Halloween…. The night of the year when the veil between the living and those who have died is the thinnest. For Wiccan and Pagan communities, it is a time of celebration. For those cultures who celebrate Halloween it is more commonly known as a night when kids and kids at heart dress up in costumes and the kids go trick or treating, and the adults have parties.

It  falls on October 31 because the ancient Gaelic festival of Samhain, considered the earliest known root of Halloween, occurred on this day. It marked a pivotal time of year when seasons changed, but (more importantly) observers also believed the boundary between this world and the next became especially thin at this time, enabling them to connect with the dead. This belief is shared by some other cultures. It’s a night where it has become tradition to hear or tell ghost stories, watch horror movies, and generally scare ourselves and have fun doing it.

We here in the Southern Hemisphere haven’t really had Halloween as such a huge thing like it is in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in the USA. But some do celebrate it here. So in honour of the season and the fact that there are two Halloween eves in the world, one in each hemisphere of the world. I am having special episodes of the Walking the Shadowlands podcasts. One today for our Halloweens eve and one tomorrow for the Northern Hemispheres Halloween eve. Two nights of genuine ghost stories and paranormal experiences.

For those who have been following my podcast will know that in the first season of this show I did share some ghost stories and paranormal experiences that people had sent in and because I have so many new listeners who may not have heard them, I’m going to re-share some of those stories, along with a whole pile of new ones. So, get your nice warm cuppa tea, or coffee, or favourite tipple. And, your rug if it’s cold where you are. Or your…. What!?! Did you just hear a noise then? Did you hear that? Oh must have just been my imagination….

Are you ready to walk with me, into this part of the shadowlands and see what awaits us there? Are you brave enough? Then let’s begin!

Tatiana – Arizona.

My name is Tatiana and I am from Arizona, USA. The wild west, so it takes a bit to scare me. But, when I graduated from high school, I was about eighteen, just about to turn nineteen years old, I decided to go to New York city to visit my grandparents and to visit my friend Anna who lived up there.  And it was a pretty normal visit. Went to Queen’s, saw the sights. Went to Manhattan, just a pretty good time.

Staying with my friend Anna one night, her and her dog – Tippy, who was an adorable little pit-bull.  Very protective, very sweet. Good little dog. And Anna tells me she was suddenly called into go to work early the next morning. We were planning on hanging out, but we were going to have to change plans. She asked if I’d just stay in the apartment for that morning and hang out with the dog. She gave me her Netflix password. You know, it was pretty chill. Normal friend stuff. And of course I said yes. You can’t keep your friend from going to work. And I’d always felt pretty safe in the apartment. It was a fairly normal place.

But, so I’m there the next morning. Me and the dog hang out. Have a bowl of cereal together. Watch some TV.  And suddenly the dog jumps off the couch with this kind of high-pitched yip and runs to the kitchen. At just like a ninety-degree angle off of the living room, so I couldn’t see into the kitchen. And she’s in the kitchen and she’s growling. And I start freaking out, and I think we’re on an upper floor of the apartment building. But, maybe there’s somebody trying to climb in the window. Somebodies about to get in and hurt me. So, I follow the dog to see what’s going on.

And when I get in, I see a shadow figure! I’d never seen one before, didn’t know what it was. Didn’t know what was going on. But, it just looked like a three dimensional shadow. A person. Kind of tall, maybe six-one, six-two? Taller than me and I’m six feet, so…. You know, it was a little odd just to see that as well? And I gasped, I think. I was just shocked and this thing rolled around and turned and looked at me. And there’s this natural human response when you’re shocked, to put your hands up and in front of your face. And that’s what this thing did. It’s hands just went up, kind of over it’s head. And it took kind of a step back, as if it were really shocked to see me, and to see that I could see it.

And, I didn’t feel cold. I didn’t feel terrified. I just felt shocked and the dog got inbetween me and the thing and started growling and barking at it. All I could think of to say in the moment, was get out! Get out! This isn’t your home. This isn’t where you belong. You don’t go here anymore! Leave! Just leave! And the thing slowly turned and walked straight through the kitchen wall and left.

I was shaken and I sat down. I hadn’t been huge on the paranormal before then, but I knew my friend Anna was. So I didn’t actually tell her and she still doesn’t know to this day what I saw in her house. But, that was a terrifying experience for me and something that really made me come to know that the paranormal’s out there and it’s real and scary as all getout!

My Personal Story _ Waxhaw NC.

At that time, I was living in the states. In a small town called Waxhaw, about 30 minutes out of Charlotte, North Carolina. It was mid morning. It was daylight, broad daylight and I was sitting in our sunroom resting, because I had just hurt my back and could barely move. It was bit of a mission for me to get on and off the chair, it took me a few minutes. I definitely couldn’t just leap up off of my chair like I would have normally.

So I was just sitting there, feeling rather sorry for myself, reading and just resting. When out of the corner of my left eye I see this large blond, vaguely familiar woman, standing on the other side of our decking. I saw her from the waist up.  Which was actually impossible (but I didn’t even consider this at the time), because of the height of the decking from the ground. It would have made her about twelve feet tall. I did a double take when I realised she was smiling broadly at me and waving to get my attention.

I smiled, waved back at her and called out to Jay in the next room. I told him there was someone on our property who was wanting our attention. Could he please check? And at the same time I turned to look at him in the other room. When I turned back to look at her she had gone. I assumed that because I had acknowledged her, that she had now gone to the front door of our house. However, as Jay was on the way to the front door to check if she was there the phone rang. It was my Mother-in-Law to say that she had just heard from Rhonda, my then sister-in-law, that Rhonda’s mum was critically ill in hospital.  That was when I realised it was her, that I had actually just seen.

I didn’t recognise her initially, because she looked younger and far healthier than when I had last seen her. I said to Jay, no, no. She’s not ill. She’s actually passed away, because that’s who I just saw. Then, at that minute, the phone rang again and it was to say that they had just received news that she had passed over. You have to understand that I rarely, perhaps a handful of times in my life, have seen spirit that look absolutely solid, like a living person. And she, was one of them.

I realised afterwards, that she had come to tell me she was ok, so I could pass that onto her daughter, Rhonda. Because, she knew I was a medium and would likely be able to see her, to pass the message on. So that was one of my more interesting experiences I have had in broad daylight.

Belinda’s Story

This is Belinda’s story. The beginning experiences in a major haunting episode. A period of a number of years where she was tormented and haunted by entities who traumatised her and later her daughter as well. The full episode was called “A Haunting in Australia” You can listen to the full story in that episode.

I moved into a unit on the central coast, in New South Wales, in Australia. From the very first night I moved in there it felt very uneasy. I didn’t feel comfortable, like I was constantly watched, and I especially didn’t feel comfortable being in my bedroom. I felt like I needed an easy escape route kind of thing, so I slept on the lounge in the lounge room.

So the very first night, I remember laying on the lounge, and I woke. And there was a tall, long-haired, solid man with a flannelette jacket walked in my entrance door. And closely followed behind him was a shorter man with a bald head. My eyes felt all groggy, and I swore it was just a dream but I think… so I went back to sleep and woke again, and saw the same people, but they were in shadow form now. And I remember looking up and just seeing the short balder guy sitting on my TV in shadow form and he just went “shhhh” (Finger to mouth), like that at me.

Almost every night I was in this house, in this unit, I would have that feeling. I would have that feeling of… so, so if you were to close your eyes and hold your hand an inch or so above your skin and you can feel that there’s an energy force there? I would have that feeling. Like there was someone behind me. I would sleep with the covers over my head, tucked under my feet. I’d have the fan going 24/7 just to have background noise and block out something, and I would just hear – just have that feeling constantly.

I had multiple situations with these same beings all the time. And then it escalated one night where I actually had a very – yeah, a very scary encounter. I woke to tapping on the roof, or … ‘cause, I was on the bottom level of a multi-level apartment. I just assumed it was a couple upstairs having a dispute. I woke to hear (stomping her feet), on the floor, ceiling above my bed.  And it went again just (stomping her feet again). It went two or three times and then it stopped. And then, they went again! Then I heard running across the floor above me, and the door above me slamming and people running (Belinda, stomping feet) down the stairs. And then, the loudest bang! Which I thought was on my front door. But it could have been on my bedroom door. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

I freaked! I didn’t know what to do!  It was about three or four in the morning. I ended up ringing the police, and they attended, and no one answered the door upstairs. They weren’t sure if someone was in there. There was no sound of movement up there, and I later come to find out, that I think that – that place was actually unoccupied. So, I don’t know if what I – I don’t know if what I encountered was a replay of a domestic situation? But it was very, very frightening.

A few nights later I was laying in bed, again I saw…  And the door handle started to slowly creak up and down, just…. It wasn’t a round knob. It was kind of one of those side… kind of like a… I don’t know what you call it? A lengthways handle, and it was slowly creaking. Yeah –  up and down, and then it just slammed down and the door swung open. The door frame was empty for a second and then this, the tall shadow being with the long hair was there, and then he just lunged at my bed in a shadow-blanket form. I was so petrified – I’m even shaking a bit now just thinking about it. My whole body just shook. It was the middle of winter, and I was sweating and felt like I had a fever. It was, it was terrible.

 I remember telling one of my bosses about it and she believed, she believes in the spirit world. She said, “I don’t know who that is, but whoever it is, they do not want you in there. You need to get out right away!” That didn’t help at all! So, yeah within – I gave my notice pretty much straight away, and every morning I would wake up just in tears, like grateful that I made it through the night. It was really… I don’t know who it was… I have a feeling now, that it may have been to do with – there’s a men’s rehab facility next door, a woman’s refuge across the road from the hospital. I think it was to do with someone who had overdosed. And yeah, these two beings they just were nasty and really enjoyed terrifying me.

So I got out of that. God, that was when I was twenty-two or so, I’m now almost 37. But, it still gives me chills recalling that.

Sammy from New Zealand

About 14 years ago we stayed in a hotel suite we had booked on the Gold Coast, we were booked for a week, but after arriving late at night, staying that first night with 2yr old daughter and mother-in-law we checked out early the next morning, lost a lot of money and found a new hotel room.

That first night I could not sleep, I was filled with such bad energy, this crushing feeling of dread and malevolence. so bad that I got my two-year-old into the bed to co sleep with me and hubby, and I would doze off and dream of her climbing up on the window sill, and falling out the 7th floor window, dreams so real I would wake up with tears and shaking and not sleep again for another hour. Early the next morning as I was sat drinking coffee trying to work out a way to get us out of there, without hubby getting upset over the costs, and my mother-in-law getting pissy having to re-locate. hubby comes out dressed and shoes on, I asked what’s going on? He says ‘we can’t stay here, I’m gonna go find us somewhere else, hurry up, get mum up, start packing be ready to leave when I get back.’  His mum was already awake, clearly upset to. we were washed up, packed and waiting downstairs within 25mins.

The whole day we were ‘shell-shocked'(?) we didn’t talk about that first hotel room. but the next night over a couple of beers I said to hubby how glad I was to get out of there. It was like an open flood-gate. we all opened up offloaded with each other.

The three of us all experienced that same dread feeling, the same bad dreams of my little girl falling out of the window (we all dreamt of the same window by the top of the stairs of the suite), we all slept very, very badly, and all woke up knowing we couldn’t stay there another night. Hubby said he had woken up felt like someone was sitting on his chest, he couldn’t breathe. The rest of the week we would detour the longest way around not to have to drive past this hotel. Even as I type this I am getting chills and hairs up on the back of my neck….

Jasmine from New Zealand

So I’m Jasmine and my experiences with paranormal began when I was quite young. So it happened when my sister passed away. My younger sister passed away in two thousand and one. She had a seizure in the bathtub. Between the time it took for my dad to answer the door and for me to get there, she had already passed. And so, I was sort of the first person on the scene and saw her. I was five years old when that happened.

After that I experienced a lot of unusual things that were happening, that related back to her behaviour when she was alive. We had a sliding door in our bathroom for instance, and we had to shove a wooden wedge in it so she couldn’t get into the bathroom. After she passed away, we took it out for convenience and I would hear her running up and down the hall way, opening and closing the door. That happened, basically every day.

I experienced her as if she had actually never left.  I heard her laugh, or could feel her there, but I never seen her physically. Sorry, it’s a bit hard to… but yeah, it’s getting easier to talk about which is good. And I think, this feels really important to do.

So yeah, these experiences, they continued basically everyday. And because I was quite young, I didn’t really understand what I was experiencing, and because I never seen a physical form I just always heard or felt things, I couldn’t identify that with being her. So I was quite terrified of what that could have been. Or even the idea of a ghost.  You know as a child I always thought that was a scary thing, or a bad thing. And my family, my parents were still very young so probably a bit uncomfortable talking about it and probably quite in shock about some of the things that were happening as well.

Didn’t really speak openly about it with me, and it wasn’t until a close family friend – who I actually call an uncle spoke to me and had heard about… from my parents what I was experiencing and he spoke to me and told me that it… that I didn’t have to be scared, because it was my sister. Knowing that, sort of flicked a switch in my mind, where it went from being really fearful and actually quite scared of what was happening, to actually feeling quite relieved. And actually almost happy, cause in a way she hadn’t gone and um, you know, that was a nice feeling for me, that I could still experience her there.

Even though I didn’t completely understand what was happening, I was still quite happy that it was happening to me because, not all the members in my family experienced it the same way. Although there was one night in particular where we were all… All of us were in the lounge and her room was closed off for about a few months at least, after she passed away. Completely locked up the way it was the day she passed away. And we heard this banging noise.  And we all sort of looked at each other like… like, did you hear that? To sort of confirm what we were hearing and it carried on. And the noise was ding… ding… it was like something banging against a metal bar and we actually used to share that bedroom together and it was a metal bunk bed that sort of had a railing on the side. She didn’t cry much as a baby but she would bang her bottle on the side of it when she was ready to get let out of bed or if she wanted the attention she’d bang that until somebody would come into the room.

And so it continued, it continued like… just kept going it… that noise, and my Mum was actually starting to cry ‘cause it, she just didn’t really know how to cope with what was happening, and the close family friend, my uncle, he was actually there. He got, he just got up and he walked into the room and he opened the door and he said; “Ok, come on, you can get out now!” And then closed the door behind him, and after that there was no, there was no more banging noises. So for a family, for us as a family that was quite a big experience. That we’ve never actually talked about ever since, actually.

I continued to have those experiences right up until we left that house actually, and after that I never experienced it to that intensity I felt in that house which was actually the house that she passed away in as well. Of feeling like she was just there, you know? It’s so hard to explain what the feeling was like. But I guess in terms of feeling their wairua, their spirit that you know, you know when somebodies in the room with you or something like that.

That was, that same feeling and I guess in life I didn’t have that same connection, but I felt connected to her through my sense of smell, so for me smell has always been one of the biggest things I have always picked up on. As soon as I go into a room that’s one of the first things I notice and it’s attached to everything I remember, and for her it was this very distinct smell of play dough – you know? Homemade play dough. Salty sort of smell to it, and she loved playing with the stuff.

She’d come home from pre-school reeking of it! Her clothes, her bag, her everything that she had, she always had that, really salty smell – and I actually do remember it, when she first passed away. As a child when we first went back to… sort of going back to normal, going back to pre-school and back to school. My brother and my sister were very close and they went to the same preschool and when we used to come home we’d walk into the house and it was still like she was still there, it was still like she’d still come ‘cause, we could smell that smell of the play dough.

Later on in life as I got older, I think as well do, we sort of start to push away a lot of those sort of things we were experiencing and I think as I got older I become less in touch with what I was experiencing, or with that connection with her. I didn’t pick up on things as easily, but those… that smell came back to me several times. Like, I’m twenty-three now, turning twenty-four soon and I’ve since had several times in my life where that smell has come back.

Usually before quite an important … um, like when something – a difficult situation’s about to come up usually in the family. Usually when I’ve had to step up and being a teenager you sort of get stuck in your own world and that’s all that matters, and there’s been a couple of times where I didn’t – where I needed to step up for my family and help them and she sort of came along, and that smell, I smelt it again and straight away having her picture in my mind, knowing that, that was her trying to tell me something. Then sure enough! Not even that long later, something quite big happens and then I realize oh right, that’s… that’s her coming back to let me know something.

And ever since, I have had similar sort of things but it’s never been as strong as that connection is when I was a child.

Felicity from New Zealand.

Something has always baffled me. When I was a child (10 years old or so) I complained to my mother that Dad would often come home late from his committee meetings and stomp through the house and it would wake me up. I am profoundly deaf and don’t hear a thing when my hearing aids are out for sleeping….so how could I hear stomping loud enough to wake me?

Mum would sometimes be upstairs vacuuming and could hear stomping downstairs to the point she would dismantle the vacuum cleaner pipe and get ready to whack someone over the head with it as she knew she was alone in the house. What baffles me is how could she hear the same stomping downstairs when she was vacuuming?

We do know that our house had a lot of activity. Locked doors would slam shut. On another occasion a young girl was seen running up the stairs. There were several ghosts at various times. But how does a deaf person hear a ghost?

John from the States

I’m an EMT with the Fire Dept. here and today we got called out on a crash. Two people in one car and one in another car. That person was dead. I did the vitals and it showed he was dead. No heartbeat or pulse. The rate was zero point zero. Flat line, red. We put him on the gurney and put him in the ambulance. And, went to take care of the other two people.

We were taking care of them when this cop started yelling at someone to come back here! I looked and it was the dead man walking away from the ambulance! The cops got him, and put him back in the ambulance and stayed with him. We got him to the ER and they said he was dead as well! Now, I don’t believe in ghosts, but you tell me? What the hell did we all see?

This is Mary from Texas

The one that really, really got to me, ah still gets to me to this day. And I don’t wish it on anybody to have this happen. I was pregnant. I was living with my parents. I was pregnant with my second child. And I was laying down in my son’s room patting him on the back. He was almost two and I was trying to get him to go to sleep. My parents were ordained ministers, so…. Shh, I’m sorry, that’s my dog.

I felt like something was starring at me, so I looked up and I see this demon. Like full form, I mean he was hunched over. He was probably like six foot five. There was like no muscle, no fat. It was just bone. Looked like he had been burnt. He was brown, tan, black, orange, and reds. He had a round head, a long chin. At the end of the chin, it was kind of rounded. He had very sharp pointy teeth. His ears were pointy. And he stopped and looked at me. And the evil that just came off of this, this creature was OMG it was horrible. To this day I still get chills. And I picture it, like it just happened.

I mean, I broke down in tears, ‘cause I never in my life seen anything like that. I’ve never in my life felt such pure evil, come off of this thing. And he walked into my bedroom and through the walls. So, I didn’t go in my room for two weeks, by myself. And, I only went during the daytime. I never told my parents, because growing up as a child, they told me I was go…. I was taught that mediums and psychics go to hell. Because, that’s evil and demonic and I’ve always seen things my entire life. I never asked for it. I would pray so hard, I would cry, to not see it. ‘Cause, I was terrified of going to hell.

But yeah, that was also, you know? Growing up as a child a scary part of seeing things was being told that you’re going to go to hell when you die! And like I said, it was never something I went looking for it, I never asked for it. Nothing.

But the demon didn’t come near me. He didn’t touch me. He looked at me and grinned and he just walked on.  That out of everything I’ve seen and everything that’s moved, flown by me…. That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. 

Rusty from the USA

Up until my mid-20s, I would’ve told you there’s no such thing as ghosts. Most things that people say, I think is their imagination, or wishful thinking. Now, I don’t know. I …just… don’t know.

When I was in my 20s, and newly married, my spouse and I moved for his job. We needed to find a place to live pretty quick. We lucked into the perfect house. It was old. In it’s previous life, it had been someone’s beach cottage. Which I loved. What’s better than living in a resort town, close enough to walk to the beach? Plus, it wasn’t in a resort area. It was on the back half of someone’s property, with one road in and out, and lots of trees and shade. Very quiet. No other people around.

Because the house was originally a weekend cottage, it was one big room, with a small addition to one side that contained a kitchen and bath, and another addition off the back that had a bedroom. The big room was awesome. All windows on three sides, with a nice breeze most of the time. A fireplace. Lots of open area.

The only thing that kinda pinged my radar was the landlord. When we rented, he was overly insistent that we sign a year lease and we couldn’t break it for any reason. No matter what, we needed to pay out the lease, whether we lived in the house or not. I thought that was a little weird, the way he kept repeating that over and over because he wanted to make absolutely sure that we understood. But, it didn’t really register…at the time. Other than I was a bit worried that maybe there were trouble-makers or noisy parties on the beach or something. He assured us that it was a very quiet neighbourhood, but he repeated again that we couldn’t break the lease.

I worked a nine to five job. My spouse worked twelve-hour on/off shifts. So there were lots of times when I would be home by myself.

The first month or two were fine. I liked the house. I liked the neighbourhood. I liked the beach. I’m mostly a homebody, so when the spouse was at work, I would stay at home reading or watching a little TV or cooking. I’d always wanted to learn to knit, so I bought some yarn and started teaching myself.

Then sometime around the third month, I started to get very strong feelings that someone would be standing behind me while I was reading. You know, like looking over my shoulder. It only happened when I was alone in the house, and only when I was in the main room. Without thinking about it too much, I started sitting places where my back was to the wall, or reading in the bedroom.

When I went to bed at night, I started closing the door between the bedroom and the rest of the house. I felt safe in the bedroom.

Sometimes when I fell asleep in front of the TV late at night, I’d wake up to catch someone standing in front of the fireplace, just out of the corner of my eye. I thought I needed to stop dreaming so much. But I started to stay in the bedroom after dark, with the door shut.

Things started not being where I put them in the big room. I got kinda irritated with my spouse for messing with my stuff. I wasted five to ten minutes almost every day looking for my handbag, or my car keys.

Then one day when I came home after work, I found my knitting yarn wrapped and tangled around all the furniture in the big room. I don’t mean just a little bit. I mean the yarn was strung between couches and wrapped around the legs of the chairs. I told myself that my spouse was playing a trick on me and I cleaned it up. Then I decided that I wouldn’t mention it to him, just to see how long it took him to come clean. (He never did.) I moved my knitting to the bedroom.

My sister came to visit for a long weekend. I’d gushed so much about our lovely beach house that she came to visit and see the beach. She came for a 4-day weekend. She slept on the pull-out sofa in the big room. After the first night, she told us that the sofa wasn’t very comfortable and she thought she was coming down with something, so she changed her travel arrangements and she was leaving that afternoon. She seemed agitated, but she wouldn’t talk about it.

A few days after she went home, she called me. She started the conversation with, “I know you don’t believe in ghosts and maybe I’m just being stupid…” My heart dropped. I thought I was the only one and I was being so stoic and pretending I never saw or heard anything. She went on to tell me that after she went to sleep that night in the big room, noises woke her up in the middle of the night. She thought it was one of us, but no one was there. Then, while she was sitting in the bed looking around, the windows started opening and closing. It just kinda went around the room. One window opened and closed. Then the one next to that. Then the next one. And the next one. Then she heard footsteps walking straight towards her. But no one was there. The footsteps walked right up to the bed where she was sitting, then over the bed, continued across the room, and out through the side door into the kitchen area. She said she ran out the front door and spent the rest of the night on the front porch. She came back inside when the sun came up, waited for us to wake up, and made excuses to go home. She didn’t want to spend another night in that house. She said, “I know you won’t believe me. That’s okay. But I’m not ever sleeping in your house again.”

I told myself that my sister had always been a little nutty about stuff like that, so knowing that the house was old, she probably just had a very vivid dream. I kept telling myself that. A few weeks after that, just when I’d stopped jumping at every stray noise, I woke up one Sunday morning and went to cook a leisurely breakfast for me and spouse. And y’all…. I still don’t know how to explain this.

I opened the kitchen cabinets to get the dishes out to start cooking. All the dishes were rearranged. Not messy. Not tumbled about. They were all very neat and orderly, but everything was on the wrong shelf. The shelf that normally held glasses now had plates stacked on them. The shelves that normally held bowls now had glasses on them.

My first thought was that someone had been in the house during the night. I checked all the locks. Still locked. We didn’t know many people and I couldn’t think of anyone who would pull a trick like that. Besides there was so much stuff moved that no one could do it quietly without disturbing people sleeping in practically the next room.

So I did what any half-crazed, scared-to-shit person would do. I pretended it never happened. I pretended that I always kept the glasses on that shelf, and there was nothing strange about having all the plates on this shelf. I sure as hell wasn’t moving anything back because I didn’t want to see what would happen if I did.

I cooked breakfast. I went on with my day. And later that afternoon, I told my spouse that I wasn’t really comfortable in this house anymore. Could we find somewhere else to live? Amazingly enough, my spouse never asked me why. He simply said that was probably a good idea and let’s find something quick. And we moved out.

We called the landlord after we’d already packed and moved the furniture. He came over and picked up the keys. He never, not once, asked why we were moving. In fact, he never met our eyes. Just kept looking at the ground. We agreed to keep paying rent until he could get some new tenants.

Months later, I asked my spouse if he ever felt anything strange in that house. He said, “Yeah, that wasn’t a good house. Glad we moved.” And we never talked about it again.

Rebecca from Seattle

I was one hundred percent skeptical and didn’t believe in anything paranormal. And then my kid, six-years-old at the time, was the one who turned my beliefs on their head.

We were living in a two-bedroom apartment, and my kid just couldn’t ever sleep well at night. I didn’t think much of it at the time, downplaying it as normal insomnia (which I had struggled with, too, as a kid). The thing that struck me as weird about it is that she never deviated from her original reason of why she couldn’t get to sleep.

She would come out of her room to tell me that there was an old man in her room, telling her to leave because he lived there. I had the typical eye-roll reaction, giving my kid a reaction like “well you don’t have to be asleep, but you need to stay in bed when it’s bedtime” because I didn’t believe her as if it was all make-believe. That was a mistake.

After several months of living there and doing this routine regularly with my kid, I got a photo debit card in the mail from a bank that I don’t do business with, addressed to a different name. My first reaction was to think “this is identity theft, or, previous tenant didn’t notify their bank that they moved out” so I called the bank, read the numbers off the card, and then while I was wrapping up the call, I had put it down on the table to find the scissors (as the banker told me to cut up the card), when my kid hears the conversation, and comes over to see the card on the table.

I’m off the phone with the bank, and my kid says to me right away “that’s the old man in my room, that’s him.” I’m thinking to myself that this has got to be some sort of make-believe scenario again. Yeah, the picture shows an elderly white man with white hair, and a white beard, but that’s got to be a coincidence, right? Right? So fine, I’m going to prove that. I look up the name in quotes, along with the name of my town. First search result is this man’s obituary.

Still not wanting to believe what my six-year-old was telling me, I got in touch with his surviving family members via FaceBook, who were mentioned in the obituary. I found out that this gentleman died in the apartment, succumbing to cancer. He was waiting to move in with his son and convalesce there, but passed away before the move happened. Also I think it’s worth noting that my landlord had no legal obligation to tell me that someone died in the apartment before I moved in, because it was a natural death (it would’ve been different if it were a homicide).

I should note that I never saw him or heard him (the ghost, that is), I only knew about this because of my kid. I asked her about all the things that he had said to her. “I pay rent on time every month” and “this is my place, not yours” were the most frequent complaints. I finally believe in ghosts because of my six-year-old kid, and getting evidence in my face (a photo bank card of the man that my kid said wouldn’t leave her room, and then googling to find his obituary) to silence my scepticism.

And that’s where we’ll end today’s episode of our two episode Halloween special. Be sure and join us tomorrow for more true and ghostly experiences encountered by people just like yourselves. I’ll end this episode with these words from a mystery man….” Happy Halloween. Do try not to die….”

Our musical score today is called, “Are you scared yet?” (scream) By Sascha Ende.¹ Licensed under creative commons for more information check out this episodes page on the podcast website at: www.walkingtheshadowlands.com.

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1. Are you scared yet? by Sascha Ende (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/saschaende/59247 Ft: Admiral Bob