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. This call was 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 belongs entirely to Jimmy, who called in with a true ghost story that carries a particular kind of weight because of who he is and what he does for a living. Jimmy has worked as a crew member on multiple paranormal television shows. He has been in haunted locations professionally. He has watched investigators react to things he himself could not see or feel. He went into a haunted tattoo shop basement in Chicago as a skeptic, and he did not come out of it the same way.
Jimmy was in the basement of a haunted tattoo shop in Chicago when he felt something push him from behind. Not a brush. Not a suggestion of contact. A push, with the specific physical sensation of having stepped on someone's toes and having them respond to it. He turned around. There was no one there. For a man who had spent years on paranormal television sets watching other people have experiences he could professionally document without personally believing, this was a different kind of moment.
The psychic working on the paranormal TV show that was filming in the tattoo shop that day described the stairwell leading to the basement as a supernatural highway, a concentrated corridor of paranormal activity where spirits move through rather than settle. That description is consistent with what researchers have documented in other locations where activity concentrates in transitional spaces, stairwells, doorways, hallways, and thresholds between floors, rather than distributing evenly through a building. Jimmy was pushed in exactly that kind of space.
Haunted tattoo shops have been reported across the United States with a consistency that researchers find difficult to attribute to coincidence, possibly connected to the intensity of human experience and emotion that concentrates in spaces where people permanently mark their bodies in meaningful ways. Chicago's paranormal history runs deep, and the South Side in particular has a documented supernatural geography that predates the city's modern development by generations. Jimmy's tattoo shop sits inside all of that history, whether the shop's current owners know it or not.
One caller. One true ghost story from behind the scenes of paranormal television and a basement in Chicago that pushed back. 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.
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Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.
Production by Newman Media.
[00:00:00] Welcome to Tell Me A Ghost Story. The late-night call in podcast where we delve into the world
[00:00:18] of the supernatural and explore the eerie and unexplained. I'm your host, Michelle Newman.
[00:00:27] This podcast features true stories from our collars that will send shivers down your spine
[00:00:33] and leave you questioning the existence of the afterlife. So grab a cozy blanket, turn
[00:00:41] down the lights.
[00:00:45] Oh hey Michelle this is Jimmy and I got a little story for you. I've been working in paranormal
[00:00:52] TV shows for the last three to five years and I've definitely seen some stuff out there.
[00:00:57] I'm not necessarily a believer myself, but I'm a skeptic. But I have seen a few things and
[00:01:03] experienced new things and I will tell you my favorite story.
[00:01:10] This was maybe my second episode on my first paranormal show and we were in Chicago at a haunted
[00:01:18] tattoo shop. Now usually before our psychic comes in and does that everything we need to make sure
[00:01:24] everything's completely blacked out, power shut off and all that. And my producer that I worked with
[00:01:30] had this issue where he'd always end up locking keys in a van. So right before psychic showed up
[00:01:36] he locked the keys in the van so we were scrambling to try to get into the van. So I went looking for
[00:01:42] something to maybe wedge the door to get in so I went down to the basement of this old tattoo shop
[00:01:49] and while I was down there I had just my small flashlight the lights were completely out.
[00:01:54] I'm looking through stuff looking for a hammer or anything that I could wedge and all of a sudden
[00:01:59] my coworker came down and he came by me and kind of said hey let me go in there so I backed up
[00:02:07] out of the way and when I backed up I felt like I literally stepped on somebody's toes.
[00:02:14] Like if somebody was standing directly behind you say you're at a concert and you're in the pit,
[00:02:18] you're standing and you backed up and also just stepped on somebody's toes where I felt myself
[00:02:23] go up that I stepped on somebody's toes and then somebody pushed me in my back
[00:02:28] and to the point where I went whoa what was that so then I and he turned to me and goes what and
[00:02:35] I was like oh nothing and I turned my flashlight around to see if there was maybe a pipe or
[00:02:41] something I backed into maybe or anything like that and I couldn't see anything. So for a second
[00:02:47] I was like okay that was really strange and then all of a sudden on the radio I hear them
[00:02:53] so I just kind of brought you off I was like oh that's nothing since when I went upstairs
[00:02:58] and I went out to the van and continued my work while the psychic went through and I was sitting
[00:03:02] there thinking I was like what just happened down there I was like I definitely got pushed I felt
[00:03:09] something in my back and like somebody was like get off my feet and kind of pushed me away
[00:03:15] and then come to find out when the psychic slept through there that the stairwell going down to
[00:03:21] where the basement was was this like supernatural highway basically that kind of where all these people
[00:03:27] were going through so I don't know if I conjured up something like that but being down there and
[00:03:33] just kind of in their space but that was probably one of the only times that I was like wait a minute
[00:03:40] what just happened thank you Jimmy for your story weird fact if you google haunted tattoo parlor
[00:03:49] you get 3.1 million results with shops from all over the country I'm not quite sure what's going on
[00:03:57] but it certainly makes me think twice about getting a tattoo that's all we have this week folks
[00:04:04] do you have a ghost story call 701 484 2666 that's 701 484 2666
[00:04:22] or go to tell me a ghost story.com and leave your story there go ahead and leave me a five star
[00:04:30] review wherever you get your podcasts with something particularly scary in this episode
[00:04:35] or maybe you've had a similar experience leave your comments via our Spotify page thank you to all
[00:04:43] the colors who love messages this week and as always I'm your host Michelle Newman signing off
[00:04:52] see you next week