The Bloody Hand, Flesh Pedestrian, Brotherly Love

[00:00:06] We all hear this big crash, and the chairs lifted up and shot at each other.

[00:00:25] 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.

[00:00:37] I'm your host, Michelle Newman.

[00:00:41] 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.

[00:01:00] Hi, my name is James. I'm from Greeley, Colorado, but my story happened in Loveland, Colorado.

[00:01:07] At the time, I was around six years old, and I was living in a foster home.

[00:01:15] And my foster brother, he was on the swimming team at the time, so he had a lot of swimming meets.

[00:01:23] So on this particular day, he had a swimming meet at Thompson Valley High School in Loveland.

[00:01:30] So while they were all doing their swimming meet, me, my brother, who was also in the foster home, and a bunch of the other foster kids,

[00:01:39] and random kids we didn't even know, there was probably 10 of us, we all ventured off to the gym while they were doing the swimming meet.

[00:01:46] All the parents were cheering the athletes on.

[00:01:49] We, us as kids, ran off to the gym.

[00:01:52] So when we got to the gym, we entered, and all the lights were off, there was no one there.

[00:01:58] Things were clean, we all started running around.

[00:02:00] There was a two-story level to the Loveland Thompson Valley High School gym.

[00:02:07] There was the basketball court, which we entered on the bottom.

[00:02:09] Then there was the top part, which had like a bunch of folding chairs where everyone,

[00:02:14] and bleachers where everyone could sit and watch the games.

[00:02:17] But the bleachers were folded in, and all the chairs were neatly folded, I remember.

[00:02:22] So as we're running around, we all hear this big crash.

[00:02:34] And the chairs lifted up and shot at each other and crashed into each other and just fell instantly.

[00:02:43] And it made all of us kids, literally, we all bolted for the same door.

[00:02:48] So as we go, I was, I'm waiting for my brother.

[00:02:54] My brother's watching where he goes.

[00:02:56] We go out.

[00:02:56] Me and my brother are the last one.

[00:02:58] The door's shut, and you know any gym, they have little tiny windows.

[00:03:04] Me and my brother look back, and I saw a bloody handprint smear down.

[00:03:11] But he says he just remembers only a handprint.

[00:03:15] And, yeah, we ran, got out of there, went and told all the parents.

[00:03:20] But I was six.

[00:03:21] My brother was nine at the time.

[00:03:23] The other kids were a little older, 11, 12.

[00:03:26] And we went and told the parents what happened, and they went into the gym,

[00:03:31] and they literally just thought we destroyed all the chairs and stuff.

[00:03:36] Thank you.

[00:03:40] James, thank you for your story.

[00:03:44] Sometimes adults just don't get it.

[00:03:48] Next message.

[00:03:50] Hello, this is Erica from San Diego, California.

[00:03:54] I have a story, but I don't know if it's so much a ghost story as it is a cryptid story.

[00:03:58] My grandparents are Chicano and claim to have Native American roots.

[00:04:06] So we were always told the stories of both cultures, Mexican as well as Native.

[00:04:14] I heard the La Llorona stories and the flesh pedestrian stories, as I like to refer to them now.

[00:04:22] I do not and try not to, as often as possible, speak of them or say their names,

[00:04:28] because we were taught growing up that they do, in fact, draw negative attention.

[00:04:34] One time, my family, we were going through a really hard time in our lives.

[00:04:38] We were homeless, and we were out of a house.

[00:04:43] Our neighbors invited us along to camp with them.

[00:04:47] There was a big annual family camping thing they did every year up in Palmar Mountains.

[00:04:53] So we went, and I'm having such a great time.

[00:04:57] There was myself at, like, 17, and there were a handful of kids in my neighborhood all about the same age as me.

[00:05:04] We all went to school together, so it was so much fun.

[00:05:07] At one point, my dad offered to drive all of us teenagers up the mountain to the observatory.

[00:05:14] So we all agreed.

[00:05:15] We jumped in the minivan that my family brought along, and up the mountain we went.

[00:05:26] My dad's always been a jokester, kind of one to pick and tease.

[00:05:31] He loved to tease my sister and I, the oldest two, because our grandmother had constantly told us those stories

[00:05:39] about flesh pedestrians and shapeshifters and how we don't say their names, we don't mention them.

[00:05:45] But that's my dad.

[00:05:47] He just, he's a jokester.

[00:05:49] So we get up to the top, and he starts talking about them and telling the other teenagers about them.

[00:05:55] And then he, you know, points out a deer, and in the distance, he says, you know, look at that deer.

[00:06:05] We're talking about shapeshifters.

[00:06:08] And suddenly this deer appears.

[00:06:10] How coincidental.

[00:06:11] And I didn't think much of it.

[00:06:14] I'm just irritated at this point that my dad doesn't stop talking about it.

[00:06:20] And then one of my friends picks up a rock and throws it at this deer in the distance.

[00:06:27] Of course, the deer ran away.

[00:06:30] They laughed it off, and we left.

[00:06:33] Well, as we're getting ready to leave the observatory, the top of the mountain, we all get back in our van.

[00:06:40] I'm in the front seat.

[00:06:42] We start driving down the mountain.

[00:06:44] This was broad daylight in the middle of the day, probably like 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

[00:06:50] Everything seems to be fine.

[00:06:52] And suddenly I start to hear a thump, thump, thump to my left.

[00:06:59] And I look over at my dad, who's in the driver's seat.

[00:07:02] And he has this faith of pure horror and terror.

[00:07:08] And he's just scared.

[00:07:11] And that's very weird for me.

[00:07:12] My dad's one of those tough guys who doesn't show feelings.

[00:07:15] So immediately I looked at him, and I see him stomping on the car floor.

[00:07:21] And my teenage brain initially thought, is my dad doing a dance or something?

[00:07:26] Being goofy?

[00:07:27] But when I saw his face, I knew he wasn't being goofy.

[00:07:31] And I asked him, did the brakes go out?

[00:07:35] And he looks at me and shakes his head yet.

[00:07:38] And when I tell you that I have never had a more silent moment in my life than those two minutes

[00:07:46] that we were going down the mountain at 60 miles an hour with no brakes,

[00:07:55] my dad is an excellent driver.

[00:07:57] He's trying to put us into like a dirt bank and like a hill, like a dirt hill on the side of the mountain.

[00:08:05] And it didn't slow us down one bit.

[00:08:07] It actually almost flipped us over.

[00:08:10] But luckily, we managed to get back on all four tires after that.

[00:08:15] But our car would not stop going.

[00:08:19] I really did think I was going to die.

[00:08:22] It felt like more than gravity was pulling us down that mountain.

[00:08:28] And then right towards the end, before the campground entrance, there was about 15 to 20 yards of guardrail.

[00:08:39] My dad, without thinking twice, pushed our minivan, my side of the minivan, into that guardrail.

[00:08:47] And we were going about 60 at this point.

[00:08:52] And it slowed us down to a complete stop.

[00:08:55] No joke about, I'd say, 10 feet before that guardrail ended.

[00:09:01] We were very close to the end.

[00:09:02] And at the end of that guardrail was a drop straight down the mountain.

[00:09:10] So it was terrifying.

[00:09:11] It was the most terrifying experience of my life, of my friends' lives.

[00:09:18] We all know each other still.

[00:09:19] They still live in that same neighborhood that my grandmother lives in, that we used to live in before we lost our home on Mack Street.

[00:09:29] And we still talk about it to this day, how insane it was.

[00:09:32] We talk about how my dad was messing around about flesh pedestrians and saying their names.

[00:09:37] And I kept telling him, don't do that, because Nana told us that when we talk about them, we draw their attention.

[00:09:43] But he just kept joking about it.

[00:09:45] And then that happened.

[00:09:49] Could it have been coincidence that we just so happened to lose brakes that day going down the mountain?

[00:09:55] Possibly.

[00:09:56] That's always a possibility.

[00:09:58] I personally don't think so.

[00:10:01] So my parents, they swear up and down that they did their due diligence and making sure that the car was as good as it needed to be for us to live in it until we could find housing again.

[00:10:16] So they made sure to check that everything was in working order, both under the hood and inside the car.

[00:10:24] And that's one thing that they hold on to.

[00:10:28] They're constantly saying, no, we really don't think it was the car.

[00:10:35] So it's not a ghost story.

[00:10:37] I do have ghost stories, which I will call back with.

[00:10:40] But it is something that any time I hear a story about a flesh pedestrian or a shapeshifter, I can't help but think about my own experience.

[00:10:54] So that's it.

[00:10:56] Thank you so much for offering this platform as a safe space for people like myself to feel a little less crazy about the paranormal and otherworldly experiences they have.

[00:11:13] Take care.

[00:11:19] Erica, thank you for your story.

[00:11:22] That is terrifying.

[00:11:27] Hi, my name is Vicki and I'm from Hammond, Indiana, and I have a ghost story.

[00:11:33] When I was nine years old, my older brother passed away.

[00:11:36] He drowned in Lake Michigan.

[00:11:39] I was the youngest of five at the time and my four other siblings were much older than me.

[00:11:45] My mom and dad used to call me a bonus baby.

[00:11:47] But I was also kind of like an oh shit baby because my mom had me when she was 43 and they already had four kids who were all at least 10 years older than me.

[00:11:57] This is my oldest brother who was actually 18 years older than me at the time.

[00:12:01] And throughout his 20s, he lived back at home with us.

[00:12:05] So at the time he was living in the basement when he had passed away.

[00:12:08] He had a bedroom down there.

[00:12:11] I had always kind of felt like he was going to come back and say goodbye to me.

[00:12:15] And I can't really say why.

[00:12:16] There was just something that told me he was still kind of hanging around.

[00:12:21] I had this really interesting dream the night after he died that he came back and waved to me in the kitchen after everybody had come back there from his funeral.

[00:12:29] And it didn't feel like a dream.

[00:12:31] It felt very real and like he had come to say goodbye.

[00:12:37] So I guess I just always kind of felt like he was hanging around a little bit.

[00:12:40] But now obviously my brother and I were very far apart in age and I was still a kid when he passed.

[00:12:46] But it always felt like there was a little bit of a bond between us.

[00:12:50] So the ghost story part comes in that I had come home from school one day and I was definitely a latchkey kid of the early 90s, right?

[00:13:00] And I had that time that was from like 3 to 5 p.m. that neither of my parents were home yet.

[00:13:06] And we had at the time just gotten, I think, a cordless phone, which was a really big deal, right?

[00:13:13] Back in the day.

[00:13:14] And I was going to maybe take a shower.

[00:13:17] I think I had come home from a practice of some sort or something active.

[00:13:21] I don't know.

[00:13:22] And I would always bring this little portable phone in the bathroom with me just so I had it.

[00:13:26] I don't know.

[00:13:27] It made me feel safe maybe when I was home alone.

[00:13:30] And I had just gotten in the bathroom and the phone starts ringing.

[00:13:34] But it was the phone that hung on our kitchen wall that wasn't quite a rotary phone anymore.

[00:13:39] But, you know, it was an older phone that made like a bring, bring, bring, bring, bring, bring.

[00:13:43] It kept ringing and I ran out of the bathroom to answer it.

[00:13:47] And it was right by the kind of the back door.

[00:13:49] We had like this door that was half glass that we had a back porch and then it went down to the basement.

[00:13:54] But it was all enclosed.

[00:13:56] Anyways, I answered the phone.

[00:13:58] Nobody's there, right?

[00:13:59] I hang it up and I'm walking back to the bathroom.

[00:14:02] And I don't know if it hit me what happened first.

[00:14:06] If it hit me that it was weird that the kitchen phone rang, but the portable phone that I had in the bathroom didn't ring.

[00:14:13] But I'm walking back to the bathroom.

[00:14:15] I'm in this kind of back hall.

[00:14:16] And very clearly, as clear as day, I hear my brothers say, Vicki.

[00:14:25] And it sounded like he was right behind me.

[00:14:27] To this day, I regret I didn't turn around.

[00:14:30] But I was so scared at the time, which is interesting because I did know that it was him.

[00:14:37] And so maybe there was nothing to be scared of.

[00:14:38] But I was still only nine years old.

[00:14:41] And I guess it was just a confirmation that I had felt like it was going to happen.

[00:14:45] But it was months later that this happened after he passed.

[00:14:48] So I darted into the bathroom, slammed the door.

[00:14:52] I sit down with my back against the door.

[00:14:54] And I called my mom at work.

[00:14:56] I didn't tell my mom at the time what happened because I didn't know if she would believe me or want to hear it.

[00:15:02] And we didn't really talk about what happened at all, frankly.

[00:15:07] So I just called and told her I was home from school.

[00:15:09] And, you know, I just felt better hearing her voice.

[00:15:12] And I stayed in the bathroom until either I can't remember her or my dad came home from work, you know, an hour later or whatever after 5 o'clock.

[00:15:20] So I never turned around.

[00:15:22] It never happened again.

[00:15:24] And I sort of felt after that like he was gone.

[00:15:28] And I don't know why it didn't happen again or what the point was.

[00:15:35] It didn't really feel like closure because I didn't turn around and see him.

[00:15:39] But also what I noticed is when I got to the bathroom was that phone that I brought in there, that portable phone, right?

[00:15:44] It did not ring.

[00:15:46] So I felt very like I had been drawn out of the bathroom.

[00:15:48] I had been drawn to the phone in the kitchen to the back door down to his bedroom in the basement where he used to live.

[00:15:56] Like he was trying to get me out to say goodbye.

[00:15:59] So that's my ghost story.

[00:16:04] Thank you for calling in, Vicki from Indiana.

[00:16:08] And thank you for sharing about your brother.

[00:16:11] I think you did what any 9-year-old would do in that situation.

[00:16:16] And that's okay.

[00:16:19] That's all we have this week, folks.

[00:16:21] Do you have a ghost story?

[00:16:24] Call 701-484-2666.

[00:16:32] That's 701-484-2666.

[00:16:40] Or go to tellmeaghoststory.com and leave your story there.

[00:16:46] Go ahead and leave me a five-star review wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:16:50] Was something particularly scary in this episode?

[00:16:53] Or maybe you've had a similar experience.

[00:16:56] Leave your comments via our Spotify page.

[00:17:00] Thank you to all the callers who left messages this week.

[00:17:04] And as always, I'm your host, Michelle Newman.

[00:17:09] Signing off.

[00:17:10] See you next week.

[00:17:14] Bye.

[00:17:14] Bye.

[00:17:14] Bye.

[00:17:14] Bye.

[00:17:14] Bye.

[00:17:15] Bye.

[00:17:15] Bye.

[00:17:15] Thank you.