Smoky Quartz Usage and Ritual, Apparitions and Paranormal Occurences at Crooked Cottage, Tarot

Season 3, Episode 5: Smoky Quartz, Paranormal Experiences at Crooked Cottage, and Your Weekly Tarot Pull

In this enlightening episode of Intentional Spiritual Living with Brian, we dive into the mystical and the mysterious. First, Brian explores the powerful properties of Smoky Quartz, offering insights into its uses for grounding and protection, along with a step-by-step ritual you can incorporate into your spiritual practice.

Next, we venture into the eerie and intriguing world of Crooked Cottage, where recent paranormal occurrences have sparked curiosity and conversation. Brian shares firsthand accounts of apparitions and unexplained phenomena that he has experienced at this historic location.

Finally, don’t miss the 3-Card Tarot Pull for the Week—a powerful reading to guide you through the days ahead with wisdom and clarity.

Whether you're looking to deepen your spiritual practice or simply curious about the unknown, this episode has something for everyone. Tune in, and let's journey together into the realms of spirit and mystery.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:15

Music, hello and welcome to intentional, spiritual living with Brian. This is season three, Episode Five. Today, we're going to cover some fun stuff. So I'm gonna go a little bit more in depth on Smoky Quartz as far as building our crystal toolkit, and that is simply because I'm a huge fan one of the crystals that I use the most, and I can't wait to talk about it with you in a previous episode in Season One, I talked about using a combination of smoky quartz and rainbow fluoride, and we're going to expand upon the usages of this lovely, lovely stone. In part two, we're going to expand upon our Paranormal Activity discussion from last week. We kind of did a little bit of discussion about my life and things that have happened early in my life, that are spiritual and paranormal and unexplainable. And today, we're going to talk about all the stuff that has happened at our crooked cottage Escape Rooms building that we own at 112 South Sandusky Street in Delaware, Ohio. There's been all kinds of cool and creepy and weird stuff that's happened over there. And I know if you love paranormal, you're going to love to hear about these discussions. And then finally, part three, we're gonna pull a three card Tarot Spread, like we have done in previous episodes, and find out what the universe and Mother Earth wants us to know for the weeks ahead. So with no further ado, we've got a lot to cover. I am going to get started right now. All right, let's get right into it, friends, we are halfway through season three. I can't believe this is the halfway point. Time has been flying lately, as I know it has been for all of you. It's been fun going through and picking out these crystals that I know and love and keep in my toolkit. And today is probably going to be in my top two or three to talk about during this season, and that is Smoky Quartz. I'm actually holding a large Smoky Quartz palm stone that is near and dear to my heart that I've had forever, that is stupidly clear from Brazil. You can actually read newspaper through it. It's just a beautiful piece. But I really want to talk about Smoky Quartz and why I love it so much, and then I'll touch on a little bit of a combination. I talked about it in a previous episode that I will reference for you, and I will talk about a little ritual you can do with it. So let's get right to it. Why do I love Smoky Quartz so much? Well, as we know Smoky Quartz so we know that clear quartz is the master crystal that amplifies everything and holds everything. It's where we start, and it's what we started with on this podcast, all the way up through different types of quartzs, natural Citrine, natural Smoky Quartz, Rose Quartz, and the list goes on, Gara cell quartz is another good one from Madagascar. But Smoky Quartz really has a special place in my heart. I think we need to talk a little bit about how Smoky Quartz is formed quickly. This is not a geology podcast, obviously, but I like to know things, and I know you do too. And so Smoky Quartz is quartz is a rule. Something interesting about quartz, actually, to before I talk about the radiation. That makes it an interesting factoid about the mineral quartz. So clear quartz, there is no mining typically of clear quartz to get clear quartz out of the earth. For the sake of clear quartz. It's a secondary mineral, even though it's a master crystal. Metaphysically, people are usually cutting through layers and layers of quartz to get to something else, whether it be like a black Tourmaline that's hosted on there anything that's hosted because a lot of these semi precious and precious stones are surrounded by quartz. The only quartz that I'm aware of that is mined simply for the quartz is gears all quartz out of Madagascar. And gears all quartz is an interesting one too. I should talk about that in a future season. It's kind of a slightly pink. It's not like Rose Quartz. It's kind of like the lightest color, pink, with a little bit of milky translucence to it. Garrison quartz, and that is mined out of Madagascar to get gara Sal quartz out of the earth. But typically, when you mine, when you're getting quartz and pulling it out of the earth, it's to get to something else. So just something really interesting for you to know. But what is so special about Smoky Quartz? So a lot of these minerals, you know, people often ask, you know, are these ethically sourced? And the answer is, as best we can, you know. Um, it's a dangerous job to get this stuff out of the earth. And a lot of the material, the quartz material, is surrounded with radiation and the Earth's crust. And so that irradiation of the quartz is what brings about the smoky color, because it modifies, and I'm not a scientist here, but it modifies a molecular structure and allows different wavelengths of light to get in, which makes the Smoky Quartz its color that it is. And Smoky Quartz, depending on how much radiation it's been around in heat in the earth, determines the color of the Smoky Quartz. Smoky Quartz can be the lightest gray all the way to nearly opaque black, and anything in between. I find the most valuable ones in my shop, the most valuable specimens of Smoky Quartz are actually kind of the lighter colors that are gray that you can still see through. And so that's a little bit about Smoky Quartz and the geology of it. But why do I love it so much? Metaphysically So, if we view radiation as a negative thing, it's a scary thing. When we hear radiation, we think of nuclear bombs and cancer treatments and all those things. It's not something we really want to be around, right? And so the Smoky Quartz is absorbing that radiation to get its color and changing the wavelengths of light to get its color. And so it's an absorber of and a catalyst of negative, negative energy, if you will, and its metaphysical usage is simply to absorb, not nullify and reflect back, but absorb the negative energy, which is a little different than the go to protective stones of Black Tourmaline and black obsidian, which nine out of 10 People when you talk about metaphysical usage, somebody comes in the store, they're looking for a pile of Black Tourmaline to put in the corners of their house, or black obsidian to fend off entities and protect and reflect back, that type of thing, which is wonderful, and I support all that. But I what I love about smokey is that I'm not followed around by entities and chased by entities, and I'm not worried about that as much, but negative energy I worry about constantly. People can inflict it upon you. People can wish it upon you. I'm not saying it's Hexing, per se, but there is a lot to be said for wishing ill with another human being, if you will. And that is where Smoky Quartz shines over black Tourmaline for certain intended uses. And so let me explain a little deeper. So if I wanted to keep an entity out of my house, for instance, if I wanted to protect my house and repel negative energy away so that it could never get in here, I would use black Tourmaline. I would put it in the corners of a room, that type of thing. And I will have a section on Black Tourmaline, and it's very similar to black obsidian, if not exactly the same. Those are the two go tos for repelling and protecting from bad if you will. And when I say bad things getting in, Smoky Quartz is like a sponge. It's like one of those air fresheners that you can put in a room that absorbs the odors. It doesn't smell like anything. It really doesn't do anything. It just absorbs it. And that's what Smoky Quartz does. And so if you feel like somebody is wishing you ill will to the point where it's starting to work for them, you feel like you might have been hexed. You might have been cursed if you believe in that type of thing. Smoky Quartz is your friend, because what it does it is absorbs that and what's so powerful about the absorption versus repelling it, in my opinion, you're never not going to have negativity around you're never going to have ill will. You're never not going to have negativity around you. I apologize. You're never not going to have ill will bestowed upon you from another human being. It's just how people are. When people get ahead, when people get something that another person wants, that's when it starts. And some people take it too far and they they wish ill on you. I've seen it happen many times, and Smoky Quartz is a great way to deal with that situation, because it's absorbing. Now you may ask if it's absorbing all this negative energy. I'm holding a piece right now that I've had for multiple decades in my hand. If I'm to think that this palm stone, which is probably two inches tall by two inches wide and maybe an inch in depth, if I've had it for, let's say, 20 years, what's keeping it, what's keeping it cleansed, and all that kind of thing. And we'll get into that on another episode of cleansing. I But it's going to be a really quick section for me. So those are all kinds of elaborate things people tell you know, on the night of a full moon, put it in your window sill, if it's a if it doesn't end in it, for instance, you could soak it in water with some natural salt, that type of thing. You could set it near Selenite. I don't really do any of that. I do. I have a Selenite charging plate that I will use to clear out things if I'm in a hurry and I'm being lazy. But really, what I do is another ritual after I've. Gotten what I want, or from time to time, and I will just ask the universe to cleanse my piece of Smoky Quartz of any negative to negativity that it is absorbed for my good use moving forward, something like that. And we will have an entire podcast section on that. But it doesn't have to be a ceremonial as you may read about. So that's just a little background on smoky course and why it's such a powerful, powerful tool to have in your toolkit. Because, simply put, you're always going to be surrounded by negative people and negative energy, and there's always going to be people that wish ill of you. It cannot be avoided, and so keeping a piece with you, especially in times when you're feeling a psychic attack, there's nothing better. Now I told you that I was going to do a ritual I want to talk about real quick, another uh, combination that I talked about in a previous episode of this podcast, and that is the combination of rainbow fluorite and smoky quartz and brain fog. If you head back to season two of this podcast and listen to episode two, I did a whole section on clearing brain fog with the combination of rainbow fluorite and Smoky Quartz, and it's pretty cool stuff. It's something that I continually use in my life. Not everybody suffers from brain fog the way I do, but some days I just can't get it together early enough in the day. It always comes around, but like, I need to hit the ground running at eight in the morning or something. And this is a power combo. So season two, episode two, if you want to hear all about that, but I have designed a really basic ritual for just Smoky Quartz for this episode that I think you're gonna love. And really all you need is a quiet space one white chime candle. We've talked about chime candles in the past, but for anyone new, it's those three to four inch tall, very skinny spell candles, or chime candles that come in multiple colors, and you want a white one for this, and a holder for it, and your personal piece of Smoky Quartz. And again, if you're building your toolkit, we're starting with the basics and coming up through all 10 episodes of this season, I highly, highly recommend to get yourself your own personal piece of Smoky Quartz that will be with you for the rest of your life. It's not just something to use for a short time. This is an important, important crystal. So once you've gathered your two materials, which are just Smoky Quartz and white candle, let's get started. So first things first, you need us to get in your quiet space. This is a ritual to do just with yourself. This wouldn't be a group ritual. So find a time of day and a place during the time of day that you can be alone and just sit Indian style on the floor and hold your Smoky Quartz. And as you're holding the Smoky Quartz, imagine it absorbing all the negativity that you're feeling currently and the era that you're living in that is surrounding you, and why I pointed that out the era that you're living in. You know, these things are fleeting, and they change. And we might feel attacked by our peers in a job setting for two weeks, and that dissipates. But at the current time, you know, we we get this is getting to know your crystal toolkit and stuff, and so these are things you're going to be visiting. But right now, what imagine it absorbing all of the negativity that is surrounding you. And just do that for two minutes. If you have five minutes, do it and and use your third eye, your intuition, your entire chakra system, and just feel all that negativity around you, coming into the into your Snooky courts, okay? And once you've done that, then light your white candle. Breathe and breathe deeply. Imagine roots are growing from your feet, and they're going all the way down deep into the earth. Now, as you're holding your Smoky Quartz, you've got those roots that are coming from your feet. You are right now connected to the earth, and you're holding your Smoky Quartz. And we're trying to alleviate negative energy and negativity that are surrounding us currently. And so I want you to pull all that negativity in that you're visualizing and you're thinking about that's upsetting you into that smoky quartz and pull it through your arm, all the way down through your torso, through your heart chakra, your root chakra, all the way down through your feet, and send it back into Mother Earth fast and furiously. Let it flow through you. Feel it. Because this, if you don't acknowledge this stuff, you can't just swish it away. So feel that negativity. Feel it enter into your Smoky Quartz, feel that energy come through your body, that negativity that's been plaguing you, and shove it down into those roots, into the earth. Because what the Earth does is neutralize that it doesn't make any difference to the earth. Negative energy to the earth, Mother Earth and Gaia, they can completely. Completely neutralize this. And I want you to say the following mantra, after you have released all of that energy. And sometimes, for me, that can take 20 minutes, because I have a lot of things going through my head that are and I think that things aren't plaguing me, but when I sit down and focus my energy and intention on this, I find out that I have a lot to release. And so I want you to say the following, I release all negative energy to the earth. I release all stress. I am grounded to Gaia and well protected. So mode it be. Let me say that one more time, I release all negative energy to the earth. I release all stress. I am grounded to Gaia and well protected so mode it be, and just meditate with your candle until it's done. Burning a chime candle lasts between 20 and 3040, minutes tops, and you should be well into that now. Once that's done, the ritual is done, and you have cleansed yourself and your life of the negativity that's been plaguing you, and you've done that with Smoky Quartz. It's a very, very powerful practice, and I'm so excited for each of, every one of you to try it. All right, let's talk more about paranormal. We had a discussion last week, a lengthy discussion about all the paranormal stuff I've had in my life, in my younger life, but I want to talk about the current times and something that's been happening a lot recently. This is fun stuff for me, I love paranormal studies, as we find our niche in the craft. You know, I'm a 35 year I keep saying 35 years because I don't want to admit how old I am. It's actually coming closer to 40 years of tarot reading, and that's kind of my specialty. And crystals, runes are not my thing. I like them. I don't know how to read them. Well, that type of thing and paranormal stuff has always been fascinating, fascinating to me. And recently it's just blown the door open in my life from some things that have been happening. And so I want to share them with you guys, just for pondering and fun campfire stories, if you will. But I will tell you right off the bat, come into the store and talk to me. Come into the store and talk to Lori. We've both experienced everything I'm about to tell you here, and I'll explain to you why Lori and I, and my partner and I have experienced them so paranormal activity. So in September of 2019 we opened ravens cauldron, as you know, and it was at 110 South Sandusky street, and I mentioned 112 South Sandusky Street. It's the same building, two different addresses, two different front entrances. And so we were there up until this time of last year, and then we moved to historic downtown Delaware because we had ran out of product space and our little kooky Victorian house that we were running out of and we couldn't expand, and we had a thriving three room escape room business upstairs that we were running. Because when I bought this building, we were running ravens Calder downstairs, and the upstairs was just sitting there, and I that drives me crazy. I wanted to use it. And so I decided I wanted to build escape rooms up there, because I don't particularly like strip mall escape rooms. I mean, there's some wonderful ones, but when they're sandwiched in between a Chipotle and a GNC, it loses the vibe for me. And so we have a authentic Victorian house with a beautiful carved wood bridal staircase and a storied history. It's turned over. It's been apartments, lots of people living there and stuff, and it's authentic. So enough about that. So I bought the building. We were running the escape rooms upstairs, running ravens cauldron downstairs. The first week of August of last year, we moved to downtown Delaware in an effort to grow our business of Raven's cauldron, but also to expand our escape rooms downstairs. We have now opened another escape room downstairs. It's called Crabtree Manor, death and greed. It's a huge escape room with a bona fide, real casket in it, very difficult. Little kitchen area, several rooms, really fun. So why did I tell you all this, and why we talk about this building? So this building, for lack of a better term, is crazily haunted. And I mean crazily haunted. I'm taking a drink of coffee. I apologize. One quick second. And when I say crazily haunted, I don't mean scary. I just mean stuff happens all the time. And so I had mentioned that my employee, Lori, she's also one of my really good friends. We go over there. We love this stuff, and we have sat for hours at night, at one in the morning, and all the rooms of this building, and we know all about it, and so I want to just kind of talk to you about the things that have happened. So here goes. I mentioned that the building has a storied past, and when I say it has a storied past, it has been so many different businesses, and it has been cut up into apartments at. One point when I actually rented the building. I rented the building for a year before I bought it, and I just had the little half of the downstairs area. And then there was a computer repair company upstairs. And then the back of the building, where we have two different escape rooms upstairs and down was two apartments, very small apartments, but a gentleman lives upstairs, and a lady lived downstairs. This was all when I when I rented the place, and then I bought the place and got those people out so that I could make it what I wanted. But my point in telling you that when we were there, it's been so many things. There's been so much energy and so many human beings living there. I mean, there was a backyard put in the back, and people would have parties out there. It's been insurance agencies, a real estate agency, a hiring agency, and these are just the things I know. I don't know what else it's been. I've been to The Delaware Historical Society. I've not been able to find anything, but I'm still working on it. One really cool thing that we found in the building was an electric bill for one of the apartments upstairs, and it was from 1972 we have it in a frame in the escape room, and it was for $7 for the month. Pretty interesting stuff. So I was born in 1972 so who knows what all this If These Walls Could Talk type of thing. So what have we had happen there? So all the while, while we were running, ravens called and we had little things happen. And when I say little, I mean things that got your attention, but who knows what it would be. One thing that sticks out was Barbara Wagner, who is a dear friend of mine, and is also a very talented psychic medium, would come over and we always saw a shadow figure running from what was my Tarot room under a bookshelf into my Tarot room, that was one thing we would hear, a snake type hissing sound. Lori and I several times downstairs, lights would flicker and turn on and off, but nothing really concrete. You know, the stuff that's like you could I always look for paranormal stuff as a way to explain something that's misunderstood, and I always try to look for the scientific explanation. And so those were no big deal. But then once we started doing construction on the escape room upstairs, and what that entailed was running 1000s of feet of Ethernet cable, putting new ceiling tiles and putting new doors and moving things around. And when we started disturbing the building, it looks nothing like it did when we bought it, is when the fun started happening. And so my contractor one time lost a tool belt that had hammers and screwdrivers and everything in it, and it was really irritating to him, and come to find out, it was above a ceiling tile in a room that he wasn't working in that started, lights would be turned on and off, computers would be rebooting all kinds of again, small stuff, until recently. So let me fast forward and cut to the chase on what's been happening recently. So I've talked about this in another episode this season, but Lori and I do a lot of witchy things over there. I do major, huge crystal grids. I charge my skulls. One of my specialties is crystal skulls. If you join my email list, you can read all about it. I'm a huge believer in the power of a crystal skull. I believe that it is a vehicle of a human being's essence, if you will, a human being's mind. The most important thing you know, we're not known for our livers, we're not known for our stomachs, We're known for our personalities, and that's all contained in your head. And so when you have a crystal skull, that's representative of that, and they're very, very powerful, and I am very razor focused on charging them with particular energies. And so we do some of these over at the escape room. We're building a escape room right now called Joyce's dollhouse, but it will not be done until probably early next year. And so we use the back room at the dollhouse to do this massive crystal grids with hundreds of crystals and very nice crystal skulls, and we honor the gods and goddesses. Usually, we will start something with on the south, and that is a Earth, the gods and goddesses of the earth based south, and then we move to the west, and that's water, and we take that water to nourish the earth. And then we move to the north, and that's the gods and goddesses of fire, and we use that fire to warm the water, to nourish the earth. And finally, of the East, it's the gods and goddesses of air, and that air, oxygen gives us oxygen and able to to breathe life into that fire, to keep it going, to warm the water, to nourish the earth, type of thing. So I'm very much an Elementalist. When it comes to witchcraft, I like directions and elements, and so we do that, amongst a lot of other things that we call these gods and goddesses, and to build up energy into these skulls and these crystals to manifest whatever we're trying to manifest. So I'll leave it at that. And so these. Things that I'm talking about here, they happen at usually 10 o'clock at night, and they go from 10 to 12, and we will walk in a particular circle and charge these crystals, and this is when the fun happens. So the first thing I want to tell you about happened about two months ago, lawyer and I were doing that said ritual, and I was, I was on the north the fire, and I was charging a Sardonyx skull. Sardonyx is a banded type of Carnelian with a deeper red and more banding in it. It's all about vitality and fire and getting things done. And so I might have said something like, gods and goddesses of the of the North invoke passion into this skull, ultimately to invoke passion into me so I can grow X, Y and Z, something to that effect. And I was in the middle of that statement. Now let me back up a little bit to get to this room I'm talking about, you have to go through three doors. You go through one regular door and then you go through an old, creaky Victorian door that's been there for over 125 years. Go through a little room and then go through another creaky Victorian door. All those doors were sealed shut. When we go in these rooms, we locked the energy in the room to charge these skulls, and so those doors were sealed shut, pulled they cannot be they're not loose doors. It can just open on their own. So again, I was at the gods and goddesses of the North charging my Sardonyx. I was saying my mantra, and in the middle of it, the door was kicked in. Now, friends, I don't get scared of much. I'm not scared of anyone or thing. Really, I screamed so loud. Laurie screamed so loud. We thought we were done. Then we started thinking about it, laughing at the Santa. We're in the in, I should mention to you, when we're in this room, and we're doing this stuff, it is sensory deprivation. There is no light whatsoever. The windows in the entire escape room building are boarded up from the inside with plywood and painted black because you need that. You need no you need complete isolation when you're in an escape room and complete escapism. And so that's already been done in this room, and so it was so black. Imagine being in a room with your eyes closed as tightly as you can that's as much as we could see. Imagine standing there and then having a door kicked open, and not only friends was the door kicked open, but you could feel the presence of somebody in the room. And that's when we were screaming. I think I screamed twice, and Lori screamed twice, and it was so frightening. We composed ourself after the scream. Nobody was grabbing us, nobody was throwing anything. So we were we couldn't see anything. But we're like, well, there's no one in here, obviously. And we felt our way through the room to get out. The door was never open. We opened the door to that room, the next door. I'm like, well, maybe it was the next door. Long story short, none of the doors were jarred or open from what they were when we initially went in there. So that was, that was one of the scariest, scariest paranormal things I've ever, ever had happen to me. It was so scary that we weren't able to finish our ritual right away. We went out to the lobby, the escape room, and we turned on yacht rock music. I called Dan, my partner, and we were all just talking about I needed to calm down. It took us, like, a half hour before we can compose ourselves. So that's number one. Number two, there are clocks in this escape room complex. We have a cat clock that's kind of creepy. We have an old antique Victorian clock above a fireplace, and we have another Victorian clock that moves back and forth with the pendulum in the back of the kitchen multiple times. All these clocks are set to a particular time. I'm not going to say it in case any of you come to our escape room, and I don't want to give anything away, but they're set to a particular time so that you have to solve these puzzles, and they've been moved and changed multiple times, and now for the most concrete evidence of a paranormal sighting I've ever had, and I invite any of you that live in the area, if you want to see this video, come into ravenscauld and I can show it to you. I am going to post it on the crooked cottage site eventually and talk about The Haunting of this building. But Katie, our escape room manager, this would have been on, it's like two weeks ago. I can get you the exact date I have it on my phone called me so we have a we have an escape room called the house in the woods. It was our original first escape room upstairs. It's the one that is so fun. It is so creepy and dark, and we really themed it multiple rooms. So there's an outside section of this room, so you go into several rooms up front, and then you actually have to work your way to get outside, to get some things, to get back inside, to solve, to solve your way out of there, excuse me, and there are cameras in in every single room of every escape room, and so we can constantly look at them and see what's going on. And so Katie texted me this day she was, she was like, an hour and a half before letting someone into the house in the woods, and she gets there early, and was getting the Mayan temple ready for someone as well. And told me to look at the cameras and the house in the woods outside. And so I did, and oh my god, there was this apparition. And I'm embarrassed to tell you what it looks like. It kind of looks like a banana or a male appendage, for lack of a better term, but it's, it's, that's what, that's what it looks like. It's not defined at the bottom at all. It's kind of rigid at the bottom. But just think like a like a banana, and it is moving up the wall, over to the right and back down. And this went on for a solid two hours, and it's not moving in the same pattern either. It's moving erratically. Now again, let me re refresh your memory on this room. There is no light to be had in this room. There is no window in this room. There is an original window in this room. It has been boarded over years ago from the inside and painted flat black. There is no door with a window. There is no lighting effects in this room. There is an outhouse in this room that has a moon cut out of it, that has a pink and orange and red light in it that is facing the opposite way from this apparition was Katie went into the room after I saw this, I might go in there before, before the people start this tour of the house in the woods and tell me if you can see this. She saw nothing. I saw when she opened the door on camera, I saw nothing. So I called Chuck. Chuck is my IT guru, one of my best friends, and you're in good hands with Chuck when you need anything it there's so much technology. A cricket cat is escape rooms. We have a whole server rack upstairs, ubiquity boxes, everything going on. And I and he looked at it and was just astonished as well, and recorded the whole thing. So we have the recording of it for at least six minutes of it. There is friends, there is no scientific explanation of this one. And I told you at the beginning of the story, like, I really like to disprove this stuff. I really like to be like, Okay, well, here's what that really was. There is nothing. There is no light source in here for that to happen. There's no window. There is no fancy special lighting. It's a dark room. It's got kind of astroturf. It's supposed to be outside. There's an outhouse that we built into there, and a fuse box puzzle, that's it. And a basement like we built cellar doors into it that looks like you're going into a cellar door basement to get the final key out of there. That's it. There's no special lighting, no nothing. There is an impossible way. There is no possible way. I should say that that light could move in the erratic way and it just again, think about a banana, and it's moving all around. Well, what's interesting too, was that I said, Well, certainly, if this is an apparition, then it will likely get scared away when the house, in the woods, people start going through, and so when they came through, it was still happening. And I'm watching the camera furiously. I was running the Marysville store this particular day, so I couldn't get there, and I'm bummed about that, or I would have been there. And the people finally got to the outside, and you could see it shining through them. It was like on this man's leg. There's two stairs that go down to this outside area, and he was and that's where it was. This apparition was appearing. Was up and down the wall and on those stairs. And it was on the human beings that were in there too. And it was moving on them, you could see it. And then after about five minutes of them being in there, it just instantly disappeared, and we have not seen it since. So there is your story of some of the legend of crooked cottage escape rooms. It's been such a wild ride, and it puts a pep in my step. I really have loved paranormal stuff all my life and but I've always disproved it. I've spent three different nights at the Mansfield Ohio reformatory where Shawshank Redemption was based upon and some of it was filmed, and allegedly, that place is really haunted, and all these things and all this documentation, friends, I have never felt a thing there I have been. I've spent the night in that prison three different times with the electric off. And you walk around with your friends, and you meet up for pizza at midnight. You stay all night, and you can bring all this fancy equipment and all this stuff I've never, ever felt a thing there. And why do I believe that is this is just now. I'm going to drift off into my opinion, and then I'll wrap this up so we can get on to our Tarot. But, um, when it comes to paranormal and hauntings, I am fully of the opinion. You know, everybody says, you know, oh, the same the sanatorium as an asylum. It's haunted. The prison's haunted hospital. I don't find that to be true. Why would anybody want to haunt a hospital? Nobody wants to be there. Why would somebody want to haunt a prison and linger around there? They don't want to be there. But I can get on board with why somebody wouldn't want to leave someplace that they loved, and so the crooked cottage escape room has been many residential houses over over many years. It's been many businesses, and who knows, but there's some sort of energy and some sort of haunting there, and someone loves the place. Something else interesting about that building and why it might be coming around right now is. It was a very nondescript building. So when I bought the building, it was very light gray sided. You could tell someone that lived in Delaware for 30 years where it was, and unless you told them it was right next to Papa John's and Donatos, they wouldn't know, because it just kind of blended into the woodwork. Well, we've had it resided into a dark navy blue. I mean, I have gutted the entire inside. It's been re plumbed, rewired. It's all new on the inside, not all new. We kept all the original wooden stuff, but we have, we have brought it back to life. It is not disregarded. It is beautiful inside. When people come in there, they're always shocked because it's really on the outside, it's just a normal looking old house. When you get inside, it's pretty cool. And so I think my opinion of hauntings is that when somebody shows something love, like a building and stuff, they do have energy in them, and it does sort of happen, and I think that's exactly why this building is being haunted. So there's your ghost story of the day. There's your paranormal story of the day. If any of you are local and listening to this, come visit the escape rooms and see what you can find. It is our fullest intention. Now that we have this apparition, and we have proof of it and all these things happening, we are going to do paranormal investigations where people can come. We're kind of going to do it like at nine o'clock at night, and you can stay till as late as, like three in the morning, and we'll provide pizza and groups of 10 or so. It's a 2000 square foot building with multiple rooms and stuff, and the hauntings have happened anywhere and I should everywhere in the building. It's not just one place. And I also should tell you, I mentioned Barbara Wagner the other day. She's our she's a retired psychic medium. She used to do all our psychic mediumship teachings, trainings and readings in our store. She's just retired, but she'll still come out of the woodwork for her friends. And so I had her come over there the other day, and she laid in that room, and she was aghast with the energy. I mean, she said the floor is vibrating, and she said my mom was watching and kind of laughing that we were messing with ghosts and stuff, and she felt it all. And we're still investigating as to what it is and how we can see more. So stay tuned for that. I will have an update if we have any other major occurrences. But it's been a wild, wild ride, and I encourage you to come visit us. And if you're into the paranormal, keep an eye out on our stuff. You are on our on our stuff. Listen to me on our socials, on Instagram, Tiktok and Facebook. And if you see us announce a paranormal investigation. Come do it, because you won't be disappointed. It's a very, very cool and active building. All right, friends coming up, we'll see what Tarot has to tell us for the week ahead. You all right, let's get right on to it, since I was pretty long winded in our discussion of paranormal, so let's talk Tarot. I just shuffled my cards. I'm pulling them right now. We got the death card, the three of swords and the nine of cups. Death, three of swords and Nine of Cups. What does the universe want us to know? This is a actually, a cool reading. I will for any newbies to tarot here, I'll quickly talk about the death card. Again, I've been reading Tara for 40 years now, and that's one of the feared cards, even though there's absolutely nothing to fear with death, most of us know. But death card is simply about change, ushering in change. And it scares people simply because it's kind of a scary looking card, but it really is a transformation and ending in a new beginning, and that you combine, that you combine, if you could make math out of words, transformation plus endings plus new beginnings equals change and death. It's about a necessary change, an inevitable change, and that's where the scary part comes, because some people, we are hardwired as humans to resist change of all kinds, and so we have the three of swords. And that's all about heartache, sorrow, emotional pain, but it's coming from our head. It's the suit of swords. So it's represented by air, and it has to do with active thought. And so it's not always real. It's just how we feel, if you will. And the nine of cups, otherwise known in the industry as the quote, unquote wish card, has everything to do with being satisfied, emotional fulfillment, contentment, your deepest desires are being realized. So when we combine all these three things, what does that mean? So really, what it means is, it's a journey from sorrow to joy, and the pain of letting go is absolutely necessary to achieve our deepest desires. So what do I mean by that? So have you ever really you've been on one path? That. Let's think of a good example. If I was okay, there's a person sitting in front of me, and I pulled this three card reading for them, and it's a college student that's been studying accounting for two years. They're two years in to their four year degree, and while they like accounting, they've started to question whether or not that's really what they want to do, and this tarot card comes up. And so what does that mean? Well, it's the pain of letting go, like we just said, a journey from sorrow to joy. So you've put in money, effort, energy for two years, into studying accounting, to build your life in front of you and your career, only to turn out that that's really not what you want to do, and you've loved accounting since you were in fourth grade, and you took a little class in grade school, and now you're resistant to change. You're heartbroken not only because you're not heartbroken because you know you're leaving accounting, you're heartbroken because you're it's change, and we don't deal well with that. But as it comes in, you've been studying this accounting stuff, and you've come to find out that technology and computer science and that type of thing is more interesting to you. And so as a result, you want to switch tracks, and so you're going to lose a little bit of your forward momentum, because you've taken all some of your major classes now, and you have to toss them away to take new ones. So it's going to put you you're behind the eight ball of graduation, but it's your deepest desire, and it's going to bring a smile to your face. Simple and easy, that's what the universe wants us to know. So for the week ahead, friends, if there's something that you've been doing and you feel like you've lost you've lost your you've lost your connection to it, but you just keep doing it and going through the motions. Honor that energy, honor that think about it and think about making this necessary change to get where you want to be. If I'll say it 100 times through this entire podcast, season three, season two, season one and future seasons, is that change is inevitable, but we are hardwired as humans to resist it as best we can. That's why the tower card, which is a little bit more scary change and the death card, scare us. Because it's not that they're scary as much as we fear change as humans, and sometimes that change fuels us to tick on something that you could never imagine and really, really, really, truly be the best version of ourselves. So divert that path, if it's necessary. Think about it this week, take inventory and make adjustments. That's all for Tarot this week. Thank each of you for tuning in this week. It's been a really, really fun episode. I really adore talking about paranormal stuff, as you could tell, because I didn't shut up. And I also really, really loved talking about Smoky Quartz this week, and I really encourage each of you to try that Smoky Quartz ritual. And if you don't have a piece of Smoky Quartz, I start building your toolkit because I just done wonders for my life. I really cannot stress that loudly enough. And of course, I love doing tarot and just summary, real quick on the week ahead. Just keep an eye on your life. Keep an eye on something that you've been following because you used to love it, and maybe you don't anymore, but you continue to do it, thinking it's going to change. Maybe it's time to change paths. All right, friends, next week will be episode six, and I look forward to speaking with each of you then, until Then, be the best version of yourself. Blessed be you.