Roads, cemeteries, and the outdoors
Highways, bridges, woods, battlefields, and cemeteries.
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.
Woman in a white dress pursues a car on Monterey Highway, 1951
A caller named [name withheld], from Los Banos, California, relays a story they say their father told them about their father's cousin [name withheld]. According to [name withheld], in 1951 [name withheld] was driving north from a movie theater in Morgan Hill toward San Jose on a stretch of the Monterey Highway known as “Blood Alley.” A woman in a white dress at the roadside kept pace with the accelerating car and then appeared at the window as a skeletal face. [name withheld] says [name withheld] braked, prayed, and drove back to [name withheld]'s mother's house instead.
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.
White-haired woman with a white dog beside a desert road
A caller named [name withheld], from Salt Lake, tells Art Bell a story dated to 1981. [name withheld] says they and four friends were driving home from a California graduation trip. On a desolate desert road outside Palm Springs, they saw a white-haired woman in white holding a white dog on a chain. The woman’s dress and hair blew without wind, and her head turned unnaturally far to follow their car. The friends reportedly felt a horrible feeling and still discuss the encounter years later.
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.
A 10- to 12-foot shadow with red eyes on a marsh shortcut in Freeport, New York
A caller identifying themself as [name withheld] from North Bend, Oregon, tells Art Bell about a night roughly 25 years earlier. At 17, they took a shortcut through a marshy area behind an old railroad station in Freeport, New York, on Long Island. They say they heard what sounded like dog tags clinking and then two-footed footsteps coming toward them from out of sight, and decided to run. As they reached a hill, a 10- to 12-foot dark outline with red beady eyes stepped up from the bank in front of them. They report freezing, then fleeing about two miles home. They say they never told their parents and have told only one person since. They describe the encounter as possibly a “bridge” to something else rather than naming it.
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.
Whistling to call ghosts at Spouting Horn, Kauai; a cousin held down
A caller who says they are originally from Hawaii and are listening to the show on 105.1 in Las Vegas describes a night in the early 1970s on Kauai. The caller and four others drove to Spouting Horn, whistled to call ghosts, and played a prank on a cousin by driving off and leaving him. The caller reports seeing the cousin crouching. When they returned, they heard Hawaiian chanting with no instruments. They found the cousin crying, and the caller’s brother could not lift him. The cousin later said something held him down. The host cuts the call off for time. The caller adds that their grandmother saw a spirit behind the cousin and that he still wears something she gave him.
Black car, red window light, and a note in an orchard
A caller describes two nights in a row on a country road near the research center where they had just started work as a custodian. On the first night the caller reports a black car and an old woman with a “grotesque wrinkled face” staring at them at a stop sign. Their passenger said he could not see her. On the second night the caller reports a red light in an upstairs window and a light in an orchard behind the house, where their friend found a note. The caller says the note, read later at home, said [quote withheld]
66 more stories
- Chains, a plea for peace, and grave markers in a Logan County field2 min
- Woman in white and vandalized cemetery at Indiana University4 min
- Refusing a cave after a strange sound; a body reported found there4 min
- A wild man figure reported near an archaeological dig on the Luxembourg-Belgian border4 min
- Disorientation, a dry river crossing, and a chair-shaped rock in the Wind River Range4 min
- Red eyes in the woods across from a rural Louisiana house3 min
- Horses, war cries, and an arrowhead in a tree near Pipestone, Minnesota3 min
- Vanishing woman in a long gingham dress on a Georgia country road3 min
- A round light moving like a walking man on a hill at Rockwoods Park5 min
- Ghost tracks and a truck pushed over a San Antonio rail crossing5 min
- Fax confirming a San Antonio “school-bus ghost tracks” story1 min
- Presences and voices reported at World War II monuments in southern Okinawa2 min
- Woman in a green glow at a bridge near a lynching site in Claxton, Georgia4 min
- Gray figures circling and red eyes in Genesee Park at the summer solstice4 min
- Footsteps and a felt presence on a gravel path at Custer Battlefield3 min
- Figures in a field, a shrinking shape, and a child’s face in a drain pipe7 min
- Floating light over a hill during a night hike in Babler State Park3 min
- Anonymous Border Patrol agent’s fax: shadowy figures in fog at San Diego cliffs4 min
- Coon hunter reports six glowing chanting figures in Pennsylvania woods2 min
- Glowing figure on a rock during a moonlit hike off Mount Shasta2 min
- Letter from Canada about cats gathering in woods where a man reportedly died1 min
- A San Antonio railroad crossing where cars are reportedly pushed off the tracks2 min
- Mother kneeling at grandparents’ grave in Lodi reports a film before her3 min
- Figure standing in the road at the site of a fatal crash, and a message to a bereaved sister4 min
- Two officers chase a fast-moving shadow through a closed area2 min
- Police officer reports a man and dog who vanished on a foggy road near an old homestead3 min
- Dark winged figure flying above trees at a farm at 3 a.m.1 min
- Walking boots without a body on a logging road near Knoxville3 min
- Faceless woman in period clothing walking on a snowy road near Yellowstone3 min
- Faceless green caped figure in the left lane on a night drive to Peoria2 min
- Equipment failures and a truck fire at a logging site said to be a burial ground3 min
- Figures in a lakeside park and the same tall man in a kitchen4 min
- A detective's email: a boy's ghost and a murder weapon3 min
- Motorcyclist who vanished from a campground after supper and a conspiracy talk3 min
- Handprints on the front of a car that stopped before a cliff28 s
- A glowing headstone in a Byron Center, Michigan, cemetery, and a figure standing near it3 min
- Car reportedly pushed off railroad tracks at a Clarksville, Tennessee, crossing2 min
- Glowing figure and face in a photograph at Santa Barbara mission graveyard2 min
- Driver reports hitting an elderly man and dog on a road outside Chicago5 min
- Woman in white waving arms on an Arizona highway, then a crashed car5 min
- Police officers report a child's laughter from the woods of a private estate5 min
- Empty charred casket and a freshly dug hole in a cemetery found as boys6 min
- A truck pushed at San Antonio train tracks and children’s crying3 min
- Trucker hears a voice, glimpses a girl in white, and finds a wet seat near Pacheco Pass3 min
- Hunters report formally dressed couple who vanish and leave no tracks in snow3 min
- Caller says a ghostly image appeared in a photograph of a Chicago murder scene3 min
- Family account of shut cemetery gates and robed figures at Saint James2 min
- Girl in a raincoat with a flashlight reported in a basement and a cul-de-sac5 min
- A faceless girl on a rural road near Cabot, Arkansas4 min
- Teenage boy on a headstone identified from a photo as the caller’s uncle3 min