The Woman You Can Only See When You're Not Looking

Hey, it's Michelle, and this week's six calls cover more paranormal ground than almost any other episode this season. James from San Francisco returns with his third call, this time about his decade working at UCSF Medical Center on Parnassus, one of the most documented haunted hospitals in California. The kitchen where he worked used to be a morgue. Volcanic smoke rose from urinals with no explanation. Voices spoke in bathrooms that fell silent the moment he opened the door. Invisible hands pulled at his jacket on the basement stairs. He heard rumors of an exorcism on the eighth floor of the Children's Wing in the early 1980s. James has now called in three times and every building he touches has a story.Melissa from Pittsburgh calls in about Graystone House, a stone mansion built in the 1700s as a stagecoach inn and brothel, later converted into a group home for teenage boys. Every single day at exactly 6 PM the doorbell rings across multiple doors. Nobody is ever there. Faucets turn on at full blast in empty rooms. Whatever is in that house has been doing this long enough that it has a schedule.A caller shares a true paranormal story about a five-bedroom rental house with one room nobody can keep occupied. Four different tenants have rented the room by the main entryway, and all four ended up in serious addiction or rehab. The connection between that specific room and that specific pattern of suffering raises a question that this episode seriously sits with. What if some spaces hold hunger? What if desperation can soak into walls the same way smoke does. Michelle explores Dr Gabor Mate's concept of hungry ghosts and the Buddhist tradition of beings trapped in endless cycles of craving as a lens for understanding what that room might be doing.Chuck from Upstate New York calls in about the woman in the empty lot in his neighborhood, the site of a house that burned down decades ago. She stands in the weeds and broken concrete, wearing something pale and perfectly still. But only in peripheral vision. The moment you look directly at her, she is not there. Chuck and multiple neighbors have all seen her. Nobody has ever seen her move.Diane from Sedona is a practicing diviner who calls in with a Ouija board session that crossed a line she did not expect to cross. She was helping a man contact his deceased father when her hands went ice cold, and her body began shaking uncontrollably. She describes feeling squished inside her own body, making room for something else. She has no memory of what was said. When she came back to herself, the skeptic she had been reading for was pale and shaking because she had told him things only his father could have known. The planchette had kept moving with only her finger on it.And Cindy Ketron from Avon, Indiana, calls in with a family story from the Great Depression. Her great-grandfather was working in a hayfield when a man in a business suit appeared with a notepad and pencil and offered to solve his problems in exchange for something. Great-grandfather asked what would happen if he simply did not want the offer. The devil did not know what to do with that answer and disappeared. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do to something that wants power over you is refuse to be afraid of it.If you've got a real ghost story of your own, a haunting experience, something you heard, something you can't explain, I want to hear it. Call us at 1 (701) 484-2666 or head to⁠⁠ tellmeaghoststory.com⁠⁠ to share your story. You might end up on the show.Support us with official merch at ⁠⁠newmanmedia.shop⁠⁠, catch us on YouTube at ⁠⁠@tellmeaghoststory⁠⁠, and follow along on Instagram at ⁠⁠@tellmeaghoststorypodcast⁠⁠.Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade. Production by ⁠⁠Newman Media⁠⁠.