We used to tell ghost stories at night around the campfire but I never thought these stories could be real till i had an unsettling experience! I was a mrmber if a public affairs unit when I was in the US Navy Reserve. We were invited to the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterrey California in the United States to help with an open house. On the campus is the Delmonte Hotel, a hotel over 100 years old with an extensive history of hauntings and ghostly activities. I was just a yeoman (administrative person) with no journalistic experience so they let me handle the children at the Open House. It was my job to tell them the ghost stories!! I diligently worked at digging up the ghost stories to scare these poor little children! There was the story of the bride and groom who were killed in an earthquake at the hotel on their wedding night. They roamed the hotel in their wedding regala at night. There was the story of a server who was holding stemmed glassware in both hands and making fun of ghosts in the dining room- the lights went out and when they came back on the globes if the crystal glasses were missing, only the stems were in his hands!! I did an excellent job of scaring the children all day long! That night I had a hotel room all to myself. I took a shower and went to bed. In the middle of the night the mattress of my bed flattened, someone was getting into bed with me! I screamed and ran across the room and turned on the lights expecting to find a prankster in my room. But there was no one in my room but me! The ghosts were giving me a dose of my own medicine!! So yes, I believe in ghosts!!

I am sitting here in the middle of a tornado watch with my little chihuahua trembling on my lap. The midwest is famous for its killer tornados. I have experience with only one. I bought a house in an area that has tornados regularly. Not necessarily the big killer tornados, but smaller ones that run along the same path every year. My neighbor replaced his shed 3 years in a row, then moved it to a different location in his yard, now it has stayed to ground for quite a few years. But the path still remains. One evening I was talking to my sister in the phone, in my kitchen. My little chihuahuas ran outside and ran right back in and down to the basement. I was not paying attention, I could hear the wind, i could hear my patio furniture moving around but I did not notice. The warning sirens did not go off so I just kept talking to my sisters. Then I heard police sirens. I looked outside. There was a metal shed blocking the street. So I went outside in my backyard. My shed was gone!! A tree was on my garage, roof tiles were everywhere! Guess whose shed was blocking the street!! The tornado had picked up my shed and lifted it over my neighbors house and landed it in the middle of the street. My garden equipment was scattered all over the neighborhood. And there I was, phone in hand, looking bewildered because I had missed the entire event!

One of the first books I ever read told the story of Kemlo, a boy born on a Space Station above the Earth. His adventures took him and friends outside the safety of the station on space scooters. The adventurers were mix of children born in space and those on Earth...the boys born on the station were acclimatized and moved freely...the boys born on Earth wore bulky suits. I was six at the time, the moon and stars were fiction. What fictional stories being written now will be factual in seventy years time?

Thank you for joining me on this journey through our stories. On my SKOOL platform, I will talk about the events I run and the people I have helped tell their stories. And now I am looking to work with business owners and interesting people to tell stories, and tell them well. Why? Who am I to start a podcast? Whoever begins a Skool must surely ask themselves, 'Who Am I?' to start a post? Perhaps you have been reading and listening to other people offer content on a subject; you are confident that your experience with the work can benefit the public and business owners. My skill, my experience and my passion are in storytelling. I don't mean just telling fictional stories; I believe we all have a story, and we should be telling it well. But first. Who Am I? Let me tell you a story. My story starts 71 years ago when a private in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment was drinking in the Granby Arms, Attleborough. My dad. You see, during the war, he served with the Regiment on the Ack-Ack guns and mortars. He was an athlete. He played soccer, rugby, ran, but most of all boxed for the battalion. He ate his meals with the officers and never drank. Until a few years after demob, and celebrated with friends. He drank three pints and began to feel 'woozy', and decided to get some fresh air. As he reached the door, he tripped and, falling into the street, bumped into my mother-to-be and fell over. They knew each other, and that is what may have saved my life before it started. She picked him up and took him to her house around the corner. That is how I was born. Not that night! A year after they married. The date, 18th of December, 1949 So, you see, our stories could be traced back to a time we were not even a thought, a vision or an atom.

In November 1998, Ernie Boxall’s wonderful partner and mother to two of his three daughters decided she was tired of being second to his desire to be a football coach. The years of raising two young daughters, while Ernie spent his free time coaching, proved too much, and he moved out while his partner began a new life with the girls. Ernie had to move out of the home and closer to his work at a local hospital. It was his darkest time, seeking to rebuild life in a new location while still keeping in contact with his daughters. The worst moment came when he arrived home to find that his daughter had been attacked by the partner of the woman who lived opposite, who, it turned out, was a known to the police. He felt a failure, and the pressure grew. The hospital was restructuring, and the change was too much: he was sacked (on a false charge), and the world crashed. The Change: The change came when he went shopping after the sacking. A wrong turn at a junction found him driving past a sign advertising Tai Chi. That wrong turn in the road changed his life. Tai Chi led to an introduction to Shiatsu Therapy and, over three years, an introduction to the art of listening to people’s stories. Ernie became a Tai Chi and Shiatsu practitioner and set up his own business. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t hard either, because Ernie had a gift for listening and delivering good networking pitches. 1. It gave him the platform to deliver his 60 second presentations with authority. 2. It also gave him insight into the business owners who leave money on the table because of the Unwittingly Made Mistakes Many Make When Anxiety and Dread hamper their impact. 3. Ernie started working with them to deliver presentations with impact. 4. He turned to podcasting to deliver “No Story Stagnates”, with guests from all over the world. 5. In 2020, he hosted a live “No Story Stagnates” event, featuring storytellers, authors, poets, and musicians who entertained the audience . 6. Then the pandemic hit, and Ernie lost the locations for all his businesses. The door that closed, so that other doors could open. Ernie is taking Skool to help you tell your story before others tell it for you, and tell it well. Connect to learn how you can benefit from Storytime services. Click to say YES, Ernie, I want to know more about storytelling for life and for business.https://www.skool.com/storytime-skool-7852