A trippy Ouija story, siblings have an amazing bond that shows up during a crisis, the ghost of a stepfather and much more on Campfire!
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TRANSCRIPT
A great Ouija board story and much more on this edition of the Campfire.
Welcome to our gathering tonight. Here we share stories of ordinary people who have experienced extraordinary things. Sit back, relax, and warm yourself by Jim Harold’s Campfire.
JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold and so glad to be with you once again If you’re new here, what we do is share real stories from real people about really spooky and strange stuff that happens to them – UFOs, cryptids, ghosts. Whatever it might be, that is a part of the picture here at the Campfire, and we’re so glad to have you with us once again.
We have two spooky shoutouts and a special message to share today before we get to the stories, including a fantastic Ouija board story.
Bridget wrote in and said that she wanted me to give a spooky shoutout to her eight-year-old son, Elijah. Elijah is testing for his red belt in taekwondo on September 10th, and he loves listening to the Campfire. So I wanted to wish him good luck and stay spooky, and I understand once you get this, in another year or so you can test for black belt. My goodness, very impressive, Elijah. I know you’re going to pass that test. I know you’re going to do great. Stay spooky, and all the best of luck.
And then we’ve got Tommy, a shoutout to Tommy. Katie says, “My best friend Tommy and I love your show and have been listeners for two years. We listen every week and discuss all the awesome stories. If you don’t mind giving Tommy a spooky shoutout for his birthday on September 3rd, it’s appreciated.” Tommy, happy birthday and stay spooky.
And if you want your own personalized shoutout via video from me, for birthdays, anniversaries, congratulations, whatever it might be, go to cameo.com/thejimharold. That’s cameo.com/thejimharold.
Now, it is time to say farewell to somebody who is very special: Aurora Howes. She started out as a listener and a big fan of the podcasts, and she kind of became an auxiliary member of the team. Her specialty was quality control and listening to our shows and making sure that there weren’t any errors or any mistakes, and she did a great, great job at it.
But in the process, she became a friend, and a very special friend – a person who, for example, played host in her home to Minor League baseball players who needed almost a parent. She served as that, she and her husband did. Also, she volunteered to play Mrs. Claus at Christmastime. Just fantastic. Really, really a special person.
Aurora had been ill for quite some time, and unfortunately we lost her in August. It’s a sad thing. It’s a part of life, it’s the circle, but it’s still a very, very sad thing. I want to wish her husband, Ed, all the best at this difficult time. May your memories be a comfort to you, and the knowledge that one day you’ll be together again, because I know I believe that. I believe that Aurora believed that.
And I believe that really I shouldn’t be talking about her in the past tense, but I should be talking about her in the present tense, because if I believe what I believe, she’s still around, and she has the answers now that we’re all seeking and knows what all this interesting thing called life is all about.
So Aurora, thank you for everything you did for the shows, but more importantly, thank you for being you and just being a great person. God bless and rest in peace, but celebrate as well when you’re up there in heaven. Aurora, thanks again.
And now, on to the Campfire stories.
Carson is on the line from California, and we’ll keep the alliteration going – this could be a Campfire classic, the story that he’s about to tell us. It’s a Ouija story. He found us on Reddit, so let me say this: that’s someplace I wish we had a lot more traction and people knew about us. So if you are on Reddit and you’re a fan of the show, please go on Reddit, in the appropriate places where people talk about these sorts of things, and spread the word. I would very much appreciate it.
Carson today is going to tell us – well, I think this very well might be a Campfire classic – a Ouija story. Carson, welcome to the show and tell us this amazing story.
CARSON: Thanks for having me, Jim. Me and two other friends were up in Prescott, Arizona where my family has a cabin. If you’ve got a cabin in the woods, you’ve got to have a Ouija board, everybody knows. So that night, I brought it out and I said, “Who wants to play?” They were both down. We set up the Ouija and we put our hands on the planchette.
Whenever I play Ouija board – and I play it a lot – I always ask, “Are there spirits here?” as my first question. So I asked that, and we’re all sitting there. It doesn’t feel like it’s moving. But then it starts to move almost imperceptibly slow, just so slow that we could have a conversation while we were doing it. I’m going, “Oh wow, I’ve never had it move this slow.” They weren’t as experienced as me with the Ouija board.
Slowly it goes to “yes,” so I go to my next standard question: “Are you a man or a woman?” It slowly, slowly goes to “W.” I go, “Oh my God, you guys, I think we’ve got contact.” It just felt real. You know how when you’re playing Ouija board – it just had that sense about it. So I say, “What’s your name?” Slowly, slowly, it goes to “H,” and then slowly to “E,” and then to “I,” and at that point I go, “Oh man, this is nonsense. There’s no name that starts with H-E-I.” They’re both going, “Yeah, this is just going to be gobbledygook.” I go, “I guess we’re just nudging it around. That’s fine.”
Then it goes to “D” and then “I,” and it spells out “Heidi.” I go, “Whoa!” I had never thought of that name. I don’t have a friend named Heidi, I don’t have a family member named Heidi. Maybe couldn’t even spell it. They both felt the same. We were in our mid-twenties and they were kind of macho guys, but they were like, “I’m too scared to play.” I was begging them, “Please. We’ve made contact.”
That was when I was confident – I knew I wasn’t moving it, and I was confident they weren’t because they were showing me genuine fear. So I think we went and watched a movie instead.
Well, in and of itself I didn’t really feel like that was a story. I always require some kind of objective confirmation or something for a ghost story to be true in my mind. But then about six months later, I went back to the cabin. I’m an animator, and I was going to work on one of my cartoons; I needed some quiet time. So I went up there, and I’m going around the house, grabbing supplies and whatnot. My dad is a painter, and upstairs he has a studio.
So I go upstairs and open the door, and right there on his taboret, which is almost flush with the door – there’s maybe a foot between the door and the taboret – someone has removed a single antique book from the bookcase and placed it on the taboret so it’s facing whoever enters to read it. And it was the book Heidi.
It was a creepy old copy with a Dick-and-Jane style crusty illustration on the book’s leaf. I just picked it right up and put it back, and I put it out of my mind until I was driving home, done with my solo trip up there. That’s when I started to go, “Oh my God.” [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: It was one of those things where you’re just like [dun-dun-DUN!]. [laughs]
CARSON: [laughs] That’s exactly what it was like.
JIM HAROLD: Wow, that is a Campfire classic.
CARSON: Oh good, I’m glad to hear that.
JIM HAROLD: That is an awesome story. And “Heidi,” other than the context of the book, it’s not a real common name. It’s not like it’s “Jennifer” or “Jessica” or something like that. Really interesting.
CARSON: Yeah. There’d been other ghostly things in that house. My dad woke up one night and there was a bell ringing over his head. He woke my mom up and said, “Hey, do you hear that?” They never were able to figure out where the sound was coming from. So the house has that vibe about it in general, too.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah. What a great, great story. Carson, I appreciate it. When we were talking, Carson was telling me what a fan he is of the paranormal and John Keel. I’m like, oh, you are the real deal.
CARSON: Oh yeah. I’ve read it all.
JIM HAROLD: That’s awesome.
CARSON: I’ve ruined many a dinner party. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: [laughs] I’m proud of you. Carson, thank you for being a part of the Campfire.
CARSON: Thanks, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Dianna is on the line from Oregon, and she has what I consider to be a remarkable story. I’m not even going to say what it is; I don’t want to spoil it in any way. A big shoutout to her niece, Gabby, for telling her about the show. Dianna says she listens on her commute. Dianna, thank you for joining us from Oregon today and please tell us this remarkable story.
DIANNA: My story takes place about two years ago, last July. A little bit of preface – it deals with my friend Denise, who I’ve known for over 20 years, and we still live in the same city. We met in California, in Venice. Life happens; we each moved away, so we mainly kept in contact by telephone. We talked every few weeks or every couple of months, whenever it struck us to call each other.
I talked to her on a Sunday when this story starts, and talked probably for an hour and a half or so, got all caught up to date and everything, and then when I was getting off the phone, I said, “I’ll talk to you in a few weeks,” as a hint of I was all talked out, didn’t need to talk anymore. So we got off the phone.
A couple days later, on a Wednesday, I was sitting at work. I was working from home. I just had this overwhelming sensation to call her. Her name just popped into my head, and I didn’t know what or why, but I stopped what I was doing. And I’m not usually the type of person – when I think about calling somebody, I usually wait a couple of days and think about it, “Oh, I need to call them,” because I’m not really a phone talker. But it was so overwhelming that I just stopped what I was doing and called her on the phone, and it went to voicemail.
I didn’t really think anything of it, because sometimes she didn’t answer the phone. I thought, “She’ll call me back.” A couple of days passed and she still didn’t call me back, so I called her again and it went to voicemail again. I was getting a bad feeling at this point, but not really because I talked to her every once in a while. Sometimes I would call and she wouldn’t give me a call back.
Sunday rolls around, and I was doing chores and I missed a phone call. I went over and checked and I had a voicemail. I listened to it, and it was her niece. She had called me – which still wasn’t out of the ordinary. I didn’t call her right back because I was finishing my chores. The phone rang again, and she left another voicemail. At that point, I knew that something had happened. Something really bad. I didn’t want to call her back. I knew what she was going to tell me.
But I called her back anyways, and she told me that Denise had been in an accident. She had drowned in her backyard pool. When I got that overwhelming feeling, her husband had gone out there and found her and got her out of the pool and called the paramedics. They had revived her. So she was breathing, but on machines. When they had taken her – sorry, I’m getting upset. When they’d taken her off the machine is almost the exact time I had gotten that overwhelming feeling when her name popped into my head. And she passed away.
JIM HAROLD: Wow. It’s one of those things where it’s very, very sad, and I’m so sorry for what happened to your friend. What a tragic circumstance. But to me, it speaks to the connection that you both had and the friendship, and how important that was in both directions and how deep it was in both directions. I’m not a therapist or anything like that; I don’t pretend to be. But I would think maybe that should be a little bit of a comfort in the sense that you meant that much to her and she meant that much to you, and you had that friendship, which is not necessarily an everyday thing.
So I think in some ways, tragic circumstances, but that experience tells me that you guys really, really had a great, great friendship.
DIANNA: She was. She was one of my really good friends. It was just weird. I knew it happened on that Wednesday when I had that feeling. I knew what it was. I knew something had happened, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. That’s why I didn’t call her back the next day, because I didn’t want to know. I didn’t even want to call her niece back. I still can’t believe it.
JIM HAROLD: I believe there’s a golden thread, and sometimes it’s by blood and sometimes it’s not, but just as close as blood. What a fascinating story. Dianna, thank you for joining us today on the Campfire and sharing it with us.
DIANNA: Thank you, Jim. Thank you for having me.
JIM HAROLD: Next up on the line is Marlyn from Utah. We’re so glad to have her on the show. She’s going to tell us about a weird experience one time when she was babysitting. Marlyn, welcome to the show. Thanks for listening. I know our friends at Astonishing Legends sent you this way, so we thank Scott and Forrest. Please tell us your story.
MARLYN: Awesome. Thanks, Jim. I’m in my thirties now; this is when I was in eighth grade and I was at my friend’s house. We were babysitting her little sister. It was actually her stepsister. Her stepdad had died a few years before that, so we were babysitting her and we were listening to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” and we were spinning around in circles.
I opened my eyes for just a second, and my eyes scanned the top of their stairs into their basement, and on those stairs was the perfect figure of a person. No detail, but it was bright white.
JIM HAROLD: Wow.
MARLYN: Yeah. I didn’t feel bad feelings, but I was definitely shocked. I stopped and I turned to my friend, and I said, “Oh my gosh, I just saw a figure of a person, all white, on your stairs.” She goes, “Oh, that’s probably my stepdad. He’s here all the time.” I’m like, “Uh… okay…” [laughs] Again, I didn’t have negative feelings, but I was like, this isn’t normal for me to see spirits all over the place.
So I was kind of catching my breath, a little shocked, and then we start dancing again. A couple minutes later, her little sister goes, “Daddy!”, and she runs up the stairs. My friend and I look at each other. We follow her up there. I’m way behind her because I’m like, I don’t know if I want to see anything else tonight. [laughs]
So we follow her up the stairs and she’s lying on her mom’s bed, and she’s saying, “Daddy, Daddy!” My friend goes, “Where is he?” She points to a corner that she’s staring right at. She just lay there for like half an hour, maybe. And she was two, and that’s a pretty good time for a two-year-old to stay still. We just sat on her mom’s bed, and I had goosebumps everywhere and was looking all over the room.
But as I got older, that was a pretty cool experience. In the moment I was creeped out, but I’m like, wow, what a cool thing to be able to witness and be part of.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, they just seemed like it was a relative – like he was alive, just like, “Oh, he’s coming to visit again,” like it was a normal thing.
MARLYN: Yeah. They’re like, “Oh, he watches over us all the time.” I’m like, “Okay, good for you, but I’m scared.” [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: I don’t blame you. That is a very, very cool story, Marlyn. I know you have another longer story. We’re going to catch that next time, and you’re going to come back, I understand. Thank you so much for telling us this remarkable story about the stepdad ghost.
MARLYN: No problem. Thanks, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Cindy is on the line from Georgia, and we’re so glad to have her on the show. I love these kinds of stories; they’re fascinating to me. This is something that’s been reported the world round. It’s a very real thing, I believe. Cindy, welcome to the show and please tell us this remarkable story.
CINDY: Thank you, Jim. Back in 2017, I was working second shift, so I didn’t really get up early. My daughter was already grown, out of the house, working at the hospital, and my son was at his dad’s. His dad was taking him to school that day, because we share custody.
My daughter calls me at 7:30 in the morning, and I get that call and I’m freaking out because I think something’s wrong. She says, “Mama, I’m hurting in my stomach. I don’t know what’s wrong.” I said, “Well, you’re driving to the hospital to work. Get checked out when you get there.” But she said by the time she got there – she told me, “I can’t explain it. It’s not me.” I said, “What do you mean?” She says, “I don’t know. Something’s wrong.” She just kept saying “Something’s wrong.” I said, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
I hang up with her and about 10 minutes later, I get a call from the sheriff’s office that my son was in a horrific car crash. It was bad. He’s fine now, so that’s all that matters.
JIM HAROLD: Oh, good.
CINDY: But it was really bad. We didn’t know if he was going to make it.
JIM HAROLD: Oh my gosh.
CINDY: And it was happening right at the time when Gracie called me and was telling me all this. I didn’t think of it at the time, because I’m rushing to the hospital and all that, but afterwards, Gracie mentioned, “I guess now I know why I was hurting so bad.” She was hurting right where all of his internal injuries were. It was crazy.
And a few days beforehand, I just had a feeling of something bad was going to happen. I don’t know. We’re all kind of connected like that.
JIM HAROLD: I believe that, and I believe when you’re close with someone or close friends or blood relatives or those kinds of things – it reminds me, my mom used to always tell this story about my grandma. My mom had a lot of brothers, but at this time she was living at home, and her youngest brother was living at home. He was older than her, but he was – I’m not sure if he was the youngest. I think he might’ve been the youngest of the family in terms of boys. She was the youngest girl. They had a slew of kids. This is in West Virginia, and this must’ve been probably in the ’50s, early ’60s.
At this time, this was before electrification in that area. They didn’t have electric. They didn’t have a phone. No internet (ha ha). No television. Nothing. But anyway, they were home and my mom’s brother had gone to work. I think he worked in like the oil fields or the gas wells where they drilled for gas, because the area where they were from in West Virginia they drilled for gas.
She told my mom, “Your brother’s either been hurt real bad on the job or he’s dead.” And lo and behold – they didn’t have a phone, so somebody an hour or two later comes walking up to the door and said that he had been hurt very badly, and he ended up breaking his pelvis.
CINDY: Oh, goodness gracious.
JIM HAROLD: He lived and he was fine after his recovery, but my grandma knew.
CINDY: I’m telling you. Families know.
JIM HAROLD: That happens.
CINDY: Just a little thing that happened when Gracie was a baby – I was dead asleep, and I don’t know – all of a sudden I woke up out of a dead sleep, ran into her room where she was in her crib, and she was choking, throwing up. Not really choking yet, but she had thrown up, and I was like, “How did I wake up?” It’s crazy.
JIM HAROLD: Yep, I’ve heard that one too. It’s true. There’s a golden thread that exists between us and our loved ones. I think it’s actually a pretty neat thing.
CINDY: Absolutely.
JIM HAROLD: Cindy, thank you so much for sharing your story, and I’m so glad that your son is doing okay now.
CINDY: Thank you, sir. Thank you.
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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: Chelsey is on the line from Virginia. She’s been listening for several years. We appreciate it. She has a story – she calls it a quick headscratcher, but it’s very impactful. I love these kinds of stories. Chelsey, welcome to the show and thank you for joining us. Thanks for all your support over the years, and tell us what happened.
CHELSEY: This is what I would call a headscratcher because there’s really no explaining it. About a few months ago, my boyfriend and I went and did a little weekend getaway trip. We stayed in a hotel. I didn’t get very much sleep because we were in a hotel and it just, I don’t know, kind of weirds me out a little bit sometimes.
On the drive home, we were really drowsy and tired, so when we finally got back to our house, we basically went to go take naps. We live in a three-story townhome, so I went upstairs to the top floor to go take my nap, and my boyfriend was downstairs on the bottom floor. He was just hanging out – that’s where our living room is, and he was hanging out before he took a nap down there.
I’m in my bed, asleep, and I felt something crawling on my neck. I sleepily brush it away, and it just moves to another part of my neck, so I brush it away off my neck, and I hear something land by my face. I open my eyes and I see there’s a tick. I’m so grossed out because we’re not originally from the East Coast, so I am really, really creeped out by all the diseases ticks can carry.
Anyway, I panic. I jump up, I run to the bathroom, I grab some tissue, grab the tick and flush it down the toilet. I’m panicking, thinking that maybe when I had come inside from the trip to empty out trash in the garbage outside the house, maybe that’s where a tick had come and crawled on me.
I rush downstairs to ask my boyfriend if he can do a tick check on me to see if there’s any other ticks on me at all. So I rush downstairs and he’s sitting up on the couch, and he is on his phone, just scrolling. I go to him and I say, “I need you to do a tick check on me.” He looks at me, bewildered, and he’s like, “A tick? What are you talking about?” I said, “I just woke up from a nap and there was a tick crawling on me. I grabbed it and I flushed it down the toilet.”
He looked really shocked because he said, “That’s really creepy because I just woke up from a nap where I had a dream that there was a tick on the bed. You were on the bed and we were both looking for a tick on the bed.” We were both weirded out. I told him, “That literally just happened. I literally just woke up because there was a tick on me on the bed.” So we were both just like, how the heck did that – I don’t know, there’s no explaining it.
JIM HAROLD: That’s weird.
CHELSEY: It was super weird.
JIM HAROLD: And there’s no way he could’ve heard you or anything like that. You guys were totally separated. To me, it seems like there’s a great connection there, and basically, it was him feeling you had this situation going on.
CHELSEY: Yeah, I don’t know. It was strange. I don’t think there’s any real explaining it. Either there is a really good connection there or – I don’t know. It was just really strange.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, it’s really weird. We’ve had calls like that recently where there’s this connection between people who are close, they’re related or they’re close friends or boyfriend/girlfriend kind of things. It’s just really amazing. I think it’s a very, very real thing. Chelsey, thank you so much for listening all these years, and thank you for being a part of the Campfire.
CHELSEY: Thanks, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Maggie is on the line from Kentucky, and she has – well, my favorite kind of story. You know me; I love those headscratchers, and she’s got one for us tonight. Maggie, welcome to the show and please tell us what happened.
MAGGIE: Thank you. Last December, I think I had a visit, except I’m not sure who or what that visit was. We had this incredible warm front come through, and it was ahead of storms, as it sometimes is. But it was an enormous treat – that’s how I saw it at the time – to be able to sleep out on our porch.
I’m on the porch, but there’s no sleep to be had because as soon as I’m set up, this enormous electrical storm comes through. This is the same storm last December that, in western Kentucky, killed 57 people. Here in central Kentucky, we just had an enormous storm. There was constant lighting and thunder. I’m up and down off the couch, trying to re-anchor the solar panels to keep the rain off me. So I’m awake, is what I’m saying. There’s no way to sleep. There’s a certain amount of light on our porch from lightning and twinkle lights and candles that are down in hurricane lamps. I’m awake. I’m up and down.
For some reason, I start thinking about my grandpa in this very specific way, to the extent that – all I can tell you, Jim, is that he’s been gone 46 years, but he was there on that porch with me.
JIM HAROLD: Wow.
MAGGIE: To the extent that I turned my head towards where I felt his presence and said, “Grandpa?” As I did that, I saw this outline. Just think this generic form, entirely composed of blackness, silhouetted against all this light – lightning, light from the living room behind it. No light is coming through it, and there’s nothing there on the porch it can be. And it’s right next to me. It has a head, it has shoulders, and then it seems to go straight down to the ground.
I had just gotten over this sense of this very kind, loving presence, and then I’m stunned to see this form. I don’t feel afraid; I just feel numb. In that moment, this form steps over to me and leans down and begins talking very rapidly in my ear. It’s a language I’ve never heard before. I don’t recognize it as a language. I’m just taking it in.
While my brain function is not recognizing it in any sort of language, the very center of me – and I’m patting my chest, Jim – the very center of me is relaxing and expanding and warm. And then the next moment, that form is gone, the sense of my grandfather is gone, and I’m just on the screen porch in Kentucky, riding out this big storm. And that’s my story.
JIM HAROLD: Let me ask you – did you interpret the form as your grandpa, or something different?
MAGGIE: Again, this is all so subjective. I felt my grandfather was off to the left of the form. This form wasn’t shaped like my grandfather. Other than this generic head, shoulders, and straight to the ground, it wasn’t shaped in a human way. It wasn’t giving off those same grandpa vibes, if you can understand what I’m saying.
JIM HAROLD: In other words, the grandpa presence was very warm and comforting, and maybe this other one not so much?
MAGGIE: But I wasn’t afraid of this other one. It was so fast that it was there, it walked over to me, it began speaking to me, and something in me recognized it as – I mean, I hope. I think about that sometimes, that something that was fully dark whispered in my ear. I’m like, what does that mean for me? But I’ve stayed the same person. I had two presences on my porch.
JIM HAROLD: Wow, that’s a unique story. Usually it’s “I saw this shadow person” – we just recently did a show on shadow people, sharing those – or “I saw or felt the presence of a loved one.” But to have both of them simultaneously, very interesting.
MAGGIE: It was.
JIM HAROLD: Did you feel that the presence of one or both was protecting you? I think you said your grandpa was protecting you from this storm?
MAGGIE: I felt like the storm connected me to my grandpa. I think that’s why he came to mind and it’s possibly an interest we share. We love big storms. He was the oldest of twelve boys, raised on a very hard scrabble farm in Tennessee. So he was probably at times exposed to elements in a very similar way as me. I just started thinking about him.
JIM HAROLD: I have grandfathers on both sides; one has been gone 45 years, one has been gone 41 years. That’s a long time. I will occasionally think about them, but it’s not super often. I would visit once a year and spend some time with both of them, particularly – I remember more about the grandfather who died in ’81 to the one who died in ’77. But the point being that I don’t think of them every day. How often did you think of your grandfather at that point? It had been 46 years; did you think about him regularly, or was it just every once in a while?
MAGGIE: Every once in a while. I’m grateful for his life, but I think of him every once in a while.
JIM HAROLD: Right. Well, fascinating story, Maggie. I’m glad you made it through that storm safely, and I’m so glad that you could share your story today on the Campfire.
MAGGIE: Thanks so much, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Jim Harold’s Campfire is brought to you by The Shallow End with Schnebly and Toth. I’ve got to tell you, I think in this day and age more than ever, we need a good laugh. That’s where The Shallow End with Schnebly and Toth comes in. From the Webby Award-winning creators of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro, comes a new podcast that will help you promote your self-esteem through stories of other people’s bad decisions. Introducing The Shallow End with Schnebly and Toth.
Growing up together, Lindsay and Jethro were very good friends, and they were drawn to stories about stupid people doing stupid things. I was like that as a kid; I loved those stories. These stories, like it did for me, made them laugh – laugh a lot. Sharing these stories back and forth, well, it’s been an ongoing thing for them over the years. [laughs]
Lucky for us, they decided to get together and do a podcast on their obsession, because even though they are a little older now, their senses of humor are decidedly stuck in the fifth grade. I guess mine is as well. I used to love to sit – me and a bunch of friends – and read stories from the Weekly World News. That’s kind of the vibe of the show, and I absolutely love that.
For example, you’ll hear stories like a poacher in Africa who snuck into a wildlife park to kill a rhinoceros and it did not end well. Or the guy who, after spotting a high-speed rolling tanker truck filled with red wine, came up to get a swig. Well, that’s a stain that will not be coming out. No Tide stick will help. [laughs]
Really, it’s a series of wildly entertaining stories about people who are making just the worst decisions, just the stupidest decisions, but one thing I’ve got to give them – they’re absolutely certain that they’re right. There was one, a recently released episode, about these two treasure hunters that went out and tried to find this treasure. Had a book, tried to find this treasure, and they got rescued within an inch of their life. And then, in their ultimate wisdom, decided to go back out. Let’s just say that was not a good decision. You’ll have to listen to get that one, and you’ll definitely have to listen to The Shallow End with Schnebly and Toth.
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Follow Jim on Twitter and Instagram @TheJimHarold and join our virtual Campfire Facebook group at VirtualCampfireGroup.com. Now, back to the Campfire.
JIM HAROLD: B is on the line from Iowa, and actually, her sister Brittany told her about the show, so we thank Brittany very, very much. Today, B is going to tell us about – well, it sounds like she may have lived in a haunted trailer. She’s going to tell us more. B, welcome to the show and tell us what happened.
B: Hi. Thanks for having me. This happened about 10 years ago. I had an ex-boyfriend, but we were dating at the time, and he was given a trailer by someone that he knew. Actually, that person’s mom was in a nursing home and she couldn’t take care of the trailer, so he was just given this trailer. We lived in it and everything was okay, and then one day I woke up and my stereo was turned all the way up and it was on static. He worked night shifts, and he had just gotten home and I said, “Did you do this? Did you turn the stereo up?” He said, “No.” I thought, okay, that’s really weird.
Then a few days later, I woke up and I was getting ready to go to college and he had come walking in the door, because like I said, he worked night shifts, and there was stuff strewn about. There were clothes thrown. A chair was moved across the room. And the radio was turned all the way up again and it was on static. I asked him, “Did you do this? What’s going on?” He said no, that he had just gotten home. I’m like, okay, that’s weird.
I just had this moment and I was like, “I feel like the person who owned this trailer died. I bet she’s p***** off that we’re in here.” He was like, “You’re being crazy.” I’m like, “No.” So I just talked to whatever. [laughs] I don’t know, I didn’t even know, but I was just like, “Okay, you don’t live here anymore. This is not your home. You need to go. We live here now, not you.” He thought I was kind of crazy, but I’m like, “I don’t know, what else could it be?”
Later on that day, I got a text from home, and he said that the lady who owned that house had died that morning. I said, “See? Something was up.” And we didn’t have any problems anymore after that. I don’t know if it was her spirit passing through or if it was nothing at all, just a coincidence. But it was a very weird encounter, for sure.
JIM HAROLD: And it was interesting that you had that intuition to know that. I think that’s one of the most interesting parts of the story. You caught on to it and you were accurate, so I think that’s just as interesting as the activity itself.
B: Yeah. I watch a lot of horror movies, so I’m like, “We’ll just try anything if there is something here.” [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: Well, B, interesting story. Thank you so much for joining us and telling it on the Campfire. And thanks to Brittany; I know that she’s told her own story, and thank her for spreading the word. Follow Brittany’s example, folks. Share with a friend, share with a loved one today. Send them a link. Show them. B, thank you again so much.
B: Thank you for having me.
JIM HAROLD: Beth is on the line from upstate New York. She is a return storyteller, and we appreciate it. This time she’s going to take us back a few years. She was 15 and at the county fair, and strangeness ensued. Beth, welcome back to the show. Tell us what happened.
BETH: Thank you. This was the summer of 1990, and my then-boyfriend and his father and I had gone to the Dutchess County Fair in Rhinebeck, New York. We spent the whole afternoon doing typical fair things. We went around and threw darts at balloons and pet a lot of cows and ate a lot of greasy food.
JIM HAROLD: Sounds like a great time.
BETH: It was a great time. It was just your normal, typical county fair. After it got dark – I’m guessing it was about 10 or 11 o’clock at night – the fair was going to close for the evening. As we made our way back to the car, the midway was super crowded. Just packed with people. At that age, I was a very anxious teenager, and I was really concerned about getting separated. My then-boyfriend’s father was in the lead, and my boyfriend grabbed onto his shirt or his hand – I don’t really remember – and I grabbed my boyfriend’s hand. We were weaving in between all of the people to the point where even my arm was extended all the way out because it was just so packed.
For some reason – to this day I don’t know why – I happened to look up, and hovering over the top of the midway was this huge black object. It just blacked out the stars. It was massive. From what I could tell, it was triangular in shape. It had lights; there were four on one side and three on the other, so it looked almost like a checkmark. I remember thinking one of the lights had to be burnt out because it was uneven.
As I’m being pulled through the midway, I keep glancing over my right shoulder up into the sky, trying to figure out what in the world this huge, huge black object is. I had a couple thoughts. My first thought was: “Why is it not making any sound?” Because something that massive, even over the sound of the midway, we should’ve been able to hear something. And then my second thought was: “Why isn’t anybody else looking up at the sky and pointing at this thing? Why do I seem to be the only person that’s seeing this?” Then my third thought was: “I don’t think I’m supposed to be seeing this.”
As I’m being pulled through the crowd, we’re getting closer and closer to the rope that marks the end of the midway and the parking lot. I just kept looking up and looking up, and I kept thinking, “I’m not supposed to be seeing this thing.” As we got to the rope, my boyfriend went over first, and he turned around to help me over the rope, and he looked over my shoulder. I knew instinctively that he saw this massive thing in the sky.
For some reason, I dropped my head; I avoided his eyes. It was almost like I knew he had seen it, but I felt like I shouldn’t know that I knew that he had seen it too. It was very, very strange. So I stepped over the rope and we got in the car and we drove the 45 minutes back to his house, and none of us said anything. We didn’t say, “Did you see that thing up in the sky?” We didn’t talk about what we were doing the next day. We didn’t talk about anything. It was just complete silence in the car all the way back to his house.
When we got back to his house, we didn’t talk about it either. I kept thinking, “I wasn’t supposed to see it, so if I don’t talk about it, it didn’t really happen.”
JIM HAROLD: Do you think on some level, maybe you guys were mesmerized?
BETH: I hope not. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: In other words, this thing kind of telepathically said, “Don’t talk about this”?
BETH: I see where you’re coming from, but that’s really frightening to me. I hope that’s not –
JIM HAROLD: Sorry. I’m sorry to do that to you. You said something, though – you saw something on a show that I always loved that really made you think, right?
BETH: I did. It was two years later. It was 1992, and I was on Cape Cod at the time because that’s where my parents were living, and it was summertime. I was marathon-watching Unsolved Mysteries back when Robert Stack was the guy, and there was an episode on the Dutchess County boomerang UFOs. I remember sitting on the couch and my mouth dropped open. I had shivers all over my body. I kept going, “That’s what I saw! Holy cow, that’s what I saw.”
I guess there were 5,000 sightings throughout the ’80s and early ’90s. At the time, the official explanation was that it was a stealth bomber, and Stewart Air Force Base was nearby, so it makes sense. But I’ve looked at pictures of stealth bombers at night, and the lights are not the same and the size is just a huge discrepancy. I do not believe for a second that it was a stealth bomber.
JIM HAROLD: So its’ much, much larger than a stealth bomber would be.
BETH: It was huge. I want to say that it was – gosh, I don’t want to say football field size big because I think that’s too big, but it’s also hard when you’re on the ground and you’re looking up at the sky to really judge size.
JIM HAROLD: Right.
BETH: But it was way bigger than a stealth bomber.
JIM HAROLD: That’s amazing. When you’ve got multiple people seeing it, that’s really, really interesting to me. That’s really, really fascinating. Like the Phoenix Lights. The rectangular UFO thing is very common. It’s not just you; many, many people have seen – not rectangular, excuse me. Triangular. I don’t know about rectangular, but triangular UFOs. And I know, for example, Belgium had a flap of UFOs sightings. Very common for people to see triangles. Always, you hear similar things – they had lights, very huge, very silent.
I remember the late Peter Jennings, one of the last things he did before he was sick was they did a big documentary on UFOs on ABC, and there was a report I think of a police officer who said he saw one of these triangular UFOs very low, very slow-moving, absolutely silent, and huge. And I think – I’m not sure of this, but I think he may have said about the size of a football field. There’s too many people reporting them not to be something to them.
Now, could they be governmental experimentation? I think that’s absolutely possible. But could they be something else? I think that’s absolutely possible too. We love to hear these stories of these sightings. Really, really interesting, Beth. Thank you for sharing it today.
BETH: You’re welcome.
JIM HAROLD: Also, I know you’re a podcaster, and you said you mentioned the show last time and it helped you guys a little bit, so give us about a minute on your podcast and where we can find it.
BETH: I’m one half of the Where Our Minds Wander podcast. It’s a weekly show where my husband and I both pick different topics that fall under the whole supernatural umbrella. We talk about everything from haunted places to cryptids to UFOs to unsolved mysteries and just weird places. We like to say that if it’s supernatural or naturally weird, we’re all-in.
JIM HAROLD: Excellent.
BETH: People can find us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify as well as other listening platforms, or they can check out our website at whereourmindswander.com.
JIM HAROLD: Very cool indeed. Beth, thank you for sharing that and sharing that great UFO story.
BETH: Thank you for having me. I had a good time.
JIM HAROLD: Next up on the line is a big supporter of the shows. He’s a Plus Club member, he’s been a storyteller; he’s always there for us, and we appreciate it. He’s got a very interesting story. I’m talking about Gus from New Jersey. He’s going to tell us about this remarkable, remarkable story. Gus, welcome to the show again and please tell us what happened.
GUS: Thank you, Jim. Great to talk to you again. This is a follow-up to a prior story that I shared on Campfire probably back in 2020, 2021. In that prior story, it was a story regarding my older daughter, whose coworker had psychic abilities. To make a long story short for this version, he basically told her that my mom, whose name was Irma, and she passed away back in 2003, was going to be with me for a partial corneal transplant that I had in my left eye back in 2015. It was really heartening to know that my mom is still with me even though she’s not with me.
JIM HAROLD: Right.
GUS: So this story is a continuation of that. Back in March 2019, I went to our local hospital in the radiology department to get an x-ray. When you walk into the radiology department, they have about a half a dozen check-in stations that you can go to. But every single station was occupied when I arrived, so I sat in the general lobby area for about five minutes, and then a woman stood up, waved her hand, and said, “Mr. Manz, please come to see me.” So I walked over.
When I sat down at her desk for the check-in and I looked at the nameplate in front of her computer terminal, I did a double-take because the nameplate had her name and first initial of her last name. Her first name was Irma, same name as my mom, and the first initial of her last name was M for Manz, which is my last name. I thought, wow, that’s a coincidence, but it’s really not a coincidence. There’s something else going on here.
When I talked to the woman, she said that that day I was there for my x-ray was the 10th anniversary of her mother passing. I said, “I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that my mom and your mom connected the dots up in heaven to make us be here on Earth.”
But I really know the reason why this happened, because the very next day, on Saturday, we were hosting a surprise 90th birthday party for my father, who had no clue at all about the surprise party. I think this was definitely a sign from my mother telling me, “I’m going to be at that party too. You think I’m going to miss a 90th surprise birthday party for my husband? Nope.” And I’m sure she was there to enjoy the festivities, and it was a great time.
JIM HAROLD: I love that. That is a great story, Gus. That’s the thing I like to get across to people about the Campfire: it’s not just the spooky-ooky “there’s a demon chasing me” stories – although we do have those – but it’s also these reassuring ones where our loved ones give some kind of a sign. I think it means so, so much. So glad that you shared your story.
I know in addition to telling great Campfire stories, you do a lot in your town there in New Jersey, and you’ve been working on a walking ghost tour. Take a moment to tell up about it.
GUS: Sure. Thank you, Jim. I’ve been researching the history of the town where I live – Flemington, New Jersey, which is the county seat in Hunterdon County in central Jersey – for about two years. I’ve collected stories through my research in the library, the Hunterdon County Historical Society, and just talking to people around town. I’ve collected about 15-16 ghost stories of different buildings within downtown Flemington borough.
So I’ve partnered with owners of a metaphysical spirit store on Flemington called Within Spirit, and the three of us are managing what is called the Flemington Ghost Walk. This ghost walk launched in June, and we have tours on select Fridays in June, July, August, September, and October, all of which have sold out. It’s basically blown up like I hoped it would – and I collect no money for this, but my reward is having more people visit the town that I live in and love so much, and hopefully get to spend more money and help the local businesses.
The website for the Flemington Ghost Walk, if any of your Campfire listeners are curious about it and would like to take a walk – because we just added a few more dates and times this past weekend – they can go to www.flemingtonghostwalk.com. Again, flemingtonghostwalk.com to sign up for a ghost walk. It’s about an hour and a half. It touches 15-16 locations within Flemington, and it’s about a 1.2 mile walk.
The feedback we’ve received so far from the folks who’ve gone on the tour has been absolutely phenomenal. The fact that it sold out so quickly for all the dates that we’ve got, there’s definitely a need for this type of entertainment in town. And like I said before, it helps a lot of people get business to town and come back to see all the other fantastic things my town has to offer.
JIM HAROLD: That is awesome. You’re obviously very civically-minded, and I love that you have a very direct website that’s not this-that slash this slash that dot dot dot… [laughs] I think that’s really smart. Give us that website one more time.
GUS: Sure, www.flemingtonghostwalk.com. What I’ll also do, Jim, is maybe in the future I’ll submit some stories that are taken directly from the ghost walk which I think are particularly fascinating, especially the historical aspects as well as the spiritual. Each location has three components: it’s got the history of the location, it’s got the spooky stories that were shared directly to me by the people that experienced them, and also has impressions of different mediums who visited that location as well. So that trifecta of things for each location really makes this a compelling ghost walk.
JIM HAROLD: Very good, Gus. Good luck with it, and thanks for sharing your Campfire story and all your support.
GUS: Thank you, Jim.
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You’re listening to Jim Harold’s Campfire.
JIM HAROLD: Next up is Wesley from Massachusetts. Wesley had been on our other show, You Won’t Believe What Happened To Me – that’s the one I do with my wife, Dar, about incredible stories. Actually, Wesley had a horrific, scary story – scarier than almost any ghost story I could think of – but you’ll have to tune in to You Won’t Believe What Happened To Me to get a listen to it. So check that out wherever you listen to the Campfire.
But Wesley, today, the business at hand, he has a couple of Campfire stories around his youth. Wesley, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us again, and tell us what happened.
WESLEY: Thanks, Jim. The first story – they’re both fairly quick. The first story, I was less than a teenager. I don’t know if I was 9, 10 maybe. I’d gone to bed, and for whatever reason I just happened to wake up, and when I woke up – to set the stage a little bit, where my bedroom was when I was a kid, right outside the door was the living room. To the left was the kitchen and to the right led to my parents’ bedroom, which was across the way. Then the wall between me and their bedroom was the front hallway to lead outside. So there was really nobody around.
I woke up and I heard a woman’s voice calling my name very melodically. It wasn’t my mother. It wasn’t coming from where my parents were sleeping. But I woke up and I heard, “Weeeesss…. Weeeessss…”
JIM HAROLD: Ooh.
WESLEY: Yeah, it freaked me out. I panicked, and like a lot of kids do, I covered my head, I closed my eyes, and I basically went back to sleep eventually and that was it.
JIM HAROLD: That’s a weird thing to hear somebody call your name, just audibly call your name. I know I’ve had little things that happened to me during my childhood, and I still think about them. Like, “What was that about?” I remember one time – I grew up in a house that was at least 100 years old. It was an old A-frame style house. The house was long, so you had a couple big rooms, a really tiny bedroom, then a little tiny hallway, a restroom there. It was meant to be two units originally. And then the same on the other side of the house, as we called it.
But the thing that was weird was one day, I knew where everybody else in the house was – there were five household members – and I knew where everybody else was. I walked that little hallway, could’ve sworn somebody walked past me. It was just like a 10-second thing, but I still think about that. Did I miscalculate? Did somebody pass me? Or did some thing pass me? [laughs]
WESLEY: Who knows?
JIM HAROLD: Also, you have a Ouija story. We love to hear Ouija stories.
WESLEY: Yeah. This one I was a little bit older. I was a young teenager, still in grade school. I was hanging out with some friends. The grade school I went to was a very small Catholic school. It was the same 13, 14 students from Grade 1 to Grade 8, so I’d known them basically my entire childhood.
We were just hanging out at one friend’s house, having a party, and everyone was like, “Let’s play with the Ouija board.” I didn’t want to touch it because I’d always been a little bit sensitive growing up, and I was like, “These things have never felt right to me,” so I just sat back to watch what happened. There were I think 10 people in the room. Three of them were on the Ouija board, and they were playing it, and everyone else was just watching.
Nothing was really happening. It was kind of whatever. At one point, they stopped playing, and something distracted everybody in the room except for me and the people around the board. One of them – I don’t remember why; this was a long time ago – but they picked it up and they started to slowly turn it sideways so it’s standing up on end. As they did that, the planchette stayed on the board. They got it completely vertical and the planchette was on the board.
We’re all looking at each other, and as soon as we were like, “Hey, y’all see this?” and people turned, it fell.
JIM HAROLD: We had one story way back where someone saw a Ouija board walk, inchworm style, across the room. But that’s pretty good, the planchette staying on there when it’s tilted to the side. That’s pretty wild. Very cool.
WESLEY: It was creepy. They were turning it – I remember it turned a little bit, stayed, turned a little bit, stayed, turned a little bit, stayed, and then it was literally vertical, straight up and down. It was crazy.
JIM HAROLD: Pretty cool. Wesley, thank you so much for joining us today on the Campfire. I appreciate it. And thanks once again for coming on our other show, You Won’t Believe What Happened To Me.
WESLEY: Thank you, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Codie is on the line from Texas. We’re so glad to have her listening. She listens on Spotify. She’s going to take us back to when she was 12 or 13 years old and at Grandma’s house. Codie, can’t wait to hear this. Thanks for calling in from Texas, and looking forward to hearing this story. Tell us what happened.
CODIE: Hey, Jim. Thanks so much for having me today. I’ll go ahead and begin with my grandmother’s story. Actually, this is my story from visiting her when I was a child. I remember that day, we were driving over because my grandma needed help with something on the computer, as most grandparents do. We were driving over there, and I think I was about 13 years old or something.
Something happened on the car ride. I can’t remember exactly what it was. I think we got into a little argument or something. I was kind of in a bad mood. Once we got to my grandma’s house – it was about 20 minutes away – I walked around the house and went outside on the trampoline instead of going inside with everybody and saying hi immediately. I just went around and wanted to be by myself for a little while.
So I did that, and I was lying on the trampoline for a little while. I remember lying on my back. I had my knees up and my arms behind my head, if you could imagine. So I’m kind of propped up. I’m just there watching the sky for a while. It’s really calm. I start looking around for my phone, like, “Hey, what did I do with it? I guess I didn’t bring it with me.”
I went inside to get my mom’s keys because the car was locked. I went inside, got the keys, went outside through the house, and then I unlocked the car, saw my phone – it was wedged in between the seat in the back. I was like, okay. I got it and I went back inside, gave my mom the keys, went back outside, lay back down on the trampoline, and then I’m looking through my phone for a while.
I didn’t notice this at first – I thought it was kind of creepy. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard other stories, maybe like alien encounters, just weird stories, and people will be like, all of a sudden I noticed it was really quiet, extremely quiet. No noise, no wind, no birds or anything. I just barely noticed that. I don’t know if “peripheral” is the right word, but I just noticed it was real quiet. I didn’t even realize that my dog was out there at the time. We did have a dog, but it was just so quiet.
I’m looking through my phone and for some reason I go back to the pictures. When I’m looking at the pictures in my phone, the very last picture is a picture of me on the trampoline from behind me. It’s literally like if my phone was right at the edge of the trampoline, with just the camera over the edge. It’s a picture of me from behind my head – while my phone was in the car, locked. While it should’ve been in the car, locked.
There was nobody else out there. There was nobody. I feel like as a kid at this house, there were a couple of experiences, and I didn’t really ever think too much about it because I was just a young kid at the time. There were a lot of people in the house. I was the youngest, so I didn’t always get heard all the time. I was just a kid.
But this one, I went in there and I told my mom right away. I showed her the photo. She had just seen me go inside and get the keys, so they automatically believed me. They were like, “Oh my gosh, what?”, freaking out. I think that’s a huge reason why I believe it, and why I remember it so vividly, because I just remember that was freaky. Like, there’s literally no explanation how that could’ve happened or why.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, that’s bizarre.
CODIE: Yeah. I’ve been listening to your channel and I’m like, that’s something that I’ve never heard of. Never.
JIM HAROLD: No, that’s weird.
CODIE: I think about it now and I still have no explanation, nothing.
JIM HAROLD: Could it have been something saying “look at yourself”? In other words, you were being cranky that day – maybe it’s like a “look at yourself’ from the universe?
CODIE: That’s actually a really good idea. Maybe. I hadn’t thought about that. But I mean, I was just being a bratty kid. It wasn’t all that serious.
JIM HAROLD: Right. That’s what kids do. Sometimes they get moody. I mean, grownups do the same thing. They get moody too. I’ve looked back at times where at the time, I thought I had every right to be angry, and I look back at myself and say, boy, I was being a jerk. I know we’ve pretty much all done it at one time or another. I don’t know. That is an interesting story.
CODIE: Yeah. I definitely can’t deny that there was some sort of ominous feel to it, because it was right at the edge of the trampoline behind my head. It just felt creepy. It felt not good. I guess that’s all I can really say. If it was like a universe thing – I don’t know, it was just the way that it felt, and then the fact that there was no sound or anything. It just got all quiet. I was like, this is really weird. I don’t know. I just always think about that and I’m like, there’s no explanation for that still.
JIM HAROLD: Very interesting indeed. I know you’ve got more stories, and I look forward to you being back on the show. But thank you for sharing this one. I’d be interested, if anybody else out there has had a supernatural experience with technology, sign up at jimharold.com/campfire, because that’s an area we say, “Ah, that couldn’t be!” – but why not? If the supernatural can interact with something physical, why can’t it interact with things on the technology side? I think it’s perfectly possible. Codie, thank you for your call today.
CODIE: Of course. Thanks so much, Jim.
JIM HAROLD: Next up on the Campfire is Tina from the Northeast USA. She says the Campfire is her morning ritual. She’s a member of the Plus Club, and she and one of her best friends love to listen when they go on road trips and things. We’re so glad to have Tina on the line. She has several stories, but first she’s going to tell us one that really resonates, she says, with her family – and this one is about her daughter. Tina, welcome to the show and tell us what happened.
TINA: Thank you, Jim. It is a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me today. This story goes back quite a few years. My daughter is special needs; she has autism. Even at the age when this story took place, which is when she was four to five years old, there was not really a strong communication skill, so it was very difficult for her to connect words and create sentences.
Setting the scene, I was leaving my daughter with my niece to babysit while I took my husband to the bus. When I came back, I noticed the house was dark and my niece and my daughter were sitting in her room on the floor. I asked what was going on and she just said that they had been playing a game and that they were doing hide and seek, and she tried to get her to leave the dining room and she wouldn’t leave. She kept saying, “Come here, come here,” and my daughter was like, “No, I can’t. I’m scared.”
My niece was like, “What’s going on? Why are you scared? Come here.” She said, “Of the little boy.” She said while she said this, she had her hands down by her side, her eyes were closed, her teeth were showing, and she said the little boy was scaring her. Of course, at that point my niece just grabs her and they go and barricade in her room. That was really it. She never was able to explain what had happened, but needless to say that was pretty scary. One of the scariest experiences my niece told me she’s had in her life.
I’m not too sure what that is. I haven’t heard too much about the little boy. But it does kind of tie in with another quick story.
JIM HAROLD: Okay.
TINA: This was basically my daughter, again when she was younger, started saying that her brother was missing. She does not have a brother. Again, communication not really being a strong point for her, she would say, “My brother is missing. Oh no, my brother is gone.” I would just say, “Okay, what’s going on?” She would say, “My brother’s Gage.” His name was Gage. She would start saying this out in public. People would stop and look at me like, “Oh my God,” probably thinking I lost a child somewhere. But that wasn’t the case at all.
She would just say that. She was never really able to expand on that. She just said he went missing in a store. I don’t really know – again, obviously we did not have a son. We did not lose any family member. She really did not watch television, so I don’t know where she got this from. I don’t know; maybe that’s the little boy that scared her from another time, but that was just one of the things that came up as well.
JIM HAROLD: That’s really interesting. So you think there’s at least a possibility that the two are connected?
TINA: I have to say maybe. I’m not 100% sure because a lot of times, with autism, it’s so hard to connect the dots. But it’s just too coincidental that both are boys, her little brother Gage and then this boy that she was supposedly scared of in the dining room of our home. That’s the only way I’m connecting it myself. You try to make sense of the situation.
I think also what happened was – as I was writing this, at one point just recently I said to her, “Hey, do you remember” – because now she’s 15. I said, “Do you remember Gage?” She just said, “No.” And then she walked away. I said, “Really? You don’t?” She turned around and looked at me, kind of gave me the little side eye, and said, “That’s my brother” and walked away.
JIM HAROLD: Ooh.
TINA: Yes. I’m not too sure – I don’t know. I don’t know if she’s sensing something or seeing something or there’s some residual thing.
JIM HAROLD: I know communication sometimes can be difficult. My late brother was autistic, so I can completely empathize with that situation. ’Tis a mystery.
TINA: Yeah. It really is a mystery. But it’s a family story that we share over and over again, and I just have to say, maybe she’s an antenna. Maybe she’s just seeing things and feeling things that I’m not aware of or everybody around her is not aware of.
JIM HAROLD: Could be. I know you had some other stories. Is there a quick one you’d like to share with us?
TINA: Going back to this, to set the scene about her being like an antenna to things, when she was even a little bit younger, about three years old, my father-in-law had passed away. So this was quite some time ago. At that time, she was only able to say maybe one or two words, so very rarely would she connect even one, two, three words to make a sentence.
We had come back home; we were entering the house – this was about a week after my father-in-law had passed away – and all of a sudden, I’m walking behind her just a few steps, and I see her stop dead in her tracks. She’s got her little legs spread out, her little arms spread out. She’s stopped dead. There’s nothing in our immediate field of vision that would indicate any reason for that.
She just said, “The gray man.” I didn’t ask her. I didn’t prompt her. But I thought, oh my God, there’s somebody in the house. There’s an intruder. I swooped her up and put her back into the car, which was in the attached garage, left the door open, and did a clean sweep of the house. There was nobody there.
But afterward, when I had a chance to calm down, I thought, that’s really crazy, number one, that she said three words together. Number two, it’s so shortly after my father-in-law passed. And then what’s interesting is she never went back into her bedroom to sleep at night after that. She just decided that was it. She wouldn’t. She actually hijacked my bed. [laughs] So after that, that was it. She never went back into her room. She wouldn’t go there at night.
JIM HAROLD: Interesting. Well, Tina, I know you have more stories. I hope you’ll sign back up. And thank you for being a part of the Campfire.
TINA: Thank you.
JIM HAROLD: Brittany is on the line from Iowa. She’s been listening since 2014. My goodness. We appreciate our longtime listeners, and all our listeners for that fact, even if today’s the first day you’ve tuned in. Brittany is going to tell us about some touring she did, and she found more than a very old manor. Brittany, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us, and please tell us what happened.
BRITTANY: Hi. Myself and a friend went to the Edinburgh Manor, which was an old psych unit, house for the poor. It was a few different things.
JIM HAROLD: Where is this located?
BRITTANY: Monticello, Iowa. It’s been abandoned for many, many years. When we were going downstairs, my friend was in front of me and there was nobody behind me, and I heard somebody say, “Hey!” right in my ear right behind me. It was loud enough for me to say, “Did you say something?” and she said, “No.” But I’m kind of a skeptic, so I’m like, “Did I really hear that?”
Then we went to the backyard, and we both heard a noise. I thought it was a cat meowing, but it didn’t really sound like a meow. I don’t know how to describe this noise. Maybe like someone trying to talk, but not making words. It just was a strange noise. I heard it, but I didn’t say anything, and then she said, “Do you hear that?” I was like, okay, we both hear this noise. We heard it three separate times out in the backyard.
In the beginning, the lady who owns the manor, before she left, said a lot of people see a little girl or hear noises of a little girl in the backyard. That’s where she likes to hang out. We didn’t even think about that until we were driving home. We’re like, “Was that the girl? What was it that we heard?” That’s my story, short and sweet. I don’t know. Like I said, I’m a skeptic, so I’m like, was that a ghost? Was it my imagination?
JIM HAROLD: It’s one of those things where if there is such a thing as hauntings – I believe that there are – these are the kinds of places that are most prone to it. A lot of energy, it’s been around a long time, those kinds of things. So I wouldn’t doubt at all that you did encounter some kind of spirit or residual haunting, possibly. Maybe a sentient haunting, I don’t know. But Brittany, I certainly believe it’s very possible.
BRITTANY: Yeah. That’s my only ghost story that I have. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: To be honest with you, I think sometimes when somebody says “This is my only ghost story,” my ears pick up because it doesn’t happen to you every week kind of thing. Not that there aren’t people who are more sensitive than others. I do believe that. But when someone who doesn’t feel that they’re particularly sensitive picks up on something, I’m like, yep, something certainly happened to them. So Brittany, thank you so much for sharing it. Obviously it’s not scared you away from the paranormal.
BRITTANY: No, no. Definitely not.
JIM HAROLD: Well, thank you for being a part of the Campfire today, and stay spooky.
BRITTANY: Thank you. You too.
JIM HAROLD: Cameron is on the line from Lancaster, England. We’re always so glad when we get a chance to speak with our British listeners. Cameron heard about the show from the great podcast The Secret Room with Ben Hamm, which is going from strength to strength these days. Very, very successful podcast. We thank Ben for that shoutout, and we’ll do the same and tell you to check out Ben’s show because it is a very, very good show.
Cameron is going to share with us some strange experiences including a late night visit from a youthful version of his grandfather. Looking forward to it, Cameron. Welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us today and please tell us what happened.
CAMERON: It was during the pandemic, the first lockdown that we had in the UK. And obviously, as we spent all our time at home, I’d end up being up late at night, until maybe 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, just on my own, watching a bit of TV. I’d continuously see out the corner of my eye – I’ve got a little arch walkway in my living room that goes to my dining room, open plan downstairs. I’d see something move out the corner of my eye. That went on for the first couple of months of the lockdown until it lifted and we could go back to work.
I remember thinking to myself, I can’t tell anybody about this because they’re going to think I’m absolutely mental. Because it does sound like an insane thing that I’m seeing things in the corner of my eye. When I went back to work, it stopped, and I thought, okay, maybe it was just going crazy in lockdown, not being able to get out of the house.
Then a couple of weeks into work, it started happening to when I was locking up the pub. I’d be walking round and I’d see something in the kids’ area, and I’d have to go round and have a look around. I wouldn’t see anything. I’d check the CCTV, see if anybody was still in the pub. Couldn’t find a single thing. Then when I was driving home – it’s only about a 10-minute drive from the pub to where I live, and the same place every time, about 5 minutes from my house, I’d see a figure stood very briefly next to a road sign. It’d catch the corner of my eye, and as soon as I’d look round, no longer there.
After a couple of weeks that started to die down. But when I really started to think I wasn’t crazy at all, I told my best mate about it. I tell him everything; I’m always very open with him. We tell each other everything. He left his phone in my car one night and he was coming back to come and get it, and he said he saw me walk from my car to my front door and came sprinting down the street to talk to me. But I’d been in bed for an hour, hour and a half. He swore blind that he’d seen somebody walk from my car to my house.
That was when it hit me that I’m not crazy, and if he’s seeing things walking about near me, then definitely I’m being followed by something.
I was hoping to tell you a couple of things, if that’s okay.
JIM HAROLD: Sure. You were going to talk about your grandpa, right?
CAMERON: Yeah. This happened years and years ago. This happened when I was just starting secondary school, so I was about 12-13 years old. My grandparents live in the same village as I do, so it’s about a 5-minute walk from where I live. But whenever I stayed there, I always felt a certain level of uncomfortable. I’d sleep with the duvet covering my face just because I wanted to be hidden. It never made sense to me. I always put it down to being a scared kid.
But this one night, I was sleeping in the spare room, and I used to listen to cassette tapes of a show called The Cliborough Kid. One night, I woke up and I heard the stop button click on the tape. I thought it was finished. I opened my eyes and I went to go turn it over and I saw a pair of legs standing right outside of the duvet where I was looking. Then the figure bent down and turned its head and looked me dead in the eyes for what felt like forever but must’ve been a matter of seconds before I closed my eyes.
I remember I thought, if it is there, I’ll feel it. So I threw a fist out, trying to reach out for it, and there was nothing there anymore after I opened my eyes. I woke up in the morning and I said to my grandma, “I’m sure I saw Granddad in my room last night, but he looked younger and he had longer hair and a handlebar mustache, like an old-style Mexican.” She pulled out a picture of their time in Pompei, when he looked exactly like that.
I can’t remember if I knew at the time it was my granddad, but when I’d woken up in the morning, I thought, “That looked like Granddad.” But when Grandma pulled out the image, I was like, “That was definitely the man that was looking at me last night, unmistakably.”
JIM HAROLD: Interesting. We had another call recently where a young woman saw her grandfather after he passed, saw a vision of him, and saw him much younger than she’d ever seen him in life, and then mere days later I think it was, somebody presented a picture that she’d never seen before, and it was actually what she saw. I think that’s very interesting. It’s always interesting to me how – I’ve heard that our loved ones many times, when you see them after they’ve passed, have a vision, that sort of thing, a visitation – that they present themselves at their most vibrant. Maybe let’s say they were older or in ill health or those kinds of things. That’s typically, it seems, not what people see. They seem to see people in the prime of life, and that sounds like what you experienced.
CAMERON: Here’s the twist for you, Jim. My granddad is still alive today.
JIM HAROLD: Aha! I assumed. [laughs]
CAMERON: Unfortunately, my grandma has passed, so I’m not sure where that photo is. But my granddad is still alive today, which is the weirdest thing about it. If he had passed, I could put it down to obviously a visitation or whatnot, but the fact that he is still alive but I saw him maybe in his thirties, that’s the strange bit for me.
JIM HAROLD: I just recently did a new interview with Loyd Auerbach, and he talked about the fact that visions of people can sometimes be of living people. He did a segment for a TV show where people kept reporting in this one location a replay of a murder. Well, the victim was dead, but the murderer was very much alive in jail. And people were seeing that murder being created, like a replay. Maybe that’s a little bit of a hint that this has happened to people before. Very interesting indeed.
Cameron, thank you so much for sharing stories with us. I appreciate it very much, and I hope you’ll come back if you have more.
CAMERON: I have plenty for you, Jim. It’s followed my family for years, everything spooky.
JIM HAROLD: Thank you again for being a part of the Campfire.
CAMERON: Thanks very much. Stay spooky.
JIM HAROLD: Thanks so much for joining us on this edition of the Campfire. Much appreciated. Please make sure that you follow in the podcast app of your choice. Also make sure to share the show. A great way to do that is when you’re in that podcast app – Apple Podcasts or Spotify – you can actually share the show, like you would share a link to a website. I know on iOS there’s that one little share sign, and you click on it and you send off a link that way. So much easier than it used to be back in the old days.
So please do that for us, because hey, it’s September 1st. Spooky season is here! It is here, so I know a lot of people will be paying attention to the spookiness. So spread the word. Everybody you talk to about Halloween, when the subject of Halloween comes up, say, “Hey, I’ve got a podcast for you. You need to listen to Jim Harold’s Campfire.”
We thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time. Everybody have a great week, stay safe, and as always, of course, stay spooky. Bye-bye.
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.