Somewhere in the Skies - HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: Spooky Stories at Jim Harold's Campfire 🔥

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

In this special Halloween edition of Somewhere in the Skies, Ryan takes a seat at the virtual campfire with none other than Jim Harold, the godfather of paranormal podcasting and host of the legendary Jim Harold’s Campfire. Together, they share real ghost stories, true tales of the unexplained, and firsthand accounts of the supernatural that blur the lines between our world and beyond. Jim brings spine-tingling stories from his vast archive of Campfire callers, while Ryan opens up about his own paranormal investigations in Nova Scotia and the eerie experiences that left a lasting mark on him... literally! As the fire crackles, they unpack the theories behind these encounters, discuss why we’re drawn to fear, and explore what the Halloween season reveals about the mysteries that haunt us back here on the ground. So grab a blanket, head into the woods, and join us for an unforgettable night of ghost stories, chills, and cosmic curiosity… right here at Jim Harold’s Campfire. HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Follow all of Jim Harold's work at: https://jimharold.com Please take a moment to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple. Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Email: [e-mail] YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SomewhereintheSkies Discord: https://discord.gg/NTkmuwyB4F Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ryansprague.bsky.social Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomewhereSkies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somewhereskiespod/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryansprague51 Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U Proud member of SpectreVision Radio: https://www.spectrevision.com/podcasts Read Ryan’s articles at: https://medium.com/@ryan-sprague51 Opening Theme Song by Septembryo Copyright © 2025 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. #Halloween2025 #SpookySeason #GhostStories #HauntedCampfire #ParanormalPodcast #Halloween #Paranormal #Ghosts #Haunted Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet. So Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs to help him see if he can afford it. Co-pilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work.

Now, Hank has a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Co-Pilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at M365Copilot.com slash work. This episode is brought to you by Subaru. Go further in a long-range Subaru hybrid with up to 581 miles per tank in the Forrester hybrid. Longer range, better fuel efficiency, and legendary symmetrical all-wheel drive standard. The Subaru forester hybrid.

Visit Subaru.com slash hybrid to learn more. Maximum range based on EPA estimated combined fuel economy and a full tank of fuel. Actual mileage and range may vary. Welcome to a very special. and spooky episode of Somewhere in the Skies. I am your host, Ryan Sprague, and this is going to be a fun one, guys. Now, you know, we used to do a Halloween series

every year here at Somewhere in the Skies. And, you know, I'd have three or four episodes where I'd bring on paranormal investigators. I'd have you guys tell your own personal ghost stories. But, you know, I thought, what better way than to amalgamate all of those together and bring the one person I know, has the best, the best campfire ghost stories out there.

He collects them by the dozens every single week at Jim Harold's Campfire, the paranormal podcast, you name it. He has done it. I have already said his name. So I am so honored to have our guest today for our special Halloween episode. That is the one, the only Jim Harold. Welcome back, my friend. Hi, Ryan.

And always good to be with you and talking spooky stories. And congratulations on all the things you've been doing, the TV stuff, the award winning, all of that, you know. And just great to see your progress for the years. And now you've gone from being the new guy to being one of the OGs. So congratulations on that. Welcome to the old guy club. The old guy club. I'm waiting for my membership card in the mail.

I know. Yeah, it's like, it's the ARPP for podcasting persons. They never tell you that when you get into this, that you'd be doing this for, I'm going on nine years now, Jim. And I want to get to your history in just a minute. But thank you. I know, you know, every year I try to get you, I try to rope you in to do one of these spooky episodes. And you're so kind with your time. And again, I can't think of someone better because this is your job.

This is what you do. You collect these ghost stories, right? Yeah, honestly, you know, I've been podcasting for 20 years, the paranormal podcast, which still continues to this day. But a few years later in 2009, I started Jim Harold's Campfire. And that's really the show, I think, that allowed me to make this a full-time job because people love that show. And what we try to do in the show is very similar to when it premiered. Yeah, sound qualities better. Now we have video, which we didn't have for many years.

But basically the concept is exactly the same, is that normal people call in and tell their supernatural stories. It's not anything that is, what is the word I'm looking for? It's not ginned up. We don't tell people, make it scary here. We don't do anything like that. We simply say, just tell it from your heart. Tell it like it happened. And, you know, we have plenty of scary stories.

And we have some heartwarming ones, too. There's no doubt about that. So it's just very, very cool indeed. Absolutely. And I love that idea of, you know, just listening. And that's what you do. And, you know, we have our series here called Witness Accounts, where people tell their UFO stories.

And it's the same thing. I'm not even involved. These are strictly people who send me an audio recording in their own words of their UFO experience, uninterrupted in their own voice. Because at the end of the day, I think that's what people really want to hear. As much as they probably love hearing from you, hearing from me on our shows,

which has grown to love, and we're so appreciative of that support. We will never be able to tell a story as well as the person who actually experienced it. We're going to try today, but I know we will come up just a little short. But yeah, there's nothing like hearing a genuinely,

you in ghost story, especially at this time of the year, right? That's true. It is the perfect time of the year. And what I always say, though, is I always remind people, you know, a lot of people are out there telling spooky stories this time of the year. But remember, November 1st, when everybody goes off to put up their Christmas trees and get out the Thanksgiving turkey, I'll still be here. You'll still be here. Those people who are dedicated to this is a way of life will still be here. So don't worry. People get in depression.

All Halloween's over. It's like it's never over at the spooky studio. I have this graphic that I use every year. For our live streams, we're going to have one on Halloween this year at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube. And I always dress up in costume. And one year I dressed up as Penny Wise the clown. And as a joke, as a joke, what I do is I have this graphic and it has our pledge. It's always Halloween at the Spooky Studio.

to me in the clown outfit, you know, very serious. It's kind of goof on myself. But it's true is that this is a way of life for me. This Halloween is just, it's a little bit on steroids. And I do a lot of this kind of thing appearing on other podcasts or radio shows and things. But all in all, it's just what we do all year. So it's not really that different. Right.

And you've built such an incredible community. I mean, you even have like your own social media. site now where everyone who listens to the collective Jim Harold podcasts, the countless different ones that you do, can all come together. And it's so cool. I just joined a couple weeks ago. And I love this idea of getting off of things like Facebook and Twitter. I mean, they're great for many reasons. But there's a lot of things that go with that as well when it comes to social media. And you created this community where we can all just come together, share stories, and keep it positive. You know, it's not about explaining things or saying your story's better than mine.

You're making that up. Anything like that. It's just here we go. Let's talk as a community. Can you tell us a little about that? Well, it's at virtual campfire group.com. And here was a Genesis. We have a Facebook group, which had 27,000 people in it. It's starting to decline now because we made that clear we're getting away from that. But at its height, this summer had 27,000 people. And I would post something or somewhere else would post their spooky story and maybe a hundred people would see it or 500 people or a thousand. And I thought, this is ridiculous. We've spent years building this community, not just me, but all the members. And then we can't talk and interject with our own people. So at pretty considerable expense, I went and looked at different platforms and we decided to move

forward with our own community. And it's not reached the levels of that 27,000. It probably won't because some people just love Facebook and they're on there anyway, so they click in. But we have gotten a few thousand people so far. And it's great because we can share show updates. We can share things like our live stream coming up on Halloween night. We can say, hey, you share your spooky stories. Maybe it's someone who's not comfortable going on the show yet. Or maybe somebody that wants opinion. Have you ever experienced this? It's just a great place for people to share ideas. And I got to tell you, we have such a great community. We had such a great community on Facebook. And it's transferred over here. I think in the maybe four months we've been doing the three or four months we've been doing this now, we've had to basically say goodbye to two members out of thousands who were maybe not, you know, posting the kind of stuff they should be. That's pretty darn good. It's self-policing. We don't put up with any nonsense. There's no politics because I don't care if you're on the left or you're on the right. There's weight. For me, the paranormal is for everybody.

It's not whether you have an R or a D by your name. So no politics. And people are really loving it. And we're having a good time and it deepens that connection. And it's basically social media just for the paranormal without any of the nonsense. And it's virtual campfiregroup.com. And we encourage There's no charge. The only one's paying for anything is me. And we're not like sucking up all your data or we're not, you know, doing anything nefarious. There's no spammy ads or anything like that, all that. Because, you know, I go on my Facebook and believe me, Facebook was very crucial to our growth years ago. And it was great. But it's like now they put the cart before the horse. You know, I understand these platforms. They have to make a profit. I'm a compassionate capitalist. I believe in making a profit, but not to, you know, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, not going overboard. I know they've got to have ads, but when you pull up your Facebook feed and there's 10 items and nine of them are either an ad or AI, there's something wrong. And that's, I don't know about anybody else, but that's what I'm experiencing these days. Yes.

Yep, it's across the board. And it's unfortunate, you know, Facebook used to be a really good place to find friends and people you went to school with or. to keep up with family. You know, I live in another country now. It's very hard for me to see family members, but things like Facebook were where I would go for that. And now when I get on there, you know, it's just, like you said, it's unfortunate.

But again, I love that you were proactive about the situation and you built this community. I highly suggest people check it out. We'll put links in the show notes as well for everything. But the real reason I have you here today, Jim, is for the campfire. I imagine you and I, in fact, I even have the graphic.

I'll put it up here on the screen post-production of you and I at a campfire. Speaking of AI for all its faults, you know, it makes some fun images. And this is one of them that you're looking at right now, guys. I'll share it with you after you. We're going to sit around the digital campfire today.

And I'd love for you to share some of your stories. And I have some of my own. no, I'm known as a, yeah, you know me as the UFO guy. Everyone listening to this probably does, but I have in the past few years taken up the paranormal torch, I guess, and that comes to us courtesy of my good friend and colleague Paul Kimball, who lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, and he has been producing, directing, filming for over, gosh, 13 seasons now, a ghost hunting show in Nova Scotia. one of the only ones of its kind.

And if you ever been to a sea town, Jim, which I know you probably have, those are some of the most haunted places. Oh, absolutely. No question. No question. No question. Yeah. Even, and it's not the sea, but even living off of a great lake, there's a lot of spooky stories.

I was just talking with Chad Lewis recently, the great researcher, about the great lakes and some of their spooky stories. Water and the paranormal seem to go together. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost.

Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay.

Hilton, for the stay. I would have to agree with that. In fact, we had two speakers this year at Anomicon, which you were the MC of as well. I was so honored that you did that for us. We had two speakers who both did presentations on chipwrecks and the ghosts that come from that. And I just love that. I love that whole nautical ghost thing. So that's going to be a lot of the stories I'm sharing tonight are my ones from my own personal paranormal investigation.

which I've never shared on the show before. So these will be exclusive stories. Oh, cool. That are in our television show, some that didn't make it on camera. But I'm really excited to share those with you, Jim, for the very first time. But I'd love to start with you.

Now, again, you have racked up thousands of these stories. And we were talking off air how hard it is to retain them in our memory, in our minds. Yeah. Yeah. The thing is, is that my campfire shows 90 minutes every week. and we do that every week. And it's been 90 minutes for several years. It started out 30 minutes. Then it went to 60 minutes. And it's been 90 minutes. I don't know if it's for the last 10 years. It's been quite a while. It's been 90 minutes. So that means we do on average about 10 stories a week. So it's like when I'm going to do a show like this, you know, I have a few stories that I have in my memory bank. And I recount. And there's some really great stories. But I'm like, you got freshen it up, Jim, and add some new stories. And you don't always tell the same. stories because there's thousands to choose from. In fact, if you want me to, I can get into the

first one. And this one was just in the last month. And it was such good timing. This call, I said, thank you for giving me one of the creepiest campfire stories ever in October. Thank you. This was Aubrey, a young woman, I would say probably in her mid-20s. And this story happened in 2019 when she was attending the University of Pittsburgh, which is in an urban area. Now, the campus is surrounded by hospitals, so she parked at a hospital service lot at the far end of campus. So it was daytime and a fall, probably about this time of year, and she was walking back to her car after class. She had her AirPods and just a normal average afternoon, nothing weird. And then on the opposite side of the street, it was near a bus stop in a small wooded area.

noticed a woman standing back among the trees. And this woman was wearing all black. Maybe it was a leather jacket. And this woman had this striking vivid red hair. It was so red, it gleamed in the sunlight. Now, the woman appeared normal. In fact, she was kind of attractive. And the one was standing there looking at Aubrey through the crowd with kind of a smile. Aubrey thought, that's kind of weird, why she's smiling at me. And Aubrey glanced away. she continued to walk to the crosswalk because she was going to go get to her car. And when she turned, the woman was right next to her. And it's like, wait, she would have had gone at a full sprint from where she was to be right next to me.

Now, what was also weird is nobody else seemed to notice her. Now, at the straight corner, the woman turned from friendly to something different. The woman bared her teeth. It wasn't a friendly grin, but this. kind of menacing smile. She didn't move. She just stared directly at Aubrey. Aubrey thought, you know what?

It's the city. There's some strange people in the city. Some strange things happen. So she thought, you know, this is just a weird person. So she starts walking towards his parking lot. And she's looking down, you know, you got to watch the street for potholes or uneven sidewalk or that kind of thing. and she looks up and guess who's standing directly in front of her, in the middle of the road, inches away, this woman.

Aubrey nearly collided with her, stop short, tried to sidestep, but at this point the woman's face had completely transformed. Her mouth had stretched unnaturally wide, like something inhuman, something we couldn't do. She had too many teeth for her head, and they were crowded at odd angles, and her eyes, her smile was, was almost up to her eyes. Like you couldn't physically, you could try to smile Ryan as hard as you can and you couldn't do it. And her eyes all of a sudden were sunken. It's like a grayish film was over pale green, almost like somebody put a digital, like a Snapchat filter on her or something. She said it looked in human like something from a movie or a Halloween mask, but it was real and it was up close and personal with her. Aubrey felt total terror. She had a primal fear, cold sweat, pure.

dread. She quickly sidestepped the woman. She refused to look back, hurried to her car terrified she'd see her again. She backed out of the parking lot and started to drive up the steep exit row. Guess who she saw? The woman standing at the top of the hill blocking her path. The woman's face now looked normal again, but angry. She was glaring at Aubrey. Aubrey drove straight towards her, and basically Aubrey said, I hope she moves. Hery's hands were tight on the wheel, staring at the woman's chest rather than her face. At the very last moment, this weird woman steps aside and raise one hand towards her, possibly like a fist or to grab the door, she thought. Aubrey spread her way.

Once Aubrey got to the highway, she broke down and started crying. She was shaking. She was terrified. She was like, oh, what in the world was that? She pulled over and cried for a while. Her boyfriend said, well, it was just a weird person in the city. But Aubrey insists it wasn't human. Now, all this for years, she had, not for years, but for months,

she had all these dreams and bad experiences. She remembers the unnaturally red hair. But most of all, I think that she remembers that terrifying grin. She thinks it's something possibly supernatural. Maybe something only she saw since no one else reacted. There was no stress in her life, no trauma, no explanation. she never had anything like this before or since, no paranormal experiences. But the thing that really makes it stand out is this happened in absolute broad daylight.

Nothing at nighttime, nothing like that. I mean, and I believe her, if you watch the video, because we have it on my YouTube channel, and it's also a video on Spotify, if you watch her, you can tell she's not making this up. This really happened. And she's seeing like a very intelligent feet on the ground young woman. I believe her. I just don't know what it was. I just said, and it was the title of that week's episode, creepy as hell, because I think that it definitely meets that criteria.

What do you think? Right. So as you're telling this, you know, I start conjuring these images, you know, back in the days of like Tumblr and Reddit and all the. these deep, dark dives into, like, urban legends. And people would post these really creepy images of the grinning man. You remember those, Jim? Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right.

I forgot about that. That's right. Also reminds me a little bit of the black-eyed kid stories. Yes. Yes. And I have to, admittedly, I have to look into this. But last week, I think it was on either in the YouTube comments or it was in the virtual campfire group at virtual campfire group.com.

It was, I had to get that in. It was, someone said this reminds me of the Japanese legend of the XYZ. And I have to look into that. It talked about a grinning woman. So I have to check into this because maybe this taps into a bigger phenomena that that's worldwide. So, but again, I believed her. And that's the thing about the campfire. I mean, sure, are there probably people who come on and maybe pull my leg? either A, I am not good at detecting it, or, B, they're really good at hiding it because the vast, vast majority of people, I could count on one hand, Ryan, in 16 years of doing this show that I think somebody called in and was trying to snow me directly, trying to either take something that they read in a book and retouch. I mean, people really seem sincere, and I believe them. So either I'm Uncle Sucker or these people are really experiencing it. And I think people are really experiencing it. I tend to err on the side of that as well. It just comes off so genuine.

And people don't realize when they submit these stories to you or I, they have nothing, nothing to gain. That's right. That's right. We're not paying them to tell these stories. They're not writing bestselling books or going on. Maybe sometimes they'll get interviewed for television shows or something like that. But again, like that's usually on their own.

So I don't understand for many people why they would create it up. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Wow. That is, the creepy as hell is the perfect way to put that one. Wow. And the fact that she tried to say, hey, if you're supernatural, now's the time to dissipate because I'm going to drive my car right through you.

Yeah, yeah. She's like, I hope she gets out of the way. Or else I got some vehicular. manslaughter on my manned. Man, what a great story to start with, Jim. Awesome. Shall I move to my first?

Absolutely. Please do. Okay, okay. I'm trying to think of which one to start with. I think I'll start with these stories that sort of escalate in terms of my personal involvement. Okay, let's start with this one. So, while in a place in Nova Scotia called Lunan,

It is one of the most beautiful little fishing towns I've ever seen. They have this very famous huge ship that has been, you know, was lost in a shipwreck originally. They rebuilt it. And it's called the Blue Nose. And this is like something that brings a lot of tourists into town to see the reimagined and rebuilt Blunos ship. You've got all of these houses throughout the town of Loonenburg that have what's called the Widows Peak. in the front of the home. And this is literally a window on like the second floor of all of these old,

really creepy looking houses where, you know, the wives would wait for their husbands to come back either from war or from fishing expeditions because that was what everyone did in these little towns. And when all the men would get off their ships and come home, uh, they would wait in that window to look for their husband. And if their husband didn't come back, uh,

Unfortunately, that usually meant that they were lost at sea or something tragic had happened during war. Anyways, to get to this story, there's this beautiful academy in the middle of town, and it's actually surrounded by a cemetery. It's called the Lunenburg Academy. I might put up some images as we're going through this gym of the place. And I had the opportunity during my TV show, which was called Haunted at the time, to go to the academy. And there'd been a lot of reports of all different things happening throughout this huge, huge building, whether it was weird noises coming from the basement or children running through the academy. But it was, you know, 10 at night. There were no children in the building, things like that. So they called us to come investigate, and I'm not kidding you, we went from the basement boiler room all the way up to, I believe, the fourth level of this academy.

And we had the weirdest things happen throughout all of it. But the one I want to share with you is we went to the basement area and we set up a Ouija board, something that I am very akin to Yuzi now. I know you actually just had an episode of the paranormal body. Yeah, Karen Dahlman on the paranormal podcast. She's great. Yes, I learned a lot from that episode of things that I should not be doing on my ghost show. But this was kind of a positive experience. I'll start with that. So we get the Ouija board out and we set it up in the basement and we had a new guy on our investigation team, a guy named Dylan. Now, Dylan had been a paranormal investigator for years.

He had never worked with me or the rest of the team before. So, of course, he was a little skeptical. He wanted to kind of test the boundaries with the other investigators. Make sure we were all on the up and up because you watch a lot of these ghost shows and you can't tell me that some of this stuff isn't fake. And Dylan, he said, okay, you and you go on the Ouija board. The you and you was me and my buddy Jacob. And we'd been doing Ouija board sessions for a season prior to this and we had stunning results.

So it didn't surprise me when Dylan said, I want to test these guys. guys make sure. So what he did is he, uh, he blindfolded both of us. He set the board down. And as we're doing the switchboard session, unbeknownst to us, we, um, he, excuse me, he was spinning the board without us knowing. So even if for some reason, let's say we could sort of see under these blindfolds, which I can tell you, we could not. or if we had known where the A is on the board, where the two is, stuff like that. Yes, no. Yeah, he would spin the board without us knowing. So, you know, feasibly if we were cheating or had memorized things, hopefully he could catch us in the act.

He did not. We had incredible results throughout this entire Ouija board session. Meanwhile, we had one of our female investigators, Amy, in the corner of this room. And she's kind of just trying to sense things out and she's listening to the things coming through on the Ouija board. And the big thing that came through on the Ouija board was a child. And we came to find out that this child was, I believe, it was 14 years old. And it was a girl. and we came to find out that her name was Sophia,

which meant nothing to Jacob and I. We were like, okay, cool. We're talking to a little girl, Sophia, Sophia. And all of a sudden, Amy, in the corner of the room, just starts freaking out and crying. Like, it was crazy. We're like, what, what's going on? Did she lose a family member named Sophia or something like that?

And Amy goes on to tell us, Sophia has a very rich history in this area. Amy was from a town over, from Lunenburg, where we were. And she said, I want to bring you guys somewhere. We're okay. So they cut the cameras and everything. We take the blindfolds off.

And we follow Amy outside of the academy into the cemetery that I told you about that surrounded the academy. And we make our work. way to this grave gin. And I'm going to put a photo up here on screen. This is it during the daytime. But at night, it looked a lot creepier. Now, if you're watching this on YouTube,

it's an image of a large grave with a chained heart, broken chained heart in front of it. I've never seen anything like that. Right? Very unique. And mind you, this is at night. So we had to get the flashed. lights out and we're looking up and what name is on that grave but Sophia.

And we start getting a little freaked out. We start asking Amy about, well, who is she? Who is this girl? And the story goes, and I'm just going to pull up my notes here because I do not want to get this wrong because this is an actual person. This is not urban legend. I want to respect the history. Sophia at the age of 14 was unjustly accused of stealing $10 from her employer, which was a lot of money back in the mid-800s when this happened. She worked for a local, I don't know what it was, you know, like a convenience store sort of situation.

And she was accused of stealing money from the register, $10. She was automatically, you know, fired from the job. And back then, if you were a criminal of some sort, like this, you were done. you were blacklisted for life. Your entire family was sort of like ousted socially from the community. And this ruined Sophia's entire family's life. Her parents lost their jobs because of it.

They were shunned from the community. They couldn't go anywhere without people, you know, throwing vegetables at them back. Stuff like that. Horrible things, man. And it got so bad that Sophia eventually died of what they called a broken heart. And for those who don't know what that means, that means unfortunately killing yourself. So at the age of 14, Sophia committed suicide because of the shame that this brought to her and her family.

Now, it would take some time after that for the owners of the store where Sophia worked, they had a young son. and finally the son would come forward and say, I was the one who stole the money. Oh, my gosh. So just such a tragic story, but the fact that that was the name that came through, that Amy was in the corner of the room, as we were quote unquote speaking to Sophia,

she was in the corner where if you were to go through that wall, that is right where Sophia's grave was. And it was just amazing. So we spent the rest of our investigation trying to get Sophia and the young kid to make up for him to apologize to her for what he did for not taking the rep and making her do it and ultimately leading to her untimely death. So, you know, I won't give away what actually happens at the end of the episode. I hope people will check it out. But yeah, that was one of the most heartbreaking stories I'd ever learned, especially when I went out. and saw that grave of the broken heart of Sophia.

So, yeah, that was one. No, let me, I hate to turn to tables, but I'm going to. Don't please. Being on these ghost hunting shows and having experiences like that, how has that changed your perception or has it changed your perception of the afterlife and what ghosts are and do ghosts really exist? Kind of like, where were you, Ryan Sprague, a few years ago, And where are you now and how is that different?

Surprisingly, and you can ask my father, my sister this. I was very skeptical of the paranormal. Now, obviously, I've been following your work for a long time now. I love horror movies. I've watched the ghost hunting shows. But a big part of me, Jim, was always like, I don't know. I don't know. And, you know, that probably came from a sense of fear of the unknown, of facing death.

things like that. And I also grew up rather religious. I was born and raised Roman Catholic, and I was always kind of told not to talk about this sort of stuff, the paranormal and things like that. So I will say that I was very skeptical when it came to ghosts, which is ironic because I am a uphologist and I believe in all the alien stuff. But yeah, I went into doing this ghost show very skeptical.

And that's kind of what they wanted me to be, the rational one of the group. And I will tell you, after three and a half years now of doing these paranormal investigations, my mind has been changed dramatically. And you'll see as my stories go on, why. But yes, I am much more open to these things than I ever was before, embracing them. And also the way I interpret that, which we can get to as well. I don't necessarily believe these are just spirits. I believe there's a lot more going on than just, you know, the ghost of someone who has passed.

So, yes, my mind has been changed dramatically would be the short way of answering your question. I kind of thought that might be the case, but I wanted to get it from you and understand how you've evolved in your thinking on it. Yeah, and, you know, there are things we did explain and we're able to debunk. And I think that's just as important as well. But, yeah, that one, oh, boy. I could not. Can't explain that one, Jim. Jacob didn't know the history of Sophia. I had no idea.

Never been to Lunenberg. We do very little research for our investigations purposefully because we don't want to be, I guess, influenced by the... Exactly. The myths that have grown in these towns or the stories that have been shared. We just want to go experience it. If it happens to coincide with something afterwards, all the better. And that's what actually makes it more genuine for me. Yeah, Amy bringing us out to that graveyard and seeing that grave, man, my heart hit my shoes.

I swear. It was one for the books. But let's move to you. I feel like I've bled. Sophia has been given her time. Thank you, Sophia. And we're wishing her all the best. But what do you have next?

Well, this one also, I've been blessed this October to get some really interesting stories. And I have this saying, I call them Campfire Classics. and the one I just shared with you, I think, will fit that billing, and I'll be telling that hopefully, you know, if health maintains years from now. Here's another one that I thought was very dramatic in the way that the spirit manifested itself or showed itself or showed that it was there. This is a story from, and this was literally what would have been, was it last week's episode or the week before? Spencer from Texas called in And Spencer's family had a house that was built in the 1940s

And it was a family house where the grandparents lived And later an uncle lived and so forth And growing up he remembers it was very comforting It was filled with dark pine paneling, heirlooms, antiques It wasn't scary when he was a kid That changed over the years Several family members died there

His grandfather died there, his uncle, Troy died there in his bedroom in Troy's bedroom in 2015. Now, after inheriting the house, Spencer's mother began experiencing unexplained activity, footsteps, voices, pictures falling, even a TV remote flying across the room. So during a visit about two years ago, Spencer was staying overnight. And he left the living room and went to the bathroom, which sits across from the bedroom where Uncle Troy died. And as he stepped into the hallway, he was struck by the distinct smell of his uncle. Because, you know, people have, and it doesn't mean they didn't take a shower. They just have smells about it. Yeah.

And this was, yeah. And it was instantly recognizable and unmistakable. And Spencer had had a sense that maybe his uncle was haunting this place. So he said, you know what? I'm going to confront this. I'm going to see what's going on. And he said, Troy, if your spirit is here, I want you to open your bedroom door. Now, one thing important to say is that on the floor of his bedroom was heavy shag carpeting. And if anybody's been in a house where you have wooden doors in that heavy shag carpeting, you know you've got to kind of yank the door to open and close it. It's not easy, right? Well, he says,

Troy, if your spirit is here, I want you open a door. The closed, heavy door with the shag carpeting, suddenly swung all the way open. No air movement, no breeze, no nothing. Spencer was stunned, but he said, let's try this again. Troy, if your spirit is here, close the door. The door shut completely, and it clicked. So he called his mom, and he said, I want to show you something. He said, Troy, if your spirit is here,

open the door. It opens. He says, Troy, if your spirit is here, close the door. He closed it. His mother was absolutely horrified. She's like, oh, my God. She had heard these things and experienced these things, but this was basically proof. That night, she literally barricaded the door because I think Spencer had to leave or something. So she was by herself. Now, after this, Spencer went back home where he lived in Colorado, and he experienced a vivid dream that felt very real. He was standing in his family's living room where Uncle Troy sat in his old recliner, the same one that was still in the house. And in the dream, Spencer realizes his uncle's dead, and he asks him, why are you still here? And his uncle said there was a bright light outside, but he was afraid to go towards it.

Spencer reassured him. He said, it's okay, you can go. and after this dream happened and Spencer told Uncle Troy that he could go, his mother noticed a sharp decline in the paranormal activity in the house. And Spencer wonders

if he was in fact communicating with his uncle and he did move on. Now, before Uncle Troy's death of visiting preacher claimed there was a demon in the house, you know, and Spencer, you know,

didn't like that idea. And Troy had actually a year earlier, Troy called his, Troy had called Spencer terrified saying he'd been dragged from his bed into the hallway. And it found his great-grandfathers, because remember, this was a family house. Kane looped around his neck. So things were happening to Troy. Troy dies. Troy haunts the house. Spencer has the dream.

Troy is released. Now, Spencer eventually went back to the house, prayed with holy water, and everything seemed to calm down after that one event that his uncle had. But overall, I think Spencer believes that he did speak to his uncle. His uncle was haunting the house and maybe he was afraid to, quote, go to the light. And Ryan, this is the one thing that does worry me about the paranormal. and kind of scares me about the paranormal. It's not that I'm afraid of being haunted by a ghost or something. But I like to think on some level we live in a just universe.

I mean, people, there's injustice in the world. We know that. And people, you know, through no fault of their own many times, I have bad lives and bad things happen to them. And sometimes good things happen to bad people. We see that too. So I don't know that there's justice necessarily on this earth. But I do like to think when we get to the next level,

there is some level of justice. I would hate to think somebody has a stuck soul because they're afraid of going to the light or maybe they died suddenly or unexpectedly, you're in an accident or something. And they don't know they're dead or that. When I hear that, that bothers me. That's the one thing that bothers me. Overall, doing these shows has been a very positive experience and actually kind of made me have more faith in a higher power, more faith that we do go on. But the stuck story thing does stick with me and does does worry me a little bit. I hate that idea of stuck souls. Yeah. You know, that's such a good point, Jim. And a lot of people believe that the way we can help these spirits is to help them move on and that they are stuck. And that's why we're experiencing them.

They're in some liminal space that we just can sometimes catch glimpses of. And, and, you know, that's good. We try to help when we're doing our investigations, like either if it's helping someone to move on or simply to be there to listen, to believe them, to bring something forward that they wanted to bring forward, not necessarily help them find the light or whatever, but just to get their story out there, I think that's anyone, human or spirit or otherwise, just wants to be heard. And I think, you know, if we can be the ones to do that, that's great. In this story, though, what really caught my attention was the fact that you had something happening in the real world that was then brought into a dream world and seemed to have a resolution in a sense.

You know, yes, the holy water, yes, a spiritual side of it. But I love the fact that like a story can be continued in the dream world as well. and it can have just as much of a resolution or implication in real life. That fascinates me because, you know, whether it's an alien abduction or a paranormal experience, so many people tell me, as I'm sure they say on your show, I felt like I was in a dream or I felt like I had just woken up. Or maybe it was a dream, but it felt so real.

So my question for you is, where is that line? Like, are these things actually happening or are they in some weird, astral projected dream world as well, or it is most logically a case-to-case basis, right? Yeah, I would think that, but I also do think there's something about the dream state. Now, I think that, and I often make this comparison or this kind of joke, you know, there are those dreams. And again, I'm not an expert. I just interview people. This is just what I've gleaned over the years of my opinion.

You have these kind of silly dreams, right? you go to the grocery store, you go to get produce, and then in your dream that night you're flying on a head of cabbage. You know, they're those kind of dreams, and we've all had them, just nonsense dreams. And it's probably our mind filing things. I've actually had, recently I was talking to a dream expert said that actually a lot of times those kind of dreams are even representative of something. They're not meaningless. But then there are, I think, the more rare dreams where we make some kind of connection. We recently had a very striking story in September of someone who had a dream about the 9-11 attacks before they happened, a premonition.

An extremely credible guy, big supporter of the shows, very intelligent, very articulate. And it bothered him for years. He felt that there should have been something he could do. Of course, he couldn't have done anything. But I think there's something about the dream state that brings us closer to the veil. and that can make us more susceptible to things like premonitions and things like communicating with our dead loved ones. Because when people call and talk about their dreams of dead loved ones, they use phrases like more real than real, more real than reality, the most vivid dream I ever had. Those kind of things.

There's something about the dream that is different. So I wonder if there's something about the dream state that lowers our barriers and gives us access to that higher place. I could not agree more. I mean, I will make this very brief. I lost my grandfather, you know, he was a smoker his whole life. And of course, the year he decides to quit smoking is when he dies of emphysema. Like these are the ironic things about death. But, you know, for years and years, I just wanted to talk to him. I loved hanging out with him. We used to always watch television together the old days of, you know, um, Dennis the Menace and all the black and white TV shows. We used to just sit down and watch those for hours together. And I missed that. I missed that part of my life. And I just wanted to like see him, hear him, talk to him.

And for I'd say five, six years, nothing. You know, I always hoped he'd show up, whether it's paranormal or in a dream, nothing. And then I'm not kidding you. Well, one night I had a dream where we were at a family get together. And he just so happened to be in the back, just sitting down in the back in my dream. I was like, oh my God, Grandpa. And he gets up and he starts walking towards me. It's almost like a POV dream happening. And he's walking towards me. And he opens his mouth. He's about to speak. I wake up. I never got to know what he said. Nothing. I was heartbroken. But I tell my mom, and this was her father who passed away, I told my mom the next morning,

grandpa was in my dream and she just like went cold and I'm like yeah pretty powerful right and she's like I had a dream last night where he showed up and it was the first dream I've had of him oh my god Jim yes and I lost it I lost it I did so funny you mention I just this hasn't even aired on a show I don't think or it was on last week show of a woman who had a simultaneous dream with her father now it didn't involve a dead relative but they were both having the same dream the same night. And it was from her point of view. And then he was on a boat and she was in a river or something or with alligators. And they had the same dream. And she told her mom. And she didn't know her dad had this dream and said, you need to go talk to your dad. He told me about a dream he had last night. Ask him,

just don't tell him what you had. Ask him about the dream. And he told her the same. So it's so, it's a coincidence on top of a coincidence. And I've had multiples over the years, even one that may have prevented like a terrible car crash where two people had the same dream from their own viewpoints. This is a thing. So you have the dual dream, the simultaneous dream, along with the connection to the past relative. So, yeah, I mean, these things are real. I believe they're real. Now, again, like most of this stuff, my favorite quote about all of this is this. Not only is the universe stranger than we understand, the universe is stranger than we can understand. I think there's a whole layer of reality that we don't understand and there is some weird me going on.

What that is, I don't know, but I know it's real. I love that. I love that quote. Wow. The Somewhere in the Sky's podcast is free to listen to every week. But if you would like to help support the... the show. We have a very active Patreon page where you give what you think the show is worth. In return, you'll get early access to the main show, bonus episodes, and priority to ask our guests your

listener questions. Your support truly makes the show continue and grow. So to learn more and to join, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At first Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. This one I'll make a bit more brief. This was also in Loonenburg, this small fishing town in Nova Scotia, and we were staying at a bed and breakfast. We were literally staying at the place we were investigating, which I don't recommend.

You never get a good night's sleep. If you're staying in a haunted place, you're there to investigate. but hey, hey, it was the only bed and breakfast left in town and it just so happened to be where we were filming, which was very convenient. It was owned by a mother and a daughter. The mother had recently gone through a divorce and had moved to this small fishing town with her daughter

and really started a life for them there. This bed and breakfast was very successful, beautiful, beautiful place, but they started having weird stuff happen that guests were reprimed, reporting, whether it was weird noises or doors opening and shutting at night. So she had someone come check the doors, make sure all the locks were okay. And it wasn't a draft coming in and out. Weird electrical stuff. Insert, ghosty thing here. So we came and two of us stayed at the

bed and breakfast, me and one of our other investigators. And we talked to the mother and daughter. and the daughter had some things that she had mentioned, whether it was like toys that had been moved in her bedroom or the mother said that utensils had moved in their apartment, in the kitchen area of the bed and breakfast, blah, blah, blah. So we go the whole day investigating into the late night, and we had some interesting stuff happen, nothing too crazy. And then, of course, when everyone else packed up for the day and left,

me and this other guy were left to spend the night. And it had to be around 4 in the morning, Jim. I had saved a huge barbecue chicken meal that I'd gotten that night, and I could not wait to dig into it after the investigation. All I could think about was these barbecue chicken wings the whole day. So at like 3.30, 4 in the morning, I'm just chomping away. I ate way, way too much. and I go out into the

lobby area of my bedroom where there's kind of a landing and then stairs going down and I turn and look to my left because I just sensed something and standing there was

a full apparition of a person I'm talking clothes skin, facial hair but the weird thing was they had to be about three feet tall with an oversized suit on. It looked like a kid in an adult suit with a top hat,

but this person looked like they were elderly, you know? And they, you know, the iconic Bigfoot pose of Bigfoot walking? Yeah. So this person was in that pose in like suspended animation. They weren't moving. They weren't walking. or anything. They were in this perfect like big foot like pose looking at me, full suit, top hat. And this is what's hilarious. My initial reaction was, oh, I'm so sorry. Like I felt like

I was intruding on this person. And I'm not kidding you. They in that pose looked at me and also were like, oh, I'm sorry. Like we had both, we were both intruding on the other's presence or existence in that moment. And oh my God. And then it just, in the blink of an eye, I blinked, it was gone. But I distinctly remember the clothes. I remember the person almost looking at me apologetically. And then they were gone. And I couldn't believe it. I chalked it up to maybe like I had eaten too much and I was like tripping on barbecue sauce or something. I don't know. He got a chicken wing high. Yeah. Yeah. But it was crazy. I had never. seen something so clear in my life. And then the kicker to all this is, the next morning,

you know, we're telling the mother and the daughter about what we'd seen, what we'd experience. And the daughter just looked at me and she grabbed her mom's hand and started like shaking. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? And she's like, I saw this small man in the top hat at Christmas. We were like, what? And she's like, did he have, did he look like he was. a kid, but like an adult. And I'm like, yeah. She's like, he visited me on Christmas last year. And the mom is like, why did you never tell me this? And she's like, I was too scared. So apparently, what a story. This little person in a big suit had made itself at home there. But yeah, it was just this weird moment of like the ghost and me acknowledging one another and both seeing.

mean like we were in the wrong of being? This is very common. This is where the ghost is as shocked or surprised by the normal human as the normal human is by the ghost. And I'll give you another one that ties into your story. This was also in the last month. We've had a slew of interesting stories in the last month. There was this guy he was talking about when he was a kid.

kid, I think I might have been North Carolina or somewhere. He had a tree house or something. He was going back in the woods to play with his GI Joe's. It's probably like in the 80s or 90s. I don't know. And he was a little kid. And he goes in there and he sees a little human five inches tall. And it's not one of his GI Joe's.

It's like a tiny human. And it's standing there among the leaves or whatever. and it just goes, oh, and it disappears. And that ties two ways to your story, the little person, and the fact that it was shocked and surprised by the, quote, normal human. Wow. Yeah. Oh, these connections are giving me the creeps tonight.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but that's what I'm saying is like, is everybody making this stuff up? I don't believe everybody's. What we are seeing, what we're seeing is a, and you kind of said it earlier and you're probably thinking along the same lines. I think sometimes some of these things can be past loved ones and those kind of things. I think that is a thing, but I don't think it's all of it. Are we seeing in alternate realities? Are we seeing in some kind of multiverse? Are we seeing time slips that go two

ways? I don't know. I mean, like with the little man, the little elderly man, maybe that's some kind of alternate reality that's slightly different than ours. And maybe they're having the same thing happening on their side. So I agree with what you were hinting at earlier that all of this is way more complex than simply just dead people showing up. Some of it might be that. I'm not discounting that altogether. Right. And sometimes it kind of maps to people's experience. But I think there's more to it than just that. I would have to agree. Yeah, this stuff is far stranger than like you had mentioned, we can imagine. It's crazy.

It's crazy. All right. I think we're at your number one story. Am I correct? Well, this is maybe not my number one all-time story, but it does kind of speak to the weirdness we talked about because it's not a traditional ghost story. But is it? So anyway, this was Lily and she was from Ohio and she worked in a large metropolitan hospital. She was a respiratory therapist.

And this happened one morning. She had a patient that had to go to get a cat scan, like down the basement of the facility or something. So it was her and they had the patient on a portable ventilator. It was a patient in a bed and what they call a transport person. The person pushes the bed around. So anyway, they go to the elevator bank and there's two types of elevators. On one side of the hall, there's a big cargo elevator. and then there's a more normal passenger elevator

directly across the hall from it. So anyway, she steps into the elevator with the transport person and the patient in the bed. And she turns around and she sees a group of people getting into the passenger elevator across the way. She's like, there's a woman there. She's very familiar. And she looks at her.

The woman turns around. She realizes she's looking at her. herself. And the woman spots her too, and they're like looking at each other until the doors close. And she's like rubbing her eyes. She's like, what in the world was that? That was me. How can that be me? I'm here. That can't be me. So all day, you know, she's thinking, what in the world was this? What? What's going on? I mean, I can't explain this. But she still had to do her job. She's a respiratory therapist at a major metropolitan hospital. She can't sit and ponder the mysteries of the universe. but a bugger all day. So the end of the day, she's exceptionally tired, maybe worn down somewhat from this story. She's standing, and she's getting ready to go home,

she's standing with a group of people to get into the passenger elevator. She walks into the passenger elevator and she turns around. And she sees something that makes her blood burn cold. She sees a patient in a hospital bed. She sees a transport person. and she sees herself from earlier in that day.

And then they lock eyes and the doors close. Oh, I, you tell me. Oh, my gosh. See, that is the sort of profound nature of time and space and all of these things. Because it's like, are you staring? you're almost staring into your own mortality or your own inevitability or something like that. I don't know. Is it a mirror universe?

Is it, oh, my God. Is it they were both seen both ways in time? Yes. Because the same is that if you look at what scientists are saying these days, the best scientists say literally time is not literal. That past, present, and future, it's an illusion. of some type. Yeah. The way that I've heard people explain, like time is like a river and it all exists right now, but we just happen to be dipping you and I right now into this piece of time, but our past still exists and our future exists all at the same time. The other way that I've

heard it explained, I don't know if was Mike Rick Sack or whoever it was, but someone I interviewed said something like it's a book. You have a book. And every page in that book exists, but you're only accessing it one at a time. And if you rip all the pages out and you throw them on the floor, that's kind of like time. Everything's there, but you only access one at a time. You know, but that doesn't mean that the other one doesn't still exist. You're just looking at this particular page. Right. So everybody that we know and love or haven't known in love still exist. but we're not accessing that point of time right now. It's also like a, you know, a computer hard drive.

Computer hard drive these days are huge. I've got terabytes of data, but it's only accessing a certain range of data at any one time, but that other data still exists. Right. Yeah, you know, it goes back to that beautiful short story made into a movie arrival where, you know, for anyone who hasn't seen it, I won't give away too much,

but you sort of start the story with a mother who we come to learn may have lost a child. And the story plays out. But then we realize that at the end of the movie, the child actually has never been born yet and is going to be born. So it plays with these things of time. And, you know, it's heartbreaking because we know what inevitably is going to happen. But by the end of the movie, it hasn't happened yet.

And that's how the aliens, quote, unquote, communicate. It's actually through time and space. It's not through mouth. It's not through telepathy. It's how they can influence or interpret time. It's way too much. It gets so deep. But yeah, this idea of like a river.

Yeah, like that's the one thing that I said last night, I was on another show, they were interviewing me. And I said, I love delving into these topics. You know, I love that. That's great. But sometimes you just got to go step away and cut your grass or something or else you'll go mad. Because if you really think about the implications, if you take it seriously, like I take it seriously, and I know you take it seriously, it changes everything. And I don't know. You know, when I started all this 20 years ago, I thought, this will be great. I'll interview these experts and stuff. One of my first guests, was the great Stanton Friedman. I think he was my second guest. My first guest was the great parapsychologist, Lloyd Auerbach. It was just really super home runs on my first shows because nobody knew what a podcast was.

Nobody. A pod? What? But anyway, I thought I would talk to people like Stanton and like Lloyd. And we continue to do that. I mean, we mix in UFO shows too. And I thought six months I'll have this stuff all figured out. Ryan, I can tell you

it is far from figured out In fact, I have more questions today than when I started. And I'm guessing you might be in that same category. I think it's worthwhile to try to pursue the answers, but I don't know if we'll ever get them. I gave up on that a very long time ago. I am very upfront with people.

If you're looking for the answers to UFOs, run away from my show because you ain't getting them. And for those who give you the answers, run away just as, much because nobody knows, Jim. Nobody knows what is going on with any of this stuff. And I think that is by design.

I honestly do. I think these topics they make us ask new questions in life. And you always bring this up and I love this. What are the biggest questions in life? What happens when we die is their life elsewhere out there?

And, you know, while we might get closer to some of those answers scientifically, I I do think that living in that mystery makes life worth living even more. I love knowing that we don't have all the answers. And that something out there phenomenologically, I guess would be the word, is keeping us on our toes. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, the thing was, I would feel, you know, if I didn't believe there was a higher power and I didn't believe there was more to this universe, I would be very depressed because, you know, I'm getting fairly along in the game now. And even if I'm healthy and I live my lifespan, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. So I like to think that there is something beyond and that we do get to be reunited with our loved ones and that there is a greater mystery. To me, that's a positive, not a negative. So, and I mean, if I'm wrong, then, you know, when I take the great dirt nap, then I won't know. It didn't hurt anything. But I don't think that's the case. I mean, scientists will say it's only anecdotal evidence.

Well, it's still, to me, it's still evidence. And too many people experience too many things for it all to be made up or for it all to be misinterpretations. People are experiencing things that are unexplainable and hint at these other realms. There's no question about it. I could not agree more with you. I could not agree more. Anecotal evidence is evidence. And that's most of my work is just telling stories.

And I'm okay with that. We do not have these topics without the witnesses and experiencers experiencing them. So I think that is very important to keep in mind. Okay. Here's my final story for you, Jim. And this one's a little freaky. I thought I would end with this one to really get us in the Halloween mood. I went to a place in Barrington, Nova Scotia, very small town.

There's maybe a population of thousand people, something like that, at most. And they've got this wonderful historical complex that's basically a museum of the town mixed with a war museum or war memorial, I guess. They have a wool mill, an old wool mill, which is beautiful. A river runs right under the building, very picturesque. And then they've got a meeting house, which throughout the centuries at this point, has been a place where people could go and pray, no matter what sort of religion they were. But primarily, it was used as a Protestant praying place, where they would meet and have masses and whatnot throughout the years. So we went to this complex.

We did the museum. We did the wool mill. Great, great, great. We get to the meeting house, this prayer house, as it were. you go in and it's got that that great old musty smell of an old church or whatnot um you know boom awesome atmosphere perfect they've got candles everywhere it's turning dark i'm like ah this is going to look so good on tv this is my first investigation mind you in this paranormal world that i've entered into with these people and i'm like oh wow okay let's do it let's do it let's do it

And basically in the house, you've got the church pews or whatnot. You've got a level above with church pews. And then this big pulpit where whatever, the priest or the person would do the mess. And each of us took turns going up to this pulpit and we would put on the old spirit box. You know, the headphones and the radio waves sweep through frequencies. you pick up words. Apparently, allegedly, these are the words of a spirit trying to communicate. I know you've talked about that a lot on your show with different investigators.

And we all had, you know, it's very hit or miss with that sort of approach to the paranormal. But there got to this point where, again, my Ouija brother, as I call him, Ouija brother, Jacob, he was under the spirit box up on this pulpit. and he's a very dramatic guy. He's an actor by trade. So, you know, when he really starts getting into it, he gets into it. So he's up there and he starts saying the words that are coming through. And it was so weird.

I'm up in one of the church pews in the balcony, just listening to him. And while he's up there, I start feeling this like burning on the back of my neck. I'm like, what is going on? So I actually like I take my jacket collar down, kind of like a jean jacket that I'm wearing today if you're watching this. I take it down. Like maybe it's irritating me. No, no, that's not it. And it just starts burning more and more, like getting hot.

Oh, my gosh. What the heck is going on here? And meanwhile, Jacob is in the pulpit under the spirit box. Can't hear anything that we're doing. You know, you ask questions. They are supposed to give you an answer. They can't hear what you're asking. And all he starts saying is fire, burning, fire, fire, burning.

And my neck is just getting hotter and hotter. And it's, oh, you know, maybe it was daytime and the sun was coming in. And it was none. This was 10 p.m. at night. There was a full moon out. Pretty sure the moon wasn't moon burning the back of my neck or something like that. And finally, they cut the cameras. and I just run downstairs

and I go to Paul, the head of our thing. I'm like, look at my, is there like something on the back of my neck? And he just was like, oh my God. I'm not kidding you.

I'll put the picture up here. We get out of the church thing, the meeting house. We go into the war museum part to see my neck. And this is what they found. Dang. I had these huge burns.

welts on the back of my neck and they hurt so bad and it got so bad that the archivist at the museum at the time she runs into the special room she comes back with a crucifix and she says put this on it was blessed by the pope

like what so for the rest of this investigation I'm wearing a crucifix blessed by the pope I'm afraid to go back into this meeting house because Paul says it's because you're Catholic, Ryan. Protestants don't like Catholics. It clearly didn't want you in there. And as funny as that might sound, I started putting credence into that. I'm like, yeah, maybe, maybe that is why. Like I was not, quote, unquote, welcomed into this meeting house. You know, the welts went away that night, thank God. But I will never forget that. And then what happened after this is I started having something follow me, Jim. Hitchhiker, as it were.

After this night, I started seeing this grayish misty figure, and it followed me to three different continents. You know, I live in Scotland now. After I did this investigation, I went home to Scotland. I see this gray misty figure like the first night back home. I go to New York to visit my family. I see the gray misty figure on the stairs at my parents' house. I go back to Nova Scotia. I see this gray misty figure.

So this thing was following me. I had an attachment. And it took for us to go back to the Barrington Meeting House and for me to finally confront whatever did this to me to my neck and say stop, stop following me. You know, let's end this amicably. And let's just get this over with. And I'll tell you after that, why can't we all just get along?

Catholics, Protestants, who cares? We're all humans. And you know what? I think it worked because I haven't seen the figure since. I haven't been scratched or burned. But yeah, that was my first investigation. I get this huge, huge burn on the back. That's crazy.

That's crazy. I'll tell you, I can see why you changed your mode of thinking on this. I'm going to skeptic to believer. I could see why. And it's true. I think, you know, you don't really necessarily believe some things. unless you experience them, but a lot of times when people experience things,

it has a quick way of changing their mind. It does. And, you know, I will be 100% up front with you. Going into the show, I was like, this is going to be boring. And, you know, at times it is. Like, what you see on television is the condensed islands. Exactly.

It's like paranormal fishing. I love that term. I'm going to start using that. It's true. You spend eight hours, maybe an hour. You know, something will happen. or it's like baseball. You're sitting around, standing around, waiting for the ball to get hit.

You know, it's a very non-accoms to bad. And then Otani gets up to bad and the rest is history. Go Blue Jays, by the way. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm rooting for the Blue Jays. Yeah. Sorry, my Los Angeles friends, but.

We love you, Los Angeles. But it's the Blue Jays got to get back to those Joe Carter, Roberto Alamard days, in my opinion. Um, okay. So, yeah, I, I honestly. think like this stuff is we're just scratching the surface. Obviously, these stories you brought forward today are some of the weirdest I've heard in a very long time. I know my journey with the paranormal has only just begun and it just gets crazier and crazier. And I think what I was going to say is I didn't think anything was going to happen. And now I'm in too deep and I don't

know how to get out. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But I'm heading back. I'm heading back in the fall, and next, excuse me, next spring to do a whole new batch of investigation. So who knows, Jim, I might have another batch

to bring to the table next year for our Halloween meeting together. Be careful out there. Be careful out there. That is a very good point. You know, it took me a while to realize you got to cleanse yourself of this stuff.

So I would leave these investigations. I'd go home. I'd say a prayer. I'd take a nice shower and say, go away because I don't need any, coming back home with me after that. So, yeah. But Jim, before I let you go, I've kept you way longer than I told you.

Where can people find everything you're up to? Tease the live stream you got coming up for Halloween, if you will. This will be going up tonight as we speak on the 29th of October. But yeah, let us know where we can find everything that you're doing. Well, that live stream, we do it every. I think this is our 11th annual video live stream. for the Halloween season. This one will actually be on Halloween night, 8 p.m. on YouTube at YouTube.com slash Jim Herald. That's YouTube.com slash Jim Herald. We'll have giveaways of some

Amazon gift cards. If people like free stuff, we'll do some giveaways of some Jim Herald merch. We'll have games. I'll be dressed in costume. Dar will be dressed in costume, as is our custom. We'll have Psychic Medium Jody Levon. As a guest. We're just kind of a grand old time, 8 p.m. Eastern to whenever. And hope you can join us at YouTube.com slash Jim Herald. And I have a number of shows, but the one I recommend, first and foremost, particularly as time of years, Jim Herald's Campfire. And you can find that on my YouTube channel I just mentioned. You can find that on Apple Podcast, where we're being featured all month in their haunted house collection. And then you can also find that on Spotify. And on Spotify and

YouTube, we're in full motion video these days where the storytellers come on and they share their stories in person. That's a development this year that we've added into the mix. So I hope that you'll check out Jim Herald Campfire. And Ryan, as always, thank you for the opportunity. And I'd say to you and everyone, happy Halloween and stay spooky. Spectrevision Radio. You can't reason with the sun. Trust us.

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