Skeleton faces at a window and a skeleton figure in the hallway, New Orleans
A caller to the 1994 Ghost to Ghost broadcast tells a short story he calls “the skeleton story,” from the time he lived in New Orleans as a small child. He says he woke in his bed on two occasions to a pale blue light outside his window and saw two skeleton faces there. On another occasion, he says, a blue light in the hallway came with a skeleton figure walking into his sister's room. He says that is all he remembers, and the host ends the call.
This clip comes from the source recording. AI chose where it starts and ends, so it may start or end a little early or late. The word-for-word transcript is not published. You can hear the source recording on the Internet Archive (file “Ghost to Ghost 1994.mp3”, starting at 3:19:30). Is this you, or someone you know? Ask for a correction or removal.
The story as told
The caller (addressed by the host only as “sir”) asks to add one more story, saying [quote withheld] He says it happened in Louisiana, where he lived in New Orleans, and that he calls it “the skeleton story.” He says he was a small child at the time, “four or five.” He reports that he remembers waking up in his bed on two occasions with [quote withheld] He pulled the curtain aside and saw [quote withheld] and he says it scared him. He then reports another occasion on which he saw a blue light in the hallway of the house and [quote withheld] He ends with [quote withheld] He offers no explanation for what the figures were. He does not say they were ghosts, spirits, or anything else. The host thanks him and ends the call, then moves into the closing remarks of the program. No other person is said to have seen anything, no name, street, year, or date is given, and no documentation or physical evidence is mentioned.
Reported events, in order
- 0:00
The caller asks to add one more, brief, story.
- 0:03
He says it happened in Louisiana, where he lived in New Orleans, and calls it “the skeleton story.”
- 0:07
He says he was a small child at the time, four or five years old.
- 0:10
He reports waking in his bed on two occasions with a pale blue light outside his window. He pulled the curtain aside and says he saw two skeleton faces outside, which frightened him.
- 0:28
On another occasion he reports seeing a blue light in the hallway.
- 0:31
He reports that a skeleton figure walked down the hallway and into his sister's room, then says that is all he remembers.
- 0:34
The host thanks him and ends the call.
Claims
Each claim is labeled as something the person telling the story noticed (observation), what they made of it (interpretation), something others told them (hearsay), or something the host said (host statement).
- observation· 0:10
The caller reports that on two occasions, after waking in his bed, he pulled the curtain aside and saw what he describes as two skeleton faces outside his window.
- observation· 0:10
The caller reports a pale blue light coming from outside his window on those occasions.
- observation· 0:28
The caller reports that on another occasion he saw a blue light in the hallway of the house.
- observation· 0:31
The caller reports that a skeleton figure walked down the hallway and into his sister's room.
- interpretation· 0:31
No cause is offered. The caller does not say what he thinks the figures were, and he ends by saying that is all he remembers.
Scores, with reasons
An AI model gave these scores using a fixed set of scoring rules (scoring-v1). They are editorial judgments and rough guides, not the odds that anything paranormal happened. How scoring works.
This is a clear, consistent, but very brief firsthand story with some concrete detail (place, age, layout of the house). It is weakened by being a childhood memory from decades earlier, by its shortness, and by an easy ordinary reading of figures seen on waking at a window at night. The caller offers no interpretation and no checkable specifics.
Evidence for and against
- Firsthand story of what the caller says he saw himself: [quote withheld]
- Concrete setting and sequence given: New Orleans, his bed, the window, the hallway, his sister's room.
- A consistent sequence with no self-contradiction, and his answers to the host's prompting fit the story.
- A brief story (about 45 seconds) with no dates, no street or address, and no way to check it elsewhere.
- A childhood memory from age four or five, which the caller himself frames as a remembrance.
- Images seen on waking at a young age have an easy ordinary explanation that the caller does not address.
- Whether the two occasions and the later hallway sighting were separated by days, weeks, or longer is not stated.
- It is not stated whether anyone else was awake or saw anything on these occasions.
- Two lines of the automatic transcript (“in my” and “skeleton figure”) are short fragments, so the exact wording of the hallway episode is partly pieced together from neighboring fragments.
- 0:03
- 0:08
- 0:10
- 0:34
What the model inferred (not said on air): The component judgments (source proximity 15, specificity 10, internal consistency 14, alternative explanations 6, calibration 8, total 53, reported as 52) are my application of the scoring guide. The content behind them is quoted above. I have not treated the absence of dates as evidence either way.
The story rests entirely on one person's memory, with no documentation examined, no other on-air witness, and no checkable specifics beyond a city and an approximate age. This falls in the lowest range of the scoring guide.
Evidence for and against
- Only the caller's own word: [quote withheld]
- No names, dates, or records that could be checked are given.
- No second witness speaks on air, and no witness is even claimed for this story.
- No physical evidence of any kind is mentioned.
- Nothing in the excerpt allows an outside check, and none was done.
- 0:10
- 0:34
What the model inferred (not said on air): Under the scoring guide, a story resting on the caller's word alone scores 0 to 10. I place it at 8 because a city and an approximate age are stated, though neither is checkable in practice.
Skeleton faces at a young child's window and a skeletal figure passing down a hallway into a sibling's room, lit by a pale blue light, are conventionally unsettling images. No threat or physical contact is reported, and the very brief, unresolved ending keeps it below the “frightening” range.
Evidence for and against
- An intrusion at a child's bedroom window: [quote withheld]
- The caller says it frightened him: [quote withheld]
- A figure is described entering another person's room: [quote withheld]
- An eerie blue light recurs in both settings.
- No threat, contact, injury, or pursuit is reported.
- The story is short and ends with a flat [quote withheld] rather than an escalation.
- The caller does not describe what the skeleton figure did after entering the sister's room, or what he did next.
- 0:10
- 0:28
- 0:32
What the model inferred (not said on air): This is a judgment about how the story reads to a listener, not about whether anything happened. The score is my application of the scoring guide's anchors.
A familiar frame (a light plus a figure at night in a house) with one somewhat distinctive detail: two skeleton faces at the window, then a skeleton figure entering a sibling's room. Placed near the middle of the scale. The comparison with the rest of the archive was not done, so the published originality should be treated as provisional.
Evidence for and against
- A “skeleton” face at a bedroom window on two occasions, followed by a “skeleton” figure walking into a sibling's room, both preceded by a blue light, gives the story a specific combination rather than a single stock image.
- The caller gives the story a name of his own: [quote withheld]
- Pale lights, skeletal or skull-like figures, and a figure in a hallway are familiar ghost-story elements.
- The story is so brief that little distinctive detail is developed.
- Novelty compared with the rest of the archive was not worked out in this run, so the score is provisional.
- 0:03
- 0:10
What the model inferred (not said on air): This is a provisional estimate based on content alone (48). No comparison with the rest of the archive was available for this story.
Scoring confidence 0.60 · analysis confidence 0.70 · checked against outside sources: no · evidence available: The caller's firsthand (childhood) story only.; No documents, recordings, photographs, or other physical evidence mentioned.; No second witness speaks on air, and no witness is claimed for this story.. The originality score blends the model's score (48) with how rare the story's details are across the archive. This method is still provisional.
Ordinary explanations to consider
These are possibilities only. None is a finding about what happened.
- Dream imagery, or images seen while falling asleep or waking up, rather than an outside figure. · The caller says the sightings followed waking in bed ([quote withheld]) and that he was “four or five.” Images seen while waking or falling asleep are a commonly reported ordinary explanation for such a sequence, particularly for a young child.
- An ordinary light source outside the house, combined with seeing faces in indistinct shapes through a window at night. · The caller places a light source outside the window ([quote withheld]) and describes looking out into the dark through a curtain. A local light (a fixture, a vehicle, a reflection) plus the tendency to read shapes into a poorly lit scene is an ordinary possibility for the two “faces.”
- Childhood memories of the events that are fragmentary or rebuilt over time. · The story is openly framed as a memory from very early childhood: [quote withheld] [quote withheld] [quote withheld] Memory from that age is typically fragmentary and may be reconstructed. This concerns the reported events, not the caller's character.
What stands out
The story pairs two different versions of the same image: two “skeleton faces” seen from a bedroom window on two occasions, and later a “skeleton figure” walking into a sibling's room. Each comes with a reported blue light. The caller offers no interpretation, and the story stops abruptly at [quote withheld]
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