Hey, it's Michelle Newman, and this week's four calls have stayed with me longer than most. Let's get into them.
Scott from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, calls in with a true ghost story from his time stationed in Southern California. Required to attend a military funeral at a San Diego cemetery, he and four others were standing in the parking lot after most people had left when they all smelled formaldehyde at once. Strong enough to be physically sickening. Coming from a little boy walking the cemetery grounds in blue pajamas that looked like they were from the seventies. His feet were not quite touching the grass. He gave the five of them an angry look, and every instinct said run. They ran to their cars. As they drove away, every single one of them checked the rearview mirror, and every single one of them saw the same boy vanish at the exact same moment. Five military witnesses. One disappearance. No explanation.
James from San Francisco returns with his second call to Tell Me A Ghost Story. He lives in the building where Dashiell Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon and has been sharing it for twenty years with the ghost of his cat Meow who died after almost two decades together. He feels her crawl onto the mattress at night. He sees the indentations where her weight compresses the surface. His living cats react to the same spot with calm recognition rather than fear. She comes back. He is certain of it.
Chase from Mesa, Arizona, returns with his second call. His first was about the disembodied voice in a Kansas basement that asked hey do you know me twice and waited for an answer. This story is from the same house. One evening, the group was downstairs when they heard the aluminum screen door open and slam, and then footsteps cross the living room above them and stop. Chase's brother ran upstairs, thinking it was his girlfriend. The footsteps moved into one of the bedrooms. His brother came back down with Oreos and no girlfriend and no explanation. Ten minutes passed before anyone said it out loud. The screen door had opened. The footsteps had crossed the floor. Something had gone into that bedroom. Nobody was there.
Ashley from Washington State calls in with the heaviest call of the episode. She used to walk her dog Biscuit along a trail near the Green River, the same stretch of river where Gary Ridgway left his victims for years before they were found. One night, Biscuit stopped and would not move. Ashley looked down and found something long, pale, and curved in the weeds beside the bank. She told herself it was a branch. Something bone-like about it would not let her walk away. She called the police. They came. They bagged it. The older officer looked at her the way people look when they are deciding how much to tell you, and said they needed to run tests. Ashley knows what was found along that river during those years. She does not know what Biscuit found that night. She has wondered ever since whether something like that is ever truly over or whether the land just always remembers.
00:00 Intro
00:00:15 Scott from Pittsburgh, and the boy in the blue pajamas
00:04:25 James from San Francisco and the ghost cat named Meow
00:07:04 Chase from Mesa, Arizona, and the phantom footsteps in Kansas
00:11:45 Ashley from Washington State and the dog named Biscuit near the Green River
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.
You might end up on the show.