Ask A Hag Podcast

spooky stories

Below you’ll find some of the best scary stories around, all submitted by the Ask A Hag Podcast listeners!

Have a great story? Send it to us here.

Written by J.

Part One:
At a youth hostel in Budaberg.
The initial star of the story was an 18 year old Dutch raver boy name Jeroen (pronounced Yu-Rune). I was 22, I think, and a "weirdo" so he liked hanging out with me. On Dec 29, in the hostel one night, he came into my room and asked if I was ready to ouija! My journal states "I was so I brought my book, some pencils and shells and rocks for our circle of protection" And then I have a drawing of how our ouija looked with notes that say "circle of protection guarded by the impassible powers of earth and sky" and "i drew the board on two pieces of my drawing paper and duct taped it smoothly to the balcony floor". The board had all the usual features of Yes and No and Good Bye and the numbers, alphabet, and we used a pointy rock for our pointer. Now, Jeroen's goal was to summon Lucifer and my journal says he gave Ouija a truly majestic summoning speech. Lucifer acknowledged his presence but refused to answer any questions but he also would not close the door, Good Bye. We closed the door and say Good Bye and Goodnight and let him know our intentions. We went on to try calling Jeroen's ancestors but with no luck. Jeroen got antsy and discouraged and gave up so we said Good night and went to sleep.

Part Two:
January 13 at the same youth hostel in Bundaberg.
Typing directly from my journal (bear with me and my tired typing fingers!).
"I was invited to play Ouija with Christa, Tracy, Kelly, Nicole, Cara. First, I was headed to the balcony with my beer, as I was leaving my room Nicole was there asking me "How do you do it?" I said "what?" She wanted to know how I had had hung around with Geoff for so long without falling in love. She said she was glad he was leaving because she was already in love. He was on the balcony playing his guitar and singing Sarah McLachlan. She went on and on and finally decided that I must have been in love for sure. Well, I went out to the balcony and there he was on a chair with his bottle of vodka playing away and singing with a huge group of people around him tapping their feet to the beat. Dawn, Emilia, Anouck, Ann-Marie... Ann-Marie sure like Geoff just huddling next to him and gazing at him. It was funny. Then when everyone was organized and Kelly and Tracy had their vodka (packers didn't pack until 10) WRITERS NOTE: WE ALL WORKED AT VARIOUS FARMS AND MOST WORKED AT A CAPSICUM FARM, PICKING AND PACKING. We went into room 10 with the big Ouija (homemade) and started to play. Cara was just being the onlooker. We said "Ouija are you there" - Yes, right away. It was going really fast - something powerful. We asked it's name and it said 5 E 6 - yes. We asked it to clarify and it went to 6 - we said "6?" and yes. Again 6 and yes and 6 and yes and we kept saying your name is 6? Finally it went faster 6 6 6. 6 6 6. 6 6 6. Then Nicole screamed "666" so freaky and she went yelling "Good Bye Goodbye and pushed the pointer on Goodbye and jumped up and ran away. While we all huddled up and then realized that 666 was still hanging around - so Kelly, Christa, Tracy and I made it say Goodbye and left the room.
Dawn and Anouck were upset about Ouija and Nicole all jumpy. We still wanted to play so we decided to go to my room because room 7 was a lucky number. First we got URUDRO who was 74 and giving us jumbled messages and say M NZ NZ NZ over and over again. So we said goodbye and asked for a new spirit. We got KEKSJ who it turned out was also saying NZ NZ NZ. I asked if it was having fun playing games with us and he said yes. We asked again for another spirit and we got KEZ who was 748 and KEZ wtill went NZ NZ NZ. It guessed Christa's lucky number and Kelly's number but I wouldn't guess my number. I asked KEZ if he was having fun with me and he said yes. I said do you like me, and he said yes and how do you spell my name? J A I N and what colour was my shirt YELLOW and are you a bad spirit YES. NZ NZ NZ. Nicole started getting really mad at Kelly and really freaking out. Cara was trying to calm her down but she got madder and madder. We were like WOAH! So we said Goodbye Kez and went outside for a break. Then I said "group photo!"
Downstairs and we all crowded into the dining area: Emilia, Dawn and Cara all in front. Anouck, Christa, Tracy, Kelly, Geoff and Nicole around. I moved a table and put a chair on top and put my camera on top. Nicole and Kelly were still fighting and pushing and making a huge scene. I couldn't take a picture. My first self timed attempt took before I was in but Nicole was already running up stairs. We got her back down but what a mess, her and Kelly were acting like babies! Nicole yells "Why don't I take the fucking picture and mail it to you!" I was shocked and told her to shut up and stand still. I took the pic and we all went upstairs. WRITERS NOTE: I HAVE THIS PHOTO AND NICOLE LOOKS INSANE WHILE EVERYONE ELSE SMILES.
Christa asked Nicole if she was okay but Nicole just stared at her and said "I want to kill someone, I want to kill someone, YOU! I WANT TO KILL YOU, I WANT TO KILL YOU!" Everyone was on the balcony and I was in the dark hallway when Nicole came running up to me, hugging a pillow. Jain Jain Jain she says "Something is wrong with me, I'm not like this, something is so wrong" She was shaking and trembling and crying. I tried to hug her and say its okay but she pulled back "NO NO Something is really wrong!" Tracy came in the hall and Nicole told Tracy. We both had our hands at our mouths. Neither of us knew what to do. Suddenly Nicole's eyes went completely bloodshot and she backed down the hall screeching "Why are you looking at me, Don't Look at me!" We tried to calm her and tell her we just didn't know what to do. Everyone was watching - Nicole went to her room and Tracy and I went back outside. First Bruce came out to make us rearrange the tables and saw me drinking my beer. Geoff and I went and fixed the tables and apologized. Bruce was very upset. We all decided that we had to call KEZ again and ask him what was going on. We all went back to my room and took our places. Nicole included.
We said "KEZ, are you still there?" YES. Nicole jumped up and left. (Dawn saw Nicole hiding in the bottom bunk, curled up in the corner, moaning). We said "KEZ, are you still playing with us?" YES. I asked "who are you playing with?" - N I C O L X - We all sighed and Cara opened her eyes very wide. We asked him to leave her alone. YES. To leave us all alone. YES. To say Goodbye - GOODBYE. Thank god. We folded up our Ouija boards (1 wet, 1 on a poster) and went to see Nicole. She was upset but said she felt back to normal (weird!). So we decided to burn the boards. We walked to the park across the road and stood in a circle in the parking lot. We ripped up the boards and burnt them to ashes. Finalized. The end. We walked back to the hostel, slightly bewildered. I said Goodnight to Dawn, Emilia, Anouck...And the rest of us went to the balcony. I drank my beer and Geoff drank his vodka, we talked and sang and even Kelly had a little guitar to strum on......"

And so ends the tale of the Ouija board saga. My parents have a real Ouija board - the original board game version - from my Mom's parents so I guess back in the 50's or 60's. I did try using that one as a kid but I don't remember anything happening. I haven't played Ouija again, since the youth hostel incident.

Written by Jain

Ghost Girl

My ghost stories occurred over a span of many years from when I was about 6 years old to 14 years old.

All of these stories took place in and around my home, and they were very real to me although no one

believed me until recently. My parents purchased our house from a friend of theirs, who also was the

man who built the house, so the house was not old. We moved in after the sale went through when I

was about 5 years old. My first unusual encounter was a dream I had at age 6 and the dreams came fast

from that point on. The encounters ended for the most part when we moved, which was when I was 14,

but certain oddities (voices and dreams) remained for years after that.

My house was the second to last house on a dead end road. The last house on the road was directly

behind ours but separated by a swamp which their driveway crossed. The dead end of the road backed

onto more swamp and a 60 acre wilderness. The swamp flowed from out of the 60 acres, behind my

house, and further along where it turned into a lake covered by a bog. My childhood is filled with

memories of crossing beaver dams, jumping on the spongy bog, swimming with leeches, and losing all

sense of time in the forest. In the backyard of my house were shop, cabin, garden area, and more

forest. Beside my house, on the upper side was another forested area before my next neighbours house

which was located higher up on a hill. This forested area was not entirely empty. It had an old cabin on

it which the neighbourhood kids all called “the haunted house” and it was haunted. It was later

bulldozed down by a parent who claimed it was a safety hazard.

As I said, the first ghosts that came to me were dreams. Dreams that 6 years olds usually have; my

dreams could be a whole other series of stories. The first dream was voices, a reoccurring dream. Other

dreams were terrifying, bizarre, and far too detailed. The dreams continued through all the years in that

house but were joined by other occurrences as I got older. After the first dreams, I began seeing

movements. It was almost always the same; I had an old dresser in my room with a curvy front, two top

drawers and one big bottom drawer. At night when I was in bed, I would watch the two top drawers

open and shut, once the movements involved my little sister but that is another story. I hated going to

bed and I would often call to my parents in fear, barely able to get a sound out of my throat, but they

mostly ignored me and occasionally came down to tell me I was imaging things.

My parents decided to home-school me the year I was in grade 2. There was a family at the beginning of

our road who also home-schooled their kids. They were Catholic and had seven children so they had

built a little school room in their house and had an actual teacher. Other Catholic kids went to their

school and I started going there as well. One of the family’s kids was the same age as me and we

became best friends (her name was Mary). I spent a lot of time at their house and was allowed to stay

overnight often. They had a full chapel in their house as the father was a priest and the local Catholic

community would go to their house for Sunday Holy Hour. The chapel was the real deal with rows of

pews, statues of Jesus, giant religious paintings, reliefs of the crucifixion, and a huge stone bowl of holy

water next to the altar. I told Mary about the ghosts and dreams and she believed me. After discussing

what I could do about the ghosts during one of my visits to her house, she suggested that we anoint my

favourite blanket. This became routine so that every time I stayed overnight I would bring my blanket

and we would sneak into the chapel and sprinkle it with holy water and say “Hail Mary’s” over it. The

ghosts didn’t disappear but I felt fortified.

I don’t know who lived in the haunted house/cabin but there were old shelves left outside that were

covered in knick-knacks and men’s and women’s clothing. Inside there were a kitchen, bedroom, books,

and an old line drawing in red ink of a bearded man playing a guitar. I believe the man in the drawing

was the man whose clothes were on the shelves. A few strange things happened when I played in the

haunted house with my neighbourhood friends but the strangest was a hollow in the ground outside the

house. It felt strange, the hollow. It emanated some sort of energy. We kids used to dare each other to

stand in the hollow for as long as possible. It was uncomfortable and some kids would run away crying.

We found a book in the haunted house one day with a drawing of a face inside the front cover. We

thought we had discovered some secret and went running with it to my parents, who were doing yard

clean up and had a burn pile going. We showed it to my parents who flipped through the book,

exchanged a few words with each other and then threw the book into the fire. My parents had a lot of

unusual old books like Dante’s Inferno and Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse so I was surprised and

confused by this book burning.

All of these brief tales are meant to give a sense of the duration and breadth of dreams, and ghostly

shufflings that took place in and around my house. I only saw embodied ghosts (is that the right term –

ghosts with form?) twice, the first time was when I saw my dead cat. He appeared when I was playing at

the haunted house and I saw him walking in front of me. I called out and then stopped short when I

realized that I could see the bushes behind him, through him. It might be funny to add that this cat’s

name was Killer. He was not much of a pet but he was a good cat. The second time was when I saw the

ghost girl.

My house had a downstairs door and an upstairs door but we mostly used the downstairs door. When

you walked in the downstairs door there was a hallway directly in front that widened in the middle for a

woodstove. To the right was a stairway that led upstairs. The stairway was divided up by landings. The

first part of the stairway, that was visible from the downstairs hallway curved in a quarter spiral up to

the first landing. Further down the hallway to the left was a doorway into a bedroom that my brother

and sister shared. My sister is five years younger than me and my brother is seven years younger than

me. A little further down the hallway, was another short hallway on the left that led to my bedroom

door. At the end of the hallway, opposite the entrance door was the bathroom. When I was lying in my

bed, I could look out my open door, and down my short hallway into the main hallway. I couldn’t see

much except the wall of the main hallway but I could see when someone passed going either to or from

the bathroom.

I must have been 10 years old or so the night I saw the ghost girl, because at first I thought she was my

sister, who, being five years younger than me, would have been around five years old. I was lying in bed

but I couldn’t sleep and I felt a bit giddy for some reason. I wanted to talk to someone and was

watching the hallway in hopes that someone would get up and go to the bathroom. Now, my parent’s

bedroom and bathroom was up one level, the living and dining room were up another level and our TV

room was up in the attic so the only people that would have walked past my hallway to go to the

bathroom were my younger sister or brother. I don’t know how long I lay awake staring down the

hallway for but I remember had pretty much given up hope that someone would walk by when

suddenly, I saw my little sister walk past my hallway and into the bathroom. I jumped up immediately

and scurried down the hallway to the bathroom door. The bathroom was laid out so that on the right

there was a washer and dryer, straight ahead was the sink and mirror, behind the door on the left was a

shower, and the toilet was to the left of the sink. Thinking my sister was on the toilet; I didn’t go all the

way into the bathroom but leaned on the side of the door frame waiting for her to emerge from the left

side where the toilet was. I probably only stood there for 30 seconds, but it felt like longer, before I

became aware that it was very quiet, too quiet for anyone to actually be in the bathroom. All at once I

realized that I had not seen my sister, in fact, the girl who walked past my hallway hadn’t really looked

like my sister. I got chills and tingles all over my body and felt every hair stand on end but I forced

myself to walk into the bathroom to check. By the light of the nightlight, I could see that the bathroom

was empty. But I knew that I had seen someone, that I wasn’t alone, and that the hallway behind me

was not empty. I turned around and there, standing in the hallway at the opposite end, in front of the

downstairs door and facing me, was a little girl; five to seven years old with dark brown hair that hung

loose below her shoulders. She was wearing a white dress, the kind a little girl would wear that tied up

behind the back and was about knee length. She stood still and looked at me, expressionless and silent.

I stood still and looked at her. Then she turned and went up the quarter spiral stairs towards the landing

in a perfectly smooth and silent glide. I’m not sure if she disappeared up the stairs or if she was

obscured by the darkness as the night of the nightlight faded down the hallway. I also can’t remember if

she had feet because I was so focused on her face and dress. The moment she was gone I took off for

my bedroom at a run and leaped from the door across my room into my bed for fear that other beings

would catch me by my ankles from the darkness of the floor. I threw my covers over my head and lay

wide awake until exhaustion eventually took me to sleep.

I didn’t tell my parents until a few years later as I knew they would never believe me. I told my little

sister and she believed me but she was also very young so she was easily enthralled by stories. A few

years later, when I was 13 and in grade 8, my parents put our house up for sale. Despite being terrified

of my nightmares and ghost sightings, I loved our house and property and the swamp, bog, and forest. I

did not want my parents to sell and when I found out that the people who had put an offer in on our

house were the parents of one of my new high school friends, Devon, I did my best to try to convince

Devon that his parents should not buy our house. So, I told him all of my ghost stories. He did not

believe me at first but then he hesitantly started asking me for more details and finally told his parents

as well. They did not believe me and told him I was just upset and trying to scare them off (which was

true). In any case, they bought the house and my family moved out the summer before I went into

grade 9.

Devon remained a good friend of mine through high school and his parents, who were in theatre, had

annual Midsummer Night’s Dream parties. They were huge affairs where people dressed up as mythical

folk and I was often asked to tell my ghost stories as Devon had told everyone that I had seen ghosts

when I lived there as a child. As the years passed, I didn’t think about the ghost girl as much anymore

until one summer when I was visiting friends at a campground. Devon was there with his family; his

wife, 8 year old son, Gowan, and 6 year old daughter, Aleyna. I was sitting by their campfire when

Devon approached me with Gowan in tow and told me that Gowan needed to talk to me. I was

confused but we walked to a picnic table and sat down together. Devon started the conversation by

saying that Gowan had seen a little girl in a white dress when he was visiting Devon’s parents and had

asked Devon about her. Devon said he knew right away by Gowan’s description that the little girl was

the same ghost girl I had told him about, and then he asked Gowan to tell me what he had seen. Gowan

went on that he had been playing in the backyard of my old house with Aleyna, when they noticed a

little girl in a white dress spying on them from the trees around the perimeter of the cleared part of the

backyard. They said that they watched her slide in and out of the branches while they played and she

spied on them. After a while, they moved towards her to find out who she was but she wasn’t there.

Gowan described to me what she looked like and what she was wearing and it was a perfect match.

Suddenly, people (except my family) started believing my ghost stories.

Since then, I’ve often wondered about that house and the spirits there and recently it has all come to

the surface again. A few weeks ago, I walked into a meeting with a local ecological society I am on the

board of. The president of the society is in the same book club as Devon’s father, who still lives in my

old house. Our ecological society meets in the house of the woman, Diane, who lives behind my old

house, at the end of the driveway that crosses the swamp, where she has lived for over 40 years. Of

course, Devon’s father has heard my ghost girl stories and had related them to our society president

during one of their book club meetings. Subsequently, our president mentioned it to Diane. Diane was

surprised to hear about the ghost girl and had a shocking tidbit to add; just the previous summer she

had rented her cabin to a man. He approached her one day and asked her who the little girl in the white

dress was. Diane said she didn’t know and asked him for more information. All the renter could tell her

was that he had seen a little girl in a white dress playing alone by the edge of the swamp on the other

side of Diane’s driveway, below the forested backyard of my old house. As far as Diane is aware, he only

saw her once. This was the conversation I walked into to. Now there is surely no doubt about the

existence of the ghost girl and her mystery is on my mind often.

Just this morning I had a thought come to me; I woke up to go to the bathroom at around 6:30 am and

when I got back into bed, my thoughts went to the ghost girl and then to the voices I used to hear and

suddenly I had this idea. The first nightmare I had was of me looking at my 6 year old self, I was standing

in my nightgown on top of a mountain, the very point of a mountain, in a sea of mountains, way up high.

I was very alone in this place and it was cold and windy. There was a voice that kept saying “Hello” and

then it would echo and go higher and faster “hello, hello, hello” and then it would start over with

“Hello” and then it would echo and go lower and slower and slower “hello...hello...hello”. This dream

gave me a trance-like feeling where sounds would start to drone and my head felt like it was being

squeezed. This dream was one I had frequently for years until it suddenly stopped and a similar

experience started occurring in the daytime. If I was doing something repetitive like washing dishes or

later, in my teens, like mowing the lawn, the droning would start. Sometimes I could control it and

make it go away but sometimes I couldn’t catch it in time. First, after the droning started I would see a

face in the back of my mind. It was a stern woman’s face with her hair pulled back tight. Her stare

matched the droning. Then the voices came. It was both a woman’s voice and a man’s voice but they

always said the same things “Gertrude, hurry up. Come on, Gertrude. We’re leaving. Gertrude!

Gertrude!”. That’s it. It was always the droning, brought on repetition, reminiscent of my first dream,

the stern woman’s face, and the voices calling Gertrude. The voices stopped when I was 18, largely

because I finally was able to train my brain to overcome them. So today’s early morning thought (it’s

Friday the 13th, interestingly) was that maybe the ghost girl’s name was Gertrude. Was the stern woman

her mother? Was I pulled into that first dream in my nightgown because I looked and was dressed

similarly? Will I ever know?