Red Balloon, Whispering Phantasm & Ghost of a Little Boy | 428

[00:00:15] Thank you for joining me and welcome. I'm your host, Nick Ryan. Tonight's episode is brought to you by my newest supporters, Stu, Corey, and Lisa. Thank you for making the show possible. Our first experience of the night comes to us from De'Aaron, and De'Aaron's experience is called Haunted With My Family and Dear Dan.

[00:00:42] Hello Nick. I've been listening to your podcast for about 8 months now. I tend to binge it while I'm working for about 3-4 hours. I was listening a couple of days ago thinking that I should write you to tell you about my stories, but I giggled and shrugged it off until I heard you indirectly say my name at the end of episode 370, and it really caught me off guard when I heard it. That's when I decided to actually write you. I have three incidents that I wanted to share with you, and I hope you don't mind.

[00:01:12] My first incident happened in 2013 while living with my mother and my two siblings in Florida. Being a teenager, I was known for having quite a few girlfriends from time to time, but I never brought them around to my house. I never really felt anything or witnessed much until one day when my mom got on me about leaving the door unlocked after, quote, letting out my little friends at night. The thing is though, as I stated before, I never brought anyone around.

[00:01:39] Of course though, she didn't believe me, and I just shrugged it off, thinking that it was my brother. But after she yelled at me for a third time, still convinced that it was me, I confronted my brother. The thing is, my brother's room was adjacent to the back door, so why would he have to sneak anybody out the front? On top of that, my brother is homosexual, and was still working out his sexuality at the time, and he also has never brought anyone around out of fear of being ridiculed.

[00:02:06] My sister, being the only other person, was far too young to be considered. So that begged the question, of what was really going on. It wasn't until a few weeks later, when I accidentally fell asleep on the couch, that I got a rude awakening. In the middle of the night, I felt a slap across my face that made me jolt upward, terrified. As I scanned the living room, not a single other person was in there with me. Being that the opening to the living room was a few yards away from where I was laying,

[00:02:36] it would be literally impossible for any human to be faster than I can open my eyes, after jumping out of my sleep. I soon left that house to live with my father, after everyone there refused to believe me. And to be honest, his house wasn't any better. This brings us to my next incident. Or should I say, incidents. I won't go into depths about all the things that happened at my father's house,

[00:03:01] but let's just say they already had a name for this, what I believe to be, ghost. Its name was Bob. The one incident that freaked me out the most about my father's house would have to be the one that happened while my brother, Malik, and I were home alone. At this time, I slept in the living room since the only other two rooms belonged to my father and my brother. Yeah, I know. The living room again. One particular night, at about 10pm, I heard rattling in the kitchen.

[00:03:30] Now, let it be known that we did have one unwanted furry friend living in the house that no one was too pleased about. Knowing this, I shrugged the first sound off until I heard a louder bang that sounded as if someone was slamming a cabinet shut with plenty of force. I jumped, obviously terrified, since it was well known that there was something that was in the house. At that moment, I yelled to my brother, Did you hear that? And he yelled back, Yeah, it was probably just Bob,

[00:03:59] as if it was normal to just have this happening in everyday life. Again, I shrugged it off, laid back, and continued looking at my phone. That is, until I could hear what sounded like every single cabinet, drawer, plate, bowl, and cup was rattling in the kitchen. I immediately jumped up from the couch and hightailed it into my brother's room, where I slept for the next week. I will gladly write to you about plenty more incidents about that house, on a later date.

[00:04:28] The last incident I wanted to share with you pertains to one single red balloon. Two years ago, I worked for a remote security company based in Florida. This was a typical office job, but it was 24-7, having three shifts including overnight, which was what I worked. The company was still growing, with most employees working from home, since it was optional to come back to the office after the COVID shutdown. I can't quite remember the exact date, but we had an office potluck slash celebration

[00:04:58] for having finally secured our 500th community that we'd be overseeing. The entire office was decorated with party supplies, such as streamers, balloons, table and chair covers, etc. Now, before I get to the reason that I'm telling this story, I want to mention that an employee named Dan, who worked for this company since it started out in the owner's garage, had passed away a month prior to this celebration, after a long fight with cancer.

[00:05:25] The reason I say this brings us to one singular balloon that I spotted as I was getting up from my computer to throw away some trash. This red balloon was just hovering in the walkway perfectly still. After about five seconds of me walking towards it to get to the trash can, it started to slowly move away from me. Of course, I paid it no mind until it turned the corner. This balloon literally turned the corner as if it was moving somewhere with intention. I immediately got the attention of my three other co-worker buddies

[00:05:54] and told them to follow me and to watch this balloon. We immediately caught up with it since it was moving so slowly. We followed it all the way into the IT section of the office, and at this time, the balloon had now made another left turn, then right, and then left again. We were speechless. After what felt like five minutes, the balloon stopped moving, and it didn't move from the spot that it was at for two whole minutes until we grabbed it and ran back to tell everyone.

[00:06:22] My good friend Tyler then stopped and told everyone to look before we all turned the corner. That's the moment that we realized it. That balloon had stopped directly behind the chair of Dan's old desk that he sat at when he worked here. At this point, we were no longer excited, but completely shocked. I could tell this from the expressions on everyone's faces. We continued our run to tell everyone what happened and to ask our supervisor to pull the footage to watch it.

[00:06:49] Within the week, the entire office had watched me and my three co-workers follow this balloon and watch it roam all the way to Dan's old desk, and we all came to the conclusion that he wanted to hang out with us at least one more time. Being that this was the camera's camera footage that we watched it from and seeing that I'm no longer employed there, I doubt that I can get the footage, but that won't stop me from trying, because I would love for you to witness this amazing, yet slightly terrifying incident.

[00:07:16] If I'm able to receive it, I will definitely send it to you. Thank you, Nick, for everything, of course. If this makes it to your podcast, that would be awesome, and much appreciated. Our next experience comes to us from Danny, and Danny's experience is called The Whispering Ghost. Danny says, Hello again, Nick.

[00:07:44] Months ago, I submitted a true story called The Flying Orb, which you shared, much to my delight. I'd like to share another true story that happened to me when I was a young teenager decades ago, in the late 90s. When I was a young teenager, I lived with my two parents, my mom Kimberly, my dad Robert, and also my older brother Michael. We lived in Satchesay, Texas, in a small three-bedroom home which had numerous strange things happen inside, such as sightings and noises being heard.

[00:08:13] I have always been sensitive to spirits, and it always seems that if a place is haunted, I'm the one who the spirits like to interact with. However, what happened to me in my bedroom back then, over a span of a few weeks, I found to be truly terrifying. It began a few months after we first moved into the home. Every night when I would lay my head down onto my pillow to go to sleep, I would begin hearing a whispering sound directly in my left ear. At first it was so faint, it was hard to make out what the words were.

[00:08:43] However, the whispering began to get louder after several nights, and I realized the whispering was in fact my first name being called. The whispering would simply say, Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. Each time it whispered my name, it would become louder in my ear, as if someone was standing next to my bed, leaning directly over me, whispering just inches away from my head. As each night passed, it eventually graduated to where it began to be whispered from across the room

[00:09:13] towards where I was laying, like someone or something was standing at the foot of my bed, or at my doorway, whispering it. Each night, the whispering of my name would get louder and more pronounced, almost as if me becoming more used to it gave it more and more power, enabling it to be more audible. I became so terrified that each time I began to hear my name being whispered, I would jump up, exit my room, and run into my brother's room, which was adjacent to mine.

[00:09:40] I would then lay on his bedroom floor with one of my blankets and pillows. He seemed to be slightly annoyed by my antics, but would always allow me to sleep there on the hard carpet. On other nights, I would find myself being a bit braver, ignoring the whispering and pulling my blanket over my head until I fell asleep, happy to be awoken by the sun peeking through my blinds the next morning. To me, the daylight meant the whispering had ended. I went to my parents one morning and told them about the whispering,

[00:10:10] because I was beginning to grow more frightened, and the spirits seemed to be getting more frustrated as each night passed. My parents were always interested in the paranormal and were not total skeptics, but they seemed to brush it off as simply my teenage imagination. I would also tell my brother Michael about it, who seemed to laugh and didn't take it too seriously either. I began to sleep with my bedroom door open, so that I could make a quicker exit into my brother's room, if I felt the need to do so.

[00:10:37] The whispering of my name persisted over the next several weeks. Daniel. Daniel. Daniel. Whatever the spirit was, it was obviously wanting my attention for some reason, and I never answered it because I felt if I did, I would be opening myself up for some type of scarier and more sinister action. I thought that once I acknowledged it, maybe it would possess me, so I refused to do so. I knew it was a ghost or spirit of some sort, but I didn't know if it was good or evil.

[00:11:06] I didn't know if it needed help, wanted to simply talk, or was trying to do something bad to me. What happened to me one evening, however, changed both my parents' and my brother's opinions on what I claimed to be occurring. One night, the whispering was so loud and persistent, I once again jumped up and ran into my brother's room, staying the night there on the floor again. The next morning, my brother Michael approached my parents and told them, I think something is wrong with Daniel.

[00:11:34] He's doing strange things at night. When they asked him what he meant, my brother told them this, Last night I was laying in my bed, and I heard Daniel in his room whispering his own name out loud over and over again. Then Daniel ran out of his room, came into mine, and slept on the floor again. Why would he be doing this? Why would he whisper his own name like that, and then act so scared? Well, this horrified my parents, and absolutely terrified me,

[00:12:04] because it confirmed that the whispering of my name was so loud, it was to the point where my brother was now hearing it through the wall that separated our bedrooms. It was so clear that my brother assumed that it was coming from me, the only living, breathing person in my room. It also confirmed to me that I wasn't crazy, and that the whispering was in fact happening. I was horrified. My family then began to believe me. Their belief gave me the courage to try and sleep in my bedroom more,

[00:12:33] and perhaps even tell the spirit to go away, and to leave me alone. I knew that my parents had my back, and sometimes that is all a young kid needs to be brave. However, I never got that chance to confront the spirit, and tell it to leave. The strange thing, was that as soon as my parents and my brother began to believe what was happening, the whispering stopped. It was as if whatever this spirit was, it knew the rest of my family found out, so it quit. This too terrified me.

[00:13:02] What was its plan? What did it want from me? And why did it give up after my parents and my brother, those who could protect me, found out? Or did it give up when it knew that I had obtained the courage to tell it to leave? It was obviously one of the two reasons. Well, I will never know what or who this spirit was, or what it wanted from me. Why choose the youngest sibling in the house to call? What would have happened if I had sat up in bed, and asked it what it wanted?

[00:13:30] I get goosebumps just remembering this story, and I hope that those who hear it, will know that if they have encountered such things, they are not alone. Thank you for reading this, Nick. I look forward, to your future podcasts. Before I continue, please consider showing your support by subscribing, sharing, and giving the podcast a positive review.

[00:13:58] You can also visit me on Patreon, buy me a coffee, or PayPal and make a donation, or become a member, starting at just a dollar a month. You can even join my Patreon membership for free, and get access to all of my future updates. And of course, just listening to the show is the best support of all, and I'm grateful to have you here. Now, please stay tuned, and I'll be right back, after these brief messages.

[00:14:28] This next experience comes to us from Anonymous. This experience, while not necessarily graphic, involves the subject of murder, and may be inappropriate for some listeners. Discretion is advised. Anonymous says, Hey Nick, I've written to you before about a light that I saw above my house, and an older story about a strange phone call that my friends and I had. But this story is a difficult one to tell, because it involves the passing of a childhood friend, and his mother.

[00:14:58] I will not use their names, or the town in which this happened, because it's in the public records, and I would like to protect their identities, for the family's sake. When I was about five or six years old, my older sister, who would have been about 14 or 15 at that time, babysat a young boy. I'll call him Johnny. He was older than me, but I think that he was developmentally challenged. I only say that now, because he was probably nine or ten years old, but he was at my basic five or six year old intelligence level.

[00:15:27] His mother knew my mother through mutual friends, I think, and she asked if my sister could babysit her boy while she was at work. We'll call my sister Jane, as I haven't asked for her permission to tell this story. Jane only went to the home of this woman twice or maybe three times at best, because of how filthy the home was, not to mention old and creepy. She never said that anything creepy happened while she was there, but on more than one occasion, a gentleman who was, let's say, rough looking, came by the house,

[00:15:57] and was looking for the woman of the house. This made my sister uneasy, and she didn't want to babysit unless Johnny was dropped off at our home. This went on for a while during the summer, before I started kindergarten. One rule that my mother had put on my friendship with this young boy was that I was not to go over to his house to play. It was not a great distance from my home. It was just down the street and across a cow field, and you were there. I was allowed to leave my own yard all the time as I was kind of a latchkey kid.

[00:16:27] It was a different time back then. However, I knew even from a young age that there was a problem with Johnny's mother and or lifestyle because of conversations that I overheard between my mother and sister. This one day that I will never forget, I was over at Johnny's house during the day even though I was told not to, because his house was fun. It had an old barn next to it that we could play in, not to mention large fields to run around in as well. The barn sat about 25 yards on the east side of the house.

[00:16:56] The house had three different entry points. A main front door, which was never used. A side door on the west side where the driveway was, which was the mainly used door. And a door on the east side that exited the kitchen that was also never used. Large weeds grew all around the old home where there was almost no foot traffic. Johnny and I were playing out between the barn and the house closer to the barn when we heard men talking. We both looked toward the house to see three men leaving out the side kitchen door.

[00:17:26] They sounded if they were arguing about something, but it wasn't in English. I don't know what the language was they were speaking. I was far too young and I don't really remember what I could say it sounded like. Anyway, Johnny and I stopped what we were doing and watched them for maybe a minute or so before they noticed us. One man was a little older than the other two. He was balding and had a thick mustache. He was also strangely dressed. He was wearing high-waisted pants and suspenders. The other two men were dressed similar

[00:17:55] but without the suspenders, and they were wearing hats without a rim like a baseball-style hat would have. Once they noticed us, the older man yelled at us, kind of telling us to get lost or something. I couldn't understand him. However, we ran away towards the cow field behind the house. At that young of an age, when someone, especially a stranger, yells at you, it's pretty scary. So we just ran. We stopped about a hundred or so feet away and looked back at the house. We could no longer see the three men,

[00:18:25] but we now noticed smoke rising from the house, but it looked like it was coming from the other side, the west side. Johnny and I ran farther into the cow field and farther west to get a better look at where the smoke was coming from. It was coming from all of the upstairs west-facing windows. We watched in horror as the smoke got thicker and thicker, soon followed by flames. We stood there frozen, not sure what to do. Soon, though, fire trucks began to arrive, followed a few minutes later

[00:18:54] by police cars. We watched this unfold for probably 15 or 20 minutes, maybe longer, but when the police started to arrive, I got scared because I wasn't allowed to be over there, and in my young mind, they could get me in trouble. So, I did something that I wish I could undo for the rest of my life. I ran home. I don't remember saying anything to my friend. I just ran home and didn't say anything to anyone when I got home. I knew that I would get a smack or two for being over there.

[00:19:24] Later that evening, my mother came down into our rec room while I was playing by myself to tell me something. She had a very sad look on her face. She told me that Johnny and his mother had passed away. I asked her how, and she said that they had died in a fire earlier that day. This didn't make any sense to me, so I said without thinking, why did he go back into the house? At this point, my mother gave me a strange look and said, what do you mean back in?

[00:19:53] I then started crying, and I told her that I was there and that we saw the fire and the fire trucks. I also told her about the three unusual men. My mother was visibly upset, and for good reason. She then spoke to my father about it who was also very concerned. He asked me a few questions about what I had seen that day, and he felt that it was necessary to contact the police. I was terrified. I thought that I was in big, big trouble, and that my mother and father weren't helping the situation because of how disturbing

[00:20:23] my story was. To be clear, though, they weren't upset with me, just at the whole situation. Late that evening, far past my bedtime, a policeman did visit our home. He was with a female officer as well, and they were both very nice to me, and they calmed me down. I kind of freaked out when they arrived, but they calmly asked me what I saw. I told them the whole story. Everything. After telling and retelling the event a couple of times, they talked to my parents with me in earshot

[00:20:52] of their conversation. They told my mother and my father that that wasn't possible. If fire trucks and police personnel were there, there would have been no way for the young boy to get into the house. I did tell them that we watched them actively trying to put out the fire. The officers just said that I must have been mistaken, and probably with a different child, while watching the fire from the cow field. But, I'm telling you, I wasn't. I was with Johnny, and I was with him for at least an hour or two playing in and around the barn

[00:21:22] before the fire and the sighting of these three men. I believe that something paranormal happened that day. I just don't know what part was paranormal. Was it the three odd men? The fire? Or, was I playing with a child who was already deceased? To this day, I don't know. But I do know that Johnny and his mother both passed away that day. In a fire. I have since discovered that the fire was intentionally set by a crazy boyfriend of his mother.

[00:21:51] He later confessed in a note to taking their lives and setting the fire to conceal what he had done just before he took his own life. I was so young, I don't understand what happened that day except for what I've read in old newspaper articles. I know this is a dark story and maybe not suitable for your channel. But, I had to tell it. And, I thank you for reading it. As I bring tonight's episode to an end,

[00:22:20] I'd like to thank D'Aaron, Danny, and of course, Anonymous, for coming forward with their experiences. And of course, if you'd like to share your paranormal encounter or learn more about supporting the show, you can find all my contact and support information in the show notes and at paranormalmysteriespodcast.com. Until next time, thank you again for being here and I hope you'll join me for my next episode as we continue our journey into the unexplained right here

[00:22:49] on Paranormal Mysteries.