Are you interested in angels, demons, spirits, ghosts, and monsters? Are you curious about their origins, tales, and influence upon history and on the present day? If so, sit back, relax, and welcome to Southern Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more.
And for this honor, I am very pleased to bring back Brandon from Cookville Ghost Hunters, who joined us for an interview last year, where he went through some of the basics of paranormal equipment, some details around his guide, and shared some really illuminating thoughts. And actually, since then I have been on his podcast, which you can find the link to if you go to southerndemonology.com and click on Friends of the Show, uh you'll find that link there.
But we did a couple of joint episodes, one of which was around the quote unquote demon of the Ouija board, Zozo, and kind of analyzing how likely or not that thing actually might be. Actually, Brandon, on that note, I was recently watching a TikTok from a another paranormal investigator, and she was just going on and on and on around how she can't uh even say the name Zozo in her home, or else she'll be plagued by horrible things that are going on.
I mean, that that's the reaction of a lot of people that don't really understand or just investigate for the thrills and don't really research it.
Exactly. Uh in the show notes, I will have a link to that joint episode that we did. And then just last week we recorded a session that I think you said will be coming up later this year. Is that right?
Yes, that is. Uh I had just finished putting it together, so it's waiting to be published along with all the others.
Nice. But we talked about Zoroastrianism, and the reason I bring that up is in the last episode, episode six, entitled Machine and the Shadows, I actually went over some of the dangers of Chat GPT and other types of generative AI, and I fed it a question of uh what are the some of the similarities between Christianity and Zoroastrianism in terms of demonology? Because we had just got through talking about that, it was very front of mind. It gave probably the most shallow answer you could ever imagine, and I kind of tore it apart as it deserved.
So I mean, I I think the the target art audience of that app aren't really asking the religious questions like that. I think they're more so just looking to have something to chat with, so I can see that the answer it gives isn't really that informative.
Yeah, it was it was pretty much it resembled what you would find if you gave a high schooler the task of writing an essay for the first time.
That's how I equated it, but oh, so little effort put involved.
Yeah, I mean it made sense. Yeah, it like if you if you didn't know anything about Zoroastrianism, you might agree with it or say, oh, okay, I learned something today. But if you knew anything at all, you'd be like, uh I know. But anyway, uh, don't mean to get too distracted on that front. What has been going on with Cookville Ghost Hunters as of late since the last time we talked? Since the last time. I guess last year on this show.
Yeah, um, mainly what we've done is we'll investigate a location just about every Friday. We we did that during the winter. So I do not advise people to do that. It is freaking cold. I can imagine. But we still had a good time doing it. The biggest, well actually we had two cases since I was last on. One of them was I don't remember the exact I think it was back in September of last year. We went to St. Oglethorpe, Georgia, which I was given written permission from the clients to discuss their case for for educational purposes only.
So, in terms of the names of the clients, I'm going to change the names and not use their real identity. Gotcha. But I don't remember exactly how we came across this case. I do believe it was another investigator I go with. Anyways, this woman had reached out to us uh wanting an investigation, and so we went down there. The interesting thing is uh St. Oglethorpe from where I live, I think it's I want to say it's almost like a three-hour drive.
Is that near Oglethorpe College by any chance?
I think so. It's like uh 15 minutes south of uh Chattanooga.
Okay. Yeah, because that was, believe it or not, that was one of the undergrad colleges that I was strongly considering. That's the only reason I know that name, honestly.
I I might be a little off on like the distance or time, so please don't hate me or send any messages saying that I was wrong. What was interesting is the client's house was within walking or like probably driving distance from the St. Oglethorpe battlefield. So we believed that to be some involvement in the case.
But the first day we were there, after the investigation, we had concluded that something was in fact there, but we qu we couldn't quite pinpoint what it was the following day because we had an investigator that lived about 20-ish minutes from the client, so she would always check up on them. And the way she described it to us next made me think of a demonic oppression. So we drove back.
And during our second visit, what had happened was I was with the children at the time trying to interview them about what was going on because we had believed this entity to target the mother, and so one of the other investigators was with the mom, and she had tried to get the mother to read the Lord's Prayer, and she would not do it. Really? She sh it was as if she couldn't do it, and about a few minutes later, uh, the mother referred to herself in third person, pointing at the investigator and said, She made her read that.
Oh, that's not a good sign.
I was not in the room present for this, but the investigator that was, I do not doubt a word she says because she's probably one of the most dependable investigators I work with. And so while I was, I do believe we were outside at this time, or at least I was talking with one of the children, and this investigator had pulled out or was pulled out some of her equipment and took out her ovulus, which that device I will swear on it till the day I die. It's like the best thing I've ever bought.
And can you just give a brief refresher of what exactly that is?
Okay, and actually, I don't think I had it when I was last on your show. So this is a I guess to y'all a newer device, but it is this piece of equipment that measures different readings, so say EMF readings, uh, temperature fluctuations, and it has a built-in word bank. And it is believed that spirits can manipulate the readings for this device to say words. I think the word bank it has is like 2,500 different words and phrases on it, and so it will say a word or phrase from its built-in word bank.
And the thing is, you'll have to know the history or a general or have a general understanding of where you investigate to see if the ovulus is showing any relevancy. And yeah, I the ovulus and dowsing rods are now pretty much the only things I use on investigations.
Uh yeah, I think that we've had another investigator on David, who is also one of the triumvirant that forms up the paranormal rundown crew. He has had a good bit of experience with the uh with that device, if memory served. Just in case there are any that are listening and didn't know what it was, I wanted to allow you to to give the chance to explain it. So thank you for that. Yeah, I didn't mean to interrupt. Please continue.
Oh no, you're you're fine. And if your viewers want to actually watch the ovulus in work, when we go live on investigations, I always use the ovulus.
And are you still doing that on Facebook Live?
Yes.
Okay.
Uh when we have service, of course. There are some places that we go to that I don't have service.
Are those recordings um actually do they persist after the live status or not?
Yes, they should. I think when I finish the recordings, like Facebook gives an option to either delete them within 30 days or never delete them. And I've always picked never delete them, so you should be able to go back and watch them.
Okay. Well then maybe um if if if it's not too much trouble, if you have a recording like that already, uh, we can maybe showcase that uh in the show notes.
Yeah, yeah, I can send the link afterwards. That'd be awesome. Thank you, sir. With the case, the the investigator is pulling out her ovulus, and the mother was in her room, which she was the only person on that side of the house. And according to the investigator, which I'm gonna give her the name April, when she pulled out her ovulus, she had said that the mother peeked her head out from the corner of her room down the hall towards April, looked at the ovulus, leaned back in towards her room, and it was described as this deep laughter saying, That's funny, and then like a male voice.
Holy crap, and she was the only one in on that side of the house. And when April had seen that, she looked at the other kids and said, Okay, I think it's time to go outside. So when she told me what had happened, I said, Let me see. So I walked back in, and I I can't really explain it. I think it might have temporarily given up possession or whatever. But when I walked in, the mother looked at me and she's like, Where'd everyone go? I said, Oh, we're we're all outside just taking a little break. She said, and all y'all left me? I said, No, they're they're just taking a quick break.
They'll be back in a minute. And it was like she had no memory of what happened.
I mean, that just raises so many questions. I mean, memory loss is a very frequent side effect of a true possession. Do you really think that this is a case of just simple oppression, or could this be blurring over into the possession side of the house?
I would my original opinion after that night was we have clear signs of oppression, borderline possession. And we agreed, me and the other investigators agreed that we could not fix this ourselves. We had to call for help. Yep. And so we did. We have a connection with a Native American shaman that we reached out to, and I will say it was an honor working with him, watching him do what he did. Because to us, we were we were preparing for like a spiritual war. We had our protective Bible verses ready, we had our equipment, we had the whole, we had everything ready.
And here just comes in the shaman saying the prayers, blessing the property. Of course, I'm generalizing there's a lot more that was involved, but he was blessing the property. We went inside to the in the house, and it was me, April, and the shaman, and the mother looked at us, pointed at me, and said, I'm okay with you here, pointed to April, and then the shaman and said, I don't want you here. I I will say this part I'm describing, I did get video evidence I did get recorded, but for the safety of the clients, I won't be releasing the footage.
Yep, that makes total sense.
But the shaman started doing his thing inside the house, started smudging, and it was as if the air started becoming toxic to the mother. Like she wanted nothing to do with the shaman. She kept as much distance between her and him as as possible. And it got to the point where when they were when we introduced the shaman to her, she would not shake his hand, wouldn't wanted nothing to do with him. But after about 20 or 30 minutes of him working, he then looked at her and said, I haven't formally introduced myself.
And he said his name to her and he asked her, May you shake my hand, and she did. The interesting thing, kind of a little detail I saw, was in terms of like holy water, bloodstone, which is a a very protective crystal, before we call the shaman out, she could not touch anything like holy water or bloodstone. She couldn't touch it, couldn't hold it, couldn't nothing, like it was a burning rock or something poisonous.
But after the shaman finished, I guess what you could call a ritual or his blessings, she was able to touch the holy water, felt just fine, hold the bloodstone in her hand, just looking at it, complementing the looks of the crystal. Just it was a literal day and night difference.
That's amazing. Do you have any idea from the investigation that you did about why there may have been uh demonic oppression that was going on?
Yes, and a lot of your listeners could probably correctly guess what we believed the cause to be. Would you like to take a guess?
I am guessing playing around with the Ouija board. You would be occult.
You would be correct. Oh gosh. Except that w what we concluded was that it was one of the children that had dabbled with a Ouija board, and this entity targeted the mother because it probably saw her as quote, like like the weakest link, basically.
Right.
But we had about we concluded it was a Ouija board. But then I asked the shaman, he did not know our findings, and so I asked him, I said, This entity, how do you think it got in here? And he said, Well, I would say a Ouija board.
Do you know how long the shaman has been in this particular field?
According to him, since he was a child, uh his father, his father was a shaman before him, and he was a a protege or an apprentice to his father in this field.
That's amazing. Now, was this before we actually I hit the record button? We were talking, and you had mentioned your guide, uh guide's assistants. In a particular case, is this the case that you were talking about or is it a different one?
Yes, this is one of the cases that she's helped me on. Uh, she was the one that told me it was a Ouija board.
So, for those who have forgotten or didn't listen to the previous episode, would you mind just giving a little bit of background as to your guide?
Yeah, I do have an episode on my podcast that goes more in depth, which it's over an hour long. Generalizing my spirit guide named uh Hannah. Uh, she's the one that basically she she is my eyes to what I can't see. And I can give so I I can spend hours giving examples of what I mean, but I will give one to kind of paint a picture. Uh I had investigated an abandoned school with another group, and this was the first time I'd ever been to this location. And communicating with my guide uh using my dowsing rods, which I also talked about that too in that episode.
I had asked her, has a Ouija board been used in this school? And my rods had crossed her yes, so she was saying yes. And I asked her, I was like, okay, can you point in the direction of where it was used? And the rods pointed to the room behind me. So I asked the lead investigator that night, asked him, I was like, uh, to your knowledge, has anyone used a Ouija board here recently? And the look on his face just told me everything I needed. It was it was a shock face, and he said, uh, yeah, that I'm aware of yesterday. I said, Okay, well, they didn't close it properly.
But that that is just uh that is just one example. Uh and there was another case we had worked on, I think it was about a month or so ago.
One of our investigators needed our help. And so we went and helped out. There's so many potential things involved. And after we solved, or we didn't really solve, but after we helped out, to this day, everything seems to be a whole lot more quiet than what it was. But in that case, it ended up being me and um I'll I'll say April again because she helped she helps me, I help her. It was just us two in the in the house. And so I'm going around, and because I hear like this noise down the hall, so I go to check it out.
I look in the bathroom, of course nothing, I don't see anything, don't feel anything. I turn to my right into their music room, don't feel anything, don't see anything. Walk to the end of the hall into like a uh guest room, didn't feel anything. But as soon as I turned and looked into the master bedroom, it was just instant chills around my whole body, and I just said, Okay, yeah, it's in here. I mean, it was dark, I couldn't see anything, but my body did, and it is no exaggeration when I say in a split second, my entire body was just chills.
I could not even begin to imagine.
With that, we do believe that a recently deceased ex was or had been dabbling like really dark occult stuff, and we believe he was the cause of what was in the house, targeting the new boyfriend of the house. So we had sought the advice of a um, I guess a Wiccan priestess or high priestess, I I think the sibling of April, basically, and we had followed her advice by taking a picture of the deceased axe, wrapping it in black cloth, putting a nail through it, and then burying it on uh hallowed ground. So we did that, and we haven't they haven't had near as much activity as what they used to.
What is a good example of hallowed ground, in your opinion?
In my opinion, there would be two answers. One would be a cemetery, the other would be a church. I I will say for animosity's sake, we did use a church, but it was in the middle of nowhere at like 12 or 1 in the morning. So no one saw anything, so technically it never happened. But that that is the route we went because it would have been worse being in the south, the Bible belt, to be caught digging in a cemetery.
Yeah, I could definitely see that. I mean, besides just the basic complications with the law, I mean, just trying to explain yourself often be the most troublesome thing in the world.
So yeah, yeah, it would be because the interest but the interesting thing is we had investigated a cemetery out in a uh town called Sparta, Tennessee. And it was just three of us. Supposedly, a neighbor living nearby called the sheriff's department and reported teenagers partying at the cemetery.
Oh, you're kidding me, my gosh.
And so it was just us three, and here come three sheriffs just plowing, like I don't, maybe going 30, 40 over the speed limit. They were coming in fast. And so they got out of their cars with their really bright flashlights, and they looked at us like hello. So we we said hello back and they asked us, Would y'all mind telling us what you're doing here? We said, Yeah, we're uh paranormal investigators. They immediately said, say no more, have a good night, and drove off as quickly as they came.
Really?
Yep, did we have no bothers the rest of the night?
That is kind of amazing because I've I don't know, I have a slight phobia of cops, I should say, and I think a lot of that comes from the various types of demeanors that you encounter in Tennessee police. Um, not saying that it's all bad by any stretch of the word. I don't want to characterize anything in that kind of a blanket, you know, detail, but yeah, I'm I'm surprised that they just kind of walked away. That's that's kind of amazing.
Oh, that they didn't just walk away, they uh briskly walked away. Like, we need to get out of here now, like let's just go. And they didn't bother us the rest of the night.
Well, I will be dang. That is awesome.
And it's I don't know, I would, I guess I would say it's the misconception of the people in the area in terms of like let's say paranormal or just religion in general. I'll I'll give you an example. One of the people I used to work with in my old job, religion would often come up, granted, this was the mindset of a Southern Baptist whose political affiliations were borderline, acting as if Trump was the next Messiah. So that this was kind of the people I worked with at this job. Yep. And we got on the topic of energy drinks.
I I believe it was because like he was getting tired or he just had not been sleeping well. And I asked him, I was like, have you drunk any monster? He said, No. I asked, Well, why would that be? Is it because like has a lot of sugar or something? He said, Well, not only that, but uh monster promotes Satanism.
Oh, you're kidding me. Oh my god.
I I kind of kind of looked at him thinking he was joking, but his his face told me he was serious, and I looked at him and I asked him, like, what he said, yeah, Satan or uh monster promotes Satanism. And I asked him, Well, how how how do you figure that? And he said, uh, because the claws on the monster can in Hebrew mean 666. I I'm I'm sorry, JJ, I cannot make this stuff up.
I wish I could. I I wish you were, honestly. Just hearing that makes my head hurt a little bit.
And I looked at them, I said, I don't think that Straty said, oh yeah, this woman did a whole research into and looked into, and she says that it promotes Satanism. And sure enough, if you type out, if you go like Google or whatever, and you type out monster, actually, let me go ahead and do it right now, just uh kind of prove my point. Back in 2014, monster energy drinks promote Satan, says woman in viral video.
Oh, you know where they're getting that from? Yeah. I just figured I just realized if you take one of the claw marks to be a wow, or if you use modern pronunciation for Israeli, evolve, then it does have a Fidel value of six. So if you could misconstrue a claw mark to be a wow, which no one in their right bloody mind would ever do if they ever knew even a tiny bit about orthography. Oh my gosh, that's unbelievable, right there.
Yeah, that's what I kind of had to deal with, which I'm kind of sad at my new job. I don't deal with I I guess the best way I can say it is stupidity. I don't deal with that anymore.
I mean, I I'm sure that the entertainment value has gone down a little bit, but that's probably better for your health overall.
It is, and like I I can go down or have so many conversations about the different things that were said in terms of what they believed the Bible to say or whatever, but this is a paranormal show, so we're we're gonna go back to the paranormal aspect, if you will.
Well, I I will add one more lovely thing onto that topic, though. When I was growing up, I'm not sure if I ever talked about this or not, but when I was growing up, I would go to the Southern Baptist Church, just right down the street from where I lived. One night they held a special seminar and walked in on it, had no idea what it was about, and it was going over how the Smurfs were the ultimate symbol of Satan. And actually, like it was like an hour and a half long movie that they showed, and even as a kid, I was like, Are you kidding me? That is absolute BS.
Of course, I didn't have any of the tools that I have now at my disposal, but yeah, that was just one of the things I was like, yeah, I'm I'm not I'm not gonna pay attention to the these uh this particular preacher anymore, I don't think.
I looked it up, and that's an actual thing dismursed in sadism.
Yeah, believe it or not. Well, um this book mainly means they got the idea because of not what Azrael and Gargamel are can be construed as two names of demons and blah blah blah. I'm I'm not gonna give it any more credence than that. Anyway, the satanic panic of the eighties. Oh, it was real, it was very real. I mean, uh you know, it it it scooped up so many things from Smurfs to DD to anything that was even slightly out of the norm or uh spoke of imagination was quickly subsumed underneath that banner. And it it was it was scary.
Actually, let me let me let me keep that train of thought going on um religion and uh uh Satanism. I guess at the time of this recording, I think a week has passed since the shooting in Nashville. Yes.
The uh Coventon shooting. Well, I live an hour directly east of Nashville, so that was pretty close to me. And as a result of this shooting, which I'm gonna say first and foremost, that was a tragedy, plain and simple. No need to politicize it, nothing. It was simply put a tragedy. What I have seen though is many people have been posting on Facebook, of course, you know, where all the arbiters of truth really are found is Facebook. Accurate. I think it would be an accurate assumption to say 99% of posts I have seen on Facebook are blaming Satan for it. Really?
So yes, I've seen too many to the fact that I decided to address it on my own private Facebook page.
Which I read and was heartily in favor of and knew you were about to start a religious war wherever you were, and I'm glad to see that didn't happen, but I was waiting for this religious war to happen.
I was wanting them to, and it didn't happen, but pretty much uh I took the position of I mean it it's gonna kind of sound a little bad to me to say this, but I like to explain. But isn't it convenient for us as Christians to have Satan? Isn't it convenient for us to have such a perfect scapegoat to where we don't have to take responsibility for ourselves? We can just blame something else. And case called like case solved. Like if you're if you're like if you're let's say, for example, committing adultery, just say Satan made me do it. It's all good.
If you're fighting some type of addiction, just say Satan makes me do it. You're golden. Just just try not to continue that addiction, but if you do, it's Satan's fault, and we understand.
Yeah, well, I I know I have heard that cop out more than a few times. I was especially when you linked it to the horrible, horrible events that happened in Nashville. I was very glad someone came out and actually you know called it for what it was and divorced it from this idea of oh yeah, we're just you know, Satan's the ruler of this world. I guess we haven't we can't do anything about it. It's that kind of fatalism and escapism, which just drives me bonkers.
I mean, exactly. I think I ended the post with Satan only has the power in which we give him. So if we don't give him any power, he's just a tempter, nothing more. And because of that shooting, I had teased a project I'm working on on my post or on my Facebook page, I'll go ahead and say that I'm working on a project, a bonus episode, where I analyze every single instance of Satan in the Old Testament.
Which I would love to see that.
Which I will go ahead and say, like, although let's say the proper noun seems to be used and referred to Satan, so far, which I am now on, uh like as of this recording, I'm on the book of Isaiah. None of them actually mean the Christian devil, Satan, Lucifer, whatever you want to call him, none of them have mentioned Satan.
Yeah, if uh if you ever get around to recording that one, I would love to be a part of that because yeah, I can certainly bring some uh ammunition to that gunfight too. Spoiler alert, by the way. How can although, you know, I'm gonna have links in the show notes and it's already on southerndemonology.com, but just so that you can get, you know, um some news out there around your work, how can they find how can people find you?
So the easiest way to find us is on Facebook at uh Cookville Ghost Hunters. Uh if you are living in Tennessee, preferably like middle Tennessee, and you're having some sort of paranormal issue or that you believe to be paranormal issues, you can actually reach out to us through Messenger. I I do respond to those pretty quickly, or you can reach out to our email, which is covelghosthunters at gmo.com, and I do check that every couple days. Perfect.
Well, Brandon, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming on. Before we go, I do have one last question for you, though. Okay. So in the couple of the cases that you have discussed here, especially when it comes to demonic oppression, you've, you know, alluded to Ouija board or other types of occult phenomena which has opened a doorway. Have you ever encountered a case of demonic oppression, obsession, etc., that was not opened up through that particular method?
As of right now, no. All of the cases that we have worked on, and I'm I'm not saying that the only purpose behind a Ouija board is to summon demons. That that is not what I'm saying. I believe that the Ouija board in in a very similar way to guns are a tool. The conversation or the debate of something being good or evil is defined in the hands of the user. However, thanks, I'm gonna blame Hollywood, bunch of movies, TV shows that have portrayed the Ouija board as this evil, demonic thing that's scary and stay away from it. That is already people's preconceived ideas of it.
So when you go into, let's say, a Ouija board session thinking it's evil, you're gonna summon demons. Guess what you're gonna do? You're gonna summon demons, you're gonna summon something far beyond your understanding because you have that preconceived idea that it's evil.
Um so even if you didn't have that preconception, I would still probably say that they are dangerous. And I I like the way that uh a previous guest phrased it, the demon folklorist. And she said It's not as if a demon lies behind every single door, of course, because then You would never use a door, but when you use a Ouija board, you are just casting a doorway open, and you never know what's going to come through. And you can very well invite something that you have zero intention of bringing across.
And especially because most people don't know how to close out a Ouija session, you can just leave a door open permanently. And you know, that is that's why I'll never touch one. Because I mean it's just a dangerous, dangerous proposition. Even if the chances are low, they are absolutely not zero.
See, I I would agree with that a hundred percent. The analogy I use with the Ouija board session is when you open a session with the Ouija board, outside your house, the purge is going on. So by you opening or starting a Ouija board session, you threw your door open during the height of the purge. And if you do not close that session properly, you just went to bed or did something else with the door wide open during the purge. You don't know what's coming through.
There you go. I like that a great deal, and I completely agree. Well, Brandon, thank you so much for coming back on, sharing some of your experiences, sharing some of your the very entertaining story about monster energy drinks uh promoting Satanism. I got a good chuckle out of that one. I would have laughed more if people actually didn't believe that, but you know, you can't have everything, I suppose.
I mean, there's a whole lot more, but you're gonna need a whole different episode just for the stories I've been told.
Maybe we can have another episode in which we actually go through a lot of these because Lord knows I've got more than a few stories myself on that front. And you might need some alcohol to get you through that episode. I can guarantee you that I would. But anyway, please go visit Cookville Ghost Hunters. Uh, you can find them on Friends of the Show on the website, listen to Brandon's podcast. It's extremely well done. He puts in a lot of research, and I I thoroughly appreciate him doing that.
And uh the fact that he was able to uh spare some time and come on and share some of his experiences, it just tickles me to death. Thank you very much.
No, and thank you for wanting to have me back on.
Of course, anytime you want to come on, you've got an open invitation, my friend.
Alright, well then I'll see you later.
Thank you for listening to Southern Demonology. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com where you can find all of our social and podcasting links. Also, if you have a moment, please feel free to rate this podcast and leave any encouraging feedback that you may have. As always, I am JJ and it has been a pleasure getting to talk to you today.