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 to the very first episode of season four for Southern Demonology. As always, I'm your host, JJ. As part of this new season, I really wanted to evamp the intro and outro for the podcast that I have been using for quite some time. The intro, in fact, has been used since the very beginning in one form or another. If you have any strong feelings, either positive or negative about the new pieces, then please let me know. You can contact me either through the website, southerndemonology.com, or by emailing me at southerndemonology at gmail.com.
We're kicking things off with the bang this season with an interview with the two gentlemen responsible for the Wandering Road podcast, which explores the paranormal. Chris grew up in a very haunted location for most of his young life, and some of the tales that he shares are just horrifying. I have split this conversation up into two pieces, as it is quite an involved conversation, but one that I know that you will enjoy. I'll have a link to their podcast in the show notes, and I even appeared as a guest on their show talking about various topics as I do.
So I hope that you'll give them a listen as they are very much worth listening to. Without further ado, sit back, relax, and enjoy part one of our conversation, which I am calling the house is calling me. Hello, all. And today I am really excited to bring you two phenomenal gentlemen that I had the opportunity to be a guest on for their podcast called The Wandering Road. We had a phenomenal conversation that went on a lot longer than what we expected. In fact, Chris here joined our Discord yesterday, and we've had some uh good conversations in the meantime.
So I wanted to extend the courtesy because I know that they have had a lot of experiences, and plus it's just nice to be able to interact with others who have podcasts so that you can get to know more of the audio environment in which we all kind of live in. So Chris and Dean, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
Thanks for having us on, JJ. We really appreciate it. Absolutely.
Tell me a little bit about what the Wandering Road podcast is and why you started it and how you two actually synced up to do it together.
Yeah, so The Wandering Road, it started off as kind of funny enough. I the idea I had for it initially was kind of like a middle ground podcast where I would just voice my opinions on certain things, like certain pop culture topics, historical topics, and then I would delve into paranormal stuff. And then as it grew, like I got into like my third episode or so when I did like my first quote unquote creepy episode where I talk about talked about La Giorona, and that's episode three, if anyone wants to check that out.
Yeah, so after doing that, and then I started incorporating my first guest was my cousin. We talked about his paranormal experiences, and then I had my other friend on, and we talked about his paranormal experiences, and it kind of went from there where it's like, okay, I think I'm gonna shift this to a full paranormal type of podcast and maybe sprinkle in you know other topics here and there just to spice it up a little bit. But that's kind of how it started. It was like it was just an idea, like really off the cuff.
It's like I was telling my wife, like, I talk about all this crap with like my friends, and it's like it'd be cool to put it in audio format and just throw it out there, you know, just to see if it sticks, see if anybody enjoys listening to it. And then I think it was around episode eight, I interviewed well not interviewed, I talked to Dean, we talked about some AI stuff and you know the prospects of AI in the future. And then after that, it we had such a good dynamic.
I approached Dean and said, Hey, do you want to come on and be my co-host so we could talk about this like paranormal topics and all of these other different topics because him and I we went to we went to college together, we did undergrad together, we did grad school together, albeit different programs, and we always had this good dynamic where we had good conversation and good analytical discussion.
And that's kind of where it started and where we are now, where we're just diving into these different paranormal topics in general, and just you know, trying to make sense of all of this stuff from an analytical point of view, and also just you know, trying to believe some of the stories that we come across.
Gotcha. So it sounds like Chris, you're very much a believer in the paranormal, is that correct?
Oh, absolutely, because I grew up in a haunted house, JJ.
Okay, we will get to that, I promise you. Dean, where do you stand on all that? Are you coming more from a more skeptical analytical kind of perspective?
Or yeah, and and it's funny that you say that. Like, I I will very much be honest that I take the perspective of Socrates in a way where I always try to frame any interaction with the idea that I know nothing. And I'm such a huge fan of philosophy. So I kind of like subscribe to the idea that I literally like I know nothing. Like outside of my own consciousness, I I always admit that I know nothing.
So even though I'm more in the camp of skepticism, only for the fact of being like, you know, purely analytical and wanting to understand things from the baseline perspective of as they exist, I still think that it's possible. And I will never ever shut out any idea, any religion, any perspective because I'll never know for sure. And there's no way for me to know for sure philosophically. So that's the way I approach it. But at the same time, I that's that's kind of the the direction that I take in the podcast for the wandering road.
Like I'm if you listen to the podcast, you'll understand that I'm more analytical and I'm more skeptical, but not because I don't believe, not because I'm kind of not because I'm never never because I'm trying to dismantle the argument or the interaction or whatever story. It's just because I want to understand it more and try to think of all the different perspectives that are possible in that story.
He's just trying to bust my chops as always.
Yeah, that's it. It's always fun. Yeah.
I completely agree with that approach. First, I've never uh in many an episode I have always said that I know nothing. And I think the older I get the kind of besides the the the Nazi views, I kind of have taken Heidegger's view of knowledge at heart, where you are at once uh dragging historicity uh behind you uh as well as casting it forward to interpret any events that you happen to encounter. Yeah. And that's really the only ray of experience in which you can perceive anything through.
So even though I have uh have had a lot of paranormal experiences, I still can't say for sure that what I see or what I experience is actually the truth or not. But all I can do is kind of keep an open mind without uh jumping to I want to believe, so therefore I will believe anything that comes across my desk.
Yeah. No, that's I think that's very brilliant. And that that's I think that's the way that you need to approach this sort of concept, because if you immediately think of what you want to see or what you're afraid to see as factual or it's gonna happen, then that's the only thing that you're ever gonna see. And um that's kind of a lesson that I we kind of talked about it offline between the three of us, but I I will openly admit that I grew up Catholic and um and there's nothing wrong.
Like, I I don't believe honestly there's anything wrong with affixing yourself to one way of believing because you can totally have an open mind and still believe one way. But for me personally, um I had so much experiences with so many different cultures and religions and understanding all that sort of the depth and whatever. So for me, like I still think that it's totally possible that the Judeo-Christian uh religion could have gotten it right, but I can't escape the fact that uh there's somehow a somehow a blend between multiple religions that have ever existed into Judeo Christianity.
So uh I totally I'm totally with you with this idea that there's no way we could possibly know until it's time to finally know.
Yep. Uh the only thing that I I I guess like for example, uh there was uh a scientific uh channel that was big on YouTube and they started doing these more uh in-depth series around particular topics. And I think this started off about a year or two ago and because it was around this time of year, uh the first one they picked was ghosts. And it was the most shallow uh interpretation and analysis I have ever seen on the subject.
They went through all of the common cases of what uh a paranormal experience is not, you know, oh, it's just sound waves that are making you feel creeped out, it's you know, blah blah whatever the case may be, but they never bother to open the door to examine it any further than that. I actually just got through watching uh a YouTube video, um not a YouTube, a TikTok video of a creator that I actually kind of respect. He goes really in depth into really odd minutiae and kind of relates it back to how it is now. And uh it's an interesting blend.
He was going, you know, yeah, like 46% of the of the American public believe in the paranormal. Uh, three-quarters claim to have experienced it. But then you've also got one in ten people that believe in the flat earth. And I'm like, okay. And he's like, oh, but you know, don't get mad at me because I'm just reporting the numbers. And I said, no, you're framing all of this in the same exact conversation to call into question what people believe, right? No one should believe in flat earth. I mean, if you do, I'm so sorry, but you you should go back and get some education.
But those people annoy the hell out of me. They really annoy the hell out of me.
Guys, guys, we're gonna lose half our kid.
Reel it in, reel it in. No, I'm just kidding. I apologize to any flat earthers.
Not that I'm trying to shed listeners, but if you honestly, if you feel that you know something that generations upon generations of scientists have proven without a single shred of doubt, to be true, and you need that to feel special about yourself, you need to find another niche. Yeah, and that's no, I totally agree. Not trying to be that controversial. Alrighty. Let's come back to what you touched upon before, Chris. Tell us all about living in this haunted house.
All right, I'll start from the top. So I'll start with my first paranormal experience. I was probably maybe four or five years old. And this was when I was living in the Bronx um with my parents. So I think I had to have been maybe five or so at the time because yeah, my sister was just born. So if you picture, we're in we live in New York City, we live in the Bronx, we live in an apartment building, there's just one big ass bedroom for all four of us. My bed, like all of our beds, like the headboard was like up against the wall, and the window, the big ass window was to the right of us.
And with my bed directly facing it was like my parents, like vanity and dresser and whatnot. So I remember distinctly, for some reason, I woke up, it had to be like around maybe two or three in the morning, and I see these things that kind of look like dwarves, right? I don't know, like I know it's I think in uh Latin American folklore they have these creatures called the Duendes, they're like kind of these like miniature creatures. So I don't know what the hell they were.
I just remembered that I saw them and I started screaming at them, saying that they don't belong here, they have to leave, they have to get out. And then my mom wakes up and it's basically like chastised me in Spanish and says, like, basically says, like, what the f are you doing? Like, why are you screaming? And I told her there was like whatever over there, and she looks and there's she's like, There's nothing over there, and she's like, Go back to bed. So I go back to bed and that's that. That's my first, I would say, paranormal experience I had.
Okay, hold on. You point over there, she says she sees nothing. During that time, did you still see them?
Or yeah, I did. I still saw them, and then after she like like I turned my head, like I was pointing at it, looking right at them, telling them like mom, look over there, and she's like, There's nothing there. Then I look at her and I look back and then they're gone.
And what did I mean, uh I know this was an early age, but do you remember besides being diminutive in nature, did they have any other special kind of visual characteristics about them?
No, they were very shadowy, but like the size reminded me of like the seven dwarves, like in height. That's the closest comparison I could think of. Yeah, so they were like these shadowy figures and their their height, they were like dwarves in size, I would say. But they didn't have any distinct features that I can actually remember right now. Because that was so long ago.
Gotcha. All right, go on. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt.
Oh no, no, that's fine. If it was a dream, I would happily accept that because that shit still scares me to this day.
By the way, I found a um like I found an online uh post recently. It popped up in my newsfeed, but there was like some Scandinavian uh example that probably came about years ago, but it was like recycled into uh social media, and it was a it was a picture, it was two pictures of a supposed gnome, I think from like Sweden or something like that. And it was someone who could claim that like their grandfather left them this corpse. And I'm sure if you googled it, you could find it, but it was like a the corpse of a gnome or like a really small creature in a tiny coffin.
And it, you know, from the perspective of just looking at a photo that was a like you know, a picture that was taken by somebody, it seemed kind of like okay, that's that looks real. I mean, I know there's no way to know nowadays because there's so much uh fabrication that is going on behind the scenes and like all kinds of CGI and uh professional uh individuals who can create things like that. So there's no way to know for sure, but it looked to me as if it was pretty convincing.
So that's that's just uh an interesting perspective that gnomes um are still very much part of our um idea today for for uh creatures.
Oh, that is interesting. And speaking of diminutive things, goodness, uh just what last week you had a quote unquote researcher show those miniature mummified supposed aliens to the Mexican Congress.
Yes, right, right. Yeah, I remember that.
Yeah, I'm dying for them to actually turn them over so that other people can do some validation on that.
Oh, you know they'll never do that.
Yeah, unfortunately, but yeah, it's just interesting. Anyway, go ahead, please.
Yeah, if you guys like South Park, uh it was the underpants gnomes. Let's call them the underpants. Yes. Yeah, so that that one, I don't know, like I could say I was dreaming. That one you could toss up to maybe a child's wild imagination at five years old, which I would completely accept. But the one thing I'll always say is that children are more susceptible to the paranormal, uh, which I've noticed when I've like done research and whatnot.
Okay, let me interject. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to derail this conversation, but I have to ask, have you seen the movie We Go On? I have not.
Me either.
I so highly recommend it. Uh there it's this guy, and I I know I've talked about this movie a few times, and um, I'm not trying to boring to bore listeners here, but there's a guy who is suffering from every phobia known to humanity, from death to rot to decay, to the point where he can't drive a car, he can't ride in a car, he can only really be on a bus, and even then he's afraid he's gonna die the entire time. And he finally says, Okay, look, I'm going to do whatever I can to get people to send me proof of the afterlife.
Because I think that's the only way I can calm these phobias that I have, unless I go through like 15 years of therapy. And it takes off from there. But it is one of the things in which that movie claims is that yes, children have a much closer tie to the paranormal, largely because they don't have filters that have been built up over the years, etc. But yeah, I it's just I've always been fascinated by that subject. What do you agree with that, Chris? And if so, like why might you think that be the case?
I'm sorry, JJ. What was the overall question?
Oh, uh, why do you think that children may be more open to the paranormal?
Just because they're so young and they're very open-minded, they don't have, to me at least, they don't have these like our like philosophies and these notions and these ideas already ingrained in us. So they're they're very open to different concepts and for things that they don't understand, if that makes sense.
It does. Okay, and then that's the last interruption. Go ahead, please.
Yeah, sure, sure, yeah, no problem.
Well, can I add something to that real quick? Actually, so like yeah, so I know I'm probably gonna get uh partially, you know, I don't know, like people might not this not this might not resonate with some people, but personally speaking, I always had this idea that children like when they just come into this realm, it's I wonder if it's always possible that the spirits that inhabit human beings come from a certain source in the universe, like from a pool, like a conscious pool. Right.
So what you when you are drawn in from that pool of consciousness or wherever it comes from in the universe, maybe there's multiple sources, when it it finally inhabits us as children, it's like Chris said, it's as fresh and new and unaltered from all the other interactions that we speak of or experience on Earth as possible. So in that sense, it's kind of pure from wherever its source comes from. So maybe it's possible. And and I I I have to admit that I kind of wonder if I've I've experienced this when I was younger as well.
Like when I was younger, I had all kinds of really crazy, beautiful, awe-inspiring experiences and interactions that happen around.
So I have to wonder if I mean it's totally admit that it's totally possible that it's just because, you know, as kids, we really don't have that depth of knowledge or understanding of what's going on going on around us. So therefore, you know, we don't have a very complicated sense of awareness or personality. But at the same time, there's also a mystery there. You know, like it could be the, you know, from the philosophical side, the psychological side, or the spiritual side, even like why don't we why don't we have that depth of experience at a younger age? Why do we seem more innocent?
Why do we seem more open? It could very very well be because where we came from spiritually, or even in the inception of our spirit, that we, you know, are brand new in a sense or experiencing earth in a different way. So I don't know. That's just something that I've always thought of for a long time. I don't know if you guys have a perspective on that as well.
Yeah, I do. So that's really interesting. I like that idea. The thing that I've been thinking about is especially paired with some more recent experiences that I've had with machine learning, is the brain is just wired differently at that age. You know, there are ten times the number of neural connections going on in the brain. And the goal is to essentially train itself on how to do things, it's gathering inputs from the rest of the world, assembling them, and then trying to make connections amongst them.
One of the reasons why kids are so much better at learning languages than adults are because they can just assimilate it that much faster. Right. And maybe that plays into account as to why they may be able to experience things in which we shut out because we have already made those necessary connections and we just I don't know if we're blind to it or if there's something, but it just seems to be something more than just perception's sake.
Yes.
It's almost like you know, being that open provokes or promotes some type of spiritual openness that you don't find in an adult. And I find the conversation just really I mean that topic really fascinating.
I totally agree. Yeah. That's that you know, is it's a it's just so crazy to me that so many adults that lose perspective on that. And I I also have to wonder why. I mean, you JJ yourself and us, and like even like we're all like we're all in the the older adult, not older, but like you know, we're older than we were in our 20s or whatever. So we're we're in that mature state, so to speak.
Oh, I don't believe it, man.
But whatever. Like we're you know what I mean? Like we're we're all in that more mature state right now. And I think that it's so interesting. Imagine, like, think back to even like 10 years ago when we were, you know, past the adolescence stage, we were past the college stage, etc. We thought back to uh people who were younger than us. And we might have we might still have had some connection to them because we we were close enough to understand what their perspective is.
But there's something fascinating about taking those leaps and bounds, like you said, from you know being sub-10 years old and then ended being a teenager and then being into your 20s and then really becoming an adult and that progressive stage of experience and intellect that continues to grow for a lot of people. And it's just that that to me is like if you went back in time and you told me when I was like even 18 years old. Like I know most 18-year-olds are like invincible and they just want to have fun or whatever.
But for me, like I was kind of a wallflower, like I was kind of like a really uh reflective person. I didn't have a lot of involvement or dedication or investment in people in terms of like partying or having a lot of fun. But that's, I mean, I'm not shitting on anybody who's like that, but just saying that like that's that was the perspective I had at that age, but that was just one perspective of many. So, and that is just one snippet of any age group.
So the compounding reflection of what is possible for how many people have different experiences and how that progresses into older age is just it's just mind-blowing. So, like, uh but I still believe that everybody, when they first come to this realm, or not everybody, maybe most people, because everybody has different experiences, but most people through a certain age have a really good experience that is more spiritual than not. And maybe that deviates for whatever reason.
You know, maybe like we talked about in other like other podcasts, like in demonology and stuff, there are different aspects and negative sources that influence our lives or whatever that might draw us into more negative perspectives or whatever. That's possible. That's just kind of speculation. But for whatever reason, I think that like we we kind of draw away from that more innocent perspective, thinking about all the friends I ever had who were really, you know, like in a younger age and we were all kind of on the same page, and then we kind of branched out, so to speak.
So I have to wonder if it's just a perspective of multiple pathways that lead to different thoughts or different patterns or patterns or beliefs. I also have to wonder why that is. I mean, it's just it's it's just so mind-bogglingly complex to me. And I'm sorry to go off on a tangent, but like, you know, feel free, feel free to uh add any context or shoot me down on that at all.
No, I I completely agree. In fact, I think we would have been pretty good friends if we had gone to college together because that was pretty much the exact same voice.
Hell yeah, absolutely, man. Yeah, that's why we met. We all know that by now.
There you go. Right, yeah. When we were talking offline last night, we were going over some of our previous living uh experiences and places where we had been, and we all three have a connection that we had no idea of before the fact. And it was it was just it was just kind of like kids meant bizarre, weird, but it was awesome at the same time.
So crazy, crazy. It's fate. We should actually like maybe reference that real quick. So, like, so essentially, just for the listeners, what happened was um after we had this really incredibly awesome conversation between the three of us, we were talking about like where we came from, where we grew up, and all of our experiences.
And it turned out that I I correct me, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm probably missing some perspectives here, but like my wife and I, we lived in Falls Church, Virginia, and that had a connection to one of us, and the other person also had a connection to that location or in and around Virginia, and it was just like this whole convoluted, crazy sequence of events between the three of us that we, you know, we never knew between the three of us, like where we came from, what we did, and then it kind of lined up in a way that it just it just blew our minds.
So I mean, I don't want to talk like you know, specific uh locations if you guys aren't comfortable, but just to speak to that, it's just it's just mind-blowing that we all had overlapping locational areas that we all touched on in our personal lives, and we all happen to come together at the same time. So, like, there's something there for sure.
Exactly. Yeah. All right, Mr. Chris, you want to keep going?
Yes, sir. I shall. So we moved into a two-family home in I think it was probably 1998 in Queens. So my aunt lived downstairs, and me and my family, my dad, my mom, and my sister, we lived on the upstairs apartment. So the paranormal activity in that home literally started from day one. And it's it's crazy because I I remember this like it was yesterday.
So my aunt and uncle had this stereo system, and I remember vividly, like when we first moved in, they had it sprawled out on the ground, like the speakers and everything, everything was connected, but the only thing is that it wasn't plugged in at the time, and we would only plug it in when we would use it. So even when it was plugged in, like it would when we moved into that house, like the stereo system would turn itself on on full blast, completely random points through today.
Like I remember clearly one summer I was upstairs in the apartment, my mom was in the kitchen doing something, my dad was at work, and my sister was with my mom, and then the stereo just like completely goes off full blast. I go downstairs, take a look, I'm like, okay, this thing's pretty old, so it might be malfunctioning or something. So I turn it off, and then it just decides to turn itself back on. And then at one point, we decided to unplug the damn thing, go back upstairs, taking care of our business, and guess what? Unplug the bastard turned on again.
Well, that kind of eliminates the thought of maybe it was just electrical surges.
Yeah, yeah. At first we thought it was electrical surges, because this is 1998, they probably had the damn thing since the early 80s, so it's like, all right, something's probably going wrong with it. And even when they got a new one, it was still doing the same thing, whether it was plugged in or unplugged, it was so damn creepy.
And other things that I've experienced in that house, I'm not gonna go into super detail because we'd be here all night, but the creepiest things that would happen is I remember this vividly, and in one of my podcasts at recent episodes, I actually did an interview with my sister to talk about her ex her perspective of growing up in that home. And the one thing that we always remember is that it would normally like around five between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. we would hear these footsteps in the attic.
And and I'm not talking about just someone randomly just walking back and forth, it was like army boots, JJ, stomping back and forth in the attic. And my parents and my aunt and uncle tried to tell us that oh, it was squirrels and it was pigeons. And I was always thinking, like, motherfucker, there they ain't no squirrels or pigeons wearing boots stomping back and forth in the finging attic. Like, do we have a squatter up there? Like, what the hell's going on?
And here's the thing when they went up to the attic one day, because the previous owners of the home just like when they sold it, they left everything in there.
Oh, that's not a good sign.
They went up to the attic and they found an old trunk with World War II regalia in it, and they found army boots, and the uniform that they found was from the bad side. Oh my god. Yeah. I don't know if it was a regular just Vermock army uniform or if it was an SS uniform. I'm not too sure, but they did find that old regalia. And on top of that, my big thing is when you move into a home, you don't keep any of the furniture. Yeah, my aunt and uncle decided to keep the dining room furniture and other pieces of furniture belonging to the previous owners, which I don't think helped things.
So to make matters even worse, I remember this one specific event. It was I'm standing in, so let me paint the picture this way. There's the kitchen, there's like a little like square-ish hallway, and to the right in that hallway is a closet door, like three feet, maybe four feet from that closet door is the entrance to the bathroom. And directly to the right of that closet door is the entrance to my parents' room, and to the left of on the left side of that is the entrance to my room.
So my aunt that was staying with us for a little bit of time, she decided that hey, I'm gonna go use the bathroom real quick. So I'm standing in the kitchen, my mom's in the kitchen, and my sister is standing in my parents' bedroom doorway. My aunt comes out of the bedroom, and my sister's standing there. She turns and walks towards the bathroom door, she opens the door, steps one foot inside of the bathroom, and literally gets tossed into the closet door. No, she gets lifted at least a foot off the ground and chucked into that damn closet door.
I swear to God, I swear on the graves of my four grandparents that are no longer with us. Dude, JJ, if I text my mother right now and ask her, ask her, ask her. I don't have to give her any context. I'll just have to say, hey, what happened to my to our aunt this one day with the bathroom? And she will send you a freaking block of text of everything that happened. I don't have to mention any ghosts, no spirits, no nothing. All I have to say is, what happened to our aunt that day with the bathroom? And she'll immediately recount that. It's one of those things, it's like, holy shit.
And what's crazy is that my mom tried to like brush it under the rug because she had like I was probably 14 or 15 at the time, and my sister was maybe nine or 10 because I'm five years older than her. She just said, Oh, well, maybe the ghosts had to use the bathroom and push her out of the way. Just try to make light of it, you know? But that's one of the things that like it's imprinted in my head. Another thing that happened to me while I was in that house, specifically when I'm a when I was alone, I was I would hear my mom's voice call my name.
Oh god, why did I know that you were gonna start bringing up mimicry at some point?
Yes, sir.
Okay, I gotta hear this. Yeah, go ahead.
So it happened so many times, and one time I it was my junior year or junior or senior year of high school, and I remember it was either one of those years because I got out of school early because of ours, like when you got into those higher grades, like my schedule in New York City, they front load your schedule like your freshman and sophomore year, and in your last couple years, you would start at like seven o'clock and you'd be home by like 11. So I get home early from school.
I didn't have really much anything to do, so I go to my room, I close my room door, and I pop on my Xbox, start playing some Call of Duty, and then I hear my mom call my name, and I'm like, what the f there's no Nobody home downstairs. My sister's at school. My parents aren't home. It's just me alone in this house. And my grandparents or my grandmother, because my grandfather had passed away in 2004. My grandmother is in the basement with her home nurse. So it doesn't sound like either of them. It clearly sounds like my mother. So I ignore it. And then I hear it call me again.
And at this time, I'm kind of spooked and I'm kind of irritated at the same time. So I pull out my old Moto Razor flip phone and I call my mom and she picks up the phone. And I can hear her. My mom worked in Manhattan. I could hear the traffic noises in the background and the footsteps of like the shoes and stuff of people around her while she was walking. So she was clearly in Manhattan. And she's like, What's wrong? Is everything okay? Yada yada yada. And I was like, Mom, you're not home, right? She's like, No, I'm not home. Obviously, you can hear that I'm not home.
And she's like, What's going on? And I'm like, Well, I heard you call my name, yada yada yada, and she's like, just close your door, don't answer it. Never answer those things. And to make matters even worse, there was one time we were in the living room together, and we both heard her voice call me.
Really?
Yes. Dude, I have goosebumps remembering this shit right now. It's just so f ingrained into my mind. And it's all like come back to me, especially when I started all this paranormal stuff and talking to my other family members. Because I come to find out very quickly, it wasn't just me that experienced that stuff. My mom, who's really sensitive, she knew immediately that there was something in the house. My sister told me that when my aunt came to help us unpack and stuff, she told my mom that you have visitors here.
My dad has heard footsteps in the living room, going to the front of the house, to the back of the house, like to the kitchen, to the living room, to the front area, hearing it at two o'clock in the morning. And I don't know if my dad was much of a believer or not, but he kind of like I guess he had to like keep it together and not be spooked. But I remember one night, like he heard the footsteps, and my mom got up to go and look, and he was like, No, I'm gonna go look. And he did probably the worst thing you could possibly do.
He picked up a baseball bet and started swearing and said, Leave my fing family alone, yada yada yada, the whole nine. And that's kind of why my dad converted to Catholicism because he was a Hindu at the time. And whenever he would do like they call them pujas, they would do like these prayers to like Hindu deities, nothing would work until he went to my mom and said, like, okay, you're Catholic, like we need to go down this route. And things started lessening up for us, but it started to exacerbate like in other areas of the house.
Like how so?
Like it would target my grandmother because she was a devout Hindu and she would wake up before dawn and pray all the time. While she was alive, she confided in my mother that you know she would say like they won't let me sleep at night. Like they just keep making noise, they just keep talking, and we didn't know who they was. She would say that they push her, and they would like put like you know, they would try to hurt her. At one time she like fell over and broke her wrist.
And my aunt was like, Oh well, she tripped over, whatever, but she then she told my mom that she was pushed and she and that's why she broke her wrist. So it was it was just that house, JJ, was just really dark. Like you would be so happy outside, like as soon as you stepped outside, like you would be fine. But like when you would go into that house, you would just be miserable. Like you just wouldn't want to be there. And I always like at the time I chalked it up to me being a teenager, right? Like, you know, you're growing, you're going through hormones.
There has to be some sort of scientific explanation for this. Because at the time I was an staunch atheist, and I told Dean this before, right? I was a staunch atheist. And living in that house and reflecting on that stuff kind of pushed me towards back back towards Catholicism.
I can imagine.
Yeah, because my mom, she would do like all these prayers and these cleansings and stuff, and they seem to work in the interim, but uh whatever was there, it's so powerful that it's still there, JJ. It's still there plaguing whoever lives there now. Because when we left that house in February of 2007, the people that moved in after us, they were a happy, loving family. Not three months later, they start fighting with each other, it gets physical, they ended up having a divorce, like the kids went astray. It was just it was all all a mess.
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 solely owned, 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 it is the best way to help support my work. As always, I am JJ, and it has been a pleasure to speak to you today.