Cold spots and sudden heat
A sudden cold or heat.
A black form, the family cats, and a brother’s hypothermia in an Edison, New Jersey, farmhouse
A caller who says they are calling from Fairborn, Ohio, tells Art Bell that around 1970, when they were nine or ten, their family lived in an old farmhouse on 12 acres in Edison, New Jersey. They report waking at 3 or 4 a.m. and seeing a black, indistinct oval form in the hallway that “slammed into” them and told them “don’t go in.” They then found their younger brother being enveloped by it in their shared bedroom while the family’s cats attacked it. The story ends with their father, described as a police officer, running in with a gun as the thing slid through a window. The brother was reportedly kept overnight in the hospital for hypothermia the next morning.
San Jose apartment with occult remains and blue light pillars
A letter read on air, with the writer’s name withheld, describes working for an apartment-management company in East San Jose, California, in 1971. The writer reports being sent to clean a second-floor unit after an eviction. They say they found black walls, red bulbs, a pentagram, altars, and animal remains. After warnings from two strangers, they say they saw two pillars of blue light at the foot of their bed at about 2 a.m. The letter ends with the writer saying they never returned to the address.
Family haunting in Louisiana tied to an uncle who kept his wife's corpse
A caller from Austin, Texas, tells a family story they say took place in Louisiana about a hundred years before the broadcast and is still going on. An uncle, said to be devastated by his young wife's death, kept her corpse in an upstairs bedroom for six months while he waited for a glass coffin ordered from New Orleans. He reportedly kissed it nightly and talked to it over a Ouija board. The caller passes on servants' reports of candles that would not light, cold air, whispers, falling objects, and nighttime conversations with another voice. The caller says relatives kept avoiding the room and feeling a cold presence into the 1970s. The caller says the woman is still buried in Metairie Cemetery, that a family member holds the key to the crypt, and that they themselves would go in out of curiosity.
Ghost drums at a reenactor rendezvous at Fort Ouachita
[name withheld], calling from the Springfield, Missouri Ozarks, says they are a Cherokee historic reenactor. They describe an eleven-day rendezvous in 1994 at Fort Ouachita, Oklahoma, an old Confederate fort and cemetery. After most camps left on Sunday, the caller and their husband stayed overnight. The caller reports fear, birds screaming at midnight, ghost drums, waves of ghosts, dress jingles, a moved teepee door, and a fire that went out cold. The host closes with comments, and the story ends without resolution.
Six nights in an abandoned rural house: Odors, Ouija board, and footsteps
A caller who says they are a county fraud investigator tells Art Bell they spent six nights with their girlfriend and her daughter in an unoccupied house about 25 miles up a dirt road in Northern California. Local people had told them it was haunted. They report a rotting-flesh smell, cold spots, a chair that flew back and injured the girlfriend’s knee, a door handle turning, footsteps and a slammed door upstairs, a child’s “help me” captured on a tape recorder, and orbs in several hundred photographs. The call ends with the host asking for the caller’s e-mail and website link.
Rented split-entry house: orbs, mist, whispers and a white figure on the stairs
[name withheld], a caller from New Hampshire, tells Art Bell about strange events the caller says began on the first night their family moved into a rented split-entry house about twenty-three years earlier, when they were sixteen. The caller reports a dream of an old man with hollowed-out eyes, then waking to balls of light zigzagging through their room. Later came a mist and cold in the hallway, whispering and footsteps at night, a face staring over their shoulder at the computer, and a white figure with bulging eyes on the stairs. The caller says their brother [name withheld] reported the same experiences. The host ends this part of the broadcast by telling the caller they are haunted.
A floating female figure, immobility, and being carried out a bedroom window
[name withheld], calling from Medford, Oregon, tells Art Bell about events they say happened in the mid-1950s, when they were about ten or eleven, in a house on Garden Grove Avenue in California. [name withheld] reports a fear of the bedroom and a curtain moving. One night, [name withheld] says, a female, ghost-like being floated through the open window and tied something around the caller's finger, leaving them immobile. It then floated the caller out of the window toward a light, where they were poked and prodded, with a buzzing sound, before they found themself back in bed. Art Bell suggests a hypnotic regression and calls it possibly an abduction story rather than a ghost story.
Childhood sounds and a cold presence in a Pomona house; a white figure in Ontario
An unnamed caller to Ghost to Ghost 1996 describes strange events in two childhood homes. In a house in Pomona, California, from about age five or six, they heard sounds after their mother left for a graveyard shift. They were repeatedly woken by an extremely cold presence over their bed, and they saw the family dogs escape weekly. In a later house in Ontario, California, around fourth grade, they saw a short, powdery-white glowing man in a navy peacoat walk up the hallway into their room, touch them, and seem to read their thoughts. The caller describes the figure’s face as blank and says the experience was impossible to describe. The host closes the segment with general remarks that children and animals sense such presences before adults do.
Bed trembling, a whispered name, and shadows after a grandmother’s death
A caller phoning from Wabash, Indiana, describes events they say began about 1989. Their then-wife’s grandmother was found dead in her garage in East Tennessee, and the family’s suspicions fell on the wife’s father, [name withheld]. The caller says that in their Middle Tennessee home, the children saw something in their bedroom and their wife saw shadows. The caller felt their bed shake, felt someone move their hair and sit on the bed, and heard a whisper of the name “[name withheld].” They say the activity stopped the day [name withheld] died in a car accident. The caller says they believe the grandmother was telling them [name withheld] killed her.
Cold spot, woman, and giant arm during a church overnight
A caller who gives their name as [name withheld], in Pearl, Mississippi, tells Art Bell about a night they and about half a dozen friends spent in their church at the end of a summer. The caller reports a cold spot, a woman seen in the hallway, a huge arm reaching around a classroom door, a moving white pattern on a window, and a face with glowing eyes before the group fled and huddled together. The caller says nothing else happened that night and that they are the only one who has told anyone. The caller thinks the beings were angelic and demonic rather than the dead.
Friend hears crying through a bathroom wall; neighbor found dead
A caller who calls themselves [quote withheld] tells a story they attribute to a friend in Victoria in 1987. The friend rented a suite in a converted Victorian mansion. While bathing there, the friend reportedly heard the woman in the next suite crying through the thin wall on about three or four nights. Then the friend noticed the room turning cold and a bad smell coming from the other side. According to the caller, the caretaker and police entered the neighboring suite and found the woman dead in her bathtub from slit wrists. The caller says she had died about two weeks earlier. The friend moved out shortly afterward. The host reacts with surprise and offers his own suggestion that the moaning might have been a plea for the body to be found.
Tucson house after a 1977 murder-suicide: Alarm, child voices, cold room
A caller who gives their name as [name withheld], of Rochester, New York, describes living in a Tucson, Arizona, house connected to their husband’s first wife. The caller says the woman killed her two children and herself in 1977. [name withheld] reports a burglar alarm sounding at exactly 2 a.m. on nights their husband was away, children’s whispering, moved objects, and a living room that stayed cold in summer. The caller says a responding policeman advised them to leave, and they did. The caller says they later concluded the dead woman had been trying to drive them and their children away from their husband.
45 more stories
- A former priest blesses the house of a dead radio singer3 min
- Sensed presence of previous owner “[name withheld]” in a purchased house3 min
- Disturbances in a rented upstairs apartment above an old store5 min
- Childhood home in Granite City, Illinois, with flying plates and slamming doors4 min
- Letter about a stone mason's photograph in an old L.A. home's wine cellar2 min
- Ouija board session said to contact a grandfather in a coma4 min
- Letter describing a haunted house where unseen presences are treated as roommates1 min
- A child's voice and figure in a Las Vegas family home4 min
- A Denver officer’s letter: A woman in a red dress at a courthouse and the elevator5 min
- Daughter’s invisible friend Daggett and a cold chair in a Kansas City-area house3 min
- A caller sees an occult-minded acquaintance appear in their locked bedroom and vanish at the kitchen light2 min
- Voice says “Get out” in a bathroom at a housewarming party2 min
- Black figure at foot of bed in a Redlands home3 min
- Cold spots, footsteps, and a bang in an attic at a friend’s house in Oswego2 min
- Dark cloud and disturbances at a remote lakeside recording studio in Oklahoma3 min
- Voice and sudden cold in a bedroom after a caller asked for a devil's deal3 min
- Vancouver house with reported voodoo history and a priest who would not enter6 min
- Featureless black figure reported at a roller hockey rink2 min
- Caller’s secondhand story of a figure on the stairs in a Salem house3 min
- Knocking, pulled covers, and a figure in 1920s dress on a hotel's fifth floor3 min
- Humming voice and a namesake tombstone in Covington, Georgia3 min
- Nightly 12:26 wakings, cool fingers, and a child’s invisible playmate5 min
- Lights, a door, and voices in a boarded-up plantation house outside New Orleans6 min
- Footsteps on the stairs and a cold, angry presence in a Colorado Springs house2 min
- Man in trench coat and stovepipe hat with bicycle on Phoenix street4 min
- Cigar smoke, a cement mixer, and moved chairs in a grandfather’s house4 min
- Caller reports a Pan Am flying boat appearing alongside their Cessna near Ukiah5 min
- Cold bedroom, tall figures, and cigarette smoke in a moved mobile home4 min
- Dark presence and being thrown in a Yosemite employee tent cabin5 min
- Gray figure and male scream in a rented Union, Missouri house4 min
- Handcuff marks, “help” in frost, and a light orb at a Phantom Lake house3 min
- Vision of hellfire, a figure in the doorway, and a child-sized shape in the hallway5 min