True Ghost Stories: Jim Harold's Campfire 3

by Jim Harold

  Contents

  Something Really Nasty - Prologue

  Introduction

  Title Page

  PART ONE: HAUNTINGS & GHOST STORIES

  1. She's Mine

  2. The Phantom Passenger

  3. Alone in a Haunted Dorm

  4. Great-Grandma Didn’t Believe in Ghosts

  5. The Praying Phantom

  6. The Family that Spooks Together Stays Together

  7. One Spooky Birthday

  8. Help Me

  9. Pass the Spaghetti

  10. Gasping for Air

  11. Duddy's Haunted House

  12. The Haunted Laptop

  13. Shadow Warrior

  14. Die and Say Cheese

  15. Night at the Haunted Asylum

  16. A Little Something Extra

  17. Phantom Footsteps

  18. Haunted Honeymoon

  19. The Haunted Hut

  20. Ghostly Smells

  21. A Ghost in Jim Harold's House

  PART TWO: OUIJA STORIES

  22. It Opened a Portal

  23. N-O-T-H-I-N-G

  24. A Family Secret Revealed

  25. Some Things Should Be Left Alone

  26. I Never Played with a Ouija Board Again

  PART THREE: MONSTERS & SHADOW PEOPLE

  27. Mia the Cat vs the Supernatural Predator

  28. Followed in the Woods

  29. A Night Visitor

  30. The Disappearing Shadow Man

  31. Strange Bedfellows

  32. A Strange Gift

  33. The Monster in the Cubbyhole

  34. It Had No Eyes

  35. Strange Legs

  36. A Chip on its Shoulder

  PART FOUR: VISIONS, DREAMS & MESSAGES FROM BEYOND

  37. My Other Sissy, the Dead One

  38. The Hypochondriac is about to Die

  39. My Round Faced Angel

  40. Two Toes & Baskerville

  41. Dreams from the Other Side

  42. I’m Still Watching Over You

  43. The Ides of March

  44. A Most Unique Name

  45. Grandpa, My Guardian Angel

  46. Making Rounds from the Great Beyond

  47. Memaw’s Mommy Is an Angel

  48. Like Someone Flipped a Switch

  49. You Made the Right Choice

  50. The Ride Not Taken

  51. I Shouldn't Have Been Able to See That

  52. Waving Goodbye

  53. A Cemetery Messenger

  54. Girl of My Dreams

  55. A View from Above

  56. Three Little Fishies

  57. Grandpa's Magic Doorbell

  58. Don't Forget Me

  59. A Little Guardian Angel

  PART FIVE: BIZARRE

  60. A Living Statue

  61. A Strange and Fantastic Voyage

  62. Doppelgänger Delivery

  63. The Headless Conductor’s Lamp

  64. My First Amusement Park

  65. The UFO Kids

  66. The Phantom Car

  67. A Big Blue Circle

  68. A Candle of Inspiration

  69. The Roadhouse Saloon

  Closing Thoughts

  AUDIO BONUS/FREE STUFF

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Something Really Nasty - Prologue

  A Note from Jim: Here's a creepy tale to get you in the Campfire mood. Enjoy!

  My story begins in early summer of 2002. I was living in North Carolina, and I had a good friend who lived in Richmond, Virginia. I decided to take a quick, impromptu weekend trip to visit him. I arrived at about 1 a.m. on Saturday and once I got there, we spent some time discussing what we we're going to do the following day.

  He mentioned that his parents were out of town on vacation. They had asked him to watch their house while they were gone, pick up their mail, change the lights around in the house to make it look like somebody was there and that sort of thing. He asked me if I would mind going with him to do that. I said, "Oh yeah, sure, absolutely." He said, "Do you remember that I told you a few years ago that my parents' house is haunted?" Well, I hadn't, but he jogged my memory. I told him, "Okay, well that's fine. It's no big deal."

  He started second guessing himself about taking me there and I said, "Carl, come on. You promised your parents. I don't want to screw that up just because I popped into town. Let's just go get it done and then we'll have the rest of the weekend to play." So that's what we did. They lived outside the city limits of Richmond in a country-suburban area. We took off and got there in no time because at 2 a.m. there wasn't any traffic on the road.

  As we started pulling into this residential area, his whole demeanor and personality changed. He got very anxious. By the time we pulled up into the driveway, he was just locked up. His jaw was tense, and he was squinting at the house. It was a normal ranch-style house on a street of normal ranch-style houses. He turned and said, "This is probably the most foolish thing I've ever done. I don't know what I was thinking to bring you here. I'm just going to blow it off. My parents will understand. They're going to be back in a day or so." He started to put the car in reverse, like we were going to leave. I said, "You're crazy. What are you doing? We've driven all this way. Let's just go and get it done." He insisted, "No, no, I don't want to take you in there." I said, "Okay, fine. I'll sit here in the car and wait for you. You go do your thing." He barked at me, "No! I will not leave you alone for a second here." He scared me a little bit. I didn't know what to think.

  I gave him some time to think and he worked it out in his own mind. He said, "All right, five minutes, in and out, and then we're gone." I was fine with that. So we got out of the car, headed out to the house, got onto the front porch, and he started to open the door. He put his key in the lock, and I will never forget the way he turned and looked at me. It's seared in my brain. He had this mix of nervous tension and anxiety. He unlocked the door and pushed it open. I was standing behind him and to the side.

  I have no other way to describe what happened. As he pushed the door open, a gust of wind came out of the house. This wasn't a breeze. No. This was wind, serious wind. It bypassed him and hit me directly in the midsection; next thing I knew, I was no longer on the porch. I was standing in the front yard. I assume I stumbled off the porch. It all happened so fast and I didn't know exactly how I got there. I was doubled over, incredibly nauseous, and I had vertigo. I was dizzy and lightheaded. I felt like I was about to throw up.

  He came to my side instantly and apologetically asked me, "Are you okay? What's going on?" I said, "I don't know." It suddenly occurred to me I'd just met the ghosts from his parents' home. We'd been acquainted, and they weren't happy. He was so stressed out at this point. I wanted to make him feel better, so I straightened myself up and tried to catch my breath. I said, "I'm fine, it's all good. Let's go in, let's get your stuff done." So we did.

  We entered into the entry hallway and he flipped the lights on. We headed into the kitchen, and he was sorting through the mail. I was just standing there waiting on him and going over in my mind what had just taken place. It was bizarre and nothing like that had ever happened to me before.

  As I was standing there waiting for him, a little bit of movement caught my eye from the entryway hallway. A huge, pitch black shadow had passed in front of a large mirror that was on the wall. It was almost person-shaped. It was tall and slim. As it passed this mirror, both hallway lights dimmed briefly and then came back up. My jaw dropped wide open and my eyes were wide. I looked over at Carl and he looked at me. He asked, "Did you just see that?" I said, "Yes, I did." He said, "Oh my God. I'm almost done here
, honey. I'm so sorry. We'll be out in a second."

  No sooner than he said it, the atmosphere in the kitchen just became so heavy and oppressive. I'm getting choked up even remembering it. I'm not eloquent enough to have the words to describe the feeling, but it was overwhelming. At the same moment, both of us got hit with horrible vertigo. We were both reeling and stumbled. We were holding onto kitchen chairs to support us.

  Then, it felt like something had put my internal organs into a vise, almost, just pressing and squeezing. I'm just getting scared telling this story. It was absolutely awful. I've never in my life experienced anything like this. Carl said, "Okay, I'm done with this. You go to the front porch. I'll be two seconds behind you. I need to change the lights. I'm forgetting the rest of the stuff." He didn't have to tell me twice. I was pretty much out on the porch before he even got the words out of his mouth.

  So I was standing out there and he was less than 10 seconds behind me. He had the front door keys in his hand. He started to pull the front door closed, but it slammed itself shut and locked itself! Envision this all happening simultaneously: both locks locked themselves, thunk thunk, and all the lights in the house turned off. Just all at once. I was standing right there. Carl had the key in his hand, not even in the lock. He tested the door and it was locked. He said, "Bleep this, we're gone."

  We ran down to the car and peeled out of the neighborhood. We headed back into Raleigh, to his apartment in Carytown. After we got back, our adrenaline was pumping from this experience, and we were talking it over. I couldn't shake that bad feeling, no matter what I did, but I just chalked it up to paranoia. As we were sitting there on his balcony in the middle of the night, I kept looking over my shoulder. I was really jumpy. He looked at me and he said, "Do you feel like we're being watched too?" I said, "Yeah." But we kind of wrote it off and thought, "Okay, we're just still jumpy."

  Long story short, we never really could shake that feeling that weekend. I drove back to North Carolina on Sunday, and continued on with my life and just put it behind me. Shortly after that, we had a little falling out. We ended up not talking for a while, so we were out of contact when things started happening at my house in North Carolina.

  I lived in this cute little cabin out in the woods with my son, and it had always been a really happy place. Everything was totally chill in my house prior to this experience.

  Within a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, strange things started happening around my house. I didn't connect the dots back to my Virginia visit. My son was 5-years-old and had always been such a happy, joyful child. He never gave me a moment's problem, nothing at all. He was never afraid of the dark or to go to bed at night. Well, suddenly he became afraid of the dark and afraid to be in his room, but only at night.

  I picked up on this over the course of several days, until finally one night when he flat out refused to go to bed. I sat down on his bed with him, and I asked, "Honey, what's going on?" He said, "The voice keeps me up at night." I said, "Excuse me?" He said, "There's somebody in the attic." Now, his room had a trapdoor, pull-down ladder to access the attic, which I rarely if ever used. He said, "There's somebody up there, they make noise, and they call to me. I can hear them say my name and they say other things, but I can't hear that part. It keeps me up at night and it scares me." Well, that sent shivers up and down my spine.

  I was really upset, but at the same time, I still wasn't connecting the dots back to Virginia. I was hoping that it was his imagination, even though he'd never had a problem with that before.

  Then, strange things start happening to me. I started to see little slinky, creeping, shadows just out of the corner of my eye. I never saw them dead on, but I'd be sitting at the computer or cooking, and something would move really fast out of the corner of my eye, just darker than whatever's around it. I'd quickly look, but I couldn't see anything. Floorboards started creaking as if somebody was walking on them. I was trying to apply logic to it, and I figured, "Okay, it's an old, decrepit North Carolina cabin. I'm sure everything's cool."

  This house also had a basement in addition to the attic, but it was really awful and creepy with unfinished and crumbling earth walls. It wasn't a place that you'd want to be and I never liked to go down there even before all of this. After I got back, it got worse. It felt like Carl's parents' kitchen, that oppressive feeling. It got to the point I didn't even go down there. The door to the basement stuck really badly, and it gave off a horrible suction noise. You couldn't even open it. You literally had to thump it open with your whole body and your shoulder to get that suction feel to break. It had like a popping sound when it would open. You could hear the sound all over the house.

  This one day I will never forget. I was sitting in my living room at the computer. It was 2 or 3 p.m. and broad daylight. I was alone in the house, and the basement door opened. Thunk. I heard that horrible suction sound, and then heavy, thudding footsteps going up the hallway that seemed to stop at the kitchen doorway. I flipped out, because I thought someone had broken into my house. I jumped out of the chair, overturning it in the process. I took off running through the kitchen. I got there and the basement door was shut and locked. No one came out of that door, but the sound was definitely there. To this day, I am convinced I didn't dream it.

  Anyway, so I lived there about another year, with little things here and there going on. In about 2003 I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I live now. I felt like I had left all the strange little things that were going on in North Carolina. I hoped it was all behind me. There were a few strange things that happened in my first Albuquerque house, but nothing that I couldn't explain away and push to the back of my mind.

  On Halloween 2004, I took my son to Old Town Albuquerque for trick-or-treating. All the businesses around the plaza there stay open late and hand out candy. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people come out. It's a fun community environment. There are these little adobe buildings throughout, and you never know what kind of business you're going to run across.

  I let my son lead the way because it was his candy-finding expedition. He led us down this little side street, and there was only one business open down there. It happened to be a New Age shop that sold crystals, herbs and everything those kinds of shops sell. We walked in, and my son went up to the guy behind the desk to get his candy. The man was talking to him about his costume. I was standing a few steps behind him, not really paying attention. The guy who worked there looked up at me, got the oddest look on his face and rose up out of his chair. I don't remember the first thing he said to me, but it felt alarming. Something just raised the hackles on the back of my neck, whatever it was.

  Then he said, "I feel pretty sure my boss would like to meet you. Do you mind?" That just felt like the most bizarre, out of place thing, and I didn't even reply. He turned his head and he looked back into this little office that was dimly lit with one lamp. I followed his gaze, I looked back there, and there was this older, middle aged woman looking at me. She had a half-smile. She raised her hand and gestured for us to come back there. I figured, what the heck, I'd go with it.

  I walked back there with my son and she talked to him about Halloween for just a moment. Then, she turned to me and said, "Do you by any chance happen to see auras?" This had just taken such a weird turn for me. I said, "No…" She said, "Okay, well, I do, and my clerk does as well, and I feel like when he said that I would want to meet you, it's because, like me, he was completely overwhelmed with your aura. You have..." Mind you, I don't know anything about auras; I'm just repeating what she said – she said, "You have the most beautiful shimmering violet aura. I've never in my life seen anything like it."

  She went on to say, "But, you have something really nasty clinging to you."

  She said, "I hesitate to use the word evil, but it's really not nice. I would like to help you." At this point, I think I must've given her a skeptical look as if to say, "Oh, here's the big pitch for money." She rushed to reassure me. She said, "Trust me, I don't want
any money. It would feel criminal to ask you for money, but I need to help you try and get rid of this thing that's clinging to you. Will you allow me?" I don't remember what she called it, if it was a cleansing ritual or ceremony, something about cleansing. I looked at my son; he was wide eyed, just staring up at me. I said, "Well, okay." Just because I don't see auras, she might. I figured I'd just go with this, because I didn't want anything nasty clinging to me.

  She pulled out a wand and began doing this circular motion around me saying all kinds of different things that I can't even begin to remember at this point. Then, she said, "I beg you. I beg of you, please come back to me any time you're anywhere close to Old Town, and let me do this again. What I've done here, I hope it helped. It's not going to get rid of this thing all the way." I looked at my little boy, and he looked like he was fixing to bolt out of this place with or without me. I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Thank you very much," We get out of there, and he looked at me and he said, "Mommy, can we be done trick-or-treating? I want to go home." I said, "Absolutely, honey, yes."

  We went home, and that was that. In the meantime, I got reacquainted with my old friend Carl via email. We settled our differences, got back on a good track, and I mentioned to him that I was going to be traveling to Raleigh to visit some other friends. He was like, "Really? When? Because I'm going to be in Raleigh for a job interview." It turned out it was the exact same time I was going to be there.

  While I'm there, Carl came to my friend's house that I'm staying at, and we hung out for a couple hours. Naturally, our conversation ended up turning to that infamous night at his parents' house. I made the offhand comment, "Yeah, strangely enough, my little house in North Carolina started having weird things going on with it." I mentioned to him about the New Age lady in the shop on Halloween the year prior, and all the blood drained from his face. He, pardon the pun, turned white as a ghost. He got really intense and he said, "You've got to be kidding me." I said, "No, why? What?"

  He said, "Jen, the house that I grew up in, the house that my parents still live in, it's been haunted since day one." Now, that was a new build; they were the first family that ever lived there. They still live there. He said, "It was always haunted. I swear to you, I'm not lying, there has been no, zero activity at the house since the night that we were there."