Ghost to Ghost 1998 dives into unsettling spirit encounters—Art Bell describes a smoky, faceless figure grabbing his wrist without touch, while callers recount eerie events tied to violent deaths: a flashing light and slave voices in Louisiana’s abandoned LeBeau Plantation House, a firefighter’s suffocating pressure linked to a 20-year-old fatality, and a ghostly cat hissing through a courthouse wall. Trained observers like police and sheriffs confirm these phenomena, yet Bell questions their origins, suggesting they may not always be human spirits. Cross-cultural parallels emerge as callers from islands describe similar "Sao Tamona" experiences, mirroring Okinawa’s hauntings—where Bell witnessed cave burnings—and other locations steeped in trauma, blurring the line between ghostly and something far more sinister. [Automatically generated summary]
I woke in the early morning to see someone kneeling beside my bed staring at me.
I could see the outline, a smoky outline, of a man, almost transparent, with an expressionless face.
To my disbelief, I closed and opened my eyes, repeatedly thinking that I must have been dreaming, only I continued to see the figure kneeling and staring at me.
Frightened, I threw two quick punches at my intruder's head of a black belt and karate, only to see my fists and arms pass straight through this entity as it slowly drifted back into the night.
Obviously, I was frightened and confused.
Was I dreaming?
Earlier this week, I was again awakened in the middle of the night by someone or something grabbing at my wrist.
So I shot up in bed and again saw the smoky outline of my visitor.
This time, it was holding my arm and staring directly at me.
No time to react as the figure slowly simply faded into the dark again.
Was I dreaming?
Convinced this might all be in my head, I only told two of my closest friends about the ordeal.
That was until last night, you see.
I was at a school function sitting with many of my fellow students when the conversation turned to the supernatural.
That's when one of my classmates embarrassingly admitted that he and his roommate believe there is an entity visiting their apartment.
Though they haven't seen the ghost, apparently their visitor makes itself known by moving objects around the apartment and knocking other items over.
Couldn't believe what I heard, turned white as chills ran down my spine.
You must understand, Art.
The two students who told us that story live in the apartment across the hall, directly across the hall from mine.
I don't know if I'm going to have time to get this in or not.
It's from a police officer.
He says, here's my ghost story, Art.
I'm a cop.
When I was 13, we lived in an old church parsonage on the Celine Seward County line in Nebraska.
The church and the small country cemetery was just south of the house.
My bedroom was on the southwest corner of the house.
One November night near Thanksgiving, I had just turned out the light from reading.
There was an ear full moon out.
I could see the church and cemetery like daylight.
I lay back in my bed, which was inches from the door, as was the light switch.
Was facing the door when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
I assumed it was my dad.
It was not unusual for him to check on me.
I liked to stay up.
He admonished me to get to sleep.
I'd stay up and read.
I heard steps coming closer, feigned sleep, but kept my eyes partly open.
As the steps entered my room, I saw not my dad, but a shadowy figure.
Tall, male.
No features.
Repeat, no features.
It had a white collar.
The moonlight in my room, almost like a nightlight.
Should have been able to see any face if it was there, but it was just a shadow.
I about filled my drawers.
I walked toward the window, stood there as if looking at the church.
It was a solid figure, as the moonlight didn't shine through it.
It turned, started back toward the door.
Me, I pulled the covers over my head and shook until I fell asleep.
Several years later, when I was an adult, my dad and I were driving about having Barbie bops.
We drove by the house, the church.
I asked dad if anything strange had ever happened there.
My dad told me this story.
When he was, when it was cold, often when it was cold, we'd shut the sliding doors to the large parlor so we wouldn't have to heat it.
Dad would often wake to pounding on the sliding doors because they were tape-shot.
He actually, on occasion, would see the doors move as they were pounded on.
You know, the old, you've seen it in the movies, right?
Boom, boom, boom.
Door bows in, that kind of thing.
So it just goes on and on.
In other words, his dad had seen the same thing.
I'm just, there's not going to be enough time for me to finish this story, but there is another case, you see, of an independent confirmation.
As I said earlier, a lot of people see these things, they experience these things, and they don't want to talk about them for obvious reasons.
Because somebody's, you know, you're afraid somebody will think you're nuts, right?
Well, you're not nuts.
And so tonight you will hear stories, and we're about to go to the phones, from people who I can assure you, most of them are not nuts.
Now, of course, there could be a few, but most of them are not nuts at all.
I was doing an antique show in Texas, and on the way back, I went to visit my sister's house who lives in St. Bernard Parish, right outside of New Orleans.
Well, I'd rather just kind of get to what happened.
unidentified
Okay.
Well, we go behind VFW Hall, which is back behind this place, and we've got to go a roundabout way to sneak over the fence and this, that, and the other.
And it's kind of like right out of Max Files episode, you know, going through sugar tankards in the middle of the night, stacked too high, and all this stuff.
Get into the house finally.
And I'd like to say that we didn't really destroy anything except like a little eight-inch board trying to get in.
But we get into this place, and it's huge.
And there's like eight rooms on the bottom floor.
And so we start making our way around, and we're looking for a staircase.
And you have to imagine that we're not supposed to be there.
And so one of the first things that happened, and this was really bizarre, okay, because, you know, I'm pointing the flashlight down at the ground.
I'm using the towel to kind of like block out the light so we're not lighting up an entire room at a time, but only a little bit so that we're not going to be seen from the outside.
We go around to the first path to the first floor, and then we noticed that we couldn't find the staircase.
So we start going through again.
The second time through, this is the weirdest thing.
We heard, I mean, it sounds like a classic haunting type of thing, but I swear it sounded like, you know, like a large metal handled door and something swinging closed.
The wind started blowing, and everything's boarded up, but it dropped like, we could hear wind outside, but it dropped like 20 degrees.
And everybody just freaked because we thought we were, once again, we thought we were busted.
Well, basically, I go over by the end-all-be-all is we heard what sounded like the voices of slaves calling, like adult black men calling to each other.
When I lived in Maryland once, a place called Blue Ridge Summit.
We lived in a very large house at the time.
In fact, the house we lived in, my mom called it Early Victorian.
Halloween.
Early Halloween.
It was an old house, but it had 35 rooms.
35 rooms.
And I, of course, I had appropriated one of the top rooms in the house for my hamshack.
And it was on a route where they had sent slaves, you know, and they would send slaves from the southern part of the country to the northern part of the country.
And there were certain, like, safe houses for the slaves.
And this was one of them.
And so we had in this house, it was a prepee house that I lived in.
We had secret passageways.
And so it was really cool as a child because, man, there were secret passageways that went around almost every room in the house.
Totally secret passageways.
Now, the story was they had been used to hide slaves in their trek north.
You know, it would be a stopping off point.
But man, that was one weird house I lived in.
Place called Blue Ridge Summit of Pennsylvania, Maryland.
The Miss and Dixon line actually ran right through the house.
Lieutenant, in those firehouses, you know, the old-fashioned thing was that there was this sliding pole between one floor and another, and you would see firemen sliding down it.
Yeah, well, this is part of what I've never understood and part of what I was after tonight.
You know, I can understand that there could be a ghost or there could be an entity of some sort, but how they actually physically manifest in this world and attack people and do things like you're talking about, that one I don't get.
unidentified
Well, you know, I saw this guy twice afterwards, and I said, Chris, I said, were you telling me the truth about that story?
And, from what he told me, the widow of the firefighter, and I don't know his name, but the widow of the firefighter never received any compensation for that.
The part that I'm Struggling to understand, and I guess I'm going to keep saying this: is how do these entities that no longer possess a physical body manifest physical things?
I mean, how can they be touching you, choking you, scratching you, affecting you physically in any way at all in this dimension?
Remember, they don't have a physical body anymore, right?
But actually, the one I was going to talk about was what happened as a child.
Fire away.
I'm not going to waste time or anything, but when I was a child, I was about six or seven years, and it was right after an experience that I had two years prior with a miracle with a religious person.
And we had moved into this new house, and everything that happened in this house was really odd.
I remember every Halloween, every really evil thing that went on.
I remember, I don't remember Christmas or anything nice in that house.
I'm told that Guam, which I think did before it gets through on the international line, can't now.
So, I don't know exactly what I'm going to do here.
I guess, Guam, try to call my two regular 800 lines, both east and west, because I'll be damned if I know which one you really are.
And on top of that, once I clear the call on the first-time hauler line, I'll clear that number for Guam only for a period of time.
We'll see what happens, because there are some good ghost stories to come from Guam, which is running the show actually live this morning to them Saturday afternoon.
The sun is probably beginning to sink in the sky now on Guam.
Just sink, or maybe, no, actually, it wouldn't be sinking yet, I guess.
Anyway, Saturday afternoon.
So, we'll try it out here in a moment with Bomb.
Sorry, you can't.
It seems ridiculous that you can't get through on the international line being that far away, but maybe that's the case.
Art, you know, it sounds like the policeman you're talking to had an encounter with Black Chuck, a spectral dog that has been reported all over the world.
Demonic.
Question mark.
It may have been a demonic thing, and he calls it Black Chuck, a spectral dog, for whatever that's worth.
unidentified
Wow.
You know, I've always wondered what it was, because I've always had experiences where I've actually seen figures, I've had doors bang, I've had a lot of things happen.
And seven years ago, I was sitting there talking to my brother, and the thing that shocked me, the whole situation, was we had started talking about, and he's also a police officer.
I mean, you can always later sort of close your mind, right, and think to yourself, no matter how real the experience was at that moment, hey, I dreamed it.
Yes, and I guess it considered that an invitation, right?
unidentified
Yes, it did.
And it did what?
I was sitting there in a chair, and then all of a sudden, like I said, it's a very warm evening, must have been in the mid-80s, had the windows open, and it walked right up next to me, and all of a sudden I was freezing.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I got goose flesh.
It was totally creepy, and I felt this.
You know how you can tell when your wife's angry at you?
And I'm trying to move my fingertips to get him awoke because I can't hardly move, but I'm willing my fingertips to touch him.
And I'm trying to get his name out.
I'm thinking, am I having a stroke here?
What's going on?
And that's what I'm thinking.
But I'm like, no, that's not going because my mind's working here.
And all of a sudden, my body, I thought I was going to start levitating.
I'm like, oh, my God, what's going on?
And I'm going to start praying in my mind because my husband and I are very religious.
And I start praying, you know.
And finally, I don't know how, but my husband got awoke.
But in the meantime, the middle part, because I'm keeping my legs and arms, trying to keep them down, but the middle part of my body starting to move up.
I'm like, oh, please, God, make it go away, please.
Yeah, and now, and what was really weird when I pulled into this rest area, like when us drivers pull in late at night in a rest area, you can't find a parking spot.
Some other, well listen, we're out of time, but some other truckers, I'm sure, will give mile marker 163 a try, because these things tend to hang out at the same place.
All right, first-time caller line is restricted for Guam.
Only Guam.
unidentified
I couldn't lie away No, I'd never fall one day Yeah, the song on the moon That's running to my head That love is fine I'm talking to you today Yeah, I need to go My whole life's been to a brave man
How much I feel is my life's been to a home Lay it in my house Feel my feet go My feet up in front of the moon and stars And I'm the girl that I've gone for How much I feel is my life's been to a brave man Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon
and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Feel my feet up in front of the moon and stars Call our bell in the Kingdom of Nye from west of the Rockies at 1-800-618-8255.
East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
First-time callers may rechart at 1-775-727-1222.
And the wildcard line is open at 1-775-727-1295.
To rechart on the Toll-Free International line, call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell, Cornboard Kingdom of 5.
Following the call I'm just now going to take, then I'm going to reserve this line away for only Guam.
I don't care who you are, what it's about, only Guam, those poor people.
You would think, and if you're, by the way, if you want to call on the international line and you're anywhere else in the world, you're welcome to now call because obviously Guam isn't able to use it.
So the international line anywhere else in the world is 800-893-0903.
With reference to Guam, this is going to mean you would have to pay for the call, but I don't know how else to do it.
All these other lines are jammed beyond all reason.
So if you're in Guam, seven area code 775-727-1222 just as soon as I clear this line.
But one particular night, my mother and a friend of ours were up there, and we're just hanging out in the main trailer.
My parents caretak the land for the people who owned it.
And we're just talking about different stuff.
It was nighttime.
And I started getting really nervous.
I was pretty young at the time.
I Started getting very, very nervous about like I am now, as a matter of fact.
And the other two people were with us, my mom and the other person, were also getting nervous, but they were trying to pretend like everything was okay because they didn't want to scare me.
I looked back behind me, and I see a guy lying on the bed in the living room.
We're in the kitchen, she could see into the living room, and there's a bed there.
And he was floating about a foot off the bed.
And about that time, I said to the people, my mom and other person, I think we should leave now.
Well, if you get a chance to check my website, you'll see a picture of a lady halfway through a door.
And when I say through a door, I don't mean walking through a door.
I mean I mean coming through a door.
unidentified
Okay.
I'll be sure and check that out.
But anyhow, we decided to gather.
By the way, there were people hung on that fig tree there before it was originally chopped down.
But anyhow, we left the building and started going down the hill.
It was pretty dark out.
We're going down this hill to head to where we stayed in a small travel trailer.
And we hear a noise, like a clunk, clunk, clunk noise behind us.
And we tried to look back, but we couldn't see what it was.
And we just took off running.
All of a sudden, I freeze.
I look back and I see way up in the sky.
I look straight up.
I see in the sky what looks like a small piece of metal, maybe two foot by three foot piece of metal, and like a small tin or aluminum garbage can flying in the air.
It makes a circle around me and I hear a crash behind one little rock shed that was up there.
I was frozen in my spot, so one of the other people had to grab me and pull me in the trailer.
We all compared notes and found out that we were all feeling kind of weird vibes and everything about the area when we were in there.
So the next day, since it was too dark to go out that night, next day we went out and looked to investigate, see what it was.
The clunking noise behind us was actually a tin garbage can.
But the two pieces of metal I saw up in the sky, I mean, this is Arizona.
We don't get tornadoes that often here.
And the ground wind was not the, it was not that bad.
You see, ghosts seem to manifest themselves most frequently from those who either die unexpectedly, die in the middle of a passionate love affair, commit suicide, hang themselves, blow their heads off, that kind of thing.
Those type of deaths, you know, violent deaths seem to bring this sort of thing.
Why, I don't know.
It may be the speed of the death, but if that was true, then you would think that most people that got hit by trucks or walked out into the middle of traffic would be ghosts as well, wouldn't you?
And yet it appears to be this hand of man violent death, whether it be one's own hand or another hand that produces the entities that stick around.
Okay, well, I got a story similar to that, only it's not a dog, but it has similarities.
When I was a kid, I grew up in a family of, I was the youngest of five, and I was sharing a bedroom with my sister, who was the second youngest from me.
I was the youngest, she was the next one up.
And so I was, I'm going to say maybe, gosh, I don't know, seven or eight years old the first time I saw this thing.
And I'm looking and it starts coming through a little bit more.
And what it was, it was this thing's head, okay?
And it poked its head through just a little bit.
And on the side of its head, I saw, on the side of its head, I could see like, again, blacker than black, wispy arms coming through, like the hands were being extended, and they were coming through the side, you know, from the side of the head.
And the head comes in farther, and it looks around in the room.
And the whole time I'm thinking, am I just, you know, am I seeing things?
Am I imagining this?
And the more and more I look at it, I'm getting scareder and scareder.
And it's taking on a form.
And my sister's asleep, and I'm just, I'm getting scared to death seeing this thing.
And it finally comes through the door, floats through the door all the way.
I could see it was smooth-shaped, meaning it didn't look like it had wild hair or anything.
It was completely black, but the head was round, like a mannequin's would be.
And I remember seeing arms and a torso.
You know, I'm peeking through my covers.
I got my covers probably like up to my nose at this point, you know, looking at this thing.
And the way I, I'll never forget the way it moved.
It was like a burglar was, like he would move, like if he was tiptoeing.
It was very, like almost stalking the room with the head crouched down and the arms were kind of up in the air.
Well, that is why, again, folks, that I'm saying, you know, we call these ghosts, but that's just a name.
We don't know for sure what they are.
In some cases, they may be the departed managing to manifest back in on the earthly plane here, right?
But they might not be human either.
Many of these things may not be human, and so I'm tending toward the physical manifestation, particularly physical attack type stories, so I can try and get a better grasp of what it is that we're dealing with here.
I want to reiterate that because of the screw-up, and apparently Guam can't get through on the international line, I am going to hold this first-time caller line open for Guam only.
All right?
I know you're out there this afternoon trying to get through, so keep trying.
It's area code 775-727-1222.
And of course, the lines are totally jammed, but if I need the audience to cooperate, do not call that number.
One night, the dispatch supervisor ran out of paper in her computer and wanted me to go with her into the courthouse to retrieve some papers.
She would not go there alone.
This is an old western courthouse in which the jail was in the basement.
A number of people had been hung there, killed themselves there, and she was scared to death of it.
We went up to the front door, which was a double glass door, and unlocked the door.
And when I opened the door and put my, I had a flashlight, I didn't want to turn the lights on, and there's a set of stairs, and at the top of the stairs, you like cats, you'll enjoy this, there was a ghost cat standing there.
And when I shined my light on it, he reared his back up like a cat will and hissed at me and attacked me, ran down the stairs and ran at me, ran up my body and according to the dispatcher, went through me.
In fact, I'd probably quit, go find another job, or transfer or something.
Listen, I gotta go.
We're up here at the top of the hour.
I appreciate your call.
Thank you very much, officer, and take care.
So many law enforcement officers, people who are trained to observe things.
A cat that attacks and kisses, arches its back, attacks you and jumps right through.
unidentified
I'm inside, but you don't need human space.
Come on.
Some bell this morning when I'm praying I'm gonna open up your gate It may be to tell you about Klaidra And how she gave me life
And how she made it in Some velvet water and ice trees Flowers flowing on a hill Lies and flies and death for dear
Life on ice, very mighty Knocked out, but do not rush
Klaidra is my name To re-chart bell in the Kingdom of Nye From west of the Rockies dial 1-800-618-8255 East of the Rockies 1-800-825-5033 First time callers may re-chart at 1-775-727-1222
use the wildcard line at 1-775-727-1295 to rechart on the toll-free international line call your AT ⁇ T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903 this is Ghost to Ghost AM with Art Bell on the Premier Radio Networks that would be me.