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 friends, and welcome to season 4, episode 2 of Southern Demonology. As always, I'm your host, JJ. The first episode of my horror review miniseries that I do for the month of October dropped on Friday the 13th.
I normally try to keep these episodes on the shorter side, around 3 to 4 minutes, but apparently I forgot all about that, as this one clocks in at over 12 minutes. Oh well, you live and you learn. Today is the second and final part of my interview with the Wandering Road podcast host, Chris and Dean. Whereas Chris wraps up some of the more horrifying details of the house that he lived in. Dean shares his own dose of the unexplained in the woods, and I share a little of my family's long history with the paranormal.
So sit back, relax, and prepare for chills in the final segment of The House is Calling Me.
You were saying how you grew up in a really significantly haunted house or whatever, like you had experiences. Do you think that like you were the initial experience, like your family were the initial ones who experienced that house and the spirituality that came from it? Or do you think that it was like kind of reverberating through the ages?
For me, I think it's been reverberating because the first one that I know had encountered it was my great-uncle, who was by weird coincidence, was just a few years older than my eldest uncle. And because my great-grandmother had seven kids, my grandmother had five kids, and there wasn't a ton of over. I mean, there wasn't much of a gap there. But he would sleep upstairs, and he would come up, and he would often find a body print in the bed. Oh.
These were not the most sturdy of mattresses, but it was enough to tell that there was something physically in that bed, and that attic was always kind of a nightmare scenario for all of us. Jeez. Yeah, and I don't know if anyone had it before, but I also have a very like my entire family has a rich history of the paranormal. I don't know if I've ever told the story. If I did, it was a really long time ago where when my great-grandfather passed away, uh, he had a tooth pulled, it would not stop bleeding.
Come to find out he was a hemophiliac, and he was rushed away to a hospital, and he died from complications to that. But my family knew the night that he died, even though it was miles and miles away, because a lantern walked itself up to the front porch at night when all my family was sitting outside, sat itself down on the porch, and a voice boomed out from the air, your father has died this night, and then it picked itself up and walked itself back into the darkness.
Wow, that is freaking horrifying.
I don't know if that's the same thing or not. Who knows? But yeah, something has long played not just my immediate family, but much older than that as well.
That's intense. Like that's that's really scary. Do you still get do you get anything now, or is it kind of like if you hear stuff, you ignore it?
Funny enough, my the old house that we used to live in, it had been falling apart at the seams. Like the back room, the flooring had collapsed down in the uh into itself, the whole house was just infested with brown, recluse spiders and black widows. You couldn't go in there um unless you really wanted to gamble for your life just from the structure and from the critters. My mom finally had it torn down. So that as of last year, that law cabin is no longer there at all, and haven't experienced anything, but I will say it could be coincidence. I'm not saying it's not, who knows?
But the day that my youngest uncle passed away, we went to his funeral, we came back home, and there were three vultures, or buzzards as we call them, sitting on the tin roof of the old house looking at us, and they would not leave for over an hour. Wow.
Wow. Yeah, a lot of weird stuff happened in that house. But going back to your experience, because this is this is fascinating. I mean, not only did you have physical abuse, you also had mimicry. Yep. I you had, I mean, this is the most kind of classic example of demonic oppression that I have heard of in a very long time.
You want me to throw more wood on the fire? I forgot to mention this.
Please do.
Along with the f footsteps, around 5 30 p.m. every day, you would hear, I don't know if you'll be able to hear me knocking, but on our door. And I would go open the door, and nothing would be there. My aunt wasn't home, my uncle wasn't home. And it got to a point where like that happened a few times. My dad opened the door, he went downstairs, he checked, nothing, nothing. It was so freaking petrifying now that you think back at it, because I was a kid, and you can't really fully grasp what the hell is going on, but when I think about it now, it's like, what the hell, man?
Like, what did I live through? And I know people will say, like, oh, there's a scientific explanation, and I will gladly accept any analytical scientific debunking. Gladly accept that because what I wouldn't want to accept is the fact that I lived with possibly a f demon for from 1998 to about 2007, and on top of that, the damn thing would target my sister as well. Where she would see things, she would see shadows. One day she told me she was walking up the basement and she felt something push her up the stairs, and she's probably about like 11 years old at the time.
At one point, she had an imaginary friend that like physic that manifested itself in front of her. Yeah, it looked like a she said it looked like a five to six year old boy that looked like he was in like a sailor suit or 1920s like school uniform type of look. And when I interviewed my cousin Cassandra about this, because she had experiences, she said the same exact thing. And my cousin, she gets like downloads and does tarot and stuff like that. She's very spiritual. She said there's multiple entities in that home.
And what's even creepier, when I was doing my show recording with her, and as soon as we talked about started talking about hair experiences about that house, my cousin, who lived across the street from that house, he still lives there. And he can attest to everything too, because he experienced stuff along with us. He sends me a he calls me, I decline the call, then he sends me a text message. Guess where I'm parked up in front of right now?
And then see, he sends me a picture of him in front of that house while I'm doing the recording with my cousin talking about her experiences in that house.
So what prompted him to do that?
It was just out of the blue. Like her and I, we just started talking to about that house and like five minutes into talking about it. He sent he calls me and sends me a text message with a picture saying, Hey, guess where I'm parked up in front of. I figured you'd want to know. And the I don't know if that's sheer coincidence or something more malevolent at play there.
See, what I what I tell you guys, the last thing we did, like the last recording we did together, like I just have this feeling, this psychological imperative or this mathematic, this mathological or mathematical constant that dictates our lives. It's just, it's if you think about it, like what does that even mean? Like if he if he had a family member who contacted him who had no recollection or awareness of what he was doing in that moment, there has to be something more than just even just spiritual coincidence.
Like, there has to be like a lining up of experiences that are shared among people, and it's just it's just mind-blowing. Right, dude.
Exactly. That's very true. Because he had no idea I was doing a recording, he doesn't know my recording schedule, he didn't know who I was talking to, he who I was talking to, he didn't know what I was going to be talking about. And for him to send to call me and then send me that message with a picture of that house, it's just something I don't I can't explain. And my sister was just recently in New York back in March, her and my cousin, and she said they felt the need to walk by that house again.
And they started walking by the house, and they both said they felt sharp pains in their head, like really sharp pains, to the point where they had to cross the street and the pains didn't stop until they got to the other block. So I I don't know what that means, but it's one of those things that I I can't explain, man.
I might have to upgrade that from demonic oppression to demonic obsession.
I I think you might be right.
Because you know, up oppression is just where something is actively pushing against you, obsession, it can mean that someone has opened up a doorway and they're actively inviting something in, but more than but usually the term replies to if an entity is actively seeking to influence and to you know ruin, and it definitely sounds like there is a common thread.
Let me ask you this have you thought about compiling all of these experiences into a book, cross-referencing everyone else in your family's time while living there, and trying to pull together a comprehensive picture as to everything that was going on?
Yeah, I definitely have thought about doing that.
I I would urge that because that, if done well, would be absolutely phenomenal.
Yeah, and the last few things I'll say about that house because like I have really bad goosebubs just talking about it.
I can imagine.
Yeah, it dude, like it it was just so frustrating. Like my final straw, like I I think it was another thing of mimicking. And I told my parents, like, I don't want to live here anymore. I was 16 years old at the time, my senior year in high school. I I told them, like, I don't want to and then they ramped up their search and we moved into a new home. That going into that home, like, people would come over, it basically they would always say, like, this home is so beautiful, it has such a good aura, it's so welcoming that nobody would want to leave.
It'll be like one o'clock in the morning, and nobody would want to leave. But I remember my aunt told me that one day it was in the summertime that she called our home upstairs. She called our phone upstairs when we still had landlines, and because she heard footsteps like running back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room to the living room. So she called the phone upstairs, no one answered. She knocked on the door upstairs, no one answered. So then she calls my dad's cell phone and he picks up, and she told me that we were at all at a barbecue and there was no one home upstairs.
And that's when she said, like, holy crap, she like finally believed that there was something in that home. It took years, but people it took so it's what 2023. We moved out in 2007, she moved out probably a couple years later. So it took almost 15 to 16 years for anyone to even acknowledge that stuff went on in that home. I don't know, I guess we we were afraid or something like that, but it it was one of those things that now everyone openly talks about it, and we remember it with a little bit of fear, but we also remember it, I guess, in a weird way, fondly as well.
Well, I mean, otherwise, what can you do? Allow the fear to completely overwhelm you? Uh, it's it's a common stress-induced phenomenon, so I I can I can completely imagine why.
Yeah, and one thing, like my mom being a Catholic, she liked to burn incense and say prayers throughout the home. And when she went to one specific room in the home to say a prayer, she said she felt the atmosphere was really thick and something was choking her. And then, yeah, go ahead.
Were there any other methods of protection that your family attempted besides the incense and prayers?
We would have uh like Catholic prayers. My mom would sprinkle holy water, she always kept holy water, she would always put like a cross in front of the doorway, like a paw belief cross. So anything that she knew for protection, she would do. Because my mom is uh Dominican, so along with you know the Catholic belief, they have some other like spiritual beliefs that they use for protection along with that. So she would also incorporate that as well for our protection.
Gotcha. Was there an and this is just a question that's not insinuating anything? What did y'all ever consider having a an exorcism of locale done involved the church in any way?
No, we didn't. Okay, we didn't, unfortunately. Because I don't know if that was a thing that my parents were too familiar about. I guess it was kind of one of those things that they saw in movies, but didn't know that, like, you know, this is something you would actually do in a home.
Gotcha. Well, that and there are there are certain dioceses and parishes which are very open to that idea. There are others that are absolutely against it. Yeah, it's a crapshoot, whichever way you go. I was just curious, though.
Yeah, I could go on for hours and hours about that house, but I'll digress and give Dean a little bit of airtime if he has any creepy stuff you would like to talk about. Because we were talking offline and he mentioned he had some creepy things, specifically with uh what was it, Dean, with like woods and stuff, whatnot, just like here and stuff.
Yeah, so um I used to spend a lot of time out in the wilderness when I was growing up, just kind of by myself, even in my adolescence, like maybe from the age of like 10 on. And there one particular time that stands out in my mind that is really creepy is I was so I had this old, so I was I was part of a family that was like a bunch of hunters, and I stopped hunting a long time ago, but I grew up as a hunter, and I had this 22 uh rifle, which is if you're not familiar, a 22 is a very small caliber rifle. Oh, yeah.
And you're familiar with that. So like I basically, that was my first rifle that was mine, and I kind of took it out, you know, into my grandparents' backwoods. They had like maybe 20 acres or so of forest land. And I remember like I had been out there dozens of times, like tons of times, and there was this one crazy experience I had to this day. I don't know what it was. Like, even thinking analytically, I can't imagine what happened in that situation. But I was walking around with a rifle, and I was kind of just like, you know, taking in the scenery, enjoying my time out by myself.
It was kind of dusk, like you know, like early, late, mid-afternoon-ish or whatever, kind of like the sun was about to set. And I saw this pine tree that I've seen a million times. It was maybe like 14 to 20 feet tall. And it started shaking violently. I didn't hear any sound, and that the wind wasn't kicking up too much, but this tree was just shaking by itself. And there were other trees around it, around the same size, and they weren't shaking themselves. I'm like, what is happening? Why am I why am I like 30 yards away from this tree and seeing it shake violently? What's happening?
And then all of a sudden to my right, there were a bunch of dead leaves that were in a pile kind of like along the side of this fence. They just started kicking up in a fervor. And I just assumed in that moment, like, oh, it's just wind kicking up the leaves, but the tree was still shaking, nothing else was shaking around it. These leaves were kicking up. And then something dropped out of this tree so fast in a blur and it ran like in the 15 to 20 yards span of grass in front of me down over the berm into the left side of me, like like there was nothing, there was a big drop-off on that side.
So whatever came out of this tree ran across that open grass and into that berm was so fast that I literally cannot make out what it was. Or maybe I was kind of like, you know, I'll admit that as a kid, I don't know exactly where I was looking at what point I could have been like looking to my right, and maybe I didn't see the animal that it was, but whatever it was, it was out of the corner of my eye at least, and it was moving so fast that to this day I can't imagine the animal moving that quickly from the tree, from the 14 to 15 foot pine tree.
And it dropped down into this berm, and I could hear this like rustling and this kind of like animalistic sound that I was not familiar with, kind of like a groan, like could have been a bobcat or something. I don't know, but like I don't know any bobcat that would be that high up in a tree that could shake it that much and then run that fast in front of me down over into a berm into a ditch. That is probably the absolute craziest possibly um spiritual story that I've ever had.
I don't know if you guys have any insight into that whatsoever, but that's just a crazy story that happened to me when I was like 12 or so.
That is crazy. Because I can't think of any animal or anything else that could cause an entr an entire tree to shake or move that fast. Yeah, I I I have no bloody idea.
I'm with you, man. It was just a crazy story to this day. I'll probably never know what it was. I like I hope it was, I really hope it was an animal because uh it was such a crazy experience. That if it was something more than an animal, that it was just it would just be terrifying.
Oh, Sasquatch.
Let me ask you one follow-up.
Yeah.
Did you run or did you ignore it and walk calmly away?
No. I sat that I stood there from my recollection from when I was really young. And again, like I know we all like think things differently when we're younger, but from my recollection, from this point in time, I remember just being looking around and just being awestruck. Like, what is happening? And then after that happened, I'm like, I need to get back into my grandparents' home as soon as possible. So I after that experience, I turned around and I ran.
I didn't maybe not dead ass sprint because I was so confused with what's happening, but I was I definitely ran back to my parent or my grandparents' house and through the front door, and I was just like, okay, I'm done.
Okay, that's interesting. And this is actually something I want to go back and ask Chris about too, because one of the things that I've had I've heard many others in the paranormal space that happen to grow up in the South say is that if you hear something, if you see something, you ignore it and act like you did not. And then when Chris, when your mother said just ignore it, is there a reason why she said that? Does she think that ignoring it or not acknowledging it would protect in some way?
Or my mom was a big proponent of not welcoming anything in. Yep. So she so she went through it all. And when you live in those islands, and I've been to like where she lived, I've been to our land, and I actually like saw something there. Like I guess it was like a guardian spirit of my aunt, which they call El Indio. And I actually saw them. And funny story, my aunt, when she came from the Dominican Republic to visit my mom, we were in our kitchen and our newer home in New York at the time.
We moved out of the haunted house, and they were talking about spirituality, and she was talking about like her spirit protector or whatever. And then I like turned to them and I was like, El Indio, and she was like, My aunt was like, How do you know about that? And I was like, Yeah, when we visited in 2005 or whatever, I saw him, and she was like awestruck. She was like, You actually saw it? And she was like, Yeah, he's upset with me because you know, like he's tied to the land that he can't follow me to America.
But going back to your original question, yeah, my mom, like, she's seen things when she was younger. My mom is very religious. She's the type of person that says, like, you know, you don't acknowledge whatever negativity or negative spirits are out there because you don't want to give it power. And she always reminds me that whenever I'm scared, that yeah, these things might be powerful, but to always remember that your belief and God is stronger. So that's why she's always been like that.
Wow. And what did this guardian spirit look like?
So he from what I can remember, he looked like a Taino uh Native American, like whatever traditional garb you know they had with the flaps and you know the face paintings and whatnot. That's kind of what he looked like, huh? Yeah, like the native folks that Columbus would have encountered when he landed in Hispaniola.
Okay, I I know I'm gonna go in a really strange direction. Bear with me just for a second. I know that y'all both like Japan and anime. Have y'all ever seen an anime called uh Miatico Chan?
I have not. No, me either.
Please elaborate.
It's actually pretty good. It's about a girl who suddenly begins to be able to see these horrific or spirits all around her, and they keep asking, can you see me? Can you see me? And she does everything that she can to pretend like she does not, and she ignores all of it, and she actually winds up seeing a I it's never elaborated upon, but is more than likely a commie of a temple and begins to protect her. But all of this just kind of brings those images back to mind. I I was just yeah, sorry, my mind break makes uh strange connections sometimes.
So no, that's completely fine, man. But yeah, that's that's kind of where all of that stems from, from my mother like not giving anything attention because she believes well, I and I believe that if you give something attention, you're giving it your energy, and that's probably the worst thing that you can do, and that's probably exactly what it wants. Because I'm of the belief that these things out there, whatever these spirits are, whatever these demons are, they want our interaction because they want our energy, because they feed off of it, and that's how they get stronger.
So I think if we deprive them of that in whatever way you can.
That's true. But my goodness, your story has pretty much everything except, I mean, it wouldn't it'd be the ultimate triumvirant if it had red eyes. That's the only thing is missing. It has mimicry, it has you know physicality to it, it has oppression. Dear goodness gracious, I I am just glad that you walked out of there sane, your family's safe, you didn't suffer horrendous long-term consequences. That's a kind of a minor miracle in and of itself.
Yeah, I'm now that I think back on it, like you realize how dangerous it could have gotten. Like how really dangerous it could have gotten. It could have gone really bad for us. And especially since there were essentially three teenagers, well, two teenagers and one adolescent in the house that could have been heavily influenced. It we're we're I would say that we're lucky.
And I would attribute that to our parents and my grandparents and their strong faith in what they believed in, with from my mom and dad's Catholicism to my grandmother's Hinduism, to my aunt and uncle's strong belief in Islam. I think all that combined together kept this thing at bay a little bit.
True. I mean, it I I know that a mixture of religious iconography, incense, and prayers, it can often agitate these things, especially the darker they tend to be, but they also provide some measure of protection as well, even if it provides or provokes some temporary responses. And yeah, I I think that you you've got very lucky, and you're lucky to come from such a uh a loving family to be able to survive such an experience and and tax.
Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, one thing I will say real real quick is that even now, if I think back on it and I feel, you know, I get the goosebumps and stuff, I'll just like recite the Lord's Prayer. What was it? And I would recite one of my favorite songs, Psalm 23, and that would, you know, just make the goosebumps go away. It could be purely psychological or just a comfort thing, you know, to put my mind at ease, but that's something I tend to do, which I'll probably do after the after this show today.
I do not blame you. When we moved into northern Virginia for the first time, we were in a relatively large apartment, but there was I don't know what it was. Like my family would get creeped out in certain rooms, and I actually wound up printing the prayer to St. Michael and hanging it within our master bedroom and reciting it daily, and that definitely seemed to have calmed things down and made it a much more welcoming environment. Even my son, when he would come, he would refuse to sit in the living room alone because he was petrified of it. It was really kind of strange.
So, yeah, any protection is always worthwhile. And I've always urged people to look to the Lord's Prayer, Psalm 91, prayer to Saint Michael. These are always good things at the end of the day. Absolutely. I I completely agree. Awesome. So let me ask you this: we are pretty much out of time. How can people find the Wandering Road Podcast?
So, folks, if you want to find the Wandering Road, you can search us on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. If you search for the Wandering Road Podcast, you will be able to find us there. Also, we're we are on Instagram at TWRoad Podcast, you could give us a follow there. And also, we are on TikTok at TWR Podcast, and you could give us a follow on TikTok.
Also, if any of your listeners in you know tune into our podcast and they enjoy our stories and whatnot, if they want to share their stories with us, they could always uh send us a submit their paranormal stories, or even if they want to appear on our podcast as a guest to share their paranormal experiences, alien stuff, cryptids, you name it, we're open to it. Uh, you could reach us at twroadpodcast at gmail.com.
Fantastic. Well, I cannot thank you both for all the time. This was another amazing conversation. I hope that you do go off and give the wandering road a listen. They have some really interesting stuff, and they're just awesome guys to boot. So well worth a subscription, like, follow, comment, whatever it is. I'm not going to go into the standard spiel, but you know what it is. I hope y'all have a wonderful evening. Anything, any other closing thoughts before we wrap it up?
Anything from you, Dean? I was just gonna say, JJ, you've been awesome, man. Thank you so much for your time. And this, like the every single conversation we've had, I mean, we've only had two so far, but it's just been a spark of uh interest and it's just really awesome conversation. So thank you, man. I look forward to future collaboration, and I wish you the best, man.
Thank you very much. Yeah, we uh we may have to consider putting together a uh podcast network and start uh going forward down that road.
So right on, man. Yeah, absolutely. And I echo his sentiments, JJ. We really appreciate you uh bringing on to your bringing us onto your platform so we could share our stories and our perspective.
No, I appreciate you bringing me on to yours and for the amazing conversations. This has been some of the most fun I've had in a very long time. And uh I hope that uh it sounds like I've gotten some good friends out of the mix too. So I appreciate that.
Totally agree. Absolutely. Yeah, man.
All righty. Well, go find the wandering road, they are awesome, and thank you for tuning in, and we will be with you again next week. 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.