by Jim Harold
Contents
The Lamp Lady Comes at Night - Prologue
Introduction
Title Page
PART ONE: TRUE GHOST STORIES
1. The Reclining Ghost
2. A Ghost on Ice
3. Sailing with the Spirits
4. Oooh, They Like You!
5. Nan and the Ghost
6. Who Is Cooking in My Kitchen?
7. A Visit from Grandma
8. The Schoolgirl Ghost
9. An Imaginary Friend
10. Our Ghost, the Prankster
11. Ghosts Weren’t Mentioned in the Job Interview
12. Campfire Spirits
13. Australian Ghost Hunt
14. Little Boy Charlie
15. A Haunted, Haunted House
16. The Haunted Home of Rest
17. The Boo Tube
18. Haunted Frat House
19. Grandpa’s Haunted House
20. The Haunted Cottage No. 1
21. Geronimo's Revenge
22. That Phone Can't Be Ringing
23. Dark Witchcraft Comes Home to Roost
24. All The News that's Fit to Haunt
25. The Haunted Cottage No. 2
26. The Haunted Vet Clinic
PART TWO: DREAMS, VISIONS AND ANGELS
27. Ghost Nanny
28. Not Just Any Painting
29. Mary Visits
30. Angel on the Park Bench
31. Changing Faces
32. Would You Like Fries with Your Time Travel?
33. A Nightmare Before Elm Street
34. Walking into Another Time
35. Angel in the Desert
36. A Vision of Mary
37. A Dream of Death
38. The Little Girl Who Saw the Future
39. I Know this Place
40. A Mother Just Knows
PART THREE: FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE
41. Daddy's Watch
42. So Far Away
43. Man with the Top Hat
44. Message Across the Miles
45. Grandpa's Pipe Smoke
46. Honey, I Love You
47. She Left a Message at the Beep
48. A Call from Dad
49. Grandpa’s Message from Beyond
50. Off the Hook
PART FOUR: STRANGE CREATURES
51. La Chusa
52. Hungry Like the Wolf
53. The Wearin’ of the Green
54. Beast in the Fog
55. The Staring Red Eyes
PART FIVE: THEY COME FROM THE SKY
56. Castle in the Sky
57. Out of Body, Out of this World?
58. Big and Silent
59. The Giant Eagle
60. UFO over Manhattan
61. Retro UFO
62. Knock Three Times
PART SIX: REALLY WEIRD STUFF
63. The Plane that Killed Me
64. The Walking Ouija
65. What a Mirror Image We Are
66. The Witches' Tree
67. His Master's Voice
68. Today Will Be the Day
69. Picture, Picture on the Wall
Closing Thoughts
AUDIO BONUS/FREE STUFF
Acknowledgements
About The Author
Copyright Page
The Lamp Lady Comes at Night - Prologue
A Note from Jim: Here’s a Campfire tale to whet your appetite. Enjoy!
This happened about 17 years ago. I was about 14 years old and we lived in Pennsylvania. My aunt had been going through some things in her house, and she asked me if I wanted this lamp that she had found. I was really drawn to it. It wasn’t a lamp in the traditional sense. It was a ceramic figure of a woman, a standing Spanish flamenco dancer. Her hand was in an upward position with a tambourine in it, and she had a very full skirt that was swirling as if she were dancing. The reason I call it a lamp is because there were all these different colored light bulbs in the skirt. You could plug it in and it would light up. It was very unique.
Anyway, I took it home and I put it in my room. I think it was probably no more than a week or so after I had the lamp that the first strange thing happened. I lived out in the country, and when the bus would come in the morning for school it was still dark outside. Mom would wake up before everyone else and she would turn the heat up for us, because it was very cold. This particular morning, it was dark, I was in bed and I heard the shuffle of my mom’s slippers. At least I thought they were my mom’s slippers, coming up to where the thermostat was located right outside my doorway.
It was so real, you could hear the weight on the floor. I called out to my mom to say good morning and she didn’t respond. I thought, “Well, that’s kind of odd.” Soon, these footsteps came closer and closer to my doorway, and I glanced up. To my surprise, it was the woman from the lamp standing in my doorway!
She was in the same position as on the lamp. I couldn’t really discern her clothing. It was dark. The same position of the hand, everything. A chill just went up my spine. It had tried to trick me into thinking it was my mother, because that’s exactly the way her footsteps sounded…with these shuffling slippers. If you knew my mom, you’d know. It’s kind of a family joke how she shuffles.
It was a human figure. I don’t remember seeing through it; it was solid. I couldn’t see color either because it was always dark. It continued to appear every night, and though it never tried to copy my mom anymore it progressively got closer and closer to my bed.
I can’t remember the expression on its face. I just remember this overwhelming feeling of evil, and that it meant me harm. I was paralyzed. Every time it came around, I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t move. This went on for several weeks, every night. During the day, after this would happen it never occurred to me to tell anyone. It was almost like I couldn’t, like it had blocked itself off in my memory. Yet, every night, as I fell asleep, I would have that dread of knowing that it was going to come bother me.
I had a four-poster bed, and every night it got progressively closer and closer. I was afraid of what it would do next when it got to the point where it was leaning over me. Toward the end, it had put both of its hands on each of the bottom posts of my bed and was leaning over it.
It still kind of freaks me out to talk about it today. For the longest time, I didn’t talk about it because I was so afraid. From the first moment, though, I knew somehow — I guess it was because of the position it stood in — I knew it was connected to that lamp. I finally told my parents, and they decided, “Okay, we’ll just get rid of the lamp.”
So they did, and nothing happened for a little while. I moved my bed because I didn’t want to look at the doorway anymore.
A few weeks after this happened, I was laying in bed – and now my bed is against the wall next to the doorway – as I looked over, this hand came around the doorway and grabbed the post right next to my head.
I was totally freaked out, because I thought, “What else can I do? The lamp is gone, I’ve told my parents.” At that point, I was pretty religious. I told my pastor. He just told me to rebuke it, but I couldn’t speak. He didn’t understand that I seriously was not able to do anything. It was like I was paralyzed.
So, I went outside with my sister the next day, and I was telling her about it. We were walking around the house, and it was in the winter; there was a lot of snow. All of a sudden, we see the lamp on the ground, behind our house. We had an old oil tank and the lamp was there in the snow. That’s why it was still coming around. It wasn’t really gone.
I remember that we told my parents, and I guess my father must’ve taken it and he actually p
ut it in the trash can. Once it was gone, the apparition was finally gone too. After the fact, we found out that there was actually a woman who had made the lamp, it was like a ceramic cast piece. This woman had gotten in a lot of trouble legally for abusing children. So, I don’t know if somehow she put something into that lamp, but I felt very targeted as though it really wanted to scare me, terrify me, and just make my life a living hell.
I think it was definitely an entity. It seemed like it knew what it was doing. It felt like it was put there on purpose, almost, to just do this kind of thing. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but that’s the way I feel.
I believe evil exists. I didn’t have as strong an opinion on it until at that point where it was made real to me. I never thought, really, that this type of thing was possible. I was pretty skeptical, and realized that other people believed in things, but unless I saw it, I wasn’t going to believe that certain things were really possible. After this happened, I’m a believer. I mean, how can you not be when something happens to you? I know a lot of people would say that I was sleeping, but I know I was awake. I was so terrified. I couldn’t move and I couldn’t sleep afterward. I know I was awake.
It happened so many different times, and it got progressively closer, and it was just horrible. I was so scared. I don’t think I could’ve slept if I wanted to, because my heart was racing. I mean, I was wide awake. Each time it came, it wasn’t just a split second. It would be at least – oh, five to ten minutes each time, just standing there.
It seemed like it had me mesmerized. Maybe that’s part of why it took me so long to tell anyone, because during the day it was almost like it didn’t happen. It just blocked itself off in my mind and that’s so not like me, because I talk a lot!
-Amy, Montana
INTRODUCTION
These are TRUE GHOST STORIES -- 70 stories from my popular program, Jim Harold’s Campfire, as told to me by people from all over the world.
In these pages, you’ll find tales of walking Ouija boards, departed loved ones who return to deliver a final message, apparitions, angels, and entities that some might consider demons. We even throw in a few UFO and cryptid creature stories for good measure. Some tales are simple, others quite elaborate, but my belief is that they all come from a very genuine, heartfelt place. The real world telling of these tales is what makes them very chilling, in most cases, and heartwarming in others.
The stories are edited with a gentle hand for pacing, but remain, for the most part, in the words of the original experiencer.
I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I have enjoyed curating them for you.
AUDIO BONUS/FREE STUFF: For those of you reading this and who have downloaded the book, thank you! You can go to the “Audio Bonus/Free Stuff” page at the book’s end to find an exclusive link to a bonus audio show plus other free goodies. On this special audio Campfire, exclusively created for readers of this book, I share and replay my 5 favorite stories from this compilation. You’ll get to hear the original retelling by my callers. It is a paranormal countdown in the spirit of the old Top 40 radio shows. You will be able to download or stream it to the device of your choice. It is my thank you for reading the book. Enjoy!
Best regards,
Jim Harold
September 2013
TRUE GHOST STORIES: Jim Harold’s Campfire 2
by Jim Harold
PART ONE: TRUE GHOST STORIES
1. The Reclining Ghost
It is a strange story that started about 10 years ago. My mom had a very nice friend who had some furniture that she wanted to get rid of, so my mom was happy to get it. Who wouldn’t want free furniture?
My brother and I went with my mom to this woman’s house. Her husband who was in his late 80s, was still alive at the time. He had two recliners and a couple of dressers that they were giving away. The chairs were both the same color. The man told my mom very directly, “You can have these recliners, but only you can have them, nobody else.”
My mom said, “Okay, I’ll take the recliners, I’ll take the furniture. I don’t mind. I’ll keep it.” She didn’t really think about giving any of it away to anyone else.
A couple of months or so after my mom got the furniture this older man passed away. After his death, we started experiencing some weird things with one of the recliners. I remember sitting in the living room and, sometimes when I’d be by myself, I’d hear something in the garage moving around, but I would ignore it. Sometimes I would make a joke, I would tell the ghost, “If you drop anything, you’re picking it up, because I’m not getting up from here and picking it up. You made the mess, you pick it up.”
There was one instance where my brother got really sick. He had one of the recliners in his room, and he got appendicitis. We were thinking maybe it was in relation to the chair, because he was in his room a lot. A deep depression had come upon him. We don’t really understand it, but after a while he got better, he got a surgery and everything. Thank God that he survived it.
After a year or so, we got rid of one of the chairs – we gave it to my elder sister. She lives up north from us. She was happy to get free furniture too, so she took it, and put it in her son’s bedroom. My nephew would tell her that sometimes at night he would see the chair move. He would see this hand come across the resting arm area, and it was tapping in a way, like tapping its fingers! He told his mom, “There’s this arm, I’m seeing this thing, I don’t like it! What is this?” She didn’t believe him and said, “Just ignore it, it’s just you’re tired, you’re stressed from school.” He insisted that he was seeing something.
Then one night it happened again, and this time he went to his mom and he refused to go back in his room. To reassure him, she offered to take the chair and put it in her room to show him that there was nothing to it. A couple of days later, after they went to bed, she started to hear something. She looked and she saw the chair moving, and all of a sudden she started to see the apparition of the arm come up, just as my nephew had said. It was starting to tap its hands, and it started to become a weird demonic form.
It freaked her out so much that she grabbed the chair, put it onto the curb in the middle of the night to get rid of it permanently. When she went back in the house, she heard something rocking back and forth plus a dragging sound. What was the sound? They thought maybe somebody came across, saw the chair, and wanted to take it. She and my nephew looked out the window and got a real shock. They saw the chair rocking and dragging itself along the curb. She told us, “I could’ve sworn, I’m not lying, but I saw what looked like a figure and there were these weird spirits just jumping out of the thing. I just closed the windows and everything. I didn’t want to even open a window or crack it open or anything. I didn’t care.” After that, I can’t remember what she told us about that chair, but we never saw it again.
When we came to pick up the furniture, the old man, he was sitting in one of those chairs, too. I’m thinking it was probably that one that we gave to my sister. We still have the second one!
-Jeanne, Washington
2. A Ghost on Ice
I grew up in a small town in Saskatchewan. We happened to have a lot of ice rinks. That’s pretty common in western Canada where skating rinks are sort of the lifeblood of small towns. We had an old rink, we had a new rink, and a curling rink all in the same complex. Throughout high school, that’s where I worked. When I wasn’t at school, I was working at the rinks. This was about 15 years ago so that sets the story up.
The old rink, to put some context around the story, was probably about 60 years old at the time. It was a heart-shaped building, so it had great big wooden arches, and it was just kind of a neat building altogether, if not creepy, when you were there by yourself, that is. One of the jobs every night before we could go home was to get the new rink and the old rink cleaned up. With the new rink, it was quite easy; the equipment was good there so we typically did that one first. It was probably just before midnight or so when I went over to
start working on the old rink. This would’ve been sometime in November or December, and it gets pretty cold up here in the winter, so it would’ve been in the minus 30 to minus 40 range at that time of the year.
Anyway, I was cleaning away. I had the dressing rooms upstairs right over top of the lobby cleaned. So, I came back downstairs to start working on the lobby, and as I was getting close to being done sweeping the floor in the lobby, I could hear footsteps. It sounded like somebody was walking around upstairs in the dressing rooms, which wouldn’t have been impossible, just odd, seeing I had just cleaned them and with the building all locked up. Yet, at the time, I wasn’t thinking immediately that this was anything other than somebody being up there.
So I let it go for a little bit. Then I heard something which sounded like something was dropped on the floor. I thought, “Okay, that’s getting weirder.” What capped it off was, the way I try to conceptualize it, the sound of rolling pails, but it really just sounded like something was rolling around on the floor upstairs. So, I thought, “Okay, I’d better go check this out.” I make my way back upstairs, and all the lights are still off. Nobody’s up there. I had to leave the lobby and go into the arena part to get up there. When I got there…no more sounds.
I couldn’t quite figure it out, the phantom sounds and all. Still, at that time, I still wasn’t thinking anything paranormal. I came back downstairs, and I just started to finish up the sweeping, put stuff in the dustpan, get it cleaned up. About 10 seconds or so after coming back downstairs and going back to work, the floor-scrubbing machine that was set up and ready to go to wash the floors started up…by itself!
I wasn’t anywhere near this thing and I heard it click on. It has a scrubbing pad on it, and you can hear the motor running. I mean, there’s no way the machine could turn on by itself. So at that point, with the noises from upstairs and the machine turning on, I was done. I left the building.
