Cemetery or grave
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.
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.
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.
Injured, one-legged figure with a lantern on Roberts Road
A caller who gives their name as [name withheld], from Chicago, tells Art Bell that about eleven years earlier they and a friend were driving home from a party at around 3 a.m. They saw a man standing by the curb with a lantern on Roberts Road. The caller says the figure stepped in front of the car and walked toward them, looking injured and see-through, with a missing leg. The caller says a following car drove right through the figure as it walked toward a cemetery. The caller says they and their friend both saw it, that they called Justice Police and later [name withheld], and that the experience unsettled them for about a year.
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.
Halloween graveyard dare and a death in Graceland Cemetery, 1933
Art Bell reads aloud a piece he attributes to “Ron in Seattle.” It is presented as a true story about a 1933 Halloween dare in which two young women agreed to drive stakes into graves at midnight for $10. [name withheld] is said to have felt something tugging at her skirt, screamed, and been unable to get away. The reading closes with a quoted newspaper headline reporting her found dead in Graceland Cemetery with the stake through her dress. No witness speaks on air, and no document is examined.
Falling through ground in a cemetery and being lifted out by pressure on their feet
A caller named [name withheld], calling from Houston, Alaska, tells Art Bell a story they say happened about thirty-five years earlier, when they were 13, in Westfield, Massachusetts. They say that while running through an old cemetery beside a church as a shortcut, they fell through the ground into what they assumed was a grave. They were covered in dirt and winged insects. Then they felt a pressure around their feet that lifted them out of the dirt. They say they ran to the far side of the cemetery, where their friends were, and have never entered a cemetery since. The caller offers no explanation for the pressure.
Two tomb robbers found dead in a New Orleans above-ground cemetery
[name withheld], calling from New Orleans, tells Art Bell that they and their younger son were visiting and cleaning their grandmother's tomb in an old above-ground cemetery. They found several tombs broken into. In the tomb of a girl said to have died in a scarlet fever epidemic, they found the recent bodies of two young men. The caller says the cemetery keepers called the police and that they later heard both men had died of heart attacks. The call ends with the caller saying the little girl took her revenge on the men who tried to break into her tomb.
A door, a figure on a cross, and footsteps in a rented 110-year-old house in Paw Paw, Michigan
[name withheld], calling from Bradley, Illinois, says that in the summer of 1989, when they were fourteen, they were living in a rented 110-year-old house in Paw Paw, Michigan, opposite a cemetery. They report that the upstairs door opened by itself and that they then saw [quote withheld] at the stairs. Later, as a depressed teenager, they asked a spirit for help and heard footsteps coming down the stairs. They then decided it was the devil and asked it to go away. The call ends with Art Bell calling the reversal a “foxhole conversion.”
E-mail: Floating woman in nightgown crossing road by old church, 1978
An e-mail read on air from an unnamed listener who describes themselves as a longtime shortwave listener and Coast to Coast AM fan. They recount a night in 1978. They say they were driving their date home in a secluded rural area after midnight when they saw what appeared to be a woman in an old-style nightgown and nightcap cross the road in front of the car by an old church with a graveyard. She was floating above the ground, with no legs and eyes that were “just dark holes.” The woman continues through roadside vines, their date is nearly hysterical, and the writer insists it was [quote withheld]
Noose reported suspended from nothing in a rented former church rectory
A letter read on air, credited by the host to [name withheld] in Alberta, Canada, describes a family that rented a small-town house beside a church and graveyard in the mid-1990s. They decorated it for Halloween with headstones and a hangman's noose. The writer says a scream from downstairs woke them after midnight, and that the writer and their 11-year-old daughter saw a hangman's noose suspended from seemingly nothing on the stairs, which then fell. The writer says they learned the next day that the house had been the old church rectory and that a former pastor of the neighboring church had hanged himself there.
Child’s night visitor “[name withheld]” matched to a gravestone and a photograph
A caller who identifies herself only as a woman in Texas, who previously lived on Long Island, tells Art Bell that a “resident ghost” shared her home when her son was about three. She reports that the boy spoke of a night visitor named [name withheld] who took him through the ceiling into the attic. He later pointed out a gravestone reading “[name withheld].” Years later, she says, a coworker with the maiden name [name withheld] confirmed an ancestor named [name withheld], and a photograph of him turned up in a dead aunt’s attic. Her teenage son recognized the face. The story ends with minor household disturbances still blamed on [name withheld].
26 more stories
- Cemetery legend: a grave said to answer “nothing at all” at midnight2 min
- EVP saying “go home” recorded in a Niagara-on-the-Lake graveyard2 min
- Art student draws a tombstone named [name withheld], then meets a woman of that name at work5 min
- Dream of father-in-law searching for his body and wife hearing the caller's voice2 min
- Caller reports a lady appearing in bed after they lay in an open grave2 min