 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode, it is our Fireside Frights episode. I usually do this once a month, but it has been quite some time since I've done one of these. In fact, it was back in mid-March that I did the last one, so three months. I've got a few stories that have been built up, but hopefully I can spend enough time to catch up on most of them. I will let you know that I'm a little bit on the downside today and the fact that I just came out of some outpatient surgery, nothing severe actually should make things a lot better for me. It's just a testosterone treatment. And I'm finally on my migraine meds and so you're seeing new episodes in the podcast after a while and now a new Fireside Frights. So Fireside Frights is of course different than what I normally do if you are new to the show. This is a little bit different than what you would hear in a regular episode. Fireside Frights, I just strip away all of the music, the sound effects, everything else. It's just you, me, this campfire and whatever sounds nature decides to send our way. So if you'd like to email me your true story, that's what Fireside Frights is all about. It's only stories by you, listeners to the show, the Weird Darkness Weirdo family. You can email them by going to WeirdDarkness.com and then clicking on Tell Your Story. Or just send me an email, Darren at WeirdDarkness.com, Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Our first one comes from Rachel. She says, Hey Darren, I listen to your podcast daily. I finally got a round to writing down my own paranormal experiences. Feel free to use this wherever you think it fits best. Your fellow weirdo, Rachel. And so here's what she wrote. I wouldn't say that I believe in ghosts, but I've had experiences with the paranormal my entire life. I was born at Flow Memorial Hospital, and according to my parents, the maternity ward was haunted by a nurse who once worked there. When they would lay me in my crib, I would coo and giggle at someone or something in my nursery. They witnessed the mobile above my bed move without being wound up, and the rocking chair would rock without anyone sitting in it. Thankfully, she was a good spirit, if that was in fact what it was. Of course I have no remembrance of these happenings. The next experience I have is years later. My parents had moved across the state to a small farm and moved in an old farmhouse. They remodeled it and added rooms for me and my younger brother and sister, so it was a pretty big house. We're celebrating Christmas about 20 years ago. Friends in the front of the house where we had opened gifts and the kids were playing with their new toys. I went to the back of the house where the bedrooms and bathrooms were. No one was back there. It was dark, lights off, no television, no radio was on. From the darkness I heard a small child singing the Christmas carol We Three Kings. I spun around and headed back to the living room with everyone else. Again, I think it was a benevolent spirit, but I didn't want to find out. Shortly after my husband and I married, we moved into the house where he grew up. His father had tragically died when my husband was about 11. We lived in the house for about four years. The entire time we lived there, no one ever smoked in the house. However, I often smelled cigarette smoke wafting through the house. My husband's father was a heavy smoker. I think the cigarette smell was him drifting in to check on his son. About five years ago, my husband and I moved into a house across town. I did not like going into the east side of the house where the guest bedrooms were. However, I did hang a few pictures and crosses in that hallway. Once the crosses… one of the crosses was given to me in memory of my grandmother who had passed away the year before. One afternoon I heard a buzzing, like an electrical buzzing coming from the hallway. I investigated and it was coming from that cross. I don't know what compelled me, but I said, Mamma, you can go. And the buzzing stopped. The two years we lived in that house, we would hear scraping at night. The living room had a Spanish tile floor and the noise sounded like someone dragging something heavy across the tile. My husband would check, but never saw anything moved. We started sleeping with the bedroom door closed and locked. The final experience I had happened about nearly three years ago. My husband and I moved. Again, he was law enforcement and concerned with security. We had cameras all around our house and even alerts on our phones. When either of us came within a certain radius of our home, the other would get an alert stating, Alex is arriving home or Rachel has left home. We also had a ring doorbell camera that signaled our phones and we could automatically connect and talk to whoever was at the front door. Well, as you know, the corona pandemic hit in the spring of 2020 and my husband was part of the first responders who could not shelter in place. He became very sick from the virus and passed away July 11th, 2020. After he died, I got an alert on my phone stating, Alex is arriving home. I've been in possession of his phone and smartwatch for the past week. The night of his funeral, my phone alerted with the ring doorbell camera. This was about 3 a.m. I picked up my phone and switched to the live view. I saw an orb and heard the crackling sound that's heard on the paranormal shows. I wasn't scared this time either. I felt at peace, like my husband was just finding his way home. Today I'm in a new house with a feisty black cat. So far, knock on wood, I haven't had any more experiences since then. I'd like to keep it that way. Rachel, I am so sorry for your loss. That has got to be devastating. I cannot imagine what life would be like without my bride, Robin. I'm sure it was very much the same for you when you lost your husband. Goodness gracious. Almost exactly three years ago today. So I am I'm very sorry for your loss. I'm sure this is a really horrible time of year for you. And if I had known that, I might have skipped this email until the next fireside frights, so it wouldn't be so fresh. But as I've mentioned in the past, I don't read these in advance for fireside frights. I just pick them up and just start going. So my so my reactions are genuine and off the cuff. But I'm really, really sorry for your loss. Yeah, the cross, though, with your mama, looks like she she was possessing that cross, which is interesting. Normally when you hear possessed objects, you don't think of something religious like that. But yeah, there you go. We have a in our in our home, not in our home in our family, that is. We have a grandfather clock. I've talked about this, I believe, in the past in fireside frights, but we have a grandfather clock that is supposedly haunted by my grandmother. I knew my grandmother before she passed away, really nice lady. But apparently there was a lot of tension about the clock within the family. The the siblings were fighting over it. And I don't know exactly how that went. I really don't need to know it's none of my business. But anyway, my dad ended up with the grandfather clock and he has had visitations from my grandmother, his mother, since her passing. And it's not just in the house. He moved into the house that she was in at first in order to take care of her in her in her last days. And so then I could kind of see where her ghost might be there. But when he moved away from Kansas City and moved to Texas and took the grandfather clock with him, she still visited him there. So we are pretty darn sure that it's the grandfather clock because after that they moved to Arkansas for a while and moved back to Texas again a little bit later on. And they've they've had a couple of incidents with the clock. And well, it's my dad, it's not the clock itself. It's not like there's anything wrong with the clock. It's not doing anything. But my dad seems to be a bit more sensitive to stuff like this. I did not inherit that. I know that I'm the one who tells all the spooky tales. And he's not really into spooky tales. He's not into scary stories and horror movies or anything, probably because he gets enough of it in real life with seeing stuff like this once in a while. But yeah, so when the day comes that my father passes away, it's possible that I'll be inheriting that grandfather clock or possibly my little brother. It would make more sense for my little brother because he actually does have a son who he could hand it down to and keep it in the family. But anyway, one of us is going to get that grandfather clock more than likely. I'm just wondering if the ghost is going to come with it. So Rachel, thank you very much. I appreciate your email. This next one comes from Crystal. Crystal says, first off, I'd like to say I love the podcast. I just love all the variety of stories you tell. OK, I've been holding on to this story for a very long time because I've been too scared to share it online. I'm afraid that some younger people might try this. So please make it absolutely apparent that this is incredibly dangerous and could have horrific deadly consequences. With that disclaimer, I would really like to see if anybody has had has any idea what it was I actually experienced. As I've never heard another story like it. So here we go. It was either 1996 or 97. I was a preteen at a slumber party participating in all the dumb things preteens at slumber parties did back in the 90s. I remember the party was from my mom's boyfriend's daughter. So I didn't know anyone at the party other than the birthday girl. We were watching scary movies, so I'll admit that Nightmare on Elm Street was on my mind. However, I'd been watching scary movies since I was quite young and didn't get scared by them. And this was like my third time seeing this particular movie. Anyway, moving on. One of the girls started talking about a time she was at a party and played a game called Pass Out and described what it was, basically making someone pass out. I called Bull. I truly did not think that you could make another person pass out. I just thought it was something that happened naturally, like in the movies when a woman is shocked and passes out as a man catches her. The girl said she would prove it. So I went along with it and I volunteered because I didn't want them trying to trick me by pretending to pass out. OK, here's where it gets weird. So I did everything they told me to do and eventually the world went blank or black. So by the way, Crystal, thank you very much for not detailing exactly how to play this game. I appreciate that. Yeah, it would have been dangerous to go through that. So anyway, she says, then suddenly I was in a dark. All right, so so she does that. She passes out. The world goes black. Suddenly, I was in a dark alley. Everything was in black and white. There were pipes everywhere and I could hear water dripping very loudly. Something was coming for me and I started to run. It was chasing me and I was terrified for my life. But the only sound I could hear was water dripping and a strange hum. I felt like I was running forever and everything about this felt real. Eventually I woke up from this, but everything was blurry. There was a group of girls all standing around me pointing and laughing their butts off, but I couldn't make out their faces. I didn't know who they were or where I was. I was lying on a pile of teddies on the opposite end of the room. Took me a few minutes to remember what had happened and where I was. But I was extremely disoriented and felt absolutely sick. Head pounding, heart racing, nauseous and covered in sweat. When everyone finally stopped laughing, they told me how that was a good one and that I got them real good. I had no idea what they were talking about. According to them, after I passed out, I started kicking and flaring my arms all over the place. My legs were going up the walls and I went all around the whole room, like a woman possessed until ending up in the pile of teddies where I stopped for a while and was completely still before coming too. It was apparently terrifying for them and they thought I played a prank on them to freak them out. None of them ever believed me that I did not and that I that I wasn't freaking them out on purpose. Very few people in my life have ever believed this story when I've told it. I'm not going to lie. I tried to make it happen again multiple times with other friends and never could. Again, I cannot stress this enough. This is a terrible idea and I've probably lost brain cells due to it. But anytime I played the game again, I just pass out for a couple of minutes and then come to with no dreaming of any kind, only blackness. Some have suggested to me that perhaps I had a seizure, but I've researched it and I really don't think that's what happened. Also, nothing like it ever happened before or since. Some have said that I had a near-death experience and saw a hell, but I was just a kid. I really think that that's bull. Did I shift realities, time travel or see a past life or something? I really have no idea. Over the years, I've tried to look up people having crazy experiences like this when playing this game, but I haven't come across anything. Has anyone else experienced something like this? I think about this probably more than I should. I've never forgotten it and I never will. It was crazy weird and whether scientific or supernatural, I hope someone out there can shed some real light on what actually happened. Holy cow, Crystal. Yeah, dangerous. Please, people, if you're listening, don't do this. Please don't do this. Obviously for one reason because you're passing out that, which means blood is not getting to your brain. So the comment that Crystal makes that she could be losing brain cells, it's very, very possible that that's what is happening. But the idea that she went through all of this weird stuff, the near-death experience almost sounds right. I don't, I mean, how many people go through a near-death experience and come back and are able to say exactly what happened to them? You don't have the typical near-death stuff in the fact that you're not seeing the light. You're not being asked to come down a hallway or go somewhere else. You're not hearing a voice saying, no, it's not your time. You need to go back. Nothing like that. So I'm not really sure if it would be an actual near-death experience. What I'm inclined to say and I'm not an expert in this. So please don't take my word for this. You still need to do your research, Crystal. You need to keep looking for an answer. But I'm inclined to say this is similar to what would happen if you're inviting a spirit in to talk to you through like a Ouija board or spirit board or tarot cards or something like that. You're opening yourself up to an outside influence. And, you know, sometimes you risk that influence being a bad influence. And if you are purposely knocking yourself out, I'm wondering. I don't know exactly how you guys went about knocking yourselves out. And I don't need to know. But I'm just wondering if perhaps that just allowed a door to open for something to come into you and just mess with you for a short while. I don't know. It would make sense because you said that you've not forgotten about this. You think about it more than you probably should. It's definitely something that has affected your life in a negative way for a long time. So that would be my guess. Yes, please start. Keep doing research. If you find an answer to this, I would love to know. And Weirdo family members, if you're listening to this and you know what happened to Crystal, do me a favor. Drop me an email at Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren again is spelled D-A-R-R-E-N. And just like in the subject line or something, write, you know, pass out game or something along those lines. So I know what you're referring to. So in the next fireside frights, we can refer to this and see if maybe we have an answer for Crystal. Again, thank you very much for the email, Crystal. I appreciate it. Kelly sent to one saying, Hey Darren, this is my encounter with a ghost of my friend's father. Okay, this is actually a fairly long one. So let me get a sip of my drink here real quick. I always tell people what I'm drinking. I am drinking Diet Mountain Dew with, I'm putting flavoring in it. Myo energy with caffeine and B vitamins in it. So I'm doubling up on the caffeine. I'm also getting through some B vitamins into this. Okay. Oh, in case you're wondering. Akai berry storm. That's the flavor that I'm using right now. Okay. So Kelly says, Oh, she even titled it haunted happenings, the ghost of his father and paranormal experiences. I had a series of paranormal experiences that have happened to me this year, but it all happened almost a year ago. That's when this guy came back into my life. The odd thing is the minute we started talking again, we noticed all these similarities that we had. We are both earth signs, similar life experiences, and his brother having the same birthday as me. Then it became more than that. We noticed we could message each other the same exact word or sentence at the same time. Then there were times where we spoke the same things at the same time. And sometimes when we spoke, it was a whole sentence at the same time. Then at times we would know what the other one was thinking. It felt like it was an intense connection at the time and we were drawn to each other. We had the same dream one time. I had dreams of him. So some would come true. He told me that he had a dream of me. I'm not sure if it was only once, but he did say he had a dream that scared him of me. He said he saw something bad happen to me. I then noticed that I could pick up his feelings. Some days it was overwhelming. One time I remember just crying out of nowhere. I was not even sad and later that day he said that he was upset. I also remember waking up in the middle of the night and feeling panicked. I'd message him and ask him if he was okay and he'd say no. I remember a few times talking to him and I just knew the color of the shorts he was wearing or his socks. Then when we would hang out things would get intense, especially at the beginning. When we first started hanging out, unexplainable things would happen. The television would just turn on by itself. We would look for the remote control. It was always under the bed and in the middle. I'd never forget the time when so many things happened all at once. First his television turned on, then it went off, then everything went off. One by one his lights, our cell phones, and air conditioning all turned off. I got chills all over me that night. I definitely felt someone was there with us. He always knew it was his dad. He told me that mainly his dad was coming around more when I was there. He told me that one time his phone flew across the room and he saw his dad that passed away. One time when we were talking on the phone he told me that a plant that was in his room fell over about four times. He also saw 1111 and 1111 on his phone that day. Another time that we were talking on the phone he said that you left one of your shirts at my house. Then he said the shirt moved from one end of the couch to the other. I laugh when I think back to seeing an angel numbers with him. I'm not familiar with angel numbers. I laugh when I think back to seeing angel numbers with him because he did not believe in angel numbers. The first night that we saw angel numbers he was actually trying to tell me that you can look at your phone and see any number. He put his phone in the kitchen to charge. We talked for hours in his room and I had no idea what time it was. He went into the kitchen to look at his phone. It was exactly 1111 p.m. After that day it became a regular thing for us to see angel numbers. It was always 1111 and 1111. It was to the point where you could not deny it. We never really paid attention to the time when we were together, so when we saw the angel numbers we knew that it was a sign. The clock in my car was broken and I remember we were driving and laughing and when we stopped my car it was exactly 1111 according to my clock. Another time I looked at my Facebook and I had exactly 1111 friends and his face and name was next to the number. Or I would have 111 emails. It felt like things were trying to get our attention. We even had some similar health issues at one point. It was the same eye condition and it was at the same time. One time he told me that he put a crystal that I gave him under his bed. He took a nap and he woke up to my crystal hitting the wall and startling him. Another time he was on his phone and he said that he was on social media that all of a sudden one of my YouTube videos about wolves popped up and he can't explain how. And as I just wrote that I heard two knocks on my wall, which is strange because not too long ago we asked his dad to give us two knocks if it was him. I had different dreams of him. One time I had a dream of him falling, but I saw him fall in the bathroom, but he fell outside. It's strange, but sometimes that's what happens in my dreams. They turn out a little different. I had a dream of his dad once and it was odd. He seemed like he was worried and trying to get a message through. I only remember him asking what was the problem with his son and I. It's kind of funny because I always wondered the same thing. He was acting as a counselor in the dream in between the two of us and seemed as if he was trying to help. Then this guy ended up moving into my building. When I went into his apartment we still had the same strange things happen. Weird knocks, strange sounds, and his socks falling off his shelf. I asked him one night if I could perform a seance to try to contact his dad and maybe get some messages from him. He agreed to this. At the time we happened to be in my apartment. We heard 14 noises. All the noises sounded like knocks on a wall. It's funny that the number 14 is the day I was born. Then we went back to his place. Before I left my place I told his dad that he had to go back with him or if any other ghosts were there as well they had to leave. So we got back to his place and I said let's try to ask again because we started to hear the noises again. The minute I said if this is his father then please knock twice if you have a message for him, instantly we heard two knocks. Then it kept happening. The next day he told me he felt like it was really overwhelming because now the knocks just keep happening all the time. He and I parted ways now. I stopped talking to him because he was toxic and he just kept treating me really badly. I still do see him in my dreams sometimes. However the dreams are different now. One night I had a dream I met a new guy and it was my wedding day and I was wondering what this guy would have thought of me getting married and if he cared anymore. Another dream that I had was me moving out of my apartment that I'm living in and him trying to find me but he could not. But a really creepy thing just happened recently. I walked into a store and it was just me and three other people in the store. The store owner kept teasing this little boy. The little boy was looking at mood rings and the color of his mood ring meant love. All of a sudden his sister kept calling his name and she said that it was time to go. He just so happened to have the name and the guy that this story is about. Then things just took a real weird turn. I left that store and walked a few blocks away and just felt drawn to this other store. I went in there and all of a sudden the little boy that was trying on mood rings came up to me. He looked right at me and said look it's her. He kept saying it over and over again. He kept telling his sister to look that it was me the lady from the other store and they kept calling his name once again. There's the same name of the man this story is about. Thank you Kelly. Okay okay everybody wants my opinions on stories and my thoughts and again I need to reiterate I'm not an expert. Kelly has a different lifestyle than I do and so she's going to dive into things that I would never dive into. I went when she mentioned that she's doing a seance right then right then in there red flags red lights beep beep beep don't do that beep beep beep don't do that but that's because that's because I'm a born-again Christian so I'm not going to step into stuff like that but I mean if you're not a Christian and and you're maybe wicking or pay again or whatever you don't see an issue with it so I totally get that but I'm wondering okay as I was reading this Kelly there are a couple of things popped into my head number one I wondered if the guy was actually messing with you playing with you because there are people who really can almost they can all it almost makes it makes it look like they're mind-reading you they can say the same word or same sentences like right at the same time as you it is a it's a weird thing but you can look it up on YouTube people will be able to do that type of thing texting each other back and forth and having the exact same word at the same time I'm not exactly sure how that worked but it was just something that popped into my head and if you say you were dreaming about him he could so easily just say oh yeah yeah yeah I'm dreaming about you too yeah yeah yeah so whether or not he was telling the truth I don't know that doesn't explain the weird stuff that starts happening later on it was just something that kind of occurred to me while I was reading this and then you get into the angel numbers and I think I kind of figured out what you were talking about with that where you start seeing the same number everywhere and for no apparent reason um like there was that movie 23 uh or was it room 23 uh anyway um you know you start seeing that same number everywhere that he goes and you're you are seeing the number 11 or 111 or 1111 you know it's like the the number the string of ones everywhere you went it is kind of weird when that happens I think that's probably happened to most everybody not to the extent that you're talking about I mean just a couple of times you know during the day you might do it I know people who will post online hey look at that my phone just says 1111 I'll like take a screenshot and send it out like it's something it's like it's some big deal I don't get it but okay but I you mentioned that you're thinking maybe it's a sign I want to know why what sign would that be if it's the spirit world the paranormal supernatural whatever trying to get a message to you what possible message would that be hey look here's a string of number here's a string of ones now go out and do whatever it is that that message tells you to do what what is that I that makes zero sense to me if they really wanted to get a message to you come back you know come to you and start speaking to you in English tell you exactly what it is they want you to do or at least give you some hints but just a string a string of numbers like that makes no sense at all uh I know that they're just called angel numbers because I seriously doubt that's actually from angels because that I would think angels the angels being messengers that's actually what they were created to be our messengers that's the worst message ever if you're trying to get a point across to somebody that's all I'm saying I'm kind of glad that you're no longer with this guy uh because yeah sounded like he was yeah well you you use the word toxic and even without his personality I don't know his personality but what was happening between the two of you definitely sounded toxic very unhealthy even if you loved each other very much you didn't mention if you were actually boyfriend girlfriend I'm assuming that's what you were but even if you were just friends either way you can be really close to somebody and truly truly love somebody either you know emotionally romantically whatever you can be as close as close can be to somebody and and love them very much and be happy and still kind of be toxic at the same time I mean it is possible for that to happen so I'm glad that you two are no longer together interesting that your dreams changed after that and you're still kind of wondering what he thinks of you I think that's probably the case for all of us when it comes to past relationships he's obviously still on your mind somehow I still have uh I still have dreams about old girlfriends from goodness gracious like high school my high school girlfriend will step into my dreams once in a while because once in a while she she pops into my head so even if I don't think about it so I don't think it's necessarily you know an odd thing that you're dreaming about your ex the little boy it was trying on the mood rings probably just a coincidence but it came to the name unless unless your your old friend guy friend boyfriend whatever had a very strange name you know a very unique name uh other than that I would think that's just just a coincidence and you just happened to be at a couple of different stores when that same kid was there that's but still that anyway very interesting though really glad you're not with him that's all I can say all right moving on uh our next next one comes from uh Kyle he says hey Darren uh here's some backstory and context to my story my wife and I have been married for going on two years now and been together since December of 2017 for when we first met she told me she can see ghosts and feel them as well she sees them all over the place and will normally tell me about it I have no reason to doubt her we bought a house a couple years ago and sometimes ghosts visit us and ask her for help she tries to ignore them for the most part but sometimes she does tell them what they need or want now normally I can't see or sense them but I don't know if it's because we have been together for so long or if they trust me or what but I've been able to feel like I notice things kind of off when one is around which brings me to the story when one needs help or directions or whatever they normally appear and kind of follow my wife around for a bit but this time something different is going on the last month or so we have been dealing with what we both believe to be a small child maybe three to five years old now I say we because it's letting me get the full experience too started out by one night at maybe midnight or so by knocking stuff off our dresser and getting the feeling of someone coming up onto our bed and sitting down by our feet we felt the depression in the bed and everything it also grabbed my wife's uh hand I'm assuming I think he left a word out there my wife's hand and to hold it a couple days later we had put my son down to bed he's two years old after an hour or so of him sleeping we heard a small child screaming and crying daddy instinctually we thought it was our son so I ran upstairs and opened his door to see him sound asleep the screaming and crying continued with the daddies in the hall as I looked at him sound asleep once I went back into the hall the crying and the daddies stopped so it creeped so creeped out I went downstairs and told my wife that it wasn't our son now this is weird for us because this time the ghost isn't letting my wife see it and it's letting me hear and experience stuff too later when we went upstairs for bed we noticed that the ghost had put a ball in front of our room as if it wanted to play I know the ball wasn't there earlier when I checked on my son randomly we'll hear it moving around or uh moving around our house running up and down our stairs and even shutting doors we even heard it whistle we don't think our house is haunted because we've lived in it for over two years and never had anything happen like this till recently we just don't know what it is my wife has asked it many times if she can help but she doesn't get any feedback just what it wants to do I wanted to share what we're dealing with in hopes you might share it on a podcast to see if any weirdo listeners have heard of anything like this happening or have any idea why it doesn't want help I just hope it's not something pretending to be a child in hopes that we want it to stay hello well thanks again feel free to share our story if you want to thanks again love the podcast thanks that's a kyle kyle wow um your story reminds me a little bit of the old film with george c scott uh changeling or the changeling not to be confused with the angelina joe lee movie that's that's a different changeling but you know the idea of a child haunting the house wanting to play ball that's what really caught me was the was the ball uh you say that say you've been there for a couple of years nothing's happened up until up to this point uh but i'm wondering have you done anything to the house recently quite often from what i've read and and learned not from personal experience but just from telling so many stories quite often a haunting won't begin until something triggers it and it can often be renovations in a house almost like the house uh like the previous owner doesn't like what you're doing to the house or it stirs something up you know spiritually i you know however you want to take that so i'm wondering if that could possibly be it it's interesting it's a tiny little child i i'm wondering too if it's not just pretending to be a small child so if you are not doing any renovations then i have to wonder have you opened yourself up to some type of spiritual infestation for lack of better words have you done a seance recently have you um played with tarot cards recently or seen a a fortune teller or have you and i'm not accusing but uh have you committed some horrible horrible sin that you're keeping a secret like maybe you've like maybe somebody in your house is cheated on each other or um maybe there's a maybe somebody has stolen money of a great value and is keeping it a secret because stuff like that from and i'm getting this from uh father carlos martin from another podcast that i listen to often uh called the exorcist files and he's mentioned that sometimes you can just commit a what's considered a mortal sin and it's kind of like inviting somebody in so you don't even have to be playing a dangerous spiritual game for it to happen just living that life can sometimes bring it in so i really don't know though um your wife asks often if she can help and the spirit doesn't want help that doesn't mean that you have to put up with it though if you don't want the kid there if it's freaking you out i can't i'm wondering what your kid's what your actual two-year-old son how he's handling this you you haven't mentioned that i'm wondering is this like an imaginary friend for him as well does he sometimes play with the ghost that would really concern me yeah it's one thing to have your kid with an imaginary child that you don't see or hear from or anything it could just be there could be just their imagination but when something when you start getting evidence that it's a real entity then you know that's that's where you get concerned so i would wonder if your son is also seeing hearing this spirit but i man if it was me i would just be i'd be calling a priest or a pastor over in or i would definitely be blessing the house i would go out and get either make holy water if you know how to do it or you can just get some olive oil it has to be it has to be natural organic i think or will gosh my mind is freezing up on me folks i'm sorry but anyway look it up you can look up how to bless your home with holy water and holy oil and you go about doing that but i think you can just use olive oil and just make the sign of a cross over all the entrances in your home you know that kind of thing ask the spirits to leave ask god to bless your home and to protect you from all all spirits that are not of him you know that kind of thing so but yeah if there are any weirdos listening that know what that's about drop me an email let me know we'll put it in the next fireside frights and for that subject line maybe just say two-year-old ghost and we can take it from there thanks for your email cal i appreciate it all right this next one comes from let's see i want to make sure that they gen all right so we'll go with gen hello i have a weird story just started listening not too long ago good times decided to share my weird story because i think it's funny and it's an option here let's start the story with some background info i'm an only child to a single mother who worked and went to school to get degrees and all that jazz my grandmother would babysit me but she would often need rest until noon so i played alone in her house so anyway sometimes we would go shopping for things that she needed and would often buy me toys she got me this giant baby doll about the size of a toddler but designed to look like a sleeping infant it would close its eyes when you laid it down and i carried it with me all the time jumped forward a few years in my pre-teens i was feeling really down because i felt very alone i heard a voice that said i was not alone and it brought me great comfort and i was flooded with fantastic images of beautiful creatures and people pale white skin black nails horns wings fangs i guess some would see them as demons or vampires from that point on the one who spoke to me was at my side he had a few forms which i liked to draw out i assumed i had gone crazy due to isolation and lack of friends maybe schizophrenia but sensitive people saw him or could feel something with me well into my older teen and adult years back to my story about the doll i still had her many years later but she was super banged up she lost an eye which i replaced with a black marble and i uh i painted her up to look like my demon vampire friend my mom was unnerved i bet she was but i loved that doll so at some point in my childhood around grade school uh still with no human friends my mom had arranged to sleep over with a few girls from my class i wasn't really for this i really just wanted to play with my dolls draw and read books side note for punishment she would take away my books and make me go outside to play so the girls came over we have pizza and snacks they talk about things like cute boys and play with each other's hair i awkwardly tried to join them but i didn't think anybody was cute and didn't like being touched i tried to talk about cool animal facts but they didn't care eventually they pushed me out of my own bedroom and i went to sleep on the couch i was woken up partly because i heard my door open and i see them toss out my creepy baby doll mostly still asleep i see her wink at me and start to stand up but at that point i was already falling back to sleep i just missed it as a dream but in the morning the girls were silent and seemed disturbed about something they asked me if i put the doll back in my room i tell them no and my mom asked what they were talking about they asked her if she put it back but she didn't either they told her they put the doll out because it was creepy but it was back when they woke up the door was still closed but the doll was back in her corner of the bed my bedroom door is not silent it doesn't creak but the latch makes a very loud pop when when uh turned due to the door being set wrong to close it you have to push it with your whole body to get the latch which is noisy and opening and opening the door to get in is like opening a can of biscuits while a cat plays with the doorknob pop rattle rattle clack clack not something you can ignore very easily my mom was shocked at this but didn't really believe them but saw their faces as genuinely scared one girl cried when they realized it wasn't me or my mom they all went home and didn't talk to me at school which was normal but now they actively avoided me i wasn't upset at that why would anyone want to be friends with people who kick you out of your own bedroom and sleep over at your house as for my doll i still have her she's in storage though not because i'm scared of her or anything she spent many years on my bed through my childhood and some of my teen years she traveled with me when i moved around and when i could and when i could i would set her up with my other plushies when i had space i'm in my forties now and married we have our own house with two dogs and not much room on the bed she's comfortably stored away in a nice box with other toys from my childhood or newer dolls i've collected because i like plushies one day i hope to pass her on to my own child or at least get her out of storage when we finally organize the house i don't know if it was my friend or the doll itself but i'm happy about it either way he likes to play coy with with uh some things i'll probably share some more stories with him later maybe i'll ask if he's okay with that he's pretty open with things thanks for reading listening and i hope miss mocha is enjoying the cat toys remember if you don't believe in yourself that's fine because satan believes in you much love signed jan yeah jan's actually one of the vendors that i've that i've met to these places that i go uh genocide doll if you want to look at her if you want to look at her stuff online i believe that's what her instagram profile is genocide doll but and yes she loves it so thank you very much jan i appreciate that miss mocha really well she loves toys in general welcome to being a cat your story sounds so much like the real story of anabelle the doll not the movie but the actual anabelle doll because that's something where they would try to get rid of the doll the three girls in that house tried to get rid of it tried to throw her away a couple times she would end up back not only at their doorstep but actually in the room uh stuff like that and nobody would fess up to going out and getting her and bringing her back very much like the anabelle doll which makes me think that doll might possibly have a demonic connection especially after you you talk about your friend i guess i will call it an imaginary friend that looks like a demon i'm not gonna i'm not gonna say demons actually look like that that's the way we portray them now because anything with with points seems to be uh seems to be bad and with curves seems to be good i learned that actually from a disney animator and he was saying that if you look at the if you look at the for example the wicked the wicked queen oh no no no let's let's go with um Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty you'll see that she's got the horns with pointy with the with points but also her facial features are jagged and pointed and that's easier easier to portray as a as a bad person as uh you know they're they're the antagonist in the story where Sleeping Beauty yourself has these fine curvy lines no no no jaggedness at all she's very flowing uh so makes me i think that's why we started creating demons you know in pictures and stuff like that because it's just easier to see them as well demonic that way but that doesn't mean that they actually look that way in fact i'm guessing that demons probably uh look very much like well whatever they want to look like they have the ability to change but you like the tv show Lucifer it would not surprise me if demons look like that just like normal people who just happen to go around doing really really nasty awful things and they they don't have wings either uh well i'm not going to say they don't have wings nowhere in the bible does it say that angels or slash demons have wings uh so i mean they can move from one place to the next in an instant but that doesn't require wings you know that's just supernatural anyway thank you very much for the story genocide or i appreciate that um gosh i you have to wonder what your doll thinks of being stuck in storage right now when you take her out and you decide to set her up again what does your spouse think of that is that is your spouse i don't know if it's a he or she so i'm just saying spouse but but what would they i'll just say they what how do they react when you bring back the doll i would be curious to see what kind of a reaction you get from that thank you very much jan i appreciate it tori sent me this next one saying hey this was a while ago so i'll try to recall with as much detail as i can this is another long one let me get a sip here real quick oh goodness we're already 10 minutes away from being an hour and i've got a ton of stuff still left to go i don't i don't think i'll get through all of it today but still all right here's tori's email i was about 19 years old maybe when this happened i was working two jobs in ebbonsville wisconsin and lived in magnolia township at that time job one was housekeeping at the nursing home and job two was in home care for an autistic child in town she was about 15 i think at that time and for the sake of her privacy i will call her maggie in this story maggie was mostly mute and what some would call on the more severe side of autistic prone to fits of teenage frustration but also very small childlike in play and cognitive abilities we got along so well it was like having a younger sister to hang with at the time i was coming from a rough background as well abusive parents had kept me very isolated growing up and it was nice to have someone to pal around with working with her was a mostly physical job we had a two-seater bike that we'd go on quite long rides together on we go play at the parks or really anything to get her out of the house and wear her out a little for her parents we went to the middle by by the way before i continue on here i think that's really cool tory i know that that was your job but it's really cool that's what you decided to step into and and do it takes a very special person to work with special needs kids so kudos to you for that before we even continue with the rest of your email okay anyway we went to the middle school park one day and noticed a tan and gray mismatched sedan parked in the parking lot beside the playground kind of a sketchy looking dude was in the driver's seat watching us intently kept looking over my shoulder at him as maggie played on the swings with me seated beside her and i didn't like the looks of him eventually i asked maggie if she wanted to go to the at the time newly built park out in the new subdivision now i didn't say that directly i asked her if she wanted to go make sand castles the park we were at has mulch as a substrate the new one had sand which i was perpetually which was perpetually damp for some reason excellent for building her way of saying yes was to hop off the swing and start towards the bike we got in and i took a winding way to the new park where we got busy making our little city of sand wasn't long though that guy came to this park this time rolling up close to watch again i made a point to watch him back make sure he knew that i saw him and eventually we left and went back to maggie's house i told her dad i saw a guy being sketchy towards maggie and i didn't like it and he kind of blew me off now maggie was pretty very small build cute teen girl and i'm solidly convinced the only thing it would take for her to hop into a stranger's car would be to offer be an offer of candy or cell phone to play on so i was worried for her safety and upset with her dad for not seeming concerned at all for a while we saw this guy daily everywhere we went and i still pleaded with maggie's dad mom and older sisters to watch out for this guy and his car something was up but no one seemed fazed a little later on you know before i go on i would be calling the cops i don't care what maggie's mom and dad say if they're not concerned you're concerned you should definitely i would have been calling the cops and say hey look this guy's following us he's a creep so just check up on him you know it just the idea just a cop showing up and asking questions is often enough uh to scare somebody away from good that's all that that's all i'm saying all right moving moving on with your with your email a little later on we were at lake leota a little park in town with a crumbling man made channel to guide a small creek through the park maggie liked to sit on the banks and further erode the crumbled concrete on the side by picking at it i was sitting beside her holding my usual one-sided conversation with her when i noticed a car pull up on the road across the channel from us like maybe 500 feet away tops right there out in front of everyone was that same old gray slashed hand sedan but this time a woman was standing behind it with a comically large camera leaned across the top of the car photographing us i was bewildered for more than one reason first that was definitely the car second who is this lady and thirdly how in the world did she think she was being at all covert i watched her a second pondering all this and tapped maggie's shoulder pointing at the lady and saying look we're getting our picture taken say hi and waved maggie waved as well causing a weird reaction in the woman who looked horrified bolted upright rushed around the car got in the driver's side and literally squeal tired to speed away i was so confused now here's where things get fuzzy i don't remember if this is the day or the next day when this next bit happened it was in the same location but as we had taken the double bike to the park i turned around to get it to get it to leave now about that bike it was one of a kind in that small town it was very expensive her dad had put the fear of death in me to never lose or damage maggie's bike and i always parked it in the same place when at the lower park which was on one of the paint lines between two parking spots and the little parking lot no one ever drove to that lot so i wasn't being a total jerk it was also probably about eight parking spaces and a straight line down there when we turned to leave there was two black on black suv's parked tightly on either side of the bike almost squeezing it in between the windows were tinted to illegal limits and all the other parking spots were on it were a excuse me all the other parking spots were still available nobody had come out of the vehicles it was threatening rain that day so the park was almost uh was mostly empty i got a icky feeling about it we'll say not wanting maggie to go near those suv's but needing to get the bike i came up with a plan quickly i pointed out the bike to maggie and explained it to be stuck using her level of understanding and the fact that we were good friends to my advantage oh no the bike is stuck but i tell you what here's what we'll do if you take my hand really tight i'll grab the bike and we can both pull hard okay hang on tight don't let go i told her creeping up to the bike apprehensively grabbing the bike by the back tire it was a heavy bike so it actually balanced itself pretty well maggie accepted the assignment and took my arm with both hands thinking this just to be a simple task of freeing the bike uh i hated being that close to the vehicles i could feel whoever was inside watching us from the blacked out windows it felt like it took forever to pull the bike free but we got it and insisted that we took a uh and i insisted that we take it across the little people only bridge the let me try try that again sorry we got it and i insisted that we took it across the little people's only bridge and go back to her house that way so it was harder for them to follow again i told her family about this and they still didn't seem to care i told my family about this and they unsurprisingly also didn't care i felt like i was going nuts seeing such a bizarre behavior and worrying they were after my disabled friend while everyone just shrugged it off it was awful sightings of the sedan and suv's would become very frequent and i started carrying a large knife with us on day trips her dad didn't like that at all but still didn't believe me at that point i was also mid-level in martial arts so i was at least somewhat comfortable with the idea of decking someone if needed sighting started to decrease sudden sightings started to decrease suddenly and i was starting to question if i'd made a big deal out of nothing after all when i left maggie's house late one summer night just after dark at the time i had a crappy white oldsmobile and a few bad habits with it i wasn't a great driver country kids never are and working so close to home i used to be bad at keeping gas in the tank thinking i'll just throw some in tomorrow no big deal i started on my way home what's usually about a 10 or so minute drive in the country on the main road out of town a black suv is on my tail immediately i tried to tell myself it's a popular vehicle out here every farmer has a black suv it's probably nothing after all i was solidly convinced they were after maggie not me the road out of town is very straight until the first intersection right before the first intersection the other suv was parked in the oncoming lane's shoulder once me and the other suv pass it turns on and pulls beside us or behind us that is in my head i'm thinking what the f i put on my blinker for my normal turn see two blankers turn on behind me i flipped the blinker off and blow past the intersection they follow suit now i know i'm being followed i was young and admittedly reckless growing up in an abusive household makes one that way it also makes it impossible to ask for help or no appropriate responses to things like this i'll admit that what i did next was the wrong thing to do i was young i was just coming to terms with the idea that the people i thought were after maggie are for some reason after me this didn't feel real i was in a car chase with a stupid 98 Oldsmobile intrigue a white one that stood out at night i became reckless my first thought was that i can't lead them to my home if they didn't know where that was yet after that my next thought was the cop that used to sit on b to catch speeding teenagers rushing the valley i gunned it towards b i'm guessing that's highway b anyway i gunned it towards b hoping the cop was there hoping to be pulled over hoping i could tell him what had been following me or what had been happening hoping he believed me but there was no cop on b no one was on b i thought about going to a friend's house but didn't know what the heck was following me they stayed on my bumper at every speed over every hill around every turn eventually i came to the realization that i couldn't run forever my dumb butt hadn't put gas in for a while and i was running very low eventually i'd run out and be stuck then what i really pushed it and sped towards bump uh bumps bluff there's a winding road there with some weird field access driveways scattered around i got around the corner slammed it in reverse and plunged backwards into a cornfield i turned off the car and hoped my glaring white vehicle didn't show in the dark i hung out there until i was pretty sure i'd lost them i never did see them drive by i barely got home and told my family what had happened again no one believed me and i got a lecture on running the car out of gas i got to work the next day and told maggie's family about it same thing no one believed me weird thing is i never ever saw any of those people or cars ever again after that it just stopped like a month and a half of stalking ending in a car chase and they just stopped and i'll get it i don't know what they wanted from us or from me and i don't know if this is related but later that year while i was at the gym late it was just me and some other dudes there older a little sketchy but younger than the guy in the sedan i was getting ready to go and had to use the bathroom i put my backpack on the bench by the door and my bottle of water inside the strap on my bag i used the facilities and came back to find two identical water bottles inside the strap on my backpack same brand same amount missing same wear on the label i stared at it a moment trying to comprehend what was going on when the other guy at the gym sidled up on me and asked what i was doing this startled me as he was standing too close and seemed eager for something i took on an innocently confused look and said well i had one water bottle and now i have two and don't know where the other one came from to which he responded much too eagerly oh looks like you got two now better drink them both yeah that was it for me i said no i don't think that's a good idea i might catch someone's cold i took both bottles to dump out at the faucet and toss the empties into recycling if looks could kill i'd be dead the look he gave me was ugly i quit the gym after that even if you decide not to read this on your show i'm just looking for answers i'm so confused what happened to me what was that i still get i still get scared when i see black suv's and i still get anxious if i think someone's following me for too long any ideas welcome thank you for reading through my story signed toby holy oh dark tory oh my gosh what a story unbelievable wow uh i used to be in school aged child care for a while before i discovered radio actually before i discovered um pizza hut and then before the and then discovered banking and then discovered the credit union and then discovered radio anyway i did it for for a few years and you know you have to go through some training to identify abuse and stuff like that but so when i'm around kids i'm a little bit more observant or at least i used to be i'm not anymore but i but i was back then and i remember seeing a kid that i i thought was um being abused and i had i had to call it in just i and i knew the kids parents too and um they were they were nice people but there was just something that was kind of off so i had i had to call child protective services and turns out everything was fine and i feel horrible about calling because they don't know that it was me that called but still uh you do what you you have to do it because you feel that there's something wrong you feel that child that particular child is in danger whether or not you have the evidence you know to prove it or not if you suspect it you really need to call somebody so i'm glad that you were start look you started looking for that cop but to find out later that they were actually after you i think maybe that's the reason that it stopped they were looking they were going after you and they may have noticed that you noticed them but they probably didn't but well they you didn't know that it was them and maybe they actually kind of recognize that that you weren't sure what was going on so they still felt somewhat comfortable to stalk you like that but once Maggie is gone and they're following you and you go on that that car chase that puts them into a dangerous situation because now you know it's you that they're after you know what they're driving black SUVs and all you have to do is call a cop somewhere and you know and and they could follow you or the cop you know could follow you or whatever but i think because they're dealing with an adult now or you know late teen whatever i think maybe the covers blown you know that that's kind of what i'm thinking so at that point the cover is blown okay we screwed it up we didn't get her and so we're not going to get her and trying to go after her again at this point after that long chase after her disappearing and it's not finding her because you were in the cornfield uh you know she's she she knows that we're out after her so she's gonna be on on guard all the time now she's not worth the effort that's what i'm thinking happened but wow so terrifying i can't believe though that Maggie's parents didn't believe you and didn't care i know your parents were horrible you were abused as a child and i'm very sorry to hear that but you would think Maggie's parents especially with Maggie being a special needs child that they would take some precaution there if Maggie was you know close to being a teenager was cute attractive then yeah i mean you're immediately thinking oh great the perverts are out there they're going after Maggie i would understand why they were thinking that it was that you were thinking it was her they were going after not you but you said you were 19 years old so you were young and attractive too so i can understand why the suvs were kind of going after you i had a niece i still have a niece so she's still my niece but she went to Mexico a few years ago and apparently that is a very dangerous place to go especially if you are a a teenager with blonde hair and you're attractive because she came this close to being kidnapped in order to be be to be uh sold in into the sex trade and she knows that because apparently uh when when they approached her and they ran off they they started to chase them but they got away they went to the to the authorities there and the authority said yeah that's been happening around here so you have to be careful i mean granted that's Mexico but no matter where you are you you need to you need to have your heads up you need to need to have eyes on the back of your head no matter where you're going but especially as you were watching somebody else's child i mean you've got the double responsibility there yourself and the child um man in today's world it's just it is so ugly isn't it i really i was watching a tv show the other day and they were talking about how scientists think maybe they finally found the cure for aging that you could well just as an example what if you could take a pill and live forever and or or stop aging and live forever you know and i don't know if i'd want to do that because this this world just keeps seeing she keeps getting worse and worse and worse so this ugly stuff that's happening you the way you wrote that though was extremely exciting tori you might want to write that down i mean you've got it written right here maybe get a ghost writer or something because that would make a very interesting book or if nothing else if not a book maybe uh you know a long novelette something um and just just come up with a with a decent ending for it wow thank you very much tori i appreciate it it's gonna be hard to top that story even though there's nothing paranormal about it it is still terrifying all right this next one comes from laura she says in my younger years i hung out with a group of people some were friends some were something else one in particular acted as though he were the leader in reality there was no leader he always claimed there was something inside him that came out involuntarily he also claimed he was a wizard of sorts none of us really believed him then one evening i was standing in his driveway waiting for the others to show up we were talking about his inner demon and how he didn't have the luxury of becoming angry because bad things would happen i laughed at him and asked if he was going to turn all green and start throwing things exactly what i was thinking laura hulk smash uh well what happened next completely shocked me it happened so quickly that i didn't even have time to think about it something came out of him i don't know if it came out of the top of his head or from his lips honestly it growled was black and looked like a controlled cloud of smoke i jumped back at least two feet used some choice words and told him stay away from me you're evil he then laughed what sounded like a fake laugh and asked if i saw him my response what the hell was that then he proceeded to tell me he likes you this sounds completely fictionist but i will never forget that day or i'm sorry sounds completely fictitious but i will never forget that day i'm making up words here now another memory of this same guy years later my ex-husband and i were at a party nothing big just a few people hanging out and eating this guy was there and he showed up after us and i didn't know he was going to be there i smoked in those days but didn't drive he offered me a ride to get a pack of cigarettes as my husband was off showing someone his car the story was literally a block away so i didn't see the harm i accepted the ride we went to the store then he wanted to stop and talk i suggested we should just get back but he insisted i lit a cigarette and he stopped in a parking lot i don't remember the conversation but i do remember i gave him the time it would take for me to smoke a cigarette about 15 minutes we got back to the party and everyone except two people were gone my ex was asleep on the couch i asked where everybody went and was told they all left and my ex was not happy what do you mean i asked i was only gone a minute he looked at me as though i was making a bad joke and said you were gone for four hours with frustration in his voice this is crazy i've never had anything like this happened before jump ahead about 20 years i'm looking up stuff on on a demonology and it says similar to alien abduction the presence of a demon can actually make you lose time i find this incredibly interesting the curious phenomenon i wonder how often this happens and how often it goes unknown to the people it happens to love your podcast and love that a christian such as yourself has this type of podcast the last christian church i attended they would not even hear of such things that are discussed here love the open minded us keep up the awesome work and the awesome podcast signed creepy stuff happens everywhere thank you creepy slash laura um that what a friend my first question what happened during that four hours i want to know i'm granted you probably don't want to go back to the sky but if you were gone for four hours because he wanted to quote unquote talk what happened for four hours that you were gone did he take advantage of you was there some sort of ceremony that took place that you don't remember what were his motivations for doing that i'd want to know he's he's got it there's got to be a reason for him doing that to you especially because he was so insistent on pulling over to talk four hours wow um yeah i know about the alien abductions thanks i'd never heard of demonology or demons doing that to you but man i yeah if they're taking if they're taking over that now there you go maybe you were temporarily possessed maybe you went out and did some things that you just don't remember doing maybe he needed somebody to help him do some things maybe not like a seance or you know a ritual or anything maybe he needed a partner in something to go out and do something something illegal or something i don't know but anyway i that's my first question that's but that's the biggest question what the heck did you do to me during that four hours um the whole smoke thing reminds me so much of the demons in the supernatural tv show that's it for just a moment there i thought started thinking okay maybe this isn't a real one you know she's just taking stuff from television but uh i believe you i believe you yeah i'm hopefully this guy is not in your life anymore anyway and as for uh the last christian church you attended so many of them don't want to talk about the paranormal and i get that i i've attended i attended those churches and i i understand why they don't want to cover this stuff because really it's it's just so odd and strange and it's hard to explain and for the most part uh jesus god tells us to stay away from it um i'm i'm i'm bringing it from a from a perspective of i'm not endorsing it i'm just telling the stories what they what god awards us about is being involved with it going out and doing these things which is why you'll never see me going out ghost hunting you'll never see me going to parties playing some of these games like weisha or charlie charlie or or doing uh spirit boards or and i'm you know light is a feather or that got anything like that uh i won't do i won't do the tarot cards i won't go to fortune tellers anything like that if you do that you're fine that's that's that's your thing but i won't because my religion would not allow it plus even if it did allow it i don't want to open myself up to to a spiritual situation like that because you never know if it's going to be a good or bad spirit coming in so so but that's probably why the churches don't because it's just it's so dangerous to play with and it's really there's a fine line there between talking about it and then being involved with it so and i sometimes wonder if i'm even crossing that line like when i go to these uh expos and conventions and stuff because i'm stepping in to where a lot of these people are and that's fine we are supposed i mean we're supposed to to love everybody uh but it's really hard to step into these things have conversations with people and not want to get involved like like oh you know what why don't you go ahead and just tell my my my fortune while i'm here you know yeah just just this one time you know i had somebody do an astrology chart for me once and afterwards i just like i started thinking to myself why did i do that why did i allow that to be done i mean nothing bad happened but still it's like i didn't need that it didn't really tell me anything but i didn't know about myself and it's sort of like a fortune telling kind of a thing and i just didn't need it there it was just sort of a gut check type of thing but uh yeah and going to horror movies all right so am i just watching the stories or am i getting suddenly now getting involved in those stories it's a very fine line i i i totally get it and i think that's why some people have an issue with me being a born-again christian doing a podcast like this but until god tells me otherwise i'm gonna continue forward and granted i'm gonna i'm gonna get a little little spiritual here and i apologize but i think god's actually using weird darkness to reach people we're talking about you know the hope in the darkness you know where where we're helping people who have depression or other problems we're getting the word out about that weird darkness helps me to spread the word about the church of the undead which is a separate podcast but every sunday i'm doing like a christian message over there but then again you like your stuff here like when i'm doing chamber of comments or fireside frights i get to share a little bit of my faith and i've had people come to me saying well just like yourself thank you so much for doing something like this and being a christian at the same time and i've had people say they are now after listening to the podcast going back to church they or i've opened my bible again for the first time and i was reading you know thank you so much for leading me back to it so i think god's using the podcast it's a very strange tool for god to be using i granted i give you that uh but i think he's using it until such a time he stops using it or tells me to stop doing it i'm just gonna continue doing it so thank you very much i appreciate the email all right uh elis that's a short one here she says it was a darker night around nine o'clock when my little sister mom and me went for a walk to look at the lightning about 10 miles away then i had that feeling i was being watched i directed my flashlight near the bush i saw a weird-looking figure in the bushes hiding watching us as soon as he knew i saw him he wasn't there he ran away he was covered in fur and had glowing eyes i never walked that road at night again i don't know where you were elah uh if you were in one of those roads that the bray road beast is seen at or maybe one of those areas where bigfoot's seen chupacabra i mean what the way you described it it could be so many tiny little things you never know what it could be heck it could have been moth man just just hiding well i don't know elah but uh yeah i don't blame you for going back down that road that road ever again especially if it scared you uh let's see here uh this next one comes from sky saying from what i remember i had a question from my mom she had just come out of her room and i was following her down the stairs i was talking to her more than she was replying once we got to the bottom of the stairs she told me to hold my thoughts while she went to the bathroom so i said i'd wait i sat down at the end of the stairway while she walked into the bathroom a few feet across from me she turned on the light and closed the door i waited for a couple of minutes before i heard the garage opening i figured it was my father weirdly enough it turned out to be my mother i stood up right away and pointed to the bathroom it was in sight right next to me where my mother just walked in i asked her how she did that she looked at me confused i explained i was just talking to her and she was supposed to be in the bathroom she said she hadn't been home all day and just got home now we opened the door the light was still on no one was in there we never really talked about it again after that but it stayed with me i'll bet it did sky a doppelganger story those are rare how do you you can't explain those and most of the doppelganger stories you can't that there's there's no actual explanation for them especially when you know that it's a family member you're talking to not like seeing somebody across the you know across the parking lot going hey i think that was my dad you know nothing like that i mean you're actually conversing with this person you know you know intimately this person and for that to be a to be a doppelganger would just be freaky thank you sky i appreciate the email the next one comes from arthur saying dear sir you you don't have to call me sir please don't call me sir anyway i've already had the opportunity to share my story with the public in my country through a conspiracy magazine dedicated primarily to ufo's on last january nevertheless the subject seemed important enough for me to share it with an international audience i was therefore seeking to have a longer version of my story published in english you have the last version of my testimony here attached i mentioned inside several times the blog i first firstly tried to create actually i must warn you i have already been censored my article has been deleted twice from reddit first on the grounds of non-compliance with rule six and then on the grounds of spamming after that it was the blog i designed to share my testimony that was deleted without any explanation from the platform with my user account to summarize the subject i was led to become interested in a relatively well known video game because of the strange links i discovered between it and a disturbing person with whom i had already had a psi experience or or psi experience i guess but by taking an interest in said game i got the iconic character of the game interested in return indeed i was seduced and threatened for almost two years by a thought form generated by the player's psychic investment in this character she wanted me to become her companion and actually to help her find a way to become real however it became clear from my experience and especially from the research i did afterwards to understand these events that this was no accident the game had been designed to elicit this phenomenon moreover there are several elements that make me fear that the next step for the creators of the game is to create another entity of the same type in the near future but this one seems to me to be much more worrying because it looks like an exterminating angel determined to slaughter as many people as possible i hope that my text will be readable and even pleasant for you to read best regards arthur okay this is gonna be interesting never had this one happen before how long is this i'll bet it's gonna be a really long oh my gosh um it's like 13 pages long uh full of okay it didn't come through very you know what is this about polybius if this is about polybius i've actually done a story on it but no okay no you were just mentioning that because this is this is anime stuff um the deeper my desire is no reinforced i tell you what this is so long uh buddy i'll i'll look at this a little bit later on and see if i can make sense of it if if it really is readable and usable i'll probably have to make an entirely separate podcast because this is so much stuff um um you call it's the game he says it's d d l c a truly cursed video game so all right well if anybody knows what d d l c is if you're familiar with the game um how about you just email me and tell me your experience this is one of those too long didn't read stories um i don't want to do that to him i mean i will go go back in and read it but since you already are telling me english just not your first language and that you had a hard time putting it together it's probably going to be brutal for me to try and read aloud here for a fireside frights so i will look at it a little bit later on but uh if you are a weirdo listening right now you've played d d l c you know what this guy's talking about if you've had any weird experiences with it drop me an email let me know uh again darron at weirddarkness.com darron is d a r r e n and in the uh in the subject line just put d d l c in that way we'll we'll know okay uh moving on all right this one comes from dj let me start out with saying i have a few stories from my childhood to my adult life i'd like to just use the name dj or jd this thing i encountered was about 14 years ago when i was staying with my girlfriend at the time which is now my significant other we were staying in a camper on our parents land near her mother's house i've worked in the oil field for years at this time and travel a lot for work i'd flown back home in from colorado when decided to go to bed around nine or ten p.m normal oil field workers back then had weird working schedules so normally you had to call in and see what yard time was around five or six p.m and plan to get up anywhere from midnight to two a.m in the morning i'd come in and called to check yard time which was around two a.m i told the girlfriend i was going to bed so i could get up and lay down in the bed i assumed she came to bed around nine or so that night after spending some time with her daughter and putting dinner up i didn't rest well and kept looking at the clock to see what time it was to make sure i wasn't going to be late i'd say around 10 30 11 i heard my dog outside going nuts and heard the dog uh heard the door open to the camper i didn't think anything of it because the children would come over to see if their mom is uh see if there's oh excuse me to see their mom if something happened from her mother's house which was across the way i looked at the clock and realized that neither child had said anything when i heard the door close i then realized that my feet felt a little heavy and i just put it off as being jet lag i laid there for about another 15 minutes and realized that the pressure i had felt on my feet had moved up to my knees i can already see where this is going dj sleep paralysis right all right let's see now i know most of your listeners are going to say oh there it is right there oh it has to be another sleep paralysis case well listen to the rest of the story i'll swear to god this was not something that could be explained by those stories everybody talks about okay uh so i'm being told i'm wrong already all right we'll see how it goes another 15 to 30 minutes passed and the pressure had moved up to my waist at this time i was so freaking upset that i had come up with the idea of just rolling over just rolling over would allow me to get this thing off of me and i could give back to sleep this is where it got weird i imagined and i do mean imagined cocking my hip to the left and rolling over on my side i imagined me rolling over and my right side landing on the nightstand this is what i realized i could actually move my fingers i started moving my fingers and realized the feeling i was feeling was actually the blanket on the bed not the wood of the nightstand at this point i was so ticked off i tried to do the same thing i felt my hip actually move and this thing shoved its hands on my chest and yelled in my face i couldn't hear her scream but say her face saw her face screaming at me like a strobe light once this happened i could move my arms and put my hand on its chest threw it against the wall heard it hit and run through the house i curled up next to my significant other like a little child and curled up in the fetal position i could hear it walk back through the camper to the bed and felt it push down on the edge of the bed i kicked it every time i felt the pressure on the bed for about an hour and then i heard the door open dogs went crazy and then nothing i stayed in the fetal position holding on to my significant other until the alarms went off to go to work when i got up and got ready for work she got up to make coffee and some breakfast i didn't say a word on what happened i went to work and told some of the hispanic guys about it and they told me it was death reminding me i was still within its grasp after work i made a back out to her place and sat down to relax on the couch before having to go to bed again for the next day while i was sitting there her daughter came in and said mom a woman came into my room at nanny's house last night i asked her if she liked dolls too and she just screamed at me but i couldn't hear her screaming i just froze on the couch and waited for her daughter to go back to her mother's house i then asked her if anything strange happened last night when she came to bed she said she had put her leg across mine when she went to bed and i threw her leg off me last night i then told her what happened the night before i believe we stayed there another year in that camper and i would not sleep in that bed from then on i told my significant other then that i would sleep on the couch to make sure that i could watch the door for anything that wanted to come in the house while i was there you can use the story if you wish i've been listening to your podcast since i found it about five or six years ago lots of travel and i was tired of music so i chose your webcast to use while driving i do have more stories military childhood and just things that can't explain i may share some in the future and if you ever make it down toward texas i'll try to make a road trip plan uh if you have um plan you have oh if okay make a road trip uh plan if he's all if you're off of work keep it weird keep us entertained i appreciate the break from the crazy world we live with your crazy with your creepy pastas and things from the past dj oh sorry sounds like a weirdo that believes in christ dj so so you're a weirdo in christ as we like to say thank you very much dj i appreciate that oh okay uh i i'm still gonna say sleep paralysis in the beginning but yours is definitely different um i think the demon used sleep paralysis as its entry way to get to you but well i don't recall sleep paralysis is you usually does have that physical feeling so you feel that there's something on top of you um i don't remember anybody hearing uh hearing scream or or seeing seeing something screaming at them but not hearing it i don't think i don't remember any sounds being associated with with sleep paralysis i'm convinced that there is a demonic aspect to it because of my own experience with sleep paralysis but yours is so different because you were able to push it off of you once you once you got out of the paralysis you were able to push it off of you and it hit the wall and then you heard it heard it uh running around the house as you ran to your girlfriend's room so uh that's why i'm thinking started off as sleep paralysis but it used sleep paralysis kind of as a gateway or an entry way into our world especially since the daughter kind of hurt kind of saw the the thing too that's that's freaky man i don't know if the camper is haunted or if there's something that's happening happened that it happened to you and your your uh significant other or what oh my gosh that would i would definitely if i was still at the camper i would i would definitely be calling a priest oh my gosh all right hey thank you very much dj i appreciate the uh i appreciate the email all right let's see here uh this next one comes from uh jack all right hi darron i just finished an episode of fireside frights where you asked people to submit stories of dreams that felt so real you can't believe they weren't when you wake up so here's mine from about five years ago i remember it vividly i dreamt about being on a date with a girl named kiera i've been with her for years and this was our weekly outing a nice romantic meal we walked and talked along the beach afterwards for hours i remember just being so full of joy watching her blonde hair flow in the ocean breeze we headed back into town from there and met up with some friends who commented on how happy we were well about here is when i woke up next to my now girlfriend or now ex-girlfriend i laid there staring at her wondering who she was and why she was in my bed it took about 30 minutes for reality to set in and for me to remember my real girlfriend's name once it all clicked i was distraught at the loss of kiera who i considered to be the love of my life discovering she didn't exist was mortifying that's my reality dream and i still get a bit saddened by it when i think of it oh and i never told my ex that i briefly forgot her name and no that's not why we broke up thanks for the podcast darron i listen nearly every day in work sign jack that was gonna be my question you did you break up shortly after this because you didn't remember her name or maybe because you told her the dream you know but no you said you never did tell her the well you never told her that you forgot her name i don't know if you told her about the dream or not because that would be hard that would be so hard some dreams are so realistic and if you actually did find the love of your life in a dream and it felt so i mean it felt completely real to you and then you wake up and it's gone that would be devastating because because that you would you would just know in your heart that person exists she has to exist you even knew her name kiera you knew exactly what she looked like what she smelled like what she felt like and then to wake up and to find out that she doesn't even exist would just that would be heartbreaking man i'm i'm sorry that you had to have that dream because i know it's probably haunting you to this day i don't know if you're if you got a girlfriend or if you're married now or what but that would see it would be tough for me to move on at that point i mean not only would we would i break up the with the girl because suddenly i would be in love with somebody else kiera in this case she may not exist but i'm still in love with somebody else and i would be constantly on the look for her nobody would nobody would would measure up i would go the rest of my life wondering does kiera truly exist is this is this my way of knowing that i should wait for my literal dream girl to to show up in my life that was wow that would be hard oh man i've had realistic dreams with uh you know ex-girlfriends in my dream or or stuff like that i think i may be mentioned once before that i had a dream that i had a son um tiny little redhead boy maybe about two or three years old playing in the backyard and it was it was a short dream but it was so realistic i woke up and i actually cried when i realized that i was not a dad um and i still kind of i still think back on that and that was goodness gracious i mean that that was i think it was even before robin and i met that i had that dream or shortly or shortly after so i mean it would have been maybe close to 30 years ago still i could think of that dream and remember that kid's face yeah it's hard thanks again for the email jack this next one comes from let's see here from randolph all right uh hey there darren i recently began listening to your podcast while on extended drives and felt inclined to share a story i don't often tell thank you for all that you do i'm an lcsw working both with children and adults in need i live in san Antonio and though at the time the story occurs i worked with a larger therapy group i presently work privately even back when i worked in the larger firm i've always preferred to work with individuals living in the south and east parts of town as often these areas are populated by those who are in the most need though i work with individuals who suffered greatly from trauma related to gang violence abuse and addiction i have never been harmed in any way by the clients i've worked with although i have had some odd encounters with the one i'm telling you right now being one of the strangest the clients were two adult women living on the south side they shared a small home likely built in the 50s and were both in their early 30s they grown up together though they were not related and they both had experienced a great deal of trauma at the hands of abusers both when they were children and when they were adolescents their troubled history included former gang involvement each one sporting the tall the uh tall tail tattoos of the gangs operating in the area and they presented themselves as very tough ladies they both had ptsd depression and were struggling with the symptoms i graduated with my masters only a year before being 25 at the time of me seeing them and immediately recognizing that something else was going on with these two when i entered their home i held in i held in home sessions as usual with them meeting once weekly to perform case management provide coping skills and begin providing therapy they were very open with me and i remember them saying repeatedly that they felt that i was a good person or that i had a good vibe which they could sense i was happy with this but then things began to become strange i recall a time when i was visiting them while a storm was about to pass through the city we discussed how it would be dangerous for me to travel back to my home through the storm and one of them produced a vial with a gray ashy powder inside she rapidly took the powder and spread it on to me my reaction being unfortunately to just sit there and allow the substance to be placed on me they then both assured me that my ride home would be safe due to them having protected me i wanted to be respectful of their beliefs and so i thanked them on the ride home in the blinding rain i narrowly avoided a deadly crash between two cars ahead of me i was spared not due to my own driving prowness but instead due to the peculiar way the cars seemed to part just enough for me to squeeze through without a scratch i'd honestly forgotten about the whole protection spell my two clients had cast upon me but i was reminded of it when i received a call from one of the women who was checking in on me when i'd returned home not being a religious person i kept a skeptical outlook on the events figuring it was a wild coincidence i then began noticing other things however during a mindfulness breathing exercise with the two women i felt the room go cold and heard voices i maintained a calm demeanor on the outside but internally i was panicking and wondered if i should find myself my own psychiatrist until the two women spoke up and asked me if i had heard and felt the presence in the room i was flushed with an ambivalent feeling of both relief and fear i was relieved to know that i was not hallucinating alone however i was afraid of the implication that there was some presence and i had actually felt it the two of them then began doing some ritual i completely lost control of my session at this point mind you they let candles and made some kind of smoke reciting some ritualistic phrases i did my best to stay calm when it was over i admit that i felt safe calm and secure they teased me saying that they had done a session on me and then i reminded them of the things i wanted them to work on for the next week and left i convinced myself that what i'd witnessed was some kind of trick perhaps i'd interpreted the echoes of people passing by outside as the voices and there'd been a strange draft i couldn't lie to myself about the last thing i witnessed though if you remember i had earlier stated that the two women had troubled pasts they'd shared with me some of the crimes they'd committed and we discussed the grief and trauma which accompanied these revelations many of the crimes were rather violent and they made it clear that they still had individuals in their lives that they greatly disliked one was a former sapd officer who had wronged them they each had an intense hatred for her that we discussed anger its sources and the need to let go of such feelings they maintained their hatred for this woman even showing me a picture of her face with an x marked through it since they never stated a desire to physically harm this woman only an intense hatred of what she had done to them i was not overly concerned with anyone's safety i was more focused on helping them let go of that anger on one of the last days i met with the two women i had come for their session and they let me know that they needed to run to the grocery store to pick up a few items and that they'd be back though it seemed inappropriate they trusted me and so i allowed them to leave in their home to wait all right so you're waiting in their home as they take off okay while sitting there i heard a strange and out of place noise it was a tapping like that on a window though it seemed to be coming from one of their bedrooms i eventually gave in to the urge to investigate and went into the room i had never really been inside of this room occasionally we would meet in the other woman's room but never hers as i walked inside i immediately found the source of the tapping but took a while to comprehend and process what i was looking at on the dresser there was a mason jar with the shrunken woman inside of it the woman was banging on the inside of the glass and when she saw me began yelling for help my mind raced to explain what i was looking at he couldn't horrified i began to inch closer to the dresser with the jar on top as if i wasn't even in control of my legs as i got closer i recognized the woman as the former officer in the photo i'd been shown i feel like at this moment i disassociated or i dissociated from the reality of the situation i pretended as if i was watching a movie of myself interacting with this insane shrunken person in a jar i think because i couldn't otherwise handle what i was witnessing she pleaded with me to let her out she told me that the two women had shrunken her and that she'd been there for about three days she told me that they'd been tormenting her playing cruel games with her as they're captive while they put her in a taco pretending they would eat her forced her to clean their dishes 10 times her size even squashed her between their panses once for calling them fat i stood there unable to even let out a squeak for what felt like an eternity then i heard their car door slam like lightning i bolted from the room closed the door and sat back down on the couch i could still hear the tapping when the two women entered i lied about having a family emergency and went home i then had three more sessions with the two women decided to hold them at the group office instead of in home and discharged them from and discharged them from my caseload i still think about what i saw often i especially am reminded when it rains the thunder reminding me of the storm and the tapping of the raindrops on my window reminding me of the woman in the jar i don't know what those women were if they were witches practicing brigeria santeria or what what often troubles me is how nice they were to me they loved me they cried when i terminated our sessions i struggle with what i saw it felt so real i know it was real did i doom that woman to her fate by not intervening even if i did intervene though what would have happened to me i've never been witness to anything else supernatural while providing counseling but a fear still lives inside of me because of that encounter that's a new one that oh i had no idea that was coming this is one of those stories that if i had read it online and it wasn't sent to me by a weirdo family member i probably wouldn't believe it it's it sounds like one of you like a like a creepypasta you know i'm not saying that i don't believe it i'm just saying this is something it's but well because creepypastas usually somebody will use a fake name or whatever but i can see this person is using their real name with me because i'm looking at their email address and it actually has their entire their name in the email address so i'm guessing it really is a real person here oh the the ashes or whatever they spread on you at the beginning i thought okay yeah all right so yeah they're they're into some sort of witchcraft paganism something along those lines i could i could see that um and yeah it was maybe maybe a uh you know coincidence that you that you weren't in the wreck i could see all of that once they started i don't know you try to get them past the anger and once once you see that that photo with the x through it you almost feel like you need to call somebody but you're right they haven't actually they haven't actually threatened anybody so if it's if it's a doctor patient uh um confidentiality thing i don't think you could have said anything to anybody unless they actually did threaten to hurt someone and they didn't they just showed you that picture with an x through it but yeah how do you how do you go on after seeing something like this i my first thing is well you call somebody you tell somebody what you just saw there's no way they're gonna believe you there's no way this is all right now i understand what people who see ufos and stuff like that why they don't want to tell people because they don't want people to think that think of them as odd or weird or strange or whatever all right now in randolph's case here that's exactly what would happen to me i would not know what to think i might go to a demonologist or somebody somebody who has some experience with the paranormal and maybe ask them do you know anything about this have you heard of anything that's happened like this before and just kind of get it try to get a gauge of what it was that i just went through uh but i mean you can't how do you turn you couldn't turn them in it's not like you can call 911 and say uh yeah yeah there's these two witches and they've they've shrunk this little lady and are keeping her in a jar the 911 people are gonna immediately think you're a crank and probably send cops over to arrest you for wasting their time wow randall or randolph that is oh man it almost sounds like a twilight zone episode dude that is really creepy stuff thank you very much for sending it to me uh let's see here uh this next one comes from mike he says big fan of weird darkness and you my family has a story about a neighbor that i thought would be interesting keep up the good work signed mike all right and he calls his story the old house in the late 1960s my family bought a house in northern new jersey it was the newest house in the neighborhood the rest of the neighborhood had houses built between the 1920s and early 1960s the area used to be farmland with a scattering of houses until the george washington bridge was completed then it slowly turned into a commuter neighborhood for people working in new york city by the 1960s all the farmland was gone and every previous open lot had a house on it one of the older houses was owned by ida ida as the majority of the neighborhood were either immigrants immigrants are the first generation born in the united states oh okay so all right for a second there i thought she was he was talking about like the entire family but no he is talking about an individual ida as the majority of the neighborhood uh either immigrants are the first generation born in the united states my perspective as a kid growing up was that ida was a mean and nasty woman a little background on ida she was born around 1900 in germany she was born out of wedlock and was a teenager during world war one she immigrated to the us in the 1930s married another german immigrant and settled in new jersey they never had kids all their relatives lived in germany and around 1970 her husband died and she broke a hip the hip never healed properly she'd get around using metal crutches ida was a loud and boisterous woman who let everybody know her opinions ida would yell at us when we rode our big wheels and bicycles on the sidewalk in front of her house she stated we were damaging her sidewalk she called the police on a neighbor because leaves from his tree were supposedly blowing into her yard wow she is a meanie you're right mike everybody had trees in the neighborhood including ida she yelled at people parking in front of her house because she wanted a space available in case anyone came to visit her nobody ever did and she did not own a car she was extremely religious and believed that she was a conduit directly to god oh man one of those people okay she didn't think she was a prophet but instead believed her opinions were sent and approved by god directly to let the sinners know that god was thinking about or what god was thinking about them the god who agreed with her was definitely from the old testament a divorced neighbor moved his girlfriend into a house next door to ida ida would call a girl the girlfriend a whore because they were not married and living in sin this happened every time they were in proximity around each other it wasn't a snide remark under ida's breath it was a loud yell that the entire block would hear i gave the lady a lot of credit she completely ignored ida this occurred for 15 years before going on with mike's email why is it that the woman is called the whore but not the guy why is that i mean the guy is just as guilty as the woman for living in sin as she says so it's it's amazing the double standard that we have guys can can sleep with as many girls as they want we think that they're studs but a girl girl stays with one guy sleeps with him and stays lives with him out of marriage suddenly she's a whore i just don't get that all right anyway moving on another neighbor's daughter became a teenage mom ida called her a whore when she came home from the hospital ida found out the newborn's uh name was rebecca she yelled at the family that baby rebecca was going to grow up to become a deceiver like the mother of eson jacob in the bible the worst memory i remember is that an older kid in the neighborhood was hit and killed by a car another child was born into the family about 18 months later ida stated that the family only had that child to replace their dead child even as a young kid i knew that was messed up another personality quirk of ida was that she was a strong supporter of germany during world war two wow okay she was a young woman going through the trials and tribulations of germany during world war one and in the end of the 1920s she was very proud of how hitler had uplifted germany and the german people in the 1930s okay i never heard her say anything directly anti-semitic but she would reiterate that hitler was right and that germany should have won the war that alienated every world war two vet and their families in the neighborhood yeah you don't live in the u.s and say that hitler was a great guy you just i don't care if you're from germany that you just don't do that uh the reason i know so much about ida is that my mother was the only person in the neighborhood who befriended her when i was around eight my mother started buying groceries for ida when she went shopping and would invite ida over for coffee but your mom was a special lady mike that's all i can say ida would be spouting off her history and opinions whenever she was over at our house i was just a kid playing around and her voice would be background noise my father despised ida and she had to be out of the house before he came home from work when i was a little older i asked my mom why she had a relationship with ida especially since both my parents were little kids in nazi occupied eastern europe during the war both of my parents were very lucky to have survived my mom stated that ida had no one in the world to help her and with her disability she could not survive i asked about all the mean things she would say and my mom stated that she does have hate in her heart but that was based on her hardships that she had lived through the hate just grew and grew inside ida still needed help my mom ever the optimist always saw the goodness in people your mom was a saint man the routine went on for several years but eventually ida burned her relationship with my mom ida saw something she thought was inappropriate that my teenage sister did and went off all nasty on my sister my mom had had enough she told ida to leave and not come back my mom did continue to pick up her groceries but ida never never set foot in our house again in 1991 my mother found ida collapsed on the floor of her house when she was bringing her some groceries ida was rushed to the hospital but died shortly thereafter it was of natural causes ida's lawyer found some distant relatives in germany for her estate the relatives wanted to just sell the house quickly and as is condition with as little expenses as possible the house was 60 years old with absolutely no upgrades and very very little maintenance for at least the previous 20 years the lawyer offered the house to my parents for a very good price my parents bought it my parents did the minimum amount of work to update the house to make it livable the house was not perfect but it would be comfortable and clean for anybody who wanted to rent it okay so they bought the house not for you to live in but to all right okay good i was thinking i would not want to move into this woman's house or anyway their first renter was a young man who was working on an advanced business degree from columbia university the man came from a prominent and wealthy family in korea his father wanted him to get as much formal education as possible before letting his son into the family business the reason i mentioned the background of the renter is that he had one goal get his degree as soon as possible and go back to korea to become involved in the family business the renter did not party use drugs or even have a social life he was a very focused young man about a week after moving in he started hearing footsteps on the wooden floors throughout the house every night he checked all around the house to include the attic crawl space and basement every time he heard the footsteps nothing was ever found all the dead bolts on the doors were locked and all the windows were secure the renter talked to my parents about it my parents thought maybe some raccoons got into the house they called an exterminator no raccoons or traces of any other critters were found about a week later the renter was sleeping in the middle of the night he was awakened by the sound of multiple windows being smashed he locked himself in the bedroom and called the police multiple police officers arrived and surrounded the house they told the renter through the 911 operator to stay inside while they secured the perimeter once the perimeter was secured they had the renter turn on his bedroom light open the window announce himself to the police and come out of his ground floor bedroom window this was done in case there was somebody inside the house waiting to ambush the renter the renter gave the door keys to the police multiple police officers did a thorough search on every inch of that house no one was found in addition none of the windows were broken and all the doors were secure there was no sign of an intruder or anything being out of place the police left my mom a night owl saw the police cars arrive and leave she walked over to the house and asked the renter if he was okay the renter explained what had happened he was distraught and extremely embarrassed approximately one week later the same thing happened the renter was awakened from a dead sleep to windows being smashed the renter again called the police the same officers arrived again no signs of broken windows kicked in doors or anything being out of place my mom was up and saw the commotion she walked over to check on the renter most of the cops had left except the supervisor the police supervisor was getting angry at the renter and explaining that they did not have the resources to deal with imaginary or prank 911 calls the police supervisor stated the renter would be arrested the next time he called for this issue my mom went into the house with the disheveled renter to make sure that he was all right the renter excused himself for a few moment for a few moments to change my mom strongly believed this was ida causing all the issues my mom said the lord's prayer and whispered to ida that renter was a good man and for ida to leave him alone my mom then stated to ida that her suffering in this world had come to an end move on and be happy ida nothing weird ever happened after that night the renter received his degree and went back to korea multiple renters over the years never had an issue the house was eventually sold and the new owners knocked it down to build a to build a modern house i look back at ida now as a man in his late 50s everybody goes through trials and tribulations in their life some experience life worse than others but you can't have the bitterness and anger destroy you as it did ida i strongly believe that my mother's compassion brought a little happiness to the bitter person that was ida while she was alive i also believe that the compassion brought ida peace after she had died oh my what a great story man your mother is incredible i don't know if she's still alive or not but mother's day needs something special for your mom what a woman and yeah can you imagine being haunted by ida that's a that is a ghost you do not want to deal with it i feel so bad for that korean guy the poor kid oh man okay this next one uh comes from diane she says uh hi darin this is my second true story submission to you well thank you for sending in another one diana i appreciate that uh it was exciting to hear you read my first one i especially enjoyed listening to your honest reactions and insights after reading each story your reactions are funny honest and very reasonable this experience happened over 10 years ago when my husband and i made a trip to las vegas we made her a reservation to stay at a newer boutique hotel off the las vegas strip for one night since the hotel we planned to stay at for the bulk of the trip was not available for the first night we arrived when we tried to check in the front desk employee informed us that the hotel was having plumbing issues they gave us a refund and provided us with vouchers to stay at an older marriott hotel off the main strip we were disappointed but figured it was no big deal since it was free and only for a night when we first saw our hotel room we were not impressed it was very basic small and outdated the furniture was old and bulky probably from the 80s or 90s and the room did not fit much more than a king-size bed two nightstands and a tv the room appeared dark and i had an uneasy feeling about entering the room i shrugged off that anxious feeling thinking i was creeped out because the room was older than what i was accustomed to we each showered and got settled for the night the whole time we stayed in that room i felt a nervous heart pounding sensation it was an uneasy feeling yet there was no immediate sense of fear or danger i simply did not feel comfortable i did not share how i felt with my husband that night because i figured it was probably nothing the next day we checked out of the hotel and proceeded to move on to other hotel to uh to our other hotel on the las vegas strip after we left that old creepy room at the marriott hotel my husband told me he had a weird and vivid dream there in the dream he walked into the hotel bathroom of the room in which we were staying and saw a naked old man in a fetal position in the corner my husband explained that he surprisingly did not feel scared of the old man in fact the old man seemed to be more afraid of my husband and was shrinking away as if he was trying to retreat from him in fear after hearing this i shared how i had felt weird in that room the whole time we stayed there and my husband said he felt the same after comparing our stories and thinking it over we now believe we stayed in the same hotel room where that elderly man had passed away he must have died in the bathroom i jokingly told my husband he was the lucky one because the old man chose to show himself to him in the dream while i only felt his presence maybe the old man was more comfortable appearing to males that experience made me realize that the tingly uncomfortable heart pounding feeling i had could actually be a real thing maybe this is what others mean when they report being watched in a paranormal situation i haven't had that feeling in other hotel rooms since then hope i never do but i guess i can now distinguish what that eerie feeling means thanks darin appreciate how you bring us a little light at the end of each show it provides listeners with a beautiful and uplifting closure to balance out the strange and sometimes dark encounters that can happen in the world diane diane great one yeah uh i have i think i i think in my last chamber of comments episode i was talking about how some people get the the spiritual gift of discerning of spirits and i have to wonder if maybe that's kind of where you know where you guys were coming from but well no i take it back no not because you were both doing it at the same time and you probably don't have the same same spiritual gift you might but i you know that i was like i was trying to rationalize it a little too soon there sorry uh yeah i i don't know i don't know i'm i'm glad it was only the one night though i've been in really old hotels that'll kind of creep to me out but i don't think it's for the same reasons i think it's just because like you mentioned it was in a place that just it wasn't it didn't have the accommodations and it wasn't as updated as you were used to and so it just kind of it could make it make you feel a little out of place uh i remember doing that uh i was i think i was taking an acting class or something in chicago and decided to stay downtown went to one of the old hotels there and uh and it was it was an old old room it didn't have air conditioning or anything like that it barely had plumbing um it had electricity but really old switches that you had to turn rather than flip up and down it felt like it would have been haunted and i actually felt kind of creepy in that room probably no reason for it other than just my own imagination playing tricks on me but yeah um thank you very much for that i appreciate it uh let's see here this next one comes from uh kimberley she says hi darren um just call me kim i'm writing you from the state of delaware or more affectionately known as delaware as you know we're a small state and it doesn't seem that there's much in the way of paranormal going on around here as compared to more densely populated or larger geographical areas thus i do get excited when i hear a fellow delawarian telling his or her their their story on a podcast so i decided to share my story which i've already said to you for your next fireside frights in hopes that others from delaware will hear it and be encouraged to send in their own i had mentioned it really is not scary and that it'd be appropriate for a christmas fireside frights if you don't use it it's no problem i still love to share it with others as i feel it is a story of affirmation i'm writing to you today because i recently heard a story regarding aliens and the possibility that our god as we know him may actually be of an alien race i don't know that it was stated as such but the story alluded to it nonetheless i do often wonder how you feel about all the paranormal stories you share specifically in regard to the spirits of those who were once alive you've clearly stated many times that you take the bible and its stories at their word so you believe our souls go on and do not linger this is a very broad statement of course as i don't recall your exact words but you know what i mean i love that you are a devout christian but a lover of the things that go bump in the night there are many christians who believe it is blasphemous to believe in such things but i feel that part of being a good christian is having an open mind and also respecting what others believe regardless of our own beliefs it's a matter of agreeing to disagree i guess just a little backstory about me to give you some context before i get to the meat of my email i was raised by two loving parents my mom is a devout christian and attended a methodist church regularly i went to church and a sunday school for many years but i found the church services to be very dry and boring i believe today they're known as traditional services whereas now we have contemporary services with live music and everyone wearing their good sunday jeans lol now that's my kind of church service had i been brought up in that era i think i would still be attending church today but i'm not a religious person i'm what i like to call spiritual i believe in god and jesus christ i believe actually i know that god exists and i have very strong faith in him i believe in the power of prayer and i also believe that sometimes those unanswered prayers are truly a blessing to be revealed at a later time garth brookes song unanswered prayers is a perfect example of this all right before i go on yes that that i worked in country radio for a short while and that's that song is just so so on the nose sometimes those it's it's it's not really it's not spiritually accurate because god does answer all prayers it's just sometimes the answer is no or sometimes the answer is not now but yeah the whole idea of god saying no to prayers which garth calls unanswered prayers sometimes that is the best answer to a prayer obviously okay anyway moving on so i have my religious mom and now here's my dad he grew up poor was raised on a farm and quit school sometime around the seventh grade to work the farm when he married my mom he worked full time and later when he was almost 40 he opened a liquor store with his best friend only three days after i was born but continued to work both jobs for several more years wow uh long story short he never went to church because he was usually working dad didn't really talk about god and i honestly don't know if he truly believed in him or not he didn't believe in ghosts or anything of the sort either he was quite the quiet skeptic dad sold the store and retired at the age of 84 and he died one year later after having a fairly simple shoulder surgery the story that i sent you for a fireside frights is centered around him so i'll leave it at that um before i continue on uh kim i don't know if i've seen if i've seen that story from you so if you want to resend that story you said it was great for christmas send it to me and maybe in the subject line put christmas fireside or something along those lines so i'll know that way i can set it off to the side because i don't remember seeing that i may have already shared it and i just don't remember if i have shared it that's fine but if i've not if you haven't heard it go ahead and set it my way again i'd appreciate that okay moving on so kim says so here i am a true believer in god a belief instilled in me by my mother who is now 93 and still attends church in her retirement community when she's able then there is my skeptical side which obviously came from daddy you see i don't necessarily believe everything written in the bible i'm sure you will disagree with this and i totally respect your beliefs this letter is just to share my thoughts and a bit of a different take on who god may be the bible was physically written by man and we all know that man aka the human race is flawed there are so many conspiracy theories surrounding the vatican and the secrets that holds the theory that god and religion were created to not only keep people in line but to give them hope and a reason to live while i do believe there may be a smidgen of truth there i do not believe that this the life we're living is all there is that this is all we are and all we're ever going to be that we are born we live we die and that's it that is not my belief and honestly i have hard time hard time believing that anyone can 100 percent believe this because when you really think about it how can this be it why would we exist at all if there were no higher purpose or reason for existence we could talk about the conspiracy theories and such for hours but that's for another podcast lol here's a thank you for not continuing on with that kim that would be a you're right that is a whole new conversation uh so here's where my skepticism about who and what god is coming from i was watching one of dr steven greer's movies and i heard a story that hit home for me my thoughts on dr greer and his beliefs etc i play no part in my beliefs it just happens to be where i heard this story the first time he was discussing all the presidents who had voiced an interest in ufo's and he all promised that when they became president they would disclose the truth as you know to paraphrase the great fox molder the truth is still out there waiting to be discovered when former president jimmy carter insisted on being read in on the whole area 51 aliens exist topic it was then director of the cia george h w bush who told jimmy carter something that caused the president to put his head in his hands and literally cry this greatly disturbed me i pondered it for weeks because to me it meant that the truth was so disturbing that telling the world would cause great upheaval this further cemented at least in my brain the theory that religion was created to keep the world from disintegrating into madness but then another thought occurred to me i've never really cared much for ufo's stories because to me they really aren't a mystery i don't know how anyone can truly believe that in a universe as big as ours we could be the only life that exists in my opinion that is a preposterous notion but again that's just what i believe but the thought that god is actually an alien is actually quite plausible to me and really very interesting i don't feel that in that it in any way diminishes or dismisses the word of god from the bible why is it matter who god is or where he came from the important thing to me is that he exists he watches over us and he hears our prayers whether he's a man sitting on a golden throne in heaven or an alien lord somewhere in a faraway galaxy as long as he is real and he can hear me that's all that matters to me darin i know this letter was long and probably full of information that i didn't need to share but i wanted to throw that out there to the weirdo family and to you and to get your take on it i totally respect your beliefs and i respect you as a person what you do brings uh what you do brings joy to so many people and the work you do to help others fight depression is just awesome i feel truly blessed to have found your podcast and to be a part of this weirdo family and it truly does feel like a family when i see you've not posted for a couple of days i worry about you just like i would a good friend who i haven't heard from in a few days i hope you'll take this letter for what it is simply an opinion shared with a group of friends that might create some worthwhile dialogue please keep on doing what you do you really do make a difference in people's lives and i know that god no matter who or where he is will continue to bless you and your bride because you deserve nothing less respectfully and sincerely kim okay i'm kind of wishing i had read this in advance because i probably wouldn't have shared it uh this is a mind this mindblower um all right you're right that i don't i don't agree with you um if when it comes to god being an alien assuming well what is your definition of an alien if alien just means not of earth then yeah god could be an alien because he's not of this world he's the one that created this world so i guess in in in that kind of definition he'd be an alien but i know that's not what you're referring to um i don't believe that would be the case i don't and i don't and it's not the same god uh because if god is let's say god is like an extraterrestrial from another planet and he created us that would mean that god is a created being and a created being cannot be perfect so you would be you would be um worshiping an imperfect god which totally totally destroys the whole idea of jesus christ because jesus had to come and die for our sins because we're not perfect he has to be he had to be perfect in order to die for us in order to take what in order to take our punishment upon himself he's taking our place for the punishment because sin deserves death spiritual death and well and physical but spiritual is what we're talking about so if god was an alien he wouldn't be perfect um there's no such thing as perfection in the galaxy except for god himself because everything just the whole second law of thermodynamics everything is winding down it's becoming less and less complex it's it's falling apart uh which is another reason that um well never am i hope i won't go i will go go into that one just yet just now but anyway um so that's why i wouldn't believe believe that um i just i just don't think that that would be i i i just can't see that um i believe god created us from nothing and only god could do that because all right if we if there was an alien he would have had to have used something in order to create us he can't an alien couldn't create something out of nothing but even if he did let let's just let's just say that i did buy into this who created the alien then all right was that his god right okay well then who created his god the god before that right i mean you could go on back back and back and back into eternity and you'd never find the first god if you assume that god is an alien but if you believe that god never was created because he's always been which is a hard thing to grasp i understand that it's hard to get our to wrap our minds around that but god is outside of time he doesn't exist in the past or in the future or with a present he is everywhere all the time at all times eternity that's what eternity is eternity doesn't mean forever forever means now and continuing on and on and on and on and on and on you know ongoing eternity is everything at the same time everything in the past everything in the future all in one single tiny little moment that's eternity and that's where god lives so uh and i forgot where i missed where i was going with that oh yeah he created time so he would not be you know so he would not be bound by it anyway so that's where i'm going with that we i could go further but and i i totally see where some where some people come from with that i think most people want to believe that if they don't believe in god um you seem to be the exception to the rule because you say you do believe in god um but you're all and you're not saying that you necessarily do believe in this but but you think it's an intriguing theory i think most people though buy into that because they don't like the idea of there being a holy god who would judge their actions and their lives and you know some somebody that you would have to be beholden to somebody whose life truly does belong to that your life belongs to them whether or not you want it to or not you know he created you if you create something it belongs to you and even if that thing decides to run or you know or dis or disobey what you want it to do that doesn't change the fact that it's still yours um like your child i mean you're in a way i mean but you love your child no matter what they do they might want to disown you but still it's your child and you still love them and you want the best for them and you want them to do what you know is best for their lives even if they don't agree that you have to do those certain things in order to have the best life that doesn't change you from wanting them to do those things and trying to give them advice trying to give them guidance but you know they can ignore you that's that's what kids do so all right i'll move on to the net i know i that's that's sounding like a church of the undead i apologize folks all right let's just move on to the next one this one comes from uh sal he says hey darren i was just in chicago over the weekend for a good friend of mine's wedding my cousin and i flew out from lax on friday morning so we could see what a chicago night had to offer to los angeles single guys turns out it had too much for us to handle ha ha ha the wedding was saturday it was a beautiful moment that we were able to share with our childhood friend or as we la folk call it day one sandbox homies sunday we decided to explore the surrounding towns we ended up in justice we had a few bars and a bowling alley which was awesome we took an uber to the venetian gardens for dinner which local recommended the food was delicious we took another uber back to where we parked our car in justice the driver went down archer road uh archer road there it is uh it was dark and kind of creepy but i love that kind of stuff i was chatting with the driver when he spotted a young girl wearing what looked to be to be a white hoodie walking pretty fast on the side of the road she looked like she was gonna walk into the road so he flashed the high beams at her to get her attention she ever so slightly looked over her shoulder and moved back onto the side of the road he said i'm gonna ask if she's okay if she needs a ride would you be okay for her to ride with us i responded i don't think she's gonna want to get in the car with three dudes all of a sudden he stepped on it and yelled f that i asked dude what the heck's your problem he drove away fast until we got to a main street and then he tells me with tears in his eyes that my friend was resurrection mary i felt like a bucket of ice water was thrown at me followed by a bucket of hot water it was crazy i turned back to look at my cousin with his eyes wide and filled with fear and tears and he says her feet weren't touching the ground i haven't slept since that night thank you for your time darin signed sal well hopefully you have um slept since then uh you set this to me a week ago so hopefully you're doing all right now i wouldn't i've never heard of resurrection mary wearing a hoodie um from she's the the ghost is supposed to be so old you would expect it to be wearing dated clothing you know period clothing or something uh i don't know whatever who who knows when it comes to ghosts clothes you know maybe they have a maybe they have a ghost outlet somewhere and they shop at the weird darkness store and buy their own hoodies and stuff i have no idea whatever that is but uh yeah yeah i i can understand that being a little bit uh freaky not for you i'm but the uber driver so that that's what would scare me if i was seeing it i would immediately think hey there's a girl on the side of the road i'm on archer road she's wearing white i would immediately think resurrection mary i wouldn't necessarily believe it's happening but it would definitely come to mind but when the uber driver freaks out on you and pulls away like that and you don't know why he's freaking out until he tells you later that's a terrible way what kind of a rating did you give him i'm just kind of curious about that because you're not going to pull that stunt if you really do want to continue driving for uber uh that's that's pretty good that's pretty good by the way uh i did it was the last year i think maybe the year before i did a drive through um of resurrection cemetery i happened to be on archer road you know out there for a paranormal conference for paranormal chicago and i realized that i was there in the area so i went ahead and just drove through it it's daytime so it doesn't set it's not it's not creepy at all during the daytime it's actually a very beautiful cemetery but uh i'll try and look for the video on that and i will post a link to it in the in the show notes uh so that way you guys if you want to check it out uh you can let me write that down here video mary that'll that'll mean that that will remind me okay so thank you very much for the email alex i appreciate it okay this next one comes from let's see from carrie she says i know a lot of people have a story out there of the shadow man this happens to be true though i'm not a 15 or 13 year old when when you're young it's easy for your imagination to run wild i was in my late i was in my late i know she doesn't say she doesn't say what age she was i was in my late i know a lot of people okay there is all right all right when you're all right she was in her late 20s i started experiencing sleep paralysis i do not know what brought this on i've researched and read everything i could on this subject i suppose stress could have been a factor i've always been a stressed out kind of person though so why now why not before it still does not make any sense to me i definitely had worse stress than i was experiencing then it presented cause to me in later times how teams how be it uh what i do know this is not a friendly watch out for you kind of entity this is not child's play either it is evil and dark um i know a lot of people have okay there it is it started when i moved into a rental one summer things started quickly i would put something down only to have it disappear i assumed i had misleaded somewhere you know what they say about that though chalked it up stress next i was trying to ignore it i thought it was my imagination that was wishful thinking this went on for some time i started asking and looking for some answers the town i live in is small it's halfway up a mountain at night it's so foggy you can hardly see it doesn't matter what season or temperature i know humidity will cause it but so will frost strange i've seen weird lights heard things you cannot imagine i leave for work around 3am for work every morning i was about to make a left turn i checked once more before turning in the car's headlights there was a black shadow male form with a top hat it did touch the highway but floated or oh it didn't touch the highway but floated or glided across there's about two feet above the highway you can see its form it looked as if they were making its way across the tree line it just disappeared then two green eyes appeared believe me i floored it that night was terrifying for me rest of the story i got the hell out of there okay i have that's the first time i've heard of the shadow man having excuse me the hat man having green eyes there's people say that there's a difference between the hat man and shadow people but yeah definitely scary i would be wondering the skeptic in me i'd want to stop and look not at the not at that moment but maybe later i'd come back to that same area like in the daytime and see if somebody you know put a rope across the road or something and pulled something across as somebody was driving driving through just to scare them like they did you that'd be a very mean trick to do but all right anyway uh okay still got something here this next one comes from sam the story isn't really paranormal but it does have to do with a Ouija board and two very scared girls back when i was a teenager my best friend was sleeping over one night i had a glow in the dark Ouija board and as teen as teenage girls do we charged it up turned off the lights in my room upstairs closed the door and started playing around with it on my bed we never had any luck contacting spirits before but it was still fun to try and we were really into it since the mood was perfect with it being nighttime and with all the lights out all of a sudden we hear this loud banging on my bedroom door and the door knobs start rattling we hear this loud growling roaring from the other side of it and me and my friend are almost peeing ourselves from fear and screaming our heads off my friend jumps into my lap and i grab the back of her shirt and hide my face into her back both still screaming my bedroom door opens and there's my dad laughing and turning on the light he looks at us we're almost in tears being so scared he looks at the Ouija board on the bed and bursts out laughing even harder and goes so that's why you two were screaming so much i had no clue you were playing with that my dad likes to play tricks on people and it was heading up to bed and noticed we were being a bit too quiet and decided to scare us needless to say it worked better than he had planned and it's still the fun story to tell i don't think i've touched the Ouija board since thanks for reading this sign sam well there you go sam yeah good dad he scared you away from Ouija boards you don't play with them anymore that's that's a great parental lesson right there uh looks like okay we have another uh sam this one says Samantha all right here we go um we're a darkness fan i have the following very true story a little over a decade ago my husband and i rented a hundred year old remote rural alabama farmhouse on a sprawling 81 acres of land we just finished unpacking and settling in that first week and decided to take a break and go out for dinner upon our happy return we were met by a scene out of a horror movie our our four poster antique bed was filled with bugs that kept appearing out of nowhere and falling in layers onto the bed this was happening only on our bed as one has to do we checked all possible crevices including ceiling and walls and there was nothing coming through so we gathered the entire king size comforter left it outside and slept in a guest room the months following there were no more there were no more mystical bugs however there was constant scratching noises in the walls the home had no vermin or rats i didn't pay attention to scratching sounds and elected to put earplugs on to muffle the sounds since whatever it was wasn't garnering our attention on several nights a large dark apparition looking like what i could only describe as the grim reaper would hover over me and somehow i would feel the presence wake up see it yell at it since i was so sleepy say a few our fathers and hail marys and st michael's prayer and it would go away my husband saw it too and joined in on the prayers let me just add to this juncture that i had a very demanding job with the state as a parole officer so restful sleep was precious the last incident to happen in this charming old house is as follows at the time my rottweiler dog was very close to me and would sleep at my bedside one night my dog woke up by my woke me up by growling and when i looked much to my amazement and horror i saw three people there were two men and a woman dressed in business attire talking amongst themselves and looking at me they were ghosts i could see them but they were also see-through i didn't take my eyes off of them and nudged my husband awake and asked if he saw anything he described them just the same way they kept talking and pointing at us but by this point seeing as my dog was not growling anymore and not sensing any danger and being so sleepy i told them to keep their voices down please ask them to kindly leave us alone and we all went back to sleep seriously that's what you did you got ghosts right there in front of you you just quietly asked them to keep it down because you're trying to sleep you are way too cool with this savannah way too cool that that is something i would not be doing i would be freaking now if it's a daily occurrence and they're all the time yeah or yeah they eventually you get used to it you say hey guys can keep it down tonight you know tomorrow's going to be a rough day all right i get that but for your for your first experience to say hey keep it down we're trying to sleep in here like they're like they're teenage kids in the other room and you're that's great all right let me get let me get a sip here again before i move on okay uh this next one uh comes from uh let's ask want to make sure they don't want to be anonymous okay from allison i've got a creepy one for you when i was young we lived in fairly rural colorado between glenn wood springs and veil it was new years and i was supposed to spend the night at my bestie's house unfortunately i didn't know until that night that her stepdad was really abusive stepdad and her mom spent the night arguing when he got tired of mom he turned his anger towards my friend and her brother i was terrified but eventually told him to leave everyone alone i tended to be my bestie's defender at school so it came pretty natural to defender at home he threw me out of the house for my efforts and locked the door behind me it wasn't that long of a walk to my house about a half mile so i headed home it was really kind of creepy out there and i was a bit freaked out already by what had happened at my friend's house and then i saw a manlike shadow just off the road i ignored him but picked up my pace after some yards i took the chance of sneaking a look over my shoulder the shadow had moved forward with me i wasn't far from my house so i decided to make a sprint for it i've never been more scared in my life luckily we never locked our doors so i could just fly in and slam the door behind me i locked it and then ran through the house locking all of the doors and windows once that was done i peeked out the window by the front door a man was standing at the base of our driveway i headed to our kitchen and sat hidden by the counters with my dad's chef knife in my grip until my dad and stepmother got home from their new year's celebration i never told them what had happened on my way home just the things had gotten upsetting at my bestie's house and i couldn't sleep next day we heard that ted bundy had escaped from the glenn wood springs jail just west of us was it him rationally as an adult i know it probably wasn't but whoever it was he scared the heck out of me nonetheless wow yeah ted bundy yeah he escaped twice from custody so i don't know if that was him or not but yeah that would have freaked me out although saying that i have i'm wondering if maybe it was actually a supernatural entity coming out of such a dark creepy um tension-filled situation with your with your best friend's house i always wonder if maybe like a like a spirit attached itself to you a spirit of anger or or whatever um and and kind of followed you home you know maybe trying to attach itself to you just just a guess i don't know you would think how do what does that say about me that i'm more willing to believe a supernatural entity than it was ted bundy who was a real person that okay man i gotta i gotta check myself on this on this stuff once in a while all right anyway thank you very much for the email allison appreciate that uh this next one comes from jane she says hey my name is jane live in eerie pennsylvania an appropriately placed or appropriately named place my husband and i currently live in a house that his grandparents lived in we bought the house after his grandparents passed my husband wanted the house to stay in the family we've lived in this house for the past 29 years when we first moved in i did feel like someone was checking in on us but nothing ever bad we did renovations on the house including the basement in the basement there was an old pool table that wasn't in good condition so we broke up the pool table and bagged up all the billiard balls and q sticks and threw them away i even watched the garbage men load it all up several years later after renovating the basement we adopted two cats that would love to spend time in the basement one day i found our cat pouncer by the water heater playing with something i reached down to pick up what he was batting around what i found really shocked me there was the white cue ball from the pool table that we had broken up and thrown into the garbage several years earlier i know the first thing most people think is that we missed this cue ball and it was under the water heater well that water heater was replaced a couple of years after we got rid of the pool table and a new furnace was put in too there wasn't any possible way that cue ball could have been back in that basement i remember putting it in the girl in the garbage bag myself thank you for letting me share my story i've had many more experiences in my life seems like i have experiences in almost in almost every place i've lived in but experiencing this since i was a teenager thank you jane so right so you got a pool playing ghost nice so um yeah so you've got it the anabelle doll thing going you throw it away and it comes back to you anabelle kids toys kids balls now you know now a billiard ball the cue ball uh well i could be could it be a it could be a cursed object i guess or a haunted object i don't know i've never i wouldn't why why would it be a cue ball that would be possessed though i mean you could be a really really uh great pool player love play in the game but why would you attach yourself to the cue ball that's that i could a pool cue i could maybe see i can see the pool table see again why am i rationalizing one thing but not the others you're getting a little insight into the mind of marlar here folks all right moving on this one comes from emma that's promised by true spooky tale although i'll admit as scary as it was at the time it now just seems quite bizarre all right well let's see what emma has to say then i'm writing this from my studio looking out onto several acres of very windy and drizzly woodlands in the not so sunny south wales village of glennaman uk glennaman i hope i'm pronouncing that correctly after hearing your recent story about the omenford couple who fled their home after recording strange noises underground it inspired me to write in and tell you of our little spooky encounter whilst living in our old house our old house was set in the next village to where we currently live whilst waiting for this property to become available we were living in a little minors cottage set in a lovely quiet little row of only eight houses ours being the middle story had it that someone was once murdered on this street and apparently the murderer hid and then fled from here as there's a train track at the bottom of the garden anyway i digress the story is unrelated and although we knew of this old tale the house had always seemed nice and calm despite being built in 1905 and probably having seen quite its share of passings to the front of our property was a small walled section with a front gate which separated our house from the road we have a small dog so upon returning whoever was last in always shut the gate so if the front door was ever opened the dog couldn't run out onto the road this part's important as it was a particularly creaky metal gate on the nighting question it was cold but calm autumn night far enough on in the year that it was dark fairly early so we had all the candles lit and we're relaxing watching tv at the time we had a curved set where either end reclined which tended to mean we would sit on opposite ends so as to take advantage of our own recliners we were quite alarmed to hear what sounded like someone turning the handle on our front door and trying to enter we knew this wasn't possible as the gate had not opened so no one could be at the front door then a few moments later i felt an icy blast drift past me as if someone had opened the fridge right beside me the refrigerator door right beside me at first i wasn't sure what had just happened that was until i looked over at my fiancé and before i could tell him what had happened he exclaimed did you just feel that i've gone ice cold it was as if something had walked past me and gone straight over to him the night went on without further incident that was however until we went to sleep we were awoken in the early hours of the morning to what sounded like someone bouncing a ball against the wall in our bedroom this went on for a couple of minutes and then moved to the stairs sounding as if someone was rolling a ball down the stairs you know what it'll bounce down a couple miss some and then continue down bounce bounce miss bounce bounce bounce the finale was when the ball appeared to be rolling along the boards in our attic all in all the whole experience lasted approximately 15 to 20 minutes now there are a few things to note here but the main is that all these sounded as if the ball was being bounced or rolled along on a wooden floor on a wooden floor we had carpet on the stairs and the attic had been insulated under one of the warm home schemes meaning there was no exposed beams they were all inches deep and foamy insulation we lived between two elderly neighbors both of which lived alone with no children in any of the nearby houses the final twist to the tale was when i was talking to one of my neighbors a few days later when i couldn't stop thinking about our late night encounter i asked him if in all the years he'd lived there if he had heard any strange noises his reply left me even more surprised after a short pause he said that nothing really happened in his house the only noise he used to hear was me bouncing the ball for the dog on the skirting board in the hallway our dog never owned a ball i gave up buying them as a puppy and when he was a puppy he refused to bring them back despite us now living in a 1600s farmhouse with at least one death on the property and pleased to report all is calm that's however apart from the occasional waft of cigarettes when neither of us smoke or the shadow of a small animal assumed to be a cat that can be seen walking through the kitchen towards the living room and finally whatever it is that our dog can see on the yard that he regularly stands and growls at anyway i hope you enjoyed our spooky tale of the night a ghost decided to come in the house hide out for a few hours then wake us up in the middle of the night to play ball from weirdo listeners Emma and Hugh thank you guys great story i really appreciate you sharing that with me Emma and Hugh 1600s your your house was built that is an old house 400 year old house that is amazing well then again you're in the UK so you're gonna ask some old houses there but that old we're so used to hearing the here in the states thinking ooh the 1800s wow that is ancient how can you live in a house that old and you're in the 1600s you've got castles for crying out loud you can live you can live in something that's thousands of years old but again the bouncing ball what is it with bouncing balls for this fireside frights if you've never seen the movie the changeling starring George C. Scott you really do need to see it it's it is definitely something that every time one of these stories pops up that's what i feel like we're you know i feel like i'm watching here in my head talking about the ball going down the stairs something rolling or rolling back and forth in the attic that kind of thing all right this next one comes from uh from uh oh wow uh she goes she goes by adi but apparently her real name is a darin so very very similar to mine in pronunciation not spelled the same but still that's kind of cool anyway first of all i've been a self-professed atheist i was raised christian but i've recently gotten back into magic spell work while working with a few deities it's an interesting journey and second my possible paranormal experiences see mom passed away in 2019 and at the time i wasn't open to the idea of any sort of afterlife and i just accepted the fact that she was now gone but now as of this year things have been happening around my house that are just off one i was downstairs in the kitchen and heard something slash someone walking from the living room and the through the dining room towards me but i saw nothing two about a month or so ago i was about to leave for work and was holding my bedroom door a jar and suddenly felt it being jerked closed i looked and there was no one on either side of my door three around a couple weeks ago i was just leaving the laundry room down the hall from my room and after i closed the door and was about to close the door the laundry room kept fumping against the door frame it really spooked me four both times this morning when i went to go out for a smoke on the back porch i found a cigarette butt placed in the middle of the chair the first time and the second time i found one to the side of the chair no one else was awake at this time and we live on a few acres sorry for the long message darron i look forward to hearing from you and the next podcast you drop love your content thank you adi well thank you adi i i appreciate that uh they they got a good they got a good story here they do uh the cigarettes would definitely be the thing that that would throw me a little bit especially since you live on several acres and nobody else was around uh the downstairs hearing something walking that seems to be something that people talk about on a regular basis and i'm sure the experts would come in the skeptics and try to explain that one away um you're the door being a jar and feeling it being jerked closed yeah there you know that one that's a good one that's that's a good one adi that one so that one would be a little bit harder to explain oh it was just a draft yeah right like drafts pull the door against you like that um the laundry room i i had a hard time understanding exactly what you were talking about that i don't know if the laundry like if like if the uh the washer was was pounding or if it was the door that was pounding but anyway thank you very much for the email adi i i appreciate it okay this next one comes from will she use a letter k uh my husband and i just finished building our dream home i was it was an old farmland his grandfather used to own it's nestled among trees and a creek runs behind no home had ever been built there one night when we were still getting settled in i stretched out on the couch in the living room to watch a movie my husband was fiddling with something in the back of the house usually for me i drifted off to sleep i and i woke up as the movie credits were rolling by still lying down i glanced at the front door the man was standing there looking at me i slammed my eyes shut when i opened them he was still there i rubbed my eyes roughly he was still there i watched him he watched me i was not scared but concerned with a strange man to come in the house he was about five foot eight or so wearing old-fashioned farmers clothes stetson like hat mid-thigh denim jacket he stood in profile the room was fairly dark but i could see he had a sharp nose i decided i had best sit up and when i did he was instantly gone over the years i've tried to convince myself that i was obviously dreaming except for a couple of things primarily was the feeling i had of unspeakable immense love total acceptance a feeling that i was okay also a feeling of pity and a little sadness these feelings stayed with me for months and months i felt like the old man just wanted to see what we've done with the place after promising myself i would never tell anyone about this i couldn't hold it in i felt like i was walking on air when i told my husband guess what just happened he immediately said i had described his grandpa i never knew him or had ever seen a picture of him because he'd been dead for many years before i married my husband my mother-in-law said the same thing my husband died of cancer at age 62 here in the house but i still live here his grandpa is welcome back anytime wow okay first very sorry for your loss about losing your husband especially to cancer that'd be a horrible way to go interesting that uh grandpa's welcome didn't mention anything about your husband's ghost so hopefully he's gone on to a better place and he's and he's happy kind of interesting how how family will stick around like that this next one comes from andy he says darren hello hope you're doing well today after listening to your youtube channel i decided to send you our family's experience and yes it's true it may not be the most frightening or bizarre experience you've read but it sure was interesting living through it hope you have a nice rest of your day thanks darren signed andy all right well then let's take a look at andy's story here and see what he has to say he calls it simply our paranormal experience dream home nice this is a long one let me take another step another drip or another drip another sip it'd be a drip if it was coffee but it's not not coffee this time around okay starting to lose my voice but i'm also seeing an ending to these emails coming soon so maybe i maybe i can make it through all right um where am i andy and here is your okay in november 2009 my wife and i moved just a few miles away from where we were living in the city in our dream home that sits on two acres out in the country here in southwest michigan the home we purchased was only four years old and sold to us by a young couple who built the house themselves and had two young children we had one daughter at the time who was three years old we were in a hurry to get moved in because days after we moved into the home i was leaving for a two-week mission trip to zambia africa one evening after i returned from africa my wife and i were sitting in bed and heard a crash coming from the basement bathroom i went down to find the shower curtain rod with no curtain yet installed on it laying on the floor i didn't think much of it at the time i just figured that perhaps the previous owner had not installed it correctly a few nights later i awakened around 2 a.m to find a living room light on outside our bedroom my wife slept as i got up to turn it off as the light was annoyingly keeping me awake in the morning i told her that she left the light on in the living room when she went to bed and that it woke me up during the night she insisted it was totally dark when she went to bed after me i checked the light bulb and it was firmly screwed into the socket it was not a touch lamp so i could not figure out how it came on by itself a daughter uh had not gotten up during the night to turn it on either a few months later after i came home from a business trip my wife stated that while i was away our three-year-old daughter came out of her room one afternoon where she was playing and asked where's daddy my wife explained to her that i was still on my business trip she said our daughter insisted that i must be home because she heard my voice talking to her as if i were in the room with her a few months later my wife and daughter were in our basement while i was at work one afternoon my wife said she froze as she heard multiple voices upstairs she could hear them speaking but could not make out what they were saying she thought perhaps they were robbers and was terrified for her and our daughter's safety she thought it was odd that she did not hear footsteps though the voices then abruptly stopped a few moments later after a lengthy amount of time she slowly went upstairs to find that no one was there and had not been there she could not figure out who or what had been upstairs talking by spring of 2011 we had a second daughter late each night i'd wake up to use our master bath toilet and then leave our bedroom to walk down the hallway to check on the girls who shared a bedroom one night i went to our bathroom and then walked through our dark bedroom to head to their room just a few feet before making it through our bedroom doorway the lamp on the end table next to our couch right outside our bedroom door came on it illuminated the room i was about to enter i froze with my heart racing my first thoughts were that someone had broken into the house after a few moments i rationalized that i would have heard at least something in all that silence like soft steps walking across the carpet it also didn't make sense that a thief breaking into a home at night would turn on the most obvious lighting source in the center of the house i gathered my courage and took a few extra steps to walk into the bright living room where the lamp was i found that no one was there the next morning when i told my wife what had happened i could not explain to her or understand myself how that lamp came on in the middle of the night at that very moment i was about to enter the room combined with everything else that had happened this is when we really felt as if something paranormal was coming into our was occurring in our home a few other things happened over the next few years that we could also not explain i finally phoned the previous owners one afternoon and made small talk for a while i told them that we loved the house and we were grateful that they sold it to us years prior i asked them if they had ever had anything odd happen in the four years they lived in the house when they asked what i meant i explained the multiple events that we experienced while they agreed that the events we experienced were eerie they insisted that they had not had one thing happen in their four years of living in the home one evening in 2013 after we had put our daughters to bed i was in the kitchen with our small dog sugar it was dark except for the glow of our laptop computer at a nearby table i bet over to give a give a dog cookie to sugar when i stood up a female voice whispered hey very clearly in my left ear because my wife would frequently want to show me something she found on the internet i looked over at the laptop computer thinking i would see my wife the chair was empty i quickly went into my daughter's bedroom a few steps away thinking my wife was by our girl's beds and had whispered out to me from there she wasn't there either i went down the hallway to the other end of the house to find my wife in bed with the blankets over her reading a book i asked if she had tiptoed real quickly down here after saying something to me in the kitchen my now only 30 to 45 seconds if that had passed since i heard the woman's whisper in my ear my wife replied you finally heard voices too didn't you for the previous four years i didn't believe that she and my daughter had heard voices in our home i believed it now and i could not explain from where these voices were coming with everything that we experienced up to that point we didn't necessarily feel afraid just bewildered and confused none of us were ever physically touched by anything we had ever saw any ghostly apparitions on a sunday afternoon in 2016 i went into our basement utility room which houses our water heater and furnace as well as my tools and workbench among other household appliances it's a good sized room with no windows and just one door i entered the room to find my power drill in its hardshell plastic case sitting upright in the middle of the room on the concrete floor it was as if someone had set it there i paused for a moment and wondered why i had left it there in the middle of the room i then realized i hadn't this drill in case normally sit on a shelf with other encased power tools at a height that makes me stand on my tippy toes to reach it of all the power tools in their cases on that shelf how did just this one come down how could it have landed in such an upright position and with no damage from the height it fell i was baffled and put it back on the shelf not two days had passed when i entered the utility room once more to now find two wooden slats about four inches wide and two feet long each um two feet long each that i used as window props laying in the middle of the room on the concrete floor in the same spot the drill and case had been sitting they were lying next to each as if someone had placed them there together it was not as if they had randomly fallen these slats were normally kept on an upper shelf approximately eight feet off the floor this is an area that my wife or small daughters would need a ladder to reach them if they could even find them discovering the drill case and now these slats in the middle of the room all on their own in such a short amount of time frame had me flabbergasted once more i'm not told my wife what had happened with the drill case and wooden slats about a day later she told me that she went down to the utility room to get something for dinner out of our extra fridge when she entered the room a can of spray paint that was on the floor behind the door got knocked across the room i got the chills when she told me this i told her that i have not been using any spray paint for weeks and that those cans were a good six feet away from the door the door she entered is the only way into that utility room the only way that this paint can could could get behind the door would be for someone to be in the room and to do so it just wasn't humanly possible to place anything behind the door i then explained what happened just days earlier with the drill case and wood slats it was as if something in our home was trying to get our attention i've lived at many addresses across several states in my adult life and had never had even one of these experiences happen at any of those houses because the previous owners never had anything peculiar happen to them i began to wonder what we had done to bring this into our home after years of odd and unexplained events it finally occurred to me what may be causing our bizarre experiences during my mission trip to africa shortly after we moved into the home years earlier i brought back multiple wood objects of different sizes these objects were hand carved by various villagers in different areas of zambia through which we traveled perhaps one of these wood carvings i thought could contain an evil entity witchcraft is very much alive in that part of africa so while i could not prove it definitively i believed this to be a strong reason for what was happening in our home shortly after the utility room incidents i put an end to what was happening i went downstairs one night to get something from our basement even though the basement was dark i didn't turn on the lights as i knew it would be a quick trip down and back to grab what i needed as i entered the basement i passed by a window that faces our backyard the window alarm went off and it startled me this is the type of alarm that needs the windows to physically open to make the alarm trigger all i had done was walk by it like the lamp going on years earlier this alarm waited until i was near it to go off and loudly sound i had had enough being a devout christian i said out loud you will no longer bother my family and you are not welcome in this home in the powerful name of jesus christ you will leave and you will not return i'll admit my heart rate was up there a bit i paused for a moment in the silence as if awaiting a response and then went back upstairs my wife immediately heard from me what had happened with the window alarm and what i said out loud afterwards although we experienced seven years of unexplainable events and voices no one in our family has had another incident in our home since it whatever it was was commanded to leave oh andy what a great uh well i want to say testimony or story whatever that is amazing when i was reading through that before you got to the end where you were talking about the carved object that you brought back i was picturing in my head somebody that worked with their hands somebody who liked working with power tools or with tools in general maybe working with wood maybe working with electricity working on houses stuff like that because you know the lights turning on the uh you know the the drill the wood slats it just it for some reason in my head i was thinking to somebody that somebody that liked to work with their hands you know like like a handyman type of thing so when you got to the zambia um wooden thing that you brought back the wooden um artifact that kind of made sense because that would have been made by hand by somebody who was really good with their hands are really good with working with wood and stuff like that and so i was kind of on the same same wavelength but i did not did not expect a cursed object uh that that definitely was not my thing but man you you knocked it out of the park when you got the told this thing to get out in the name of jesus christ so many of these stories work that way when when if somebody doesn't believe in in christ they'll go and they'll try to uh to usage or something like that um and sometimes they'll try to try to make friends with the spirit okay whatever but so many times if it's an evil spirit it won't go away until the name of jesus christ is said it is amazing how often that happens and this is not just me being religious even though i i am and i'm going to be a bit biased towards this solution it happens so often you have to wonder why unless there truly is power in jesus christ because that's the only thing that explains it especially the sleep paralysis incidents so many of those people can't get out of them i'm not not all of them obviously because we've shared some that don't but so many um they'll get out of it by by asking jesus to save them or telling the demon or whatever it is to get out in jesus name it's amazing how often that happens and when somebody and they'll they'll have repeat sleep paralysis incidents sometimes but those those who use jesus name don't at least not that i've heard of if you're if you're somebody who had sleep paralysis and you have you know tossed this tossed out the demon and jesus christ's name and it left you alone if it did come back i want to know because i would like to know about that but i've never heard of it happening before somebody somebody saying you are not welcome here in the powerful name of jesus christ you will leave and you will not return that's those are some powerful words man so well done i knew you were christian right from the get go because you said that you were on a missions trip in zambia so i knew right then and there okay this guy's gonna be a man of faith he's gonna have an interesting story uh really appreciate that thank you so much for sending it andy okay this next one comes from uh crystal hi darren i don't know if you still have interest in imaginary friends stories of course i do crystal of course i do uh but i have a story of something some adults might call imaginary it started when i was about four or five years old my parents moved into a house with me and my newborn sister the friend of theirs wanted us to house sit for a year i remember it was an old house almost a farmhouse i loved and heated that house i had a big bedroom at least to me that had a bed a small dresser and a small table i like to use it also had a bay window with cushions to sit on the bench where i loved to sit and stare outside the bed was on loud springs and also old which would alert my parents when i was up despite this bucolic setting good word usage there i felt things that were wrong about the house first i absolutely refused to go into the basement there was a demon yes i knew what one was called there there was a demon there that i was convinced would hurt me my mom tried to coax and or demand i go down there with her but i'd make such a fuss not to once i only went halfway down the steps before i planted my butt and wouldn't go further during this time i started having terrible nightmares now described as night terrors i remember only pieces of the dreams but i do remember being terrified by what i called the demon of demons wow that's not ominous at all okay um i understood it liked to torment children and i was his choice of the moment i would wake up sitting bolt upright eyes wide with tears and fear i'd scream for my parents to comfort me or run for the comfort of the bay window i then try to stay awake by leaning against the coolness of the window watching for the sun to come up or daddy to get in the car for work once either of those happened i felt safe enough to climb back into bed until mom came to wake me up for the day sometimes i lost the battle with the sandman and fell back to sleep many times the terrorizing renewed even there even after my family fulfilled our job and moved to a house a few miles away the demon continued its torment on me this lasted until we moved north after i finished second grade i felt relieved once i realized i was safe from it that lasted until i was in my early 20s when i met a girl who by then shared my interest in things paranormal and was considered to be new age one night my friend her boyfriend and i were sitting in my room talking and being young adults in general at one point the boyfriend seemed different he managed to say i don't feel right then the boyfriend wasn't him anymore the thing said hello to us but told my friend he wasn't here for her its gaze leveled on me and a smile slid across its lips do you remember me little girl it asked as i saw horns and tusks outline the boyfriend's head shoulders arms and torso i suddenly felt small and scared again as i answered and choked yes it laughed replying good and then asked do you still fear me i swallowed hard which helped me find the courage to say no not anymore apparently it was not convinced and asked why i simply told it i stopped you it should be noted that by that point in my life i'd convinced myself the nightmares stopped because i taught myself how to block it from coming to me i was wrong however the demon told me it left because i got too old to be anymore fun with then it decided i wasn't worthy anymore i did the snort smirk and oh really to him which he clearly did not like he tried to say more to try and scare me again but i had enough with a confidence i didn't feel i told him told it that it wasn't welcome anymore and declared it to be banished from my friend and house with the final i'm not finished with you and a couple other idle threats i reiterated my banishment declaration it was then the boyfriend uncurled himself and stretched his somehow aching body he asked what happened and we told him all that transpired as we each understood it i explained the short version of what i'd already told you and your readers the boyfriend then said i feel like i want to eat raw fresh meat as he rubbed and flexed his jaw we all nervously laughed and proceeded to break down what kind of demon it could be have me give any additional information i could and so on we soon quit that endeavor and then went home and they went home thankfully i have not had any more issues of that kind again well that's my story hope you and the rest of the weirdo family enjoyed this my husband and i really enjoy your show by the way thank you science crystal well thank you crystal i appreciate the kind words there at the end and i'm glad to have you and your husband as part of our weirdo family i'm glad it's really it's always great when i hear of couples listening to the show together that's that's rare for podcasts most people are listening in their car driving to work or something like that or maybe going to sleep at night it's neat when when people are listening together so thank you for sharing that what a story though now at first if it wasn't for what you saw i would have said okay the boyfriend he probably maybe you'd shared this story before and so he knew about it and so he was playing playing along playing around with you you know trying to scare you but you saw on the face the horns and everything come on come on to him that's all you you can't fake that so i'm guessing this really was something that you would dealt with and as a little kid as a tiny kid four or five years old something that you that you experienced called the demon of demons who comes up with that at four or five years old you might know the concept of a demon well when you as a kid like four or five you probably know the concept of the devil because you've seen all the cartoonish pictures of him the red suit the forked tail you know carrying around the pitchfork and he has horns i get all that but to know what an actual demon is and then to to come up with like a demon of demons to know that there's a hierarchy of demons like that because there is that is that's scary that's i almost said impressive but that's for a for a young child to know that that's really disturbing that really really is so yeah i think i think something was definitely tormenting you and to to then start hanging out with kids or young adults i guess who were of the new age they were not i don't know your spirituality so i because i don't think you mentioned it in here i think i would have would have caught if you said that you were religious or christian or something so you not being christian and them not being christian you know being pagan or new age or wicking or whatever they were you you say new age but they probably weren't protected as well which made it easier for that demon then to infest the boyfriend at least temporarily because if you're a christian my this is my what i truly believe i don't have proof for it but a lot of i get this because i've heard it from other from people that i trust and i it makes sense to me if you are a born again christian so you've actually given your life to christ you cannot be possessed you can be oppressed you know you can be tormented by demons but they cannot actually enter you and control you uh because in the bible it says he who is in me is greater than he who is in the world uh so if jesus is in you you've accepted him into your life a demon can't take his place he's in you so he stopped that stops that from happening um so that's at first one night when you said that you you had stopped it i thought okay well maybe that's what she meant but no you would actually just you thought you'd found a way to to keep it away but so very cool story man i really appreciate that crystal thank you so much for sharing it uh let's see here i've got oh wow world was done two more all right um dear mr marlar i'm from north carolina by the way this comes from uh cindy i'm from north carolina not far from the devil's tramping ground i thought i knew everything about the devil's tramping ground but i learned a couple of new things about it from your podcast i've listened to many many many podcasts like yours and yours is by far the best well thank you so much you're so i appreciate that it's very nice of you your voice is so easy to listen to cool well let me before i get continue on let me write down devil's tramping ground i'll put a link to that episode in the show notes as well in case anybody hasn't seen it it's actually a very recent episode so you've probably all have already heard it but just in case i'll put that down there so i need to look for the uh resurrection mary video that i made and the devil's tramping ground um episode somebody oh yes right we also talked about imaginary friends let me let me write down that episode as well just so ever just so i can make sure to get to it okay all right uh anyway uh she says i have two paranormal experiences to share with you both auditory the first was when i was staying with a friend whose house was way off the road in the woods by itself it was a very old house she and her boyfriend were in the process of renovating it she and i were sitting on the couch chit chatting and having a beer when from the back of the house the clear low male voice says her name we both jumped and looked at each other and asked each other did you just hear that her boyfriend nor anyone else was there at the time and with no road nor houses close by so we know it was not of this plane i get chills just remembering that the second was a year or so after my grandfather went home to jesus my entire life he would call for my grandmother when she was in another room to do different things for him for example ethyl call so and so for me or ethyl bring me my hat he always did this even when he got sick in the nursing home he would call for her a year or so after my grandfather passed my brother my son and i were in my grandmother's kitchen with her just talking went out of nowhere we hear a shout from the back of the house ethyl i knew from my brother and my son's faces they had also heard it very clearly as i did my grandmother said is someone here she'd heard it too she looked out the window to see if someone had pulled up in the driveway no one my brother and i waited until we left to discuss what we'd heard my grandmother doesn't believe in the paranormal even though i know that time she had also witnessed it my brother my son and i all agree that was my grandpa's voice that gave me chills thanks so much for what you do i love how you put the verses and quotes at the end of each podcast the podcast gets me through a lot of house chores if you use my experiences you could refer to me as sick lunch lady okay sick lunch lady i'll instead of cindy i'll call you a sick lunch lady that's funny all right uh yeah you would think your grandmother would actually recognize her husband's voice instead of just saying is there somebody here you would think oh my gosh that's my husband yeah there's because if it's somebody that you know even if it's somebody from years ago but you're very very close to you know that voice when it comes like like if they call you out of the blue before they even say who they are you hear that but that voice you just know it's them so and she was so used to him being in another room yelling ethyl i would have thought that she probably you know what i'm guessing she probably did recognize the voice she just didn't want to let on because it probably scared her not like not like fearful terrified type of thing but it would have startled her especially because because she didn't believe in the paranormal and she didn't know how to explain it and maybe she wasn't sure exactly you know what you would heard you may have heard somebody yell it too but but maybe you didn't hear it in your grandpa's voice you know but she did you know um any anything you can to try and rationalize it away so all right uh let's see here moving on to our very last one all right this one comes from jane uh hi again it's jane from eerie pennsylvania hey i truly hope you don't mind that i'm emailing you again i don't mind it at all i don't mind you feel free to send me as many stories as you would like uh i was listening to your chamber of comments that you had on july 16th by the way i think is truly awesome it's so very sweet of you to take time out of your day to share your emails as well as answering them that's the reason why i decided to email you i was listening to the email from one of your listeners that was quite lengthy but asked a very valid a great question to me as well she basically had asked if any if uh one can believe in god as well as believe in the supernatural that really hit home for me i listened very intently to what she had to share as well as what you shared so thank you for that that email had me thinking about an experience i had ever since i heard that i've been kicking around the idea of emailing you the thought had not left me alone so here i am i promise i won't keep bothering you as i know you truly are a busy person with a lot on your plate it's just this thought wouldn't leave me alone and kept telling me to share it with you you know what you don't have to you don't have to apologize for emailing me okay that's that's what fireside frights and the chamber of comments is all about i love getting emails from people and i don't have anybody else sorting through them i'm the one that reads them so if you send them to me i will see them i may not necessarily reply immediately sometimes i'll set it off to the side and reply here in a firefight fireside frights or in the chamber of comments but i do see them so and i don't mind that at all i'm in front of a microphone all day long being being a professional voice actor it's what i do it's a nice little break actually when i get emails from people so don't worry about that all right okay anyway continuing on with jane's email she says i haven't shared this with many people in my life just just those i thought i could trust and those i thought would appreciate it its experience was when i was 29 i just turned 53 last week let me give you a little background info so this might be a bit lengthy so far that i so far that i do apologize oh i'm sorry so for that i do apologize when i was around eight or nine my mother was in the process of separating from her second husband my stepfather he and i never got along and let's just say he was kind of cruel to me so i went to live with my grandparents for a very short period of time just until i could be with my mother again during the time i was with my grandparents my grandmother made sure to take very good care of me she was a very devout catholic and what did we raised catholic as well she made sure i went to church every sunday and learned and learned all i could about god while there i indeed needed i i'm so sorry folks i'm stumbling over this one her writing is perfectly fine it's just me i did indeed learn to accept god and love him my mother and i were back together after the school year and when we were reunited i did keep keep up going to church and kept up learning about god when i became a teenager i did become lazy and didn't really go to church but i didn't stop believing in god and prayed to him every night thanking him for the day's blessings you're not the only one jay i think teenage years is something that we all kind of walk away from church for a while just because we're trying to find ourselves trying to find out who we really are you know do we really believe in this stuff that mom and dad have been teaching us all our lives and quite often we do come back to the church but yeah those those years that's that's when i walked away too um she says i did find something amazing about my praying to god now i'm probably reading too much into this but i sometimes swear the things i prayed for would happen so fast i was it was shortly after i got married i remember going to the local animal shelter and saw a cat there i felt so bad for this cat it was there because its owner had passed away it didn't have a home anymore i so wanted to adopt this cat but my hubby wouldn't go for it so i'd prayed so hard for this cat to get adopted i called back the next day to check on it it literally got adopted an hour before i called that's just one example i have but things like that would happen all the time here's the experience that i had that still lives with me today when i was 29 years old my oldest daughter was three at the time and my youngest was a little over a year old my hubby was going through some medical issues that we were trying to get down to the bottom of little did i know at the time it would take us two years to finally get a medical diagnosis and a plan to treat him but during this time my husband had gone through so many tests and doctors only to get no answers well again when i was 29 on the particular night i remember being at my lowest and so sad and not knowing where to turn my husband wasn't doing well and my youngest daughter was also sick that night but just typical little kid things so after i put my girls to bed and my hubby was asleep in bed i came out to the living room sat down on the couch and just started talking to god i was talking out loud to him as if he were in the same room with me as i sat there talking to god with tears in my eyes i felt as if i were being held in someone's arms like someone was giving me a big bear hug i suddenly felt very tired and sleep just came over me very fast so i thanked god for listening to me and said good night i went to bed that night i had the most wondrous dream ever my dream didn't seem like a dream to me it felt very real in every aspect in my dream i found myself on a beautiful mountain side next to a babbling stream i could hear the running water of the stream in my dream the colors of the mountain side were so brilliant they just stood out i felt utter peace calm tranquility and love i didn't have a care in the world at this place when i turned my head to look around i found animals sitting next to me all kinds of them they were just sitting there next to me then all of a sudden i heard my name called by a man's voice it was the most beautiful sounding voice i have ever heard i looked up because i was sitting down but i looked up i saw the face of jesus surrounded by a golden light he had the most bluest eyes i've ever seen and the biggest kindest smile i could ever imagine i was in utter shock that i couldn't find my voice for a moment he took that time to sit down right next to me he reached over and took my hand in his and smiled at me i looked at him and just couldn't believe what i was seeing as if he were reading my mind he just laughed and smiled at me more he then said to me don't worry everything's gonna be okay i'm here for you i was speechless but then i finally found my voice and asked but why me surely there are bigger and better people than me he laughed again and the laugh was the sweetest sound i ever heard he told me that he was there for me because i've always put people before me and wanted to let me know that he was there for me i then remembered that i had forgotten to pray for my sister-in-law that night and before i could even say a word he said my sister-in-law was going to be okay as well as for everything i prayed for before i went to sleep i then woke up the next day with such a sense of peace and love that i just can't put it into words now i know there are people out there that think that i may have made all of this up in my imagination but i can assure you i did experience all of this that experience has stayed with me ever since it happened i did share it with a reverend of our local church he thinks that i did indeed get a receive a visit from jesus but i should be careful with it not sure what he meant but i will always treasure it with that being shared i've also had my fair share paranormal experiences i truly believe in both i know you share your emails with your listeners and i'm okay if you want to share this i just ask no one judge me too hard thank you so much for letting me share this very truly personal experience with you thanks again hugs jane i don't know if i could if i could end tonight on a better story did not plan it that way at all i went from the oldest to the newest emails this one came in just yesterday jane wow what an amazing story and i think i know what your pastor meant when he said that you need to be careful um because some so many people would take this and immediately think jesus took me to heaven he showed me exactly what heaven's going to be like and we can't know that we can't know that it was just a dream he and granted god does speak to us through dreams i have no doubt about that whatsoever i'm not saying that he always does but he can acts 217 your sons and daughters will speak what god has revealed your young men will see visions your old men will dream dreams so yeah god does speak to us through dreams once in a while so i don't doubt that at all but you can't necessarily say this is exactly what jesus said to me you know you can't do a thus say it the lord type of thing you don't want to you don't want to put yourself in the uh in the shoes of being a false prophet you know you can't call yourself a prophet for that but yeah i mean the way you were describing that though i said that that sounds like heaven to me uh the beautiful surroundings like that the animals living together you know the lion the lion and the lamb that by the way which is not in the bible uh that was actually in last in last week's church of the undead uh that the lion and the lambs together isn't in there but the the the uh the wolf and the lamb lying together the whole the whole point is there are no there's no pray you know there's no um there's there's no uh pray and predator situation when it when it's in heaven and i do believe that that animals will be in heaven i i truly do believe that i i think that's that's part of uh you know what the but what when the bible's talking about all the animals living together in harmony like that i think i i think heaven is going to be that way so when people ask about their pets why not yeah i if if animals are going to be there anyway why not have our pets there if it's something that we truly loved and heaven is all about love why not have that have you know the pets that we loved there so uh jane that that is really great i really appreciate that um folks that that's the last email if you want to email me your paranormal story uh you can send me true stories or uh fictional stories the fictional stories will be used in a uh in a future like like maybe friday frights that i'm hoping to bring back soon or like or maybe a thriller thursday if it's a true story though i share it right here on fireside frights you can email me just go to well just email darin at weirddarkness.com that darin again is d a r r e n and uh i'm gonna leave you to uh with with this uh isaia 40 verse 29 the lord the everlasting god gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak and a final thought from simone wheel to be always relevant you have to say things which are eternal i'm darin marlar thanks for joining me for this fireside frights episode of weird darkness answer george possessor of a magic each one right here on the other hey weirdos our august weirdo watch party is saturday august 5th with a movie presented by a perfectly named horror host show the weirdness really bad movie with dav binkley. dav will be presenting 1962's dreck of a film the magic sword starring basil wrath bone and trust me wrath bone is the only good part about this movie the son of a sorceress armed with weapons and armor assisted by six magically summoned knights embarks on a quest to save a princess from a vengeful wizard that's right it's not just an awful movie it's an awful historically incorrect period piece movie you got a two-headed fire breathing dragon cursed shrunken people a giant ogre that looks like a guy in a werewolf costume a wicked and ugly witch you'll see the cone heads from saturday night live well they look that way at least you've got dated special effects terrible acting and costumes that look like they were ripped right out of a money python skit the weirdo watch party is always free to watch online with all of us so grab your popcorn candy and soda and jump into the fun and even get involved in the live chat as we watch the movie it's the magic sword presented by the weirdness really bad movie show saturday august 5th starting at 10 p.m. eastern 9 p.m. central 8 p.m. mountain 7 p.m. pacific see a trailer for the film and invite your friends to watch along with you on the weirdo watch party page at weirddarkness.com it will see you on saturday august 5th for the weirdo watch party bonus points if you're wearing your renaissance festival costume while watching when salem roanoke took a job near his family's new home as a hired hand in the texas hill country he anticipated learning the ranchers trade but a series of strange events shocking murders and unholy revelations divert him down another path this terrifying trajectory puts him directly into the middle of a struggle between monsters magic and men armed and backed by a militia of ranchers salem attempts to combat the creeping tide of evil that threatens to engulf his new home and destroy the people most important to him will salem manage to save his home or have his actions condemn everyone he hopes to save the witch trials a summer of wolves and season of the witch by sr roanoke available in paperback kindle and audiobook versions look for the witch trials by sr roanoke on amazon or find it on the audiobooks page at weirddarkness.com that's weirddarkness.com slash audiobooks and subscribe to this channel and click the notification bell so you don't miss future videos I post videos seven days a week and while you're at it spread the darkness by sharing this video with someone you know who loves all things strange and macabre if you want to listen to the podcast you can find it at weirddarkness.com slash listen