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.
Hello, I'm Monica Rheinagel, host of the Nutrition Diva podcast. Summer is here, and with it, the hot and sticky weather. A morning working in the garden or maybe on the golf course can leave you more depleted than you realize. And plain water isn't always the most efficient way to restore the balance. That's where liquid IV comes in. Its science-backed formula is clinically proven to hydrate faster than water alone. Whether you're exercising, playing outside, or simply surviving a summer heat wave, it's an easy way to stay hydrated. Shop now at liquidiv.com.
Liquid IV, hydration that goes wherever life takes you.
Welcome back to Southern Demonology, and as always, I'm your host, JJ. First, I have a bit of news. The follow-up to Halloween has always been quite busy in a very good way. Um as I got the opportunity to appear as a guest on the Your Worst Friend podcast for their extra special Halloween episode. Matt and Shane are two amazing comedians that talk about everything under the sun. And for once I brought demonology into the mix.com and Facebook.com slash Southern Demonology. But of course, you can always get it at their site which is your worstfriend.com.
This episode is being released on Halloween, and I thought it would only fitting that we discuss horror movies and ghost stories in order to get you in the mood for the spookiest night of the year. But before I do, I wanted to pose the following question. What's your favorite Halloween memory? You can share them either with comments to this podcast, on our Facebook page, on our Discord server, uh, or by directly contacting me at the website. I would really like to know. For me, and of course you knew I was going to pipe in, um so many of the happiest memories are from when I was young.
Um the best costume I had was a custom hida behind one, a monster that I made up after an uncle had told me uh all about these mythical things uh that I entered into a school wide contest that my mom and grandmother helped to create for me. Uh the best scare happened while going trick or treating. Uh my mom took me to a small house in Slayden, Tennessee, where there was a large figure dressed in a pair of overalls holding a candy bowl. Its face was obscured in shadows. I smelled a trap for some reason, but the allure of candy was just too strong.
So I carefully snuck up on the porch, and right as I was about to reach my grubby little hand into the bowl, the world came to life. Lights on the porch began flashing, the darkened face which turned out to be a mask lit up with red eyes, and the rocking chair began to move. I was so frightened, I'm surprised to this day that I didn't soil my outfit. But uh the best involved riding around with my best friend Matt back in the day in the back of my grandma's green and white pickup truck being taken around to all the houses in the neighborhood and just having an absolute blast.
But the best modern memory I've had as an adult happened after moving back from Japan. My youngest daughter, who grew up in Tokyo, had never experienced Halloween before. And while adults there have been partaking in the holiday for some time now, it's still spreading culturally. And while she was in the eighth grade at the time and almost too old, I could not resist the opportunity to get her her first taste of trick-or-treating. So we got her a costume and my wife and I walked her around to all the various homes in our little townhome complex in Northern Virginia.
While it didn't last that long, that night is burned into my memory as one of the most loving and special moments for our family, and I am so happy to have had it. Before we get into ghost stories, I did want to share an amazing horror movie find. And you might be a little shocked, but just hear me out. VHS ninety four. Now I had occasionally ran across the original VHS movie and its sequels while browsing for horror movies to watch, and they didn't really sound very interesting. But after reading the description for this new release of '94, I had to give it a watch.
And boy, oh boy, am I glad that I did. It is one of the best horror films that I have seen in quite a few years. First, it is an anthology movie or a movie made up of smaller horror stories, and while anthologies are well are and when anthologies are well done, uh they tend to be my favorite just because you get a wide variety of topics and the pace is faster. The entire VHS series follows a pretty simple format. There's a main story in which all of the other ones are then introduced.
And as for 94, it centers on the SWAT team being called in to raid a huge industrial complex that's suspected to host a large quantity of drugs. The thing that makes each and every one of these stories uh so amazing is that one, all of the effects tend to be practical ones, and they are so well done as to be mind-boggling. Two, the stories are fun. Yes, some of them are very, very gory, if not all of them, and you know, some of them do try their damnedest to be scary, but others have kind of of very comical moments to them.
And three, going hand in hand with that they play, they don't take themselves entirely seriously, but most of all, four, they are clever and very well written. I came away so impressed that I had to go watch all of the other movies in the series. And well, come to find out, the vast majority of them fit my initial impression. They are ho hum B-rated quality movies. Um, there were some sparks of genius here and there, but the vast majority of them are Drek. Um Vi VHS Viral may be kind of my second favorite out of them, but even it had some really bad stories to it.
But yet 94 is that rare movie that actually took all of the great ideas that the previous movies had and amplified and built upon them dramatically. If you have time to watch just one horror movie for Halloween, this is the one I recommend hands down. You can find it on Shudder or AMC Plus, which includes Shudder as part of its programming. And no, I am not a shell for Shudder, I just that's where you can find it. Well, now that I've spread the news about VHS 94, let's get to the main event. As this is Halloween, I wanted to help set the mood by sharing some ghost stories.
However, they are not trawled from Reddit. Rather, they come from one of two sources my family or where I grew up, and even more, they are all 100% true. The first story is entitled The Trailer and comes from none other than my own mom. My mom met my dad when he was in the Army and stationed in Clarksville, Tennessee, a largest town that's only thirty minutes from where I grew up. After my mom and dad were married, they moved back to where his family lived in Olympia, Washington State. And their first place they moved into was a pink and white trailer and a mobile home park.
Everything seemed fine at first. But then my mom started noticing that the light in the first bedroom would always be on if they left and came back. At first she thought my dad had just left it on. But after he swore that he had turned everything off, they both became extremely conscientious about ensuring that yes, indeed, it is turned off. Yet once again, the light would be on when they returned. It became so pervasive that she even called the electric company to see if there was a short in the fuse. They came out, inspected, found nothing. There were no issues.
One day she happened to be talking to one of her neighbors, and the woman mentioned that others had complained of the exact same phenomena ever since a baby had died in that bedroom. Considering that my mom was pregnant at the time with my older brother, who sadly passed away when he was a baby, and they were going to use that room for the baby room. That little tidbit did not exactly sit well. Yet they continued to stay until another strange thing happened. You don't think I'd let you off the hook that easy, did you? One night she got up as she needed to pee.
She walked from the bedroom and entered the living room in order to get to then the bathroom. And she saw a man. Not outside looking in, but inside looking out. Through the window, his back to her. He wore a hunting outfit all brown. Before she could make a sound, the man turned around and looked at her. He had a forlorn look on his face. Before a scream could escape her throat, the top half disappeared, followed by his bottom half. Needless to say, she did not get any sleep that night.
The very first thing the next morning, my mom and dad went to see Buddy, the older gentleman who owned and operated the mobile home park to find out what the hell it could have been. Yet after entering the office, the scream my mom wanted to utter the night before finally blossomed forth after seeing a photo hanging in Buddy's office. It was the same man she had seen the night before. After Buddy and my dad helped to calm her down, she found the strength to ask who that man was. He sighed and said that it was his best friend. They would go hunting together all the time.
The last time they went, the man's wife had asked her husband to stay home because she wasn't feeling very well. He laughed it off, saying that he'd only be gone a few hours and then he'd spend the rest of the day with her. That unfortunately never came to be, as when he came back home, he found his wife dead from a heart attack. He was so heartbroken that he passed away a few months later. That day, Buddy had to find new tenants for a pink and white trailer. The second story is all about a small house in the small town of Van Lair, Tennessee.
I grew up in Slayden, which is roughly a hundred and thirteen people big. The next town up, about ten minutes up the road, is Van Lair, population four hundred or so. When I was growing up, the only things it had were a small bank branch and the elementary school I went to, a gas station, and the dumpster situated next to a large cemetery. Nowadays it also boasts a bad restaurant and a dollar general store. That is so busy it might as well be a Walmart. My mom, after retiring from the phone company, took a job at the water department.
After being a customer service for so long, she couldn't stay away from helping people, and while she worked there, she got to talk to nearly everyone in town when they came in to pay their bill or to report a problem. One day a customer came in looking angry, worried there was an issue, my mom struck up a conversational tone and inquired as to what was going on. The older lady said matter of factly that the remodeling she had happening was going to be delayed once again. Again, my mom asked. What happened? The woman proceeded to tell her story.
She had gone to Dixon, a town twenty minutes away in order to do some grocery shopping. She'd left a man working in the kitchen to lay down tile and then do the grouting. Yet the man kept hearing voices and noises that he could not explain. Finally there was a thud from upstairs, and when he turned his head in that direction, he saw a woman in a flowery dress start walking down them. At first he thought it was the homeowner, but then he realized she had left. Then upon closer inspection, he saw that he could see the staircase wall through the woman.
It was at this point that the man threw down his tools and hightailed it out of the house. When the owner came back, she was greeted not by the worker but by his boss, telling her that he had quit and refused to come back. My mom asked her if she had ever seen anything strange, and she replied Oh all the time. Forces a woman, a little boy up front, but it never bothered me none. However, the same could not be said of her husbands. Plural. She had gotten divorced a few times, and the woman claimed it was because the house didn't like them.
She had said that it was especially bad for her first husband. If he ever entered a room with no exit, he would find the door slammed behind him with no way to open it again. Sometime later, my mom was speaking to the oldest lady in town, whose name is Miss Imogene. She happened to ask if she knew anything about the house, and Miss Imogene replied that a preacher and his family lived there when she was younger. The church was right across the street that he preached at, and the mother and son were transplanting some flowers from their yard to the churches.
Yet a car that came speeding by neglected to see them crossing the road and hit them. Both the mother.
Hello, I'm Monica Reinagel, host of the Nutrition Diva Podcast. Summer is here, and with it, the hot and sticky weather. A morning working in the garden or maybe on the golf course can leave you more depleted than you realize, and plain water isn't always the most efficient way to restore the balance. That's where liquid IV comes in. Its science-backed formula is clinically proven to hydrate faster than water alone. Whether you're exercising, playing outside, or simply surviving a summer heat wave, it's an easy way to stay hydrated. Shop now at liquidiv.com.
Liquid IV, hydration that goes wherever life takes you.
Eventually, my mom found out that the lady owner had to be committed to a mental hospital and eventually sold the place. Whether or not that was because of the activity in the house, she never said. I do know that property has been sold five times since and currently sits empty. The third story involves a little stretch of road called Cerry Hill. If one heads south from Van Lair, one can either head into Dixon, the largest town in the county, or go to Charlotte, which, being smaller, um is still the seat of government and has a few stores along with a middle school.
If you choose to go to Charlotte, you have to take a pretty winding road that will take you into the hollow known as Kberry Hill. Even in direct sunlight, that stretch of road is very dark. And at night there's not a single source of light besides your headlights. It's always been an eerie place. I was always reminded from Um from the first from the intro to Tales and the Dark Side as it was browsing through the forest. The the when I first saw that show for the first time, I immediately thought of that's KB Hill. Part of that is because some because of some family history.
See, on that stretch of road, my grandfather happened to murder my great uncle. Well before my time, by chopping his head off. The other factor is that there is a legend of a ghostly traveler on that particular stretch of road. The story goes that if you're traveling along Kerry Hill at night, then a ghostly hitchhiker will appear in your back seat. This is typically evidenced by a sudden chill in the air. Once you reach the top of the hill and thereby exit the holler, then the ghost will fade away.
Yes, this is a common tale that you'll find all over the world, but there's something about Kberry Hill that just forces you to believe it. I had a great uncle, Uncle Blundy, who absolutely refused to travel that road after sunset. He'd even go an extra thirty minutes out of his way just to make sure he never encountered the spirit. I myself have been more than a little nervous about driving along that route, especially at or after midnight. I'd always be checking my rear view mirror just to make sure my car didn't suddenly have an extra passenger that night.
One of the other great traditions involving Kberry Hill is to scare the ever living daylights out of anyone who is a virgin to the tail or to the road. During a recent trip back to Tennessee, my mom, my wife, and I were driving along this stretch of road during the day, and we made sure to tell my wife the whole story behind the hauler. On the way back, which you guessed it, happened in the dead of night, we made sure to remind her of the story and to be careful of any uninvited guests who may sit next to her as she was in the back seat. She did say that she suddenly got cold on that hill.
While I have never personally experienced anything besides a sense of dread, I know others who swear to have witnessed the spirit. Either way, I still take care when driving on that road. While I don't avoid it at all costs, I will conveniently decide to go another way if the opportunity it presents itself. The last story comes from my late uncle Ernest, who told me this one day as we were driving down the then used to be dirt road that was the only way to reach his house. Surprisingly this road was actually paved last year for the first time. One wonders never cease.
There was a large rock off in the woods that passers by would report as haunted as they could hear a fiddle being played. A little too on the nose, but this rock was then called fiddler's rock. For those who happen to be outside the southern US, a fiddle is a common term for a violin. A ton of local legends sprung up about this place, namely how if you heard the music you were to die within a week's time, or that if you followed the music, the spirit would lead you in endless circles, getting you hopelessly lost.
Apparently the tell attracted some attention from the team of scientists actually came down to study the rock formation to ascertain whether or not one could hear music emanating from this thing. And sure enough, the team on clear nights could actually hear violin music. But that wasn't all. Other instruments could clearly be heard as well, as well as announcers come to find out this rock was actually picking up radio signals and naturally broadcasting them. And so the haunting of Fiddler's Rock came to an abrupt end.
While this last ghost story wasn't so much of a true one, I did bring it up for a few reasons. There's a science YouTube channel that I've been following for a while called Seeker, and they publish videos that cover everything from space launches to how vaccines worked. Very well, by the way. Anyway, uh well they had another channel called Seeker Plus that had had a more long form science videos, and they had recently resurrected it after six years of inactivity. And the first topic they covered is whether science can prove that ghosts either exist or not.
This was then divided into three sections Can ghosts be proven or disproven? What can science tell us about death? And finally what can science not tell us about death? As of writing this episode, the first two parts have been aired. Now this is right up my alley. Not only do I love ghost stories, but I'm a big believer in science. Yet science not as a discipline, but as a practice can lead to huge blind spots. This long form video essay suffered from the same.
In the first part, it tropes over the very repeated explanations for what ghosts can be, from the brain's tendency to infer data that is not there, such as seeing faces where there's not a face to vibrational frequencies that can cause a feeling of dread. Or that if one is told that a place is haunted, then there's a greater likelihood that a person will claim to have had a paranormal experience or carbon monoxide poisoning. And that was it. It does go on to state that it's very difficult to prove that something does not exist.
But this series and near on every other scientific exploration of this particular topic treats the subject the same. Oh look, here's an extremely illogical belief, and aren't we so kind to look into it for you even though it's obviously phenomena that can be explained away? And that frankly pisses me off to no extent. Science is meant to discover the reasonings behind phenomena and explain the how and the why. Yet scientists can fall into the very human pattern of dismissing entire topics as to whether or not they appear to be scientific in nature.
Case in point doctor Jeffrey Long is a doctor who became interested in NDEs or near death experiences after hearing about one from a colleague. He began studying them by collecting as many first person recollections about them as he could find so that he could begin to piece together their commonalities, the medical episodes that resulted in them, etc. Yet for years he conducted this research in private as he was afraid of being branded alone because the topic itself is dismissed within the medical and wider scientific community.
Humans are fantastic as judge at judging something with little to no information just based upon a gut feel. And at the end of the day, scientists are human. Though the discipline they practice is meant to go into a subject matter as a neutral observer so that the merits of the topic itself can be proven or disproven, that does not happen in all cases as illustrated above. Are ghosts an easy thing to prove or disprove? Of course not. These experiences are usually the exception to the norm, and that by itself makes them extremely difficult to study.
Are all ghost encounters really because of ghosts? No. Many of the surface explanations that the episode gave and that I repeated can explain a lot of them. For example, did my wife really experience the cold while riding on Kerry Hill because a spirit got into the car or was it because she was scared because of all the stories my mom and I told her beforehand? It was almost certainly the latter. However, just listen to many first person encounters that people report of paranormal encounters.
For example, I've been listening to old episodes of Art Bell's radio program who covered a lot of paranormal related topics. And he would often have open night calls where he'd set a topic and have callers tell of their experiences. And some of these nights were solely dedicated to ghost stories. And some of the things that these people would tell were just spine chilling. One of these actually came from the radio host himself. One night he said that he wasn't working in this ham radio room while where he had his computer set up.
He was doing some research and focusing intently on what he was doing when he felt as if he was being watched. He turned his head to the left, and there was a human, shadow shaped thing. And then it blinked away. He quickly turned around in his swivel chair, and there it was again, but directly behind him. It had it moved position, but suddenly it had appeared in a brand new location. And then, just like the first time, it disappeared. He continued swiveling to his right, and there it was yet again. And then, like the others, it faded away. But this time it did not come back.
He spent the rest of the night looking for intruders just in case this thing had a more mundane source. Can all of these first person encounters really be explained by surface level scientific explanations? And I would say no. You could dismiss them by saying, Oh, the person may have been drinking or could be on drugs or could be sleep deprived. But that would just be a dismissal. And that's honestly why I what I one of the things I like about what doctor Jeffrey Long said regarding NDEs.
Rather than just dismissing these stories out of hand after he encountered a telling, he decided that the narratives deserve to be listened to, as those accounts could provide very useful data points. Now, this is not an anti science rant. I want to be clear on this. In fact, I shudder to even give that impression due to the huge amount of anti science sentiment floating about on social media nowadays, especially around vaccines. Moreover, not every tale out there deserves attention. Go look at some of the Reddit groups, such as R the Truth is here or R Paranormal Encounters.
It probably won't take you too long before you find many entries that will make you question whether or not certain people either have any remaining brain cells or never had any at all. Regardless, rant over, apologies for that. And so now we come to a close to our Halloween special. I hope everyone out there has a fantastic, safe, and responsible holiday, and that you enjoyed some regional ghost stories. Also, I do hope you get a chance to check out VHS 94, and I would love to hear your thoughts.
Please feel free to join our very friendly Discord server, or perhaps you'd like to support me on support me on Patreon and help fund the podcast. Either way, have a very happy and safe Halloween.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 feedbacks that you may have. As always, I am JJ and it has been a pleasure getting to talk to you today.
Hello, I'm Monica Reinegel, host of the Nutrition Diva podcast. Summer is here, and with it, the hot and sticky weather. A morning working in the garden or maybe on the golf course can leave you more depleted than you realize, and plain water isn't always the most efficient way to restore the balance. That's where liquid IV comes in. Its science-backed formula is clinically proven to hydrate faster than water alone. Whether you're exercising, playing outside, or simply surviving a summer heat wave, it's an easy way to stay hydrated. Shop now at liquidiv.com.
Liquid IV, hydration that goes wherever life takes you.