Ep. 135: The Haunted Tour Guide

And I just turned around and I call ass out of there. I was done. I wasn't dealing with them. The hypocrisy of the cult is one of the things that turned me. Away the quickest. When I turned my head lights on, it turned and looked at us. And one of the things I remember the most, where the eyes were going red. I see an orb of light. It is just circling these steps. Like it is waiting for me. And he begins to tell them that he saw a UFO. They're basically like, what are you talking about. That's seven foot up on a tree, peeking around it, and that's where I saw. The top of the muzzle, nose and the eyes. As soon as I made eye contact with this thing, I don't like death. Welcome back to Tenfoil Tells. I'm your host, Brandon Wright. Night. We're gonna be joined by my guest, Risa. Rissa is a tour guide for some of the haunted locations in Maryland and some in Pennsylvania. She reached out to me a while back and we got something scheduled, so I'm definitely looking forward to talking with her before we bring Rissa on. If you've ever had an experience and you'd like to be on an episode of ten Foil Tells, there's a couple of things you can do. You can either send an email to Tenfoil Tales podcast at gmail dot com or you can go to tenfoiltel dot com and go to the contact section. Either way it works for me, so just make sure to reach out and we will get some to schedule for a future episode. If you would like to podcast out, please continue to share it around. Word of mouth is the best way of getting the word out for the podcast. You can also help out by leaving a five star rating and review wherever you listen to podcast at. So if you're on Appler, Spotify's, click the five stars and it definitely does help out, so please continue to do that. If you haven't already, you can also joined the Patreon come I remember there's different tiers. There's a free membership and the paid membership. You get access to some of the episodes on the free membership, but with a paid membership you get access to all of the episodes, early access to the new ones. They're all ad free. It's only one dollar ninety nine cents a month, so it's worth checking out. You can find more information about that in the show notes. Make sure to follow me around on all the social media's Facebook, Instagram, cs. But we're going to go ahead now and bring Rissa on dive into the conversation. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. I'd like to take this time and welcome my guests to night. Rissa. Thanks for coming out here and talking to me. Thank you so much for having me Brandon, I'm delighted to be here. Would you like to let the audience know a little bit about yourself? Sure? So I work as a ghost tour guide. I work in both Pennsylvania and Maryland, and I tell haunted history and ghost stories as a big part of my living. So I always tell people that I work in the paranormal field, but I lean more into being a historian than an investigator. They do go hand in hand, but I mean, it's definitely it's a lot of shades of grain in between those two. But I. Do a lot of history research about my buildings, about who the ghosts could have been if they were in fact related to the story of a building or a town, And it's definitely been a thing that I've found a lot of excitement trying to figure out who the hauntings might be. Now, sometimes that's not the case. I do work with other people as well. I sometimes work with psychics and they'll tell me like, this ghost isn't related to the building they're walking, and so in those cases it's kind of you know, anything goes. But a lot of times I'm able to find obituaries or articles or things about the ghost story is that I tell, and it's really cool to put a face to history. And you know, as far as how the hauntings themselves react to that, I like to think that they must really like that somebody has taken the time to figure out who they were and what their story was and to tell it continuously in their memory. I've always been interested in paranormal like hauntings and places that it could be haunted or whatever, but I've only been on a couple different investigations with local groups or whatever, and it kind of soured me on the whole thing. But oh no, there's certain places that I would love to go. But then I'm like, I've done this show enough and I've listened to enough stuff and talked to enough people that it's like I'm afraid to go to these places now because I'm afraid I'm going to bring something back with me. Well, you know, I haven't found it to be super common, at least not for me, and I go in and out of haunted spaces every day. I have not had a lot of taglongs. I have not had a lot of attachments at once in my life. I did, but I, like I said, I've worked in this field a long time. I wouldn't call myself a medium per se, but I am sensitive enough to know what's going on around me usually, and I don't find that I walk people through haunted spaces all the time. I don't run into a lot of attachments. Now, if you go into a space that's full of the level and energy, or there's been a lot of you know, pain and suffering, like an old hospital, you might have a different story there. And you know, I worked with paranormal investigative teams, and some of them have been wonderful and sensitive people who really cared a lot about what was going on and both the spirits and the participants. And then I've worked with others who were less professional. I guess you could say there was one team that I worked with. Unfortunately, most of them were intoxicated the whole time. They were banging on the walls, they were yelling at ghosts, they were yelling at participants. It was just about saying so in that case, I could see how you might have been soured. I was soured on that particular group. I just simply won't ever work with them again. But I have found other individuals that, you know, i'd encourage you to, you know, consider somebody else who has a different philosophy when you feel ready, because there are some investigators out there who are good people and are working with ethical considerations in mind. I've talked to a few of the locals now since I've been doing the show, and I wouldn't be opposed to going out with them at some point. But this was about fifteen years ago, and everything was paranormal, and it didn't matter what it could have possibly been. Explain that everything was a ghost, a ghost, a ghosts. So I'm just like, hmmm, I'm more of a skeptical type of a person in general, so I'm not going to say everything is paranormal right off the. Bat, all right, I absolutely agree. So many times I have had people reach out to me say, like you know, can you help me figure out what's going on in my house? Sometimes there's you know, a raccoon in the attic, or there's a malfunctioning HVAC system or a dishwasher that's squeaking, and all of those things really do need to be considered before you immediately land on ghost. Yeah, that's I always try and look at things in a scientific, explainable sort of rational explanations before I jump to other worldly explanations. I guess you know I am. The same way. I think that you have to consider the mundane first, you know, I mean, most of the time it's not a ghost. Sometimes unexplainable, you know, I've had people show me video that I cannot explain, you know, things like glasses floating through the air and things like that, you know, in a in a restaurant, I can't explain that. It doesn't look like a draft could do it, you know, but an entity certainly could. And you know, it's it's moments like that where I'm like, well, you probably have something paranormal here, but when it's something like a squeaky sound on the stairs, and like, you know, it could just be that you have squeaky staircase that you know needs some refinishing. Yep, that's kind of how I try and look at things too. I did have a question, though, like how did what led you on to become a tour guide? Like how did you come about doing that? That's a great question. So when I was eight years old, I was in England with my mom and dad, and I grew up in a town called York, Pennsylvania, and we were in a place called York, England. And if you've never heard of York, England, you should check it out. It is considered the most haunted part of England, even more so than London per capita. And when I was eight years old, they took me on a ghost tour and I absolutely fell in love with it. Now, to be honest, ghost tours are not usually recommended for eight year olds, but I was already a dark and spooky Wednesday Adams type and I absolutely fell in love with the entire experience. And I wasn't old enough at ace to become a tour guide, but at fifteen I was. And you know, I had to overcome being an introvert and being incredibly shy to become a tour guide. But I wanted to do it bad enough that I decided this is just how I was going to learn to get past being shy, and I did. I became a tour guid when I was fifteen. I worked for the local Historical Society and I was a guide in I think like four or five different buildings that they offered tours for. I really ended up loving the process of talking about history and sharing stories of the past. I didn't become a ghost tour guide told much later. For the most part, you have to be twenty one to do that because of pub crolls, so, which is fair. But I was a tour guide many places in the course of my life, college, different historical properties, different museums, and later when I became finally a ghost tour guide, I worked at Maryland History Tours. I still work there, and I absolutely finally was like, this is it. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. I love putting this kind of a face on history and telling the stories of the past in a way that gives them a personality. It's I've never been on an actual tour like that. Oh well, you should check one out sometime when you run across it. Maybe when you're. Traveling seem to happen too much. My life's too chaoic with that way out. I have four kids, marrying, a full time job and everything else, or the travel doesn't seem to happen as much as I think it would be. But I I enjoy what I do, so I wouldn't change in my life. So maybe when my kids are older, I'll get to travel. Maybe one day you can all go and enjoy a tour together somewhere. I think I'm the only one in my family that enjoys some of the stuff that I do, though, so I don't know if I could get them to go on a haunted things. I can't even get get a little scary haunted house things around here. We kind of talked about all fair. I think everyone's afraid of the dark except for me, so I'm the odd ball of the family. Yeah, it is true. Most of the ghost tours do happen at night, so you are walking around usually by candle light or lantern light something like that. So I don't know if I would do great in certain situations. This is completely off topic or whatever, But when I mentioned the haunted stuff, this was years ago. We had a local haunted jail, but they had people in costumes and I saw someone come around the corner, so I knew he was going to jump out, but I was not expecting the other person to come out from the other side, and my fight or flight instincts kicked in, and I'm pretty sure I punched the kid in the nose when it was all of a sudden done. When we got outside, I apologized to He's like, it's okay. It's like his nose was bloody. It was like, oh, poor guy. Just I wasn't expecting. I wasn't expecting it, but he startled me and I just popped. Well, you know, years ago, I was in a commercial haunt like that and the devil came out after me, and he had a plastic pitchfork, and just as he was, you know, menacingly poking his pitchfork towards me, it fell apart. So it wasn't nearly as terrifying as it might have been had his pitchwork not literally fallowed apart. But what I do, there's nobody who jumps out or anything like that much more. It's much more like a walking tour. And we stop in front of his store buildings. Sometimes we get to go in them, depends on the program, but it's a lot calmer and quieter, and I've never I've never been on a haunted tour that does the jump scares, but sometimes the real ghosts make an appearance, which is pretty interesting and exciting. I even have photographs from some of my guest tours, both in Maryland and Pennsylvania. You know, mysterious faces in windows or things that they couldn't have photoshoped because they shot them right there. So it's interesting when at a ghost tour a ghost actually shows up. Yeah, is there anything that you would like to talk about far as like your personal experiences before we dive into some of the things you've experienced while doing the tours. I would be happy to so. My first fash so, I was definitely one of those little kids that interacted with ghosts, and my parents were extremely accepting and they never told me it was an imaginary friend. They always just said, you probably shouldn't tell others, but it's fine. If you see ghosts, we believe you. It's all good. And so I went about my business thinking that ghosts were real and that sometimes they showed up and talked to me or I could even see them. And my first time I saw a full body apparition, I was again in England, and it was in York, England, at a restaurant called Marmaduke's. The restaurant is something different now, but it is still there and it is still an Italian restaurant. And Marmaduke Buckle was a real person in England's history. Sadly, he was a person who we would now say had some both physical and mental challenges. But when he lived in the sixteen hundreds, it unfortunately got confused with witchcraft, as so often happened in the past, and he was driven, sadly to end his own life. Now, when I saw him in the restaurant, I had gone up to use the bathroom and I just saw a really sad young man who I would have put like as a teenager in one of the rooms, and he looked so sad that I went back downstairs and got my mom. I said, well, come upstairs, there's a boy that needs help. And we got upstairs and there was nobody. Now, I hadn't seen anybody follow me down the steps, and he certainly had gone into the bathroom because the bathroom doors were both open, and it was it's a small place, and she my mom went down and got one of these servers, and the servers like, oh, you saw the ghost. That's the room where Marmaduke appears. And so that was the first time in my young life that I remember seeing a full body apparition, and I remember seeing a facial expression like the very detailed experience, and I wasn't scared. In fact, I mostly just felt sad. I did not know the story of Marmaduke Marmaduke Buckle when I saw his apparition. I learned the story later, and luckily, because I was an eight year old, the surfer said that sometimes he appears as he as he was when he hanged himself, but luckily I did not see that. I just saw him sitting on a chair and he was very sad, and I could sort of empathize with him as a little girl seeing the apparition. Like I said, I'm really glad that he did not appear to me as he sometimes allegedly does. So that was my first really memorable experience with a really distinct ghost, and since then, like throughout my life, there have been numerous encounters everywhere I've ever lived that I would I could could only account to a ghost. Sometimes things I see things are moving by themselves, or sometimes it's just a I'm almost sure there's a ghost in the room. I can't prove it. I can't disprove it, and if I can't prove it, I don't usually talk about it. I just kind of let it go. But I've had very interesting experiences on ghost tours that were public and in front of a lot of people, and they always seem to happen at particular sites. So it is it good for me to transition too that? Now? Yeah, that's fine, Okay. So in Elicat City, Maryland, where I give ghost tours, there is a place called the B and O Railroad. It was America's first passenger rail station and it connected Elicat City in Maryland to Baltimore by thirteen lucky thirteen miles of track. And at that station there's a ghost named Charlie. Charlie was the station master there. He and his family lived in the station, which used to be a customary thing, and he was there during the time of the Civil War. He is a real or. He was a real person and a lot of people have experiences with Charlie. When there's nobody upstairs, they hear footsteps. Sometimes Charlie is helpful enough to move the trash cans on trash day and when none of the employees have done so, and they still hear luggage being dragged across the floor in the second floor. So I was giving a presentation. The whole second floor of the rail station is now one great, big empty room, and a lot of times they do history lectures there, and I was giving a talk there about Edgar Allen Powe. I had not mentioned Charlie to any of the people there. It was a night where we were talking about something totally different, and it didn't even occur to me that it would bother Charlie that I hadn't told his story. So I was going on talking about my topic and two women who did not know each other, did not come together. Both stood up and screamed and said someone had touched them at the same time. Now they were like one in front of each other, one in front and one behind, and they both felt an icy cold man's hand reached down and grasped their shoulder, and I immediately was like, oh, that's just Charlie. He just wants us to know that he's here. The women did not take it in stride like I did. They both hustled right out of the lecture and there was nothing about mister Poe that was going to keep them there that night. But I did immediately stop and tell Charlie's story and acknowledge that we were in his place, and there was no more incident that night from Charlie at the Vienna. So there are a lot of interesting photographs that come in from tours at a particular window where they used to hang the lantern, and then the old rail station. Sometimes there's a face there as well as the reflection of the lantern. And it's a museum. It's closed after five o'clock, so it's not like there's a person in there. But again we can't quite explain the pictures. We can't explain them, and we can't explain them away, and we get a few every year from I mean, and tours run there all the time, So it is interesting that Charlie would choose to stick around. He didn't have a particularly traumatic or awful life. He had a pretty normal life for his time, and he was a pivotal part of getting Union forces to the West during the Civil War because he kept he and some guards kept that train station from ever falling into the Confederate hands. So he had an interesting role in history, like one of those tiny turnpins that nobody really thinks about, but it was important, and he kept the tracks between DC and points West open and safe for the Union. So all of that said, they still think of him as a very active spirit, but not unfriendly. He's just there and still doing his thing, taking care of the station, even though it's been a museum for a very long time. And I believe nineteen fifty was when they had their last commercial train come through that station. But there's another spot further up the hill in Ellicott City called the Wine Bin, and it's a wine shop now, but it was originally the old firehouse and Captain Benjamin Shipley was the first fire station master there and it was the first firehouse that had trucks. Before that, it was like the horses, right, So they had trucks, and he believed in having an open door policy. And when the liquor store moved in years after it was no longer a fire station. There was a lot of trouble with that because the folks who are in the liquor store knew that they locked the doors at night. They knew it. He put in cameras to prove that he locked the doors at night. Well, somehow they would come in the morning and the doors would be open, including the door to the back of the room where there was a safe. So they also caught things on camera, like stuff being rearranged mysteriously. I guess Captain Shipley, who did both live and die at that firehouse, just decided that he didn't like how things looked and maybe he was going to move it around. Dogs go crazy in this place, and they are always very cognizant. When they had a paranormal investigative team in, they said that both Captain Shipley and his firehouse dog, his Dalmati, whose name was Yogi, are both still there. And they say that the dogs, the living dogs, are reacting to Yogi. So all of that said, I was giving a there. They have an open space in the back, and it was not about the captain, it was not about the firehouse, and it was not even about ghosts. It was a different history topic for the city. And there were a lot of people standing there listening to me chat when all of a sudden, bottles started tipping off the shelf right behind me. There was no breeze, there was nothing that should have knocked them down. But suddenly this is a water bottle in my hand as I show you, I'm trying to demonstrate. I know there's no camera on your podcast, but they just started tipping right off the shelf, Bottles of wine crashing, splashing to the floor, just one at a time, poop, poop. And then behind me there was a case with beer, and the beer started literally tipping out of the display onto the floor. I immediately stopped what I was talking about. I pushed everybody back so nobody got hurt on all the broken glass, and I said, I'm so sorry, Captain. I meant to tell your story first, and let's proceed with telling the story of this old firehouse and the captain and his dog. And the minute I started telling it, all of the activities stopped. So there was nothing rumbling, there was no truck driving by, there was no reason the things should have fallen and started breaking only where I was standing. All we could think of was that it was Captain Shipley everybody wanted to leave. At that point. Everyone was kind of like, we should leave, and I believe that the employees were like, we need to clean up, so you all need to clear out, and we did. We went on to the next part of the pup Crawl. And there's another super haunted site in Ellicott City. It used to be a church and now it's another museum. And one time I was giving another again a totally different talk, and it was not a cold It was not cold in the church. It this shouldn't have happened. The heat was set. It was the fall and the heat was set. I believe it's seventy two. Everybody was comfortable, and then all of a sudden, right into the middle of the room, this cold column. The people in the middle of the room could see their breath. It went from being normal to so cold that you could see your breath, including where I was standing talking, and like the very middle of the audience in the front, I stopped. I told the history of the building. I told the ghost stories of the building. There were quite a few, and we all started to warm up again. But it was that cold that you could see your breath. I mean, it was a drop of maybe where is it the point when you see your breath? Isn't it like forty. Something that's around there. It was dramatic that it happened in seconds and then cleared out in seconds. So now when I'm going to give lectures to that museum, I always go in first and I'm like, hey, I'm here tonight. I'm not here to talk about you all, but I'm going to introduce you and we're going to be talking about, you know, whatever other part of history tonight. But I know you're here, acknowledge you, and I will introduce you before we begin her talk. So, because that was a super weird experience and people were really uncomfortable with it, nobody got up and left on me at that point, which was lovely, but I was free. I was suddenly like shaking cold. It was so strange. And a lot of folks have had experiences in that museum, things like they've had chur groups of children from schools, and apparently once there was a really how do I say this, not super well behaved young man who was picking on other kids and all of a sudden he fell slap across the face. And as you know, we don't discipline children that way, but it doesn't mean somebody from the past wouldn't have. But he had a handprint right there as if somebody had slapped him, and he did not blame any of the other students. Everybody who was there at that time said that he came out of nowhere, like he just got slapped by nothing. And so we don't have film or camera on that one, but there were witnesses that there was nobody there to hit him and he was just suddenly slapped. So maybe one of the old church ladies had had enough of his attitude. Maybe, So we'll never know for sure, but I'm sure he'll remember it for the rest of his life. Now when it comes to some of these experiences, everyone else's experience. And have you ever had anyone that's trying to claim it's not real as they're there? Oh? Sure? You know, ghost tours are appealing to all sorts of people. It isn't just believers that go on them. There are people who just love history or they're traveling through an area and they want to know more about it. On every single tour, I would say I have both believers and skeptics, and that's totally fine. I'm completely open to both, and I think that there's space for both in an experience like a ghost tour. You know, there's also people who go in a ghostore because they want to have an experience, and sometimes they think they like push too hard. Sometimes they do things like literally trespass on private property and I'm like, I really can't have you work walking on somebody's lawn or like up to their front door, like you need to pull back. Do you know what the show Supernatural is? Yes. I had a two young men show up one time, dressed like Sam and Dean, and they were literally telling me that they were going to like find some ghosts and I was like, great, but I need you to keep it under control. More than once that night on that tour, I had to pull them back from trespassing on people's private property. Not a museum, but like somebody's actual home. They're like walking up looking in the windows. I'm like, all right, come on, boys, back it up. You're not looking for ghosts. You're literally illegally trespassing on somebody's front. Porch being crakers. At this point, Yeah, that exactly never trust the living. But yeah, that said, you know, I think there are folks that definitely would try to take any one of these stories I just told you and explain it in some rational way. I chose those specifically because I could never explain them. There are times when somebody, so I've had people like standing in an old church with me and they're like, they're right next to a drafty window made of glass that's over one hundred years old, like there's a cold spot here. I'm like, you're right, and it's a drafty window. So but like the cold spot in the church was experienced by a whole group of people, and I couldn't explain it with electronics. There's no way that a heater, especially in an old, drafted church, worked like that. And I knew the museum, I knew that's not where the drafts were, so I couldn't explain it away. None of the staff could explain it away. The hvact was working fine, there was no and they should have gotten cold in just that one place, not like standing next to a drafty window, where if you weren't cold, I would wonder why not. So so yeah, absolutely, there are people who even when they witness it, like the two women, there were people like do you think that really happened. I'm like, I think that they believe it really happened. You know, I was like, I, Charlie didn't touch my shoulder, I didn't have a strange icy hand touch me. So I can't explain to you what they felt, but you know, I believe that they experienced something that made them so upset that they had to leave. I've often wondered, though, if people come in there with those expectations that they don't manifest these things to happen. Sometimes it could be. But in all the examples I've given you, nobody was there for a ghost tour. M They were all there for eggar all and pill lecture or some other piece of history. Yeah, sadly all on a ghost tour for the most part. Sometimes that ghosts show up, other times they don't. So sometimes it's an experience that's just one or two people have. But the ones I gave you, I tried to pick ones where there was a big audience who all saw something and they weren't there specifically. Looking for ghosts, Eric, because I don't understand that side of the paranormal obviously, I don't think anyone really does. But like nobody does. I feel like there's a large group of people. Maybe it's the energy of all those people that can I don't want to say feed them, but cause them to manifest. That's a possibility. But at the same time, then there's instance of where it just happens the one person. It's a right right, well, you know, it's like I said, a lot of folks show up on a ghost tour, and there's so many reasons people come, but there are definitely people who come because they want to have that experience. They want to have some kind of supernatural or paranormal encounter. And I can't promise that ever, nobody can. But if they have it, sometimes they have it alone, you know, Like they're sure that they saw a face in a window, and I'm like, that's a museum, it's closed, there's nobody there, you know, so did they see something? I'll never know. I'm sure that, you know. I always believe people when they tell me they experience something, especially if they are also showing signs of trauma. And then other people show up in a ghost tour because they've already had a paranormal experience somewhere else and nobody believes them. And they kind of just want to be heard with compassion. I am always willing to stand in that place and listen with compassion. And in my many years doing ghost tours, I have heard ghost stories, I have heard crypto stories, I have heard ufo stories. Because all of these folks that are having these experiences, whether they could be explained yor not, are just looking for someone to hear them without judgment. And I'm always willing to do that. And sometimes people ask me, like, what should I do or what does it mean? I'm like, I don't know what you should do. I don't know what it means, but I'm happy to listen. You're essentially me without the podcast exactly. Yeah, That's why I do. What I do is to give a place for people to talk about the weird experiences they can't really talk about normally because people don't think you're crazy. Yeah. But yeah, I won't tell them they're crazy. I won't try to explain it away. I will always listen with patience and compassion. There are times when I'm still standing at the end of my tour, you know, thirty forty minutes after it's over, because people are sharing things with me that have happened in their life that they don't have a place for and they can't make sense of it. I'm always brought back to people. There are people who they're the world is just tilted, you know, and they don't know how to rationalize or understand something they experienced, and I can't necessarily fix that for them, but I'm always willing to listen. Yeah, that's that's basically what I tried to do here. It's just to give people the platform to have the opportunity to talk, because a lot of the times all they need is to just talk about it, and it somehow works therapeutically for some people. Some people have had this built up and bottled up for so many years they just have to talk to somebody. Oh yes, I have run across that too, people who have been sitting on an experience for years and their spouse didn't believe them, their grown children didn't believe them, their colleagues, their neighbors, whoever, nobody believed them, or they said you're literally crazy, And I'm like, I know, I don't think you're crazy. I think there are things in the world we don't understand. But you know, I can't tell you what it means, right. I think it also takes someone and I just say this. I'm not an expert or any but I feel like it takes someone that's actually had some sort of an experience to understand what someone else is actually going through too, Because you can tell someone this has happened. If they've never had any sort of weird experience, they're going to be they can't relate to it, and not everyone can relate to the same traumatic experience as other people have had, But if you've had some sort of an actual experience, you can somewhat relate a little bit of at least understanding that this is strange. I've experienced something that is unexplainable, so I kind of can relate to how you can be experiencing something too. It might not be the same thing, but at least we're on the same wavelength. Absolutely. You know, when I was training, when I was moving from doing just regular history into doing haunted history, it's not something that anybody prepared me for. And I'm just used to like talking about history on tours or lectures and that was it. You know, some people might walk up and be like, oh, that was very cool, or oh, I also have a base like that or whatever. But when you step into the paranormal world, you're stepping into a space that nobody understands, that nobody can explain, that science can't disprove or prove, and there's all of this gray area. There's just like a whole lot of space where there's uncertainty, and that makes people who have these experiences really uncomfortable. You know. It's interesting to me too, because a lot of other cultures see the paranormal very differently than Americans do. And like, for example, I recently attended a lecture by a fellow in Scotland, and in Scotland they have experts sometimes a family line who's their whole expertise isn't dealing with contacts and this is a respective thing to do. And it was just absolutely fascinating to me to listen to this man talk about his family's experiences. They call it laying ghosts, meaning putting them to rest, and it's just not thought of in the same way here. We don't have experts in various towns that are there to deal with people's haunted homes and it's just not a thing. But there it's normal and it's talked about more openly, and then I guess in many other cultures around the world, there are festivals where they celebrate the ghosts and the dead. You know, we have Da de les Mortes, we have the Hungry Ghost Festival. I mean, all of these other places and other cultures have a space for ghosts, where ghosts can be acknowledged, where these things can be believed in their own way, and ancestors and those who are dead can be honored in a very specific way. Our culture doesn't do that. I mean, I'm not saying that it's right or wrong. I'm just saying that we don't have a space for it. So I think that that adds to the pile of stuff that people who have paranormal experiences have to deal with, the fact that we don't have a language or a space for it in our American culture, aside from like horror movies. Do you have an opinion, I know it's an opinion that everyone has one, but like, what do you think a lot of the paranormal experiences actually are. Do you think these are residual hauntings, Do you think these are spirits or do you think that could possibly something else? Both? I think residuals are real. So many people have the same experience and the same ghosts, and they don't know each other. I think that residuals are like a scar on time space. They'll never change. They're always the same. Like I have a scar here in my hand where I put a curling iron on my skin. It's always going to look the same. I think residuals are the second sex same, and I think there are a lot of residuals. I think the idea of letting an energy imprint on a space makes sense. There's a lot of discussion about how that could happen, and I don't know the answer to that. I'm not a physicist, I'm not a geologist. I can't explain those things. I have talked to physicists and geologists, and you know, it's interesting when they're taken off the record, they'll say, we can't prove that it's not true. I actually spoke to a geologist recently, a PhD. And he's like, I think there are certain stones that do hold energy. He's like, there are certain stones that when I get around them, my immediately get a headache. He's like, I can't prove why are what that's happening. He's like, so, how am I to prove to you without a shadow of a doubt that it's impossible the ghosts are related to bedrock. He's like, I can't prove to you that it's impossible. He's like, it could be possible, could just be beyond the science we have now. So that's what I think about residuals. As far as interactives, do I believe they are souls or spirits? I guess then the short answer is yes, I can't explain to you what the afterlife is. My opinion is that souls are made of energy. Energy is another word for a soul in lots of other languages, in other concepts like chi or key in. That's the soul. It's the energy that keeps you alive. It's the energy that makes me alive. And this plastic cup not a life, you know, So without my body, am I still alive? I don't know. Maybe I'll let you know when I get there. But again, it's something that you can't disprove, and I I've had enough encounters myself that I can't explain that I think there's something to it. My opinion is that there could in fact be I mean, maybe maybe it's the theory that Einstein had that there are multiple dimensions and we just travel from one to the next, you know. I don't know. I mean that that kind of makes sense. So that's kind of the route that I've been saying lately with my own opinion is what if a lot of the paranormal stuff that we think is ghost is something from a different realm just bleeding into our world. So when people see shadow people, or if they see these things, what if this is just normal for them and they're already there, it's just their reality, their different dimension is bleeding into ours. I think that's a possibility, And again, I don't know that we have the science to understand that at this point. That's that's where I've always tried to go with it, Like, let's just say there's a spirit realm, like a different dimension that is like the spirit's side. Like maybe when we die here in the three D world, maybe our energy, our spirit or whatever you want to call it, goes on to the next plane of existence. And then not throwing out religion of any type of form of whatever we move on to next is the next plane that sometimes interacts with the existing one. Now I'm very much on the same page as you, and I think that's definitely a possibility. Again, I can't prove it or disprove it with science. I can't disprove it with religion either, but nobody else can either, right, And I think for people who've had experiences like this, especially people who've experienced like an ongoing haunting, the trauma is real. Like any therapist would look at them and say, whatever happened, they experienced a real trauma. And I definitely have run across that. With people who I met who have had especially cryptid in UFO experiences, I would say that their trauma is extremely real. I'm not a therapist, that's not what I do for a li but I know somebody who's traumatized when I see it. And I've talked to people who were so knocked sideways by experiences they couldn't explain by seeing, you know, what they think might have been a were wolf walk out of the woods and fast in front of them, in front of their car, or I actually interviewed someone whose sister had so many UFO experiences that she finally committed suicide because she didn't want to live anymore. So it's like those are real. Those things are very real, and those people have experienced something that well. In the case of the young lady who decided to take her life, it was so traumatizing that she didn't want to continue. So I can't explain those things. But I also think they should be taken seriously when people say them, and you shouldn't be told you're crazy or you shouldn't be till you imagine that it's real to that person. And I feel like that some modicum of respect is an order. You said you interviewed people. Do you you have your I don't have a I don't have a podcast or anything. I was collecting stories. For a book, okay, because when you said, I was like, I didn't know if you had your own show or not. Well, no, no, no, I was. I'm working on a book about the town where I grew up, Heyar of Pennsylvania. I also leave ghost tours there and I really just wanted to collect a lot of people's stories. And I found that the more people I asked, the more stories just fell out of all different kinds, things I never would have expected. And like someone who has a terrifying Harry elf that they think lives in their house. Is it real? I don't know, but she's certainly terrified of it. And again again I don't know what it could be. It could be something from another realm. She thinks it's a puck wedgie, which is like a a now Lokian legend. And I don't know anything about them. They're not my area of expertise. I know that people have looked for them in Massachusetts and New York and places like that. But this woman is convinced she has one in Pennsylvania and it breaks things in her house, and she goes into her kitchen and finds somebody's taking a bite out of food, and there's nobody home but her, and I don't know what to tell her. It is a lot of people would relate that to fayfolk too. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of stories about I say Faye, but a lot of most people say fairy. Understand it, but then they think a tinker Bell. I was like, nah, it's not. Really, that's a Disney story. Yeah, it's it's not that, But there's the fay is definitely prevalent, and a lot of lore, especially over in. Europe too, Oh, definitely very old lore. Which again legends and stories are influenced by something they are. You know, I think it's interesting I mentioned where wolves earlier where else? Are one of the things I've researched as a historian. They go back where creatures go back to every continent where there were people. They weren't all wolves, some of them were cats or other animals, but a where creature goes back to over three thousand BC, and that we know of because we didn't have written history too far back beyond that, and so they've been with humanity a really long time. What were they about? You know? I know some people would say, oh, they were a manifestation of people's imagination because they were afraid of wolves. That's reasonable. Wolves used to be scary. But how are people still experiencing them if this was always a manifestation of imagination. I don't know. Without diving in to it here. And I know everyone that listens A at this point's going to roll their eyes because I say this a lot. I can talk to you off air about that whole topic because that is one hundred percent of the reason I do my show, because just three or four miles down the road. I had an encounter in two thousand and seven with an upright walking canine, And that is why I want to give people the opportunity to talk about it, because I never felt like I could because it is insane. I'm a skeptic and I don't believe in that type of stuff, but yet I've seen it, so yeah, but now that is a I don't like talking about it on here because then everyone's like, oh, he just wants to talk about his own stuff all the time, Like, no, it's literally not. But for somehow it always gets brought back up because I feel like things are connected a lot. They are, and I you know, I have interviewed more than one person who's had a similar experience to you. The one I mentioned Earl. It was a woman who said it ran up beside her car, crossed in front of her so fast that she didn't even slow down. And I interviewed another woman, and this woman has top secret clearance. She's like, you must never use my name. I could never tell anybody else about this. She's like, because of what I do for a living. She's like, but I saw either. She said it was either a wearwolf for a dog man in broad daylight, and she was pulling over to go into a park, and it walked out, stood in front of her car, looked her in the eye, and then walked away. So I mean people are having these experiences. That's yeah. I'll talk to y'all fair about what happened with me. But I had an email a year ago from someone, and I don't know who because I tried to reply back and said the email didn't exist. So I thought that was strange. But the way it was worded, the person wouldn't give any information out because of how I don't want to say military, but I got it like a military or like work vibe to it. But the way it was wrote out or whatever, I don't think they were from America, just because the way something was spelled was not like the American way of spelling a word, like instead of using like I don't remember where the word was, but I remember it caught Mike. They used an S instead of like say, realized, and they had like an S and it's that's like a a more of a yeah. And they mentioned something about this thing running up to their window, but I'm pretty sure it was like the like their driver's window. They said it was like this side, which would have been the opposite side of what the driver's window, So it's almost like the car would have been flip flopped from what we're used to. But they said this both type creature like stock them or whatever, and it comes running up to the window, and like I think that if I remember right, it was like two of them. But I thought it was just strange, like this email, especially the fact that tried to reply back that it didn't exist. I was like, that's even weirder. But no, like there's all sorts of different experience that people have had with these type of things that it's throughout history. Like you're saying Earier, like upright, walking canines, wearwolves, whatever you want to call them. They have a loure that's went back for over one thousands of years at this point. Like I don't want to I relate a Nubis to this, but like the ancient Egyptians had like the jackal headed a Nubis god like, and then there's been stories of they don't remember exactly where it was, but there's an entire tribe of quote unquote dog men somewhere over there. And then like even Saint Christopher was supposedly depicted in paintings of having a wolfhead, which didn't make a whole lot of sense back then either. Yeah, it's a it's a big part of human history. And then it wasn't. The seventeen hundreds or whatever, they had the werewolf trial some France where people who are getting burned at the steak for being were wolves. Right, well, they were also burning tons of witches, so that there was there was a lot of fear going around then. I don't actually think all of that was I think a lot of that was fear and superstition, and I don't know that there was actually an epidemic of were wolves or witches. I think there was an epidemic of superstition. But the guilty were denied. It basically said no, I'm not a were wolf. Then you were guilty because you denied us. Like so what happens if you admitted it? The same thing with like witch, Oh you're a witch, No I'm not, which is lying burn Yeah, it was. It was a rough time to be alive back then for everybody because you had to live in fear all the time. We think today is crazy, but look back at those old days. The history of its insane. Yeah, well, is there anything else you would like to discuss before we wrap this one up? No? I feel Brandon like this was a great conversation. Yeah, me too. Would you like to let anyone know where they can find you on tours up? Sure? If you're in Maryland, I work at marylandhistorytours dot com. It is in Elicacity, Maryland, and we run ghost tours and history programs from April through December. If you are in Pennsylvania, I have Haunted Pa online and I run ghost tours April through November. Awesome. Send me that in a email and then I will include those in the show notes for anyone listening. But I want to say thanks for coming out here and talking with me to night. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It's also been a very enjoyable conversation for me. For anyone out there listening, thanks to Rissa, and thanks for listening. But we're going to wrap this one up, so good night everybody, and that's the show everyone. I really hope you guys enjoyed the conversations. If you would like to be a guest on Tenfoil Tels, remember to send an email to tenfoil Tales Podcast at gmail dot com or go to the contact section of tenfoiltal dot com. Just get your message to me. We'll get some schedule for a future episode. And just remember the truth lies, and the stories we share, the connections we make. Stay curiously open minded. Thank you all for joining us on this journey, and until next time, keep questioning, keep seeking, and keep exploring the unknown. Good night everyone seen on. Sounds in the headphones. Yeah, it's turn to rock. Got a story about a crypty creature. Let's take a. Walk thig foot Someler. They're out there in the talk, but the truth is out there likeingly as fuck us. Both signings got the whole Worldsome conspiracies fons like a story in the book Console sign to keep us. We're all gonna use the whole mind in history. They don't want us to know the secrets they hide, since they will show. No, they don't society. They keep us in chase, but in time it's time to break the reins. Control trying to keep us fine, but I won before. We gonna use a mind. In history. They want us to know the secrets that hide, since they will show the lead of society. Thank you, Bust and Chase the sand in talks is time to break the reins Mm hm