Spine-Chilling Ghost Stories From Real People Who Lived Them (Encore)

The weather tomorrow. I expect a biting cold front. Hmmm, how naughty. I wonder what I'll be wearing or taking off. The night will be wild and untamed. Expect heavy, lashing rain that'll soak you to the skin. By Monday, temperatures will rise slowly but surely, reaching their peak in the afternoon. Not in the mood for miserable weather, Fly cheaply to Turkey with sun Express, Sun Express, non stop sunshine. And I just see a silhouette of my mom and I said, oh, I'm sorry. Was I sleep talking too loud again because she would wake me up? Well, it turned around and I walked right through the wall. 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 spine and leave you questioning the existence of the afterlife. So grab a cozy blanket, turned down the lights. Hello. My name is James and I'm from with Phill, Virginia and growing up just about every house I lived in with hammad I don't know if it was me or just an insane kind of coincidence, but one of the most consistent things I ever experienced was at my mother's house when I grew up. There was a spirit there that pretended to be her. It would look just like her, down, just like her, And so growing up I was always told I was lying because it would tell me to do or not do things in the house that my mother would have said earlier to do. For example, one time I didn't put my shoes on because it told me that we weren't ready to leave yet. Then it went downstairs, and then my mother came down the stairs from upstairs, as the living room was on the ground floor, and it was like, why aren't your shoes on? And another time I woke up from a dream and I sleep talk I always have, probably always will, and I see what I think is my mother. And we lived in the suburbs, so there's a street light and I just see a silhouette of my mom, and I said, oh, I'm sorry. Would I sleep talking too loud again because she would wake me up? Well, it turned around and I walked right through the wall, and I think I was about ten or eleven at the time, and I did what any child would do, and I ran out of my room and flept in my mother's bed, because who would want to stay in the same room as that. So yeah, I have many stories and will definitely call back, but I just thought i'd share that one. I love your podcast bite. Thank you, James. Your story takes us to one of the more unsettling corners of the paranormal, the doppelganger. In Norse mythology, there's the vardiger, a spirit that appears moments before the person at mimics like a ghostly harbinger of someone's arrival. In Irish tradition, there's the fetch, a spectral twin seen as an omen of death, and an Appalachian ghostlore close to James's own roots in Virginia, there are spirits known to mimic the living, calling children by name, or appearing in doorways, only to briefly vanish when spoken to. So, frankly, James, you did what any of us would do. You're andy your real mother's bed, Because frankly, when the world starts to blur between the living and the dead, sometimes the only safe place left is under the covers. Yes, my name is or Here. Now. I've been seeing this thing around my house for quite some time now, you know it's it's by people. It's got five fingers, long claws. It's harry, but not too harry. And I've been seeing it for quite some time now, Okay, I finally got it on it's I have it on film. I can tell you my whole story, and the story that I'm telling you is one hundred percent real. Uh. It's sort of like it's got a snout like a dog. It's gray, it's dark, it's got the claws, and I've seen it just feel they want to cut it on film. It's about maybe a ten foot privacy fence, and I've seen it walking in the alley and it backed up and then cut some speed and it jumped on the fence and it was holding his body up with his arms and his hands, and it started walking like walking the fence with his hands and his feet hanging all the way to where it wanted to jump. And once it jumped, it jumped sideways outside of his legs and it was hanging on with his right hand, so on the edge of the fence, and that's when I saw his hands in his class. Now I've been seeing it for about five years. It's on my roof, It comes in my yard, it growls on me. I got him recorded growling at me. If you're interested in my story, which is one hundred percent real. That the first person I call, I didn't know where to call him to tell this to, but it kind of scares me and it's real. Thank you, hora. Hey, your call introduces us to a creature that's not quite a ghost and not quite a beast, but something older. This lines up chillingly well with the North American folklore of the dog man. The dog man, most famously reported in Michigan, is seen across the US, often as a cryptid, described as a part man, part woolf. It walks upright and sometimes amidst a growl that shakes witnesses to their core. Weirdly enough, it started as a hoax from a radio station in the nineteen eighties, then there started to be real sighting. Unlike werewolves, dogmen aren't human. They are something other, something born of the shadow and the wilderness. Indigenous legends also describe skin walkers or windowgoes, depending on the region. Both shapeshifters associated with malevolence and a supernatural power. But maybe one of the most unsettling things about this story is the way the creature behaves, the way it climbs stalks and seems to know you see it, the way it jumps, balances and hangs on with its claws as if testing the boundary between physical and spectral. We often think of ghosts as pale, translucent things trapped in time, but Jorge's visitor is fully formed, fully present, and it's been following him for years. Please call in with more updates, Hight. I'm Evelyn and I'm from Fremont, michig And when I was about six years old, I was staying over at my grandma's house. I was sleeping in the bed and I woke up and I looked out, and I could have sworn that I saw my grandma standing there. So I waved to her and I saw her wave back at me. When she waved back at me, I laid back down. And I fell asleep again. In the morning, I went up to my mom and I was like, Mom, I saw Nana last night. She waved at me. My mom went completely pale, and she looked at me dead. In the eyes and went, Reity, what do you mean. As I was explaining it to her, I started to realize that my grandma has been dead for the past four years. When this happened, I never met my grandma, and when I described her the exact way she looked, my mom started freaking out. She called my grandpa and my dad and my brothers and my sisters. They had a talk with me and they tried to explain how I didn't see her and it was just my imagination. But a couple of years later, I was eleven now, and I was sitting up in my room playing with my cat, and I heard my grandma. She said, as we am called, so obviously I said, hi, Nana. Then I remember that she's been dead for years. Thank you, Evelyn. There's a reason so many ghost stories involve grandparents. Maybe it's because they were our first bedtime storytellers, or maybe it's because they can be our first experience with death. In many cultures around the world, ancestors are believed to stay close to the family, offering protection, guidance, or even simple companionship. These kinds of encounters are more common than you think. A spirit showing up in a gentle, familiar way, a loved one coming to say hello or maybe goodbye. This isn't the kind of ghost that slams the door and growls in the dark. It's the one that reminds you that love doesn't die with the body. So was Nana simply saying hello? Or had a strange woman wandered in from the street. My name is Christina. I'm from Phoenix, Arizona, I. So my last story was about the house next to the cemetery. This one is about a house that we were ringing in Tempee. So many things happened. The house has never felt right. You know, you move into a house and the thick thick. That's how I want to explain it. But one night, my husband and I got a really big argument. Usually when we argue, but I'm not leaving the bed. He would go sleep on the couch, but I was really upset. I went grabbed my pillow, blanket, and I went to the couch. But I'm laying there and you know you feel somebody walking into a room or standing over your shoulder. You feel that well, I felt that. I felt that really strong, but it felt like it was my husband. So I'm laying there, and I feel like he was standing like behind the recliner, staring down at me. And you know when somebody that like, you really feel like you feel a heat. But I felt that. I sat up really fast. And as I'm sitting up, I'm telling them, what are you gonna do? Stand there stream a night. And nobody was there. He was still in put So that kind of like startled me because I know what I felt, not just somebody standing there, but somebody that was angry because how I felt. And I'm sitting there really confused, and then I hear something in the back. I see a light and there's an alley. We have alleys back there. I look out the window and there is a medical examinter van behind our house in the alley. I think, I don't know for but I think something might have happened in the apartment complict. A lot of people drove through our alley to get to the complex, and in that I kind of just put two and two together. I just don't understand why why that happened. I mean, I'm I'm not surprised, but I know, like I know the gumma, whatever was down in there was who was supposed to be in that band. I grabbed my pillow. I forgot how mad I was. I grabbed my pillow, my blanket, and I went back to bed. Thank you, Christina. Across many cultures, there's a belief that the dead don't always know they're dead, and there's also a darker idea emotional energy as a beacon. When we're upset, grieving, or fighting, the energy doesn't stay within us, can leap, and sometimes spirits are drawn to it. Not malevolent necessarily, just lost looking for warrants or looking for a way out. For you, Christina, it wasn't just a haunted house. It was a haunted moment, a moment when the veil was thin that someone stepped through. Hi, Michelle, this just didn't I got another fantastic bill story for you. Back in southern Indiana where Grandpa and Drandma Chinca, my mom's parents had a farmhouse. And anyway, well, you had just come back from running errors in town and we noticed we being followed and we had this maniac chasing this from behind our intructory room. Never saw him before. It was a red backup trunk and he was glaring his wild music and he yelling and swearing, almstin a je's at us and he give us a bad gestures and I said, Brian, get away from him. Can you imagine our horror as he passed, as he had a hatchet in the back of his head and his face was leaving, yelling, was cursing and carrying on, and he fainted for view. And I told Brian, I said, Brian, we did not see that. Brian says, You're right, we didn't. He was finally so shaped and that he had to pull to the side of the road and drove to the bathroom and I joined him on the other side of the car. But I was never so shaped in my life. You though it was a ghost. We were un totally unprepared for that. And we later passed the cemetery on the same road, but we were wondering where the ghostly man that changed us in the red druck? Who was he? And wand he want beware if you ever see that guy, get the heck out of his way. Thank you, Cindy for bringing us another banger with a roadside encounter straight out of a supernatural thriller. Tales of phantom hitchhikers and ghostly drivers are part of the American haunted cannon. You've probably heard of Resurrection Mary in Illinois or a version of the Lady in White who disappears from the back seat, But in places like Indiana in a long route sixty six, there are older tales of red eyed drivers, spectral trucks that vanish mid chase, and bleeding figures who appear on the road and then vanish as quickly. Who knows. Maybe it was an injured man driving himself to the hospital. Maybe it was the spirit of someone who died violently. Maybe it was a residual loop, a violent moment replaying on the land. Or maybe it was something older, something bound to the road, not the driver. So if you're ever out driving in southern Indiana and you see a red truck barreling towards you, look twice, don't try to pass him, don't pull over, just get out of there quickly, and maybe light a candle when you get home, and then, of course call to tell me a ghost story hotline. That's all we have this week, folks. Do you have a ghost story? Call seven oh one four eight four two six six six. That's seven oh one four eight four two six six six, or go to tell me a Ghost Story dot com and leave your story there. Thank you to all the callers he left messages this week, and as always, I'm your host, Michelle Newman signing off, see you next week. Might have been it.