Paradigm Shift
The Everything Podcast, hosted by the dynamic duo Rob and Jesse, is your weekly dose of unfiltered conversations that truly cover everything—from the latest crypto market rollercoasters and tech breakthroughs to wild life stories, random hot takes, and whatever absurd rabbit hole the hosts tumble down next. With Rob's sharp, no-BS insights and Jesse's laid-back humor keeping things grounded yet unpredictable, each episode feels like kicking back with two old friends who aren't afraid to dive deep, roast bad ideas, or just geek out over the weirdest corners of culture and current events. Whether you're into finance, memes, or pure chaos, it's the show that somehow makes it all connect.
Paradigm Shift
Paradigm Shift: Top Super Natural Topics Discussed
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Listen As Big Rob & Jesse Dive Into Some Of The Worlds Biggest Super Natural Stories And Lore, What Could Be Real What Seems Fake & More
All right, welcome back to another episode, a darker episode of the paradigm shift. I am, of course, Big Rob coming back at you with the world heavyweight champion of the world, Jesse. What's going on, buddy?
SPEAKER_01Hey, I'm coming back at you from the haunted mansion over here in Florida. I've got the pipe organ in the background. It's a little dark, it's a little scary, and I'm ready to go.
SPEAKER_00He is the ghost with the most, my friends. We are going to talk some paranormal stuff tonight. It's going to be a good time as we ramp up our episodes towards Halloween. We're going to be doing many, many episodes, uh, mixing them in with our other stuff, talking about some of the supernatural and paranormal stuff going on. Haunted places, ghosts, encounters, werewolves, who knows what else? So make sure you are locked in. Give us a five-star review. Don't be that guy. Come on.
SPEAKER_01Don't be that guy, or we're gonna haunt you.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Uh, before we dive into it, man, you got any uh initial thoughts before we uh dive into this?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think this is this is gonna be a fun one. I'm really looking forward to getting into the all the things that are a little dark, a little spooky, a little outside the realm of is it real or is it not? And uh yeah, well, I think I think we got some great examples, so this should be fun.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I like I like a lot of these. Um the first one on the list, of course, in no specific order. Ghosts and spirits of the dead, the most widespread supernatural belief. Ghosts are typically seen as the lingering souls or energy of people who have died. Reports include apparitions, voices, cold spots, or objects moving. They appear in nearly every culture from residual hauntings, sorry, residential residual haunting, sorry, uh, that we replay events to intelligent spirits and interact with the living. Have you ever had a ghost encounter? Yes. You have to tell me about it because so have I. So you go first.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I'll tell you mine. So my story was, and and you know, it it could be circumstantial. I I get that, but my story was my father-in-law passed away, right? He ended up uh getting cancer and it took him out. Okay. So he passes away from cancer, and my mother-in-law is still living in their house, and it's in uh Mississippi. And so we have to go there and kind of help her clean out the house, right? Pack things up and kind of what are you taking and what am I giving away? Kind of that downsizing of all the the things, the stuff, right? And so what was interesting was connected to the house, he had a garage, and at some point in time, he kind of built a roof from the garage straight into the house, and he walled that in and made that like a wood shop, right? So in his wood shop, he had all kinds of wood and tools, and you name it, just like a really cool spot, right? So I'm a bit of a woodworker myself, and I was out there in the wood shop, and you know, I'm kind of like going through all of his things, and I mean, there's stuff out there with his handwriting on it, and you know, you name it, like all these little touches of him are kind of everywhere. And I was looking at the time, he had he had made these forms, so they were like the outlines of an Adirondack chair.
SPEAKER_00What is an Adirondack chair?
SPEAKER_01An Adirondack deck chair is kind of like a it's a wooden chair that um in this case, um gosh, can't think of the type of wood. It's it's like a yellow and red wood that he used predominantly with them. But anyway, it is it's a wooden chair that you would sit in. It's sort of it it sort of has like a lean back to it, like it's a really nice chair. Like if you bought one of these brand new, it's like 500 bucks, right? And somewhere along the line, he had gotten a plan for them. And the plan basically gives you all the pieces and you know the sizes, and you cut them out and all this stuff. And so from that, he basically took like almost like a cardboard and he made like forms of each one of these pieces. So if somebody ever wanted to recreate one of these chairs, like here's the template to do it, right? And so at the time, he had made probably eight to ten of these chairs, so five sets of two, let's say, right? And so this is one of the things that he was kind of known for amongst some of the other woodworking. Like he would do like a chest at Christmas for certain people. Um, he would like donate them, all kinds of stuff like that, right? And so, anyway, so I'm in the wood shop and I'm kind of going through all of his old stuff, and I'm sitting there and I'm I'm thinking, I'm looking around, and I'm going, where are these forms? And in my head, I'm going, where are the forms at? Where are they? Like, I can't find them anywhere. You know, I cannot find them. I'm like, come on, I'm like, come on, Tom, where are the forms? Show me where they're at. Where are they? And out of nowhere, this wind gust slams the shit out of the door that was open, right? Like just slams it like really hard, right? And and it was the one and only time that door slammed the whole time I was there, the whole weekend, right? Door slams, I look over right at it, and there's the forms right there, right next to the door. And I went, thank you. It was it was it was kind of crazy, man. I was like, I was like, I don't know. Like, again, I mean, I don't believe in coincidence, and what are the odds? The one and only time this door slams, sure enough, there's the forms exactly right there, and I've been looking for them for like an hour and a half.
SPEAKER_00Wow, I don't believe in coincidence, man. I don't believe in coincidence. Yeah, um, so I remember I was renting this a room in this house, it was in the basement, and so I had just like a single bed. I was in my early 20s, I think, at the time or something, and it was just just like a single bed, and I had like a a dresser, but one of the shorter, like waist height dressers that were that are longer, you know, that you get like three sets of drawers, three down, kind of thing, uh, kind of like right beside my bed. Right. So one night I was sleeping, and to this day I don't know whether it was just I was just tired if I if I was seeing things, whatever the case might be, right? But I woke up in the middle of the night, and again, I'm in this basement room that's unfinished, like this, there's no like ceiling tile or anything. I'm in there with like the the water heater and all the furnace and all that kind of shit, right? Right in my room.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um and I wake up and I kind of look to my left, I look over to the dresser, and there's a woman standing there, like she's turning the pages looking at a book or something on the dresser, and she was wearing like an old um housemaiden uniform, like back from like I guess uh I don't know, like the slavery and stuff like that. You know, they would wear kind of the puppy dresses with the apron over it and um kind of like that, right? Yeah, and I just kind of laid down like uh I did well, I didn't lay down because I was still laying down, but just kind of saw that, and then I kind of closed my eyes again, and then I was like, wait a second, and I opened my eyes again, and she was gone, right? Now I don't know if I was seeing things, I don't know what the case might be, but I think it was just oddly specific for me, like the the outfits and and just specifically doing something, like standing there, kind of looking at a book on the on the dresser or whatever the case might be, or or looking at something on the dresser. And uh I just it was kind of just too specific of a situation for me to just have simply been seeing things. Normally, when you just kind of open your eyes and you're just seeing things, you just kind of see something like it would just be standing off, and then that's not what you saw. It's a coat rack or something like that. You know what I'm saying? But it was just yeah, it was in this weird place where nothing else was, it was just standing in front of the dresser. So to this day, I don't know what it was. Uh, if it was just me, if it was seeing things, or it was an actual encounter, but it left a definite impression on me.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00For me to remember such specific detail about it all these years later.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, that's that's that's interesting. You know, while you were telling that story, I thought about two other examples that I've heard recently of ghost stories with people I know. And so one of them is with my granddaughter that she is three, okay. And they live in a hundred-year-old house. And I've been over there a couple times to help them, like, you know, do like some trim work of this or that, or clean that thing up. Like, I'm pretty handy with carpentry type things, you know. And uh and so her mom, my wife's daughter from her first marriage, Samantha. Uh Samantha's telling us, she's like, Yeah, you know, um Charlotte keeps saying she's seeing a cat in her room. And we're like, a cat, like they don't have cats, okay? They don't they like they don't have cats, yeah. And and she she makes these weird comments that she's like, I don't like that cat in my room. And and so in her room, there's no stuffed animals that resemble a cat. There's nothing in this room that resembles a cat, absolutely nothing. And she's like, Yeah, I don't like that cat in my room. Like, I I don't like it there. Like that cat needs to leave my room. It's like we're we're like, uh I don't know what's going on in your room, but there's there's no cat in your room, you know. Not that we've seen, yeah, not that we've seen. And and and she the weird thing with this story is she said it multiple different occasions, totally different like day increments apart from each other, different times. And it's like, is she seeing something there? I don't know. So that's a really weird one that has come up multiple times.
SPEAKER_00That sounds like it's right out of a horror movie or something.
SPEAKER_01It could be, it could be, and like I said, this house is a hundred years old. So by I mean, there could be something there. I don't know. Um, so another one that that happened recently also was that in my uh my old day job, we used to have to travel for like cat response, right? And so we'd go down to wherever, you know, the hurricane hit or this or that, and we'd be somewhere for a couple months or whatever the case may be. And so we went down uh to Bradenton in Florida, and we stayed at this hotel that's been there like over a hundred years, right? And what was weird about this hotel is that it obviously it's been renovated in the time since, but there's all these relics of like what it originally looked like. Like even in like the elevator, like the elevator is super small. It's even got a panel for all the old buttons. There's like weird things like that, right? Like there's there's all these like relics of the past, like all the windows uh like on the sides of the building are original, they're all over a hundred years old, like just different things, right? And so anyway, apparently this hotel was known to be haunted. And I guess like a hundred years ago, like a lot of the uh mafia guys that would come down from New York, this is where they'd stay, right? So it it's weird, but one of the guys that was on my team, he was on one of the upper floors. And the rumor was that I think it was like the fifth floor is supposedly haunted of this hotel. Like I was on the second floor, so I I never experienced anything. But he was on the on the haunted floor, right? And uh, and one one morning, I mean, he came out and he was just like, he's like, you guys are never gonna be believe me. He's like, the the weirdest thing happened last night, and he's like, and I don't want to say it out loud because it sounds creepy and weird, but he he's like, he's like, I woke up in the middle of the night and there was a kid sitting on the end of my bed. We're like, really? And he he's like, he's like, do not say that out loud. I don't want anybody to think I'm like some chester molester here though, you know. He's like, I don't want anyone to know. He's like, but he's like, yes, he's like, I woke up, there was a kid on the end of the bed.
SPEAKER_00That's terrifying, man. Terrifying. How did you get through the rest of the night? I would done. I'm out of that room.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I I'm pretty sure he moved out of that room. And the weird thing, you know, with like a lot of hauntings is they always say that like when you're doing like renovations and things, that sort of stirs things up. And they were actually renovating the room right next to his on that haunted floor.
SPEAKER_00You know what's funny is you know that I travel a lot, right? I stay in a lot of hotels, and I always have that in the back of my mind when I stay at hotels, new hotels, like and I'm just like uh you know, there's an there's an uneasy feeling whenever I stay in a hotel. I don't know what's happened in this room, I don't know what's happened in this building, I don't know anything, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, there could absolutely be weird stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, someone could have been killed in there. I have no idea, right? Yep, so so yeah, terrifying stuff, man. Um, so to sum that one up for me personally, I do believe that um I do believe that you know it is a possibility that you know ghosts and and spirits are a real thing. Um why, I don't know. Like why why they would be here, I don't know. There's all kinds of different theories, but at the end of the day, that's all just theory, unfinished business or whatever the case might be. Or maybe at the end of the day, there's simply just a world beyond our uh senses, right, that exist that we go to when we die here, and maybe that's just sometimes a little bit of a crossover that you get a glimpse into or something. There's all kinds of theories like that, right? Um, but I guess we will never know until we cross that threshold.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I I kind of subscribe to like the Spider-Verse theory. Like, I think there are likely multiple dimensions, and I think in some form or fashion of your typical haunting, there's some sort of dimensional overlap. Now, whether that side can see us or not, maybe depends, right? Like one thing, like with a lot of hauntings, and uh man, I've watched a ton of like ghost hunter type shows, um, is that your haunting is either like a residual haunting, which means it's kind of like a like a movie or like a tape tape deck that's it's just replaying this event that happened there, and you may hear like a glimpse of it or footsteps or something weird or the lady at the dresser, right? Or you have the haunting that is like an intelligent haunting, and that's like it could be like a spirit of a person, it could be the spirit of an animal, or even weirder, the spirit of a thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I like that, yeah, yeah, because yeah, that that that's scary stuff. That's gonna lead into kind of the yeah, like psychics, you know. We I mean, I think we talked a little bit about that before, where you know, psychics will go into these places, and I remember, I don't know if it was you that was telling me a story about this one psychic went into a place and said, you know, there is a spirit here, but it was never a human spirit, right? Yeah, yeah, I'm out of here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So what I was saying about when we we talked about that on another episode was that um on one of these ghost hunting shows I would watch, they would always bring in there was like two main psychics, and they were like well-known, world-renowned type psychics, right? And the moment they showed up, they would just blindfold them so they couldn't see anything, they wouldn't tell them anything about the area, nothing about what happened there or why they were investigating it. It was just like, hey, you're here now, put on the blindfold, find it, what's here, you know? And I mean, every time it was like if if they were in like a like an old like uh mental hospital or something, that psychic would go right to like room 213, right on the right on the button, you know, and be like, this is the room, this is where it happened, you know, and they'd start talking, and you're like, oh god, like uh, you know, and and they would like zero like right in on it, or if it was like, you know, we're in like an old jail or something like that, like this is a cell where somebody was murdered, and they would pick up on it immediately. And so that one that you're talking about, that was a haunting, and they were outside. It was like on like a wooded property, and and she says, She's like, Yeah, she's like, There's a spirit here, but it's an elemental spirit, which means that it's always been here, and it's not human and it's negative, negative, right? And it was like, oh my god, and there's like a house, you know, like 20 feet from there that somebody's living in, you know. It's like, oh my god, like that just creeps me out. Like, we're selling, you know, time to go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, for me, the it really comes down to, you know, I know that there's people out there that don't believe in this kind of stuff, but at the end of the day, you really have to ask yourself if you're coming from a scientific perspective, right? You have to think about it like this think about the the five senses you have now, right? If, for example, if we never had the sense of hearing, if we couldn't hear, if there was no, you know, if we didn't have ears, you would never be able to comprehend that that would be a thing, a sense that it would be possible, it would be completely ridiculous for anyone to say, hey, like there's this concept that you could actually like hear things, and they would try to destroy you be like, that's absurd. What are you talking about? Right? Yeah, well, it's the exact same thing. I mean, there are so many different um light, for example, uh light, what is it called? Uh ejections or or whatever that that we can't see. There are sounds that only dogs can hear, we that that we can't hear, but dogs can, right? So why would it be out of the realm of possibility for you to think that there are things all around you right now that you simply just don't have the senses to pick up on?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. I mean, think about uh radio stations. Can you pick up on those in your head? No. Do they exist? Yes. Uh can you charge something wireless wirelessly through with energy? Yes. Um can you see it? No. Um, you know, even think about like making like a phone call with a cell phone, right? Can can you can you hear the words coming through, you know, going somewhere? No. But that's absolutely there, it's all there, you know?
SPEAKER_00So to completely dismiss something as impossible, I think would be a little bit ignorant.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I do too. And you know, the other thing too, well, like with psychics, there's so much about this topic that we just we don't really understand, right? Like, you know, I remember I saw one video where they had a it was like a Fleer camera, one of the uh infrared ones, right? And so with this particular camera, it was focused on the psychic person and the person next to them that was experiencing the haunting or whatever, right? And what was really weird was when they had it under the the the infrared so they could see like the heat. The psychic, when they were trying to tap into the person, it was like their energy, you could see it in the in the camera going to this person. Like like there was something connecting there that you know with with your eyes, you can't see anything, right? But but through this heat camera, it was picking up on the psychic was legitimately doing something where they were like picking, where they were like going into the head of the person next to them. It's crazy, it's weird, you know.
SPEAKER_00Uh, number two on the list, an interesting one to say the least demons and possession. Uh malevolent, malevolent non human entity. That can influence or take control of people. Classic cases include uh Annalise Michael's exorcism and the events that inspired the exorcist. Many religions describe demons as fallen or opposing spiritual beings. Uh, possession reports are often involved changes in voice, strength, knowledge of hidden things, and aversions to religious symbols.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's creepy.
SPEAKER_00It's beyond that creepy. It's horrifying. That's another thing that I do kind of believe. Um fun another funny story for you. And this this kind of goes into this kind of is like a uh sandwich between the the first topic and the second one, right? Now I'll never forget this. Um, I was again younger, I must have been uh late 20s, maybe or something like that, or mid-20s, and I was sleeping over at my girlfriend at the Times house, and we'd been together like a long time, 15 years we ended up together. But this was we were like six or seven years into our relationship, so we knew each other really, really well, right? And one day, one morning, she woke me up, and just like normal, she woke me up, and uh to this day, like I can't explain what happened, but I was like, So she took my hands, like she woke me up. I sat up and she took my hands, right? Because I looked something wasn't right, and she said that I was squeezing her hands so hard that they were like gonna break. And she said I had an absolutely terrified look on my face, and I kept yelling at her that I had no idea who she was, right? I just who who are you? I don't know who you are, right? What am I doing here is what she said. And the funny thing is that I was aware that I was doing it, right? It was like I was behind my eyes, it was a weird experience where I could see her, but I had no control over what I was doing at all, right? And eventually she got free of my hands and she ran upstairs. She wouldn't talk to me for like she was terrified of me after that. And I kind of when she let go of my hands, I suddenly I snapped out of it, and I was like, I was like, wait, where are you going? Because she was obviously not running towards me, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, and I don't know what that was about, but she said, like she could tell from the look on my face that I legitimately had no fucking idea who she was, and I was terrified, right? I don't know, yeah, I don't know what happened there. Maybe it was just odd time to wake me up. I don't know, but like I said, I was cognitive of what was going on, that's why I can remember it kind of so vividly, but it wasn't me doing it, hmm. Right, so I kind of do lean towards like my theory on it all at the end of the day was like maybe there was a spirit in me at that time and wasn't expecting her to wake me up, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Boy, that's that's a weird story for sure, and you know, I I think I think with a lot of these like exorcism, you know, demon type stories, they are kind of like that, right? There's sort of like this memory loss, but I'm sort of here, but not really confusion, you know, and I'll I'll tell you, you know, like the whole exorcism topic I've always found extremely creepy, and I I think it's very real also. Like, I don't think this one's bullshit. I think this one is real. And yeah, you know, like I mean, just just some of these things, you know, it's where it's like the person's eyes are like black, you know, or um, you know, like some of these, some of these ones where it's like, you know, obviously they embellished it a little bit in the movies, but you know, it's like they're walking up the wall backwards, you know, and then you're like, what the hell, you know, and the heads turning around, and oh my god, you know, like even like the uh those paranormal activity movies, those were super creepy, right? Super creepy. Uh you you said it, the exorcism. One of the worst movies I ever saw was The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna say, yeah, that one scared the hell out of me.
SPEAKER_01God, yeah, exactly. I I mean, so you know, I I think there's a lot of truth in this, and you know, even if you're on like YouTube, um there is a uh there's a uh like a clergy guy, um, you know, father, whatever his name is, that I've seen him do multiple interviews, and he is like known as the guy that does exorcisms. And I mean, he tells tells these stories like matter-of-factly, you know, and he's been uh he's like made an entire career of doing this, of doing these exorcism stories. And um, you know, I mean, I know some of these tie into like certain hauntings, like things like Amityville, you know, that was supposedly some sort of demonic possession type story, and look how that turned out. Really, really weird. Um, so I I think it's real, and I think it's one of those things that you don't mess with this one, you know.
SPEAKER_00Well, one of the lessons in like one of the things I took from that movie, uh, the Emily Rose one, was that you know, she was um, and that this is one of the reasons that I kind of believe it, because you know, my faith and stuff like that, right? In my personal life, is that you know, she was afforded the opportunity to to leave at that at a certain point, right? Where you know God had sent someone down to say, you know, you can leave, you can have the option to leave and come with me, right? And basically die, right? But you'll you'll come to heaven, and uh, or you can stay and suffer so that the world can know that this is real, right? That this is this is a thing that you need to be aware of, and you need to uh because we've gotten we've gotten so numb to everything and gotten so um uh nonchalant about this kind of stuff that we just blow it off. And I I don't think it's that's exactly what they say, like the devil's greatest trick is convincing man he didn't even exist, right? So everyone's just like that's not real, but we do see evidence from time to time that it is people slush it off at your own risk.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I I think it's real, and I I think um there's a sh there's a show, I think it's on the travel channel. It's um paranormal paranormal wit witness. Is that what it is? Paranormal witness, maybe anyway. Uh it's it's on the travel channel, and and they do they go into all kinds of crazy stuff like this, and they've had a ton of episodes, ton of them, right? I remember they did one where um there was a possession story in it, and they had a video of the lady, and it was like in the Philippines or somewhere. And I mean, you could see clear as day, she was possessed. Like some something was in her, her eyes were crazy black, you know, like they were trying to like, you know, hit her with the holy water and you know, the prayers and you know, be gone and all this stuff. And eventually it was like whatever the spirit that had a lock on her, it was like it did finally let her go. And she just kind of you know collapses, and it's like she has no idea what the heck just happened, but you know, she looked like she just you know went through like a 12-round fight with Tyson, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and that's the thing. You do see there's all kinds of videos out there where it's like, yeah, oh yeah, she's possessed, absolutely positively, no doubt about it. Uh, and that that is where I kind of want to segue into the third topic, is that, and I believe this, it's not just demonic possession, angelic possession as well. They say, in in you know, in in my belief, you should all one of the reasons that you should always, always help other people, be kind, um, and offer grace is because you never know if you're dealing with an angel. Interesting, yeah. That's what they say, right? You could be dealing with that, uh, and a simple act of kindness can go a long way, right? Yeah, so I I believe that as well.
SPEAKER_01That's that's very interesting. That kind of reminds me of um, remember that movie? I I think it's like It's a Wonderful Life, where the angel uh Clarence comes down, you know, and uh visits him, right? You know, like there's a lot of like Christmas stories around things like this, but um is that something that could be more than just Christmas? I think so, you know, and and I think I do think that you know, kind of kind of like in that like simulation theory type of way of looking at the world, do we all sometimes need some help from somebody or from a completely unexpected place? Yes. And and again, in the idea of like, is coincidence real? And you and I don't believe in it, so it's like, well, where where did that come from? You know, where did that person or that presence or whatever it is come from? You know, and and I do think there's something to that, you know, and I would say, I don't know if you do this or not, but you know, like me personally, uh, this is one of my own things that whenever I get on an airplane, I do kind of say a prayer to like my guardian angel, like, please get me there, please make this like like a the easy, the an easy flight. Like, I I can't take you know anything crazy here, you know. Like, please look out of me, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I always pray uh leading up to any kind of a trip, whether I'm driving, flying, or whatever. Uh, and I just ask that you know that God come with me, ride with ride shotgun with me on this on this trip, right? And stay by my side kind of thing. So absolutely I do that no matter what form of travel I do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, I think that's really important.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Um number four, an interesting one, change of pace, vampires. Ooh, vampires, undead beings that sustain themselves on the life force or blood of the living. Folklore versions, such as um the Slavic appear, or Romanian Strigo, Stragoe, uh, predate the elegant Count Dracula image. Traits include returning from the grave, avoiding sunlight or religious objects, and spreading their condition to victims, like an STD. Belief in vampires led to real historical practices like staking corpses. Where do you stand on vampires?
SPEAKER_01Well, um, there has to be some truth in this somewhere, right? Um, I know a lot of it kind of dates back to like Vlad the Impaler, and pretty sure he was Romania, Transylvania, somewhere around there. And um he was known as Vlad the Impaler because he literally would impale all who kind of crossed him, enemies, whatever, and those stakes were lined all the way up to his castle with bodies stuck stuck on them, right? So that really happened. And I know from that, um, especially like in Europe, um, there are some really haunted places. Like, there's there's a particular forest that um is somewhere around that same area, Hungary, Romania, that is known to be extremely haunted. And, you know, like that there's a lot of graves that they've found that, yeah, the corpse was staked, or they cut off the head. Uh, they they did all kinds of stuff because they thought this was genuinely a vampire, right? So could could there be some truth there? I don't I don't see, I don't see why not, to be honest. I mean, obviously, you know, it's embellished with movies and things like that, but I do think there is a real-world aspect of this thing.
SPEAKER_00I do think that vampires is a topic that we could do an entire episode on, to be perfectly honest with you. But uh, a broad overview for me, we do know that there are cults out there that refer to themselves as vampires. I mean, they're humans who do drink blood because they do believe it sustains them. Um, however, like you said, I I feel like TV and movies have kind of exaggerated things, but I am not like like flying and turning into a bat and um, you know, uh superhuman strength and uh you know things of that nature, but I'm not opposed to the immortality aspect. I mean, crustaceans are immortal, yeah, unless they die of natural or unless they die of you know outside circumstances like a predator or something. But if you just if you just were to let a lobster you know be predator-free, that thing will live forever. Yeah, so immortality in itself is not a non-existent thing on our planet. So is it possible that there's some sort of a genetic um ab abnorration ab aberration or whatever the case might or whatever the word is I'm pronouncing it wrong.
SPEAKER_01Uh abnormality is I think abnormality, sorry, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh that you know that is extremely rare. That that yeah, we see all kinds of abnormal abnormalities in humans or other animals. So yeah, that aspect of it, I'm not entirely opposed to. No, whether they drink blood to sustain themselves, I don't know. I think that that's probably a little bit of a practice that uh of lore that came from the dark ages and you know kind of just carried on. I don't think that that's actually something that I mean we know again that that cults do it, but uh the only aspect of the vampire narrative that I I would subscribe to would be the immortality or the long life of said individuals.
SPEAKER_01So well, you know something else, like we all have canine teeth, right? The pointy teeth kind of in the corner. Everybody's got them. So could it have been possible that some people had bigger canine teeth that were really sharp? It sure. I mean, why not? You know, especially when you're going back like hundreds of years. I mean, it's not like they had like fine cutlery to cut the meat and you know what they probably just ripped it out with their mouth, you know. So I I mean, I can see that part of it. I can also kind of see like the blood ritual side of it, you know, from sort of that like pagan type religion side, um, these kind of earthly gods and sacrifice. I mean, sacrifice occurred all over the planet, right? Where they were sacrificing and killing people and using their blood. Um, so I could I could totally see that part too. You know, on a side note, I had a friend of mine tell me at one point, he's like, he's like, hey, you remember the video game Castlevania? So if you don't know the game Castlevania, it's it's uh a vampire hunter, Simon Belmont, and he's trying to take out like Dracula, right? Like that's kind of Castlevania in a nutshell. And there's multiple versions of Castlevania that it's different members of the Belmont family and they're killing the vampires or whatever. Um, but Netflix actually did a Castlevania uh it's like an anime kind of cartoon show on Netflix, and it actually had three seasons. And my buddy told me he's like, You gotta watch this. This is really good. And sure enough, man, I watched that and it was awesome. Man, it was awesome. And and like just the gore of it and the the vampire side, and it it does deal with Count Dracula, and you know, like in the show, like the the local kind of church is uh in that in this case was kind of like bad, and you know, it they somehow like got his wife, and you know, like they burned her at the stake because they thought she was a witch, and then it's like now you gotta face the wrath of Dracula, like it was a crazy show, man. But gosh, it was really good.
SPEAKER_00I'll have to check that out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So where do we land on it at the end of the day? For me, immortality or long life, yes. The rest of it, well, I mean, I think that the the the blood drinking is more of an occult thing. Uh the rest of it is kind of exaggerated from TV and movie. That's where I land on it. What about you?
SPEAKER_01I think they're kind of taking bits and pieces of different events and sort of putting them into one character, right? Is what it feels like. So could there have been that character? Maybe. Is that character out there today? Maybe. You know, everybody's inspired by something, and I don't know, maybe there's a lot of things we don't know. So I kind of view it like I do think it's embellished for the sake of movies and things like that, but could could are are there multiple aspects of this that are real? Yeah, there are, you know.
SPEAKER_00Next up on the list, this is an interesting one. The headless horseman. Oof. The legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington's Irvings 1820 story of a Hassan soldier who lost his head to a cannonball and now rides at night searching for it. Is uh a cornerstone of American Halloween lore. The tale is set in Sleepy Hollow, New York, and is retold every October. It blends ghosts, vengeful spirits, and seasonal folklore. What do you think, man?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so in the for the sake of ghosts, would have having a cannonball fired at your head and blasting it off be a traumatic event.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Would you even would you even know what happened? Probably not.
SPEAKER_01No, probably not, right? Um so could there be some some truth in that story? Maybe. Um, could it also be some way of fending off people, you know, to telling people like you don't want to be here, this happened here, and sort of pushing people away. Yeah, I could see that. Um, does it get creepy in that area with fog rolling in and you know, certain times of year, and and just the everything's dead, you know, it's fall. Yeah. So I I can kind of see how that one came about. Um, at the end of the day, is there actually a headless horseman? Probably not, but then again, maybe if somebody opened a door, who knows?
SPEAKER_00I have an interesting take. I think it merges with our first topic, right? Ghosts and and spirits. Well, obviously, during those uh like civil war times and stuff like that as well, you're gonna have a lot of soldiers. I'm sure a lot of soldiers have their heads blown off by cannonballs. Those suckers were shot and they would bounce like rocks skipping across the water, and they would just bolt, like they would be shot right into a group of soldiers standing there reloading their muskets. I'm sure a lot of soldiers were smacked dab right in the face with those cannonballs as they came roaring in, and you wouldn't have even seen it coming, right? You're sitting there trying to load this musket as fast as you can. You look up, wham, there goes your head, right? Yeah, and those suckers are going so fast and they're so heavy that yeah, it's it's clean off. Like your head is in a Billion pieces, so that part obviously the law of averages says that definitely happened, right? Uh undoubtedly. I mean, I watched Mel Gibson's The Patriot. Okay, I've seen it happen. But uh, so I again I think it kind of merges with the first topic where you know there there probably is a lot of uh spirits roaming around in especially especially historic places like New York, right?
SPEAKER_02Right, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like, you know, all through the history of New York, you you've had uh gangs of New York, right? You like the the story that like the movie uh is not a obviously not a true story in the truest sense, but it does kind of describe how things were back then. A lot of murder uh was normal, a lot of slaughtering of of houses and people and soldiers, and so you're gonna have a lot of that supernatural aspect in a place like New York, I think. So I think that kind of merges with um with this grandiose story that kind of goes hand in hand with the vampire thing where they take other aspects and they create this character. Maybe it's to scare people off. Uh, you know, maybe who knows why. Maybe it's just a fun story like Santa Claus that they made up. I don't know, right? For for an interesting holiday, or maybe there was more to it, but the head headless horseman character itself that's portrayed, I think that's a bridge too far. Apparitions, ghosts of headless horsemen, however, I don't think that is a bridge too far.
SPEAKER_01Hmm, that's interesting. Yeah, I was just thinking about that, and I I kind of feel like if there was an apparition, if there was a ghost, I feel like he would have his head. Like it would be like he's still him, but he's lost, you know, like he's he's in another plane, but I feel like he would have his head. So the idea of him being the ghost without the head, that's kind of crazy, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00How would he ride his horse?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't know. Not sure.
SPEAKER_00That one, yeah, that one's a little bit of a stretch for me. Uh the the lore around it, I I could buy into, but the character itself, that's like saying Dracula, right? For me. Okay. But here's an interesting character Bloody Mary. Do tell the ritual of standing in front of a mirror in a dark room and chanting her name three times. Is a classic Halloween slumber party dance. The spirit that supposedly appears is often linked to Queen Mary of England or other tragic women. It is one of the most performed supernatural games associated with Halloween.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so let me let me say this first off. I think this is one of those things like opening a door. Okay. And the thing with all things paranormal is when you open the door, what goes through that door may be her, maybe something else. And does that door get closed afterwards? I don't know. So this is one of those ones where I feel like you are sort of playing with fire, and what comes back at you could be crazy, right? Like it also kind of goes down the rabbit hole of uh you ever see when they do the light as a feather, stiff as a board, where basically you'll have somebody lie on the ground completely flat, right? And you'll maybe have a couple people on the left side of their body, a couple people on the right side, and you put your two fingers together, and that's all they say. They just repeat that over and over light as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather, stiff as a board, right? And the idea is that you can sort of levitate this person with your fingers, and you don't you don't even feel it or nothing. And I've seen people do this, and it it looks real. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And and like they have they're like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, we're lifting them, we're lifting them, you know, and it's it's like the two fingers, like no one's using any muscular anything, and somehow this body is lifting off the ground. Wow, like that that's weird.
SPEAKER_00That's crazy.
SPEAKER_01So, anyway, back to Bloody Mary. Um, not a fan, not a fan of that one.
SPEAKER_00Not doing it, not doing it. Yeah, when is when is the official reset? If I say it twice, how long do I have to wait before I say it again? Is it 24 hours? Like, what is the you know, what's the cutoff here? Um, but for me, uh, I I gotta agree with you, and I do I we have a bonus one that we're gonna talk about here that this kind of segues into, but I don't want to feel like we rushed the the topic. Uh I do believe that, like you said, when you open a door, you have no control over what comes through that door, and most of the time it's a lot easier to open that door than it is to figure out how to close it.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. And and let's let's just think about this a minute. Let's say that you did this and it worked. So so you're looking in the mirror, and all of a sudden someone else shows up.
SPEAKER_00Uh do you win or lose?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, no, I don't I don't I don't even want to remotely go down that train of thought.
SPEAKER_00No, what what's the payoff here?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. No, no, or you know, like the the mirror like clouds over or something, or all of a sudden you realize you're staring in the at someone else.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, good. I'm good. Yeah, oh not even gonna try, right? But that segues into the last one that I wanted to cover today. Ouija boards and spirit communication. Right, the talk, uh, the talking board popularized in the 19th century, is used to spell messages from spirits, users report, um, the moving uh the the plant planchette, plant the the little hand thing, yeah, uh moving on its own. Skeptics attribute it to the uh idometer effect, unconscious muscle movements. Um, it remains one of the most accessible and controversial tools in amateur paranormal investigating. Again, you're opening a door.
SPEAKER_01You are, yeah. You were you were opening a door, you don't know who's on the other side or what is on the other side. Um, I know in my house, my wife, she is like adamantly, adamantly against the Ouija board. She is like, there's no way in hell we're ever gonna pick one up, we're never gonna accept one. It's never coming into our house in a million years, not happening.
SPEAKER_00Throw it on the bonfire.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, light it up, light it up, ain't happening, you know, and even you know, like earlier, I had mentioned that um the movie series of paranormal activity, you know, they had a scene in there too where they were doing the Ouija board, and then all of a sudden it starts moving on its own.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but no one touching it, no one touching it.
SPEAKER_01It's it's just moving and it's it's selecting letters and uh yeah, yeah. I no, I'm not doing that, you know.
SPEAKER_00I don't think I've actually ever seriously played with a Ouija board. I've I've probably handled one at one point or another, but I've never actually sat down to ask questions and play the game and stuff like that. And uh honestly, I never would, right? It's a it's a door that I mean, even if someone listening right now is rolling their eyes, going, Oh, come on, right? If there's a one percent chance that it's real, yeah, and you invite some uh malicious spirit into your life, why would you why would you dick around? Yeah, it's the same thing with Bloody Mary. If there's a one percent chance that it could happen, why the fuck would you do it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Did did you ever see there was a god, I can't think of the name of it, but there was a really good movie about these witches, about these teenage girls, and they start getting into witchcraft, right? And they they've got like the pentagrams and they're like chanting the spells. And they I think in the movie there was like maybe three or four girls, right? And two of them end up really going at it, right?
SPEAKER_00And and I mean there's a but I know the movie you're talking about, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I can't think of the name. Maybe you could look it up. I don't know. I can't think of the name of it, but anyway, so the two girls are like going at it, and one of them is sort of the darker version, right? And she's trying to scare the other girl, and the other girl's having like hallucinations, and you know, she's she's doing spells against her and all this stuff, right? But that girl who was kind of like the victim ends up being like the strongest witch, like of the group, and ends up sort of like fending her off and and fighting against her in this movie, you know. And at the end of the movie, there's this this scene at the very end where the other three girls see her and they're like, hey, you know, I'm sorry, yeah, like, you know, it got carried away and we didn't mean it, and you know, hope you're okay and this and that and whatever. And and they they sort of like loosely make amends, right? But the group starts walking away, and the one that was the mean one is like, she probably doesn't have any powers anyway. And she turns around, and it was like she like summoned like Satan, you know, and it like the like the sky gets real dark out of nowhere, and they're like, Oh no, and then sure enough, like the lightning bolt hits the tree right next to them. The big branch falls, nearly lands on him, you know. And it's like, yeah, like she she does have those powers. What was it? Like the craft, maybe that was that is what it was, yeah. Yeah, god, that was a good movie. Um, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I was just trying to look it up. Absolutely. Um, yeah, I I think that it's it's something nobody should play with at the end of the day. Yeah, I really don't. I I don't think it's a fun thing to get for your children. I don't think it's uh I don't think it's a wise idea no matter what. Um, because I I do believe in the spiritual realm and stuff like that, right? And again, I I just you know, I and I understand there are people out there that have lost loved ones that you know desperately want to communicate with them one last time and stuff like that. I have that. My mom is gone. I would never grab a Ouija board to try to talk to my mom, ever. I don't know who I'm talking to.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, and and and and that's the part of speaking with a demonic presence is that it it masquerades as someone else. And often when they think they're talking to their loved one from you know the other side, you're not. You're talking to something totally different, you know. And this is where like those those psychics seem to pick up on this like right away, right? Like they know a mile away, like, yeah, you're not you're not talking to who you think you're talking to, and you really want to believe that this is you know your mom or whoever, right? And it's like that's not who you're talking to.
SPEAKER_00No, and that's human nature. People tend to believe it doesn't matter how much evidence you can show them to the contrary contrary, people will believe what they're what they want to believe. Yeah, yeah, just how humans are.
SPEAKER_01Well, and you know, something else here too, right? Like you and I the other day were talking about the occult, right? And this is kind of back, you know, the beginning of the century, you know, the 1910s, 20s, whatever, where they were legitimately trying to summon things and open doors and uh get through, you know, one way or the other. And you know, did they? I think it's likely they probably did on different occasions and in different places. And you know, like often like like a lot of like the ghost hunter shows. I mean, they'll go to places where it's like, oh yeah, they performed occult rituals here. And is this place still haunted and just messed up? Like, yeah, like it is, it's weird. Like, there's there's weird stuff going on here. People can't explain it, they don't know what it is. But somebody opened a door and they never closed that door, you know.
SPEAKER_00And you got to be careful because that door could stay open and tied to the location, but it could also follow you wherever you go. You can't hide from that kind of thing. There's no place on the planet you can go hide from the spiritual realm, right? Yeah, so but uh that kind of ties up our list for today. Uh, I think me personally, I don't know if you agree with me or not. I think that the next not the next episode we do, but the next leading towards Halloween episode that we do next week, maybe we should do top 10 scariest haunted locations on the planet. Oof.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, I'm uh I'm all for that one. There are some there's some really scary places, and you know, I would tell you seeing a lot of these like paranormal type videos, they're real videos, right? There's some stuff that's going on out there that it is it is weird, you know, it is really weird. I know, you know, we've talked about kind of off-camera things like the the gin. And this the we we didn't really talk about like the shadow people. That's a that's a really weird topic. The shadow people, where like, you know, you'd be like, let's say walking down the hallway in your house, and out of the corner of your eye you can see a a bed and somebody's laying on it and they're completely black. That that stuff is it's caught on camera, it's been caught on camera multiple times. I mean, that is weird. Whatever that is, I don't know what that is, but it's weird.
SPEAKER_02Terrifying.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Something's there, you know.
SPEAKER_00So you can dive in, do an episode diving into that too. What are the theories, the top 10 theories on who those are, who those shadowy figures are and where they come from?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and you think about like like trauma and traumatic events and think think about it in terms of like energy, right? Like energy gets trapped in locations, right? It really does. And you know, like, I mean, if you ever go into a place that like some really bad stuff happened, you walk in there, you can feel it. Like, I remember um when I this is years ago, I went to like a really old jail, right? That now it's like a tourist thing, like, yeah, go to the old jail, you know, and it's like 300 years old, right? But you go into this jail and you like go in one of these cells and just sit there a minute, and it's like, oh my god, like you have like the weight of the world on you all of a sudden. Like, this is like this is awful. Like, I gotta get the hell out of here, you know. And you can kind of feel the energy in there is is bad, you know, like it's really bad.
SPEAKER_00Well, and that's that kind of leads into the spiritual realm is that people tend to forget that at the end of the day, our bodies are just you know, flesh and blood, they're they're you know, they're they're vessels, but our true being, like uh even our brain waves, everything is energy, and energy doesn't just disappear, like you can't energy doesn't just go away, it simply just transforms into something else, uh, or is you know moved, but it never energy can't be just destroyed and is gone forever. That's not a thing that happens with energy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, and and and I think you know, some spirits move on. I think there's others that are trapped that don't move on, that are still there, and then likewise, there's equally that traumatic energy that something really, really bad happened here at some point in time and it's still there, like like legitimately, you know.
SPEAKER_00Here's my here's my closing thoughts on on that is that an interesting theory that I think could be true is that when you die, um, you are presented with the opportunity to go to your next destination, right? And if you choose, you have that choice, and if you choose to stay because of loved ones or you know, things that were tying you to your life, uh unfinished business, whatever the case might be, and you choose to stay. Um again, most of the time for your loved ones, what ends up happening is you end up going insane as a spirit as time goes on, and you become a malevolent, malevolent spirit, uh, you know, because you you've gone insane, right? You you no longer are the person over time that you were, right? That's an interesting theory as well. That some people choose to go and they're good with their lives, and other people decide to try to hang on and find a way to communicate with loved ones and stick around, and it doesn't work out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, that's that's true. Um, and I think I I think your energy, your positive, your negative, your spirit can be like trapped in a place too. Like, I remember watching one of those ghost hunting shows, and in particular, it was like a big property, like a wide open property, right? Like a farm or something. And um, there was a particular tree on it, and the tree was like mangled and just looked, looked like crap. I mean, the world's worst-looking tree. It was a big tree, right? Just old and dying, and you know, weird, weird angles, all kinds of stuff, right? And the story in the episode was that the tree was haunted, right? And it it it had always been haunted, and it had some something about it like that it had pulled in the bad energy, was the story of this episode, right? And so where it got really, really weird was at one point in the episode they brought in the cadaver dogs. And where do you think they went? Straight to that tree, straight to it, like like beelined right to it. And it was like, oh my god. And and the the crazy thing was like the investigative team was like, uh, we may have to call the police, like there may actually be a body buried at at the tree. And what was crazy was that they did call the cops out and they investigated the tree, and they never found a body, but it was sort of like the dogs were picking up on something that had happened there like a couple hundred years ago, you know. Yeah, yeah, it was weird, it was really weird.
SPEAKER_00Well, guys, let us know in the comment section if you believe in ghosts, spirits, vampires, and everything else we've covered here today. Let us know what other topics you'd like us to cover in terms of the supernatural or paranormal as we lead up to Halloween. Um yeah, let us know down below. Give us a five star review and we'll see you in the next one. God bless.
SPEAKER_01And a haunted shift out.