 Welcome, weirdos! I'm Darren Marlar and this is a Chamber of Comments episode where I answer emails that I've been sent recently. Sometimes it's just a nice complimentary email that I receive. Sometimes it's heart-wrenching. Sometimes it's asking for advice. Your emails always come directly to me. It's not an assistant or a service that I have. I try to read every single one of them. And, very often, I'll reply to those emails right here in the Chamber of Comments. And you can email me anytime about anything at darronatweirddarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Our first email comes from Vance. Dude, I love your Reddit list episodes and I honestly do not believe how you can keep a steady and straight voice reading the Reddit handles of some names. I just sit at work and almost laugh out loud with some of them. But that's honestly the biggest part of the fun of a Reddit list for me. Well, thank you, Max. I appreciate that. Yeah, some of them are very hilarious. I love the puns that people use for their Reddit games. And I'll admit there are times that I have to stop and do a retake on just the name because I'm laughing or having a hard time understanding it. By the way, you mentioned that you listen at work. If you do and you've got co-workers that are listening along with you, I would love to have you register for our Weird at Work contest. I do a random drawing every month. It's the second Wednesday of each month. And if you win, you get four WeirdDarkness coffee mugs, a bag of WeirdDark roast coffee and a WeirdDarkness t-shirt. So just go to the contests page at WeirdDarkness.com if you're listening at work and you're also sharing it with friends there. Our next email comes from Nessa. Hello, Darren. I've been listening to your podcast for the last few months. I've enjoyed every single one you've done. I also joined the Facebook page. Problem with the Facebook page is everything I've posted so far has been removed from even posting it. The first one was telling me others on WeirdDarkness not to be fooled by my other profile because it got hacked and is trying to scam people, and I figured a warning was suitable. Then I posted about an ancient fact, and that was denied. Afterwards, I posted a joke, which many of us have on this page, but that was also denied. Why is that? Do any of those things go against the rules? If I'm not allowed to post there, I'll just leave the group. Well, thank you for letting me know about this, Nessa. I looked into this and I see what the issue is. If there isn't a Facebook account that is less than a month old, then anything it tries to post to the WeirdDarkness WeirdDose Facebook group is going to automatically be declined for posting. This is because there are so, so many spam accounts out there. We probably reject a good 20 of those a day, people who are creating brand new accounts, and they're just doing that in order to spam the group with their messages. We have no idea which one of those is legit, which isn't. Since most all spam comes from new accounts, what we do is we make sure that anybody who's in the group and posting has been on Facebook for at least a month, and that doesn't rule out all the spam. I've seen some spammers that have been online for three, or on Facebook that is for more than three years. So it's not a perfect method, but it does help us weed out the spammers. Another reason that's not used specifically, but another reason that somebody might not be able to post, or even be allowed in the group, is if their Facebook profile isn't active, meaning you're not posting really at all on your own profile, you're only posting to groups, or you don't have a profile pic. If you don't have a profile pic on your Facebook profile, then that's also an indicator that you could be a spam account. Obviously, there are people who are not spammers and just don't have profile pics, but that is something that is required. So all you need to do, Nessa, is just wait until you've been on Facebook for a month, and then suddenly you should be able to post no problem at all, all right? And I'm sorry that you're having that issue, but it's just for the best of the group that we do it that way. This next one comes from Barry from Derry, North Ayrshire, Scotland. I know I'm butchering that Barry, and I apologize. Anyway, he says, Hi Darren, I was just listening to your episode about the female resurrectionist Helen Miller. I know that you kept saying Helen Miller, me, begbie. I just wondered if you knew what that meant. Me in Scotland means previously, as in her maiden name or unmarried name was begbie, but her married name was Miller or Millar. It can be spelled both ways. Anyway, thought that might be of interest to you. Still loving your content, take care, signed Barry. Thank you, Barry. No, I did not know that. I wondered why it said Helen Miller, me, begbie. I thought that was like part of the name or something like de Caprio, you know, or Van Van Helsing, you know, something like that. I thought me was part of the name. So in other words, her name was Helen Miller, maiden name begbie. All right, so that makes sense. So I think in that episode though, I kept saying, every time I mentioned her last name, I kept calling it Helen Miller, me, begbie, because I didn't know any better. I thought that was the full name. So thank you for letting me know. I appreciate it. And David sent me an email saying, I'm listening to your fireside frights episode. And there are a lot of stories about sleep paralysis. I have a question for you. I know what it will sound like, but I'm asking sincerely. I want to know your thought process on this. The question, there is so much legitimate medical information out there, including treatments, causes and diagnoses, etc. You said numerous times you believe that it is demonic in nature. Why is it that you believe it to be so? I myself have never experienced it. Well, I may have a number of years ago, but I'm not so sure it was exactly that. Thank you for your info. I enjoy your show. And as far as ghosts and dragons and such, we have very similar views. Look forward to learning why you think this way, signed David. All right, David. Well, the reason that I believe sleep paralysis is demonic. How do I put this? It's not all cases of sleep paralysis that I believe are demonic, but I do believe that demonic entities can use sleep paralysis. So I know that's kind of backwards from where you're going. But I'm sure that there are medical reasons that people might have sleep paralysis. It's actually been proven why sleep paralysis takes place. The actual physical part of sleep paralysis, it's a medical thing. I get that. Our brain switches off our muscles while we're dreaming, because if it didn't, we would be trying to act out our dreams physically and we would end up hurting ourselves or hurting somebody else in the room while we're sleeping. You'd have a lot more bruises than you do now, as well as broken bones and concussions and everything else, because you know what you do in your dreams and sometimes it's dangerous stuff. Can you imagine waking up and realizing you were acting all of that out while you were dreaming? I mean, your body would definitely show it. So that's why the mind turns that off. Sleep paralysis is when you wake up, but your brain has not turned off that paralysis function or that self-protection thing. So now you're awake, but you also can't move. And it is a terrifying feeling. So that I do believe is medical. That part I don't have an issue with. The demonic nature of it is when it comes to the things that you see and feel while you're in sleep paralysis. Because it doesn't explain, the medical aspect doesn't explain what we see. It only explains the physical aspect. But there are people who see, it's something, it's called the old hag syndrome, where they'll see a witch or an old woman or sometimes it's a man, whatever. They call it old hag, but it doesn't have to be a hag. But some sort of creature that is pinning them down, that's the feel. I mean, you are pinned down because of sleep paralysis. But seeing that entity pinning you down is different. Some people see shadow people. Others have seen something in the corner that they can't quite understand where it's coming from. Me personally, I saw a demon and the, it's as scary as it is with sleep paralysis. The overwhelming sense of evil that I felt when that demon was in the room makes me believe that there is a demonic aspect to sleep paralysis. Again, not every time. But when people see these things, I believe that it is demonic. Another reason that I believe that is so many stories that I've read that have been sent to me say that they were finally able to step out of it once they called upon Jesus to save them. I don't know. And I had an email about this earlier. I think it was maybe in the previous chamber of comments. Somebody had complained that, oh no, I take it back. No, it wasn't in the chamber of comments. It was one of my patrons. They had expressed a concern because they are not Christian, they're Jewish. And so they didn't appreciate me saying that it was the name of Jesus that saved people from these predicaments, these encounters. But I'm only reporting what I've read. So I don't know if maybe another religion would have the same capability. I don't know if, for example, Buddhists, excuse me, Muslims, if Muslims can call on Allah during a sleep paralysis moment, and it'll snap them out of it. I don't know about that. All I can report is what I have read and my own experience. And every single one of those has been somebody calling upon Jesus in order to save them. But that snaps them out of it. And so, again, the demonic aspect of it, demons don't like the name of Jesus Christ. So that is another reason. So I know I was bantering back there. I went a whole bunch of different directions. I hope that explains where I'm coming from. If not, drop me an email and let me know. And I might be able to try to explain it a little bit more. But I think that pretty much sums up the way I feel about it. So if you'd like to drop me an email, you can do it at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Again, Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N, Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. And please, tell everybody about the podcast, if you can. Let them know what you like about it. And maybe just encourage friends, family members, especially now. Now is the perfect time because we're getting ready to step into October. Of course, that is a big month for all podcasts that are true crime and horror and paranormal related. But it's especially great for us because that's our birthday month. We'll be celebrating seven years of Weird Darkness this coming October. And it's also our fundraiser month where we ask people to donate in order to help those who struggle with depression. And I'll give you some more details on that as October creeps in. So thank you very much, Weirdos. I greatly appreciate it. And we'll see you in the next episode.