Episode Details

This is one of the original Tell Me A Ghost Story calls from the early days of the show. Short, raw, and exactly where it all started. This call was later incorporated into a longer compilation episode with full host commentary, if you want the complete experience.

Hey, it's Michelle, and this early episode belongs entirely to Jimmy, who called in with a true ghost story that carries a particular kind of weight because of who he is and what he does for a living. Jimmy has worked as a crew member on multiple paranormal television shows. He has been in haunted locations professionally. He has watched investigators react to things he himself could not see or feel. He went into a haunted tattoo shop basement in Chicago as a skeptic, and he did not come out of it the same way.

Jimmy was in the basement of a haunted tattoo shop in Chicago when he felt something push him from behind. Not a brush. Not a suggestion of contact. A push, with the specific physical sensation of having stepped on someone's toes and having them respond to it. He turned around. There was no one there. For a man who had spent years on paranormal television sets watching other people have experiences he could professionally document without personally believing, this was a different kind of moment.

The psychic working on the paranormal TV show that was filming in the tattoo shop that day described the stairwell leading to the basement as a supernatural highway, a concentrated corridor of paranormal activity where spirits move through rather than settle. That description is consistent with what researchers have documented in other locations where activity concentrates in transitional spaces, stairwells, doorways, hallways, and thresholds between floors, rather than distributing evenly through a building. Jimmy was pushed in exactly that kind of space.

Haunted tattoo shops have been reported across the United States with a consistency that researchers find difficult to attribute to coincidence, possibly connected to the intensity of human experience and emotion that concentrates in spaces where people permanently mark their bodies in meaningful ways. Chicago's paranormal history runs deep, and the South Side in particular has a documented supernatural geography that predates the city's modern development by generations. Jimmy's tattoo shop sits inside all of that history, whether the shop's current owners know it or not.

One caller. One true ghost story from behind the scenes of paranormal television and a basement in Chicago that pushed back. This is where Tell Me A Ghost Story began.

If you have a real ghost story of your own, a haunting experience, something you heard, something you cannot explain, I want to hear it. Call 1 (701) 484-2666 or visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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.