by Jim Harold
-Haley, Georgia
5. The Praying Phantom
When I was 9-years-old my family went on holiday to Spain, which is quite a big destination for the English. A lot of people travel to southern Europe and go to the hotter places, because of our weather. We went to Alcudia and stayed in at a typical modern resort with a big swimming pool outside, apartment blocks, and entertainment facilities around it. Me, my mum and my dad stayed in a room with three single beds in it and a sort of on-suite bathroom. It was very basic.
This particular evening, we'd all gone to bed after going out somewhere. My mum likes to sit up at night reading. So, she was doing so and the rest of us were asleep. While she was reading she saw an old woman with a traditional Spanish dress on, sort of hovering by the side of the bed. The figure was quite dark and had black clothing on.
It floated to the side of my bed, got into a kneeling position and started to pray. Although she'd seen this, Mum never told me at the time. I found out a few years later.
God knows how my mum got to sleep that night. When I spoke to her about this, she said she was really scared. She put her head under the covers. She was shaking, and after about 10 seconds she looked over the bed covers and this thing had disappeared.
Now the twist in the tale is what happened when we woke up in the morning. Although I was a kid, I can remember this distinctly. My mum and dad were sort of bickering to each other, saying, "Why did you do this? Why did you do that?" It turned out that during the night my dad had the thin blanket that had been over him removed and a newspaper had been placed on top of him from his head to his neck. The paper was perfectly arranged all the way up his body. He was lying flat, and it had been perfectly folded across his body all the way up. It was quite strange and I don't know why that happened.
My dad thought Mum had played some sort of joke on him, but to this day, she's convinced it had nothing to do with her and it was related to the ghost or what she had seen the night previously.
I can remember waking up out of bed that morning and seeing my dad throwing this newspaper off of his body.
I would've really liked to have researched it further, but the thing is, we just don't know. With it being a modern complex on this very old Spanish island, it could've been built on anything. The way my mum described the ghost's clothing was like some really, old, sort of traditional Spanish dress. It was black and lacy, almost like what a nun or a religious figure would wear.
Unfortunately, after that holiday, Mum and Dad got divorced. Since this spirit came to me and prayed beside my bed, maybe this was some sort of thing on the other side looking out for me. I just don't know but that's the way I explain it to myself.
-Andy, United Kingdom
6. The Family that Spooks Together Stays Together
My grandparents lived in an old farmhouse. In the mid-90s, when I was about six or seven, my sister and I spent some time visiting during the summer. We slept in the front room, since my sister refused to stay in my mom's old bedroom upstairs. I would soon learn why she was so reluctant.
This particular night, I recall something waking me up. I looked around the room, and when I looked to my left, I saw a man standing by the window, just staring. He was in the form of a semi-transparent black shadow and he had no features that I could make out.
My sister and I grew up in a very spiritual household, so it wasn't uncommon to see a ghost now and again. Still, I'd never seen a shadow spirit like that. I turned and asked my sister, "Who's that man standing by the window?" She looked and said, "You mean people?" When I looked back, the shadowy man had been joined by a woman wearing a long dress.
We freaked out and both pulled the covers over our heads. That's when my sister told me the reason why she wouldn't sleep in my mom's bedroom; she was awoken by three spirits circling her bed, just staring at her. The shadows wouldn't say a word. They would do nothing but stare.
The figures we saw that night didn't seem threatening at all. The only thing I felt from them was great sadness. I just wasn't sure what they were. It was an older farm, so I'm sure there were a lot of families who had lived there. I got the feeling that this man and woman were part of the same family.
Later that week, my sister and cousin were out playing by the rubble of an old chicken coop. I remember my cousin finding three slab stones underneath a bunch of the stuff. He said, "Hey, these would be perfect for the steps for the fort." They pulled them out, and we didn't think much of them at the time. We just let them be. That same night, when my sister and I were sleeping, I was awoken again. When I opened my eyes, there was a little boy standing not more than two feet away from my face, just staring at me. I remember pulling the covers over my head again. The boy was literally right in my face. I said, "Please go away, you're scaring me." When I finally got enough courage to pull down the covers, I saw him turn around, walk away with his head slightly down, and go right through a wall. I never saw him again.
A few years passed and my grandpa decided to sell the farm. He was cleaning up the old chicken coop, and he was taking apart the fort that my sister had built when we were out there playing. He came across those stones and flipped them over. When he did he noticed each of the stones had a name on them. One said "Mother," one said "Father," and one said "Son." There were dates, but we couldn't make them out. They were gravestones! I have always wondered if the figures that were visiting us at night were that little family who lived on that farm long ago.
-Amy, Wisconsin
7. One Spooky Birthday
We have two daughters. This experience happened on the birthday of my oldest who had just turned three. We had made the mistake of letting her sleep with us and we were trying to shake her of the habit. Usually, I would go into her room with her and lie on the ground next to her bed in hopes that she would fall asleep.
This particular evening, it had been a big day since we'd had a birthday party. I was wiped out, and she wasn't going to sleep easily. I was in her bedroom on the floor trying to coax her to sleep but it wasn't happening. I let her crawl down onto the floor next to me. I thought, "Well, whatever it takes to get her to go to sleep, the sooner I can get into my own bed." So, we were lying next to each other and she sat up and started looking at something as if it was sitting right next to me, like an invisible object down at ground level. I didn't see anything and I couldn't fathom what she was looking at. I could tell her eyes were focused on something, but there was nothing there but the closet.
She started making faces and little noises as if she was imitating something. I was taken aback and it ended up getting worse. She started growling, and then she got scared. I picked her right up and ran with her into our master bedroom. Of course, my wife objected and asked, "What are you doing? You're supposed to be putting her to bed in there." I quickly recounted the scenario. She said, "Well, what about my other daughter?" I looked across the hall into her dark bedroom and said, "I'll go get her. Forget it, we'll all sleep in the bed tonight, we'll break the rules."
I went across the hall into the other bedroom to pick up our 1-year-old daughter, who always slept by herself with no problem, out of the crib. As I went to get her, I had to watch where I stepped because there were toys in the hallway and in my bedroom doorway.
Here was the most interesting part: the toys weren't there moments earlier. Since it was my daughter's birthday that day, we had cleaned the house. It was one of the very few times that we put all of the toys into the toy box. Secondly, I had just come from the hallway with my other daughter and the hallway was empty.
At this point, I was really worried. I went into the room, swept my little baby up, and I brought her into bed with my wife. I told her about the toys. My wife said, "That's really strange. Come to bed. Don't worry about it. It's nothing to think about." So I said, "Okay, I'll be right to bed after I use the restroom."
So, I go into the restroom and as I'm standing doing my thing, I felt something hit my head. I figured that since I was standing right next to
the shower; obviously I had hit my head against the shower curtain rod. That's exactly what it felt like. As I tilted my head up, the shower curtain rod was definitely there, but it was a good 18 inches away from my head. That put the shivers into me. My entire body at that point was covered in goose bumps.
We never had any more experiences, but that was one spooky birthday!
-DJ, Nevada
8. Help Me
I've been working as an emergency responder for about five years in a very rural area in Kentucky. I work for two different ambulance services and I've had strange experiences at both. I'll give you an insight on the experiences I've had at the one place.
At this particular service, we would go out when someone passed away and transport the body to one of the local funeral homes. It was kind of a favor we would do for them, but it seemed like once we started that strange experiences began.
Several people who worked for the service reported seeing shadows and a young female in particular at our station. They also would see doors open and closing, shadows and stuff along those lines. One night in particular, I was at work and that evening, we only had two trucks running. We had four people at the station. At our base, we've got a large truck bay, a kitchen, a living room and some bedrooms.
The bedrooms are only about 14 by 12 feet and each has two beds apiece. The walls are very thin, so you would know if anybody had gotten up. If someone was moving around, you'd hear the doors open and shutting. I'm a night owl myself, so I tend to go to bed after everybody else. This night, I went in to go to bed and everybody was asleep. I laid down, turned the light off, and had been in there 10 minutes, just long enough to get comfortable. From the middle of the room, I hear a sigh, like a female sighing. I knew there was nobody else in the room with me. I turned the light on and I looked; sure enough, there was nobody in there. So I turned it back off, heard another sigh again, but still nobody was in there.
The ghost that we have, we call her Brandy. She's a young female that we know had been killed in an accident several years ago. Just a name that came out of the blue. Don't really know her real one.
Well, that night – after all the sighing – I heard something hit the floor out in the bay, and it started bouncing. It sounded like it was getting farther away like it was skipping, like skipping rocks. I would say it probably went about 50 feet, from the sound of it. Then it stopped, and then it started skipping back.
Having heard all of this, I got up because I thought somebody broke in, so I walked out there. Another employee heard it too. So we both went out there and there was nobody. The doors were locked and the bays were shut, but there was one thing that was quite strange.
We had an ambulance that had been wrecked a few weeks prior and we had some of the miscellaneous items from it, like hard hats and so forth, lying on a stretcher, out in the bay. They were pushed up against the corner so we could put them into a new truck when we got one.
The hard hat that had been on the stretcher was now laying across the bay, horizontally from where it would've been originally. That is what I heard skipping...it had moved itself!
It's nothing to be sitting out in the bay late at night and hear people walking through there. You'll hear footsteps, but not see anyone.
A couple of employees told me about one winter night when they were all sitting around in the bay talking about the experiences they'd had at the place. We've got glass business doors between the bay and they were fogged up from the cold. What happened with them was just plain weird.
As they were sitting there talking, they heard a knock on the door. They all looked at the door and saw something being written out on the fogged glass. When it was finished, it spelled out "Help Me."
That's just the beginning. There are plenty of more experiences I could tell you about. The place is haunted.
-Samantha, Kentucky
9. Pass the Spaghetti
My grandparents lived in a small two-story house just outside of Philadelphia. There was a little six-foot-tall hallway that led from the kitchen all the way into a living room in the back. I would sleep on the couch there when I came over for a visit.
I was about 8-years-old when this story took place. My sister was staying in the extra bedroom next to my grandparents off the hallway. My parents were upstairs, and I was down on the couch at the end of the hallway. I was trying to get some sleep, but I kept waking up because I kept hearing something. I couldn't figure out what it was.
Then, my eyes adjusted to the light, and I saw my sister sitting in the recliner. I thought it was kind of odd because she had gone to bed a long time ago. I wondered what was she doing sitting without the TV on. I called out to her, but she didn't answer or turn around. I could see her in a one-quarter profile. Finally, I just said, "Oh, forget it," and I went to sleep.
Later that night, I woke up again. I saw this amorphous, light colored blob at the end of the hallway. I couldn't figure out what it was, so I got up and I walked down there. It was gone. There were no lights on and all the drapes were closed, so there was nothing coming in through the windows. I ended up walking back down to the couch.
I started reading a book for a bit, and then turned off the light. I looked again down towards the kitchen, and the blob was back. I walked down to exactly where I'd seen it, and again there was nothing.
I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep after that, because I was pretty sure something weird was going on. The next morning at breakfast, I told my sister and she said, "That's really weird, because I woke up a bunch of times. I kept hearing stuff, and I kept grabbing for my glasses. For some reason, I kept seeing my glasses on the bed and I kept grabbing for them but they weren't there." When she would grab for them, she couldn't touch them. Yet, she got up in the morning and they were right there on the nightstand.
This is not a one time thing at this house. My aunt and uncle moved in there after my grandmother went into a home, and they had all kinds of things going on. Unfortunately, that's also the house where my 13-year-old cousin died. Everybody kind of had an experience there, you just kind of saw weird things.
The family really didn't talk about it. Someone might say, "Yeah, I saw some weird lights upstairs." The reply was always something like, "Yeah, why don't you pass me some of that spaghetti." That's about as far as you got as they just wanted to move past the strangeness.
-Greg, Maryland
10. Gasping for Air
It is ironic that I even listen to the Campfire podcast and that I would even share this story is kind of bizarre. As a child, I was easily terrified. My parents sheltered me from scary things, even animation, because I was so easily frightened.
When I was 11-years-old, we constantly visited my cousins. They were a newly married couple and had a 2-year-old son. We went over there almost every week. It was just the thing to do. This was my cousin's childhood home and he had moved with his wife to the third floor.
One day while I was playing with my little cousin in his bedroom, he just got up and wandered away. I found myself sitting in his bedroom waiting for him to come back. All of a sudden, it was like all the air was sucked out of the room. I had a very difficult time catching my breath, to the point where I was flat on the floor and ended up crawling out of the room. The second I crossed the threshold, I could breathe just fine.
At this point, my parents saw me, and I must've had a look of distress on my face. They asked, "Anthony, are you okay?" I said, "Yeah, I'm fine, but I couldn't breathe in there." They looked at each other, looked back at me, and didn't say much of anything. Being a young kid, you tend to shake things off. You don't really question things. I knew it was strange, but I didn't ask. I figured there were some smokers in the home and maybe that's what caused it. I just kind of let it go.
We got in the car to drive home that night, and my parents said, "We need to tell you something. We don't want you to freak out, but seeing what happened tonight, you're probably asking yourself why that happened." I had no clue. They said,
"Well, their house is haunted." That was pretty traumatic. They started to tell me the typical ghost stories that you hear but about this house. Even to this day, I would consider myself very skeptical of things, so hearing creaks, footsteps and doors opening is hearsay in my mind.
Apparently, there were a few spirits haunting that house. One was a female on the first floor. It was an older home, a part of the Underground Railroad, and it was in an area in between two large cities. These homes were kind of old, Civil War-era motels, but not like the ones we have today. There was a large home, and then around the home were small cottages and the owners of the home would rent out those out to travelers.
The story goes that there was a murder on the first floor of this three family home, the main home of the property. A woman was murdered in the front foyer. My cousins knew of this story and of this woman. Again, they were your very typical ghost stories: cold air, cold spots, smell of roses, things like this. They were careful to make sure that I did not find out about the haunting before my experience, because they knew that I would never go over there again. They went out of their way to be out of earshot when sharing an incident with my parents.
