Jim Harold's Campfire - Haunted Work Trip - Jim Harold's Campfire 757

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

A routine work trip quickly turns into something far more unsettling when a listener finds herself trapped in a hotel that feels wrong from the moment she arrives. What begins as unease escalates into a series of deeply disturbing experiences that unfold through the trip and an interesting reaction from the hotel staff. Elsewhere in this episode, the strange and unexplained take many forms. A quiet walk in the woods turns into a baffling encounter with silent crowds and a mysterious operation. A haunted home reveals layers of unsettling activity that seem to affect different people in different ways. From encounters in cemeteries to unexplained presences in everyday workplaces, these stories range from eerie to deeply thought-provoking, leaving you to decide what might really be going on just beneath the surface. VIRTUAL CAMPFIRE GROUPJoin our FREE online community at ⁠https://virtualcampfiregroup.com⁠YOUTUBE CHANNELBe sure to subscribe to Jim’s YouTube channel at: ⁠https://youtube.com/jimharold⁠ JOIN JIM’S SPOOKY STUDIO PLUS CLUBYou can get access to Jim’s entire back catalog of Campfire and a TON of exclusive content with the Spooky Studio Plus Club. Go to https://⁠jimharold.com/plus⁠ and signup to support the show and get access to our MASSIVE library of content!MERCHGo to ⁠https://jimharold.com/merch⁠ to get your Jim Harold T’s, sweatshirts, mugs, hats and more! BOOKSGet all SIX of Jim’s Campfire books here: https://jimharold.com/campfirebooks/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Our first caller did and we'll hear all about it on this edition of Jim Harold's Campfire. Sit back, relax and warm yourself by Jim Harold's Campfire. Long time listeners since 2019, Andre from Texas is on the line and we're so glad. Now, you know, back in the day when I was working for the man, I used to, you know, occasionally go on different work trips. that sort of thing. And yeah. But now I'm just kind of pretty much here behind the desk. Now some work trips are fun.

Some work trips are a lot of times. It's hectic. It's boring or whatever. This one, I don't think it's going to be boring for you. Audrey from Texas is here. She's going to tell us all about. Audrey, welcome to the show. Thanks for listening all this time.

And please do tell your story. And here we go. Thank you. Thanks, Jim. Thank you for having me. So yes, I'm sharing an experience I had on a work trip. I do want to give a disclaimer because anytime I tell this story, everybody says, you know, you're so brave.

And if I were you, I would have ran out. Number one, I am not brave. And number two, I did not have a choice because this was a work trip. So during this point of my career, I was traveling every three weeks or so. And when I travel for work, I look for, you know, reviews. about safety, proximity to the airport. Sure. If there's food at the location, free breakfast, things like that.

And my company specifically, we were not allowed to have rental cars. So I really had to be aware of the distance to the airport because I was Ubering everywhere. So for this specific work event, I was setting up an event in Santa Barbara. And I was really excited about it because every single hotel Airbnb, everything in the area was completely booked. And I ended up with this beautiful hotel that overlooked the beach. I could literally, you know, walk one street over to the beach. And I was just so excited because normally when you go on a work trip, you know, you tend to be in a marriot that overlooks a random parking lot. Sure. So I was so excited to have this hotel. So I saw it was

kind of a mission style, older hotel that had been, you know, newly renovated, great reviews about safety, things like that. So I get on my trip as usual as I do all the time, get to the hotel. And as I get dropped off by my Uber and I see the hotel, I had a pit in my stomach and I thought, uh-oh. And I kind of, you know, kind of, you know, chastised myself a little bit saying like, okay, just because something's old does not mean it's scary, you know, don't even think about that. So I check in at the hotel and the first thing that was a concern to me was the front desk said that my phone in the room did not work at all. And for, again, safety purposes. That's a bad sign.

Yeah. Safety purposes, that's, you know, front of mind for me. I did not like that my phone did not work at all because anything can happen with my signal and if I need help, you know, you're kind of stuck. Sure. So I go through the hotel, and the hotel was a bit of an odd setup. So essentially, you had to walk the entire length of the first floor down a very long hallway. And it really was like the shining movie. It was very eerie.

There were a lot of these strange open, what looked like used to be storage areas, just these weird little cubbies. Again, thinking safety, friend of mind, these little nooks and crass. just did not feel safe to walk through alone traveling by yourself as a woman. So you had to go all the way through the first floor, then take an elevator, walk all the way through the second floor, take an elevator to where I was the third floor. And it kind of felt like its own little tiny, secluded and dark tower. Again, you know, my hairs are standing up on end. It feels extremely creepy, but I'm just trying to be, you know, excited to be there. So I get to my hotel room, you know, try to settle in. have dinner eventually. It's, it's time to go to bed. And again, I had a really just awful pit in my

stomach. And instinctually, I had every single light in that room on because I just felt so uncomfortable. So as I'm sitting in the bed and, you know, starting to wind down, the first thing that started happening was there was this cabinet across from the bed. And it was a newer cabinet, not an old cabinet, but it kept just making this horrible banging, sound, not like it was settling or cracking, you know, as a temperature changes or settling, like a really loud bang coming from inside of it. So I got up. I looked around it to see maybe it's leaning on the wall.

There's a pipe there. Maybe the AC vent is doing something to it. And there was nothing around it. So I kind of put that to the back of my mind. Eventually, I, you know, fall asleep. And every 30 minutes, I, was waking up to either what felt like someone bumping the corner of my bed and startling me awake, or I was waking up to what felt like the last moment of a conversation. And when I would wake up,

I would literally go, huh? What? Because it's sound, I, I just missed whatever it was. So of course, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm really nervous at this point. I'm not sleeping for more than 30 minutes. it's out of time. And I'm trying to be logical and think of, okay, maybe it's just a really old place. Maybe it's the person behind me somehow is moving and it's pushing my bed forward. Maybe it's their TV. I don't know. So I finally, again, I fall asleep and I find myself having sleep paralysis. Now, a little context to my sleep paralysis is when I get very stressed in life. I have sleep paralysis, but it's not like, you know, what you see in the movies or what you hear. I believe it's just like a sleep disorder, really. And I've had it so frequently that I know

how to wake myself up. So I'll wiggle my fingers. I'll wiggle my toes. I'll imagine myself falling. And immediately I wake up. There's nothing scary about it. It just kind of is what it is. this time I have this overwhelming feeling of dread and fear. I feel my hair standing straight up. And I start to feel a sensation of hands pushing me down into the mattress. Oh, gosh. Now these hands were pushing me down hard enough that I could feel some were large hands. That felt like a male.

Some were small hands. That felt like, you know, a younger woman. some were very thin and obviously that's terrifying. So I wake up as I'm saying the Lord's Prayer and I feel their hands dissipate. So at this point I'm absolutely terrified and I'm like, okay, well, I guess I'm not going to sleep. So I start looking for different options because again, I'm on a work trip. I can't just leave. If I leave, I have to, you know, pay for it myself. but ultimately, I have a commitment that morning to stand up my event. So I start looking around because that's enough for me.

Again, I'm not brave and I don't want to experience these things. I got to go. Every single thing was completely booked. I even called the front desk on my cell phone because my room phone didn't work, and they could not switch my room, and I was completely stuck. So eventually, I somehow, I don't know how because I was sitting up straight, and I was so scared. Eventually, again, I fall asleep.

I wake up to the sound of my phone ringing in the room. The phone that they specifically told me did not work. And actually, I forgot to mention when I first checked in, I forgot they said it didn't work. And I picked it up to call for an extra blanket. And there was no power to the phone. I couldn't turn it on at all. So you can imagine my horror at 3 in the morning.

hearing that phone ring. And in the moment I had forgot, kind of, you know, kind of half asleep. And I picked up the phone. And of course, just like a horror movie, there was static. So I called the front desk and I said, hey, did you guys call me? And the person said, you know, no, it was probably your family. And I said, no, my family would not call me at three in the morning at my hotel room.

They don't even know what room number I'm staying in. I said, okay, whatever. So I go to sleep. The next day comes and goes, I have my event, I'm exhausted. I try to stay out as long as possible. Inevitably, I end up back in the room. Same situation. I'm trying to not sleep as much as I can, but I'm so tired at this point.

At some point, I do end up falling asleep with all the lights on. And this time during the night, I hear the sound of one of the locks, the hook at the top of the door. I don't know if, you know what I'm talking about. It's kind of like a lash like this and it goes over the door. Yes, yes. It flung open. Oh, man. And of course, again, traveling alone, I jump up thinking, oh, my gosh, someone's trying to come in my room.

There was no one there. So at this point, I'm absolutely terrified. I'm still having the incident where my bed feels like it's being bumped. That cabinet's making a loud, banging sound every, again, every 30 minutes. So, of course, I do it. any adult would and I call my mom. And I asked her to, you know, to please pray for me because there is just, it just felt so, you know, heavy and just odd in that place. So, you know, we go through that whole bit.

I am out of my room right when the lobby opens at 5 a.m. to just stay out as, stay out as long as I can until my event starts. This now takes me to the last night. Again, I am calling every day to see if they can change my room. I'm looking for hotels in the area to see if I can stay somewhere else. Honestly, if I had a rental car, I would have slept in the garage, the parking garage. That's how scared I was. And it was such a shame because it's this beautiful hotel overlooking the ocean. It's about like a once in a lifetime opportunity of a work trip. I was so uncomfortable. I couldn't be in the room. I spent more time in the lobby than I did my own room. I was very respectful of the staff, but I was so scared. I stayed until they kindly told me to leave. So the final night, again, I have the incident with the latch undoing itself. My room phone called me again and the static was picked up on the other line. And, and it was picked up on the other line. And I decided at that point, I didn't care how early I got to the airport. I just needed to get out of there.

So I checked out of my hotel at about four in the morning. And finally, as I'm checking out, I decide to kind of break the fourth wall with the staff. And I say, hey, this place is really haunted, right? And the staff ends up telling me that, yes, it's extremely haunted. It was in World War II. It was a hospital. Oh, boy. And they said no one visits and stays there without a story.

Oh, wow. They ended up telling me, you know, if you were scared in your room, our supplies are in what you used to be the morgue. Oh, geez. Yeah. And finally, the gentleman who had picked up my calls, those two nights at three in the morning, he came out from the back. And he said, honestly, you scared me so badly because I know. your phone did not work. When AT&T has tried to fix it,

they let us know beforehand, and they do that, you know, eight to five, Monday to Friday. And he said he knew for a fact that he was not calling me, but when I called him, he was alone.

And it absolutely terrified him to know that my phone was ringing. So that is my story. That's a great story. And I got to tell you, I think you are brave, okay? I think you are brave.

A lot braver than I would be. A lot braver than I would be. Now, let me ask, and I want to say kudos to that staff for being so open with you because a lot of places, you know, unless they bill themselves as a haunted hotel, they'd be like, oh, well, we don't talk about that. I had that experience one time. I was staying in this place that looked like it would be haunted. It was this historic hotel. It was beautiful. It was great.

And I didn't have any stories, but I was asking around with the staff. I'm like, well, I'm here. I've got to ask the question. Is this place haunted? And they're like, well, you know, they didn't want to talk about it because they didn't. build themselves as that. They build them as themselves as this classy hotel. I looked it up later.

It turns out that it's extremely haunted, apparently. But no, that's very cool. Well, I was going to ask you if you did research, but you kind of did research right? They're on site. And they basically said you're 100% right. You're 100% right. Absolutely. If you had need to go back to that town, now some people would.

Are you a kind of person saying, let me back in there. I want to take some EMF meters. I want to take a Franks box. I want to see what's going on. Is that you, Audrey? No, you know, Jim, that was enough for me. I ended up going back and looking at the reviews, and I did find that people intentionally stayed in the building I was in

to do EMF readings and things like that because the hotel is so haunted. For me, that was enough. That's my campfire classic. I'm good. Very good. Mission accomplished. Good job. Great story.

And you are a very brave. woman. Audrey, thank you for your long-time listenership, and thank you for being on the show today. And let me say this. We're in need. I was going to say this anyway. We're in need of some good spooky stories like Audrey's story. Don't get me wrong.

We love the happy, positive, you know, I saw butterfly, and it was a sign for my grandma. We believe in those. We cherish them. We love them. And they are an important part of the campfire. But we also want some good old ghost story. So please, submissions are open now. Jimherald.com slash campfireer.

Be like Audrey and tell your spooky story. Audrey, thank you so much and stay spooky. Stay spooky. Feels like every product claims real protein these days. But real doesn't start on a label. It starts at the source. Like real California milk from California farm families, it's real dairy delivering high-quality, complete protein.

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great for affordable touch-ups on the go. Get this new must-have concealer at Sephora or at Sephora.com today. Welcome to the Campfire. I am Jim Harold and so glad to be with you once again and we embark on you know, I don't know,

maybe another 17 years of doing Campfire stories. We'll see. By that time I'll be pretty long in the tooth. But we certainly have a long way to go with the campfire, with your support, of course, and we'll talk about that with the Plus Club later. But in the meantime, please tell a friend today about the campfire. This is the show where we have real people tell real stories, just as we did with our first caller with that haunted road trip. Audrey was very brave, much more brave than I would be. And also, I want to

tell you about another podcast. This one is absolutely free. It is called The Paranormal Report, and that is the weekly show that I do with my wife, Dar Harold. And we take a look at all the paranormal news out there and report on it that comes out Wednesday. And it's on YouTube and all the podcast apps. It's called The Paranormal Report. And we have some humor. We have some fun.

We give some opinions, which is very different for me. And I feel like it brings out a different side of me. I don't know if you're like. like that side or not, but it is what it is, and Dar, I think, does a fantastic job. So please check it out. It is called The Paranormal Report wherever you get the campfire. And you are here at the campfire. You want to hear some stories. And here we go. You know, one of my favorite kinds of stories is head scratchers. And I was thinking about this story that we're about, ready to hear from Samara from Michigan. And I couldn't really categorize it. I don't know that

we've ever had a story quite like it. So I'm going to say it probably is best categorized as a head scratcher because it's like, is it paranormal? Is it an alternate reality? Is it a time slip? Is it just something very much of this earth and not kind of paranormal at all? I don't know. But Samara's going to tell us all about it and what happens.

Samara, welcome to the show. And thanks for listening and tell us your experience. So, yeah, this was probably back in like, I want to say 2014. This was back when I was living in Georgia before I moved to Michigan And I had gone up to Kentucky to stay with some family of mine And I was seeing this guy that was going over that was going to college over in Moorhead, Kentucky And so I would go over there on the weekends and You know, we would just hang out just kind of to the around town

Just hanging out seeing the sites and And, you know, and so there was one weekend. We, like, there was nothing going on that we could tell. So we just decided to go down to the reservoir and hang out. And so, you know, we drove out there and it's like out in the middle of nowhere. It's out in the woods. And so we pulled in and there's like a big, like a dirt and gravel parking lot. and people in and park and then there's like a river, a little bridge.

And I think there was like one of those concrete culverts that come out the side of a hill, you know. Yeah. And so there was a river going out. And so we hung out for a little bit. And somebody was like, let's go hiking up in these woods. And we're like, okay, we didn't have anything else going on. And so we take off. And this was late afternoon, maybe early evening.

evening, you know? And so we take off into the woods and I guess we were out there for a couple of hours. I think somebody said that their feet started to hurts. It was starting to get darts. We were like, let's let's head on back to the car. And, uh, you know, we, we took off back to the, the parking lot. And I think it was about as time it was starting to get that time of day where like the sun is starting to, it's just starting to set. And so the sky is still lit up, but everything down here, like in the woods, like you can still see the ground and the people around you. But everything under the trees is black, you know. It's still dark. And so there's this big long straightaway that we got into when we were walking back to the parking

lot. And it was like, you know how they cut the trees back away from the power line? So you got these long cuts going through the forest. And so we were walking down this. And like I said, it's starting in dark. And so we start seeing people coming the other way. And we were like, what's odd for people to be coming out into the woods now that it's getting dark? But, you know, to each their own, I guess. And so, you know, I said hi and nobody answered me back. And we just kept walking. And the people just kept coming toward us. And there was this big, long gaggle of people.

Like, imagine you go to like a concert. And, you know, all the people standing in the line waiting to get into the venue, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a long, stretched out cluster of people. And so we keep walking down this cut, and the people just keep walking by. Huh. And nobody's talking to us. It was super eerie.

And they weren't talking to each other either. It was super solid. Like, when I think back to it, it made me think of, like, the trail of tears or something. You know, people... Do you think they saw you? Oh, yeah, they saw us. Like, we were regarding each other as we walked past. this long gaggle of people, but nobody said anything.

They weren't even talking to each other. And it was this tense kind of, the only word I could think of was like an anticipation, like they didn't want to go where they were going. Oh. Like they were worried about something. They weren't talking to us. They weren't talking to each other. It was just this long string of people.

And it was all ages of people. They had like little kids. there were old folks. Just it ran the whole spectrum of age. And some of them had a blanket pulled across her shoulders like they were cold, you know. Huh. And they were just kind of ambling through the woods. And it took several minutes to get to the other end of this long string of people.

And we finally got to the end of it and we're going toward the tree line down where, like, the parking lot and stuff is. and we start to see lights do the trees. And I'm not talking about like flashlights. It's like it looked like we were walking up on a high school football game. It was like these 20 or 30 feet up floodlots. And these streetlights, these floodlots weren't there when we pull in to go into the woods. That's weird. Yeah, it was super weird.

And so we come out of the woods and we're about to cross the river. And we see all kinds of guys. like black tactical fatigues running around doing stuff. They were like setting up the floodlights and they had a command tent on the other side of the river that was like, it was like a black version of those awnings that you see at like a funeral or a burial out in the graveyard, you know, and they had a table set up with kind of a video village. They had like a string of computer monitors. And it looked like they were a good 30 to 50 guys running around in black tactical fatigues.

It was super weird. And we were like, this is really weird. We're going to get in the car and we're going to go home. We don't have anything to do with this. Don't blame you. Smart move. And so we get to the dirt parking lot and there's a bunch of cars out there. And I mean there's like a bunch of, like, a bunch of, like,

like black SUVs and stuff. And we didn't know. We were ready to go. So we went to the car and got in the car. We were getting ready to leave. And there was a guy out in the middle of the parking lot. He was like coordinating and directing and stuff. And he stops us.

And he's like, what are you doing here? But he was a little bit more, you know, assertive. Vocal. Yeah. And we were like, we were just out of your hiking. And we're ready to go home. We're just going to get out of.

here. We don't want to have anything to do with this. And I think my friend that was driving, it was the three of us, it was, the guy was seeing and his roommate. And his roommate was sitting in a passenger seat, I think. And my friend asked, what was going on?

And the guy that stopped us said that there was a hunt for an armed suspect or individual. I forget the noun he used, but he definitely said he was armed. And I was thinking, if they're looking for an armed individual, why do they have all these kids and old folks out here?

Right. Right. And it's super weird. Anyway. So we left there and we went over to where one of their friends was working. It was like a fast food restaurant or something. They were getting ready to close. And we were sitting in the dining area and just trying to puzzle out what we had just seen. Wow. So do you think, and I mean, did you, did you, did you, did you, did you, do you, you, Did you come to any conclusions? Did you say, oh, I think it's that or that, or is it just kind of an open question at this point? It's kind of an open question.

Like, you know, I've been puzzling over this for obviously like 10 or 11 years at this point. And I'm, you know, ever since all the Epstein stuff come out and all that, I was like, you know, maybe this was some kind of trafficking thing. because I know Michigan is kind of regarded as a human trafficking corridor. Oh, that's terrifying. That's terrifying. So you don't think, you think this was here and now, this was either some kind of government thing or something weird like what you're talking about. You don't think in any way this was a time slip or alternate reality or anything that. You tend to think this was very much a human of this day, some kind of secret operation. Is that right? Yeah, I don't think it was any kind of a time slip. I think it was something going

known they didn't want anybody to know about as far as I can tell you know the story that it reminds me of a little bit is we had this guy on who I think this was it was right on the Ohio West Virginia border I can't remember on which side it was I think he lived in Ohio and this happened to West Virginia I can't remember and this has been probably 10 years ago but one day he went to school and uh they called uh all the kids out room by room and they took them in the field and there were these people in white clothing and they were running all these tests on them and kind of things and then you know some of them were cognitive tests some of them were physical tests and then after that they would

pull certain kids out who did very well and he remembered that he was worried because he was doing well on the mental he's doing really well in the physical test but then he got worried because this is back in a day when your parents would tell you, hey, you know, if you're going to play, you get into your play clothes, right? Or you get in school, they used to have gym clothes. You don't run in your good clothes because, you know, it's hard to come by good clothes and you get in trouble. You'd actually literally get in trouble.

Maybe some people might get like smacked if they ruin their good clothes. He was worried about, but he was thinking, boy, I'm really knocking these physical tests out. So anyway, they pull him aside and take him into a tent and they start doing all these puzzle tests with him and all these cognitive tests. And he's doing very well. So anyway, the day goes in. It was a very unusual day because they didn't eat in their cafeteria because that's where they had the tables set up and they had the kids go through this thing. And then he said, you know, they called him all back into the rooms and they did dismiss school and nobody talked on the way home. Next day he goes back to school.

And he raises his hand. And everybody's like normal, like nothing ever happened. Nobody brings it up. And he raises his hand and asks the teacher, says, when are we going to find out how we did on those tests? And the teacher basically said, and I'm paraphrasing, this whole thing. You know, you can go back in the archive and check it out. And it's also, I think, in book six.

The teacher said, I don't know what test you're talking about. we didn't take any tests. He's like, oh, you know, the one where, and he also said they shot something in his arm too, I think. And he says he still has a scar. He said, you know, the one where we were running and jumping, and then they took us in and did different puzzles and things with it. And she's like, I don't know what you're talking about. And nobody knew what he was talking about. But yet he remembered it. And he said he has that scar to this day. That's the story, even though it's very different. That's the one it reminds me most of that we've had in the We just passed the 17th anniversary of the show.

That's the one because it's kind of like it's not supernatural. It's just some kind of weird, weird kind of thing going on. I, you know, I don't know. So, yeah. So, yeah, Samara, I appreciate it very, very much. My phone is ringing. That's why I'm kind of puzzled here. I'm going to leave that in, folks.

These things happen when you're doing a show, live to tape. But I love the story. Any other thoughts on it? Any other thoughts on it? Now, I've looked into events in the region and stuff, and like there's stuff about bigfoot hunts every now and then, but I can't imagine a big foot hunt, like in the dark with floodlights and what looked like almost 300 people and a whole company of guys in black fatigues

and thousands of dollars worth of equipment and stuff, Well, I got to tell you something. It seems very sinister to me. It doesn't sound like they were up to any good. And it sounds like that whole business about a perpetrator, prisoner, or whatever it was. It sounds like a cover story to me. I'm glad that you guys were out there. It did to me too. Yeah. I'm glad that you guys were able to get out of there safely. No thought of going back to that area again? No. I'm with you. I'm with you. I don't think I'd ever go back there again. Samara, thank you for telling you. telling your story today on a campfire and stay spooky. Stay spooky, Jim. Phoenix is back, and she's going to tell us part three of her story of living in a haunted house she's been on before and told us some of the different happenings, the man downstairs, and all the different things going on. And now she's going to provide more detail on her journey in that haunted house.

Phoenix, welcome back to the show and tell us what happened. Thank you. Okay, as I said, this was part three. And I guess this is probably going to be more of the interesting part because this one is more actually spooky malevolent. And that would be, okay, quick recap, haunted house, Alton, two-story house. The old guy, in the first floor, it's just, it was dining room, kitchen, and living room. Then there's steps that go up to the second floor, and that's where the bedrooms were. work. There were three bedrooms, mine, my father's, and then this little tiny room, and this is the

bad room, this little tiny room, it had, we used to call it, we assumed it used to be a nursery because it was so small. And we didn't know what to do with it. See, my mom and dad had split up. It used to be her office. She used it for her office while she lived there, but when she left, Dad and I were kind of like, what are we going to do? We were going to turn it into. a game room. And that never came to pass because, to be perfectly honest, there was low-key creepiness about the room the whole time anyway. And I didn't go in there any more often than I needed to even when my mom was working in there. But so what we decided to do is he just threw a twin bed in there and called at a guest room, you know? And so the first thing, the first major thing,

notable. I had a friend named Liz, and she lived a couple blocks over, and she had gotten into a fight with her mom and decided she was leaving the house. So my dad said, okay, well, she can stay here for a little bit until they get themselves together. So Lisa was here, and of course, she was staying in the nursery. And she did this one thing that kind of, I don't know, why this set this off, but she had found a kitten in the neighborhood and brought it back to the house. My father immediately said, uh, no. And so, you know, after tears, she took the kitten to a friend of hers and they adopted it. That night, it was late. I know it was late. It was well after midnight. And all of a sudden she comes bursting into my bedroom.

And I mean, you could see she was visibly shaking. She was so frightened. And I'm like, you know, geez, Liz, what happened? And she said that she was in bed. She was mostly asleep. And she felt a thud on the foot of her bed and then felt something like scratching at her feet through the blankets. And at first, she thought it was the kitten because she had forgotten in the sleep area. She'd forgotten that the kitten was gone.

And it was one of those immediate flashes. She suddenly realized, holy stuff, the cat isn't here. She jumped up. And, I mean, she flew. She flew down the hall into my room. And she stayed in my room that night. And I say that's the first notable experience. Because the, and I'm moving to the second one, which was, again, I had mentioned my mom and dad had split up.

And mom and her partner were moving to Florida. And this was, again, it's Southern Illinois. So they were moving to Florida, and my father very magnanimously said, well, why don't you spend her last night here at our house? Because you give your kid a chance to say goodbye, you know. And so she and her partner did stay in the nursery. And they managed to pack themselves into that twin bed. And again, we're going to bring another cat into play, only it's a real cat, because this time

they had their cat, Schultz, in the room with them. And the next morning, as they were getting ready to leave, her partner pulled me aside and said, listen, I got to tell you something. This happened to me last night, and you live here, so I want you to know about it. She said, during the night, she woke up because she felt what she thought was the cat on her chest nursing. and that was not unusual for her cat to anxiously nibble suck, you know, that's just what Shultz would do. And she was like, ah, and it woke her up and she said she put her hand down to push the cat away, except she didn't feel the cat. She felt what felt like baby hair, a head,

and soft downed baby hair. Yeah, right. And it freaked her out, obviously. I mean, and she tightened up and she's like, okay, I am not going to wake this household up with this because we've got to get sleep. We've got a massive drive in front of it. It's like 13 hours. And she said all she did was roll over into like a spoon position against my mom so that her, you know, her whole front of her was covered. And she just kind of burrowed in and that's where she slept. But that's what she told me what happened that night, right? Okay, now we're going to move ahead. A couple. Yeah, a couple years. You remember that the old guy downstairs was the one that chased the red-headed bartender that my father had been seeing. Right? Yeah. All right. She's gone.

And he has rolled into a new relationship. A younger woman named Denny, and they were engaged. Denning happened to have a two-year-old girl named Jess. And they moved in with us. At this point, I'm still working at that same stage. Steakhouse. So, you know, it's not unusual for me to roll in between three and four in the morning every day just due to work and buddies. Sure. And so, um, Jess didn't talk. She was only two. And so she was still doing the mostly babble. And so she couldn't explain stuff. And, um,

see, it was this one afternoon. And apparently these things had been going on for a little bit. And they only just told me, we were sitting all sitting at the table, eating something. And then he said, this is what has been happening. At night, Jess would go to bed about 8 o'clock. And sometime between noon and one, a few times a week, she would wake up screaming hysterically. Just screaming. And of course, Dad and Dan would go running in there. And Jesse couldn't just couldn't say this is what's happening.

all she could do was cry and scream. And this went on for, they thought it was just night tears because, of course, it's a new situation, a new house. Sure, sure. And after that happened several many times, it reached a point where Jess's vocabulary

managed to reach a point where she could communicate. And this one night, and that's what they're telling me the next day. This night, she'd started her, and she'd see, she cried every time, she woke up no matter what, whether it was a nap or just, you know, how some kids do that, they just wake up and cry. Just was one of those. So they weren't paying as much attention to it. They thought it was just her until this one night they went running in the bedroom,

picked her up, and this time, Jess is saying, bad moon, bad moon. And as they talked, bad moon. And as they talked for a while and dad was able to extricate enough information, apparently in the night, something with a round, white, either ugly or possibly distorted face, was waking the child up and scaring the living crap out of her. And that's when she would start, yeah, that's when she'd start screaming and they'd come running in. there's honestly there's not a real i can't tie this up with a bow because at that point within the next couple months dad and den actually broke up then he moved back to a chicago with her daughter daddy sold the house and i went to florida to chase my mom but there is one post script i want to add to this

something did happen that was very positive i was 20 years old at that point apparently my mother had been having multitude experiences in that house that he just wasn't telling me about. Now, of course, I had had experiences, and I was keeping it hush because my mother was one of those, ah, it's BS. That kind of stuff doesn't exist, blah, blah, blah. Daddy was the opposite. And I found out that he and I shared an experience. The first time I ever saw anything in paranormal was when I was about five or six years old. I was at his mother's, my grandmother's out of his mother's, sleeping in the same bedroom that was his.

And I woke up and I saw a couple standing at the foot of my bed. It was a woman wearing a very patterned house dress. And the man was wearing a suit with a hat. And it wasn't a batman. It was just a guy with a hat. and I finally broke down it's almost like you know what have you ever noticed that when you confess to seeing paranormal stuff it's almost like coming out to somebody you're like oh my god they're gonna yeah I that's how we felt with dad and when I told daddy look this has been happening

a long time and this is what I saw he went oh they did that to me too that was that was my grandparents And it's like, what? He said, yeah, my grand and grandpa. Oh, don't worry about it. Exactly. So that's nothing to worry about. But see, that opened this doorway. And he started sharing all of his paranormal experience of not just in the house, but all his life.

So I have to wonder now, I just, I toss this out. I wonder if it really is genetic. Some people see it. Some people don't. I believe fully that different people have different levels of sensitivity. And based on, and again, I always say, I am no expert, I am just speculating. But based on what I have heard from people, whether it's experts I talk to or it's people like yourself who have had experiences, this stuff seems to tend at least to run in the family. And if there's one generation with sensitivity, there seems to be more likelihood than the next generation will have a similar sensitivity.

Sensitivity. Can I Let me land on one more point that you just made that I can give you an example to underline what you just said. Different people see it different ways. Again, we're going to make a two minutes stop in Florida. My mother and her partner had built a brand new house that had the spirit of a dog in it. For a long time, her dog would just, I can't even describe it. the way the dog would behave when this other dog was around. It wasn't mad.

It wasn't barking. It was like the dog would go into slow motion and walk around in the closet, always to one spot. Okay. Briefly, this one afternoon, I was in their bedroom. She had the kind of master onsuit where the big mirror and sinks are all part of the bedroom. Yep. Right? And I was in there and I turned and I looked and in, um,

the floor in front of the cabinet, there was about a baseball-sized shimmer. Like a heat shimmer. Okay? And I saw it. And my initial reaction was, I'm going to run and got to go by. And then it's like, no, no, wait. And I stood there and I started calling for her partner. Like, come here.

You've got to come here. She came in. And all I did was point at the thing. And she went, oh, my God. God. I said, do you see that? She said, yeah. She saw the dog. All I saw was the shimmer. And we were looking at the same thing. Makes sense to me. I believe that. I do believe people see different things in different ways. Phoenix, thank you for sharing part three of your story. Absolutely. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's like low prices in every aisle. And when you

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Next up on the campfire is John from California. We're so glad to have him, and he has a very unique profession. John is a grave digger, and that plays very much into this first story. John, first of all, as I told you off air, thank you for what you do, because I think that we in the civilians don't give enough credit to people in the mortuary business, the graveyard business, those folks. And let's face it, it's a constant for everybody. Everybody's going to die. Everybody needs those services.

And those services are needed at the most sensitive times. So kudos. And we've mentioned on the show before everybody working in that industry. Thank you for what you do. I think it's very underappreciated. So tell us what happened in connection with your job. Well, it was my first week of working at the cemetery, and I was a young guy, and our cemetery is over 115 years old. So being the new guy on the crew, in the older section, we used to have to hand war the grass over there.

We had a lot of upright headstones and things like that. So our lead, Felipe, said, hey, go over there and water that section. And so we have a little tractor that we lovingly called the Batmobile was actually a little riding tractor that had become inoperable other than being able to just pull a trailer. So I load up this stuff and started heading in that direction. And as I pulled out of our work area, I saw a young lady about 100 yards away. She'd just parked her car. and she was getting out of it and walking towards part of that older section of the cemetery. And I'm approaching her car and I look to the side and I see her walking towards another young lady who was already over in that section.

And she's about 10 yards away from that woman. So I'm thinking maybe they're together. As I'm approaching her car, I see the first young lady that was there. she looks down at the far end of the cemetery and just outside of our gates, there are some houses and stuff like that. And there were some people working on the roof over there and making some noise. And so that the young lady that had already been there starts walking that direction and a pretty fast pace. And you see people sometimes that get a little annoyed if there's noise because we try to keep the cemetery quiet. getting a peaceful place for people who are at their loved ones.

And so as I'm driving, I've watched this young lady and she's, now she's moving pretty fast. And I'm thinking, oh, boy, I'm about to see this young lady get mad at those people over there. And I'm just glad that they're not going to, she's not going to be yelling at me. And when I get about even with where the car was that the first young lady had gotten out of her car, I am now getting into the section where I'm going to have to approach or go on to the grass. And I look over and see that young woman that's walking towards the fence. And as soon as she gets to the fence line, she disappeared.

And that freaked me out. I just, I looked over and they were so realistic. Like I said, I thought they were together. That's how real the apparitions. was, I realized, oh my God, I just saw a ghost spirit being young. I freaked out and turned the tractor on and went back to the work shed. I said, I'm not going over there, Felipe. Sorry, somebody else going to have to water today.

And that was my very first experience, less than a weekend to a now almost 40-year career. Wow. That's a way to start it off with a bang. By the way, I wanted to say hello to your wife, Kathy, and thank her for listening as well and the big stay spooky to her. Now, we have time. You said you had another story you might want to share with us. Yes.

So that was the very first experience I've ever had. And our latest, literally not that long ago, we got a new set of columbarium, which are little cremation niches. You've seen, everybody's seen them before if they've been to a cemetery. They're about, you know, 13 by 13 inch little wall boxes. and the manager, Kathy, who just happens to be my wife, by the way, asked me to go over and put those faces to those niches only go in one way. They come out a specific way and they have to go back in the same way.

So you have to mark the back of them like top and right and left. So she asked me to go mark those and they'd only been in maybe a couple weeks. I get over there and I start adjusting, taking some off, marking the top of them with the sharpie and then putting them back. And unbeknownst to me, I guess one of the columbarium at the very end of the section, somebody had already had some remains placed in there and I didn't know about it. I pulled the face off of that columbarium.

And as soon as I saw that there was an urn inside of it, I was like, oh, sorry. As soon as I said sorry, I felt a hand hit me on the back of the head and it actually knocked my hat off. Oh, man. Kind of like, get out of here. That would have been scary enough, Jim. That would have been scary enough. But behind this section, there are a bunch of really tall cypress trees and cypress are pretty thick.

Between two of them, I saw something passed through it and actually moved the branches. So it was like something hit me and then ran through the trees. Oh, man. And that's my days sometimes. Well, I got to say, I mean, I think that there's this thought maybe, well, I think there's two schools of thought. I think one, there's multiple schools, but two schools, the extremes. People think that either everybody who is past or every spirit is evil and demonic and scary Barnabas Collins. And then there's the other thing that's think, oh, all the ones.

on the other side, their sweetness and light. What psychics have told me is that people are kind of like the way they were here. And if somebody was sweetness and light over here, they're going to be sweetness and light over there. It's a little bit snarky over there. It'd be a little bit snarky over there. Sounds like to me, John, you got a hold of one of the snarky ones. They say, get off of my urn.

I'm sure I did. And I've never felt anything in all of my years. I've never felt anything evil or, um, like in danger, I've always felt either a longing for some kind of connection sometimes. Sure. Just somebody to, like, I try to acknowledge if I see spirit or if I see something going on, I try to acknowledge, you know, hello, that there are several that I see all the time, like on a weekly basis.

Wow. And I'll just drive by or walk by and say, hi. How's your day? and just keep on going. They don't bother me, and I try not to bother them. So I've never felt that, like nothing evil.

I've seen dark, dark figures, dark entities. I just try to stay away. If it's something that I feel a little uneasy, I'll just stay away from them. But like in the case with the hat, I think it was a,

hey, I was sleeping here and you woke me up. I'd be mad if somebody woke me up, right? Let me get back to my rest. Well, John, again, thank you for what you do. I hope you'll come back and share more stories. Thanks to Kathy. And a big...

I love to... Stay spooky. Oh, I have my merch on. Oh, there you go. I like it. I like it. Thanks a lot, John. Oh, I love to hear from our international callers, particularly from Down Under.

I was just talking to Hale, who joins us, about Australia. I used to think that there was one time. time zone for Australia. It turns out there's five folks. If you don't know that, there's five time zones in Australia. That is pretty, pretty wild. And we only have, what, three or four here in the U.S. So, well, I guess I'm not counting Alaska. I'm not counting. So strike that from the record. But regardless, that doesn't matter. Haley is here. And she's here because her friend, Sarah, told her about the show. Be like Sarah. Tell a friend. And then you'll get to hear great stories from other people, your friends, family, everybody, just like you're going to hear from

Haley, which is a very cool story. Also, a special stay spooky to her mom, Lenny. Lenny, stay spooky. Sarah, stay spooky. And thank you so much. All right, you have a story about a haunted veterinary hospital. This sounds fascinating. Tell us what happened. Yes, hello, Jim. Thanks for having me. So until recently, I used to work in a 24-hour emergency veterinary hospital and there is a known resident ghost there. Cool. Just, yes, just to start, I'll just quickly set the scene of the layout of the hospital. So the public comes in the front.

There's a row of consult rooms. Behind those consult rooms, there's an internal corridor. Behind that corridor, there's some more consult rooms and the treatment room at the back. Okay. At about 10pm every night, we lock the consult room. room so no one can come in the building unless we buzz the public in. So a little bit of a foreshadowing. But yes, as I said, there's a known ghost in the building.

Two of the nurses who are quite sensitive to these sorts of things, they see him all the time. So he's described as he's a middle-aged man, they would say. He's kind of got longish-ray hair. He wears a denim jacket and denim jeans. And he's always seen by those two nurses. He's just standing around looking at what's going on. He'll be standing around staring at those two nurses. He just stares at them.

And one of them, oh, sorry, and as well, he'll just call out their names randomly. So one of them will call her Gabby. He'll just stand there and just shout her name. He'll be like, Gabby, Gabby, Gabby, Gabby, like trying to get her attention. Yeah, which is awkward for her because when she's in the middle of a conversation and someone's shouting at her, it's not like she can just stop and say, can you please be quiet?

Because technically she's talking to nothing and she'll seem crazy. But yeah, so they see him all the time. There was also another incident. So later at night, after we've closed all the close and locked, the consult doors, no public is in the building. One of the nurses, she was in one of those consult rooms. She was standing on a chair, putting something away in a cupboard up high. She saw something at the corner of her eye.

She turned and looked and she saw the ghost just standing in the doorway looking at her. She got a fright because obviously no one should be there in the building. She got a big fright. She fell off the chair. No, and he disappeared. So that was the first time she's seen him. In terms of what I've seen, I haven't seen him per se, but there's been many a night where I'm in the office working on my computer late at night.

And I've seen, you know, at the corner of your eye, when you see like a dark figure kind of walk by you, I've seen that a few times. and I've turned and looked and there's nothing there. There was even one night where I was in the office, and I could hear and see, like, someone was throwing things against the wall, like little thumbtacks or chip clips.

They were just being thrown against the wall near me, and there's no one around. Like, can you stop doing that? And I guess, oh, as well, in that hallway where he's frequently seen as well. Like there's just been sometimes where I'm locking the doors at night and I feel like, oh, I'm not alone here.

There's, I feel there's a presence here, but I haven't seen anything. So, yeah. Wow. Wow. Is there any idea of trying to get rid of the ghost? Or they say, you know, it's okay. He's hanging out.

He's not really causing any problems. Well, yeah, he's not really causing any problems. And we don't know where he would have come from because where this hospital, it was built in a big, warehouse and there was nothing on that land beforehand. We don't know what the warehouses were used for beforehand. So we don't know where he would have come from.

But he doesn't cause any trouble. So no one tries to get rid of him, but he does try to communicate with us sometimes. But it's interesting. He's calling people by name. You mentioned Gabby. Yeah. That's wild. When they start calling you by name, that's like, go.

Exactly. It's pretty much wild. Is it known just? amongst the workers or does the community know that it's haunted? Just amongst the workers, yeah. To my knowledge, no one from the community has ever told me that they feel there's a ghost here, but I don't know. And maybe the ghost just interacts with the workers, you know? Maybe there's some reason it feels like it can ship to the...

Now, let me ask you this, because they always say animals can detect ghosts. Has anybody ever noticed the animals kind of like staring out into space? and like they see something. Has anybody ever noticed that? No. Not that I know of. No. The animals don't react to anything like that.

Interesting. In our hospital. I mean, you know, it's different scenarios, but I have heard people believe that maybe sometimes if they're homeless haunted that the cats and the dogs and so forth will see something. I was just curious about that.

Well, that's really interesting. Well, Haley, thank you so much. I really appreciate you telling us. story. I thank you so much. I think your mom, Sarah, I know you said you guys listen to the show every week. Then you compare notes on the different stories. I think that is so cool. I think that's so cool. You ought to join if you are not there, our virtual campfire group. It's free virtual campfire group. com because that's what we do there. We all talk about the stories. And then also, thanks to your friend, Sarah. So Lenny's your mom. Sarah's your friend. Sarah, thank you. Because we wouldn't

have heard this cool story if it wasn't for Sarah. Thank you all. Thank you, Haley. Stay spooky. Thank you, Jim. Stay spooky. Bonjour, compadre. It's the... Priceline negotiator! How do I negotiate so many

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time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes listeners of this shell will get a seventy five dollar sponsored job credit at indeed dot com slash podcast that's indeed dot com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Sherry is from Texas and we're glows. So glad to have her on the show. And she has a story about a sign and she's going to tell us all about it. Sherry, welcome to the show. I know you've been listening for a while. We really appreciate it. And tell us what happened. Okay. Well, I had a friend, a very good friend. We were friends for close to 35 years when she passed.

Yeah, thank you. She was one of those friends. You were lucky to have met in your lifetime. They were just one of a kind. And so I was lucky to have had her. But she passed in 22. It was a quick. It was three weeks.

She was diagnosed. So it was all very quick. And we were very close. when we met, we had an immediate... We always talked about it later. We just felt like we knew each other. It just, I don't know. It was...

And you've heard of those things where you just... Of course. You just clinked. Yeah, and that was the friendship we had. And after she passed, I just never felt her, never got a sign, never anything. And... you understand that. Her family didn't.

I was happy for them. But she had passed a couple years, and I still had nothing. And, you know, I was just down about that because it just, you know, they say they're there, but it's nice to know. Sure. So it was her birthday. It was last October. And it was in the evening. And I had been thinking about her all day.

And you know how you do. you get on Facebook and you start scrolling, which is what I was doing. And I saw a little picture of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And it was a Winnie the Pooh fan club site, I think. But so I read it. And this is where I think she was giving me a sign. It's okay. I'll just read it real quickly.

Please do. It's, it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, Pooh saying how lucky we are to have friends who make goodbye so very hard, for it means our time together, has been something worth keeping. And Piglet responded to Poo, but what if you go far away, poo? What if I can't find you? And then Winnie the Pooh smiled and said, then you must remember Piglet that friends never really leave. They stay tucked inside your heart, in your laughter, in your memories, and in the quiet moments when you think of them. Even if you cannot see me, I'll be there. Even if you cannot hear me, I'll be there for friendship doesn't end just because the world puts a little space between us.

Wow. And that was on her birthday. So, yeah, in that moment, I just really felt like that was her telling me, you know, I am here with you because I talked to her a lot and just thought about her a lot. And I think she was just letting me know. So that's nice. That is, wow. You got me choked up a little bit there, Sherry. Wow. Wow. What a great. Yeah, it really fit. And yeah. So I was very happy for that. Yeah. And I think we all have people like that. And I've been thinking about that lately a lot. I had, I found out in a very kind of one in a million way that somebody that I had gone to school with and who was very close with and we died a lot. TV productions together and things. He just collapsed at work and died.

Now, I hadn't been in touch with him for 30 years, so I couldn't say we were close, but we were certainly close colleagues at one time. It got me thinking a lot about life and death and friendships and all of those kind of things. And I have those moments. My best friend passed away of a brain tumor. The godmother of my oldest daughter

and my wife's best friend and a very good friend of mine passed away in her 30s of cancer. And you think of those people. And it's nice to think that they do live on. And that goes with relatives, too. They do live on. Every day I think of my mom or my uncle or one of my grandparents or my father-in-law. It's something that they would say or something that they would do in a particular stance.

And even if it's not supernatural, even though I think, you know, again, I believe, you know, too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence, right? So I think that she put some things into place for you to see that. But even just in the ever day of remembering them, you're honoring them and you're keeping them alive in a way. It's really important for us to know. I've really been thinking a lot about this lately, a lot. And thank you for sharing this with us. It's very profound and it's something else. It's a great story. Plus, somebody recently told me that they think I sound like Winnie the Pooh. Oh, really?

Yeah. Well, gee, pooh, yeah. Now I know I've got a rumbly in my tumbling all these years. You have another story for us, right? A quick one, yes. My father, he had become very ill. He had lived a long life. And for about, he was in and out of the hospital and then it became septic.

so he was back in. He had been, he was 88, almost 89, and he had been hanging in there for myself and my brother and sister. And I knew he'd been fighting and fighting, and he just, I knew he'd had enough. So I talked to my brother and sister. Quickly, my sister's son was getting married out of state and with my father's definitely wanted my sister to go,

so she was not there. My brother had just had some major surgery, open heart. He was just not, he just had gotten released. So it was kind of, I was just me. So I went into the hospital that morning and I said, Dad, look, I've talked to everyone and we've agreed that if you're ready, we're okay. And you'd have to know my father, but he was like, really? And I'm like, yeah, so I went and told the doctor.

And of course, they're not going to believe me to stop medication. So they went in and talked to my father. Now, my father was a type A engineer type of person, and the doctor just wanted to confirm with him. And my dad said, well, yes, I do. I'm ready to go. Do you know how long this will take? Wow. The doctor's face was like, oh, I don't know, you know, but you had to know my father.

So he was ready. As I said, my sister's son was getting ready to get married. married, and my husband and I had planned to pick up our daughter from college and drive to Florida, where the wedding was at. So they were leaving the next day, and I could not leave because, of course, my father was in the hospital, and my husband said, why don't you pack some clothes? I'll take them, and then you can fly out if it, you know, when, whatever happens. And so I said, okay.

So it was that evening, and I told my father, I said, now by this point, he was. was getting a lot of pain medication, and he was not conscious. So I just went up to him, and I said, hey, dad, I've got to go home and do some packing, but I will be back. I said, wait for me, and I left. So I'm home packing, and all of a sudden I get this urge to call the nurse's station at the hospital. And so I get my cell phone, and I'm calling, but no one's answering.

And I thought, this is so odd. It's like 8 o'clock at night. Why isn't anybody up the nurses station? This is back in 2013 when a lot of people were still holding onto their landlines. And so my husband comes in the bedroom with the landline phone and says it's the hospital. So I've got them on one in ringing. So I hang that up and answer. And it was a nurse's station letting me know my father had just passed.

So while I've been. try and call them, they're calling me. And it was just one of those surreal moments where I guess I must have sensed something and was calling. So yeah, so it was, you know, one of those things. There is that connection. I really believe that. There is that connection and we know things. I mean, I think of, you know, twins, for example, and they'll be in different parts. of the country and one is injured and the other one will feel the pain, you know? And I think that extends to other, I think that extends maybe sometimes physically. I think it can spiritually and it can extend.

We get these signs. We know things. How we know them, I don't know, but we know them. I just had this feeling. I didn't even pursue the thought of when, why I just picked up my phone and, you know, that urge hit me and called and, you know, didn't really think about it till later. how odd that was. The thing that I always think about, this is a family experience.

My mom used to tell me this story. She came from a very large family. And her and her older brother, immediately older brother, were the only two, I think, that were still at home of the point. This is in West Virginia. And where they lived, it was like in the height of Appalachia. I know now it's cool to call it Appalachia, but I call it Appalachia. But anyway, that's where my family was.

Rome, West Virginia. And I'll tell you, they were so, what's the word I'm looking for, non-progressed, that they didn't have electric until like 1970 or something. I mean, my dad said the first time he ever went there, they didn't have electric, which was, blew my mind, you know. So they didn't have telephone. They didn't have a way to get in touch with each other. I don't know. This probably, I'm guessing, happened in the 50s or very early 60s. And my uncle had gone to work in, I know they had gas wells and things around this area. They for natural gas. And he went to work.

And my grandmother, who was like, you know, she was born, I think in 1899 or something. So very old school, very wise in many ways. And she said, well, he's not going to come home. He's either going to be badly hurt or he's going to be dead before they. the day's over. She got this feeling during the day. And my mom was there, I guess, as well, because she was younger. And what do you know, that afternoon somebody shows up from the company and they had no phones. You know, they had to send somebody and said, he's been hurt badly. He broke his pelvis. And, you know, he lived and he was fine. I'm sure that was very painful for him.

so forth, but he ended up being fine. But it was badly hurt. Now, how did my grandmother know that? And that's not something my mom would have made up. My mom was salt to the earth, you know, was not into putting pyramids under her bed or, you know,

getting in touch with the oneness of the universe. What was? She wouldn't make that up. And how would my grandma know that? These things exist. These things exist. They're real. Sherry, Thank you for sharing your stories.

I appreciate it. Of course. Stay spooky. I'm speaking. Before we get back to the next great story, I want to ask you to join my Plus Club. And basically the Plus Club is the thing that powers what we do. But more importantly for you, as a Campfire fan, it is the key that unlocks the whole treasure trove of all the campfire episodes going back to 2009. We just recently had our anniversary

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already here telling her story. So if you've been listening for a long time and you're holding back on a story, Charlotte just put you to shame. No, no. I understand. I understand. people can be nervous, they can be scared, they can be intimidated, there's no reason to be any of that. So I invite you to sign up at jimherald.com slash campfire. And also, Chartlandlis spent a few minutes beforehand talking. It was like old home week because she's from the area that my dad is from in West Virginia. So that was really kind of a cool little piece of synchronicity. But we are here to share Charlotte's story and it is about her grandfather.

Charlotte, could you please share your story? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. So to preface this story, my grandparents came to West Virginia and put down a double-wide home in like 2015, I'd say. And that home, unfortunately, would be where they both ended up spending the remainder of their years. And my grandmother passed away first. She passed away a couple years later, like 2017, I think. And then after she passed away a couple years later, my grandfather, unfortunately, passed away. So he ended up taking his own life in that home after she passed away. And after he passed away, everything happened so quickly because my family and I were actually in the

process of moving to Virginia to Texas for my mom's job. So it was super crazy. We didn't really have any time to like deal with what happened. And I think I went there one time. before we left with my dad just to, I don't know, finish some stuff up. And I had only been there one time after it happened. And the only way I can describe the presence there immediately was just very heavy, very tense. And I'd never, I'd never been scared at my grandparents' house, even after my grandma passed away. But when I went there, I was genuinely frightened. And the entire time I was there, I felt like I was being watched.

And that was a feeling that I feel like stood out a lot throughout the course of the next couple months. And, yeah, so fast forward the next summer after he passed away. We were going back there to stay for a week to clean up the house, get rid of the furniture. And it was going to be the first time that I was going to stay there. a prolonged amount of time. And I remember going down there and just being terrified because the last time that I had been there, the energy was just so off. And so we get there and a weird thing started happening slowly to all of us. So I remember one night specifically being in my room and I heard someone's

singing to me like singing a lullaby. We had a front screen door and there was like a button on it and you would hear someone clicking that button open and swinging the door open like someone was going to come to the front door but no we would ever come in. And my siblings and all I all had this event that kept happening. Every night we would hear someone like in the kitchen like moving pots and pans and you'd your footsteps and it sounded just like my grandfather because he was the type of guy who would come in the kitchen at night and would be like really rustling things around he was not very you know graceful

and it sounded just like him and it was so scary and so we all had this like agreed rule I guess that if you heard it you just never turned around you never turned around never looked at it because we were also scared and I mean I was still really young when this was happening I think I was going to like 15, 16 men. So all of these led up to the big moment that happened that I wanted to come on and tell you about. So one day we were sitting in there, all four of my siblings and I, my parents were out, they were doing errands, whatever, and we were just sitting in there doing our thing. And I wasn't really doing really well with his passing. I was very upset, very bitter. I didn't like talking about it.

I was really mad at him. And so his room, I never, ever stepped foot in his room. I always kept the door shut, too. And we were sitting in there like a normal day, and all of a sudden we hear this incredibly loud boom, like so loud that it shakes the house, you know what I mean? And like I said, I was young at this time, and I think maybe someone's in the house with us.

And it came from his bedroom, because it was just a double white. So it was just, you know, one floor. And so I tell all my siblings, I'm like, stay here, don't move. And of course, like, you know, any kid does, I grabbed a knife because I didn't know what else to do. Right. And we live, like, you know, out in the woods. There's no one I can call or anything.

Right. So I grab a knife and I'm getting ready to go in there. And my little brother actually ends up coming with me because he also thought somebody was in the home. And I just remember going to open the door And I was just so scared because not only because of that noise, but it was like the first time I was going to step foot in his room. Yeah. And so I opened the door and like the only way to describe the atmosphere in there,

it was dark, but not like pitch black dark. It's like when the sun tucks behind the clouds and it gets a little bit darker. that's how the atmosphere was. And for some reason, the ceiling fan was like on the highest level it could be on. So it was like shaking so hard. It's like shaking the ceiling, which is unusual. We don't keep the fans on. And it was cold and it was scary once again.

And it was like that feeling again that like I wasn't the only one in there. And like I said, at this point we were getting close to the end of that week. So we had cleared out majority of his furniture. There was nothing in there to be knocked over. And I looked around the room, looked through the closets and stuff. Nobody was in there. Nobody snuck in. And like I said before, the entire time I'm walking through that room, it feels like someone's eyes are on me the whole time.

And I feel like your body naturally knows when there's a threat. Right. And it like, you know, you sense it. And that's what I was sensing that I was like threatened. I was in danger in there. And I couldn't find anything in there. And just like the feeling of being in there, it just felt scary. And I felt his like presence was in there with me.

And I kind of feel that possibly he was stuck because he passed away so fast. And I don't really think he knew what he was doing when he made that decision. I wonder maybe his spirit, his spirit, like, couldn't pass on. Right. And like I said, it all happened so quickly, so nobody was ever really talking about it, processing it. And I think maybe that contributed to him being stuck there too. So I shut the door and I tell all my siblings, I'm like, do not step foot in there. Don't go in there.

And as soon as my parents get home, I told them what happened. And that was the last. big thing that I had, interaction I had with him. I had like a dream later on with him. That was the last big thing, but that's a story for another time. It was like, it was weird. But like I said, looking back now,

I wonder if maybe he was possibly either reliving that moment, like that sound we heard. I wonder if that was like the gunshot that took his life. And if we were hearing that again. And even now talking about like, kind of makes me emotional because well, sure. It's hard to know.

It's just, I've just felt it in my heart, you know? Or I wonder if maybe he was wanting me to go in there to try and make terms with it and come to peace. But it's now, 26, we're actually living in that house. And it took a few months of us living there. But now I think that my family, we have a lot of love. And I think the negativity there is gone. And we talk about him more openly and discuss it. And I hope that he's passed on now. And I feel like he has. I think we just needed to come to terms and help him move on. Yeah, it's one of those things like you, you, and I've heard people say that people who have survived these attempts say, you know, after it happens, they, they, if they're like conscious,

they all of a sudden realize, oh, what I've done? You know, but it's just got to be an incredible amount of distress for somebody to come to that decision. And I do want to say this, Charlotte, and I thank you for sharing this very personal story because these can be difficult stories to share. But when we have a story that has a mention of suicide, we always bring up the 988 lifeline. I'm looking at it right here, 988 lifeline.org. And I'll just read what they say here. Using the 988 lifeline is free. When you call text or chat the 988 lifeline. lifeline, your conversation is confidential. The 988 lifeline provides you judgment-free care. Talking with someone can help save your life. We want you all to be here and there is help. Reach out to that

9-88 lifeline. If you're in a situation where you're thinking about doing yourself harm or you know somebody who's thinking about doing themselves harm, certainly. Yeah, and you can call, text, chat, and there's also arrangements here for those with the hearing challenges as well. So Charlotte, hopefully your grandfather is resting in peace now, and maybe this activity subsiding kind of directs to it. Maybe it took him a while. Maybe that's what was going on. Charlotte, thank you for sharing your stories,

and I'm an honorary mountaineer, I think, and you're a real mountaineer, so always great, Always great to talk to a mountaineer. And thanks for Cullen, especially after just a week of listening to the show. And stay spooky. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. She's been listening for a couple of years.

I'm talking about Kim from Maryland. And she says that myself and Dar are constant companions. Kim is also a fan of our show. The Paranormal Report. If you haven't checked that one out, please do. That's on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. wherever you find this show, the Paranormal Report, our weekly review of paranormal news with a little bit of humor thrown into.

Check it out, the paranormal report. And Kim, thank you for that opportunity for that plug. Now, you said in your submission, if I'm reading this correctly, that you uncovered an interesting talent that you have, partially because of the campfire. Tell us what happened and welcome to the show. Yeah, actually, I wanted to call in because it's not like, you know, a lot of your stories that you get are so like just wow, you know. And this one's a lot more subtle. So this is like for those of us, you know, who are hoping we have some kind of abilities. And, you know, I hear a lot like, oh, everyone's got these abilities. You just have to trust your intuition and stuff like that. So that's kind of this kind of a story. So I live in downtown historic Frederick. It's like, I think the buildings are all built in like the 1700s, 1800s.

And there's this really cute, really cute building around the corner from me that is a vacation rental. And so I had always been really curious about it, like, oh, that'd be fun to, you know, if my family is in town, have them stay there. So one day I saw these two women coming out of it. And I asked them, hey, are you guys renting it? How do you like it? And the funny thing is, they didn't seem too enthusiastic about it. But they did say, well, if you want to take a look in, go ahead. And so I thought, this is a great opportunity.

I'll take a look and see if I want to recommend this. So I walked in and did an about face and walked out. And I can't really tell you why. And at the moment, I thought to myself, ew, I don't like the decor. It's ugly. And so I didn't think too much more about it. Sometime around that time is actually when I started listening to your show. And, you know, after a while of listening to some episodes, you start to realize, like, there's a lot of haunted houses out there.

And I started thinking about, like, wow, I've lived in a lot of places. Why have I never lived in a haunted house? And so, you know, anyway, that question was always kind of in the back of my mind. And one day, because there are so many old houses in the area, I was talking to a neighbor of mine and he mentioned that a unit in his building was potentially up for rent. And I was standing behind the building with him and I looked up at the building and I looked at the unit he was indicating. and I just thought, ew, I don't like it. It looks ugly. And then I stopped and I thought, hang on a second.

And I remembered all these times over the years of going house shopping, house hunting, I mean, not shopping, house hunting or apartment hunting. And it came back to me a handful of times of walking into a place, looking at it and going, Ew, I don't like the decor and turning around and walking out. So in my mind, I was always thinking like, oh, I just think this place is yucky. I don't like it. But I started thinking, hang on a second. And so I looked at him and I go, is your place haunted? And he said, yes, as a matter of fact, it is. He's told me that any women that he brought over, they'd have their feet tickled and like they'd hear, I guess, whispering in their ears. It was pretty creepy. You have a creepy ghost, yeah. Yeah, I started thinking, is it possible that I can tell, you know, if a place is haunted? So sometime after that, I went on the, I live in Frederick, Maryland, and it's supposedly a very haunted town. So I went on the ghost tour there, and we're walking all over town and, you know, hearing history and seeing different sites. And we turn this corner and guess what building?

I'm standing right in front of. It's the old, the rental that I had been looking at that I walked in and did an about face and walked out and thought, ew, I don't like the decor. So I guess the decor is ghost. You could capitalize on that. Now you could, you know, if somebody wants to know if their house is haunted, you could say, well, for a small fee, I could tell you. Well, I mean, I did like test. it out after that because I was in this historic mansion and I had the same feeling.

Like, it's always like, ew, I don't like the decor. And so I asked somebody, is this place haunted? And they said, no. And then later, I had the occasion to talk with somebody else. And he said, oh, yeah, this place is haunted. Oh, that's funny. You know what that reminds me of? I had a kind of related experience.

When I was a little kid, my parents, we lived in a very working-class area. And for whatever reason, other than going to a better area, which actually we could have afforded, my dad was a steel worker for a working-class guy. He made, you know, a decent living. But we lived in a very depressed inner city area. And when everybody else moved out to the burbs, he never moved. But so instead of doing that, they bought a second house in West Virginia, where they were originally from. which was worth even less than the first one. So economically, I don't know what they were thinking.

So I don't want people to think, oh, Jim had a vacation house growing up. Well, yeah, but you put the two houses together. They weren't worth as much as most people's primary house. But that's neither here nor there. When they got it, the place was kind of furnished. And one thing that the people before left was this very large college diploma in the one bedroom, the bedroom I slept in. And I was about 11 years old.

Yeah, about 11 years old. I was terrified of that thing. And it had the old script. It was probably from the 20s. I had the old big script writing things. I kind of get the willies even thinking about it. And I think they tried to contact whoever it belonged to because they were going to get rid of it, but they wanted to give them the opportunity to, you know, to get it in case it's a family thing.

And nobody ever got back to them and they eventually got rid of it. And I was talking to John Zaffis, the haunted collector, and we were talking about how objects can hold energy and reactions to objects, both positive and negative. And I had mentioned that to him, and I always chalked it up to being kind of afraid of like the ornate writing. I don't know if there's a font phobia or what you would call it. But he put forward, what if that was a haunted object? I never thought about that. I never thought about that. It was kind of like you.

I don't like the decor. I don't like that weird fancy writing. But I had a fair, I mean, I didn't even want to go in the room. It freaked me out. And then with hindsight, I'm wondering, should you really have had that fear of the fancy writing? Or was something attached to that diploma? I bet. This is how, I think, like, people like us who don't have these spectacular events happening.

Like, where there is that intuition. there, but we don't recognize it. We don't realize like, hey, this is actually you perceiving some kind of yucky presence in that room. And maybe it wasn't a nice one. Maybe it was, you know, again, I do believe we just, I mean, and these calls are out of order. So who knows when this will air and when that will air, but had a very nice call with someone about a loved one who gave very specific signs over and over and over again. And I think that's sweet and I think that's great. But I also think there's some spirits out there that are kind of nasty too. So maybe this diploma and maybe these places you're talking about are a little of more kind of snarky spirits. But regardless, Kim,

thank you so much. Thank you for the kind words. I'll be sure to share them with Dar about the paranormal report, which everybody should check out wherever they watch or listen to this show. And I thank you so much for sharing your story today. And of course, stay spooky. It is pretty. I love it. Thanks. Thank you so much for joining us today on the campfire. I appreciate it.

And I would appreciate it if you would share this show with your friends and family. And people who are into the spooky, that's how we get the word out. That's how we get these great stories. So please text a link to a friend or a family member today. I would appreciate it very much. And on that note, I would appreciate it. if you would share your spooky stories, you can sign up at Jimherald.com slash campfire. And as I said, I think in my call with Audrey earlier, please, we need some spooky-uky

stories, some ghost stories and those things. We love the stories about the signs and all that's great. And please keep submitting those by all means. But we want to get some good old ghost stories in there, too. We like to keep the mix very vibrant and sufficiently spooky. Well, thank you so much. we'll talk to you next time and again go over to jim herald dot com slash campfire to sign up to tell you your story and we'll talk to you next time stay safe and as always stay spooky bye bye