Attacks and harm
Injuries, scratches, choking, or assault.
Wife reports unseen hands holding her under bathwater
A caller tells Art Bell that their wife phoned them at work asking them to come home and that the caller found her in bed trembling. According to the caller, she said unseen hands had grabbed her shoulders and held her under bathwater. The caller reports that she has had similar episodes and claims she was sexually assaulted by “something.” The host links it to other callers’ reports. The story ends unresolved.
Hooded faceless figure in the bedroom and a return during a cardiac arrest
A caller identified on air as [name withheld] of Sacramento describes himself as a 6'9", 370-pound pastor. He says a faceless, handless, hooded figure came through his bedroom door in March of that year and threatened him. It then threw his wife off the bed by the ankles and left what he describes as bleeding hand imprints. He says the same figure appeared beside him a month later when his heart stopped during a hospital stay in San Francisco. It told him it was time to come with it. He says he refused and was revived. He ends by telling the host he believes the figure was probably following him after he once helped a Catholic pastor with an exorcism.
Entity attacks on a child in a late-1800s house in Needles, California
A first-time caller who gives their name as [name withheld] tells Art Bell about what they call an “entity attack” that began when they were about four years old, in a family house in Needles, California. He reports a presence coming through the wall at night, grabbing and dragging them, and family-wide problems with furniture moving. In a final incident, their father was trapped in the basement under a chest freezer. They say the family moved out about two weeks after that, and that they still sleep with their head under the covers.
Hawaiian cemetery prank, a shaking car, and bite marks
A caller who gives their name as [name withheld], from Northern California, relays a story they say their former Boy Scout leader told them about ten years earlier. The leader was a Hawaiian man named [name withheld]. As a teenager in Hawaii, [name withheld] and a friend took two girls to a cemetery as a prank. The parked car they returned to was shaking violently, with the girls screaming and “red eyes” at the windows. [name withheld] is said to have found a bite mark on his ankle that night. His older brother mocked the family’s warning, and the two returned to run over graves and kick over food. The brother is said to have had more than 200 bites counted on his body and to have needed hospital stitches. The caller ends by saying they were shown [name withheld]’s lasting bite marks years later and by discussing Hawaiian cemetery customs.
A floating translucent man at the caller's bedside at seventeen, and a warning five years later
[name withheld], calling from Grants Pass, Oregon, tells the host that at seventeen they woke in bed to a translucent man floating about a foot above the floor, who they say had been shaking them. They fled the house, and their mother told them it was a dream. Five years later, they say, the same figure came to them in a dream and warned that their boyfriend, their son’s father, would hurt them. The following day, they report, he choked them. They end by saying they would listen to the presence next time.
Hands pressing him down in bed; uncle later recalls a murder in the flat
A caller, reached by the host while sitting out on his porch, tells a story he says goes back to 1983. That year he moved with his wife and baby to Long Beach, California, and took a free one-bedroom apartment in his uncle's building. He reports that his baby woke screaming nightly for about a month. Some weeks after the couple switched rooms, he woke from a frightening dream to something pressing him face down into his waterbed. He could not breathe or speak until his wife woke and turned on the light. The next day, he says, his uncle told him a previous tenant, a drug dealer, had been shot to death in that same room. The caller says the experience converted him to belief in ghosts.
A sensed presence with a tail and blunted nails during an out-of-body experience
A live caller, introduced by the host as being [quote withheld] says they have been a spiritual person since the age of two. They say an “essence” came around them about twelve years ago when their sister died and has come and gone since. They say the one time this presence turned angry and violent was as they were returning from an out-of-body experience in their bed. It disappeared into “some hole,” leaving a long, heavy, grayish tail in view. They say it still visits and presses long, sharp nails into their back at night. They report feeling only blunted pressure and take that as a sign they are protected.
A bull-shaped figure at the bedroom door and a sensation of being smothered
A caller describes an event they say happened when they were about seven years old. The caller says they woke at night to see a bull, which they call a demon, standing at their open bedroom door, and then struggled in bed, unable to scream or breathe. The caller reports praying for it to be taken away, after which they say it let go and never returned. The caller says their father, who came in after they screamed, did not believe them.
Dream-guided trip, two figures in black, and a black net in a valley
A caller who gives their name as [name withheld] describes a series of vivid dreams or waking dreams over seven to nine months, at some point about fourteen years before the broadcast. In them a voice told them of a place near Papua New Guinea. The caller says they traveled there, encountered a man and a woman dressed in black at an airport, and was then engulfed by a black net in a valley at night before calling on spirits and escaping. The caller says they later came home by way of the Philippines on Halloween and concluded that a spirit watches over them.
Wartime story of a figure at a wrought iron fence and a graveyard
A caller recounts a story they say their grandfather told them many times. According to the caller, during World War II in England the grandfather and a friend were riding in a horse-drawn carriage at night. The friend threw an empty bottle over a wrought iron fence. A figure reportedly walked through the fence, stopped the horse, and passed a finger through the friend’s boot. The friend reportedly died of blood poisoning two days later. When the grandfather returned about a week later, he found that the fence bordered a graveyard. The caller says their grandfather believed a ghost killed his friend.
Bedroom attack by a creature “astride” the caller, later called a succubus
A live caller who identifies themself as [name withheld] from Santa Rosa tells Art Bell they were attacked in bed by a creature they describe as a mixture of animals sitting astride them. The caller says it briefly paralyzed them and came back once in the same night. The caller says they fought it off and drove it away by covering their navel and genitals, something they say they had learned from friends. Asked what they encountered, the caller says it was a “succubus”/“incubi” that feeds on sexual energy. The host calls such stories “pretty common” and says such things [quote withheld]
Smoke-like ghosts and an aggressive figure in a Fulton, Missouri, home
A caller who gives his name as [name withheld], in Portland, tells Art Bell he had a “ghost experience” in 1988 while a student at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. He was in his cousin’s home with his cousin [name withheld] and a friend, [name withheld]. He says smoke-like, see-through figures appeared one after another in the living room: an older woman, three boys playing jacks, then a girl doing cartwheels. Then an angry man burst in and swung at him without making contact. He says he remembers little afterward, that the friends were whimpering, and that one of them quit school. He says it changed their lives.