Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 128 - A Haunting in New England
Abby sits down with an old friend to talk through some of the experiences she has had living in a historic and haunted home.
You can watch this episode here.
From sleep paralysis to spectral encounters, Grace's tales will have you on the edge of your seat, questioning the boundaries between the physical and the spiritual realm.
As our conversation evolves, we discuss theories that our perception of reality is shaped by the energy we emit. We traverse the realms of consciousness and spirituality, extending far beyond the tangible. Come along, join us as we unearth the mysteries of Grace's historic home and delve into the captivating world of the supernatural.
Abby sits down with an old friend to talk through some of the experiences she has had living in a historic and haunted home.
You can watch this episode here.
From sleep paralysis to spectral encounters, Grace's tales will have you on the edge of your seat, questioning the boundaries between the physical and the spiritual realm.
As our conversation evolves, we discuss theories that our perception of reality is shaped by the energy we emit. We traverse the realms of consciousness and spirituality, extending far beyond the tangible. Come along, join us as we unearth the mysteries of Grace's historic home and delve into the captivating world of the supernatural.
Hi everyone, before we start the episode, I just wanted to let you know that we actually also filmed this episode, which is really important for the subject matter. So if you'd like to watch this episode, you can go to YouTube and search for the Lunatics project or head to lunaticsprojectcom and click on video. Enjoy.
Speaker 1:Hello everybody, I'm Abby from the Lunatics Radio Hour podcast, where we explore the history of horror and sometimes the paranormal. So today I am very, very excited to be joined by my friend, grace. We actually went to high school together. We've known each other for a super long time and Grace reached out to us because she lives in this gorgeous historic home and she's also had some pretty intense paranormal experiences here, along with her family. So we're going to talk about it and show you guys the home and we'll see what comes with it. Hi, grace, hi, thanks for sitting down and talking with us my pleasure. So, to start off, you texted me and said my house is haunted. Come interview me, yeah, tell us, okay, well, before we get into the haunting, what year was your house built? 1725. And how did you find out the history of all this?
Speaker 2:So my dad lives a mile down the road, okay, and the woman who renovated the house so it was like a shack, basically like totally rundown her name was Gloria and she was just like a neighborhood icon. So when I saw the house for the first time my dad knew exactly where the house was and he the house has a reputation, so he immediately knew it was Gloria's house. He like knew some information which I'll get to in a little bit about, like what happened when the house was rebuilt, okay, and it was the, I think, the previous owners also. It was like in the listing that is a 1725 house, Right?
Speaker 1:Very cool, okay, and so at some point the house got renovated again. Yeah, when did that?
Speaker 2:happen. So Gloria was like a hobby antique rebuilder. So she rebuilt this house, she rebuilt that house and I think she also worked on some other houses in the area Cool. So in 1998, she had the entire house lifted off, the foundation disassembled, post-embeam disassembled, the concrete foundation was repaired and then the house was put back together. But the cool part is that the Smithsonian actually they handled like the dig.
Speaker 2:So, they excavated the foundation, maybe like three feet around the foundation as well, or whatever, and they took like a bunch of artifacts to the Smithsonian.
Speaker 1:So how did they know to do that? Is it a protected house? So?
Speaker 2:it's not a protected house. I don't know exactly why. I think maybe it lost its protection when the foundation was rebuilt. It's not like a historic home. I tried to find it like on the historic registry and it's not. But like all of the houses on the street are of that era and none of them are historic homes. Cove used to be like a shipping center.
Speaker 1:Huge schooners would come down and cloning old times I know you would never think right.
Speaker 2:And then they trestled it off to build the railroad. And when they built the railroad trestle, I guess it prevented any of the schooners from coming in and somehow over time the water has gotten like lower and lower and lower, got it? Wow, yeah, it's really interesting. So we picked up some of the information about the house. Like, that house, I think, is like 1837 over there, we picked up information about the house from mostly from people who've been here for a long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, super cool, okay. So when the Smithsonian came, what did they find?
Speaker 2:So just to clarify I've been told it was the Smithsonian, but I think I believe it was the Connecticut Historical Society, Because I have a knot. I called the Smithsonian. Yeah, because I'm like I want to know, and I even like, we have boxes of artifacts that were left behind. That are all labeled yeah.
Speaker 2:And it includes like an inventory file and I even researched the men who did the excavation to see if I could find them and I can't find anything. So I know it was excavated, because I have the boxes that are like professionally done, obviously done, and labeled and indexed. But I can't actually find the record of it.
Speaker 1:But whoever came, some official historical society came, yeah, somebody fancy yeah, and what did they find?
Speaker 2:So it's really I think it's really old peakwatt land. So I was telling you when you came, like you can, you can like kick a rock and you can, you'll find an arrowhead or like an old apothecary bottle, because it was peakwatt land. But it was also obviously colonized and taken and this house was built and the, the peakwats were decimated. But in these boxes they have like creepy shoes like that kind of stuff, wow, and then they have, like you know, arrowheads, pottery, all of that like you know pretty much everything that you can imagine.
Speaker 2:There's some bones in there too Human bones. So I don't know if there's human bones in those boxes, but there's, there's definitely bones in there, okay. When we, when we bought the house, we found out the history of the house a little bit, just how old it was, right it was like a feature for us because we like old stuff.
Speaker 2:And then when we were at the closing, the people we bought the house from they said just so, you know, there's these boxes that we left in the basement that went. If you ever sell the house, those boxes need to stay with the house Like they're. They're technically part of the house. So, they have to stay there and they're there for you and they're full of artifacts and whatever.
Speaker 2:And I was like, oh, cool, so is the house like really haunted or what? Yeah, and she, they were like no, we did find a human skull, though, in the house. So I was like oh, wow, like okay, can we get a little more detail on that? And she said, basically when they they had this huge pine tree in the woods over there or in the yard on the other side of the house that they wanted removed, and when they removed it they found human remains. We thought that they were fucking with us at the time because it's a house closing. So we were like, oh, okay, like there's bones right. Then we go home and we see there's bones in the boxes too. So we were like, okay, that's kind of weird that that's a cemetery and that's just that part of your yard. Yes, and that the garage was the chapel site.
Speaker 2:Wow which makes sense because in the front of the chapel there's a something in the ground that y'all show you. That's a circle of stones, like an old well that's dug into the ground and kind of covered. Okay, so that's the lore Is that it's a. That was a cemetery. I don't know what this house, if it was just like the directory or something but, apparently it was the, it was the chapel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Yeah, we'll go check that out. So tell me about the basement here.
Speaker 2:So it's like a I think there's a name for it, but it's just a half basement. It's really not. There's not really very much that significant about it, Okay so I think it's.
Speaker 1:I guess when they report the foundation, it's now just a modern foundation. Yeah, exactly, Exactly.
Speaker 2:And what?
Speaker 1:elements of the house, before we get into the fun stuff, are like are there pieces that are updated and new and pieces that are still original?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so like this side of the house was the original house right Like the tall side of the saltbox, yeah, and then this came later, but I don't know when it came. We could probably look at aerial pictures and see exactly like when it came. You saw the post in beam inside. The post in beam is all original and all of the wood in this side of the house like that really dark wood yeah, I think it's chestnut which is you could tell it's actually extinct now, right?
Speaker 2:And so that wood is very it's like very precious wood, yeah and very, very old and it ages so so nicely. So I think pretty much everything in that side of the house is obviously. All the drywall is new. Yeah, you know, like that all got redone, I think all the electric got redone Love plumbing, yeah, and then they put in like some fun, other like modern things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very beautiful. Yeah, you live here with your husband and your two kids, yeah. Yeah, Coming into living here. Were you someone who believed in the paranormal?
Speaker 2:So this is an interesting question. So no, I wasn't really. I mean, I did like I was like spooked by it and I liked it, but I wasn't that into it. Okay, before we moved into the house, I met with a astrologer and I got my chart done and he said, like it was like a two hour thing. You know, and I have a recording of it, if you were listening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's cute Because one of the things that he said when he read Francis's chart is that she's sees spirits, your daughter, my daughter, yeah, and that she's going to be surrounded by gardens. So then, when we saw the house, we were like, oh shit, there's gardens like everywhere. Yeah, like this is really. That's like an interesting coincidence, right so? But no, I don't. I had never really experienced anything, definitely not at the level that I experienced it in this, in the house, when I moved in.
Speaker 1:So what made you decide to meet with an astrologer? Just for fun? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I had just had my daughter, my sister like got her chart done and I was just yeah curious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Cool. And is your husband skeptical Very?
Speaker 2:very, very yeah. But then certain things will happen and I'll be like so what do you mean? Get that mark? And he's just like he puts it into a box of things he can't explain and he just ties the box up and that's it.
Speaker 2:And so. But then he also has experiences like, and then I'm like, yeah, how do you explain that, honey? And he's like I don't know, and he's really only had he's had fewer experiences than Francis and I have had he's only really had two things that he's, you know. Yeah, maybe three but, yeah, two or three things, Francis and I. It's like dozens of things, yeah, okay. So how long have you lived here?
Speaker 1:for Four years, four years and tell us the first time you felt like something strange happened to you here.
Speaker 2:The. I think the first time Mark was traveling to DC, it was February 2020. Just before the pandemic, we'd only been in the house for like three months. My son was not even close to born yet. Yeah, that was like two years away or some year and a half way. So I was laying in bed and I woke up with sleep paralysis, which I had never had sleep paralysis before ever, and it I'm assuming it was sleep paralysis, whatever that is yeah which nobody fucking knows.
Speaker 1:Right Hard to pin down. Yeah, so one of those things that spans almost every culture?
Speaker 2:Yes, and the next thing that happened also is I have heard so many stories like this, which was I was looking up and this is so. I'm going to be looking at Alan to see how he reacts but there was green smoke that was forming over my head. I couldn't move and it formed directly over my face and it was a man's face and I screamed and broke myself out of sleep, paralysis, because I was so. I gasped so loud when I saw it and it the same. It didn't disappear. The same way that it came together, it floated apart.
Speaker 1:That's terrifying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was crazy yeah.
Speaker 1:So you were laying in bed when this happened and you felt stuck before you kind of broke yourself out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it was. It happened, only it took like 10 seconds, and I don't know if it was sleep paralysis, for it was just that. I was like frozen in fear, yeah, but I was awake after. Like, I didn't wake up after I was awake, I covered my head and stayed under the covers until the morning and that was it.
Speaker 1:It was in man's face. You didn't recognize. I assume, Do you still remember what it looks like? So if someday you saw a photo or something you could be like that looks familiar, yeah, yeah, okay, that's like a bang, that's like starting off in ten, starting off with a bang yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then I had, in rapid succession, three more episodes of Sleep Prowl says, and then they completely stopped. Wow, it was so humiliating, yeah. So, and then there were some things happening with Francis simultaneously. Okay, when we first moved into the house it everything was really potent, like it was just very intense, yeah, and it's. It tapered off a lot since then, okay. But the next episode of Sleep Prowl says I was slaying in bed and sideways. This one was less dramatic, but I saw two people standing in the corner of my room, two little boys standing in the corner of my room, two blonde little boys, weirdly enough, just their outlines, and they were inside of my shelves, which was very strange. And I, this time I stared at them, for who knows how time works when you're, like, in a different state of consciousness, but I stared at them for what felt like 10 minutes before they were gone, like a significant amount.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they were like a see-through or opaque.
Speaker 2:They were like black.
Speaker 1:Black. But, you could tell they're blonde. Yeah, yeah. So that's really crazy.
Speaker 2:So the next thing that happened was I had a normal night's sleep and I woke up the next morning and sometime in the afternoon I remembered that someone had been holding my hand in the night and it was such a distinct feeling and I even could remember what position my hand was in and I knew that somebody had been holding my hand All right, that's nice, it felt very friendly yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, so I was like okay, yeah, I don't think it intends to scare me and okay, yeah, but I also was sort of like I don't really appreciate being touched without consent, right, yeah, fair. So like I was like okay, and I told Mark and it was like, oh, that's weird, mark, at that time he had woken up in the middle of the night and sent something in the room. That was his big thing. Yeah Was like he could feel like primal that there was something in the room. So the next time that I had the sleep paralysis this was the final time that it happened and then I started to get really serious about what was going on. I started to really like think about it, yeah, and feel a little more protective.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because at that time I was like very curious, right, yeah, like I was having sleep paralysis a little bit. I was like I felt like I was interacting with something. The next time that the sleep paralysis happened, I, mark, had let me sleep in because I think Francis had been up the night before, so I was let me sleep in. That sound so like patriarchal, but we like alternate, yeah, so sleeping in. So I was sleeping in and I could hear Francis and Mark open my door and I couldn't move. I was like really out. I could hear them open my door.
Speaker 2:I heard my cat come in and like like per around my feet go out, heard them go out, and then I felt somebody grab my ankles and pull me off of my bed, which was the most bizarre thing, right. I could feel like the sheet up against my face. I could hear it. I was really scared. I didn't like know what it was right. And then when I opened my eyes, my eyes were open, right, but I was still at the top of my pillow and I couldn't move. And then it happened again. Something grabbed my ankles and pulled me off the bed oh my God.
Speaker 1:And again, when I opened my eyes, I was back at the top, just like deja vu, like back to back to back to back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it happened three times and I've heard stories like this other people before having something pulling.
Speaker 2:And it felt like I was being pulled out of my body. It was very bizarre. And when I got out of bed so I started to stop and I thought, okay, if I can just get to my phone, because I was totally lucid, I was like, if I can get to my phone, I can text Mark and he can come help me, because I couldn't speak and so I'm laying. I was on my bed like this and I knew in order to get to my phone, I had to be able to move my hand.
Speaker 2:And they say that's how you get out of sleep. Paralysis. You focus on, like, moving your fingers, so that I was very slowly able to move my fingers and then my wrist and then get out of bed. It's fucking crazy.
Speaker 1:I want to pause on that because that's like the first I've heard. So sleep paralysis is very often associated with like crushing or being pulled right in the dropping. But to have it happen three times in a row and like the way you described it as like being pulled out of your body, like I've never heard, that's like such a fascinating way to think about and terrifying way to think. Half astral projection, half.
Speaker 2:So I'm so glad you said that Okay, because I instinctually know that I was being called to astral project and I know that sounds fucking crazy.
Speaker 1:I'm with you.
Speaker 2:I had this somehow, this really intuitive understanding that the sleep paralysis was the first stage in this layered reality and I felt like I am being invited to enter another dimension. That, seriously, is how I felt. It sounds wild. I was like I'm being invited to enter another dimension and I'm being kind of pulled there against my will and I don't really feel good about that and that's why I was like I want to stop this, because if I want to experiment with different layers of consciousness, I want to make sure that I'm doing it on my own terms. I don't want anybody forcing me to. It just feels it feels uninvited. And then I was listening to something that was just like you can get lost in the astral plane, which is again very woo woo, I know, but you can get lost there and there. From what I understand, there's like hundreds of unexplained sleep deaths every year.
Speaker 2:So, I was sort of like I don't really, I'm not really into that and I feel like, whatever this is, it felt like it started really playful and light and it just feels like it's getting more and more forceful. Yeah, and just like rude.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's what I was going to do to dispel this.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And I like talked to some like witchy friends who gave me some good advice which I followed, which was like put flowers in the basement, move the furniture around, play loud music and speak directly to the spirit and tell it to leave.
Speaker 1:Like a shifting of energy. Is that the idea of it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like you know it's, it's deriving power from fear, and so if you can establish that you're not afraid, you just talk to it. So, Mark and I started talking to it every day and telling it to get the fuck out.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Basically get the fuck out of my house, don't, don't touch me, don't try to scare me. And it stopped the sleep paralysis.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:But there was other things that it kind of started to manifest in like different ways.
Speaker 1:I'm going to pause also to just say we are doing this interview outside of the house not just because it's beautiful, but because Grace and her family have a rule where we don't talk about the house in the house. Yeah, yeah it feels important to say right now yeah, yeah, like.
Speaker 2:Mark got locked out the other day. He doesn't has no idea how he got locked out because we have all like turn locks, yeah. And he came in and he was like how the fuck did that happen? And I was like don't talk about it, Just like leave it. You don't give it any.
Speaker 1:Energy.
Speaker 2:And give it any energy, yeah, and he was like why don't you do something with us? Yeah, the same thing I told you about the the rate like I dropped. This did I tell you that the weed washer? Yeah, I dropped the thing and I'm just like all right, it's like it wants attention, Right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I don't know.
Speaker 1:You try not to give it attention, you just don't know what you're, what you're messing with. Yeah, you know, yeah, you don't.
Speaker 2:So like around the same time Francis started that's one that I think around like 18 months probably she started talking about things in the house which I thought was really interesting. She didn't really know, she didn't know anything about. Like when we moved in my dad when she was less than one, my dad maybe said that was Auntie Gloria's house, right, but we didn't regularly talk about Auntie Gloria.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And she started saying that Auntie Gloria was coming to see her at night.
Speaker 1:And Auntie Gloria is the local woman who re-did this house. She lived in the house. She died in Francis' room.
Speaker 2:So she started to say Auntie Gloria's totally. I swear to God, abby, you've known me for like 20 years. Totally unright like. Auntie Gloria came to see me last night. She played with my toys. She told me you need to put your cakes in the oven right when you make the batter. Stop letting them sit out. She told me she wants you to paint the house red again.
Speaker 1:The first time Francis comes to you and says the name Auntie Gloria, what, what did you feel like?
Speaker 2:I was like I looked at Mark, I was like what the fuck? And then I said to Francis, I probed her a little bit the same way you saw me probe her in there, just like oh, is she nice? You know, what does she look like? And just really keep it very. I didn't say anything, like she's not real, because I don't believe that. And if we had talked about her we never said auntie Gloria. So the auntie thing was kind of weird, right. So I pull up her obituary and I didn't say anything to Francis. This was the next day. I just put it in front of Francis and my mouth to God's ears. She pointed to the picture and said hey, it's auntie Gloria. That was like wow. And once we started to give it a little like, once I think she picked up on our reaction she totally backed off of it. Francis did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she was not down to talk about it. And like she didn't, yeah, she started to conflate auntie Gloria with her other imaginary friends, which are obviously imaginary. But of course we come to find out. The house used to be brick red and Gloria had painted it the original color, which was like a very specific shade of red, because in order to have a historic home it has to be certain colors. She had done a lot of research to make sure it was the perfect shade of red. So when they painted the house black, it was like a neighborhood. Everybody in the neighborhood was like are you kidding me?
Speaker 2:After all that Gloria did to make sure the house was the right shade, so that was wild.
Speaker 1:So, francis, out of nowhere, before you even knew that was like Gloria wants you to paint the house back to the red. And then you crabbered it that way. That's wild.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was crazy, that's crazy. And then she would say other stuff that was just straight up little kid, creepy, like she'd be, like the lady with the black eyes came to see me.
Speaker 1:That's terrifying.
Speaker 2:Yep. Or like the lady in the bath comes to see me at night. When mommy comes, she runs away.
Speaker 1:Is she? Does she feel?
Speaker 2:afraid I don't think so. She's never said anything. Well, so the most recent time that she saw something was like less than two months ago and she was scared. That time she told me about it and she was scared. So when we put the obituary in front of Francis and she pointed out the picture of Gloria, it says in the text, lovingly known by everyone in the neighborhood as Auntie Gloria, which we had obviously never, ever said to her before.
Speaker 1:So just another layer of validation.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and that was that something that gave your husband the skeptic a little bit of a pause.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so then, I said to Mark like oh, what do you make of that honey? Right? And he was just kind of like yeah, that's fucking insane, yeah, that's wild. He had no explanation. He was like I guess she sees, auntie Gloria.
Speaker 1:Yeah, something we were just talking about too is like to me, that experience of validating something, like having your daughter come to you say something that you were very easily able to look up, not only by picture, by the Red House painting thing and by the name the specific name, so he validated it in three ways gives power and validity to everything else, even the cake thing to me was bizarre the cake thing.
Speaker 2:Because when Francis said, like Gloria says, you should leave your cakes out, and I was like that's interesting and it's true, I googled it. And it's like, yeah, you're supposed to.
Speaker 1:you don't let them sit in the pans, you should put them in the right way and you've been letting them sit in the pans.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the one thing that gives me pause about that is that I don't know if I personally believe that people communicate after death. So what I was thinking there was this is like maybe you need to be cut out. I don't know, but I was like I think that this is something impersonating Gloria.
Speaker 2:I don't see any reason why she would still be here. I just don't see any reason. She's got no unfinished business, she's not. What purpose would she have here? So that to me I was sort of like Francis if you see something, you command your space, like you tell something that you don't want to be touched, or if you don't want to talk to somebody, you can tell them that. Because I felt a little like, well, that's a school of thought, right, like in the paranormal world is that ghosts human ghosts are not real. It's like fucking demons.
Speaker 1:And shit that are tricking you.
Speaker 2:And I felt tricked when it started really friendly and then it felt like there was something else that was underneath, that, that was not as friendly.
Speaker 1:So I don't know. Yeah, I mean it makes sense. It also makes sense too, because you and Mark were very clearly like no leave, and then there's a tactic shift right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so true. It was very weird. So I started to hear whistling, which was weird and I would hear it. I wouldn't just hear it at the house, I would hear it everywhere. Like I would go for a remote hike and I'd hear whistling and be like what? And it seems so innocuous, Like it seems like, oh, it was a bird. It was definitely not a bird. I know it seems like a small detail, no, it doesn't. But I've learned since that this is a very common thing that people experience is hearing whistling and that it's an old native, like an old wives tale dating back to Native Americans, that you should never whistle by yourself.
Speaker 1:Which is funny, because when we were setting up here, I started whistling and you were like don't whistle. And I had never heard of it before. I whistle all the time.
Speaker 2:Now, I know I guess it's supposed to be some kind of an invitation. Maybe you should fact check that. But that's what I understand.
Speaker 1:And when you heard whistling, was it a similar tune, or was it always different, or?
Speaker 2:was it just a really meandering whistling? Yeah yeah, just like a meandering tune, and yeah, and then things at the house. I think that things at the house sort of slowed down at that time for a little while, like maybe for like six months. Things were very low key Once I started doing all my rituals.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, Frances stopped saying that people were seeing her. She may have said like one or two other little things, but like nothing huge. And then something happened, Like things started to pick back up and I think that this is the next thing that there was the flies in the bathroom, which was really weird. So there was a swarm which at the time I didn't think about. I was like this is fucking disgusting, Like what is it? We have like an infestation. But then I thought about it afterward and I was like oh, that's something that people talk about.
Speaker 1:How many flies was this? Thousands, thousands of flies, thousands Like.
Speaker 2:I took bleach in the bathroom and sprayed everything and then I put stuff in the drains and I tried to seal everything up. It was the weirdest thing. And just in one room, one room, just in the bathroom, and I walked in and I was like holy shit, like I got mark. I'm like what if we have a fucking fly problem now? Like what is this? Yeah, they say people who are possessed by demons are followed by flies. So then sometime around, like August, william still was not four at night, I was newly pregnant with William and we were all sitting in my living room. I was in the kitchen and my husband and my daughter were in the living room and they were playing rough housing and I heard Mark growl really, really loud at.
Speaker 2:Francis. And then I heard Francis say what was that? And I said that was Daddy. And then just kept doing the dishes. And then I heard it again, really, really loud, in the middle of the room. And Francis said what was that? And Mark said that was Mom. And I turned around and I said you're fucking with me, right? That was you. And he said, and then we looked at each other, we kind of had this realization at the same time that there was a disembodied growl in the middle of the living room because it was so obviously in the room and it was so fucking loud and so human that we were like that, we were both fussing out if we were joking right and you have your two kids watching or your Francis watching you.
Speaker 2:Francis then completely burst out crying and she's like what was that noise? What was that noise? And then Mark was like he was just trying to calm her down. So he was like it was just the grill, like something wrong with the grill, everything's fine, right. And she's adamant that was not the grill, daddy. Like that was not the grill, there's no way. That was the grill. And at this point she's only 18 months old. So yeah, she was only 18 months, which is crazy because she was talking so much at that time, which William was not like that he took forever to talk. So we were really freaked out by that. But we just did our whatever, like stop talk to it, stop go away. And then the weird tie up to that story was Halloween. So on Halloween we went trick or treating I don't say grocery shopping.
Speaker 1:We went trick or treating Halloween grocery shopping.
Speaker 2:We went trick or treating. We go to this place that has this incredible. They go all out, right, they have all the statues and all the decorations and we walk past this statue. I'm not making any noise and it's got this long, it's all creepy, right. And Francis goes. That's the grill, Daddy, it's the grill. Mark was with me at the time when we were just like I'm like Mark, explain, Explain. How is she making this connection? Nobody is telling her to say this stuff and it didn't growl.
Speaker 1:It was just visually. She was like Visually she was connecting that. That's the thing that made the noise. Yes, look, that's the grill.
Speaker 2:It was so weird.
Speaker 1:Do you ask her about it? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that at that I don't know what we said about to her at that time. I think we pretty much kept up like the like we would gently probe, like do you see anything? Like whatever. But we pretty much would tell her how to protect herself. Like I would tell her count your friends, If you are feeling scared, you can count your friends, you can always call for me, or whatever. Nothing can touch you, Nothing can hurt you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty. Yeah, it was funny.
Speaker 1:That gave me like a shock.
Speaker 2:It was, yeah, it was really really wild and then. So this was kind of wild. This was another night that Mark was traveling. How convenient for me, right?
Speaker 1:But he's just knowing that it was him that's for him.
Speaker 2:So Francis was with me and we were sitting at the table. She this was around that same time. It was that fall that the same thing with the grill happened, and we were sitting and we used to play this game where like to get her to eat yeah, Because I don't do anything that I should, I guess, promote healthy eating. I would just bribe her by blowing out a candle every time she took a bite. Ok, so I had like a candle out, brother.
Speaker 1:I had five candles on it.
Speaker 2:And I'd light all five candles and every time she took a bite blowing out and she loved it, right. And so I was sitting there feeding her and we were on the last candle and she took a bite. I turned, blew the candle out and I turned back to Francis and I gave her another bite and then I looked back and the candle was lit again and I was like that's weird. Maybe I didn't blow it out right. So I blew it out again and I watched it go out and relight itself. It was wild.
Speaker 1:And eventually you just blew it out and it stopped eventually, obviously, yeah it stopped.
Speaker 2:That was the last time and I tried to do it right. I tried to recreate it, I tried to hypothesize and put on my fucking goggles and test it or whatever I'm like, test it and try to get it. I could not get it.
Speaker 2:I could not get it to do it again. So I looked it up and I learned that it does happen. If the smoke is hot enough, it can travel back down and it can relight the candle. So maybe there's a logical explanation for that one. Alan, I'll give you that. But I again tried to recreate it so many times. I put the wind in different directions, I lit it in different places. I challenge you to try to do it Twice in a row. It happened, yeah, yeah, especially here.
Speaker 1:And the stairs. Tell me about the stairs.
Speaker 2:So this is the most recent thing.
Speaker 1:And how long ago are we talking?
Speaker 2:Like two months probably.
Speaker 1:Are you nervous about us doing this now that it's going to?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think so. Yeah, yeah, right, so yeah, great. The first thing was the shushing that happened. That kind of started it again. So Willie woke up really early one morning. And yeah, he woke up at like five. We went downstairs together and he was just being rowdy, Like he was just being crazy yelling, screaming and it was so early and I don't want to do it because it makes me look ridiculous. But somebody shushed us like soup, just really really loud in our ear out of nowhere, Right in my ear.
Speaker 1:Shhh, it was really strange, that's actually something, so we stayed at a few different haunted hotels and that's like a recurring theme in haunted like. There's one, the Algonquin Hotel in New York, which is a really interesting, cool historic hotel. But one of the things is that they believe the ghost of Dorothy Parker, for whatever reason, is there, because she spent a lot of her time there, and that whenever there's like big groups of kids, they always report hearing the shushing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that mean yeah. So I was sort of just like hey, like message received but keep it down, Not really your business but I agree, I happen to agree at that time.
Speaker 2:But so then a couple weeks after that I had a friend come stay. I had like a party and my friend Allison came to stay. And whenever people stay at the house I just give them, I prep them. Not that you're gonna experience anything, you're probably not but if you wake up feeling scared, just do a quick visualization of like a ball of light surrounding you and you're gonna find like a immediate piece. You'll be fine If you just do that and maybe say a quick incantation like a little love and light and you'll be fine.
Speaker 1:So I told her that Good advice.
Speaker 2:I told her that before she slept at the house with her husband, and I didn't give her that much detail about why. I just told her it's haunted.
Speaker 2:So just to say a little something. And she woke up the next morning and she said something was running up and down the stairs all night. And I said, okay, well, I didn't tell you this when you first said you were gonna stay, but, like two weeks earlier, Francis had said that she, she had woken up in the night. And I said why did you wake up last night? And she said, oh, I woke up and the way her bed is positioned, she could like sit up and see the stairs to our room. She said I woke up and I looked at the stairs and the light was on and there was a man standing at the stairs and he had no shirt on and he was looking up at your room and it was really scary, yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, okay, and it was all very intense and again, the thing with the friend coming in, it's like another person who's experiencing it and reporting back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the biggest maybe not a theory, but like a takeaway I have is like there's like layers of energy at this house and it just it's one of it. Does it really does feel like it's just one of those places that's thinner.
Speaker 1:Right, you know I've had that experience in a few places, but there's, I go to a lot of cemeteries, yeah, and there's one particular cemetery in Stratford where, weirdly, I have family Like my earliest ancestor that migrated here is buried the earliest Beardsley, and there's something about that cemetery where I have that feeling.
Speaker 1:Like not in any other one, but there it's just like something is thinner, there's like some excess energy that I can feel, that I can't feel in other places and I don't think I have like you know, like I'm not a medium or a clairvoyant but, it's just like it's obvious you know. It's clear that I'm seeing it.
Speaker 2:And I think I felt that way when I first walked into this. Actually I didn't even think about this, but the first time that when I came to see the house I said to the realtor I said it feels like a religious place here Because something about the way the light was like shining through the windows it felt like a cathedral. I was like it just feels really like I don't know. Feels like really.
Speaker 1:And it sounds like it was and it was yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is really strange.
Speaker 1:so what are your thoughts on like you're staying? You don't have plans to leave Mm-hmm and you're just dealing with it as it comes. Is that sort of your philosophy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, nothing about it feels. It actually feels like we were saying earlier.
Speaker 2:It feels really like it's given me like a sense of like infinity and like really it gives me a lot of comfort weirdly enough, because I don't think that I truly believed that death isn't the end which I don't who knows really what does that even mean but it does feel like, oh, if there's so much more that we don't see, and I feel like there's proof of that here and that's comforting to me, yeah yeah, I feel the same way and I think that's why, when you have movements like the spiritualism movement right after the Civil War, in some ways people are looking for that validation.
Speaker 1:And it's like can be a thin line when people are looking for it versus when it falls into your lap.
Speaker 2:And that's when it's powerful, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah Well, thank you for talking to us and bringing us into your home and inviting us to look at it and learn about it. It's my pleasure. Do you feel like anything has ever followed you outside of the house?
Speaker 2:I felt like the whistling kind of? Yeah, that was really the only thing, otherwise it's no.
Speaker 1:I think I feel that way. Yeah, it feels contained.
Speaker 2:No, but when I've talked with other people about, I have this friend, Ian, who's so skeptical, and right after the green smoke thing happened, I was in DC staying with him and I was telling him about it and he was like bullshit, whatever.
Speaker 2:And then I was like, well, have you ever seen a ghost before, ian? And he was like, yeah, I have. And I was like, but it looked like he was like it's fucking green smoke bitch. It was the same thing that you saw. He was so mad I was like telling you this is like as much as you could say. It's like you know, it's like a psychotic episode or whatever it is. Even if it's a collective unconscious, like at some sort of energy level that we're all drawing from, it's still evidence that there's more than what we understand consciously.
Speaker 2:For me, I don't know, it felt like it came. It all makes sense to me in my head. Like I feel like I understand more, like what the layers of consciousness are and then how to access those layers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 2:Like even they say okay. The way that I think about it is like well, you have wakefulness and you have sleeping, dreaming, lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis, astral projection, remote viewing, like it, it layer, you know, I don't know. That's how I feel about it.
Speaker 1:So one thing I want to tell you we have an episode where we it's not my story to share, but I'm going to share it with you An episode of the Lunatics Radio, our podcast, our podcast, fairly recent, where we interview Lindsay Brisbein of the Chilling Podcast.
Speaker 1:So, her podcast is like this 13 part series where she claims she lived in the most haunted house in America. It's like in Kent, ohio. Okay, and the thing I want to say is because she told a story to us on the podcast about how her and her friends it was like I think they lived there like during college, right. So her and her friends are on the couch, they're watching Amityville Horror, some kind of movie, horror movie and in the outside there was like a deck, in like a sliding glass door they could see green smoke coming up and it like came up and like went around the house and they all just fled and like her story goes on and that like there's a lot of experiences and energy attracts like energy.
Speaker 2:So I've stopped consuming true crime completely, which you know I love true crime. I'll listen to last podcast when it's like history related or when it's like paranormal related, but if it's violent in any way or if there's that darkness to it, I thought for a while I should give it up, because, just like ethically, I felt like I should give it up. But I then it changed for me and I realized like all right, I'm inviting this into my energy and I'm like one of those energy level people Like I really believe that shit and what you put out there you attract. So if you're watching Amityville Horror, I've stopped. I don't watch slash removes anymore. I used to fucking love them, like Halloween and Friday the 13th, that was my shit. Like I absolutely loved it and I just I don't consume it at all anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that makes sense.
Speaker 2:And it makes sense that she would. Yeah, the green smoke thing. It's fucking weird and I've heard other like theories about, you know, like history being a hologram you know, like it's all in the atmosphere around us and when the light hits it a certain way, you can see it, and sometimes I believe that too right, like if it's a certain time, you're just seeing what was there.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Yeah, like an echo or an imprint, yeah, and we also talked about this a little bit before but I truly believe and I've said this a hundred times on the podcast but like the idea that how would you explain physics to a cockroach? Yeah, so how do we expect to understand things that are just so?
Speaker 2:far beyond.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it which again gives, I think gives us hope and is exciting and like yeah, yeah but I also don't expect that, despite the fact that we're interviewing you, know that we want to like understand people's stories, that we're just accepting them as your stories and then we don't need to like categorize it in a certain way or give any sort of like you know ruling on it right. It's your story, you know. So thank you yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just one more thought on that. Yeah, cuz you made me think of this. Like, I Think everybody has had an experience, even if it's not like this. Like if you've ever had a dream when you've known intuitively that the person you were talking to was not Like if you've ever been visited by a loved one yeah, dream, yeah, sometimes I don't know if you ever.
Speaker 2:This is a wrap, it's happened to me before.
Speaker 2:My cousin died.
Speaker 2:My cousin took his life a couple years ago and I he visits me in my dreams, like, and when I look at him, I'm like You're not in my subconscious, yeah, you are real, like you're. You're in this other Right world, this other plane that I'm accessing here, in this different level of consciousness, and I really think that If you I don't know, it's like that this is like a religious thing and I'm not religious, but they, like you, know that the way that you see yourself, or the potential you see, yeah, in yourself, god sees a completely different level of potential and I do kind of believe that, like, just like human potential, it's not about technology or it's about spirituality and it's about consciousness and Finding ways to access deeper levels of consciousness. Finding ways to access, even if you, even if you have access to your intuition yeah, that's a level of consciousness that you have to cultivate, and then you have to practice, and you may not have had an experience with Ghosts, but you've had an experience where, like you, intuitively knew something right or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:It's like the thing where, like, people can say every day, trust your gut, and it's not, no one questions it, right for the second. Someone's like oh, but maybe I saw this. It's like oh, that's you're crazy. Yeah, but just the idea of trusting your gut it's like a little bit like ethereal.
Speaker 2:It's like a little bit it is you know, yeah, yeah yeah, it's like the first, the first layer of clairvoyance. Or like you know, being a psychic is just being able to trust your intuition totally.
Speaker 2:Yeah and there's this great story. I'll give you a copy of the book because I have it. I always have an extra copy to give Called women who run with the wolves. Oh, yeah, you know it. Yeah, okay, so you know the story of baba, baba yaga. Yeah, with the little intuition doll, right, like you have to feed it, yeah, in order for it to grow and strength, and that's that's what I feel like that's true for, like your levels of consciousness, you have to, you have to feed it.
Speaker 1:You can't right. Yeah, you have to, if you yeah.
Speaker 2:And how limiting to be like we don't. This is this. Is it how boring?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd much rather choose to live in a world where I'm open to more things? Yeah, then, where I'm closed off to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, cool grace.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for generously welcoming us into your home, for telling us these stories. They are Making me think about things in a new way, so I appreciate that and, as always, thank you guys so much for watching. If you want more haunted history, you can listen to the lunatics radio, our podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time, bye.