Happened in childhood
The person telling the story was a child at the time.
Dark woman from the attic and phantom table-setting in a childhood home
A caller tells Art Bell about a childhood haunting in their family home. The caller says they and their brother were visited at night by a dark female figure they called the doll stall woman, who came down from the attic through a closet. They later heard table-setting sounds and saw white legs in old-fashioned pajamas moving around the dining table. Then a spirit entered their room and grabbed their legs. The caller says this is the first time they have told anyone about it.
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.
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.
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.
Childhood events in an Oregon City rental house: a hand in the bath and a laugh
A caller who gives their name as [name withheld] tells Art Bell about events in an old rented house in Oregon City, Oregon, where their family lived from about the time the caller was six until they were eleven. They describe lights switching on and off, strange sounds, chairs sliding, footsteps, and a feeling of being watched in the basement. Their parents dismissed all of it. The climax they describe is in the bathroom at about age eleven. They say they felt a hand stroking their neck and then felt snakes falling from the ceiling onto them, followed by a cackling laugh they call the most evil they have ever heard. They say they spoke to a priest about it. Art Bell ends the call because the show was short on time.
A black shape in the bedroom closet after a childhood church prank
A caller who says they are phoning from Austin, Texas, tells Art Bell about a night when they were about seven years old and staying with their Aunt [name withheld] in the country. They woke and saw a pitch-black, nonhuman “thing” sitting in their bedroom closet. They say they could not scream and prayed silently to God in their head. In the morning they found their normally neat toys jumbled in the closet. The caller offers the jumbled toys as the reason they do not accept the experience as a nightmare.
Glowing green clothed skeleton in Navy housing and a stepfather’s change
A caller the host addresses as [name withheld], calling from San Diego, describes an incident in Navy housing in 1971 (later said to be 1974). They say they saw a luminescent green, fully clothed skeleton with an evil grin inside their bedcovers while they were unable to move. They say they later learned the previous tenant, a man, had died driving home from hunting, matching the hunting cap and jacket they say the figure wore. They link the sighting to a lasting change for the worse in their stepfather’s personality. The host suggests that the figure inhabited the stepfather, and the caller says they believe so. The caller ends with a brief remark that their late mother visits them.
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.
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.
Caller [name withheld] says he and his twin saw their mother’s head float down the hallway
A caller who gives his first name as [name withheld], and who says he is in Colorado Springs, tells Art Bell that as a child he and his twin brother both woke and found their mother after a suicide attempt. That night, he says, lying awake in bed, he saw his mother’s head, with nothing below the neck, move down the hallway toward him and grow larger as it came. He says he only recently learned that his twin brother saw the same thing. The transcript never states whether their mother survived.
Red glowing figure playing a child's organ at home
A caller named [name withheld], calling from Sacramento, describes a childhood incident they say they have told few people about. They were alone at home with their grandfather one summer. They heard music coming from an old organ in their room, walked down the hallway, and report seeing a red, glowing being with yellow eyes using its fingers on the organ. They say they commanded it to leave in the name of Jesus and that it vanished. They believe it was a demon.
72 more stories
- Childhood home in Granite City, Illinois, with flying plates and slamming doors4 min
- Two brothers swatted by nothing at a second-floor windowsill2 min
- A wild man figure reported near an archaeological dig on the Luxembourg-Belgian border4 min
- Skeleton faces at a window and a skeleton figure in the hallway, New Orleans44 s
- Shadowy figure bows silently, then a phone call confirms a grandfather’s death4 min
- Childhood sighting of a semi-transparent cocktail party in a Minneapolis apartment6 min
- Footsteps from the basement, a shotgun and knives moved in a childhood home4 min
- Childhood waking, a hooded figure, and floating to the living room4 min
- Vancouver house with reported voodoo history and a priest who would not enter6 min
- Deceased father appears at the foot of the bed and speaks to his son2 min
- A woman steps from a curtained closet and removes a crying child's skates4 min
- Children startle a transparent figure in an unfinished basement4 min
- Childhood memory of rainbow-colored blindness in Key West sunlight2 min
- A 1920s scene in a cloud seen from a kindergarten swing set2 min
- A child's late-night phone call reporting their father's death6 min
- A sliding couch and a giant hand reported in a childhood home in Oregon4 min
- Invisible two-legged walker and hoof prints in snow, Palmer, Alaska, 19713 min
- Figures in a lakeside park and the same tall man in a kitchen4 min
- Glowing faceless figure at the foot of the bed and a golf ball next morning4 min
- Woman in one color seen at a childhood bedroom window on Long Island3 min
- Laughing in the basement, a woman in white, and shadow figures in a family home6 min
- Sister’s feet grabbed and a breathing presence at Fort Meade, Maryland2 min
- Childhood closet and bedroom doors, a green light, and paralysis3 min
- A childhood vision of six tornadoes and the 1976 Sedalia, Missouri, storm2 min
- Deceased neighbor’s voice and rose scent reported to warn caller twice4 min
- A figure watching from a child’s bedroom window in a rented house2 min
- Childhood near-death experience under ether after a horse wreck9 min
- Shadow figure at a bedroom window and a child found on the roof3 min
- Grandmother sits up in her casket and later appears in the caller’s bed3 min
- Pitchfork reportedly pushes open a closet door in an abandoned house2 min
- A woman’s figure in the bedroom corner and a simultaneous pain in the eye3 min
- A ghost, eye pain, and a triangle mark in the caller’s pupil2 min
- Pool cues, an eight ball, and a front door that opened and slammed4 min
- Yellow eyes and an unseen figure at the top of the stairs on a 13th birthday5 min
- Basement clip lamp shakes, emits flame, and a dark object flies at a girl3 min
- Children’s laughter in a church camp shower at dawn2 min
- Talking toys with no batteries in a cousin’s nursery; an unpopular upstairs room5 min
- A voice calling a child's name in her bedroom, c. 19595 min
- A cabin in the woods near Cloudcroft furnished only from the 1940s4 min
- Struck by a hearse at six, an out-of-body experience, and later night visitations4 min
- Army recovery hospital house, a watched feeling, and a nurse figure at a kitchen window3 min
- Felt presences and an unseen couch sitter in a Mackinac Island house3 min
- Letter: A child hears a pleading girl in a window eight blocks from home2 min
- Out-of-body story from a father during a stroke in a Brampton house3 min
- A boy, a woman's hope chest, and a furious figure above the bed4 min
- Civil War figures reenact a bayonet killing in an aunt's basement3 min
- Child figure in the Harnden house and a newspaper article of a 1958 murder-suicide5 min
- Door held shut by something with dog-like feet; Cracker Jacks toy taken1 min
- 1965: A ten-second TV lag and a shadow man in a hat seen by children2 min
- Dead uncle seen in boys’ bedroom on the day he had promised to visit4 min
- Bed covers held up by an unseen helper after a child’s request4 min
- Girl in white dress at the foot of the bed in a Sacramento house2 min
- Child reports transparent man in buckle shoes in grandmother’s hallway3 min
- A Santa-suited figure, a fallen well, and three extra presents at Christmas3 min
- Noises and cold chills in an old house in Chattanooga (part 1)1 min
- Shadow figure in a bathroom doorway, Chattanooga3 min
- A faceless girl on a rural road near Cabot, Arkansas4 min