Dark mass or shadow
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.
Reported red-eyed funnel-shaped figure at the foot of a bed
[name withheld] from Florence, Alabama, tells Art Bell that when they were about 15 or 16 they woke around 3 a.m., felt watched, and saw a pair of red eyes attached to a black, spinning, funnel-like form at the foot of their bed. They report being unable to scream or move. When the form moved around the bed, they fled to their mother’s room. With the light on, nothing was there. Their mother called it a nightmare. [name withheld] says they still believe it was real and are still scared by the memory.
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.
Lifelong bedroom attacks and a black figure with red eyes
A caller who gives their name as Mary, in Hickson, Tennessee, tells Art Bell that they and their family have been attacked “all my life,” mostly in the bed or bedroom. The caller reports a night when something grabbed their hand as if to pull them out of bed. On other nights they woke unable to breathe, scream, or move, while seeing two red eyes and a black figure. They say it also happened to their husband and brothers. The call ends with the caller saying they sense things about people, believe their father was possessed, and know when people are going to die.
Two floating featureless figures on a Colorado mountain road
[name withheld], calling from St. Louis, Missouri, tells Art Bell about a nighttime drive they say they took in the mid-1980s while living in Colorado Springs. The caller says they and their girlfriend parked on a dark mountain road above town and saw two black, featureless head-and-torso figures floating silently and rapidly toward them. They fled by car. [name withheld] says their girlfriend later gave a matching account and added that the figures were nearly upon them as they drove off.
Black dog rising out of a sleeping wife in a bedroom lit by a store sign
In a letter read on air by Art Bell and credited to [quote withheld] the writer says that several years earlier they were lying in bed beside their then-wife when they saw something black rise up out of her body. The writer says it formed into a black dog with glowing yellow eyes, which took its time to fade away after they screamed. The writer says the dog never reappeared. The writer adds that sad events followed, most notably learning that their wife [name withheld] had been cheating on them.
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.
Dog growls and dark figure at foot of bed after wife's ex-husband dies
A caller who gives no name, from west of the Rockies, asks Art Bell whether dogs can see ghosts. The caller then says that since their wife's ex-husband was killed in a car wreck last December, their little dog has barked and growled at the air. The caller reports that the other night, lying upstairs next to their wife, they felt a tap on their shoulder. They saw a big dark figure at the end of the bed that seemed to be trying to pull their soul out. The host interrupts for a break before the story is resolved.
Letter on deaths and reported hauntings at the Penfield Place in Illinois
The host reads a letter attributed to [name withheld] in Rockford, Illinois. It recounts the history of a house in north-central Illinois that locals call the Penfield Place. The letter tells of a series of deaths, a bride's disappearance and the later discovery of her dismembered remains, and strange events reported by later tenants. It ends by describing the house as still standing, decaying and in ruins. No document or second witness is presented on air.
Letter: Transparent figure of a deceased grandfather in a spare bedroom
A letter from a writer the host identifies as “[name withheld]” from Springfield, Illinois, read aloud on air, describes seeing a transparent figure resembling their grandfather coming out of a wall in a spare bedroom about three weeks after his death in February 1978. They say they told no one at the time. They say that twenty years ago they learned their son had seen the same ghost roughly three months later in a front bedroom. They also report other family members seeing dark forms and lights and doors behaving oddly. The letter ends with the writer saying they will never know whether it was a ghost or a demon, but that they believe they saw it.
Voices, a shadow figure, and gray figures near Waverly Hills Sanatorium, 1993
A caller who gives their name as [name withheld], from Indianapolis, tells Art Bell that as a high-school senior in Kentucky in 1993 they took a jogging shortcut through the grounds of the abandoned Waverly Hills Sanatorium. The caller says they heard a chorus of voices that stopped when they told them to. The caller says they saw a black, shadow-like figure with red eyes in a shed window. They met a bearded man with a Rottweiler who vanished after telling them not to look back. Then they saw more than a hundred gray figures in a field. The caller says they ran to school and that nobody believed them until they later learned the site was said to be haunted.
A face materializing in the caller’s own vision, followed by a dream
A caller addressed by the host as [name withheld] from California tells of sitting in their living room on the phone about 15 years earlier when a gray spot in the corner of their vision grew and materialized into what they could barely make out as a non-human face. The caller says it went around a corner smiling at them and that they ran out of the room. The caller later had a dream of an abyss and something screaming for them to come outside. The host cut in to say they were out of time, and the call ended.
53 more stories
- Shadowy figure bows silently, then a phone call confirms a grandfather’s death4 min
- Dark cloud and disturbances at a remote lakeside recording studio in Oklahoma3 min
- Letter: A shadow resembling the writer’s late father, popcorn and cigar2 min
- Featureless black figure reported at a roller hockey rink2 min
- Anonymous Border Patrol agent’s fax: shadowy figures in fog at San Diego cliffs4 min
- Students re-enact a Civil War battle in a campus auditorium said to be haunted10 min
- Disappearing objects and a front door that opened by itself in an old house6 min
- Dark winged figure flying above trees at a farm at 3 a.m.1 min
- Bed trembling, a whispered name, and shadows after a grandmother’s death6 min
- Figures in a lakeside park and the same tall man in a kitchen4 min
- A presence before conception and a child’s talk of heaven3 min
- Dark presence and being thrown in a Yosemite employee tent cabin5 min
- Shadow figures running past a bed and blinking clock radios in an Atlanta apartment6 min
- Caller relays friend's story of a black semi-human figure on a bike trail2 min
- Haunted family house in Lorain, Ohio: Slapping, shadows, and something on the bed4 min
- Investigator reports tripod pulled by nothing and shadow silhouette on a stairway wall2 min
- Shadow figure at a bedroom window and a child found on the roof3 min
- Voices, a child's closet figure, and shadows seen in a Pahrump single-wide2 min
- Caller describes a black shape in a NIST-released 9/11 video clip4 min
- Tall shadow figure in woods linked by caller to neighbors’ candles4 min
- Hooded shadow figure during an episode of sleep paralysis2 min
- Shadow figure in a bathroom doorway, Chattanooga3 min
- A lost ringtone plays, then a dark figure leaves the bedroom3 min
- Shadow figure behind a sapling and streetlights going out on a drive home4 min
- Tall shadow figure in a bowler hat gliding through a grandmother’s basement4 min
- A radio station at 666 Main Street, Deadwood, and a ghost called Doc Smiley4 min
- Granddaughter reports two black figures at a friend's house5 min