All is Not Lost Podcast
All is Not Lost Podcast
Sam's Side of the Story: Growing Up With The Paranormal
In this special episode, my son Sam joins me as we walk down memory lane—only our memories include haunted houses, eerie encounters, and things that still give us chills. You’ve heard my side of these stories before, but now you’ll hear what it was like for him growing up with a mom who talks to the dead… and in houses that didn’t exactly feel empty. From spooky neighborhoods to mysteriously moving baby monitors and haunting dreams, we’re unpacking it all—through both our eyes. Get ready for laughs, goosebumps, and some heartfelt moments too.
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xoxo,
Rianne
Hello and welcome back to All Is Not Lost Podcast. I'm your host, psychic medium, Rhiann Maldonado. Today, I'm really excited to have my son, Sam, in the podcast studio with me, and I hope you enjoy this episode.
SPEAKER_00:Spirit, does it stay? Does it go?
SPEAKER_01:The fact is, spirit does survive death. Our loved ones are all around us. Love survives. Spirit survives. All is not lost.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to the All is Not Lost podcast. Here's your host, psychic and evidential medium, Rhian Maldonado.
SPEAKER_01:Sam, I know that you and I could talk for hours. Yeah. I couldn't help but feel inspired by the mannequin incident the other day. So for any listeners who haven't heard about what happened with the mannequin in our living room just last week, it might be helpful to go back and just listen to that quick video. I think it's only nine minutes. But that made me think how interesting it would be for you and I to sit down and just kind of rehash over the years, all the interesting things we've experienced that led up to even our haunted house in Spokane and anything else where the wind blows us. But I have never sat down with you like this and I've really wanted to for so long. So I'm so grateful that we have the opportunity to do that today. So yeah, what do you think?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think so. I mean, You referenced the incident recently with the mannequin, and it got me kind of thinking that we all come to different conclusions about, I don't know, how spirits work or what all these things are. And I think everybody kind of has their own perspective. But I really think it's kind of this timeline of events that we've gone through that's influenced my perception of it and your perception of it. And it's just been something unique to us. And each one has kind of shifted, I think, how I feel. Oh my gosh, yes. Over 28 years of things happening. And because of that, I think it's important to kind of look at each individual thing within the context of the whole.
SPEAKER_01:I agree because what I was thinking as you were speaking was the evolution of how even I have felt and experienced spirit contact or things moving in the house has completely evolved over time to where there were times I was scared, there were times I wasn't. And the reason that's important to note also is one of my followers on Facebook commented about the mannequin not being particularly spooky, that maybe it was just a hello from spirit. And I haven't had a chance to respond to her, but what I was thinking with that is I probably seem to other people less scared than like people on TV would be. I am not scared. Was it spooky? The word I used? Yeah, it was spooky because it's a human head shape.
SPEAKER_03:It's very different
SPEAKER_01:looking at you. It's very different than lights going on and off, which I have experienced plenty of times and we can get into that. But have that happened to me 15 years ago? I might've been terrified and burned down the house. So yes, the evolution is fun. So I, I talk a lot. I'd like to let you decide, where do you want to start this process? Because you were a kid. I mean, here you are turning 28. Yeah. But like I said, you've lived with me, your mom for all these years, and we've been through a lot of things and lived in a lot of houses. And I would like to know your perspective on some of this crazy stuff.
SPEAKER_03:So I think I definitely like to start with our Temecula house.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:But, I'll say, and I think there's some other little things that have happened to us in our lives as children that we could discuss later if they come up. Sure. I think that's a main one. I also want to say, I'm like, I feel like I've always been the person to be interested in these things though.
SPEAKER_01:You were from a small kid.
SPEAKER_03:From the time I was little, I, I was just always fascinated. I wanted, I remember you bought me that Barnes& Noble book that was about a paranormal investigating team in England.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And I got that when I was really little and I read it cover to cover like a hundred
SPEAKER_01:times. And I think on your bookshelf you still have it. Yeah, I
SPEAKER_03:could show a picture.
SPEAKER_01:And you were an X-Files aficionado from a young
SPEAKER_03:age. I watched like the UFO shows and all of those things. And I think it is kind of like the X-Files that I wanted to believe.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, oh yeah.
UNKNOWN:I think I was just very interested and I found all these things fascinating.
SPEAKER_03:And I think as we get into it later, this kind of idea that I think some of these things can be portrayed as just really scary, and they can't be. But I think ultimately, even if it's scary, I've always wanted to know. And that's something I feel like I can't turn off. And it's just a perspective, you know?
SPEAKER_01:That's interesting to hear that perspective too, because as your mom, in the same exact time frame... While I have always, and I've said this in other episodes, I always felt different. I always felt like a little bit on the outside and that I was open to things. And I had strange occurrences happen to me that I didn't know were strange at the time. During the time I was raising you, I was so busy being a single mom that I don't think I got to enjoy or be aware. But then things were happening anyway that were popping up and I was noticing. But having this opportunity to look back with you at all the events is going to be very different.
SPEAKER_03:I think so. Do you mind if I actually start with one quick story that we've never told that was mine?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, please.
SPEAKER_03:Do you remember when I was in second grade and I went to Lake Havasu with my friend Chance?
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:So during this trip, a friend of mine, when I was in second grade, his family were going to go to Lake Havasu and they had like an old RV.
SPEAKER_01:I was going to say, this is the RV trip.
SPEAKER_03:And the RV... to me at the time looked identical to Aunt Sandy's RV. It was still like a 1970s one. Like they didn't have a new one. It was like that. And we drove out there from California. So it took all day. We arrived just before midnight. It was like 1150. We pull into this dark spot right on the edge of the lake. I already have goosebumps. I thought, you know, it's interesting. I was excited to be there. And they say, let's just go put our feet in the water. Oh, yeah. His family was really strange.
SPEAKER_01:They were the strangest family. Super nice, but super weird.
SPEAKER_03:The one thing I always tell people about his family, every corner of their house had a doll covering her eyes, looking in the corner. Like they were faced in the corner as
SPEAKER_01:a decoration. Were they decorative?
SPEAKER_03:They were decorative.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, but they were creepy.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, they were like cloth, like sewn dolls about a foot tall. And they had their hands over their eyes and their face in the corner. And they had those in multiple corners in the house. And their house was very dark, like up on a hill.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they were a strange family.
SPEAKER_03:Anyway, so we go to put our feet in the water. And, you know, I follow along because I'm a kid. And it's just they tell us that's what we're going to do. But then everyone turned around and is walking back up the beach. I'm still in the water about 30 seconds longer looking out across the lake. And on the other side of the lake, I'm telling you, I saw this giant bright light. It was like, if I had held up a quarter in front of my eyes, like pretty big, like maybe about a foot from my eyes. And it moved across the sky and went down behind the water on the other side of the lake. Like a big orb. It was a massive orb.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right. I don't
SPEAKER_03:know if it's in the sky or was an orb. To me it felt far away at the time. Sure. Like, I've seen photos of like a comet or something and it would be, it's fairly small, kind of like a dot in the sky. This was like as big as the sun. in size and day. You know how big that circle would be moved across the sky. And then what's weird is I woke up the next day and I had a horrible stomachache. Do you remember that? Yeah, that's when your stomach problems started. It was so... I had the worst day of my life. I was in so much pain. And I know, not that that meant anything, but I felt like seeing something weird... That was the first time I remember seeing something that really, really... It felt strange to
SPEAKER_01:me. When you were so young, only in second grade, to be aware that it stuck with you all these years made an impression on you.
SPEAKER_03:This scene I never forgot because I thought there's just, what could have been in the sky? It was like it was
SPEAKER_01:huge. Was it high up in the sky or lower towards the horizon of the lake?
SPEAKER_03:It started in the sky and it moved from the top left of the sky to the bottom right and then disappeared behind the water.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting. Do you remember as a kid what you were thinking it might have been? I
SPEAKER_03:couldn't. You were just in awe. I just thought, I don't know what it could be. Interesting. That's all. And I just want to share because I think that was like the first experience I had where I was like, I absolutely to this day know I saw it. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:there's no doubt in your mind.
SPEAKER_03:And I can't explain it. It was very weird.
SPEAKER_01:Well, not... I know I used the word orb a minute ago, and I know that people overuse, in my opinion, people overuse the word orb. We've done enough experiments. We know enough that oftentimes it's dirt, it's dust, it's whatever on the lens. However, we're going to get a little off track, and that's going to happen because we have so much to talk about. You and I both have completely unrelated, amazing orb stories in our Temecula house. Oh, no, our second, our Murrieta house.
SPEAKER_03:Moving back to the same city or
SPEAKER_01:area. The same area. And that area has a ton of developmental history, like from what it used to be to what it is today. So I want to just put that in there really quick. So I am oftentimes a big, not skeptic, I got to come up with a better word, of orbs. Because when I'm watching shows or hearing people talk about it, I can see where it very easily could be a dirty lens or a piece of debris or dust. But no one will ever convince me that this particular time, as with I'm sure other people have their ones that they're adamant about, this particular time, I know without a shadow of a doubt what I saw. We were in our Murrieta house, so that was after Temecula, many, many years later. So this had to be 2015. Yeah, so it's 2015 and 2016. Okay, we just left Spokane. Okay, so there I was nursing Willa for bedtime, and I'm sitting in the chair, and I'm looking at her closet. And what I remember about this house is we did not have a lot of stuff out. It was a humongous rental house, and there wasn't... time or reason to really like decorate or unpack everything. We just never stayed in the house that long. And so I remember specifically that her room was very empty. She had a crib. She had a little dresser and, um, the chair I was nursing her in the closet was open. And there was one of those little Rubbermaid containers that has like three drawers and you could see through them. It was clear. So I knew her little cloth diapers and things were in there and there I am nursing her. And I had no cell phone in the room. Because I was present. And the sun is setting. It's getting dark in the room. And I look in her closet because that's just where my eyes were trained. And no joke, there was a bright blue, the most beautiful blue orb. But it was bigger than a softball. And it was hovering in front of that Rubbermaid container. And it was there near the ground. So big. And I'm staring at it and I can't move because I'm nursing the baby and she's falling asleep. I can't take a picture because I didn't have a phone, but I am racking my brain the whole time. There's got to be a light up toy. There's got to be something. I'm going to go search over there the minute I lay her down. But everything I can see is there's nothing in that closet. There's nothing in this room. There's no way light is shining in there. But there is this humongous orb and it was there so long. It had to have been at least a full minute because it it just didn't go away. It had to be 45 seconds to a minute. And I felt trapped, not in a bad way, but like there I was holding the baby. So I'm not going to like get up and go check it out. But it was enough time for me to keep running through my brain. What else could this be? So later I did check the closet. There were no toys. There were no light up toys. There was nothing. I even looked at the angle of the sun from the window, trying to figure it out, but for it to be the size bigger than a softball and nothing in that room, I'll never to this day know what it was, but it definitely was something. And that house, that was the first house we lived in after the haunted house in Spokane. And I was still very raw and scared of everything. I was just like, nervous to be alone in that house, nervous to be in our room. And the house had nothing to do with it. But I brought all this fear with me because I still didn't understand what I was doing. And I know you just recently told me you had a similar experience in that house.
SPEAKER_03:I did. And actually, I want to say what's interesting is when I was telling the first story in this 1AM in a Minute, I haven't talked about the color. but both incidents were, I would say that it was blue, but the center was bright white. Like, you know, imagine if something like a, it was like a light bulb that was so bright, but the outer edge is bluish. That is
SPEAKER_02:what I saw.
SPEAKER_03:But what's interesting is, so I was laying in bed in my room in that house one night and I opened my eyes because I was like, I had the light off for a little while, but I was like getting settled, right? and I saw an orb appear on the left side of the room near the door, move across the room to right in front of me, move a little closer to me, and then vanish.
SPEAKER_02:And
SPEAKER_03:it was the same size. I would say it was bright white with like a bluish kind of tint on the ends. But what I say was really interesting seeing this orb, compared with when they talk about orbs in video, which just kind of, they look like they could be a dust mote
SPEAKER_01:or something.
SPEAKER_03:This orb was so bright that when it disappeared, I closed my eyes for a second and blinked, and I could see the bleaching of the cones as if I had looked at a light bulb. And to me, that made me really feel like, well, then I had to see a real light. My eyes and my brain interpreted that there was such a bright light, it left an impression
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:On my eyes.
SPEAKER_02:Interesting.
SPEAKER_03:So if this was just maybe something I conjured up in my mind, I didn't think that that would happen. That's
SPEAKER_01:a good point. And let me just, for our listeners who want to look up bleaching of the cones or bleaching your cones, when you do say, look towards the sun or a bright light, and then you close your eyes and you still see that impression that you have rods and cones in your eyes and the way in which your eyes look, interpret that information is it's called bleaching the cones. So if you want to research that to know what we're talking about, you, you absolutely can. But that's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. That's a way to test yourself of what you actually saw. I
SPEAKER_03:think so.
SPEAKER_01:Cause if you, like you said, if you conjured it, imagined it, if it was a piece of dust, when you close your eyes, you're not going to have an impression left.
SPEAKER_03:So I also will say in my story at Lake Havasu, That didn't happen. I do think the object felt far off in the distance and I remembered one detail. The layout of the lake isn't like the Great Lakes where there's just a horizon of water. It meanders and then you'll see hills over the horizon. The way that there would just be land or mountain or something. It went in front of one hill and behind another.
SPEAKER_02:If
SPEAKER_03:you're overlaying them on the horizon, It went between two objects, so it had a point in space.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so that felt, do you think that was more like an object?
SPEAKER_03:I think it had to have been, and I guess I'm comparing while that they had the same color, I think that it was a different experience than seeing the orb in the house. Makes sense. For that reason. And the intensity of the light in my room was so close to my eyes that it left an impression.
SPEAKER_01:And then it came towards you, and mine in the same house hovered. It knew it, let's say it has... sentience knew I was looking and stayed yours moved towards you so it'd be interesting to really sit and think and maybe it'll come to us about what or who might have been visiting us at that time especially after such a traumatic time in our lives
SPEAKER_03:I do think it's one to me that house felt very mundane and to an extent at the time I was surprised I didn't really think I wasn't in the mindset that there was anything going on. So it just kind of felt like, well, that was very strange. But I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:No. And let me say this because I'm gonna ask you. It didn't feel scary to me.
SPEAKER_03:No, not one bit. I was more perplexed. At the end, I was like, wow, that was... That was very strange.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting, strange, but not at one point did I at all feel scared, which was interesting having come from such a scary... Coming from recently. So that was not at all scary. It was just very fascinating. Yeah, I think
SPEAKER_03:that's a good point. I also, I guess I'm going to say, we're going to get into other experiences we've had.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And seeing kind of this bright object, I don't think in its own way, seeing just like a bright thing of light isn't very scary. True. You know what I mean? To me, seeing the orb, while anomalous, is not in itself a frightening visual. No. As some of the things that I
SPEAKER_01:saw. Yeah, something turning, something moving, something... Right? Right?
SPEAKER_03:So...
SPEAKER_01:Good point. Well, let's go back in time. So you and I were living in Temecula in California by ourselves around 2005. 2005 and
SPEAKER_03:then a couple years.
SPEAKER_01:For a couple of years. And... I want to give a little bit of background on that house because you weren't with me when I met up with the realtor.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you need to do that first.
SPEAKER_01:So we were living in Escondido still and we were going to buy a house. And Temecula was nice and more affordable. We could get more house for the money. And so I got in touch with a realtor online and I told her what we were kind of looking for. And she put together a whole day of house hunting with some listings. And I go up there and we look and we look and we look in every single house. I was like, no, not this one, not this one. I just, none were really that exciting. And we were looking at one and I don't remember what the problem was. And I don't think it matters because then we turned and across the street, she said, oh, that house is for sale, but I didn't have it on my list. And for whatever reason, and we know it, we know, um, I was like, I'm not interested in that house. And she goes, well, let's just let's go look because we're right here.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I was like, OK, fine. So we go in there and I'll never forget. It was very strange. The owner of the house was sitting on like an ice chest, a cooler in the middle of the kitchen, looking all like downtrodden. And I guess he was doing some repairs. It had been a rental. And so it was it kind of had some things wrong with it. Well, we did a tour and I remember going in the master bedroom and instantly I did not want to be in this house. And I don't know if you all, I'll be happy to know if you remember this. They had it staged with crappy furniture. And there was
SPEAKER_03:a bassinet.
SPEAKER_01:And there was a bassinet.
SPEAKER_03:You should, because I went later.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. And the bassinet had a blanket over it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And okay, bassinet shouldn't be scary. Even with a blanket over it. So what? The room was heavy. It was dark. It was heavy. I didn't feel good. And then we went in the bathroom and oh, the realtor was gushing over the master bathroom because it had really expensive tile on all the walls, the floor, everything was tiled. Remember that?
SPEAKER_03:You were in like a stone room.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. It was weird. And instead of being impressed, I just felt yucky. So come we leave. And I was like, yeah, no, I'm not really interested in that house. But that was when I was married to not my husband now. And it was his turn to come up and look at some houses he had been working. And funny thing was, he instantly loved that house. He's like, this is the one. This is the one.
SPEAKER_03:I will say, objectively, it was a nice house.
SPEAKER_01:It was a gorgeous house with a perfect yard. I
SPEAKER_03:want to make it clear. Oh my God, the house. I can picture
SPEAKER_01:the front. Yes.
SPEAKER_03:And in a really pretty... neighborhood. Beautiful neighborhood. It was right off the main road.
SPEAKER_01:Great view, great breeze, lovely backyard, nice neighborhood. Everything was perfect. But something inside was yucky. Yeah, in a cul-de-sac with other kids. It could not have been a more ideal. It looked like a community pool that was like Olympic size and stunning. Anybody would have wanted to live in this house. So I felt weird that I didn't. But of course, he wanted that house. So we buy the house. And yeah, icky right away stuff was happening. This is the one where my, I really believe my grandpa was there. My grandpa, Sam, that you're named after, he had been an electrician in life and this is where all the electronics, all the lights were starting to adjust all the time. And I just felt this comforting sense of, that it was my grandfather. And I think because the marriage was so bad and short-lived and thankfully and all that, I felt my grandpa was there taking care of me. And you know that. And I want to share some of that, but I want to let you talk. So that's the set up of why we were there, how we got in that house, and where some of this joint stuff started to happen.
SPEAKER_03:I think there were a couple things. One more interesting feature of the house was, do you remember it had that bonus room off the kitchen that had a weird multicolored fan? Each of the fan blades was a different primary color. That's
SPEAKER_01:right.
SPEAKER_03:In
SPEAKER_01:this beautiful, neutral colored house.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and I believe the walls were painted a different color. I can't remember.
SPEAKER_01:I think they were just neutral color.
SPEAKER_03:But it was just kind of different from the rest of the house. And it kind of felt like, well, what do you do with this?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:But anyway, I think... But aside from the thing with the electronics, which is the big one, I think definitely the weirdness with our cats.
SPEAKER_01:Travis lost all his hair.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, the cats started losing their hair, and they were acting very strangely. And then what I really focused on for me was the master bedroom as well. I do believe that when people talk about paranormal encounters and things, and they talk about an oppressive atmosphere, Like, I really believe that, like, that's a hallmark. It is something you can truly feel. And there was something about stepping into that room that I just can't even describe. I was taken on the tour and I saw the room with the bassinet and the staging and it did feel spooky at the time. But later on, a lot of things happened and eventually the carpet was ripped up in that room, which just made it a million times worse.
SPEAKER_01:The carpet was gross and never going to be, like, cleanable again. And so we just ripped it up thinking we would replace it. But then for a while, it was just a plywood floor.
SPEAKER_03:So there was a point later where the cat box was in there.
SPEAKER_01:Because I got divorced and I moved out. Yes. Just so our listeners understand. I moved into one of the smaller bedrooms. You, Sam, had the other small bedroom. And we just dedicated the master bedroom to the cat box.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And I don't remember why, but for some reason we had to keep the cats in the room at some point. I remember several times like this. So I would have to go in and close the door while I cleaned the cat box. I think honestly that was one of the most times I've ever been scared. I truly felt as a kid that rarely did I feel really, really scared.
SPEAKER_01:Like in danger.
SPEAKER_03:And this was like... I was holding my breath, counting the minutes. Like if I stayed here one second longer, something bad was going to happen.
SPEAKER_01:I felt the same way. No
SPEAKER_03:matter how much I, you know, the windows were open and there's sunlight coming through and you can see the house behind. I felt like I could not spend one minute longer in that room. I don't think to this day I've been in a location where where I felt like I needed to leave immediately. Even when we've been to like the Yuma prison in the solitary confinement cell or all these things, I've never felt a sense of like, I need to leave this room as much as there. And then there was one other incident. I don't know if you remember, but there's one day we got locked out of the house for some reason. And the only way in was, I don't remember the situation, but we got a ladder to go up into the master bedroom because the window was open.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, right over
SPEAKER_03:the balcony. Yeah. And going into the house to unlock the door, starting in the master bedroom, I was meaning. Scary. I thought, there's no way I'm going to make it out alive. Like, that's how I felt. Maybe not that thought in my head, but like the fear I felt was that if I had to go through the window, get to the bastard bedroom door, open it, go downstairs and unlock the thing before like any adults were there with me was so scary. But on the other hand, I do want to say I had a lot of great memories in that house and other areas. I had a lot of fun things I did. It was a really happy time in my life. I remember I was in fourth grade. I was playing games on the computer that I liked.
SPEAKER_01:I was watching shows that I liked. We were watching Netflix all the time back when you ordered DVDs in the mail.
SPEAKER_03:Honestly, I... I think I had some super fun times. So I think the point I'm trying to make is that the master bedroom is something different. It's not like this whole house just made me feel spooky or something. I had a great time, but I just didn't want to be in there.
SPEAKER_01:I enjoyed the house as well. Once the marriage was over and it was just us, I did have a good routine there. I loved my office upstairs that was in that little extra loft area. We had friends over. We, it was very nice. The yard was nice. Everything was nice. That room was, was just awful. And I don't know if you remember, but a lot of the stuff that I thought my grandpa was doing stopped the minute I, filed for divorce.
SPEAKER_03:It was interesting. It actually started right when we moved in. I remember one of the first incidents was within
SPEAKER_01:minutes, days. There were
SPEAKER_03:still boxes in the living room when it happened. I
SPEAKER_01:remember right away our refrigerator died on move-in day. Literally, we had to get a new fridge on the day we were moving in. And that was like, huh, okay, well, random, weird, whatever. But then... I remember so vividly. And these are the stories I like to tell people. I remember so vividly that I would like clean everything up downstairs and I would turn off all the lights and I would be heading up for bed and I'd get to the first landing and all the lights would come on downstairs. And I was like, what the heck? I'd come back down, turn the switches off. Strange things like that would happen so much so that I called grandpa. I called my dad and I was like, dad, You were not going to believe this. And he's like, ah, there's an explanation for everything. I said, no, you've got to come over and see this for yourself. So grandpa came up.
SPEAKER_03:I remember.
SPEAKER_01:And there we are. We locked up everything downstairs. We turned off all the lights. We start walking up. Boom. All the kitchen lights come on.
SPEAKER_03:I remember that. I actually remember I was behind you guys walking the stairs and I remember grandpa turning around.
SPEAKER_02:Do
SPEAKER_03:you? Like I just see his face turning around when they turned on. And what I think is I mean, you could see a million paranormal investigations and they can ask the spirits to do whatever and be just waiting for evidence. For something to almost be on command and really prove itself to someone who came to be skeptical is pretty incredible.
SPEAKER_01:It was super incredible. And that it happened multiple times. And that there was always some... something like that going on. And the favorite one, I don't remember if you were at your dad's or if you were upstairs in bed, but the one that I am so shocked about. So I like to tell the story that in the old days, I'm doing air quotes, in the old days when we would have to watch TV through a stereo so you could listen to it on the better speakers. We had the stereo downstairs and obviously it would have CD, radio, stereo, the different choices and you would push the button Well, it was hooked up to stereo because grandma and grandpa came up and we watched a movie together and we watched it through stereo. The movie was over late at night, probably close to 11. We walked my parents out, say goodbye to them, come back in. We're locking up and we go to walk up the stairs and the CD player comes on. blasting ACDC's Hell's Bells.
SPEAKER_03:I do remember.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my God. So blasting it. So how did it get from two points here? How did it get from stereo to CD? And also my grandfather, the one we've been talking about named Sam, when I was a little girl, he is grouchy. He'd walk around the house, Hell's Bells, Hell's Bells. That was his saying. So that night, why did it play of all songs? Hell's Bells, and how did it switch from stereo to CD on its own?
SPEAKER_03:And then I would argue, I mean, you'd have to look up the album, but like, was it the first song or did it select a specific track? Oh, that'd be fun to look that up. I actually remember going to school and telling my friends about this thing that happened because it was crazy.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my God. It's just so shocking. And why I say that too is what we mentioned earlier. The minute he moved out and we filed for divorce, all of it stopped. It all stopped. And I felt like saying to my grandfather's spirit, well, I remember thinking, thank you for protecting me. I know that was you. And now you must not feel that I need the protection because I'm no longer in this situation. But how do those things just stop?
SPEAKER_03:I feel like that one was pretty clear. I think... You know, for a lot of other things you don't know or there might be some ambiguity, I feel like in this one it was very clear. And he responded to, like, Grampy coming over and other things. It just felt like it was very targeted.
SPEAKER_01:Very targeted. Very specific. In a way that
SPEAKER_03:I've never seen again. No.
SPEAKER_01:And isn't it interesting to think, so just for anybody who's listening, this was before, again, way before this. the Spokane house when anybody ever told me I was a medium before any of that. So at this point in my life, when that was happening, when that was going on, I was still in the mindset of I'm just weird and different. This is normal stuff for me. I'm okay with spirit. I'm okay with death. I had been there when my grandfather died. I'd been there when my grandmother died. So I just thought I was this weirdo. Who was okay with death and dying and that I wasn't freaked out that my grandfather was visiting me. This was kind of normal to me. So strangely, before I ever even got further in this information, that I had something else going on in my life.
SPEAKER_03:I think, if I remember correctly, immediately though, I don't know if you made the connection to your grandfather. Because I remember talking at the time, oh... All of these spooky things have happened, including the bedroom. And I feel like at that time, it was just like all this house. But then I think looking at it later, there's obviously a difference between the events going on with the lights and the music and the room.
SPEAKER_01:The room was 100% separate. Yeah, the room. And maybe grandpa was there for some of that, too. My grandpa. I don't know. But that's a great point. The bedroom, completely isolated, so different, don't want to even think about it. But the other stuff with my grandpa doing these things, I think it was him letting me know he was there supporting me in this terrible
SPEAKER_03:marriage. You know, I think it's interesting because we're going to be discussing this way that some of our perceptions have changed. And I feel like a thing that I've... Maybe I feel like I believe now is... is especially after what we go through in Spokane, I don't believe maybe in portals or something, or the way that they talk about that, but I feel like a location can be... Maybe it's not that there's specifically a spirit, but a location itself can be off, or there can be something bad.
SPEAKER_01:Lloyd Auerbach and I talked about that when I interviewed him about some... Oh my God, why did the word just... Geo-something just left my brain. But how there can be some electromagnetic fuzz, for lack of a better word, something in an area that can create all kinds of weird things. So you brought up location.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What do you think... Are you thinking about still that Temecula house? The bedroom? Or where were you going with that?
SPEAKER_03:Well, because the bedroom to me is really interesting. Because if... You know... Sometimes I think we lack the vocabulary for talking about spiritual things. Again, for even a lack of a better word for that. I don't think English has a lot of variations. So sometimes it can be difficult to describe what you're saying. But I feel that if we're saying that the specific point of land is cursed, for lack of a better word, or has some dark feeling to it. It's weird to me. that I would think that that would be like the ground itself or a specific area. But this room is on the second floor. It's isolated like a 3D space in the air in a way. Like if you take away the house, right? There was something about crossing the threshold from the hall into that room, crossing the store, this instant change. And later in Spokane, I really want to discuss this region outside of the house that had a similar feeling to me. And I guess... Maybe I'm not going somewhere specific with it, but just this idea of that even in a man-made structure, separated from the earth itself, there could just be a space that's off. A pocket. That I think has a negative energy. And I don't like to often ascribe things to be bad or evil or negative. I try to just look at things kind of neutrally. But I do think that that room was one place where I felt it felt negative. It felt oppressive. Very clearly.
SPEAKER_01:So do you... I like the theory of this pocket in space. It's interesting. I hadn't thought of that before. In this particular case, though, what about the people who maybe lived there before us? Maybe they had fought a lot. Maybe there was some abuse. Maybe there was something like that. And it just was hidden in that room. That's usually what people chalk it up to is residual abuse. energy from a bad situation repeating and repeating and repeating so for those listeners out there that might be like oh maybe it was residual energy from you know a bad marriage or somebody's baby passed away or something horrible you know but i don't know because you're right i don't like the word evil and i've said that in my podcast before but that room
SPEAKER_03:that room felt
SPEAKER_01:awful if
SPEAKER_03:there Every moment felt unsafe.
SPEAKER_01:It did. It felt like a, like, okay, not to be dramatic, but to be dramatic. It literally felt like somebody could have absolutely been murdered in that bathroom.
SPEAKER_03:I personally feel like every moment in there, I felt like someone was going to come murder me. And maybe that sounds silly or from my perspective as a kid, but I'm genuinely saying I have never felt that way anywhere else. Me neither. It felt like someone would spontaneously materialize and that would be the end of me.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my God. That's so
SPEAKER_03:scary. And It was maybe okay. I could see that this particular thing it evoked within me was like a sense of like being chased or like this idea of like- You were in a hurry. I'm in a hurry. And if I don't leave fast enough- I'm in danger. I'm in danger. And maybe that is this residual experience. But I also, I bring this up because when we get to the other area, I feel like there's a difference between human actions, maybe creating residual energy and maybe a place itself It's something beyond action.
SPEAKER_01:It's good to bring up both. And so I'm laying
SPEAKER_03:the groundwork here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And it's a different vibe and other people may have the same experiences. So after Temecula House, we did a lot of moving and I don't think that there were a lot of opportunities because we... We moved down with your grandma and grandpa for a little while. We had our first house here in Arizona. Then we moved to Idaho. So we had two houses in Idaho. And I don't think there were any occurrences.
SPEAKER_03:No. One thing I want to maybe back up a little and say is at least I feel like in Tucson, Arizona, I feel like a lot of the homes and things, it doesn't feel like as... active it doesn't in a supernatural sense as I've maybe felt in somewhere like Idaho or Washington
SPEAKER_01:that is an interesting point because I feel the same way there's a lot of activity that we felt up there whether we were going to like say estate sales and into people's homes we also went into a lot of homes because we were in a lot of play groups because your sisters were babies we went into a lot of homes up there and it was a very very different vibe than anything in my childhood in Southern California And our tomacular homes, that's a great point.
SPEAKER_03:And, you know, you could say, oh, maybe it's because it's a little darker and rainier and cold. But I think there's something to it. Even Sarah said... Sarah's my wife, by the way. She said to me the other day, she's like, I feel like there's something about the Pacific Northwest being off. Well, there's more serial killers. A lot of crime. It actually came up because we were talking. She saw the thing about a serial killer in Washington that was the most prolific in the U.S. we'd never heard of. And I brought up the serial killer in Spokane that we had heard about. And we had known people who had been involved in that case.
SPEAKER_01:And let's just add for our listeners that Sarah is a non-believer. big time about a lot of this stuff. I feel sad sometimes that she's, her mother-in-law is a crazy psychic medium. Cause she can usually come up with an explanation or she just kind of rationalizes these things away.
SPEAKER_03:So I think to clarify, because I might come up with things that I've talked to Sarah about later and on our different perspectives, but I think Sarah is someone who who believes, and that's why she chooses to rationalize it, because she's more fearful.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, she's one of the fearful types. For her,
SPEAKER_03:she needs to tell herself that it has to be this, because it would be difficult
SPEAKER_01:for it to be the real thing. But
SPEAKER_03:she certainly believes that it's all real. Thank you for the clarification. Which I do think is a different perspective than your dismissive kind of person.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely, absolutely. Great point. Thank you for clarifying that. Okay, so... different energy in the Pacific Northwest than, say, the Southern California, Arizona, where we are now.
SPEAKER_03:I sometimes think that while, you know, maybe you can talk about the days of the Wild West or, you know, California is a really old state, but in a way they're also newer than compared to, say, the East Coast.
SPEAKER_02:Sure.
SPEAKER_03:Which has a lot more history. I think We're people who have grown up in the Western United States. And I think that really colors our personality and the way we view things. It's its own specific culture. And I think there's something about being in the Southwest that's very... maybe focused on the now and the new, where I think the Pacific Northwest also feels like it has this older kind of- It does feel older. And the way the communities work. And more native. People have lived there a long time for many generations. They're very established. It's more difficult to break into as an outsider.
SPEAKER_01:I was just going to say, let's do a funny note that we were told literally multiple times by people oh, we're original owners. Oh, we don't need friends. We have friends. They're not very welcoming to new people. And while we did make friends, a lot of people said, no, we're friends with people from kindergarten and that's just the way it stays.
SPEAKER_03:And I thought that was really interesting. I mean, we grew up near San Diego. It's a melting pot if there ever was one. It's you know, incredibly diverse, there's lots of people, and no one's really feeling that they have a claim more
SPEAKER_01:than anyone else. Everyone's a transplant, just like here in Tucson.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and Tucson does have that vibe. And to me, sometimes I think that's the collective mindset feels like new or indifferent. I think when you're in Arizona, there's certainly locations that have an old history. You can go to a mining town, you can go to something that's connected history, but the cities themselves are very recent in a way. Like if you go to like the center of Tucson, I'm sure it was established in the 1880s.
SPEAKER_01:Sure, but Marana, where we live, was 1977, the year I was born.
SPEAKER_03:Or was it 97,
SPEAKER_01:the year you were born?
SPEAKER_03:I think Marana's newer. I was looking at Oro Valley on their website yesterday, which is a region where I live here, just down the road, but it's a separate town. And they said that when they first incorporated in the 70s, that they only had like 150 residents or something. It was such a small circle. And only in the last couple years has it grown to be like 20,000 or
SPEAKER_01:something. Okay, well here we're gonna go on a tangent and then we should get over to Spokane. Temecula.
SPEAKER_03:Temecula was a...
SPEAKER_01:When I was a child, Temecula was nothing. There was one dirt road. No one lived there. It became a boom in like 1997. Like when you were born, that's when things started to happen out there. My aunt and uncle lived in one of the very first housing tracts that was built right off of the main drag in Temecula. There was nothing there. So interesting that we're talking about these little tiny... I
SPEAKER_03:think just... Two anecdotes on that that I think are fun is I've met people from other states who know of Temecula, California. And I was surprised because in my mind, it's not like a big city like San Diego. It's kind of far away inland. And they're like, I just hear about it as this fancy city.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because of the wine country. The wine
SPEAKER_03:country, this metropolis out there, this luxury
SPEAKER_01:city.
SPEAKER_03:And in my mind, I'm like, oh, it's just Temecula. It's just a place. It is beautiful. It's a beautiful place. But we didn't experience it like that. Someone else's outside perspective. Also, when I was at that church event with Sarah the other day, we met an older man and a woman who both had lived in San Diego in the past.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:But they both lived there in the 60s, but haven't really been back since. And the guy even said he left in like 68. He's like, oh, when I lived there, Escondido was just a gas station.
SPEAKER_01:Totally. Yeah, when my dad was born, that's how it was.
SPEAKER_03:And that's incredible to me compared to how it is, but... But that's that newness I'm talking about, where I will say in places like Spokane, many of the houses are over 100 years old.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and they all have basements. Sorry, that's just a side note. They have basements.
SPEAKER_03:I think I just want to make it clear that a lot of the construction, a lot of the place in the city are at least 100 years old. Where we're talking about, you know, these places that we've lived in California and Tucson are within the last few decades, within one lifetime. True. And that's the difference.
SPEAKER_01:The South Hill in Spokane is
SPEAKER_03:even older.
SPEAKER_01:Remember, we'd go visit Emily in her house and they look modern and new, but they're not.
SPEAKER_03:Do you remember the South Hill was where that serial killer operated?
SPEAKER_01:He
SPEAKER_03:killed women off of Sprague and then buried them in his backyard in the South Hill.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, isn't that nice? Yeah. So a little food for thought there that if you want to do some research on serial killers, they're very, very prolific in the Pacific Northwest where we lived for a while. And And OK, so let's move on to the
SPEAKER_03:house in Spokane.
SPEAKER_01:Do some because they've heard me talk about this house a lot. I would like you to do some lead up as, again, a teenager perspective. How old were you? And talk about the location, your friends, all of that stuff, because I think it really matters. And it paints a picture different than my picture.
SPEAKER_03:So I think for just a bit of background, we had lived in Post Falls, Idaho, and it was 30 minutes away across the border. And I had. was in my sophomore year of high school. I still hadn't finished. There was still a little bit of school left when we decided to move to Spokane. And I know I was really disappointed at the time, because I had made many friends in Idaho. I was on the cross-country team. I did a lot of activities in school, and so I was a bit disappointed. But to be honest, when I saw the house in Spokane while I was bummed, it was gorgeous. I don't think I've lived in a house since that objectively I think was as incredible as this house. It was located up on this hill, so far up that it overlooked the whole city if you walked down the street a little and looked between the other houses. I remember just one scene, like I could look out my bedroom window in the winter and it didn't have street lights, it had street lamps like a movie. And there's just this gentle blanket of snow falling on the road and these street lamps. It was beautiful. And then I think my favorite thing, and not that this is not uncommon there but i like the split level houses so there's like a basement there's a living room but then the kitchen's on another level with another living room and houses and houses bedrooms were upstairs and in a way i felt like it felt cozy and there was a lot of different space to do different things and spend your time differently which was nice in the winter months
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_03:so
SPEAKER_01:beautiful yard beautiful deck
SPEAKER_03:oh the yard and you did have a deck on the back where you barbecue um Well, I had to mow the huge parts to some extent. That was difficult. And a decorative cherry tree out front. Yeah. It was really nice. So I remember even having friends come over in high school and they said, we looked up your house. It's like a million dollar house. And we were just renting. And it wasn't like the price even reflected that.
SPEAKER_01:You had so much fun in that. I loved that all your high school friends would come over. You'd have your game night. I loved buying snacks for you guys. And your sisters would pop their heads into your game nights. And it just really... that side of it was so fun and family oriented because as a mom, that is what I had always wanted. I wanted the house where all the kids wanted to come.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, where my kids would be safe and their friends would be having fun at our house.
SPEAKER_03:And I think we really got to have that. And I think that's like we were saying with the Temecula house, there, there are good times and there are many good memories and these things are kind of in a way, an independent because you are living a life there.
SPEAKER_01:I will say the Spokane house, 100% different from the Temecula house in that I didn't feel in danger in the Temecula house except that bedroom. In Spokane, once that stuff started happening and dad left...
SPEAKER_03:It did.
SPEAKER_01:It was all bad. All bad. But yeah, leading up to it matters.
SPEAKER_03:I think what I want to say too, though, and things are only... clear in retrospect. Because what I feel is that when the stuff started happening, a lot of other things became clear. A lot of things that had been written off or felt like, okay, that was strange, whatever. And so I think that that lended itself to, ooh, maybe I feel like this is spooky or I'm having this feeling, but I'm going to write it off into my life. It's only when it came to a head that then it all becomes clear. And looking back, you can kind of say, oh, well, the whole time it was like
SPEAKER_01:this. It was trying to get our attention this whole time.
SPEAKER_03:But we weren't aware at the time. And so that's kind of how we could continue on as we did. So it's hard because I think that when we talk about this story, we have different specific events that stick out to us. And you've talked about this. But there are some incidents that I had. And so because you've covered some of
SPEAKER_01:it,
SPEAKER_03:One thing I wanted to start with was that dream I had. Oh, I
SPEAKER_01:was thinking about that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:The most visceral experience I've ever had in a dream.
SPEAKER_01:So give the layout of where you slept, though. I will. Because it was very different. But I think that's a great example.
SPEAKER_03:So this was a personal experience of mine. And I also think that sometimes when telling the story, I leave it out because a dream feels very subjective.
SPEAKER_01:But a lot of people who believe in this stuff and who are listening, a lot of people know the power of dreams. Sure, some dreams are random and our brain is just working things out. Other times, our dreams are trying to communicate with us. So I think it matters in this
SPEAKER_03:case. So I'm sharing it here. Perfect. That's the big point. So anyway, I had a bedroom in the basement of the house. To some extent, that was fun because there was also a dancer's living room where I had friends over and
SPEAKER_01:I had a fun time. And its own separate entrance, so it wasn't like a... a dungeon. This was an actual living space.
SPEAKER_03:So from the main living room upstairs, you'd walk down the stairs. To your right was just an opening. to a living room. And that living room had a window on the back wall. And then it also had a door that led out to the backyard because the house was built on a hill. So the back of the house was exposed, but the front side was underground.
SPEAKER_01:And the door also had a window. So it was nice and bright. It was an actual living area that could have been rented out as a separate living area with a bedroom.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And a creepy furnace room.
SPEAKER_03:So that's what you get to. When you're at the bottom of the stairs, you could turn right and you could look into the living room. And left of you was a door. And this was the furnace room, which was just kind of an unfinished storage area. It just looked very spooky. It felt spooky. To some extent, I'm just like, it would look spooky to anyone. Sure. And we kept some junk in there and I just didn't open it.
SPEAKER_01:Right. We just don't go there.
SPEAKER_03:I feel... And then... If you went straight ahead of the stairs, so the same direction was my bedroom, and my bedroom was really nice. And while it was in the basement, there was a window on the back that was at ground level. So if I looked out the window, I would see our yard at the base. It was kind of behind a bush and under a tree, and I could look out on the street. But I often kept the window covered. So yeah, so... with that layout in mind one night i had fallen asleep and i had this dream and in my dream i was upstairs in the living room and we were having a party and my grandparents were there and family friends were there and i remember it feeling like wonderful upstairs because we experienced like long winters in this house and they were sometimes difficult in this The sliding glass doors were open and a breeze was wafting through the house. We actually had curtains on the windows. And in my dream, they were clearly blowing in this breeze. And there were people standing around in small groups with drinks, talking, having a great time. Well, I felt this like imperative in my dream. I thought I need to go write a letter, which is really weird.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, my God. I don't remember this. Because I'm here
SPEAKER_03:again. to be honest I mean like with my age I'm rarely writing letters and but I thought I have to write a letter and so I need to get an envelope very strange development well downstairs in that living room we had a kind of filing cabinet we did and it just stored random pieces of paper junk things that we had saved and I knew in my head there were envelopes down there so I kind of said Oh, I'll just be one second to everyone upstairs. And I walked down and it's like the vibe changed. I wasn't, it's like the party wasn't there anymore. All of a sudden it's dark in the stairs down. It just, it grows incredibly silent because also upstairs is a party. There's people talking. I mean like dead silent. I walked down and as I get to the final step, I just turn my head to turn into this living room and I see the door. The door that went out to the backyard was ajar just a little bit, like maybe open an inch. But the thing was, there's a window in the top of the door. And through that window, I saw two bright, glowing yellow eyes. Like, it felt like right after the sun sets when it's still a little light outside, but like it's dark near the ground. It was like that time of day. And it had also been bright and sunny upstairs. So it's like time had almost passed. And I see these eyes and I freeze. And as my brain kind of adjusts to the lower light, I see it's this giant wolf outside. I don't like... I don't know. Some people are kind of like into wolves or dogs. I've never cared about that my whole life. I've never thought about any of these things.
SPEAKER_01:Weirdly, wolves are a thing in the Pacific Northwest. They are. Okay, so we should not forget
SPEAKER_03:that.
UNKNOWN:But I...
SPEAKER_03:I guess there can be some things that are in your conscious awareness more. Yeah. And that shouldn't be for you. It was weird for me. I'll say it's something I've never thought about in my life. And this giant wolf is there. And he's fixing me with this stare. And I've been around animals my whole life. We've had cats and dogs and things. Animals will sometimes get a look at you where it feels like whoever moves first, they're going to move. Like they're going to attack you. I've had I've seen this before. Even my house cat now will sometimes just get kind of a wild look in his eyes and do this thing. And that's like a familiar thing. And that's how I felt. He was poised and like ready to move. And it felt I froze. I had my arms up in the air. They were above, you know, by my chest and I just didn't move. And I knew, I'm like, the second I move, he's gonna launch forward. I
SPEAKER_01:just had this feeling. And the door was ajar in your dream.
SPEAKER_03:And the door was ajar. Like, he's gonna come for me. And I stopped. And you know, it's like, oh, time slows down. I think to myself, do I run up the stairs? Or like, what do I do? Do I run into the room? And I just made a decision. I'm just gonna have to run up the stairs. There's nothing I can do. And I took a breath. and I started to turn to my right. I moved my left arm to the right because I was turning my upper body to turn around and go up the stairs. And in an instant, the wolf burst through the door and there was a couch along the wall, jumps on the couch and sinks its teeth into my left forearm. Because I had brought it up to turn and I felt the bone crunch.
SPEAKER_01:And this pain.
SPEAKER_03:And I woke up screaming. Suddenly I was sitting in my bed in pitch black, like sitting straight up, screaming and covered in sweat.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my God.
SPEAKER_03:Oh
SPEAKER_01:my God. Obviously that stuck with you for all these years.
SPEAKER_03:It was so, so real. And it was the moment by moment thoughts are still in my head. I know what I thought every second of this encounter.
SPEAKER_01:I would like to do some research on wolves because remember they were reintroduced or introduced illegally. Yeah. up in the Pacific Northwest, and then people were allowed to kill certain amounts of them or weren't. You
SPEAKER_03:got like$100 a wolf you killed. There were billboards, at least in Idaho. And I don't remember the specific rules, the
SPEAKER_01:laws in history. I just know there was something about the wolves. But some people would
SPEAKER_03:hunt them because you could get paid per wolf killed to thin the amount of wolves there.
SPEAKER_01:So I would like to know, like the historical significance and also spiritual significance of wolves as spirit animals or anything else to do with wolves, because maybe there was some communication, some letting you know there was danger. You know, I'd just really like to know the significance of wolves coming to you in a dream. So real.
SPEAKER_03:So real.
SPEAKER_01:So real.
SPEAKER_03:I think in some way, this thread that I've been talking with this, like, connection to a place, I sometimes wonder if this spirit, or whatever it is, was connected to the land. Not the house. There's a reason I feel like the wolf came from outside, inside.
SPEAKER_01:Which is a little
SPEAKER_03:bit different than some of our other experiences, which were very location-based in the house.
SPEAKER_01:Things
SPEAKER_03:happened kind of related to locations where events occurred, and we can get to that. And so, I felt that this was different. To me, it struck me as I don't, again, we kind of lack the vocabulary. I felt like this place had more supernatural phenomena than other places. It was kind of a place where more things were able to manifest. And because of that, I believe I had this experience. And I think in some way, it was separate but somewhat related to what was going on in the house. But it didn't feel like a manifestation of the same things that were occurring.
SPEAKER_01:Or vice versa. What if Jan... did these murders and hurt himself, and the fights happened because of the location. That's my theory. Maybe it drove him to do things he wouldn't have normally done. And I'm going to lead into what I know where you're going. So while this neighborhood was one of the premier fancy neighborhoods in Spokane, people know this neighborhood, Northwood. I don't even remember. Is that what it was called?
SPEAKER_03:There were these big mansions up on the hill above us, even bigger than the house we were in.
SPEAKER_01:And it's funny because comparison, it's certainly not a mansion. It's just a beautiful, nice house up on this mountaintop. But I'm known for everywhere we live, I drive back roads. You know, as a kid, everywhere we would move, the first thing I would do is start exploring back roads. I like to know how the grids connect, how roads connect, and different ways to get different places. I don't just stick with the main road. And so the main road would have been Argonne and the freeway. But I discovered the back road leading out of our neighborhood, and I found all the back roads to get to your high school once you moved over to Gonzaga and you were in high school downtown Spokane.
UNKNOWN:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:And so I would drive this back road frequently with your baby sisters. And there was that really dippy area that dipped down that would freeze in the winter. And we had to be really careful or you couldn't get back out where all that creepy stuff happened. But then you'd end up through really kind of a crappy part of town.
SPEAKER_03:It's the part they made fun of. Yes. People in Spokane make fun of this neighborhood for being kind of the worst neighborhood
SPEAKER_01:in town. Right. But we would drive through here. And I remember when I talk about... What happened with me getting in touch with Brittany, the medium about Jan and everything that happened in the house, I was literally driving that back road to come pick you up from high school. And I pulled over at that Panda Express right outside of that crappiest part of town when I heard my phone ding and got the message from her. So this area around the house, the the park area. was strange the roads were strange do you remember that abandoned house off to the side um right at the top of the mountain that we would look at all the time it was very spooky and it wasn't abandoned for a while we watched people moving out and then the weird door we have pictures of the weird door on the side of the mountain
SPEAKER_03:there were so many strange things and so yeah it was i think it was columbia oh is that the name of the road okay and You would, we were in this community that was on the hill. On the side of the hill and kind of down in the base was another housing community. And that's part of the story because that's where the other house
SPEAKER_01:where Jan's
SPEAKER_03:girlfriend lived.
SPEAKER_01:Where she moved out and went
SPEAKER_03:to. So this road, Columbia, ran westward out of this neighborhood. And the first thing you would see was the housing development that was around us would stop. And then there was this kind of creepy... I'm gonna say shack. It's maybe unfair, but like somebody lived there, but it was a very rundown, very scary house. And then the road went through an area of forest. It was outside of, it was in the middle of the city, but there was this area that wasn't developed and there's kind of like an electrical station in there. So it just kind of felt like you were outside of town for a little while. When you got to the end of the road, you went down a small hill And this is another thing, I don't know what it was, but there was this strange door. This massive iron door built into the side of the hill. I
SPEAKER_01:think I have a picture of Grandma and Ruby looking at it. We do have a picture. Somewhere.
SPEAKER_03:And, you know, I don't know the significance of the door, but definitely it's kind of a spooky thing. And then there's this neighborhood. But I think in describing the things I saw in this area, the first major part was all around the neighborhood there are these flocks of magpies.
SPEAKER_01:Magpies! Oh my god. And
SPEAKER_03:I have... Never really been conscious of them before. But when I, I want to stress, I think there were hundreds.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah, all the time.
SPEAKER_03:This wasn't like, you know, you see one wild bird here or something. I mean, just massive flux. You could wake up and the entire like lawn or an area could just be covered in these birds and they're quite large. But the reason is really spooky.
SPEAKER_01:Which I didn't know until we looked it up.
SPEAKER_03:Well, first thing was we, so we go down this road almost every day. And what's strange is that every day something on the road would change. The first example that I think is a little less spooky, but setting the stage. For example, one day there's a car there. You drive back and forth. Well, the next day you go. Like an abandoned car. Like an abandoned car, at least parked on the side of the road. A few days later, you get up and drive and the tires are gone.
SPEAKER_02:The
SPEAKER_03:next day you go, the doors are gone. Then the windows are smashed.
SPEAKER_02:Then there's pieces.
SPEAKER_03:Then there's just debris. And then nothing. And then one day there was a big TV put out there. And slowly it degrades day by day. And you say, oh, it's vandalism or something. But the strange thing was there were always animal carcasses on this road. Big ones. I'm very large, like deer or elk. And it's not uncommon up here to maybe hit those animals with your car. So I think very initially you could go, maybe this was an accident, but no. Imagine this animal. You see this body lying on the side of the road, which could be an accident, okay? But then the next day, I'll say, different parts of its body were strewn about different
SPEAKER_01:areas. The animals were dragging it about.
SPEAKER_03:There would be a head here. You'd see a rib cage over there. You'd see something else. And the thousands of magpies. And the magpies would just be feasting on everything. It really felt like piles.
SPEAKER_01:Which I didn't know magpies were carnivorous. Until then.
SPEAKER_03:But this show wasn't just once. This was years. And sometimes multiple dead animals in this spot. And while you could say. All these animals just ended up here. We don't know how. And they're being strewn about by animals. I felt like sometimes. I don't know if it was animals. They were torn apart
SPEAKER_02:and moved around.
SPEAKER_03:There were like. Pieces of bone and flesh moved around in very strange ways and every day completely different configurations. It was graphic sometimes. It was. And the sheer over time quantity of animals that died, large animals, and then effectively mutilated corpses along this road. To me, that was terrifying. I thought that was so strange. And the fact was, I think the number of magpies in the neighborhood had grown to an alarming
SPEAKER_01:amount. And you would hear them. And it would be loud. It was a scary sound in the silence. And I think it's because
SPEAKER_03:there was so much food.
SPEAKER_01:So much to eat.
SPEAKER_03:There was no reason I think the population should have gotten that big. But that also, to me, confirms just how unusual and strange all of these animal deaths and mutilations were. That's so weird. It
SPEAKER_01:just compounded. It added to the creepiness of everything around there.
SPEAKER_03:I think to this day, what I really feel is that that is the other area. You could say that was the activity of someone or people. To me, that stretch of road felt absolutely terrible. Well, I don't believe in
SPEAKER_01:portals and words like you said. That is an interesting place. It was a negative place.
SPEAKER_03:It was a place that felt They said there were more supernatural things that happened. There were more disturbing things that happened. In this neighborhood, there was just something that made it very different from what I would say a normal place would be. And it was like that bedroom.
SPEAKER_01:It was really scary one day when I was on my way to get you. And I think I was running a little late. And I don't remember why it was so urgent that I changed your sister's diaper. But something happened in the car where it was like one of those where I've got to help her right now.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I had to pull over and get out of the car, unbuckle her, take her to the back of the car, put the trunk down, change her diaper in the back of the SUV. And I felt like I was being watched and I was on a time clock the whole time. I have never changed a diaper so fast in my life and put a baby back in a car seat. I was so exposed feeling that. standing there on the side of the road. No cars drive by. It's very isolated, yet it's a well-traveled road. It was awful. And I remember that day changing her diaper and no cell service. I couldn't have called if I needed anything. It was horrible.
SPEAKER_03:It felt like a location cut off from time. Cut off from the city. Cut off from everything. And within this space, things were just not right. But I feel that either that area extended to the neighborhood where our house was built, or that whatever was in this neighborhood leaked on... Had tendrils. Yeah, had extended itself
SPEAKER_01:further. I'm picturing Stranger Things right now. It
SPEAKER_03:was a feeling like that. And one thing I told Sarah the other day when I was telling her this part of the story, I didn't realize I hadn't, was that when I went to visit Alex at his lake house a few years ago, and... Wyatt and Alex, these are two of my friends from high school. They picked me up at the airport and we took a drive by the house. They wanted to just look at
SPEAKER_01:it. They wanted to go to our old house?
SPEAKER_03:They just wanted to look at it after the story and everything.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_03:All these years later.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So all we did was pull up to the road. Someone was obviously
SPEAKER_01:living there. Did you take the back
SPEAKER_03:road? And we turned around and then we did. But I had the most sickening feeling because when we took the back road, they had built a whole new housing development where that shack was at the edge of the thing it had extended into this area. And I just had this sense of dread because I'm like, it sounds crazy, but it just felt like this tainted land. and the fact that new families would be moving into these homes. There's a famous Lovecraft story called The Color Out of Space. And in this story, this strange meteorite falls on a farm. And this is in like the 1920s. These professors drive out from the university to come investigate it. They can't identify the material. They can't identify anything. And it like just kind of every day, it just kind of burns itself out until it's gone, right? But the farmer's like farm is like tainted. This thing has seeped into the ground. The crops start dying. His cows start dying.
SPEAKER_02:His
SPEAKER_03:family members start going insane. And it seeps into the well on his house. And his family is drinking the water. His family members are going crazy and changing so much that his son throws himself in the well. He has to lock his wife and his other son up in rooms in the attic because they've gone completely mad. And these other people are watching his farm slowly. And then the big reveal at the end of this book is that the man telling you the story is a surveyor. They're gonna build a dam and flood this valley to provide drinking water for the city. And he's there interviewing people in the future. And he's met a man who was best friends with the guy who's farm and he's listening to the story. And he's like, I guess I'll be never drinking the city water.
SPEAKER_02:And I got goosebumps right now.
SPEAKER_03:But this is a favorite story of mine, but I feel like it really reflects what I felt. This idea that they're going to, you know, things are always expanding, always building, and they're going to move on to this location that has this something that's
SPEAKER_01:not right.
SPEAKER_03:And people are going to be living there in their experiences. And
SPEAKER_01:anyway. Oh, I guess I didn't realize you guys drove back there. I look at it sometimes online, you know, like Google pictures. It's just a house. It's literally just a house, but it was a life changing experience for us. So we've, we've done a lot of background. I think we should. And you know what you made me, I got to make a note because I'm going to make a little note here for one of our listeners, Gloria. I want to make sure that I get back to this. We need to do another episode where we talk about what happened with the undercover FBI and you guys staying in that cabin. So we need to make a side note of that. We got to do that
SPEAKER_02:story.
SPEAKER_01:So that's for the Gloria. I'm going to make a note and I'm going to come back to that. But so if you have not listened to one of my very first episodes about trauma and awakening spiritual gifts, you have to go back and listen to it because everything that Sam and I are talking about today starts there with this house we lived in in Spokane. And I don't want to give away too much details, but you're going to get it all there. Like this will be all spoilers. So you should listen to that one. And the follow up to that one is when I interview a medium named Brittany, who came in and came into that house at that time and helped me with some of the stuff going on there. What we've and I interviewed her seven years after it happened. And it was great to get her perspective. But this is the first time we're going to get Sam's perspective. But go back and listen to those. If you haven't, we'll be here when you get back.
SPEAKER_03:All right. This is something off the record. Yeah. We took a little break. I don't know if it's something you'd ever want to speak about on your podcast. Okay. But I thought it's strange when we talk about the master bedroom that the whole thing with Dan ended in violence. And this kind of the incident with Jan at this house. in this kind of place and a kind of like a violent man and someone, it kind of bringing- Snapping. Someone snapping and doing something just insane. And again, it's like, yeah, I'm like, on one hand, I'm like, what Dan did is inexcusable. So I never want to like attribute, but I guess I'm saying it feels weird. It almost feels like The Shining. Yes. In some way.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. But,
SPEAKER_03:like, this person maybe already had the potential. Right. And this pushed them. But it's also, this is in this weird place and all these things. And then they snap and become violent. Murderous, even. Like Jan was. And, I mean, Dan certainly made me feel that way that
SPEAKER_02:night. Oh,
SPEAKER_03:my God. I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to die. When you talk about humans being scarier, that was the scariest night of my life.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you can... You can do a little side note of that. The only bad thing that might come of that is somebody like Lloyd Auerbach would say maybe I'm attracting it. But I'm not now.
SPEAKER_03:But also, I'm like, the chance thing was before you were there.
SPEAKER_01:That's true. Oh, that's true. But I was attracted to the house. But it led to my gifts. Yeah, but that's a good point.
SPEAKER_03:I also say that living in the house is some of the worst time with your and Dad's marriage.
SPEAKER_01:God, and I say that publicly. Everybody knows that.
SPEAKER_03:And so... Just a train of thought I've had.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well you can bring it up. Okay, let me crunch.
SPEAKER_03:Need some water for sure.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:But I think we should say everything about the story in the house and then I'll say this kind of like my thesis is like there's this place and it can be connected to things that happened.
SPEAKER_01:So hopefully you've gone back and listened to the other episodes of so you know what is going on in this house. But in a nutshell, to help Sam get started with his perception, basically we were moving from Idaho to Spokane and we were renting and instantly I wanted this house that we found on Craigslist. And so we rented it, we moved in, everything started going to crap in our lives, marriage was terrible, kids weren't sleeping, like I'm really nutshell-ing it here because you've probably already heard it twice. come to find out this is when I became aware of my mediumship through another medium who came over. And what we discovered is that the man who owned the house was living there with his girlfriend and her twin boys. And the story I heard from the principal of the school where my daughter was going is that one of the twin boys was autistic. And her words were that it was a bone of contention in the relationship. So the relationship got violent. The woman and her boys moved out and moved down the road. And when Sam was talking about this neighborhood that you had to go through that was related, she went and lived just down the road with her boys. Well, one day the owner, Jan, the owner, Jan went and, um, well, he snapped and he went and to her condo and he killed her. And apparently he wanted to kill the autistic boy, but he killed the other boy instead, which horribly left the autistic boy with no brother and no mother. But then he came home to our house and killed himself. So that's the nutshell. If you want all the details, please do listen to the other ones. But that's what's basically we're talking about here. And I've given my perception a lot of times and Sam has never been able to on record, give his perception. And I really want him to touch on also that we have friends in the community. He went to a Catholic high school. His friends were friends with a priest in town that was a pretty well-known priest. He's going to talk about this. And apparently other people knew about our house. And when I called asking for help, nobody would help us. So Sam's got some perspective on this. So start asking. wherever you want. I don't know if you want to start the night we found out when I came to pick you up from school or if you want to start with other creepy details. You take it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think ultimately I had your experience downstairs on the couch that you told me about. Oh, with the baby. With the baby. And there had been weird things in the house. There had been my dream. There had been that road.
SPEAKER_01:The relationship. Me and dad were fighting constantly. And that
SPEAKER_03:was a big part.
SPEAKER_01:Ruby not sleeping.
SPEAKER_03:Everything was just becoming very difficult. And I think and there were a lot of strange things going on. But again, we hadn't attributed them together. But then there's this, the day that's talked about in the other podcast where the neighbor kind of revealed that there was something going on and you got more information. And I think that while we've gone over all of that, the interesting part was that we felt like we needed to do something because ultimately I had to finish high school and I only had a little bit of time left and then we were going to move. But we had to find a way to survive. So one thing, one solution was we asked the high school if they could do anything or if I could take my finals early.
SPEAKER_01:Can I interrupt you real quick?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I just want to go back in time a little bit to, do you, and don't forget where you were. Yeah. Do you remember the night, okay, so we found out one afternoon, one evening. I made you all sleep in my room. Yeah. I talk about that. And then that's, The next morning when I said to you, you're not going to school, you've got to watch your sisters. I've got to go talk to the principal at the school because something spiritually had told me go talk to the principal. How do you remember feeling that night when I first told you? I remember showing you my phone because we were in the car with the babies. The neighbor was driving us and I didn't want to say, oh my God, we're living in a murder house. So I think I handed you my phone where I had texted it to dad and let you read it. Do you remember that?
SPEAKER_03:So, yeah. And to be honest, when I read that, I was really confused. Okay. I mean, because that day, you always picked me up from high school. I didn't drive. Well, I stood outside for what felt like ever. Everyone had gone home. Yeah, I was late. And I couldn't get a hold of you. So I was... Your phone was dead. My phone was dead. I was just, I was really confused. And to me, it was a regular day.
SPEAKER_01:And then I come pulling up in a van that's not ours with a lady. You come pulling up in this strange thing and
SPEAKER_03:you call me over and I get in the car and then you show me a message and it didn't make any sense to me. Like at this point, I was, you know, confused.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:I don't remember like exactly the following minutes.
SPEAKER_02:Sure.
SPEAKER_03:But we eventually were like, okay, yeah, this thing happens or something's wrong, something's scary. We went to your friend's house.
SPEAKER_01:We did that night. We went to Angela's house.
SPEAKER_03:And I think we ate there and we sat there for a little while and we were deciding, should we stay with them?
SPEAKER_01:They offered us to stay downstairs. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And I think you ultimately decided that we were going to go back home. And I remember. I
SPEAKER_01:did because the babies slept better in their beds and I didn't want to disrupt them, even though I was in such a terrible state.
SPEAKER_03:So I think ultimately at this time, if I'm going to be honest, I didn't know how to feel.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, that's fair.
SPEAKER_03:On one hand, I thought it was really scary. On the other, I was just like, what are we going to do? It just kind of felt like, I don't know, I froze. Because I didn't know what the right thing to do was. And again, I'm almost done with high school. I think
SPEAKER_01:you have like six or eight weeks left.
SPEAKER_03:And I have to do these final exams. It was like, I didn't know what we were going to do. And I felt, at the time, I'm like, we can't go back. Yeah. Back to the house. I was like certain that we were going to have to figure something else out because it just seemed like too much. But yeah, ultimately we had to go back and we had to stay and start doing it. And I mean like living there
SPEAKER_01:again. And packing to move. And
SPEAKER_03:packing. And I just felt to some extent like that's what I was saying a second ago. But we were trying to find other solutions because it wasn't nice just being there
SPEAKER_02:again. It was horrible.
SPEAKER_03:And I... I think I want to just, I know it's been mentioned before, the baby monitor story because this has been, I felt, before seeing the mannequin thing lately, was the most I've ever seen in terms of activity, like obvious. So from my perspective, my mom and I were sitting downstairs and we looked at the baby monitor and saw that my sister had woken up and we were going to leave. So I walked upstairs and... grabbed her, walked downstairs. And then I'm certain, I think we just like put on our shoes and walked out the front door. Like it was very mundane. We were going to go to dinner. And so we ate and then we came back. And when we came back, I think we were like getting settled and I pick up or one of us picked up the baby monitor and the camera view was completely different.
SPEAKER_02:It was looking at the ceiling and it had been pointed at the crib.
SPEAKER_03:And I went upstairs to try to figure out what was going on. And I, and I'll swear to anyone on here, There was no way this could have been an accident. It's hard to describe verbally. You've
SPEAKER_01:drawn diagrams, yes.
SPEAKER_03:But the cord for the baby, the baby monitor was mounted high on the wall and it had a cord and everyone says, well, maybe you just bumped the cord. Well, it couldn't have been because the baby monitor could swivel in a circle. And when it was pointed downward, the cord was at the bottom. But when it was pointed at the ceiling, the cord was coming up from the top and then down. My point being that when it was facing down, if you tugged on the cord, well, it's already on the bottom of the camera. It won't turn. Someone would have had to turn it. And then now the cord's going the opposite direction. So there was no way that this could have moved by pulling the cord. It would have had to be turned manually. And it was high up on the wall, like by where I'm in. I didn't do it. And I walked in. Walked out the door, walked back in the door and it was changed.
SPEAKER_01:Do you remember we had dad called the police that night?
SPEAKER_03:So we called the police because
SPEAKER_01:dad was not living with us. He moved out. He had to go take that job in California. So it was just us, me and all of you kids. And I knew that cops always look at ladies like they're crazy. And dad, having been a cop, I was like, you need to call the police and have them come search this house. And the cops came and they searched the basement, they searched the house, and they found nothing.
SPEAKER_03:They didn't find anything. There was no sign that someone had entered the home. And they checked every area so there was nobody in there
SPEAKER_02:to
SPEAKER_03:assure us. There's no reason someone would have broken into a home and turned a baby monitor and then left. So in my mind, that was... absolutely definitive proof that something happened. I think it was a supernatural occurrence. I also go, there was the baby monitor photo.
SPEAKER_01:Which we have. Which we could post, if you remind me.
SPEAKER_03:We could post.
SPEAKER_01:We'll post that of Eden in her crib and the other baby on the floor next to her.
SPEAKER_03:So, yeah, there was something anomalous in a photo taken from that baby monitor
SPEAKER_01:and that was the boys room the twin boys that was their room yeah and that's where eden slept and i know that that baby was curled up on the floor next to her
SPEAKER_03:So in my mind, having already had that photo too, it was very clear. And so to this day, I've often talked that I think that a lot of things you see in paranormal investigations are very minimal. Maybe it's just like energy, like turning on a REM pod or something like that. And I still think those things are impressive, but I've always been a little skeptical about things moving because to me, in all my experiences, I'd only seen it once with the baby monitor. And I guess I'd always thought maybe it just takes a lot of energy or it's hard for them to do um but this is the one case that i felt was two if i was to ever tell someone who's a skeptic i would say this story is what i feel like is the absolute proof i've had a lot of experiences but there was nothing that i could there's no explanation
SPEAKER_01:no and in that case you'd have to recreate it mount that on the mall on the wall and have someone who's skeptical say show me how that happened with the way the cord is mounted on there
SPEAKER_03:and not that you convince anyone i think my point is just that when i'm speaking if someone was to ask me oh you've had all the experience but like what really makes you believe and i'm like well that
SPEAKER_02:yeah
SPEAKER_03:to me i could if i wanted write off everything else sure that to me was definitive um But I obviously don't feel that way. No. And when we put it all together, it tells a story. And I think it tells a very clear story. And I think it's important to look at the thing as a whole.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, I'm going to sidetrack here for a second, too, because you mentioned the thing with the baby. And I just thought of something else that I did talk about in the other podcast. But your opinion here. Do you remember that baby Eden? who was sleeping in the room that was the boys' room. So not the one where the monitor moved, just for our listeners. Eden would sleep all night, 12 hours. She would never cry. She just was the perfect sleeper. And then towards the end, right after dad moved out, moved to California, she started screaming in the night. And when we asked her what was wrong, she said, something's trying to eat me.
SPEAKER_03:I remember that.
SPEAKER_01:It shifted so much. She literally said, something's trying to eat me. And I thought that was a very strange and interesting thing to say, especially from somebody who had been sleeping perfectly. And then the thing with baby Willa, when I brought her home from the hospital and I was sleeping downstairs with her that you touched on, I've always said I don't believe in the word possession. But if I was ever going to imagine... what a possession might feel like. That is how I felt that night laying there with her. So if you want to, as the listeners, hear more about this and know what I'm talking about, please go back to the first episode, Trauma and Awakening, Spiritual Gifts. But the energy shifted and did feel dangerous and scary.
SPEAKER_03:Honestly, your experience down there on the couch is, to me, one of the scariest stories I've ever been
SPEAKER_01:told. It was the scariest thing I've ever lived through.
SPEAKER_03:Ever. Through everything, even... you know, this thing about the mannequin and all this, I've never felt like really like I thought anything was like that scary or like that crazy. But to me, that story is the only time I've ever doubted or just had this feeling of like, maybe there is something that could be really terrible. Yeah, maybe we should be careful. I think that's the only time I thought that because it's truly a terrifying story and it's scary for you when I heard it. So I don't have much to say on that.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, no, because you weren't there, but... God, that was awful.
SPEAKER_03:So I also want to say that the point where the man took his own life in the garage was actually right below those bedrooms.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly
SPEAKER_03:below. So where the incident with Eden feeling scared in her room and then into the baby monitor were in a way within feet of where the... I mean, just the distance between a floor, you know? Mm-hmm. And so I have no doubt that in some ways those things were influenced by an event happening so close. And definitely the location. So kind of what I'm saying, and it's hard to articulate here, but I also feel that the spirit of Jan, the man who did those things, I think is different than some of the other experiences we had. I do too. And I think there were two things going on. I think your experience on the couch, I don't believe that was connected to Jan.
SPEAKER_01:I don't think it was Jan. But I do think
SPEAKER_03:that Eden and Willis' experiences upstairs were.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:Or the photo of the child in the bed. Yeah. And then later when we were moving out of the house and we were just about to pack up, a ball came bouncing out of the garage from that exact place all by itself.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. In the garage.
SPEAKER_03:And all of those things, too, are tied to kind of a specific location in the house, which was that section of the garage and the floor above it where some of these other events occurred. in other parts of the house. And I think that there was something different there.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Brittany felt that. When she came to investigate, she felt that there were spirits in the furnace room and a little girl spirit in your bedroom and just some transient spirit activity in the entire house, separate of Jan, 100%. And then... I think she does feel like you, that there is just something weird about the land, the neighborhood, the area, for sure. So then touching back on when it was so fresh and new, before I had gotten ahold of Brittany to help me through this, I was desperate. Just like you were saying, I did not know what to do. I didn't know if it was safe to live in this house. I didn't know anything about spirits. I didn't believe in mediums really. So I just felt so lost and out of control and home alone with a bunch of children. I didn't have family. I didn't have friends really. I didn't have anything. So I joke that I know I called your school and, or emailed and was basically like, Hey, You Catholic people help people on TV with stuff like this. I need some help. And I remember emailing your teacher or your counselor, your guidance counselor, saying, I don't think Sam can finish his finals. You're going to have to come up with another way. We've got to get out of this house. And they laughed at me. They
SPEAKER_03:laughed at you.
SPEAKER_01:They laughed at me.
SPEAKER_03:So this is, I was talking about this with Sarah, and I'll go through the story with my friend Dutch as well. So we had the incident. We talked to this school. Right before we moved, it was actually right after my graduation. We left immediately after, so the day
SPEAKER_02:after. Yeah, the next day.
SPEAKER_03:So the night of my graduation, the day before we moved, I was with my friend Dutch, who was one of my best friends in high school, and his family owned a restaurant in town. They threw a graduation party for him, but they also kind of threw it for me. They included me in it, and it was a really nice thing. Well, they had invited their... the priest that they, you know, I guess...
SPEAKER_01:In the community. In
SPEAKER_03:the community, that they knew his name was Father Joseph. And he came over and at the end of the night, we're standing outside and... duchess little sister said sam you should tell father joseph about your story and i was like i was a little hesitant because honestly i've been telling it a lot i it had been this crazy series
SPEAKER_01:because it was very real for us very real story it was our lives and it was traumatic
SPEAKER_03:and and
SPEAKER_01:yeah it was hard for like eight weeks all by ourselves
SPEAKER_03:but i felt in a way you know at the time i was kind of put on the spot so i was like okay and i went through everything and that time was very fresh so i had all the details in my mind and the whole thing. And I remember the priest kind of looks at me and goes, oh, but, you know, like, I don't know, like, Sam's family, they're probably, like, I don't know if he said, like, they have, like, a good heart or they're, like, strong or something. Just kind of passed it off like, oh, but, like, you know, I'm sure you'll do okay. And, you know, and this thing. Well, a year later, my friend Dutch's family flew me out to come visit. after I had been gone. And I went to church with them because I was staying there over a Sunday. And Father Joseph was the priest. And as we left, he said, hi. And I said, hi. And we walk out to the car. But then Dutch and his sister say, oh my gosh, we were talking to Father Joseph later. And he said, actually, when you told him that story, he was so scared. He didn't want, like, he wouldn't go. He's like, he didn't want to say anything or anything. or address it because it was too frightening.
SPEAKER_01:Had he heard it in the news? Was he already aware of it like some of our mom playgroup friend people? I
SPEAKER_03:can't speak to
SPEAKER_01:either way. That didn't come up. I knew a lot of
SPEAKER_03:people knew. When I told
SPEAKER_01:the story,
SPEAKER_03:he was too scared. He told them he could have never gone to the house. It was too much. Wow. That's crazy. He thought that that was one of the most extreme stories he'd ever heard and he couldn't handle it. Well, you know, we've talked about this story and I was talking to Sarah the other night after the incident with the mannequin. And she's like, I would have complained. Like, they have an obligation. Let
SPEAKER_01:our listeners know, Sarah is Catholic, has been Catholic her whole
SPEAKER_03:life.
SPEAKER_01:And she comes from the Pacific Northwest where that is... Common.
SPEAKER_03:So, yeah. So, so my wife is Catholic and she was explaining to me, she's like, they have an obligation to help with these things. And like 99% of priests are not like trained, but they do have people who are trained
SPEAKER_02:to
SPEAKER_03:deal with this. And like, that is part of the role they fulfill. And that if something happens, they have an obligation to do an investigation, right?
SPEAKER_02:I thought they
SPEAKER_03:do. And she pulled up the, like the, the webpage or something to read me how they handled the investigation and, and who's supposed to be called. And, and there's a, there's a procedure because if you think about it, the Catholic church is an institution. It has procedures for how they deal with certain things and, and what they're, and the duties they perform. And she said, you know, even more than the individual priest, Father Joseph. She's like, when you called the school, and I want to say that my high school was a Catholic high school who had Jesuit priests who worked there and lived on the school grounds. And at that point, the people should have taken it seriously. That
SPEAKER_01:really irritates me because I told them, I am a mom alone with four children for the next six or eight weeks with no family, nobody to help me, and we're living in this terrifying situation and they laughed at me
SPEAKER_03:i will say the counselor was a jerk
SPEAKER_01:she was awful if i could find that email she was awful to me
SPEAKER_03:so i think it's unfortunate i was talking more with sarah about it and i guess what happened was It was very normal for them to deal with these things. And then there's the kind of post, like, 1960s, people start to not believe in the supernatural, even Catholics.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:They stop believing in spirits or miracles or, like, those things only happened in the past. Some people even tried to rationalize, like, the miracle stories in the Bible to say, oh, there was a scientific reason why this happened. And I guess in more recent years, they've come out with more publicationist stance that no, these things are real and if someone is a Catholic they need to acknowledge that in a way the supernatural is real. It is the official stance. And I wonder if that is why some people, like you might speak to someone who is a Catholic and works at the institution but laughs it off. But the official stance, and at least especially talking to a priest, that would be considered that they didn't do their job. But I could see why an individual who's just an employee is going to not pass it along or not take it seriously.
SPEAKER_01:Sure, but Father Joseph, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. On the other hand, we were already leaving.
SPEAKER_01:Sure, but he probably could have had somebody at least talk to us or counsel us or help us. I
SPEAKER_03:thought so. You
SPEAKER_01:know, something looking back.
SPEAKER_03:Ideally, what I think... So what it sounds like should have happened is that when we told the school, someone should have talked to us and they do a thorough investigation first. Like they don't come in. It's not like the movies where they come in and do anything crazy, but they do research the incidents. They talk to the people because also the thing is they take it very seriously about people having mental health
SPEAKER_01:issues. I was just going to say, they probably rule out mental
SPEAKER_03:health first.
SPEAKER_01:Because they could
SPEAKER_03:help you. And I think in the way that, especially with dad having been a police officer and things, and especially with the PI business, a lot of people who experience these things might have had mental health issues. But I also think that, I mean, it is a professional system. And I would have, I think at the time, we would have appreciated any help.
SPEAKER_01:Any validation.
SPEAKER_03:Any validation that what we were feeling was real, even if it was a different belief system for how to deal with it. I think I would have appreciated the fact that there's people who go, no, this is real. What you're experiencing is valid. Being scared is valid or having a difficult time. I think that's what I needed because I feel like people in the community either didn't want to deal with it because they were too scared. They laughed it off or they felt like it was an entertaining story, but it was our lives at the time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the owner of the house that we were renting was such a jerk. When dad called him and I called him, he said... I don't know what you're worried about. I've given you a safe place to live for the last few years. Which prompted us, we learned, unlike some states, Washington State, they are not required to tell you that someone died in the home or was murdered in the home. I
SPEAKER_03:think that's
SPEAKER_01:absurd. Right. So some states aren't required. Some have a statute of limitations. Others just don't have to tell you. So that was pretty dismissive and unfair. And then I remember when I would reach out to some of the Mom friends I had made through all the baby groups we were in. They were like, oh, my God, that's your house. And they had been over there for parties and play groups and all this stuff, but never made the connection because listeners, you can actually still look this up in the newspaper. Like right now, you can see a photo of Jan. This was a big newsworthy event in the town. So that's really weird news. that, you know, to know everybody knew, people knew, but wouldn't help, didn't want to help. I mean, people don't know what to do, to be fair. I get
SPEAKER_03:it.
SPEAKER_01:But some comfort and validation would have been nice.
SPEAKER_03:I think we live in an interesting time. And maybe this goes into what we're telling you about that book we heard about. But this kind of idea that on one hand, more than 50% of Americans believe in the supernatural, still. But I think that there is not an understanding of of what it is or how to approach it, I think we're in this kind of, it's kind of this middle ground. Half the people you meet vehemently will tell you that it's the most ridiculous thing they've ever heard. I think the other half will believe, but they have so many different ideas and conditions and all these things that it becomes so muddied. And I think a lot of people in situations and things just don't know what to think. And I often think that the first people they encounter have all their own preconceived notions. And it's really difficult. And I think that's why when we talk, and I know that when you do your talks, we really try to take a neutral stance or maybe only speak from our own experiences or do qualifiers in the statements we say. Because I never want to say that I know the answer or I know how it works or these things work. Nope. I don't know if we'll ever fully know, but the best we can do is, I do think you can respond to your own situations. I think you can keep an open mind, but I also think you still need to be critical. And I think ultimately that what I'm saying is it's just, it is difficult to find help and it's difficult to find help that you can trust.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:And I think that that's why with what you do with your mediumship and things, I think it's really good the way you approach it. If only so that people can kind of get an answer, an idea without, kind of extra baggage and without an uncritical answer or so on. You're always trying to offer evidence.
SPEAKER_01:Things like that.
SPEAKER_03:But it's just interesting how we approach these topics.
SPEAKER_01:So looking back now, all these years out, what are we, that was 2015, 10 years out from that traumatic event. It is. Yeah, I guess. Oh, my gosh. Like February, March would have been because I think dad got the call for the new job on Valentine's Day that year. So I know he was gone within a few weeks of that 10 year anniversary. How do you think? Because I know what I have said recently, and even in that big talk I just gave in Green Valley, I know where I feel and how I feel impacted. by that and the positive trajectory it put me on even though it was so traumatic. How do you feel?
SPEAKER_03:So I think that ultimately what I got was I was very scared at the time and I don't feel as scared of I guess anything supernatural now.
SPEAKER_02:Me too. I
SPEAKER_03:think ultimately when I see a lot of things that can go that's very interesting you know maybe sometimes it's fun to feel a little spooky but I don't at the end of the day feel anything serious not like I did through all those years I think I've come to this you know uh very I don't know I'm sorry I lost my words for a second but I've come to the conclusion I feel that I don't think most of the time anything is that serious maybe that's it I believe that know you can have crazy events happen you can have all these things but i don't think that there's an immediate sense of danger all the time or that things are really difficult and i think that sometimes when i watch like shows or investigations and they tell people immediately that this is a dangerous situation it's something that i really don't like and it's a pet peeve of mine i think because i have lived through it so i feel like i can say definitively then I think most of the time that is not the case but I think that when I'm thinking back to situations like that road or that bedroom I know there are times where I have felt like a genuine fear and I think in that I try not to I just would never jump to that sure maybe if that is something that I encountered I would acknowledge it again and I haven't since but I would just say to anyone that I think that is not something anyone should ever jump to But I just don't know everything.
SPEAKER_01:I agree 100%. And I think you're saying similarly how I realized through all of this, that's when I came to my very definitive conclusion of sharing with people, I'm far more afraid of the living than the dead. While scary things happened, I think it was to bring my awareness to a new level and to evolve me into looking at things a different way. And I'm no longer afraid of Jan. I don't excuse what he did. We've talked about this. I think he put me on this path as a way of trying to get a little bit of redemption for him. And I don't feel, like you said, in immediate danger. And story for another day, I think I told you, I recently did an investigation with our group here in town And when I went into this one room that I did not want to go in, I had visceral, awful reactions. I was scared. I didn't want to go in it. I came out. We had a discussion about it. And I felt fine. And I was able to go back in and finish the investigation. So my explanation there is I think when we initially have those feelings, it's to give us a message. Then when we realize it and process it and talk about it and figure out, oh, that's what they're trying to say, we no longer have that scary feeling. But people... Side note, love to be scared. It's exciting. Paranormal investigations are fun when they're scary.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So that's what sells. And yeah, let's have fun with it. But the lesson I think you and I both came out with is it can be scary in the moment, but really we learned a lot from it.
SPEAKER_03:I think so. I think that ultimately my conclusion with it all is I believe that if there was to be something bad or negative situation, The worst thing you could do was be scared. I feel like if we're going, let's make the assumption that that's real. Like for a second, if something could prey upon you, it would only be because it could scare you.
SPEAKER_01:And by being scared, you're inviting it. You're giving it power.
SPEAKER_03:In a way, I feel that it's like, it sounds funny. It's like having a weak mind. Like if you think about that, it's like you're allowing yourself to be overcome. And so it's, I think my ultimate approach after that, if I was in a house like Jan's house again, I think I just have to approach it of like, but I'm not
SPEAKER_01:scared. Right. We have boundaries. We're not afraid. You need to stay doing what you're doing. You're not going to affect me. You're not going to affect my children. You're not going to affect my life. Yes. And see, we've evolved. We had to go through it and feel it and come out the other side and process it to now look at it differently.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:A hundred percent. And so it's, it's been fun to hear, hear your take on it and what you conversations you have with your friends. I don't want to go too much longer, but I mean, I do, I could talk all day, but for our listeners, but tell me real quick, initial conversations you had with your friends. Cause you guys were teenagers.
SPEAKER_03:It might be difficult for me to perfectly remember, but I remember telling them the story.
SPEAKER_01:Did you like go to school one day and be like, Oh my God, you will not believe what I found out.
SPEAKER_03:Like who wouldn't.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. No. So I want to hear that from you.
SPEAKER_03:I don't remember exactly what I told them. I mean, I know their general reactions.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Of that. I mean, I think they believed me.
SPEAKER_01:Did any remember the news article? Did any of them remember that happened? I
SPEAKER_03:don't remember. You don't remember. To be honest. But I know like. I just to my best friends are Alex and Wyatt. I know Alex is a little more skeptical now, but I definitely feel like he believed me then. But Wyatt definitely believes. So I know that he was. He very much felt the same way. I think Dutch felt the same way. But, you know, they definitely believed me. And I think they were like, I don't
SPEAKER_01:know. Oh, my God, that's your house.
SPEAKER_03:It's crazy
SPEAKER_01:how much time they had spent there. Sleepovers.
SPEAKER_03:That's what they tell me now. So when I talk to Wyatt now, he's often like, I just can't believe like I spent the night so many times with all that going on. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:quite a
SPEAKER_03:story. So,
SPEAKER_01:oh, my gosh. Well, it's been interesting. So much fun having you here. I've been wanting to have you on the show for so, so, so long because we have so many shared experiences and so many things that I just think we have great conversations and always fun stuff to talk about. So I really appreciate you being here and sharing your perspective.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, absolutely. It was super fun.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for joining me again for another episode of All Is Not Lost podcast. I really hope you enjoyed listening to me talk with my son Sam as much as I enjoyed recording it. Remember to like and subscribe and review and listen anywhere you get your podcasts.