Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Good evening. I'm Ben, and welcome to the show where you and I gather around this campfire to hear some of our fellow campers scariest experiences. So whether you're a new or returning camper, I am happy to have you. Tonight, we are headed to Chicago to hear Thomas's story. Thomas believes that his grandmother accidentally invited something into his life when she promised to visit him after her death. Before we begin, if you would like to check out our camp September bonus episode, head to patreon.com. do you want to hear a ghost story? You will also gain access to ad free episodes, get a shout out at the end of an episode, and more. Now, without further ado, do you want to hear a ghost story?
[00:00:51] My grandmother always promised to visit me in the afterlife when she passed. We were always the most spiritual of our family, often leaving family gatherings to go on walks and discuss life and death.
[00:01:03] So it wasnt strange when she made me the promise to visit me when she died to give me proof that the afterlife existed. As I grew up, my attendance at these family events became fewer and far between as work and life got in the way. Over the years, I had forgotten the promises she made of though. My devotion to the paranormal never faltered. But I believe my grandmother kept her promise, or something kept her promise for her. It was Saturday, Halloween 2015, a cloudy and cool morning in the Rogers park neighborhood of Chicago. At this point in my life, I was keeping a deeply detailed dream journal. At the recommendation of my therapist, who believed I had repressed trauma from my childhood, I sat in my window nook with a cup of coffee. As I stared out the window. Buildings and trees obscured my view, but I could see the lake from my apartment on the third floor of what likely used to be a single family home. Now split into apartments.
[00:02:02] I could see the falling leaves blown down the street by each breeze off the lake, acting as the bass to the symphony sung by the birds. This early in the morning, a person all bundled up was being towed down the street by their dog. As they dashed towards the beach, the rays of sun peeked through the horizon, dancing through the clouds, trees, and leaves, so that by the time they finally made their way to my window, they were but a faint glow.
[00:02:29] I sipped my coffee and sat back in my chair as I turned on a metronome, a technique my therapist recommended to remember my dreams. While she seemed so confident in this, I was never sure. How could I tell if I was remembering a dream or simply letting my mind wander and creating something new?
[00:02:49] But I wanted to work through all these feelings that I had, feelings that I didnt know the origins of. Maybe my therapist was right. Perhaps this was the way for me to do it. If not, it was regardless, a good ritual to start the day with, a meditation, slowing down before the day. Now, I don't know if you've ever meditated like this before, but for me it's as though you're waiting, waiting forever to reach this elusive meditative state when all of a sudden you realize you've been there the whole time. You don't know how or when you got there. You don't notice when the sounds of the world faded. One moment I was sitting in my chair with my eyes closed, the next I was somewhere far away in my mind.
[00:03:35] It seemed as if I was in my childhood home, staring up the stairs where the only light was coming from. I looked around the foyer and it faded into an abyss outside the front windows. It was as if I was looking out into open space, nothing but distant stars where the trees that lined my driveway should have been.
[00:03:55] A knocking echoed from upstairs. The light began to flicker as I slowly started up the steps, each step creaking louder than the last, until I finally reached the landing, the light making one final flicker before sustaining a blinding glow.
[00:04:11] I put my hand over my eyes to see and turned my head towards the sound of the knocking coming from the bathroom to the right of the landing. I squinted, attempting to dim out even more of the light.
[00:04:23] As bright as the light was, it barely entered the bathroom, as if the shadows were swallowing it whole. I finally found the source of this rhythmic knocking. The cabinet door beneath the sink opened about an inch before slamming closed like a screen porch door in the wind. I walked over to the cabinet, blocking out more of the light with my body as I entered the bathroom.
[00:04:47] Upon stepping into the bathroom, the cabinet door flew open as a gust of wind burst out of it. I looked away, shielding my face from this blast of air. When I looked back, the doorway I had just stepped through now led to that same starry endlessness that the windows downstairs had shown before.
[00:05:06] I looked back towards the sink, where a single candle was now lit under the mirror. I stopped and stared at myself in this mirror as the cabinet began to knock again.
[00:05:17] In the mirror I could see my eyes looked like they were sinking into my skull and my skin had taken on a yellowish hue much as the autumn leaves outside my window.
[00:05:27] I looked away, back down at the cabinet, and grabbed it before it could swing shut. This time I felt faint gusts of air on my fingers as though the cabinet or something within the cabinet was breathing. Before I could swing it open, the breathing stopped, but upon opening the cabinet, I was met by my grandmother's face. She was just sitting there, smiling an unnaturally large smile that extended further than I had ever seen.
[00:05:55] My stomach dropped and a wave of nausea washed over me. I watched as her smile disappeared, her skin turning a ghostly white and her eyes rolling into the back of her head. I stumbled backward, my heart now pounding in my ears. Her body rolled out of the cabinet, landing perfectly to stare directly at me. Her mouth gaped open, releasing a scream that pierced through the air as she grabbed the cabinet door and began banging again and again and again. I turned to run, but the bathroom door was now closed and there was no handle to be seen. Panic began surging through me. My hands were trembling, my breath coming in short gasps. I curled into a ball, desperately trying to pull myself out of this. Luckily, leaving this meditative state was just as quick as entering it. The cabinet banging was soon replaced by the steady ticking of the metronome, and the screams were replaced by a bird outside my window.
[00:06:54] My coffee was still hot and the sun had barely moved as I wrote everything from this experience down. I finished my coffee when my phone rang.
[00:07:04] It was unusual. No one called me this early on the weekend. Looking at the caller id, I saw it was my mother, so I picked up.
[00:07:12] Hey, what's going on? Is everything okay? It's really early, I said. I could immediately tell that everything was, in fact, not okay. My mother had been crying.
[00:07:22] Your grandmother, she. Your grandmother died last night, she said.
[00:07:29] The words hit me, but it was as if I already knew.
[00:07:32] I sat there, not knowing what to say.
[00:07:35] Our conversation went over briefly. The plan for everyone to come home. I spent the next day on a train, reliving every moment of my dream. With every tree that passed the train window, I pored over every detail of my journal.
[00:07:48] It brought me back to the memories of my grandmother and me, discussing the paranormal. When I remembered her promise, she had always said that she would give me a sign from the other side.
[00:07:59] I never mentioned any of this to my therapist or my family. I no longer think it was a dream, but I'm also not sure it was a sign from my grandmother. Nothing about it felt right. It didn't feel like her, I suppose. Whatever it was, though, it did accomplish what she had promised.
[00:08:16] I now firmly believe in the paranormal, though I am weary discussing it, afraid of what might be out there, listening, waiting to make contact with me when I am most vulnerable.
[00:08:29] Thank you, Thomas, for allowing me to share your story.
[00:08:32] I don't know where to begin with this one. On one hand, I am sorry for your loss, but what if my grandmother did that to me? I would raise her from the dead and kill her again myself. That's she said she was going to visit you, not haunt you. It's curious though, that you have suspicions that it might not be her. I don't claim to be a paranormal scholar of any kind, but I will say that many people I know who are tend to caution against what you put out into the world because you never know who or what will be listening for show announcements this week I want to talk about the Halloween special. It will air on Halloween and be free for everybody. Patrons will get early access to it, but it is something that I want available for everybody. I had intended to do a fully produced audio drama of a submitted story for this episode, but unfortunately that is not something that seems plausible with my current capabilities. So the Halloween special will be sort of a free bonus episode with two to three stories. If you do want to listen to it early, head over to patreon.com. do you want to hear a ghoststory? I will leave you here for the night. I am glad to have you all as campers on this journey. Please keep sharing the show with anyone you think might like these stories or someone you are trying to scare. If you are enjoying it, please go ahead and leave a review. I would love to hear from you. Gertrude, come quick. I found him. The one who stole our fire. Wait, what? Who are.
