’d never had that issue before, haven’t had it since. So I don’t know, I’m not sure what was going on, but it was just fascinating to me to hear all of these weird sensations that I’d had growing up in that house corroborated as an adult.

Jim Harold (00:53:37):

Wow. Wow. It’s interesting. I mean, you got to believe that old saying where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and all those things happening to different people at different times and so forth. Something definitely, I don’t know what, but something had to be going on with that house.

Kris (WA) (00:53:52):

For sure. Yeah, I have thought about sending a letter to the current owners and asking if they’ve experienced that kind of thing, so.

Jim Harold (00:53:59):

It’d be interesting to know. Interesting to know. Kris, thank you so much for joining us once again on the Campfire and sharing this story.

Kris (WA) (00:54:08):

Thanks for having me, Jim. This was great.

Jim Harold (00:54:11):

Jim Harold’s Campfire is sponsored by BetterHelp. What’s the first thing you do if you had an extra hour in your day? A lot of us, including me, spend our lives wishing we had more time. And the question is, I guess is time for what? If time was unlimited, how would you use it? The best way to squeeze that special thing into your schedule is to know what’s important to you and make it a priority. And therapy, while it can help you find what matters to you most, so you can do more of it. And I think that therapy is a great way to get in touch with yourself. It helps you learn positive coping skills, how to set boundaries. It really empowers you to be the best version of yourself, and it isn’t just for those who have experienced major trauma. So I would say if you’re thinking of starting therapy, you should give BetterHelp a try. It’s entirely online. It’s designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. You just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Learn to make time for what makes you happy with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/jimharold today to get 10% off your first month. That’s betterhelp H E L P.com/ Jim Harold. And we thank BetterHelp for their sponsorship of Jim Harold’s Campfire.

Announcer (00:55:45):

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

Jim Harold (00:56:00):

Next up on the show is Sheri from California. She’s a great supporter of the show, always has such kind things to say, and we appreciate it. And she’s going to tell us about a Queen Mary investigation and the aftermath with emphasis on the aftermath. So glad to have Sheri here. Sheri, thanks for your support. And tell us what happened.

Sheri (CA) (00:56:23):

Thank you, Jim. , this took place a few years ago. It happened on October 24th. In 2015, some girlfriends and I wanted to go on the paranormal tours on the Queen Mary. It was close to Halloween. And so we booked a room and I signed us up for a Dining with Spirits tour and a paranormal investigation tour. Kind of thought the Dining with Spirits was just going to be dinner and some ghost stories. Turns out it was dinner and a tour, and we started and did that. And somewhere along the way I realized that the paranormal investigation tour, which is the one I really wanted to go on, started before the tour, we were on finished, and they’re very accommodating. They said, no problem. These tours crossed paths, and you can jump to the second tour. The tours crossed paths. So, okay, that works. When that happened, my friends were tired and decided they didn’t want to go on it, and they would just go back to the room and go to bed. So I went on it by myself, and the whole tour was great. It was fun and interesting. I didn’t catch anything particularly, and that I thought was paranormal that I noticed along the way. And the good thing about the paranormal tour is that it went to the pool, the swimming pool area, and the dressing room areas, which are purportedly haunted, pretty haunted in the Queen Mary.

(00:57:57):

And when we were down there sitting in the dressing room stalls, we were in the dark and people were recording or taking video. And I sat down in one of the stalls and I sat on something and I reached down and it was like a broken off tile from the dressing area. And at the time, there was debris over the floor, all over the floor. It wasn’t like a really kept up area. They were using it as storage. And for whatever reason, I dropped that tile in my purse.

Jim Harold (00:58:37):

A keepsake.

Sheri (CA) (00:58:37):

Yeah, it wasn’t a vintage tile like they have in the pool area. Frankly, it looked like a 1960s asbestos tile. It was little. And I normally don’t do stuff like that because I know it’s not a good idea to take artifacts. And I’m not proud of the fact that I did it. It’s not like me.

(00:58:59):

But in my purse, it went and we finished the tour and the tour guide reminded everyone that he had given them a business card at the beginning of their tour so that people could upload and share the EVPs or photos or videos that they took. And since I wasn’t on the beginning, I waited until everybody kind of said their goodbyes to him and left. And I asked him for a business card. And he goes, yeah, sure. Come on back down to the pool area. I’ve got my bag there, I’ll give you one. And we went back down to the pool and he gave me the card and he says, I have to go upstairs and do my emails. It’ll take me about 10 minutes. Would you like to stay down here by yourself? I mean, you can if you want to. And I’m thinking, it’s three o’clock in the morning in the bowels of the Queen Mary in a haunted area, and it’s in the dark.

(00:59:51):

And I said, of course, I want to stay down here by myself. And so he let me in and I again, didn’t really think I caught anything or noticed anything. He came back and we said our goodbyes. And I’m heading back to my room and my room was near the front part of the ship, the bow of the ship. I was in room 4 0 2 or something. It’s really the beginning of the hallway. And the pool area is back in the back of the ship in the stern area, down deep in one of the lower decks. So I went up the stairs and I’m basically going down the entire length of the hallway on the port side, the left side of the ship. And I’m hearing a busboy cart, those metal carts where they bus dishes and I’m hearing dishes clattering on this cart, just really rattling and clattering on this cart.

(01:00:49):

thinking, I’m not thinking paranormal. I’m thinking, gosh, that can’t be hotel protocol, because that would wake up a light sleeper. And going down the hall, there was nobody in my hallway, but I figured they were walking kind of parallel with me on the other hallway. And between the two parallel halls, one on the left side of the ship, one on the right side, there were these breezeways that connected the two ever so often. And so the next time I came to a breezeway, I ran across it and looked down the other hall. There was nothing there. And then I thought, okay, this could be a paranormal experience. And I felt scared and I ran back to my room and got in bed as quick as possible. My friends were already asleep. So the rest of the trip got up and had brunch and walked around the ship some more before we all went home.

(01:01:46):

And it was a lot of fun. And then when I got home over the next two weeks, well, when I got home, I took the tile and I put it in my art supplies out in the garage, in the laundry area, up in the upper cabinet. I just set it, put it there. And then over the next two weeks I was hearing weird noises coming from the garage area and the garage and the kitchen are right next to each other. So I kept hearing things. And we’ve been in the house at that point, 26 years, and you get to know the noises, and these were catching my ear as being unusual and like something falling, but I couldn’t see anything that fell. And my husband and I talked about it, thought maybe a squirrel had gotten in the garage and couldn’t get out. And so that’s what we thought it was.

(01:02:42):

And then I started hearing noises in the kitchen and I’d be cooking at the stove, and I have pan drawers to the right and left of the stove that have my pans in them. And I would hear a pan fall or the sound if you dropped a pan from a few inches above into the other pans, that kind of a noise. And that was weird then to open the drawer and there would be nothing there. And I was starting to think, oh crap, maybe it’s not a squirrel, maybe it’s a rat or something horrible like that. But I could never catch anything. There was no evidence of any critters. And it was just happening sporadically over the next week or so. And then I still wasn’t thinking anything about it except for maybe some critter. But then I heard a noise coming from my island and it sounded like dragging heavy furniture over my wood floor. Oh, man, it’s exactly what it sounded like. And it was coming from inside the island. Oh man. It did not sound like plumbing. It did not sound like anything I could figure out. So that’s when I was beginning to think, is this something? Is this something from the Queen Mary?

(01:04:07):

And I was still just trying to wrap my head around it. And then now we’re up to November 12th, so it’s been almost three weeks later, I came out of my room. I, at that time would get up at four o’clock in the morning to get ready and go to work early. And I came out of my bedroom into the living room, and I heard distinct footsteps running up the stairwell to the second floor. And I was looking at the stairs. There was nothing there. And the footsteps sounded, it reminded me of our beagle, Maggie, where her toenails would click and clack on the stairs as she would run up. And I heard it start at the bottom and run all the way up to the top. Now, Maggie or Beagle had passed away earlier that year in May, so it wasn’t her. And I knew at that point that something unusual because it was happening.

(01:05:08):

We never had anything happen, paranormal happen in our house. Never. I always kind of felt like our house was like a clean house. It just didn’t have anything weird happening. And so I was kind of thinking to myself, what have I done? What now? And I opened the door to go out to the laundry area and the art cabinet where I had put the tile, the door was still closed, but there were art supplies all over the cabinet and all over the floor. And those cabinets, they don’t swing open, and if you open them, they don’t swing shut. They’re kind of balanced pretty well so that if they’re open, they’re open. If they’re closed, they’re closed. And I just looked at that and thought, oh crap, really? What now? What am I supposed to do now? And that same following weekend, I woke up at, I went to bed on Friday night, and I don’t set my alarms for the weekend unless I had to get up for something.

(01:06:16):

But Saturday morning, both of my alarms, my dual alarms went off at four in the morning. And if it one alarm went off, you could think, okay, you turned it on in your sleep accidentally or something. But the second alarm was never set for four AM. It was always set for seven or something like that if I had to get up. And I thought, okay, that’s weird. Again, this has never happened before. So I turned them off Saturday night, I looked at the alarms at both open, make sure they were turned off. And the next morning, Sunday morning, 4:00 AM one of the alarms went off again at four. And I thought, this is ramping up. It’s getting kind of irritating now. I didn’t know what to do and I pondering it. I didn’t know how much to talk to my husband who was raised Catholic and really didn’t like to talk about ghosts.

(01:07:13):

It wasn’t his thing. But during the following week, he was upstairs, he had fallen asleep watching TV upstairs, and he had woke up, turned the TV off, turned the light off, came downstairs, and he was checking his emails before coming to bed and his work emails. And while he was standing at the dining room table looking at his pc, the light turned on upstairs and a TV turned back on. And that scared him. He said he was almost too scared to go upstairs and turn it back off. He almost came and got me and make me do it.

(01:07:54):

And then he just said, you got to do something. You’ve got to get rid of that tile. And so I said, okay, I think you’re right, because it’s one thing to think it’s fun and interesting and go to these things, but when out of the blue, this stuff is happening in your own home. I had kids, they were not, I had one still, I think, left at home. Everybody else had, all the other kids had moved out, but you don’t want them to be afraid to be in their house. And my husband didn’t want to be afraid to be in his house. And so I got the tile, and when I was by myself, I just said out loud, you have to go. You don’t have my permission to be here. This is our sanctuary and this is our home, and I don’t want any mischievous spirits here because it’s making everybody uncomfortable. So you have to go. And then I bubble wrapped the tile, put it in a box. I mailed it back to the Queen Mary with a letter that just said, sorry, and this is where I took it. And here it is back. And I didn’t really say much else. I just, I’d send it back anonymously. And you know what? Everything immediately stopped. There were no more noises, no more weird things happening. And that was it. But kind of made a believer out of me, do not remove artifacts from haunted places.

Jim Harold (01:09:28):

I think that’s very good advice, very good advice. You don’t know what you’re bringing home with you.

Sheri (CA) (01:09:33):

You don’t. And I thought for years about it being a hitchhiking ghost, but after listening to your show, I feel like it’s an education. I finally, I kind of thought, well, maybe instead of it being a hitchhiking ghost, it’s just the fact that you open yourself up mentally or spiritually to what’s on the other side. And that could have been what happened. It could have just opened myself up to it. And the things that were happening here may or may not have been associated with the Queen Mary, but the ritual of saying, you don’t have permission to be here. And I think maybe closed that door, but it was really an odd thing that happened to us. And this house, the house still feels clean now, and I don’t feel I could walk around anytime day or night. I don’t feel anything here.

Jim Harold (01:10:34):

Yeah. Yeah. It seems like it was tied to that piece of tile. Sheri, thank you so much for being a part of the Campfire and stay spooky. Or in this case, don’t stay spooky because the spooky is gone.

Sheri (CA) (01:10:47):

Thank you, Jim.

Jim Harold (01:10:48):

Melissa is on the line from Arizona. We’re so glad that she is. She said her and her husband discovered the show on a trip back from Vegas. And I wonder what was scarier, the results at the gaming tables or the show itself? I don’t know, but we’re so glad to have her with us, and she’s going to take us back to when she was a teenager and her family home and a mystery and maybe how she kind of solved it. Melissa, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. Please tell us what happened.

Melissa (AZ) (01:11:23):

Yeah, sure. Thank you. So when I was in eighth grade, which was in 1999, my parents moved us into a new house. It was a new build, and it was a totally new neighborhood. It’s the only two story. My parents still live there, by the way, too. It’s the only two story that’s grounded. There’s houses all around it, but there are one story which matters for a little later in the story. And when we moved in, most of the houses around there were under construction. Ours was barely finished, and we moved in late 1999, and I was in eighth grade at the time, and I had been in the same school district for a long time. And when it came time to go to high school since we moved, I had to switch districts. So I knew that was coming, and I felt some anxiety about it

(01:12:15):

 And meanwhile, we’ve been in the house for months and new house, nothing was going on, nothing had happened. And I will also say it’s helpful to know that it’s a four bedroom house and all of the bedrooms are up on the second floor of the house. And my bedroom was in a corner, and there’s nothing on the outside of, it’s just a two story house, especially then it was also new before I forget, since it’s helpful to know for later. So as time approached for me to switch schools all through that summer, before that, I started to get less excited and more anxious, and I would vent to a close friend of mine. Her name’s Chrissy. And so we talk on the phone, go visit her, and I talk a lot about feeling anxious. And of course she tried to make me feel better. And we talk about it a lot. And school started, and it was really challenging at first, trying to make new friends. And of course, I’m venting to my friend this full time. And a couple months, maybe a month and a half goes by. And I had started, I was in marching band. So I started making friends and things started going smoothly. And the conversations, of course, that my friend continued, but it was less and less about my anxieties and feeling sad and anxious, and I was just getting into high school.

(01:13:33):

And then we get into the fall of that year. And so at this point, we’d probably been in the house for I guess really almost a year. And strange things started to happen only in my bedroom. So the first things that happened were issues with the lights. And so they would flicker. And so my parents could never figure out what the issue was. But what we started to notice is that when we would get closer, maybe thinking that the light fixtures were loose or something, or the light bulbs were loose, you would get closer to touching the lights. They would stop flickering if you’d get inches within the lights. And so that went on and on. And again, I’ll be in my room, and then in the corner of my room, I had my tv, just big console tv. And what I would always do is I would go into bed with it on and put the timer on to have it turn off.

(01:14:30):

And I started waking up at night, and the TV would be on and it would be on static, always be on static. And so I thought, well, maybe I’m rolling over on the remote, but I wasn’t. It would happen when the remote would be by the tv. So eventually I stopped sleeping with the TV on because I couldn’t stand waking up at the static at night. And as this happened, I started to just slowly more and more feel this sort of presence up in the corner of the room right above where the TV was. And this is really the dawn, I think, of what we talk about for modern Ghost hunting shows and things like that. So wasn’t as common, wasn’t as prevalent. I really thought that I was, maybe I was having a mental health crisis from stress. I couldn’t figure out what was happening.

(01:15:23):

And I started talking to another friend of mine who I went to high school with, and her family is very religious Baptist. And she was saying, what we kind of describe now is sounds like you have something attached to you, which just scared me more sure. And I didn’t know, I didn’t even know enough to tell things to go away, anything like that. And so what slowly started happening over those couple of months this happened was I stopped sleeping in my bedroom. I would sleep in the office just because I couldn’t shake the feeling of something was watching me. I was a teenager, so I’d posters all in my room. The posters started falling off, whether they were tacked in or taped up, anything like that. I would wake up in the morning after sleeping in there, and the posters would be on the floor or pulled half off.

(01:16:07):

And I just thought, I’m not going to stay in here anymore. And at the time, we had one elderly German shepherd and a bully breed puppy. And so I would come home after school and right after school to be with them. They needed more care and attention, and my parents would still be working, and my sister would be out with her friends still. And I would just stay downstairs. I didn’t want to go upstairs. I didn’t want to relax in my room because I was just too anxious from it. And so probably about three months, three, four months into this activities started to explode through the house, especially because I was alone there a lot. It wasn’t just in my bedroom anymore. It wasn’t even upstairs anymore, and it wasn’t at night any time of day. And really, a couple big things happened really before that stood out.

(01:17:13):

So one afternoon, and I was home alone after school at four in the afternoon, I had gotten the dogs and the cats fed. And like I said, it’s a two story house. And I’m hearing trumping around upstairs. There’s footsteps all upstairs.

Jim Harold (01:17:14):

 Yeah, that’s got to be frightening.

Melissa (AZ) (01:17:51):

Oh, it was terrifying. I couldn’t figure out, of course, especially being a teenage girl, you’re thinking, there’s someone in my house. And I was thinking it was the cats. And I realized the cats were downstairs too. The dogs are downstairs. And I remember also feeling so relieved because my dogs were reacting to it. I was like, I’m not hearing things. I’m not hallucinating. This is really happening. Which was a relief. And then also very scary. And that had happened. And then probably within the same couple of weeks, downstairs again, middle of the afternoon, I had gotten the dog food after coming home, made some food, and I was sitting in the living room, and I got this horrible feeling behind me in the kitchen that someone was there.

(01:17:58):

And I turned around and the fridge door was open, and one of the cabinet doors was open. And I yikes, couldn’t believe. Yeah, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. And it was, again, before I’d seen that on TV or in movies or anything. And I went and shut them. And I were talking to the dog saying, can you believe this? Do you see this? And that was it. And so after so many months of this, I started to get really fed up, and I talked to my family about it. My sister, her room was across the hall from mine, and she noticed little bits of it too. I started to get fed up and I just couldn’t stand living like this. And I thought it was so unfair. And so I started to speak up more when things were happening around the house saying, I don’t like that.

(01:19:17):

Please stop doing that. And I felt so much more empowered after doing that. And I thought, oh, thank God. I’ll do this. And so one afternoon I was telling my sister and her friend who were in her bedroom about all of the things that had happened and kind of giving them the rundown. And I’m standing in my door, just inside my door as this happening. And as we’re talking, we start to hear on the outside of the house, scratching outside my wall up on the second, oh man, door of the house. And it’s a new neighborhood. There’s no two stories around us. There’s no trees, mature trees even at that point. And the three of us are of course freaking out.And the girls are behind me and panicking and shrieking, and it’s like something in me stopped. And I said, no, absolutely not. And then I started yelling, saying, get out of my house.

(01:20:11):

You can’t be here. I’m not going to live like this. You can’t do this anymore. And as that happened, a poster that I had duct taped, which I’m sure my parents loved, I had duct taped onto the wall, came down on my head full force as if somebody had grabbed the top of it and pulled it down on me as hard as they could. Whoa. I had to fight my way out of it, threw it on the ground. And then the three of us ran downstairs, shrieking. And that was for the most part, it activity waned down, get to the end of my freshman year. And of course, they still kept in touch with my friend Chrissy. I went to her house. We hadn’t even talked about this for such a long time. We have other things going on, and the activity had just died down to nothing. My friend Chrissy at the time was a budding Wiccan, which I’d always known. And she had a little chest where she had a makeshift altar. And I’m sitting there, I asked if I could look through it, and I’m looking through it, and she’s got a lot of stuff in there. And I see this little glass bottle. And the second I touch it, it was like my arm ran ice cold. And I looked in it, and there’s a picture of me,

(01:20:54):

And it was like everything from the last year came rushing back to me. And I picked it up and I said, Chrissy, what did you do? And she had no idea what I was talking about. And I explained to her when I touched this, everything that just happened in my house for the last year just came rushing back to me, said, what did you do? When did you do this? And she’s sitting there, and it’s the only time in my life I ever saw the color actually drain from someone’s face. And she goes, oh my God, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I go, what? She goes When you had switched schools and you were so stressed and so sad, she said, I did a good luck charm for you. And the timing of that synced up exactly with things happened in my house. So I guess it was a good luck charm gone wrong. And so she got rid of whatever it was. It was like a bottle of lick flowers and some other things in it that I can’t exactly remember because it’s been so long. But yeah, that was her efforts to make a good luck charm. And I think what happened was it just opened a door that wasn’t supposed to be there or be open in the first place.

Jim Harold (01:22:05):

Yeah, that’s creepy. That’s creepy. And the thing is, is that I think that to me, and again, I am not of a tradition that would practice spells and those kinds of things, but I think when you do any kind of thing spiritual like that, you got to be careful. So maybe whatever she did, it kind of rebounded in a negative way. You just got to be careful in what you’re doing. And I’ve actually had a witch on one of my other shows who told me that that’s why she wouldn’t cast love spells because she had a love spell one time that she cast, I think for herself that went wrong when she was very, very young and inexperienced, and it went very, very wrong. As I understand. She didn’t get into specifics, but she said, that’s why I don’t do that. So I mean, it kind of follows that if you’re going to do that sort of thing, you got to be careful what you’re doing or you might slip up and cause something like this. Well, thank you so much for being a part of the show and sharing your story today. We certainly appreciate it.

(01:23:11):

Next up on the Campfire is Yuselmy from Wisconsin, and she has a story, well, she thinks she may have opened up some kind of a door to the paranormal, and we’re going to talk about it. Yuselmy, welcome to the program. Thank you for joining us, and tell us what happened.

Yuselmy (WI) (01:23:32):

Hi. Okay, so this happened about seven or eight years ago. I was about 12 or 13. I have always been in a horror stories, everything scary. And at the time, I was really into Japanese, so I like to combine both. And I had found this song, it’s called Secrets of Wisteria, and it’s really unsettling, really creepy. And at the end of the song, it has an audio and reverse. And mind you, I would also listen to this song all the time. I would listen to it when I’d brush my teeth, when I would eat, when I was doing my schoolwork. And one day I was like, oh my goodness, if I listen to it, if I find this audio in backwards, the audio will no longer be backwards and instead be normal. And so it’s this gentleman talking about, it’s so creepy. He’s talking about eating this little girl within nine days.

(01:24:26):

And Im, yeah, I’m not going to go into other details because it’s really graphic, but I can’t remember when the scary stuff started happening at my house. But it started happening where every morning I’d wake up at three in the morning, and mind you, I didn’t have a door. I had an archway door, and my mom would put up a curtain. And so I’d wake up at three in the morning, I’d toss and turn and I would look at the curtain doorway. And I noticed that I saw a tall figure, kind of like a shadow man, and he was wearing a long trench coat. He was wearing a hat, and he had this suitcase, and he would just stand there every night just staring at me. And I would just sit there petrified and I would do what any little kid would do and just pull the blankets over my head.

Jim Harold (01:25:19):

Oh my gosh.

Yuselmy (WI) (01:25:21):

And it was like that every night, and I wouldn’t be able to go to bed until four in the morning. And then other stuff started happening, not just including me. Oh, I just remembered this part. One night I was home alone. My mom was at church and my brother was out with his friends, and I used to walk around in the circle in the living room and listen to music. And I remember I had the lamp on, and I remember that I was walking around in a circle and all of a sudden I felt someone staring at me, and I felt that they were on the couch right by the lamp, and I would try to just ignore it, and it wasn’t going away. So I sat down on the other couch next to the other couch, and at the time, my brother and I had walkie-talkies, and I remember that the walkie-talkies were unplugged. They were dead. I remember that because he didn’t take it that night. And I sat there on my tablet just trying to get rid of this feeling. And then all of a sudden, the walkie talkies go off and there are these voices, and it was like a male and a female voice. And then there was screaming. And so I just remember I ran out the house and I went to the downstairs neighbors and I just hung out there and until my mom got home from church.

Jim Harold (01:26:35):

Wow. So you think that maybe listening to this weird music somehow open like a paranormal portal or something, and that’s where this figure every night entered and these weird things with the walkie talkies and all of these things happened?

Yuselmy (WI) (01:26:53):

Absolutely. My mom, I don’t know if it’s just the church she goes to, she’s a Pentecostal Christian, or I’m not sure if it’s the Latino culture because I’m Mexican, but she’s always told me, no matter what you do, you always open a spiritual door. And they would always talk about that at the church she goes to, but I didn’t care. I still don’t care. But I think it was partially because of my overactive imagination. But it got worse because I remember one night I had gone to church with my mom and we would travel one hour, two hours. So I remember my brother said he got home around 11, 11 or midnight, and he came home with his friends and his friends had come in and he said, the last friend that came in, he got all weird, and he was like, Eric, who is that little girl sitting on the couch? And they were like, what little girl? There’s no little girl. He’s like, there’s a little girl sitting on the couch. And he said that she looked black and white and that she was wearing a white little dress and she had black hair and it was in a bob and that she had almost this black and red aura around her. And he said that. He said, I’m just going to go home. He is like, I don’t want to deal with this today.

Jim Harold (01:28:11):

Well, and have things calmed down subsequently?

Yuselmy (WI) (01:28:15):

Yes. There was actually another night where my brother and I, my mom has a book on how to break curses or whatever. And I remember one night the tall man was there, and I just built up the courage and I ran and I went to my brother’s room, and we both started praying. And when we started praying, we heard footsteps from the living room, walked into his room, and then we just started hearing stuff knocking down like a remote controller. Then his PS4 controller, and then it just stopped when it got close to the bed. And then he said, I’m going to go get a snack. I’m really, I need to get energy. And I was like, okay. And I felt better. And I tried falling back asleep, and I felt something hovering over me, and I thought it was my brother, but it was weird because I could just feel him breathing on me.

(01:29:07):

And then he came back a few seconds later and I’m like, that wasn’t you. And he’s like, no. And we just kept on praying. And then it was already six in the morning, so I had to get ready for school. And my mom did not wake up to anything at all. She said she hasn’t noticed anything. And she’s like, but I have this book. She’s like, you can go ahead and read it. And so he said that when we had all left, he said that he found a prayer and that he started reading, and he said that he got really tired of it and just drained and exhausted. So he said he was going to take a nap, and then when he woke up, he would finish it. And he almost astro projected because he said he was walking around our town and everything was black and white and foggy.

(01:29:52):

I don’t know if you’ve seen Silent Hill, but kind of like Silent Hill. And he said he found a church and that there was a glass basement. And he said that he could see through the windows and that there were these people wearing cloaks and doing some kind of ritual. And then when he realized that they were doing something that they all just scared at him. And then he said he started running and he started running home. And then he said that he felt the urge to go faster because he felt something near his body. And then when he almost got to the house, he said that he heard someone go, Eric. And then he said that when he woke up, he felt something hit him. So he woke up and he finished reading the prayer. He said he prayed the entire day just going around the house, and then he lit some incense and was trying to bless the house. And then ever since then, that thing has been gone.

Jim Harold (01:30:45):

Well, I’m glad that things have calmed down. Thank you for listening to the show. Yuselmy, and thank you for sharing your stories. And again, so glad things have calmed down because things like that can be very, very frightening Indeed.

Yuselmy (WI) (01:30:59):

Absolutely.

Jim Harold (01:31:00):

Thanks for being on the Campfire tonight.

Yuselmy (WI) (01:31:03):

Thank you. Stay spooky.

Jim Harold (01:31:04):

Stay spooky! Thanks so much for tuning into the Campfire. I appreciate it. And please share the show with a friend today that’s so important. That does grow our listener base. But you know what? It also does, it also gets us a rich new vein of Campfire stories. And if you enjoy this show, that’s what keeps it going is new callers. So please, please tell your friends about the Campfire. We’d love for them to listen, and if they have a story and almost everybody does, we’d love for ’em to share it as well. Also, if you are into the Campfire and spooky stuff, check out our Mausoleum of Merch at JimHarold.com/merch. Dar has been doing a tremendous job with a ton of T-shirt designs. Now we have candles like we mentioned last week, a stay spooky candle. I’m sure we’re going to be doing more. So check that out at JimHarold.com, click on the Etsy option, and as a friend of mine used to say, Bob’s your uncle. So there you go. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody. Stay safe and stay spooky. Bye-Bye.

Announcer (01:32:07):

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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