Foul, rotten, or sulfur smell
Gray-eyed man on a friend’s couch after a Ouija session
A caller from Colorado says a high school friend, with whom they had once used a Ouija board, phoned them at about 3:30 a.m. in December. The friend was crying and standing outside their own house in the snow. The friend said they had come home to a smell of sulfur and found a well-kept man sitting on their couch with entirely gray eyes. The friend had broken their bedroom window to escape. The caller and their mother later entered the wrecked house and had priests bless it.
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.
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.
A cloud at a mother-in-law's death and ongoing house disturbances
A caller who says they are calling from Santa Rosa tells the host that in 1989, on Thanksgiving Day, their mother-in-law died. The next day, they say, they and their husband watched a large brown mist cloud dissipate on the sidewalk outside. They go on to describe a series of household disturbances: objects moved, a music box starting by itself, and odd smells. They also describe family upheavals involving their husband and their son. They blame all of it on demons. They say the situation is still going on. The host closes by telling them he believes they are in a dangerous situation.
Childhood home in Granite City, Illinois, with flying plates and slamming doors
A caller who gives their location as Granite City, Illinois, says they were raised in a house from birth to age thirteen. The caller says plates and cups flew and smashed there, cold spots and strange smells occurred, footsteps and slamming doors were heard, and a dog watched unseen things. The caller says their parents brought about four people to drive out ghosts and that someone said a man had hanged himself in the basement. The caller says the activity went on until the family moved out after thirteen years. The caller says they were a child with no choice and would not live in such a house now.
Nightly object movement and a brother’s singed hair in a modern home
A live caller tells Art Bell that their current home has had unexplained activity since the family moved in when it was newly built. The caller reports objects moving, vanishing, and reappearing. The caller says their older brother’s hair began burning while the brother read a book. The caller also reports nightly activity aimed at the caller and their mother, and interference with their music equipment. Art compares it to a poltergeist. The call ends with the activity still going on.
Dark figure in a hallway after a husband's remark about selling his soul
A caller who says they are [name withheld] in Chicago tells the host a secondhand story about a friend and the friend's husband. About 32 years earlier, the caller says, they were woken at night by a smell of something burning. Then they saw a large dark figure in the hallway of their apartment. The friend told the caller that the friend and the friend's husband knelt, prayed, and cried until the figure vanished. Earlier that day, the friend said, the friend's husband had said he would sell his soul to the devil over financial troubles. The friend was convinced the devil had come to collect. The host replies that such a deal, once made, is done, and moves on to the next caller.
Letter: Transparent old man and smell of dirt, rot, and alcohol in a Missouri house
A letter read on air, attributed to [name withheld] in Anchorage, Alaska, describes events when the writer was 24 and stationed at an Air Force base at Knob Noster, Missouri. The writer lived in a roughly 150-year-old remodeled house. Over successive nights the writer reports being woken by a smell of dirt, rot, and alcohol. On the third night the writer saw an old man described as transparent sitting at the foot of the writer's bed. A co-worker whose father owned the house told the writer about the previous elderly couple and the husband's death in that bedroom. The writer says they then told the figure to leave. The writer reports that he disappeared and never returned, and neither did the smell.
A small limping figure, a 1932 diary, and a drowned boy identified
A caller who identifies herself only by her location tells Art Bell that a small, limping gray figure, a mold smell, a clock chiming thirteen times, and a failing light bulb began recurring in her home at 10 after 11 each night. She links the events to a 1932 child's diary that she says appeared on her kitchen counter. It led her to a boy said to have drowned in the neighboring town. A Catholic priest reportedly told her it was a soul that did not rest. She says that after she showed the boy his death certificate, the events stopped.
AP item on reported spirits and a bread smell at the US Capitol
Art Bell reads an Associated Press item datelined Capitol Hill about claims that the US Capitol building has been the scene of spirit sightings and sounds over its two-hundred-year history. The item quotes Clarence Brown of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. It lists a demon said to have been reported by more than one guard, a sighting of John Quincy Adams (who died near the old House chamber in 1848), and a smell of baking bread from the basement after a Civil War bakery there stopped operating. The reading ends, and the host moves to the next item.
Police officer recalls a dog-headed figure entering their childhood bedroom
A caller who says they are a police officer in Charleston, South Carolina, describes an experience from when they were about six or seven years old, after their family moved into a new house they call “really odd”. They report hearing footsteps approach their bedroom door. Then they saw a figure about six to seven feet tall with a dog’s head, matted fur, upward-pointing fangs, and long fingernails. They say it came with an odor they call “pure death,” walked toward their bed, and leaned over them. Art Bell stops them at the top of the hour and asks them to hold through the news, so the story is incomplete here.
Fragment: Prayer to cast an unwanted presence out of a room
An unidentified caller describes, in a fragment, an intense and tense experience in their room. The caller says they prayed to Jesus and the Lord to cast “whatever it was” out. They say it took [quote withheld] with no unit given, but felt like an hour. The host adds that it smelled really bad. He dubs it [quote withheld] says it hovered over the caller and was foul, and asks what these things are.