Window
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.
Dreams of a missing friend asking to be buried, later found in a car
A caller who gives the name [name withheld] and says the call is from [quote withheld] passes on a secondhand story from a friend named [name withheld]. According to the caller, [name withheld], [name withheld], and [name withheld] all dreamed of their missing friend [name withheld] appearing in a window and saying “bury me.” The dream image reportedly began to look like a decomposing body. Then [name withheld] was found dead by suicide in a car with a hose from the exhaust. The host sums it up as a decomposing man entering his friends’ dreams and begging to be buried.
Ouija board spirits, a ball of light, and an old man with shark-like teeth
A caller named [name withheld], from Pahrump, Nevada, tells Art Bell that at about age 17 in Houston they used a Ouija board alone and spoke with spirits, including one called [name withheld] and a dark spirit called Baal. They report a ball of light appearing near a model airplane. About three days later, they say, they saw an old man in a brown leisure suit who seemed to move instantly across the street and smiled with shark-like teeth before vanishing. The story ends with Art Bell warning against casual use of the Ouija board.
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 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.
Wood-chopping sound and floating shadow at a ranch house
A caller from Kelso, Montana, tells Art Bell about a night several years earlier when the caller and a girlfriend were alone in a large old ranch house. The caller reports hearing a wood-chopping sound outside, then seeing a tall dark shadow float across a propane tank toward them. The next day they found chopped wood scattered around the yard. The caller also reports hearing their mother's voice call them inside the house when no one was there. They say they think the home's earlier large family “were still there.”
Waking paralysis, chest pressure, and moving curtains in upstate New York
A letter read on air by Art Bell describes a listener's experience of waking in an old upstate New York home, unable to move or speak. The writer felt as though a person were kneeling on their chest while their husky-Shepherd dog barked and growled. They say the pressure eased when they concentrated on the dog. The room's curtains were then shoved aside although the window was closed. They stayed with friends for several nights afterward.
Letter: Crying child and a locked room in a Victorian university office
The host reads a letter attributed to [quote withheld] In it, the writer says they worked in the 1980s for a university journalism department housed in an old off-campus Victorian building. They report hearing a child crying that they could never find, a chilling cold on the stairs, and a third-floor door they could not unlock. The letter ends with a friend opening the door, a child’s footprint in dust, a cold vortex on the stairs, and a psychic’s story of a boy’s fatal fall and his mother’s imprisonment there.
Thin five-foot figure with a gigantic head among oak trees; cat found de-gutted
A caller identified only as [name withheld], listening from Las Vegas, tells Art Bell about something that happened in 1984. Around midnight, after hearing rustling and fluttering in the leaves near their third-story house, the caller went outside with a butcher knife. They saw a thin, black, five-foot-high shape with a gigantic head moving among the oak trees. When they jumped past the tree, it had vanished. The caller says that three days later they found one of their cats completely de-gutted, with a razor-sharp cut down the center. They offer [quote withheld] as their own explanation and only partly connect the two events.
Screaming, shaking, and red eyes at an Alabama plantation slave cabin
A first-time caller who identifies themselves as [quote withheld] tells of a trip they say they and some friends made in about 1988 or 1989 to a decrepit old plantation house and its fallen-down slave quarters in Alabama. The caller had heard the site was the scene of a mass killing. They say that when they touched the door of one cabin, screaming and banging broke out and the whole shack shook “like an earthquake.” The noise seemed to stay right over their heads as they ran, and the caller saw big bright red eyes looking out the cabin window at them. They say the group drove off and never returned to the area.
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.
Teen dream of a house and pasture, later found ruined near St. Louis airport
A caller who gives no name or location says that in their teens they had two dreams in one night. The first showed an idyllic road with grazing livestock and an old house; the second showed the same road with dead animals and an axe attack. About six months later, the caller says, they and two companions found a ruined house off a driveway near the St. Louis airport, felt a presence, and fled when their Jeep would not start. The caller ends by saying that over the years, the only explanation they and their cousin agreed on was an economic one.
45 more stories
- Man in a hat seen at window and bedside in a Nebraska rental house7 min
- Church windows close one by one during a funeral in Montreal4 min
- A moving cold spot and a self-operating elevator in a suburban restaurant8 min
- Séance in a Knoxville apartment and a swollen window that fell5 min
- Percolator parts found reassembled on a windowsill3 min
- Woman in one color seen at a childhood bedroom window on Long Island3 min
- Vanishing shack and field of Corvairs near a suspected haunted house8 min
- Handcuff marks, “help” in frost, and a light orb at a Phantom Lake house3 min
- A figure watching from a child’s bedroom window in a rented house2 min
- Fax reporting a man in lumberjack dress at a ninth-floor window42 s
- Shadow figure at a bedroom window and a child found on the roof3 min
- Fireplace doors, an orb, and moaning in a Branson-area bed and breakfast4 min
- Figure in a black hat standing over a bed and walking through a window2 min
- Voices, a child's closet figure, and shadows seen in a Pahrump single-wide2 min
- Upside-down face at a motorhome window on a night drive near Chico6 min
- Children’s laughter in a church camp shower at dawn2 min
- Grandchild identifies man crossing yard as deceased father-in-law34 s
- Deceased mother appears healthy in the kitchen and says not to worry5 min
- Sensed presence and French windows opening by themselves in a rented Portland duplex, 19774 min
- A cabin in the woods near Cloudcroft furnished only from the 1940s4 min
- Army recovery hospital house, a watched feeling, and a nurse figure at a kitchen window3 min
- Letter: Ceiling noises, a weeping ghost, and bones found in an attic5 min
- Letter: A child hears a pleading girl in a window eight blocks from home2 min
- Woman in black knocking on a window from inside a Chicago house, 19824 min
- Cemetery security guard sees misty figure at office window1 min
- Girl in white dress at the foot of the bed in a Sacramento house2 min
- Black butterflies and a face image in a bedroom window after a husband’s death1 min
- An image on a rice-field bridge and at a bathroom window4 min
- A hooded figure at a California motel, later described by the writer’s son2 min
- A Santa-suited figure, a fallen well, and three extra presents at Christmas3 min
- Figure in trench coat and fedora at a Dallas window3 min