In this episode of Real Ghost Stories online:

We share listener submitted ghost stores and take calls from people who share haunting memories from their childhood.

Here is the transcript of some of today’s ghost story letters:

Murday

“Murday” the name that was written on the box, I don’t know how I found it,me and my dad were just digging up ground to make a new foundation the yard,that’s when I found it. Sitting there not even two feet in the ground was a small cardboard box with the name “Murday” written on one of the top flaps, I didn’t want to tell my dad about it for he might have discarded it, so I took it out of the ground and ran inside. Curiosity and excitement were running through my head I couldn’t wait to open it and see what was inside, as I entered my room I sat on my bed getting more and more excited when finally I opened it. At first I was confused, the box had nothing but dirt inside,but then I shifted through the dirt and found things that were utterly disgusting, inside the box were several dead birds,heads severed and wings twisted in ways I don’t even want to describe, I didn’t want to search through the box anymore but something kept pushing me to. I shifted through some more and found a document,it read “My name is Murday, and I have buried this box in hopes that someone will find it and bring my memory back to life.I have buried several boxes like this one all over the country so my memory will live on in them, if you are reading this please spread the memory of me, don’t let me fade away.” I was shocked when I read this,millions of thoughts rushed through my head, “who was this Murday” I can’t get him off my mind, I can’t let his memory fade away, I won’t. Find the boxes, bring the memory of Murday back to life.

Unexplained Hand

When I was 8 years old, my family lived in an apartment complex. It was a 2 bedroom apartment, and there wasn’t anything suspicious about it that would insinuate that anything bad had ever taken place there.

My story takes place one night when my sister and I went to bed. We shared a room with a wooden set of bunk beds. She had the top bunk, and I had the bottom. This night was like any other, and the last thing I remembered was falling asleep with our bedroom door open, and the light from the living room still providing light to the room.

I woke up what had to be hours later. Our bedroom door was now shut, and judging by no light being seen through the crack under the door, I assumed my parents had gone to bed. I was then faced with one mystery; what had awoken me?

I glanced around the dark room, barely lit by the street lights from outside. It was then at this point that I heard the crinkling of candy wrappers under my bed. I was like any other kid with junk under the bed, and I had not thrown away the empty Smarteez wrappers when I was finished with them. They had been stashed under the bed, and now for some reason, something was playing with them. I lay there, hearing the noise. Suddenly, it stopped.

It was at this point that I heard a kind of scratching, or clawing at my wooden head board. As soon as this registered, I then heard the Smarteez wrapper being crinkled once again. In a fleeting moment of relief, I then reached the conclusion that it was our cat, Bootie. I assumed he had been accidentally locked in our room when my parents had shut our door, and was entertaining himself under my bed. I reached down into the space between my bed and the wall, and my hand touched the carpet below.

I only did this because once again, before this night, I had never encountered anything scary, and rather enjoyed spooky things, not knowing that I would encounter something beyond terrifying.

My hand roved around the carpet, searching for the fur coat of my mischievous cat. However, it came into contact with something else entirely. I felt a hand, a human hand; one of size considerably bigger than mine. It was pressed down upon the carpet, and I flicked the middle against the carpet. Twice. I yanked my hand up and backed myself up against my head board, horrified. Then, in another hopeful moment of relief, I came to another conclusion.

“Amanda!” I called. “Get out from under the bed, now!” My bigger sister loved to play pranks on me, and loved entertainment at my expense, like any other older sibling.

“I’m not under the bed,” she called back. “Prove it,” I demanded. And her arm came down from above me, proving that in fact, she was not under the bed. I was terrified. I didn’t know what to think, and decided I should sleep it off and wait till morning. Unfortunately, fate would not have it that way.

The clawing continued on the wooden head board, and then came a knocking.

Knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock-knock.

In a terrifying moment, my eyes darted to the foot of my bed where a hand rose into view, wiggling the fingers slightly. It was every child’s worst nightmare come to life. I screamed in absolute horror, the loudest I’ve ever screamed in my entire life, and ran from my bed. I didn’t look back, nor even consider it, as I reached my door and threw it open. My sister was sitting up and screaming as well in panic from my own actions. I ran into my parents’ room, right next to ours, and launched myself onto the bed and shook them violently awake. Upon them waking up, the only thing i could cry was simple; “There’s something under my bed!”

My parents rushed to my room and flicked on the lights. I stood behind them as my mom calmed my sister and my dad searched the room, the closet, and subsequently the entire apartment. Was it a burglar? Some kind of intruder? A rodent? He couldn’t find any of the above. All of the windows were locked and shut, as was the door. There would have been no way whatsoever for an intruder to escape, had one been in my room, under my bed at all. Very unlikely.

Knowing he had two panicking children on his hands, my Dad knew he had to think of something to calm us. He disappeared from the room once more and reappeared shortly after, holding our cat Bootie in his hands. “It was just the cat, guys,” he soothed. “It was just this little guy.” I was 8 years old and eager to believe anything. And somehow, some way, he was able to coax us back to sleep, but only out in the living room for the night. Nothing else happened that night, and the long-awaited dawn arrived. Going forward, I dreaded sleeping in that room. I remember being on vacation, and absolutely dreading coming home to that apartment. Needless to say, I was elated the day we finally moved out. I am without a doubt convinced there was something evil in that room, and the incident remains unsolved.

To this day, my story has not changed one bit. Of course, there will always be skeptics who question my account of events. Sometimes, some of us need to actually experience something to believe it. And that’s okay with those of us who have experienced the paranormal and beyond, because we know what we saw, heard, and believe, and that’s all that matters in the end. But i do know this; of any skeptics there may be, my dad is not one of them. I’m 26 years old now, an older age to where he feels comfortable telling me that it was not the cat that night. He knows this, because the cat had actually been sleeping in their bed when I came bolting in. In fact, he remains puzzled about what actually happened that night. He believes me, because he cannot explain it himself. But he saw the effect that night had on his son; an effect that’s enough to assure him that it wasn’t a dream or a case of a child “just seeing things”.

Evil Shadow Figure

When I was 18 just before going away to college, my cousin and I decided to have one more camping trip on my uncles property. My uncle lives on top of a large hill, almost a mountain, and wrapping around the base of the hill is a large creek. We decided to set up camp next to the creek on the backside (furthest side from other people) of the hill. There were 4 of us, and we made it down via ATV a few hours before sun went down. Some important things to note are that our campsite is right next to the creek, and about 250 yards away from 2 long, curving train tunnels that run under the aforementioned hill.

As the sun went down, my cousin and I decided to try our luck spotlighting fish in the creek, unfortunately for us there were NO fish in a place normally filled with them. The first occurrence started when we noticed that every time we shut the spotlight off, we would hear a WHOOSH, WHOOSH, WHOOSH, through the water. When we turn the light back on, the sound stops but the waves coming from the disturbance were huge. Definitely not fish causing this. My cousin and I look at each other, obviously perturbed but decide not to tell the other 2.

Rejoining them at the campfire, we notice that it is very quiet in the woods that night, normally it is very loud out there at night. It was then that the second and the almost-worst experience happened. We started hearing what sounded like whispers, echoing off of the hill. Couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but almost sounded like “Why are you here?”, very loud bang as an old tree falls over nearby. It was shortly after this that a large gust of wind came through and almost blew our rather large fire out. It was at this point we are freaked out and deciding to leave. It is also at this point the scariest things happen.

I was first to move toward the ATV to start it up, and I was frozen to the spot where I stood. Standing next to the ATV, more like hovering, was a dark shadow of a man. I only know it was there because it was darker than the night behind it. It almost radiated darkness. My cousin and company caught up to me at this point and were likewise frozen. We all saw it. Finally through the paralysis, one of us lets out a scream and the shadow like .. flashed back towards the train tunnels.

Our route up the hill, of course, took us right past the train tunnel. Passing by it, nothing happens, it wasn’t until we were in the middle of the woods on the trail up the hill that the girl sitting on the back lets out a scream and starts yelling at me to “Go FASTER!!!”. I did not look behind me at this point, as I was driving up the hill at a high rate of speed, but both people sitting on the back said they saw the dark shadow, with LARGE, WIDE OPEN WHITE EYES (they were not there when we all saw it at campsite), peeking out from behind trees as we went up the hill. It did not follow us past an old SLAVE graveyard which is near the trail. Yes, slaves were killed building those tunnels and buried in graves. A woman and her son were drowned in the creek in a canoe incident. Many things happened in the area around that campsite we chose, and never knew it.