Jim Harold's Campfire - The Haunted School - Jim Harold's Campfire 781

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

A school should be empty before the year begins, but one teacher keeps hearing things that suggest otherwise. Elsewhere, a piano starts playing at an ungodly hour, but the obvious explanation doesn’t quite hold up. Then a nighttime walk through Salem takes a darker turn. And in Southern California, a huge unexplained craft hangs over a busy freeway in plain sight, but what may be strangest is how everyone else seems to react. It’s a Campfire full of eerie sounds, uncanny encounters, and those moments when the world suddenly feels a little less ordinary. --CHECK OUT ALL OF JIM’S FREE PODCASTS Jim Harold's Campfire - Real people share real stories of paranormal encounters.The Paranormal Report - Our weekly paranormal show with Jim & Dar Harold.The Paranormal Podcast - The longest running paranormal podcast on the internet. Est. 2005. Jim interviews the greatest minds in the paranormal, UFOs, cryptids and more. Find them all at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, jimharold.com or wherever you get your podcasts! VIRTUAL CAMPFIRE GROUP Join our FREE online community at ⁠⁠https://virtualcampfiregroup.com⁠⁠  EVENTS Hope to see you soon at one of Jim’s live events: ⁠https://jimharold.com/events⁠  YOUTUBE CHANNEL Be sure to subscribe to Jim’s YouTube channel at: ⁠⁠https://youtube.com/jimharold⁠⁠   MERCH Go to ⁠⁠https://jimharold.com/merch⁠⁠ to get your Jim Harold T’s, sweatshirts, mugs, hats and more!   BOOKS Get all SIX of Jim’s Campfire books here: ⁠https://jimharold.com/campfirebooks/⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Haunted School. Up next on Jim Harold's Campfire. Sit back, relax, and warm yourself by Jim Harold's Campfire. Next up on the Campfire is Laura, and I'm going to spill a little bit of beans on myself here, a little bit of the tea. I was sitting on the wrong call for about 10 minutes, and Laura was patiently there waiting, and then I realized I was on the wrong call, and here she is. So Laura, just a saintly person, saintly person for waiting all that time while Jim got his act together. And Laura also, thank you for doing God's work. You're a teacher.

Thank you. Yes. You've had some strange experiences surrounding all of that. So tell us what happened. Okay. So I'm going to kind of keep where I teach a school in Eastern North Carolina. I'm not going to say the name. Makes sense. Makes sense. And it's a pre-K through 12 schools. school, we have a lot of buildings. And typically, depending on what grade level you teach in, is what building you're in. But ever since COVID, I've been in, I teach high school, but I've been in a building that is first to third grade, which is only relevant for the story. And I've had three kind of peculiar experiences. And if I hadn't had all three, I might have been able to brush it off, but I actually just had one in August right before the school year started. The first one happened. Um,

maybe 2022. I was here on a Saturday doing some work because teachers do that. And I was the only person on campus. And I know I was the only person on campus because when I came in, I had to drive all around the campus to get to my building. Not another car there. I'm in my classroom working. And I kept hearing sounds outside the external door so where I could look out to the windows. And there's a sidewalk that leads to a courtyard. Nobody shouldn't have been there. I kept hearing like kids. running up and down making sounds. And I heard it a couple of times, ignored it. I heard it a third time and went outside

because what I thought was another coworker from a different building who has children maybe had showed up and I was going to go see who it was. Open the door, there wasn't anybody there. I was so sure that I had heard the voices that it actually walked all around my building. I went to other buildings and nobody was there and I thought, well, maybe I was just hearing stuff.

And I went back to my room and I heard it again. And it's the distinct footsteps of kids running and like giggling, laughing. And it kind of freaked me out, so I left. And then the other one happened last school year. I was in my room and I have a different schedule than the other classes around me because I'm in an upper school and there in lower school. And I had my door closed and I was going to make an external phone call using the school's phone.

So there wasn't anybody in. the room with me. And I went to pick up the phone to dial the number. And you know how like if you're standing there, you can kind of feel like someone's, you can feel a presence. Like someone's in the room with you, but. Sure. And so I felt like somebody was behind me. So I was getting ready to say something. And I heard a hello. And it was a distinct hello. I had not dialed the phone yet. I had even picked it up. And I turned around to say, oh, wait a second, I'm getting ready to make a call, except there wasn't anybody in the room. And then the third thing. This is the third thing happened.

I like to set up for school before the teacher work days actually began so that I can get focused. I was here. No one else was here. Again, it was a weekday, and it was about 7 o'clock or so. And I have a door that leads to the outside of the literal outside, and another one that leads to an internal hallway. No one was in. I had the door that leads to the internal hallway open. And once again, I'm working quietly.

and I heard the sound of what I thought was somebody coming into the building, and I thought it was, we had a new teacher on the hall, and I thought maybe, oh, someone has the same idea as I do. They're coming in to, you know, to set up. And I actually left my desk, went out to go greet the person that I thought was there. And when I walked out into the hallway, I was like, oh, none of the doors are open. But I could hear down the hall the murmuring of, you know, like the sounds of two people talking about like you can't. about what they're saying. Yeah. It sounded like a teacher in her classroom teaching. And I know what that sounds like because I hear it all the time. And I stood there and I listened and I listened and I started to walk down the direction of where I thought it was when it became clear. Like there wasn't anybody there.

And why would they be teaching because school hadn't started yet? And so I walked back to my room, stood in the doorway for a second. and then distinctly heard it like the un it was recognizable. Somebody was in a room teaching. And then I decided I've watched enough Jim Harold and I've watched a lot of Appalachian TikTok and I pretended I hadn't heard anything and I went back to my desk and was like, I'm not going to acknowledge it. Just keep on teaching.

So those were my three things when I, just really quickly, when I was getting, not permission, but I just wanted to let people know that I was going to do this. And, you know, you always have to preface with, I'm not crazy. I swear I'm not crazy. Right, right. But the person I mentioned to it goes, oh, you two, this was in a different building. They had gone to close up after a basketball game, completely dark in the gymnasium, and heard the sound of a basketball dribbling and the sound of somebody playing basketball.

They searched that whole building. It was the same thing as me with the first one. You were so sure of what you heard. Yeah. Undeniable. So the schools was built maybe in the 16th. it was on donated farmland. I don't know that it was interactive.

I feel like it was maybe a stone tape. I don't know. School taught a lot of emotions like theaters. Yes, yes. That's exactly. You stole the words right out of my mouth. That's what I was going to say. No, it's exactly what I was going to say.

Because it might not be like evil or anything like that. Just think about this. You know being a teacher better than anybody, kids are hyper. And there's a lot of emotion. and happiness and angst and, you know, just youthful energy. And you multiply that, you know, over, you said the 60s, 50, 60 years. That's a lot of energy. That's a lot of energy.

And this building that I'm in, I think, was the first building built. So I don't think it's, like, I really don't think it's an interactive or an active thing. I just feel like that energy just seeps into the building. And it's here and people have good experiences and bad experiences. And, you know, some of our teachers have taught 30, 40 years before they retire, and that's a lot of time in the classroom. Very cool. Laura, thank you for being a part of the campfire and stay spooky. You stay spooky to you. Thank you.

Welcome to Jim Herald's campfire. Happy Halloween, everybody. I can say it now. It's October. This is our first campfire of this Halloween season. It's October. We can say it without any shame. and I'm so glad to be with you today, and we've got a great show for you.

Lots of haunted spooky stories. Oh, it's going to be great. And a couple of things we would ask. If you've got a spooky story, please share it. Go to jimherald.com slash campfire and sign up. And I do have an extra request to those of you who have signed up but haven't been on the show yet. We have about a dozen people who have signed up and have not booked times. So basically the way it works, you fill out the form.

and within a very short amount of time, Dar reaches back out with an email. You have to respond to that email and book your time as laid out in that email. But we have people are booking times and they're not, they're saying, I wanted to share my story, but they're not booking the time.

So if you've signed up for a story anytime recently and not followed three, please do because, you know, that doesn't get on the show if we don't set a time. So please look for an invite from Dar and get your slot set up. We want to get you on the show to share your stories like all our great storytellers today.

Another thing, you might say, Halloween, boy, I wish the campfire came out two or three times a week. You know, this isn't enough for me once a week. Well, I've got an answer for you. It's called Spooky Studio Plus. Yes, at Jimherald.com slash plus. Jimherald.com slash plus. And you get the whole back catalog going back to 2009. You get it all.

Thousands and thousands of stories. So sign up today. You get a lot more, but I'm not going to berate it. I'm not going to lay it on too thick. You can see on the slide there all the things you get. If you go to Jimherald.com slash plus, you'll see all the things that you can get. But I know you're a Campfire fan. So I'm guessing the main thing is that big Campfire archive going back to 2009.

So you can have a different episode every day. a couple of episodes every day. In fact, you could have, I don't know, you could fill the whole day, basically, 24 hours of campfire until Halloween. You could probably do that. What would that be? On average 24, because the early episodes weren't 90 minutes. I bet you could do that. I bet you could almost have 24 hours of campfire going all the way from now through Halloween if you're a Plus Club member.

So, yeah, get with it, Jimherald.com. Plus, it supports our work and allows us to do what we do. Jimherald.com slash plus. And now let's get to some great spooky stories. As I always say, I love to hear from our friends over in the UK, our friends over in England and so forth. And Adam is there and he's been a friend for a long time. He's been listening since 2012 and we appreciate it very much.

And he has a tale of a paranormal investigation and the average. Aftermath, and he's going to tell us all about it. Adam, thank you for joining us. Always a thrill to talk to somebody from England. Tell us what happened. Well, thank you, having me, Jim. So, probably best to start with a bit of background. So it's sort of 2010, 2011, I got really into those ghost hunting shows.

And things like ghost hunters, ghost adventures, in the UK, we have something called Most Haunted. And so I was into them in a really big way. So I fancy trying it out and doing it myself. I end up joining up with an amateur an amateur group of paranormal investigators and it was course about six months we did five or six investigations

and I'll be honest Jim not a lot didn't get anything throughout all of those and I kind of kind of kind of kind of canned it in because it was it just got it was boring again with a lot of investigations

that didn't fake anything it was just a lot of nothing So we sort of parted ways with that group. And also, they sort of were a little less serious than me. I think maybe you have to go a bit too seriously. But I tried to debug everything. But that's going to be quite important later in the story. Meanwhile, about a similar time, I've got a friend who started picking up Dowson Rods. And she started sort of practicing them.

And she claimed that she was very good with them. So as soon as I got wind of this, sort of within the back end of 2011 at this point, I thought I'm going to debunk this. I'm just going to sort of not call her out, but just, no, wanting to sort of take a scientific approach.

And I did everything I could think of to debunk her skill, her claims. Everything from like picking objects in the room, thinking of, like, asking questions, only I knew the answer to. Even having different people going into a completely different room, with myself included with rolling a dice

and getting her to pick out the number now you would expect something like this even when to take out the factor of her being able to read people the results would be quite low but we were talking an 80, 90% success it was spooky, how accurate

how good she was with Catars was genuinely believe the real deal and she's actually very skillful with them genuinely so those last that's the two bits of

important background information. But to the same friend who did the Dowson was, she moved into an old chapel. So we live in, it live in Cornwall. It's a small village and it's sort of like an old chapel. Not crazy old by UK standards, but in, I suppose in America, you would call it a historical building. So probably looking 18, mid-1800s. Right.

As to how this building is. but it had been converted into flats or apartments, two up and two down. And the key point is in her sort of apartment, her bedrooms up in one of the corners, and it's led through to the attic of what would have the chapel. So she started getting some quite low level, sort of

what I'm looking for phenomena. It's quite low level phenomenon to begin with. Things like knocking, the odd breath here and there, things that she could kind of ignore and hope it went away. But in particular, there was this one door

which led to narrow corridor which went up into the attic. It was big enough she could use as a walking wardrobe, which she did. But this door would open and close very often by it, And again, it's an old building. It's quite, you expect to be quite drafting as you sort of try talking up to that to ignore it and hope it went away.

And this continued on for a few months until it got dangerous. So she actually woke up with a handprint on her leg and it was a bruise. What was really odd about this handprint was the palm was really small. and we're talking like a small child for the actual palm prints itself. And the fingers were really long and spindly. My hands aren't small, but the fingers were longer than my hand, by a good measure. Wow. So it was like a real, but it was very clearly a handprint, the four fingers, thumb and the palm,

but it was really odd proportions. But this was the point where she wouldn't, you couldn't ignore it anymore because it was getting dangerous and basically just really trying to get her attention, I think. So, of course, me being the ghost hunter friend and sort of maybe probably the most knowledgeable about the subject out of the people she named, she approached me and I, so let's investigate it. Maybe we can get some answers, and see, no, just see what's what. Because, yeah, I still fantasies myself a ghost hunter at the time. I think I'm a bit older and a bit wiser now, maybe wouldn't have been quite so gun-ho. But, so, yeah, let's investigate it.

So we got to, again, this would have been early 2012 by the time we actually got around to arranging to go over. And it was myself, my friend, my girlfriend at a time. We sort of, and I decided we were going to go to the whole hog. So we went to this wicker place, got like spirit candles, a Ouija board, did like EVPs, tried doing, like taking photographs, everything that I, knew and everything I could think of. And as usual for me, a lot of nothing. Didn't get a thing on any of those.

The whole investigation, the whole, the active phase of the investigation, we didn't get anything. What we did get was some really strong responses on the Dowson Rods, because we decided we could try and make contact through the Dowson Rods when the Riji board was a bust. And the, it was some really strong responses. So my initial thought was maybe it was a child trying to get attention because the chapel was attached to an old schoolhouse. Built at the same time, sort of built as a single complex.

So I thought maybe, you know, because that was my initial thought. But through a serious of questionings, we've discovered it wasn't a child. As we found out, it was a grown man. And when she asked, were you a priest here? got quite a stern no to that one. And then there was like, hold on a minute. It's going to be, obviously, it's in England. It's going to be Protestant, not Catholic, where you were a vicar, got a strong yes.

So we got, so we narrowed it down to a vicar whose name was John, but we didn't manage to narrow it down further than that. Maybe it was from lack of asking the right questions. But then we got to why was he still here and not passed over? because the man of God, you thought he'd be looking forward to embracing the afterlife. So we asked, are you here because, no, you're missing someone? No. Are you here because you did something wrong? And this is where we got the first real evidence of it being paranormal,

was the, the Dawson world that had been sort of leaning left for yes, right for no. And this one, they just spun, as if somebody in a tantrum flung him. Now, in order to get that vine of a spin on dowson rods, you've got to either flick your hands or give it a proper twist. But my friend should just hold it loose in the hands. And they just spun on their own gym. So that was the first time we sort of got a hint of his, or maybe his disposition, his temperament. So I said, right, okay, why are you, are you, why are you sort of, why you did the happen with my friend? is it because you're angry with her?

No. They should do something wrong? No. Are you attracted to her? Another big spin. So when we could gather is he had some sort of attraction to my friend. We didn't, I didn't want to dig into the nature of it.

Whatever it was, was drawn to my friend. And so it was basically trying to get her attention. And so then after that, it just, no matter what we asked, it was just spin after spin. We weren't getting anything else. I think he was fed up at that point. But so we put a dousin rods away. I actually my friend was quite spooked and asked if we could basically stop the investigation there, which we did.

So, however, one thing I wanted to do, I was quite insistent on was when we went to sleep, I wanted to leave out various objects. So we left a couple of trigger objects. One was a crucifix, a Bible. as they drew trope, so we'd do like a chalk line around it, so we'd know if it'd moved. And because the lot of the activities seem to be coming down through,

from the attic into the room, and one thing about that door to the attic, I should have mentioned earlier, was it was actually a very windy and stormy night when we were doing the investigation, and that door did not move an inch. If there was going to be a draft, if it was going to be blowing because of the wind,

it would have been banging all of that night. But there wasn't a draft through it, Jim. that door was not moving because of the wind. So we laid out, so I put out talccabat like baby powder all over the floor, right from the door to the far end of the room.

And this was a big room. So with this talcum powder, with that down, you couldn't get to the door without stepping on the powder. You couldn't get to the far wall without stepping on the powder, or at the very least, taking a running job off the bed and clattering into the wall.

So we went to bed, I said, woke up in the morning, nothing. Absolutely nothing whatsoever. Nothing in the powder, nothing on the trigger objects. And then just left, woke up a few times in night, did a bit of an EVP by myself, and again got nothing on those.

So we decided we were going to call it a day. Went down to the sitting area. We were there for maybe half an hour. And it was like to say, me and my friend and my friend, and my girlfriend at a time. We were all in the room. And then we should probably start packing away. By this point, it's about 11 o'clock in the morning. Not the time you'd expect to be the spookiest. But I hear no more than 30 seconds after she's got up from the room. Adam? Yeah. Come here.

So I go up and she's like, do you see what I'm looking at? And I see on the floor in the talcum powder by the door. There is four finger marks. I was what looks to be, like four drag marks through the talcum powder. Somebody's sort of taking the hand and dragged it through there. But Jim, here's the thing. She wasn't looking at the floor. She was looking at a guitar on a bench across the far side of the room. Now, like I said, in order to get to this bench,

we would have to cross the talcum powder or to go running the leap and risk breaking your neck. And on the guitar, and there were a matching set of four. scratch marks, scratch down the body of the guitar. And you can see the talc there as well. It's like somebody had taken the fingers, dragged it through the powder, and scratched down the body of this acoustic guitar. Now, we did some, so she's there pale as a sheet. And what I think here happened, Jim, is the ghost,

this reverend, this vicar called John, is like, he wanted to show that he could be, he could do what he wanted to do. He could manifest and he could interact with what we left out. He was not going to do it on somebody else's terms. Interesting.

And the thing is, because we have powder everywhere, there was nothing else in the powder. So there's no way that you didn't have time. None of us could, none of us could get across. None of us could have got to this guitar. So, and with just how big the scratches

were, I'm again, being the sort of the self-fancing ghost hunter that I was at the time, we did some experiments of just how hard you would have to scratch. And we didn't get a similar scratch until we started using metallic objects. It was a screwdriver that we used in the end in order to try and get a similar sort of scratch pattern. So something scratched out with some heller force. Wow. And whilst we're out of the room.

Now, that's the, that's quite a story. Now, let me ask you this. You said you went in before you were like very, very, much like the debunker you wanted to debunk things. Did that kind of change your attitude about all this stuff? I've, I experienced quite a lot of things as a child, which I might come back and discuss another story. So I was already a believer, but I also think that people are way too quick to say things are paranormal, things are ghosts. Sure. So no, it didn't change my point of view because I didn't need convince that I was already a believer. That's why, it's one of the reasons I was really quite so

excited to do it. Wow. What a story. What a story. Now, did she run into, do you know she ran into Vicar John very much after that? Were there any more experiences? There weren't because I needless to say, after that, she didn't live there very long. She got out of there pretty much within weeks.

Ah. Smart. Smart person. Smart person. Very cool. Adam, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Love the story.

Thank you. Look forward to hearing more stories and thanks for being a part of the campfire. Stay spooky. Stay spooky, Jim. Cheers. New from Nespresso. Blend wellness into your coffee routine with a coffee plus range infused with functional benefits. Choose the coffee you love with added B vitamins, like coffee plus B12 to help support immune function and coffee plus B6 to keep your day moving. Or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight. Our new double espresso with ginseng. extract. Whatever lies ahead, don't change your morning. Let your morning change you. Discover Coffee Plus on Espresso.com. Well, next up, we have Max from Idaho, and Campfire is a family affair for his crew, and I think that's so cool. And his kids love to listen to the Campfire, and I'm so appreciative. Graham, Casper, Miles, and Elliot are all big listeners to the show. And I think

maybe it was Graham who discovered it. I can't remember. which one discovered it. That's right. It was Graham. And told you about it. So guys, thank you so much for listening and stay spooky. And we mentioned Elliot there. And Elliot is kind of the subject of this story or at least gets us into it. Max, thank you and the guys there for being big fans and big listeners. We appreciate it. And tell us what happened. Well, thanks, Jim. It's exciting to be here. They've been trying to get me to tell you the story for a long time. So my oldest Elliot, he's 23 now.

At the time of the story, I think he's about nine, so it's been a while. And we lived in Kansas City at the time, and the house that we lived in had all the bedrooms upstairs. I was traveling a lot, but when I was home in town, I would often work late in my office to get ready for different trips and whatnot. And these four boys, they keep us busy. A lot of times they would sneak out of their rooms at night, usually to go downstairs. and get something out of the kitchen, but it was like living with a pack of raccoons, you know? They'd go down in the morning and stuff was everywhere.

And so I like to sit at the top of the stairs in my office with the door open because that way if they're sneaking out at night, I could catch them in the act. But on this particular night, Jim, it was pretty quiet. I'd done my work and finished around 1 a.m. And went in to get ready for bed. And my wife was asleep, so I was trying to be quiet, but I have an electric toothbrush.

So I was worried about the noise. I'm doing my toothbrushing. I'm trying to be quiet. And then I heard some music. And I thought it was my phone. So it startled me. But then I got really annoyed. Who is calling me at 1 o'clock in the morning?

So I'm fishing around and I find my phone, but it's not going off. And so I turned the toothbrush off. and sure not there's music playing and I realize it takes me a second but I realize it's the piano playing in the room right below me huh so my first my my first reaction is this is Elliot Elliot loves to play the piano he's taking piano lessons and he's often assigned to him to practice and and that's what I'm hearing I'm hearing a familiar him downstairs like something

Elliot would play. But I'm just amazed of all the things he'd be up in the middle of the night doing why he'd be playing the piano. So anyway, I go to the top of the stairs and I kind of whisper, yell down the stairs, Elliot, knock it off. Get up here right now, kind of thing. And the piano playing, it stops immediately, right? Like he's been, he's been busted. Yeah. And so, but he, I'm waiting for him to come sheepishly around the corner, but I don't hear a sound. So I go about halfway down the stairs, and I say, Elliot, I need you to come up here right now. And I look, I can duck down now and see it into the room where the piano is, but it's dark. So I use the flashlight on my phone, and the room is totally empty.

There's nobody in there. So I think, okay, he snuck out. It's an open room. He's gone out the backside. and he's hiding from me and I go downstairs and I look around. He's not in any of the downstairs rooms. So I go upstairs to the bedroom that the boys share and they're all fast asleep.

And so now I'm trying to think of what other possible explanation could there be if it wasn't Elliot. And I thought, well, it's a digital piano. So it's not an acoustic piano. It has a recording feature and sometimes Elliot would record something. So clearly what's happened

and there's been some sort of a glitch or something that triggered. Right. Logical. You know, he recorded something earlier and for whatever reason it decided to play it one in the morning. So I go downstairs and I check the memory

and the recording feature on there and there's nothing on it. There's no file that's been saved. So now I'm just getting kind of freaked out and I go up and I'm scared enough or unsettled enough anyway that I wake up my wife and I say, hey, somebody was downstairs playing the piano. And I thought it was Elliot. He was playing such and such a hymn, but everyone's asleep in their bed.

It's super creepy. And I kind of woke her up out of a deep sleep and she says, well, what was the hymn that he was playing? And I told her, I don't remember now what it was, but I told her at the time, and she said, Oh, Elliot doesn't know that. He's never played that before. And then she more or less just rolls over and goes back to bed. But I am convinced, Jim, that we've got a ghost in the house.

You know, one thing that she said before she went back to sleep was she said, well, if it is a ghost, it's down there playing a hymn, it's got to be a good ghost. And I figured, well, like, you know, after some pondering, I figured that was probably true, and I was able to go back to sleep. But, Jim, I don't know what happened. It's never happened again. It was many years ago. I've never been able to explain it. So somewhere between a serious technical head. head scratcher and a piano playing ghost.

I don't know. You and your listeners will have to help me figure it out. Oh, yeah. I love it. I love it. And that's the thing is, you know, you would think, well, did somebody break into my house? But if somebody broke into your house, what the first thing they do is go to the piano and play a hymn? Right.

Oh, somebody really wanted to play a him on a piano. Wow. I don't, you know, we've had these things. We've heard people, you know, they'll be walking through the woods and they'll hear pianos playing or they'll hear music. I mean, you know, these things are real. I can't explain them. That's the thing I will say to people. I believe this stuff is real.

That's where my knowledge ends. It's very strange. There are a couple of those really specific details that I should have written down. But it was familiar to me and something that. I definitely thought that it was plausible that he would have been playing. But my wife who would know better and was with him, you know, Holmes said, no, he doesn't know that one. Anyway. Very cool story.

Thanks, Max. I appreciate it. And stay spooky. Thanks, Jim. I love to hear from our repeat callers, especially from when they're across the pond. Dave joins us once again, and he's here. He has a story about his daughter. And Dave, thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining us. I was running a little late today, so Dave was very gracious and being patient, so I thank him so much for that. Dave, welcome to the show again,

and tell us your story. Thanks, Jim. It's good to be back. And again, before I start, just to encourage anybody else that's got a spooky story out there, please join up. Don't think be judged. It's great. Honestly, just share your story. We want to hear it. Right. If the story starts back in 2015, my daughter had bought her first house in Bedfordshire in England.

It was an old Victorian place and lo and behold, she'd bought it before I'd even had a chance to look at it as kids do. She'd just, she'd had a second child about eight months beforehand and they needed a bigger house. so they were renting previous to that.

And she said, Dad, come up and have a look. And we've got a few, you know, great plans for this place. We want to do this. We want to do that. Come and have a look. So anyway, I went up there one evening. And I got to the footpath on the way to the front door. And I just something wasn't quite right.

I didn't feel very well. So anyway, I knocked on the door. She answered and said, oh, come on, Dad. I'll all show you about. So anyway, she sat me down in the front room, made me a cup of tea. and they said, right, we'll do a tour. She took me into the kitchen, that was fine. And then she said, right, let's have a quick look upstairs.

And as you walked upstairs, just as you got to the land in between the ground floor and the first floor, the temperature drops. Huh. It was baking hot downstairs, three stairs from the top, ice cold. So I thought, that's odd. I said, is your heating not working up here? She goes, no, we just can't get it to regulate it. It's fine downstairs.

We've tried everything up here. Just can't get it right. So anyway, I thought, nothing of it. I just thought, I'll go and sit back down. And I was sitting there and we're chatting away, and I just felt more and more sick.

I just, you know, I've got a bit of a sensitive vibe about me that if I think there's spirits or anything else around me, then it can affect me quite badly. Not always negatively, but sometimes, you know,

it does. And that was one particular occasion. I just had to go. I just said, I'm ever so sorry. Oh, you know, I'm going to have to go and I'll catch up with you tomorrow. Anyway, got home and the next day you had a phone call. It's because, oh, I've invited my brother Andrew to move in with us and his girlfriend.

They're going to have the back room and, you know, they're going to be our lodgers, really. It makes sense. And I thought, yeah, that makes sense. They're moving out of home. It makes sense for them to have, you know, family with them and to start a new life. So anyway, you know, a week or so went by and I rang her again. I said, everything okay. You haven't heard from you.

It's very unusual. all because, well, not really. Some strange things have been happening. I said, oh, what strange things? She goes, well, Andrew woke up the other night and had a look out in the window and he swears that he saw a woman walking across the garden. I said, really?

Huh. I said, did you check? Did you check that the gates were all locked and everything? Yeah. Did he describe her? Yeah, she was, she had like old clothes on and she had grey hair. Huh.

And she was just basically diagonally walking. across. I said, maybe he'd just woken up from a dream and didn't understand what he was doing. So anyway, I left that and didn't say anymore. Anyway, I went around the weekend afterwards and I sat down again. Again, I felt a bit queasy, but not as bad as the first time. Maybe because I'd sort of prepared myself for what might happen. Sit down and all of a sudden I heard a trundle out in the hallway. And I turned around and my little granddaughter was in one of those baby walkers, you know, the ones were wheels. Right. And she basically was rolling to the bottom of the stairs and pointing upwards, going,

yv-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-lady, lady. Lady, ooh. Yeah, so we sort of think, just baby talk, you know, nothing's going on. Didn't think any more about it. And then apparently the next night, I got a panicked phone call from Hazel, my daughter. She goes, Dad, Dad, you've got to come around.

There's something going on, something not quite right with this place. I said, calm down, calm down. I'm coming now. Lucky enough, I only lived two minutes down the road. So I drove up there, you know, without breaking the speed limit, I say. And knocked on the door, and she goes, come here, we've got to speak to you.

They all sat around this big oak table that they had in the dining room, and she was shaking. And Andrew was there, and he's one of those boys that, you know, thinks he's tough as nails, but again, I could see that he was great. You know, he didn't really, you know,

not often you saw Andrew like that, nothing phased him. I said, what's up with you? He goes, face. So what do you mean, face? He goes, well, we're all sitting there having dinner. and I heard something behind me, I turned round. There was an old woman's face looking at me through the window.

Oh, man. That's creepy. I thought, seriously? He said, yeah. So I can't stay here. I said, well, you've got to now. You know, you can't move out. You've got no money to go anywhere else at the moment.

Let's see if we can sort this out. Luckily, Mark, Paiser's husband, had some friends that were sort of a paranormal group and decided to do an overnight vigil. And they said, yeah, there's definitely something here, you know. they said that Hazel and Mark's bedroom seemed to be almost like a portal that was like a gateway, that there was, you know, spirits crossing back and forward. And they said that they would obviously, you know,

try and bless the house and, you know, give a some peace and quiet. Anyway, it all calmed down. And that the upstairs of the house was never cold again. It was perfect. The same is downstairs. So I thought, this is very odd. I went away and I went down the local library and did some research. The house used to be an old police house.

Back in, it was built at 1890, I believe. The first couple that were in there, the woman of the house, died. Get this, three steps from the top of the stairs. Oh, there you go. And it's supposedly she has not left the property. She's quite defensive about it. But she loved my granddaughter. And that's why she used to sit at the top of the house.

top the stairs and have a conversation with a in a wheeler. Wow. Wow. That's something else. And that's great when you can get that kind of validation on a story. It's not just, you know, because sometimes you think, well, maybe it's just a lot of coincidences. Yeah.

But, I mean, this ties it all together. This ties it all together. It was just weird. I knew there was something strange going on, but I just didn't quite understand it. I mean, like I say, it was definitely three steps from the top. It was ice cold. And that explains it. Like I say she basically, what happened was she apparently was walking down the stairs,

tripped three steps from the top, fell down, broke her neck. So that third step was the death step, so to speak. And that's why she never passed it. She basically never passed the third step from the top. Wow. Wow. That really, do they continue to stay at this place? Do they continue to have this place?

Oh, yeah. No, obviously after the blessing and the paranormal vigil, everything calmed down. Occasionally they've seen the woman out in the garden, but they've never seen her in the house since. And again, they're fine with that. At the end of the day, it was her property. And, you know, they're quite happy for her to pace the ground, so to speak.

That's good. You know, it was just the interaction. A nice coexistence. Yeah, exactly. And like I say, at that time, it was a period of my life where lots of strange things were happening. I mean, I've got time for a quick, very quick second story. Sure, go ahead.

I lived in an old property that used to be a cobbler's. They make shoes and everything. So it was basically converted into flats. I was on the ground floor and the top floor was another couple. I used to move, I moved into the place and again, it felt fine. It was not, you know, not scary, not eerie. But sort of strange things happened like, you know, keys had going missing. The remote control for the television had gone missing.

And I just couldn't rack my head around in what was going on. Anyway, I was there cooking my meal one day, and I'd had all the ingredients out on the side. I'd got beef, the gravy granules, and an oxo cube. I don't know what you. They like stock cube. And basically, the television was on behind me, and I turned around to see what was going on. Turned back, stock cube had gone. So I thought, what on earth is going on?

So I thought, do you know what? I'm quite intuitive. So I said, look, whoever's there, I'm going to turn away. If that stock queues back, not a problem. You can live here happily. But, you know, I know you've been hiding my keys. I know you've been hiding the TV remote. But, you know, it jokes a joke.

But, you know, when you've done it, please put it back. Turned around, stock keeps back. And again, that happened. That happened with car keys as well. My first time my ex-wife came round, she left her car keys on the table. and I thought, I'm not going to say anything, because I know that it's going to happen. She's going to go reaching for them, and they won't be there. And lo and behold, they weren't there?

And she started to panic. I said, come on, I'll take you on a tour of the rest of the flat, went into the bedroom, just talking, looking out the back. I said, come on, your keys will be there. And they're gone. I said, no, no, they'll be there. We went back, and yeah, they were. That's interesting.

On the table. It seems like you're really in tune. And the other thing I'll say is people of other people have said this, you know, when something haunts their house that they are, you know, they talk to it and say, hey, leave me alone or calm down or you can stay here, but you got to be nice. And it seems like sometimes they listen. It definitely seems like they do listen. Yeah.

And it turns out that the cobbler did have a little apprentice. And apparently he died, as they did quite young, back in the day. And again, I suppose it was somewhere he felt happy and safe. again, I was not in a position to get rid of him. I quite enjoyed the company. I used to talk to him, to call him Charlie. I don't know if that was his name. I never found out for sure what his name was.

But it just seemed like he was a Charlie. That'd be interesting if it turns out that he was. I bet there's a good chance he actually was. Well, Dave, thank you again. Thanks for working with us on the time. I appreciate it very much. Thank you for coming back to share your story and stay spooky. And you.

Stay spooky, Jim. Going on vacation? We're here for it. With kids, who turned the backseat into a courtroom drama over whose tablet is louder, whose charger is faster, and while watching the same cartoon for the hundredth time is a human right? Yep, we totally have vehicles to handle that. Because whether it's a road trip or a business trip,

where your flight's delayed, your phone's at 2% and your dinner is whatever is open. Yeah, here for that too. Enterprise, we're here for it. Jim, and I'm back with a brief interruption, but it's good, I promise you. We have some free events coming up in Northeastern Ohio, and I want to make sure you know about them. First of all, actually, October 5th, today, if you're watching this on October 5th, they're listening, Avon Library from 6 to 7. I'll be there. That's the Avon Library and Avon, Ohio.

So that's part of the Lorraine Public Library system. And we're looking forward to that for sure. We've never been to that library before to talk. And then this week on Wednesday, October 7th, we'll be at Lorraine Public Library Main Branch from 6 to 730. Again, that is the Lorraine Public Library Main Branch on October 7th. And then I've got some more dates for you. October 15th.

That is at Thursday, October 15th. be at the Independence Library from 7 to 9. That is the Cuyahoga County Public Library. That's one of their branches in Independence, Ohio. Then we have October 26th, which is a Monday, and that will be the Parma Heights Library, 7 to 9, Cuyahoga County Public Library. And then October 28th, which is a Wednesday, that is the Chagrin Falls Library, 7 to 9. That's also the Cuyahoga County Public Library. That's a very picturesque place, Shagrin Falls. It's It's been featured in movies. It actually looks like something from a movie. Shagrin falls on October 28th Wednesday, and that will round out our fall speaking engagements. So I hope if you're in the area or within reasonable driving distance, you can make it. We do an all-new review of some different campfire stories that we've featured over the years. If you came last year to our library talks, this is a whole new program. We don't repeat any of the stories that we did last year, so it'll be new to you. And we hope to see you there.

You can find all of the information at Jimherald.com slash events. Jimherald.com slash events. And now we return you to your regular scheduled programming. Next up on the campfire is Jim from Wyoming, aside from having a fantastic first name. Jim has been listening to us for a few years, thanks to our friend Scott and Forrest over astonishing legends, and I'll return the favor.

If you have not yet listened to that fine podcast, although I'm sure most of you have, make sure to check it out. Jim, Salem, Massachusetts, you were there and some strangeness ensued. Tell us what happened. Indeed. So this would be about almost 10 years to the month. It was up there visiting a very dear friend of mine. And we decided to go through the tour of Salem. We both had an interest in history.

and figured, well, what better way to spend an evening as to just go through Old Town Salem? So went, did all the touristy things, including the witch house, which has an interesting connection that I'll reveal towards the end. And going through, decided, well, let's go to Gallows Hill Park, just to see where the, they had actually hung those that were convicted to witchcraft at the time. And the interesting thing was we got there, it felt very off, very strange. But nothing quite happened. And it's also important to note in 2016, there was a project done by the University of Virginia to identify the actual location of Gallo's Hill. Well, we decided to return, and it was along Pope Street. And once we got there, there was a little memorial called Proctor's Ledge.

And that was where Gallows Hill actually was determined to be in 2016. So we sat there and just this cold rush came over both of us. And it was kind of, okay, we've encountered the supernatural before. there's something about us being here at basically dusk. Nothing really out of the ordinary for what we'd experienced prior. So we started going from Pope Street across and then down Essex Street. And it got really dark, really fast. It was like the sunset incredibly fast from what we were expecting after, you know,

a week up there. And I just kept getting this constant feeling of being watched. And the further we went down Essex Street, I started noticing that there was something went wrong with the lights, with the street lights specifically. And eventually I turned around and just watched, and the street light immediately behind us was on. The one beyond that was.

off and then the one beyond that was still on. And this is only within the first block of walking down Essex. And we continued and the same pattern kept repeating at every set of street lights. We would go from one to the next and the light would turn off as we would continue. So there was just this constant motion and it kept getting colder and it seemed to get darker. Obviously that was our perception, but there was just this constant flipping on of lights as we would go. Yeah. And we got, I figured it was about halfway down Essex Street.

and again, I turned around and looked back at that immediate streetlight. And the best way I can describe what I saw was roughly eight foot tall but walked like a gorilla. Oh, my lord. It was bizarre. It was black and no facial features, nothing of, interest there. And I turned to my friend and, hey, there's something weird going on. Do you see that?

She kind of avoided the question until we went up to the next block. And she turned around and said, yeah, I'm seeing this shape and it's roughly eight feet tall. I hadn't described it to her at that stage. and it kept going until we hit a major intersection, a Y intersection. And the immediate streetlight across to our right, we were going up the left-hand side, and that went off. It's almost as if, and we felt this cold going around the right side of it, it's like it was trying to cut us off or corallus to go back into downtown sailors.

And the strangest part of that, that's about where that encounter ends, but there were three teenagers coming the opposite direction. And one of them commented, hey, what's with the lights? And as soon as we made it into downtown Salem, the lights started behaving normally, and that vision that we had both had just stopped. Huh. Do you, I mean, obviously, it sounds like you believe that this thing you saw was somehow connected to the streetlights, right? Yes. Yeah, it seemed to somehow manipulate that particular light that it was under at any given time.

Also, you're a pretty hip guy when it comes to paranormal stuff. You listen to astonishing legend. I bet you're familiar with SLI, streetlight interference phenomena. A bit, yes. Yeah. Yeah. This is the idea, folks, if you haven't heard of it, that some people can walk by streetlights and they'll turn on and off. So, the interesting that you saw this weird thing and then you had this SLI kind of experience. And it actually gets weirder from there.

Oh, okay. Well, here we go. So we are getting ready to get to go, you know, grab the train back to Boston. We're passing by one of the older cemeteries. And at first I think it's just my shadow being cast into the cemetery from various streetlights. Turns out not to be. It starts moving independently and aggressively coming at myself and my friend. And at that point, I've kind of lost my cool, and I try to reach over the fence to grab it,

and my friend just grabs me and pulls me back and says, no, it's gone now. Don't mess with that. So it turned into rather an interesting evening in that regard. But something that I think ties all of this in, especially the Salem Witch House, which is one of the prosecution, well, one of the judges during the witch trials, Jonathan Corwin,

I'm descended of Jonathan Corwin and John Proctor, who was one of the men executed for witchcraft. So I can't help but wonder if there was some connection with all of that and myself. Oh, that's interesting. That's interesting.

So you were tied in there by family. Wow, wow, wow, wow. You know? Just one last note on that. It's from two different sides of my family. I'm the only one in multiple generations to have both genealogical lines cross. That's interesting how that all tunes in, isn't it?

You know, the thing is that a lot of things happen there, and I think where you've got much strife and much angst and, you know, bad things happening, you know, it leaves something. And it sounds like you encountered whatever it was. Now, obviously, you've been very interested in the paranormal for quite some time. Did this enhance it? Did this kind of say, did this put this on the map for you? You said you had some other experiences, though, before this.

Yes, yes. And other experiences that I'd like to share in future. It was definitely one of the moments where I felt more targeted than any of the other encounters that I've ever had. It felt very specific to me, simply because it was stalking me, and it seemed to have a laser focus on where I was on that particular sidewalk or if I crossed the street or not. Pretty cool. Jim, thank you for joining us on the campfire and sharing your story of Salem, Massachusetts. Stay spooky. Stay spooky, Jim. Thank you. You know, Dar and I talk about some of our favorite people, some of our favorite campfire.

participants, participants over in our virtual campfire group. And when we have that discussion, this person always comes up, Marcia from Tennessee. She's very active over at virtual campfire group.com. So make sure you check that out. It's absolutely free and a lot of fun. And Marsha, well, I'm not going to give it away, but boy, it seems like there's a lot of different elements to this story, Marsha. A lot of different things intertwined. Tell us what happened. Okay, so a little bit of a back story, so this will make sense. We had our property in Bristol, and then next to that property was the church lot that they used for extra parking. And there was a road, and diagonally from the lot was the church.

And across from that was their property were like visiting pastors or preachers would come stay. And across from that, bordering their property was the ball field. All this is important. later. Okay, so I had a dream one night that I was standing in the churchyard, and you know how sometimes you go outside and it's like a vibrant yellow tent to everything? Yeah. This dream had a translucent blood red tent instead. And I was standing there at the edge of their property along the road, and I looked down the back alley to my left, and here come a couple horses. the blackest shade of black I'd ever seen in my life.

And they were all decked out with, you know, just glamorous looking. They had the big feathers, you know. Huh. And they were going in slow motion. And they were coming. And as they went past me, I noticed they were pulling a hearse, one of the old-fashioned glass hurses. And as they got to the church, some gates swung open.

And the only noise whatsoever in this entire dream was a voice that said, those are the gates to hell. Oh, Lord. Oh, man. Yes. Yeah, and the hearse continued to descend on down the hill until it disappeared out of sight. And when I say that, I don't mean until it just continued going until I couldn't see anymore. I mean, it just went so far down the back alley and just vanished.

Okay, so sometime later, I don't. know how much time had passed. My dad had come home one night from visiting a friend from a trailer park that had been put down in the back alley. And I will admit, dad had been drinking, but what he saw scared him sober. And my dad didn't stutter, but he was stuttering trying to get this out. He was trying to describe something that he had seen. And he's like, what do you call like this half man, half, half creature, like half animal. And I'm like, like a centaur? What are you talking about?

Right. He's like, yeah, I saw him. I was like, oh, you did not. That's a mythology. They don't exist. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw it. And he got some pen and some paper,

and he proceeded to draw what he had seen, what had stepped out of the shadows right in front of him. And when he showed me, a few things actually tell me, but this did. It was a baffamette type creature with the head of a man and torso of a man, but below that it was like a goat or some creature like that. Now, my dad was six feet tall.

And when he said that I had to look up at this thing, he didn't mean just like glance up. He had to crane his neck back to look up at this thing. And it was so close if he had stuck his hand out, he could have touched its stomach. And the thing looked down at him and growled. Oh, man. Yes.

And dad told this story many times after this happened, drunk or sober. And not one single detail ever changed. And he would try to mimic the growl. He said, I just can't do it. He would try to mimic it. And the best that I can describe it is if you went to hell and collected the voices of the damned, that is the noise that came out of this thing. wrote.

Yikes. Yes. So there's a word for that, like Polly something or other. Dar would know because she's speech therapist, but where you have multiple voices. Oh, my. Wow. Go ahead. Yes.

It was just growling at him. And it was just frightening. And he was telling Mom about it. He's like, you've got to come see this. You've got to come see this. And Mom, I have no idea why. Because, I mean, Fred Daphne can go and investigate all they want. But I'm staying back with me.

food snacks. And she goes and she makes it as far as the end of the driveway before the evil off this stopped her dead in her tracks. She could feel it from all the way down the back alley. And she said it was at that point, she said it was like the Lord himself spoke to me and said, get back in the house now. And she did.

And she did not ever go back out to do anything like that again. and well I'm just going to tell you when I get up there I'm going to be able to pick my angel out of the entire heavenly host because he's going to be the one with a nervous tick and anxiety but I assure you the palpitations I cause them is not from going out spectating demons in the back alley because that's just not something I would ever do

but then later on after I had this dream I, well, after this happened with Dad, I found out some disturbing history about this area. During the Civil War, that ball field that I had earlier spoke about was a prison camp where they housed Confederate soldiers. Now, I mean, it wasn't like size-wise, anything like El Miro or Andersonville or anything like that. But when it come to the breakdown of decency and humanity and the plain horrors of it, it certainly rivaled them. And the men that died there, whether they died from starvation or whether they died from disease or double Jack Callahan, whether he murdered them, they would take those bodies and bury them in the back alley where that's, where that's... demon appeared and where the hearse disappeared.

And later on, they said that they, when they were making that road, that they supposedly supposed to have dug these men up and send them to Pennsylvania. Now, I call BS on that because why would they send Confederate soldiers hundreds of miles away to Pennsylvania when we already had a Confederate cemetery literally a mile from where this took place. And the disturbing thing is, what if it wasn't Pennsylvania State, what if they meant Pennsylvania Avenue, which is the street that ran parallel to the front of the house? And that's the street that I lived on.

So did they move them there and they got confused or would their bodies even moved at all? Whoa. And that's, yeah, that was a really disturbing dream and the way everything just kind of tied in with the, you know, with the Confederate soldiers being buried where that demon appeared and where the hurts disappeared. And it was just, it was just really strange. And I had the dream before I knew about any of this other stuff. So do you think something was communicating to you through the dream? Maybe, probably.

Just like showing me, you know, a bit of history in their own way. Like this, you know, obviously I don't believe it's like the literal gates to hell. but I think that for them it was hell on earth. And I think that that was maybe, maybe that could be what was wrong with our property, being in close proximity to something like that, you know, and I don't know. But maybe they were trying to communicate to me

like something that they had been through. Because later on, you know, I also found out, like I mentioned double Jack Callahan, that man was pure evil. He would go out every single, single day and murder one of the prison camp

people, one of the prisoners. And it was just horrific. But he was a sharpshooter, so he knew exactly how to shoot him without killing them out right. And they would let them lay there and just die. And it was just a breakdown of

humanity there. Yeah, that's terrible. I have a feeling. Maybe you're right, that something was reaching out, like trying to tell its own little story, but the best it could describe it's like, it's hell. When you think about something like the Civil War, there was so much, and especially if you get into like atrocities and stuff like that, you know, there's so much negative energy,

I got to believe that that sticks around and it manifests. I do believe that. It makes sense to me. That's why I think some places just, you know, after horrible things happen, you know, they tear them down. and, you know, if you were totally logical and totally by the book, you know, another stuff exist and it's just people's imagination. Why do that?

Why tear down a perfectly good structure wherever? But many times we see when there's been a serial killer or something like that, they'll just bulldoze the place. And I think it's on some level because we know that that energy sticks around. Now, the truth is that maybe even when something's torn down, the energy sticks around. But I do believe that's why I think, you know, you see prisons or you see what they used to call insane asylums or places like that. You see all these things because really bad things happened in some of these places. I think that it causes a trauma to the land, not just where it happened, but if it's bad enough to the point that it could also affect all the surrounding areas.

Because I know we've heard many times, even on campfire, you know, it might not have happened on that person's property. but maybe down the street, like a horrific car accident or something. And maybe it gave it like geological PTSD or whatever you would call it. It's really interesting. Geological PTSD. That's a good way of putting it. Well, Marcia, as always, thank you. Very interesting dream, very interesting experience.

Thank you for sharing it on the campfire. And I know you will, but I'm still going to say it. Stay spooky. I will. You too. Next up, we have a long-time listener, first-time caller. Dominic is calling in from the great state of Arizona. He's been listening since 2018,

and I'm really glad he called him because he has a story we don't hear as much of as we'd like, and those are UFO stories. I think people are a little more reluctant to tell those. So if you have a UFO story, any story, but if you have a UFO story, don't hesitate to share it at Jimherald.com slash campfire. Dominic, tell us your story. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Jim. Yeah, so this happened in 2005. It was in Southern California. It was early December. And my wife and I were traveling in Orange County. We lived in Orange County at the time. And we're traveling down the five freeway north from a city of Lake Forest Irvine where our friends were. And it was around 5, 5.30 in the evening. And on this particular highway, freeway, when you're traveling north, from a city of Lake Forest Irvine, where our friends were, and it was around 5. It was around 5. It was around 5. And it was around 5. And it was around 5. And it was around 5. And it was around. And it was around, it was

and you get into Irvine, the city, the freeway opens up completely. And you can see most of the West Coast heading north. And there is air traffic of airplanes, you know, flying in and landing in John Wayne there. But as soon as we hit this threshold of where it opens up, I would say five miles in front of us, 1,500 feet above, there was a UFO. And it was, to me, it looked like, like if you're a drummer and you see symbols, like hi-hats, like an opened hi-hat. And it was metal. And it wasn't like some beautiful object.

It was like dirty. And it was swinging, swaying like this. And it was, I was just in awe. I was like, wow, man, that is just so cool. This cool thing I've ever seen. And my wife was like just calling me. I was like, do you, well, do you see this, right? She's like, yeah, yeah, I see it.

I'm like, okay, cool. And we wanted to get some dinner. You know, we're on our way to get something to eat anyway. And we're going to a fast food restaurant right off the freeway right there. So we just get off on the next exit. We're sitting in the drive-thru and we're just staring at this thing the whole time. We have a perfect view of it. We're just watching it for, you know, a few minutes.

And what was amazing about it was, like, I was trying to bring it all, like, take it all in at the moment. like it's dirty. It kind of looked like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, like that color. It had that same color. It was kind of dirty. Like it had been through something. And it wasn't like stationary. It's like slightly moving like back and forth, forward and back.

And it had lights under it. And I was like, why would a UFO like have lights? I was just one of my first things thinking. But had these stroke lights going extremely fast underneath it. And these colors I have like never seen. And it was like hot pink, hot purple, hot blue, white, red, purple, and just very fast, like, spinning, spinning, spinning. And then it had vapor coming underneath it. And I could see the lights shining through the vapor of the actual craft while I was doing that.

So I was, you know, obviously saying everything I'm seeing with my wife next to me. And she's like, yeah, yeah, I see it. Like, just nonchalant. I'm like, okay. And I'm not trying to get like too excited about it. Like it was just amazing, you know. And then so I have one witness, which was a great. eight because, you know, we've all had things happen, I would assume, and you just don't have

somebody there. So I get to the, so I get to the drive-thru, I ordered my food real quick, and I get to the window, and we're just watching it at the window, and I'm like, can't believe it. And so the kid, you know, he comes to the window, and I was like, hey, man, hey, do you see this right here? And he just kind of looks out, and he's all, death, UFO, like, just didn't even have a care in the world. And my wife was kind of the same way, just like, death's UFO, I don't know what it is.

Let's get home, you know. So it was just very strange to me how it was like didn't really have an effect on anybody around. Like everybody else around us in the parking lot wasn't even like looking at it or acknowledging it. So me, I'm like, I'm going to get home and it's going to be all over the news because it was large. I mean, it was a large crash. There was like planes were going over, you know, closer to where we were over it through their flight path. And I mean, if you could like fold a dollar bill in half, I'm just trying to. to get a size for it, you know.

You can fold like a dollar bill in half. Well, like a dime would be the size of a helicopter because a helicopter actually came up towards it and was like circling it, going around, checking it out. And I was like, oh, that's cool, you know, like, I don't know if it's law enforcement or it wasn't a government, didn't look like a government helicopter, it looked like a private helicopter. I'm like, well, that's cool. I'm like, well, all the people on the plane are going to see it.

The people in the helicopter were going to see it. Everybody on the freeway is going to see it. I mean, thousands of people at this time. And sort of rush home, like trying to keep an eye on it while I get home, get home like, you know, a couple minutes later, turn on the TV, nothing. Not a thing. I figured it'd be all over the news. Like, it's just a mass sighting. It's got to be thousands of people seeing this right now. Go on the internet. At that time, you know, everybody just had the internet at their home. It wasn't on their phones at the time or anything. Right. Nothing. Not a thing. And so that, because I'd always have like it had like a passive, you know, thing with like UFO. or paranormal. Like, it was never something I researched. So I got into it. I was just like very kind of like, I don't know, disheartened by the whole community with UFOs.

Like it just seemed a little, it just wasn't like my cup of tea. Like I'm, I don't know how to word it. Like, I have reason, you know, like I believe in reason and is something unreasonable, you know. Right. So it was just weird to me that I had an effect on people around me. versus me just trying to take it all landing on. It's a once in a lifetime experience, you know, that I'm going to have. And everybody else was just kind of like nonchalant.

And even my wife to the state were still, we've been together 30 years, you know. And I told her we're coming on. I'm like, you remember that, right? And she's like, well, because we had mentioned it just to a few other people. Right. And they were like, oh, it was probably drones because there was people, you know, putting lights on drones at the time. I'm like, yeah, but I had vapor on it and it was large.

And it definitely wasn't a drone. You can look at it and see that was some type of craft. And my initial feeling, and I know feelings aren't like facts, but my initial feeling when I saw it was we did it. Like it was human made. Like, that's ours. Like that was my initial gut feeling like, well, that's right. We did it.

It wasn't like some far off, you know, thing that came here or anything like. Right. Which anything is possible, but to me, my feeling was like, wow, we did it, we made it. And that's what everybody kind of talked about through the years. But I don't know. As I get older, I don't know. You know, I honestly think it was either just a time machine and, you know, humans in the past or the future are on a cruise and they're just seeing what's going on. I don't know. Or it is some type of military thing, I guess. Time travel tourism. Time travel tourism. Yeah, that's an interesting concept. Yeah. So do you think it was just general apathy? People just didn't care.

They had, you know, they were late for their to get home or whatever it was, and they just had their own little lives, and it was just too much to bother with. Do you think it was such a slap in maybe their beliefs that they kind of wanted to ignore it? Yeah. Or the other thing that I was going to throw out, and this would go to like the alien hypothesis. Is if they kind of like put almost like a spell on people or a trance on people that they wouldn't care, desensitize them. And it didn't work on Dominic. So which one or any of those do you think are possible?

I think it'd probably be about 50-50 on that. Yeah, I think it probably had something to do with both of those things, you know. People are, you know, busy and they're just doing that. They don't want to be bothered. But I think it had has a little bit. it to do with maybe our consciousness or something. Yeah, it must. It must.

Because it was nowhere to be seen anywhere else. Most people didn't even look up to look at it. Nobody else pulled over. I did, you know. So it was pretty amazing. So, you know, if you have me back on, I have another one that's even better than this one, you know, at a later time. Absolutely. Sign back up.

We will have you on post-haste. Definitely. And appreciate it because, again, I think there are a lot of UFO experiences out there. We want to help get those stories out so people feel more comfortable sharing their stories because there's something going on in our skies. And yeah, sometimes I believe it is the military. And sometimes I believe it's not. And which ones which, that's a big part of the question.

Dominic, thank you for sharing your story on the campfire tonight and stay spooky. Stay spooky, Jim. Thank you. The third time is the charm. Well, it's always the term when we talk to Shelley from Washington. We're so glad to have her on. She is back. And she says, I have a real ghost story for you this time.

So I can't wait to hear it. Shelly, welcome to the show. Tell us what happened. Thank you, Jim. And thank you for having me back. It's an honor to be here. Yes, actually, I don't usually have ghost stories, you know, from my experiences. They're usually somebody else's.

So this time, it was actually my experience. And not only that, it was corroborated by one or two of my friends. So this happened in 2024 up in Squim, Washington. For those of you who know Squam, it's a Native American name up in Washington State. It's spelled S-E-Q-U-I-M, which is interesting because it's pronounced Squim. So that's a Washington trivia piece for you. But basically my sister and I are best friends with two sisters. A couple times a year, we go to different vacation rentals and hang out and have fun.

And so we went up to Squim to this vacation rental that we don't usually occupy. It was a new one that we wanted to try out. And so we drove up there for a few days and hung out. And this vacation rental, it was probably built in the 1990s. It was a little bit dated, varied 90s colors and tiles. And it kind of looked like whoever was renting it out, it may have been their parents or something. And then they're just renting it as a vacation rental. That's kind of the impression that I got from them.

It wasn't like, you know, and they went through like a company to do it. So basic layout of it that you need to understand is you walk in the front door and if you walk straight through to your right is the kitchen, to your left is the living room. And then there is a staircase to your right as you come in the front door that goes up to the bedroom suite. So it was a pretty big suite upstairs. And then downstairs, if you go past the living room down the hall, there's an extra bedroom. So there were four of us. My friend Darren and I decided we're going to take the upstairs bedroom suite. And the other two sisters, my sister and her sister were going to take the extra room downstairs.

So we hung out and everything all night. Nothing really happened. I was not feeling well. So I took some cold medicine and went upstairs and went to bed and slept for a while. And then the girls all decided that they're going to go to bed about 1 a.m. So they all went to, they, Darren came up to bed with me at one, a little bit after one, and then the other two went to bed. So we're lying there in bed.

That woke me up. And I was wide awake. And we're lying there in bed. And all of a sudden I heard, it sounded like somebody downstairs went into the kitchen, took a glass and moved it across the top of the counter, you know, how a piece of, you know, you take a glass or something move across a counter. It has that kind of distinct clang, kind of not a clanging, but kind of a, you know, set it down, move it. I don't know what that sound is, but it had that sound.

So it sounded like somebody was getting a drink of water or something like that. So I'm lying there and I'm listening to it. And pretty soon, like a couple minutes later, I'm hearing creaking on the stairs, like up to our bedroom suite. And so I'm lying there listening and it's carpeted basically. So carpeted stairs upstairs. And then it stopped. And then there was nothing. And then I'm lying there and it's storming outside to be fair.

So it's storming outside. It's windy. It's raining. Everything else. And I'm lying there. And it sounded like somebody like took the plastic lawn furniture that was on the upstairs deck and just drug it across the deck. So, you know, and I'm at this point, I'm getting a little bit freaked out because I'm like,

what the heck is going on? And so I'm like, Darren, Darren, are you awake? You know, she's like, yeah. And I said, did you just hear that? And she said, yeah, I just heard that. So we sat there and kind of discussed it. I said, well, I'm not getting up. I'm going back to sleep, which I don't know how I went back to sleep.

but I did not want to go investigate. And she's like, yeah, me neither. So we both went back to sleep. So then the next morning, we went downstairs, you know, and said, hey, you know, and said, hello to the sisters and everything. And I said, were you in the kitchen last night? Because it sounded like somebody got up about 1 a.m. And, you know, it sounded like somebody was getting a drink or something because we were hearing, you know, like a glass going across the top of the. countertop. And they're like, no, no. And then one of them said, I thought that was you.

So she heard it too. So yeah, my sister didn't hear anything, but she sleeps like the dead. So that happened. And then we were trying to recreate what we had heard. So we went up and down the stairs. We could not get our stairs to creak at all. Couldn't get anything to creak, anything like that. The lawn furniture, there was a loose gutter outside, so there's a possibility that it wasn't lawn furniture, you know, getting dragged across the deck. It may have been that gutter that was going because it was windy and stuff. So that's a possibility. But we could not explain the glass across the counter. We could not explain the creaking stairs. And then the other thing that happened is we all went for a walk outside because it was on the beach. So we went for a walk on the beach.

and when we came back, we went to, you know, put the key in the door and turn the lock, and we could not get back into the condo or the house or whatever. We were locked out. So then my sister had to call the management company, and they actually had a key that was, you know, buried outside, so we were able to get back in, and my sister was really upset about it. But, you know, she claims it's because we were on, you know, we were on the beach. We were on the sea with the salt and everything like that and the, and the lock was corroded. I don't know.

I'm wondering if whoever used to live there did not want us there and locked us out. Get out. Get out. You girls are too noisy. Yeah. So that's the other thing that happened. I did, I tried to do some research on the house. I didn't find anything. There were a couple of reviews. They were both positive. There weren't a lot of reviews. There, that area is a very haunted area of Washington State. And down the beachways, there is a grave of an old sailor down there, you know, probably a couple miles down the beach. But that's all I found. It felt more like just somebody who used to live. live there, didn't want their house being rented out. Yeah, so they kind of made it uncomfortable

for you, made it uncomfortable for you guys. Well, you know, I do believe that. I mean, we hear these stories about people who, for example, they buy a house, maybe it was owned by some older people or something, had been there for decades, and it was the same way. And then they would be very upset when it would change. I remember when I was a kid, and this was even up to the early 90s, we had a neighbor across the street. And I mean, you would walk into their house in 1990 or something. And it literally looked like it was from the 30s. I mean, the linoleum looked like it was from the 30s.

The table looked like it was from the 30s. I remember the lady had a blender. It was when it was old Mixmaster with the stand. Like, and it looked. I mean, it was literally like walking back into. a time warp. I think they did have a television, but it looked like it was a television

from the 50s or the early 60s, but everything, I can picture it in my mind. It was like going back in time. Wow. And I could imagine if somebody came into that house after them and wanted to change everything, I can imagine they wouldn't like it very much. Maybe it's the same kind of deal.

Yeah. I mean, I would love a house from the 30s, but I would leave it alone, probably. But yeah. But yeah, that's kind of the feeling that I got. I mean, it wasn't like super malicious or anything, and there wasn't a whole bunch that happened, but I'm not really interested in going back to stay there.

There you go. That's the true test. Shelly, thank you for joining us again and stay spooky. Stay spooky, Jim. And thanks for having me. Crystal is on the line from North Dakota, and she deserves. some kind of special award because she's been listening since 2013. Lucky 13 years. We're so glad

to have her with us tonight. And a special thanks to her husband, Ronald, who told her about the campfire all those years ago. So Ronald, you stay spooky and Crystal is going to stay spooky because she has a spooky story for us. Going back to her childhood, and I love these childhood stories, you know, some of those things where they're so powerful, they stay with us many years. Crystal, welcome to the show and tell us what happened. Hi. So this was when I was about five to six years old. I want to say maybe five. It was in the summer. And I remember we had, there's me and my brother, and there was a few kids from the neighborhood who were playing in the basement because it was during a thunderstorm. And during that thunderstorm, the power went out. And after the power went out, my mom had, and we were playing in the basement. Sorry. So my mom had opened up the basement door, and she had like a, I remember like a lantern or a, or, a flashlight and she was calling us upstairs to come upstairs now and we all kind of rushed towards the stairs and then we were just kind of in line and kind of jostling each other and bumping into each

other just kind of like hurry up, hurry up, get up the stairs. And so I was doing that to the person in front of me. The person behind me was doing that to me. And I remember getting up to the top of the stairs and my mom started to shut the door. And I remember stopping and telling her like, no, there's somebody behind me, like, you know, and she said, no, you're the last one. And I just, I remember just being like, no, somebody was pushing me up the stairs. Like, this wasn't, um, there's somebody still down there. And, um, that was, that's pretty much the end of that. But I just, I remember it very vividly, because my parents would like to retell that story. And that was my first encounter with, um, something like physically happening.

Mm-hmm. So now in your email, didn't you say that you found out something about the house later, though? Was there something about that house? Yeah. So I found out that it was haunted. So my older siblings, they spent a lot of time in the basement, just being like teenagers, and they had a lot of experiences. And I cannot think of anything off the top of my head just that, I don't know if it was voices they saw.

I think maybe they had moved like their jewel. I remember something about earrings, like moving their jewelry around and just like hiding it from them. Yeah. Well, the thing is, I think, sometimes people believe that, you know, if you have a haunting or you have an encounter with a spirit or ghost or whatever you want to call it, that it's like, oh, they're going to appear in full body apparition. And, you know, it's going to be like a scene out of a movie. And something as simple as it being a push, you know, sometimes it's not super dramatic. It's just like something that's very kind of every day. In a way, though, to me, that says it maybe was more of a protective spirit because it was trying to get you into a safe place, right?

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Well, Crystal, thank you so much for sharing your story. I really appreciate it. Thanks to Ronald. And thanks for sticking with us all these years. My goodness, 13 years. That's something else.

So glad that you're enjoying the shows. And thanks for all your support over the years. and thank you for being on the show and stay spooky. Thank you. I told you it would be a good one, and I hope you enjoyed this edition of the Camp Fire as much as I did. And we thank all of our storytellers, past, present, and future. And do sign up to tell your story at Jimherald.com slash Campfire if you haven't.

And if you have, but you haven't responded to Dar's email to set up your time. I know there's at least a dozen of you out there. Please go ahead and do so. Look for that invite in your email. Check your spam, even, from DAR, because she follows up with everybody. So we thank you so much. Hope you will consider our Plus Club. Like I said, I think, I don't know this for a fact.

I'll have to look into it. I think you could listen to Jim Herald's Campfire, all of our episodes 24-7, up until Halloween, if you joined Jimherald.com slash plus, because we've got the whole archive of thousands of stories going back to 2009. And there's never a better time to do it. So we would appreciate that very much. Jim Harrell.com slash plus. And tell a friend. Heck, it's spooky season.

Everybody wants to hear spooky stories. This is the place. This is the best place. And I will say this. A lot of times people say, well, I kind of got away from the campfire for a while. But they come back because this is the place to hear authentic stories from real people. And we really appreciate all of our storytellers.

And we appreciate you. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody. Stay safe. And of course, stay spooky. Bye-bye.