True Ghost Stories: Jim Harold's Campfire 3

by Jim Harold

  At first, they did not think that the female ghost went to the third floor. About two or three weeks before my experience, their young son had woken up in the middle of the night screaming that he was afraid. They got up and reassured him. He started to cry and say over and over that he didn't want to play right now. They asked him, "What do you mean, you don't want to play right now?" He said, "Tell this soldier that he's scaring me and I don't want to play right now." This happened in the very bedroom where I had my experience.

  After hearing about this, one thing led to another and they ended up in the attic. When they went up there they found artifacts from a Civil War soldier. Pictures, uniforms, things like this that they had never known were there, and they were right above the son's bedroom.

  It was quite an experience, and like I had said earlier, sometimes facts are sometimes more terrifying and more bizarre than the footsteps you might hear in the night.

  This story still has an impact on me today. Even my father asks me to retell it. It's hard for me to even admit that it happened.

  I feel these kinds of things are like the last frontier. I had no idea of that house being haunted, then something happens and then your own parents tell you that it is haunted? It makes you think...

  -Anthony, New York

  11. Duddy's Haunted House

  This story begins when my grandmother had passed away and I was in the transition of moving from one place to the next. The family decided that I could move into her home until it was sold. It was me, my two children and my roommate, Bess. We had just settled in and had been there for about a week. I went to work that Saturday. My kids were old enough to be left alone. Once I got to work, I received this frantic phone call from my children saying there was someone in the house. Not only had they called me, they had called my sister Julie and my roommate. We were all rushing to the house simultaneously. We thought someone was in the house.

  I got there and I opened up the door. There the kids were, sitting at the table with knives and sticks. They were scared to death and they locked themselves in this room. I said, "What is going on?" They said, "Someone's in the basement." They heard the footsteps going up and down the stairs. They heard tapping on the basement door.

  So, I went and checked the house out. In the meantime, my sister and my roommate arrived. We all looked for this mystery intruder because we all took it seriously. My kids aren't ones to get real scared and you're talking about 14, and 16-year-old people here. Not little kids.

  I said, "There's nothing there." We searched the whole house. Everything was bolted downstairs; none of the windows were broken. I said, "Maybe the house was settling." I was thinking that this house was new to them and they weren't used to the sounds that it made. So, I headed back to work, finished up and returned home that night. Of course, my roommate was real skittish anyway, but I reassured her that it was nothing.

  Next thing I know, everyone was camping out in the living room with the TV. I said, "What are y'all doing?" They were afraid to sleep in their beds. This went on for months. I even heard steps, and the tapping on the door. I could be in the bathroom bathing and it was so bad that I would get up and check. We'd hear stuff in the kitchen; if you left a dish in the sink, everything rattled. We couldn't leave dishes in the sink, nothing. It had to be clean and, ironically, my grandmother was very meticulous about that.

  This continued to go on. I said, "You know, it's probably Duddy (Grandma). Don't worry about it. This is still her home." The kids said, "You know, you're right. It does sound like her going up and down the stairs." People have distinct sounds when they move around the house. You know the sounds if you grew up with them. So we didn't think anything of it.

  One time, the kids were gone for the weekend; my roommate had to work that Friday night and we normally did midnight coffee because she worked second shift. I had been sleeping, but I got up about 30 minutes before she came home. I got dressed and I was waiting for her. All of a sudden, I saw her come through the door of the bricked-in porch, but I wasn't looking very closely because my head was down. She wasn't speaking and seemed upset.

  I said, "Are you feeling bad? You don't want to do midnight coffee?" When my roommate was sick or just not feeling good, she just wouldn't answer. She just could be rude like that.

  So she came in the front door, shut and locked it and then she walked to the back. She didn't answer me, so I figured there wasn't going to be any coffee. When I saw her she was wearing green polyester, but I wasn't paying a lot of attention to her clothes.

  I took my jacket and shoes back off. I got comfortable and had just laid back down when all of a sudden, I heard this banging on the door. I said to myself, "There's nobody else. Who the hell is it?" It scared me. I thought my cranky roommate was in the back and accounted for so I couldn't figure out who it was.

  Suddenly, I heard my roommate calling from the porch door, "It's me, Bess." I opened it up and I said, "Oh, no, hell it's not. You just walked to the back." She said, "No." I told her, "I know what I just saw." It turned out that whoever had walked in, locked the door and went to the back, was not my roommate Bess. It was someone else.

  Thinking back, my grandmother, when she was younger, she had hair about the same length as my roommate, same color, same height. If I had thought about that polyester, I would've realized it was not Bess. She wouldn't have worn that.

  Another weekend, my girlfriend Dana came over and she was sleeping in the back of the house; about 3:30 a.m., she came in and she said, "You're going to have to tell your grandmother to leave me alone. I need to sleep." We all knew that it was my grandmother in the house. We all saw her at one time or another.

  We sold the house and I had to stay one more night by myself. I stayed there many a night by myself, never afraid. This time there were different noises and a very strange feeling. I'd never been so scared in my life. I was frozen in my spot, right where I was sitting on the couch. The hair on the back of the neck went up and I said to myself, "Do I go back there and check? Do I run for the door? Oh my God, I'm not going to make it." I could not move. I have never been so scared in my life. It was not the same feeling as my grandmother. I figured she must've moved on, knowing we were moving. Something else was there. The feeling that came over me was horrible.

  I called my roommate up and I said, "Stay on the phone. I'm leaving." She said, "What's wrong?" I said, "Something's in the house. I'm so scared, I can't move. If I am not there in 15 minutes, you call the law." I knew there was something wrong. To this day, I'll never know what it was, but I know there wasn't a person there, it was a malevolent feeling. Chills were running up and down my whole body. I was scared to go out the front door.

  The next day, my sister said, "Are you coming to get the rest of your stuff?" I said, "No, I will never walk in that house again." When she went to go in the door, she could not go through it either. She had the same exact feeling. Her husband went through, but she couldn't.

  I eventually went and tried to collect my things, but I said, "I can't go in there." I never did go back into the house. I've never had that feeling again and I hope I never do. Being visited by Duddy was fine, but whatever was there that night was something I want no part of whatsoever.

  -Darcy, North Carolina

  12. The Haunted Laptop

  I am an IT guy. I've been doing it for about 17 years now. The thing is, I work in manufacturing, and I'm on call 24/7. Before I go to bed at night, I set up my laptop, I remote in, get everything ready, just in case I get a call during the middle of the night. That way I can stumble over to the machine, do what I need to do, and hopefully fix what I need to fix, so I don't have to drive into the plant.

  One of the things I do is tell the laptop to shut the LCD off after one minute of inactivity, so that way it always stays off. When I need it, I can wake it up and do what I need to do. This story begins on a night when my wife woke me up out of bed and said, "I think there's somebody in the apartment." I said, "No there's not. Our dogs w
ould go off. There's nobody here." She just had this really creeped-out feeling. I just dismissed it. I told her, "It's nothing. Everything's fine."

  The apartment was dark, the computer woke up and the whole apartment lit up in blue LCD light. With no input, I thought that was pretty odd and I said so. Of course, that just egged my wife on. She told me to get up and look around. So I did. I got myself some pizza and sat down at my laptop thinking maybe it was an update or something like that. No. No updates, no nothing. It just woke up, and then it went back to sleep, like it should. So I figured, "Okay, that's fine. I know technology doesn't act right, so say it didn't act right. Okay, whatever." I finished my pizza and went to bed.

  Then my wife promptly stuck her elbow into my ribcage a little bit later and said, "It's doing it again!" I woke up and sure enough, my laptop was back on. I told her, "Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's the finest move of the mouse or something. Maybe it detected a movement. Maybe some air moved around, maybe a fan made the mouse move slightly?"

  I had two dogs, but it wasn't them. They're kennel-trained, so at night they go in their kennels and we close the door and that's where they sleep. So they weren't moving around, and I didn't have any other pets. I told her it was probably just the furnace or the air conditioning or whatever. I kept waiting for it to shut off as it had a one minute turn-off rate. I kept waiting for it to go away, turn off, and it didn't.

  So I got up, walked over to it, sat down, and I unplugged the mouse. I unplugged everything else except for the AC adapter. I watched it, and then it turned off. Okay, fine. I figured it was going to be one of those nights. So I just went back to bed.

  It happened a third and final time. My wife woke me up and she said, "Your laptop's on again. Shut it down. Fix it." Okay, fine. I wandered over to my laptop again. I sat down and noticed that there was a Word document open. There were a couple of keystrokes in that document. I hadn't opened or created that. When I have my laptop on, I don't have a Word document open. I have it loaded with my admin tools and stuff that watches the printers on the shop floor and so forth. I don't use Word that much. I thought that was pretty strange.

  So I shut it down, and as I shut it down and unplugged it, I grumbled a few things. I basically said, "Listen, you blank-blank-blank." As you can imagine, my language was a bit foul and I said, "Knock it the heck off." I'm paraphrasing. "I don't care what you're up to, but you're messing with my sleep. So knock it the blank off." Right then, I heard a gigantic thud right behind me, just as loud as it can be. It sounded like something at least maybe 10 or 15 pounds, and it landed right on the floor right behind me. Then, my smoke detector went off for a second, and then it ended. Everything was fine. Nothing ever happened ever again.

  This thump was good and strong. It sounded like a boat anchor or maybe a bunch of textbooks just hit the ground right behind me. I can't explain it. It was just the strangest thing. Why would a gigantic thump happen after I cursed at this thing? It's never happened since, even though I leave my laptop in the exact same setup as before. I don't know. It is just one of those weird things I can't explain, and it never happened again.

  I'm glad it stopped. I don't know if I could get that fixed under warranty!

  -Wedge, Illinois

  13. Shadow Warrior

  I was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, for two years during the early 2000s. The experience I will share occurred one evening when we were under a typhoon warning. Whenever that happens, guards are deployed to different posts to ensure the integrity of base security. A friend and I were stationed in what was called the Crow's Nest; it was one of the ammunition supply points. It's a bunker surrounded by Plexiglas. From that vantage point, you have a 360 degree view of the area.

  It was about 11:30 p.m. and we were just standing by the windows, watching the storm come in off of the beaches. I looked down and about 30 feet below where we were, I saw something very strange when looking at one of the ammunition bunkers.

  First, I think it's important to note that the bunker's doors were built from several tons of solid steel. These doors were closed and locked. To do that, they are brought together on a chain pulley mechanism and then they're hydraulically dropped down into the ground about six inches. You cannot open them by hand as you have to use their mechanism to open them, because the doors are extremely heavy and built to withstand explosions.

  I can only describe what I saw as a dark figure who stood up out of a ditch, ran across the road and through the solid, steel doors of one of the ammunition bunkers.

  When you're on typhoon watch, you're given shotguns and ammunition for security reasons. This was so real that both me and my friend both put a round in the chamber of our shotguns. We thought somebody possibly was infiltrating the base. That's how vivid and real this image was. We both looked at each other, went down to the area, and radioed in what we saw. We went down and looked at it. There was nothing there. It was raining. There were no footprints or anything we could discern in the mud or grass.

  It's really hard to say what this was. The location where we were at was less than 200 yards from the beach where the Marines landed on the island of Okinawa in World War II. That's where the first Americans set foot on the island during the war and it was where they took the island. I could guess that it was an apparition of a Japanese soldier, but there's really no way to say. Like I said, it was a shadowy figure; we couldn't discern any uniforms, male/female, ethnicity, anything like that. It was a dark, shadowy figure and we saw it for maybe two seconds.

  The culture in that area of the world is very superstitions and there are a lot of supposedly haunted locations around. All I can say is that was a very memorable, unique experience that boggles the mind.

  -Carl, Midwestern United States

  14. Die and Say Cheese

  I grew up in a small town, Canfield, Ohio. My buddies and I used to go out adventuring around, and we'd go to different places. We used to go into old logging camps and stuff, looking for relics and that kind of thing. One time one of the guys found an old abandoned farmhouse. Being young and stupid, we decided to go up into this old farmhouse that had been abandoned for years.

  We went in there with flashlights and everything. We were rummaging around. We found different things like thousands of Mason jars that they used for canning. There was an old radio from back in the '20s or '30s or whenever. Then, I came across an old McIntosh Hardware catalog.

  You could get anything from this book, from clothing to a horse with the plow. It was about 1300 pages full of illustrated stuff...anything you needed. I said, "Oh man, this is a nice find." The hardback was kind of torn up, but I took it anyway.

  I had it in my house for about a couple of months and then I started really leafing through the pages. I was really surprised when I came across, stuck in the pages of the book, photographs of dead people in coffins! I guess it was an old tradition to take pictures of the deceased in their coffins. Anyhow, in subsequent years I took the book and the pictures with me wherever I moved.

  Every time that I went down by them in my basement or in a storage area, wherever I lived, things got really eerie and cold. It was just strange. One day, I decided to take the book out. It was down in my basement, and things started to really get extremely cold, freezing. I decided at that point to get rid of the pictures, because every time I messed with them something weird started to happen around the house.

  It wasn't really about the hardware book itself, but it was more about the pictures. There was three or four sets of pictures of this very old guy in a coffin. It was just very eerie to look at them.

  Finally, I just tossed the pictures out with the garbage. Right now, I'm trying to get rid of the catalog, but I'm trying to figure out the best way to do that so I don't jinx myself. The moral of the story? When you go treasure hunting, be careful what you bring home with you.

  -Robb, Delaware

  15. Night at the Haunted Asylum

  This happened on a visit to the Trans-Allegeny Lunatic Asylum in
Weston, West Virginia. It is an old asylum that has been shut down since the 1990s, but it is rumored to be haunted and a local organization conducts ghost tours there.

  So, we went in for our visit and for eight hours we were locked in the asylum overnight. They take you and divide the group up by floors. On the first floor they give you a tour, and then they tell you where the hotspots are. I was walking down the hallway listening to the tour, and I saw in the corner of my eye, somebody duck out of a doorway back into a room. I counted heads and everyone was present. I stuck my head in the room and there was nothing there. I thought it was going to be a great night if I was seeing this already.

  My youngest brother was with me and he kept saying "Are you whispering?" I said, "No." He said, "Somebody behind me keeps whispering in my ear." All night, he had this woman's voice bugging him. He couldn't make out anything, but all night long, she just stuck with him.

  We got to one area where they kept the inmates in, basically, solitary confinement. You walked down the hallway and there was door after door after door of these bare walls. I swear, each one I walked past, I felt cold coming out of it on the side of my face. I walked down the hallway; the rooms were on my right and I felt cold on my right and heat on my left. The temperature corresponded with the doors. It was a November night, but the cold I felt was even colder than the temperature outside would have been. I can't describe it. It was odd.

  They took us back to the kitchen on the first floor and they mentioned something about the cook who didn't like people coming into his kitchen. I got that vibe. He did not want me there. The further I walked, the heavier it got. I just felt it pushing against my face. He did not want me there. I stepped into the room and something hit me in the chest. I figured, "OK, I'll leave." My brother and his friends all looked around in there, but I seemed to be singled out. The cook did not like me, for some reason.