I Meet a Spirit on a Trolley

Full transcript of the My True Ghost Stories episode “I Meet a Spirit on a Trolley.” Listen to this episode.

A lingering ghost on a trolley. Will I ever see her again? Welcome to episode 72 of My True Ghost Stories. Way back before the pandemic, I used to work in a public school. I still work in a public school, but this was a different public school.

And I taught after school enrichment classes. I'm just going to, without going into too much detail about what I taught at the school. I taught enrichment classes to the students, the very young students at this school. And I taught inside the school. We didn't take them to another location.

I came into the school and taught them their classes there. And when the pandemic hit, the schools all closed and everything became remote. And then slowly they started to integrate back into the classroom. And they had these cohorts and everyone had to wear masks. And they were not bringing in any enrichment classes, which is what I taught.

So I got real ambitious. And I decided to find a location that was very close to this public school, like very, very close that I could bring the children to have an outdoor program and because that's the only enrichment classes that would really fly was outdoor programs because inside the actual public schools, they had to keep the windows open all day. And so I needed to have an outdoor program. And very, very close to this public school was a cemetery. And yes, that does seem like a strange place to have an enrichment class for little kids.

But they had trolleys at this cemetery that people could take tours in, but there was no tours going on during the pandemic. So these trolleys were just sitting there and you could open all the windows on the trolley, making it for all intents and purposes on outdoor program. But we would have shelter from rain if that happened. So I managed to secure these two trolleys and then offer these after school and enrichment classes to the children that attended the public school that was very close by. And it actually worked.

The parents were so desperate to have some sort of care after school. And there was no after school program being offered at that school that my enrollment filled up immediately and I had a wait list of like 60 families. So I went ahead and taught these enrichment classes five days a week every afternoon in trolleys in a cemetery. Now you'd think that a medium working in a cemetery would have a difficult time because of all the distractions, of all the ghosts wandering around. But in reality, there aren't many ghosts in a cemetery.

Most spirits in my experience crossover way before the burial itself. But there are some ghosts there and I did see some while I was working in that cemetery. And today I'm going to tell you about one of them. So part of this enrichment program, if the kids would bring a snack, they would eat their own snack. And then we would do a little project.

So again, I'm not going to go too much into the nature of this enrichment program because that's not what this story is about. But we would have a snack and then we would do a project. And that would leave a mess. And then the teachers that I had hired to help me teach this enrichment program would take the kids for a walk and they would walk through the cemetery. Now these kids were so little that some of them did not actually know what this was and they didn't know what all these, well, what the headstones were.

They just kept saying there's so many statues in this park and we were just fine with that. We just left it at that. There was a few kids that would explain to everyone what those statues were. But for the most part, they just walked through there and enjoyed the trees and the birds and the sunshine. And while they took this walk, I would furiously clean the trolley, sweep up all the snack food and the goldfish crackers and the trisks and also the debris from whatever project we had worked on.

I would sweep that up as fast as I could before they got back. And one day, I'm going to tell you about one of the ghosts. This happened a few times, but I'm going to tell you about one particular ghost. One day while I was sweeping, I had my back turned to the door of the trolley. I mean, there was windows all around, so nobody could really sneak up on me.

But I had my back turned to the door of the trolley and I was sweeping out the back of the trolley and sort of making my way down the center aisle, getting ready to toss it all out the door. Something I probably had a dustpan, but I don't remember, but I know that I was backing up. And as I was backing up, I felt a presence. I felt somebody in that trolley with me and I felt somebody looking at my back. And I knew that it was not a person because on these trolleys, anytime someone would get on the trolley, the whole trolley would move.

And it had not moved and I hadn't heard anything. So I knew there was not a person standing behind me. I knew that there was a spirit standing behind me. So I turned around and I probably laid the broom up against the window and I turned around and I looked and there was the spirit of a woman, probably a middle-aged woman, middle-aged to elderly, not quite sure, but she was standing there and she was just looking at me. And she looked lost and she looked confused and she shrugged her shoulders at me.

As if to ask, do you know what's going on? And I looked at her and we had a few moments of looking at each other and I contacted St. Michael. I said, St. Michael, what should I do with this spirit?

And St. Michael said to me, she's not ready. She's not ready. And so I probably shrugged back or I smiled, I waived, I let her know I was there for her. But St.

Michael told me she's not ready so I'm not going to try and get her to cross over because that's not what's supposed to happen right now. And after we had this exchange, the spirit of the woman vanished. And I retrieved my broom from up against the wall of the trolley and I resumed sweeping up the mess. And as this was happening, I saw my little class of children and their teachers walking back up the row between all the headstones from their walk and they were going to rejoin me and then we were going to play with toys after that. So that was that.

I was able to finish out the whole year. We went all the way till June. No one from the waiting list of 60 got to join the program because nobody left the program. There was no other options. It was the only after school enrichment program in town at that point.

So we made it all the way to June and that program ended. And the next year we were able to go back into the school enrichment classes resumed in the following September. The masks came off and life began to return to normal as I'm sure you all remember. Life returned to normal very slowly, but it did. So I put out an episode of this podcast, my two ghost stories about once a week.

It's usually every seven days on whatever day I'm able to do it. And part of that is me wondering what story am I going to tell? Sometimes I remember old stories. Sometimes I've written down a story to remember. I have a little list of stories.

So many of these paranormal supernatural stories have happened to me that I've forgotten a lot of them. And I remember them and I'll write it down real quick and I'll say, okay, this will be this week's episode. And in this case, I was taking a walk. It's very cold in New York City these days, but when there's freshly fallen snow, which has happened a few times, there's this winter wonderland aspect to the city. And I decided to take a walk and I was walking.

I was walking around that public school. And then I turned the corner and there was that cemetery and I started walking down along that cemetery and the cemetery looked absolutely gorgeous. I was looking through the fence, but it was all covered in snow and it was truly a winter wonderland. And as I was walking, the story, the story of that woman on the trolley came to me. And then as I was walking along, I got the idea, oh, I should tell that story.

But the story didn't seem complete. The story all it had was this ghost shrugging at me, looking confused and St. Michael telling me that she's not ready. But as I had this thought process and I looked through the gates at that winter wonderland cemetery, St. Michael said to me, she's ready.

And I knew what he was talking about because that's exactly what I was thinking about. He said, she's ready. But I didn't know when am I going to go in there, you know, it's locked. My hours don't coincide with cemetery hours. How am I even going to do this?

And so a few days later, I was taking the subway. I was taking the subway back from an appointment and I had to stop at my pharmacist. And my pharmacist is right at the train station, which is near the gates to the cemetery. And it was at a time that I did know that the gates to the cemetery would be open. Now, timing wise, it would not be really ideal to go in there now because then I might be late for work.

But I was really thinking about going to the pharmacy and then heading straight over to the cemetery. And as I considered this, I looked down and on the floor of the subway, above the floor of the subway, was a little piece of fuzz and it was spinning like a tornado in circles, spinning, spinning, spinning. And then it headed for the door. And I don't know if it went out the door, but I saw that little spinning piece of fuzz as a sign that they want me to go to the cemetery right now. As soon as I get off this train, pick up my prescription and then head into the cemetery because she's ready.

The spirit is ready. Sometimes a piece of fuzz is just a piece of fuzz, but sometimes it's a sign from the other side that you need to do something. And this piece of fuzz was a sign that I needed to do something. So I took the train to the stop. I went to the pharmacy.

I got my prescription and then I headed down the few blocks past the public school that I used to work at and into the open gate of the cemetery and it was open. The security guard that used to work there when I worked there during the pandemic was not there, but it was this lady and she waved at me anyway. So I waved back at her and then I headed around the little corner and I walked towards where our trolleys used to be. The trolleys were not there, but I knew exactly where we used to park. And so I knew exactly where the spirit of this ghost was waiting for me.

At first I had to make a choice if I was going to walk down this little path or walk down the main road in the middle. The path was only shoveled, snow eyes halfway down and it didn't reach the point where the trolleys used to be. So I backed up, I had started to go down the path, but I backed up and then I went down the main road and I went to exactly where I knew the trolleys were. The reason I knew where exactly the trolleys used to be was because I had memorized the names on the headstones that were right outside the window of the trolleys. So I found those last names and I stood there and there was the woman ghost.

St. Michael repeated, she's ready. I said, hello, she said hello. She had some concerns that a few years had passed and I said, no, no, no, no, don't worry about that. I said, it's fine.

And Michael said, okay, tell her to be ready. And so I told her it's time to cross over. Get ready. And I didn't have to tell her to put her arms out to the side. I just told her to be ready.

She was standing in the snow. Of course, there was no footprints or anything because she's a spirit. She was standing in the snow between two very low headstones. And she was standing there and she was looking at me and I told her, be ready to cross over. And as soon as I said that, four angels came in from the four diagonals towards her and took her arms and lifted her up to the other side.

It was a beautiful crossing over and it was so fast when she was ready. It was so fast. She went up so peacefully. And as soon as she crossed over, I felt her relief. I know she had been wandering around this cemetery confused and lost for a while.

Spirit time goes much faster than our time. So she had not been wandering in her experience for years, but she did know that sometime had passed. And she was confused and lost and now she had crossed over. I don't know what met her on the other side, but I did feel her relief as soon as that crossover happened. As soon as it was over, I did not close up the portal because it is a cemetery and I'd imagine there's just portals everywhere there.

I know I said that there's not that many ghosts there, but there are ghosts there. And probably frequent crossovers happened from there. I don't know, but I just something told me, you know, don't close up the portal and to be honest. In order to close up that portal, I would have had to wade into knee deep snow to close it. And I just decided not to do it.

And I figured this probably portals all over this place and I left it. So that was that. I stood there for a moment. I enjoyed the relief. I felt the serenity.

I looked around at the winter wonderland. A lot of the headstones were covered up. It was beautiful in there. There was a bird singing. I don't know why I didn't think they sang in the middle of the winter, but it was singing.

I said goodbye to the location and I promised to come back to the cemetery and visit the next time my schedule allowed. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of my true ghost stories. If you enjoy my storytelling style, you can subscribe to the Patreon. In my Patreon, I tell interesting stories of my life in New York City and beyond. And if you have enjoyed this episode of my true ghost stories, please take a second to review, subscribe and share it with a friend to help the show grow.

And that's all for today. Thank you for listening to today's episode. And if you think your house is haunted, want energy cleared from your space or need a custom spiritual ritual, I'm here to help. Visit jpclearing.com or email me at jpclearing60 at gmail.com. Don't forget to join me here every Tuesday for a new episode. Until next time.