True Ghost Stories: Jim Harold's Campfire 2 Read online

  At the dog grooming school, they had two phone lines. One line was a business line, and the second phone line was a private line that they both used for just themselves so they didn’t clog up the business line. No one else ever used that line or knew the number other than Mom and Dad.

  I don’t know why Mom did this, but shortly after Dad died she decided that she would go to her office in the wee small hours of the morning. I guess because she wanted some privacy and didn’t want everybody to know how upset she was at the time.

  She went into her office at about 1 am. She sat in the recliner that my dad had died in and just let it out. She was talking, asking him why this had to happen, and saying how she couldn’t take care of us without him. She was letting all her emotions go, just talking away.

  Mom said to no one in particular, “Why am I sitting here talking? He can’t even hear me.” Then she asked him, “Bob, if you can hear me, if you’re okay, just give me a sign that you can hear me.” Right after she said that, the phone rang. It was the second line, the private line that’s unlisted, the one nobody knew the number for, except Mom and Dad. When she picked it up, it was just static.

  Dad had always been known as a prankster. He would do different things just to hassle us.

  Mom believes, as well as my entire family, that it was my father’s way of letting us know that he was still listening.

  -Laura, Michigan

  49. Grandpa’s Message from Beyond

  When I was 16, my grandfather, who had been very, very close to our family, died suddenly. My father and grandfather owned a family business together and he lived next door so it was quite a blow.

  I was raised Roman Catholic, and every good Roman Catholic girl had a statue of the Virgin Mary on their dresser. After the funeral, I started waking up at about 6 am every day and I would look at that statue of the Virgin Mary and it would turn into the head of my grandfather.

  I think the weirdest part of it was I didn’t think it was weird or spooky to see the head of my grandfather on my dresser. He would be trying to mouth some words to me. I can remember sitting up, looking at him and saying, “I can’t hear you, Grandpa. I can’t understand you.” It happened for six days in a row and on the seventh day, it happened again with a slight difference. I woke up, my grandfather’s head was there again. I couldn’t understand him and, finally, in frustration, I said, “Grandpa, I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me,” and I went back to sleep.

  I got up, went downstairs and had breakfast with my mom and dad. My mother looked at my father and said, “Oh, Lou, I wanted to tell you I dreamt about Pop last night.” My grandfather was my father’s father, not my mother’s but she had dreamed about him. Of course, my ears perked up. She said, “He came to me and he told me he wanted to tell you that he’s just fine, he’s with Jesus, he’s very, very happy, and not to worry about him.”

  It was really sweet. I just stood there with my mouth open, and just was totally amazed. I found out what he’d been trying to communicate to me. I don’t believe that my perception was mature enough at that point for me to understand what he saying. My grandfather would be back though.

  Flash forward about 16 years. I was around 32 years old at that point. I had a daughter that was three, and an infant who was six months old. I was very happily married. Unfortunately, I had contracted bronchitis that was building into pneumonia. I was very sick. There was a flu going around, and the doctors were overwhelmed. I kept calling to get an appointment with the doctor, and the office kept telling me, “Just drink fluids, take aspirin, you’ll be okay. It’s just the flu.” So there I was. I was running an incredibly high fever, probably about 104 degrees. I managed to put my children to bed and then I went to sleep as well.

  At about 2 am, I started having a dream that I was back in the Catholic church that I’d been raised in. My brother and I were standing at the door of the church and we were shaking hands of the parishioners as they were coming out. All of a sudden, my uncle, my father’s brother, came through. I went to shake his hand, and my brother grabbed me and said, “Don’t touch him, he’s dead.”

  This was about a week after my uncle’s funeral.

  It gave me chills. For a moment, in my dream, I felt this cold wave of air go from my head right through my toes, as though my blood had just cooled down completely. I woke from the dream. My grandfather and my uncle were standing next to my bed.

  Another very bizarre part of this story was that every light in our entire house was on. The lights in the closets, the lights in the bathroom, the lights in the garage, the lights in every single part of that house were all on. I woke up and was very frightened, not because I saw my uncle and my grandfather, but because I thought I was so sick that they had come to take me home. I just screamed, and my husband woke up. He looked at me and said, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  I said, “Well, as a matter of fact,” and before I could say anything else, he said, “And why the heck are all the lights on in the whole house?” Now, my husband worked for an electric company, so he was really conscientious about conserving energy. He got up and he ran around and turned all the lights out. He got back, and I told him, “I can’t sleep with the lights out. I have to have lights on.” So we left the lights on in our bedroom.

  When I woke up in the morning, I was perfectly healthy. All symptoms of flu, bronchitis, pneumonia, whatever it was I had, were gone, and I was absolutely healthy.

  I recall when I was a child, the family business was just a block away from our home. My grandfather had started the business and my father and my uncle worked in it. They would always come back to our home for lunch. Whenever I was home from school or sick, my uncle would make a real point of coming into my bedroom to tell me a story or just listen to my problems. He was just very, very compassionate when I was sick. It would bring healing.

  That evening when I had the fever, he brought healing again. It was a really powerful dream and subsequent vision that I had. It not only served a purpose in healing me, but also in drawing me closer to an understanding of God and how God’s compassion reaches for us.

  - Pastor Carrie, North Carolina

  50. Off the Hook

  The story that always sticks with me involved my aunt. She was involved in a car accident around 1984. Unfortunately, she was killed instantly by a drunk driver. She had two kids, my cousins, and they were brought to our house to stay the night after this happened. Their father was also involved in the accident, so he was in the hospital too. My bedroom was given to them to sleep in and I was put in the living room. I was all by myself in the living room, nice and dark, and as a youngster it’s not always the most comfortable place to be.

  I remember waking up and hearing footsteps. I thought somebody had come out to get a glass of water or something in the kitchen. I picked my head up, and looked in the kitchen. I saw my aunt, the same aunt who had just died that night, standing there.

  Of course, I did a double take, rubbed my eyes, and my heart was racing. I was thinking, “Oh my God, is that really my aunt?” She looked at me, walked over to the phone, and picked it up off the cradle, as if she were going to make a call. This was back in the rotary dial days. I said, “Aunt Lorraine, is that you?” She looked at me again. I was just a scared kid, so I covered my head with the blanket because it was clearly her, but she was also dead. How could she be standing there?

  I don’t know how many minutes passed, but I eventually uncovered my head, peeked over there and saw that the phone was still off the hook, but she was gone. It was still off the hook in the morning. When my mother woke up, she came into the kitchen, woke me up and said, “Hey, you left the phone off the hook.”

  I told her it wasn’t me and that it was Aunt Lorraine, I think, she probably thought, “Oh poor child, she’s so distraught.” Pretty logical, but it wasn’t the case. It was Aunt Lorraine.

  -Fiveneye, Washington

  PART FOUR: STRANGE CREATURES

  51. La Chusa<
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  La Chusa is a supernatural figure in Hispanic culture. It has wings and is very sinister. When I was a kid, I was always told by my grandma that if you’re doing something really wrong or disobedient La Chusa would get you. She said, “La Chusa will get you if you don’t listen!”

  So, being a kid, I didn’t pay much attention to her warnings. My first strange experience was when I was outside at a friend’s house, I was about 10 years old, and I was walking down the road by myself. I started hearing birds chirping, which wasn’t unusual, but then I heard my name being called out. I used to go by “Benny.” I heard, “Benny, Benny.” That kind of gave me the chills. I looked around, and there were woods behind those houses, but I saw nothing. Of course, I ran back into the house. That was weird, but something much stranger happened the following year.

  My cousin and I used to be real mischievous. We used to throw rocks at moving vehicles and then run down this alley and hide. Well, one night when we were doing that, we were sitting outside, and my cousin had one of those little pilot airplanes that he was throwing around. It was about 2 am. He was throwing it around, and it got caught in this tree. He was looking at it, trying to find a way to figure out to get it down. I was on a scooter at the time.

  The tree shook, and the plane fell down and he bent down to grab it. As soon as he bent down, this big old bird-like figure came out, shook its head, and turned towards us. The funny thing is, as soon as my cousin turned around, I had already hightailed it into the house. I was looking out the window, yelling at him, “Come on, come on!” As we waited inside through the night, this figure stayed perched on the fence for about an hour just staring into the house.

  It was big! I would say it was probably about four or five feet tall. They say La Chusa has a distinct whistle. To this day, I’ll be walking or sitting outside and I get this sensation that something is there and I’ll hear a whistle. There are woods behind my house, so it is really creepy. Of course, I don’t wait around to see what it is. I just go and head back to the house.

  If someone says that we just saw a big bird, I’d tell them I know what I saw. I’m not one to imagine things. I’ve had a lot of paranormal experiences. I’m pretty sure when I’m seeing something and when I’m not. I say you really don’t know until you experience it. There are just so many unexplained things out in this world today. I just can’t fathom that none of them are real.

  - Ben, Texas

  52. Hungry Like the Wolf

  My son was born on Halloween, and this experience occurred while I was in labor.

  I chose to have a natural water birth, as was the style in the 1990’s. The whole time I was in labor, I continually told myself to just keep breathing calmly and to relax. My mother and my father were there with my husband and our midwife. I was laying on the bed, trying to get into full labor, and I just started breathing heavily. The next thing I knew, in the blink of an eye, I wasn’t there anymore. I was not in my body anymore. I looked down, and I was running. That’s the only way I can explain it. In the blink of an eye, I was running.

  I was not human anymore. I heard panting, and I was running through this thick, dense forest. I could smell leaves on the ground. It was fall. I could see my paws, and I realized all of a sudden, that I had become a wolf. I was feeling the sense of wolves around me, like the sense of The Call of the Wild. The pack was around me, and we were just running through this field. I know how crazy that sounds. I know how it could easily have been that I was in so much pain, that I had passed out and that I was having this dream or hallucination.

  I’m completely willing to accept that, with the exception of the fact that my family was around me. To me, this seemed like all of maybe a few minutes, just long enough for it to register. While it was only a few minutes for me, it was an hour and a half for my family who was around me. All of them said, “You were panting like a dog. Just quietly panting like a dog.”

  I’m willing to accept that was a dream, but the story doesn’t end there. Of course, I had my son. From the moment he began talking, he started doing things like howling at the moon. He was really fixated on werewolves and wolf aesthetics. He just loved anything wolf-oriented.

  Then he started showing these early signs of really talented writing. In elementary school, my son won awards for his writing on the black werewolf. These were stories of horribly Shakespearian tragedies. I remember my friends and I reading these stories, and almost weeping at the pain and complexity that my son was conveying through these amazingly intense stories.

  Even to this day, if you could see a photograph of my son right now, it’s likely he would be wearing his “One Person Wolf Pack” shirt. He still writes about the black werewolf. That’s his thing. He has everything that suggests a wolf spirit. Ironically, our last name means “village of wolves.’’

  This is who my son is. When you look at the Native American belief of the totem spirit, my son fits every single category of having a wolf totem spirit, right down to creative writing. I believe that experiences are for us to interpret for ourselves, and I believe that the experience was me or my higher being telling me this creature was coming into my life.

  -Patricia, California

  53. The Wearin’ of the Green

  This story happened when I was 8 years old. At the time, I shared a bedroom with my little sister who was around 1 year old. I woke up in the middle of the night and I could hear my sister laughing in her crib. I sat up and I looked over. She was standing up with her hands on the vertical bars of the crib looking down at the floor and laughing.

  I sat up further, looked down, and saw the moon was coming through the window and illuminating the floor. There on the floor, right in front of her crib, was a little figure about maybe five to seven inches tall. It was alive and it was dancing. There was no sound; it was completely silent, except for my sister’s laughing, giggling, really, as small kids do. I was completely shocked and threw myself kind of backwards on the bed, and hit my head on the headboard. That told me that this was real. Now I look back and think, “That was a dream; I was asleep.” But that was a real impact with the headboard, and the whole thing was totally bizarre.

  We lived in a stressful home, with a lot of drinking, and it was not a very happy environment. But this night there was this feeling of magic. That’s the only way I can describe it. I looked at this figure, and it looked, I know this sounds nuts, but it had a little suit on, like a bowtie and a jacket and a hat, and it was just dancing. From what I remember, it looked like just a normal but very small person who was there for some reason to maybe help us. Maybe to give us hope, and make my sister happy for a little bit. I don’t know what the purpose was, but it really affected me. I’ve talked to my little sister about it. She’s all grown up now and has a family. Of course, she doesn’t remember it, but she believes me. I’m in my late 40s, and this occurred in the late 1960s. I’ve never had any other experiences but this is a memory I’ll never forget.

  I was really freaked out. It was just so absolutely unbelievable to see something like that. When you count my sister, until now I’ve told only three people in my whole life, because who would believe a story about a real-life leprechaun? It just sounds crazy but it’s true.

  -Jim, Missouri

  54. Beast in the Fog

  I was walking home from a friend’s house, and the weather was horrible. It was really, really foggy and I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face. Anyway, you know when you get that feeling that someone’s looking at you? That was the feeling I had.

  I thought I could see something in the fog, and I was on a mobile phone to my friend at the time, because I was a terrified little kid. He was talking me home. I heard a bloodcurdling howl off in the background. I thought, “Jesus Christ, what’s that?” He said, “I thought you were walking home,” I said, “I am walking home.” He said, “It sounds like you’re watching a movie there.” I asked, “What do you mean?” He went, “I just heard something howl at you.” I asked, “What do
you mean?” Obviously, this conversation was confirming the fact that that wasn’t my imagination.

  I looked around, and I saw something, bent over, and I was wondering what the hell it was. At first, I thought it was a big dog, but the way it stood, well, it wasn’t a dog. I just started running.

  I heard this pounding behind me and I thought, “Jesus Christ, I’ve got to get away from this thing.” My friend’s screaming, “Run, run, Ben! Run, run!” I ran towards this big park, and as I got closer, the thing just starts pounding behind me, the footprints start petering down. I turned around, and it was gone. My friend said, “You are one lucky guy.” I replied, “Don’t I know it.”

  I was a skeptic before that happened. I didn’t believe in the paranormal, and thought it was just people making stuff up. Then this happened to me, and I realized there’s something out there.

  -Ben, United Kingdom

  55. The Staring Red Eyes

  I was about 14 or 15 years old. During my summer vacation, I would often take our dog, Paxie, out for a walk at about midnight. I grew up in a very safe neighborhood, so I didn’t worry about taking her for a walk right before I went to bed.

  Paxie had been abused and placed in a shelter before we adopted her, so she was a very docile dog. She never growled at anything and never barked at anybody. She would always just kind of whimper and run away whenever anything was dangerous or any other animals would come into our yard.