This is one of the original Tell Me A Ghost Story calls from the early days of the show. Short, raw, and exactly where it all started. These calls were later incorporated into a longer compilation episode with full host commentary if you want the complete experience.
Hey, it's Michelle, and this early episode has two true ghost stories that both involve the specific frustration of knowing something is wrong and not being able to convince the people around you of it. One caller brought something home with him from Hawaii without realizing it. One caller knew her mother's house had a problem and could not get her mother to take it seriously.
Dave returns to Tell Me A Ghost Story with a real paranormal encounter that began in Oahu and followed him back to the mainland. Hawaii has one of the richest and most layered supernatural traditions of any place in the United States, a living Indigenous spiritual culture that predates Western contact by centuries and that treats the relationship between the living and the dead with a seriousness and specificity that mainstream American culture rarely matches. When people visit Hawaii and bring something home with them, it tends not to be something they chose to carry. Dave did not know he had picked anything up until he was already back, and things in his own space began to feel different in ways he could not attribute to jet lag or imagination.
Then Chelsi calls in with a haunted house story that has an additional layer of difficulty built into it. The house belonged to her mother. The vibes, as Chelsi describes them, were profoundly off from the moment she set foot in it. Something in that house was not right, and Chelsi felt it clearly and consistently every time she was there. Her mother did not feel it. Or did not want to. The specific dynamic of trying to convince a skeptical family member that their home has a paranormal problem while that family member continues to live comfortably inside it is one of the most recognizable experiences in the ghost story community and Chelsi's version of it has a warmth and exasperation that will resonate with anyone who has ever known something was wrong in a space and been unable to make the people they love believe them.
Two real callers. Two true ghost stories about what happens when you sense something that the people around you cannot or will not see. This is where Tell Me A Ghost Story began.
If you have a real ghost story of your own, a haunting experience, something you heard, something you cannot explain, I want to hear it. Call 1 (701) 484-2666 or visit tellmeaghoststory.com to share your story.
You might end up on the show.
Support us with official merch at newmanmedia.shop, catch us on YouTube at @tellmeaghoststory, and follow along on Instagram at @tellmeaghoststorypodcast.
Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.
Production by Newman Media.
[00:00:02] Welcome to Tell Me A Ghost Story, the late night call in podcast where we delve into the world of the supernatural and explore the eerie and unexplained. I'm your host, Michelle Newman. This podcast features true stories from our callers that will send shivers down your
[00:00:32] spine and leave you questioning the existence of the afterlife. So grab a cozy blanket, turn down the lights. Hey Michelle, it's Dave Schufold again. So my grandmother was in a living apartment connected to our house so I saw her every day until I was a teenager.
[00:00:55] And then she moved in my aunt for the last six months before she finally was gone at 97. Wonderful, stately old lady who loved everyone didn't do much but pray and watch TV because she was super old when I was a kid.
[00:01:08] Well hopefully we all get there someday, right? Anyway, she passed away, house burned down, new house goes up and we were convinced every time something strange happened. No, it was Nonna, you know, Nonna's Italian for grandma.
[00:01:22] So one time my dad's cat goes missing and I tell him, oh you know grandma's haunting the place. And he says sure, right, I'll find the cat. Cat showed up on the front step next day, no problem. I feel like a week or two. Nice, right?
[00:01:35] And then one day I'm out, I'm out in the boot and I wanted to go to a parking lot. There's a five or six storey, I don't know, multi-level parking lot at my job.
[00:01:44] You know, I can imagine in the daytime for the most part it was pretty well lit except there was some tree overhang but I drove over to the side of the parking lot where a lot of our co-workers said they wouldn't park.
[00:01:55] And I got out of my car and I'm like, what's going on? I got so curious about the paranormal, you know, I was in my mid 20s and pretty stupid. So all of a sudden I knew something was behind me and I was terrified.
[00:02:10] So I can't explain it and someone who doesn't believe in the paranormal would tell me I'm crazy for making it up but I hopped in my car, I drove home like the devil
[00:02:18] himself was chasing me, I go home, I shut the door, I locked the door at the time I was still you know upstairs in my current self waiting to find a wife. Set the alarm, we all go to bed. Two in the morning, the alarm goes off.
[00:02:34] So there's no evidence of forced entry, it just looks like something had pushed on someone or something had pushed on the back door and something else had pushed the back door back so it didn't open but it moved just enough to set the alarm
[00:02:47] off almost like something unseen was trying to get in and Nana was holding it out with all her goodness and love. I can't explain that any better. Years later my youngest daughter was in the house sleeping in an upstairs
[00:03:04] bedroom and she said, you know, a sweet old lady said hello to her and smiled at her and she saw a picture of Nana and it was lady she'd seen. So now she's the time five years old. Who knows?
[00:03:19] Thank you Dave for calling in again with another great story. No one messes with Nona. Next message. Hey Michelle, this is Chelsea from Los Angeles and I have a ghost story that I want to share with you.
[00:03:41] So I grew up in Hawaii on the island of Oahu and there's many ghost stories there. Everyone who lives there has a ton of ghost stories. When I lived in this house when I was like an elementary school, I
[00:03:59] lived in this house with my mom and younger sisters and I felt a ghost in the house. And I would tell my mom, I would like be in bed and I would feel a presence or like hear something.
[00:04:14] I would tell my mom and of course she was like it's fine. There's no ghost. And I remember specifically this one time I like I was home alone and I literally heard footsteps and I was so scared.
[00:04:27] I like go on to the hallway and there's like no one there. And I just remembered telling my mom she never believed me. So then like at the end of middle school, we moved to another house and like a different location. I didn't want to move.
[00:04:44] I was like away from my friends and it was a different town. We were with moving in with my mom's new boyfriend who I generally know. So I was like, I don't really like this house. But I remember when I went in the house, I remember feeling just
[00:04:57] way more calm. Like, okay, this sucks. But I feels like there's no ghost in here, literally. And then my mom's friend and her son moved into our old house like a few months later. And my mom later told me the story that there's one night when her
[00:05:21] friend heard her son playing like in his room late at night. She would like hear some things like a few times, but there's one night when she was like, why is he away? She's like a little boy. She heard jumping on the bed, playing with toys.
[00:05:39] She wasn't like some there's someone else in the house. It was my son is playing and she went into his room and he was completely asleep. And so her friend was telling her there is a ghost. It's like a haunted house.
[00:05:56] And I felt way more validated after that. And then she did the right thing, which is what you do in Hawaii when you move into a new place or you like have an event. A lot of people will hire a Hawaiian priest to come and bless the place.
[00:06:11] So my mom's friend did that and I was well. Thank you, Chelsea, for your story. Vibes are the hardest thing to explain. And the easiest thing for others to dismiss. When the vibe is off, it's off. Get out of there. That's all we have this week, folks.
[00:06:34] Do you have a ghost story? Call 701-484-2666. That's 701-484-2666. Or go to tellmeagostory.com. And leave your story there. Go ahead and leave me a five-star review wherever you get your podcasts. Was something particularly scary in this episode? Or maybe you've had a similar experience.
[00:07:08] Leave your comments via our Spotify page. Thank you to all the callers who left messages this week. And as always, I'm your host, Michelle Newman. Signing off. See you next week.