SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Our host; Dr.G had his first paranormal experience at only eight years old. With over five decades of storytelling, magic and paranormal story collection he is an award winning story teller on a mission to revive firelight and the telling of stories!
SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Haunted Tales: The Girl, the Man, and the Tiger (most downloaded 2024)
Dr. G shares his ghostly experiences from childhood, blending humor and history to explore the presence of spirits in his life. Through vivid storytelling, he examines how these encounters shaped his family and his beliefs in the paranormal.
• Growing up in haunted houses in the Ohio Valley
• The importance of storytelling in shaping fears and beliefs
• Narrative of "The Man, the Girl, and the Tiger" A Daughter's true story"
• Reflection on night terrors and sleep-related fears
• Connection between past and present with paranormal experiences
• Inviting listeners to share their own ghost stories
Hey everybody, it's Dr G and you're listening to your ghost story buscom, your podcast home for paranormal and ghost stories, updates on the bus and everything that our fans love. I'm going to give you a little background. This session is going to be a little different than most. One of the reasons why is this would be about the fifth time that I've attempted to put up this podcast. We are not in the studio, we're in my living room. In my living room. Now, for those of you who don't know, our living room sits in a two bedroom flat, nothing spectacular that is behind a storage unit that we manage at this moment. The whole place has a huge fence around it, lots of video cameras. I have a 60-inch monitor on my wall. If you could see this room while I'm talking to you, I can look up there and make sure that nothing living is running around the property. The gates are currently in lockdown. The gates are currently in lockdown, so you are not getting through them for any reason. I told you that to tell you this, every time I try and read this story, which is written by my daughter, there's a thud or a bump or something that sounds like a door closing, perhaps a tire squealing. The last attempt a turned off cell phone sent a code and if you just heard that beep there's nothing in here that beeps. Everything in here is turned off, cell phone's off, the pad's off, the computer I'm recording this on doesn't go beep for any particular reason. That stuff, although it happens occasionally, happens most frequently when I try and relate this story to you. If my daughter is listening right now, she's laughing, I'll guarantee it. If my daughter is listening right now, she's laughing, I'll guarantee it.
Speaker 1:I always say that I've been a paranormal investigator for around five decades, give or take about 50 years. Same thing, always been an illusionist in many things in my life and this is one of my favorite stories. You're also going to hear me say I grew up in three haunted houses on the same street. The last one of which was more haunted than the other two Seemed like it was progressive. If you heard the episode titled progressive, if you heard the episode titled Agnes Arbitus Wagner, that was in what we love to refer to as Woodrow 1, then came Woodrow 2.
Speaker 1:This story happens in Woodrow 3. A little bit of background. The house was right around 125 years old prior to its partial destruction and rebuild years old prior to its partial destruction, and rebuild the environment. Although the town itself, the village, was a great place to grow up. You could leave your windows open. You didn't have to lock your doors. At night you saw a dog walking down the street. Not only did you know who it belonged to, but you knew. If you took it home, you'd probably get a glass of sweet tea and whatever the current story of the day was. So it was not a bad place for children to grow up. The family life you'll hear a lot about that as well, but let's just say that at any given time, jerry Springer would have dropped anything he was doing to come to one of our family get-togethers. My daughters grew up in that, but they also got to grow up with their great-grandparents and they also got to grow up in a haunted house. My daughters do not fear the paranormal, which I think is an absolutely great thing.
Speaker 1:This story is written by my oldest daughter and it is called the man, the Girl and the Tiger. And it is called the man, the Girl and the Tiger, and I'm actually going to do something I don't usually do. I'm going to read it just like it's a book, although I could recite it without ever looking at it. I'm doing that just to see if anything's going to interrupt us. This time we're going to let this roll, no matter what happens. So again, I'm not in the studio. I don't have a camel back with a little tube next to my mouth. So if my mouth gets dry, you're going to hear me drink. You're going to hear me shuffle papers All done on purpose because this is kind of an experiment to see if anything's going to happen on this round.
Speaker 1:When you grow up in a haunted house, it's not hard to believe in ghost stories. When you're a kid, there's Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, and maybe even an imaginary friend. Now, that was the microphone just cutting out for a second. Let's see. Do we hear anything? Okay, I'll stop interrupting her story. There's Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, and maybe even an imaginary friend, and they're all very real until you grow up. When I was older, there was a time period where I wondered if it was just my imagination as a child. Maybe I grew up believing in those things because the people around me believed in them. I wanted to be a skeptic. I tried to rationalize those things away, but the ghost never left me. The older I got, the more I began to understand that there is indeed a world unseen, a world that exists all around us all the time, time and every now and then, for whatever reason, we catch a glimpse of it and the dead get in. I think it's easier to see them as a child, maybe because we don't know that we're not supposed to believe and we don't try to explain anything away. This is my ghost story and the first of what would become a lifetime of many.
Speaker 1:I grew up in the Ohio Valley. I was born in West Virginia, but haunted Ohio was all around us. The american revolution, the civil war, the underground railroad and all of its refugees all those things happened all around us, and that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the history of those hills. Native American burial grounds, unmarked asylum graves, abandoned buildings rich in history and even haunted prisons. You could take your pick of spooky places to explore, but my first haunted place was my own home.
Speaker 1:I was raised by my great-grandparents and my father in a big house that probably seemed a little larger to me than it actually was. I had a happy childhood, surrounded by family and friends. I had a happy childhood, surrounded by family and friends. There was always people in the house, but there was always something else there too. My great-grandfather had lived across the street and bought the house when the previous owner died and the mother of the current renters also passed away. The house sat empty for a few months. My father knew it as the haunted Hammond Place. We would later come to know it was the owner, ruby. Ruby was the original owner and I don't believe that Ruby ever left.
Speaker 1:My entire family swore that anytime anything went awry it was Ruby. My mother said she liked to steal her earrings. My great-grandmother said she would unplug the kitchen sink and drain the dishwater. One of my cousins said she would see her from time to time at the top of the stairs, but I never saw her and I never felt her. What I encountered was something darker, something that I only knew as the man. My bedroom door didn't latch. I would shut it and it would always pop open. I hated trying to go to bed at night. I always felt like someone was there watching me. I had the room at the top of the stairs where my cousin claimed to have seen Ruby. Even as a child, though it did not feel like Ruby. They talked about her like she was a part of the family. Oh, it's just Ruby, a harmless prankster. Whatever this was, it felt ominous. I remember shoving a stack of books against the door at night a stack of books that was too heavy to lift and I remember that door popping open with ease, just like there was nothing to stop it.
Speaker 1:I remember not going to sleep alone for a very long time. I also remember vaguely the night terrors and the nightmares, some sleepwalking that I experienced when I was very small. They never really went away, they just became less frequent. The older I got, night terrors became nightmares, nightmares became insomnia. Insomnia turned to sleep paralysis and I became the weird night owl. What I did not remember was the man, not until I saw him again. I think I was around six or seven years old.
Speaker 1:We had those old kind of saloon style doors to the basement off of the downstairs bathroom which was off of the kitchen. I would brush my teeth there, since I shared the upstairs bathroom off of my bedroom with my dad and stepmom. It was daytime, somewhere around lunch, and I was brushing my teeth when the saloon doors slammed off the wall. I was terrified. I thought maybe my dad or my great-grandfather or maybe even my uncle was down in the basement smoking. I went to look down the stairs and that's when I saw the man. He was staring back at me. He had one foot on the stairs and one foot on the railing. He was dressed all in black. He was dressed all in black. He almost melted into the darkness of the basement, except his pale face and hands. I screamed out. I ran out of the bathroom crying for my dad.
Speaker 1:They searched the whole house, checked the basement, the backyard, the garage. There was not a living soul in sight. There were no open doors or windows. There was no way that any living being had been there. No-transcript. I said what man it was. Then I was told by my family about the night terrors. I would wake up screaming the man, the man. I had zero recollection of this, but I knew, even as a child this was the same thing I had felt staring at me through my bedroom door. That was right about the time that the Tiger man showed up. We had a huge backyard. My great-grandfather had a garden and the house next to us had a big garage next to our yard with blackberry and peony bushes. We would play outside for hours picking flowers or picking berries Myself and the neighborhood kids. When there was no one to play with, I could still be found outside playing alone.
Speaker 1:The first time I met the tiger man, he came from the side of the garage. He looked like a man but had a painted tiger face. He wore striped pajamas and pointed mittens. He even had pointed socks and a sewn-on tail. He was my imaginary friend, but I promise you he was no more imaginary than the man. He was real to me and my memories of playing hide and seek with him are as clear as my memories of playing with the kids next door. He never spoke, he never came in the house. I never feared him in any way. He never scared me. We would play until I was called for dinner and then he would stand alongside the garage and wave goodbye to me when I went inside. Every time I would look out the window he would be gone. Sometimes I wonder was he there to protect me when my great-grandmother died right around? That time is when I stopped seeing my Tiger man and after she passed he was the only presence. She was the only presence in the house. She would slam cabinet doors and the whole house would smell like lilacs in the dead of winter. I think she kept the man away and I think the tiger friend of mine knew that I was safe. Not long after that, my grandfather would go on to live in assisted living and I would finish out junior high living with my best friend. Before the summer I would move in with my mother and start high school.
Speaker 1:I stayed in Insomniac, but I remember the house being so quiet. I remember standing in the basement and feeling no fear. I remember thinking, wow, there really isn't anything here. I was always home alone after school for several hours and I remember one afternoon I actually laid down to take a nap. I was in the attic, which was my bedroom. I remember thinking how nice it was to be able to leave the door cracked open for the cat and not to feel like I was being watched. I remember the afternoon sun coming through the window and that feeling of fading off to sleep, and I remember the man appearing at the foot of my bed and reaching for me as I jolted myself awake in the motion of pulling my legs away. I tried to tell myself it was only a dream, but I think it was the last bit of his energy trying to follow me. It was then I started to wonder was it the house that was haunted or was it me? And for the first time in a long time, I thought of my tiger friend. In the years that would follow I would experience many more things and many old places that would solidify my belief in a world largely unseen.
Speaker 1:In the first home that I owned, I would often frequent a thrift store to furnish. One day, sitting lonely by the register, was a tiny tiger toy. He looked just like my tiger friend. I picked him up and I asked how much. The register person said take him, he was there for you. I carry that thing with me always. Some things that haunt us are worth keeping. That is definitely one of my personal favorite stories.
Speaker 1:Not very long ago I met up with my daughter in Vegas. We were there for an evening. She still had that little plastic Tiger man statue in her purse. I've had things like that happen in my life, where you're in an unexpected place like a thrift store and all of a sudden there's something there that the cashier has no price for and no knowledge of how it got there. It has no price for and no knowledge of how it got there. Over the years, I've seen things like that happen to my daughters many times. I'm so glad that they don't fear the paranormal and that they have their own stories to tell. What's your story? We'd like to hear it, but until we meet again, as we always say, we'll see you inside your mind. I've been Dr G Actually, I'm been Dr G Actually. I'm still Dr G and you are listening to yourghoststorybuscom, your home for great ghost stories, some paranormal stories, updates on the bus and everything that our fans love. Good night.
