SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC

From A Squeaky Night Pump To Hollywood Hauntings, We Trace How Belief Shapes Ghostly Encounters

• Dr.G

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A squeaky iron pump at 2 a.m. can sound like a horror movie prop—until it’s your street, your neighbors, and your grandfather tumbling down a hill to catch the culprit. We open with a vivid small-town mystery outside the Polks’ house, a snapshot of how folklore forms around noise, fear, and community. A teacher’s hushed warning and a thread to the local AME church suggest deeper roots, the kind of story that lingers in the walls long after the sound stops.

From there, we widen the lens with celebrity hauntings that feel intimate rather than sensational. Demi Lovato describes a little girl named Emily identified by both a medium and investigators, and Gigi Hadid remembers an attic that became friendlier once the kids started talking to “the lady.” Jessica Alba recounts a night terror that mirrors sleep paralysis—pressure, silence, and terror—followed by rituals like blessing the home and burning sage. Lucy Hale notes late-night appliances and motion sensors flaring to life while her dog stares at empty air, and Claudia Schiffer shares why her family welcomes the creaks and spontaneous music in their Tudor home. Alyson Hannigan adds a “gentlemanly” figure at the doorway and a quirky twist about disclosure laws, offering a lighter take on sharing a space with the unknown.

We also wrestle with method and meaning. What do evolving medical protocols and shifting psychological criteria teach us about certainty, skepticism, and care? How do we evaluate claims when a person’s subjective truth is undeniably real to them? We explore practical tools—lucid nightmare interruption, environmental checks, ritual as state-shift, and thoughtful documentation—while keeping space for the possibility of a world unseen. The aim isn’t to force belief; it’s to investigate with humility, manage fear with skill, and honor stories that refuse to be neatly filed away.

If you’re curious about hauntings, sleep paralysis, house lore, and how belief shapes experience, this conversation will give you frameworks and goosebumps in equal measure. Listen, share it with a friend who loves a good ghost story, and tell us: which moment convinced you something was there? Subscribe, leave a review, and send us your story—we might feature it next.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hey everybody, Dr. G, Spirit Tales and Magic. I hope this finds you well. And hey, check out the website, SpiritTalesandmagic.com. Give us a like, give us a share, forward it out to all of your friends. You can turn in your ghost story there, or your paranormal story, or you can even book us for an event. By the time that you are hearing this, Cassandra and I are not in the studio. And occasionally we do record one, put it in a can, and have it released the next morning. So what that's what's going on here. This particular one is not alive, as they say. But every time I do that, I let you know about it. And it's not very frequently that that happens. But R Friday is uh gonna be a real mother for you. So we're not gonna be available anywhere. If you run into us out in the public, love to see you. So we were telling celebrity ghost stories and a ghost story or two about the three Woodrow's. It reminded me early this morning about Woodrow One. Now, Woodrow One was the town I grew up in, St. Clairsville. You had to cross a major intersection, which was a state route, State Route 9, and you started down a hill to what would end up going to a place called Hutcheson Drive. If you veered off to the right, there was this little goat path that was where Woodrow Avenue actually began. There were four houses back there at the time. I don't have any recollection of who lived in the first two. I think one of them was abandoned. I don't know who lived in the house to the what would be the right of us if you were standing on the porch. But to the left of us were Mr. and Mrs. Polk, and you'll hear a lot more about them. They were amazing people. Probably two of the sweetest human beings I think I've met in a very long time. Just after the Polk's house, there was a half of an empty lot, and there was an old school iron water pump that you know went down into a well and you could pump it and get water out of it. I hear my grandfather talking about how crazy the poles are one morning at breakfast. Now I know if I walk out there, he's gonna stop talking. And I wanted to hear what he had to say. I liked the poles, he knew it. He didn't like me liking the poles as much as I did. And you gotta remember, this is a long, long time ago in a place that was kind of prejudiced sometimes, and the polks uh were of a different skin color than we were, which I didn't give a crap about, but some people did. He talked about Mrs. Polk's husband, and I'm gonna have to look up his name, forgive me for that. Uh, but it's been several decades and a life that I can say was a hell of a ride between then and now. So Mr. Polk and Mrs. Polk are discussing the guy that keeps pumping water out of the pump at at two o'clock in the morning. And the pump is very old and very squeaky. It's like one of those old pumps from a horror movie, you know. Only it's very loud. I mean, if somebody pumped that pump, the Polks could hear it really loud. We could hear it, and I'm sure the house next to us could could hear it as well. So they would call the police. Small town, police at that time didn't have a whole lot to do. They had uh, I believe back then two cruisers, and both of them would show up fairly quickly, being that that little section was only a couple of blocks away from the police station, and they would never find anything. So how grandpa talking about that story and he goes, yeah, they talk about it all the time. This guy, this guy, this guy. He said, uh, you know, so one night I decided I'd sit by the church. Now, up the hill from that pump is a huge, can't remember what denomination of church, I want to say Methodist. It's a very big church, like I don't know, 11 times the size of the church that we went to. So I sat up there under that big pine tree and just watching. And he goes, So I wanted to see this guy and who he was. So okay, whatever. So, you know, his wife, grandma, says, Well, did you get him? No, he said, I must have been falling asleep or something because I rolled down the hill and hit my head on a pump. He said, Then I was the one making the noise. He said, Nah, he's of course I might have been swearing a little bit at the time. He said, police came. And uh, so the the police, one of the policemen, is is related to our family. Because, you know, it was Dawn, and Dawn said, you know, Tom, what are you doing down here? And he said, Ah, I lost my footing there and it slipped. He goes, Oh, all right. He said, uh, you okay? You want me to have somebody check you out? He said, No, I don't need nothing. I'm going back to the house to go to sleep. So then I walk into the kitchen. You slipped on something? And he's like, I don't believe you were involved in this conversation, but we'll eat your breakfast and get you butt to school so you won't be late. All right, fine. I guess my rolling eyes and facial expressions have betrayed me all my life. Um so when I go to school, I remember that our teacher's name was Mrs. Magahie. And uh you go to home room. That's you know, that's your home room, that's where you live. And then if you are scheduled to do anything different, you're told about it. And you know, small groups of you will leave your homeroom and go somewhere else. So we're going to the we're going to walk up to the seventh and eighth grade building, which was, you know, a really cool thing to do. They had a planetarium in there. It was actually a very nice planetarium for where we were. So you had to walk in groups, I believe it was groups of five or six, and there would be a teacher's aide or a teacher that would walk with you to make sure you behaved yourself. And it wasn't a very long walk, it was about I don't know, 500 yards up a little hill. And so everybody go ahead and you know, partner up with your partner. And your your partner was at the beginning of the year in home room. You all stood up against the wall, and the first guy went one, second guy went two, you know. So one, two, one, two, all the ones take one step forward, you know, one, two, one, two, that, until there was, you know, there were two, two, two, two, two, two, two. And if you were the odd guy out, your partner was the teacher. Guess who was the odd guy out? So she was my partner. So everybody starts out in the hallway. They know where to go. They're gonna go up by the milk machine and they're gonna stand there, waiting for to be divvied up and walked up. And I said, Okay, ready. What's wrong today? Wrong? What's wrong today? There's I can tell by the look on your face. Are you mad about something? No. What happened at home this morning? Well, nothing. I just my grandpapa's telling a story. What kind of story? So I told her the story. She just kind of smiled and she said, You really like the Polks, don't you? I said, They're really nice people. And she said, Yes, they are, and they like you. She said, Nah, I won't get into that, but I know for a fact that they do. She said, Um, you don't go out there at night, do you? I'm like, no, I'm not the person pumping the water. And she said, No, no, no. I I she goes, you shouldn't go out there at night. There's not I go out in our yard at night sometimes when I can't sleep to play with the beagle. And she's like, you shouldn't do that. She goes, so you like magic and things like that? Yes, ma'am. And she's like, so I'm gonna tell you something, and I'm not gonna tell you any more about it for a while after that. But if I'm gonna tell you this first little bit, you'll need to be able to keep a secret. Can you do that? Yes, ma'am. I don't believe Pap was fell. I believe he was pushed. Um you never go to the AME church, do you? So the AME church is a is a all black church. And it's like, I I do go there once a year. We have a week-long revival, and the you know, we go to their church, they come to our church, you know, that kind of thing. She goes, well, that's good. She goes, uh, the next time that happens, she goes, Do you go down to the fellowship hall? The fellowship hall is the basement. But yes, we go down to the fellowship hall and we have a dinner or a lunch. She goes, Well, if you can get away from pond for a minute, she said, ask somebody about that pump out by the polks. There's a story that goes with that. She goes, but it's spooky. Okay, I'll ask him. I forgot about all of that till today, actually. I never did uh remember any of it, but then all the memories came back, you know, today. So we'll thank you for that. And I'm gonna tell that story separately, but let's get back to Demi Lovato. She's my house in Texas is so ridiculously haunted. I don't know how else to explain it. She wrote this in uh, I believe a 2013 Buzzfeed piece. Not by a bad spirit, but a little girl. And I actually think that her name is Emily. I had a medium come over and ghost hunters, and they both told me the same name, Emily. There were so many times that I saw her when I was growing up. I believe that everybody can tune in to that part of their mind. I think I have a very strong connection with the afterlife. The singer continued, when I walk into a room, I can tell if something has happened in there or not. Or if a room that I happen to be staying in in a hotel is haunted. Which will move us to Gigi Hadid. I've had a lot of unexplainable experiences with the supernatural. And she said this in a vogue interview, which I believe was 2018, and there was a Halloween-themed video. She says, When we were kids, we lived in this really old house, and I was given the attic as my room. We used to hear this weird sound in the closet. And when we asked my dad, he said, This old lady used to live in the house. The house is settling. Old houses, when they settle, they make noise. We convinced ourselves it was her, and we would talk to her. We'd be like, girl, we'll bring you some tea, and things like that. She's the sounds continued. We never saw her or were never spoken to by her, but we continued on a regular basis to talk to her. We think she liked it. Jessica Alba in a 2008 interview. She told the Sydney Morning Herald she was attacked by a ghost while sleeping in her family's home when she was 17. She said, I had no idea what it was. I felt this pressure and I couldn't get up. I couldn't scream, I couldn't talk, I couldn't do anything, she said. It was terrifying. Something definitely took the covers off me, and I definitely couldn't get off the bed. And then once I did, I screamed. I ran to my parents' room, and I don't think that I spent many nights in that house ever again. There was definitely something in my parents' old house. I don't know what it was, and I can't really explain it. But they got it blessed, and they burned sage and other things since then. You know, as suggested, we do the podcasts and we tell the ghost stories. I don't get into the politics of whether you believe or not, or yeah, you know, as a parapsychologist, I can explain away just about anything, or I can say you made it up in your head or you didn't, or whatever. And whatever it is that I believe in$10, get you a nice little coffee at Starbucks. But I can tell you, if you go back, and I hope I don't get this wrong, I can't remember the year, but there was a movie, didn't get much run, that was called I Believe the Entity. It was a movie about a woman who was frequently attacked sexually by a ghost. I was very young when I when I saw that movie. And keep in mind, even after Ann Aggie, I didn't believe in this whole ghost thing for a very long time, but uh we'll talk about some of the things that got me where I am. But my mother, who was a forensic psychologist for a court system, I can't say where, for a little amount of time, sat on a panel of people that interviewed the real life lady that the movie was made about. Several interviews with her. Now, I don't know about these interviews until I am having lunch with her at Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, Weston State Mental Institution. So I'm interning with her, and you know, instead of, boy, this guy looks great today, you know, we would talk about psychological psychology and parapsychology and psychological things and her job, you know, at the time with recorder's court. So several interviews she has with this lady. Yeah, like is she crazy? You know, we don't really use crazy much around here. Stop acting crazy. She goes, Yeah, I wish you wouldn't do that. I said, Well, you know, Freud and Jung, right? She laughs. No, I don't believe she is. I believe that she believes that she's telling the truth. I have run into in my lifetime several people who tell some pretty damn bizarre stories. And many times, and many times some of the ones that are way out there, like you you want to say, and you discovered all this right after you found the wild mushroom patch, right? But some of those kind of stories that I get, you know, I've had interviews with some of these people, and I will tell you 100%, they believe what they're saying is true. So then if truth is subjective to the owner of said truth, does their belief that it's real manifest it and make it real? Kind of interesting. So a short ghost story from Lucy Hale. She told uh Hollywood teen, I believe it was in 2010, uh, her coffee maker once came on by itself at 1 a.m. Frequently doors close. They don't slam, but they do close and gently latch. I've had a motion sensor that lights up in my apartment, and I swear it lights up sometime when there's nothing under it. And my dog stares and barks a lot. I don't feel threatened, well, that threatened, but it definitely kind of freaks me out. It's like the dog can see something that isn't there. There are several people of I want to say art business, but that's probably not a correct way to put it. There are several people in the paranormal field who believe that animals can see that sort of thing. They also believe that young children can see it. Uh check out the man, the girl, and the tiger. I believe it's their first podcast episode, and it's the one everybody loves the most. Claudia Schiffer. My lawyers are gone. Oh my god, don't do it. I'll behave. Former residents have trouble letting go of the Tudor mansion that Claudia Schiffer and her family call home. She says, We've had a medium go round, and she's told us that actually all of the ghosts that lives in this house with us are absolutely lovely. That no one should need to be scared. She told Architectural Digest, we welcome all of our ghosts. Basically, we hear the creaking noises and the strange things that happen sometimes, like when the music comes on, and we have enjoyed living with them. Allison Hannigan. And uh, I have to get this dig in. Penn, tell her. Where's Allison? Okay, anyway. She says, I have a ghost in my house. I saw him a couple of months ago. And by the way, that's not a dig on anybody that has replaced Allison. So don't put words in my mouth, but we're done with that. So Allison says, I have a ghost to my house. I saw him a couple of months ago. She told the San Francisco gate this. I don't think he died there because there's a law in LA that when you buy a house, if someone has died in it, they have to disclose that. I did not know that. That's interesting. And nobody did. So I don't know why he's there, but he's very friendly. My friend saw him first one night. She said, I don't mean to alarm you, but I just saw a man follow us out of the house. And I said, Well, at least he's gentlemanly. He let us go first. Later that night I saw this silhouette of a man standing in the bathroom doorway. I was like, Sweetie, what are you doing? I thought it was my now husband, Alexis. But then I looked, and Alexis was asleep next to me. In the Me and the Girl and the Tiger, my daughter will tell you the story of thinking something's a dream, and you wake up and it's it's still a nighttime, it's still there. Now I've had that happen on several occasions. Um with the gentleman I've been talking about with the bowler hat and the long coat, uh to you know, add the poles of water pump to the place that he hangs out. I have always had this ability to, when I'm terrified in a dream, to stop the dream, explain to what's terrifying me that it's my dream and it's time to wake up. I know that sounds like a crocodile, but I actually can do that. I've been able to do it since I was about 12 years old. And it works 99% of the time. So I don't know why that's that way, but I like it. Now I'm told by my mom before she passed and several other people that absolutely anyone can do that. You know, a lot of psychologists will tell you that your dreams are manifestations of stuff that's clogging up your conscious mind that it just wants to dump. And it doesn't want it to go into your filing cabinet because if it goes in there, it stays with you. So you're gonna have a dream about it and woo, it's gone. Okay, maybe. Um I would imagine, and it is nothing more than that, that if you had 10 psychologists in the room and you ask them that exact question, five of them will probably say, Yeah, that sounds right. And the other five would be like, ah, you know, I don't know. There could be this or that or the other. All of that sort of thing. So let's see, I was a trauma medic for 15 years. So in that field, so we'll take it somewhere clear away from let me take your brain out and play with it and put it back in. There's usually a very strict set of protocols that trauma medics and paramedics and and doctors and people have to follow. If this happens, you do this. If this happens, do that. When you're going from a regular paramedic to an ACLS, advanced cardiac life support medic, you'll go through a thing called megacode. And if this happens, do this. Then the result was it this or this? If it's this, do this, if it's that, do that. Okay, fine. There are some of the same kind of protocols in effect for things we do in psychology and parapsychology. It's, you know, then they don't call them mega code because it's a whole different thing. But I told you that so that I could say for a long period of time, years, for a burn, and I use this as an example all the time. If you're a frequent flyer of the podcast, you're you're gonna hear it a lot. If someone got burned, it was a dry, sterile dressing protocol. Then you'd get a notification from your advisor. The protocol has changed. If someone gets burned, moist sterile dressing. Okay, fine. Then a couple of months later you would get one. The AMA has decided that the best treatment for a burn would be dry sterile dressing. Okay. 50%, 50%. Now, back to playing with your mind. If this person does A, B, and C, they're schizophrenic. Okay, fine. Then you get the letter. If the person does A or B in the absence of C, they're schizophrenic. No, what about C? Well, forget about C. Okay, fine. And on and on it goes. And I would imagine that it is that way in just about every profession, right? I will not forget being in kindergarten and whispering someone, whispering a story into somebody's ear, and when it came back to my ear was nothing like the story. I was attacked online by some folks that uh didn't agree with the fact that someone told ghost stories because it sends you to hell. I'll try not to mention that too much more, but to my lawyer friends who are listening, there is a great deal of tongue biting that goes on. So I I have the right to remain silent, but I never have the capability, ask Cassandra. Sometimes A and B doesn't always equal C. And so it is in our world. I saw a ghost. What does it mean? What makes you think it's a ghost? Well, what else could it be? I have a haunting. What kind of haunting? Do hauntings come in in different types? Yes, they do. Oh. Well, I don't know. Is it a bad haunting or a good haunting? What do you believe it to be? Like truth, it's subjective. The person who owns it sees it quite probably in a different way than I do, or you do, or somebody else does. But like we always say, my friends, there is indeed a world unseen. And it is a world that exists all around us all the time. And every now and then, for whatever the reason, we catch a glimpse of it. And the dead get in. Please give us a like, give us a share, follow us. It's important. Tell all your friends about it. Submit your stories either online or send us this mail mail. And hey, tell a ghost story. It's good for you.

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