A Haunting in Idaho 9: The Unholy Ghost of Salem, Idaho

The following true story has been terrifying me for most of my life. So much so, that I paid homage to it in my first book, The Summoning Those who have read it will immediately remember the significance that the old Salem Church plays in my novel. But, little do people know, such a place really existed and it was no less unnerving. The following true account is taken from none other than my own dad, Ken Longmore. With his permission, I give you the following:

It was the fall of 1967 and Ken was a young man attending his sophomore year at Rick’s College in Rexburg, Idaho—now known as Brigham Young University—Idaho. Ken had come all the way out West, from his home state of Minnesota, to study art, so that, one day, he might fulfill his dream of becoming a professional painter. Having only one year of college under his belt, he was still very unfamiliar with the area and hadn’t really spent a whole lot of time beyond the confining city limits of the small college town.

One morning, while attending one of his classes, the professor felt the sudden necessity to stop his lecture and offer a heart-felt warning to the students in attendance. “I just want to take a moment and tell you young people, that you should stay away from the old Salem Church. I know some of you like going out there, seeking thrills, but something is not right about that place, something evil and sick, and you aught to keep clear of it.”

The professor probably saw the looks of befuddlement, amusement, and disbelief that must have been on many of his students’ faces—Ken included—and decided to add to his message of warning: “A couple of days ago, a few high school kids didn’t come home after being out all night. I was called, as a friend of one of the families, to help search for them. It was discovered that they had been planning to go up to the Salem Church and tell ghost stories and the like. Well, we drove out there and, sure enough, they were still there. We found them on the front steps. They were out of their minds, babbling incoherently, scared half to death. I don’t know what those kids had been dabbling with, but something got at them and really messed with their minds. Two of them came to their senses after we got them home, but one of the girls is still being treated at the state hospital in Blackfoot. I don’t know if she’ll ever be okay. You have no idea what you might be fooling around with, class, so just stay away from that place.”

This professor might have had the best of intentions in offering this warning to his students, but in hindsight, it might have been better if he had just kept quite about this event. Having grown up in a haunted house himself (see A Haunting in Minnesota) Ken’s curiosity was peaked at an all-time high. He had to see this Salem Church for himself. Of course. He is a Longmore.

Not being from the area, Ken had not heard of the place and began asking around about it. He was able to quickly learn that the building used to be an old Mormon church built out of limestone blocks by early pioneer settlers to the area. It had been privately owned for some time now and was derelict, rundown, and slowly eroding from the decay of time. It stood in a rural area, not far away from a small community known as Sugar-Salem. Once he had acquired directions as to its location, he was determined to go out there and have a look.

On a late afternoon, after he was finished with his classes for the day, he hopped into his 1956 Chevy Nomad and began the drive out to the abandoned old church. It was getting to be around five o’clock when he arrived. Despite its rundown condition, Ken was immediately impressed with the unique, Gothic architecture and styling of the building, complete with a belfry. It was really neat, he thought, in its own way. He even considered that the worn-down, two-story structure might provide excellent subject matter for a watercolor painting.

After taking in the scene before him for a few moments, Ken decided it was time to get out of the car and have a look around to see if there was a means to gain entrance and explore this place. It was the reason he had come, after all, despite the warnings of his professor. He had to admit, before arriving, he’d felt pretty bold and adventurous. Now that he was here, all by himself in this rural setting, the old church now loomed threateningly before him in the rays of the waning afternoon sun, and his previous conviction to come here was seeming to feel more and more like a foolish proposition. 

Determined to see this adventure through, however, he approached the church’s main front door. He found the entrance to be securely locked. One would have to break down the doors to get in that way. He knew that there must be another way in, others had told stories of being inside.

To the left of the main entrance, a short distance away, was a smaller door, warped and damaged. It was near the corner of the building, and by the looks of it, this was the means to gaining access to the structure. Sure enough, with a little work, Ken was able to pry the door open, the bottom of it scraping against the ground as he pulled on it. Before him, a steep, narrow flight of stairs climbed dimly upwards to the second story.

Ken steeled his resolve and began ascending the old stairs, the rotting boards groaning under his weight as he climbed to the second story of the old church. The dire warnings of his professor echoed louder in his mind with each step. He finally reached the top. He now stood on a small landing where a door—slightly ajar—led into a larger room on the right.

As he reached the landing, his presence must have startled some doves that happened to be taking shelter in the old place. There was an avian explosion of flapping and beating wings in the other room as the birds became startled and made their escape through some holes in the roof. Ken jumped  back in his own shocked surprise. His heart certainly needed no more shots from his already pumping adrenal gland.

When the birds had made their evacuation and things had settled back down, Ken gathered his wits once more and peered through the six inch crack left by the slightly open door. He could see a large room filled with maybe some old furniture he thought, along with scattered bits and piles of debris from the failing and caving roof. There was what may have been a stage, or otherwise some kind of raised platform at the back of the room. He decided to go in and have a look.

He went to place his hand on the door in order to nudge it the rest of the way open. But as he raised his hand toward it, the door suddenly swung back toward him and closed, all by itself, right before his eyes. This was not a gentle swaying of the door as one might expect that a draft would cause—there wasn’t any wind outside anyway. Nor was it an outright slamming of the door; it was almost just the regular force that one might expect a person to use under normal circumstances when shutting a door.

To Ken, these were not normal circumstances. Not at all! In Ken’s words: “I don’t even remember my feet touching one stair on my way out of there.” The next thing he knew, he was in his Nomad and heading down the road like a bat out of hell. He never returned to the old church in Salem, figuring that maybe there are powers that are not to be trifled with, and places that are better left alone.

There’s no saying what Ken really encountered in the old church that day in 1967: a draft of wind, a shifting of the building, or perhaps it was, indeed, an unseen entity letting him know that he was not welcome. Who knows what really happened to those kids that the professor had warned about, that were driven into such a state of fear as to have temporarily lost their sanity? That story remains to be told, but it probably won’t be by me.

We will probably never be able to find adequate answers to these questions; the building itself is gone, having been torn down, and hauled away years ago. Maybe for good reason.

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 If you have a personal story of the paranormal or an adventure that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at
bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

Some images in this blog post were obtained through Google. The author does not own these images and takes no credit for them. No copyright infringement was intended. 

Free Falling

The following story comes from a close friend who wishes to remain anonymous. In the following story I will refer to him as Tyler.

Have you ever heard of astral projection, or OBE (out of the body experience)? The principle is pretty basic. It’s based on the belief that your spirit can vacate the confines of the physical body, for a time, and then return back to the body. This isn’t to be confused exactly with a near death experience but the two can definitely be linked, I believe.

An OBE can happen accidentally to someone. Some people have reported that in a moment of extreme duress, pain, or exhaustion, suddenly finding themselves floating outside of their body and observing what is taking place from a different angle, as if they were someone else merely observing. Others have reported to have left their body inadvertently while sleeping. They might be having a dream and then, the next thing they know they are standing in the bedroom, looking down at their own unconscious body.

Astral projection is the same concept, except that it is the deliberate action of leaving the body. Some claim to have figured out how to meditate and concentrate in the right way, allowing them to leave their body at will. Those who have been able to do this, say that they then are able to move about on what they call the astral plane. They are still here but are able to move through walls, fly about, and even meet other beings and spirits. NO THANKS.

My dad used to know a man that claimed he could do this. According to this person, there was a sort of silver umbilical cord that connected him to his body. He had the feeling that when you die, the silver cord is severed and your spirit is permanently separated from your body. Off you go towards the light. This man gave up the practice, however, after laying down on his bed one night, he meditated and successfully entered the astral plane.

He turned around to look at his body and was horrified to see a dark, shadowy figure standing in the corner of the bedroom. He felt an evil vibe coming off this specter and had the distinct feeling that this character was trying to figure out how to take possession of this now vacant vessel. He jumped back into his body without hesitation, and gave up the practice of astral projection. SO WOULD I! 

In my debut novel, The Summoning, the main antagonist, Daniel, uses astral projection to inhabit the body of someone else and commits a murder that can’t be traced back to him in any way.

The story of my friend, Tyler, is not that scary, but still quite incredible.

One late afternoon, after returning to his second-story apartment from an extra hard rugby practice, he collapsed on his couch. He was so exhausted that he didn’t bother taking a shower or anything. He doesn’t recall ever being in such an exhausted state before in his life, and immediately began to drift off to sleep.

He tells of suddenly experiencing the sensation that he was sinking through the couch. He opened his eyes and was shocked to be looking up at the ceiling, just a few inches from his face. He realized that he was falling, but very slowly—he wasn’t sure how he got up there to begin with. He tried to turn himself around to face the floor. He got about half turned and looked down. This was when he discovered he wasn’t even in his apartment!

Below him, on the floor, was a blow-up mattress with some big guy sleeping on it. He didn’t recognize the man, but he was distinctive, being a very big guy with long hair, possibly Samoan or some other type of Pacific Islander heritage. I’m out of my body, he thought to himself. At that moment, he felt himself fly back up through the floor, the couch, and into his body, like the snap of a rubber band.

At first, he just assumed that he’d experienced a really bizarre dream, brought on by his extremely exhausted state … until the next morning when he went to leave for work. He almost had a heart attack when, coming out of the apartment, he ran into the big Samoan man he had seen sleeping on the blowup mattress. He had not seen the man before hand and had originally thought he was just a figment of his imagination. Now the guy was standing right here in the flesh!

It turned out the big guy was spending the night with a friend and that’s why he had been on the blowup mattress in a spare bedroom. It was at this point that Tyler had to seriously take into consideration that he had, indeed, inadvertently slipped away from his body for a few seconds.

Personally, I don’t condone that one should try to experiment with this stuff on purpose. The story of the evil presence waiting there on the astral plane should serve as warning enough to those who might be curious. I don’t know what to actually think about this particular phenomenon. Of course, I do believe that we all have a spirit that inhabits this mortal house of clay. So, it’s not too far of a stretch for me to think that under the right circumstances we could find ourselves straying a little from our physical body.

But as far as I’m concerned, I’m only planning on my spirit taking a leave of absence from my body once, thank you.

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 If you have a personal story of the paranormal or an adventure that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at
bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

The images in this blog post were obtained through Google. The author does not own these images and takes no credit for them. No copyright infringement was intended. 

A Haunting in Idaho 7: The Girl of My Dreams

The following happened to me in November of 2000.

I was twenty-seven years old and was excitedly anticipating becoming a father for the first time, in just a few months. My wife, Kimberly, and I had just purchased our first home in preparation for starting out a family. The house was an old, brick farmhouse, built in 1898 by some of the first people to settle down in the historic, little village of Iona, Idaho. This is the same house where I had my experience with Charles, mentioned in a previous post. Read about that good time right HERE.

We were thrilled to be in our first home and I still remember those wonderfully terrifying feelings of responsibility and stewardship that would come over me from time to time, as the idea of being a property owner and a father began to sink in. And if I’m honest, me being me, the idea that the house could be haunted was also on my mind. A hundred year old house is bound to have a ghost or two hanging around, right?

I don’t remember exactly how long we had been living in the house when I had this experience, but I do know it was within the first few weeks or so. One night, after having gone to bed and falling asleep, I suddenly woke up for no particular reason. I was lying on my right side, my back facing the open bedroom door. In this house the master bedroom was right off the living room. I don’t know why I awoke, but didn’t think much of it and decided to roll over onto my left side.

As I did so, I was taken completely off-guard when I saw a little girl standing in the doorway! She was about six or seven years old and was wearing a white nightgown that had an old-fashioned look to it, like something you’d see the Ingles girls wearing on Little House on The Prairie—minus the bonnet. She had long, dark hair and was smiling at me.

I didn’t feel any fear. In fact, the thought that this was a ghost didn’t even enter my mind. She didn’t look like what I would have imagined a ghost to look like. She seemed solid, right down to her little, bare feet planted on the old, hardwood floor. My first thought was that a neighbor kid must have been sleepwalking and somehow found herself in my house. Yes, that was it.

I was about to ask her who she was when she raised one hand up in a sign of farewell, smiled sweetly, and said, “Bye … “ She dragged the world out like, “Byyye.” Suddenly, she became less substantial, like the dimming of a light, fading into transparency, her hand still up in the air. Before I had time to be scared or disturbed by this, she was gone. Vanished into thin air.

I remember experiencing a sensation of wonder more than fear as I tried to come to terms with what had just happened. What in the heck was that?  I thought to myself as I rolled back onto my right side, once again putting my back toward the bedroom door.

As I rolled over, I caught a strange movement out of the corner of my eye. Some shadowy thing slipped into the bedroom at that moment. Flew into the room, would be the better way of putting it, I guess. The best way I can describe it would be if a black blanket of mist slipped into the room by flying through the doorway, up high near the top of the frame, and then floated up into the corner of the ten-foot ceiling. It hovered up there, watching us in our bed.

I was seized by such a fear at that moment that I suddenly felt paralyzed, like a charge of electricity was coursing through my body. I thought I could sense this thing spreading out across the ceiling, becoming larger. It began to descend, as if to completely drape itself over us. With sheer mental force, I powered myself out of that feeling of paralysis and turned on my back to face this spectral threat. But, there was nothing there.

I lay there contemplating what had just happened. The fear slowly dripped away as several minutes ticked by. I concluded that somehow I had dreamed the whole thing. And, maybe I did. To this day, I’m not exactly sure about that. Was it all a dream? I felt like I was awake, but … I just don’t know for sure. To be honest, maybe I don’t really want to know.

I never saw the girl again, or the strange, black shroud that had flown into our bedroom that night. I’ve spent the years since, telling myself that it was all just a bizarre dream. There was never any other evidence to make me think that there was the spirit of a little girl haunting the house.

Except for this one time when our dog, for no reason at all, got his hackles up and started growling at our darkened kitchen one night. But a dog wouldn’t growl at the ghost of an innocent little girl. Would it?

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 If you have a personal story of the paranormal or an adventure that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at
bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

The images in this blog post were obtained through Google. The author does not own these images and takes no credit for them. No copyright infringement was intended. 

A Haunting in Maryland: If These Walls Could Talk

This week’s true paranormal story comes to us from my friend, Thomas. It takes place in Maryland, over a period of about fifteen years. The story, in an almost classic style, begins with a recurring nightmare.

Through much of the 1980s Thomas had a recurring dream that he was living in an older home. In this dream there was a feeling or sense that the walls of the house were to be avoided. One was to avoid touching or rubbing up against the walls. Even pushing furniture up against the walls was a bad idea. This was because the walls were infested with the spirits of the evil dead. Nothing ever happened in the dream; there was just a sense that the walls were evil.

Sounds like a typical, demented nightmare—I’ve had similar dreams myself—except for the fact that this particular dream persisted throughout most of the 80s for Thomas. That’s something that I would not consider normal if it were happening to me.

In 1992 Thomas found himself renting the second story of an older home, constructed in the 1840s. The home had been renovated some years prior into a rental unit. He recalls that there was a stairway on his floor with a landing that led to an attic door. The door was actually boarded up and also had bars installed across it. He began to feel like something might be wrong with the house when his bluetick coonhound started wandering up the landing to just stare in quizzical fascination at this off-limits door. Was this the house of his recurring dream with the infested walls?

His suspicions were confirmed one night while he was watching TV in the living room. For seemingly no reason the ornamental plaster medallion, mounted above the fireplace, fell off the wall, all by itself. But it didn’t just fall off the wall. It practically sailed across the room, assuming an impossible trajectory, and crashing to the floor! Thomas climbed up to where it had been solidly attached just moments before. He looked for anything that might explain this strange occurrence. No explanation was to be found, and it was at that moment, he suddenly realized that he was actually living in his nightmare house!

He took the dream and the flying medallion as a warning and moved out of the place, having only lived in the old house for three months. Years later, just by chance, he actually bumped into a man who’s grandparents had purchased the house some many years before and had renovated the place.

Remember how Thomas’s dream included the idea that the walls were infested with the evil dead? Well, according to the grandson, when the house was being renovated, four complete human skeletons were found hidden inside the DANG WALLS! I know, I know! How creepy is that?

The bodies were never identified, I guess. The house was close to the old Mason-Dixon Line, and the working theory is the bodies must have been the murdered remains of a small group of runaway slaves. But, nobody really knows for sure.

What do you think about dreams? Was Thomas warned ten years before to stay clear of this particular house? If so, where do dreams like this come from? Is there a higher intelligence reaching out and trying to warn us, or does the dream somehow come from within our own minds? Perhaps, through and extra-sensory ability that we possess but are mostly unaware of?

Whatever the case, I think I might start paying a little closer attention to my own dreams for now on.

If you are enjoying my blog, please consider signing up for my FREE Newsletter

 If you have a personal story of the paranormal or an adventure that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at
bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

The images in this blog post were obtained through Google. The author does not own these images and takes no credit for them. No copyright infringement was intended. 

A Haunting in Idaho 6: No Vacancy at the Hotel Rogers

As I went to do a little research on The Rogers Hotel in order to write up this blog post, I had no idea of the building’s already infamous reputation in the community for being haunted. And I certainly wasn’t aware of it when I got hired to work for a company that was using the haunted hotel as an office space at the time.

I did a little googling on the building to see what background information I could find on the place and was surprised—but not really—to see a few websites where the haunted building is mentioned. There has even been a paranormal investigation done in the place.

Some videos have been posted by the group that did the investigation on YouTube:




The Rogers was built in 1937 by Bronson Marshall “Brunt” Rogers, one of Idaho Falls’s first millionaires, for the cost of $300,000. Upon its completion, the hotel boasted 100 beautifully furnished rooms with attached baths that went for $2 and up. The hotel enjoyed celebrity guests over the years such as: Herbert Hoover, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, and Roy Rogers.

My own experience with The Rogers takes place in 2001 when I took a job as a graphic designer for a publishing company that had just moved into the building. The antique structure is comprised of three stories in which all the rooms have been converted into offices; my office was on the second floor, if my memory serves me correctly.

I was excited about this new job—I had my own office for cryin’ out loud, with a window and everything! And I loved the building, located in the historic section of Downtown, Idaho Falls on the corner of B Street and Park Ave. To this day, the old sign still remains on the side of the red-brick building. Painted in fading lead-based paint, it reads:

HOTEL ROGERS
One of America’s better places … to eat and sleep.

As I said before, this building was not only new to me, but new to my coworkers too, as they had just recently moved in. Well, it didn’t take long before a coworker shared a ghost story with me, and my new workplace began to take on a whole new meaning.

Apparently, two guys stayed after hours one evening to put together a few modular desks. They were on the top floor—what turned out to be the hotspot of paranormal activity—with the parts and pieces of a new desk spread out in front of them on the floor. They were kneeling side by side, hunched over the instruction sheet, trying to make sense of the instructions—you know how those things go. Anyway, as they were kneeling there, they both suddenly felt a hand clap them each on the back of the neck. They both turned in surprise, having thought they were the only ones in the building at the time. They expected maybe to see a coworker, perhaps even the boss standing over them. But, there was nobody there!

In wide-eyed astonishment they looked at each other, and without a word, jumped to their feet and got the heck out of there, the skin on their necks still prickling with the sensation of a hand being laid there. They returned the next day and were forced to confess their story to their coworkers and explain why they had left a desk in a state of complete disassembly for everyone else to find in the morning.

A saleslady, who’s office was located on the third floor, told me of a time when she was working. It was midday and everyone on her floor had gone to lunch, leaving her alone as she worked to finish up a rush job that day. As she concentrated on the work in front of her, she caught a quick glimpse of a man walking by her door. She didn’t see much, except to note that he seemed to be wearing a pair of overalls and a checkered flannel shirt. She found it very odd, as this was definitely not company dress code.

She got up from her desk thinking that perhaps the boss had come in from a day off and was heading to his office, just a couple of doors down. Maybe he’d just come back from camping or something, she figured; he maybe just needed to grab something real quick. Although, it was strange that he just walked past her door without saying anything. She went to the door and called out his name. There was no response. She stepped out into the hallway. It was completely empty; all the doors were closed and there was no place the man in overalls could have gone! A chill spilled down her spine as a very uneasy feeling creeped through her body. She decided the rush job could wait and left until some other workers could return with her to the third floor.

There were other incidents: doors opening and closing by themselves, lights flickering, footsteps, a disembodied voice, etc. A few more employees thought they too had seen the man in the overalls and some had actually given the wandering specter a nickname. I can’t recall what the nickname was. Something like Bill, I think.

Things apparently got bad enough that someone reached out and contacted some people who had worked for the company that had previously occupied The Rogers. These contacts all enthusiastically corroborated our suspicions that the old hotel was haunted, saying that their employees had also experienced similar incidents while working in the building. I don’t know if there’s any proof to the rumor, but we were told that the man in the overalls was probably the ghost of the hotel’s maintenance man who had worked in the building for years, until he was discovered deceased in one of the rooms one day. Dare I speculate he was probably found in a room on the top floor?

Naturally, these stories and incidents served to incite my imagination quite a bit. I would make excuses to walk the halls of the old building, looking for perhaps a shadowy figure lurking in a corner, the ominous creak of a door slowly opening by itself, or even Bill’s ghost gliding down the hall.

One evening, I found myself working late on a project that had to be done by morning. After a while, I decided to get up and walk around a little to stretch my legs and give my eyes a break from staring too long at a computer screen. As I walked around, I soon realized that I had the entire building all to myself. All three floors. Gulp!

I took possession of my faculties and decided that if I was ever going to see a real ghost, this was probably my best chance. Don’t ask me why I actually wanted to see a ghost; seems like a foolish thing to wish for now. With all of the courage I could muster, I began to walk the hallways of The Rogers, one deserted floor at a time. “Come on, Bill,” I said, now and then, as I made my way closer to the top floor, “Come on out and show yourself, if you’re really here.”

I know … Dumb!

For whatever reason, Bill chose not to manifest his presence to me that night, and to be honest, as I left the building to go home, I think I was kind of grateful he hadn’t. I refer you to my previous post: Charles

I kind of have this theory that when we’re actually trying to see a ghost or communicate with them, collect evidence, etc, we’re less likely to see something then if we just go about our normal existence. I think that maybe when we are in the act of pursuing an experience with the paranormal, perhaps we aren’t in the right frame of mind, making an occurrence not as likely. Perhaps, when we’re just going about our normal routines and daily lives, we are more relaxed and therefore somehow a bit more susceptible to a glimpse at the other side. Which leads me to what I count as my own experience at The Rogers.

At some point, I kind of forgot about the supposed ghost or haunting of the building as I went about my daily life there. I even began to doubt the stories I had heard from others. Not that I thought people were making up the stories, but I started to assume that people had probably just allowed their imaginations to get the better of them. Saw and heard things that just weren’t really there. Personally, I had just spent too much time there—many times all by myself—and had not witnessed any kind of paranormal activity. Not even an unexplained cold spot.

One day, I approached my boss and told him that my office needed a second chair for clients to be able to use when they came to see me. He told me that I could probably find a decent office chair down in the basement, where they had stored a bunch of office supplies and furniture when the company had moved in. Basement? Up to this point, I had no idea there was a basement in the old place. If I’d been on my guard, maybe the thought of going into the basement of an old hotel, that was alleged to be haunted, would have at least raised some concern. But, I admit on this occasion, I thought nothing of it, as I took the stairs, making my way down there.

The basement, itself, wasn’t particularly creepy as I remember it now, some sixteen or so years later. It was a pretty open space with an uneven cement floor and, indeed, it had a great deal of office furniture that had been stored down there: desks, chairs, filing cabinets, old computers, old fax machines, etc. The lighting wasn’t too bad, I remember. About what you might expect in a space such as that.

I began to rummage through the selection, in search of a decent chair that would fit well in my small office space. Before long, I had selected a good candidate and separated it from the conglomeration of stuff. With my primary task complete, I took a moment to have a look around. Maybe there was something else in the pile that I could use for my office.

And that’s when I took notice of the dark, far corner of the basement.

It was an empty corner that held this aura of being farther away then the rest of the room—detached somehow from the rest of the basement. It seemed a little darker than everywhere else too, as if the already weak light emanating from the lightbulbs down there just couldn’t quite penetrate into that one corner. Feeling somewhat drawn, perhaps like a moth to the flame, I took a few steps in that direction. But only a few steps.

I pulled up short, the dim corner gaping in front of me like the giant maw of some lurking monster that just might snap shut and swallow me whole, if I were to go any nearer. The skin on my arms prickled and I’ll be danged if I didn’t suddenly feel a slight chill in the air as I stood there, unable to go further—unwilling to take even one more step closer to that darker little realm of shadows.

I thought I actually felt a presence down in that corner. An unseen phantom watching me from the darkness, warning me, maybe willing me away from its otherworldly abode. For a long moment, I stood there wrestling with myself, questioning my instincts, trying to rationalize away these odd feelings of foreboding that had suddenly come upon me. In the end I chose to heed that sixth sense that was trying to tell me that something about my surroundings just was not quite right. I left with my chair.

Before heading up to my office, however, I stopped by the office of a coworker named Chris. I felt comfortable enough with Chris to tell him about my experience—I knew he believed in the ghost stories that had been circulating. I was sort of going nuts inside, wondering if I had just imagined those feelings in the basement, so I asked him to make a little trip downstairs, and see if maybe he might experience something similar in the far corner. Chris agreed to humor me and headed down to the basement while I waited in his office.

It didn’t take long for Chris to return. He was smiling, but looked a bit shaken up. I asked him if he had also had the uneasy sensation of being watched from the corner. He said that he had definitely felt uneasy while he was down there … and yes, especially while standing near the far corner.

I don’t think I ever went back down in the basement of The Rogers hotel during my employment in that building. And never again did I walk the halls, during after hours, audaciously calling out the building’s ghosts to make themselves known. To this day, and even immediately after my experience in the basement, I question what really happened down there. Was it just my imagination, after all? Was my mind just playing tricks on me?

I suppose these are questions that most people who experience a ghost sighting or paranormal event probably ask themselves. And to be honest, I don’t have an answer as to the truth of what really happened. But, I do know this: at that moment, as I stood there feeling as if the very walls of the room were yawning after me, my blood suddenly turning to ice water, there was no doubt. No doubt at all.

If you are enjoying my blog, please consider signing up for my FREE Newsletter

 If you have a personal story of the paranormal or an adventure that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at
bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

A Haunting in Idaho 5: The Possessed Toy

This week’s true story of the paranormal was submitted by a friend of mine, who wishes to remain anonymous, so for this story I will refer to him as David.

The incident that was relayed to me took place approximately in the year 1981 in the Iona, Idaho area while David was playing at the home of a childhood friend. The boys would have been right around ten years old. David’s friend had a handheld electronic game that was extremely popular at the time called Merlin by Parker Brothers. Many of you that are around my age or older, probably remember the game and the TV commercials that advertised it.

At some point while playing with the game, the boys became bored and set it aside to just talk about whatever it is a couple of young lads might discuss. At some point, David—and for no particular reason—decided to punch in the number 666 into the keypad on the Merlin game. I imagine that whatever conversation they were having may have lead to this decision. The game did not respond, however.

Not to be one to give up quite so easily, David tried once again to feed the biblical number into the device. Again, Merlin was having none of it, and remained silent to this input from the young boy. David says that he made a few more attempts, not really knowing what he was thinking or why he would try such a thing. Each time he tried this, the little machine gave zero response.

His friend, growing nervous—apparently a smarter kid than David—started asking for the game, saying that he wanted to put it away. But before handing the Merlin over to his friend, David gave it one more attempt, punching the infamous number into the game, expecting the same results as before.
This time however, and for no apparent reason—I like to think it might have been the sixth attempt—the Merlin suddenly came to life in a flurry of beeps, screeches, and high-pitched tones. It lasted a few seconds, and in David’s own words, it seemed as if the game were somehow screaming directly at him in anger and rage.

When the Merlin fell silent again David and his friend were very afraid. And although the game shook in his trembling fingers, David just had to know, so he punched in the three sixes a final time. The game remained silent. The boys looked at each other, eyes the size of teacups, each feeling that what they had just experienced was something that went beyond just a coincidental malfunction of a toy.

Not having any more of it, David’s friend took the Merlin from him and went to put it away.
To this day, the memory remains with David as a terrifying and vivid reminder that it is definitely not wise to play around with such things. The moral of the story:

Toying around with The Number of The Beast is no game.

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Images obtained through Google Images and are not my own.

 If you have a personal story of the paranormal that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at
bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish. 

A Haunting in Idaho 4: The Ghost Waitress of Idaho Falls

The following true ghost story was told to me by a coworker of mine some years back, and has remained as one of my favorites over the years. It happened in Idaho Falls in the early or mid eighties.

This coworker of mine, Rick, was working at the time as a busboy at the old JB's restaurant on Broadway by the overpass. There was a young waitress working there at the time who I will refer to as Linda. Rick remembered her as a very hard worker that always seemed to be in a cheerful mood and easy to get along with.

Unfortunately, after a period of not feeling well, Linda went to the doctor only to be told that she was in the final stages of a very deadly and aggressively spreading form of cancer. Within a very short time the cancer took Linda from this world, leaving her coworkers at the restaurant reeling in shock at the sudden loss.

A few days after the funeral, Rick stayed late with the manager, John, to help close up the restaurant. When they had locked up the place they went and got in the manager's car, having carpooled to work that night. As they were getting ready to leave, Rick's boss started patting himself and quickly realized that he had left his cigarettes back inside. "I'll be back in a sec," he said, leaving Rick in the car to wait.

John was gone a lot longer than would have been expected for a simple task like retrieving a pack of cigs. Rick began to worry and was just about to go inside to check up on the guy, when John finally returned. According to Rick, the man was as pale as a sheet and trembling!

"Man," Rick said," you look like you've seen a ghost!"

John nodded slowly and whispered, "I did." He then related the following story to a wide-eyed Rick.

John was pretty sure he knew where he'd left his pack of cigarettes and quickly made his way through the restaurant to get them. Indeed, the smokes were right where he remembered leaving them. When John grabbed the pack and turned to leave, he was suddenly frozen in his tracks by a loud crash that came from the kitchen. It sounded like someone had just broken every plate the restaurant owned. He could even hear the distinct scraping sound a plate makes when spinning in its undulating fashion on a tile floor.

His first thought was a thief had concealed himself somewhere in the building and now, having waited for everyone to leave, was in the act of robbing the place when John had come back inside, scaring him. He figured the thief was trying to make his getaway and had accidentally disrupted a stack of plates in the process. Feeling more angry than frightened, John dashed toward the kitchen in hopes of snagging the little rat before he could escape.

Bursting through the back entrance to the kitchen, John was shocked to see nothing wrong with the place. There were no plates smashed into millions of pieces across the floor as he had expected to encounter. He shook his head. Was he losing it? Too many late nights? That's when he heard a thump and looked up to see the big double doors that the wait staff used when picking up orders from the kitchen. Both doors were swinging gently back and forth on their two-way hinges. Someone had just gone through those doors! How he had not seen them was beyond him, but the thief was getting away! John ran to the doors and shoved them open.

His blood turned to ice when he saw Linda! There she was in her waitress uniform and as real and substantial as any living person. Her back was to him, and in stunned silence he watched her walk down the little corridor that led from the kitchen to the dining area, as she had done thousands of times before her untimely death. Then she turned the corner and vanished into thin air! After realizing what he had just witnessed, John ran out of that place as fast as his feet would carry him.

JB's is gone now. Torn down with an Olive Garden in its place. I did manage to eat at JB's a few times though, after hearing this story. Each visit, as I ate my popcorn shrimp--as if it really were popcorn--I couldn't resist taking a moment to wonder and entertain the notion that each night, after the guests dispersed and the place grew quite, perhaps Linda would glide among the tables once more and pass through the kitchen doors, leaving them to swing gently back and forth in the dim silence.

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Images obtained through Google Images and are not my own.

 If you have a personal story of the paranormal that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at
bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.  

An Uninvited Guest in The Idaho Rockies

In this week's post I decided to switch gears a little bit. As much as I love a good ghost story, I'm also interested in other facets of the paranormal or the unknown. As far as legends and mysteries go, in my mind, Bigfoot is the supreme granddaddy of them all. In fact, I hope to write a novel around the subject some day--when I can conjure up a plot and a story that will do the subject justice. This isn't a ghost story, but in keeping with the theme of this blog, it is still a TRUE one. And it happened to me.

Now I imagine that most folks probably don't take the legend of Sasquatch--my preferred name for the creature--very seriously. Sure, it makes a great story around the campfire, but other than that, reports of sightings are mostly met with good-natured eye rolling at best, and outright ridicule at worst. The intent of this post isn't to try to convince skeptics or make a case for the existence of Sasquatch. The fact is, as fascinated as I am by the reports and stories of sightings, I'm not entirely convinced myself. That said, I WANT to believe!

The following really happened to me and some friends a few years ago. It's not proof of anything, but why don't you read for yourself, and then you decide.

It was the fall of 2011. A few years earlier, some childhood buddies and I had started the tradition of going on an annual backpacking trip together. Ironically--and half-jokingly--we refer to these trips as our annual Bigfoot hike. We joke with our wives that we are embarking on serious expeditions to locate the elusive cryptid. But, nothing out of the ordinary had ever taken place on these excursions. Until this particular year.

We were hiking in the White Clouds of Central Idaho, an outlying section of the famous Sawtooth Mountains. Our destination for that year was Walker Lake, a tranquil, blue mountain gem that lies in repose between soaring, jagged peaks.

This is a fairly remote location and given the time of year and the length of the hike, it was not considered abnormal that we had not encountered any other hikers that day on the trail. At the lake itself, there was only one other camp, aside from our own: an older gentleman--in his mid to late fifties--and two women. Based on the man's graying beard, wide-brimmed hat, fancy trekking poles, and khaki shorts, my friend, Jon, immediately dubbed him, the liberal. No offense to my more progressive friends and fans out there, but it was funny.

We made our camp near the lake's outlet, a crystalline trickle of ice cold water that tumbled down the valley, joining up with other small streams to form Little Boulder Creek. The liberal's camp was a few hundred yards away on the other side of the outlet. I have to take a moment here to describe the terrain of our immediate surroundings in order to properly convey what we experienced later the next night.

On one side of our camp was the lake, maybe twenty-five yards or so away. Behind us was a very steep hill, strewn with boulders, deadfall, and pine trees. The hill was steep, but not very high. I would guess about a thirty foot rise from where our tents were set up. At the top of the hill, the terrain leveled out into basically, a giant granite slab crisscrossed with big cracks, from which scrubby bushes and gnarled trees sprouted. If you were to climb the hill from our campsite, to your left would be a sheer cliff face a few hundred feet high, topped with boulders and trees.

Can you picture it now in your mind's eye? Good, I'll get on with the story. It was our second night camping by the lake and we found ourselves all alone, the liberal and his companions having hiked out that morning. The sun was down and the true darkness of night, that can only be experienced in the mountains, had fully settled in. But we had a good, comfortable fire going and were standing in the warm glow of its flickering, yellow flames, chatting and conversing, joking and laughing. Some of us were heating water in metal cups for hot chocolate.

It was the quintessential good times with good friends moment, when suddenly a loud crash shattered the relative peace and quite. All conversation and movement ceased amongst us as every eye went to the hill behind us. It sounded like a small boulder--about the size of a basketball in my mind--had fallen from the sky to smash onto the big slab of granite above and behind us.
We all looked at each other, mutual expressions of curiosity and concern on each face, some of us silently mouthing, what the ... as our minds raced with possibilities. We listened and kept our eyes peeled on the shadows dancing among the trees along the perimeter of our campfire's limited glow. After some discussion and some nervous shining of flashlights into the dark surroundings we determined that a large rock must have somehow fallen from the cliff to land on the shelf of rock below. Although, I do remember thinking to myself that if that were indeed the case, the rock had somehow managed to fall at a forty-five degree angle.

After a few minutes, we shrugged it off, light-hearted conversation eventually picking back up. Or perhaps, if I was getting my way, the telling of spine-tingling ghost stories had resumed. Either way, the moment was interrupted once again by the identical noise. I'm telling you, this was loud. A great, singular THUMP, and most definitely the sound of stone colliding upon stone.

Once more, we froze. Then flashlights clicked on, bright LED beams stabbing into the darkness as we strained with our ears for any other accompanying sounds. Once again, the sound had come from behind us, up and over the hill. I imagined someone ... or something up there, peering down at us from the blackness above. I even admit that more than one firearm was made readily available at this point.

It took a little longer this time for the moment to pass, but eventually it did and once again we dismissed the incident. A few more logs were fed to the flames, we huddled in a bit closer to the fire, and did our best to resume normalcy by picking our conversation back up where it had left off.

I actually couldn't believe it when a third crash resounded off the nearby granite cliff walls and reverberated across the still, black surface of the lake. A third time! I guess there's some truth behind the saying, third time's the charm because there was just something about this third interruption that said to me that, this was no coincidence of falling rocks or some other naturally explainable event. Somebody was up on that hill purposely screwing with us! I think we all reached this same conclusion at that time.

But, I think another reality weighing on all of us--that had no need to be spoken aloud--was our utter isolation in the area. That, combined with the fact that it was nearly midnight, made it highly unlikely that it was a someone screwing with us and more likely a something!

I remember at that point saying something to the group along the lines of, "We are men, for crying out loud. We are the dominant species on this planet. Let's all charge up that hill and let, whatever it is up there, know that it can't mess with us like this!" And so we formed a line and ran up the hill, our flashlights darting in every direction. I don't recall a battle cry, but there could have been one just the same.
We found the top of the hill to be void of any person or creature. Whatever had been causing the noise had made its fast escape from our impromptu charge. We returned to camp never to be bothered by the strange crashing noise again. Which confirmed to us that we had probably chased something or somebody away and it had chosen not to return.

To this day I wonder what it was. I'm fairly convinced that it's highly unlikely it was a person. We were almost literally the only ones on the trail that weekend. We saw no other people on the way up or down the trail--except for the liberal, of course. But even he was gone at this point. Also, we were miles from any roads or other suitable campsites. A person would have had to have hiked in complete darkness through very steep and rugged terrain for miles just to mess with us. And in Idaho it's reasonable to say that he would be at considerable risk of getting himself shot! It just seems far-fetched that it could have been a person. But at the same time, whatever it was must have had the ability and level of thought process to purposely distract us by throwing small boulders near our camp.

So where does that leave us? Well, you tell me.

Sasquatch image obtained from Pinterest and does not belong to me.

 If you have a personal story of the paranormal that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

A Haunting in Idaho 2: The Woman in Black

The following true ghost story comes from a former coworker of mine, and is one of my all-time favorites. The story was told to me about twenty or so years ago, as we labored one day detailing cars at the small shop where we worked. For the purposes of anonymity, I'll refer to him as Steve.

Steve was about ten years older than I, and usually his stories were funny tales of some of the crazier things he had done in his youth. But for some reason, on this day the conversation had turned to the sharing of ghost stories. Maybe it was getting close to Halloween or perhaps, me being me, I had simply steered the conversation in this particular direction.

When Steve was younger and just getting out on his own--I would guess in the late 70s--he ended up renting a studio apartment that happened to come in the form of a small basement house. For those of you unfamiliar with what a basement house is: it's basically a half-built house. Imagine digging the hole for a basement, building your exterior walls--usually from cinder blocks--a few feet above ground, and then slapping a roof on the whole thing. Voilà! Basement house.

While living there, Steve never noticed anything strange or paranormal about his groovy new digs. Except sometimes, in the middle of the night, the little orange light indicating the gas oven was on would suddenly light up by itself. It was a frequent occurrence and Steve attributed it to an electrical glitch in the knob. But to be safe he would get out of bed each time and could always get the light to shut off by turning the knob on and then back to the off position. He didn't always catch the anomaly in the act, however, and would sometimes wake in the morning to find the light had come on while he was fast asleep. This was slightly disturbing, but not enough to worry him too much.

I'm not sure how long he lived there, dealing with the faulty oven light, but his days as a basement house renter came to an abrupt end one fateful night.

He awoke suddenly from a dead sleep to the click of the oven light, once again, turning itself on. But, when he opened his eyes, he beheld an old woman standing at the foot of his bed. He described her as looking like she had walked straight out of the 1800s. She wore a massive black dress: big shoulders, corseted tightly at the waist, and flaring wide at the hips. The bodice was stitched in elegant velvet scroll work with black buttons that ran all the way to the neckline. With her iron-gray hair up in a severe bun, she had the appearance of the strict head mistress of a girls boarding school. A detail that really stood out to him at the time was the huge, ruby-red medallion that hung from a silver chain halfway down her body.

Her face was as stern as the rest of her countenance, her eyes piercing him, as she raised an arm, sleeved in black lace, and pointed a bony finger at him. "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" she commanded angrily.

In stunned bewilderment he could only stare back at her, his fear-numbed mind racing and grasping for answers to questions he didn't even dare to ask.

Suddenly, the woman in black turned and walked away, vanishing as she passed right through the far wall.

Having no desire to disappoint the old woman, or risk any kind of return visit, Steve spent the remainder of the night packing up what little belongings he possessed. By morning he had moved back in with his parents until another apartment could be located.

But here's the kicker: that very next night ... the basement house caught fire and burned to the ground. The old mistress in black had probably saved Steve's life with her angry demand!
 
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Pictures via Google Images and Downton Abbey TV show: PBS 



If you have a personal story of the paranormal that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

The Hollow Earth and Admiral Byrd's Incredible Story

For me, legends and myths are one of the great spices of life. It's the mystery and wonder that makes things interesting and keeps that innate explorer, that I'm convinced dwells in all of us, engaged. The irony is that I secretly don't want the legends to be proven one way or the other. Honestly, if some hunter one day drags a real sasquatch out of the woods and ends the speculation on Bigfoot, I don't think I'll be very happy. It will be amazing, but in many ways sort of a let down too, as the mystery and wonder will be gone. Although, it sure would be satisfying to see all the scoftics have to eat crow.

One of my all-time favorite myths, legends, or "theories", if you will, is the Hollow Earth Theory. The first time I heard of such a thing I was a teenager and my dad told me that there is a theory out there where some people believe that the earth is hollow, and not only that, but that it is populated by another civilization! The very idea of it fascinated me, as unlikely as it seemed.

It was hard to believe, but me being me, I had to try to find out what I could about the theory. And it turns out there are some pretty interesting stories on the subject. For example, It's rumored that Adolf Hitler believed that a pure Aryan race dwelt in the earth's center. He believed it to the extent that, supposedly, he sent an expedition--some say three--to Antarctica to try and locate an opening that would lead to this place. He assumed that this hidden civilization would have superior technology and be sympathetic to his cause. There are those who even go as far as to postulate that Hitler did indeed discover an opening and that he actually escaped into the hollow earth, and lives there to this day. Can you imagine?

Another interesting theory advances the idea that UFO sightings aren't the result of alien visitors from outer space, but are actually technologically superior aircraft that originate from inside the earth; perhaps the descendants of the lost continent of Atlantis checking up on the goings on up here on the surface. This sort of coincides with Jules Verne's vision from his novel, Journey to The Center of The Earth. Except in the book, Atlantis is discovered to be an abandoned ruin. I have even heard some people in the religious community speculate that the lost tribes of Israel were led by God into the hollow earth, and reside there to this day. How cool is that?

Hollow Earth model

The idea is not new; I could go on and on with different versions and legends about a hollow earth. Most cultures and peoples have some sort of variation of a hollow earth in their beliefs, traditions, and mythologies. Most of these traditions deal with the idea existing in a spiritual plane. Hell, for example: a place where the spirits of the damned reside with their master, Satan, in an eternal lake of fire, paying for a life of sin and wickedness.

There are many varieties of Hell or the underworld out there in religion and mythology, but what really gets my attention is the secular side of this subject. The idea of this being and actual domain of our physical world, as we know it, is what sparks my imagination. Hell can wait.

On that note, I'd like to just briefly talk about the incredible story of Admiral Richard E. Byrd of the US Navy, my favorite hollow earth story, and the one that my old man used to spark my imagination on the topic those many years ago.

It's not my intention here to go into an in-depth article on the Admiral himself, his life achievements, background, history, etc. If you'd like to know more about this early twentieth century explorer and adventurer you can check out the Wikipedia article on the man HERE.

Admiral Richard E. Byrd

The story that was told to me was that in February of 1947, Admiral Byrd decided to make a solo flight over the North Pole, just for exploration's sake. In a nutshell, as he was nearing the pole, his compass and other flight instruments went totally haywire on him, and he totally lost his orientation. One second the plane felt like it was in a steep dive, and then climbing steeply in the next.

After a few minutes of this, he quite suddenly found himself flying through a valley of lush, green vegetation. I believe one story claims that, looking from the cockpit window, the lost admiral even beheld a woolly mammoth lumbering along a hillside! According to my old man, it was at this point the compass went all crazy on him again, and the next thing he knew he was back to flying over endless miles of snow and ice. Other versions of the story tell of him actually being escorted by advanced aircraft to a city and meeting with its leaders, but this was not the story that was verbally passed on to me at the time.

He returned to the North Pole at other times in search of this green valley, but never found it again. The general consensus of people who chose to believe his report was that he had inadvertently flown into an opening that led into the hollow earth.

Now, if one were to do a quick Google search on the subject it wouldn't take long to discover that the story and the existence of a secret diary where the Admiral recorded this experience is very much in contention. And for the most part, the whole story seems to have been debunked from what I could tell. But who knows?

Debunked or not, the story itself suits my purposes, because as a fiction novelist, this is the kind of stuff that stokes my creative fires. I don't have to worry about whether the diary exists or if the story has been debunked or not. As an author, all I have to do is ask myself, Yeah, but what if? and my imagination is off to the races!

The idea of a hollow earth has fueled countless stories, myths, and legends. Not to mention even containing major religious themes. And it's no wonder. The Hollow Earth theory has got to be one of the greatest mysteries that's out there. Do you agree? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it in the comments section.

If this post roused your curiosity and you would like to know a little more about the subject, I found a great write up by The Telegraph that provides an excellent little overview on it. Check it out here.