True Ghost Stories: Jim Harold's Campfire 2

by Jim Harold

  I’m the only one that’s seen her there. Heidi saw the other apparition with me, but I’m the only one that’s actually seen the technician lady.

  When I did see her, I was startled more than anything else. I have seen things in the past, before I worked there, but it just kind of catches you off guard. I seemed to pick up on a lot of emotion and grief there, the very first time I saw her. This started when I first began working there, I haven’t seen her in the past few years. So I like to think that hopefully she’s moved on.

  As I mentioned before, I’ve not only seen human apparitions, but animals too. We are a veterinary clinic that treats dogs and cats, but also we have some exotic animals in there, such as birds. One day, I walked into our treatment area once and saw a conure, which is like a small green parrot, flying around the treatment area. When I saw it I said out loud, “Oh dear, we have a loose bird in here.” Sometimes they can get out of cages. Someone replied, “We don’t have any birds here!”

  The one that many people have seen and experienced is the cat. It’s a black and white cat that we’ve seen walking through our treatment area. I’ve seen it walking down the hallway that connects to our exam rooms. I’ve actually seen it walk into an exam room that’s been occupied when the veterinarians are nursing a patient. I’ve seen it walk through the door plus my friend Heidi has seen it, as have several of our other employees, receptionists and other technicians!

  We’ve even had one incident where two of our receptionists and a couple clients heard a cat meowing. At the time, we didn’t have any cats in the hospital. They looked to make sure it wasn’t coming from the outside, but there was no cat outside and there weren’t any in the hospital either at that time.

  I tend to be a little bit more open to this phenomena and I know my friend Heidi is a little sensitive as well. The fact that we’ve both seen these things validates them for me.

  -Sharon, Massachusetts

  PART TWO: DREAMS, VISIONS AND ANGELS

  27. Ghost Nanny

  We first moved to a house up in the northwest area of Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1995. There were times, after our first baby was born and was in a crib, that I would sit in the living room in the evening and read a book or watch some television. On a couple of occasions, I could hear our baby cry in the other room, and my wife was either in the kitchen or down in the basement folding laundry or whatever.

  In these cases where my wife was busy and I heard the baby cry, I would go in and tend to it. Sometimes, through my peripheral vision I saw my wife, or what I thought was my wife, walk through the kitchen and into the baby’s room. Then, the baby would stop crying.

  Here’s what is interesting. There were a couple of instances that this happened where she then came into the living room from the kitchen. I was surprised, and I said to her, “Weren’t you just in the baby’s room?” She looked at me, surprised too, and said, “No, I wasn’t.” Yet, I would swear I had just seen a figure cross through the kitchen into the baby’s room, and then the baby would stop crying after several seconds. She looked at me as though, “What are you thinking, are you crazy or something?”

  That was strange enough on its own but what really freaked me out were nights when my wife was at work. She is a nurse and she worked evenings, three nights a week. Naturally, I would be alone at home with the baby. Again, I would be sitting in the evening, reading a book or watching television, and see a shadow or a figure cross through the kitchen and go down the hall when the baby would cry. It made no sense, as I was the only person in the house other than the child! Now, that was quite shocking!

  I never saw this directly, just in my peripheral vision, but something in the shape of a woman would move across the kitchen, towards the bedroom and the baby would stop crying.

  Once we moved, I asked the people who purchased the house from us, “Hey, do your babies cry very much in the house?” They said, “No. They start to cry sometimes, but not for long at all.” We thought for a while that we just all had really calm babies. Now, I think it had something to do with a comforting spirit in the house.

  -Matt, Michigan

  28. Not Just Any Painting

  This story happened when I was around four years old. About a year previously, my mom had divorced and taken me and my three-year-old sister with her. She moved us all in with a friend of hers at a place in Fremont, California. It was something like a motel. Mom’s friend had a daughter who was three years old, too, so there were the two little girls and me. We all lived together.

  During that time, my mom went to a garage sale in San Francisco, it was in one of the Victorian homes there. From what I was told she went down to the basement, and there were a bunch of pictures. Painted pictures, not just prints, but real painted pictures. Some of them were finished, others unfinished. What was interesting about this basement is that there was a painted scene on top of the ceiling, instead of just white walls, part representing heaven, and the other part hell.

  When my mom started asking around, it appeared the people were, I don’t want to say Satanic, but she mentioned something similar to that, something more on the dark side. That didn’t stop my mom from buying a painting she thought was beautiful. It portrayed a lady with blond hair sitting on a rocking chair in a white gown. My mom loved the picture, brought it home and found a place to put it. It ended up being hung on the wall between the upstairs and downstairs.

  Soon after that, this painting started randomly falling off the wall. I remember this happening several times, although I was just a kid. It wasn’t as though the nail was bent or the sheet rock was giving way. It would suddenly just fall off the wall. Mom would hear the crash and go in there and put it back up. This happened quite a few times, to the point where my mom and her friend had started to wonder what the heck was going on.

  There was one time where they threw a get together, and it fell off the wall during the party. I remember going up the stairs, and some of the adults were talking about it. My mom was telling some of the people, “Yeah, it just keeps falling off. Once again, there it is, it’s off the wall.”

  I should tell you that the place echoed a lot; for some reason. If you were upstairs, you could hear things pretty well downstairs. In the middle of the night, we would start to hear the faucet in the kitchen start to drip water. You could hear it really clearly, drip… drip… drip… drip. My mom would go down there and shut it off.

  A few days after that party is when it started getting really interesting. This is where all of us, especially us kids, started to get a little scared. In the middle of the night, maybe at 2 or 3 am, we would start to hear a lady downstairs crying really softly. We didn’t know how to take it. I remember being in the room with my sister and my mom’s roommate’s daughter as well. We all slept in the same room. I remember the first time it happened, my mom and her friend came to our room. They opened the door and just stood there. We all listened to this going on. They were too scared to go downstairs, but they wanted to come to be with us kids while this was going on. Eventually, it mellowed out.

  The next night, it happened again. My mom and her friend came to our room the next night, and the crying was just a little louder. The crying was like moaning and sobbing. I can envision this figure, maybe with her hands on her eyes, crying, looking down into her lap. That’s the kind of crying it was. I just remember laying there, we’re all looking at each other, and we can hear this.

  A few nights go by, and it happens again. At this point, my mom and her friend are really scared. We all just knew it was going to happen again. About a week later, it got to the point where the crying was incredibly loud. It started out soft, and it got louder and louder. Then, it just went explosive. It was so loud, you could literally feel the crying through the walls, like a woman was just crying and bawling her eyes out.

  My mom, her friend and all of us were so shocked and scared that we took action. My mom and her friend immediately ran into our room, turned the lights on, and grabbed us. They didn’t even
put clothes on us, it was just like, “Something’s going on down there, and we’re getting out right now.”

  I just remember my mom grabbing us out of the bed. There wasn’t any preparation. We all ran down the stairs at once. I just remember my mom grabbing me and my sister and holding us, carrying us. Then her friend got her kid, and we all went at the same time. I remember there was a pause before we went down, and then we just went for it. Luckily, we didn’t have to pass the living room, because the front door was right down the stairs. But if you made a right-hand turn and went down the hall for about four, five, six feet, then it cuts into the living room. We didn’t have to go in there, and that’s where this intense crying was coming from. I remember running out that door, and all of us were frantic. I just remember holding onto my mom, and the crying was just so loud.

  Then we had to go around the community pool, which was right in front of the sliding glass doors in our living room. Our sliding glass door didn’t have curtains, so you could see inside our apartment. The parking lot was on the other side of the pool within sight of our place.

  So when we got in the car, we could see right through the glass windows. That’s when my mom and her friend freaked out, because when we looked inside our apartment, there was a lady with a white gown sitting on our rocking chair in the living room, just rocking. She was the figure in the painting! My mom and her friend started to scream, “Oh my God!” I just remember my friend’s mom trying to get the keys in the ignition to start the car, and she couldn’t do it. I just remember us kids screaming, “Ahhhh!” We were just terrified.

  My mom’s friend finally got the keys in the car. It was in the wee hours of the morning, and we just drove straight to my grandma’s house, which was about seven or eight miles away in the next town. When we got there, us kids, we never went back. My mom had to go with some people and immediately evacuate to get her stuff and get out. So did her friend. From that point on, me and my mom and my sister stayed at my grandma’s until she remarried again.

  My sister knows what happened to the painting. I don’t really know. I can’t remember. I wish I did, because I don’t want to say that she trashed it or gave it away. I’m not sure. I’m more than sure my mom didn’t keep the painting and it didn’t stay in that house. I’m sure they did something with it.

  I will never, ever, forget it seeing that rocking woman from the painting. It’s impossible. It’s funny when you’re an adult and you look back at that, you think that it must have been a dream. Well, no, it wasn’t a dream. This is something we all experienced. It’s just one of those things when you’re an adult, you can remember it as it happened or you can turn it off and pretend it never happened. The truth is, it really happened. We ended up at my grandma’s house and we never went back. That’s it.

  It is hard for me to talk about it, even now, just remembering that incident is scary as hell.

  -Jay, California

  29. Mary Visits

  My experience occurred I was 10 years old. I was just starting to go through the Catholic sacraments of Reconciliation and Communion. You get those when you’re in grammar school. I always had a fairly close relationship with my faith for a kid. I was preparing for my first Holy Communion, and I was sitting in the church with my mom and dad. It wasn’t during Mass but we were just there to pray. I sort of felt unusually sleepy and I wasn’t ever a kid that fell asleep in church; I just suddenly did, and my eyes started to close.

  I saw the Virgin Mary holding the child Christ, and it was very colorful, almost like a new painting or something. It was just so bright, and the colors were swirling and everything. She didn’t say anything, but I just felt this overwhelming sense of peace, love and just happiness. I guess it lasted probably for five minutes, just being in her presence, and then I just opened my eyes and I said, “Mom, Mom, did you see that?” She said, “See what?” I explained it to her and she said, “That’s a very special thing and I hope you never forget it,” and I said, “I won’t.”

  Mary was young and pretty, but not like a model or something, and she was definitely not blond. She was definitely Middle Eastern looking and small with sort of a slim build. The Christ child was probably a toddler, maybe two years old.

  It was just always something I could remember when I felt alone or down. I feel many people, when they’re teenagers, have a sort of a faith crisis. I definitely did, and this experience was one of the factors that made me decide to remain a believer and all that, as opposed to giving up on faith and everything. I would remember that vision and think to myself, that was definitely real. That was a real experience. It wasn’t just a dream or something. It was definitely real because it felt different and it looked different.

  It was incredible, and I’m very thankful. My Dad, when he was a child, also had a very similar experience. He couldn’t sleep, he was having nightmares, and she appeared to sort of comfort him in his childhood.

  Maybe there’s something about the family, I don’t know, but we’re very blessed, regardless.

  -Christina, New York

  30. Angel on the Park Bench

  This happened a long time ago. I was probably about 4 years old and I’m 23 now. I was in Midland, Texas to visit my dad, because my parents separated when I was three years old. He was in the restaurant business, and he worked a lot of very long hours. I ended up being alone for most of the time, with my stepmom and my sister, while I was there. My stepmom decided that she was going to take me and my sister to the playground one day, because she just wanted to get us out of the house.

  To setup the story, I’ll give you a little background on where the playground is located. There’s a church at the top of the street, and the playground is right at the bottom of the street, so it’s basically a straight incline.

  As soon as we were done playing, being a four-year-old, I thought that I’d be cute and try to run up to the top of the street for attention, because I wanted to prove how fast I was. So I run to the top of the street, I turn around, and I’m going to show off and show how fast I’ve gone, and they’re gone. My stepmom was pushing my sister in a stroller, and she is nowhere to be found.

  At this point, I’m very confused and not sure what to do.

  There’s not a whole lot of places they could’ve gone. So, I’m standing in the church parking lot, and I’m very scared. I sit down on the curb and I start to cry, because I can’t remember how to get back to my dad’s house. All of a sudden, I feel this tap on my shoulder. I look up and I see an elderly woman standing in front of me. I can’t tell you what she looked like, because I don’t remember for the most part, but I do remember her eyes and how calm I felt when I was around her. She just had the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.

  She asked me what was wrong, and I told her. I said, “I lost my stepmom and my sister,” and she said, “Do you mind if I sit with you until they come back because I’m sure that they’re still out looking for you?” I said, “Of course, you can sit with me.” She just made me feel like everything was going to be okay. She was very calming, and every time a lady would walk by, she would ask, “Is that your stepmom?” I’d say, “No.”

  Finally, I saw my stepmom and my sister. The woman pointed and she asked, “Is that them?” I was just so excited. I ran over to them, and my stepmom hugged me and told me never to do that again. She took my hand and we were going to start to walk back, and I said, “Wait, I need to say goodbye to the old lady.” She said, “What old lady?” I said, “The old lady I was just talking to,” and she said, “Honey, when I pulled up to you, you were sitting by yourself.”

  I have never forgotten the story and never will. Maybe it was an angel?

  -Elyse, Texas

  31. Changing Faces

  I live in a country town in New South Wales. However, in 1989, I lived in the big city -- Brisbane in Queensland. I never thought about spiritual matters. Through a series of coincidences, things weren’t going well, and it was like I was getting swallowed up by the city. Subs
equently, I moved to this country town in New South Wales. There were all these people there who were kind of spiritually aware and stuff. So it was all very exciting.

  I moved into an apartment, and a lady was living upstairs who I had met in Queensland, Oxford, as well. She was someone who made me feel very comfortable. With most people, you feel as though you’re supposed to say a certain thing or do a certain thing. With her, I was always completely relaxed. I could just say nothing, do nothing, and it was great.

  So she invited me upstairs, to have a cup of tea. She’s sitting in the seat across the room, and I’m sitting in the seat across from her. We had the heater going, and the fan of the heater was just relaxing me so much with a constant hissing sound. The conversation became slower and slower, and in the end, we weren’t saying anything. Her eyes were closed, and my eyes were closed. I don’t know how long it was but some time went by.

  Then, I remember, I opened my eyes, and I was just going to talk to her, but when I opened my eyes and I looked across the room I was no longer seeing her face.

  Actually, what I saw was that her whole head had turned into a golden mask. It wasn’t a human face at all, but this mask. The mask was oriental-looking. It looked like an Oriental, beaten metal, golden-colored mask. I guess it could’ve been bronze, but it looked very much gold. I could see the details, I could see the pits in the metal where they’d beaten it. I could see what looked like little rivets and things like that.