by Jim Harold
I'm a little bit different from a lot of your usual storytellers. I've heard some on your podcast who say that they're skeptics. I am an extreme skeptic, but this is something I can't explain.
By definition, it was definitely a UFO. I've read in Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World that meteors can appear green, but this, to me, the size of it and the way that it lit up everything red. Well, I don't know. I have absolutely no idea what this could've been. It's something that's been burned into my brain ever since. Every now and then, when I see those guys, it's something we still talk about. It is a bond and I'll always remember it.
-Jon, Texas
66. The Phantom Car
This happened in 1980 when I was 10-years-old. I grew up on southeast shore of Maryland. There were about a dozen houses in our neighborhood, and ours was the last one on a dead end street. This must've happened on a Friday or Saturday night. My parents were out on a date, so I was home with my older brother or a babysitter.
I was in my room, looking out my bedroom window. I was waiting for my parents to return because it was about midnight or so. There was a gravel road out in front of our house, so you could hear when cars were coming up the road. You would hear that pop and crackle under the tires. So I was looking out the window and I heard that noise. I saw a silhouette of a long black car. I can only describe it as maybe a Lincoln or a Cadillac. Late '60s model, that long kind of black car.
The headlights weren't on, so it was just kind of cruising along. I saw a silhouette of it. As it got closer to the front of the house, the interior light of the car came on. The interior of the car was illuminated and I could see the driver. It appeared to be an older man wearing a hat. His eyes were very dark and recessed, so I couldn't really make out his face. Just as I saw him, he turned and looked toward our house. I was in my room with the lights out, so I didn't feel like he could see me directly, but I felt like he was looking at our house.
There were 8 to 10 mature trees in our front yard, oak trees. As the car drove past these trees, one in particular, it just disappeared and did not reappear on the other side. The best I can explain it is that it drove behind one side of a tree and simply disappeared. Like I said, we were on the end of a dead end street, so there were three posts there with reflector lights. There was no reflection. It wasn't a cul-de-sac where one could turn around easily. This man would have had to turn into my driveway or into my neighbor's driveway and then turn around to get out. Not the sort of thing I would have missed. Nothing like that happened at all, it was just gone. Very strange.
I kind of freaked out. I remember telling my parents and my brother but they didn't give much stock to it because I was 10-years-old. That was 30 years ago, and I can still close my eyes and imagine that car disappearing. It's pretty creepy.
I'm a fan of the paranormal but I don't go ghost hunting. I did see a strange orb out that same window once but the time with the car was the only instance where I saw anything that extreme. I just don't know where it vanished to, it doesn't make sense.
-Chad, Maryland
67. A Big Blue Circle
My family was driving up north from Illinois to visit my in-laws in Wisconsin. It's about a five or six hour trip. I like to drive at night because there's less traffic, so this happened about halfway there. It was probably between 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. There was a very overcast sky and the clouds were hanging really low.
It wasn't stormy or raining and there was no lightning or thunder. We were driving along, and I swear I saw a blue, almost baby blue light, shoot just really quickly from left to right across the sky. I turned to my wife and I said, "Did you see that too?" She said, "That streak of light that just went by?" I said, "Yeah." I thought it was kind of weird.
We drove a little bit longer, and all of a sudden, the whole horizon lights up with a quick flash of the same color blue. We thought it might be lightening, but again, there were no storms in the area. Then a half hour had passed and there were no other flashes. That's all we could talk about. We were just wondering what it was.
We were driving along for a while and then I saw an almost perfect circle in this cloud of that same color blue. It was just lighting up one spot in the cloud. We were looking around because we thought it might be a spotlight. It wasn't because we'd have seen that beam of light coming from the ground, especially at night. This spot wasn't moving at all; it was just there. It wasn't like a timed thing and it wasn't a pattern. It would just arbitrarily dim and then brighten.
We were driving toward it and I said, "We're going to go under this thing." We were looking around for any kind of explanation. This was the middle of Wisconsin so there's nothing out there. Sure enough, we just drove right under it and it was almost a perfect circle. It was just blue. We drove under it and then that's all we saw for the rest of the trip.
It was just an eerie feeling. It very well could've been some sort of weather phenomenon. I really don't know. All I can say is I've never seen any weather phenomenon like that before, and I drive at night up north all the time. I've been going up there since I was a kid and I've never seen anything like that.
I don't know what weather phenomenon would cause just one little circular part of a cloud to glow blue. It just gave me a really eerie feeling after I drove under it. I actually was kidding with my wife, nervously, and I said, "Do we have any missing time? What time is it? Jim Harold's never going to believe this!" I knew I was going to call you right away.
I never saw any news reports or anything like that following this. There were other cars on the road; they had to have seen it. I mean, the whole horizon practically lit up when it flashed. Then other cars were driving under this thing. If any readers know exactly what it is, if it is some kind of weird weather phenomenon, I would love to know because it still kind of freaks me out when I think about it.
That's my first one, my first UFO sighting.
-Tom, United States
68. A Candle of Inspiration
In the year 2000, I was living in an apartment in El Paso, Texas. The neighborhood was very historic. My building dated back to 1903, so it had some really awesome character to it. Wooden floors, a lot of built-in, so I really loved it and was excited to get into it.
Several things happened over the time that I had lived there, but nothing like my experience on this one Sunday morning. I had this beautiful built-in bookshelf and this huge bay window. I was lying on the floor, stretching, just kind of enjoying the morning. It was really nice. I got a phone call. I got up to answer the phone and it was a friend. I was talking to her on the phone in another room. Then, I walked back to the spot where I had been stretching and to my complete and total surprise there was a book lying on the floor. It was just where I had been moments before.
I was the only one that lived in the apartment. So, I was astonished that this book seemingly pulled itself off the shelf and rested on the floor of its own volition. I told my friend, "Oh my gosh, there's a book right here on the floor where I was lying." I picked up the book, and it was The Woman's Book of Confidence by Sue Patton Thoele. It had some really nice inspirational stuff in it. I wasn't a regular reader of the book, but I definitely enjoyed it.
A few years later, I lived in another apartment in the same neighborhood. I had met a wonderful man who eventually became my husband, his name was Nate, and we were dating. He was at my home. I had never, ever told him this story about the book or anything. I came home one afternoon, and on coffee table, was that same book. It took me by surprise and I wondered what that book was doing on my coffee table. It was déjà vu because I hadn't put it there. I said to myself, "Here we go again!"
It turned out that my boyfriend had put it there. I thought that it was an incredible coincidence, almost synchronistic. Nate said, "Well, I was looking through your bookcase and I found this book today. I just wanted to show you something I think you would really enjoy hearing." I was just completely surprised, because this was the same book that a few years earlier had mysteriously ap
peared on my floor, and of all the books in my entire bookshelf, he pulled out this specific book.
I feel someone was trying to get a message to me. There was something there that kind of put the pieces together. After the first time, it was wild to have that book pop out again several years later and in a different location. It was a very inspirational message that Nate shared from the book. It talked about having a candle burning inside of you and letting that be an inspiration to other people and to yourself. I absolutely found the experience an inspirational one.
-Martha, Colorado
69. The Roadhouse Saloon
Jim's Note: I'll leave you with one of the freakiest Campfire stories ever…enjoy!
This took place up in northwest Wisconsin way in the north woods.
We have a family place over that way. My friend Bob and I had gone to see a band play that was about an hour away, maybe a little bit further, from where we lived. We stayed until the band stopped playing and then visited with them afterward since they were friends of Bob.
Driving home, it was one of those nights where it was pitch dark. There was no moon. The only lights were the stars. There was no ambient light, no cities or towns anywhere, for miles and miles. Our headlights were it.
As we were driving along, nature started to call, and we needed a place to stop. Well, there was no place to stop and use the restroom. We were thinking maybe there would be an all-night gas station or something, but there wasn't. My friend could've stopped and pulled over in the woods, but I walk with canes and I was not able to do that, so I told him, "Keep going. Just drive fast."
We were about a half hour, maybe a little bit more from home. Like a beacon in the darkness, we came upon a place called The Roadhouse Saloon. It had bright neon beer signs in the windows, and a big neon "Roadhouse Saloon" sign.
It was just like something out of the movies and it was about 3 a.m. Bars don't usually stay open that late, it was way past closing time.
We saw it there and I said, "Just stop, pull in, and I'll use the restroom. We'll stay for a little while." At this point, Bob said that he was glad it was open, because we're both artists, and there was a mural in the place that he'd heard about. He wanted to check it out.
We got into the parking lot, got out of the car, and when we opened up the bar door, there were probably eight or ten folks in there. Everybody instantly turned to us and said, "Hi! Come on in!"
The bartender was this big, burly, muscular guy with one of those skinny strap t-shirt with tight jeans and big, strong arms. He was leaning on the bar and just grinning at us. The bar was a horseshoe shape and there were a couple women sitting on one side drinking. They looked at us and grinned. The guy closest to us was a younger guy with a glass in his hand and he got up. He said, "Come on in, come on in," and he smiled. He had these nasty brown-stained teeth like he'd been smoking and drinking. It was kind of gross.
I looked at Bob and said, "Order a couple of beers; I'm going to the ladies' room." So I did. The light was off when I got there. I flipped the light on and used the bathroom. As I washed my hands, I noticed something strange. There were no paper towels in the bin, and that the bathroom was spotless as if it hadn't been used. Now, this is 3 a.m. and these women sitting at the bar looked like they'd been there the whole night. My first thought was that they'd been there all that time and hadn't washed their hands? Then I thought, maybe the bar was closing and the staff had cleaned up. I just pooh-poohed all that and came out.
Bob handed me a beer and we walked over toward the mural. We passed this beautiful old-fashioned, round-topped jukebox. It had vinyl records in it. Sitting at a table were two guys that were playing cards and then there were a couple more playing pool at the pool table. Nobody was talking. It was just quiet and they just kind of watched us.
We walked over and took a look at the mural and we were talking about it. It was really interesting. It was painted like a set on a stage, so things faded out at the sides. It was real sharp towards the center. It was a scene out of a Western saloon; there was a table with people playing cards, a billiard table and everything. As I looked at the painting of the people playing cards, I looked back over to the two guys playing cards at the table, and it was them...their faces. They were in cowboy costumes in the mural, but it was them.
I said, "Bob, look. That's those guys." He hummed, "Doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo." (Twilight Zone theme song). He said, "It's probably their family or something. Of course, the artists would paint the people that frequent here. These people are obviously regulars." We were just looking at it and finding everybody else in the bar. We spent the time and we found the ladies, we found the bartender – who was not the bartender in the mural, but the cowboy over in the corner. Every single person in that bar was in that mural.
Then the younger guy with the bad teeth went up to the jukebox and put a record on. It was "Let's Twist Again" by Chubby Checker.
He came up to me and asked, "Hey, you wanna dance?" He was kind of funky, so I pointed to the cane and I said, "Sorry, I can't dance. I apologize." He teetered off. That was the first, other than hello, that anybody said to us.
Then, we finished our first beers and thought, "Let's have one more and then head out." We were going to look at the records on the jukebox again. We ordered another beer and sat at the bar for a little while. The people there didn't talk to each other or to us. We tried to engage them in conversation. We asked, "What can you tell us about the mural? Who painted this? Are you guys in this mural?" They were just kind of smiling at us, nodding like they didn't speak English, or we were speaking a foreign language to them. There was just no response to our questions.
We had an inch or so left in our beers. We went back over to the mural to look some more, to give ourselves something to do. As we got there, we noticed that in the center of the mural were those old-fashioned swinging doors entering into the saloon, like in a '60s TV Western. As we got closer, we saw the shadows, or outlines, of people in the doorway coming into the saloon. We hadn't noticed them when we'd looked before.
It was like they were shadows, like engraved, but there was some color starting to develop. Like the artist had started to paint some color in to give the illusion of somebody coming inside. As we got closer, I just grabbed hold of Bob's arm and I said, "Oh my God, look at that." There were two figures coming into focus.
The female that was directly in front of me in the mural looked exactly like me! It was a woman with a longer skirt, like I had, and a cane and curly-ish hair. The guy standing next to her looked exactly like Bob. These two new people in the mural looked exactly like us. I said, "Oh my God, that's us." Bob said, "Let's get the bleep out of here." We just set our beers down and got to the door as fast as we could.
As we started to leave, everybody just kind of stood up as if to say, "Wait, where are you going?" We got out and the door closed behind us. Instantly, it became pitch, utter blackness. Those neon signs that had been lit up were all out. I froze because I was afraid I would fall, not being able to see. My friend said, "Stay there; I'll go turn on the car lights so that you can see where we are." It was completely black. The windows were there, but the neon signs and everything were off. There were no cars in the parking lot at all.
We got in the car and sped out of that parking lot, spinning stones behind us. As we were driving down the road, we asked each other, "What was that? What happened?" The more we talked about it, we freaked out. You know, people disappear all the time. They would've found our car in the parking lot and wondered what happened to us. We'd be on America's Most Wanted or something, I don't know.
When we got back home, we told my sisters and family this story the next morning. Even though they could tell we were freaked out, they were like, "Yeah, right."
We felt if we had stayed, we could have been trapped in that painting. I don't even know if there was a gray shadow of people in the doorway when we first looked. We were looking for everybody else in the barroom, but I think I would've notice
d a shadow of a woman with a cane in the doorway. Maybe those people were trapped there. I have no idea what it could've been.
A couple of days later, after telling my sister and everybody, we took a field trip up there, not at night I should say. It was open, the mural was still there, the same faces from the bar were in the mural but none of the people were physically there, only in the picture. There was one big difference with the mural, though. There was nobody in that swinging doorway anymore. The misty shadow of Bob and I had disappeared.
The bartender that night was this young woman, and I said, "Hey, where's the other bartender?" She said, "What other bartender?" I said, "The other night I was here and there was a young guy, big, balmy looking guy." She said, "Me and my dad are the only bartenders here." And the jukebox? It was just a modern jukebox with CDs. It did not have records in it and nowhere on that jukebox was "Let's Twist Again."
I'm sensitive to ghosts. I've experienced hauntings since early childhood. I grew up in a haunted house and am very sensitive. I have friends that, when they're going to buy a house or rent an apartment, ask me to come and read it to see if it's going to have bad energy or not.
Still, I picked up nothing in that place when I walked into it. Usually, if there is something up, I get butterflies in my stomach and I can feel it in different places in my body. It's a physical feeling, almost like a smell – that intense, pungent kind of sense that you know something is there that you can't see. There was nothing like that. I had no inkling what was going on. I was completely blindsided. I have no idea what it was.
Maybe somebody reading this knows if these kind of things happen to anybody else, or if there are places where these things happen. I have no idea. I do know this, we really felt like we got out of there within seconds of not getting out of The Roadhouse Saloon at all.
