A disembodied head haunts a young man, a mom finds a ghost attending to her baby, a haunted rental vacation home and much more on this edition of Campfire!

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Note: Pre-orders are for eBook only. Print book will be released on May 7, 2024

TRANSCRIPT

Jim Harold (00:00:00):

Stalked by a disembodied floating head? Wow. Well, that’s what happened to one of our callers this week on the Campfire.

Announcer (00:00:23):

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 (00:00:34):

Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold. So glad to be with you once again, and I have a big announcement. By the time the next Campfire comes out on May 9th, my new book will be out. It is True Ghost Stories: Jim Harold’s Campfire Six will be available in both ebook and print. And if you want to get all the links, you can go to JimHarold.com, J I M H A R O L D.com, and click on the green button at the top of the page and it’ll take you to a page with all the links. And this time, the plan is to be available in ebook in all the major outlets, Amazon, internationally, Barnes and Noble. Hopefully, we’re going to get into some libraries, ask your library about getting us into their library system, and it’s going to be great. And all the links are JimHarold.com.

(00:01:31):

Click on the big green button at the top of the page. It’ll take you to a place where we have the links. So I hope you’ll support us in terms of how much we make on one individual book. It’s really not that much. It’s a couple bucks if you order from Amazon and Barnes and Noble or one of those places. But honestly, it’s just to get the word out. I do as a way to get the word out about the shows, because I think having a book is a great excuse to get on other podcasts, get on radio shows, talk about the podcast, and maybe get some people who buy the book who have never been a part of our Campfire family and get them into the fold. But all of that to make a book not only is a lot of work, it is a lot of money for publicity and all the different stuff.

(00:02:14):

We’ve invested cover design and so forth. So please, please, please do support us if you can. And it is 65 great spooky stories, some of the best ones we’ve ever had, and I think this is our best Campfire book yet. So that’s JimHarold.com. Click on the big green button, and there you can pre-order if it’s before May 7th, or you can actually order your copy May 7th and afterwards, JimHarold.com. Click on that big green button. Also, you can search at places like Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and they’ll have it directly as well, starting on May 7th. Also, we will have a limited number of autographed books in our Etsy shop for folks in the US and you can get to that by clicking on that big green button at jimharold.com. We thank you so much for that. And now you are here to hear some spooky stories in this first one, oh boy. Wow.

Garrett is on the line from Vancouver Island. We’re so glad to have him on the show. And I got to say, this is one of the creepiest stories I was telling Garrett that I’ve seen come down the pike in quite a while. And I’m sorry this happened to him, but I’m glad he’s telling us about it because it’s pretty wild. Garrett, welcome to the show and tell us what happened.

Garrett (CAN) (00:03:37):

Thank you so much, Jim. I really appreciate it. So about two years ago, I had just dropped out of university and I got a new roommate and he told me about tree planting. Now, I had never heard of such a thing, so I did some research into it, and you pretty much go to the middle of nowhere and just plant trees for the whole summer. And I thought, well, I might as well go and do that since I don’t have much else going for me. And so I booked a one-way ticket up to northern BC Canada, and I went to camp pretty much right away. And so we spent a few days in camp, and then we started learning how to plant. And then when this happened, we were a few weeks in. So when you’re planting, you’re on something called a block, and each person kind of has their own block to plant on. Picture like a big field kind of surrounded by trees. But in the field there’s lots of broken sticks and turned up ground and rocks, stuff like that. And stumps from where the trees have been logged in the past because that’s where we’re planting. We’re planting on ground that has been logged. So that kind of as a reclamation kind of thing.

(00:04:51):

So I was there a few weeks into planting, and there was this stump kind of in the center of the field. It was a little bit closer to one side of the forest, one of the tree lines. And I had planted there a few days prior. In that field, since it’s quite large, we’re talking hundreds of meters across in every direction. And I had never felt anything strange or never gotten any weird feelings from it. But I show up one day and it’s a little bit overcast that day. It’s not a clear sunny day. And for some reason my attention is drawn to that stump. It’s kind of this bigger stump. You can tell it used to be quite a big tree, and I kind of had to do a double take because on it is what looked like a disembodied head. And yeah, it sounds really strange. And I know fair warning, there are a lot of drugs that go on in tree planting camps, but I can promise I wasn’t on any of,

Jim Harold (00:05:59):

I was almost wondering, have you accidentally, not intentionally, but maybe accidentally got something on your person, on your hands or something, and it’s soaked into your system, but wow, a disembodied head. Wow.

Garrett (CAN) (00:06:14):

Yeah, I tend to stay pretty safe at camp. I mean, the most I did was drink some liquor, but other than that, I was pretty straight laced there. And so I kind of do a double take, and I look at it, and it sounds really creepy, but it had a big grin on his face,

Jim Harold (00:06:35):

Oh Lord!

Garrett (CAN) (00:06:38):

And I could see its teeth, these big teeth, and it looked like it was staring at me. And I was like, okay, well, this is just a trick of the eye. So I keep planting and I kind of plant around it. I’m still a few hundred feet away, and then I look up again, and I’ve moved quite a bit through the field, and I look up and I still see it, except it’s still facing me as if it has turned. 

Jim Harold (00:07:01):

Ohhh you’re giving me chills. You’re giving me chills, Garrett.

Garrett (CAN) (00:07:06):

It was giving me chills at the time. At that point, I had full goosebumps on me because I’ve always liked to believe in paranormal things, but I really like proof. I really like to make sure that it’s not something else. And so of course I start planting towards the thing. Now, when you’re on the block, time is money because you get paid per tree plant. So it’s not like I could just kind of drop everything I was doing and run up to it. So I started planting towards it, and every time I got maybe within a hundred feet, it would just kind of slowly fade away

(00:07:44):

and then I would make my way up to the stump and there would be nothing on it. It would be a normal stump. Now to make sure it wasn’t something in the tree line that was because sticks and rocks and other stumps can look strange. They might’ve been giving some kind of illusion. I went to all the way around it. I went all the way around it while I was planting. And every, I swear, every time I looked up, it was there and it was really giving me a creepy vibe. So then that day ended and I didn’t really have an explanation. And I got to tell you, Jim, I planted on that block for probably another week, and I never saw it again, and I never got a weird feeling. And I mean, that stuff was there the whole time, but there was never anything on it, and it never looked like there was anything on it.

Jim Harold (00:08:35):

Do you have a working theory?

Garrett (CAN) (00:08:37):

I actually do have a working theory. In the lead up to this interview, actually, I Googled it because this was two years ago, and for the past two years, I thought, well, I saw something really strange. I can’t imagine anybody else has seen anything like that, because it’s so weird and specific. And then about a month ago, I just had to look it up, I looked up a disembodied head with black hair because it had kind of longish black hair as well as the big grin that I was talking to you about. It was just this grin. And I found something called, now, have you ever heard of the flying head?

Jim Harold (00:09:19):

I think I might’ve years ago, but tell us more.

Garrett (CAN) (00:09:27):

I was astounded when I found this online. It’s actually a legend of a spirit from the Iroquois, which is kind of southeastern Canada, Northeastern states.

Jim Harold (00:09:43):

Yeah, I think Iroquois may have been in Ohio too. New York, Ohio, I think Ohio, but I’m pretty sure New York. But go ahead. I’m sorry.

Garrett (CAN) (00:09:52):

Right? No, yeah, definitely New York. And of course I’m in BC, so I’m nowhere near that. But the similarities are really interesting. So they’re spirits, from what I’ve learned online, they’re spirits that are cursed with an insatiable hunger pretty much. And they’re cannibalistic towards people because I’m assuming at one point maybe they were people, and they’re these heads, these disembodied heads that you find in the woods that have long black hair and big toothy smiles. And it just seemed to line up exactly with what I saw. I was so astounded by it.

Jim Harold (00:10:37):

Oh, man.

Garrett (CAN) (00:10:39):

Yeah.

Jim Harold (00:10:40):

It’s just one of those things where, I mean, that has to have a tremendous impact when you see it. And it’s kind of like, and I admire the fact you took it a step further and tried to research it because it’s kind of like, what do I do with that? Just something else. Wow.

Garrett (CAN) (00:10:56):

Exactly. I mean, I thought it was such a specific thing, or it  was, I thought I had heat stroke or something. But I mean, I made sure I was pretty, I looked at it quite a few times and made sure I drank a lot of water. I ate a lot of food, and I made sure I was in the right mindset, and I still saw it there. And then, I mean, the fact that I did some research on it and I found people describing legends of the same thing from across the continent, I found that unbelievably interesting.

Jim Harold (00:11:28):

That is very, very neat. Well, Garrett, this is a Campfire classic. I got to tell you. Thank you so much for sharing it. And I wonder if anybody out there has experienced, I know we don’t currently have them open when this will air in kind of late-ish April, but in May we will have Campfire submissions reopened. So please, if you’ve seen a flying head or anything like this, please do sign up Jim Harold dot com slash Campfire and share those stories. Garrett, thanks again for being a part of the Campfire. 

Garrett (CAN):

Thank you, Jim, stay spooky. 

Jim Harold:

Cory is on the line from Washington State back on the show. We’re so glad to speak with him, and he’s going to tell us one of my favorite kind of stories. You know what I love, those head scratchers. Cory, welcome back to the show. Tell us what happened.

Cory (WA) (00:12:17):

Yes, great to be back. Thanks so much. So this one happened when I was in high school. I’ve been driving for less than a year, and my first car, if those old enough to recall what a Ford Pinto is. I had the mercury version of that, the mercury bobcat. It was good though. It ran well. So that alone was sort of odd, but no, it was, anyway, driving near downtown in my hometown with my best friend. It’s just a sunny weekend. We’re driving around, middle of the day, and it had been drilled into our heads during driver’s education. When you come to a train crossing, you look both ways. Even if the gates aren’t down and it’s not going, ding, ding, ding, it’s a stop. Treat it like a stop. You look both directions. And I don’t want to get hit by a train. So he and I both, man, I was driving, he was in the passenger seat. We both looked both directions, and I can see a hundred or so yards in one direction, a hundred. So in the other, totally clear, straight, nothing blocking the view. Gates aren’t down, nothing’s going, ding, ding, ding, good to go. And I just drive across. And the moment I drive across a train goes barreling by with no horn. 

Jim Harold (00:13:34):

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.

Cory (WA) (00:13:37):

So it was terrifying. And we freeze. I mean, I’m frozen at this point because I’m thinking, what just happened? It’s one of those moments where you’re just frozen in terror. And my friends too, we just kind of look back now, calm down enough to pull off. And there’s a parking lot just right there. And I don’t remember how long the train was, but I do know it was a modern train. It wasn’t like a locomotive, a steam engine or something like that,

Jim Harold (00:14:02):

Right. It was a diesel probably.

Cory (WA) (00:14:03):

It was, right. So we pull over and our first thought is we almost got hit by a train, but we started thinking about some of the facts here. We looked both ways. We saw nothing. It didn’t blow its horn. It would’ve seen us, right? We were sitting there for at least 10, 20 seconds. The gates weren’t down, the bells weren’t going off. What happened? And why did it come the moment we passed the threshold? Just again, it’s one of those head scratchers, nothing added up. And we thought, well, did we? I’ve even driven on that, across those tracks in the past. Every time I kind of come to it, I kind of get a little nervous and look. But yeah, to this day, we don’t have any explanation for it. Even before I came on with you, I checked with my friend who I am still friends with, and I said, you remember all that, right? He’s like, oh, yeah, I remember it as you did. I still don’t know what any of that was. 

Jim Harold (00:14:54):

Oh my gosh.

Cory (WA) (00:14:55):

Absolute head scratcher. Yeah.

Jim Harold (00:14:57):

It’s one of those things that it’s like, and again, if it had just been yourself, I would’ve said, well, maybe you were a new driver. You were mistaken. You just overlooked something. But the fact that both of you said, Hey, it was 110% clear, I don’t know where that came from. I think that gives you the affirmation, and as you said, your friend to this day agrees. Do you think it might’ve been some kind of guardian angel or something, or just a weird time slip, or what do you think?

Cory (WA) (00:15:27):

I wonder if it’s maybe a combination. I mean, time slip definitely was part of it, but I think the combination of the gates weren’t down and there was nothing to stop us from driving across other than just us looking. So I thought, what if I went two seconds earlier, right? Did some unseen force, or who knows what? It could have been so grateful that the timing worked out the way it did, of course. But yeah, just again, haven’t really had any other, I hear of other stories of time slips, and this is the closest that I personally have experienced. So glad it worked out the way it did. Of course.

Jim Harold (00:16:03):

Yeah, me too. Me too. For sure. Well, Cory, I know you’ve got another story from one of your family members. You’re going to come on a future show and tell us about that, and I’m glad you’re here. And thank you for joining us today on the Campfire.

Cory (WA) (00:16:16):

Thanks, Jim.

Jim Harold (00:16:17):

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Announcer (00:18:42):

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

Jim Harold (00:18:57):

Lindsey is on the line from Illinois. We’re so glad to have her on the program and just going to tell us about something very interesting that happened when she was pregnant. Lindsey, welcome to the show, and please tell us what happened.

Lindsey (IL) (00:19:11):

Yeah, thanks for having me. So a little background. I am a registered nurse. I’ve been a nurse for 10 years now this year. And another little tidbit of information. I’m also a type one diabetic, very controlled type one diabetic, but it is kind of crucial to this story. So this takes place in April of 2022, and I was a bedside nurse at the time, and had been for all of my career, was in the middle of what we would call a three day stretch. So three 12 hour shifts, give or take, back to back to back, and on my second shift in the middle of the three. So everyone who has done that knows that day two is almost the worst because it’s so long, you have to come back the next day. And I had probably one of the top five craziest shifts of my NICU nurse career that day.

(00:20:10):

Just crazy, unfortunate things had happened, really long day. I didn’t get home until super late. Thankfully, my husband had our toddler to sleep. He was a year and a few months old at this time. And I was pregnant with our second, our daughter that we have now. I was anywhere from 11 to 13 weeks pregnant. I don’t exactly remember. But anyways, got home super late. I’m in zombie mode, shower, eat something quick and go to bed. Sometime after midnight I rolled over, which as a parent, you check on your kids often in the night even you think you’re sleeping. And I just kind of happened to roll over, glance at the monitor, and as my eyes started to focus in on what I was seeing, my heart dropped because I could see something next to my son’s crib. And again, it’s just my husband and I there. Yeah, it’s just my husband and I there. Our dog was in the room with us, and my son was and is such a light sleeper that we have a low sound machine going. The door is always shut because pretty much anything wakes him up. And so I was shocked as I’m looking at this. And again, as my eyes start to focus, I see what looks like a woman rocking a baby standing next to my son’s crib. 

Jim Harold (00:21:31):

Oh my.

Lindsey (IL) (00:21:33):

Yes. Again, my heart drops. I’m super anxious. I look at, we’ve got a smart garage door app and cameras on our property, and I’m checking all of that, someone in the house. I get up and as I look at it, it’s translucent. I see this woman rocking a baby, but she’s not of human form. And you can see it moving on the monitor

Jim Harold (00:21:58):

Did she look like on a monitor, a ghost, or did she look like a human who was translucent or how would you describe her?

Lindsey (IL) (00:22:06):

Her face was hard to see, but you could definitely see head, her hair, her arms cradling this baby, and then the motion of going back and forth. And again, you couldn’t really see detailed features of her face, at least at this time. I normally wear contacts or glasses, and so I throw my glasses on and I’m looking at this and I’m watching it move on the monitor, and I’m sitting there perplexed what is going on. I wake my husband up and he’s like, oh, it’s probably just a dust speck on the monitor. It was not a dust speck on the monitor, definitely was what looks like a woman rocking a baby. And after watching it for some time, I’m like, okay, I’m not crazy. We definitely both are seeing this. And I go in, and as I stated earlier, my son is a very light sleeper and always has been. I mean, even just my feet going down the hall wakes him up without making hardly any noise. And I go into his room, I open the door and I said out loud to what I was looking at, if you have any ill intent or mean harm, you are not welcome here. And she didn’t leave. She stayed in there, and I’m saying she, because it looks like a woman with her hair tied back. 

Jim Harold (00:23:28):

So when you went in, you didn’t see it. You did not see it when you went in?

Lindsey (IL) (00:23:33):

I did not, no, see it in person. Only on the monitor. But like I said, it’s clearly a woman with a baby when I’m looking at it there. And I looked at it. So fun fact, we use a nest camera for our baby monitor versus something else. And so I was able to look at this on my phone and the tablet that we have streaming, and I could see it on both.

(00:23:59):

Yes. So it wasn’t just there on one and not the other. Anyways, my son never woke up through any of this, and I was loud and proud, if you are meaning ill, ill intent or harm, you are not welcome here. Never once batted an eye, never once rolled over, never anything. So also slightly alarming to me. And I watched it for quite a while on the monitor, and she stood there rocking the baby. And when I went to work later that day, and as a nurse, you’d go to work really, really early and you come home later. I looked back on the monitor after I had left for work, and it was like once the sun rose, she wasn’t there anymore. And just a second part to this story quick. So that night, this would’ve been April 9th now. So the following night, again, I had had this crazy day at work.

(00:24:54):

I came home, fell asleep, and had the only time in my life what you would refer to as an unconscious hypoglycemia episode or low blood sugar, which is fairly common for type one diabetics to have a lot of hypoglycemia in pregnancy just because of the tight parameters they have you keeping your blood sugar in, which is kind of hard to deal when you have hormones playing against you. But anyways, my husband ended up having to call an ambulance and they came, helped, and I was able to stay home. They were able to start an IV and give me some glucose that way. And in my life, I’ve never had this happen. And I’ve been a type one diabetic for 28 years at that point. And I to date, have never had this happen since. But I often look back on the scenario and I’m like, who was that woman?

(00:25:46):

Was that me holding our unborn child? Was that, I have no idea who this lady was. All I know is the timeline is too close. To not think of that, who was that? I’ve never lost anyone close to me like a female figure that would have been holding the baby. It’s just a weird situation of thinking was that me holding our unborn child that I was pregnant with at the time, looking over my son the night before this all happened, I’ll never know. But I have serious goosebumps telling you this story because it freaks me out.

Jim Harold (00:26:25):

So essentially you think you may have saw a ghost of yourself.

Lindsey (IL) (00:26:31):

I don’t know. That’s just my head comes back to that often. I think. Who else would be holding a baby in my son’s room? Like I said, I’ve never lost a female figure in my life, or unless it was, I guess just an unknown ghost that is in my house that I’m unaware of. But that was the only time we ever had anything like that happen. And yeah, I just often think, was that me looking over him the night before this emergent thing happened? I don’t know.

Jim Harold (00:27:02):

Yeah. The thing is is that we had kind of a similar story. It’s actually in the Campfire book six, which is coming out May 7th. So this may air before that. It may air after it. But there was a woman who, I won’t give away the whole story, but she was on a Campfire and she told of seeing her children to come. So she didn’t see a ghost of herself, but she saw essentially, and there was a whole scenario around that she saw visions of her children to come. So I guess it would make sense that you could see a vision of your child to come and you holding that child. And similarly, there was a little bit of a medical potential situation going on too. So it’s just really interesting to me, really interesting to me that maybe in a time of trauma you were given this sight. I don’t know. Wow.

(00:28:00):

And again, it gets to me, everything that I’ve learned on this show by talking to people like you of their experiences, just lead me to believe that our existence is way more complex than we give it credit for. Sometimes people will say something like, well, I saw a ghost. It must be a dead person. Well, I think that can be, in some cases, I do think people see their loved ones. I don’t discount that. But I also wonder if sometimes we see time shifts, we see people from the future, from the past. Sometimes if we see quote a ghost, do they see us as a ghost as well? I think when you start looking into these stories and getting stories firsthand, stories like yours, it all suddenly becomes much more complex. So I’m sorry I don’t have any answers for you, but it’s fascinating talking about your experience and hearing what happened.

Lindsey (IL) (00:28:59):

Yeah, no, and I appreciate it. And yeah, again, I often am thankful that I had the outcome that I did as scary as it was. But yeah, it makes me wonder somehow was I telling myself or someone in an alternate area trying to warn me of what was going to happen since that happened the night before the medical emergency. But yeah, I’ve always kept a very open mind to things like this and just, it really does make you wonder.

Jim Harold (00:29:26):

Lindsey, thank you for being a part of the Campfire tonight.

Lindsey (IL) (00:29:29):

Thank you.

Jim Harold (00:29:30):

Next up on the Campfire is Karen from Scotland, and we’re so glad to have her on the program, and she has a story of a very, very special pet. Karen, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened.

Karen (SCOT) (00:29:46):

Hello. Well, my daughter, who is 23 now, when she was only about six or seven, she wanted a cat. We never had cats before. We always had hamsters and a dog and things like that. So lo and behold, we got this cat. So this wee kitten, I just adored him, worshiped the ground he walked on, and he loved me as well. He was always on my knee, sat on my knee, and wherever I went, just followed me about. And we always laughed and said, I just had to think about sitting down and he would be there, you know, to be on my knee.

(00:30:26):

So we had him for nine years, and unfortunately he died very suddenly. And I was absolutely, absolutely devastated. He was spoiled rotten, and we live right on a golf course. And when he was just a wee kitten and he started going out, when I heard him coming in at night through the cat flap, I would make a hot water bottle for him and things like that. That’s how spoiled he was. He was just adored. And he adored me as well, the most. So anyway, we had him for nine years, and he died really suddenly on a Sunday. It was a Sunday. So all that week, the following week, I had been really upset and crying and things like that. And on the Saturday, everyone was out. My husband was out, my kids were out, and I was okay. I had been okay that day, and I was just lying watching telly.

(00:31:20):

Wasn’t even really thinking about him or anything. And the next minute I felt him jump onto my knee the same way as he always did. He was always, as I say, before, always on my knee. And I wasn’t even thinking about, I mean, the previous week, I had been thinking about them all the time and crying as I say, but I just felt ’em jump onto my knee, and it was the weight of him and the heat. I could feel the heat of him. And I was in myself, and it was just Patches on my knee and I couldn’t believe it. I was so stunned. And it was just the weight of him, the heat of him, just for about five minutes, and then it faded away. So that was that. And then about a week later, again, I think maybe just a little bit shorter than that, our back garden is really, really dark. And I quite often went out to look at the stars and things like that at night. So this night, I think I was putting the bin out, happened to look up, and there was just how you sometimes see faces or shapes in the clouds.

Jim Harold (00:32:29):

Yes,

Karen (SCOT) (00:32:30):

It was him and the cloud’s enormous, the most enormous cloud above me. And it wasn’t vague, you know how you vaguely out a pattern or a shape? It was him. It was his ears, it was his stripes, his colors, his tail, everything, absolutely everything. So that was, as I say a few days later, and it just gave me so much comfort because as I say, I really suddenly and unexpectedly and I just adored him. And that’s the two things. And I always tell people that have lost pets or whatever, they’re still there. They’re still with you. So yeah, that’s my story

Jim Harold (00:33:15):

We had (overlapping speech)

Karen (SCOT) (00:33:16):

And I’ve never, sorry, that was about nine years ago maybe, and I’ve never seen a cloud that looked like I’ve never felt him anywhere in the house or anything since. It was as if he just knew that I needed to know that he was okay because of the way it happened and because we just adored each other so much.

Jim Harold (00:33:41):

Well, I mean, it’s obvious that there’s real love there and there still is all these years later. And we’ve had quite a few stories like this from the sense of a visit from a pet. We had one person who woke up from a dream and her beloved dog who had passed away previously was there. We had someone who had a dog that she had to have put down, unfortunately. And you know how with dogs, the dog collars make a certain jingle jingling noise, and if you can hear your dog coming with the tags jingling, so you know what that sounds like. And she had put that collar after the dog passed, had put it in the garage, and then a couple days later, she started hearing jingling all around the house. I believe it totally. I believe it totally. I’ve had too many people tell me it happens. I think it does happen. I really do. 

Karen (SCOT) (00:34:38):

Well, it was a Saturday night. I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t in bed. I was just as I was saying, watching telly, so I didn’t dream it. It definitely did happen. Yeah, and it was nice. It did help.

Jim Harold (00:34:51):

Yeah, I can imagine. It does. Thank you so much for being a part of the program and sharing this very personal story today. 

Karen (SCOT) (00:34:59):

Oh no, thank you. Thank you. It’s been such a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Jim Harold (00:35:03):

Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by StoryWorth, and I can’t think of a more perfect time of the year than Mother’s Day to talk about StoryWorth. There were stories from my mom that I just loved hearing, and likewise, there are stories from Dar that I love to hear and my daughters love to hear, and I want those stories to live on for my daughters for generations to come. And we can do that with StoryWorth because from hilarious to heartfelt, to tear jerking to maybe a little bit embarrassing, Dar’s retelling of the events of her life, well, they always bring us joy. And just in time for Mother’s Day, we have the perfect gift that captures all her stories from my kids forever. It’s called StoryWorth. And StoryWorth helps you preserve precious memories and stories from your mom or that special person in your life for years to come.

(00:35:57):

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(00:36:44):

You can even keep a copy of the book for yourself. And what I love is this will be something that my kids will have, this will be something they’ll be able to share with their kids and so on and so forth. Families love StoryWorth, and that’s why it has more than 25,000 5-star reviews on Trustpilot with millions of stories preserved since they were founded over 10 years ago. So give all the moms in your life a unique, heartfelt gift you’ll cherish for years, StoryWorth. Right now, save $10 on your first purchase when you go to storyworth.com/Campfire. That’s storyworth.com/Campfire to save $10 on your first purchase. And please do support them. They’ve been with us a number of years, and I really think it’s one of the neatest gift ideas out there and support them. They’ve supported us and help your mom really have a very special Mother’s Day, and your family have a special memory. Thanks, StoryWorth.

Announcer (00:37:47):

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 (00:37:57):

Sharon from Maryland is on the show, and we’re so glad to have her on. And her friend Sarah from Virginia introduced her to the show, actually. I understand Sarah’s been on the program before. And Sarah, thank you so much for that and a big stay spooky and be like Sarah and tell your friends, and you get great stories like this one. Sharon, I know you have a very poignant story for us. Tell us what happened.

Sharon (MD) (00:38:24):

Yeah, the stories about my dad, he started with dementia back in 2011, and it came on really fast, and I’ve always said it was not Alzheimer’s, it was dementia. He lived with me for seven years after that, and he didn’t have all the quirky things that Alzheimer’s patients did. He was just living in the forties back with his parents and his siblings. But anyway, he developed a small brain bleed. We took him to the ER. I knew that he was dying the minute he threw his hand over his shoulder and said, my wife’s over there and she’s waiting for me. And that was the first time in three years he even knew that he had a wife. He had actually asked me one day driving down the road, almost wrecked the car if I was his wife. So it was towards the end of his life.

(00:39:19):

It was like even though other parts of his body were failing, it was almost like his mind was coming back to him. So anyway, he ended up going from the hospital to a nursing home where he was on their wing with hospice, in hospice care, and we had a lovely chaplain that would come in every day, and I just felt like she was so in tune with him and what he needed and all that stuff. And anyway, we knew that he was getting close to passing. My brother had flown in from Colorado, was staying here with me, and they had told us it was probably only going to be a day or two. So anyway, it’s about 12:30 AM I’m sound asleep, my brother’s sound asleep in the next room, and my phone starts ringing, and it’s a cell phone. I had it plugged in at night, so it was on the far side of my nightstand, and I go to reach for it, and I was half asleep. I knew immediately what was going on. We were kind of expecting it. I actually knocked my cell phone off the nightstand, fumbling around. I actually ended up having to get out of bed to pick up the phone. And by the time I picked it up, it had stopped ringing. And I looked at the screen and instead of showing that I had a phone call, which was kind of tucked behind, that was a text message

(00:40:54):

that said, I’m on my way.

Jim Harold (00:40:56):

Oh my.

Sharon (MD) (00:40:58):

And I can’t explain the feeling that I got. I ran into the next room where my brother was sleeping, and I threw up the door and he sat straight up in bed, and the first thing I do is flop down on the corner of his bed, and he says, what’s going on? Did dad pass away? And I said something to the effect of, I think so, but all I’m doing is staring at my phone in disbelief.

Jim Harold (00:41:26):

Now, could you tell what number it came from?

Sharon (MD) (00:41:30):

It said it was coming from my phone.

Jim Harold (00:41:33):

Phone. So you were texting yourself?

Sharon (MD) (00:41:35):

Yeah.

(00:41:38):

And so my brother immediately goes, well, what do you mean, you think so? And I’m still staring at my phone and I’m going, well, the phone rang, but the only thing it’s showing right now is that I got a text message that says I’m on my way. I said, I didn’t send it. He said, well, who made the phone ring? And I said, well, there was a phone call on here, and it does say Carol Hospice, which is where he was. And so he is telling me, call her back. Call her back. So I called her back, and the reason the nurse hang up up in the first place was because she also saw this text message that said, I’m on my way.

Jim Harold (00:42:15):

So she got one too.

Sharon (MD) (00:42:17):

And so she thought that I was responding with that I already knew, and I was like, no, I had no idea what was going on. Then. I am very much a believer in things that we cannot explain very much a believer in people being able to touch us and send us messages and be in our lives even after they passed.

Jim Harold (00:42:44):

May I ask one thing real quick? So she did confirm he had passed?

Sharon (MD) (00:42:49):

Oh, yeah. Yeah. About, you know,  they were doing their midnight rounds and they found him. He had passed and yeah.

(00:43:02):

So the next day that we had asked the chaplain if she would do his funeral service, we really liked her. And like I said, she seemed so in tune with him, knew what he was feeling, and when he was going through stuff, and as soon as she walked in the house to talk to my siblings, and I told her the story, and she just got this wild look on her face, and she said, your father sent you a message. And she says, I’ve seen this. She had seen it so many times, but not text messages, but just that this is what she does. She’s a hospice chaplain. I already believed totally that the message was from my dad, but I don’t think my siblings started believing it until she confirmed it.

Jim Harold (00:43:47):

Well, the thing I would say is I think we have a mental block. I think that, for example, if you had said that you’d seen a vision of your father or you heard a voice or something, people might be more open to it. But the fact that it was technology, I think we are so enamored with technology that we think it can’t be influenced by the supernatural realm. And my retort to that would be why not if we believe in the supernatural? And it can, in the case of a poltergeist, open a cabinet drawer or in the case of a death, like a shared death experience, which is kind of what you’re describing here, that it can cause somebody to have a vision. Why can’t it somehow trigger a text message? See what I mean?

Sharon (MD) (00:44:33):

Yeah. Oh, definitely. And a little backstory here too, which always baffled me about a year, probably around 2010, which was a year before, I mean, his dementia just came on really quick, but in that year before, he was adamant that I teach him how to text. He had a cell phone. He knew how to push one for me and two for my sister, and three for my brother. But he wanted to learn how to text. And I kept saying, but Dad, why? All you have to do is push one number and you can get a hold of us. But he was adamant. I showed him, we did several practice texts where he sent a text from his phone to mine, but Jim, I don’t think he ever sent another text after that.

Jim Harold (00:45:20):

Wow. It’s almost like he knew he would need that skill.

Sharon (MD) (00:45:23):

Isn’t that crazy? Is that not crazy? And I didn’t think about that until a month or so after his passing. It was like, he learned how to text. He wanted me to teach him how to text.

Jim Harold (00:45:41):

I’ve told this numerous times on the show, but I’ll share it because it’s one that I had personal experience with. And this is before I did any Paranormal Podcast. This was back in, gosh, 2001. Yeah, right before 9/11. My mother-in-law passed away, and I don’t know if you’ve heard this story, so I’ll repeat it real quick. She had come home for at-home Hospice, but we thought we had a number of weeks, but this was the first or second night, I can’t remember, maybe the second night, and she kind of rushed my wife back home. She says, you need to get back home with your husband. And my oldest daughter was almost ready to turn two, you got to get back home. My wife’s like, oh, I want to spend time with you and I could help you more. And she’s like, no, no, go home.

(00:46:24):

Almost like she was pushing her away. So anyway, I don’t know, maybe two o’clock in the morning, something like that, my wife wakes up and looks over my shoulder. I’m dead to the world, totally asleep. And she sees what she causes the most beautiful vision of the Virgin Mary. And what was meaningful about that was that my mother-in-law was a big follower and fan of the Virgin Mary. There were all these touchstones in her life. She always prayed to the Virgin Mary. They were Catholic, but it was a huge deal for her, the Virgin Mary. So anyway, my wife sees this vision and she barely puts, and she said when she saw it, she was wide awake. She was woken up, she was wide awake. She was not in a dream state, she said, then the phone rings and it’s my father-in-law, and he calls her and says she’s gone. And my wife’s a little disoriented, kind of like she’s not expecting my mother-in-law to die. We were under the impression she had weeks. She could have a month, she could have two months. Your mom’s gone. She had died at almost exactly the time that my wife got this vision. So I believe in this kind of stuff, 120%.

Sharon (MD) (00:47:40):

Wow. And it’s like she knew because she told you all to go home.

Jim Harold (00:47:45):

Yeah, she knew. And she somehow projected to my wife, I think, that vision of Mother Mary, because that was meaningful to her, maybe it was a way to tell her that I’m okay, and I’ve moved on to the next realm. But fascinating. And your dad’s story is fascinating, and it’s just great. Sharon, thank you so much for joining us tonight on the Campfire.

Sharon (MD) (00:48:11):

Thank you, Jim. I enjoyed it. I like telling that story.

Jim Harold (00:48:15):

Randy is on the line from Canada. We’re so glad to have him back. He’s been on the program before, and this time he’s going to tell us about an experience that happened to him and some friends back in high school. Randy, welcome back. Tell us what happened.

Randy (CAN) (00:48:31):

Hi, Jim. It’s nice to be back again. So I’m going to date myself a little bit. So this was the last year of high school, so this would’ve been 2000, 2001. And my school was putting on a production of The Sting.

(00:48:49):

And me and my friends would use this as an excuse kind of to get out of class or just to go hang out in the auditorium. And well, one day, me, Steve, Aaron and Justin went to go run some scenes and we’re in there. We have everything set up, and I’m going to describe the auditorium to you really quickly. It’s a fairly big high school auditorium. It has to be big enough to fit at least a few grades in there at a time. And the sound booth, you can see it directly from the stage. It’s on about the second floor, and it has two tiny windows, maybe about two by two feet each, just big enough for somebody to look out and not for a lot of light to get out. So as we’re running the scene, Justin kind of stops us and goes, Hey guys, do you see what I’m seeing? And we’re like, what? And he points, and we look to that back to the sound booth and floating in one of the small little windows is just a face,

(00:49:50):

And I can’t give a lot of detail on the face, but all four of us could confirm that we saw something, but none of us had ever been able to remember what exactly it looked like. All we know is that it was a face, it was pale, and it was just kind of floating as it was there. So Aaron and Justin decided they’re going to go check the sound booth. So they grab the keys and they go run over there, and me and Steve are still watching, and they run outside. They go to the second floor and they enter from the back. And usually what will happen is because the sound booth is dark, if somebody opens the door and it’s bright in the atrium outside of the room, the whole entire room lights up and you can see everything in there. You see all the light from that room. When they got there and opened the door, the face just disappeared.

Jim Harold (00:50:37):

That’s weird.

Randy (CAN) (00:50:37):

And they confirmed that there was nobody up there.

Jim Harold (00:50:43):

Was this, would it be fair to say this was a disembodied head?

Randy (CAN) (00:50:48):

It would be fair to say that, but it’s hard to say because of how small the actual windows are for the sound booth were. So it was almost as if they were staring out, just poking their head out and staring down at us as we were performing.

Jim Harold (00:51:01):

I was going to say, because today, and folks, if you don’t know how the Campfire is done, the way we do it is we record a couple times every week, generally on Tuesdays, and sometimes we’ll do evenings as well, maybe on Thursdays or Mondays or something. But anyway, the calls that ended up on the show aren’t necessarily recorded in the same recording session. We might have a call from April and a call from February on the same show. But Randy and I haven’t told you this. The weird thing was, is that the first call in this morning’s session, or actually second call in this morning’s session in recording this show, was about a person who saw a disembodied head. And I was wondering, do we have two stories of disembodied heads in one recording session? That would be really, really weird. 

Randy (CAN) (00:51:59):

For me. It’s actually thanks to you and listening to the show, I’ve actually had a slight change in what I’ve been thinking of what it possibly was. I’ve always told this story when it’s come up that it’s a ghost story, right? Oh, it’s a disembodied head floating in there. But all the talk on your show and on other shows about energy or maybe time, what if the person standing there was somebody either in the past, like a past student or a future student looking down at the stage at us as we’re on the stage,

Jim Harold (00:52:34):

And then you were the ghost to them.

Randy (CAN) (00:52:36):

To them. That’s it. Yeah. Because something from your show, I was like, maybe it could have even been that. But we’ve never been able to find any other stories about that auditorium other than some teachers saying that they never felt comfortable being alone in there because they felt like they were being watched.

Jim Harold (00:52:52):

Interesting. Well, maybe that head was up in that window there looking down on them. Interesting. Indeed. Very spooky. Randy, thank you so much for coming back on the show, sharing this story about the floating head, watching the high school play. And I’ve got to believe that it, it’s probably that experience and your other experiences have made you more interested in the paranormal and the supernatural, right?

Randy (CAN) (00:53:21):

Yeah, for sure. And stuff. I’ve had other experiences that maybe I’ll come back on and share at a later date, but it really did make me more sure that there’s something

Jim Harold (00:53:36):

I believe there is. Thank you so much, Randy, and stay spooky.

Randy (CAN) (00:53:41):

Thank you. Stay spooky. Jim.

Jim Harold (00:53:43):

Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by Harry’s. Sometimes you got to break out of the status quo, and I think I did that when I said I’m tired of working for somebody else. I’m going to cast my lot with these podcasts, and I’m so glad I did and so thankful for you allowing me to do that. And Harry’s has kind of done something very similar, granted, much bigger. They challenged the status quo and blaze their own trail. They saw customers getting ripped off by questionable products in the shaving industry. And they said, you know what? We’re not going to stand for this. We’re going to do something better. And they did. Instead of charging the same old ridiculous prices, Harry’s found their own way to make beautifully designed razors for a fraction of the price of other big brands,; exceptional products, honest prices, that’s Harry’s. Now, I love Harry’s.

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Announcer(00:56:48):

You are listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.

Jim Harold (00:56:50):

Ray is on the line from California. He is a long time listener. We appreciate it very much. He said he kept hearing these people call me and say, oh, I’ve been listening a week. I’ve been listening a month. I’ve been listening six months. And he said, it’s time for me to call in. And I’m so glad because he’s got a wild story about a haunted rental house. Kind of an odd vacation. Very strange indeed. Ray, thank you so much for joining us. Tell us what happened.

Ray (CA) (00:57:20):

Yeah, thanks again for having me. This is unreal, and I’m happy to share. Okay, this was a couple of years ago. It was me and my girlfriend, we were trying to just get a weekend out of town, and we didn’t want to go far. And Lake Arrowhead is pretty close to where we’re located. So we’re like, you know what? Let’s book a place. And it was very spur of the moment. We booked, it was like a three story house, and then we decided to invite friends. But the thing is, it was so spur of the moment, everyone declined. So once we actually started going up, we’re like, oh, this is just going to be us. So we didn’t think anything of it. But once we got there, that’s kind of when issues started arising. The first thing we remember or that I remember is we got to the house and it just looked like not boarded up or abandoned, but there was nothing there.

(00:58:16):

The keys weren’t, there was no reception to call the host. And I realized, okay, we got to go to town to get supplies anyway. Let’s go there. We’ll call them and get this straightened out. So we’re in town, I call them and they said, oh, the keys should have been there, but give us an hour. We’ll clean up a place and come back up. And that’s exactly what happened. We were just buying some stuff for the weekend. We get back and yeah, the keys are there now. And let me describe the house because it’s very important for the story. So it’s like a three story house, but there’s four levels total. So it’s built on the side of a cliff, and the top story is where you park your car and then you walk down one flight of stairs. You’re now on the second story of the property, but the first story of the house you walk in, and then that’s the living room kitchen, the main entrance.

(00:59:07):

Then there’s one story above below that, which is the second story of the house where the bedrooms are. And then the third story, which is below that, is a theater room that’s only accessible through the outside. And yeah, anyway, we get in there, we’re enjoying it, we’re settling in, having a fun night and just making stuff on the campfire. There’s a campfire. Yeah, there was a little fireplace there that we were making s’mores and things like that. But the first night was a little odd. We got to sleep into the second story, so we’re just sleeping. But I wake up in the middle of the night and I just remember I was awake because I was freezing and trying to get some blanket and at the edge of the bed. And I just remember going back to sleep, but instead of actually going to sleep, I remember that my vision zoomed out.

(01:00:03):

If you’re playing a video game and now you’re looking at everything in third person. And there was this weird shadowy thing that was looking down at me, and I don’t know if it was looking up, I freaking even see me that I was up or if I even was up because I could see everything from a third person point of view. And I was like, oh, that’s weird. But the next morning I remembered everything and I just remember waking up and telling my girlfriend, Hey, I don’t want to sleep in this room tonight. Let’s, you want to sleep in the front room. There’s only night left and there’s a fireplace there. It’s really nice. So we decide on that. The next day when we woke up that second night, now, sorry, second day we are out pretty much all day, and we only come back in the evening.

(01:00:53):

And in the evening we are kind of the same thing. Put the fireplace on, hanging out, watching tv. And I remember that I had to use the restroom, but I just couldn’t get myself to go downstairs because the restroom was located in that same bedroom. It was like a master bedroom slash restroom. And I was pacing for 20 minutes and my girlfriend was like, what are you doing? I was like, I have to use the restroom. She’s like, well go. But I was so terrified I didn’t want to tell her. So I was like, okay, I am going to go. I’ll be back. And I go down there and as I’m finishing up, I heard some sounds on the other side of the door and it just sounded like somebody moving around looking for something. So I was like, Hey babe, what are you doing?

(01:01:41):

Nothing, the sound. They just continued doing what they were doing. And I was like, that’s weird. They would’ve heard me. So I said it even louder, like, Hey babe, are you looking for something? Did you lose something? Almost shouting and nothing. So then I washed up and kind of just went head up. Now I’m up in the second story, but the first story of the house. And I kind of just asked her like, Hey, what were you looking for down there? And she’s like, nothing, but I wasn’t even down there, but I heard you yelling at me, thought you wanted toilet paper or something like that. And I was like, you heard that up here? So clearly if she was on the other side of that door, she would’ve heard me.

(01:02:24):

So I kind of just started getting more and more freaking out. And the more these little instances happen, the less I could tell her about it. I didn’t want to ruin the weekend anyway, so that night we fell asleep in the front room, and when we woke up, I just remember wanting to get the hell out of there as soon as possible because all this stuff has been kind stacking up and she has no idea, or at least I don’t think she does, but I just use the excuse of like, Hey, I want to get breakfast. We want to get there before breakfast is done. So let’s pack up and leave. And this is probably the most frightening part of the whole story, but we are putting our stuff away. We’re all in the front room, or there’s only two of us, but I’m in the kitchen and I’m washing just my hands, and there’s a window to the right.

(01:03:16):

And if you remember I mentioned there’s three stories of the house, which is a movie room below us, and then there’s stairs that lead outside. They go up, but they’re only accessible outside. Anyway, I’m in the kitchen and I hear a door slam so hard that the house shook and just running up the stairs, you could actually feel the house shaking too as they’re running up the stairs and as they run up to the first level, they’re now at the window where I’m washing the dishes and looking out of, yeah, and I froze. There was a curtain there, but it was really standing. I can see a shadow of something and I wanted to look out that window. It was so bad, but I was just paralyzed. I could not move. And when I finally snapped out of it, it took only six, seven seconds.

(01:04:10):

I started moving toward the window and whatever that thing was, ran up the next flight upstairs to go up into the street level. And I didn’t get a chance. I just kind of froze again when I felt that the stairs again were just being stomped on and hearing everything. And I just froze again. And that it was very obvious. Obviously my girlfriend heard and felt that, and I just said, oh yeah, let’s go. It’s time to go. And we just leave. We lock up everything. And the whole time that I’m driving to the breakfast place, I’m just silent. And she kept asking me about it, and I would just remember downplaying it. Oh, I don’t know. But I was terrified. And I only mentioned the story to her a year later because I didn’t want to freak her out with, I kind of didn’t think much of it until I looked back on it and I thought, wow, this probably could be a great Campfire story. And after looking everything up, I guess Lake Arrowhead is known for some haunted stuff. There was a TV show that was filmed there, like Ghost Hunters kind of thing and a lot of different stuff. And if I knew that before going in, I probably would’ve thought twice. But also I wish the reviews mentioned that or I wish I left the review so other people could know because it was pretty terrifying.

Jim Harold (01:05:32):

So what do you think it was? I mean meaning theories as to what kind of spirit it was?

Ray (CA) (01:05:39):

Well, I don’t know. I keep thinking maybe it was someone that lived there, because when I heard that looking for stuff kind of noise, it just sounded like a person looking for their things and maybe they don’t live there anymore or their things are no longer there, so they’re just looking forever if they’re never going to find it. And then as for the thing outside, because it was a physical thing, I’m like, can ghosts even do that? Can they make noise jump upstairs and it be felt? And whether it’s a person or an entity that did that, it was still terrifying, right? They were there the whole time and we had no idea.

Jim Harold (01:06:21):

Well, and I’m guessing if somebody said, Ray, I’ve got a deal for you. You can go stay for a week, all expenses paid, you’d have to worry about a thing. All you have to do is go there. Would you take ’em up on the offer or is once enough

Ray (CA) (01:06:39):

To go back to that place? Yeah, I thought about this. I was going to see to recreate this with a friend of mine that I told a story to, and I would definitely go back, but I would not stay the night.

Jim Harold (01:06:53):

There you go. There you go. Yeah. Sounds like a good plan to me. Ray, thank you so much for listening and for sharing your story today on the Campfire. Stay spooky.

Ray (CA) (01:07:05):

Thanks again. Yeah, thanks for having me. Stay spooky.

Jim Harold (01:07:07):

Elizabeth is on the line from Tennessee. She listens with her husband Lucas, and we certainly appreciate it. And Elizabeth is going to take us back to when she was a child, eight years old, and some strangeness that ensued. And Elizabeth is a little bit nervous, and we have told her there’s nothing to worry about. We’re all friends here. So Elizabeth, don’t worry about a thing and just tell us as though you’re telling a friend because you’re telling a friend and many friends out there.

Elizabeth (TN) (01:07:38):

Alright, Jim. All right. So like Jim said, this experience took place when I was around young. My parents and I lived approximately five miles south of Bland O’Lakes, Wisconsin, and they purchased a restaurant there because my father was a very experienced executive chef for many years, and they naturally had passions for owning their own establishment. So naturally they bought it and it was called the Fireside. So since my parents had opened it, I’m just give a little bit backstory. The area itself was very desolate. So my parents had a habit of ensuring all of our staff were very included and recognized for their individual strengths. It was northern Wisconsin, so it was pretty difficult to find staff members. That was kind of a miracle in itself. So yeah, they naturally took care of everybody, and all of our customers loved us, and we were very busy in peak times.

(01:08:49):

So one of the things that the staff members and my family would do together is there was a burn barrel located on the back of the property, back behind the restaurant. And in between the restaurant and the back of the property, there were several flower gardens that my mom had and a deer feeder. So there were things like in the way that people would admire, rather than maybe noticing this burn barrel back on the property, it was halfway into the ground so that we could have fire safely. And then beyond that was basically, we called it the Northland Pines, very tall, high, big pine trees. So one of the nights, it was definitely during the summer and after closing time, and none of the staff was around that night, but it was kind of common for us to hang out back there and burn anything from any of our food deliveries and such cardboard or anything that was burned, obviously safe to burn.

(01:10:02):

So this night in particular, it was just my father, my mother and I, and we were doing that exact thing, just burning things that we didn’t need. And the people that lived on the one side of us, it was just a woman that was by herself. She was in her seventies, and the other neighbor on the other side, one of they were deaf and also in their seventies. So this is important because all of a sudden when we’re at the fire from the woods at maybe the height of maybe I would say eight feet, something comes flying out of the woods kind of at an upward trajectory, and then it lands directly at our feet, and we all look down and we’re like, wait, what? And it’s one of our dinner rolls, and obviously we scattered and ran back to the restaurant, but when we realized that it was our own dinner roll, yeah, my father had ordered them from Cisco, but he rolled them in butter and tossed ’em in seeds. They were pretty distinctive. Not to mention there weren’t that many other restaurants up there, subway clubs that offered that type of thing anyway. And what’s even more bizarre is there weren’t really any leftovers of those because if there were any, I mean, we would either staff members or myself would eat them, or if there were a couple leftover in the roll jar at the end of the night, my father would proceed to make croutons out of them. So there was very, we didn’t throw them away outside of the obvious.

(01:11:53):

So once we all got back inside, we were just kind of blown away, like, wait a minute, we had uplighting back against the forest as well. So we would’ve seen any kind wildlife or any kind of a person walking around, any kind of activity. A, we would’ve heard it. And then B, we also would’ve seen some kind of visual to distinct something’s moving. And it was just rather bizarre. And like I said, my parents took care of their staff members, we took care of our customers, we didn’t have any bad blood with anybody, and it was a very desolate area. And my parents also owned the 10 acres behind that. And sure, there’s snowmobile tracks and decommissioned railroad tracks, but I mean, outside of that, there’s no other properties back there. Nobody has any business being back there. So it was just quite bizarre. I mean, even if somebody did go back there, I mean, what kind of message is that? You know what I’m saying?

(01:13:05):

Who throws a roll or, anyway, we also ruled out animals. I mean, in our experience, animals are usually deterred by fire. And I mean, yes, birds forge around and can toss seeds out of a feeder, but I mean, we’ve never witnessed a bird throwing their food or especially at a, that didn’t make sense to us. That didn’t add it up at all. And then oddly enough, when I went back to school, my parents, we were a separate club, so we were only open for dinner time. And when I would be gone at school during the day periodically, they would just, if they had the time, they would go ahead and go back on the property and take walks. I mean, as frequently as they could. I mean, they were running the business on their own. And so they were back there one day when I was in school, and this is again, broad daylight and all of, again, a role or they didn’t know it was a role, but when it landed, they did again, just comes flying on the woods completely. They didn’t tell anybody they were going on a walk. They didn’t share with anybody like, Hey, we’ll be back at X time, even if they did, I mean, so again, a roll flies out of the woods and they don’t realize what it is until it lands in front of them. And so they quickly proceeded to go and head back to the fireside. So it’s just kind of a head scratcher that has bothered us for

Jim Harold (01:14:53):

Now, this was northern Wisconsin, right? Am I right?

Elizabeth (TN) (01:14:56):

Correct. Yeah. So it was about five miles south of UP and Michigan.

Jim Harold (01:15:02):

So it’s a wilderness. There’s a lot of wilderness around, do you? 

Elizabeth (TN) (01:15:05):

Yeah. It’s the middle of the Ottawa National Forest. 

Jim Harold (01:15:08):

Do you feel, I mean, this might seem out there. Do you think it could have been a Sasquatch or a Bigfoot?

Elizabeth (TN) (01:15:17):

That is one of the things that we have discussed. So I would not doubt that. Oddly enough, my aunt and, well, actually both of my aunts, my dad’s older sisters, they were with my grandpa in a different part of northern Wisconsin, and they swear my grandpa got out of the car to tend to something outside of the vehicle. I think it was some kind of a 1970s Chevy blazer. And he got out of the car and to tend to something, and the girls say that they looked out the window and that’s what they saw, and they started screaming, and my grandpa threw whatever, he had his hand and was looking around and he didn’t see anything. But both of them can swear that they did. And I’ve asked her when I get to see her at different things, weddings or Christmas, or I’ve asked her a few times just to kind of reverify her because I’m obviously interested in that thing. So get it right from the horse’s mouth.

Jim Harold (01:16:28):

The thing is, now this is idle speculation. I mean, this could be totally off base, but let me throw a possible theory out there. Now, you had mentioned in your email how delicious these dinner rolls was. Everybody loved those dinner rolls. You love those dinner rolls. Staff loved the dinner, but I assume, I don’t know this for a fact, but I assume that the tastes and palette of a Sasquatch or a Bigfoot is way different or different than human palette, I would imagine. I would imagine. So could it be that somehow the Sasquatch or Bigfoot took offense at the spices? You said your dad, he bought these at a supply place, but he kind of made them his own and added in all these delicious spices. It’s making me hungry talking about it right now, but the point is, is that, yeah, humans love it. Maybe a big foot, not so much. What do you think about that theory?

Elizabeth (TN) (01:17:27):

I mean, that’s a valid theory. I mean, yeah, if they’re foraging around it, they’re certainly not, I wouldn’t assume going to find sesame seeds or poppy seeds. So that could be totally valid.

Jim Harold (01:17:41):

Well, as we know from our sponsor Hero Bread, I love love bread and I love dinner rolls. So thank you so much for telling us the story. If you ever figure out what was thrown those, please let us know. And I know you have more stories. You did a great job. No need to have been nervous, and I hope you’ll come back and tell us the other ones some point in the future.

Elizabeth (TN) (01:18:05):

Absolutely. Jim, thank you so much. Thank you for all your patience, and thanks for everything you do.

Jim Harold (01:18:09):

Stay spooky. Ali is on the line for Montana. She heard about us from, of course, and that’s why we drink Christine and Em. They are always so kind in spreading the word. We appreciate it, and we’re so glad to have Ali with us today. And she’s going to tell us about a late uncle who gave her a sign. Ali, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. Tell us what happened.

Ali (MT) (01:18:34):

Thanks so much. I first off, want to start off by giving a little descriptor of what my apartment looks like because the layout’s really important to the story. I think it was built in the early two thousands. We’re probably the fourth person that’s lived there. My mom actually lived there before me. And then we took the lease over and we’ve got a front room and then an 80 degree. It’s not quite 90 degree corner. And then the back hallway has my son’s room, a full bathroom, and then the end of the hallway is the master bedroom and bathroom. And then on the other side of that other full bathroom is a little laundry area. And this weird corner, there’s just something about it. My mom, when she lived there, our family dog who’s no longer with us, she was obsessed with that corner. Our cat’s obsessed with that corner.

(01:19:32):

And when my son was learning to wave, he would wave at that corner all the time, and it connects to his room where I keep getting all of these signs and activity that we’re having. So my uncle passed away in 1997. Oh, I’m sorry, 1998 when I was seven. And I’ve just always thought that he’s been connected to me just because he would tell everybody that my sister and I were his girls. He was always like, Nope, those are my girls. He was just so protective of us. And after my son was born, we just started having these weird little instances. He’s not a very good sleeper, even almost a year and a half later. And I got up with him and I was walking past that bathroom and one of the lights in the bathroom was on, and I always keep all of the lights of the house off such a temperamental sleeper. And we used to keep his door open because if we didn’t, the cat would eat the carpet and protest.

(01:20:44):

So thankfully we got him to stop doing that. I can close the door now, and that’s been helpful, but I would leave all the lights off. So I know that after the bathtime routine and stuff, that light was off and it was on, and I woke up, my husband, I needed help because my son wasn’t feeling good, and so I had to have my husband help. And I was like, Hey, did you leave that light on? And he was like, no, I don’t know why that’s on. And it was like, okay, that’s really weird, whatever. And then maybe a month later, he’s got this really cute little lamp in his room that’s like a circle shape that has all these star cutouts that projects stars onto the walls. And he woke up again. And so I went in to go check on him, and that lamp was on, and it makes this really audible click when you turn it off. And so I know I had turned it off because I am always doing it so carefully, like, oh, God, don’t wake him up while I’m turning it off. And so it was like, okay, why is this lamp on? That’s really weird. And again, I asked my husband and he was like, I don’t know, babe, you probably just forgot to turn it off. And it was like, yeah, okay, okay.

(01:21:55):

He’s a skeptic. So he’s like, you just probably did something. And I was like, yeah, you’re right. And then one night my husband had to go to the grocery store while I was putting my son down for the night, and I had the door closed to his room and that little lamp on so I could see what I was doing in there. And it doesn’t produce a lot of light, but it’s enough. And I see this shadow go by where the door is. And I was like, oh, it’s a car. We live by a really, really busy street. And I was like, oh, it’s probably car headlights. And then I realized, oh, I’ve blacked out all his windows. It can’t have been a car headlights. There’s no way that’s possible. And I was like, okay, well, that was weird. Oh, it was probably the cat, because the cat likes to kind of be like the watcher.

(01:22:47):

He’ll sit by the door and keep an eye while I’m doing bedtime routine to make sure everything’s going okay. And I was like, oh, it was probably the cat. And I kind of calm myself down. I can feel my heart racing. And then I’m thinking about it and I’m thinking about where the shadow was. I’m like, that shadow was too high on the wall for it to be the cat. And then I realized that the shadow passed over top of the star cutouts, if that makes sense. So the way the star lights projected, the shadow was over top of that. So it couldn’t have been from anything outside of the room. It came from inside of the room, and it was just like, okay, well, I’m just going to move that aside.

(01:23:32):

And that’s when I had heard Christine on And That’s Why We Drink talk about asking for signs. And so there was one night where my husband’s a super extrovert, and so he went out with some friends and I was like, I’m going to stay home with the baby, have a really chill night in you go have a fun time. I do the nighttime routine. I get my son down and I’m cleaning up the kitchen a little bit after mealtime, and I’m just like, you know what? I’m just going to ask out loud. And my uncle’s name was Mike. And so I go, Hey, uncle Mike, if you’re here, I would love a little sign. If I could have it be in the form of rocks and bells, that would be great. I just picked two things that I knew like, oh, he’ll respond in this way.

(01:24:15):

And immediately, my son’s not my son. My husband’s iPad dings a bell sound immediately. And I was like, oh, okay. Thank you for the response. I really appreciate that. And then it dinged again, and it was just like, okay. And I kind of brushed it off. I was like, oh, I’m texting my husband. It’s probably connected to his phone and it’s just his text tone. But I realized later the next morning I had been texting him all night, and it only went off those two times. And then the rest of the time I was texting him, I never heard the iPad go off again. And so it was just like interesting. Oh, okay, that’s weird that it did that, but maybe it was a malfunction. And then I didn’t even realize it until much later, but the rock sign happened. I have this little quartz worry stone that I keep in my pocket all the time for my anxiety, and it just kind of helps me feel more grounded and stuff.

(01:25:16):

And I had lost it, and I didn’t even realize I had lost it, just because, I mean, having a one-year-old is exhausting, so you’re not paying attention to those things. And so it didn’t occur to me that like, oh, it was missing until my husband was like, Hey, I found your worry stone. And it was just like, oh, thank you. I can’t believe I lost that. And then I was in Denver in January of this year to go see Em and Christine actually, and my sister and I were running to our gate, and I just had this sudden impulse of, I need to turn around really quick and look at the floor. And I turn around and my worry stone had fallen out of my pocket. I was like, oh, I’m really glad that I listened to that voice. 

(01:26:03):

And then a little bit before Valentines’ day, I had asked, I was doing the nighttime routine of getting my son down again. And I just, while I was putting my son down, asked again, I was like, Hey, uncle, uncle Mike, I’m pretty sure I got your signs, but I might be being kind of oblivious and maybe I missed it. If you could give me the sign of roses, that’ll really tell me that you’re here and stuff. Because when I was driving, I kept feeling someone patting my head, and it was just so weird. It was like I would like, okay, it’s not the fence. Nothing’s like, my hair’s not snake anything, but I’d be just driving along to go pick up my son from my parents’ house. And I just kept feeling somebody gently patting my head. And so I asked him too, I was like, okay, this will kind of help confirm that you’re watching out for me and my son and that you’re keeping an eye on me while I’m driving and stuff like that. And we don’t really do flowers in our house. Our cat is notorious for eating them.

(01:27:11):

I swear he’s a toddler. He just gets into everything. And so we don’t really do that kind of stuff. And I don’t wear perfumes that are florally. I like those really earthy, musky scents. So I was thinking I was going to get assigned with the smell or something. And then for Valentine’s Day, my husband came home and surprised me with a bouquet of flowers. And I was just like, we don’t have the money for this. What are you doing? Daycare? Daycare’s so expensive. We don’t do stuff like this. The cat’s going to eat it. And he was like, no things. You’ve been working so hard, and I just wanted to give you a little something to show how much I just love how good of a mom you are. And I was like, oh, that’s so sweet. And there were roses in it, and he was like, it’s so funny.

(01:27:57):

I got to the cashier and realized there weren’t any roses in this bouquet, and I had to go back and pick a different bouquet because there weren’t any roses. And they’re not even my favorite flower or anything, but he’s like, you had to have them. So I had to get use something with roses in it. Oh man, that’s crazy. And it was just like, okay, okay. I’ll go, Mike, I hear you. I hear you. You’re here. And we’ve just had some weird stuff happen ever since I’ve gotten the confirmation of the sign a little bit. I think I wrote it in my email. We on the nanny cam, I heard a male’s voice say hello. And I thought it was our neighbors. They’re kind of loud, and I was looking everywhere. There was nobody outside. It was unusually quiet in our neighborhood. And my husband, when I haven’t been home, has heard my voice coming from my son’s room trying to get his attention. And then two weeks ago as I was putting my son in his crib, it was like a flash of lightning happened behind me. It was the weirdest. I’ve never experienced anything like that before because like I said, his room is completely pitch black.

Jim Harold (01:29:13):

Wow. Well, I got to say, it seems like your uncle has done a pretty good job of getting the signs through. I love that Rose story and the fact that your husband had that epiphany, I need to have roses in this, even though they’re not your favorite, you had to have roses. I have to believe that’s Uncle Mike.

Ali (MT) (01:29:31):

Yeah, I do too. It’s just so weird. Especially he was also the one that gave me the worry stone too. So it’s really funny that in two separate ways, he was like, okay, I’m going to use your husband to show I’m here. That’s so cool. So I think that’s really special.

Jim Harold (01:29:45):

Well, Ali, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your story of a very special uncle on the Campfire.

Ali (MT) (01:29:53):

Of course. Thank you so much, Jim.

Jim Harold (01:29:55):

Thanks so much for tuning into the Campfire. I appreciate it, and I hope that you will check out True Ghost Stories: Campfire Six, Jim Harold’s Campfire Six, our new book coming out May 7th. You can find all of the links at JimHarold.com. Click on the big green button, or you can search in places like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the bookstore of your choice. We’ve really made an effort this time around to hopefully be anywhere online you want to find us. Also, you should be able to ask your local bookstore to order it as well. It may just be getting into the system on the print side for the non-Amazon stuff, so it may take a week or two for it to show up. But definitely if you’re interested in getting one from your local bookstore, that will and should be an option for them to order it. Or you can just order it online. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, whatever your preference. We thank you so much for tuning in. We will talk to you next time, and have a great week, everybody. Bye bye.

Announcer (01:30:51):

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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