Romanistan

Tales from the Caribbean

• Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens • Season 5 • Episode 27

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Welcome to the International Relations edition of Spooky Stories! It's Tales from the Caribbean with Arían Aragon and Manny!

Stay tuned for an episode of Jezmina's other new podcast with Manny, A Most Interesting Monster, if you love all things horror! We'll drop an episode in this feed soon.

Thank you for listening to Romanistan podcast.

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Follow Jez on Instagram @jezmina.vonthiele & Paulina @romaniholistic. 

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Romanistan is hosted by Jezmina Von Thiele and Paulina Stevens

Conceived of by Paulina Stevens

Edited by Viktor Pachas, Bianca, Dia Luna

With Music by Viktor Pachas

And Artwork by Elijah Vardo

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SPEAKER_03:

Welcome to Romanistan. We're your friendly neighborhood gypsies.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm Paulina. And I'm Jeff. And we are here with our international relations version of our spooky stories for the month of October. And we're so excited. Guests, would you like to introduce yourselves?

SPEAKER_01:

My name is Arian. That's A-R-I-A-N.

SPEAKER_00:

And uh my name is Imani, E-M-A-N-I. Um, it is uh my second time being so so so honored to be on this show once again. Um thank you all so much for for having me.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, guests uh or um sorry listeners, you might recognize Imani's voice from our um horror movie representation episode back in season one, which is a listener favorite. So if you haven't heard it, please go do yourself a favor and listen. It's so much fun. We talk about horror movie representations, it's a blast.

SPEAKER_00:

It's been a really, really excellent part of my life and uh full circle. It's coming around right back, right back. Uh uh, I I can't, I'm just so pleased to be here. Um, thank you all so much for even inviting me. And like the ways in which that my my opportunity to be with you all the first time around had a lot of people in my life get introduced to you all and your work. Um, I'm really glad to be able to hopefully do it again.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh my gosh, yeah. No, we're so psyched to have you here. It's always a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01:

Hi, I'm Ariane, I'm Paulina's partner. I was born and raised in Cuba for the major part of my life, and I was born into the religion of Santorio, which my family practices until this day. And I've taken a little step uhway from that, not too far, since it's all a little bit intertwined. It's all a little bit intertwined, but I'm not fully into that, and uh you guys will find out why later.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, I love a teaser, amazing. All right, who would like to regale us with your tails first?

SPEAKER_00:

You could start him, sure, sure, sure. Um first of all, like it's it's so glad to I'm I'm I'm based in South Florida, Miami in particular. Um, and so my I've been very adjacent to Cuban populations for most of my life. Um, and I'm very, very interested in hearing more about your background and what you have to share uh because it's so close to what I have seen and and lived uh um around my life here in in Miami. Um I'm really glad to be able to be here and tell um uh I'm gonna tell two two stories uh specific to my family. And um, one of the reasons why I'm so glad that I can at least share it is because both of the stories are kind of specific to uh the culture in which I come from. And so I'm um Caribbean American. My family is from an island in the West Indies called Dominica, the Commonwealth of Dominica, um, which is not the Dominican Republic, which I've had to tell people my entire life. Uh it is its own uh island nation with a long and fascinating history. Um, one of the things that's really important to know about Dominica, and I'm always a fan of talking about uh my island nation because it's it's incredibly unique. But one of the things that's particularly unique about it, they call it the nature island of the Caribbean because it has um more untapped, unseen wilderness of practically every current island in the West Indies. And the reason for that is because the Dominican government basically stopped um various colonizers from being able to actually take certain parts of land for um, you know, for housing and stuff like that. Uh so we have a lot of interesting natural beauty in Dominica, but as a result, there are also parts of Dominica that to this day no one goes to. It's dangerous to go there. Um there's stories, obviously, that spring from there. Uh, and Dominica is also a place that has had a couple different colonizers. So we have had uh French colonization, my last name is Jerome. Um, and so there's the there's the large French element of the island. English had the the longest time, the British had a longest invasion of Dominica. Um, and the island is kind of split between the French side and the English side. My mother's from the English side, very proper, Queen's language, all that kind of stuff. My dad is the country do bush, uh, which is generally the more French side. And the French side has all the fun superstitions, um, in my humble opinion. And so in my father's home, my father uh is from a village called Cochrane in Dominica. It is way up in the mountains, and it is um it's it's a beautiful place, it's a place of a lot of change. Recent years there's been a whole lot of really interesting innovations and stuff in that area. But in 1999, um, my family was in Dominica. We were visiting family, and we were visiting my father's side of the family. So we were in Cochrane as well. We were up in the mountains. And um we had heard a lot of stories about like um what we would call negromancy, black magic, uh people doing certain kinds of things up in the mountains. Because really, traditionally, if you're gonna do something and it's not something that perhaps like the Catholic Church, which is predominantly has the predominant religion in Dominica and has a large present there, if you want to do something that the Catholic Church didn't want, you'd go up in the mountains. You wouldn't do it around everybody else. And that's where my father's uh family is from. Um, so they would tell me all kinds of stuff. They my grandmother told me that they woke up one morning and there was a giant hoof mark the size of like, you know, like a house in there in a in a field, which you know they assume the the devil like one-legged stomp um in my my grandfather's uh farm. Um so we kept hearing a lot of these stories. And so the first story I'm gonna tell you is actually my father's story. It is a story that he told us about something that happened to him when he was a child, um, and then me and my brother having a subsequent experience in the exact same area a little bit later. So it's a generational uh, I guess, uh uh tale. So my father was born in 1949. Um, he just turned 76. Happy birthday, dad, uh, on September 16th. And um, so when he was a boy, uh his family, he's he's the eldest of 12 children. And I that's really important to consider here because it meant as the eldest of 12 children, he had to work um when others couldn't. So we're talking maybe 1960, 1959, 1960, my dad was about 10, 11 years old. He would work at his grandmother's bakery, which was down in uh the city. We only have one city in Dominica, so it's it's a couple hours away, a place called Roso. So my father would work at his grandmother's bakery, and the way that she paid him was to give him whatever bread was not sold uh that particular day for him to bring back to his family, and that was his pay. There was no money, it was just he worked for bread. Now, my father had always been told a story by his father that if he's walking down a particular path at night, which he tends to have to do when he's coming back from working in his grandmother's bakery, um he heard a story about uh tripping and he tripped it tripping, somebody tripping on this dark path. There's no street lights, this is a village, it's a dirt path, um, tripping over something. And his dad told him that if you trip over something in the night walking this particular road, it might be a coffin. And it might be a coffin because people in the area um would often abandon certain people who were going to be buried if they believed them possible it's possible that they could rise again. Um, and that was like just something people talked about in the the community there. He's like, Oh yeah, did you make sure that person was dead? Did you make sure that when you had that fear that funeral, did you make sure of that? And sometimes families in fear would drop would just drop a coffin um on the street as they are per progressing to another village if they believe there is something. That's the the story that my dad was told. Uh and so he was oh yes, please. They would drop a coffin, yes. So the so real coffin, what yeah. So, like the the the saying apparently was that in if you had some sort of inkling, and it was apparently supposed to be if the person wasn't very good in life, um, there's a possibility that they would be restless in death. And so a funeral process procession at that particular time in Dominica would often be there was one cemetery which was down on the bottom or like a lower part of uh this particular village. And so most people would have to have a progress uh procession of um, you know, with whole pushing the coffin pulling the coffin uh down the the street. Um in this particular time, even though you know vehicles would have been uh pretty rampant everywhere else in the world, there it wasn't common for a person to have like an actual motor vehicle in Dominique at that time. So you pulled, you pulled a coffin um down, you know, a long, long uh dirt road to get to the cemetery. And apparently the tall the story my father was told is if a person got the feeling that while they're dragging that coffin, there's something they're not they're hearing something or they just feel something isn't right, they sometimes will just drop the coffin behind them and run. And they would just leave the coffin there. And the idea would be it will if if it will get up and it'll go and do his thing, go off into the bushes, go off into the mountains on his own.

SPEAKER_04:

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00:

No, it's wild. No, I'm telling you, it's wild. So my dad has heard this story since he was younger, and here he is, even though he's 11 years old, he's working for his family, getting this bread from his grandmother. He's walking home from his grandmother's one night. Um, he tells me when he told me this story, he had said it was pitch black. He is like, you have to understand there was no street lights or anything. They had like a little um oil torch that, but like richer families would have that and would keep that only for like the the father if he's gonna go work and like you know I'm telling you, like we we I I can really tell like we it's yeah, so we both come from like a Caribbean island, we definitely have those torches.

SPEAKER_01:

The lights all the time, you know what I mean? Pull out the torch, pull out the torch.

SPEAKER_00:

And my father had said their family only had one torch, so he couldn't have the torch walking, you know, walking back from his grandmother's place. His father had to have the torch if he was gonna be doing stuff in the farm and stuff in the middle of the night. So the family had one torch. So he walked in pitch blackness, but he had walked this road many, many times going back from his grandmother's uh spot. He said he saw something overhead that was a light, and the light um frightened him for a second. And he he described it to me as a ball of flame that looked like it was dripping flame and it went up in the sky above him, it stopped momentarily above him and then went down into the valley, which is deeper into the mountains where they claim witches and other people would do fun stuff in those particular mountains. So the ball of light went down there. My dad said that was enough to be super duper weird. He said it was like an eyeball of like fire, which obviously in a Lord of the Rings fan of me is like Sauron, what? Um you know, but so he said he wanted to just get home as fast as he could after he saw the ball of light, and then he tripped and he tripped over something in the night and it was thick and he was it said it was thick and it was heavy and it was wooden. And he remembered the immediately when he heard about this, the man had said the man who told him the story said, if you ever encounter an uh the said uh coffin in the middle of the night, you have to sit on the lid of the coffin until daybreak, because otherwise the thing in the coffin can get out. That was what he was told. And my father tells me that immediately after he tripped over whatever large object there was in the there in the road, all he can think was, I need to immediately sit on this thing. So he he rushes back in the darkness, feels some sort of structure, and he sits on it. And so my father said that this would have been maybe around like 10 o'clock at night that he would have been coming back here. And he's like, it's a long time till dawn to be sitting there in the dark, 11 years old, uh on like a deserted dirt road, you know, with a couple of things of you know, steel stale bread under your arm to take home to your family who are waiting for you to come home to complete the meal of the bread that you were supposed to get from your grandmother, your grandmothers. So my father said he just he just sat there and he sat there and he listened and he said he had this debate with himself. He's like, There's nothing here. I know people tell stories, there's nothing here. Maybe this is just somebody dropped a barrel or something in the road or something. Like, there's no way that there's something that it can't be like it can't be. But he was too scared to test it. He decided he was gonna sit there, he's gonna sit there, and he said he felt nothing, no movement or anything like that. But he said in the darkness, you know, you imagine, you know, maybe you are hearing something, or maybe you're not hearing something. I can't tell. He said he tried in the darkness to feel around it to get a sense of whatever he was sitting on, and he knew it was big, wooden, and thick. My father says that he stayed there um for many hours. Uh he prayed, he just he just he was just trying to figure out what to do, and he stayed there. Nobody passed by, nobody walked by in all the time that he was staying there. And just before dawn, he decided he was probably gonna catch a whooping when he got home for being away all night and never bringing the bread back home. Um, so he's like, Look, nothing happened all night. I haven't heard a single thing. I'm just gonna get up and go home, whatever. And my father tells me, and he says, hand to the hand to the Bible. Um, the moment he stood up off of the the thing he was sitting on to walk away, he heard a huge bang from within the structure of whatever it was. He still can't tell me what the structure was, it was still too dark for, but he knew he was sitting on a wooden box type thing. And he said there was a bang so hard that he heard behind him, he just ran and he ran as far as he can, as fast as he could, to get home. Once he got home, his father was already starting work in the the farm. My grandfather had a had a um a goat farm and a banana farm. And so his father was already out there working. He's like, What do you do? Like, where were you? We were waiting for you all night. My dad gives him the stale bread, and he he basically asks my grandfather for the torch and a gun. My dad was 11 years old, uh, but when you live out in the bush, this is just how you do, you know. Um, my mother would have been too proper for all that stuff. And my dad was part of the real rough people in in the island. Um, my dad, my dad said he asked his father to come with him to go back and to kill whatever was in the street. Because my dad, my dad said that he knew in only a couple hours the nuns and stuff from the local churches would be walking that same path to for them to do morning mass. And he he felt it was his duty to get rid of whatever was in that road before one of the nuns or something might uh cross it. Um, so he and his father go all the way back. At this point, it's a good deal more light. They get to the spot where my father says it was there's nothing there. There's no box, there's no, there's no wooden thing, there's no nothing. However, my father did say that there was a large impression in the dirt uh in the path that his father was able to see. They said that the impression was like seven or eight feet long, it was particularly long, which he thought was very strange. And he said there were footprints all over it, but like in a swirling pattern, like something ran around this whatever was in the the road. Um, but there was nothing there. His father, his, he and his father searched the area other than the footprints. They didn't see anything, and you know, eventually they had to go back on with their lives, and then that was that. So that's my dad's story of what happened in Cochrane, which freaked my brother and I obviously out quite a bit. Um that's awesome. So 1999, we are staying in Cochrane and visiting our grandparents. Um, I am a Freddy cat, which you wouldn't think because now I love talking about horror stuff all the time. Uh, you know, I'm I'm a big I'm a big scaredy cat. And my dad told me that story several times, and it always freaked me out. And here we are in his childhood home, um, in this area where even in 1999, there wasn't there were places with no running water, so you'd bathe in a river. There was like a river in the back of my grandmother's farm, and that's that's where we would bathe and stuff. Uh chickens just hanging around and stuff. Like that's that's that's Cochrane. It's different now, it's very modern stuff now. And my father, um, my grandfather had a banana farm, as I had said. He also had mangoes and sour soap and a bunch of these other wonderful fruits. I was out walking with my grandfather. Um, so 1999, I would have been God, how old would I have been? Like 12 or something. Um, I would have been like 12 or 13. I'm out with my grandfather in his in the yard. At this point, he's a bit he's a much older guy. And he tells me that there's a coconut on this particular tree that he would like me to get. I used to be pretty good at climbing trees. Now my back hurts all the time, but I used to be really good at climbing trees. My grandfather says, please go and get that um coconut. Um, so I get up and I'm confident, I'm glad to show him my climbing skills. We go up and we, and as I'm climbing to get the coconut, I hear my grandfather say, actually, go for this other one, um, this other coconut, which was further up the tree. And to be honest with you, a great deal more dangerous to get to than the first coconut. But I didn't want to disappoint my grandfather. Uh again, being Caribbean American, everyone in my family is like, oh, the Yankee, every time I come, you know, I don't have an accent, you know. So like I wanted to prove myself. So I'm like, I can get the the other coconut higher up, no big deal. I went up there, there was like a breeze hit, like I was starting to freak out a little bit, but like I was able to grab that coconut um and make my way down. I was so happy. I get back down and my grandfather's nowhere around. I'm like, okay, that's weird. I go back into the house and my grandfather's there, and I was like, hey, you know, I got you um the coconut. He's like, that's not the coconut I asked you for. And I was just like, it definitely is like it like it definitely is. You I was going for the first one you told me to get, and then I started going for the second one that you told me to get instead. He's like, I didn't tell you no second one, you know, in my in my grandfather's telling, I didn't get you no second one, then. And I'm just like, what's your deal? He's like, Why would I tell you to go for the dangerous one? You're a boy, I don't want you to get hurt. I told you to go get that coconut and I went back inside. And I was like, You told me to get the first coconut and you went back inside. I audibly heard your voice tell me to get the coconut that was further up the tree. Like I like I heard, like I wouldn't lose, there was nobody else around. Like I heard you, and my grandfather goes, Ah, okay, you just you just talked to the to the spirit. Um, and I was just like, excuse me? Um, and my grandfather was like, Yeah. Here in Cochrane, and here in the mountains, there's um various spirits. And this one he always called a mabuya. And I have no idea what a mabuya is or what it means, um, but he would call this particular spirit. He says it was a mischievous spirit, it will often take the voice of a loved one to kind of get you in trouble, not to like kill you or anything, but to get you in trouble, or maybe make a kid go further out on a branch than he should uh to go for a coconut. But like my grandfather's like, I would never tell you to go for the other coconut because that would put you in harm's way. And he just said, Next time you're out there and you hear something that sounds like my voice, if you don't see me say it, don't listen.

SPEAKER_03:

Wow. Crazy. I love love that.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much for sharing. I love story time but then you're not going to be a good idea. Also, listeners, this feels like a good time to um announce it. If you want to hear more of Imani's talking, uh, we are starting our own podcast, A Most Interesting Monster. Do you want to tell everyone about it?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, I'm so pleased to. Thank you so much. Um, a most interesting monster is basically, you know, jumping into the weird and wild and wacky world of all things terrifying. We believe monsters and stories about monsters are some of the most interesting stories in our culture. They tell you things about people, tell you things about uh, you know, a people and a place and a time um that that no other kinds of stories kind of seem to talk about. And so uh both of us having a huge love of the spooky stuff um and the ways in which these spooky things kind of relate to our everyday life and different cultures of lived experiences. Um, we are starting a most interesting monster in October. And so we've already uh shot our very first episode. Do you want to tell you what our first episode is about, Jeff?

SPEAKER_02:

We are going to talk about sinners and we're obsessed. We made two episodes about it because we couldn't stop.

SPEAKER_04:

That is such a movie. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It's fantastic, right? It's uh it's just fantastic. So, anyway, if you all would love to hear amazing commentary from Jasmina and myself, uh, as well as our um amazing guest, a gentleman named Brother Yona, who is a Hulu practitioner all his life, based in South Florida, who was able to give us amazing context for the different things in that film. Uh, it's a conversation you won't want to miss, and we have many, many amazing ones like it coming up.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so please, wherever you can get podcasts, you can subscribe. We'll drop um a teaser in this podcast feed so you can find us so easily. And we will also be able to be found on social media as well. A most interesting monster. And yeah, we're so excited. So many podcasts. We'll listen to you all night.

SPEAKER_01:

In my religion, um we like to talk to spirits a lot. We love them. They um let's see, we use them for good and sometimes unfortunately for bad. I should mention that. Um sometimes most of the time for good, absolutely. That's what the that's what the religion is it's it's made for, I should say. And we like to do these rituals where we yeah, we chant um in a complete different language. I believe it's called Joruba. And as a little as a little kid, I was like memorizing this this chants without even knowing what they meant. But just a little backstory, um, we kind of get some guidance from them and things like that. So let me ease into it. Let me start off light. Um, at one of these um kind of happy gatherings with the ancestors, we were trying to bring, we were trying to communicate with one of our ancestors, and all of a sudden the room started smelling like cigar very strongly. And this is this is someone who absolutely smoked cigars a lot, and then it started smelling like kind of like that cologne that this person used to uh used to wear. And then so there's this other thing we do, it's called like a drum party. So sometimes you go and you get uh quote unquote a reading done. That's not really what we call it, but you get a reading done and they say, Oh, your ancestors, they need a drum, which means you make an entire party for them. And in these parties, the spirits go into the people as they're dancing and just doing what they do. And when the spirit is in the people, these they just start saying things about everyone. So there's 30 people in the room, and some people don't even know each other, and the person who is speaking, it's it's basically the spirit inside of the person, and they're just saying, Um, you need to stop doing this, or you know what you're doing, and and basically saying things about the people that it's it's obviously a secret that don't don't nobody else know. In one of these um parties, unfortunately, um the person with the spirit inside of them went up to this old man after having already gone up to a couple of different people and saying things like that, and it told the old man, What are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here. And then it went on to the next person. Oh, you didn't need to blah blah blah. Basically, when the party was over, the old man died. No fucking kidding, guys. Oh wow, this story haunts me to this day, and this is the reason why I do not like to partake in santeria anymore. I I'm I grew up calling it brujeria. It sounds it sounds witchy, it sounds bad, but that's what we call it. We don't really call it santeria. Another one of the stories that I have, let's see, I was I was very young when I left the country, so I was just like 10, 11 years old, and I used to always walk to my grandma's house, which was like five miles away. And I would go over there, and no nobody knows that I went over there. You know, when you're when you're an island boy, you could just you can just roam around, you're grabbing coconuts, like Imani said, you're grabbing fruits, you're just like tar sand, you know what I mean? So I'm going to my grandma's house and I'm knocking, I'm I try to open the door right away because that's just what you do. You just walk into anybody's house, not just your grandma's house, and the door is locked, and I'm knocking and knocking, and I'm trying to open the door because there's always somebody at my grandma's house. My grandma's from my father's side, and I'm knocking and I'm trying to open, and I don't know why. After after a couple minutes of trying, I didn't leave. I should have left, but then I hear the door unlocked very clearly, as like click. And I'm like, okay, somebody woke up, somebody's home. So I just open the door very excited. I walk around the whole house, and there is absolutely nobody inside. I take off so fast, I run so, so, so fast to my other grandma's house. And so from my grandma's house to my other grandma's house, there's this little spot. Um, we call it a finca, which is basically like a tiny little fort. There's just forests all over the place. We build around it. There is this little finca around which I'm completely terrified of because at nighttime I always used to get haunted there. I didn't like to go.

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know about what that means. What does it mean for haunted there?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you explain further. I may have been imagining this, but like I would see, I would see shadows, and and I would even like not only see, but I would like feel and hear voices, and I would always feel like there was something calling me there, but at the same time scaring me away from there. So I never like to go. I never like to go past there. And this is a place that during the daytime, me and my friend would just me and my friends would hang out there and climb on the trees and you know, just do what kids do. But at nighttime it was an extremely spooky place. No kidding. So yeah, I I always hated um walking past there. Also, another thing, my dad is a babalao. I believe you guys call it witch doctor. Um, not the biggest fan of that term. I like to stick to what what I grew up knowing.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think that's better.

SPEAKER_01:

But um agreed. Let's see. So um, if I was in Cuba right now, that that would have been me. I would have been doing that for a living. That's what I was pretty much set up to do. And I believe I kind of started to develop my own intuition when I was very young, and I was like, hear and see things. One time I was leaving my grandma's house where the door just opened by itself, and then basically, as soon as you open the door, there is about a six or seven foot tall wall. Um, I opened the door, and there is just like a face floating towards me. It was like an old lady, white face, just a face, just a head, just floating towards me, and it was nighttime. And then again, I just ran so far and I had to pass that place. My eyes are literally watering right now, guys. Because oh my god, I'm so serious. It still puts me to the free t yeah, but free tight. I I just seen a fucking ghost, and then I have to pass by this place where I always get hunted at.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh my god, that's terrifying. Just the disembodied face.

SPEAKER_01:

And then I went back, you know, because um it's my grandma's house. I'm always going back. And I told them what I seen, and they told me I kind of described what the person looked like, and they was like, oh wow, this this is you're describing the lady that just passed away like a few years ago. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's kind of like a couple of the things that made me like step away from that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02:

It's overwhelming. I mean, I remember when you were visiting during the book tour, you were just seeing spirits in my apartment, like just like regular people walking by. Not everyone is that sensitive. And like I imagine doing these kinds of spiritual things would be a lot harder if you had that level of clairvoyance.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I believe um I it's just kind of in my blood, but also the everyday practice. I used to go with my dad, and unfortunately, I used to love to hold the animals for him to kill or rip the head of the chicken off. And I used to love doing all these things, so I was pretty involved. There would be 15-year-olds that would be already at the level that my dads were at. So I don't think age has anything to do with it, but it was very, very overwhelming. It was scary, it was extremely scary for me. I used to hate walking alone at night anywhere that I was at because I just felt like I was being called. I've been walking alone at night, look back, and there is just a black shape with like a mask on, just following me.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

Like, you know, we we fucking see spirits, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, and it's weird literally in this house, like so. For anybody who listened to our last episode with Paris and Raquel and Dead Scared Entertainment, um Audion's here to confirm that I those he could he was seeing those spirits too.

SPEAKER_01:

Let me tell them. So I am in the other room and I feel Nina walk in the door. I'm like facing, so I'm just facing whatever, whatever, wherever I'm facing, okay? I feel Nina walking to the left side of me, and it's just so clear that I was absolutely certain that she was in there to where I was like gonna turn to her and say whatever I was gonna say, you know. So I turn and there is nobody there, but I absolutely feel a presence right behind me, kind of towering over me, and and is there is just no negating it. And Nina can confirm because this is exactly what happened to her.

SPEAKER_03:

At the same fucking time, I'm sitting in the room, so basically, he's outside of the room in in the laundry room, I'm sitting in the room, I'm like facing a certain way on my computer, like facing the wall, my back is towards the door, and I'm positive that like he's standing behind me, certain, certain, uncertain, and I do the same thing. I'm like, hey, and then I was like, and then I called you, I was like, Were you in the room? Like it was so fucking weird, like and this just reminded me.

SPEAKER_01:

Um I'm literally let's say four years old. So I was in um my mom left the country when I was five or six years old. I lived with my mom for a very short period of time, and she used to just um clean the house, you know, play her loud music, and I would just be sitting down playing with my little toys or whatnot. And very, very, very often I used to just see let's say shadows, but it was very clearly more than shadows. And my mom, she she just grew up telling me if they're good, they're welcome. If they're if they're bad, tell them to fuck off in her own way, you know, just tell them to fuck off, and she would just curse them out, get out of here. So it was something very normal to us to feel presences and see them. I grew up four years old, I was already seeing things, and they would just like play peek-aboo at the door and like see me and hide and always grew up like that.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh man, yeah. My family had a very similar response to ghosts. It's like, yeah, if you're good, you can hang out, but otherwise, you curse them out.

SPEAKER_01:

Curse them out. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah, my my grandma was the same way. My grandma actually didn't get into the my grandma from my mother's side, she didn't get into their religion to a little bit later on, but since way before she already had a very, very high level of intuition. She didn't even really need to do the so there is there is two kind of uh there is like an initiation process. I believe we have, I'm sorry if I'm wrong to all of my Santeria followers out there. I believe there's like 12 or 17 gods or orishas that we that we have on the first initiation process, which takes an entire day of chants and killing animals and drinking blood and all these things, and then you get um an orisha god, basically a guardian angel assigned to you. I'm just kind of describing the process it takes uh to to be in in the religion officially, and then you get like a bracelet with the colors of that, and then later on, or as soon as possible, you get crowned, and then you get another guardian angel. So right now I'm only Oshun. Um, she's the goddess of love in the river. Her color is yellow, which I'm actually wearing right now, just be, but I'm not fully crowned yet. Honestly, I would like to be, and um, I would like to um have more knowledge of my religion, and my dad is always pushing and pushing and insisting for me to be able to take care of um things by myself, do my own readings and help my my family out. And he's he he would never stop saying that, guys. But my grandma, like I was saying, she even before she started, she already had a high level of intuition to where she would tell the ghost, you know, get out of here, or if they're good, they can stay, and this and that. Also, I just want to throw it out there. She made the most beautiful, most beautiful, beautiful altars and for the Brujeria parties that we would throw. I really, really love those. I used to love going outside and collecting the grass and bringing this specific grass and getting this from the neighbor and things like that. And there, it was just super, super beautiful. My favorite part was when everyone came in and did drop some money on the thing, guys. I never got a dollar from there, but it was my favorite part.

SPEAKER_02:

That is so sweet. I love that.

SPEAKER_01:

I have like, I'm trying not to have like 15 questions, but I I have like Oh, please interrupt me and ask me because I can't I can't keep talking.

SPEAKER_00:

No, I don't want to into I don't want I didn't win mean to interrupt, but it was I'm so interested hearing what you all are all talking about, right? And Jez, I already, you know, we've we've talked about this with uh our our our our previous guest, like Brother Yoda. Um, my family, women in my family have been seers for a long time. My grandmother, my mother, my mother in particular, um, would have visions and dreams, and it would be a you know, maybe sometimes about me. If I'm having like a really difficult time, she'll have a dream uh about me having a really difficult time or just like a feeling. I was telling Jez I got into a car accident in 2015, my brother and I, and 20 minutes, 20 seconds after we were in the crash, she's calling and she's like, Hey, are you and your brother okay? She had no idea I was with my brother, you know, anything like that. So when you're talking real casually about seeing stuff, you know, like to like I'm like I'm sitting here having all these memories of things that I remember my mother saying she's seeing or my grandmother saying she was seeing. So I'm I'm just kind of curious from someone outside of of those kinds of experiences, you're talking about like um ones that are here to help and ones that are maybe not here to help. How can you tell? Like, how would you how would you like does it feel there's like a different feeling?

SPEAKER_01:

Um if one of the absolutely it's absolutely a feeling, and I'm sure you can vouch for this, Nina. So just not long ago, um, I walk into the house and and there's just four people here, and every time, every time I say something like this, my eyes water. I don't know why. I just kind of like start crying. So let's say you walk into your house, and there's four people there, and it's very clear, and they're just one sitting down, the other ones walking around, the other one's standing, the other one's smoking a cigarette.

SPEAKER_03:

And we both felt the same number, which is crazy.

SPEAKER_01:

We both felt four, and it's very, I would say, well, at least at least for me and and some other people, it's very easy to tell whether they are good or bad. It's very, very easy to tell. I don't, I think it's just a feeling. And the other thing is that um, like I said, majority of the people use bruhiah for good. Unfortunately, some people use it for bad. I've had people, um, oh not I've had people, but I've um my dad has told me a story that he's had people come to him saying, I want this person dead. No joke. So it can really go that far. I want this person in the hospital, I want this person to lose its partner. So there's very sick people out there that would love to use Bruhariya for for bad. You know, sorry, I just have to add in there. My dad never did the bad stuff, okay? My dad doesn't do the bad stuff. He every time he tells me the story, he told me how he declined that person, and they're absolutely fucking crazy.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean, definitely Polly and I have people come to us with some pretty wild requests, and it's like we have no desire to do the bad stuff.

SPEAKER_03:

Or do we? No.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I was just curious because when whenever uh my obviously because like um my family was like very like a Christian, first Catholic and then uh um Protestant and then Seventh-day Adventist, but very, very, very so why when when stuff would happen, it would always be done through a like a very Christian lens, right? So like my my mother wouldn't think any any spirits are good spirits. If they're if they're there at all, she don't want them there. That's like how my mother would be, but she would talk very casually about encountering things in our house. And and so I'm I couldn't put the one and what the two and two together, you know what I mean? Like, you don't want these things here, but you talk about interacting with them very, very casually. And I'm just in here, like, you know, are they good ones? Are they not good ones? Like, I don't know. I I I used to um uh an ex of mine, um, she was kind of a seer as well. And the weird thing, the first time she came to meet my parents, which was for a Thanksgiving dinner, she said she saw an uh like an eight-foot-tall black entity walk from our bathroom into like my childhood bedroom. And you can't say that my family's Thanksgiving, man. Like, you know, like my mom is like, get out, and I'm like, no, like, no, like it was it was like a thing. So, like, I don't know, it's something I think a lot about, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

You mentioned um Christianity. I just want to throw it out there that I'm like I said, I don't I don't know much because I kind of stepped away from it, but we do a lot of work with the with the church. I believe it's kind of like connected. I know that the church doesn't uh sacrifice animals and things like that, but um we go there and I kind of it's kind of a little bit intertwined. Obviously, we do have our own gods or whatnot and our things that we believe in, but we do kind of like relate in the religions.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. I mean, when we talked when we talked to uh brother Yonah, the hoodoo practitioner, there was a moment where he's talking about something that his mother did, like I think it was like the salt, uh like putting salt out. And I told him, like, I remember my grandmother doing the exact same thing, but my grandmother would never say that it was magic that she was doing because she would simply say, I'm working on behalf of the Lord to protect our house. But she'd be doing the exact same things that brother Yona was describing from a hoodoo uh standpoint, and I just found that really fascinating, you know.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, yeah, you guys did the salt too, right? Yeah, we did the salt too, like that's crazy. That was like, yeah, that that's like ancient old practices that we all practice, and it's like under the guise of like Christianity sometimes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean a salt cleanse is a salt cleanse, whether you're doing it for Jesus or Sarah Lakali or like someone else.

SPEAKER_01:

So for us, if you're like if you just like spill salt or you're like dropping salt somewhere, it's like bad luck, and and I truly believe that for some reason. That's just kind of how I grew up.

SPEAKER_03:

And if you drop it by mistake, it's bad luck for us too.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, or even if you do it on purpose, if you just drop salt on on a place with the intentions.

SPEAKER_02:

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01:

There are so many like little things that you just grow up knowing. Since I was very little, I always knew that if you put someone's name in a in a cup of water and sugar, that that person will be nice to you. Things like that. Or that if you if you bury a picture of them that they will do bad, or if you put a picture of them under your shoe, like there's always a bunch of little things that um people like to uh practice and believe in practice with intention.

SPEAKER_02:

I've definitely put people's names in bowls of sugar with like rose petals and lavender.

SPEAKER_04:

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I never heard I never heard of that. That's that but what's it was interesting is I do remember my mother burying a picture of somebody. I'm telling you, I'm having all these experiences while we have these conversations where I'm remembering now. You're remembering, you're unlocking memories now. But but again, they would have said, like, oh, they're doing like the things that they're doing is is on behalf of you know, like Jesus or something like that. So they they would never ever talk about you know what how these things related to our religion, but at the same time, most of these things were things they got from their their grandparents, so like you know it wasn't very specific towards our religion.

SPEAKER_01:

I believe this is just um things that you do with intention and they just work because we live in a weird fucking world, man.

SPEAKER_02:

Without a doubt, absolutely, yeah. Actually, um, because I can't stop working, I'm starting another yet another podcast with my friend Jess Richards, um, called Immaterial World. It's the intersection of fashion, beauty, wellness, and spirituality, and it's also very about community building. And we interviewed this really wonderful guest, Elohim Le Far, this morning, who's a brujo from um Venezuela, and he was saying that a lot of the love spells that he saw his sisters doing when he was little, he was like, Oh, that's unethical. You're making people love you. And his sisters were like, No, no, no, no. I am making people be nice to me. I am trying to make through this world. And he was like, It changed everything. Love spells were actually protection. Like one of his sisters put a love spell on an abusive boss who was trying to hurt her, but it was really just so he wouldn't hurt her, and it just he his whole ethos for practicing has really been looking at the ways that women use what sometimes is seen as retaliatory magic, but it's actually protective magic uh to move through the world with more safety. And I just I was so blown away. I just loved the positioning of that.

SPEAKER_03:

Officially announced this podcast. This is so exciting.

SPEAKER_02:

Immaterial world is also coming out in October. So it like keep an eye on the Romanasan podcast feed. If you're not already subscribed to us, I'll be dropping, you know, teasers or maybe like an episode here or there so you can get a taste for it and then follow us on our separate feeds. But yeah, I'll definitely be posting a lot on social media. Um, and and our hope, you know, my my thought was doing two new podcasts would also help maybe uh grab a wider audience for Romanistan because we're our cute little niche that, you know, a beloved like little cult favorite, but still not a lot of people know about us. So if you love us, if you love us at Romanistan, please share our episodes. It helps a lot.

SPEAKER_01:

So I just want to throw it out there since you kind of mentioned um Yes. So when it comes to like love spells and things like that, brujeria is is the one thing, and and you can study it, but for some reason, when it comes to love spells, a man can never do the job as as good as a woman would. So when you want to do something like that, you go to a woman, absolutely, and everybody knows that for some reason. And me and Nina were just talking earlier. That's fine. I was telling her women are absolutely more in tune than men are, they're absolutely different creatures, and and um the Egyptians believed it as well. There were that women were absolutely more wise than men are, and I truly, truly believe that as well. We'll take it. Yeah, that's on you guys.

SPEAKER_00:

You guys are definitely the goddess of both creation and destruction, didn't I tell you just mean it? Like all the all the all the gods that I have been researching that seem to do both creation and destruction, the ultimates in various cultures, and I don't think that's a um uh mistake. So I'm with you. I personally think that anyway, we like there we we we I think that at the end of the day, part of the reason why our nation and a lot of our culture and our civilization is the way they are, is because men have silenced the people in the culture meant to be able to guide your culture, like like the the powers within feminine energy is the kind of power that is like wisdom. And when you get rid of when you when you silence those voices, you're silencing wisdom uh for your people, your species, your culture. In my family in Dominica's incredibly matriarchal, and it's always been, and that's just like these are things that I was like taught that America has been like trying to get out of my head since I've been here, and it's wild how different that is. Anyway, that's I all I'm saying is I think you're 100% correct.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, no, that's that's lovely. Okay, I'm on. Yeah, so so yeah, the Bava Laos, they will they would like do their thing and they they do the initiation rituals and this and that, but the the the women side of it, it's just a little bit darker, I will tell you that. And I feel like they know a little bit more. And my dad is someone who who reads to this day, and and I believe he's one of the best Baba Laos in the world since he was a little kid. He's been into it. But the women, they're just they're just fucking born with it, I believe. They're just fucking born with it, and they definitely know a little bit more.

SPEAKER_02:

I love that. I mean, so many of the folks that Paulina and I have spoken to, um, there's an episode that has come out probably just uh one or two before this one with Mother Rowena. Or sorry, not Mother Ro Mother Ramona. I mixed up two guests with Mother Ramona. Um, she was talking about how Shivani's the the witches are born. Like you're it's not something that you're taught. You have to be born with it, and the community recognizes it because you are being a baby witch out in the world. You just are. It's how people respond to you. Well, this was so wonderful. Thank you both for joining us. We loved your stories. Uh, we know our listeners will love them too. And um, is there anything y'all would like to share um for people to like follow, support you, or you know, otherwise just cheer you on in life?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, I'll say you if as long as you are listening to this amazing podcast, you'll hear about things that I'm doing. Uh, Jez and I are going to be doing the most interesting monster launching in October. Uh, I myself am working on a like a small group conversation series called The Damn Good Chat, uh, that I'm also hoping to launch uh next month as well. Um, so just just make sure you're plugged into this space. You will hear about more and more ways that you can plug into me.

SPEAKER_01:

Yay! I just want to share that I'm very thankful to share my story here with like-minded people that love to hear me out. And that's that's pretty much it. So this is this isn't something you can talk to anybody about. And I'm very proud of you guys for building a great community.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, thank you. We appreciate it. Well, listeners, we hope you um are enjoying this spooky season. And remember, you can always write in with fun stories for us. We will save them up until the next time we have a storytelling session. They will never go to waste, so you can write to us at Romanasanpodcast at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes, we are telling stories all year round.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we love a story. And if you want to learn more about how to read and do all the fun things we do, secrets of Romani fortune telling is everywhere. You get books, as you know. Um yay, thanks so much, everyone.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you guys for having me.

SPEAKER_02:

You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook at Romanasan Podcast, and on Twitter at Romanasan Pod. To support us, join our Patreon for extra content or just donate to our coffee fundraiser, ko-fi.com backslash romanasan. And please rate, review, and subscribe. It helps people find our show. It helps us so much.

SPEAKER_03:

You can follow Jez on Instagram at Jezmina.vontila and Paulina at RomaniHolistic. You can get our book, Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling, online or wherever books are sold. Visit Romanistan Podcast.com for events, educational resources, and more. Email us at romanistanpodcast at gmail.com for inquiries.

SPEAKER_02:

Romanistan is hosted by Jasmina Vontila and Paulina Stevens, conceived of by Paulina Stevens, edited by Victor Pachitz, with music by Victor Pachitz, and artwork by Elijah Bardo.