Hey, it's Michelle, and this week we have three real callers. Three true ghost stories from a morgue in Texas, a kitchen in Minnesota, and a frozen basement in Southern Ontario. This episode is also available as video on Spotify or Youtube.
Larissa from Texas calls in with a true ghost story from her time working as an investigator at a medical examiner's office. Late nights, intakes, autopsies, and a presence she named Frank. Frank has a pocket watch. He wears dress shoes. He walks the hallway with the unhurried energy of someone who has been at that threshold for a long time and sees no reason to cross it. When Larissa told him probably not tonight sir he left. When her coworker heard the pocket watch open right next to his desk instead of down the hallway where Frank usually roams, the coworker clocked out immediately and went home. Medical examiner offices are among the most consistently reported paranormal workplaces in documented research, threshold spaces where some presences simply choose to linger. Frank is one of those presences. He has a pocket watch and he is in no hurry.
Anne from St Paul, Minnesota calls in with a true ghost story from her work as a residential cleaner. Left alone in a client's home she was scrubbing cabinets hard when she heard it clearly. Thank you. Nobody else was in the house. The client's cat is in dialysis and not doing well and the space carried the specific weight of someone watching a beloved animal decline. Something in that house was paying attention to Anne working in it, and what it felt was gratitude. Not get out. Not help me. Thank you. In a show full of frightening encounters Anne's call stands out because the presence she encountered was not trying to scare her. It was trying to say something kind.
Gary D from Southern Ontario calls in with a true ghost story that begins with two teenagers falling through ice at midnight in well below zero temperatures and nearly dying, and somehow gets stranger from there. He and his friend John broke into an abandoned pavilion from the 1920s to survive the cold, wrapping themselves in burlap sacks in the basement while their hair froze solid. And then from above them they heard it. Big band music. Dozens of voices laughing and talking. Clinking glasses. Someone at a microphone working a crowd. Dancing. The full sound of a packed New Year's Eve celebration directly above them on a dance floor that when they climbed up to check had a heavy layer of undisturbed filth and snow lying across it. No people. No band. No footprints. Nothing. The music started twice and stopped twice like a switch being flipped. Gary raises the hypothermia explanation himself and it deserves consideration. But hypothermia does not produce identical shared hallucinations between two people who can confirm each other's perceptions in real time. Residual haunting, the specific paranormal category where a space replays its most emotionally concentrated memories like a recording, fits what Gary and John heard far better than any neurological explanation. The pavilion absorbed decades of New Year's Eve celebrations, and on the night two frozen teenagers sat in its basement, it played one back. They also found a large pile of long, brown, curly human hair between the barrels with no explanation. Gary does not know what that was. Neither do I.
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.
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Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.
Production by Newman Media.
[00:00:06] 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.
[00:00:33] So grab a cozy blanket, turn down the lights. Hi Michelle, this is Larissa from Texas. I really love your show and enjoy it very much. I just wanted to tell you about the time that I was an investigator at a medical examiner office.
[00:00:54] And there'll be different times that we would intake bodies because families either didn't have a funeral home picked out, or we were just holding it for autopsy. During my time there, I would be there very late and sometimes I would hear different things. And more so, there was a certain presence there that I ended up naming Frank.
[00:01:24] And he had a little pocket watch. And I could always hear him with his pocket watch and maybe walking with some really nice shoes. You know, usually when somebody's walking with some dress shoes, you can hear it against the floor. So sometimes I would tell Frank, hey, you know, probably not tonight, sir. And so then he would leave. I've never had a scary encounter with Frank. He was just kind of hanging around.
[00:01:54] But my coworker sure did have a story for me one of the nights that he was there on call. And he had said that he was doing his report and that he heard the pocket watch open, but it wasn't in the hallway where Frank usually roams. It was around his desk. And with the way it was set up, we had different cubicles.
[00:02:17] And so it was right in front of another and then right behind our cubicles, there was enough space for us to walk around. But that's where all the wires and all the connections were. And so he heard the pocket watch right by his cubicle and he decided that he was going to clock out and leave for the night. So that's our story of Frank. I'll call in with more stories later. Thank you.
[00:02:49] Thank you, Larissa from Texas. There's a long tradition of ticking clocks representing the moments of life before death. Even Pink Floyd has a song about it. But what happens after death when the clock still ticks? Hi, my name's Anne. I'm from St. Paul, Minnesota. And I've been a residential cleaner with a company here in Minnesota for a year now.
[00:03:20] And I've always kind of heard stuff growing up as a kid. But, you know, I always kind of like put it behind me and never really paid attention to it. And now that I'm a maid and I get left alone in people's homes a lot, I hear things.
[00:03:41] And today while I was cleaning someone's house, I was scrubbing the cabinets particularly hard. And this woman has a cat and the cat is in dialysis. And, you know, she's not doing the best. And without giving them much less away about the details, I was going ahead and scrubbing this cabinet. And I heard, thank you. I'm afraid what? And I was left alone.
[00:04:12] But, yeah, this is not the only time. I have felt like I've been being watched aside from knowing there's probably cameras in that home. You know, I can't really put my finger on it. But, you know, a lot of things like have just been kind of getting weird. Especially as a maid.
[00:04:38] So, if you want to be a maid, just know you're probably going to get haunted. Thank you, Anne from St. Paul, Minnesota. If you want to be a maid, just know you're probably going to get haunted is one of the more practical pieces of paranormal advice this show has ever received.
[00:05:12] Gary D here in Southern Ontario. You want to talk weird? Well, I'll talk weird to you. Back when I was, I don't know, about 15 or 16 years old, being young and stupid and bored. A good friend of mine, John, two of us were always trying to find something to do. A lot of times because we were both night owls, we'd stay up late at night. We'd sneak out of the house. Your parents wouldn't know we were out.
[00:05:42] And we'd meet up. And close to where we lived, there was a large wooded area, a large park, baseball diamonds, and a lot of hiking trails. And cliffs going down to a lake. So anyways, on one of these bored occasions, we decided we'd go for a walk at about midnight. Nobody around. And it was the dead of winter. I think it was sometime in January or so.
[00:06:11] So it was freezing cold out, snow flurries. And we were walking through the woods. I don't know why, just walking around board. And we came upon this small, it was actually like a, either a small lake or a very large pond. I figure it's probably about 15 feet in the middle, 15 feet deep. And we knew this place had a lot of snapping turtles and frogs and that type of thing. I'm not sure if there were any fish in there.
[00:06:37] But anyways, being the dead of winter, the surface had frozen over. And while we were just walking around, one of us jumped out on the ice and said, hey, this seems to be safe. Next thing you know, the two of us are standing in the middle of this small lake, just standing there talking. And all of a sudden, the ice gives way. We go crashing into the water and it just hits you. Your body turns to lead, you lose your breath. And we're treading water trying to get out. We figure that's probably the end of us.
[00:07:09] Stupid people do stupid things. Like I said, when you're young, you do stupid things. Luckily, there was a fallen tree close by. I was able to reach a branch, pull myself out. John grabbed my leg and somehow he crawled over top of me to get up onto the branch. We got out of the water. Okay, the first problem was solved. Second problem was that it was like well below zero, freezing cold, windy. And we're soaking wet, we're drenched.
[00:07:39] We don't have the luxury of having a sauna close by or hot towels. And, you know, it's midnight. And for us to get home, we've got about a 15 minute jog and there's no way we're going to make it. So we thought, what can we do? We were shaking like crazy. The water is freezing now. And our hair, when we touch our hair, it's like frozen solid. Our clothes are getting very hard.
[00:08:09] So we start running and we're shaking and, and we thought there is a place that we could reach probably within about five or six or seven minutes if we run. There was no, there were no houses around us. So there was no residential area. There was no gas station or any stores. The only thing that was close to us was an old abandoned dance hall from back in the 1920s or so. I know they used to have formal dances there.
[00:08:39] It has quite a history, but it had been shut down long ago. It was all boarded up, but you could still get up onto the dance floor area. But anyway, we knew by having walked by there before that down there was kind of a knee level. There were windows that were boarded up going into a basement below the dance floor, probably where they kept inventory. And we thought if we get there and we can kick the boards in because they were just nailed in.
[00:09:08] We can kick the boards and get into the basement and probably find something down there to throw over us, to warm up. Anyways, we ran like crazy. We, like I say, we're a couple of popsicles running through the woods at midnight. You know, this is before there weren't any cell phones to call for help. So we get to this place, to the dance hall there, and we, it's called the pavilion. So we kicked and kicked and kicked. We managed to finally kick those wooden boards in.
[00:09:38] We get inside, we lower ourselves down. Like I say, it's in the basement. And luckily, I always kept a lighter in a little plastic bag in my pocket. So when we felt, when I found the water, it did not get waterlogged and soaked. So I was able to light a lighter, reach around and I found some old newspaper, rolled it up, basically made a torch out of it. Made a couple of torches. John and I just walked around, looked around. It was really cool down there.
[00:10:03] It was like old brick walls, very musty down there, a bunch of old barrels and really run down. Looked like nobody had been in there for a long time. So we look around and we managed to find some, they almost look like old potato sacks, like burlap sacks.
[00:10:26] So we kind of threw a bunch over our backs, wrapped them around our arms and kind of, you know, sat down on top of a barrel and kind of just shook back and forth trying to warm up. And once we got a little bit warmer, we kind of investigated, walked around the basement, thought it looked pretty cool. And you have to figure, being by now it's probably, you know, 1230 at night. And we hear nothing but the howling wind from that window we broke in.
[00:10:54] And you can hear the wind howling, dead silent. Just our voices and us breathing heavily. And then the weirdest, craziest thing happened. We're sitting there. And all of a sudden, from above, we hear music. People laughing and talking. You can almost hear the clinking of glasses.
[00:11:18] And it sounded like there were people dancing on the dance floor bubbles, like dozens and dozens of people, like a loud crowd. It almost sounded like it was New Year's Eve somewhere. And there was like big band music playing. You could hear the horn section and just a big boisterous crowd. And we're thinking, what the hell is going on? It's not like just one of us heard it and we're having a mental break or something. We were both listening and saying, do you hear that? Yeah, I hear that.
[00:11:46] And then we hear somebody with a microphone talking, talking to the crowd. And they're all clapping and cheering. And then another song starts. And then the dancing starts again. So this is going for a few minutes. And then suddenly it just stops. Dead silence again. And all you hear is the wind blowing. Us breathing. And we can look at each other and say, did that really happen just now?
[00:12:14] So we went around just kind of looking the basement some more, bored. And then another weird thing that we found down there, amongst all the barrels, we found a huge pile of, we found out at first we couldn't figure what it was, but we thought it was straw or something. But it was long, what we believed to be was human hair, like long curly hair, brown hair, a huge pile of it that could have easily filled a couple of pillows. Just laying there between the barrels, no blood or scalp or anything like that. But it was just weird.
[00:12:44] Why would there be like a woman's hair or several women's hair and laying in a big pile there? So while we're there talking about trying to figure out what happened here, suddenly that music and dancing starts again up above us. So we're kind of looking at each other, eyebrows raised going, holy crap, what's going on up there? There's no way there can actually be people up there dancing and talking and drinking. It's like close to one o'clock in the morning. And it's pitch dark, so there's nobody out there.
[00:13:13] So we hear it again. Same thing, the music, trumpets, the laughing, the clinking of glasses, and then somebody's yelling. And so we said, okay, let's, you know, do we climb out the window, try to go up there and see what's going on? But then we saw an old wooden staircase going up from the basement, going up towards the floor of the dance floor. But we went up it and banged on it, hoping somebody would open it, nothing.
[00:13:43] And we noticed there was a big chain and padlock on it. So there was somebody walking, we could hear the creaking of the floor, the floorboards. We heard heavy shoes, we heard the dancing. And we started yelling and yelling, nothing, nothing. And again, just, you know, suddenly it's just stops, just stop the presses. It goes from a loud boisterous crowd dancing and music. Just, it's like someone suddenly just presses a button and it just stops. And then silence again.
[00:14:14] And again, we'd look at each other and say, this is really freaky, man. Like what is going on? And then we kind of warmed up enough so that we could, you know, get home and hope that our parents didn't get up to check in our beds to see if we were there or not and call the police. But we crawled back out. We went up, looked at the dance floor area, which was right above us. We went up the little stairs around the outside. It was just pitch dark. It was just deserted. It was dirty.
[00:14:44] There was nothing there. There were no people. There was no band. There was no, no, there wasn't anything. It was just like a deserted dance floor with the wind howling through it and some snow laying on the floor. So we just kind of look at each other. We book it back home. And luckily our parents didn't find out that we were, that we'd gone over there and what had happened. They never found out that we fell through the ice, first of all, and almost died.
[00:15:11] And then we never told them about what happened with us breaking into that building, which could have gotten us into trouble. But what we did do is I can't remember if it was the next day or a few days later, we went in the middle of the day. We went back to that pavilion to check it out. And we noticed that probably the park authorities or somebody had come along, put up new boards and screwed them in this time. So extra layers of wood, lots of screws, so there would be no way anybody could break in.
[00:15:42] And again, we looked up at the dance floor and it had a heavy layer of not dust, but just like a filth. It hadn't been walked on or danced on in a long time. So again, we discussed it many times over the years just saying, remember that freaky thing that happened? We knew, you know, we joked around saying, what could it have been? Why did we hear that? Was it kind of a, you know, did we go back in time somehow?
[00:16:07] We'd go into some invisible time machine and we thought, well, maybe when we fell through the ice and both of us were just close to death. Maybe we were in the early stages of hypothermia or something and our brains were going to mush and we're losing it. But how would the two of us both have the exact same thing happen to us at the same time and hear the same thing? But that's my story.
[00:16:33] I haven't had anything quite like that happen since then, but it was scary at the time, but really cool to think about now. Thanks for listening. Take care. Thank you, Gary D from Southern Ontario.
[00:16:57] Residual haunting is the specific category of paranormal phenomenon that best fits what Gary and John heard. Unlike an intelligent haunting where our presence is aware and responsive to the living, a residual haunting is more like a recording. The same event playing in the same place at the same or similar conditions triggered by something in the environment. Gary raises the hypothermia explanation himself.
[00:17:26] Cold exposure does cause auditory hallucinations as the brain begins to prioritize survival functions. But Gary is right that the shared simultaneous hallucination of horns, the glasses, the microphone, the crowd, the abrupt silence are not what hypothermia produces. Hyperthermia produces confusion and slowing. Not two people hearing an old-timey dance.
[00:17:59] That's all we have this week, folks. Do you have a ghost story? Call 701-484-2666. That's 701-484-2666. Or go to tellmeaghoststory.com and leave your story there.
[00:18:26] Thank you to all the callers who left messages this week. I'm your host, Michelle Newman, signing off. See you next week. What the video?