by Jim Harold
So, one Sunday, my boyfriend, this woman and I drove to this tree. It was in one of the local parks. We go in, and we get to this witches’ tree. It was about five feet in diameter. It was huge, and it had these runes carved into the tree. You could tell that they were really old, and carved all around this tree. It also had a little sign down at the bottom. A couple of trees further away there was a noose hanging, which I thought was kind of strange. I was into photography a little bit, so I took pictures of the tree. My boyfriend was swinging on the noose, and we were messing around, goofing off. It was fun. We didn’t do anything destructive. We took pictures, but we may not have treated it with the sanctity whoever put it there would have wanted.
I had never heard of witches’ trees before. I was told later there is a nine foot circle around them. Once you step within that circle, supposedly, the coven that owns the tree knows you’re there. In retrospect, it makes some sense. I took these pictures, and I had these witchcraft books at home. Later on, I had a chance to develop all the pictures and compare them to these sixteenth century runes that were in the witchcraft book. I translated what it said on the tree, and it said, “blessed be these woods, for in them lies the doors to other lands.” At the very bottom of the tree, it had a carving for the coven of Single Women Witches With Children. So, these were single women with children in this coven.
A lot of strange things started to happen after I visited that tree. The next day, Monday, I ran out of gas on the beltway. On Tuesday, I was driving my car, which I think we took to the tree, and somebody made a left-handed turn into me and smashed the side of my car. It was still driveable, but it had been a newer car for me and it was not a happy thing. At the time, I was living in Maryland and my entire support group, of course, lived in Michigan. I didn’t know anybody in Baltimore, but this boyfriend.
On Wednesday, this guy came into the bar where I was working and said, “My wife just had a baby, how about giving me a drink?” I told him, “We’ve been having some problems, and I can’t give you a drink unless the boss OK’s it, and she’s sitting right over there. Get her to tell me to give you a free drink because your wife had a baby, and I’d be more than happy to.” He wasn’t very happy with me, and he bothered me the rest of the night. I have a Michigan accent so he probably could tell where I was from. When I came out at the end of my shift, my car had been vandalized. The corners on my Michigan license plate were bent up. The side view mirror was snapped off, and someone had tried to bust out the windshield and rear window. There were footprints all over it, and my roof was turned into a pie tin. This car was my lifeline and now it was seriously damaged.
On Thursday, I went into work, and my boss said, “We’re having some problems, and we’re going to have to let you go. Saturday’s going to be your last day.” On top of everything else, I’d lost my job. On Friday, my boyfriend lost his job, too. On Saturday, I went into work. It was a good night, everybody was saying how much they were going to miss me. I got a lot of tips, and I was feeling good. We were having some drinks, and I stayed after hours a bit. I got home, and my boyfriend was waiting up. I think he’d been drinking a little bit, but he had this look in his eye and it just like wasn’t him. We had been having some problems, but this night he tossed me around a little bit, so I got in my car and left. I drove around for a long time before I came back at about 9 am. I parked in the lot, and he must have seen me. We were supposed to be driving back to Detroit that day. He came down and said, “Come on, let’s go.” I refused. I said, “After what you just did to me, I’m not getting into a car and driving twelve hours to Detroit with you.” He said, “That’s it, I’m rolling your stereo down the stairs.” He ran upstairs and I ran after him. He started throwing my stuff out of the apartment left and right.
Here it is Sunday, a full week later. I am without a boyfriend, I have no job, no home, and a very messed up car. I’m 650 miles from home without a support group.
One of the things about witchcraft is they frequently use photography if they’re trying to put a curse on somebody. So for me to have a picture of their most holy relic, their tree, was pretty powerful mojo. I did develop those pictures, and anybody I showed them to had a bad string of luck. My mother-in-law, who has a little bit of the sixth sense, told me that I needed to get rid of them. We ended up spraying them with holy water and burning them, just to get rid of them.
I think I was being taught a lesson about how we acted at the tree. It was as though they were saying, “We saw you, we think you know better. You should have been more respectful.”
-Maria, Michigan
67. His Master's Voice
I have a story about a friend of mine whose grandfather died. During the time between his death and the funeral, there were a number of people at my friend’s dad’s house. They were mourning and comforting each other. One early evening, a dog appeared on their front porch, and sat there and looked in through the screen door of the house. A couple of people noticed the dog, commented, and asked the owner of the house if it was his dog. He said, “No, that’s not my dog. I’ve never seen that dog before.”
A couple of people tried to shoo it away, but it wouldn’t leave. It just sat there on the porch, but in a way that a very obedient dog would sit. It was very much like a dog that you would see with a handler who would have a leash on it. It sits by their feet and may look around, but doesn’t misbehave. A couple of people thought, “Well, perhaps this dog is hungry,” and offered it some food in a bowl, but it didn’t eat anything.
It didn’t have a collar or any name tag on it. So, in all respects, it could have been a stray, but it didn’t look like one. It wasn’t dirty, and it wasn’t mangy. It appeared to be a well-kept dog. It just sat there in a very obedient manner, and stayed there into the evening and would not leave.
The next day, once the funeral procession left the church, the dog was seen again in the same posture, in the same position on the sidewalk, about 10 miles away from the house, but along the street sidewalk on the way to the graveyard. Again, this dog was just sitting there in a very obedient manner, watching the funeral go by. Afterward, the dog was never seen again. The family took that as a sign or a message that the grandfather was okay, because the dog, although no one had ever seen it and it wasn’t owned by the grandfather, it was, in a sense, a comforting figure. That is how friends and family interpreted it.
-Matt, Michigan
68. Today Will Be the Day
It started out as a normal day. In the morning, I woke up as usual, and went to take my daughter to school. As I was coming out from dropping her off, a guy approached me and he was laughing uncontrollably. He walked right up to me and said, “Today will be the day.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was really uncomfortable. Someone you don’t know just comes up and tries to tell you something, touching you and putting their head next to your ear and near your face. I had to get out of there real fast.
At the time, I didn’t even realize it was Friday the 13th. I don’t know if this was more of a coincidence or paranormal, but it got stranger. Later, I was shopping at Wal-Mart, and I overheard a conversation where someone screamed out, “Today will be the day.” I still didn’t put all this together.
I work in a hospital, in surgery, and help out the doctors. Once I got there, we had this horrible, horrible car accident come into the ER.
As we finished, I looked at the accident victim’s shirt, and it said, “Today will be the day.” That was scary enough, but…there was a grim reaper on the back of it to add to the weirdness.
I didn’t pick up on it, but one of the doctors did. He said, “Isn’t that kind of ironic?” First, I said, “Well, it’s probably because it’s Friday the 13th. It’s not that ironic.” Then, all of a sudden I thought about everything that had happened earlier and those words, “Today will be the day.” I was floored.
After I did my work and helped with the patient, I didn’t learn the outcome, we usually don’t. Suffice it to say, it didn�
�t look very good.
The paranormal part about it all was this guy, who was laughing and laughing, and he came over like he had to tell me something funny, and then he just said, “Today will be the day.”
It is a day I’ll not forget.
-Jim, United States
69. Picture, Picture on the Wall
My grandmother had a picture that used to hang on her living room wall across from her favorite chair, and it had pretty much our whole family in it. She showed me the picture once but it wasn’t hanging any longer. I asked her why she’d taken it down, and she told me this story.
At some point, the picture started falling off the wall for no reason. She would go, pick it up, and look at the back of it to figure out what was causing it to fall. She couldn’t find anything. The wire across the back of it wasn’t broken and the nail on the wall was as it had always been. It wasn’t bent down or anything that would cause the picture to fall. She couldn’t figure it out.
The weird part is that after a couple of times, she put two and two together and realized that every time this picture did this, someone in that picture, within a month’s time, would pass away. As I recall, this kept happening over a period of about a year and a half to two years
After about the sixth time, she thought, “All right, I’m not hanging up this picture anymore because I don’t want to know.”
My grandmother would talk to my great-grandfather, who had passed away. She would say that he would stand at the foot of her bed and talk to her. She always kind of knew things, with my first kid, I got a phone call from her before my wife had gone into labor, and all she said was, “It’s a boy,” and she hung up. It was almost like a trance-like thing. Sure enough, it was a boy. She would do this to other people in the family all the time. She always had this kind of sixth sense.
-Tom, Illinois
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Thanks for reading True Ghost Stories: Jim Harold’s Campfire 2. I appreciate it! I hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed curating these great stories. A special thank you goes out to all of the Campfire storytellers.
As for the future, I have many more stories in my emporium of spookiness. Stay tuned, for True Ghost Stories: Jim Harold’s Campfire 3 coming soon to a Kindle near you.
If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review on Amazon.com, it helps more than you’ll ever know!
You can find the direct link to the page for this book at: http://JimHaroldBooks.com
Please tell your friends and family about it! Don’t forget, True Ghost Stories: Jim Harold’s Campfire 2 also makes a great gift for less than the cost of a fancy coffee!
Thanks and see you soon. Stay spooky!
Jim Harold
http://JimHarold.com
September 2013
AUDIO BONUS/FREE STUFF
1. As a special bonus, every buyer of the book gets access to a free audio program featuring my top 5 favorite stories from this book. These are the stories as told to me on my podcast, Jim Harold’s Campfire. Here is the link to listen to this program created exclusively for readers like you: http://jimharold.com/campfire2bonus/
2. If you enjoyed this book, you will almost certainly want to take a listen to the free, weekly podcast on which it is based. To check it out, go over to http://jimharold.com where you will find Campfire and my other free podcast, The Paranormal Podcast. The shows are also available on iTunes, Roku and via many other apps.
3. If you’d like to get a weekly batch of paranormal news plus updates on my podcasts and books, please sign up to my free newsletter at http://jimharold.com/free-newsletter/
Thanks!
Jim
DEDICATION
To Dar, Cassandra & Natalie: The lights of my life. I love you all more than words can tell.
To Dad: Hang in there, you’ll be OK. Love you.
To Alfredo: Thanks for being the best father in law ever!
To Mom & John: Love you, miss you.
To My Listeners and Readers: Thanks so much for your support. God Bless.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to my wife, Dar Harold, my best friend, and best constructive critic.
Thanks to our Campfire callers who shared their personal stories.
Thanks Maddy and Madeleine for their help with this project.
Thanks to my Plus Club members who have allowed me to follow my dream.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jim Harold is America’s most popular paranormal podcast host. With his two free programs, The Paranormal Podcast and Jim Harold’s Campfire, Jim has developed a loyal following that spans the globe.
In 2005, Jim created The Paranormal Podcast. After over a decade of working on the business side of media, Jim decided it was time to dust off his broadcast training and step back behind the mic. A life long interest in the paranormal, combined with his love of broadcasting and technology, inspired Jim to create some the most successful podcasts of their type to date. Jim has worked in radio, video, print, and new media.
He holds a Master’s Degree in Applied Communication Theory and Methodology and has also taught at the university level.
Jim’s free podcasts are regularly among the top podcasts on iTunes in their respective categories and compete with mainstream media publishers such as NPR and many others. Jim lives in Ohio with his fantastic wife, two daughters, a goldfish and a hamster. He is incredibly thankful for them (except for the hamster when he escapes) and his loyal audience. If you want to check out Jim’s free podcasts visit http://jimharold.com
Also, it is highly suggested that you sign up for his free, weekly paranormal newsletter at http://jimharold.com/free-newsletter/
If you have any questions or comments about the book or Jim’s programs, contact him personally at [email protected]
Copyright © 2013
by Jim Harold Media LLC
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work in any form whatsoever, without permission in writing from the author, except for brief passages in connection with a review.
ISBN-10: 0989853608
ISBN-13: 978-0-9898536-0-6
Published: September 17, 2013
Cover design by James, GoOnWrite.com
Jim Harold Media LLC
jimharold.com
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