True Ghost Stories: Jim Harold's Campfire 3

by Jim Harold

  I dropped the tape recorder. My friend Donald and I ran out of the house. As I opened the door, the recorder yelled "Don't!" Then it went right back to playing normally. I thought I was losing my mind, but I talked myself back into going into the house. We didn't have a babysitter or anything, so it was just us kids. We sat outside for two hours going, "You go back in." "No, you go back in." So I finally went back in and I said, "All right, I'm going to play this. Hopefully, that was just a one time thing."

  I played it back and the voice was still there. I took the tape to one of the nuns at my Catholic school and had her listen to it. She said, "Can I keep the tape overnight?" I said sure. I came back the next day and I said, "Can I have my tape back?" She said, "What tape?" I said, "The tape I gave you." She said, "I don't know what you're talking about." I thought that exchange was bizarre.

  Everything went back to normal until maybe six months later. My sister and I were in the house by ourselves. I went into the backyard when it was just getting dark outside. We had a basketball hoop in the backyard with lights over it so I could play at night, and I was shooting baskets. I was still in the 5th grade.

  This is so weird. The ball rolled down the driveway into the street. I went down the driveway. I looked and across the street in the neighbor's yard, there were two small children, looking at me, holding hands, and just standing there. The little boy was wearing a tuxedo, and the little girl was wearing a wedding gown. At first, I didn't really think much of it. I thought it was kind of funny. I wondered what was going on over there. There was no wedding or anything. I chalked it up to just to being some weird kids.

  I looked again and I noticed that they didn't have faces! My sister came out the front door and I said, "Tara, look at those kids." She looked at them and I said, "Does it look like they don't have faces?" She said, "Yeah, that's really weird." We were just standing there and I had this feeling like something was wrong. You know how you get that sense, like something isn't right.

  As I looked, it seemed like they were getting taller and taller and taller, right in front of my very eyes, until they got tall enough that I got scared and ran in the house. Again, my sister and I ran in the house; we didn't know what the hell was going on. It was really strange. We locked the door.

  After about 10 minutes, my sister got brave and said, "All right, let me take care of this." She opened the front door and she pulled out a bottle of mace. She said, "I'm not afraid of you. Whoever's out there, I have pepper spray." When she said that, I looked outside over her shoulder and I saw what looked like a headless man or something, some sort of creature. I can't even tell you what it was. Something that looked like it dug itself out of a grave came running towards the house.

  My sister lost her bravery right there, dropped her pepper spray, slammed the door, locked it, and that was the end of it. Years later, I talked to my sister and I said, "Do you remember that time…" She remembered everything, we have the same story, and I could never figure out what exactly that was. I didn't sleep well for two weeks.

  I think it was the Ouija board. I've never heard a tale about one where the storyteller said, "And then the Ouija board granted all my wishes and everything was wonderful."

  Have you ever noticed that they all end with the exact same sentence? "And, I never played with a Ouija board again."

  -Jake, Ohio

  PART THREE:

  MONSTERS & SHADOW PEOPLE

  27. Mia the Cat vs the Supernatural Predator

  My story happened about 12 or 13 years ago, when I was visiting my friend Rob's house. It was me, Rob, and another friend, Ian. We were sitting up, watching movies, and playing games as most teenagers do. It was about 1 a.m. and we decided to go and grab a bite to eat. There was a petrol station about 300 yards away from Rob's house, so we thought we'd pop down there, grab some chocolate, that sort of thing. We took a wander down there and they were closed. We thought okay, there was one a little further down the road. We walked down and they were closed as well.

  So, we decided to try again and the next station was about 20 minutes away. We got down there and they were open! Afterward, we ended up walking down to a large retail park. It's quite spooky at night. We were saying it looked a little bit like the old Stephen King TV series, The Stand. We'd been watching that a few weeks beforehand. It was nearly silent that time of night but during the day, it's absolutely heaving with traffic.

  It started getting late, so we decided to head back to Rob's place. Instead of just sticking to the road, we took a detour. There's a really huge park near us, and there's an old house there called Carew Manor. I know a lot of paranormal investigations have been done there. Most Haunted featured it on television over here. There's all sorts of history to it. There's a legend about one of the owners murdering his wife and that sort of thing, the typical stuff you hear from houses like that.

  We walked through the park and had to go past this big old manor house. It's now actually a school for special needs children, but it looks spooky even during bright sunlight. Next door to that is a church, and then there is a graveyard. This church is centuries old. As we were passing, just out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy standing in the middle of the church. I thought it was a bit strange.

  We carried on walking. There's a straight road that leads out for a good half mile and then it would lead back to the road that Rob's parents' house was on. We started walking up this road and out of the corner of my eye I saw a four-foot-tall, sort of a dark shape, hunched over. It was trying to hide behind automobiles, but you could see it over the bonnet of the cars as we were walking along. It was quite a big size. My friend Ian said it had red eyes. I didn't see that. I just saw a dark shape, but still it was pretty spooky.

  There was no one else around this time of the morning. We just carried on walking. It sounded like it was getting closer and closer. You could hear little footsteps in puddles and that sort of thing. I didn't want to turn and look directly at it because that's not a good thing, right? I've been into the paranormal since I was a kid. I read all these books and watched TV shows and that sort of thing. Also, there's the old English legend about Black Dog. It would follow travelers along roads at night. The rules were to not to look at it directly, don't talk to it, don't go to touch it or anything like that, and you'd be okay. We were whispering, trying to keep quiet a bit. Ian said, "Let's just run for it." I said, "No, no, no. We don't run. We just carry on walking."

  It seemed to take forever, walking down this road. Eventually, we got to the junction of this road where Rob's parents live. As we turned the corner, there was his mum's cat. Mia. She was a normal-sized cat and she never left the house or the garden. The furthest I had ever seen her away from the house was three doors away, but this was a good 500 or 600 yards away from Rob's front door. As an aside, she ended up living to the ripe old age of 18 or 19.

  Anyway, Mia was just sitting on the corner and waiting for us. She looked up at all three of us, and then turned to look behind us. Of course, we can still hear this thing, or whatever it was, with the footsteps walking along, but we didn't want to look directly at it. We got about 50 yards down the road, and the cat was still looking behind us. Then, she suddenly started to run in front of us and she climbed up onto one of the cars parked in the road. She looked at us again and then carried on just staring behind us at the corner. We carried on for another 50 yards and then she overtook us again. This carried on until we got to the front door.

  We got to the door, opened it up, and Mia was sitting on the driveway, by the car; just sitting and looking down the road the entire time. When we got in the house, once Robert got in – he was the last one – he sort of clicked his tongue at Mia, she turned and bolted in the door. We made sure the door was properly shut. It sounded like whatever it was stayed outside on his driveway for a little while. I didn't want to look out the curtains.

  I honestly believe the cat was looking out for us. She was always one of those cats that you could look into her eyes and r
ealize she was calculating things. I've had cats all my life. You can tell when some of them are up to no good, but Mia was watchful and had an intelligent look in her eyes.

  I honestly don't know this experience was other worldly or what. I got the feeling whatever it was started following us once we'd gone past this graveyard. We did go back there a few times with a larger group to investigate. I know there was no way I was going on my own, but we never saw anything again.

  -Barry, United Kingdom

  28. Followed in the Woods

  I grew up in a little town called Georgetown about an hour north of Austin. This happened when I was about 18-years-old. During the wintertime, me and two buddies went out to an area lake just to walk around it. On one end of the lake, the water was real low and on the other side of the lake, there was an old stone building. We started off about noon, maybe a little bit later, and we went walking all the way around the lake, all the way to the stone house. By the time we got there, we checked stuff out and started looking for arrowheads. It's about a five mile hike or maybe more from where we started. When we got to the stone building, it was probably 3 or 4 p.m. The sun was starting to go down.

  We started to head back and we were on a wooded trail. All of a sudden, to the left of us, we hear what sounded like a weird eating sound, like something smacking. We kept walking along the trail and it kept with us the whole time. It was right next to us, following us. It was out in the woods a little. We all heard it. We stopped for a moment. We thought maybe there was a herd of deer that were going to come running through or something like that.

  So we resumed walking, and it was dark by now. The sun was completely down. We were still on the trail with woods on both sides. To the left, the weird sounds were still going on, but then I started to hear what sounded like rocks being thrown and falling off of a cliff or something. Rocks were falling and hitting the ground. We were used to being out in the woods, but we started to get a little freaked out. So, we picked up the pace. This thing just continued to follow right along with us. The rocks were moving and you could just hear it. It sounded close.

  At this point, we started booking it. The trees started shaking and the doves that were roosting flew out of the trees. At this point, it was pitch black and we were running just as fast as we could to get to the car. It was with us the whole way. We ran all the way until we finally got to the car. We hopped in and we took off.

  One guy that I'd worked with told me a tale about when he was out there surveying at the lake when they originally created it. It was nighttime and they were just finishing up the job, getting ready to leave. Then, something in the bushes picked up a rock and threw it. This guy heard a thud, something stood up, and it was taller than the stop sign that it was standing by! He said the only way he could describe it was like a Bigfoot thing. He, too, hopped in his car and he took off.

  I also heard stories of the same thing about when they created the lake. Native Americans talk about that a lot in their stories of Bigfoot creatures. In fact, there are cave writings that say that there existed a person, just like they did. This area is one of the richest areas in all of Texas for Native Americans. So is there a connection between that? I don't know.

  What interests me the most is that whatever was following us didn't cut through the brush. If it was a human running for any reason, he would have, and this was thick cedar. We were in the scrub. This was good thick Texas stuff. It would have been very tough for a person to get through it. That's what kind of gets me on it. It was a weird situation, something very, very weird.

  -Lawson, Texas

  29. A Night Visitor

  They say paranormal experiences are usually more active when you're a teenager. Well, my adolescence was extremely active, especially when it came to dreams. I had a lot of déjà vu and a lot of very odd dreams.

  This one takes the cake. I was asleep and I woke up. I looked around my room, and out of the corner of my eye I saw something moving along the edge of my bed. I went to go sit up just a little to look at it. This thing popped up over the foot of my bed, near my feet, and I froze. This figure didn't have very strong features; it was more of a shadow or a silhouette, and it started slowly, on all fours, to crawl up my bed. I thought I had to be dreaming, that it wasn't real. I wasn't scared yet.

  It placed a hand, if you could call it that, on my ankle. I felt it, it was real and it had weight to it. Now, I started getting frightened. It slowly moved up my entire body and finally it came to my chest. We were face-to-face. I blinked or twitched and then I turned away from it. When I came back it was gone. So I sat up in bed figuring that maybe it was my cat. I got up and I turned on my light. Not only was my bedroom door closed, my cat wasn't in my room.

  I really wanted to blame my cat. I had a lot of lucid dreams when I was younger. Until this one, though, I'd never had another creature in my room with me. This thing actually popped up a few other times later on in the future, in dreams, though never actually when I was awake. It was very strange. I was frightened, not because I thought it was going to hurt me, but simply because there was something I couldn't identify crawling on me.

  When I was able to sit down and think about it later, it seemed like it was curious, like it was checking me out. I have an English Lit degree now and I've read a lot of folktales and fairytales. You'll find, oddly enough, in these stories that creatures like this can be good or not so good. I don't know if this one was a form of a shadow person or something connected to me. It wasn't mean, but it was odd. That's all I can say. It was very, very strange.

  -Jenna, Oregon

  30. The Disappearing Shadow Man

  My shadow person encounter happened while I was living in Missouri when I was about 11-years-old. It is a memory burned into my brain. I shared a big room with my stepsister and my brother. Since I was older, half of the room was mine, and they shared the other half.

  My siblings were gone for the night. My parents' room was directly above mine, so I could hear them walking around and talking. I didn't have a regular door for my room; it was one of those sliding doors with a broken latch. I was on my brother's bed watching the little black and white TV we had in the room.

  All of a sudden, I looked up and this dark figure, a shadow of a man, came into the bedroom. I said, "Is somebody in the kitchen?" The kitchen was right near my bedroom and I thought maybe I'd seen a shadow on the wall. That didn't really make sense because it was solid-looking. It stopped when it came into the room. I couldn't see any features. It was just a dark mass of a man with broad shoulders. That's how I could tell it was a man. It stopped, turned and looked at me. Then, it turned again and it looked like it went through my bed, and disappeared into my closet.

  I stayed there, petrified, for about two hours. Then, my mom came downstairs to check up on me, and I was just lying there. Again, I couldn't move. She said, "What's wrong?" I told her, of course. My mom has had experiences as well so she believed me. It wasn't like, "Oh, you're crazy."

  It was very big, very menacing, and it disappeared in my closet. My mom went over there, looked in my closet, and she said, "There's nothing in here now." I said, "Yeah, nothing you can see right now, but it went in there."

  We moved soon after. There were always lots of little dark shapes you'd see out of the corner of your eye. We never researched it, but something bad must've happened in that house.

  -Danielle, New Mexico

  31. Strange Bedfellows

  This experience has happened more than once, but the first time was the most vivid. I was in my college dorm room sleeping. I had noticed recently that I was waking up at the same time every night at about 3:14 or 3:15 a.m. It was odd.

  So this particular night, I woke up again at the same time and I was trying to go back to sleep. I heard footsteps and shuffling coming from near my window. I figured it was my roommate getting up to go to the bathroom. I heard shuffling coming toward me and then I felt something sit down on my bed. I still thought it was my roommate, so I was
laughing to myself. I was about to get up and guide her back to her own bed, but that's when I felt whatever it was lie down next to me! I felt an arm come around me, and then I knew it wasn't her.

  Although I was on the first floor, I thought somebody had broken into the dorm. I couldn't move and I couldn't scream, even though that is all I wanted to do. Not only did I feel this arm around me, but I also felt breathing on my ear. It was just entirely too close to me.

  At first, I assumed this was a person but there was something different, something was wrong because I couldn't move. I think I even heard whispering in my ear, but I don't remember what was said. I was much too frightened. I was struggling to move, struggling to say something, and it probably lasted only about five seconds but it felt like forever.

  When I was finally able to make a sound, I think I whimpered. That's when whatever it was got up rather quickly. It left, and I sat up. I was able to move. I looked around the room. My roommate was still asleep, the window was closed, and the lights were off, as if nothing had happened. I didn't even make a sound, because my roommate was still asleep.

  I went into the common area where the lights were on and I stayed in there for the rest of the night.

  Now, as I said, this has happened more than once, but just not as intensely. The interesting thing is that from then on I always recognized when it was about to happen, and I fought to stop it. Wherever it was at, it always started with hearing footsteps from the opposite end of the room. Once, when I was living in New York, it came down the stairs and I heard footsteps. In my mind's eye, I saw a silhouette of a person. I knew it was happening, so I fought, and before it got close to me, I woke up.