Stinky Sal, More Shadow People, Ghost Dog, Shorty

[00:00:07] There standing over me was what looked like a shadow figure in a hooded robe. And I remember gasping, I gasped. And this thing, it didn't disappear, it sucked back into the closet, like the end of Poltergeist.

[00:00:29] 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.

[00:00:40] 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, turn down the lights. Hi, Michelle. This is Sophie from Los Angeles. And this is my ghost story.

[00:01:12] So when I was younger, my mom was looking for a house for us to move into with my little brother. And she was going down the street and she was just drawn to this house and we came in. And the first thing we did as kids is we ran to all the rooms except one room my brother would not go in. And we just, we thought, you know, because the house is old, maybe he just wasn't comfortable or whatever.

[00:01:35] So we just ignored it. We bought the house, moved in. And while we were here, my mom in that room put in like chairs, you know, furnished the room. And there was this little rocking chair that we had when we were a kid. And my brother would keep saying to my mom, Mama, the man smells. And my mom's like, what? What man are you talking about, little one? And he was just like, the man sitting in that chair smells.

[00:02:02] And my mom just thought, oh, he's a kid. It's, you know, it's imaginary friends because he would also say to us, there's a dog in the backyard and we never saw the dog. So we just thought, oh, it's his imaginary friend. And then one day my mom was up in the morning and my brother said, there's a dog outside. And we looked outside and there was a coyote. And that's when we realized maybe it's not all just imagination.

[00:02:26] We did a little more research and we found out the guy who used to live in the house actually died in the room that my brother was too scared to go in. And that he would constantly say smells. This man, Sal, apparently would sit in this room and just hang out here. And so my brother as a kid would just be like, this guy smells all the time. And at that point on, we decided that maybe Sal is in the house with us at all times.

[00:02:54] Thank you, Sophie, for your story. But listeners, I had to know. What did Sal smell like? Like a very intense of B.O.'s smell. And you know what? It's funny. It stayed with him his whole life because to today, he is very much like worried about scents and making sure he always has deodorant on. So it stuck with him. Next message.

[00:03:24] My name is Brennan. This story comes from when I was living in Victoria, B.C., which is on the west coast of Canada. There is a house near to where we live in Victoria, which has a history. Very strange history. Very unusual history. Very, to be honest with you, a sinister history.

[00:03:46] Not of what happened in the house in terms of people, but in terms of a presence that appears to be in the house, which seems to prey on people with temporal illness. The very first time I heard about the house, I drove past late at night with a friend of mine. We looked at the place. And instead of feeling chills like you usually do when you're telling ghost stories, I felt hot needles all around my neck. And that night both, even though my wife had gone to bed early, she had not had a chance to hear the story I would tell her.

[00:04:16] We both dreamed of there being an intruder in the apartment that night. And then I had some friends come to town. They wanted to see the place because I told them these stories. So I drove them past it in the middle of the day. It's a very boring suburban house. And when I showed my friends this house, they went, oh, that's boring. Because it is. But again, that night, both of us dreamed of an intruder in the house. So that, I decided I'm not going to go near this place anymore.

[00:04:45] I just don't think it's a great place to hang out. But my wife's mother, who lives in England, she heard the stories, which came out at Christmas. She really wanted to see it. And I thought, oh, I'm being dramatic. I'll just, I'll go, I'll show her from the other end of the street. So I did. And again, it's a very boring little bungalow. And she went, oh, well, it's this morning. And we went home. However, that night, it was two in the morning. My wife was in bed. Her mother was asleep in the spare room.

[00:05:15] And I was sitting on the couch looking at my phone. The lights were off. The only illumination was coming from the lights on the Christmas tree. And my wife had recently cut her hair short. So when the figure stepped out of the hallway and startled me looking at my phone, I assumed it was her because it was fuzzy on top. It wasn't. Now, this is where my memory splits into two because I was awake. I was looking at my phone. And then I saw the figure step out.

[00:05:44] And the next thing I know, I'm lying flat on my back on the couch. And there was a shadow figure in the corner of the room staring at me. It is sort of tilting its upper body side to side as if it's trying to figure something out. And I can't move. So I focused everything I could on moving. And I finally, I screamed. I was able to move my arm. And then it was gone. I was awake. And I couldn't figure out when I'd gone to sleep. So I went to bed.

[00:06:14] And in the morning, I said to my wife, I said, I'm really sorry if I scared you with the screaming last night. And she said, you didn't. You didn't scream. And my wife is a light sleeper. And then I lived in Montreal for about eight months in 2022 to 2023. And shortly after I got there, I was in extreme sort of mental and physical duress. I was in bad shape after the worst of the pandemic. And so I was just there to try and get well.

[00:06:42] And a friend of mine took me for a drive one night. And then they brought me back to my apartment. And my apartment was on the 28th floor in downtown. I would share in a room with a couple other folks. And so my room was very bright. The lights of the city filled up quite a bit. You know, even at night, it was quite bright. And I had a bad dream that night. I woke up. And when I opened my eyes, there standing over me was what looked like a shadow figure in a hooded robe.

[00:07:12] And I remember gasping. I gasped. And this thing, it didn't disappear. It sucked back into the closet like the end of Poltergeist. But that and that was so far the last time I've seen those things. Thank you for your story, Brennan. And if you want to hear more about his encounters with shadow people, check out the episode of Tell Me a Ghost Story called Accidental Exorcism.

[00:07:42] Next message. This is Cindy, one of your favorite fans. And I really like your toffees. And I wanted to tell you about the day my dad's ghostly greyhound dog, Dave Sparky, came back to say his final goodbye. You lived to be about 14 years old. And he was very close to the family.

[00:08:08] The first night, we were all downstairs in the basement doing our tours and everything. And we heard that familiar sound, click, click, click. The sound of a dog's toenails walking across linoleum floor. It was always the same pattern, walking from the linoleum floor to the top of the stairs. And then they would cease. There was no barking. It was just as if dad would leave the door open, but they never seem to go down the steps.

[00:08:40] It quit when we got a new dog, and the dog felt jealous or something and didn't want to come back. I wonder if anybody else listening to this broadcast have had a ghostly experience from a former pet. Has her pet come back to visit you? Would you like to tell Michelle about it? I'm sure she'd love to hear your story.

[00:09:08] Cindy, thank you. I know. Where are all my ghost animal callers? I would love to hear more of those stories. Hi, my name is Jules,

[00:09:36] and I am in Santa Barbara, California, and I have a ghost story for you. My first interaction with a ghost was in back, all the way back in 2001. I was living in Seattle, and I had a new boyfriend at the time, and we were super young, super in love, super broke. And so we wanted to do like a weekend getaway. And because we didn't have a lot of money, the easiest thing to do would be

[00:10:05] to drive across the border to Canada and to go to this youth hostel that we had heard of that was really cheap. You know, this was before, you know, iPhones and Instagrams. We had heard there was this youth hostel there. It's like $20 a night. It's called the Cambie. And the area was like very indie rock, very cool, artsy scenes. We were like, great. And we went up, stayed at the Cambie one night.

[00:10:32] It was definitely like creaky and old walls, not well kept up, super hip and cool. Had a great time. I decided to stay a second night, booked a room for the second night. Went to bed that night. And then in the middle of the night, I had to use the restrooms and walk down this incredibly long hallway. We were like the furthest away from the restroom. Go to the restroom, wash my hands. I start, you know, walking back down. We're like, I'm a super long hallway to our room.

[00:10:59] And granted, we had probably been like stone most of the day, but by no means was I like wasted or on anything other than like just, you know, I was a little bit tired. So it was like a little bit like groggy walking down the hallway. And as I'm walking down the hallway, I see just out of nowhere a man. And it's his side profile.

[00:11:27] And I clearly, and it's been how many, you know, so many years, I clearly remember his. He had black pants on and I could see his side profile. So I could see he had like a coat with like lapels. He had a top hat. And I think he has something in his hand, maybe like a small cane or something. And he was not quite solid, but he was not quite see-through. It was like a mix. And of course I'm kind of walking down thinking

[00:11:57] I'm just seeing a person walking across from me, about 10 feet in front of me into a door. I'm thinking, oh, someone's, I didn't think that the outfit was just strange. It was like, whatever. Walking into a door. And so when I got to that point of the hallway where the door would have been, you know, you kind of subconsciously when you walk past someone, they're going in their apartment building. You potentially hear them put down their keys,

[00:12:27] take their shoes off, put the lock on. So I was kind of like, I think, subconsciously like looking for a sound that's a sign that someone had just gone through a door. And so when I passed that part of the hallway where there would be a door there, there was no door there. It was just a solid wall. So I had just seen someone walk through a wall. I didn't think much of it. I just kind of kept walking. I remember clearly unlocking the door to our room,

[00:12:56] shutting the door, sitting on the bed. And my eyes kind of like popped open. I was like, told my boyfriend, I was like, I just saw a ghost. And he was just like, what? And I told him everything that happened. And then that kind of started like a whole other kind of like, just different things that happened to me in the years to come when it came to like seeing ghosts or feeling them or seeing things move.

[00:13:25] Because I think after that is when I just kind of like became open to it. And then kind of fast forward many, many years. Now I was living in New York and it was 2008. And since that time, I'd always kind of like sensed things moving in, you know, the room that I was in. Or a lot of times I felt like the go-to for a ghost was like to turn on the bathroom light.

[00:13:53] Out of nowhere, kind of TV on. Or the one that constantly kept happening to me in hotels and like apartments that I live in is my sheets would get moved, like poked. Like I would kind of like be laying there, no one there. And I could see the sheets just like, just poking a little bit. I don't know if those like have the ability to move sheets. But anyway, so fast forward 2008. Now I'm in New York.

[00:14:22] I'm in a new apartment, an old apartment as always in New York. And I could definitely sense there was something in this apartment. But there was something like very different about this particular ghost. And it took me a long time to figure it out. And what I figured out was this being, this ghost was very short. Because I could never sense them above my waist. They were always like low to the ground.

[00:14:51] And so I kind of made up in my mind that it was, that it was a child. I was like, because the thing about this ghost is it followed me around the apartment constantly. Almost like I could hear their footsteps. And what kind of like, you know, the mirrors in the bathroom would open. The TV would turn on all the time. So like children shows. And, you know, they would follow me around.

[00:15:19] And so I got kind of annoyed with this particular ghost. And for some reason, my mind always thought it was a girl. So I had to kind of make rules for the girl or the child. I was like, okay, you, I know that you're here. You're not leaving. You don't seem to be like dangerous. You're trying to do anything weird to me. But I need to set some boundaries. And you can't come into my room. Like you can't come into my room. And you can't come to the bathroom with me. Like we're done. I need a lot of space.

[00:15:50] So I like officially laid down the groundwork. And that, you know, the thing about that I learned over time with ghosts is if you lay down really clear boundaries, most of the time they will like abide to them. You know, now that I'm like a mom, I can't imagine a child ever listening to you. So maybe the ghost is a dog. At the end of the day, I think what ended up happening is I kind of like for a while I had this like,

[00:16:19] Oh, I have a superpower. I can like sense things and I can see things and I can. And it, it kind of started to annoy me. So I made a conscious decision, like after that apartment experience in New York, that I was going to stop being open to it. Stop trying to read the room. So basically with age, I just closed myself off because I was kind of tired of having the experiences.

[00:16:45] And really since then, I haven't had any because with the little girl at the Brooklyn apartment, just like, you know, because it was just constant need for attention. And I'm someone who just likes to be alone sometimes. So, you know, 2008 to now, I haven't really had anything since. But for a period of time, I felt like I was just something in me. I had an openness. Thank you, Jules, for sharing your story.

[00:17:14] It was also a great example of how to set boundaries with the living and the dead. That's all we have this week, folks. Do you have a ghost story? Call 701-484-2666. That's 701-484-2666.

[00:17:43] 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.