[00:00:06] And I just see a silhouette of my mom, and I said, oh, I'm sorry, was I asleep talking too loud again? Because she would wake me up. Well, it turned around, and I walked right through the wall.
[00:00:24] 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.
[00:00:52] So grab a cozy blanket, turn down the lights. Hello, my name is James, and I'm from Whiffville, Virginia. And growing up, just about every house I lived in was haunted. I don't know if it was me or just an insane kind of coincidence,
[00:01:18] 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, sound 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.
[00:01:44] For example, one time I didn't put my shoes on because it told me that we weren't ready to leave yet. And 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.
[00:02:13] And we lived in the suburbs. So there's a streetlight. 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 it walked right through the wall. And I think I was about 10 or 11 at the time. And I did what any child would do. And I ran out of my room and slept in my mother's bed.
[00:02:41] 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. Bye. Thank you, James. Your story takes us to one of the more unsettling corners of the paranormal, the doppelganger.
[00:03:11] In Norse mythology, there's the Vardiger, a spirit that appears moments before the person it 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 in Appalachian ghost lore, close to James' own roots in Virginia. There are spirits known to mimic the living,
[00:03:41] 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 ran to 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 Jorge.
[00:04:10] Now, I've been seeing this thing around my house for quite some time now. You know, it's bipedal. It's got five fingers, long claws. It's hairy, but not too hairy. And I've been seeing it for quite some time now. Okay, I finally got it on film. I have it on film. I could tell you my whole story. And the story that I'm telling you is 100% real.
[00:04:39] 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 the other day when I caught it on film. It's about maybe a 10-foot privacy fence. And I've seen it walking in the alley. And it backed up. And it caught some speed. And it jumped on the fence. And it was holding its body up with its arms and its hands.
[00:05:06] And it started walking, like walking the fence with its hands and its feet hanging all the way to where it wanted to jump. And once it jumped, it jumped sideways outside of its legs. And it was hanging on with its right hand on the edge of the fence. And that's when I saw its hands and its claws. And I've been seeing it for about five years. It's on my roof. It comes in my yard. It growls at me. I got him recorded growling at me.
[00:05:34] If you're interested in my story, which is 100% real, you're the first person I call. I didn't know where to call and who to tell this to. But it kind of scares me. And it's real. Thank you, Jorge. 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 Dogman.
[00:06:03] The Dogman most famously reported in Michigan. As seen across the U.S., often as a cryptid, described as a part man, part wolf. It walks upright and sometimes emits a growl that shakes witnesses to their core. Weirdly enough, it started as a hoax from a radio station in the 1980s. Then there started to be real sightings.
[00:06:31] Unlike werewolves, Dogman aren't human. They are something other. Something born of the shadow in the wilderness. Indigenous legends also describe skinwalkers or windigos 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.
[00:06:59] 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.
[00:07:26] Hi, I'm Evelyn, and I'm from Fremont, Michigan. 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.
[00:07:56] 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,
[00:08:25] Sweetie, 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.
[00:08:52] 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 11 now, and I was sitting up in my room playing with my
[00:09:20] cat, and I heard my grandma. She said, Hi, sweetie, I'm home. So, obviously, I said, Hi, Nana. Then I remembered that she's been dead for years. Thank you, Evelyn. There's a reason so many ghost stories involve grandparents.
[00:09:50] 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.
[00:10:21] 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.
[00:10:49] My last story was about the house next to the cemetery. This one is about a house that we were renting in Tempe. So many things happen. The house has never felt right. You know, you move into a house and it's thick. Thick is how I want to explain it. But one night, my husband and I got a really big argument. Usually when we argue, I'm not leaving the bed. He would go sleep on the couch. But I was really upset.
[00:11:16] I went, grabbed my pillow, blanket, and I went to the couch. But I'm laying there. And, you know, you feel somebody walk 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's mad, like, you really feel it. You feel the heat. But I felt that.
[00:11:45] I sat up really fast. And as I'm sitting up, I'm telling them, what are you going to do? Are you going to stand there staring at me all night? And nobody was there. He was feeling good. So that kind of, like, startled me because I know what I felt. Not just somebody standing there, but somebody that was angry is how I felt. And I'm sitting there really confused.
[00:12:14] 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 examiner van behind our house in the alley. I think, I don't know for sure, but I think something might have happened in the apartment complex. 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.
[00:12:42] I mean, I'm not surprised. But I know, like, I know deep down that whatever was standing there was who was supposed to be in that van. So I grabbed my pillow. I forgot how mad I was. I grabbed my pillow, my blanket, and I went back to bed.
[00:13:11] 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 is a beacon. When we're upset, grieving, or fighting, the energy doesn't stay within us. It can leak. And sometimes spirits are drawn to it. Not malevolent, necessarily. Just lost, looking for warmth, or looking for a way out.
[00:13:40] For you, Christina, it wasn't just a haunted house. It was a haunted moment. A moment when the veil was thin and someone stepped through. Hi, Michelle. This is Tintin' Chetra. I got another fantastic ghost story for you. Back in southern Indiana where Grandpa and Grandma Jenkins, my mom's parents, had a farmhouse.
[00:14:10] And anyway, we had just come back from running errors in town. And we noticed we were being followed. And we had this maniac chasing us from behind our country road. Never saw him before. It was a red pickup truck. And he was blaring his wild music and yelling and swearing obscenities at us. And he'd give us bad gestures. And I said, Brian, get away from him.
[00:14:40] Can you imagine our horror? As he passed us, he had a hatchet in the back of his head. And his face was bleeding. He yelling, was cursing, and carried on. And he faded from 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 shaken that he had to pull to the side of the road and go to the bathroom. And I joined him on the other side of the car.
[00:15:09] But I was never so shaken in my life, even though it was a ghost. We were totally unprepared for that. And we later passed the cemetery on the same road. But we were wondering, where's the ghostly man that chased us in the red truck? Who was he and what did 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.
[00:15:43] Tales of phantom hitchhikers and ghostly drivers are part of the American haunted canon. 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 and along Route 66, there are older tales. Red-eyed drivers. Spectral trucks that vanish mid-chase.
[00:16:12] 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.
[00:16:41] 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 the Tell Me a Ghost Story hotline. That's all we have this week, folks. Do you have a ghost story? Call 701-484-2666.
[00:17:10] That's 701-484-2666. 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.
[00:17:40] I mean it.