Are you interested in angels, demons, ghosts, spirits, and monsters? Are you curious about their origins, influence, and how to protect against the unknown? If so, then welcome to Southern Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more.
Hello all, and welcome back for season five, episode eight of the Southern Demonology Podcast. As always, I am your friendly neighborhood, Ancient Demonologist JJ. I do have one small announcement if you'll allow me a quick moment. I have made a rather large modification to my Patreon page. No longer are there four different tiers at various price points. I want it to make it easier for anyone out there to show their support. And plus, I want it to bring the base price to be in line with the Apple Podcast subscription model. So now, if you'd like, you can become a Patreon for as little as $1.
99 USD. Or become a scholar for $6. Also, if you could just rate and follow this podcast and maybe recommend it to a few friends, then I will appreciate you beyond all belief. I will have a link to the Patreon page in the show notes. Okay, with that out of the way, today I bring you an interview with a horror author who is a rising force in the field. Not just because of her literary prowess, but also because she seeks out real life situations in order to educate and inform.
She appeared back on the podcast in season two for a two-part series that went not just into her work, but also that of her life and her family, which really helped to cement a direction and brought her into this particular line of writing. I will also have a link to that earlier set of episodes in the show notes. I'm also very honored to call her a dear friend ever since meeting her.
For those who have listened for a while, you know I like to keep my episodes to around 30 minutes in length in order to respect everyone's time, but this conversation necessitated that I release everything all at once. Dear listeners, I bring you my interview with the ever-amazing Anna Maria Manello, which I call Besiegement of the Semester. And I have a extra special treat for you today because I have coming back as a return guest, someone that I am tickled to death to talk to yet again. I consider her a very dear friend.
This is Anna Maria Manila, who came back way back in season two and graced us with her presence. If you don't know, she is a phenomenal horror writer who has now seven books to her name and has written some absolutely riveting stuff. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend you to do so. We will get exactly where you can get her stuff at, and I will have a link in the show notes so that you can go check her out. But I promise you, you will not be disappointed. Anna Maria, how are you doing tonight?
Oh, very good, JJ. Happy to be back.
It's an absolute honor and a pleasure for me. I uh I mean it's nice to know someone famous, I guess, in my life.
So I don't know about that one.
So the last time that we had talked, you had your most recent book that was out was Haunted Heirloom. And I know that you've got a few others that have come out since then. Do you want to walk us through out a few what a few of those uh more recent publications have been?
Oh, yeah, sure. The next one that followed after Haunted Heirlooms is a book called Unholy Structure. And like the name suggests, it's about an inn. It's actually an inn that's situated somewhere here on the East Coast. I can't disclose the exact place, but it was referred to me, called to my attention by an actual paranormal investigator. His name is John Curley, and he works as the founder of the Harrisburg Area Paranormal Society. And to this day he recalls that particular case because it was one of the most challenging cases he's ever had in his 25-year career.
John was called in by the owners at the time of the inn because they had already gone through and exhausted three major work crews who were called in to renovate the entire inn. It had 20 bedrooms, two ballrooms, two major kitchens, the whole thing about these beautiful inns that were very grand at the turn of the century. So, needless to say, the owner was at that point losing their mind, losing a lot of time because work crews would come in and in short order, they would quit. They refused to work overtime, they refused to work alone, and finally John came in and started investigating.
After spending several overnight through a period of several months, they had harnessed so much evidence and a lot of things have happened with the work group. And as an example, there was one situation where John walked in and he had left his wife in the evidence vehicle. It's the van that has all the electronics where they have the capability of calling into her and her viewing everything through a TV monitor. She had several TV monitors inside the van. Well, the poor woman was there for the rest of the evening. Of course, she had her thermos of coffee and everything else.
Everybody was inside with all their different paranormal equipment strategically posted in different spots of the particular inn, and they were waiting and watching for evidence, and they were getting quite a bit of very strange phenomena. John thought that his wife, for some reason, had left the van and had gone upstairs to look for a bathroom to take a break. And he could have sworn he heard her voice, was talking to her. And so finally, someone said, I don't know what you're talking about. She's in the van. He's not here. So it was one of those most frightening experiences.
Another one was he felt himself being followed into one of the rooms, and as he closed the door, someone said to him, Whispered in a very malevolent tone.
Did the voice actually sound like his wife? Was it a case of like mimicry? Yeah.
Oh, that's even more sinister. Holy crap.
Yeah. And the funny thing about this is that it tends to manipulate the machinery. There was one instance where the gentleman who had returned to the van were looking out the window and they were packing up for the evening, and there was John at the front window putting away some things, and they saw right behind them some man who was floating the way up. It was it was as if it was just right behind John, looking right at him, but he was floating up towards the ceiling.
Did uh the paranormal investigator give any opinion as to the nature of the entities that was residing in this place? Were they just human-bound spirits, or could they have been worse?
There was one major entity that was a victim of this entity when he was actually alive. The woman somehow ended up dead in a bathtub. The bathtub is now in the attic. And depending on who approaches it, they either see it as crystalline clear or they see it filled with blood. They also see some kind of formless smoke coming up the stairwell into the attic. They felt the attic was very haunted. I think he dragged her body up there.
And then in order to destroy evidence, he had burned the back of the inn so you could see part of the inn in the back was all new because they had to fix it at the time when it was still actually a working inn. That's how it originally was. It was an inn. And during the stagecoach days, there were people that were passing through, and this woman apparently was one of them. There was one also of a little boy, and he haunts the basement. And apparently he got stuck down there with, of all things, a dog. At night they would hear screaming of people who were burning.
There were servants that lived there in the back. They couldn't get out when this guy started the fire. These are all like them piecing together what could have happened, how these souls got trapped in there because of the tragedy. So a lot of things happened.
Yeah. And it took him, he was telling me it was probably one of the longest cases because they they didn't know what to do. There were so many things that were happening, there was so much evidence. And in the end, they declared that the structure couldn't become an inn. There were so many things that they had to do to clear it, to get it so that in operating condition, you know, people would be able to sleep at night if they stayed in there.
Oh my gosh. That kind of I mean, this sounds like an absolute hotbed of activity. It almost reminds me of the infamous Sunshine 360 building in Ikibikuro, Tokyo. It was the site of a former execution ground and apparently like and I've been to that building and it is quite bizarre, especially at night. So anyway. No, not whatsoever. It is a frightening little place. I have I got the chance to read the first portion of this book and the prologue.
If you are not instantly hooked by what is described in the prologue and the way that it's written, then I don't know what would ever capture your attention. You pay such homage and respect to the source material as you're documenting these things that it's not just horror for horror's sake. It is capturing the true horror to make everyone aware of not only the events, but I think also in the way, and you can tell me if I'm wrong in my supposition or not, of just how dangerous these types of situations and events can be.
Yeah, and I think that the workers in this particular place they walked in not realizing what they were walking into. Some preferred to work alone, some preferred to work on a Saturday, as you mentioned the one in the opening. He didn't realize what he was in for. That gentleman never came back. There was another and and there was another one where the gentleman was just looking into the wiring because it had to be updated electronically. And he was looking at cable, trying to hook up new cable that led into the inn.
He was outside, he was nowhere near the inn, he was actually towards the boundary where the there was of all things, of course, a graveyard, a defunct graveyard was right next door. And he saw something materializing coming out of the woods that was adjacent to the graveyard, and it started to stand up and it was within the gravestones, and it was rearing its head over and looking right at him. And the gentleman just ran. So the man digs up a bone that he finds that was in the way of the cable he was laying down.
He thought it was like, oh wow, you know, some kind of artifact, some paleological artifact, I can't say it right. He takes it, wraps it up in tarp, and throws it promptly in the back of his truck, not realizing what it is. He takes it back home to his ranch. He lives in this property where he's breeding dogs. Next thing you know, the dogs are attacking each other.
Oh my god.
And all kinds of all kinds of stuff happens at this place. And it does not stop until he realizes wait a minute, this all started when I brought this piece of bone with me that I dug up in front of the inn near this particular cemetery.
One of the lessons that I learned the very hard way in Japan was you do not take the supposition of walking by a graveyard lightly. Yeah.
I grew up in graveyards. I still remember planting my own headstone with the rest of my family when I was six years old. And I would go with my grandmother almost every other weekend to help mow other graveyards in which various family members were buried in. So I never felt uncomfortable in them. But I attracted something to me because where I used to live was directly adjacent from a rather large graveyard in one of the wards of Tokyo. And I brought something back with me and I never went that way again, just out of pure self-preservation.
And to bring something back, I I especially something especially bringing an object back from such a location that has so much of a history of activity I I can't even begin to imagine the hell that would have been broken loose. Anyway, that was a long-winded rant.
Yeah, yeah, I know. And and the thing is I think people need to be for take a risk when you do these things. But who who would have thought that that would happen? You know what I mean? Exactly.
I I I'm just it and and with these ends, you know, they're they're just workmen. They go in there, they wanna do what they need to do, do it well, and then walk out. And the next thing you know, whatever it is, they they're taking home their job, so to speak.
Yeah, in the worst way possible.
What did you do to get rid of it? Oh my gosh.
Luckily it went away on its own. I only had one horrible experience with it and it was coincidentally during one of the aftershocks that took place. So I'm I went to Japan not too long after the major tragedy of 311 where the tsunami hit Gaiichi and the s the country was just wracked for months and months. It was just wracked by aftershock after aftershock. And I probably lived through like I had never been through an earthquake one and suddenly I lived through 35 in a year and a half. Yeah, that was my least favorite aspect of being in Japan, even though everything else was fantastic.
It was on the You lead an exciting life. I certainly don't mean to. I don't go seeking it out. I tell you that much. I am not an Indiana Jones type. No, it was uh on the morning, uh it was right before sunrise on one of these mornings where an earthquake alarm went off on my phone and I was jolted awake from a dream where this thing was outside my balcony banging on the glass, demanding in one word to me, and the word was hidu. It just kept screaming, Haidu, Haidu, Haidu. But the word was being piped directly into my brain. I have never experienced such a sensation, nor have I sensed.
And it petrified me. And I knew that if this thing got in, I was done. And I did not know what the word meant, I just knew it was bad. And then an earthquake alarm on my phone shattered me awake and all in the pain from that thing was still buzzing in my head. I ran to my dictionary to look it up, and of course, it's an actual word that means to enter. It was saying let me in.
Jeez.
Yeah.
Let me in. Oh geez.
And I wish to God I was.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's too strange to be making up. And it sounds very malevolent to me. In retrospect, it's a good thing you woke up and the earthquake alarm went off. Because it you know, if it had been uninterrupted, it probably would have insisted its its way in.
Yeah, I I have no doubt about that. Because even I I d and I don't even know how long this went on for, but the small amount of time in which I'm aware of the pain just kept building an intensity in the very center of my brain that was just radiating out. In fact, there's a horror creator on TikTok and they like to make little silly short horror clips in Japanese. And one of the most of them are just kind of you know, they're for entertainment purposes. But one was the closest I have ever encountered capturing feeling and the circumstances that I went through. And it scared me so bad.
And I'm a person who watches everything I watch is a horror movie.
Oh, geez.
I mean everything. I just love them to death. Because I'm always looking for that same high that I got the very first time I ever got truly scared. And in this minute-long little social media video, I found it and I did not want it. And I literally threw my phone at the wall. Oh jeez.
And then I showed it to my wife. And even knowing what was going to come up, I still threw my phone in the car. My father was not happy with me that day, I'll put it that way. Thank God I had a good case audit. Oh my gosh.
Oh, it was true. But anyway, I don't mean to make this about me because I'm the least interesting of the two people that are on this on the that are on this interview side right now.
Oh, I think that was an interesting story.
So that was the the book that came out after Haunted Heirlooms. I think you've had one other since then, and then the newest one that just came out. Am I right or not?
I I'd had two others.
Okay.
The next one is probably the one we would call the penultimate in horror. And as far as all the writings I've had, if the other ones you think is not enough to titillate you and keep you awake, this one kept me awake, and it got to the point where I was too close to the material, I had to stop writing it for two weeks.
Really?
And I might have told this to one of your associates in another podcast, but I I actually did a lot of podcasts on this particular book. This was a collaboration with a gentleman whose name is Tom Conwell. He provided me with the direct source material, giving me direct access to the interviewee. And I'll give you a little bit of history because this one is really very, very unusual. As you can tell, I'm sitting outside and it's getting dark, so it's appropriate for what we're talking about. Tom's been a ufologist for probably 30, 35 years.
He's now in his twilight years, and one day we were talking about abductees goes into the area of people being human intelligence. And he said that what he did to pinpoint more information as to where they were coming from is he did a survey. He started out sending a questionnaire on the internet to hundreds of people, hoping he would get a reply back that would give him further insight. And he did. A few weeks later, his inbox was full, and he whittled it down to the ones that seemed very down-the-earth and a lot more authentic than others.
You know, you get some people there that like to just tell stories. Absolutely.
Well, he got it down to the five. And out of this five people, there was one that stood out. It actually had the shortest narrative, but she answered all the questions. But something about him, about her, picked piqued him. So he extended a call because she provided him with a phone number. And it was a very long phone call, it turned out. And as the months grew, he was talking more and more to her, and he found himself just really perplexed and riveted to her story.
So while Tom and I were talking, this relationship over the phone had gotten to the point where it was producing notebooks of information for him. And he said that I'm also getting a lot of experiences myself, but of a very different variety. So I pitched to him the idea of a book with him in it and the woman in it that he was speaking of, if she would be willing to give consent. And he said, I'm sure she would, and sure enough, she did, with the caveat that I would not share her location or her real name, because the town she lives in is small enough that everybody would know who she was.
Oh, I couldn't even begin to imagine. Absolutely.
So it got to the point where I was starting to really get involved writing his own narrative and then writing hers. And it dawned on me that there was a marked polarity between his experiences, which were more divine, and more of a very guardianship type of variety. He was being guarded, protected. This woman, on the other hand, something was happening more to the variety of where she was being destroyed emotionally, psychically, and even physically, and though she loved around her, things were happening to them. So as I'm writing the story, I'm getting more and more caught up in it.
And you know how it is when people are telling you on the phone, and you can hear the emotion in their voice. I started writing the more, I would say, very visual parts of the narrative. And that's the night I got a visitation myself.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, you never want to become a part of the story if you can help it.
I immediately called, so I called an exorcist. I shared with him my apprehensions. I went to church that same morning, as soon as morning hit. I was running into a church. I went inside the altar, prayed for a long time for protection. I called a psychic medium who was very gifted. She and I prayed together. I called the exorcist, he and I prayed together. And then I put the pen down for two weeks. And during that time, I called Tom and told him what I had experienced, what my concerns were. And then we waited a little bit to see if things were kind of dissipating.
The blessings that were given to me, the prayers given to me took effect as I predicted they would. And I'm very glad that God was with me at the time. And then I asked, I prayed and asked, Do you want me to finish this book?
Am I protected enough to finish this book? The answer was yes. And so I proceeded. I turned on the laptop and I picked up where I left off. I now had a sense of detachment from the material. I stopped contacting the woman and I was able to finish the book. Wow.
It's not an easy book to write from the perspective of an author to be detached, a lot more detached from the material. I had a personal experience that I did not want to repeat. So I ended up praying a lot before and after I wrote a chapter or two. I would not write after the sun came down. So sometimes in the evening when I get inspired, I write and I continue the book. In this particular one, I made sure it was broad daylight. I was outside where the sun was out, and that's how I finished the book.
I think those were extremely wise precautions.
Yes.
Bless your heart. Well, I'm glad that you were able to get through it. I know that we when we had you on the paranormal rundown as a guest, you had given a lot of background details into that book and it sounds absolutely phenomenal. And I do encourage everyone to pick up every one of your books because they they speak a truth, which you so rarely find. Like authors will love to sensationalize in order to get their names out.
And I can honestly say after knowing Anna Maria for the last, I don't know, two years or so, a chance to talk with her and get really getting to know her, that's something in which her writing does not do. In fact, I would say that your writing can it doesn't lessen the impact, but you say it in such a clear and concise way that I really think that it brings forth the danger that these things that you write about clearly pose.
Thank you. And and I'm glad it does, you know, JJ, because my aim ultimately is to let people know, educate them, that these things that we're experiencing beyond the pale are things that can hurt us. You know, people like to collect haunted objects. They talk about haunted dolls, and you know, there's some people that don't believe that that's possible. It's a rare event, but nonetheless, it does happen. There are cursed objects out there, there are places that are so intensely haunted, and what causes them to be, it's because there's something violent and tragic that happened at that site.
And people leave their imprint behind, they leave their emotions behind. But more importantly, people who are still alive need to understand that when there's something malevolent that happens at a location, a lot of negative entities cluster around that location. They feed off that negative energy and they can hurt you. And so that's what I'm trying to put across to people when I write these things. Sometimes people think it's only for entertainment. And I understand, yes, it's like a good movie, and I've been told it reads like a movie.
I've been told that night visitants in particular has the power to be put into a movie. I feel perplexed about that. I also feel conflicted because I know that things of that nature should not be put on film. The Exorcist was a very powerful book that was put on film, and there were so many tragic things, so many negative incidents that happened on the set. So, apart from conveying to the general public the importance of protecting themselves and not dwelling on these entities, is also the fact that the entertainment itself, when done for entertainment's sake, can harm you.
Yeah, these folks that run these haunted dull eBay stores or Instagram stores where they're constantly trying to sell this stuff. It absolutely baffles me and disgusts me that they have to profit from things that can be so terrifyingly dangerous. I mean, you have entire Shinto temples in Japan that are absolutely dedicated to helping to eradicate these types of and defane these evil objects that can come to truly curse people's lives. Yes.
No, no, and and and when when these things end up being just entertainment, children unwittingly tap into them, and that worries me a lot as well, because when they're playing with Ouija boards, things of that nature, they don't know what they're unleashing. And that comes to the next book after the night visitance, which is called The Infernal. The Infernal is based on a true story, and it centers around a child who was at the time about 13 years old, and she was very unhappy. She was the daughter of a woman who was very controlling.
She was, you know, the mother was estranged from the father, they were divorced, the father could care less about the kid. So the kid's life was really pretty much chaotic, and she leaned on reading these books that dealt with the occult. Eventually, she ended up because she was a child artist, she was really a prodigy, from what I understand. She started, got her hands on a demonology book that had about 30 odd plates of illustrations of different kinds of demons. And she dwelt upon them, dwelled upon them day in and day out.
She only had a few friends, and she started drawing one in particular in detail. And as the book suggests, and as what two people have told me who were actually in the house that she was living in several years ago, whatever it was was still manifesting in the house. She brought it to life.
Oh my gosh, that is frightening to get a hold of a demonology book and then to have one entity that so clearly fascinated you. And it then began to manifest, or I don't want you to give away too much. That's the last thing I want to do. But I'm just really like, would you say that began to turn into a case of obsession? There are four different states to demonic possession that starts off with obsession, and then it goes into oppression, and then it goes into actual, you know, uh attachment, which then can form into uh possession and yeah, it gets wrong.
But there's two interpretations, JJ. One interpretation, which is the interpretation I would prefer to make, because I don't like to give these things any attention. Is that this was a thought form? Oh, like a tolpa?
Like a tolpa. Okay.
She was drawing this by hand with pen and ink, and she shared this illustration with two friends, and they were, of course, riveted to it, excited by the idea, and they drew a pentagram in the attic, and they were concentrating on this creature. They were talking about making it, you know, the certain size, etc., etc. In other words, they spent a lot of hours after school. So there's two schools of thought on how to approach what this is, and I'll leave it up to the reader to figure out what it which it is.
The one interpretation is the one that you posited, the other interpretation is is it having more to do with actually enlivening a thought form?
One of the things both of those are very valid interpretations.
Um Yeah, and and you know, we we never will know because in this case it was powerful enough to create a lot of unhappiness, so to speak. It created some accidents. It was there in the woods with them. Her father at some point took her out and took her or tried to take her on a vacation, and some unfortunate incidents happened there, whether the thought form brought it about, or because there was just a sense of malice in the atmosphere with what she was doing and feeling, whether that was brought about.
You know, what one of the things you wonder about is when people wish evil on others, how much power does that take before it actually occurs, unless the person is protected? And this is one of those instances. We also have doppelgangers, you know, when someone wants to be somewhere, you know, we you think about saints who have the capability of being in two places at the same time. But we also have the inverse where we have people who are negative, who end up being in two places at the same time.
So this was one of those things, and and people are very unseated, let's put it that way, by the experiences they had because of what this girl did to this little neighborhood. And it was a neighborhood that was affected, not just the house. The neighborhood still exists today. I had two people recount to me exactly what happened. They were both college roommates at one time, and then they were sharing a dorm, and then they were in a house that they rented off campus. I graduated a year ahead of them, and then after they graduated, they told me what had happened to the house they rented.
They were unfortunate in that there was a beach house they were renting when I was still there, which was a story in the haunted heirlooms when we tried to get rid of some kind of entity that was in the chair. They left the beach house because of that. And whatever havoc they experienced there, they experienced again when they rented a house off campus.
Oh my gosh.
So these two are just really they felt like something followed them, but it wasn't that. It was an actual separate event. And then the third person is still living there to this day, so I could not get his consent because then he would, you know, they would know it was him.
Right.
And the landlady, uh the landlady is no longer living with us. She's no longer she I think she passed away about three years ago, which was around the time I was gathering the information. But my understanding is the house is still there, the attic is still there, they've cleared it up and done what they could to make it livable, but those two homes are still side by side, and you could still see some things through the windows of each house. I'll leave that for people to figure out.
Oh my yeah. Talk about being at the wrong place the wrong time twice. Yes. Yes.
I mean, that that is a very common kind of uh story that you get in a lot of different Asian countries, though. Which I mean, of course, this one didn't take place there, but it's just funny. You know, you pick up the the wrong kind of object on the street, or you do something at the wrong time, and suddenly that's really all it takes to completely upend your life. Yes.
Yeah. And how long ago uh was uh was this particular book released?
This was released last year. I think it might have been October. So it was uh an offering for Halloween, and now I just released another book, and this one is about a medium. This is actually a woman that I met on the internet on Facebook. She was very enamored of all my books and reached out to me and wanted to put the books on consignment, and that's how the relationship started. And then it went on to her talking about some of the experiences she had. And of course, you know, JJ, I have never met her in person.
I have no idea how valid her claims are until one day she started speaking just off the top of her head, things that no one would know but me and some very, very close family members. And that's when I realized I was actually talking to the real deal. So eventually I started getting more information from her. I started catching on into all the different things that she was doing. And I was dealing with someone who was an active soul rescuer, as they would call it.
Uh that is a term I have never heard before. How would you define that?
It is someone who has the ability to summon a spirit who is stranded on earth, someone who is actually haunting a site and being able to communicate with them and crossing them over and in the process cleansing the site that they're haunting. So that if you're experiencing a haunting, this woman comes in and within a period of a week or less, she is able to identify the spirit. What happened to the spirit? Uh usually it's something tragic.
And then she's able to send them to the light, so to speak, so that when you came back to the house, the house is completely bright, completely normal, and you no longer have the heebie-jeebies walking in there, or even, you know, when you're sitting out there as I am, sitting on my deck at night, feel nothing.
Did in the course of your communications and research, did you you don't have to provide the answer if it's in the book, but did you get a sense of how she discovered that she had this kind of ability?
Yes. So what ended up my narrative ended up becoming a a memoir. I write part of it from her point of view, from her own lips. I write part of it based on material from her family. Part of it, I I glimpsed the kind of interactions that she'd had with negative entities, and I extrapolated from that what the experience was like. So I started her narrative when she was just about four and went on to present day, and it became very gripping because as soon as these negative entities caught on to what she was doing, they were driven to make her sick and maybe even kill her. Yeah.
Okay, this sounds absolutely riveting. How how long would you say that it took you to actually write this latest?
This is the longest one. The book that I started writing for her began in November of last year. I was about halfway through it sometime in March. So and I just got done with it about a month ago and then started editing. So it normally I put out two titles a year. This book is a little bit longer, and this one took me about eight months, seven months, a little bit longer than usual.
We follow each other on various social media platforms, and I I saw that you had actually gone to a writer's retreat in order to help finish up this book. Would you mind explaining what just the idea of that is and if it actually wound up helping you or not?
I went on the writing retreat to just get a refresher on whether I was writing the proper way because I never really my degree is in psychology with a minor in bio. Only had an introductory English course when I was in college, apart from three weeks of a screenwriting course, which taught me how to pace, do suspense and do visual scenes. And I thought that helped me a lot. So the aim of the retreat was to let me know I was on the right track and I was using elements of the craft that writers who are successful do.
So in the end, by the end of the retreat, I pretty much was confident that I had been using the right tools and that I was on the right track.
Excellent. That sounds like a phenomenal experience. Heck, I'd love to be able to do something like that myself.
Oh yeah. Well, you know, they're all over the place. There's some that are as close as New York City and some that are maybe just an overnight and some that extend to two weeks. Most of them are seven nights long. And there's so many that are within the US, there's some in Canada that are really good. And it just depends on what kind of setting you want to be in. And it's really immersion because every day that's what you do. You start with breakfast and then you sit down to a seminar where people are interacting.
You're talking to an editor, you could be talking to an agent, someone who's on the best selling list, and then you part ways and you look for a place somewhere within that retreat spot to write, to continue what you're writing. And then in the afternoon you meet again, you talk about what you wrote, and you get feedback, which I think is extremely important. And then after that, you also hear from other people what they're working on. So it's very much a very collaborative kind of an atmosphere.
And and it confirmed for me, you know, I needed that affirmation that I was writing things on the right track. Because I really never really taken a formal writing course rather than an intro to English course. And that was a long time ago.
Gotcha. Now that that really sounds like a that kind of collaborative environment, good things will always come from that, I think. And yeah, that sounds like an amazing experience. Uh if you don't mind, I know that we're coming up on time. I've got one last question for you. Sure.
So besides, I know that you have some mechanisms for protection if you find yourself in let's just say spiritual danger. I know that you said that you pray that you have a medium that you can contact, an excess that you contact. Are there any particular anything else beyond that list that you typically do? Like are there certain prayers that you do? I know that you have alluded to in the previous conversation that you keep holy water by you. I I I would just love to know some of the things that you practice.
Well, I'm Roman Catholic by birth, and I am Roman Catholic by practice. Because of my personal experiences that started when I was two years old, I became even more spiritual. I don't want to say the word religious because that conjures the images of people who are not receptive to other religions, and I certainly am. So I would consider myself spiritual more than anything, and I feel I have a very strong link to God, and I publicly want to thank God for all the things that He has done for me and to have kept me well and kept me prosperous and successful.
So one of the things I do pray is a prayer to Saint Theo, who is a healing saint but also a demonologist. I say that every night after I say the rosary, and I always make three requests. One is for spiritual health, the other one is for physical health, and the other one is to bless everything and anything that is around me that I encounter. The other thing is a prayer to Saint Anne, whom you may know is the mother of the Holy Virgin. She is very much uh what they call a mediatrix because she is very close to the Son of God and to his mother.
Saint Michael, the archangel, I call on when I'm feeling a little bit of a psychic attack, which is not very often. When I'm feeling like I wake up in the middle of the night, I look for angel numbers. These are numbers that repeat. I'm very fortunate that I do find them. I look at the clock and it says 111, sometimes 22, sometimes 333, and more recently 55 in the morning. I wake up pretty early.
Wow.
But it it's very, it's very comforting. I feel a lot of warmth around me and a lot of light around me, even the darkest places. I'm sitting right now just 500 feet from the woods and I feel very good here. One of the things that you have to think about is that when you feel that you are being somehow watched or attacked or threatened, the first thing they aim for is fear. They feed on fear. So the least emotion you want to have is fear, and that is when you can jure the body of Christ, the the face of Christ, and whatever it is that is around you instantly dissipates.
So that's one of my secrets. I just visualize it and it works for me.
Thank you. That was truly a blessing to be able to hear. Especially like for me, although I am a practicing Catholic, I did not grow up Catholic. I converted and I've always kind of wished that I had been born into the faith and to be able to hear some of your perspectives and what you do, especially considering the fact that you are not even knee deep, you are neck deep in all of these types of writings, and you're still able to be so at peace is it it's wonderful. So thank you so much for sharing that.
And thank you so much for having me on.
Oh, of course. Is there anything else uh I'm gonna ask you about how people can find you, but uh before we get into that last piece, is there anything else that you wanted to cover that I neglected to ask you about?
Well, I just wanted to mention that the uh psychic medium that I wrote about is Michelle Budke. She is actually the founder of an investigative organization based in Leavenworth, Kansas. And the title of the book that I just released is Against the Forbidden Darkness.
That is phenomenal. Thank you very much for sharing that. Okay, so if people are interested, how can how can people find you online?
Okay, they can find me at the Sinister Archives or under my name, Anna Maria Manalo, on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. They can also find me very quickly on Amazon by just typing on the browser Haunted Heirlooms. All the other books are attached, including the latest one. And I also have a website, but I think the fastest way is to look for me on Facebook. And if they type the Sinister Archives, the page pops up. I'm also on Goodreads. I'm in the process of putting the latest book on Goodreads for people to try to access and rate as well.
Phenomenal. I will have the vast majority of all of those links in the show notes, so it's easy for everyone to find you. I cannot recommend Anna Maria Manello enough. No, she has not paid me a dime to say that. This is a true and honest review that you've gotten from me, and I would not steer you wrong just for any kind of uh crashing like profitability. Anna Maria, thank you so much for everything. It has been such a pleasure having you back. I know that you just recently went on our good friend show of Chris from the Wandering Road podcast. Highly recommend checking out that interview.
It is really, really interesting. And of course, going back to our previous conversation where Anna Maria revealed some of the details of her other books, but some of them when she when she was just talking about her formative years and how these things have been a part of her life even from the get-go, is one of the most chilling stories that I have ever heard. And uh, I highly encourage you to not only read the book but listen to her experiences, and you can just hear the sincerity that is dripping from every word. Anna Maria, I hope you have a wonderful night, and thank you so much again.
Thank you, JJ, and thank you for your time and energy. I appreciate it.
Of course, that's the least I could do. Thank you for listening to Southern Demonology. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com, which offers links to all of our social media and episodes. Southern Demonology is only only produced and edited by myself. And the intro and outro music are composed by me as well. If you have a moment, please rate, like, and share this podcast. As the best way to help support my work. As always, I am JJ, and it has been a pleasure to speak to you today.