True Ghost Stories: Jim Harold's Campfire 2

by Jim Harold

  At that point, I had to tell her the story. She got scared, and then I got scared. We went to wake up our dad, and we said, “Dad, here’s what’s happening.” My dad, the practical country boy, said, “Did you turn on the security light?” He said, “Turn it on and look outside.” So we did. He said, “Did you see anything?” We said no. He said, “Then go back to bed. There’s nothing there.” Our parents didn’t blow us off, but they kind of minimized it.

  The last time we heard it, it impacted our entire family and it’s become sort of one of those stories where you sit around and say, “We have no idea what this was.” Here’s how it ended: the last night we heard it, my oldest sister, Chris, who was in grad school, had come home. She and I were in the middle bedroom, Shelley in the corner bedroom. Mom and Dad were asleep, as was our little brother.

  After hearing about the knocking, Chris had pretty much mercilessly made fun of us. She thought we were being overreacting drama queens. So, this night, we’re both there in that middle bedroom, and she sat straight upright in bed and said, “I hear something knocking.” We could hear it knocking on the kitchen window. This knocking started getting louder. It knocked in succession. There were four windows across the front of the house; the kitchen, the dining room, and then the two bedroom windows. It was literally, knock-knock-knock, knock-knock-knock, knock-knock-knock.

  Whatever it was wanted to make sure that we heard it. It was always a series of three knocks and then it would repeat. We were quite terrified. The entire family was awake by that time. Dad was pretty upset. When the oldest daughter, the rational scientist, got upset then Dad did too. It was just constant across the front of the house. It just did not let up. Just constant knocking. Three knocks, each window, all in quick succession.

  So Dad got each of us girls a gun. We were country girls, after all, so we could shoot. He posted each of us at one of the entrances to the house, and he literally turned to us, told us that he was going out. He said, “Don’t let anything in. If you see me running, let me in, but don’t let anything else in.” That kind of freaked us out.

  Literally, as soon as Dad opened the front door, it stopped. It was as quiet as a country night can be, absolutely quiet. Dad went outside. It felt like an eternity before he came back, but when he did he was totally perplexed. He said, “I have no idea.” My dad was a country boy, a hunter who tracked prey. He looked everywhere. He looked on top of the house. He went down the road. There were no tracks. There was nothing. Our dogs were not roused, the chickens never squawked. There was absolutely nothing.

  He knew at that point that we had been experiencing something all summer long. I don’t know if he felt any parental guilt for minimizing his two younger daughters’ experiences. I have no idea. He’s never admitted to it if he did.

  It was quite an interesting summer, and I was actually very, very glad at the end that everyone else heard it, because it definitely helped my peace of mind.

  As an adult, I read a book by Whitley Strieber. I’m not sure which book, I think it was Communion. He had an experience out in a rural area with his home, and it involved a series of three knocks. It was in association with something like an alien abduction situation, and I remember when I read it I found it quite chilling.

  There was never any missing time that I know of, that I can remember. No one else in my family reported that. We did hear other things in the house. There were sounds of footsteps every once in a while, and my brother and I both reported seeing glowing things out in the field, like balls of light. We lived down on the creek bottom, so that could’ve been pretty common. We just don’t know.

  My dad had built the house. We’d lived in it probably for six or seven years. The only thing that I could think of, although I didn’t discuss this with my dad, is that he used a lot of recycled materials. All the brick – and it was beautiful brick – it came from an old schoolhouse that was being torn down in the next largest city next to our county. He purchased all of it. He built the house by his own hands. That’s the only thing I could think may have triggered it. Maybe that material held some residual energy or something.

  Now, we were out in the country, and not far from our home there was a small grave area where three people probably – I don’t know, turn of the century maybe – had been buried. Kind of unmarked old graves. Plus, there was a Native American cemetery not far away. No one heard the knockings after that night. Who knows what that was?

  -Shanna, Oklahoma

  PART SIX: REALLY WEIRD STUFF

  63. The Plane that Killed Me

  Every time I think of this experience I wish I could go back in time and ask more questions. I have two sons. At the time of this story, my oldest was three years old, and my youngest was one. We were all sitting in the dining room, it was a lovely summer day, and the window was open onto the back garden. I heard a biplane fly over. The old fashioned, World War I era type plane with the dual wings. You could hear it because of the window being open and the fact that we were near some small airports.

  All of a sudden my three-year-old pipes up, “Oh, that sounds like the plane that killed me.”

  I said, “Really?” He was so blasé about it, so matter-of-fact. He said, “Yeah, you remember, when I had another mom, I was a man and I was called Steven?” I said, “Okay.” I didn’t want to ask anything leading for him. You know, three-year-olds have quite an imagination. I didn’t want to lead him anywhere that didn’t come from him and whatever he was remembering.

  He said, “Oh yes, I used to live with my mom in London. My girlfriend used to come ‘round, and we would all go down to the pub on the corner.” He was three! He’d never been to a pub! I said, “Right, right.” He said, “Yeah, and we were sitting in the front room of my mom’s house and we were listening to the radio, and all of a sudden, it went boom! And there was blood everywhere.” He said, “Oh, oh!” He was sort of flailing his arms as he was saying this. I was just amazed. He was just coming out so matter-of-factly.

  Now, it’s very hard when a child’s telling you something like that not to want to ask really pertinent questions, but it could lead you down the wrong route. They’ll start making things up. So it’s really difficult. I wish I could go back and just ask a few more things, just a few more. If I could’ve gotten more evidence, I could’ve researched his story, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

  He never again mentioned it and he’s 24 now. He can’t remember it at all, but I’ll never forget it.

  -Michele, United Kingdom

  64. The Walking Ouija

  A Note From Jim - The caller’s opinions stated below are his own. After years of hearing these stories, I WILL NOT engage with a spirit board. Proceed at your own risk.

  When I was about 13 or 14 years old, I had started looking into some of the alternative religions. It is something I’ve done all my life, to seek answers. Rather than read the books, I’ve kind of immersed myself in different consciousness study groups or spiritual groups, just to find out what they have to offer.

  A spiritual teacher I had at the time was into object lessons. She’d give me the basics and set me free on my own. Once things got to a point that I couldn’t control anymore, she’d come in and fix it, and then show me how it was fixed. I think that was really a good thing, but I didn’t stick with her for too long because it was a little too intense.

  We’d have our sessions, and then after each one, we’d do maybe 20 or 30 minutes with a Ouija board. I’d been working with her for about two or three weeks, and she called me out of the blue. She told me I had to come over. This was not our usual day to meet. So I made an excuse, got my parents to drop me off at the library. That was our common thing. I’d go to the library, and she’d pick me up from there.

  I got to her house, and it was very sparsely furnished. I never saw any part except for the main entrance room. There was a sofa, an old fireplace, and a couple of chairs. The room had hardwood floors. She had the Ouija board box just set up in the middle of th
e floor, and that to me was spooky in and of itself.

  So I went in with her, and she went to the mantel on the fireplace and grabbed a little package. It was a black silk-wrapped bundle and gave it to me. So I sat there and waited. She told me to open it. I opened it up and pulled it out, and when I opened up the bundle, it contained the planchette for the Ouija board.

  As soon as I touched the planchette, the box on the floor started to rattle. The teacher, we’ll call her Angela, walked over to the box, opened it up, and had me sit down at the far end of the room. She said, “Watch.” I sat and I watched, she pulled the board out, put it on the floor facedown. As I watched, along its crease, the board started to rise up off of the floor. The ends of the board began to come together, then it flattened out and it made progress of about six, eight inches across the floor. It basically did a stuttering, slow-motion, almost an inchworm style movement, across the floor toward me.

  I knew better than to do anything. I sat perfectly still, but I was scared out of my wits at that point. While it was walking across the floor, Angela went over to the fireplace and started up a fire. While the board was still about two or three feet away from me, she said, “Okay, wrap up the planchette.” So I wrapped it back up in the black silk, and the activity ceased.

  So that’s point number one to your readers: black silk, as I later learned, has been pretty well confirmed to be non-conductive for spiritual energy. If you want to contain something, if you want to block the energy off, use black silk. A tie, a shirt, boxer shorts, whatever you can find that’s black silk. That’s an easy first step to isolate any kind of negative energies.

  Once the board stopped moving, she had the fire going. She took the board and tossed it in the fire. This kind of bugged me out. The board did not burn. It sat there, the flames guttered underneath it, and there was a lot of smoke, but the board itself was completely undamaged.

  The planchette was the important piece. Once I saw the board wasn’t burning. She said, “Okay, now the planchette.” So I unwrapped the planchette and handed it to her, and she tossed that in the fire. Nothing happened for a minute, and then the planchette itself began to kind of melt around the edges and catch fire, and as it did, then the board did too. We disposed of it that way.

  There was nothing special about this board, it was just like the one you buy in any store. Angela did have her own personal spirit board on the floor of the room that she had made herself.

  I will explain it as best I can, as she explained it to me and as I’ve verified through other groups over the years. The board has absolutely nothing to do with it. The board itself is kind of like the last buffer between you and whatever entity you’re contacting. So to get the principle behind a Ouija board, it’s assumed you’re contacting an entity that is somewhere between this plane and the next. You’re focusing your intent, your energy, through the planchette. The planchette is the key piece.

  The way she described it to me is that when you put your hands on that planchette and put the call out there, it’s equivalent to dressing in your best suit with a briefcase full of money and every flashy piece of jewelry you own, and going for a walk through a bad neighborhood.

  On that side, energy, especially the energy of a conscious human being, a living person, is the ultimate currency. Anything that an entity needs to do on this plane requires an output of energy. So you put your hands on that planchette, you’re saying, “Here it is. Take it from me. Show me what you got.” Which is why, more often than not, you’re going to get negative entities. You’re talking about, for lack of a better word, un-evolved spiritual beings. People who have passed on that are either afraid to go on, or are too immersed in the physical to move on, and you have your non-human entities that actually feed on that type of energy.

  Angela was a priestess of a Wiccan coven. The Wiccans that I’ve spoken to, and most neo-pagans today, have this belief that the right side of your body is for spiritual output, for energetic output, and the left side of your body is for intake. You give with your right, you receive with your left. So when you put both hands on a planchette, you’re creating this current that circulates through you. You’re putting out energy, but you’re also taking in.

  She said the number one rule – and this is where we started getting into the rules behind how to use a Ouija board – is only use your right hand. If you want to avoid any kind of danger of possession or any kind of infiltration by a negative entity, just use your right hand.

  The story itself ends there, but I wanted to share the information I’ve gathered about it and my opinion.

  There seem to be such a wide diversity of experiences that are related, and nobody seems to know just basic safety where this particular tool is concerned – and at its heart, that’s what it is. It’s a tool, just like any other magical technology out there. It’s just a tool that you can use. It’s probably the cheapest, quickest, easiest way to get results, which is why it’s so dangerous. If you really want to make spiritual contact, there are shamans, there are healers who can take you on path workings. You can take a guided meditation and meet your spirit guide that way, but that’s a lot of work and frequently costs some money. So you have the Ouija board there and you’re basically putting a towel out there to anybody who wants to come and latch on.

  -Gabriel, Texas

  65. What a Mirror Image We Are

  A couple of years ago my family had rented out a big house in Vermont for Christmas. My father’s side of the family is kind of scattered throughout the East Coast, up and down to Florida, so we don’t really get to see each other that often. We all went up to Vermont one year for Christmas, and stayed in this really old house. It was kind of creepy. We were there for about five days and there were about 15 of us.

  Throughout the five days, some weird things were happening. The servants working there would tell us stories about the house being haunted.

  It got really interesting on Christmas Eve. My brother and I didn’t have our own room to stay in. Everybody with kids got first pick of the rooms. So, we were just sleeping on couches in different areas of the house.

  We decided to sleep in the main living area next to the Christmas tree. At about 2:30 am, I woke up, and saw this tall figure at the top of the big staircase. The figure was just sitting there. It was funny, it was kind of motionless. At first, I wasn’t sure what was going on. I thought maybe someone had gotten up to go to the bathroom, or was sleepwalking.

  I remember seeing a kind of silhouetted figure. I couldn’t make out any facial features or details. It almost looked like it was wearing a tuxedo or something like that. It was very strange.

  The figure started walking down the stairs. It looked very strange when it was walking. The best way I could really describe it was almost like it was a puppet on a string, very unnatural. I thought I might be dreaming, and I actually rubbed my eyes a little bit just to make sure I was conscious. At first, I didn’t think it was anything supernatural. I thought it was just someone in the house.

  It finally got to the bottom of the stairs, and kind of started looking around. I could see its head tilt back a little bit, almost like someone who had come home after a long time and hadn’t been there for a while. It acted as if it was thinking, “God, it’s great to be back”.

  It was looking around, kind of moving back and forth in a weird, wavy way. Then all of a sudden, this completely caught me off guard, it said in a very weird, deep male’s voice, “Oh my love, what a mirror image we are.”

  I get chills just thinking about it. At this point, it was still almost bobbing back and forth, and kind of looking around. It didn’t seem to direct that to anybody in particular, which was the weird thing too. I’ve obviously gone over this in my head a thousand times, and it was very clear. The way that it sounded when this thing said, “Oh my love, what a mirror image we are.” It was almost like someone saying it in a cave. It had a weird, echo-y type quality.

  The apparition walked into another room that was off to
the right of me, and it never came back. I wasn’t sure what to do. I kind of just stayed there. I didn’t really even get up to look for anybody. I was so baffled. I was up for about an hour afterward, and nothing came back out of that room.

  I’d never really experienced anything like that. I’m 100% sure that it said, “Oh my love, what a mirror image we are.” I still don’t really know what it means. Was it talking to the house? I don’t know if it was someone who previously owned the house or who it was.

  It is something that has stuck with me. The next morning, when we were all having Christmas breakfast, I asked everybody, “Was anybody up going to the bathroom or looking around the house? I don’t know if someone got a little tipsy and was just kind of wandering.” They all said no.

  My uncle said, “I meant to ask you guys too, if anybody peeked their head into my room.” He saw someone too at around 3 am. He said that he saw his door open and the glare of light from the hallway. Then, someone peeked their head into his room and looked around! No one really ‘fessed up to that either, so I don’t know if it was the same thing. That was just a bit more, something to confirm that maybe I really did see something.

  -Adam, Connecticut

  66. The Witches' Tree

  I lived for a time in Baltimore with a boyfriend of mine. We were down there living in an apartment, and the girlfriend of one of the guys next door noticed that I was into the paranormal. She told me there was this thing in the area called a “Witches’ Tree.” I told her that it sounded really cool and she offered to take me down to see it.