Shared Death Experiences and the Paranormal

AOTP EP:17 Tonight, I welcome 222 Paranormal Podcast host and author, Joe Shortridge, who shares his extensive experiences in the paranormal realm, which began with a Shared Death Experience when he lost a best friend, sparking his curiosity and journey into the paranormal. 

https://www.222paranormal.com/

http://www.facebook.com/222paranormal

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If you have an account to share and would like to be a guest on the show, email me at show@accountsoftheparanormal.com and tell me what you saw!

Accounts of the Paranormal -

Creator/Producer/Host: Gino Barreto

WEBSITE: https://accountsoftheparanormal.com/ 

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Accounts of the Paranormal (theme song) 

Written by: Gino Barreto / Produced by: Kobe Ofei

All music produced by: 

Kobe Ofei https://www.fiverr.com/kobeofei 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Welcome to the show. Tonight, a welcome 222 Paranormal podcast host and author, Joe Shortridge, who shares his extensive experiences in the paranormal realm, which began with the shared death experience when he lost a best friend, sparking his curiosity and journey into the paranormal. Joe, welcome to the show. Hey, hey. Thank you so much for having me on. This is a blast. Oh, thank you for being here. I am so I'm so happy to have you here. Reading about all the things you've done and and and what you do. I don't I don't know where you get the time, but you've got a lot going on. So I'm very grateful that you made the time to come on. You are the uh the half of the brother-sister duo of the 222 Paranormal Podcast. Really cool show. You guys have almost 500 episodes. Congratulations. That is something seriously, that what a feat. I'm just in my infancy in podcasting, but I know the work that goes into this. And what a milestone. Congratulations. Thanks. You've had many paranormal experiences, including shadow figures, apparitions, poltergeist activity, a shared death experience. You've led um ghost hunts, bigfoot expeditions. You are the author of Shared Crossings, the phenomenon of shared death experiences, author of Upper Peninsula, Haunted Caves, and a number of other self-help motivation books, and also a certified life and financial coach and host of The Year of Podcast. Another podcast. Yeah. Where do you get the time? I don't know. But let's dig into it.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Let's go back. That's what I like to do usually. I like to go back and where it all started for you as far as the paranormal goes. Has this been something you've always had an interest in? That's kind of my story. I've just, since I can remember, I've always had a great interest in all things paranormal. Where did it start for you? Was there any particular event? When did it all begin?

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Well, I've always been interested in like UFOs and stuff like that. And, you know, growing up, my dad was into UFOs. He said that he had a UFO experience. I don't honestly don't remember ever talking to him about it. Because back then, you know, it was like, yeah, you had a UFO experience. Yeah, let me go work on my Jeep or whatever, you know. And I was always fascinated by space and all that kind of stuff. And my sister had the opportunity to ghost hunt with the Ghost Adventures crew in Mansfield. And she came up to me one day and she was like, you know, you've always been into like UFOs and that. And I'm like, Yeah, she says, I just did a ghost hunt with these guys, you know, and his name is Zach, and that I'm like, I don't know who that is. And then she told me, and I'm oh okay. And then I had an experience with my best friend Jackie, and this is where the shared death experience comes in. And that really did happen, you know, kind of 10 years back, whatever. It was actually 13 years ago, a couple days ago, that it actually happened. And me and Jackie were like, I want to say soulmates. We weren't lovers, we were just best friends. We connected, like you would believe. We were like psychic friends. Uh, the phone would ring, I'd pick it up, and it'd be her calling me when I'm trying to call her and stuff like that, you know. And she actually got a double lung transplant because she had lung issues. And she was also deaf, which she got cochlear implants later. But we were really good friends, real close. I could tell when she was hurting, it you know, all that you know all that jazz. So let me get into the paranormal aspect of it. The one day I was coming out of Kroger's. I worked second shift. I come out of Kroger's at about 11:30 at night, and my phone rings, and it was her sister. And her sister says, Jackie's in the hospital, um, she's not doing too good, she's on life support, they don't think she's gonna make it through the night. Now, the last I heard, she sent me a message saying, Ugh, Cleveland in the morning, and I'm like, All right, whatever, you know, same thing. She goes for the test all the time. And what happened was she went in for this test, and what they do is they'll put a tube down your down your nose in your lungs, put a little fluid in there, draw the fluid out, test it for any kind of bacteria or whatever to see how her lungs are doing. And that was a one once a year test. And apparently, when they did that, something went wrong. And she ended up on life support. And I was like kind of shocked, you know, here's my best friend. All of a sudden, I hear this. So I went home, I changed real quick and headed out to Cleveland. Now, Cleveland is a two-hour drive for me from where we're at. So I drove out to Cleveland, I get to the hospital, and she's hooked up to all kinds of stuff, and that, and we're kind of just chilling out, and got to be pretty late in the night. And I'm like, Well, I gotta go home because I gotta work in the morning. You know, it's like, wait a minute. My best friend's laying in the hospital dying, and I'm telling him, Well, I gotta go because I gotta work tomorrow. So I left. And, you know, I don't know if I was just not thinking straight or whatever, who knows? But I got home and I went to work the next day, and I was on the forklift driving, and I got a phone call. And normally I don't talk on the phone at work, but you know, I knew something was coming in. So I pick up the phone and they're like, Well, Jackie's not doing too good. They're um gonna pull the plug, which you know, they don't actually pull the plug, they stop the medications, but you know, they're gonna pull the plug in a half hour. And I'm like, okay. So I hung up the phone and I knew I wasn't gonna make it in time, so I went home, I changed, out of my work clothes, and headed out to Cleveland. And technically, I should have been driving. I was a wreck. You know, here's my best friend who I love dearly, and passing away, and she's gonna be gone by the time I get there. So I was a wreck, and I I don't ever remember myself crying, but I was probably 10 milliseconds away from bawling my eyes out, and here I am driving, and I'm texting my other friend Debbie. So here I'm going down the turnpike at probably 80 miles an hour, driving, texting, blubbering idiot. I shouldn't have been on the road, but I get to what's a town called Norwalk, Ohio, which is halfway from me to Cleveland, and the weirdest thing happened. So imagine if someone took a heater element out of the oven, and when it's on full, you know, the red hot heating element. Imagine if they took that and put it over your head and slowly took it down your body. You feel that line of heat. Okay, so I'm feeling that line of heat through my body, not just like a whoosh, but a slow heat went down my legs, out my you know, down my arms, down my legs, out my fingers and toes. And I was just like, what was that? And the second that happened, I was just as calm as I am now. And I'm like telling Debbie on the text, I'm like, something just happened. It I something's weird, I feel fine now. And she was like, Oh, okay, yeah, you're just emotions, you know. And I'm like, okay. So I get to the hospital, and like I said, this is a two-hour drive that happened an hour before that, so I drove another hour, get to the hospital, which one other thing is I didn't even I've never been to the hospital except the night before, but the night before, I this was back before GPS and all that. For some reason, I found the hospital like I'd been there before, which didn't click in my mind until later. But anyhow, I get to the hospital and I walk in, her husband's standing there, and like, hey man, how's it going? Said, what's going on? And he looks at me and says, Well, they disconnected all her medications an hour ago, and they have no idea how she's still alive. I'm like, Oh, okay. And he says, You want to see her? I'm like, Heck yeah. So I walk in the room and she's laying there in the bed, and I reach out and grab her hand, and the machine beeps, and I'm like, Oh crap, I stepped on a hose or something. And the nurse comes in and says, No, she just passed. So everybody's saying that she waited for me. So that in itself, I don't know if it would consider a shared death experience, but later on, when I was actually writing the book, I was had it forced myself to actually think about what happened. And when I say the story, I say it like that. But yet when that heating element thing went through my body, I realized that I lost total control of everything. I was still driving, but in that I'll say 30 seconds or whatever that it happened, it's almost like I had an out-of-body experience then. And the more I think back about it, I it's like they always say time slows down. And as I figured all this out, it's almost like that 30 seconds to me was like a half hour or 45 minutes because so much stuff went on. I had like um, it's almost like my body was taken over by something else, so I was driving fine and everything, but I felt all kinds of emotions and all kinds of things that I think is what she felt when they disconnected her meds, and you know, talking to other people about it and that, and they're like, Yeah, that you had a shared death experience. It wasn't one where you saw like lights in the room or music or stuff like that, but that happened. So I get to the hospital, you know, she passes when I touched her hand, and everybody's freaking out because they don't know how she stayed alive until I touched her hand. So we kind of hung out around the hospital a little bit, and finally, you know, whindled it down to the people that are there, and I said, Well, let's meet at Ma's house tomorrow. And we all left. I don't know who stayed, probably her husband stayed, but we all left and we all agreed we're gonna meet her mom's house tomorrow. So this was probably I'd say midnight or so, and I headed home. And I don't remember the drive back, not so much because of the paranormal or that just I just don't remember it. I don't think it was anything paranormal, it was just one of things that probably other things were on my mind. I get home, and the next day I get in my car and I started up, and the radio station was on a different station than when I left it because I listened to a local station here, but it was on a Detroit station, and this song that Jackie's has played over and over and over comes on, and I'm like, this is freaky. That's Jackie's song because she used to have the Ariel Speedwagon CD cassette and album, and she wore them all out playing the CD and that. And it used to drive me nuts because it's like I hated that song, you know. Um, Ario Speedwagon. Um, oh my mind just went back.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

It's not can't fight the feeling, is it?

SPEAKER_00 13:08

No, it's the one that starts up, it's like heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend, who you know. Oh, gotcha. Okay, yeah, that song came on the radio, and I'm like, oh man, it's Jackie's song. She used to play it to death. And since this happened, now my first dream of her was that night. Not the night that I come home, but the night after going to her mom's and all that. That I'll say the next night. It was my first dream of her. And she was in my dreams. She's came up and she says, Hey Joe, because that's one thing is she would always say, Hey Joe, whenever I answered a phone or that. And I looked at her and being the loving, best friend that I am, I looked at her and said, Last time I saw you, you were dead. And she just smiled, and that was the dream. She just smiled and looked at me and faded away. But since then, okay, that song has come on at the strangest times. I've had so many communication dreams with her where we actually talk in our dreams, and one of the things I noticed is when we talk in our dreams, she never moves her lips, and neither do I. So it's all like telepathic. It's all telepathic. And you know, we've had a lot of dreams where she'll come up to me and she'll smile and she says, Everything's beautiful, everything's good here. And I've asked her before in the dreams, you know, and I I don't think I have control over the dreams, but I've asked her in the dreams where I said, Well, where are you? And she just smiled and says, It's okay. It's okay. I'm like, no, I want to know, and I want to know, you know, do you see Bigfoot? And you know, are aliens real? And you know, tell me the truth, tell me what the world's about, you know. Give me the lotto numbers, you know. But uh, yeah, it's it's amazing. And that that song, okay, that has come up in such weird places. I'll walk into a store and I'll be thinking about Jackie. I'll walk in the store and that song will be playing. Or, good example, a couple nights ago. I was sitting there and I'm thinking, you know, it's my book, you know, it's Sherry Crossings was supposed to show up at my door. And this was probably about I'd say two in the afternoon. I'm I'm sitting there thinking, I wonder if it's at my house yet. Because I wasn't home at the time, but I'm like, I wonder if it's at my house yet. And I've I've got Pandora on my phone, and I was listening to um 80s music and Run DMC was playing, and I'm like, I wonder if that's that book is at my house yet. And just as I thought that, the next song we came on was that RL Speedwagon song, and I'm like, okay, I know. And I looked on the um app to see if the phone was there, or the um, sorry, looked on my phone to see if the book was there and it wasn't there yet. I'm thinking, wouldn't that be great if that song came on the exact time they put the book on the porch? You know? Is it take it on the run? Yes, yes, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Yeah, I just googled their songs, so I'm I think I was like, this has got to be the one.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

But that's okay, so another time it happened, I was at work, and I'm like thinking, should I go home and listen or go home and work on the book, or should I work on the show? And just I thought that someone's stereo, like five machines down, started playing that song. And I'm like, all right, all right, you know, and um God knows what's another one? Oh, I do float sessions, okay? They're sensory deprivation tanks, so you float in water and there's no sound, no light, anything. So it's like it's a sensory deprivation tank, and it's one of the most relaxing things you'll ever do if you get a chance to do it. But I was doing that, and I come out of it and look at my phone, and my sister's like, Hey, we're at JoJo's, come see us. And I'm like, Oh, I really need to get home, work on the book, but I'll come out for a little bit, and she's like, Okay, cool. So I get there, and everybody's just hanging out, and there's this one friend of ours that you know, God lovers, she's a sweetheart, but she likes to talk about stuff over and over and over. And she sits there and she starts telling us this story that we've heard over and over, and in my mind, I'm like, ah, I'm so sick and tired of the same old story, I gotta get out of here. Just as I thought that the jukebox, which hasn't played all night, start playing our real speed wagon, and the song goes, So if you're tired of the same old story, you know, I'm like, All right, all right, I'm leaving. So she communicates with me all the time. And like I say, dreams and that. Um I don't know if it'll work here, but can I ask real quick? Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Just go back real quick. When you were on your way to the hospital, was she aware that you were coming to see her? Was it was it possible that she could have been aware of that?

SPEAKER_00 18:32

No, because the thing is when she, I mean, spiritually she might have, but when they put so what happened, what um our friend that was with her at the time said they put the tube down her throat, and when they went to pump in the liquid, her lungs expanded real fast, and she turned blue from the chest up. Okay, and that's basically when she basically died, which is another thing, too, that I think about is when me and her went for EMS training, because we were both EMTs, and that's something I I stopped doing a long time ago. You know, I did racetracks and that, but when me and her were going to that, one of the injuries, and I know this might sound morbid, but one of the interest injuries I was always interested in was what's called a pericardiotamponate. And what that is, is you don't see that that much anymore because um airbags, but what happens is when you're in an accident, your chest hits the steering wheel, and the pericardium that's around the heart gets crushed, which is basically a sack around the heart, which which protects it. It gets crushed, and what happens is you turn blue from the chest up, and that that has been the cause of a lot of people's deaths. And she basically had the exact same thing. I mean, that's I don't know if it's a coincidence or what, I don't know. But that was the injury that she was you know knocked out by. And I she was under, so I don't know. I mean we think about when do we pass? You know, there's so many different things, and that's it's kind of morbid, but I think about that kind of death stuff, the science of death. And when do we die? Did she die that time when she was unconscious? Did she leave her body? And could she see what was happening all around her? So maybe she could see me coming to the hospital spiritually? I don't know. You know, that's something we won't we won't know till we're in that situation ourselves, and that's a possibility that she knew I was coming, so she waited, and that's that's a common thing too about death, and that, and you know, I talk about it in the book, of course, and waiting for people is a common thing with shared death experiences, where the person that's passed away doesn't really want to leave until that certain person either shows up or until the loved ones leave the room. Because lots of times, and this happened to my dad, is when you're passing away in like hospice, and there's a lot of shared cross or shared death experiences that happen in hospice, is the person won't pass away, you know, the heart will keep beating until the family leaves, and they're always like, Oh, we just left and he passed. And that was the same way with my dad, because when he passed, he was in hospice. We're all there, and the nurse is like, you know, it could be an hour, it could be a day, we don't Know and we all decided okay, let's let's go, we'll come back in the morning. And on my way home, I get a phone call from my sister that dad just passed. So that was one of the things where, well, maybe the person that's passing away waits until either the family leaves or someone shows up. You know, that's that's a common thing. So I don't know. Maybe she maybe she did see me coming, and maybe she did know how bad a mess I was in, and maybe, you know, I don't know. I'm just speculating, but maybe by her doing that heat thing to my body made me more focused on driving instead of thinking about her and all that, and maybe I didn't get in wreck because of it. I don't know. But I think that personally, I think that I felt what she did when they stopped her medications because I had not to sound gross, but I had kidney stones one time and they actually had to laser them out and they gave me an epidural, which is the same thing they give girls when they give birth. And I told the doctor it felt just like that feeling where the heat went through my body, and he's like, Yeah, it's the murphine going through your spine and all that. I'm like, Oh, okay. So maybe that's what she felt. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Very possible with the connection that you two had, and yeah, you know, no coincidence that it was around the same time that you know, about an hour before you got there when they cut the meds, and you felt that that's just the same timing, and another thing, okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

So when we record, we're in my studio. I have up my house in the back of the house, I have the studio, and then past the studio door is my art gallery where uh I have all my art stuff, and then past that's the house. We were sitting here one night, and I which I I don't know if I can play it for you on here. I I won't try in case we mess something up up. I'll I'll send it to you afterwards. But we're sitting here, and when we record our shows, we get a lot of VvPs during our shows. Our our listeners call in and say, at this time you caught this, and and we've heard stuff happen, we've had stuff happen. We can talk about that in a little bit, but um I'm sitting here and I see a blue light go into my art gallery, and I'm like, Jen, I just saw a blue light. So she's sitting on the table across from me. So she gets up and turns her phone on to um record, and then grabs a spirit box, and she did like a quick EVP session where she says, We want to know if you know who lives here. And clear as day, the best EVP I've ever got. You hear, Hey Joe. So that was her, and I am 100% convinced that EVP was her voice because it's the exact same way that she always greeted me, and it was in her voice. And I even I played the recording for her mom, and her mom was like, Oh my god, that's Jackie.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

That's incredible, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

And I I'll send it to you after the show. I'd I'd love to play it for you here, but I don't know if it'll screw anything up. But yeah, I mean it I hear this all the time, and talking to people that have had shared death experiences, there's you know, your different standard types. Um people will see different lights in the room, like the the whole room will glow yellow or gold. Um they'll see things that happen to the loved one. There'll be actually, I have a story in the book where this lady was sitting on the heater in the hospital room, and there's probably 12 people around her. And the her, I think it was her grandfather or something, was passing away, and then all of a sudden, she is in a voidless room, like a big empty room that was just full of light, and he was there with her, and they basically walked into the tunnel of light, and they got so far, and he was like, This is where I gotta leave you. And it wasn't a sad thing, they're like overwhelming with joy, and she was like, Okay, and she said that he just kept walking, and she stood there, and now next thing she knows, she's back in the hospital room, and she looks around, and it's like nothing's different, or everybody just sitting there, and she's like, What just happened? And they're like, We don't know, and just as she said that the nurse said, Oh, he just passed, you know, and then she started talking to people, going, I just did this, this is what just happened to me. And one of the other girls in the room said the same thing. She's like, That just happened to me, too. You know, so that's one of the things that happens when you have a shared death experience. Another thing is the um, like you said, the room will fill out light. People might see dead relatives showing up in the room, you know, like they're totally experiencing what the person that's passing away is experiencing, but they're not going all the way and passing away. And there's been times where there's been music that people hear, um, they'll actually see the physical body of the person laying in the bed, they'll see like a form of the body come out of the body, almost like the soul coming out of the body, um, stuff like that. And another type of for of shared death experience is where a person will be passing away, and the person knows it, and they're in a different city or different country or anything, and the phone will ring, and they'll answer the phone, and it'll be that person that's passing away, and they'll say something like, All right, I'm gonna go now, or they'll just say, It's so beautiful here, and the person will be like, Who is this? What how are you talking to me? And then they'll say, like, it's just beautiful, and that's the end of the phone call, and then they find out that the person passed away, and there's no way they could use the phone because they're unconscious laying in bed. So, phone calls from the dead is a popular one. Music, you know, I think music because it's the natural vibration, you know, music is vibration, everything vibrates, and I feel that they can use music as communication, and I think that's what Jackie does because there's so many times where I'll think about her and that song will come on, or she'll smack me in the back of the head with another song saying, No, go go do whatever you want, or you know, so I don't know. It's there's so much you think about okay, what is the chance, or what are the chances of you walking to a new building or a room, and just out of the blue, that song comes on. Or I mean, there's been an ex there's been a time where I was thinking about her. I said, Okay, Jackie, the next song on the radio, play it, and it was, it came on, and I'm like, oh, freaky, but you know, I just think that you know, we know that there's no such thing as time on the other side, so they have all the time in the world, and I think that they can know when we need to hear them or when we need to think about them, and they'll send us signs like that just to remind us, you know, hey, you know, I'm like I always say, when someone passes, they're not gone, they're just not here, and that's kind of comforting for people. And I think that totally if you walk into a room thinking about somebody and all of a sudden that song's on, or that scent, or like a cardinal will fly into the window or something, I think that those are signs that they can send. They may not be able to physically show up as a full-body apparition, which I've talked to people, and that has happened to them too. You know, people who have had loved ones show up as full-body apparitions, but I think that would take so much energy to where I think that they can manipulate the situation so that you run into that time where that song's on, or the the bird flies by that you want to see, or whatever, you know. I think they can do that. And I don't I don't think it's a thing where they change reality, I just think they can steer you so that you're there at that time.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

When you experienced that in the car driving to the hospital at that time in your life, what were your feelings or thoughts on shared death experience? Or did you even have any?

SPEAKER_00 30:55

No, I didn't even know about it. You know, that's the thing is I like I said, I was always into like UFOs and stuff like that, and you know, looking into alien stuff and stuff like that. I wasn't really into the paranormal side of it until that happened, and it made me think about you know, what does happen when someone passes, you know, about spirits and ghosts and everything, and that really propelled me to think about this kind of stuff and get want to learn more and dig deeper into it, and that eventually did lead to the podcast where Jen's like, Well, you want to learn about this? You know, I do this, she's already ghost hunting, so let's do a show about it. And it was, I think it was the timing was good because both me and Jen, you know, we just had our normal jobs, and you know, we were never big partiers or nothing like that, so we weren't out drinking all the time or nothing like that. But I just think it was the right time to get into this, and we you know, I love to learn, and I think this is a great way to learn because basically every week you gotta learn something different. But I think that having that experience really propelled me into learning about this stuff, and you know, maybe I've helped other people with their journeys, I don't know, but I definitely know that people have come to me and said, Well, because of your show, I do this, or you know, because your show, I've started my own show, or stuff like that. You know, maybe that was what with Jackie passing away, the result and the reason is so that I could help so much other people. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

You know, I'm just speculating that yeah, you you undoubtedly have helped other people with your show. There's no doubt about that. How soon after uh losing her did paranormal experiences start for you? What was like the first thing that's the standout moment after?

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Um, I I think I I think I've had experiences before that. Um one of the experiences that I didn't even think about until later in your life was I was at a fact, I was doing working at a glass factory, and it was a factory where we put brackets on the bottom of windows for Ford. So you had the big windows for the cars, and you would put them in a machine, and then you after that you put the bracket on the bottom, you take the window and you put it in this bin, and they're separated by foam, and they're put on a conveyor. Now the conveyor is just metal tubing, you know. So you got a tube and then a tube and then a tube, and then the thing rolls on it, and you can't stand on it, or else you'd fall right through. And the one day I was driving the forklift, and I swear to god, I saw a girl standing on the conveyor. And, you know, I'm just like, hey, whose girlfriend is this? Because at that factory, it was really there was like no holds bar type factory, they didn't care about anything. They just, as long as you do your job, you can crank up the stairs, you can have your friends stop in, whatever. This is a way back, you know, way back. And this girl was standing on the conveyor and she was wearing like 50s clothing. And I saw her solid person just standing there, and then I didn't really pay much attention to it and just kept driving on. And then later I figured out that right at the corner in front of that building is where this girl was killed in a car wreck. And I'm thinking, well, wait a minute, did I see her? Was that her? I don't know. So things like that, and then once we started doing investigations, then I learned the right techniques and that to talk to ghosts or spirits, and different things would start happening. But I think that the main paranormal stuff that happened to me at the beginning was Jackie's dreams and the different you know things that happen to where like music and coincidences and stuff like that. And the more I dig into this, the more I find out that you know a lot of the stuff that we do are paranormal encounters, but we don't think of them as paranormal encounters, we just think of them as a coincidence, or you know, something was planned and this happened, or whatever. But I think that that when we started doing investigations, when I started really seeing the paranormal as in EVPs and full-body apparitions, shadow figures. I've seen a lot of shadow figures. Um, I woke up one night laying in my bed, I look up, and there's a seven-foot shadow figure leaning over me with one hand on the bed and kind of like looking at me like he's confused or you know, studying me or something. And I just wake up, I look up and I see him, and then he vanished. And then I spent the next hour just so thinking, okay, if light comes in the room this way, how would I, you know, would that be this or that? And but I think it was an actual shadow figure just kind of checking me out, trying to figure out what I was or something. And then um, another shadow figure that I've seen, we were in my sister's house, and one passed in front of us, and it was just like taking a phone to our eyes and blocking the light out, and we both looked like, What was that? You know, but yeah, I mean we've we've had incidences where we were in prisons and stuff, and we've seen full-body apparitions, we've seen shadow figures, um, a lot of EVPs. I love EVPs. Um, when I investigate, I don't take a lot of equipment. I'm more of an experience it type person than to film it and show everybody later, you know. I'm more of a person that would I'd like just experiencing it. So we've had a lot of times where we got good EVPs. Um downtown Toledo, there's a place called the Spaghetti Warehouse. I did a estes method up in the third floor of that place, and it was the best estes method I've ever done in my life. And I've tried to put that up on YouTube, but it I for some reason I can't get it to load. But um if you want to check it out, go to YouTube under Boo Productions, B-O-O Productions, and he has it on his site. It's the spaghetti warehouse um Estes method session. That it was just unbelievable. There were so many things going on, so many EVPs on every piece of equipment that we had, and then I've urged I actually heard voices like um Harold was in a different room, he's with Tullio Ohio Ghost Ghost Hunter Society. Harold was in a different room, and I could hear him in the distance going, is there anybody in here? And clear as day, I heard a little boy go, I'm Billy. You know, I'm like, Okay, I'm like, Harold, Billy's in there with you. So stuff like that, you know, just a lot of stuff happens, and a lot of people just will say, Oh, that was just a coincidence. But if you really look into it, maybe it was a paranormal thing.

SPEAKER_01 38:14

Are you currently uh still do you still do investigations?

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think our latest one we just did. I know we went back to the spaghetti warehouse the same night that my sister went to the bone house, but we didn't get anything that night. That was I'd say about a month ago or so. So yeah, we're still active in it. Um, during the winter we don't do much just because it's traveling in the winter kind of stinks. Um, we've been over to St. John's and the Virgin Islands. We've investigated out there. That's nice because that was in February where it was warm there and cold here. Um, funny story about that. So on St. John, it's known for their plantations for sugar cane, and on all the plantations, they had windmills, and these were big round stone woodmill bases, and they're still there, and we've investigated there a few times and got some interesting things. But we went to this one and we pull up and we're kind of walking around it, and the smell was so sweet in the air. I mean, it was like very strong, sweet smell, and everybody's like, Do you smell that? I'm like, Yeah, it's very odd, you know. And so we're kind of walking around, and I'm like, that's one of the signs is when you investigate, you you you're you smell stuff, and I'm like, this is crazy. So I went up to one of the windows, I jumped down. It was probably a three-foot drop, but I jumped down into it, and there was a homeless guy in there smoking a swiss or sweet. So I scared him, he scared me. So it wasn't paranormal, it was a guy smoking a sweet swiss-sweet smoke.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

Instantly debunked.

SPEAKER_00 40:15

Oh, yeah. People ask me, you know, do you ever get scared? I'm like, not really, because I mean, we've been in prisons, we've been in sane asylums, we've seen full-body apparitions, we've heard stuff, we've I've had a wall pushed over on me, stuff like that. So, I mean, I've done a lot, but when we travel for our show, we always end up at like a cemetery or that. Because if you want to know the history of a place, go to cemeteries. That's where the histories are at. Whether you want to learn about the people of the town and stuff, but we always end up at cemeteries. So we were in Butler, Pennsylvania, and we're like, hey, are there any cemeteries around we can check out? And the guy's like, the Black Cross. And I'm like, tell me more. And he's like, You could just go to the Black Cross. I'm like, okay. So I looked it up. It was about a 20-minute drive out of out of uh Butler. We get there, and it's a very small cemetery, and there's no tombstones. Um what it was was back in the 1800s when the yellow fever came through, a lot of the railroad, railroad workers passed away because of the fever. And being that they were immigrants, the Catholic Church would not allow them to be buried on their churchyard. So this farmer said, I'll give you this land to bury you know all these people on. I don't know how many there were, but there was a lot. And if you look up online, you'll look up the black cross, you see the the marker that's by the road is there, but the extra black cross is gone. And what it was was they took railroad ties and put them in a big cross, and that's why it's called the Black Cross Cemetery. And right now, if you go there, the location of where the cross was basically if you take a five-gallon bucket of cement, fill it, flip it over, that's what's there. It's not a real fancy marker, but it's a marker. So we're there, and the strangest things happened. It was like the woods was staring at us. We have well, all three of us had that feeling. The woods were woods were staring at us. You could hear a baby crying, which is a popular thing in both Bigfoot and Paranormal stuff. Um, a lot of Faye folk type deal thing where the fairies will cry like a baby so that you come into their realm. But we heard a baby crying. Um, you could hear voices in the woods. So all this stuff was going on. It was amazing. And of course, being the professionals that we are, we didn't recording of it because we just went there to check it out, you know. So that's another lesson learned is whenever you get out of your car, turn the recorder on. But we were standing there, and there's a stump, about a three-foot-high stump, and it had a red bow tied to it. And I looked at it and I turned to my sister, and I'm like, hey Jen, look at this. I turned back, and it turned into a guy jumping out of the woods at me. I saw him plain as day. He had on gray wool pants, a red shirt, a flippant style hat, and he had both arms out, like he was trying to grab me. And he was like, his skin was like ash color. And he jumped out of the woods at me, and just in a blink of an eye, disappeared. And I think I jumped about three feet into the air. My adrenaline was like bumping. Jen, she was recording herself, and you could hear me. I think I yelled, and she's like, You jumped about three foot. And I'm like, Oh my god, you won't believe what just happened. And I was shaking and everything. So I can honestly say, yes, I do get scared because that scared the crap out of me. And it was real quick. I mean, just like three seconds long. But I swear I saw him. And I could I describe him and I could tell exactly what he's wearing, you know, the expression on his face and all that. So that's one incident where a full-body apparition jumped out at me. And of course it didn't get on film or nothing. You know.

SPEAKER_01 44:40

What do you think that was about?

SPEAKER_00 44:42

What do you think he was doing? Maybe he was protecting the area, maybe. You know, maybe he was jumping out trying to push me away or something. I don't know. You know, it's like one of them things where looking back, I should have stopped and said, no, no, come back. You know, get the equipment, Jen. Let's re let's do an investigation right now, you know, find out who this guy was, and that, but it was just one of the things. And, you know, I we hung out there for a few more minutes and then we left. And you know, they always say, be careful because you get attachments. And we're at the restaurant and I feel something on my hand. I look down, there's a tick walking on my hand. So we try to kill it. I'm like with a napkin, I'm trying to kill it. I'm like, ah, tick. And then I feel another one on my other arm. I'm like, ah, so I'm like, check, please. We went back to our hotels. Even before I got in my hotel room, I stripped down, jumped in the shower, all my clothes I left out on the front. So I can actually say that I got an attachment, but it wasn't a paranormal attachment, it was thugs.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

You mentioned uh Bigfoot and the babies crying. Yeah, that's definitely a common yeah. Let's get into the Bigfoot thing. I'm really interested in hearing about that. Start with your expeditions. How did you get into that?

SPEAKER_00 46:05

Same thing as the paranormal. You know, like I said, I've always been interested in everything, paranormal. And Bigfoot is, you know, he's in the paranormal realm. And uh just by doing the show, learning more about it, and you know, joining people in their expeditions and stuff, and going out on my own, you know, down on in uh Salt Fork, Ohio, uh, because we we did a convention down there, and we're gonna do it again this this year in May, the Ohio Bigfoot Convention. And I just had the opportunity to go down there with a few people, and I was like, okay, let's let's hunt for Bigfoot. And we went out on expeditions, and honestly, we didn't see nothing. You know, I mean it's it's one of them deals where you know you see it on TV and it happens all the time, but when you're in real life, it you know, paranormal investigations in real life is spending eight hours sitting in a dark room waiting for something to happen. But we went out and we did all the normal things, looked at wood knocks and the whoops and all that, and look for footprints and stuff, and it was really fun. And you know, no matter what you do, whether you actually get it, get an experience or not, you're still learning because you're doing it. And that was mine, and then just by talking to people on the show and learning from other people, and the people that we went out on the ex you know, me and the herald from Tlittle How Ghost Center Society, we that's the one we went on together, and uh just by doing stuff like that, you know, I didn't hear nothing. My sister did have something happening down in Tennessee at one time, but like I said, even though it may not happen, you still learn from it. Um, one thing I thought about is when you do the wood knocks, I think that uh during wood knock in during the investigation, that's almost like a warning thing. I think that the the reason why you hear wood knocks is that Bigfoot is warning you, I'm here, get the hell away. And if you're sitting there knocking back, are you threatening him by warning him that, hey, I'm here, get the hell out, you know? I don't know, but you know, there's there's so much stuff with Bigfoot that you know it's it's almost like a poltergeist activity because you see the footprints, you see the hair, you hear hear the sounds of them either talking or howling, but you never see Bigfoot himself. So that's just like poltergeist. And then you have the other times where people actually see Bigfoot, so that's almost what you know. I mean, obviously he's he's a solid figure, but it's almost like that's the the um full body apparition sighting, so it's all kind of connected, and also people that have true Bigfoot encounters, they'll say that they have poltergeist activity at their house, they'll say that they are see UFOs more often. So, and vice versa. Lots of times if people start seeing a lot of UFOs, they'll have a Bigfoot encounter. So I think it's all connected. I really do. Yeah, I was just gonna get into that. What do you think Bigfoot is? I think he's a flesh and blood thing. I think he is. I just think that he, his race or whatever, is so adapt to the outdoors that they can hide from us very well. Um, there's a project, the zoo project is going on out there, which is a bunch of people that study apes. Um, I've talked to them a few times, and they're doing a lot of things with um what you want to say, cloaking, basically, because when you look at, let's say, uh polar bear, polar bears are not white, their skin is black, but their fur is white because the way that the light hits it, their their hairs are like tubes and they absorb light in a certain way, so they look white to us, and they're thinking that the Bigfoots have the same type of fur to where they can basically cloak themselves by moving different ways in the light, and that's why lots of times you'll see them disappear. Because I don't think now, you know, we don't know, this is all speculation, but I think that they're just flesh and blood, and they understand the woods well enough and camouflage well enough that they can disappear without us even noticing. And just like the animals in the woods, they know that we're there a long time before we know that they're there. You know, their hearing's better, their sight is better. You know, it's all ingrained because of that hunter type thing, where when you're in the woods, you're always trying to protect yourself. Whether you're a lion or whether you're an another ape or you know, a cougar or whatever in the woods, you're there to hide from other people or other people, but other animals. I mean, look at the dog, you know. The look at what happens when you have a dog that will jump open a window because they can hear your car coming from a mile away, they know that you're coming home, you know. And I think that Bigfoot is so adapted, that's kind of the same way. They know that you're in that area and they can hide from you or get out of that area before you get to them. But we've had had I've talked to people that said that they've seen them disappear or they've seen them morph from just like their legs up, or they're like they forget to turn their legs on, you know, or something. So who knows? You know, I'm everybody has their opinion, and you know, you can't really poo-poo anybody's opinion because you don't know, and that's that's part of the paranormal.

SPEAKER_01 52:14

You often hear when there's a Bigfoot sighting, orbs. You'll hear about orbs. Yeah. Whether it's right before the sighting or after. What do you think the connection there is?

SPEAKER_00 52:27

That's where the UFO stuff comes in. I mean, are the UFOs dropping the the Bigfoots off? Like uh we're taking our dogs to the dog park. Do you the UFOs are bringing their Bigfoots down to the earth? You know, or or are, you know, we like I said, we don't even know if they are, they could be the aliens or something. I don't know. But yeah, that's a common thing. People see orbs before or after they see Bigfoots. And I've even heard a story. Now, this was from Mysterious Universe, where this guy's driving down the road, and all of a sudden, this Bigfoot comes running out of the woods, stops, looks at the guy in terror, as if saying, run, human, runs out, and then a blue orb passes it like it was chasing the Bigfoot. You know, so I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

I don't either. I've heard a lot of stories like that. I mean, the whole Bigfoot idea fascinates me that that this giant bipedal being can be here, and yeah, there's sightings of it, but the best evidence we have to date, you know, is in my opinion, just some granny film footage from the late 60s. What why is that? It's like it just it just escapes me. I don't know what to make of it. I just know that people are seeing something, there's no doubt about it. So what is it? For centuries, yeah, for a long time and all over the world in different forms, shapes, but it's seen, so it exists in one way or another. So what is it?

SPEAKER_00 54:03

You know, and you you think about you know, there's there's been other human races, you know, you've got the the Neanderthal, you've got the Demosovans, you know, you've got you know different types, the Clovis people, all kinds of different humans, but not human, you know what I mean? Like Neanderthal, they were a human species, but they weren't the same as us. Now, I just heard a couple of days ago that you think about this, okay. Think about Neanderthal. They've never found any kind of needlework, like needles to make clothing, they've never found bone fragments that are shaped like that. Um different settlements that they've unearthed, they never find anything. So were they covered in fur? Instead of putting clothing on, were they already covered in fur? We don't know. And back then, when the Anderthals were walking around, you still you had the woolly mammoths, you had the giant sloths, you had the direwolves, you had the the giant tigers, you know, the saber-toothed tigers. Every mammal back then had fur because it was during the ice age and stuff like that. So why wouldn't uh a humanoid-style bean have thick fur? So they were thinking, well, wait a minute, maybe I mean this isn't proven or anything, but maybe the Neanderthals had fur. Okay. And they were close enough to a human that they mated with humans, and or um, I want to say humans, but you know, the um homo erectus, they made you know, they they made it with them. So they think about, oh, what happened to the Neanderthals? How did they die off? But I don't think they died off, I think they just evolved out of being all Neanderthal and kind of melted together with our race, and now a lot of that DNA is in the humanoids that are out now. Because up in around the Netherlands, you get a lot of Neanderthal DNA in people. Okay, so thinking about that. Now let's step back to Bigfoot, a big creature that's covered in fur, and someone was like, Well, wait a minute, are they Neanderthals that just evolved from the Neanderthal to the Bigfoot? And that's that's kind of a theory, but then you think about where they find most of the DNA for Neanderthal are blonde-headed people, so they wouldn't be the black fur that they see, they'd be more of a blonde if that was the case. So I don't think the Neanderthal turned into Bigfoot, but it's a good theory and it's something to look at because not so much just because Neanderthals, but because of different humoroid-style creatures. Now, the thing about Bigfoot is they have been, like you said, they've been being seen for thousands of years. They're they found a lamp in what is now Japan that from 8,000 years ago that has a Bigfoot on it. You know, there's a just uh like a descript or a picture, whatever you want to say, of what looks like a Bigfoot from 8,000 years ago. And throughout history, you have all over the world stories of big hairy creatures, and they're called all different things. You know, everybody has their own titles for them, even the Native Americans have like 15 to 20 different names for them. And a lot of the Native American tribes all say, you know, never go into the woods because that's where the hairy people live. Oh, yeah. They'll, you know, the Sakita or whatever, the the hairy people, or the wild men they called them. They never called them Bigfoot, you know. The wild men live there. And to be afraid of the wild man.

SPEAKER_01 58:39

Yeah, and like you mentioned, uh cave drawings of those which are 100% Bigfoot. You look at some of those cave drawings, and it is a Bigfoot. It's this huge, hairy, bipedal shape.

SPEAKER_00 58:52

What else could it be? And they a lot of people say, Well, they they were just drawing, you know, ideas and that. It's like, no, they knew what they had drew, they knew what they saw, you know. They the caribou they drew, you know, all that. It's like they wouldn't just come up and draw something out of the blue, you know. And you get you get people that say, well, they're all fake, you know, but once again, there's too many sightings. Now, people say, well, that you nobody has a body. Well, people have come up and said that they've had bodies and that, and but you don't know, you know, is you you can't tell if it's a fake or not. One thing is the hair follicle, you know, the hair. They when they do DNA testing, they test the hair, and there's so many times where there's no match for anything that we know. And you know, you would think that there would be a match, even if it's a match of an unknown hair that they found somewhere else, but there's always something where the evidence doesn't come through.

SPEAKER_01 59:56

Yeah, I've heard that with um the finding Bigfoot guys, they had found some samples and you know, hair follicles, they sent them off, and like you said, it comes back as like unknown primate or something. They just they could not say what it was. Why haven't we found any remains? What's your theory on that? Why are there no bones?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:14

You look back, and you know, and the thing is with bones, it's tough because if something dies in the woods, that the whole evidence of that thing will be gone in weeks, you know, because everything eats everything. And if something falls in the woods, everything from bugs to worms to other animals start eating it, even down to the bone. Like uh, good example, porcupines, they eat bone. So it would have to be something very rare to where it would fall into a bog or fall into a very cold lake, or something to where it would preserve the body. You know, there have been people out there that claim that they have Bigfoot heads and stuff, but for some reason it becomes pseudoscience and nobody wants to look into it. So, you know, it's like, okay, if somebody claims it, do the science, do the techno, you know, use the technology we have to check and see is it fake or is it something? You know, at least come out and say, No, we did the test, and this is a bear head painted, you know, or something. It's so strange. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:37

I've heard the stories of where the militaries actually shot one or two. Yeah. And great possibility that they did recover one. They're not gonna tell us.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:47

No, I mean, Mount St. Helens is a good example. When Mount St. Helens went off, there were so many military people that say that you know they rounded up bodies of caribou and you know, all the animals and put them in different piles, but there was that one pile that was covered up and had armed guards around it. And then uh they come up with helicopters and lifted this pile that they wouldn't let anybody see what it was. And a lot of people say it was a lot of Bigfoots. That the actual, you know, when the when Mount St. Helen erupted, it killed all the animals and everything, and it killed a lot of the Bigfoots. And a lot of people say, and there's some people that go on different shows and say, Yeah, I was there, I saw them, you know, stuff like that. So maybe that was one of the things where the government took the Bigfoot bodies away and nobody knows about them, you know. But then I think of you know, it goes, it's the same thing as like finding Egyptian stuff in the Grand Canyon or UFOs or anything like that. It's like, why hide it? You know, what is it gonna change? People they say, well, if they're if we find out that there's aliens and all religions will die, like, no, they won't. Because if God can make us, he can make more people on other planets, you know, and I think that by them taking you know the Bigfoots away and just hiding them, it's like, why not just come out and say, Yes, we found one, you know, big deal. But then again, the intrigue into it, you know. Do we want to find out?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:24

I don't know. I think a lot of people have to realize by now, you know, as where UFOs are concerned, that there's something else out there. Yeah, no doubt about it. I think the government just needs to come clean and just say it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:35

Yeah, it's like like my mom, she's super religious, and she was talking about that. She's like, Well, God created us, why would he create anybody else? I said, Why wouldn't he? If he can create us, you know, why would he put it other beings on other planets?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:51

Yeah, for sure. Well, and when you understand how large the universe is, how can you possibly think this little ball is all there is, you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:01

How can you think that exactly? You know, and people you think about it too. In 1984, we found our first exoplanet, and that's just uh basically a planet around another sun. And since then, we figured out that almost every single sun or star out there has planets around it, so there's and you're talking trillions and trillions and trillions. So there's got to be life on other planets, you know. It's just the problem is distance. They're so far away that it's almost impossible for everybody to communicate, even at the speed of light. You think about the closest star, you know, is what four light years away. We would never make it there. Proxima Centauri is, I think that is four light years away, if I can remember right. You know, it takes four years for a signal to get there. So if we were to fly at our the speed that we can fly now would take like I want to say 700,000 years or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:07

Yeah, we're a ways away from being able to travel across the universe like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:12

I don't know. I I love the space stuff. I believe that there are other planets with people on them, and you know, and you think about this too. Uh so there's um the Fermi paradox. That's something to look up. One night Enrique Fermi was sitting at a table full of people, and he's like, Where are they? And everybody's like, Who? He says, The aliens, where are they? And they came up with he came up with the Fermi paradox that basically is different things that happen why they're not here. They could be on a planet that's full of water, so they could all be fish or whatever. They could be um just not as advanced as us to where they haven't made it off their planet yet. The planet might be too big and the gravity might be too strong or something. Stuff like that. There's a whole bunch of them. So there's different reasons why they may not be here. Now, I believe that they are. I believe that, you know, they're they come in, go. Um, there was a we were up in in Holton Lake, Michigan, and we were at a convention, and we were all standing out behind the hotel looking at the stars, and a friend of ours has some military-grade night vision goggles. And he's like, Here, Joe, put these on. And he put them on me because he was so afraid, you know, to break them. And he's like, Don't look at the moon. I'm like, okay, it's too bright. But I looked up, and I was blown away at how much stuff is moving around up there. And I'm not talking just satellites, because satellites you can see, you know, they they stay at a steady pace and they go across and they don't change direction. I saw stuff changing direction. I saw stuff speeding up and slowing down, going every direction. If you ever get a chance to look at night vision goggles when there's no light pollution around, do it. I was blown away about all the stuff that's moving around up there. And I know satellites are up there, and there's a lot of junk up there. But stuff doesn't change direction. And when I saw things change in direction, I was like, wow, this is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:21

Yeah, without the goggles, I've seen things that make me 100% believe.

unknown 1:07:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:28

The way they move, like you said, there's just no doubt. There's nothing we have that can do that. And no people can survive the G's that you would uh with those kind of uh 90 degree turns at those speeds. It's just absolutely incredible.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:41

Yeah, I just enjoy that stuff. You know, it's the intrigue. I enjoy that's I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy doing the show so much, is like every week I'm learning something different because you know, we have to have a different show every week. Uh we have guests on, of course, and even then I I learn about the guests before we have them on, and learn about you know, we uh I can talk talk to them. You know, lots of times they have books, so I look up their books, or they send us their books, you know, so we can glance through them. And I'm not a big reader. I wish I was desciplined enough to where I could actually sit and read a whole book. But I can glance through and stuff like that and get the gist of what they're saying, and that way we can have a great conversation with them. But constantly learning, that's it. And after we get done, give me an address, I'll send you my books so you can check them out.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:31

Fantastic, absolutely. Yeah. Like I said, I'm still in my infancy here, you know, with the show, but I'm having a great time because I'm meeting people like you, and and I'm learning and hearing uh unique stories and different perspectives, and I'm just having a blast because it's just something I'm just so fascinated with. All of this stuff. It's it's awesome. Lifelong learning. Joe, I appreciate again so much that you you took the time to come on. Thank you so much for for coming on. No, thank you. Tell the people, please, where they can find you, your show, your books, uh both both your shows, your podcasts, where are you all at?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:07

Everywhere. Um the 222 Paranormal podcast. You can get that on any podcast outlet. Basically, everybody's phone has a different you know podcast outlet. So just type in 222 Paranormal, it'll come up. YouTube, not so much. Um, I'm trying to do our YouTube more, but we're more of like you are an audio podcast. And um Amazon, just type in Joe Shortridge. You'll find all my books there. Basically, 222paranormal.com and on Facebook, 222 Paranormal Podcast. So that's that's bait the gist.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:41

Yeah, yeah, and I'll definitely add those links to the show notes.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:45

All right, cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:46

But thanks again, Joe, for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you being here. If you have an account to share and would like to be on the show, email me at show at accounts of the paranormal.com and tell me what you saw. You can catch the show wherever you listen to podcasts, as well as our website, accounts of the paranormal.com, where you can access full episodes and links to all our socials and our YouTube channel, where you can listen and watch along with visual images. And if you're a fan of what you heard here, please like, share, follow, subscribe. I appreciate the support. I'll see you next time.