A Visit Through a Dream, Part II

AOTP EP:19 Tonight, I welcome back Bruce, continuing our conversation, sharing his experiences with an unexpected ghost hunt, loss of a friend, and visitations through dreams.

AOTP Episode Blog -https://accountsoftheparanormal.com/blog/f/a-visit-through-a-dream-part-ii

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

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Welcome to the show. Tonight, I welcome back Bruce, continuing our conversation, sharing his experiences with unexpected ghost hunt, loss of a friend, and visitations through dream. Bruce, welcome back to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Thanks for having me back, Dino.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Of course, my brother, I'm glad to have you here. We had an interesting conversation last time, and I'm I'm excited to get back into it. So let's do it. If you don't mind, let's roll. When you last were speaking, you were talking about um a girlfriend you had in South Carolina, and in my notes, uh you had mentioned to me a ghost hunt you did in South Carolina at a Confederate graveyard. And I'm really interested to hear about that. So if you don't mind, touch on that. How did you get into this? How did this um come about? Tell me all about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Okay. Well, last week on accounts of the paranormal, uh, you might have recalled me telling you that she was a bit clairvoyant, this girl. And uh her family, her siblings, you know, uh, they were all well aware of this connection that she had to the spirit realm. And they all kind of, you know, they don't really talk about it, but they weren't afraid about it. So some of them uh they all got together and they wanted to do a ghost hunt at this abandoned church, and it happened to be dated around the time that I was going to be in town. So the girl asked me if I was interested in coming along, and uh, you know, there pretty much wasn't a choice because she wanted to do this with her sisters. But luckily for her, I was very much interested in the idea. So uh we went on a long drive. I don't even remember where it was, it was rural South Carolina, dude. So we get to this old church, this church had to be 200 years old, you know, uh, just like something that you would see in a in a periodic film. This this tall, you know, rotted wood church building. And I couldn't tell you the last time that thing was in use. So it was graffitied, uh, homeless people beat the crap out of it. Drug addicts used it for a den. Uh, the night we were there, we were the only people there, or you know, or so we thought. So we're walking around, and the trees around this abandoned church were goodness, they had to be 50 feet high, if not higher. They were very, very tall trees, so tall that it blotted out the light of the moon. So we're walking in this pitch black area around this church, and we're armed with candles and flashlights. And this was back before everyone had smartphones that would handle photographs as well as flashlights and everything else. So we're walking around with actual cameras and the candles and the flashlights, and half of the time we're just trying not to trip or step on anything because it was pitch black and you couldn't see anything without some type of aid. So we're we start with the church, and uh again, it people beat the crap out of this thing. Uh, whatever the weather didn't destroy, Vandals took care of the rest because there was graffiti all over it, you know, there were smashed windows, uh the church house itself was empty, but you can tell that a couple of parties were held in there, you know, and I use that term loosely. So we got a few pictures in the church house, and then we walked the grounds of the church and we notice that we have a graveyard. And the closer we look, the more we realize hey, almost every single one of these graves has a miniature Confederate flag planted right in front of the gravestone. And at that point, I realized that sometime or another, you know, uh Confederate soldiers might have been attendees of this church or members of this church, and they were buried here. So we're taking pictures uh around the graveyard, and we already got a few from the church house. So now we're doing the graveyard, we're walking around, and then there is a small uh a shack-looking type building. Uh perhaps it might have been a small apartment for the groundskeeper or the preacher uh some time ago when the late 1800s or whatever it was. And we could see that uh there was a whole bunch of stuff that was locked in there, you know, chairs and tables, just furniture piled on top of each other. It looked like a really rotted out storage shack. So we're getting a couple pictures of that, and at some point, my girlfriend just gets very scared and she says, we have to leave now. And we had been there for maybe 45 to an hour, so we figured, all right, well, we've seen enough, we've taken goodness knows how many photos. So we pack up, we get back in the car, and we leave. Next morning, we are looking at the photographs, there are orbs everywhere. And the closer we got to that shack where all that furniture was stored in, the more orbs we saw in the photographs that were taken. It got to the point where it looks like we were outside in the rain and there were raindrops all over the lens of the cameras that we were using. But I swear to you that it was dry outside that night. It was dry and it was chilly.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

I know you sent me a couple of pictures and they're pretty interesting. What do you remember of the weather or visibility in particular when you were outside?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

The visibility was crap because again, those trees were so tall that they blotted out the light of the moon. So any visibility that we had was made possible with flashlights and candles. And the weather itself, it was early May, maybe it was late April, early May. So the spring had not fully sprung. It was a little chilly. We were walking around wearing jackets, but it was dry. There was no rain, there was not uh one drop out of the sky that night.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Was there any fog?

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Not that I can recall seeing, but it did show up in the photos.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Oh, 100%. Yeah, you can see it in the those two. I'll probably include those pictures in the blog, if that's okay. Very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

That is absolutely okay. Yeah, because as we were walking through, not only did we get orbs on the pictures that we review uh reviewed the next morning, but as we were going through the graveyard, some of the pictures that I took, and I unfortunately didn't retain all of them because you know, computer switched to another, switched to another, you know, things get lost. But the ones that I did uh retain, there was one that stood out. Uh again, it was a clear night, there was no fog, but fog was showing up in the photographs, and whatever was causing the fog in the photograph, they wanted to make sure that the only thing that I could see was the Confederate flag that was planted in the ground. It would not let me see any of the graves around it. It's almost as if there was a Confederate soldier that was following us and said, Don't you worry about my name. Only concern yourself with my cause. And that would also potentially explain why my girlfriend was becoming very uncomfortable after we had been there for 45 minutes or so and wanted to get out of there.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

And aside from her feeling uncomfortable and wanting to leave, is there anything else going on aside from it just feeling creepy?

SPEAKER_00 8:47

No. I don't recall anyone feeling scared or panicked. We were just walking around taking pictures like we were on vacation somewhere, grabbing photos of Niagara Falls or something. And at some point, uh my girlfriend Melissa became very uncomfortable and wanted to leave. And we had been there long enough and taken enough photos that everyone was in agreement that, yeah, we could we could wrap it up now. But no one else showed any concern. There were no instances of anyone getting pinched or poked by something that wasn't there. We were not able to see all the photographs because we again it wasn't smartphones. We were taking pictures and looking at them the next day. But there was no other instance of anyone feeling spooked or creeped out and wanted to go home, or or or nobody was afraid or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

And these were the photos that you had taken that had that mist or whatever it is blocking. Uh, did anyone else's photos have anything in them?

SPEAKER_00 9:49

There were a lot of other uh it was mostly orbs. Nobody caught a full-on apparition, but there were dozens of photos, none of which I have because they were all my girlfriend's uh sister's photos. Uh they had received all kinds of orbs and uh inexplicable bodies of fog in the photos that they were taking.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

And once you left, you know, she got creeped out and wanted to go. And once you left, um, what what what was your feeling about the time you spent there?

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Knowing that she was clairvoyant, I myself was a little concerned because the first thing that comes to my mind is that we just went into a Confederate graveyard. I myself am a Yankee. So who knows what might have attached itself to me, you know, and might be following me home. You know, to harass me further or something like that. Who knows?

SPEAKER_01 10:41

And did anything happen in the you know in the days immediately following that?

SPEAKER_00 10:47

The only thing that happened was that dream that she had about my grandmother's house and that incident at the Waffle House. And I don't remember which came before which, but there were no other uh paranormal experiences or odd happenings.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

So this was just a one-off uh little ghost hunt that you did at that time, right? It wasn't something that you were Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

It's it wasn't on the itinerary, it was just kind of sprung on me, but I was okay with it, and it was something that I had an interest in. So we did it, and I I I got what I was well, I got what I went in for.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Back to the the dream or the visitations. Um touch on those uh if you could after the one I know I had asked you previously and we got a little sidetracked. Um because I'm interested in uh if there was like a pattern or if it started to start at any point kind of pickup or steamroll, if you will, uh um after the gr the one with the grandmother, because you had you know your grandfather, then it was a few years later and you had the one uh the visitation from the grandmother. So I'm interested in what came after that and how something that came. And I'm just trying to establish like whether something that you know that may be inherent with you or something from that you got from your grandfather, an ability, so to speak, um, that you started, you know, almost like a you know, muscle that was strengthening and kind of picked up steam. That's what I'm trying to get at as to how long after the the grandmother visitation and what was the next one.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

All right. That is one excellent way to put it when you say a muscle that was starting to grow or develop, because it does feel looking back that that's exactly what was happening. Uh around the time or sometime after that incident with the prayer beads that I had told you about, uh, that's when the dream started to pick up again. And the circumstances were very unfortunate because someone had to die first. Uh at that time, a friend of mine uh by the name of AJ from New Jersey, he was a comedian, uh, literally and figuratively a banana. He had this thing that he would do where uh he would wear this big banana suit and he called his character CC Banana, and he would go to comic book conventions in this costume and do vlogging and and podcasting and all kinds of other things before anyone thought they were fashionable. So he was one of the pioneers. He would uh bring his camera and he would wear his silly banana suit and he would talk to people with cool costumes at the conventions. Uh during his day job, he would be a stand-up comedian or he would be a clown for children's parties, a magician. So he was very entertainment-minded, uh, head up in the clouds. And that unfortunately did him in because the man never had a real job. He was just so passionate about entertaining people and making them laugh that he refused to budge on any of that for the sake of paying the bills. And things went south for him. And I remember watching his or reading rather, his very sorrowful posts on Facebook about how truly depressed he was getting. But I specifically remember thinking, this man is about to commit suicide, and there's absolutely nothing that I can do to stop it. Because until that time, I was reaching out to him every now and again. I was not equipped to take him in, but I I tried to be a force of positivity for him and see what I can do to help guide him on a better path, and I failed. And the day after that Facebook post was made, uh, I wake up the next morning and I log into the internet, and everyone confirm AJ had taken his own life last night. So a couple of days after that, uh, like it how it's been several times before, I get a dream that I remember very vividly. And uh, if you recall, around that time I found difficulty getting good solid work in Buffalo. I had a new job every three to four months. So I'm dreaming, a few days after AJ's passing, that I am attending a job fair at a mall. And the job fair was not going to be out in the open where shoppers could see. It was in a special office that security was using in the back of the building, quote unquote. So I go to the it was like a classroom almost, you know, with a chalkboard and there were desks set up for anyone who was interested in the job fair, small. So I grabbed myself a seat, and there is a pamphlet in front of me that says, Welcome to the Ku Klux Klan. And I'm like, What the? So I throw it down on the floor, I grab my backpack and I storm the heck out of there, and I remember being so angry that not only was I given a bait and switch about a job fair, but somebody sent me to a Ku Klux Klan uh rally or whatever you want to call it, you know, or an enlistment exercise, whatever it was. So I'm fuming and I'm thinking to myself in this dream, I gotta go to the arcade and play a game and blow off some steam. So I'm making my way to the arcade, and at the door of the arcade, the wide doorway, standing right there, looking straight at me with a big grin on his face, is AJ. And I walk up to him, handshake and a hug. He's got this look in his eye, I got you one last time, Bruce. And I said to him, Yeah, real funny. Uh you died a day or two ago. What are you doing here? And he said to me, I just wanted to say my goodbye and thank you for being a friend. And that was it. So he played one last prank on me, and I haven't seen him since. That was 2012.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

So this was quite a ways after the um visitation from the grandmother then. Do you recall anything in between?

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Uh there was nothing in between the because there weren't too many deaths in between. But as I entered my late 30s and early 40s around that time, around the time you and I were working together, in fact, uh, that's when the dreams or visitations or whatever they are, they started to become a little more frequent. And in these dreams, I was often walking through a crowded area, and I would see my grandpa off in the distance on uh whether, you know, like like imagine the bazaar in old town, you know, in San Diego, uh, where I used to go a lot. So I would be walking through the bazaar and I would see my grandfather amidst a big group of hundreds of people, and I would say, Holy crap, grandpa's here. And he would be looking at me with a smile on his face to let me know that he saw me. And each of these dreams, and I had at least half a dozen of them, I would be making my way through this crowd and never finding him. It was almost like a movie. So he would spot me, I would spot him, but I would never find him, I would never catch up to him. One time I did, and I recall going through the crowd and going into this building where a big dining room and a long table and these Victorian-era chairs around the dining table, and he's sitting at the head, and he's looking at me with a big smile on his face, and he has his hands clasped, and he's just observing me, admiring me, maybe even. And he has students around him that have been around him for a while, and they're talking to me and trying to get my attention away from my grandfather, and he just picks up and he walks out the room. So I never get to have a word with him, he doesn't say anything to me, and it felt as if he just wanted to observe, let me know that he was watching, and he got up and he left. That was the only thing that he needed to say. And uh not too long after that, I want to say it was 2019, there was a girl in San Francisco that I was interested in, and I made arrangements to go visit her in San Francisco, and I had a dream where I was in my childhood neighborhood in Syaset in Long Island, and I was driving, uh I was driving home, and uh I'm going through the neighborhood, and a tiger is just walking across this this street in this uh in the side street of the neighborhood, and I just get real quiet. I lock the doors, the tiger walks up to the car, looks at me, and then it loses interest and walks away. And I'm thinking, okay, well that was a relief. So I immediately call, you know what? My pedal is to the metal, my foot is on the floor of the car, I get out of there. My my childhood home is right around the corner from where I was watching this tiger. I get out of the car, I run into the house, and I go into my old bedroom of my old childhood home, and there's grandpa. And I'm like, hey grandpa, what are you doing here? And he had a look of concern on his face. And he's like, I'm I'm alright, everything everything's okay. I I had to get rid of that tiger though. So I wake up shortly after that, and wouldn't you know it? This girl that I was looking to visit in San Francisco happens to be born in the year of the tiger. And after a couple of visits with her, I realized that she was going to drive me absolutely bonkers. So when I looked back on all of it, my experiences with her and the dream itself, it seemed to me like grandpa was telling me, This is not a good one for you, you better find somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Your grandpa is the one that you've had the most of these uh dreams where he he speaks to you. You've had quite a few with him.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yes. Yes. Uh of all of the uh lost ones that. I've had, you know, between friends and relatives. There was AJ that one time, but grandpa's the one that appears the most. And that dream with the tiger was probably the last time I saw him. I might have seen his face in a dream, maybe a time or two after and don't remember. But when you get a legitimate visitation, they're very difficult to forget. They're almost impossible to forget, or at least they are for me. Because I could very vividly remember the room or the environment that I was sitting in, the words that were exchanged between myself and whoever was visiting. And I no one else except for him has had that many ex uh visitations with me.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

And to anyone that would hear that and say they're just dreams. What say you on that?

SPEAKER_00 22:49

I can't convince them otherwise. There are people that won't be convinced. There are people that they're they're just hardwired to completely disregard the possibility of life after death because it either doesn't make sense to them or maybe it just scares the crap out of them. And they don't want to believe it. And there's really nothing that I can say or do to change that, because these experiences that I've had, these interpretations that I make, they're mine, and I have no evidence except for my own memories. So this is a losing case. If they don't want to believe it, not a problem. Uh if you have something that happens in your personal life, and not you, you, but generally speaking, if you have something that you can't explain, you know, you maybe someone in your audience, you know, and if you can challenge yourself to step outside yourself and step outside of what you consider reality to be, sit down and listen to me or to you or to any other of your guests that might have a story to help make sense out of what they're confused about.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Aside from um the past you know, girlfriends, the relationships you've had where these people have brought messages to you, have you ever uh sought out a psychic or anyone like that?

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Never. Never uh for two reasons. Uh one of them is grandpa, because when he was still alive and my mother, who had a very deep interest in psychic uh you know, paranormal activity, things like that, uh, whenever he would sit down and educate her, quote unquote, uh, he would say, Linda, don't ever go to a uh uh a fortune teller, you know, don't ever go to a psychic. Anyone who's charging money, they're full of it, they're hustling you. They might be able to see something, but they're going to spin it in a way to make you feel happy and make you feel better about yourself after you just gave them a hundred bucks or whatever they're charging you, and then you walk out the door. So I remember him giving that instruction. And uh, do you remember John Edwards? Oh, yeah, the television psychic. Oh yeah, yeah. About 15 to 20 years after, you know, I mean, because that I remembered that that piece of instruction from grandpa all these many years. So anytime someone I went to a psychic and they said this, you know, and I would just take it with a grain of salt, you know. But then I hear John Edwards, you know, John Eddie John Edwards is the most successful, uh impactful uh type psychic that that's ever been on television, and I can't believe how talented this man is, that he's got this amphitheater full of people, and he's able to just look at at folks that he's never met before and and tell them that their aunt Diane says hi. And a couple of years after that, it was exposed that every studio audience that he's ever had was standing in a hallway that was tapped with wires and recorders. And John Edwards' staff would carefully listen in, they would watch the video, they would listen to the audio. Gee, you think uh John is gonna pick up on grandpa, and they would give the guy notes. His team would say, Yes, this lady with the blonde hair and and the red shirt and the red skirt was talking about grandpa. You might want to, you know, single her out. And that's what he would do on his television show. And I read this story, this expose, and you're gonna have hustlers everywhere, but still, it it the first thing that I I thought about was my grandfather, and he's like, Wow, he he warned me about this. You know, anyone who buys a ticket or buys time to sit down for something like this, they're gonna get hustled. Someone is going to pick up I maybe they are a legitimate medium, but they're not gonna share any horrible stories or sad stories on a light and fluffy television show. They're not gonna get you depressed, make you cry right in front of them, make you hate life, and then ask you for money. That's not very successful. So it just made sense that my grandfather saw this coming down the road. So, yeah, he was right about everything. So that's one reason why I've never been to a psychic. The second reason is because most of the time I know what the message is and I know exactly who left it for me. Because the only person left on my list of ghosts is my friend TJ, not AJ, TJ. Uh TJ was a fellow artist that I had befriended when we were in art school together. And the two of us became very close like brothers. Uh, we had similar philosophies. Uh, we were very talented, and we were both extraordinarily frustrated with being unable to find work in our field, given how good we are. And I went the way of banking because the bills had to be paid. He went the way of tattoo art because the bills had to be paid, but he didn't want to give up art. He was very much like AJ in the sense that he just would not compromise on his passion. And he moved to Texas from Queens to uh he was going to get a job at Dell uh developing apps, and he was making great money there. Six months in, there's a layoff, and he loses his job with Dell after allocating everything that he had, you know, leaving his family and friends behind in New York to go live in Texas where nobody was. But he's got money in the bank, you know, thanks to how successful he was there in the short time he was there. So he's like, you know what? I got money. I don't really need to do anything right now. I'm gonna take up tattooing. So he took up tattooing, and uh he got very good very quickly. Uh a little too good, perhaps, because tattoo apprenticeships usually last about a year. They had him apprenticing for about three years. They refused to let to give him his license. So they had him getting coffee, they had him answering the phones, they were basically hazing him nonstop, and it led to a lot of self-destructive habits on his part. In 2017, uh he sent me a message on Facebook Messenger. It was a GIF of Steamboat Willie, or one of Walt Disney's earliest animations. So, you know, because you know how you're a Disney guy, like you know how Disney used to draw when he was still alive, all of the old uh uh uh musical melodies or whatever they would call uh he had his own style, you know, for his characters. You just draw cows wearing overalls on the farm or some crazy crap like that. So TJ found one of those gifts and he sent it to me in a message on Facebook manager uh messenger, and he simply said, Remember who we are. And a couple of days later, I got a phone call from his sister. It's emergency. Uh please call me back as soon as you get this voicemail. And that's how I found out that TJ died in his sleep of a heart attack. He had an enlarged heart that was uh basically poisoned from taking a whole bunch of five-hour energies and goodness knows what else, because he did have a lot of destructive habits. But to go back to my point and why I'm even bringing it up, I know what the message is and I know who the messenger is because a year or two later I realize that I haven't drawn in a while. So I break out the pad and I break out the pencils, and I take a folding table out into the living room, and I adjust its height so that it's it's acceptable for me to produce good work. And I sit myself down and I'm drawing for it's gotta be an hour and a half or so. And I'm happy with what I did, and I'm thinking to myself, okay, so uh let's ink it. So I take out the ballpoint pen, I'm inking the drawing on the paper, I take out the big chunky rubber eraser, and now I'm erasing all the uh the lead from the pencil, and I'm satisfied with how it turned out. It was the first drawing that I had done in well over a year. So I was a little rusty, but I produced something that I was happy with. So I'm like, okay, we're done. So I leave the drawing and the pencils and the erasers and the pens, I leave it on the folding table, and I go into my bathroom to wash the lead from the pencil off of my hands. And I towel off, I come back, and the drawing is on the floor under the table. And no one else was in that living room. The windows were closed. Who else could have left it there but TJ? And that was him letting me know that he was glad that I was drawing again. Because his last words to me were, remember who we are. And after that, uh, are you familiar with uh what amiibos are for the Nintendo Switch?

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Okay, I had a few of them, and I have them, or at least at that time, I I would keep them on top of my entertainment center. And it was high enough that my cat Ziggy wouldn't mess with it. So uh never did I ever come home and find them all over the place, you know, because my cat is very troublesome.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

You're going exactly where I was about to go when to cut you off. When you mentioned the picture, I was gonna bring up Ziggy and ask you if there was any way um it could have been Ziggy um knocking that down, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

It it was not the big Zig. Uh the big Zig was in the bedroom with the world with the girl I was living with at the time, uh just curling up on the bed with her, watching videos on YouTube or some crap. So uh there was no one in the living room. Yeah, if anything, Ziggy doesn't knock paper off the table, he tries to eat it. So uh if Ziggy were the culprit, there would have been little you know holes from his fangs that would have been all over the paper. So I know it wasn't him. So uh my my assumption was that TJ came by to say hello and to say that he was happy that I was drawing again. And uh after that incident, the amiibo that I had up on the Entertainment Center. Uh, do you remember the game Metroid for the Nintendo?

SPEAKER_01 34:05

No, I don't recall that one.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

It was one of the first titles for the original Nintendo in the 80s, in which you were out in space, you know, uh shooting after aliens and trying to solve puzzles that you can get off of this ridiculous planet. And the character was wearing a gold suit of armor with a red helmet. And over time, uh, with Nintendo, uh, the character was adapted from the gold suit of armor to a blue bodysuit, like how you might see in a superhero film, for example. And the character was female, it was a blonde woman in a blue suit. So her name is Samus. So I have a little Samus amiibo, and it just so happens that Metroid was one of TJ's favorite games when he was growing up. And every now and again, when I would come home from work and you and I were working together at this time, I would come home and I would notice that out of all of the amiibo that I had on the top of my entertainment center, and I probably had a dozen of them, the Metroid one was consistently knocked off and knocked over. Whereas every other one of those little statues or figurines remained exactly where I left it when I left the house.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Okay, so when you would see this, when you'd come home and you'd recognize that that one was uh had fallen off. Uh, how did you react? What did you do?

SPEAKER_00 35:34

The first thing I said was, thanks for stopping by, TJ. Because I knew it was him. And again, I know it wasn't Ziggy, because he would have had to have knocked over every other single amiibo figurine to get to that. So the odds of him doing this were none. There was zilch. And this is after that incident with the drawing, so that's when I knew, or at least I think I knew, TJ was around, TJ wanted to say hi. Maybe I should start drawing a little more.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

You had mentioned that you had never seen you have never seen an apparition or any spirit or anything like that. And this type this type of activity of objects moving. What other, if any, experiences uh related to that have you had? Like since since you moved to Florida, have you had anything uh moving? Um what other types of related to that?

SPEAKER_00 36:35

Nothing down here, uh nothing down here. Most of the activity happened when I was still in San Diego. Uh there's actually quite a bit that I could tell you. And uh part of it, uh my my grandmother is responsible for this one. Uh you remember when the world ended in 2020? Yep. So while we were sorting that out and listening to Wesley Willis in our spare time, uh my family was undergoing some some catastrophes. Uh in March of 2020, my little brother and his wife were expecting their first child. And around that time, my brother, who was working at Best Buy, he managed the store here in Orlando. He physically uh not assaulted per se, but he's put he put his hands on a shoplifter. And it was caught on video, and there was two weeks of debate on it, and Best Buy, after he had been there for goodness, gonna be 10 years at the very least, Best Buy decided that the incident was too risky for them and it was too much of a liability, so they terminated it. And he was terminated just days before his wife was due to deliver their first child. That's what's happening in Florida. In New York, where my parents still are at that time, my mother has ovarian cancer and she's getting a hysterectomy. And in California, where I am, I'm just going through life and working with you, listening to Wesley Willis, trying to keep myself sane. But a friend of mine uh he had the misfortune of having to bury his grandfather and his cousin the same day. Uh his grandfather died of old age, his cousin was suffering from lung cancer, and they both died within a 24-hour period. Now, my friend Jay, he will not openly talk about being clairvoyant, but he can hear things every now and again from something that isn't there. So he calls me because he he needs a friend. And I'm doing what I can to console him and and trying to keep him in a good headspace because this was a very difficult loss for him. It's two losses back to back. And he's crying it out, you know, and I don't remember how this happened in this two-hour conversation, because this goes back six years almost to the day. But something triggered me to talk about what I remembered from when my grandmother died in 1994, the one that I had the dream about. Because she was fighting lung cancer as well. Uh, for 83 years old, and having held on for three years, she was tough as nails, I guess. The woman did not want to die. Uh, but finally it happened. And the hospital called us at our childhood home. I was old enough to stay home with my two siblings and be the responsible adult. I was 15 or 16. And uh so I'm telling Jay, yeah, this is when my grandmother died, I took the call and from the hospital a half hour later. And he interrupted me and he said, No, you didn't. You were playing video games. Like, what are you talking about? You didn't take the call, your sister took the call. You were downstairs playing a video game, and then I just stopped for a second and I tried harder to remember, and I'm like, you know what? You're right. I remember now. I was playing Mortal Kombat 2 on Super Nintendo, and the phone rang, and my sister Melinda picked it up, and she told me that Nanny passed away, and that's when I picked up the phone and started calling mom and dad and everybody else. How did you know this? And Jay simply said, Your grandmother just told me. And I was like, What are you talking about? And that's when he said, Sometimes I hear things. And you normally when you and I get together, we're drinking and we're having a good time. But when it's at quiet times like this, sometimes I hear things from people and I channel them, I guess. And what I just got now was a voice from an old lady saying that you didn't answer the phone, you were playing video games. And Gino, he was right. So why does that make sense? Why is that brought up? Well, when the world ended in March of 2020, uh, that is when my niece was due to be born. Now my brother's name is Joseph. My grandmother's name is Josephine. My brother Joseph is named after my grandmother Josephine. March nineteenth happens to be Saint Joseph's Day, which was a very big deal in our family. Have you ever tried St. Joseph's Pastry, Gino?

SPEAKER_01 41:51

I don't recall, no.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

St. Joseph's Pastry. Uh, imagine putting cannoli cream in a cream puff and putting chocolate chips in it. And maybe putting a little bit of uh whipped cream and a cherry on top and some green sprinkles for the colors of the Italian flag. March 19th is Saint Joseph's Day. So every year when my grandmother was alive, you know, and my brother's birthday happens to be March 13th, so we would the family would get together and we would celebrate my brother's birthday, but then we would bring out the St. Joseph's Patries because my grandmother wanted to celebrate Saint Joseph's Day with her grandson, my brother Joseph. So why is that important? Well, my niece Layla, Joseph's daughter, was born two days later than she should have. On March 19th, St. Joseph's Day. While turmoil was happening with you and me in California and the COVID stuff, with the turmoil my parents were going through, with my mother's hysterectomy in New York, with the turmoil that my brother Joseph was going through after having been let go by Best Buy, and now he has to figure out how he's going to make money to support his family, which is going to be one person larger in another five minutes. My grandmother got involved, had a quick word with my friend Jay, and my theory is that she pulled a couple of strings to make sure that Joseph's daughter was born on Joseph's uh St. Joseph's Day as her final gift to my brother, and to let us all know that she's around and watching us too.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

It brings a memory up to me. Uh just on a quick side note here about uh my first mother my son, Alexander, um when he was born. So his birthday uh March twenty fourth. And I think his I think his due date, I don't recall, but it was a few days before that, two or three days before that. And I was talking to back then during the pregnancy at some point, I was talking to um who I still call my brother in law, who's my my older sister had passed away years ago, but um he's still my brother in law to this day. Um and we were talking and he was asking about the pregnancy and the due date and I said, Oh, he's gonna be oh the do date the due date is um uh March twenty first or or it might have been the twenty sixth or twenty-seventh. I don't really remember. But it was a with uh give or like a day or two before a day or two after that's when it was the due date. And I mentioned that to him and he says what are you talking about? He's gonna be born on your sister's birthday. My sister's birthday on March 24th. And I just kind of looked at him and I kind of laughed. I said that'd be crazy. But he said it so matter of fact. Bruce what you want of it. He was born on March 24th. He shares a birthday with my deceased sister. So you bringing up that made me think of that.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

Isn't isn't that something you know it's wild but at the same time it just makes you feel so good.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Totally totally yeah and and I still remember the moment when he said it he he kind of like uh gave me that little brush on the shoulder and he goes what are you talking about? He's gonna be born on your sister's birthday. Yeah just just like that just a matter of fact and then we just kind of went on with our lives and and this was months before the you know the due date you know and yeah um it it happened you make what make it what you want it happened and I I know you yeah I know you totally get it from what you're telling me.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

Yeah absolutely maybe he was joking around maybe he wasn't but the story has that same parallel that a birth a sp a special day was coming up and a special loved one was associated with that day and wanted you to know that they're still around and they love you. That's a beautiful story Gino it's wild but it's it's beautiful at the same time I'm I'm happy for you that you have that story that is tremendous.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Yeah it's cool that they share that birthday it's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 45:55

But uh to circle back not a lot of activity here in Florida but there was still significant activity in San Diego after the uh my grandmother had popped in for a cup of coffee uh a year later I had relocated you might remember uh I don't know if we were still in the same department at that point but uh I had moved closer to the Fashion Valley Mall and I was with a new girl and uh she had a dog and she had a collection of reptiles so we had these four big fish tanks inside the guest room filled with reptiles. So you had snakes frogs geckos all that crap and she had told me you know I mean because we had been talking for about six months to a year before we actually moved in with each other but she would mention that uh you know Bruce every time that we're on video you know every now and again the the light kind of changes behind you or there or there might be a a shade that flickers uh have you ever noticed anything like that around the house like no no and uh she said and another thing is that I I can't explain it but every time I walk into a place or get involved with a new person a lot of earwig uh insects show up within a couple of days I had a small infestation of earwigs in the bedroom which had a door to the patio in the yard so I thought that was an odd uh I don't believe in coincidences so I'm like okay well she warned me about the earwigs and here they are uh it only lasted for a day but when we moved in together that's when things started to amp up just a little bit and one of the happenings I actually caught on my Lucha Review show on YouTube I'm pretty sure that I sent you a link to this particular episode I was watching a movie that absolutely sucked and I'm like you know what I can't even write good jokes for this let's play with Ziggy for the rest of the episode so I'm filming myself playing with with Ziggy and he has uh or at least he had this little uh a pillow it was a a a fish and you can put catnip inside it so he's playing with it and he's biting it and he's scratching it and all of a sudden he stops playing and he looks to the corner of the room for a s for uh half a minute and then goes back to his playing. So and I'm thinking nothing of it because it's the cat doing cat things. So I now have all of the video footage put onto the PC and I'm editing the footage and I have a pair of headphones on so I got the cans on and I'm listening to everything and uh I'm watching the part with Ziggy playing around and where he gets quiet I hear a whisper go yeah at that point I rip the headphones off and I body slam them on the table because I had caught my first EVP without being on a ghost expedition looking for an EVP. I'm sitting there trying to put an episode of Lucha Review together and I'm having fun with my cat and someone apparently was playing along with us and they were excited. I couldn't tell you who it was but the whisper was barely uh audible but if you turn the volume up on your headphones you hear it and not long after that uh the girl that I was with wanted to shoot a TikTok of herself in the bathroom and she's playing it back we caught another EVP this one was not as uh friendly as the one that Ziggy had because when she's showing me this like yeah I I did this in our bathroom listen to this you just hear an angry whisper go no she did not upload it to TikTok oh yeah so whatever was watching her dance around they didn't want to see her dancing around or at least they didn't want to see her half naked so they're like no it it was very very clear and very very concerning so she deleted it immediately yeah that never made it to TikTok but other things would happen you know uh because we were together during the cocoa you know so I had COVID tests that would randomly disappear uh I had uh I would hear the the reptile tanks I would I would hear fingers tapping the tanks when there was nobody in the room so uh there was one night where one of my hoodies was actually taken out of the closet and left on the ottoman in the living room and I come home like babe do you pull any jackets out of the closet no I've I've been asleep all this time why what what's going on one of my hoodies was taken out of the closet and left on the ottoman here in the living room and I'm looking at the jacket it's the jacket made by the people uh I get my kilts from they're called sport kilt and they used to operate out of Los Angeles I think now they're in Utah but TJ my friend used to love wearing a kilt and going to the bar with me when I was wearing mine. We had about 12 of us that used to wear kilts and go out for special events and get drinks while wearing it was kind of like a toca party. So we would all put kilts on and we would all hit the town and whenever I had my kilt on I would grab my sport kilt hoodie uh hooded jacket because uh simple you know black zip up hoodie and it's got the low uh the uh the emblem it's it's got the the symbol on the back you know matching the kilt so I was in my uniform so to speak and I'm sitting there and I'm opening up the jacket and there's the sport kilt logo and I'm thinking to myself is is TJ's spirit that potent to the point where he can grab something out of the closet open and close the sliding door of the closet walk the jacket over to the living room that's 15 feet away and then just leave it there on the Ottoman so that question was never answered by any man or ghost uh also around that time uh my uncle Ron who is in Santa Monica I went to visit him on Christmas day uh I want to say it was 2022 now Uncle Ron happens to be the father of my cousin Adam who passed away at the age of 33 I go up and I see Uncle Ron I see my cousin Leah Adam's half sister we spend the day together and I get home and I don't know about you but my Christmas tree has been up for four weeks. I want my living room back dude so next day that thing's coming down so I take one final picture of the Christmas tree that's been up in my living room for the last four to six weeks. Let me get one nice photo and then tomorrow I'm gonna take the whole thing down. I'm looking at the photo that I just took and I have this mirror that is shaped like the Batman symbol and I see a shadow in the mirror that very much resembles my cousin Adam's upper body so it's my belief that after spending Christmas day with his father and his half sister he wanted to come by and see me before I took down my Christmas tree is it like a like a shadow is it foggy is it an outline what do you make of it it's an it's a it is a clear outline. You would think that somebody else was in the room I was alone and real real quick Florida why do you think there's no activity out there? Why why has everything kind of stopped since you went out there because I'm not alone uh 80% of my family is down here when I was in San Diego I was by myself so I picked up from Long Island in 2010 I went to Buffalo for four years I don't recommend it I just it wasn't for me and after four years that's when I just packed everything up and went to San Diego I had no job I had no money I had nothing but I went out there by myself and I built my existence by myself and I was 3000 miles away from the people that I grew up with in my home in Long Island. My uncle Ron is in California like I just mentioned but he's three hours north and he works in show business so very often he's traveling abroad so he's there but he's not really there. So I was alone and when I was finally laid off at that point my parents said forget about California forget about this girl that you just broke up with come and be with your your niece you're her goddaughter you should be here and by then which was 2023 for the sake of our listeners it was August of 23 my niece was going to be four years old uh she already knew who Uncle Bruce was she just knows that she doesn't get to see him often so my brother was very excited to hear that I was considering moving to Florida. But by then my parents were done with our home in Long Island my mother was cancer free there was no regression so a year or two after the surgery they bought a house in the villages which is about an hour north of us here in Florida so the short version of this long-winded answer is that I can assume that because I am now so close to family and I also have a few Long Island people that have relocated here over the last couple of years they were here before I uh got here actually but they're all within 10 to 45 minutes of reach so my childhood is basically here and now it's in an adult form. And if I were to guess uh my my ghosts my spirits they figured he's close to family we don't have to worry about him anymore if he ever needs help he's got help right around the corner that's an awesome way to look at it knowing how things were for you back then I'm glad you're where you are now uh around family and um everything's peaceful and uh nothing negative going on you know with you or around you.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

That's really cool. Thank you for that. But Bruce I really appreciate coming on and and sharing these um these stories and and these very personal things that you've experienced and um seen and and it's been a while since you and I had a long chat. So oh yeah this was a really cool one to have but I really appreciate you uh absolutely coming on and sharing this. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_00 57:12

Of course thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 57:13

I had so much fun it's been a blast yeah thanks Bruce you take care brother you too 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 dot com and tell me what you saw. You can catch the show wherever you listen to podcasts as well as our website accounts of theparanormal dot 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