May 2, 2025 • 59 mins
Why are some people afraid to have the closet door open at night? A few people have said strange things come and go by way of the closet. How about elevators? Do these small, moving spaces do more than go up and down? Here are a few stories to make life a bit more interesting.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Are you Are you coming to the truth? Well sham
who is says murdered true? Jon stands have happened, Bass.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Jones A.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Mamma hollm true.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Chris James. The
best doorway in the universe lets you into or out of,
depending on which direction you're going. The Organic Man Coffee
Trike Coffee Shop four or five is zero one McPherson
(00:58):
is where you will find the best coffee in the universe.
Coffee lets you get things done. Coffee helps you think.
Coffee is the best thing since sliced bread. Coffee will
save you from a werewolf if it's hot and you
(01:19):
throw it on him, or you just hand it to
him and tell him to drink up. If you can't
get there. From there, go to Organicman Coffeetrike Dot Shop.
A life is too short to drink bad coffee. Last
(01:41):
week I talked about cults and how Jim Jones got
over nine hundred people to commit suicide in Jonestown. I
had started working on it the week before. Vic Hermanson
just released a show on Trailer Trash Terrors about Jim Jones.
(02:05):
He went into a lot more detail on just the
People's Temple and how communism is the most evil group
on the earth. Evan had spent maybe two weeks working
on his show. We had never talked about what we
were working on. It just never came up. We send
(02:27):
each other texts and messages and emails all the time,
but we don't discuss what we're working on mostly so
it's kind of weird. I don't like coincidences. This world
isn't that orderly. This isn't the first time I've done
a show only to discover that some of the other
(02:50):
podcasts I listened to are about the same subject. One week,
I think there were four of us all talking about
the same thing, and it wasn't any kind of current event.
And not like when everybody was talking about the drones,
(03:11):
the drones seen all over the United States that all
seem to have vanished right around the time of the
administration change. No, for unknown and unfathomable reasons, some of
us think about strange things at the same time. Makes
me wonder about those weird thoughts that just kind of
(03:34):
jump into your head when you're not thinking about something.
Is there some entity out there somewhere sending out mind
waves telling us what to focus on, and when some
might say it's the government, why would they be ginning
(03:56):
us to talk about weird cryptids or people who vanished
hundreds of years ago. If it was some kind of
government agency sending out mind control waves, you'd think they'd
be saying government good, conspiracies bad, or something like that.
(04:21):
If not the government, how about aliens? If aliens, then
why focus on just people doing podcasts. I never hear
from listeners who say they were just thinking about hail
Bop last week. There's something weird going on, and I'm
(04:44):
not too sure. I want to know. Life is strange
and the answers might make it even stranger. We were
at my sister in law and brother in law's anniversary
the other night. We went to the Asian bistro on Shiloh.
(05:05):
I was sitting there, staring off into space, like I
do when I don't have a book in front of me.
I looked down a hallway and there was a door there,
probably where they keep their mops and brooms. It got
me to thinking about a book I'd read twice. It's
(05:27):
called The House of Leaves. Em is upset with one
of the cats for sitting on the couch when she
wanted to sit on the couch anyway. The House of
Leaves by Mark z Daniel Luski. I used to have
a hardcover copy, signed by the writer. I gave it
(05:49):
to my nephew. Hope he still has it. There might
be worth a few bucks, like maybe twenty bucks. If
you've read The House of Leaves, so you'll know what
it is and how it is put together. If you haven't,
it is an experience all in itself. The book has
(06:11):
been described as the Blair Witch on paper. Some say
it is confusing, while others find it to be I
opening the book starts out as the story of a
Johnny Truant who finds an unfinished manuscript in an old house.
He begins to read the story and finds out it
(06:34):
is a transcribed manuscript of the Novidsen records written by
a guy named Zampanol. Zampano filmed activity at a house
that defies the ideas of haunting. Will Novidsen had bought
a house in the country and moved his family in
(06:57):
without any problems. He was a photo journalist in his
life revolved around photography. Novidsen installs cameras throughout the house,
to capture candid family moments. As he's going over the images,
he notices there are doors in places that didn't used
(07:21):
to have doors, and they opened onto new rooms that
extended impossibly beyond the houses outside dimensions. I'm not going
to give you any more details, but the book is
worth your effort to get a copy and read it.
(07:41):
It's not on kindle. You'll have to flip the pages.
If it was on kindle, I don't think it would
work right. It's a page turner in more ways than one.
Some pages the words run around the edge, and in
others there might be just one word on each page.
(08:07):
That door at the end of the hall at the
Asian Bistro got me to thinking about things showing up
or disappearing in weird locations. How many kids have issues
with closet doors, especially at night. Have you ever wondered
why most parents think this is just kids being weird?
(08:32):
Like that movie Monster's Ink back when Disney was still entertaining.
As I went around talking to folks about their experiences,
I heard a few stories of closets holding more than clothes.
Roll and his wife had bought their dream home. It
(08:55):
was on the north side of town up past Loop twenty.
Now there didn't all have to share one room. One day,
as Raoul was walking to the kitchen, he saw his
wife in the bathroom by the sink. Had nothing to
do with the closet, yet he kept going, and then
(09:16):
seconds later he saw his wife in the kitchen. This
was odd, so he doubled back and he looked in
the bathroom once more. It was empty. There was no
way she could have gotten from the bathroom to the kitchen,
because the only way there would have been in the
hallway that he was standing in. A few weeks later,
(09:40):
he could see that somebody was standing in the closet.
The door has a slight gap and the shadow was
quite distinct. Thinking one of the kids was hiding there
trying to surprise him, Raoul yanked the door open, only
to find an empty closet. The property where their dream
(10:03):
house was built had been a ranch many years ago,
and there's no telling what might have lingered on long
after the property was developed. Robert told me that he's
been seeing shadow beings in their home for years. The
being is tall, about seven foot six, and very thin.
(10:26):
His wife has seen the shadow as well. Surprisingly, they
see the shadow being more often when they're together than
when they're apart. Their son, Robert Junior, says that he
sees this shadow being in his closet or in the
corner of his bedroom. One day, while visiting Slaughters Park,
(10:49):
Robert Junior had somebody take a photo of him and
his girlfriend. When he looked at the image, he saw
man standing behind them. The man in the photo was
only half there. The side of him farthest from them
was practically invisible. You could see right through him. Could
(11:12):
this be the thing that he had seen in his
closet for just another weird thing that people run into.
Folks who see shadow beings sometimes also see cryptids in UFOs.
It's as if their minds are tuned to the frequency,
allowing them to see things that others don't see or
(11:36):
convince themselves they don't see. Liz and her sister Lynn
are both energy sensitives. This means they can both feel
and sense things going on with those around them. If
a person or sick or has a bad attachment, the
(11:57):
sisters can feel it. When somebody passes away, Liz or
her sister will pray for their soul to find its
way to the proper place. On many occasions. They've even
seen spirits of the dead. My wife also sees things
like this. This might be why her and these two
(12:20):
young ladies get along so well. One day, while the
pair was praying for lost souls, they'd opened the window
to the room so that energy could exit. Any time
you're messing with energy in your home, you want to
give it a way out. The window was old and heavy,
(12:41):
and it took both of them to move the sash
up to its highest location. With the window wide open,
they began their efforts to move these souls along with
a sudden crash, the window slammed shut. This startled the
two sisters. Once their hearts had slowed down from the fright,
(13:03):
they went to see what was up with the rather
down with the window. Not only had it closed, but
the latch had flipped shut as well, something trying to
keep something else out. Late at night, while Liz was studying,
(13:24):
she hears somebody moving to her bed and then taking
a seat. The mattress makes the groaning noise. She can
hear and feel the person, but she's alone in her
room when this happens, some unseen spirit coming to visit.
She was awoken one morning by the sound of her
(13:45):
alarm clock going off. It should have said six am,
only the clock said it was three. She realized that
this wasn't her alarm clock that she was using, but
this was an old clock that she had in a
room that wasn't working. Lynn is also sensitive. She can
(14:08):
feel and hear as well as sea spirits. She wakes
up a lot between three and five am with a
feeling of somebody in her room. She feels them breathing
next to her, as if they're trying to get her attention.
(14:28):
During one of these three am disturbances, she saw a
young girl run out the door and into the hallway.
This girl was wearing a light blue dress with orange flowers.
She didn't tell me what color the girl's hair was.
I'm wondering if this could have been the little girl
seen all over town. She had on a hat as well.
(14:53):
Lynn wonders who this girl was and why she came
to visit In the middle of the night one day,
taking a shower, she stood there with the curtain closed
when she heard somebody enter the bathroom. She assumed it
was her mother or her sister. She could hear cabinet
(15:14):
doors open and things being moved around. She asked who
it was and what they were looking for, but there
was no answer. Instead, it just got real quiet. She
figured they must have left. Once she had finished, she
walked into the kitchen, where her mother and sister were.
(15:36):
She asked them who had come into the bathroom, to
which they both said they had stayed in the kitchen
the whole time. Lynn tried to not let this bother
her until later when she was back in the bathroom.
On the mirror were two hand prints. These prints were
(15:57):
far bigger than any of them could have made. They
looked more like a large man had placed his hands
on the mirror. She thinks this was the spirit of
somebody seeking help. They had a friend who is a
psychic come by and look around their home. This friend
(16:20):
told them that there was a portal in the closet
of Lynn's bedroom. The portal may connect to purgatory or
some other similar location. Why it's in the closet is
anyone's guess, but this might explain some of these late
night visits. Lynn wonders why she was the one chosen
(16:44):
to have spirits visiting in the middle of the night,
and why is her closet connected to another dimension. I
listen to a lot of podcasts. Tony Merkle on The
Confessionals had what I consider the best bigfoot interview ever. Well,
(17:07):
he didn't interview bigfoot. He interviewed a truck driver who
lived on ranch in Louisiana who had had several odd encounters.
In episode three eighty three, a Trucker's Bigfoot Property, Tony
was joined by Dylan, who had creatures on his property
(17:30):
since he was a little child. The land he lived
on was passed down through the family for generations, and
what lived in the woods was not spoken about unless
there was a real reason to. Dylan recalls three separate
occasions in his childhood where a bigfoot made itself known,
(17:53):
but despite three encounters, he managed to convince himself that
this was just something that happened. He even says he
thought that it was just a gorilla a living on
the land in Louisiana. It wasn't until Dylan was an
adult that he locked eyes with something and understood what
(18:18):
was really happening. Then all of these memories of his
childhood flashed before his eyes and started to make sense.
Dylan also said when he was very young, he had
a little boy living in his closet. It was one
of those with the twin doors on either side of
(18:38):
a small piece of wall. The boy would look out
from one door and then move over and look out
from the other one. Dylan never questioned why anyone would
hang out in his closet until years later. I also
found it very amusing. Dylan was was doing the interview
(19:02):
from his truck. He was in Laredo at the time.
He was waiting to pick up a load he had
driven from a nice, cool location into the hottest part
of the world. Well something like that. Dylan was in
Laredo on his phone talking to Tony in Pennsylvania. Tony
(19:26):
was broadcasting to me here in Laredo, well, along with
everybody else that was listening. I've gone back and listened
to this podcast three or four times now. On Expanded Perspectives,
Cam and Kyle talk about a story sent to them
(19:46):
from a listener. The woman I'll call her Bonnie, because
I can't remember if she gave her name or not,
or if she even did. Bonnie and her husband were
an out door public event. They had been there long
enough to necessitate a visit to the Portajohn's there were
(20:08):
units for both genders. Can you imagine how difficult this
arrangement would have been last year at this time, when
there were two hundred and sixty seven genders. I'm getting
off of the story. Bonnie needed to make a phone call,
She needed to visit the office, powder her nose. She
(20:33):
had to respond to the call of nature. No, the
guys on expanded perspectives didn't use any of these idiomatic expressions.
Bonnie needed a portagohn, and so she went and got
in line. There was a woman right in front of
her who stepped into the female bathroom and closed the door.
(20:56):
Bonnie stood there, waiting and waiting. Why is it the
more you need a bathroom, the longer the wait time.
When the clock had ticked by way too much, Bonnie
began to get concerned. Maybe this woman inside was having
some kind of emergency. You do know that a lot
(21:19):
of folks have heart attacks while trying to pass a deuce,
drop a log, I take a dump, go number two.
I think it has something to do with the valve
salva maneuver. Straining to pass the unpassable causes your blood
pressure to drop. Strain enough and it drops all the
(21:43):
way to zero. As concern turned to worry, Bonnie finally
knocked on the door and asked if everything was okay.
There was no response. She knocked again, and finally she
tried pulling the door open. The portajohn was empty. It
(22:04):
wasn't as if Bonnie had seen this other woman from
far off and might have mistaken which john she went into.
Bonnie was right behind her as she went in. Portajohn's
do not have a second exit. The only way out
was well if the other woman had jumped into the
(22:27):
storage container down there in the blue water. Bonnie told
her husband what she had just seen and asked what
he thought was going on. He said, there must be
some kind of a portal inside the portajohn. A portal, John,
if you will think about that next time you heed
(22:50):
the call of nature at a outside public event way way, way,
maybe a few more ways. Back in time, folks used
to have one or two sets of clothing that they
wore and that was it. A bag might hold one
(23:11):
or two items, but this was not for everyone. Some
people just had the one set. Extras could be kept
in a trunk or a crate. The rich folks who
might have special outfits for special occasions, they kept them
on shelves or in a niche built into the wall.
(23:32):
In the Renaissance, chests of drawers built to hold things
not currently in use, came into use. Some chests were
placed on stands, making them look more elegant. In the
eighteenth centuries, armed wars became increasingly the thing to have.
(23:54):
They had an interior with shelves and drawers and a
place to hang long garments or They were typically made
of wood, and sometimes they held frequently used items or clothing,
And sometimes this is where the laundry went once it
had been done. The nineteenth century saw the creation of
(24:17):
a room to take off coats and boots, called a mudroom.
Coats were hung from hooks and the boots swell wound
up on the floor below them. The mudroom gave way
to a smaller room by the front door. This became
the closet, a closeted space for coats. Before the invention
(24:42):
of coats, closets sorry before the invention of closets, spirits
were associated with hanging out in corners. People would report
seeing a shimmering form begin to grow in the corner
of the room, even up by the ceiling. Why did
the spirits move from the corner of the room to
(25:05):
the closet. I wonder maybe it has to do with
when moving from dimension to dimension, there's little chance of
encountering anyone in a closet or a small enclosed space.
I did some looking, and I found a few stories
from folks who encountered things coming and going from their closets.
(25:31):
One story is about somebody I'll call her Jeane. Jean
grew up in a haunted house. There was a spirit
that hung out in her closet. At first, a Jeane
was really scared of this entity, and she had to
have the door closed before she was able to sleep.
Over time, she began to get the feeling that this
(25:53):
spirit was an old lady who was actually there not
to do any harm, but to protect her. This led
to the question protect Jeanne from what. Jeanne mentioned having
a spirit in her closet, and surprisingly, her mother said
(26:16):
she thought there might be one in her closet as well.
Unlike Jeanne's closet spirit, the one in the mother's closet
wasn't nice. Her mom would keep the door closed at
all times, and once in a while she even drug
the dresser over to block the door. When Jeane was
(26:38):
older and married, she began to see shadowy images in
the closet at night, not just hers, but all throughout
the house. Others said they could see these entities as well.
People that didn't see anything did say that they felt
as if they were being watched from the closets. Jean
(27:01):
and her husband moved not just to another house, but
to another city. Still the closet beings were there. They
must have been following Jean, either keeping an eye on
her or guarding her against something else. I talked about
(27:22):
that elevator incident that me and my wife had several
times on the show. I'll give those of you that
didn't hear the story a quick rundown. My wife and
I went to a hospital to visit someone. As we
were approaching the elevators, a man came rushing from the
emergency department and on to one of the cabs. The
(27:46):
door closed, so I waited a few seconds to let
him get on his way before pushing the call button.
The same cab opened, showing us or there was nobody inside.
My wife described the exact same person that I had seen.
We both thought this must have been a ghost. It
(28:10):
was the best explanation at the time. Later, while reading
reports and talking to people, I began to hear of
others having similar encounters, people vanishing from small, enclosed places.
I still consider our sighting to have been a ghost,
(28:31):
and my wife does as well. But maybe it with
somebody stepping into a portal. While looking for stories of
people disappearing from elevators, I stumbled on these next few.
Now I have no idea if these are true or
just somebody making up weird stories, some of that creepy
(28:54):
pasta nonsense. You decide after listening for yourself. New York City,
June ninth, twenty seventeen, Jennifer, a fourteen year old, went
to visit her classmate Mike at his apartment on twenty
first Avenue. This apartment was new and it was equipped
(29:19):
with CCTV cameras. Mike had seen Jane from his porch
and he waved to her. She waved back to him
and then got into the building lobby. CCTV footage captured
her going into the elevator. She never arrived at Mike's door,
(29:40):
and he wrote it off as maybe she was there
to visit somebody else. That evening, Jennifer's parents called Mike,
asking if their daughter was still there and when would
she be home. When they were told she had never
got to Mike's apartment, they called the police. The police
(30:01):
did a cursory investigation, asking neighbors if they'd seen the
young girl, but nobody had and they showed no suspicious activities,
so the questioning was all they did at the time.
The next morning, Jennifer was not at school and the
police began a more thorough investigation. The CCTV footage was
(30:25):
examined and the only sight of the young girl was
her getting on to the elevator. There were no images
of her ever getting off on any of the floors
or leaving the building. Police began a door to door search.
They received permission from all the residents to check their apartments,
(30:45):
and no trace of Jennifer was ever found. July twenty fourth,
twenty seventeen, twenty seven year old Heather was at work
when she opted to take a break and step outside.
They didn't allow smoking in the building. The building had
(31:06):
CCTV cameras all over. The police due to the high
value contents and needed extra security. Heather didn't get home
that night, so her husband began calling trying to find
out where she was. When none of her workers had
any answers, her husband called the police. The police started
(31:31):
looking at the video footage from all the exits, but
they never saw Heather coming out of the building. Next,
they checked the hallway cameras and saw her entering the elevator.
The elevators also had cameras, so the footage was checked.
There was Heather standing in the cab. The video feed
(31:54):
went dark for just a few seconds. When it cleared up,
the cab was empty. Everybody just simply assumed there was
something wrong with the camera, so they had a repairman
go check it. A police officer named John returned to
(32:14):
the building to interview Heather's colleagues. When he had finished up,
he took the same elevator downstairs and he vanished. The
video feed from the cab went black for a few seconds,
and when it came back on, the cab was empty.
(32:35):
This really got the police into looking for explanations as
to what happened to their investigator as well as the
young lady. August twelfth, twenty seventeen, Christian, a forty two
year old plumber, was last seen exiting a customer's apartment.
(32:58):
When Christian didn't make it home by the next morning,
his wife called the police. Upon arriving, police noticed that
his work vehicle was still parked outside the apartment. They
began noticing striking similarities between his disappearance and the other three.
(33:22):
I like to look into any weird stories I read
to figure out if the story has any validity. The
weirder the story, the better the evidence needs to be.
I looked for any reports of missing police detectives, missing
people from elevators, things like that, all being reported from
(33:42):
New York. I couldn't find any corroborating reports. However, had
several people all vanished from elevators in and around the
same area, would the authorities want anybody to know? Would
they take steps to make the stories go away? Would
(34:06):
the government lie to us about things like this? Probably?
I've run into tamperings on several research projects that I
was working on. I'll search the internet looking for a
story that I know I read a few years ago.
All I find are those commie fact checkers saying no
(34:30):
such event ever took place. This will get me to
digging into my library and having a go the story
I'm looking for will be there in black and white.
Those who control the information and the spice control the universe.
(34:53):
I kept hearing about the elevator game, and I thought
just maybe this had some connection to the people vanishing.
In order to play, you board an elevator in a
building with at least ten stories. You ride to the fourth, second, sixth, tenth,
and fifth floors in that order. Some say you have
(35:18):
to do this while alone, while others say that you
can play as a group. When the door is open
on the fifth floor, you may encounter a strange looking
woman who just might look familiar. She may also get
on board the elevator with you. By no means should
(35:42):
you interact with her. Wait for the doors to close
so you can go to the next floor. You must
stay in the elevator as it arrives on each floor.
Once you're about to leave the fifth floor, you push
the button for the first The elevator might take you
(36:03):
up to the tenth floor instead. Once you're there, you
can explore the other world. In this other world, the
things are going to look a little off. Strange lights,
odd noises, chilling presence. Make sure you keep track of
(36:25):
where you are so you can find your way back
to that same elevator. If you get confused winding up lost,
you might become stuck in the other world. Oh, that
weird looking woman from the fifth floor, she might be
in the other world as well. Don't talk to her
(36:48):
or have any interaction with her. She might just cause
you to get stuck there with her. When it's time
to get out of this place, you must return to
the elevator that you arrived on. You ride the elevator
to the fourth, second, sixth, tenth, and fifth floors in
(37:09):
that order. Then you press the button for the first floor.
If the elevator takes you to the first floor, check
your surroundings to make sure everything looks normal, and then
exit the building immediately. Who is this strange woman from
the fifth floor. The elevator game was partially inspired by
(37:35):
Alisa Lamb, the Canadian student that died in the water
tank at the Cecil Hotel. If you watch the videos
of her from the elevator, she was definitely doing some
strange things. The game is bizarre, but it doesn't explain
(37:55):
away a police detective. Vanishing cops do have a sense
of humor, and on occasion they might mess around, But
would a cop try playing a game to see if
it might work. Come to think of it, maybe officer.
The officer had heard about the elevator game, and he thought,
(38:19):
let's see what happens. Sometimes when I was at work,
we were known to do some unusual things. Nothing illegal,
but things best not talked about. Not very smart either.
(38:40):
Ollie worked in an old building in downtown San Antonio.
He was in a hurry to get down to the
first floor, so instead of taking the elevator, he was
going to use the escalator. He walked past the freight
elevator and he glanced in as he went by. This
was one of the those old elevators with the gate
(39:02):
that you had to pull shut with strap. Inside the
gate was a second gate that you had to pull
down from above, as a second section would come up
from the floor. When you pushed the upper down button,
a bell would ring to let people know that the
cab was going to move. Inside, the cab light looked odd.
(39:29):
Instead of being white, the inside looked dim, as if
the light was covered with dirt, or maybe it was
just a twenty five watt bulb in the middle of
the floor set an old style mail cart, something from
the late fifties or sixties. All he didn't think anything
of it, seeing the cart there, and he was in
(39:52):
a hurry to get downstairs. At the escalator, he walked
as the conveyance moved along, making it down to the
first floor very quickly. He turned and he walked back
past the freight elevator. The gate was open and the
lights inside were now bright and white. He stopped in
(40:13):
his tracks and he looked into the cab. The cart
was gone. It dawned on him there had been no bell, ringing,
or sound of the elevator moving. How could anybody have
gotten the cab from the second to the first floor
in less time than it had taken him to run
down the escalator. Plus the lights were now twice as
(40:37):
bright as they had been. We talked it over and
we came up with a possible explanation. This might have
been what is known as a time slip. Allie may
have stepped from our time back into the nineteen sixties
and then back just in a few seconds. Back when
(41:01):
I worked for a living, we had to take continuing
training hours in order to keep our paramedic certifications. One
of the perks of being a border Patrol agent medic.
On occasion we stayed in some not so nice hotels
and in others we were treated to some places that
(41:22):
I could never afford. One time we were told to
stay in an old, beat up RV parked on a
military base that was our home for the weekend. It leaked.
It was the luck of the draw. You never knew
when you signed up for a training class where the
(41:45):
government was going to send you. The government was paying,
and they always got a discount. They would pay ninety
five dollars for a two hundred and fifty dollars room.
One year, we wound up at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas.
I felt way out of league. The hotel room was
(42:08):
almost as big as my house. Training was at the
Convention Center, so we could walk back and forth. It
was only about a block and a half away. I
got back to the hotel after a long day and
headed to the elevator to go up to my room.
As I was walking to the bank of cabs, a
(42:29):
door opened all by itself to the left. I didn't
think anything of it until the door slid shut. I
hadn't pushed the button, and this cab was old and
creepy looking. I thought, well, maybe somebody had pushed the
button to call for the elevator on the next floor.
(42:50):
But then why did the door open as I was
walking up to it. This was not a guest elevator,
This was reserved the staff. It was dark, and the
decorations from a few decades ago, maybe a dozen. The
wood paneling was dark stained, and there were no mirrors
(43:13):
on any of the walls. It was just four dark,
dingy looking wooden things on all sides of you. I
hadn't pushed any buttons for the cab to move, but
it started on its way up to the tenth floor.
The little button lit up, showing where I was heading.
(43:36):
Once again, I thought, okay, somebody on the tenth floor
must have called for the cab as I'm standing there
in this dark, dingy little elevator. I got to thinking
about that movie Devil. A man jumps to his death
from a Philadelphia skyscraper, leaving behind a suicide note saying
(43:59):
that the Devil was approaching soon. Shortly thereafter, an elevator
in the same skyscraper becomes stuck with five people in it,
one a security guard, a former marine who is now
a mechanic, a mattress, salesman, a young woman, and an
(44:19):
elderly woman. While a repairman is attempting to fix the elevator,
one of the security guards in the building is watching
the security camera. He sees a face in the monitor
that he thinks is the devil. While the lights are
flickering on and off. When the lights return to normal,
(44:41):
the young woman has a bite mark on her back
and the salesman has blood on his hands. I'm standing
there in this dark little elevator thinking about that movie.
I was tempted to hit all the buttons and just
jump off on whatever floor where I was at. I
(45:02):
also got to thinking what if I hit all these
buttons and nothing happened, or worse, what if it stopped
moving altogether. One time in Monterey, Mexico, me and my
wife were on an elevator that got stuck between floors.
It took the staff about forty five minutes to pry
(45:23):
the door opens so we could climb out. All these
thoughts were bouncing around in my head until the doors
opened and there I was on the tenth floor. I
stepped out, wondering how the cab knew which floor I'd
been heading to there was nobody there waiting. Could one
of the other medics have been pranking me? That would
(45:47):
have required way more activity than anyone I worked with
was willing to try after a long day of training. Plus,
how would they even know I was going to go
to that cab. Elevators usually have mirrors on one or
two of the walls, sometimes all three. It gives the
(46:10):
illusion of the inside cap being bigger, So folks writing
don't feel all claustrophobic. If you look into a mirror
long enough, you're supposed to see things, spirits, ghosts, beings
from other dimensions. A woman was riding alone in an
(46:32):
elevator in Arizona when she thought she saw somebody standing
next to her reflected in the mirror. Quickly looking beside her,
she saw there was no one there. The image in
the mirror was tall and kind of distorted looking. Maybe
it was just some imperfection in the mirror. Later in
(46:55):
the week, one of her coworkers mentioned that she had
seen something weird in the elevator mirror as well. When asked,
the coworker said she'd seen a person standing next to
her haul and kind of blurry looking. Over the course
of the next few months, everybody working in the building
(47:18):
said that they had seen this same thing. It turned
out and tall older woman had died from a heart
attack while riding in that elevator. The Avalon Theater in
eastern Maryland is well known hotspot on the Chesapeake Ghost
(47:40):
Walk tour, especially their elevator. One of the former owners
of the theater tells of a murder that took place
in the building. An actress was found dead in that elevator.
The spear of the woman has been seen entering and
(48:00):
exiting the elevator. The spirit will stare right at you
if you see her before she'll disappear back to wherever
she had come from. The elevator is also known to
move on its own without any warning. The ding sound
that the elevator makes when it reaches its destination is
(48:23):
quite loud and startling, especially for staff who are there
working alone after hours. I hear about spirits and ghosts
writing elevators all the time. Rosario and her supervisor were
working late at night on a grant application at the
(48:44):
health department. He was eleven forty five and the paperwork
had to be finished in order to send it off
by a courier to Austin. First thing in the morning.
The cleaning staff finished for the night, and after turning
the elevat off and securing it on the second floor,
they left. This was done each and every night. Anyone
(49:08):
working after hours would use the stairs instead. The last
custodian had stopped by and handed Rosario the key to
the front door. As soon as the two finished, they
would lock up and leave. From then on, they had
the building to themselves. Rosario and her boss were on
(49:31):
the second floor, just around the corner from the elevator.
The sound of the cab moving up and down was
hard to miss. The unit was old and it made
a lot of noise as it functioned. I've used it
and it is loud. It rattles, and it creaks and
it groans. This is not something you would mistake as
(49:54):
being anything else inside the building or out. They had
just about finished and were about to leave when the
sound caught them off guard. Was somebody in the building
using the elevator? Was it safe to remain there all alone?
The two made their way out of the office and
(50:15):
walked towards the staircase, which took them right by the elevator.
There it sat, the door, locked open, turned off. Now
they were both wondering what did they hear If not
the elevator, there is only the one in the building.
There's nothing anywhere nearby that would mimic the sound. Rosario
(50:40):
and her supervisor wasted no time getting out the door
and into the safety of their vehicles. They do their
best to never work later than the custodians from then on.
The Little Girl the well known ghost who has seen
Oliver Town. It has been seen at the health department,
(51:03):
the mall, the college, the sports arena, several hotels all
over town, as well as several schools. Eddie works at
one of the big stores at the mall. If anything
major has to be done that they have to have
(51:24):
a large work area. Him and his partner will go
in at night when the stores closed. One night they
had to work on the escalator. Eddie would have to
run upstairs to check on something, and the elevator would
be upstairs and he'd have to wait for it to
come back down. Once he was finished upstairs, he had
(51:45):
to wait for the elevator to come back up. The
elevator would go up and down on its own. After
putting up with this most of the night. They decided
the little girl that they called Ashley was messing around
with the elevator. During the day, Eddie would hear boxes
(52:06):
being thrown around in the linen department. He finally said,
if you're not going to help out, stop making a mess.
He hopes Ashley would cooperate. The Sisters of Mercy came
to Laredo and began working with the sick and injured people,
many of whom were indigent. Back in nineteen forty three.
(52:29):
They occupied a few different buildings as their facility grew.
For a few years, the hospital was on the west
side of Jarvis Plaza. It was torn down to make
way for an assisted living home. The place, known as
Old Mercy, is on the corner of Logan and Garfield Streets.
(52:52):
It was a six story building that was added onto
several times. People working there told me about seeing a
nun with a small child that would get into one
of the elevators. The elevator was the one that went
up to the top floor, right next to the chapel.
(53:13):
Many people said that they would see the nun and
the child get in, but nobody ever saw them getting
back out. The habit worn by this nun was from
a long time ago. To round out the hour, I
thought I would tell about how I lost a patient
(53:33):
in Houston. He didn't die, but he vanished. I've told
about him before, but the case falls into this story somewhat.
It was about nineteen eighty one, maybe eighty two. There
was this guy who had decided that he wanted to
(53:55):
stop drinking, and he'd been accepted into the VA Recovery
clim in Houston. He needed a ride into town, so
we said we would take him. He was already beginning
to have dts, so he bought him some beer to
keep him alive. Literally, that's how we used to do it.
(54:18):
The drive into town was pretty much uneventful other than
finding the clinic. It was on Main Street, but way
at the far end, in the not very nice part
of town. Come to think of it, No part of
Houston is all that nice. I was born there, so
I can talk. I hate Euston almost as much as Austin,
(54:42):
almost as much as Dallas. Big cities, just they drive
me nuts. We arrived and then the fun began. The
front door was locked and we had to push a
button and wait. Some guy came to a window mounted
next to the door and looked at us to make
sure that we didn't look like homeless bumbs or something.
(55:06):
Then he asked us to step into the entryway. The
door buzzed and we opened it. We stepped into a
little room had a locked door on both sides of us.
We had to hand over our IDs through a little
slot and then wait some more. Finally we were cleared
to enter the facility. The place was extremely secure. They
(55:32):
didn't have any cameras in the hallways or over any
of the entrances or anything like that, but all the
doors and the windows were all locked. The windows had
mesh screens over them. The nurse took our patient into
a room and we got him settled in. Then we
had the fun part, paperwork. I hate paperwork. The nurse's
(55:58):
desk was right in of the room where we had
put the guy in. It had four beds, and three
of the beds were already occupied. Now this was like
two o'clock in the morning, so everybody was asleep. We
signed him in, and then just before we left, I
stuck my head into the room to wish my patient luck.
(56:20):
He wasn't there. I looked in the bathroom. Then I
told the nurse the guy was not in the room.
The nurse looked everywhere. We looked everywhere with him, even
under the beds. We woke up the other patients and
asked them if they knew where the guy was, and
they didn't even know that he had been there. We
(56:42):
looked in every room in that hallway, plus a few others.
We unlocked doors and looked inside to see if somehow
he'd gotten in. The man had vanished. It took maybe
two or three minutes to do the paperwork. There was
no place to hide and no way to get outside
(57:04):
without a key. He was gone. We never found him.
His family never saw him again. To this day, I
have no idea where he went or how he got there.
It's one of those mysteries of life that when it
happens to you, it really makes you wonder what's going on.
(57:30):
Hope you enjoyed tonight's show. If you did, tell your friends,
Tell your neighbors, Tell people you don't even know that
they should be listening to Strange Things with Chris James.
If you're listening on one of the platforms that only
has a few of the shows, and for some mysterious reason.
You want to hear all of them, You'll have to
(57:53):
go to iHeartRadio under the podcast section where you'll find
all what four hundred and fifty shows that I've done.
You can find most of them on YouTube, but if
you have been deleted because of those fact checkers, those
comis that don't want people talking about things like the
(58:15):
Big f If you have a story that you believe
is true, I could have something to do with UFOs, cryptids, ghosts, conspiracies,
or just something really weird that happened to you a
friend of yours, a relative, some story that your grandfather,
(58:37):
your uncle told you. As long as you believe that
it's a true story, send it to me at Strange
Things at arkanasa dot com and I'll put you in
my next book. If you have any stories you'd like
to hear me talk about, you can also get a
hold of me there Strange Things at arcanasa dot com
(59:02):
Until next Saturday. This is Chris James.
Speaker 1 (59:16):
Are you Are you coming to the tree? When did
they strung up a man who they say he murdered?
Three strange things have happened there. No stranger would it
be if we met at minute in the Hanging Tree
Are you Are you coming to the truth? Well sham
who is says murdered true? Jon stands have happened, Bass.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Jones A.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Mamma hollm true.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Chris James. The
best doorway in the universe lets you into or out of,
depending on which direction you're going. The Organic Man Coffee
Trike Coffee Shop four or five is zero one McPherson
(00:58):
is where you will find the best coffee in the universe.
Coffee lets you get things done. Coffee helps you think.
Coffee is the best thing since sliced bread. Coffee will
save you from a werewolf if it's hot and you
(01:19):
throw it on him, or you just hand it to
him and tell him to drink up. If you can't
get there. From there, go to Organicman Coffeetrike Dot Shop.
A life is too short to drink bad coffee. Last
(01:41):
week I talked about cults and how Jim Jones got
over nine hundred people to commit suicide in Jonestown. I
had started working on it the week before. Vic Hermanson
just released a show on Trailer Trash Terrors about Jim Jones.
(02:05):
He went into a lot more detail on just the
People's Temple and how communism is the most evil group
on the earth. Evan had spent maybe two weeks working
on his show. We had never talked about what we
were working on. It just never came up. We send
(02:27):
each other texts and messages and emails all the time,
but we don't discuss what we're working on mostly so
it's kind of weird. I don't like coincidences. This world
isn't that orderly. This isn't the first time I've done
a show only to discover that some of the other
(02:50):
podcasts I listened to are about the same subject. One week,
I think there were four of us all talking about
the same thing, and it wasn't any kind of current event.
And not like when everybody was talking about the drones,
(03:11):
the drones seen all over the United States that all
seem to have vanished right around the time of the
administration change. No, for unknown and unfathomable reasons, some of
us think about strange things at the same time. Makes
me wonder about those weird thoughts that just kind of
(03:34):
jump into your head when you're not thinking about something.
Is there some entity out there somewhere sending out mind
waves telling us what to focus on, and when some
might say it's the government, why would they be ginning
(03:56):
us to talk about weird cryptids or people who vanished
hundreds of years ago. If it was some kind of
government agency sending out mind control waves, you'd think they'd
be saying government good, conspiracies bad, or something like that.
(04:21):
If not the government, how about aliens? If aliens, then
why focus on just people doing podcasts. I never hear
from listeners who say they were just thinking about hail
Bop last week. There's something weird going on, and I'm
(04:44):
not too sure. I want to know. Life is strange
and the answers might make it even stranger. We were
at my sister in law and brother in law's anniversary
the other night. We went to the Asian bistro on Shiloh.
(05:05):
I was sitting there, staring off into space, like I
do when I don't have a book in front of me.
I looked down a hallway and there was a door there,
probably where they keep their mops and brooms. It got
me to thinking about a book I'd read twice. It's
(05:27):
called The House of Leaves. Em is upset with one
of the cats for sitting on the couch when she
wanted to sit on the couch anyway. The House of
Leaves by Mark z Daniel Luski. I used to have
a hardcover copy, signed by the writer. I gave it
(05:49):
to my nephew. Hope he still has it. There might
be worth a few bucks, like maybe twenty bucks. If
you've read The House of Leaves, so you'll know what
it is and how it is put together. If you haven't,
it is an experience all in itself. The book has
(06:11):
been described as the Blair Witch on paper. Some say
it is confusing, while others find it to be I
opening the book starts out as the story of a
Johnny Truant who finds an unfinished manuscript in an old house.
He begins to read the story and finds out it
(06:34):
is a transcribed manuscript of the Novidsen records written by
a guy named Zampanol. Zampano filmed activity at a house
that defies the ideas of haunting. Will Novidsen had bought
a house in the country and moved his family in
(06:57):
without any problems. He was a photo journalist in his
life revolved around photography. Novidsen installs cameras throughout the house,
to capture candid family moments. As he's going over the images,
he notices there are doors in places that didn't used
(07:21):
to have doors, and they opened onto new rooms that
extended impossibly beyond the houses outside dimensions. I'm not going
to give you any more details, but the book is
worth your effort to get a copy and read it.
(07:41):
It's not on kindle. You'll have to flip the pages.
If it was on kindle, I don't think it would
work right. It's a page turner in more ways than one.
Some pages the words run around the edge, and in
others there might be just one word on each page.
(08:07):
That door at the end of the hall at the
Asian Bistro got me to thinking about things showing up
or disappearing in weird locations. How many kids have issues
with closet doors, especially at night. Have you ever wondered
why most parents think this is just kids being weird?
(08:32):
Like that movie Monster's Ink back when Disney was still entertaining.
As I went around talking to folks about their experiences,
I heard a few stories of closets holding more than clothes.
Roll and his wife had bought their dream home. It
(08:55):
was on the north side of town up past Loop twenty.
Now there didn't all have to share one room. One day,
as Raoul was walking to the kitchen, he saw his
wife in the bathroom by the sink. Had nothing to
do with the closet, yet he kept going, and then
(09:16):
seconds later he saw his wife in the kitchen. This
was odd, so he doubled back and he looked in
the bathroom once more. It was empty. There was no
way she could have gotten from the bathroom to the kitchen,
because the only way there would have been in the
hallway that he was standing in. A few weeks later,
(09:40):
he could see that somebody was standing in the closet.
The door has a slight gap and the shadow was
quite distinct. Thinking one of the kids was hiding there
trying to surprise him, Raoul yanked the door open, only
to find an empty closet. The property where their dream
(10:03):
house was built had been a ranch many years ago,
and there's no telling what might have lingered on long
after the property was developed. Robert told me that he's
been seeing shadow beings in their home for years. The
being is tall, about seven foot six, and very thin.
(10:26):
His wife has seen the shadow as well. Surprisingly, they
see the shadow being more often when they're together than
when they're apart. Their son, Robert Junior, says that he
sees this shadow being in his closet or in the
corner of his bedroom. One day, while visiting Slaughters Park,
(10:49):
Robert Junior had somebody take a photo of him and
his girlfriend. When he looked at the image, he saw
man standing behind them. The man in the photo was
only half there. The side of him farthest from them
was practically invisible. You could see right through him. Could
(11:12):
this be the thing that he had seen in his
closet for just another weird thing that people run into.
Folks who see shadow beings sometimes also see cryptids in UFOs.
It's as if their minds are tuned to the frequency,
allowing them to see things that others don't see or
(11:36):
convince themselves they don't see. Liz and her sister Lynn
are both energy sensitives. This means they can both feel
and sense things going on with those around them. If
a person or sick or has a bad attachment, the
(11:57):
sisters can feel it. When somebody passes away, Liz or
her sister will pray for their soul to find its
way to the proper place. On many occasions. They've even
seen spirits of the dead. My wife also sees things
like this. This might be why her and these two
(12:20):
young ladies get along so well. One day, while the
pair was praying for lost souls, they'd opened the window
to the room so that energy could exit. Any time
you're messing with energy in your home, you want to
give it a way out. The window was old and heavy,
(12:41):
and it took both of them to move the sash
up to its highest location. With the window wide open,
they began their efforts to move these souls along with
a sudden crash, the window slammed shut. This startled the
two sisters. Once their hearts had slowed down from the fright,
(13:03):
they went to see what was up with the rather
down with the window. Not only had it closed, but
the latch had flipped shut as well, something trying to
keep something else out. Late at night, while Liz was studying,
(13:24):
she hears somebody moving to her bed and then taking
a seat. The mattress makes the groaning noise. She can
hear and feel the person, but she's alone in her
room when this happens, some unseen spirit coming to visit.
She was awoken one morning by the sound of her
(13:45):
alarm clock going off. It should have said six am,
only the clock said it was three. She realized that
this wasn't her alarm clock that she was using, but
this was an old clock that she had in a
room that wasn't working. Lynn is also sensitive. She can
(14:08):
feel and hear as well as sea spirits. She wakes
up a lot between three and five am with a
feeling of somebody in her room. She feels them breathing
next to her, as if they're trying to get her attention.
(14:28):
During one of these three am disturbances, she saw a
young girl run out the door and into the hallway.
This girl was wearing a light blue dress with orange flowers.
She didn't tell me what color the girl's hair was.
I'm wondering if this could have been the little girl
seen all over town. She had on a hat as well.
(14:53):
Lynn wonders who this girl was and why she came
to visit In the middle of the night one day,
taking a shower, she stood there with the curtain closed
when she heard somebody enter the bathroom. She assumed it
was her mother or her sister. She could hear cabinet
(15:14):
doors open and things being moved around. She asked who
it was and what they were looking for, but there
was no answer. Instead, it just got real quiet. She
figured they must have left. Once she had finished, she
walked into the kitchen, where her mother and sister were.
(15:36):
She asked them who had come into the bathroom, to
which they both said they had stayed in the kitchen
the whole time. Lynn tried to not let this bother
her until later when she was back in the bathroom.
On the mirror were two hand prints. These prints were
(15:57):
far bigger than any of them could have made. They
looked more like a large man had placed his hands
on the mirror. She thinks this was the spirit of
somebody seeking help. They had a friend who is a
psychic come by and look around their home. This friend
(16:20):
told them that there was a portal in the closet
of Lynn's bedroom. The portal may connect to purgatory or
some other similar location. Why it's in the closet is
anyone's guess, but this might explain some of these late
night visits. Lynn wonders why she was the one chosen
(16:44):
to have spirits visiting in the middle of the night,
and why is her closet connected to another dimension. I
listen to a lot of podcasts. Tony Merkle on The
Confessionals had what I consider the best bigfoot interview ever. Well,
(17:07):
he didn't interview bigfoot. He interviewed a truck driver who
lived on ranch in Louisiana who had had several odd encounters.
In episode three eighty three, a Trucker's Bigfoot Property, Tony
was joined by Dylan, who had creatures on his property
(17:30):
since he was a little child. The land he lived
on was passed down through the family for generations, and
what lived in the woods was not spoken about unless
there was a real reason to. Dylan recalls three separate
occasions in his childhood where a bigfoot made itself known,
(17:53):
but despite three encounters, he managed to convince himself that
this was just something that happened. He even says he
thought that it was just a gorilla a living on
the land in Louisiana. It wasn't until Dylan was an
adult that he locked eyes with something and understood what
(18:18):
was really happening. Then all of these memories of his
childhood flashed before his eyes and started to make sense.
Dylan also said when he was very young, he had
a little boy living in his closet. It was one
of those with the twin doors on either side of
(18:38):
a small piece of wall. The boy would look out
from one door and then move over and look out
from the other one. Dylan never questioned why anyone would
hang out in his closet until years later. I also
found it very amusing. Dylan was was doing the interview
(19:02):
from his truck. He was in Laredo at the time.
He was waiting to pick up a load he had
driven from a nice, cool location into the hottest part
of the world. Well something like that. Dylan was in
Laredo on his phone talking to Tony in Pennsylvania. Tony
(19:26):
was broadcasting to me here in Laredo, well, along with
everybody else that was listening. I've gone back and listened
to this podcast three or four times now. On Expanded Perspectives,
Cam and Kyle talk about a story sent to them
(19:46):
from a listener. The woman I'll call her Bonnie, because
I can't remember if she gave her name or not,
or if she even did. Bonnie and her husband were
an out door public event. They had been there long
enough to necessitate a visit to the Portajohn's there were
(20:08):
units for both genders. Can you imagine how difficult this
arrangement would have been last year at this time, when
there were two hundred and sixty seven genders. I'm getting
off of the story. Bonnie needed to make a phone call,
She needed to visit the office, powder her nose. She
(20:33):
had to respond to the call of nature. No, the
guys on expanded perspectives didn't use any of these idiomatic expressions.
Bonnie needed a portagohn, and so she went and got
in line. There was a woman right in front of
her who stepped into the female bathroom and closed the door.
(20:56):
Bonnie stood there, waiting and waiting. Why is it the
more you need a bathroom, the longer the wait time.
When the clock had ticked by way too much, Bonnie
began to get concerned. Maybe this woman inside was having
some kind of emergency. You do know that a lot
(21:19):
of folks have heart attacks while trying to pass a deuce,
drop a log, I take a dump, go number two.
I think it has something to do with the valve
salva maneuver. Straining to pass the unpassable causes your blood
pressure to drop. Strain enough and it drops all the
(21:43):
way to zero. As concern turned to worry, Bonnie finally
knocked on the door and asked if everything was okay.
There was no response. She knocked again, and finally she
tried pulling the door open. The portajohn was empty. It
(22:04):
wasn't as if Bonnie had seen this other woman from
far off and might have mistaken which john she went into.
Bonnie was right behind her as she went in. Portajohn's
do not have a second exit. The only way out
was well if the other woman had jumped into the
(22:27):
storage container down there in the blue water. Bonnie told
her husband what she had just seen and asked what
he thought was going on. He said, there must be
some kind of a portal inside the portajohn. A portal, John,
if you will think about that next time you heed
(22:50):
the call of nature at a outside public event way way, way,
maybe a few more ways. Back in time, folks used
to have one or two sets of clothing that they
wore and that was it. A bag might hold one
(23:11):
or two items, but this was not for everyone. Some
people just had the one set. Extras could be kept
in a trunk or a crate. The rich folks who
might have special outfits for special occasions, they kept them
on shelves or in a niche built into the wall.
(23:32):
In the Renaissance, chests of drawers built to hold things
not currently in use, came into use. Some chests were
placed on stands, making them look more elegant. In the
eighteenth centuries, armed wars became increasingly the thing to have.
(23:54):
They had an interior with shelves and drawers and a
place to hang long garments or They were typically made
of wood, and sometimes they held frequently used items or clothing,
And sometimes this is where the laundry went once it
had been done. The nineteenth century saw the creation of
(24:17):
a room to take off coats and boots, called a mudroom.
Coats were hung from hooks and the boots swell wound
up on the floor below them. The mudroom gave way
to a smaller room by the front door. This became
the closet, a closeted space for coats. Before the invention
(24:42):
of coats, closets sorry before the invention of closets, spirits
were associated with hanging out in corners. People would report
seeing a shimmering form begin to grow in the corner
of the room, even up by the ceiling. Why did
the spirits move from the corner of the room to
(25:05):
the closet. I wonder maybe it has to do with
when moving from dimension to dimension, there's little chance of
encountering anyone in a closet or a small enclosed space.
I did some looking, and I found a few stories
from folks who encountered things coming and going from their closets.
(25:31):
One story is about somebody I'll call her Jeane. Jean
grew up in a haunted house. There was a spirit
that hung out in her closet. At first, a Jeane
was really scared of this entity, and she had to
have the door closed before she was able to sleep.
Over time, she began to get the feeling that this
(25:53):
spirit was an old lady who was actually there not
to do any harm, but to protect her. This led
to the question protect Jeanne from what. Jeanne mentioned having
a spirit in her closet, and surprisingly, her mother said
(26:16):
she thought there might be one in her closet as well.
Unlike Jeanne's closet spirit, the one in the mother's closet
wasn't nice. Her mom would keep the door closed at
all times, and once in a while she even drug
the dresser over to block the door. When Jeane was
(26:38):
older and married, she began to see shadowy images in
the closet at night, not just hers, but all throughout
the house. Others said they could see these entities as well.
People that didn't see anything did say that they felt
as if they were being watched from the closets. Jean
(27:01):
and her husband moved not just to another house, but
to another city. Still the closet beings were there. They
must have been following Jean, either keeping an eye on
her or guarding her against something else. I talked about
(27:22):
that elevator incident that me and my wife had several
times on the show. I'll give those of you that
didn't hear the story a quick rundown. My wife and
I went to a hospital to visit someone. As we
were approaching the elevators, a man came rushing from the
emergency department and on to one of the cabs. The
(27:46):
door closed, so I waited a few seconds to let
him get on his way before pushing the call button.
The same cab opened, showing us or there was nobody inside.
My wife described the exact same person that I had seen.
We both thought this must have been a ghost. It
(28:10):
was the best explanation at the time. Later, while reading
reports and talking to people, I began to hear of
others having similar encounters, people vanishing from small, enclosed places.
I still consider our sighting to have been a ghost,
(28:31):
and my wife does as well. But maybe it with
somebody stepping into a portal. While looking for stories of
people disappearing from elevators, I stumbled on these next few.
Now I have no idea if these are true or
just somebody making up weird stories, some of that creepy
(28:54):
pasta nonsense. You decide after listening for yourself. New York City,
June ninth, twenty seventeen, Jennifer, a fourteen year old, went
to visit her classmate Mike at his apartment on twenty
first Avenue. This apartment was new and it was equipped
(29:19):
with CCTV cameras. Mike had seen Jane from his porch
and he waved to her. She waved back to him
and then got into the building lobby. CCTV footage captured
her going into the elevator. She never arrived at Mike's door,
(29:40):
and he wrote it off as maybe she was there
to visit somebody else. That evening, Jennifer's parents called Mike,
asking if their daughter was still there and when would
she be home. When they were told she had never
got to Mike's apartment, they called the police. The police
(30:01):
did a cursory investigation, asking neighbors if they'd seen the
young girl, but nobody had and they showed no suspicious activities,
so the questioning was all they did at the time.
The next morning, Jennifer was not at school and the
police began a more thorough investigation. The CCTV footage was
(30:25):
examined and the only sight of the young girl was
her getting on to the elevator. There were no images
of her ever getting off on any of the floors
or leaving the building. Police began a door to door search.
They received permission from all the residents to check their apartments,
(30:45):
and no trace of Jennifer was ever found. July twenty fourth,
twenty seventeen, twenty seven year old Heather was at work
when she opted to take a break and step outside.
They didn't allow smoking in the building. The building had
(31:06):
CCTV cameras all over. The police due to the high
value contents and needed extra security. Heather didn't get home
that night, so her husband began calling trying to find
out where she was. When none of her workers had
any answers, her husband called the police. The police started
(31:31):
looking at the video footage from all the exits, but
they never saw Heather coming out of the building. Next,
they checked the hallway cameras and saw her entering the elevator.
The elevators also had cameras, so the footage was checked.
There was Heather standing in the cab. The video feed
(31:54):
went dark for just a few seconds. When it cleared up,
the cab was empty. Everybody just simply assumed there was
something wrong with the camera, so they had a repairman
go check it. A police officer named John returned to
(32:14):
the building to interview Heather's colleagues. When he had finished up,
he took the same elevator downstairs and he vanished. The
video feed from the cab went black for a few seconds,
and when it came back on, the cab was empty.
(32:35):
This really got the police into looking for explanations as
to what happened to their investigator as well as the
young lady. August twelfth, twenty seventeen, Christian, a forty two
year old plumber, was last seen exiting a customer's apartment.
(32:58):
When Christian didn't make it home by the next morning,
his wife called the police. Upon arriving, police noticed that
his work vehicle was still parked outside the apartment. They
began noticing striking similarities between his disappearance and the other three.
(33:22):
I like to look into any weird stories I read
to figure out if the story has any validity. The
weirder the story, the better the evidence needs to be.
I looked for any reports of missing police detectives, missing
people from elevators, things like that, all being reported from
(33:42):
New York. I couldn't find any corroborating reports. However, had
several people all vanished from elevators in and around the
same area, would the authorities want anybody to know? Would
they take steps to make the stories go away? Would
(34:06):
the government lie to us about things like this? Probably?
I've run into tamperings on several research projects that I
was working on. I'll search the internet looking for a
story that I know I read a few years ago.
All I find are those commie fact checkers saying no
(34:30):
such event ever took place. This will get me to
digging into my library and having a go the story
I'm looking for will be there in black and white.
Those who control the information and the spice control the universe.
(34:53):
I kept hearing about the elevator game, and I thought
just maybe this had some connection to the people vanishing.
In order to play, you board an elevator in a
building with at least ten stories. You ride to the fourth, second, sixth, tenth,
and fifth floors in that order. Some say you have
(35:18):
to do this while alone, while others say that you
can play as a group. When the door is open
on the fifth floor, you may encounter a strange looking
woman who just might look familiar. She may also get
on board the elevator with you. By no means should
(35:42):
you interact with her. Wait for the doors to close
so you can go to the next floor. You must
stay in the elevator as it arrives on each floor.
Once you're about to leave the fifth floor, you push
the button for the first The elevator might take you
(36:03):
up to the tenth floor instead. Once you're there, you
can explore the other world. In this other world, the
things are going to look a little off. Strange lights,
odd noises, chilling presence. Make sure you keep track of
(36:25):
where you are so you can find your way back
to that same elevator. If you get confused winding up lost,
you might become stuck in the other world. Oh, that
weird looking woman from the fifth floor, she might be
in the other world as well. Don't talk to her
(36:48):
or have any interaction with her. She might just cause
you to get stuck there with her. When it's time
to get out of this place, you must return to
the elevator that you arrived on. You ride the elevator
to the fourth, second, sixth, tenth, and fifth floors in
(37:09):
that order. Then you press the button for the first floor.
If the elevator takes you to the first floor, check
your surroundings to make sure everything looks normal, and then
exit the building immediately. Who is this strange woman from
the fifth floor. The elevator game was partially inspired by
(37:35):
Alisa Lamb, the Canadian student that died in the water
tank at the Cecil Hotel. If you watch the videos
of her from the elevator, she was definitely doing some
strange things. The game is bizarre, but it doesn't explain
(37:55):
away a police detective. Vanishing cops do have a sense
of humor, and on occasion they might mess around, But
would a cop try playing a game to see if
it might work. Come to think of it, maybe officer.
The officer had heard about the elevator game, and he thought,
(38:19):
let's see what happens. Sometimes when I was at work,
we were known to do some unusual things. Nothing illegal,
but things best not talked about. Not very smart either.
(38:40):
Ollie worked in an old building in downtown San Antonio.
He was in a hurry to get down to the
first floor, so instead of taking the elevator, he was
going to use the escalator. He walked past the freight
elevator and he glanced in as he went by. This
was one of the those old elevators with the gate
(39:02):
that you had to pull shut with strap. Inside the
gate was a second gate that you had to pull
down from above, as a second section would come up
from the floor. When you pushed the upper down button,
a bell would ring to let people know that the
cab was going to move. Inside, the cab light looked odd.
(39:29):
Instead of being white, the inside looked dim, as if
the light was covered with dirt, or maybe it was
just a twenty five watt bulb in the middle of
the floor set an old style mail cart, something from
the late fifties or sixties. All he didn't think anything
of it, seeing the cart there, and he was in
(39:52):
a hurry to get downstairs. At the escalator, he walked
as the conveyance moved along, making it down to the
first floor very quickly. He turned and he walked back
past the freight elevator. The gate was open and the
lights inside were now bright and white. He stopped in
(40:13):
his tracks and he looked into the cab. The cart
was gone. It dawned on him there had been no bell, ringing,
or sound of the elevator moving. How could anybody have
gotten the cab from the second to the first floor
in less time than it had taken him to run
down the escalator. Plus the lights were now twice as
(40:37):
bright as they had been. We talked it over and
we came up with a possible explanation. This might have
been what is known as a time slip. Allie may
have stepped from our time back into the nineteen sixties
and then back just in a few seconds. Back when
(41:01):
I worked for a living, we had to take continuing
training hours in order to keep our paramedic certifications. One
of the perks of being a border Patrol agent medic.
On occasion we stayed in some not so nice hotels
and in others we were treated to some places that
(41:22):
I could never afford. One time we were told to
stay in an old, beat up RV parked on a
military base that was our home for the weekend. It leaked.
It was the luck of the draw. You never knew
when you signed up for a training class where the
(41:45):
government was going to send you. The government was paying,
and they always got a discount. They would pay ninety
five dollars for a two hundred and fifty dollars room.
One year, we wound up at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas.
I felt way out of league. The hotel room was
(42:08):
almost as big as my house. Training was at the
Convention Center, so we could walk back and forth. It
was only about a block and a half away. I
got back to the hotel after a long day and
headed to the elevator to go up to my room.
As I was walking to the bank of cabs, a
(42:29):
door opened all by itself to the left. I didn't
think anything of it until the door slid shut. I
hadn't pushed the button, and this cab was old and
creepy looking. I thought, well, maybe somebody had pushed the
button to call for the elevator on the next floor.
(42:50):
But then why did the door open as I was
walking up to it. This was not a guest elevator,
This was reserved the staff. It was dark, and the
decorations from a few decades ago, maybe a dozen. The
wood paneling was dark stained, and there were no mirrors
(43:13):
on any of the walls. It was just four dark,
dingy looking wooden things on all sides of you. I
hadn't pushed any buttons for the cab to move, but
it started on its way up to the tenth floor.
The little button lit up, showing where I was heading.
(43:36):
Once again, I thought, okay, somebody on the tenth floor
must have called for the cab as I'm standing there
in this dark, dingy little elevator. I got to thinking
about that movie Devil. A man jumps to his death
from a Philadelphia skyscraper, leaving behind a suicide note saying
(43:59):
that the Devil was approaching soon. Shortly thereafter, an elevator
in the same skyscraper becomes stuck with five people in it,
one a security guard, a former marine who is now
a mechanic, a mattress, salesman, a young woman, and an
(44:19):
elderly woman. While a repairman is attempting to fix the elevator,
one of the security guards in the building is watching
the security camera. He sees a face in the monitor
that he thinks is the devil. While the lights are
flickering on and off. When the lights return to normal,
(44:41):
the young woman has a bite mark on her back
and the salesman has blood on his hands. I'm standing
there in this dark little elevator thinking about that movie.
I was tempted to hit all the buttons and just
jump off on whatever floor where I was at. I
(45:02):
also got to thinking what if I hit all these
buttons and nothing happened, or worse, what if it stopped
moving altogether. One time in Monterey, Mexico, me and my
wife were on an elevator that got stuck between floors.
It took the staff about forty five minutes to pry
(45:23):
the door opens so we could climb out. All these
thoughts were bouncing around in my head until the doors
opened and there I was on the tenth floor. I
stepped out, wondering how the cab knew which floor I'd
been heading to there was nobody there waiting. Could one
of the other medics have been pranking me? That would
(45:47):
have required way more activity than anyone I worked with
was willing to try after a long day of training. Plus,
how would they even know I was going to go
to that cab. Elevators usually have mirrors on one or
two of the walls, sometimes all three. It gives the
(46:10):
illusion of the inside cap being bigger, So folks writing
don't feel all claustrophobic. If you look into a mirror
long enough, you're supposed to see things, spirits, ghosts, beings
from other dimensions. A woman was riding alone in an
(46:32):
elevator in Arizona when she thought she saw somebody standing
next to her reflected in the mirror. Quickly looking beside her,
she saw there was no one there. The image in
the mirror was tall and kind of distorted looking. Maybe
it was just some imperfection in the mirror. Later in
(46:55):
the week, one of her coworkers mentioned that she had
seen something weird in the elevator mirror as well. When asked,
the coworker said she'd seen a person standing next to
her haul and kind of blurry looking. Over the course
of the next few months, everybody working in the building
(47:18):
said that they had seen this same thing. It turned
out and tall older woman had died from a heart
attack while riding in that elevator. The Avalon Theater in
eastern Maryland is well known hotspot on the Chesapeake Ghost
(47:40):
Walk tour, especially their elevator. One of the former owners
of the theater tells of a murder that took place
in the building. An actress was found dead in that elevator.
The spear of the woman has been seen entering and
(48:00):
exiting the elevator. The spirit will stare right at you
if you see her before she'll disappear back to wherever
she had come from. The elevator is also known to
move on its own without any warning. The ding sound
that the elevator makes when it reaches its destination is
(48:23):
quite loud and startling, especially for staff who are there
working alone after hours. I hear about spirits and ghosts
writing elevators all the time. Rosario and her supervisor were
working late at night on a grant application at the
(48:44):
health department. He was eleven forty five and the paperwork
had to be finished in order to send it off
by a courier to Austin. First thing in the morning.
The cleaning staff finished for the night, and after turning
the elevat off and securing it on the second floor,
they left. This was done each and every night. Anyone
(49:08):
working after hours would use the stairs instead. The last
custodian had stopped by and handed Rosario the key to
the front door. As soon as the two finished, they
would lock up and leave. From then on, they had
the building to themselves. Rosario and her boss were on
(49:31):
the second floor, just around the corner from the elevator.
The sound of the cab moving up and down was
hard to miss. The unit was old and it made
a lot of noise as it functioned. I've used it
and it is loud. It rattles, and it creaks and
it groans. This is not something you would mistake as
(49:54):
being anything else inside the building or out. They had
just about finished and were about to leave when the
sound caught them off guard. Was somebody in the building
using the elevator? Was it safe to remain there all alone?
The two made their way out of the office and
(50:15):
walked towards the staircase, which took them right by the elevator.
There it sat, the door, locked open, turned off. Now
they were both wondering what did they hear If not
the elevator, there is only the one in the building.
There's nothing anywhere nearby that would mimic the sound. Rosario
(50:40):
and her supervisor wasted no time getting out the door
and into the safety of their vehicles. They do their
best to never work later than the custodians from then on.
The Little Girl the well known ghost who has seen
Oliver Town. It has been seen at the health department,
(51:03):
the mall, the college, the sports arena, several hotels all
over town, as well as several schools. Eddie works at
one of the big stores at the mall. If anything
major has to be done that they have to have
(51:24):
a large work area. Him and his partner will go
in at night when the stores closed. One night they
had to work on the escalator. Eddie would have to
run upstairs to check on something, and the elevator would
be upstairs and he'd have to wait for it to
come back down. Once he was finished upstairs, he had
(51:45):
to wait for the elevator to come back up. The
elevator would go up and down on its own. After
putting up with this most of the night. They decided
the little girl that they called Ashley was messing around
with the elevator. During the day, Eddie would hear boxes
(52:06):
being thrown around in the linen department. He finally said,
if you're not going to help out, stop making a mess.
He hopes Ashley would cooperate. The Sisters of Mercy came
to Laredo and began working with the sick and injured people,
many of whom were indigent. Back in nineteen forty three.
(52:29):
They occupied a few different buildings as their facility grew.
For a few years, the hospital was on the west
side of Jarvis Plaza. It was torn down to make
way for an assisted living home. The place, known as
Old Mercy, is on the corner of Logan and Garfield Streets.
(52:52):
It was a six story building that was added onto
several times. People working there told me about seeing a
nun with a small child that would get into one
of the elevators. The elevator was the one that went
up to the top floor, right next to the chapel.
(53:13):
Many people said that they would see the nun and
the child get in, but nobody ever saw them getting
back out. The habit worn by this nun was from
a long time ago. To round out the hour, I
thought I would tell about how I lost a patient
(53:33):
in Houston. He didn't die, but he vanished. I've told
about him before, but the case falls into this story somewhat.
It was about nineteen eighty one, maybe eighty two. There
was this guy who had decided that he wanted to
(53:55):
stop drinking, and he'd been accepted into the VA Recovery
clim in Houston. He needed a ride into town, so
we said we would take him. He was already beginning
to have dts, so he bought him some beer to
keep him alive. Literally, that's how we used to do it.
(54:18):
The drive into town was pretty much uneventful other than
finding the clinic. It was on Main Street, but way
at the far end, in the not very nice part
of town. Come to think of it, No part of
Houston is all that nice. I was born there, so
I can talk. I hate Euston almost as much as Austin,
(54:42):
almost as much as Dallas. Big cities, just they drive
me nuts. We arrived and then the fun began. The
front door was locked and we had to push a
button and wait. Some guy came to a window mounted
next to the door and looked at us to make
sure that we didn't look like homeless bumbs or something.
(55:06):
Then he asked us to step into the entryway. The
door buzzed and we opened it. We stepped into a
little room had a locked door on both sides of us.
We had to hand over our IDs through a little
slot and then wait some more. Finally we were cleared
to enter the facility. The place was extremely secure. They
(55:32):
didn't have any cameras in the hallways or over any
of the entrances or anything like that, but all the
doors and the windows were all locked. The windows had
mesh screens over them. The nurse took our patient into
a room and we got him settled in. Then we
had the fun part, paperwork. I hate paperwork. The nurse's
(55:58):
desk was right in of the room where we had
put the guy in. It had four beds, and three
of the beds were already occupied. Now this was like
two o'clock in the morning, so everybody was asleep. We
signed him in, and then just before we left, I
stuck my head into the room to wish my patient luck.
(56:20):
He wasn't there. I looked in the bathroom. Then I
told the nurse the guy was not in the room.
The nurse looked everywhere. We looked everywhere with him, even
under the beds. We woke up the other patients and
asked them if they knew where the guy was, and
they didn't even know that he had been there. We
(56:42):
looked in every room in that hallway, plus a few others.
We unlocked doors and looked inside to see if somehow
he'd gotten in. The man had vanished. It took maybe
two or three minutes to do the paperwork. There was
no place to hide and no way to get outside
(57:04):
without a key. He was gone. We never found him.
His family never saw him again. To this day, I
have no idea where he went or how he got there.
It's one of those mysteries of life that when it
happens to you, it really makes you wonder what's going on.
(57:30):
Hope you enjoyed tonight's show. If you did, tell your friends,
Tell your neighbors, Tell people you don't even know that
they should be listening to Strange Things with Chris James.
If you're listening on one of the platforms that only
has a few of the shows, and for some mysterious reason.
You want to hear all of them, You'll have to
(57:53):
go to iHeartRadio under the podcast section where you'll find
all what four hundred and fifty shows that I've done.
You can find most of them on YouTube, but if
you have been deleted because of those fact checkers, those
comis that don't want people talking about things like the
(58:15):
Big f If you have a story that you believe
is true, I could have something to do with UFOs, cryptids, ghosts, conspiracies,
or just something really weird that happened to you a
friend of yours, a relative, some story that your grandfather,
(58:37):
your uncle told you. As long as you believe that
it's a true story, send it to me at Strange
Things at arkanasa dot com and I'll put you in
my next book. If you have any stories you'd like
to hear me talk about, you can also get a
hold of me there Strange Things at arcanasa dot com
(59:02):
Until next Saturday. This is Chris James.
Speaker 1 (59:16):
Are you Are you coming to the tree? When did
they strung up a man who they say he murdered?
Three strange things have happened there. No stranger would it
be if we met at minute in the Hanging Tree
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