Souls In His Shadow | Ghost & Ghouls Ep 25 | Season 1

This story contains depictions of psychological trauma, self-harm, suicide, disturbing imagery, and supernatural horror that some readers may find upsetting.  Viewer discretion is advised. 
You can skip to this time stamp to find out what we are talking about. 

If you or someone you know is going through a hard time or struggling with thoughts of depression or suicide, please know you are not alone and help is readily available.

You can reach out to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988 (available 24/7, free, and confidential), or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a Crisis Counselor.

Season 1 Ep 25 is here. Enjoy this episode and make sure to Like and Subscribe. Check out our Instagram and Tik Tok if you want to support us further. Links in the description. Make sure to leave a rating because it helps us immensely. Stay creepy cryptids. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Ghost and Ghouls podcast. I'm your host, Tyler. And with me, I have the guy that showed me the difference between a poltered geist and a poltergem, my co-host Anthony. One's real, one's not. One will blow your mind. One will change your perception on reality.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

One makes you a believer. Both make me believe. Oh god. Why you know, again, how do you come up with these actually? I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

I I I look at puns online a lot. I funny just said that.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

But then, you know, they kind of stitch them together and then I try to like direct them at you.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Oh god.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

If you're new here, this is how this is gonna work this time. We're changing the flow of the episodes a little bit to shorten them down and make them a little more digestible. So in this episode, I'm gonna read Anthony a fictional horror story about a creature, ghost, cryptid, goblin, ghoul, extraterrestrial, paranormal entity, slash famous, haunting, slash something horrific, slash scary thing, where I've removed the name of the creature from the story and replaced it with descriptions. And then Anthony here gets to guess, figure out what we might be talking about this week. And then we'll go over its history and a little what would you do, choose your own adventure scenario, which ant might speed run. It is an ABC decisioner. So, you know, last time you got really, really far on the ABC, like just raw dogging it out.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

But uh just gonna go ahead and say, go ahead, subscribe, turn that bell on for any notifications, as well as leaving a like, and then maybe following us on our you know, TikTok, Instagram, or even now on Facebook and Twitter. We had to make that, as well as join us in our uh Discord. We have a free one, links in the description below, and then as well as if you wish to support us, which greatly appreciated, we have links in the description below to our Patreon. Uh dollar only, get it a day early, as uh uncut, unedit, and have our full mess ups, technical difficulties, and uh jokes that YouTube don't like, possibly, don't know, and uh as well as to Buzz Sprout, where you can just get the audio, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, we're on everything. So I believe I covered all of it. Everything.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Please follow us on everything. Please go join our Discord. Um, we'd love to hear like kind of some if you guys have had any stories about any of these things, if you guys have experienced a haunting or an extraterrestrial or seen a cryptid or anything like that. We want to hear from you guys. We want to have a community. We want to talk to you guys. And then when you guys can recommend movies for us to watch. And we can recommend movies for you guys. And book club. I'll start a book club. Everybody loves books. You like books? You like physical books or audiobooks?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Uh uh, probably audiobooks.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

I might have to do, I might have to do like an like a like a that one would have been a good one. So my wife has been, she's she's a big reader. So we were we went to Second and Charles. It's like a new used bookstore type deal. Right. And I got my best friend's Exorcism because it looked like a VCR tape. It was a physical book. I haven't read like physical book in a little bit. The demon in the book. Guess what animal it was tied to? You say like sheep squatch, that'd be No, it was owls. Like the Lechuza. Oh. That just hit me like a freaking.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Oh, you know, I also asked uh my stepfather about that. About he said it's Lelechusa. Lelechusa. Lelechusa. Lelechusa. Okay, it's just an owl, basically, you know, because it was he said dick depicted as vengeance as well. Uh-huh. Or like something terrible. But he said he didn't really hear too much of the stories. So, because he wasn't like in the Texas, Mexico area. Yeah. He wasn't in that region. He was more like deep into Mexico. I gotcha. I guess. Yeah. But yeah, he has heard of some of it.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

That's very cool. Yeah, go watch our old our other episode. It's about owl people. The monster movie maker and the pop culture are now going to be combined into its own separate video for just to give us enough time to kind of like watch some stuff on the subject matter, and then we can kind of go into some, you know, if we watch a movie about like a a poltergasm, you know, maybe they use the peanut butter wrong. We don't know. But you know, we can kind of come up with some ideas of how to make those movies better and come up with our own ideas too.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Cool. Alright. So, Anthony here, that guy, gets three yes or no questions and a little shot in the dark gust to see if he can guess right off the rip what we're talking about this week. The floor is yours, Anthony.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

So it's the it's the peanut butter, man. I'm slightly allergic.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

They start getting a reaction. That's when you hit them with the slap. It's effective.

SPEAKER_02 5:27

Alright, three yes or no questions. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Native origin. Yes. Does its name dictate what it is or what it does?

SPEAKER_03 5:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Holy.

SPEAKER_03 5:37

So I started blasting.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Pew pew. Ping ping. Ooh! So because of a native origin, I'm obvious I'm immediately gonna go straight to like, okay, this thing is a little bit more spiritual, uh, pro possibly of a spirit, uh, and what it does and what it uh in its name has to dictate what it does. And especially with the native origin, it's usually what they attribute to like certain either like catastrophes, uh rituals, I'm thinking, um, or a set of like different emotions that they could not describe back then. So I'm just hoping that this thing is not like witchcrafty, but I'm not gonna use the question on that. I I I need to know the region. Oh lord. Okay, is this thing is this thing cutting off, let's just say it's just Mexico and the United States, right? Mm-hmm. Cut them in half. Is it south? No. So it's not in Mexico, okay? So I don't have to deal with any of the any of those creatures or folklore. Okay, so it's it's either in America or up into Canada. I feel like I can deal with the northern one a little bit more. Uh native You had to you had you you had to get the script a little bit more, so I feel like this has a a little bit into it. So I I kinda wanna go with something like along the lines of because you did vengeance, you did an area. I have a feeling we're somewhere in the Appalachian. Uh I know I'm saying that wrong. I've heard it said that way. Is it really? Oh, okay. Appalachian. I always feel like I'm saying that wrong. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

I feel like it's some some some people say like Appalachian, some say appalachian, some say I've never heard Appalachian. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Oh wow. No, that was the spear finger lady. She she was near there. Yep. No, we're not near there. I'm gonna go ahead and switch. Pro this thing's gotta be West Coast side. I'm gonna go with like uh I'm just gonna throw it out there like the wailing lady.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

I was thinking of like you you're your your your mindset is in the right spot though. West Coast? No, no, no, no. Like in terms of like putting the like the kind of the the name and like an attribute of what it does together in terms of that. You're you're your your mind, your your reason your reasoning is sound. I like the way your critical thinking is like really narrowing down. If you had like two or more questions, you'd you'd be you'd be close.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

I feel like because I need I needed to know if it's native origin, it's easier to kind of pick off of. And especially if the name dictates what it is and what it does, it's like, oh, okay, what did they cannibalism, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

So no, it's not that. Yeah. Okay. Before I start this story, I have to put this warning in here. This story contains depictions of psychological trauma, self-harm, suicide, disturbing imagery, and supernatural horror that some readers may find upsetting. Viewer discretion is divide advised. If you are sensitive to any of this subject material, just go ahead and turn the turn the video off. If you or someone you know is going through a hard time or struggling with thoughts of depression or self-harm or suicide, please know you are not alone and help is readily available. You can reach out to the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988-available 24-7, free and confidential, or text home to 741-741 to connect with a crisis counselor. I have to get that out of the way because the What kind of story do you get? Or is it the history of this? It's both. Oh gosh. It's both. I was I feel like I was way off then. This is a dark one.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Well, you know, I wasn't too far off with the name, honestly, with what you're like the wailing lady, but that could be anything.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Okay. This story is called Souls in His Shadow. The first time Daniel saw the figure, it was standing on Crow Ridge. It was nearly midnight. He was driving home a lonely gravel road that cut through miles of prairie. The moon hung low in the sky, casting silver light across the hills. That's when he noticed something standing on the ridge. At first he thought it was a tree. Then he realized it was moving. The figure was impossibly tall, at least eight feet high, maybe more. Its arms hung far below its waist, swaying gently in the wind. Daniel slowed his truck, the figure stopped moving. Even from half a mile away, he felt it staring at him. A wave of dread washed over him. He stepped on the gas and drove away. But the image followed him home. That night he dreamed of the figure standing outside his bedroom window, watching. The next night he dreamed it had moved closer. And on the third night it stood at the foot of his bed. Its face was hidden in behind darkness. Its long fingers nearly touched the floor. Daniel woke screaming. In the nightmares, they never stopped. Soon strange things began happening during the day. He heard footsteps following him. When he turned around, nobody was there. He heard people calling his name from empty fields. Sometimes he would glance across the parking lot and see the tall figure standing among cars. He looked again and it would be gone. His family started to grow concerned. His friends told him he looked exhausted. Daniel stopped sleeping. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw that thing waiting for him. Then came the attack. One evening he was walking home from a friend's house after sunset. The shortcut took him through a stretch of prairie, and the wind died completely. The silence felt wrong, and he heard a voice. Daniel. Daniel turned. Nobody stood there. Daniel. The voice came again. This time from behind him, then from his left, then his right. The same voice over and over again, mocking. The grass around him began to rustle. Something huge was moving through it. The tall figure emerged from the darkness, its limbs unfolded like a spider's, its eyes reflected in the moonlight, its mouth stretched into an unnatural grin grin, and Daniel began to run. Behind him, the sound of snapping grass and pounding footsteps. The creature moved impossibly fast. Its long legs carried it across the prairie in giant strides. Daniel could hear it gaining on him. Closer, closer. Then a hand seized his shoulder. The force hurled him into the ground. The pain exploded through his body. Before he could rise, the creature stood over him. Its face covered inches away. The smell of damp earth poured from its mouth. Then it raised its arms. Darkness spilled outwards. Shapes emerged within the shadows. Faces. Hundreds of faces. Men, women, children, all trapped within the darkness surrounding this creature. Their mouths opened. A thousand voices screamed at once. The sound shattered Daniel's thoughts. He clutched his head and screamed. Then everything went black. When Daniel woke, he was lying alone in the prairie. The figure was gone. But something inside him had changed. The whispers now followed him everywhere, telling him to end it all. He heard them in running water, telling him to hurt himself, in the television static, depression, in the wind outside his house. He's alone. At night they crowded around his bed, death, invisible voices telling him to let go. Weeks passed. Daniel stopped trusting what he saw. Faces appeared in mirrors, shadowy figures stood in doorways. Sometimes he would wake to find strange symbols scratched into notebooks he didn't remember writing in. His family tried to help, doctors found no explanation, and the whispers only grew louder. One winter evening, Daniel locked himself inside of his bedroom, and his parents heard him to talking someone. Hours passed, the conversation continued. Sometimes Daniel laughed, sometimes he cried, then he started to beg. When they finally forced the door open, they found him sitting in the corner, not moving, but still. They found an empty bottle of pills next to his body. That's when his father looked out the window with tears streaming down his cheeks. He saw Daniel's face illuminated with a ghostly glow as a monstrous shadow figure lowered its arm and Daniel disappeared into the darkness.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Good lord. What what did you pick?

SPEAKER_02 14:13

I found an entity.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

This thing is insane.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Yeah, its name? Right up there in the legendary books. So what do you think it might be? Oh gosh. Uh you were so so into like the oh man, this got dark old class life.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Something of like a grim reaper type. Uh I don't think it would be that. I feel like they actually I I actually think the Grim Reaper has more of a better image than that entity.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Yeah, think like Slender Man S, but as he's like, I was thinking of like Shadow Man almost. As he picks up his arms, the souls of people are trapped in the shadows.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Uh I feel like this entity is like it it it traps or it's attaches to someone, drains their like their happiness, like not even just that, just their sanity. Yeah. Like essentially, and then their like life force almost, and then just like or their vitality, and then just makes them I don't even know. I kind of uh what was that one movie that made the kids like just go crazy? Not weapons, but like uh the one with the lawnmower scene. Uh oh. You know what I'm talking about? Sinister sinister. It's kind of like sinister in a way, you know? I uh cause that's what I'm thinking of. Yeah, it's like I I don't know. No, I got nothing. Yeah. You ready for this guy's name? I I feel like it's gonna be something crazy. It's something dumb. I feel like it's like the soul snatcher.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

This creature is called Walking Sam. It is a modern Native American urban legend most closely associated with the Lakota tribe in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Walking Sam is usually described as an extremely tall, thin, shadowy man, often wearing a dark coat or stovepipe hat, sometimes having eyes but no uh but no mouth, associated with despair, loneliness, and death, said to whisper to vulnerable people and lure them towards self-destructive thoughts. Many versions also claim that the spirits or the bodies of previous victims hang from his arms.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Nah, because that's that's wild. Nah. Like, I I felt like I thought, okay, what so before you say what year this thing came out or like what time frame, I was thinking like, okay, this thing had to have been like bat way back then, because of like, oh, they didn't know what depression or schizophrenia was, you know, any of those like elements. So they were just like, oh, this is an entity that is trapping someone in an endless loop of like despair, yeah, and then just forces them to because they because I immediately was like, oh, they hear voices, hear screaming, and there's like they just want it to stop.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

The exact origin is debated. There are three main theories. Older Lakota and Dakota traditions. Some researchers connect Walking Sam to stories about stick people, um, which are shadow beings, and other spiritual entities found in Lakota and Dakota oral traditions. Um, the tall man tradition, some accounts suggest that the stories of a tall dark figure roaming Pine Ridge existed before the internet era and known locally under names such as Tallman. Modern influences, many folklorists and observers note strong similarities between an internet of the same build, Slender Man. No shot. Which first appeared online in 2009. Some believe modern depictions of Walking Sam were heavily influenced by Slender Man imagery in their in the internet horror culture.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

So wait, wait, so they're saying that Slender Man inspired this? Possibly. I was thinking the other way around, like Walking Sam inspired Slender Man.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Yeah. This is kind of the mainstay where the this part I'm getting ready to kind of go over. Okay. Um is kind of like one of the big talking points where Walking Sam really gained his notoriety. The 2014 to 2015 Pine Ridge Suicide Crisis. Walking Sam became widely known during a tragic period on Pine Ridge between the late 2 uh 2014 and early 2015. The reservation experienced more than a hundred suicide attempts among young people with several deaths. Um, during this time, some teenagers reported seeing or dreaming about Walking Sam, and stories spread on social media that he was responsible. Um, however, tribal leaders and mental health professionals and researchers generally emphasize that the crisis was connected to real-world factors such as poverty, historical trauma, substance abuse, lack of mental health resources, other than it being actually supernatural. Now, we I got a couple, you know, got some more talking points.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

You know, what would you prefer, like if you if this thing was attacking, right? Uh-huh. Or it in the world, like, right, would you rather have been like an actual like poverty and uh environment and all that stuff that's like making you this way, or like believe it was an actual entity? You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_02 19:47

So that this is because in my mind this is my this is my opinion when it comes to stuff like this. When you have somebody dwell on something that hard, right? Yeah. When you have a group of people that are dwelling on something like that that hard, that can twist it into reality. Because I didn't even like know about that.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Yeah. The the mass, almost mass attempted suicide. Over a hundred attempted suicides. Right? Like, I mean, the only biggest thing that I remember or learned about was like, of course, the Great Depression.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

Yeah. You know, it's kind of like they had Yeah, this was like 10, 10, 11 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yeah. Uh but again, it's like, okay, in the Great Depression, we kind of knew what was causing it. It was, you know, people couldn't take it, yeah, didn't have no money or whatever. Yeah. But like in that situation, wouldn't hearing that story about that, right? Yeah, it's kind of like, ooh.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

But think about think about this. You had them, them, them two girls that believed in Slender Man, and they took their friend out in the woods and stabbed her. You remember that story? Oh, shit. Because they believed in Slender Man.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

So, like, if this thing was kind of the same, it would kind of be like, oh, we're gonna actually Yeah, no, like it would there could be messed up people being like, oh, we need to appease it. Let's kill people for appeasing this thing. Maybe it'll lift its curse or whatever, or believe it's a curse. Okay, never mind.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Yeah, you can't I see when you when and that's kind of the kind of the the mainstay of so if you look at his like the history of Jonestown, right? Yeah, where they become radical drink the flavor aid. Yeah, but he didn't he didn't prey on like vulnerable no, he preyed he preyed on the vulnerable, like the get the Jones preyed on prostitutes, the poor, drug addicts, like those were his people because they were easily influenced because they were at rock bottom. So now you got a bunch of people that are growing up poor at rock bottom, like mental health. Health crisis is going crazy, and everybody's like, Hey, did you hear the story of Walking Sam? He wants you to hurt yourself. And it's like, it just spirals. Yeah, that's insane. You know what I mean? And that's kind of the thing. Is like, and like, I mean, I've been I've been at some dark places where I've I've looked at my loved ones and been like, I think I'm depressed. And some of them looked at me and like, what the fuck you got to be depressed about? It's like, dude, like, I I hate my job, I hate this, I hate that, I don't like myself, like I'm not comfortable in my body, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, dude, it just spirals. And all of a sudden, it's like you're just laying in bed and you're just like, man, I don't even want to get up. Yeah. You know, it's like, yeah. Is Walking Sam some sort of ancient cryptid? Some sort of ancient entity? He might be. Evidence suggests he's probably not. Um, most of the Walking Sam appears to evolved around the eighth or the late 20th century and early 21st century. The legend was most likely shaped between indigenous folklore and modern horror culture. Cultural significance now today, many people view Walking Sam less as a literal crypt and it's more as a symbol of despair and historical trauma within communities that have faced generations of hardship. Um, others kind of treat him still as a genuine supernatural entity from local folklore. Kind of like, you know, you kind of get into that.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Oh my gosh, I just thought of something like even crazier of why like they could now. Of course, this is just a conspiracy that I just made up. It's like why they call it walking Sam, you know, almost. Why? Well, it's is depicted with like despair and like where it goes, right? It's almost like, hey, what was the thing that made you know America Father Sam?

SPEAKER_00 23:44

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

You know, it's kind of like Uncle Sam. It's like trying to get you to do stuff, you know. Basically it's saying America. Well, I mean, you could even or during that time, you know what I'm saying? What they did to the Indian. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

I mean, you could you could even go into saying like Uncle Sam in the Trail of Tears, like having like the US government force them to move and walk miles and miles and miles and miles and miles across the the turn, you know, the Midwest and into reservations where the land was barren.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

It's almost like when they said like walking Sam, it's like, oh, it's Uncle Sam. The reason why it's depicted that way is because oh, he's created this, and they've created our environment of being poverty and mental health.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Then he's also wearing the top hat, like Uncle Sam did. Exactly. Okay, I think we just figured out the origins. So, um, some pre-2000s walking Sam traditions. Um, there's very little, but uh I did want to talk about like the tall man or the shadow figure. Um, some Lakota community members have stated that stories about tall, shadowy figures existed long before the internet. These accounts are usually oral histories rather than uh published folklore collections. Um, some versions describe the figure seen outside of homes or near isolated places associated with death, misfortune, or spiritual danger. One particular interesting account comes from a Lakota commenter discussing stories by grandparents born in the early 1900s. They recalled hearing about a tall figure seen looking into windows before death occurred, but noted that the figure did not have the modern name Walking Sam when they first heard the stories. Because these are recollections rather than contemporary records, historians treat them as valuable but difficult to verify. And then you have several modern discussions connect Walking Sam to Lakota and Dakota stories about stick people, sometimes called stick Indians or other in other indigenous traditions. Um these are beings that are generally described as supernatural shadow-like entities that can mislead, frighten, or harm people. Some stories mention whistling in the woods and spiritual danger. However, there's really not clear evidence that specific stick person named Walking Sam appears in older um published Lakota folklore collections.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

So the stick people and the whistle 100% believe. Yep. I think that's just another form of the shadow man. Or, you know, it might be multiple.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

Well I think that there are multiple shadow people, right? Because people always talk about seeing shadow entities, yeah. But I think walking Sam gained like that. How do I put it? Because he was named and because he was believed in the city.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

I think when it yeah, so I feel like when an entity is actually named, it it's almost like a sense of belief that you give it, and and so, in a sense, you give it power, you know?

SPEAKER_02 26:37

Yeah, so of course, like walking Sam, like so but exactly they named it, it has power, but then in that power, it also caused an entire community so much like emotion, you know what I mean? Like just despair and darkness, and I think that's when like and how do I how do I put it? It's kind of like when if any if you guys have ever watched a paranormal activity, or not a paranormal activity, but like a paranormal investigation. Oh right, what did they always do? They put flashlights out, they put the little cat balls on the ground. Hey, you can touch this thing and use its energy, right? And one of them that really fucked me up was the overnight's channel when they went to the Bellwitch Cave, right? Yeah, and they said, You can take our power and all of their shit die. I do remember that episode.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:30

That was a crazy.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Walk out of the cave and they're like, Why did we say that? Like the realization clicked in their head. They were like, Why the fuck would we ever give an entity that much power?

SPEAKER_01 27:41

No, yeah, when you give something permission, I feel like there's that veil of you need to like, hey, you can or like hey, you can attach yourself to me. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

And it's like I think that's exactly what happened in the in the in the if, and I know, yeah, hey, poverty, this, that, and the other, mental health, whatever. Yes. But in the in the scope of this becoming an a like a being, this might have been one of those things, like he got to one person, they named him, yes, and that name ran like wildfire.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

So one one thing I will say, I've been looking at a lot of a lot of things dealing with Jesus, right? And especially when it comes to paranormal investigations, uh-huh, because I feel like that is the one name that you can bring about, and it just turns everything off, it protects you so much, uh-huh, and it's insane.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

It very well could be something demonic that is just lesser that is gaining power.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Oh, 100%, because of your belief. Yeah. Like, oh yeah, you believe that this entity is causing my despair, my dread, then it's going to definitely.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

Now, here's a kind of a fun little tidbit.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

There is a claim and a frequent, frequently repeated claim online, says the first modern reference to Walking Sam appears in the 1983 book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter uh Matheson. Um, the problem is that people who repeat the claim rarely provide a page number or quotations, and the researchers have struggled to verify that the book actually contains a description matching modern day walking Sam. As a result, this claim should be treated cautiously. So it kind of looks like our your big your big to-do when it comes to walking Sam is this 2014-2015 self-harm, depression, mental health, yeah, wildfire that happened in this community. Yes. And like I was watching YouTube videos on this, like I was going through it, and they were like, Yeah, they'd have like like groups of people would get together and try to do it.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Oh, the group suicides or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 30:01

Like it wasn't just like, oh, it's just a hundred random cases. No, like they had like, oh yeah, five kids got together and tried to try to do this to themselves. It's like, holy crap.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

No, no, okay. I I gotta ask this. Is it of course did some groups just succeed? Yeah. Like, was it all of them that succeeded?

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Or was it no no no no?

SPEAKER_01 30:21

Like when we say it was like 140 attempted suicides.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

It was it was over it was over a hundred attempted suicides. Um, I after reading that and kind of like digging into the nitty-gritty of it, I did not want to know the exact number.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

This was just because they could have been like Yeah, we had over a hundred and eighty succeeded, you know what I mean? Or we had over a hundred and like five. You know what I mean? I didn't really want to know, especially being mostly teenagers and kids. Yeah. Um, but I think the if you if you look at it like like we were just saying, if you look at it from a paranormal, like in a belief in there is yeah, uh even if you go into like the multiple multidimensional, whatever uh what's the guy that's always screaming on the internet? Alex Jones. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a third dimension, and in that third dimension is with all the evil is, and what they're trying to do is thin the veil between the third dimension and our dimension, and they let him in, and it's like, you know, like they just slip in, and it's like biblically, Jesus cast uh a demon out of a dude into pigs, yeah, or cast legion out of a person into pigs. I mean, what's saying that this wasn't like a lesser imp that got in, got in some kid's ear, he did something horrific that he can never take back, gained a little bit of power, and then I wouldn't even say it would be like an imp.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

I would I would definitely say this is like a maybe a uh like if we think like shadow people are just actually like souls that have died, yeah, that can't move on because of like dread or despair or whatever that they had, and then put it on others. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Like if he if he was one that did it to himself, yeah, and then because of the traumi, his soul stuff, but then you start naming is kind of like and then he starts gaining a little bit more, yeah. Yeah, and it's uh but the depiction of him picking up his arms, right? And having so I've saw I saw different depictions. One of them was like he was tree-like, right? Like super skinny, twisty, kind of like my scarecrow that I have for Halloween, the biggest arms out, yeah, and people hanging from nooses, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

Swing in, and I was like, when you first said that, that's the exact image that came to my head.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Then I saw some where it was like the schizophrenic scribbling, like the uh like drawing style of it, and his arms were out, and it was just like veils of faces, and I was like, oh, that's so just horrifying.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Oh gosh. Nah, I I I think like okay, if you think of it from the paranormal perspective of that, that's that's insane. And then of course, if you think of from a maybe like from an actual logical standpoint, they just put a name to it, which was they're trying to like it, they're just putting what Uncle Sam, you know, what America has done to their community, and is like, you guys have not helped us out, you've put us in poverty, our mental health is bad. It's like, and then Uncle Sam's whole thing is like join us, be united, and all that. It's like okay, you're just yeah, like as you walk, it's like you're just bringing nothing but despair wherever you go.

SPEAKER_02 33:42

Yeah. You know, I I can see that being more of kind of the imagery that gets tied together with this with depression and despair that this thing did it. Yeah, this is the one that told us to do it, this is the thing that moved us, this entity, yes, and then all of a sudden it's like here it is. Yeah, and um in the timelines of like when this thing kind of existed and when Uncle Sam came out, it's like you there are correlations, and this is kind of the crazy thing with history, is there are correlations between certain demographics and the way they're depicted in history versus what how they really were and how their depictions of history show them, and they are like polar opposites, but it's the different faces of the same coin. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

And like you could easily have an evil Uncle Sam who is like 100% just completely ruining indigenous peoples, and I mean it I mean if you look at from their perspective, Uncle Sam, yeah, like that's exactly what what he did to the indigenous people, you know, and then you know, but it's insane.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

Once again, for if you've made it this far, if if you if you have any thoughts of depression, self-harm, anything like that, please reach out to somebody. Reach out to family and friends. Family and friends, reach out to your family and friends. Make sure everybody's okay. Okay. Like nobody needs to go through this alone. We're all here on this little blue marble rocketing through space at 16 million miles an hour, however fast the fuck we're moving. Absolutely. We shouldn't have to do it alone. Check on your friends. The little things you do too. Remember that. Like bringing Saratoga water. Exactly. Alright, you ready for the scenario? Absolutely. Are you want to speed run it or do you want me to like give you the options?

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Uh, I'll speed run the first three. We're going C A D.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

Ooh, I'm gonna have a lot of reading to do. Because you just picked, like You want me to pick the like the No no no no no no no no, you already you already picked. The whistling man in the trees. So, three students from your local school have vanished in the past year. Tonight your phone buzzes at 2 13 a.m. A text message from an unknown number. Come outside, he's waiting. At first you think it's a prank. Then you hear it. A distant whistle. Long and slow. Human, but wrong. You look out your bedroom window, and at the edge of the woods stands a figure. Tall. I'm getting goosebumps. Far taller than any person should be. Its limbs seem too long, hanging nearly to its knees, and it doesn't move, it just watches. Lock the door and ignore it. You lock the window, pull the curtain shut, and crawl back into bed. It's just somebody messing with me. That's what you tell yourself, and then the whistle comes again. Closer. You pull the blanket over your head, minutes pass, then your phone vibrates. Another text. Why won't you look at me? Your stomach drops, the curtains rustle, the windows closed. There is no breeze. Slowly, very slowly, the fabric parts. Only an inch. Just enough for you to see outside, and the figure is no longer the tree line. He's standing in your backyard. His head is tilted unnaturally to one side, watching and waiting. Your phone vibrates again. Come out inside. The whistle sounds once more, but this time it seems to come directly from beneath your window. You hear footsteps circling the hunt uh the house. Crunch, crunch, crunch, then silence. A full minute passes. Nothing. No whistle, no footsteps, no message. Then a single knock comes from your bedroom door. Knock. Your parents should be asleep. Another knock. Then a familiar voice. Your mother's voice. Antonio? Open the door. Fuck you. Something feels wrong. Your mother never calls you Antonio. Your phone lights up. One final text appears. That isn't her. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

I better have been told.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

Your hand trembles as you reach for the doorknob. The text message flashes in your mind. That isn't her.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

But it sounds exactly like your mom. There's no pause. Pause real quick. There's no shot I picked. Open the door. Anyway, continue.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

Okay. It sounds exactly like your mom. You unlock the door, click, you slowly pull it open. The hallway beyond is dark, empty. No mom, no footsteps, no movement, just darkness stretching towards the stairs. Mom? You whisper. No answer. The house feels different though, too quiet. Then you notice something. The family photos hanging on the walls have been turned upside down. Every single one of them. A trill a chill crawls up your spine. You start to back in your room, you hear another whistle behind you, inside the room. You spin around, the window's still locked, the curtain are still closed, but standing from the corner, you standing in the far corner of your bedroom is a tall silhouette. It was not there a second ago. Its head is uh touches your ceiling, its arms hang impossibly long. No face, no eyes, just darkness. The figure remains perfectly still. Your phone vibrates. You glance down, a final message appears. Now it sees you. The screen goes black. The room becomes impossibly cold. The figure takes one slow step forward, then another. Its joints bend at strange angles, like it's learning how a human should move. You realize something horrifying. It isn't trying to attack, it's just getting closer. Like it wants you to follow it. The whistle comes again, not from the creature, from somewhere downstairs. A second whistle answers from outside, then a third from the woods. You are no longer dealing with just one presence. Something has surrounded the house. The shadow in your room raises one long arm and points towards a hallway, as if inviting you to come. So, you picked for your for the final one, right? Yeah. You lunge forward and slam the bedroom door shut, barricading yourself in the room and prepare to fight. You lunge forward and slam the bedroom door shut. Bang! The walls shake. You shove your dresser against the door, then your desk, and then your chair. Your heart pounds so hard it hurts for a moment. Silence. No whistles, no footsteps, nothing. You grip a baseball bat from beside your bed. The room feels impossibly small. Then you hear something scraping across the ceiling. Scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape. Directly above you, moving slowly, like something with long limbs is crawling through the attic. The sound circles the room. One pass, then another. The whistle returns. Not outside or downstairs, from inside the walls. A thin, distant note echoing through the house's bones. You glance towards the corner where the figure stood. It's empty. Gone. A surge of relief washes over you. Then your closet door creaks open. Just an inch. Then another. Then another. Darkness fills the crack. You tighten your grip on the bat, something shifts inside. I'm moving towards you, moving upwards. As if a perfect person were unfolding from a space far too small to contain them. A long arm emerges, then another. Fingers seem unnaturally long. The thing begins to pull itself out, its head scraping the ceiling. The whistle stops. And for the first time you hear it speak. A voice like dead leaves dragging across pavement pavement. Come with us. The room lights flicker. On, off, off, on. Each time the light returns, the figure's closer. Ten feet away. Eight, six, four. The face remains hidden in the shadow. You realize you only have a second to act. What do you do?

SPEAKER_01 41:12

Oh, we're okay. Alright. Hold on, real quick. I'm sorry. I gotta I gotta do okay. I'm still mad at the fact that you open the door. I'm so mad I opened the door. Yeah, well, that's the speed run. No, like, yeah, because like, okay, if I'm hearing my mother like that, like whispering, right? I'm not opening that door.

SPEAKER_02 41:34

Do you want to swing a bat and attack, leap for the window and try to escape into the night, or demand to know what it wants from you?

SPEAKER_01 41:39

Okay, so there's an obvious answer, but I'm gonna go ahead and explain my reasoning here.

SPEAKER_02 41:45

B, you're garbage. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

It's terrible.

SPEAKER_02 41:48

Right? You're not leaping for the window.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

No, not going outside because that's where it wants you to go. Like, no, I'm not gonna do that.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

It seems like there's multiple of these things like floating around.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Uh C is terrible as well. Like, I already know what it wants me, like, wants from me. It wants me to go.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

It wants your virgin. How old?

SPEAKER_01 42:05

You know, I I can't even deny that. Like, I don't even know what this thing would want.

SPEAKER_03 42:09

This thing's voiced by Cat Williams.

unknown 42:12

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 42:15

Reaches back for it. You're telling me.

SPEAKER_02 42:18

Well what what did he say about oh my god, what's the the actor or the the comedian? The short one. The short one? Yeah, Kevin Kevin Hart? Kevin Hart. I don't know why I want like Kevin Smith kept coming to my mind. Oh. But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:36

Kevin Hart got his his multi-million dollar deal because he let him tell that Virgin Hole. When Diddy watch that hole, you gotta tell Diddy no.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

And there was a squirt model. So, okay, one, you know, I kind of already know what this creature wants. It wants me to come with it. Uh essentially, you probably my soul. Uh, so that's also terrible. It went to your hole? Soul. Hole. Soul. Anyway. We're on the same page. Only answer to go with is obviously A.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

Swing for the fence. You raise the bat, every instinct is screaming at you to run, but fear is turned into anger. You grip the handle so tightly your knuckles ache. The thing takes another step. Its head brushes the ceiling, its limbs bent with a jerky puppet-like motion. You charge with a yell, you swing. Crack! The bat connects with the side of its head. The impact jars your arms, and for a split sec and you think you've won. Then you realize something wrong. The figure never reacted. It didn't stumble, didn't flinch, didn't even seem to notice. Slowly it turns its head towards the bat, the wood is splitting. Not because you hit it, because the bat is rotting. Before your eyes, the grain blackens, mold spreads along the handle, the wood crumbles to dust. In your hands, the creature takes another step and another. Now you can see its face, or what should be a face. There are no eyes, no mouth, only a smooth dark void where features should be. The room begins to distort around it. The walls seem further away. The floor stretches, the corners darken. A thousand distant whistles echo from somewhere beyond the house. Beyond the woods, beyond the world. The thing reaches towards you, its fingers stop inches from your chest. Then your bedroom door explodes inward. Bang! A bright beam of light floods the room. Your f stepfather stands in the doorway holding a powerful flashlight. Probably that multi-crazy illuminator plane dropper.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

No, I was thinking it's like the uh just the uh 20,000 luminators. That's what I'm talking about, yeah. And then it just like falls out the window.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

Behind him is your mom, and the creature recoils. For the first time it reacts, the whistles become angry, frantic. The darkness around the figure wreathes like smoke. Your stepfather grabs your arm. Move! The creature retreats into the shadow of the closet, not running, not fleeing, watching and waiting, as if it knows this isn't over. Your family races uh outside, dawn is beginning to break, gray light spread across the horizon, the whistle fades into the distant trees. When the sun finally rises, the wood appears normal again. But as as you stand on the porch, exhausted and shaken, your phone vibrates one last time. A single message appears from the unknown number. Next time you will follow. The sender vanishes immediately. No number, no contact, no trace. You survive the night. But sometimes survival isn't the same thing as winning. Weeks later, you still hear that whistling in your dreams. And every now and in the now and then, when you pass a dark tree line at dusk, you think you see a tall silhouette standing perfectly still among those trunks, watching, waiting, forever, patient. Hey, the speed run work! You got it! Thank you, Ruben, for saving Anthony's life with the 20 million lumin flashlight.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

I just gotta say, it's like I am the best survival expert when it comes to paranormal entities. You put me in a whore, I'm gonna have the no loss uh clos. No. Or the no loss uh cause. I'm uh no what is it? Is it clawed? Oh, claws. Okay, for your okay.

SPEAKER_02 46:32

All right, tell you what. Tell you what. I'm gonna I'm gonna put this, I'm gonna put this on the internet. I'm gonna put this, I'm gonna put this right here, okay? You win every hold on, hold on. You win the next five. Yeah. The next five scenarios without dying, right? Uh-huh. I'll get a tattoo of it'll say final girl on my thigh.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:01

Like right under Roger the Alien, it'll just say final girl in some funny script. Listen. If you die, you gotta get that tattoo.

SPEAKER_01 47:09

That would be my first tattoo. You know what? I'm down. I'm down. Okay. I'll do it. Uh now if if I survive the next ten, this is if we ever make movies or short films. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 47:24

Not not if, when.

SPEAKER_01 47:25

When we would do that, when we start doing that, yeah. And if I survive these scenarios for the 10 in a row, right? I get a no-lost clause. Three of the short films or movies. Where we can't kill you? Yeah, I'm final, like, no matter what. For just three.

SPEAKER_00 47:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

Deal. Deal. I'll do the two. Because I saw I I saw the movie with like uh it was it, what's his name? Jason Statham.

SPEAKER_02 47:53

Jason Statham?

SPEAKER_01 47:55

Yeah. The ball bead? Yeah, and he was doing a shark movie and it said the uh the shark had no chance because he had a no-lost quad.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

That's hilarious.

SPEAKER_01 48:05

I was like, oh.

SPEAKER_02 48:06

Um, funny enough about uh side tangent for the making of short films. I've been I've been going down the rabbit hole of like how movies are made, like in terms of like how a lot of our mainstay horror movies are made. Like in terms of like, how do you make fake blood go? I've I watched a dude blow fake blood through a hose and up a wall. And I'm like, holy like that's all it is? Like, okay, I can do that. Spirit Halloween, here I come. Yeah. You know, just open up. Let's go. It's uh it's it's already June. Let's wrap this shit up. You know, but so alright.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

Uh that's the end of the Ghost and Ghouls podcast. If you enjoyed, please go ahead and subscribe, hit that bell for any notification, as well as leaving a like, and then follow us on our uh Instagram, uh TikTok, uh, Facebook as well, and then join us on our Discord servers. It's uh still a work in progress. There's some things that I just thought about that we could add. Uh, but it's for what it is, it's finished almost, you know.

SPEAKER_02 49:12

Yeah, I mean we always add more channels.

SPEAKER_01 49:14

Yeah, absolutely. There, yeah. So other than that, and then uh if you want to support us, we have links in the descriptions to our bus route where you can download the audio or to our Patreon where you can get stuff a day early. And uh only for a dollar.

SPEAKER_02 49:28

Yes, exactly. So go up there and be a ghost member. Yeah, and then I think I think if you actually what I'm trying to do is if you are a Patreon member, there there will be unlocks in the Discord where like you'll have access to like camp the campfire room, possibly, like the uh oh for like exclusive stuff, yeah, exclusive stuff, especially like movie nights, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

Yeah, or watch parties.

SPEAKER_02 49:55

Yeah, we kind of want to do some watch parties of some of our favorite horror movies because like I've been down a rabbit hole, and 2026 is fucking a banger for for some horror movies.

SPEAKER_03 50:04

2025 is good. I was thinking about I was watching a video about weapons and how they made that the other day. I was like, man, this just like the lighting, the eeriness, whatever. But like, yeah, it's just new blood.

SPEAKER_02 50:16

It's rabbit holes, dude. Exactly. I re we redid our logo and now like I'm just I'm ready for poltergasm. Oh my god, could you imagine the comedy?

SPEAKER_03 50:26

I'm not a poltergeist, I'm on poltergasm! Oh my gosh. We didn't buy buckets of blood, we bought buckets of cow.