Tell Me A Ghost Story

Latest Episodes:

True Ghost Stories: Dave Brings Something Home from Oahu and Chelsi's Mother Won't Believe the Vibes Are Off Apr 25, 2024

Show notes

This is one of the original Tell Me A Ghost Story calls from the early days of the show. Short, raw, and exactly where it all started. These calls were later incorporated into a longer compilation episode with full host commentary if you want the complete experience.

Hey, it's Michelle, and this early episode has two true ghost stories that both involve the specific frustration of knowing something is wrong and not being able to convince the people around you of it. One caller brought something home with him from Hawaii without realizing it. One caller knew her mother's house had a problem and could not get her mother to take it seriously.

Dave returns to Tell Me A Ghost Story with a real paranormal encounter that began in Oahu and followed him back to the mainland. Hawaii has one of the richest and most layered supernatural traditions of any place in the United States, a living Indigenous spiritual culture that predates Western contact by centuries and that treats the relationship between the living and the dead with a seriousness and specificity that mainstream American culture rarely matches. When people visit Hawaii and bring something home with them, it tends not to be something they chose to carry. Dave did not know he had picked anything up until he was already back, and things in his own space began to feel different in ways he could not attribute to jet lag or imagination.

Then Chelsi calls in with a haunted house story that has an additional layer of difficulty built into it. The house belonged to her mother. The vibes, as Chelsi describes them, were profoundly off from the moment she set foot in it. Something in that house was not right, and Chelsi felt it clearly and consistently every time she was there. Her mother did not feel it. Or did not want to. The specific dynamic of trying to convince a skeptical family member that their home has a paranormal problem while that family member continues to live comfortably inside it is one of the most recognizable experiences in the ghost story community and Chelsi's version of it has a warmth and exasperation that will resonate with anyone who has ever known something was wrong in a space and been unable to make the people they love believe them.

Two real callers. Two true ghost stories about what happens when you sense something that the people around you cannot or will not see. This is where Tell Me A Ghost Story began.

If you 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.

Support us with official merch at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠newmanmedia.shop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, catch us on YouTube at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @tellmeaghoststory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and follow along on Instagram at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@tellmeaghoststorypodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.

Production by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newman Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

True Ghost Stories: Roc Returns with the Woman Crying on the Sidewalk in the Middle of the Night Apr 11, 2024

Show notes

This is one of the original Tell Me A Ghost Story calls from the early days of the show. Short, raw, and exactly where it all started. This call was later incorporated into a longer compilation episode with full host commentary, if you want the complete experience.

Hey, it's Michelle, and Roc is back. If you heard his last call about the man shot outside his grandparents' motel in Pomona, the spirit at the bedroom window at 3 AM, the phantom phone calls from a disconnected booth, and the spiritual cleansing that may or may not have worked, you already know that Roc's life has had more paranormal contact in it than most people experience in a lifetime. This is his next chapter.

Roc was outside in the middle of the night when he saw a woman crying on the sidewalk. That is the kind of thing that most people would approach carefully and with concern. A woman alone. Visibly distressed. In the middle of the night. Roc went toward her because that is what you do. What happened when he got close enough to see her properly is what he called in to tell us about, and it is the kind of real ghost encounter that reframes everything that came before it in his story.

The question the original description asks is exactly the right one. What would you do if you saw a woman crying on the sidewalk in the middle of the night? The answer most people give before they hear Roc's call is different from the answer they give after.

One returning caller. One true ghost story about a woman on a sidewalk who was not what she appeared to be. This is where Tell Me A Ghost Story began.

You might end up on the show.

Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.

Production by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newman Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

True Ghost Stories: A Dead Man Calls from a Phone Booth and a Spirit Returns to a Family Restaurant with David and Roc Apr 03, 2024

Show notes

Hey, it's Michelle, and this early episode has two true ghost stories that both circle the same unbearable truth. Some spirits cannot leave the place where something terrible happened to them, and some of them will find ways to make sure the living know they are still there.

David returns to Tell Me A Ghost Story with a deeply personal real paranormal encounter connected to his family's restaurant and a young man named Bobby, who was his late brother's friend. After Bobby's death, strange things began happening in the attic above the restaurant. A presence. A cold that had no ventilation explanation. The specific sensation of being observed by something that knew the space as well as the family did. Then, years later, a stranger walked in who knew Bobby's name. Had never met the family. Had no way of knowing who Bobby was. And knew his name anyway. David has carried this story for a long time, and the telling of it makes clear that Bobby never entirely left that restaurant or the people who loved his friend.

Then, Roc from Orange County calls in with one of the most layered and sustained real ghost encounters in the entire early archive. Roc witnessed a man being shot outside his grandparents' motel in Pomona. What followed was years of contact from that man's spirit that escalated in ways Roc could not predict and could not stop. The spirit appeared at his bedroom window at 3 AM with the regularity of something that had a schedule. Then the phone calls started, coming from the phone booth outside the motel, the same phone booth where the man had been shot, long after that booth had been removed and the line disconnected. Disembodied voices pleading for help. Heavy bootsteps pacing outside at night. A grandfather who recognized what was happening and performed a spiritual cleansing to try to end it.

Whether the cleansing worked is the question Roc's episode leaves open, and it is the right question to leave open because the honest answer is that Roc is not entirely sure and that uncertainty is more frightening than a clean resolution would be.

Two real callers. Two true ghost stories about spirits who stayed where tragedy found them and the living who had to figure out what to do about it. This is where Tell Me A Ghost Story began.

You might end up on the show.

Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.

Production by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newman Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

True Ghost Stories: A Murdered Child's Spirit Appears at Alana's Bedside in La Ronge Saskatchewan Mar 27, 2024

Show notes

Hey, it's Michelle, and this early episode belongs entirely to Alana from Edmonton, Alberta, who called in with a true ghost story that moved me in a way I was not entirely prepared for. It is frightening in places. It is heartbreaking in others. And it is one of the most emotionally complete real paranormal encounters in the entire early archive.

Alana was sixteen years old when she visited her biological mother's home in La Ronge, Saskatchewan, a trip that was already emotionally complicated before anything supernatural happened. Strange things began almost immediately. A ball rolling across the room on its own. The persistent and specific sensation of being watched from somewhere she could not identify. The gradual accumulation of small, inexplicable moments that on their own could be explained away, and together could not.

Then a little boy appeared at her bedside. He was clear enough that Alana could see him properly. He asked her why she cried at night. The question itself is as haunting as the appearance because it meant he had been watching her while she slept, aware of her grief in a way that went beyond simple presence. Alana later learned that a child had been murdered in that house. The boy at her bedside was his spirit, and he had been there long before Alana arrived and would be there long after she left.

But Alana's story does not end with the murdered child. She also shares a visit from her deceased grandmother during that same stay, a presence that arrived with a completely different energy from the boy at the bedside. Where the child's spirit carried the weight of a violent and unresolved death, the grandmother's visit felt like something else entirely, the specific warmth of someone who came because they wanted to rather than because they were bound to. Alana's sensitivity to the supernatural is evident throughout her call, and the range of what she experienced in that one house in La Ronge in a single visit is extraordinary.

One caller. One true ghost story about grief, a murdered child's spirit, and a grandmother who came to say something that needed to be said. This is where Tell Me A Ghost Story began.

You might end up on the show.

Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.

Production by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newman Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

True Ghost Stories: A Historic Mansion in Denver, a Disembodied Voice in New Paltz, and a Girl in an Unfinished Painting Mar 20, 2024

Show notes

Hey, it's Michelle, and this early episode has two true ghost stories from two callers who both found themselves alone in historic buildings with something that wanted them to know it was there. One of them had a door open behind him. One of them was told to get out.

Jacob calls in with a real paranormal encounter from his time working on a paranormal television show, the second caller in the early archive has professional ghost hunting experience, and his story takes place in a historic mansion in Denver, where he was alone on the third floor. Jacob began noticing that the building was responding to him. Sounds that echoed his movements. An activity that seemed to track where he was in the room. And then a door behind him slowly creaked open with no one on the other side. What Jacob experienced is what paranormal researchers call ghostly mimicry, the specific and deeply unsettling phenomenon where a spirit appears to observe and respond to the behavior of the living rather than simply existing alongside them. Something in that Denver mansion was paying attention to Jacob specifically, and it wanted him to know it.

Then David calls in with a haunting experience from the Huguenot Street Historic Site in New Paltz, New York, one of the oldest documented settlement sites in the United States, with a history that runs back to the late 1600s. David was on a tour of the property when he heard a voice behind him tell him to get out. He turned around. There was nothing behind him but a wall. The voice was clear. The instruction was direct. David was not alone in hearing it.

The detail that gives David's story an additional layer is the painting. A portrait of a girl who died before her portrait could be completed hangs in one of the Huguenot homes, a piece of art frozen at the moment of her death with the specific weight that unfinished things carry when the person they were made for never got to see them completed. Whether the voice David heard was connected to that girl or to the four centuries of history compressed into that stretch of New Paltz stone is something the episode does not resolve. The voice was real. That is what matters.

Two real callers. Two true ghost stories from a Denver mansion and a 17th-century settlement in New York, where something spoke out loud to a man standing alone against a wall. This is where Tell Me A Ghost Story began.

You might end up on the show.

Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.

Production by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newman Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

True Ghost Stories: A Paranormal TV Crew Member's Real Ghost Encounter in a Haunted Tattoo Shop in Chicago Mar 13, 2024

Show notes

Hey, it's Michelle, and this early episode belongs entirely to Jimmy, who called in with a true ghost story that carries a particular kind of weight because of who he is and what he does for a living. Jimmy has worked as a crew member on multiple paranormal television shows. He has been in haunted locations professionally. He has watched investigators react to things he himself could not see or feel. He went into a haunted tattoo shop basement in Chicago as a skeptic, and he did not come out of it the same way.

Jimmy was in the basement of a haunted tattoo shop in Chicago when he felt something push him from behind. Not a brush. Not a suggestion of contact. A push, with the specific physical sensation of having stepped on someone's toes and having them respond to it. He turned around. There was no one there. For a man who had spent years on paranormal television sets watching other people have experiences he could professionally document without personally believing, this was a different kind of moment.

The psychic working on the paranormal TV show that was filming in the tattoo shop that day described the stairwell leading to the basement as a supernatural highway, a concentrated corridor of paranormal activity where spirits move through rather than settle. That description is consistent with what researchers have documented in other locations where activity concentrates in transitional spaces, stairwells, doorways, hallways, and thresholds between floors, rather than distributing evenly through a building. Jimmy was pushed in exactly that kind of space.

Haunted tattoo shops have been reported across the United States with a consistency that researchers find difficult to attribute to coincidence, possibly connected to the intensity of human experience and emotion that concentrates in spaces where people permanently mark their bodies in meaningful ways. Chicago's paranormal history runs deep, and the South Side in particular has a documented supernatural geography that predates the city's modern development by generations. Jimmy's tattoo shop sits inside all of that history, whether the shop's current owners know it or not.

One caller. One true ghost story from behind the scenes of paranormal television and a basement in Chicago that pushed back. This is where Tell Me A Ghost Story began.

You might end up on the show.

Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.

Production by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newman Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

True Ghost Stories: A Haunted Bank in Connecticut and a Cowboy Ghost in a Childhood Fort with Dave and Brittany Mar 06, 2024

Show notes

Hey, it's Michelle, and this early episode has two true ghost stories that share something I find endlessly fascinating about the paranormal. Neither of these encounters happened in a place you would expect. Not a cemetery. Not an abandoned house. Not a famously haunted hotel. A bank. And a fort made of cushions. The supernatural does not wait for the right setting.

Dave from Connecticut calls in with a real ghost encounter rooted in a childhood fear that followed him all the way into adulthood when he ended up working in the very building that had unsettled him as a kid. The bank had a presence that Dave felt long before he could articulate what it was, the specific unease of a building that holds more history than its walls want to contain. Working there as an adult gave him a different kind of access to that history, and what he learned about the building did nothing to ease what he had felt there since childhood. Some buildings carry what happened inside them, and Dave's bank was one of them.

Then Brittany returns with her second call to Tell Me A Ghost Story, and if you heard her first episode about the translucent men tapping on the bay windows at midnight, you already know that Brittany's childhood was unusually eventful from a paranormal standpoint. This time, she takes us back to a fort she had built out of cushions, the kind of enclosed childhood space that is supposed to feel safe and protected, and the shadowy figure that appeared inside it. The figure looked like a cowboy. It was specific enough in its appearance that Brittany has never forgotten what it looked like and never found a satisfying explanation for what it was doing in her cushion fort in the middle of the night.

Two real callers. Two true ghost stories from a Connecticut bank and a childhood bedroom that prove the paranormal has no interest in waiting for a dramatic location. This is where Tell Me A Ghost Story began.

You might end up on the show.

Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.

Production by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newman Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

True Ghost Stories: A Skinwalker in Arizona and a Spirit Orb in Austin Texas with Nicole and Lauren Feb 27, 2024

Show notes

Hey, it's Michelle, and this early episode has two real paranormal encounters that sit at opposite ends of the supernatural spectrum. One is ancient and terrifying and rooted in Indigenous tradition. One is quiet and strange and connected to a man who apparently never left the house he loved. Both of them are real.

Nicole from Wilcox, Arizona, calls in with a skinwalker encounter on her property that converted her husband from a lifelong skeptic into a believer in a single moment. Skinwalkers are among the most feared supernatural entities in Navajo tradition, shapeshifting figures associated with witchcraft and malevolent intent whose name many practitioners of that tradition will not speak aloud. Nicole heard a voice on her property that was imitating her daughter. Not approximating. Not resembling. Imitating, with the specific accuracy that makes skinwalker encounters so deeply disturbing to anyone who has experienced one. Her husband heard it too. He has not been skeptical since.

Then Lauren from Austin, Texas, calls in with a real ghost encounter of a completely different register. A black orb appeared to her while she was visiting her boyfriend's house, a presence connected to the spirit of the man who had owned the home before and who apparently had not finished being there. Spirit orbs are one of the most debated phenomena in paranormal research, and Michelle walks through the genuine differences between dust particles caught on camera and the kind of intentional, focused presence that Lauren encountered, the kind that moves with purpose and appears in response to being acknowledged.

Two real callers. Two true paranormal stories from two completely different corners of the supernatural world. A skinwalker in the Arizona desert and a spirit orb in a house in Austin that its previous owner never entirely left. This is where Tell Me A Ghost Story began.

You might end up on the show.

Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.

Production by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newman Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

True Ghost Stories: Translucent Men Tapping on the Glass at Midnight in Brittany's Childhood Home Feb 13, 2024

Show notes

Hey, it's Michelle, and this early episode belongs entirely to Brittany, who called in with a true ghost story from her childhood that is one of the most visually specific and genuinely unsettling real ghost encounters in the entire early archive. The image she describes has not left me since the first time I heard it.

Brittany woke from a nightmare in the middle of the night and did what children do. She got up to find her parents. The route to their room took her past the bay windows, and that is where everything changed. Outside the glass, in the dark, were translucent figures of men. Not shadows. Not shapes. Translucent men with enough visible form that Brittany could see them clearly and could see what they were doing. They were tapping on the glass. Deliberately. Insistently. As if they knew she was there and wanted her to acknowledge it.

One of the figures was slightly behind the others. He was pushing a bicycle. That detail, the man with the bicycle lagging at the edge of the group, is the kind of specific and inexplicable image that cannot be manufactured by a frightened child's imagination because a frightened child's imagination does not produce something that mundane alongside something that terrifying. It is too specific and too strange to be anything other than something Brittany actually saw.

She did not stand there and watch them. She got down on the floor and crawled across the room to get away from the windows, staying below the line of sight the entire way. That is not the behavior of someone who is embellishing a dream. That is the behavior of someone who is genuinely trying not to be seen by something that is already looking for her.

One caller. One true ghost story about translucent men tapping on a bay window at midnight and the child who crawled across the floor to escape them. This is where Tell Me A Ghost Story began.

You might end up on the show.

Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.

Production by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newman Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

True Ghost Stories: Footsteps on the Roof at the Haunted Palace Hotel in Port Townsend Washington Feb 07, 2024

Show notes

Hey, it's Michelle, and this early episode belongs entirely to Maggie from Washington, who called in with a true ghost story about a birthday getaway to Port Townsend that started romantic and ended with her and her husband lying awake in the dark listening to footsteps coming from a floor that did not exist above them.

Port Townsend is one of the most historically documented paranormal destinations in the Pacific Northwest, a Victorian seaport town whose architecture and history have accumulated the kind of layered supernatural activity that draws investigators and skeptics in equal numbers. The Palace Hotel sits at the center of that history. Built as a brothel in the late 1800s, the Palace has one of the most extensively documented haunting records of any hotel in Washington State, with activity reported consistently across decades by guests who had no prior knowledge of the building's history before they checked in.

Maggie and her husband were on the top floor. There were no guests above them. The hotel confirmed it. And yet the footsteps kept coming, slow and deliberate, moving across the ceiling of their room with the specific weight and rhythm of something that knew exactly where it was going. The couple did what most people do in that situation. They tried to explain it away. Old building. Settling wood. Pipes. The Palace Hotel is indeed an old building. But old buildings do not walk.

What Maggie describes in her call is a real ghost encounter that built slowly and then all at once, the specific pattern of haunted hotel activity where the rational explanations run out one by one until there is nothing left but the sound above your head and no one there to be making it.

One caller. One true ghost story from one of the most haunted hotels in the Pacific Northwest. This is where Tell Me A Ghost Story began.

You might end up on the show.

Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.

Production by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newman Media⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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