Hey, it's Michelle, and tonight's three calls each come from a completely different kind of in-between place. Let's get into them.
Larissa from Texas calls in from her time working as an investigator at a medical examiner's office. She named the presence Frank. Frank has a pocket watch. He wears dress shoes. He walks the hallway with the unhurried energy of someone at a threshold who 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 at 1 AM instead of down the hallway where Frank usually roams, the coworker clocked out and went home. Medical examiner offices are among the most consistently reported paranormal workplaces in documented research. They are threshold spaces by design, and some presences choose to linger rather than cross. Frank has been keeping time in that hallway for a while, and he is in absolutely no hurry. I can't wait to hear more of your stories.
Anne from St Paul, Minnesota, calls in from her work as a residential cleaner. Left alone in a client's home, she was scrubbing cabinets when she heard it clearly in an empty room. Thank you. The client's cat is in dialysis and not doing well. 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." Place attachment research suggests that spaces where intense caregiving occurs absorb and hold emotional residue over time. Whatever is in that house, noticed that someone came to take care of the space while its person is carrying something heavy. Anne, if the weird things keep getting weirder, please call back.
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 somehow gets stranger from there. He and his friend John broke into an abandoned 1920s pavilion to survive, wrapping themselves in burlap sacks in the basement while their hair froze solid. Then, from above them, they heard big band music. Dozens of voices. Clinking glasses. Someone at a microphone. The full sound of a packed New Year's Eve celebration above a dance floor covered in undisturbed filth and snow with no people, no band, and no footprints. 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, confirming each other's perceptions in real time with matching specific detail. Residual haunting, the paranormal category where a space replays its most emotionally concentrated memories like a recording, fits what Gary and John heard far better. The pavilion absorbed decades of communal celebration, 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. Gary does not know what that was. Neither do I.
00:00 Intro
00:00 Larissa from Texas and the pocket watch ghost named Frank
04:09 Anne from St Paul Minnesota and the house that said thank you
07:01 Gary D from Southern Ontario and the abandoned dance hall
Have a real ghost story of your own? Call 1 (701) 484-2666 or visit tellmeaghoststory.com.
You might end up on the show.