Ep. 280: New Orleans Voodoo, Folklore, and the Paranormal: The Girl With Shark Teeth

Death welcome back to dead foil tells. I'm your host Brandon tonight. We're joined by my guest Stephanie Stephanie. Thanks for coming. I heard talking to me Thank you so much for having me. Would you like to let the audience know a little bit about yourself? Absolutely My name is Stephanie, and I am from Kentucky. I actually had my first paranormal experience When I was about a year and a half old and ever since then I've just had a Lot of very very strange things happen and as I grew up and sort of Started to really think about what I was experiencing and how strange it was That really led me to wanting to find some sort of context for myself and so when I went into Undergrad, I decided I was going to look for historical context people who had Experiences the same things I had had had had experiences like me in the past I wanted to know that I wasn't alone. I wasn't that strange, you know So in undergrad I specifically started looking at turn of the century New Orleans voodoo and The practitioners the women there that talked to entities and spirits and lowas as a sort of mediumship And then in grad school I went on to study the spiritualist movement of the turn of the century and really looking at those women and how they Did very similar things to the voodoo practitioners of the same era just to sort of try and give myself some context For what I was experiencing and how it sort of fit into things other people had experienced over the years After that, I've done a few shows and I have written a lot about the sort of historical oddities and strange happenings in Kentucky where I'm from so lots of weird degrees and lots of weird experiences

Think a lot of people when they've had paranormal experience at a young age It does typically lead to them being more inquisitive about the whole phenomena

Absolutely, I have to think so Some of the stuff that you experience and like you said you when you went to college or you like were researching everything What are some of the stuff that you came across while you're researching that really kind of opened your eyes of stuff?

When I started researching I was looking at it from a very very strictly academic perspective, which was really odd Because I knew what I had experienced and I wanted to see what the historic record had for other people experiencing And specifically when I was looking at voodoo, I found a lot of works progress administration with the BPA They did a lot of interviews with people who had You know been around in New Orleans in the time that we're talking about and a few of those interviews were with practitioners of that time So you found these like first-hand accounts of these women specifically and they were explaining how They used their practice their religion as a way to sort of circumvent societal constraints on them at the time While also using it to bridge the gap between the living and the dead or what is here and Things that aren't quite people When you I'm trying to figure out how to word this when you were good when Things that weren't people are you referring to is something that Was more like a different type of a spear that wasn't a human spirit or something?

Let's just not a human anymore specifically when I'm talking about voodoo and referencing in human spirits I'm talking More from a sort of Western interpretation of that looking at the Loas Which are sort of demigods or minor deities They're entities that they work with and these things can appear as humans, but If you look at the way they work and the things that they are able to do It's not things that people can do so to my mind. I've always sort of classified them as Something that's not quite a person It's a lot of the same thing you'll find in Other cultures around the world. They'll find those things that look sort of human But aren't fairies are the one that's popping to mind at the moment certain types of faith in Europe We're said to look sort of people but not quite moonlight people in the US here also Sort of fit into that almost people category, but not quite

I think The moon-eyed people I've heard the stories before those were like with the Native Americans used to talk about that they'd see

Basically, they're like the big-eyed black-eyed kids almost the similar type of thing correct Some people relate them to black-eyed kids. I've also heard them related to goblins But you know small sort of figures that would be hanging out around the caves Specifically or in dark areas of the forest and they would not come out in the Light they they're big eyes wouldn't allow them to but I've heard them describe with big dark eyes and with big bright eyes So I'm not really sure the color but very much that same sort of archetype It sounds very similar to what people nowadays consider like the pale crawlers And pale crawlers or like gray aliens either one sort of kind of fit that vibe almost Yep, and the dover demon Yes, he's a cute one Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that's very similar descriptions of that nowadays the creepy pastas have made it a rake Which is I still think based off of a pale crawler yeah Even the Kentucky goblins are Described that way and now I the could Kelly Greenman were like little greenman with yellow eyes is what they said So the Kelly Greenman is a really weird story. I actually have done it I grew up 20 minutes from there So that was like my personal backyard cryptid as I was growing up And I've always found it fascinating if you go back to the original articles They were supposed to be little men in silver suits And then that somehow got morphed in the telling in the newspapers and they became the little greenman And they're still called the little greenman But if you look at those very first stories they were little men in silver suits And I just think that's such an interesting Progression as the story got told yeah, because I've even actually had a Geraldine the yeah she's been on my show and She's worth like she recounted the story whatever obviously she wasn't there so yeah, but

They just had a I was it the first

Goblin condo they did down there last year. I had I'm going next week I did it in October and then now they're doing it Basically here in august but When I went to it was the first time that they had done it or whatever and again everything Was a kind of alien looking the way that they had everything decorated stuff They had the little green alien figures everywhere

So I don't know if that's what a lot of people nowadays think they are but You have those but then you also have the Kentucky goblins, which is basically popularized by hellier Yeah, so I don't know if there should be one in the same or if they're complete I know they're in different locations, but at the Basically because it's Kentucky. I think everyone's kind of lumped it all together I think they are and I think there's probably going to be Some argument made about mammoth cave and the cave systems under Kentucky and how I'm sorry if you can hear that that is my cat

She wants tension and You know the Eastern Kentucky is full of caves also, so I kind of wonder if we're not going to get some sort of you know Goblins travel in the caves argument For how they could be one in the same I know a lot of people have weird experiences around these caves systems like not just these pale creatures which the movie that is sent I think is A great movie because It actually has these pale humanoid things in the caves

and I don't know when the first stories were popularized, but I wonder if that's what influenced him to make that movie I've never really looked into it It would make a lot of sense from the descriptions But I just wonder like because if you look at UFO sightings and if you look at even big foot sightings and missing missing people like they all typically kind of align Around cave systems So I don't know a lot of that especially with the missing 4011 cases and things like that as well Yeah, I don't know if that'll has anything to do with the actual caves or not But with you mentioned mammoth cave that I'm pretty sure that's the actual At least that they're aware of the deepest one Here in America, isn't it? Yes, absolutely. It is the largest explored cave system in the US if not in the world It is huge and it is incredibly haunted you have stories going back generations Of hauntings in the caves going back even before people were You know regularly touring the caves and they were using it for food storage and things of that nature But lots of very odd things there and then if you really look at it the distance between mammoth cave and the bellwitch cave Are not that great you as far as like mileage goes and you get a lot of weird reports from that one as well I've always wondered if Obviously cave systems or whatever would they can't explore every nuck and cranny I've wondered if they are somehow all connected in some sort of way so you know how life adapts to living in complete darkness Because they have specific type of species that live only within specific cave systems like they've found new species completely in different caves That have only ever been found in those specific caves So I wonder if there has ever been anything that's evolved to

Something that we're not familiar with. I don't want to say there's a completely A humanoid species down there, but it's the same story of how you basically hear orcs and gobbling stuff They all live in these dark dungeon-y cave systems Absolutely And I think there's some really weird overlap between sort of modern ideas of things that living caves and like the story of the green children of Woolpit That one is always just really weirded me out that old English tale of the Children coming through from St. Martin's land with green skin And you know the boy ate normal human food and died It's just Just seeing how those same stories have been repeated for generations It almost makes you think that there has to be something about it that Is the threat of truth you know what I mean There's always something that is the catalyst as to why things are the way that they are Especially when it comes to mythological stories and urban legends or anything like that because Something has to influence it So we're originated from where the story progressed from Clearly there was something that started that kind of a story Yeah, absolutely and It makes you wonder why the stories have such staying power and if there isn't something that is Something that inspired the first one that might still be inspiring stories today

Even throughout Europe like they always had the stories of the little people over there too They had leprechauns. They had their fairies. They had their elves And they weren't like what we think they are today

Like the nice cutesy-looking versions that we've modernized here is not what they originally were depicted as over there at all Right they were terrors And we've made them into something either cute or you take one of the modern romantasy novels And suddenly you have these very attractive things and Most of them originally were not spread that way They're all kind of like Trictors to an extent. I think I feel like they get sort of that almost vampire treatment where they go from the true living corpse into Something that can be more palatable to modern audiences There was a movie that came out about 10 years ago. I think it had a will smith in it And I think it was called blight and basically They had like all those type of creatures That were actually real and somehow they were now in our world There's like a buddy cop movie. It's kind of weird like he was a partner with one of these orc people

Strangestrange movie but like I remember they had fairies flying around but the fairies were like these creepy little skinny They weren't like tinkerbell. They were like Annoying little things that they ended up like getting caught on like a bug catcher I think like one of those little light up Yeah for those appers So it's just funny like they kind of depicted things

Actually how the original stories were depicting them Mm-hmm But again modernized thing if we take a fairies we think a tinkerbell Yeah, absolutely And you really lose something in the stories and why they were so effective at Teaching lessons or keeping people out of places when you take these Mythic figures and make them into something Qt's the impalatable. I mean you lose the terror of the story mm-hmm Like even the old elves that they have like I think it's in a Norway or maybe Sweden or whatever, but they have these Little houses that they have out there for like the little elves people But like if you actually see some of the depictions of what they look like those things were creepy like and they weren't like the little Kebler elves are saying as elves they were Long nose they had spears and A lot of it reminds me what we call the puck wedges today here. Yes, that's a good call out absolutely and I think especially around here People want every creepy thing that they see in the woods, do you know It's got to be one of the two big sort of Book of bears that they've gotten out of You know tick-tock and all those social media platforms. So it's everything is gonna be a skin walker and They forget about those Other creatures that would be a lot more regionally specific and a lot more applicable to a lot of cases I think the term skin walker gets thrown out a lot Yeah, it's it's basically I know some purist out there listening to like that's a Navajo thing and they don't come this far past the mountains or whatever Yeah, that's how it's actually depicted But I think just because everyone says a skin walker it's basically just shapeshifter Mm-hmm. Yeah, you have that and at some level I kind of wonder if we don't get into thought forms at some point where everybody's believing in something so strongly that they are Almost creating an entity I I do believe that to an extent, but then you have to think about stuff like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and stuff like I still have not I still haven't seen the big seven-foot tall bunny huff around leaving eggs for me I don't want to see that I think that might be the scariest cryptid of all I hands down don't want to see that one But yeah, I Some people say that we make these things and basically consider them like egregors or something like that to where We could manifest these things by everyone thinking about I was like well I cannot I can see that to an extent, but then you have to have all these other things too because people believe in so many different little intricate things that we'd be manifesting all sorts of stuff Yeah, I think the one currently that makes me question Exactly how much power that sort of thought has is the accounts of like uh Oh, what's he called slender man?

Yeah, and the black-eyed kids specifically like there was a lot of thought about them for a while You heard stories and then they're you know what I mean like they come and go and Are people just making it up? Are they freaking themselves out or are they Seeing something that has been created? I think a lot of it is People's minds only connect things that are familiar to them and maybe That there are certain type of energies out there or spirits out there whatever whatever they could possibly be, and they know of what people have been referencing, so they take on the shape of something that they can be recognized to someone. That's an almost more terrifying idea because then it could literally get any reaction out of someone that it wanted and, you know, your darker spirit could be waiting around any corner.

Well, people have interactions with random clowns. I know people were terrified of clowns, but I've heard stories of people walking and they see these creepy clowns. Well, that doesn't mean it's not a person. Right. I don't know. Is it something that's trying to scare someone? Is it something that once that reaction, like people see Slender Man, people see all sorts of different things that make zero sense, but what are they seeing?

There's not a good answer for it, but it is a very, very prevalent question. And if you're looking at it from that lens, you can argue a lot of the things that people were seeing historically could have fallen into the same categories as well. And it would make sense then why you have so many entities around the world that look so very similar or have such similar affects to them. I know my audience is probably going to slap me at some point for always making this reference, but I say it a lot. If you look at the old fairy reports, people used to say back in the day that people would be kidnapped by fairies. They disappear missing time, everything else. Nowadays it's alien abductions, but it's the same exact thing is what they talked about years ago before we knew what aliens were.

Absolutely, I have made that argument more times than I cared account. Aliens are the one thing, like paranormal-wise, you want to look at it that way that really sort of scares me. And when I realized by reading some of the old fairy accounts that they looked so similar to the alien abductions, I about lost it that day. It was a bad day for me, but those encounters are so close together and people don't realize how close together those encounters were. And they don't believe me when I tell them that because I've given lectures on that, like, and they just don't understand until they start looking at the exact stories. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's so much out there that people don't realize just because it doesn't align to what they think they know.

Yeah. But they don't actually look into the history of everything or look into the reported experiences or at kidnappings or whatever you want to call the abductions that they've had. The similarities between modern abductions to the old abductions are very, very similar. Yes. I'm literally one to one in some encounters. I mean, the descriptions of the old fairy encounters and the alien encounters today are one in the same to my mind. I have, yeah, it's incredibly creepy. I'm not saying that the aliens are fairy or fafoke and I'm not saying that the fafoker aliens, but I think one way or the other, they're all very similar in the same things. So maybe what we think are actually aliens from space were the same things that people back then so they were fairies.

But again, maybe they're neither, but it's what we're interpreted it to be. Absolutely. They could be neither, they could be both. Or some entities making us believe they are one in the same. But yeah, incredibly creepy concept. A lot of people nowadays are reporting everything to be demons. That kind of, it kind of irks me a little bit because now everything is demons. And I don't believe that to be the case, but again, I'm not an expert in any of this stuff, but I just feel like if we're all saying everything that's weird out there as a demon, then it literally just narrows everything else, that nothing else exists, there's either us and then demons. You know what I mean? Exactly. So one of my degrees is an anthropology and I have always had an issue with this, everything is a demon theory.

And that started for me when there was this family that had asked me about a spirit that their child had been seeing. And it was the grandmother. And the mother told me that, oh no, it can't be the grandmother, it has to be a demon, it has to be a demon. And it would not take anything else for the answer, but the spirit was the grandmother. It was incredibly difficult to deal with that particular situation. But in anthropology, there's this concept of cultural relativity. You understand a society from inside itself and they explain it on their own. And I've always found that to be sort of useful for looking at these different sorts of things that you find around the world and how they are connected to one another.

And everybody wants everything to be a demon. But historically speaking, if you are looking at demons by their own definition, they are a specific type of inhuman spirit from a very specific region of the world. These guys were finite, they had names, there were only so many of them to go around. So unless demons are quite literally multiplying, then there's not enough demons to make up for the number of demon accounts there are. But there are things like gin that were in other places. There are peck wedgies here in the US. You have all of these locally appropriate, sometimes malicious, sometimes the levelant in human spirits that could be the cause of these things that I think a lot of people are either just afraid of and calling demons or they are misidentifying the local fauna, if you will.

Yeah, I think a lot of things are being, I don't want to say misidentified in general, but I think a lot of things that people actually see or whatever could be completely something different. But when they, everyone says that something's like being labeled as a demon like these aliens come down on us as a demon. There's no fets. I'm like, no, I'm not saying it's a space alien. But at the same time, it's like, I don't just think it's a demon coming in a flying saucer either that doesn't make any, why would they need a flying saucer? Right, there's, and I just get really hung up on how that particular imagery started out. It had a very specific context. And I have a hard time finding a way to make it make sense that this thing that had this very specific context now has any sort of modern thing attached to it, like a spaceship.

It doesn't make sense for them culturally or historically. Yeah, I don't, if you go back through, I guess, history and like in biblical proportions when they'd mentioned like the angels, obviously the depictions that we have nowadays of angels isn't actually the biblical accurate version of an angel either, but they claim they've came down with the chariots of fire or the chariots of gods or whatever. What were the chariots? A lot of people think, well, those could have been some sort of a craft that they came in. So if they came from the skies and a craft and they didn't actually look like what we depict in the day, and then if you start to go down the rabbit hole of like the whole net full of them or whatever they break with humans, like there's all sorts of different things that could be possible, but at the same time, it's like, if they came down in crafts and now they're saying the demons are coming down in crafts or the demons and the original alien, like, where do we get to?

Are we all still talking about the same stuff? Exactly. And I think people also forget that those first ones also came saying be not afraid, you know, they're looking for something a little softer, a little fluffier. And I'm not sure that that's what they always were. Yeah, I don't necessarily agree with any sort of like religion and to an extent. Like, I'm not saying, like religions are wrong or anything like that, but like far as my belief system goes, like, I don't really align into any sort of specific grouping. But when it comes to like the history side of it, there are so many stories that are so similar, especially like the whole, the flood story. Almost every group of different religions or history all over the world, they all have their own version of a flood.

But they also all have things similar. Like if you have the Egyptians were building pyramids, they hit the Aztecs were building stuff here, the mile like all spread out throughout the world. They're using all sorts of things that we look at nowadays and wonder how they were building stuff so intricate from primitive people. But yeah, they also had other sort of things in common that we don't necessarily talk about again, like the descriptions from the Anunnaki, like they look like these modernized things. But some of them had like weird heads to them, but they had wings on like bird wings. Well, that's what the depictions that we have of modern angels knows, like a human with bird wings. And then the Egyptians had all these different gods that had like a bird head or an alligator head or the jackal, like all different types of creatures, but they're all on human bodies.

It's like you've seen some of those depictions and like the South America. So why were we all being influenced like all the ancestors from around the world being influenced to have all these sort of different things in common, but they were so spread apart that they had no way of communicating. It's just weird that they all evolved to doing the same exact stuff. It is very, very strange. And I know we have archeological evidence for items that would have been mined in like the South of Argentina ending up in very far north in North America. So you could almost argue that there may have been some sort of word of mouth for those sort of things, but you don't see the same crossovers across the oceans and you absolutely see the same sort of imagery continent to continent, whether you know that there is not a vocal transmission of these things.

So you have to think that there has to be some sort of similar experience that is leading these people to these things. There's all sorts of stuff that I think about when it comes to these type of scenarios and I don't have any explanation other than somehow that they had some sort of an influence. And I'm not going to say like the ancient asteroid theory is correct, but if you look back, all the stories talk about these gods from the heavens came down. And the angels came down like it's almost like, and even like the Hindu versions and like all these different types of religions, they all have something similar into like a creation as basically something made mankind. So it makes me wonder like, is there truth to that that something actually came down here found us in the way that we were already being like our ancestor and they did something to where now we're modern humans, because it doesn't really, out of everything else in the world was evolving.

We evolve so quickly compared to everything else around us. It just seems like we maybe were manipulated, I don't know. I could see the argument being made for that. I could also see the argument being made for some sort of event happening in some sort of prehistory that stayed sort of in that collective unconscious where whatever they had seen became the basis for the mythos. But it's one of those things, you know, we'll never know the answer to that, but I feel like there has to be something that ties all of those stories together. Again, like we all had the flood, like different cultures have the flood story and I honestly relate that back to the Ice Age because if you look at how old some of these ancient texts were or some of these stories have came from, it would have been about the time that the Ice Age was Indian.

See, and just because they talk about a flood, we don't know how long it actually was a flood for. They just know they used to live along these, along the rivers or the oceans because most people, even today, like most societies are built around water sources. So if the Ice Age was causing all sorts of melting, the waters are gonna rise. So eventually things would flood out and that would be, oh, it's the great flood. Like the waters rose, we used to live here. Now we had to move miles away because it's all under water.

That's just kind of how I see things. It's a good argument. It absolutely is. And it would explain many of the things. And I mean, you could even explain some of the cave drawings that have the animals that are impossible in them through the same things. They were survivors of that Ice Age, the last of their kind. But numerically speaking, academically speaking, that shouldn't be the right answer, but it does seem like the more logical answer to them just imagining these things that had lived here before. Yeah, there are cave paintings of big creatures that look like a big foot. There's cave paintings of stuff that I think some, and they could have been fake, I don't know. But it looked like they almost had like a dinosaur look tomb, which was strange.

I've seen those and I've seen some of things that look sort of like unicorns and things that look disturbingly like modern depictions of aliens, but there's a lot of those images that really seem to point to a lot of the things that people experienced today going back even before truly recorded. Yeah, so I'm not 100% sure about the cave painting things. I know they've dated some of them, but I don't know like some of the oldest ones, especially here in America. I don't even know how far back they go, but there are stories of the giants or whatever that some of the Native Americans were apparently encountering that they have stories about. Can you hear me? Oh, there you are, yes. Okay. You kind of cut out.

I said something about the Native Americans having like stories of the giants and stuff around here too, like there's all sorts of legends, like the giants and stuff throughout America. Yeah, that's a very, very popular one and even having a few giant skeletons, some that were proven to be fake and some that were lost to history from the 18th century as well, 17th and 18th. I always wondered like if there were actual giants, let's just say they had giants. Why are they trying to hide it? Like we know about dinosaurs, we know about woolly mammoths, we know about all these like different megafauna from the ice age or whatever. Why is giants an issue? Because they even talk about all these different species of humanoids, like even all the way up to like the small little, I don't know if it's down in Australia or New Zealand, somewhere around there like Indonesia, they feel like these almost like Hobbit-looking people.

Yeah, the Hobbit Australopithecus, yes. I tend to think that we end up in the position of the cyclops in sort of Greek and Roman mythology where they're finding skulls of things that they don't quite know how to reconstruct, that being an elephant skull or a mastodon skull and because of the wear of the trunk attaches, there's a big hole right in the center of the face, so it looks like a cyclops. And I kind of wonder if they weren't finding bones of either the North American mastodon or some other prehistoric creature and not quite knowing how to reassemble it and getting us two giants because I can't come up with a reason why giants would be the dividing line, you know? It doesn't add up to me as to why, I don't know, we can't do this because there's giant humanoids.

I was like, we technically have giants today because we have people that are over seven feet tall. We do. And by ancient time standards, the average person was about five and a half feet, so a seven foot tall person would be considered a giant. Full, yes, absolutely. Like, I'm almost six four, so I guess compared to those people, I'd be considered almost a giant too. Yes, standing from a person to five two over here, absolutely a giant can confirm. Yeah, so I think when I see stories of like finding large amounts of bones, I think maybe they were finding, I don't want to say dinosaur bones, but they were finding bones of like maybe like a mammoth or one of the giant slugs. Whatever there was during the ice age, I think they were finding stuff like that and they were just not sure what it was, they said they were like giant people.

Right, because that's what they had to sort of compare it to. Yeah, so they didn't know any better because it didn't look like anything that they were seeing modern times, so they're like, clearly, it's had to be a giant. So unless there was an actual giant human-looking skull, but like you said, even like with an elephant or even a mammoth or whatever, they're still not gonna know what that would have been. Right because if I tell you to reassemble an elephant and you've never seen one there is no telling what kind of creature You will present me with exactly And I don't even know like far as the ice age goes what they could have came across I would have had a humanoid-looking skull, but there are

Supposedly teeth of what people think are like modern bigfoot or like a gigantic pithicus Well, what if those didn't die off a hundred thousand years ago and people saw some of those are they found a bone of one of those and That would be like a skull I do think I can't I can't really get specifically is a great explanation for Bigfoot sightings in Asia and that region of the world I have a harder time with that over here Just because their original range wasn't so much in this area, but I think that that is an excellent explanation for What people have been sighting seeing and finding remains of in Asia forever My biggest thing when it comes to bigfoot and I've talked to lots of people that I 100% believe that they saw something

But I get hung up on bigfoot just being an undiscovered primate because we have not got no physical evidence of anything being just a modernized ape Humanoid creature walking in the woods it leaves footprints it leaves hair I have people like literally that I've done a documentary I've interviewed people that have seen them in my local area they got footprints they've got castings I don't know how Anyone would take the time just to make something fake is 90% of them don't even want to be on camera They don't want anyone to know about it. They don't even want to talk about it So what's the point like they're not getting attention for they're not getting paid for it So why make up a story if they don't want any fame and glory So they saw something But where are the bodies at where are the bones at where is the Preeding population at where is the food sources at like something that larger to have to be eating something And we don't come across all these dead carcasses all over and they don't come across the bones or they eat the bones You know what I mean like there's just so many there's so many things that I think about that makes no sense as to believing that some of these things even exist because there's no proof Right, and I have a much easier time with something like a Yeti Specifically being some sort of bear or something because the region is so remote And there are so many ways to not be able to find a body there But I have the same problems you do With bigfoot and other things that are supposed to be truly physical animals in North America South America anywhere in this sort of region um and I've dealt a lot with People like you're talking about people who have had paranormal experiences go spirits into disaster sort of thing And they want to tell me what happened They want to have an explanation. They want to understand it But they don't want me to tell anybody who they are. They want me to keep those details close They don't want to sound crazy, but they still want to know and I feel like I believe that they experienced something I don't know what it was But I believe that they experienced something and I think it's probably the same thing with the bigfoot experienceers Yeah, I think um So I fall into the category too because and I actually

The person who saw this with me I actually saw again I hadn't seen him in almost like 20 years since this has happened But we reconnected I've seen the other day and I actually have proof because he admitted it over messages that he remembers But we both saw a For all intensive purposes a bipedal walking canine and

Like there's a whole big story to this and that's why I do what I do because forever Basically we saw a werewolf or a dog man, which don't exist. I don't believe in those things But yet We saw it and he didn't ever want to talk about it But now I have I've straight up asked him and over Messenger I was like I'm keeping these messages. I screenshot. I was like now I have my own confirmation that I'm not crazy He does remember seeing it even after all these years. He still doesn't want to talk about it but Yeah, it's something Not to that extent, but similar happened to me with Bigfoot I have dealt in the world of Strictly things that don't have bodies. So Bigfoot is very hard for me But I ended up last year out in the woods with one of my friends and

There were sounds that Normal animals cannot make We have both grown up in and around the woods This is an area that we're both very comfortable with and The only things that Make any sense for what was making those sounds would be what people describe as Bigfoot and that was

Very hard for me to wrap my brain around

I know I've interviewed people just strictly for my ear because where I live out You wouldn't actually think this would be anything where it have like all these different sightings But the reason I did a documentary is because so many people have reported seeing werewolves around here And they've also saw Bigfoot and stuff. But again, I live in the middle of Indiana Which is no mountain or nothing like where like cornfields So doesn't make a whole lot of sense of why people are seeing all these things But again so many people have saw all the same things that I did and I don't have an explanation for it because again, there's no bodies There's no proof that any of this stuff exists But what did I see? What did he see? What does everyone else seem like we're all reporting seen the same exact thing And I saw this stuff before even really I didn't believe in any of this stuff, and I still struggle to believe it So it doesn't make any sort of sense as to why We see these type of things

If we're not even like interested in it. You know what I mean? Like it's just a random thing But like why is a pop-up? Right and for me that reminds me of where I work at currently Um a Jason to us is a property Well a forest that has been in more recent years becoming better known for a dogman wolf man sort of situation going on there And I thought it was crazy until I was digging into the history of the property that I actually work for and found reports of Aware wolf going back to the 60s and that

Just my I can't reconcile it We have these modern population of these stories and then I have these more antiquated reports of something that sounds the same And it doesn't make sense Yeah, they're I struggle with people that have these big fantastical stories

Like and I'm not gonna name drop people But there are people within the cryptic communities and like the alien community and like all these They have these big elaborate stories that sound like something straight up of Hollywood horror movie and It's the people that rarely have any sort of Details I typically lean more towards of having more probably they did actually see something then this thing chase me Or all these miles and like it's following me home and it was looking to my windows and all Okay, if it really wanted to get you to just burst through the window Uh-huh So the people that are driving and something happened to walk out in front of them was like well I lean more in and I like something ran across real well I guess it could have been like a different type of creature But if you're saying it was on two legs and it was way above the top of your car then That kind of limits what it could have been Mm-hmm like I see deer run out in front of me all the time, but I know it's a deer right And if you see a dog run out in front of you. Well, I know that's a dog But if you see a dog walk out in front of you that's walking on two legs I'm going the other way like You well was it a bear walking on two leg again people should know what a bear looks like too Yeah And the people that say that a lot of these big fit sightings are the runner-cross roaders bears running across the road Like yeah, but a bear wouldn't be running on its hind legs No, it might stand up to crawl over a barrier a you know the thing on the side of the road But other than that it's going to run on four legs. It runs faster. It's more stable Like if you ever watched a bear walk on its hind legs they walk goofy They're not going to be like a Yeah, they're not going to be sprinting across the road So when people say they saw this thing run across the road on two legs then clearly they saw something Now I have someone that I won't out them because they I know who it is personally and I've been trying to convince them to actually talk to me about stuff So maybe someday they will but they saw those two people they saw a bird of deer and the deer started running and I believe it 100% Because I've known them forever. No reason to make this up

All the deer were running including one of them But it was also running on its hind legs Oh, absolutely not That is a terrifying image Terrifying yeah, and they don't even want to talk about it because They're so weirded out by it because they call it the w word. I was like you mean when to go. Yep And it's like They won't even say that word but I was like that's technically not what they are look I was like I don't want to sound like a douche but like Right, they didn't have that layer. It's original. Yeah, I was like that is like the Americanized Astridized version of what the wind to go is like that's the made it look scarier by putting antlers on and they get to have a deer skull head Mm-hmm, but I don't know If they bipedal deer So no Someone's like well, it's probably just jumping. I was like why would it still like they said it was literally running On its hind legs along with the rest of the deer that were running like normal deer Uh-huh. So I think it pays with the normal deer. That is incredibly strange Yeah, and it was they said it was so much taller than the other deer

Like they saw all their eyes glowing and they saw that one way above and then they saw them in the headlights Running and it was running on its hind legs. I was like maybe it was a person in a deer costume. I don't know

That's almost worse. Yes I used to say that about what we saw with the dog going because I was like it had to be like a person in a costume because where will But right, but why would they have been where you saw them exactly and why were they laying in the middle of the road Why did they stand up like a person and then crouch down and walk off in a weird position like it none of the whole thing makes zero sense How the lens and it went down so If someone's wanting to lay in the middle of the road, then I guess they're wanting to get ran over Yeah, absolutely people are strange, but I don't think people are that strange Well, I can't say a few years ago Someone was dressed as a big foot and they ran out and look I think they actually got killed because the car actually did hit them and run them over

People do strange things. Yes It's what's funny and I've mentioned this before is like when I go out and look for stuff or I do these like Video recordings out in the woods or something like I'm more worried about the people that might be out there rather than the supposed creatures out there That's gonna tear me apart as I guess it's the crazy people that I'm scared about absolutely Absolutely Well the woods are not nearly as scary as people think they are I will say they are scary when it's pitch black and you have no light source in your just out there by yourself or one other person Yeah, I was doing that a couple of weeks ago in upstate New York in the middle of the night and there was a bear sighted in the area And we realized how stupid that was about that time. Yeah, I said I Again, it's not so much big foot or the dog man or any of the cryptids as I'm concerned about It's the people or the things that I do know that are out there like we don't necessarily have bear around here Per se like obviously where I live. I'm not saying a bear couldn't a randomly just show up, but

I don't know that for sure Because Ironically about a month or so ago. Well, it'd been about two months ago. I have someone That I know told me that uh They think they saw bear run across rows like what do you mean? They said if something ran across rows large and black And we didn't look like a dog. It's like it looked like a bear. I was like we don't have bear but who knows

When got lost. Yeah, I was like could have been they said it was in broad daylight. They saw bear run across the road Like I guess Ever now I was like I guess I'd rather see a bear than the upright walking dog Absolutely hands down. Yeah Well, we've been going on for close to an hour We haven't really talked a whole lot about some of the things that you've experienced If you'd like to share some of that with the audience Absolutely I think the story that I end up or the question rather that I could not get end up getting asked most often is What was the scariest ghost I've ever encountered? um And for me the answer Isn't what people think it is, but I always end up coming back to sort of the most memorable encounter that I had And that actually happened when I was in undergrad I ended up At college Living in a room with another girl who Also had the same sort of quirks that I did she'd had paranormal experiences her entire life

Ghost spirits that sort of thing nothing too too crazy But she did come from a religious family and she She lived on campus with me But her parents her mother specifically had gone on a mission trip and had tried to minister to someone or a group of someones who did not necessarily want to be ministered to And then she took a gift from them and brought back this string of beads

brought it back to their house and She started having strange experiences once she brought this string of beads into her home uh sounds of like laughter like a child and sort of little running feet really freaked her out She told her daughter and my roommate was being a good daughter And decided just to remove the item from the home and bring it to our dorm room Uh, she decided that the safest place for her to keep this string of beads was underneath my bed But she didn't tell me any of this was going on at the time And it was you know Summerish I guess it was late spring at that point when this was going on But I had in the days sort of as her mother had these beads at her house I'd been stopped by a few people on campus that I knew that were asking me questions that were sort of out of my normal wheelhouse I was openly studying the paranormal at this point I had already written some things. I was the weirdo on campus if you will So it wasn't uncommon for people to ask me about paranormal things But I suddenly had people asking me about dreams and things they were seeing in their dreams That is not what I do. I've never done that. It's not It's not something I really understand. I don't have enough context for it really But the first one that stopped me Said that she had had this dream Of this little girl standing at the foot of her bed smiling at her And she was terrified and she didn't know why And so she's telling me this asking me what I think and I was just like That's that's a strange dream, but you know I'm sure it's nothing. Don't worry about it. It was a nightmare. Go on about your life And I didn't really think anything else of it until I had someone else Tell me a very similar dream that they had within a few days of the first one at that point. I was Freaked completely free again. It was them waking up and there was this little girl I think she said at that point Looking down at her from the edge of a bathtub But smiling at her Very strange and at that point I was like I have nothing to do this weekend So I will hit up the library and I will see if I can find anything on dream interpretation and see if there's some sort of Through thread to what would be causing this what might be going on Again, that sort of new age dream interpretation is not my section. So I had no idea what I was dealing with But the campus that we lived on at that point was a suitcase campus everybody pretty much left for the weekend There might be 10 or 15 people left in the entire dorm So That Saturday I got up and Because I was always very social person. I decided it was a great time to do laundry because there was no one in the door.

So our laundry was in the basement. And I had my laundry basket. I'd already taken my stuff downstairs. So I just had the empty laundry basket. And I was going downstairs to move my laundry from the washer to the dryer. Nothing crazy. I wasn't thinking about anything. It was nothing. This was the oldest dorm on campus. And I was going into the basement, which is always a little eerie, but no more eerie than anything else, really. But the building was quiet. And you had to go through this big, like, fire door. And so I opened the fire door and I was standing at the top of the landing. And there was a flight and a half of stairs because it was an old building. And it wasn't really the right length to get down there.

So when they built the addition, the stairs ended up being extra long without a landing in the middle. And I was standing there. And I had just a moment as I was sort of taking those first steps down the stairs, where I felt the air shift. And I don't really know if you've ever been in a situation where something is trying to manifest like that. But when that happens around me, it feels very electric. Like the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I knew something was there. But I was in a haunted building. I didn't really think twice about it. I knew that this building has had ghost stories in it since it was built. It was a civil war hospital. That sort of thing. You know, old property in Kentucky.

It's got ghosts or at least ghost stories. So I didn't really think about it. But as I was two or three steps down, I felt these little tiny hands on the back of my legs. And I didn't really have time to think about it. And it pushed, pushed me forward. And I ended up dropping the basket. And I fell. I don't know. Eight or ten stairs down. Before I sort of caught myself on the banister because I was falling down the stairs. It was great. And I sort of sat there for a second and turned back up to the top of the stairs. And there was this little girl standing there smiling at me. And I've never seen anything quite like her. She was the cutest child I've ever seen. She had dark hair and pale skin.

She was wearing the sort of little rose colored night gown and her little feet were bare. And she had these big dark eyes. And she was smiling at me. And it took me a moment to sort of recognize what I was looking at. Because her teeth, they didn't look like peoples. They looked like little shark teeth. They were all pointed. And. That's a big note for me. Exactly. It was a big note. But at that point, I realized that my fight or flight response is broken. Because in that moment, for whatever reason, I decided the only option was to run back up the stairs at this child. Horrible idea. Horrible idea. I have no idea what I thought I was going to do. But in my brain, in that second, I was going to capture.

Luckily for me, by the time I got to the top of the stairs, she was gone. And my brain had sort of caught up with me. And I was completely freaking out. Because what had just happened. So I ended up running back to the dorm room and telling my roommate what just happened. And she was like, oh yeah, my mom, these beads and pulls this string of beads under my bed. And after a very interesting conversation, a little few choice words. We ended up removing those from the property. And once those were gone, the entity stops. The footsteps stopped at her parents house. The dreams that my friends were reporting on campus stopped. And I never saw the entity again. But that one is by far the experience that sort of stands out in my mind as the most insane.

I 100% understand the whole chasing it down. Because that is the mindset that I have for if I ever come across anything when I'm out filming or if I ever come across anything doing paranormal investigations, I'm going to go towards the noise. I'm going to go towards the shadow. Like, that's me. I'm not saying that I'm intelligent at all. But that is if I see, I have a thermal camera. If I see a large heat signature out in the woods, I'm going towards that heat signature. Now I don't know what it could end up being, but I'm going to go look for it. Now, absolutely. I hate the shows that literally show. Oh, there's something out there. Then like they don't do anything about it. They just stand in the same spot.

Then it goes away. Like, why don't you go look to see what it actually is? Yeah. Absolutely. Like, that's my mentality. Because I've watched these shows for years and I get mad at screen with the TV. So I'm like, I'm not going to be one of those people that just... Like, if I'm going to try and find something, I'm going to try and find it. Yeah. Absolutely. But the little girl, why is it always children? I don't know. And I think there's something about the innocence of them that makes it creepier. But, like, literally the cutest child I've ever seen. Yeah. And to this day, I can still see that little face. Insane. Absolutely insane. We've had some things that have happened at my house. And I'm not going to dive into it on air because I've talked about it enough.

But it's... My kids will talk about certain things and it's like... It's always the younger ones. It's not my... My one daughter's now seven. So she doesn't really talk about stuff like that. But my other... Like my son, he's five. And he will talk about an imaginary friend that he had. Well, my daughter used to have an imaginary friend. And she told us that her imaginary friend was a ghost. Oh, yeah. And like... You shouldn't even know what that word is. You're like three. Thank God. So... I just... I don't know. There's just a whole lot of different things that go on that make you wonder... What are these things doing? What are these things even are? And... If it pushed you... To me, that doesn't sound very playful.

Like it pushed you down a flight of stairs. So it was trying to do some sort of harm. It was. I've told this story a lot. I've told this story a whole lot. And I always end up with people asking me if it was a demon. And I decidedly do not think that it was. After... The incident and after removing the beads from the property. Because that was my first thing was getting those as far away from people as possible. I started looking into where her mother had gone, who she had talked to, where she had acquired the beads. And with a little bit of research, it seemed to me to fit that this entity was one that... Is it times reported by this particular region? And is sort of a protector of that region, of those people specifically.

So I think that... While what she was doing was malicious, I do not believe that she was malevolent. I think that she was trying to protect her people where she came from that sort of thing. And I just ended up in the crossfire of it. But no, it was a very malicious act. It was hands down a malicious act. Yeah, I don't know if anything that would not be considered that way. I don't know if it would be a demon. But I also don't know if any type of spirit that would be... Having creepy little teeth and the black eye, it seems very, very evil. It does, especially aesthetically. I don't know how to explain it, but she felt a lot less dark than some entities I've met. She felt not necessarily human, but just not malicious, or not malevolent, just flat out.

She wanted to hurt me, but I don't think that she was truly evil. It really did not feel that way to me at that moment. I feel like if that had been her true goal, she had enough thought and enough ability to do what she did. I think she could have done something that would have legitimately hurt me if she truly wanted to. How did anyone out... Like, when did you tell anyone else right after it happened? What did they all think? Like, how did they react? Well, I told my roommate within two minutes of it happening, and she was less than surprised, but she was the one who had known that the beads were there and known what had been happening at her mother's house. I told some other people on campus, not a lot, because that one really freaked me out.

I don't understand why the beads... Like, why did they bring the beads there in the first place if they thought the beads had something weird going on with them? Because my roommate wanted to see what would happen. Yeah. I'm not saying that it was done with the best of intentions, but I think she wanted to see if her mother was imagining things or if there was actually something connected to them. And I don't remember if you said or not, but where did the beads that had originated from? How did they come about having them? So the beads were given to my roommate's mother after she had gone on a mission trip and tried to minister to a group of people who did not want to be ministered to, and they gave that to her as a gift after she did that.

And she brought them back as a souvenir. It's funny, because I haven't really said a whole lot about any of this. So when you're listening, I mean, I might start getting bombarded with stuff, but I have a PO box and I was going to have people send me like the weird stuff, I was like, I have a whole lot of my own weird stuff that goes on. So I don't know if I want to hear on my property. If I had my own little place that wasn't attached to my own property, then maybe I would do that. But that was my original thing. It's like people have these things that they think are haunted or whatever they want rid of. Like just ship it my way. I'll keep it out here in my studio, but I got thinking about it.

I was like, I don't know if my studio can contain it. I was like, I don't want to understand that feeling. I was like, I don't want to spill into my house because I'm literally only a few feet away from my house. So yeah, I don't know. That was my original plan a couple of years ago. And I haven't really ever mentioned it too much because it's like, I don't want people to actually start sending me a whole bunch of random crap and then my entire house is possessed by all sorts of crazy things. It would make it very unfortunate. Yeah. Well, we've been going on for about an hour. I usually try and keep these around an hour. But before we wrap things up, is there anything else you would like to discuss tonight?

Um, you had mentioned haunted objects. And I just want to say one thing on that, if I could. Yeah. So I worked in museums for a very, very long time. And I think people really underestimate the amount of hauntings that take place at museums because the museums don't promote them. But the number of calls that I got from security in the middle of the night from multiple museums due to things moving in cases or motion alarms going off when locked exhibits, you know, security cameras being moved, doors being opened, doors being locked when there was no lock there. I really think that paranormal investigators, people that like the weird stuff, should really check out their local museums to just really sort of examine what might be held there because those are some of the most haunted places I have ever been.

There is a place not far from me that I was just doing a event, a couple or about two months ago now. But I was in an event and there was a speaker there. And they talked about there's a certain place in like Northern Indiana that they recommend no one going there unless they're like a professional paranormal investigator or have someone go with them that is a professional. I'm thinking to myself, what qualifies someone as a professional? Right. I would like to know what qualifies you as a paranormal professional. Right? Like what do I have to do to put that on my taxes and not be laughed out of, you know, Paris? But they claimed the place was so overwhelmingly, they didn't call it really haunted.

They just said that there was just so much activity there and they would recommend no one going there that's inexperienced so they recommend if you go to it, you need to have someone that's like a professional in the paranormal field. I'm scratching my head. I'm like, who is that? Yeah, I was like, who really qualifies as a professional? I don't know. But it makes me now want to go there. So if their whole thing was to try and convince people to actually go and they wanted to drive up revenue, like they already did. It's a great way to do it. Yeah, because they're basically don't go there and they're like, well, I don't want to go there. It's told me not to go there. Exactly. So maybe there's a bit of reverse psychology and it worked on me.

I mean, if it was great, if not, it sounds like a great haunted place to go and poke around. Yeah. And I guess if I get possessed or get thrown out of window or whatever happens and so be it, as long as I'm recording, it'll be okay. You'll have all kinds of evidence. It'll be great. Yep. Well, I believe you wrote a book recently, haven't you? I was recently published. It's not a full monogram but a monograph but it's in the feminine macabre, volumes 24 and 6. I actually have articles in all of those. Okay. The most recent, when I believe, don't, I think I'm right, would be the heart of mercy talking about mercy brown, the vampire in New England, one of the last vampire hunts in the US. Yeah, I actually mentioned this on the last interview that I had done, that I would love the opportunity to speak to someone that thinks that they are a modernized vampire.

Because I interviewed someone a couple of years ago and he said, and we didn't dive into it, but he was dating a girl at the time or he was doing a photo shoot of a girl or something like that. But somehow she was tied to a vampire cult. I was like, I want to know more about the vampire cult. Like, I want to know exactly what's going on back there. We didn't dive into any of that because he wasn't involved in it. So it's like, at some point, I don't want to talk to someone that believes that they are an actual vampire. They're out there. Yeah. I know they're out there, but I haven't yet to speak to someone about it yet. So I guess for anyone listening, if you think you're a vampire, reach out to me.

I hope you get that reach out. Is there anything you got coming up here in the future that you'll be at? I think I saw you're like a scare fest or something coming up? Yes, I am speaking at scare fest this year. I'm one of the guests and I will be talking about Jeff's tongue goose, one of the best recorded poltergeist cases in the world. So come out and join me and let's talk about poltergeists. That's in October, right? That is in October, yes. And that is in Lexington, Kentucky. Awesome. Well, Stephanie, it's been a pleasure talking with you. It's been great to talk to you. I hope you have a great night. Thank you. If you would like to be a guest on TenfoilTells, remember to send an email to TenfoilTellsPodcast at gmail.com or you can also go to TenfoilTells.com and go to the contact section.

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