Real Ghost Stories for Rainy Days

[00:00:06] I heard a voice going. 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.

[00:00:34] This podcast features true stories from our callers that will send shivers down your spine and leave you questioning the existence of the afterlife. So grab a cozy blanket, turn down the lights. Hi, Michelle. This is Christy from Los Angeles, and I have a ghost story to tell you.

[00:01:00] I want to preface by saying that since I was 13, I have had hypnagogic hallucinations. So if you don't know what that is, it's basically upon waking, I see crazy stuff like shadows in my room or bugs crawling on my face or men standing outside my window. It's pretty terrifying.

[00:01:24] So they're way more common than people think, but you usually only have a couple in your lifetime, they say. If you're like extremely like stressed or you haven't slept or something, but I have them a lot. That being said, anytime I think I've seen a ghost in my life, because there's been many, many times, most of the time I just chalk them up to a hypnagogic hallucination.

[00:01:51] How long have I been awake? Is it suspect because of that? So this story that I'm going to tell you is weird because it was in total daylight and the middle of the day and I was totally awake. So I was on my second trip to the Mount Washington Resort.

[00:02:15] I had seen the Ghost Hunters episode where they went into the princess's room and got some like crazy EVPs where the princess was like talking to them. And it totally blew my mind, made me think, you know, totally different things about ghosts possibilities and like, you know, time being split, things like that.

[00:02:40] So when they were saying that they were going to do a ghost hunters event at Mount Washington, I was super excited. Went out to the first one, ran around, didn't see anything, but it was very fun. Got to, you know, watch them do their EVP work and got to use the tools and it was super fun. So the second time I was like, OK, I'm just kind of going to go because it's fun. They have like a great veranda. You can have some cocktails.

[00:03:10] Super fun. And the guys are all, we're all very nice. So went up a second time. You know, nothing really happened. But I did go to see a psychic talk and this was Chip Coffey who is on all the ghost hunting shows. I'm sure you've heard of him. So he was just going to do some talking, do a little bit of, you know, reading of the room. And I thought that was pretty cool.

[00:03:38] So we're watching him do his thing. And there's a curtain that's behind him. He's standing up on a stage. It's fully lit in there. Nothing weird. No like, you know, special effects on the stage. Nothing happening. So as he's talking, behind him appears this smear. It's like a smear.

[00:04:04] If someone smeared paint or if somebody like just kind of rubbed the atmosphere with their finger. And it was the strangest looking thing I've ever seen. And it ran right behind him. It cut across the vertical lines of the curtain in a way that was like super unnatural. I was sitting next to a friend and she calls out to me.

[00:04:33] Did you just see that? And then on stage, Chip goes, oh, excuse me. I didn't see you there. And it was very strange. And two witnesses to it. Something I'd never seen. It was just very odd.

[00:04:59] And yeah, that was the craziest thing I've ever seen awake. Thank you for your story, Christy. And thank you for taking us to the Mount Washington Hotel in Brenton Woods, New Hampshire. One of the most haunted hotels in America.

[00:05:24] For those of you unfamiliar, the Mount Washington Hotel was built in 1902 by a wealthy coal magnate named Joseph Stickney. It was a grand getaway for the elite. An opulent escape nestled in the New England countryside. But Joseph Stickney never got to enjoy the fruits of his labor. He died not long after the hotel opened. And his widow, Carolyn, later married a French prince and became Princess Carolyn. Regal title and all.

[00:05:54] Yet despite this royal upgrade, Princess Carolyn kept returning summer after summer to the hotel her first husband built. And some say she never really left because her room that was once Carolyn's suite, now known as 314, is now the heart of the hotel's hauntings. Guests have reported seeing a woman sitting gracefully on the edge of a bed. A bed that, by the way, is still the original one she slept in over a century ago.

[00:06:24] The lights will flicker, objects vanish and reappear in odd places, and guests often catch the delicate scent of a floral perfume wafting through the room in the dead of night. And it's not just the room that's haunted. Music has been heard playing in the hotel's grand ballroom when no one's at the piano. There's also a very persistent urban legend that the Mount Washington Hotel inspired Stephen King's Overlook Hotel in The Shining. The story fits, doesn't it? It's not just the real world.

[00:06:54] Isolated, grand, haunted. But Stephen King himself has debunked this, saying that the Stanley Hotel in Colorado was actually his true muse. Still, the Mount Washington Hotel keeps getting tied to the tale, proving that sometimes legends refuse to die. Hi, Michelle. This is Justin from Antonio, Texas. I've lived in two haunted houses growing up, but I'm only talking about the second one today.

[00:07:24] My mom and I moved in with my grandparents after my great-grandma passed away. They had a room for both of us. Mine was in the back across from my grandparents' room. It had a side door that led to the outside of the house. Right outside that side door, I would hear breathing, moaning. We'd be playing with my toys, and I would just get a sudden chill in the back of my neck. We'd hear footsteps and someone bouncing a ball when no one was in the room. And as a kid, I refused to sleep in that room. But as I got older, I ended up sleeping in the room.

[00:07:53] So my mom ended up sleeping in that room with my grandmother because my grandmother needed extra help as she got older. One day, my grandma told my mom there was two men watching them sleep. She said there was a tall man and a short man. They were dressed in older clothes, something like those long bell-sleeves, white vests, and boots. On another night, my grandma woke up screaming. And she was just saying, oh, she's choking me.

[00:08:21] My mom, you know, gets her settled down, asks, you know, who's trying to choke her. My grandma says it was the lady. But she never described her more than that. My mom tells her just to pray and we're recreating the name of Jesus. They're going back to bed. And my mom tells someone staring at her. She opens her eyes, and it's my grandma. Just looking at my mom. She asks her, what's wrong? Why do you keep staring at me? My grandma just says, well, she's there with you right now. My mom freaks out and starts praying.

[00:08:53] A few days later, my mom's cutting her in a bag to the salad for extra cash. She was cutting this lady's purse for her friend. We'll just call her Casey. Casey goes, you know, to the bathroom because that's where my mom would do the cuts. There was a little couch where my grandma would sit and just watch. Audrey, when we're talking, when suddenly Casey just gasps. My mom asks if she's okay. She says, yes, I'll tell you later. I don't want to scare your mom. My grandma tells her, no, you won't scare me.

[00:09:23] It just helps what happened. Well, Casey is a psychic, you know, which we didn't know until then. And she says she's all human. And she described him to the T the same way my grandma described. She says they're there to protect my grandma because there's an evil spirit in the home, which is that lady. But she couldn't describe her either. She had my mom get thought in case she was around my grandma's bed, swept it out. After that, my grandma never complained about that lady again. My grandma has since passed.

[00:09:52] I've tried sleeping in that room twice after, but both times I've had sleep paralysis where there's like a black mass of the kidney. I've tried looking up history. Nothing comes up to explain what happened. But that's our story. Thank you for listening. Love the show. Goodbye. Thank you for your story. I couldn't fully make out your name, but I think it was Jessica. But please feel free to reach out and correct me.

[00:10:25] And frankly, this story is just another reason I'll never share a bed with my grandma. The first reason, of course, being her beard. I just did another one of these. So my name is Reed and I live in Colorado Springs. And here's my ghost story. So not even a few years ago, I was playing the Ouija board.

[00:10:53] And I was doing a loon in a back room. And I apparently picked the spirit off and I started playing and it started going darker and darker and darker and darker. Saying questions like, are you a friend of the ghost? No. Are you going to hurt me? Maybe. Like all this stuff, right? It was just frightening.

[00:11:22] So I said goodbye. Let go of it. A few hours later, the Ouija board was. The fox was on the top left corner of the room. And the leech gross on the bottom right corner of the room. I remember going in the back of the room and the bathroom door was closed. It was open when I left. And the light turned on. Just another left. So I told my parents about it and they searched the house but nothing was there.

[00:11:51] So we knew that we needed to put away the Ouija board. So I did. I put away the Ouija board and it was about 1 a.m. And I went back down there to clean up some stuff. Clean up my dreams and all that. And I remember the cabinet being open and the Ouija board being right in front of the bathroom door. And I was like, this is crazy weird.

[00:12:21] So I put the Ouija board back and left the room. But as I closed the door, I looked over my shoulder and I saw a shadow. It was average. It wasn't to the ceiling. But it was... It didn't look like a ceiling where I had formal clothes. But it was scary. And he just kind of stared at me until I walked away. And I came back. So...

[00:12:50] So... That is my scary story. And my name is Reed. Thank you, Reed, for your story. You might want to pause the Ouija board sessions until you get some protections in place from whatever spiritual practice or belief system you have.

[00:13:19] Between this week and last week's call, it seems like the spirits are listening. Hi. My name is Nicole from Phoenix. We've always tended to live in haunted houses. But this one was the beginning when I noticed things started happening. I remember laying in bed as a child and staying up late one day. And of course, it was during summer.

[00:13:48] So I probably stayed up until the sun came up. And I was playing like a little Nintendo Switch until I started to fall asleep. As I was laying down facing the wall. I could hear... I thought it was my dad at the time. But I heard a voice going. And I had both of my head buzzed in. I remember taking them off, jumping out of bed.

[00:14:19] And running to the hallway to see if it was my dad. My dad was a prankster. So I thought it was him. So I was like... Okay, I ran straight to my parents' room. My dad was dead asleep. And my dad wouldn't have been able to run that far from the time that I walked. And then come to find out years later that that house was actually pretty haunted from my mom telling me stories. And my aunt, especially in my room.

[00:14:49] They all saw things in the corner. Or they had dreams of like children standing outside holding hands. But yeah, I remember... I thought it was my dad. Because it was like a... Like it knew that I was pretending to be asleep around that time. Because I knew my parents were going to wake up. So hope to hear this. And hope you're able to use it. And thank you. Bye.

[00:15:18] Thank you, Nicole from Phoenix. For giving me the chills. It's just a phrase you never want to hear whispered. Ever. This is Cynthia Chatcher. And I got one from Avon, Indiana.

[00:15:47] This is one last story I got for you today. I want to let you know about my dad. When he was a beginning school teacher. He didn't have much money then. And he found a rental house on the east side of Indianapolis. And he said, boy, I'm going to rent that. And it was only $200 a month. And it was a nice ranch type house with a backyard. And everything else you'd think of. It had a swimming pool. Of course, my dad didn't take in much on that.

[00:16:17] But he was glad he had one. He got it at a decent price. And the owner said, well, here are your keys. And my dad said, do you mind why it's such a low price? And he said, well, in the house. The owner had died in the house along with his wife. And they think he might have done his wife in. But if my dad wasn't superstitious or scared of ghosts, he could rent the house.

[00:16:41] And so, but anyway, when my dad moved into the house, he had nightmares for the first three nights. And for, after about a week, he had a vision of a spider about the size of an apricot. Kept crawling across his bed. And it had a human face. And my dad wondered if it wasn't a guy that had murdered his wife there in one of the bedroom. He thought she was having an affair with another man. Of course, he wasn't.

[00:17:09] And her ghost haunts to this day. The two heads might float around the room in the bedroom where she was killed. But anyway, while they were at it, the spider kept disappearing every night for about a week. It had a human face to it. A human head. A human face. It was about the size of an apricot. It was about black. And when it appeared on the bed, dad says, I finally had it.

[00:17:35] And when he confronted the owner about it, he didn't ask for a refund or anything. But he said, why didn't you tell me? And the guy didn't answer. But anyway, that's the story of the human ghost spiders who killed his wife. But anyway, it happened in Indianapolis. And the house that's been torn down is no longer standing.

[00:18:03] Thank you, Cindy, for another great story and the unlocking of a new fear. That's all we have this week, folks. Do you have a ghost story? Call 701-484-2666. That's 701-484-2666.

[00:18:29] Or go to tellmeaghoststory.com and leave your story there. 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.