Closet
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.
Evil presence, a figure saying “I want you,” and strange events ending after a house fire
[name withheld] from Harrisburg, Oregon, calls to describe a series of experiences in their house. They include a feeling of evil in the bedroom, a touch across their feet, and a hiss around 3 a.m. The caller also reports that their husband saw a figure in the doorway and later heard it say “I want you.” The caller links the activity to witchcraft books found upstairs. After an upstairs house fire and a remodel, the caller says, nothing has happened since.
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.
Sounds, a voice, and a horned face in a school dormitory room at night
[name withheld], calling from Brighton, Colorado, says that as a 16- or 17-year-old student at a School for the Visually Impaired in Louisiana, they heard kicking and scratching outside their dormitory window. Then they heard a voice telling them to sleep. Then they woke to their bed shaking and an orange-red, horned face at their closet door. They say they felt frozen, prayed, and were carried out of the room, their feet not touching the floor, to their best friend’s room, where they stayed the rest of the night. Asked for their present view, they say they never figured out what it was. They agreed with the host’s suggestion that they may have a guardian angel.
Child figure in the Harnden house and a newspaper article of a 1958 murder-suicide
A caller recounts that in 1958, when they were 10 years old, they and their father stopped at an abandoned Tennessee house the family called the Harnden house. Upstairs, the caller says, they saw a three-year-old blonde-haired girl, who fled into a bedroom. The door resisted their father, and a search of the room found no one. The story ends with a local chief showing them a newspaper article describing a doctor's murder-suicide in the house. The host asks whether the girl's spirit remained.
Childhood closet and bedroom doors, a green light, and paralysis
A caller who gives their name as [name withheld] recounts events from when they were six years old. They watched their closet doors and bedroom door night after night. One morning the closet doors were fully open. They were unable to move in bed at times. One night the bedroom door appeared lit from behind with green light and mist before falling backward away from them. The caller says they then ran to their parents’ room and slept there, and that their parents acted as if nothing was wrong. The story ends there, and the host moves to the next caller.
A boy, a woman's hope chest, and a furious figure above the bed
[name withheld], calling from Pennsylvania on Ghost to Ghost AM, finishes a story he had begun earlier. As a boy, he says, he rummaged through a woman's hope chest in his room. Then he heard his name whispered from his closet and saw a furious, smoky figure he took to be that woman hovering above his bed. He says he fled screaming to his parents, who had the chest removed from the room that night. Since then, he says, he has never doubted there is something after this life.
Red eyes at 3:15 a.m. emerging from a bedroom closet
An unidentified caller (no name or location given) tells Art Bell that during their school and college years they repeatedly woke at exactly 3:15 a.m. with a sense that something was in their room. Years later, while married, the caller says they dreamed of being chased through a tunnel with slimy walls by red eyes and woke up screaming at 3:15. A month or two later, the caller says, they lay in bed and saw red eyes come out of their closet door. The host cuts the story short, saying he does not want to hear more.
Letter about footsteps and knocking after a grandmother's funeral
A letter read on air by Art Bell, attributed to [name withheld] in Wasilla, Alaska, describes sounds of knocking and slippers in the family home two nights after the writer's grandmother's funeral in January 1972. The writer and their brother hear the sounds on two nights in a row. The letter says both of them still remember it clearly.
Haunted house bought in Ohio: closet racket, knocks on a bedroom door, a bouncing cat cage, and growling
A caller who gives the name [name withheld], from Virginia, describes a house the caller and their wife bought in Ohio. The caller tells of the strange events they say they experienced there over their years in the house. They include whispering and noises, a violent racket in an empty closet, and three knocks on a closed bedroom door that their wife denied making. They also include a cat's travel cage bouncing off the kitchen floor and a low growling from the basement corner that the caller says could not have come from their cats. The caller does not say what caused any of it. The story ends with the host remarking on moving in and the sage left on the mantle.
Closet doors roll open in a grandparents' bedroom after a silent challenge
A caller the host calls [name withheld] describes lying awake at night in a bedroom of their grandparents' house, frightened by stories their aunts had told them. They silently dared whatever might be in the room to [quote withheld] The caller says they then heard the accordion closet doors roll open on their tracks in the dark. Their next memory, they say, is of being downstairs in the living room. They add that their family dismisses the idea and that one aunt believes them. The caller says they have slept in the room many times since without any further problem.
A woman’s head and shoulders emerging from an attic closet in an old converted home
A first-time caller named [name withheld], calling from Kansas City, says that in 1980 they were staying in the converted attic bedroom of a man they were dating. Knocking woke them, and they saw a woman’s head and shoulders come out of a long closet. They say the man, once woken, told them not to worry. He said he had seen the woman before and that she was “real nice.” [name withheld] ends by saying they ended the relationship.