320. GATEWAY TO THE BEYOND!? Mount Vottovaara's Sacred Stones & Ancient Energy | Paranormal Podcast

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And we're going to head to a place called Death Mountain. It is a place where the land is cloaked in myth at top a kind of earth energy grid. So lay lines. There are geological anomalies, whispered legends, talk of aliens, and possibly giants. This is Mount Vodavara. Yeah, very spooky. LA. And this is Two Girls One Ghost. I was going to say it in French, but

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I've never taken a French class. I have no idea if anything is appropriate. Would it be Dil Fantasma? Yeah. Two girls, one ghost. You're asking the wrong person here. Do unfantasma. It's hard to whisper that. I wish I knew French. It sounds so You did pretty well. I had a moment where I had the fear that like maybe that meant I'm horny or something because I was like, "Wait, why do I know this? Was this like some slang someone taught me once?" I wish we did have knowledge of another language and aside from Pig Latin and could just do a whole episode like that. Ah, wouldn't that be cool? It would be.

Watch Her Cook Podcast

We need to talk about a new podcast. Uh, watch her cook. Hot diggity hot dog. Damn. If you wanted to be aroused in like a female empowered wow, I am like so motivated. I feel so strong. Watch her cook is a podcast by our friends from National

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Park After Dark, Danielle and Cassie. And it is so good, you guys. I texted them last night and I said, I could kick a door down. I'm fired up. Yeah, it is so good. They basically for years have been collecting stories through their research with National Park After Dark about these women who played incredible roles in history and just like the things that they did and the movements that they created. And they're basically highlighting just some incredible women on their podcast. Some you've heard of, some you haven't. Most you probably haven't. It's the history class that I wish we had growing up and now we have it as adults or wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever age you are. You can listen to it wherever you listen to podcasts. It is so good. It's so good and soarchy want to live uh in the planet that Wonder Woman lives on where it's just women. Yeah, it's just such a good podcast. It's so good. Women are awesome. We're fired up. Fired up. And if anyone tries to shoot fire at you, as in

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bullets, the woman who There's a woman who flamethrower. Well, it was a woman who created the bulletproof vest. So, there's another a female fact for you. Protecting people all the time. This is such a random thing and I I think it's like my family lore and it's all BS, but from childhood, my grandmother and my mom told me that my great-g grandandmother invented that little like like when you slick down a piece of hair and curl it on your forehead. They like swore to me that that my great-grandmother invented that and I'm like, "No, she didn't." Oh, interesting. I have no idea because I feel like it was not true. Definitely a part of hairstyles in the ' 50s, but it's also a huge part of like black culture. I know. I know. Sure. No. So, like my family just created a fake lie. Oh my god. Yeah. Well, my dad told me that my family came over on the Mayflower and I told everyone in my first grade class and they told me it was a lie when I was asked to bring in real facts about it. We were all lied to. I had yet another grudge. If we were

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if we weren't already over the key lime pie incident, I'm bringing in the Mayflower. Oh, one thing that is pretty cool about my grandmother. So my grandmother married pretty late. Like my great-grandmother married pretty young. She was 18 and was like matched with a man who had already come to the US United States. So she like immigrated over to marry him and start a life in New York. But then my grandmother didn't like marry until she was 30. She went to grad school. She like won all these awards and traveled the world. And like the more I learn about her, it just like makes me so sad that she's not with us anymore because I would love to just like pick her brain. She was like she was such a strong independent woman. Taking her own current through life. Yeah. Which is a really hard thing to do at the time. That's incredible. Anyh who, uh we're here to talk about ghost stories and like some weird creepy things that happen in the universe in the world. And Karen today has a story for us. I do. And we're going to venture into the woods of Russia. You mentioned

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a lot on the previous episode of the Bennington Triangle about the triangle of death, the death zone. And we're going to head to a place called Death Mountain. It is a place where the land is cloaked in myth. There are geological anomalies, whispered legends, and possibly giants. I feel like we're really priming everyone for the spring and the summer to get outside, but also at the same time like terrifying you all to maybe stay inside, right? Go and listen to National Park after dark as well because they have that's all they do here. That's all they do here. Like as if they're with us always in our hearts they are. Cassie and Danielle, we

Mt. Vottovaara

love you. Okay, this is Mount Vodavara. It's a seemingly unremarkable rise in land. Like it's a it's a it's a petite what a sad way to to describe a place. It's a hill. I mean, when you look at photos of it, the elevation doesn't seem super high. Like, you know, if you were driving by just like a hill out the window, you know, it's just one of those regular ass mountains, as there are many

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in the in the world. Yeah. It's just 417 m above sea level. So, not the most giant mountain, but definitely one that you would enjoy and and breathe heavy on a hike, right? Yeah. But the climb to its summit, you'll find, is a little different than just an unassuming ordinary mountain. That's what happens. The most unassuming mountains are always the uh Mhm. most assumed assumed. Don't know where I was going. Well, to get here also, there's no road like right up to the mountain. So, you really have to consciously put some effort in to get to Mount Vodavara. And when you do summit, you'll find yourself surrounded by these twisted dead trees, these pine trees that are over a hundred years old and these ancient stone formations that appear impossible. Ooh, the way that they're constructed or presented hoodoo. I love when like the hoodoo rock formations always look so Yes, it's like drip castles. There's

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also an eerie silence where it seems to be that the whole area is dead and the only sound is the wind against your skin. Some call it a sacred place. Others believe that this place is cursed, but all agree it is utterly

geological history

unlike anywhere else on earth. So, let's begin as we usually do. We like to look at the history of the land and why places could possibly be the way that they are and why we're talking about them on Two Girls One Go. Psychologically analyze places, dissect them. a little piece of land. It's not even any good. It goes through a lot of therapy because so many people think it's unassuming, but it's like I should be assumed. The most assumed. We see you, Mount Vodavara. We see you. We acknowledge you. So, Mount Vodavara lies in the Republic of Caralia. I'm sorry, I'm probably butchering these names, but it's in northwestern Russia, and it's actually it's pretty close to the border of Finland. So, it's Russia's massive, right? So, it's like huge. Yeah, it's a a very northwest part of Russia. The area is rugged. It's really remote. It's

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very sparsely populated. Like I said, there's no road that even leads to Mount Vavvara. And the region has just vast forest, glacial lakes, and just seems to stretch endlessly. And I feel like when I was doing the research on this, there was an attempt at making this sound scary, but I thought that sounded really peaceful. It does sound really peaceful. It kind of reminds me of like I'm picturing in Sound of Music like the hills in Austria and just like this open stretch of land, lots of greenery, right? Yeah. I think people are like the lakes never end and there's dense forests and no people around and I'm like perfect. That's what I want to escape to. I want to go there. So quite a majestic place. Geologically the mountain is part of the westan upland and its origins trace back over 2 billion years. The bedrock here is some of the oldest bedrock on Earth. And it's shaped by this like violent past of earthquakes and tectonic plate collisions and all that good

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Ancient seabeds. And the most significant shaping event in recent geological history was this earthquake that happened 9,000 years ago. And I do find it interesting because a lot of what happens here, people keep being like, well, it's from the earthquake. Like they blame the earthquake constantly. Even when it feels much more paranormal, they're like, "The earthquake from 9,000 years ago." And you're like, "Really?" Okay. Like everything. We can't blame everything on that. Yeah. Yeah. So, this quake is believed to have heaved stones and cracked the land, leaving behind jagged cliffs and surreal otherworldly landscape. Despite the unique features of Mount Vodavara, Vodavara remained largely unknown to the outside world until 1978. So, very recent. And that year, Soviet geologist Alexander Gutlletv confidence stumbled upon its summit during a survey. And what he found stunned him. There at top the mountain were hundreds of boulders, some weighing several tons. And when I say

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hundreds, I should actually say thousands. Uh they were balanced, many of them balanced delicately on one another. And there's I'll show you pictures in YouTube, but there's like little tiny stones and then a giant massive boulder on top of them. It's wild. And it definitely appears to be this like sort of deliberate maybe ritualistic arrangement of stones. But these things are massive, right? And so many of these stones known as seeds, they sit on these small support rocks and they're balanced in a way that defy both erosion and random placement. And also it's on a mountain and much of the mountain top and where these stones are, it's not flat. So it's not like someone they think some like a group of people potentially did this on purpose. Some people believe it's a group of people who did it on purpose. Some people believe it's giants and a lot of other people are like it's the quake from 9,000 years ago. Okay. Sure. Interesting. Whatever helps you sleep at night. We talk about this a lot, but I think anytime we can't explain something, our

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desire is to find a rational reason. And then when you can't, I think society and human throughout time has used gods and powers like beyond ours to explain the unexplainable. And it makes sense cuz we're all we're all grasping for answers. Even us at the end of the last episode, we're like, "What the is this?" climbing Mount Vava, you're grasping for air, gasping for air, gasping for air and questioning what is reality. Okay, so these stones are massive. They're all kind of like precariously placed, balanced on these little tiny stones. There's a lot of like weird stuff happening around. And the mountain also is a mountain, so it's not flat. And so a lot of them are kind of like on this incline, and it feels almost impossible to be able to put it exactly where it is and somehow get it to balance without it just like, you know, toppling over. Sure, these rocks clearly to most people who would look at them do not feel like scattered debris or just the result of tectonic plates shuffling about and upturning some

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stone. That would feel very bizarre and it would also be bizarre that is only happening right here, right? So, some are at the top of the mountain, right? Yeah. Like why not everywhere else around the mountain and on the mountain just on top? And it's not like it's the only hill in a a vast valley. There's other mountains. There are also pools of water created. And there's one watering hole that you cannot blame an earthquake for this watering hole. It looks like a pool. It is perfectly rectangular. I read somewhere online that they've like never tested to see like how deep down the depth of it is. First thing I would do, right? I don't know if there's any truth to that or if like just not enough people have been interested in studying it that they've they've gone there since it is somewhat more of a recent discovery. But the stones are fitted so tightly that it does keep all of the water here. So, it's like a water reservoir, which makes total sense. And you're going to Peru soon. Yeah. And I don't know where in Peru you're going, but this reminded me of two places in Peru that I've been. One is Machu Picchu. And the way that like they have

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Yeah. created the like systems and stuff. And the other Are you going to Cusco? Yeah. Okay. You have to stop here. In Cusco, there is this stone wall. The stones are so perfectly carved to fit together that not even a piece of paper will fit between the rocks. So they were so meticulous with creating and building their stone structures to not need mortar. I think about it constantly and I went there when I was like 17 or 16 or something. I'll take a lot of pictures. Yeah. So this this is reminding me a little bit of that. Okay. So just like this is like this is happening because we have no evidence of like an actual group of people who have created it. The somewhat belief is that this happened naturally which is why people question that it actually happened naturally because like how no wrong there is evidence of a group of people who lived here. Okay. Still people are saying shut up Sabrina earthquakes. My point is just it's weird when people are like it's the earthquake from 9,000 years ago. No, it's maybe probably the

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native people or if you want to believe in the legend of giants like perhaps it's the giants. But whatever it is, it's definitely not the earthquake is what that's the one thing I'm going to say it's not with certain with certainty. Yeah. Okay. So, I said with certain words I'm just or words. Yeah. It doesn't matter. We get Well, thank you for correcting me. You understood what I was saying. Yeah, I did. So, the question that immediately arose was are these formations natural? It wasn't, but there is an indigenous group of people who did spend time here on the mountain. It makes a lot of sense that it would be them to do this and some sort of like ritual or if we want to go the paranormal route, there could be a paranormal explanation for it. But archaeologists have debated over the origin of these stones and how they were created. Some say it's the result of postglacial rock falls and effects of an ancient earthquake, but others are like, "Nope, there's consistency in shape, orientation, the balance of these stones. This is clearly evidence of human manipulation and in a very Stonehenge way and even in a very like Machu Picchu way. Several formations

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align with celestial events. So during the summer and winter solstesses, sunlight pierces specific gaps between the stones and the alignment suggests knowledge of astrology and different celestial events and and the meanings of them. Did I say astrology? Yeah, I meant astronomy. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, very intentional with the understanding of the stars and celestial events when placing these stones together, which did make me a little bit sad cuz I was like, a lot of that has been lost to time cuz we know too much now. We're focusing on the wrong things. Yeah. Alisa Kelly is so incredible to talk to because she knows so much about that. But like for me to know that there's a celestial event, something going on with the stars or the moon or something significant in the sky, like I need an Acue weather push notification. We need a Lisa to tell us. We need a Lisa to tell us, which she does cuz we follow her on

Sámi Lore

social media and she posts stuff like that. Yes. Many researchers suggest that Vodavara, Mount Vodavara, seems to have

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been some sort of ceremonial site used by early cultures. Wow. Some people link it to the Sami people, which is this indigenous group of reindeer herders in the region. M. And if you've ever watched the movie Clouse, my favorite Christmas movie that I talk about every year, and I'm mad at you, Sabrina, and everyone else who still hasn't watched it. I think I've seen it now. I have it. Oh, it's so good. Okay. Remember the like little girl who doesn't speak the same language as everyone else, and she's cool. She's Sami. Oh, that's so cool. Okay. Right. Class is great. It's a great movie. Half Christmas is coming up soon, so if you need something to do, watch Claus. There you go. All right. So the Sami people did spend time in this region and they have oral traditions that speak of sacred mountains where shamans could speak to spirits and gods and these people would also navigate shaman stairs quote shaman stairs which are these stone steps carved directly into the cliffs leading to nowhere. So,

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it's basically like the stairs to nowhere leading into this void. But, yeah, it's believed to be this sort of spiritual pathway. And it's also thought like that these stairs either lead to heaven or like to the well, we're saying heaven from our point of view, but just like to to the other world of of other side. Yeah. To the other side or leading to some sort of like portal where you can access other things, other knowledge. So this is very important to note because not only are these rock formations aligning with celestial events, but the mountain itself seems to also be this sort of like liinal space, this access point between worlds. And so it would make sense that this would attract the Sami people or the shamans from this culture to kind of look to this mountain for knowledge or access to other worldly beings. This is such a dumb thought, but if you think of us, we're kind of ants on a larger scale. Do you think ants have legends of like the ant hills that have access to other

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universes? I don't know. That's so crazy. What's the ant version of podcasts that are happening right now that only the ant community can watch and observe? Yeah, I want to know the drama and like orcas and whales and stuff. Like what's the gossip? What are the legends? What are the lore? What's the 411? We know that stuff goes on. I mean, there's a group of orcas that wear dead squid or like jellyfish's hats for fashion. Things are happening way beyond our understanding. We're such little tiny pea brain idiots. Yeah. I'll say in my research, I didn't really find too much on this, but I also I'll admit I did not do a deep dive, but the podcast ninjas are Butterflies, which you've probably seen on TikTok. They have a lot of I've never heard of this, but that's their title. Ninjas are Butterflies. Yeah. Obsessed. But they cover like a lot of stories like this. They're actually I I really like their stuff. They did an episode where they were saying that the Sami people here believe that that the stones were carried up there carved and sculpted by giants. And these giants weren't just like the normal giants that like we

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might think of. They were almost like fallen angels. So like these beasts sent down maybe as a punishment from the sky by these other gods. and the giants lived here, maybe still live here, carried the stones up there, possibly descended into a cave system, a tunnel system, or spend time coming to and from via portals that could so easily exist here based on the weird energy and things that people have experienced. It reminds me of that small island. It's part of um Micronia called Non-Madal. And there's like all of these legends because in order for the structures that exist on this island to have gotten there, it's like the technology that they had at the time feels impossible. And like the people of the culture talk about the giants that came similarly from like were sent down from heavens by other gods. Yeah. So to your point, it's like very possible that it was just a group of indigenous people in the past, but that the local lore and legend is that it's something more, something

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otherworldly. And that's sort of what's happening here. And I so what I did find in my research was that the Sami people believe that spirits inhabit the rocks and that these massive boulders like this is such a sacred place to them because there's all these massive boulders that could inhabit these spirits or do inhabit these spirits and the shamans can communicate with said spirits. And it makes sense to me because like if my pendulum could be inhabited by a trickster spirit, why not? And like if trees are spirits, right? Why can't rocks be? Rocks can be. You could be a rock and another

strangeness and possible explanations

everything everywhere else. Yeah. With some googly eyes on, right? Okay. So, we have these stones, but then we have the forest. The trees at the summit are not like the trees in the valley below. Many are stunted. They're leafless. They're bent into these really strange like scraggly twisted arm shapes. I'm picturing the like trees in the woods of Wizard of Oz. Yeah, they kind of are

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like that bride like the serpentine like almost the tree trunks are gnarled, blackened. Sometimes they look like they're scorched by something despite there being no sign of a fire. And so then botonists have obviously been asked about this and they believe the phenomenon is due to the altitude and exposure and combined with the residual damage from the ancient earthquake of 9,000 years ago which who am I to say that that's wrong. Sorry for the um tone of my voice. Sorry for the tude. Sorry for the tude. But basically they're like you know it's the earthquake and weird and just like it's cold and barren up there and that's just the way things grow. So basically the answer is that's just the way it is. Yep. But other people are like, "hm, I don't know. The vibe is off here." There are reports that the air is very different. You would think that it would be thinner cuz you're up high, but instead it's heavier. It's charged, which reminds me a lot of the Bennington triangle that you covered in the last two episodes.

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And people describe the energy as being very oppressive. Compasses will spin. Birds will avoid the area. And within this dead zone on Death Mountain, sounds seem to behave oddly, almost as if the mountain is absorbing everything itself, which is so bizarre because there's also not a bunch of like lush trees and and landscape to absorb the sound. It just exists in this sort of like weird portal. And it's also just anywhere where a compass doesn't work properly makes me question what's going on because like clearly there's something different in the energy and the magnet like it because compasses work with magnetism, right? It's the geomagnetic. Yeah. So like something is clearly different and place. It reminds me of so many places that we've covered before like the talk of land landlines, the talk of lay lines or even just like you know the places where people walk sideways or they go to like become spiritually recharged to places like Joshua Sedona and places like that. Yeah. Where like there's something a

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little bit off but like this is this is off not in a good way. This is off in like a we feel bad here, right? Oh, also um some of the you know how I was talking about how there's like a bunch of glacial lakes in the area on Mount Vivara, the water sources, the lakes have no life in them. There's no fish or anything like that. And so then again, geologists have done like extracted some samples and done some testing. And apparently it's something with like the levels of phosphorus that they believe are making it uninhabitable. But again, it's just like another thing another thing where like life struggles here. It reminds me of like is it still water that's supposed to be like deadly? Yeah. Yeah. That stuff always freaks me out. It's scary. And locals call this place a cursed forest. Other people believe it's the place of spirit activity. And like I was mentioning before, there's some anomalies quite similar to other places in the world. So, Mount Vodavara is known for that sort of like peculiar magnetic anomaly with the compasses

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frequently malfunctioning near the summit. GPS has also become super unreliable and sensitive equipment similar to when we're doing our paranormal investigations like cameras, recording devices, they all seem to malfunction, go dead, not operate appropriately. So scientists attribute these effects with the ironrich rock and possible residual seismic activity underground again with the earthquake. M but the strength and irregularity of the magnetic field here could could defy easy explanation for some paranormal researchers the anomaly is key and they believe that Mount Vodavara sits at top a kind of earth energy grid so lay lines. Yeah. So I was like well I want to figure out specifically which lay lines and what this means. So I went to maps.lay lines.net. I clicked on a ton of lay lines cuz it was kind of confusing. I zoomed in on Vodivara Russia and yeah, there are lay lines. What do they mean? I couldn't figure it out. Do they intersect? Cuz I feel like

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when we were at the Conjuring House, that was such a big part of the conversation where they're like supposedly two lay lines intersect here, which opens up. I wish I every option. I didn't. I clicked on like maybe 20. Okay. And there was one that went through, but if I had clicked on all like 150 options or something on that website, I'm sure there probably was something that intersected, but there was one that like went like directly through it. Interesting. So, I don't know. I wish I did. Someone who knows how to operate that map or knows more about lay lines, please let me know. And it's also like this is a remote area of Russia. So it's not like it was somewhere in London or like the US where like people are constantly researching this and so I couldn't find articles that could explain it for me. Right. I was left to my own devices and my devices failed. They didn't fail. You're just it's still they're still calculating right? Yeah. I'm still processing generally I guess in such places with lay lines intersecting or lay lines passing through energy said to concentrate or be concentrated creating

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conditions ripe for spirit activity uh spirit contact dimensional slips and even time distortion. So this is reminding me so much of the Bennington

paranormal stories

triangle too. The whole time you were talking about it in the last two episodes I was like oh my god mount votra is so much like that. Yeah. Okay. And this now brings us to some strange paranormal stories. A growing number of hikers, mystics, paranormal investigators, people just curious about Mount Vodavara. They have made the journey to the mountain over the last few decades since it first kind of made its way into the mainstream. And some are drawn just because they're curious, but others seek enlightenment, which I think is interesting given that it has bad weird vibes. But I think just because of like where it is, how the Sami people also saw sort of like spiritual connection here. Yeah, there is obviously still people who are like maybe tap into the better the better energy, but not all return with clear memories. There are stories many shared online or in hushed forums about

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visitors experiencing lost time, which also reminds me of episode 35 when we did the How about you forest because when people enter the clearing, it's just like boom, they have no memory or they're just like entering these huge time slips. Yeah. Hikers report taking what feels like a very brief walk or just going up to the summit and then finding that actually hours have passed. So they still feel like they have their own consciousness and like their stream of consciousness is still going at like a normal clip, but hours have passed. So there's no like blackout. It's just what happened to time? Like they walk through a wrinkle of time. It just makes me question because I don't even necessarily know what my question is, but I guess it makes me think about how when if you were to go to a different planet, like if you were to go live on Jupiter or like even like in another galaxy, time would move differently. Like say you went to let's use Jupiter as an example, like you went to Jupiter and you came back to Earth. The time that passed on Jupiter would be very

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different than the time that passed on Earth. And like people on Earth would be way older than you are. Yeah. like can that exist can that exist though within earth itself are there places where time does move differently and I don't know physic like physics w- wise if that's even possible because I guess time is based on the rotation around the sun so I don't know but like it sounds like that is what's happening it's all so confusing I wish I was smarter me too but also I'll say this even the smartest people in the world who are are trying to explain these things. A lot of it is still just theory. So, it's hard to calculate in like hard fact. All right. So, hikers have said that they feel like only minutes have passed, but actually their watches show that they have been gone for hours. Several witnesses claim to see lights floating amongst the stones. There's like glowing orbs that are unexplained. Some are white. Some

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people say that they have this like bluish hue to them and they hover silently and then they vanish. One account from 2016 tells of a small group who were camping overnight near the summit and then they awoke to find that the firewood that they had arranged at their campsite was now in a perfect circle. And apparently there had been some like strange symbols drawn in ash and there was tents moved. But again, like I'm very uncertain. This is like one of those hard places to research because there's just not a ton of information about it. So, you're like, what is creative writing and what is true accounts, right? And I think that's the case with like most paranormal or a lot I wouldn't say most, but a lot of paranormal things that are more legend and lore cuz you can find factual history about like a building, right? And if there's murders or crimes that have happened there, you can find newspaper articles and whatnot, right? And even with the paranormal experiences, often times they'll be like, "Okay, well, here's 20 reports of people seeing the same thing." Yeah. But

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with this, it's re Yeah, we're really limited. So, it is hard. But people have also reported on some ghostly figures that they'll see these pale forms moving around the rock. So, it does make me wonder if the orbs and these like fullbodied apparitions are like one and the same and people are just seeing different versions of the spirits. What if this is just like a fairy mountain? Like the fay live there? That would be so cool. Or just the spirits that inhabit the rocks. Sometimes they just like come out of the rocks and show themselves, which is also like another thing. Why are they showing? Can you choose how you present yourself? Because I feel like a rock spirit. Can't you just be anything? Do you have to be a human? Or are they creating their human form by mimicking each person who comes to visit? They steal one little like Jeepers creepers. Where'd you get that skin? Um or where'd you get those eyes, I should say. But they are mim creepier. Skin is creepier. They're just picking and choosing their favorites. They're studying studying everyone's favorite. Like the um movie The Watchers. Oh yeah.

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With Dakota Fanning. We've talked about that a lot lately cuz we've been talking a lot about the woods. Weirdly drawn to the woods again. It's cuz we've been inside for winter so we're like really thinking about what's outside. What is it like out there? I forget. I forget. Let me research it instead of walking outside. Some people also believe that these are not necessarily spirits. Or maybe they are. But there's a lot of talk of aliens here. Yeah. Alien watchers, abductions, sightings of UFOs, explanations for possible lost time. And the air, many claim changes on the summit. It's not just colder. It's not just denser. It also feels like time is moving more slowly. Sounds unuffled. And there is this almost like constant sensation of being watched. So what is watching? It's not sure. See, this is okay. If we were if we were to pause being podcasters for just like a a year, I would love to study the similarities

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between different mountain ranges and like rock formations that have similar experiences like the Bennington Triangle and Glastonbury Mountain, the Appalachin Mountains, the Aderondax, like even like Superstition Mountains, like all of these different things. They have so many similar characteristics and experiences that it's like why? What is it about them? Can you study rocks from them? Can you go deeper into the lay lines and energetic fields and measure like quantify those measurements to try to understand some similarities? Greg and Dana Newkerk need a suggestion box because they go places. We have a suggestion box for Greg and Dana Newkerk and it's called our group chat where we text them. We just constantly brain dump. Brain dump. Yeah. Cuz they do cool and we want cool to happen. Yeah. And we want to do cool with them. We want them to adopt us. We've talked about that a lot. So despite its area reputation, Mount

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Vivara has also become a pilgrimage site for sort of modern spiritualists, neopagans, and also the UFO enthusiasts. Obviously, surprisingly, no Bigfoot talk here. Scoffing. On solstice days, some travel to the summit to meditate or to conduct rituals, which I'll bring up Peru one more time. I've told you this in Peru. I don't know if they do this every solstice, but I was there for the summer solstice back in I don't know, many years ago. And it was so cool. We had gone through the sungate and we're sitting like right at the top of Machu Picchu like looking down onto the site and there was this like man in a big white robe with like this huge staff and all these people in like white robes and they were they were doing a ritual which like we couldn't hear because we weren't like but we were observing it. It was so cool. And we got there like in the dark before the sun rose because it started with the sun rising. So like the sun is like barely peeking over the mountain starting to like move and hit the actual sight of the ruins of Machu Picchu and you're watching this like huge tall man

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like do this. Yeah, it was I don't even know what I saw but it was still one of the coolest things I I've seen beyond even just the mysteries that we're pontificating about right now. There's so much in our world in different cultures and different societies that we can observe and we can learn about that I want to learn. Like I think is so fascinating. Like I wish that I could just observe everyone and all the different cultures. You could be a god and then you can I look forward to the afterlife for that purpose. You want to be the watcher. I don't want to be god. That seems like too big of a responsibility. I'll just be like a little like pleb who runs around and I want to be a pleb. I want to be a pleb. A poor spirit who has access to everywhere. A fairy. A forest fairy. Yeah, I could do that too. The Sami people for their part continued to treat the mountain with respect. And while much of their ancient lore was lost under Soviet oppression, what survived suggests that they considered such places very sacred and spirit inhabited

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places. Yeah. Or spaces I should say. Today there are no fences around Vodavara. There is no official protection. There's no like hike out at sunset, hike in at sunrise or whatever. There's there's no restrictions despite calls from scientists and some historians to put in some effort to preserve this site since obviously there's you know like we can say everything that we want to say about the energy of the place but like there are such clear like thousands and thousands of rock formations and it'd be like having no access point almost to Machu Picchu right where it's like okay here's this place that's very culturally significant and shows the clear work of people of the past that you want to preserve. Yeah. And but anyone can go up there. Anyone can touch the boulder. Anyone can push rocks down. It's like going to the Lou and Mona Lisa is not protected. You can just literally like touch her. Yeah, that's basically what

conclusions

it is. So there's there's a big call for this to be better preserved, but it remains unguarded, but at least it's not

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the easiest to get to. Mount Roivara defies easy explanation. It's a convergence of geological wonder, ancient mystery, and paranormal intrigue. And whether this is just a natural marvel, the result of a 9,000-year-old quake, the Sami people, a place where giants existed or exist, Mount Vodavara remains an enigma. That's Death Mountain. Death Mountain Death. It is interesting because I feel like in the stories there don't seem to be many stories of death. It's not like people are going up there and dying, right? It's no one's like going missing. They're just missing time. And it's like almost like flora and fauna can't thrive up there. Yeah. So, it's not death, but lack of life, which I guess could be called death. I feel like it's one of those places where like I'm not encouraging anyone to go since obviously there's there's a call for it to be more protected and for it to be like studied more and preserve what's very likely to be some early Sami culture present. But

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it is interesting just how divided people seem to be with their experiences there where some people feel like it's really off. It's really scary. It's they're being watched, right? And other people feel extremely connected to the other side. Maybe it's a little bit of also like what you bring into it, like what you're seeking. But also, it makes me wonder if the mountain chooses. Scary. I don't know. It does make me now want to because I feel like we've done a couple of paranormal investigations in haunted homes and yes, we've done, you know, we've used Ghost Tube or done some like paranormal activity and interaction in cemeteries, but like what about a mountain? What about a And I'm not saying let's go to Mount Vodavara, but like what about Mount Washington? I was just going to say I always talk about Mount Washington, how easy that would be for us to just like spend a day hiking one of the trails in Mount Washington, spend the night at the hotel, right? Best of both worlds, right? I'd be curious. Stay tuned. Maybe we'll do it.

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I wasn't really sure what this story was about, so I picked two stories. One is

listener stories

about a Russian grandmother, and then another is about an eerie forest experience. Let's start with the forest and end with grandma. Okay. Yeah. So, this is from our listener, Brier, and it's called Eerie Forest Song. Hi guys, I'm a fairly new listener, although I've popped in a few times over the years. I've been loving your Appalachin episodes and realized it sort of sounds familiar to some stuff that happened to me and my best friend. However, I live nowhere near the Appalachian Mountains, more like the opposite side of the country in northwest Oregon. This story takes place about 4 to 5 years ago, but lives on in my mind and I'm sure in my friends as well, rentree. So, let's dive into the story. Growing up, I would go to my great grandma's 20 acre forested land quite often. It's nestled up on this mountain, has beautiful views, and I was sort of a wild only child, so I ran around the entire property with a pack of dogs, practically doing patrols. I was very used to this forest. I

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practically knew all of the ins and outs, and I had made different forts in every corner. When you're an only child with the company of just dogs in the forest and reading books, you tend to let your creativity run loose. At least I did. Anyway, along these years, I made a new friend through this 4 age animal club, who I'll call Rosie. She quickly became a good friend of mine, and crazy enough, she lived a mile or two from my great-g grandma's. She also was nestled up on a 20acre property that was budded up against BLM land. What's BLM? It's the Bureau of Land Management. So I think it's just like US federal land. Okay. Well, that makes sense because Brier said so that was free for us to explore as well. Okay. Yeah. For a while whenever I would go to her place, we would work on this one area building forts for each other, practically making a village. Anyway, we both read a lot of books and also believed in Fay and all sorts of folklore stories. And even though we believed this and had our superstitions, we both felt as if we were always being watched there. The area where we were making forts was

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about a mile or 800 m away from the house. I did track, so meters is easier for me to gauge distance. Now, we weren't necessarily far from the house, but there's a lot of brush, trees, and brier bushes all around, and it was usually wet since we're in Oregon. Anyway, this presence that we felt never seemed negative, but there was this stream that ran off the side quite close to where we were building forts. And for some reason, we were both very drawn to it. And one day, we decided to hike down to the stream to see how far it would take us, because what's the worst that could happen? Anyways, we did not come unprepared. Since we both believed in fay and all that jazz, we brought a pack of crackers and extra salt to put on it in case anything were to mess with it. Fairies don't like bread or salt. I didn't know that. Interesting. Wow. We also brought two knives and I had a necklace with an iron pendant which was to ward away Fay. We marched off starting at our fort village and it was a wet cold hike, but it was so much fun. We balanced on logs that had fallen across the stream. We found so many nooks and crannies where the creek was

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especially pretty. It was fun. However, the deeper we went into the forest, the more and more we felt watched. Note that this stream is practically in a little valley, so there are steep forested areas all around us. On top of these hills is where we felt watched. I swear I could see shadows running across, following us as we delve deeper and deeper. Rosie, my friend, agreed. We were both on edge, and this was only 30 minutes into our hike. Oh, and whenever we would start talking about these suspicions, leaves would start falling. And it was weird because they only seemed to fall when we would talk about whatever was watching us. That is strange. It's like the forest spirits are trying to give a warning. Yeah. I also like to think that like something was keeping an eye on them. They're two young kids. Maybe it was the trees being like, "Hey, watch what you're saying." Because you don't want to call upon something darker in these woods, right? Regardless, we kept walking. For some reason, we really wanted to see what was at the end of the stream. An hour passed. We got deeper and deeper. We kept feeling more and

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more watched. And not only that, I was in front at the time and started to notice that everything like the leaves and trees, even the cracker I was about to eat, started to get a shimmer, a shine, like it was sparkly. It was as if glitter was spilled everywhere on the nature. We both started to get really uneasy, but still thought light of it. That was until we split up for a moment for a restroom break. Rosie went up to the side of one of the hills to go behind a tree and I found a nook of a dead tree that I had to jump down into next to the stream. When I went down there, I heard singing a literal song and it sounded like a middle-aged woman and it was beautiful. But I was so confused. Why was someone singing? Who was this? It's definitely not my friend. And it sounded nearby, close to me. I looked around. Nothing. But I felt these prying eyes even more intensely now. When I looked up at the side of the hill, I swear I saw shadows on horses or something, like a whole line of them just looking down. Had they been following us this whole time? It was

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weird. I didn't get a bad vibe from the singing, but I sure did with those shadow creatures. The singing almost made me feel safe, and when I tried to picture it in my mind, a maiden with very long chocolate brown hair came to mind. It was very specific. The shadows seemed to disappear and when my friend came back, she also seemed a bit distressed, saying that she felt watched and swore that she was seeing shadow people as well. I told her about the song and she seemed utterly shocked and it had only happened moments before, but stopped right before my friend came back. Regardless, who were the shadow people? Why were they watching us so intently? It felt as if we were being hunted. It felt like we were close to a veil of some sorts and there was like a mist along the field of grass. Was it from the fay? When we saw this field with mist, we decided we should not go there. So, we stayed in that spot for a little while where the stream had expanded with a sort of small pool. Everything felt so whimsical. We both were baby witches that at the time, still kind of are, but we had less knowledge than we do now. However, both

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of us had strong intuitions and strange dreams as well. We even shared dreams at the time. That was probably one of the reasons why we grew so close. I'll share some of that in another email. But back to the story. So, we made it to this little place and felt safe. We didn't feel watched here, which was strange because the entire time leading up to it, we definitely were being watched. Then, right before we were about to leave, I'm pretty sure we saw a man. I don't know what to tell you, but it was like a middle-aged man. I don't think it was a hunter. And we were deep in the forest. I don't know. It was strange, but we decided to head as quickly as we could back to Ros's house. We had no service. My phone was practically dead. And of course, our fight or flight kicked in. So, we decided to choose flight because how would two 14-year-olds fight off a man or even some kind of spirit or whatever it was. So, we headed back up those rolling forested hills as fast as we could as if mountain goats or something. And once we finally got home, I thought maybe we were gone for 2 and 1/2 hours, but it was more like 4. I don't know. It was a very crazy experience. And this forest felt nothing like the forest just down

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the hill a tiny bit at my grandma's house. There was a vibe off of it, which makes me wonder if this is like the government land. Is it government land? Because they know that something's going on. Exactly. Like no one else came. Yeah. A year or two later, I found out that there used to be a native tribe up there and there was a chief named Crooked Finger and that's why the main road is called Crooked Finger. Not just because it has a million corners. So yeah, that was a really crazy day. I have no idea who was singing, but it sounded so real. There was definitely something supernatural or otherworldly happening here. I wonder what you two think. Stay safe and happy ghosting, Brier. Happy ghosting. I like that. Gosh, I don't know. The woman singing, the weird vibes, the trees releasing leaves to warn you or or silence you. I don't know. It does feel like there's something like there's something off about that place. Seeing shadows of horses and like men on horses like Yeah. It almost reminds me of the Night Marchers, like this like tribal militia

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of ghosts. Yeah. It's also one of those things where it's like maybe none of this is connected. Maybe it's just like a place that has a bunch of activity. Like there's just a lot going on on on this land, which it sounds like there's a lot of land in this space that's like not overly populated. There's not houses on houses on houses. 20 miles of open land. Yeah, that sounds nice. Well, now we're going to end with Russian grandmother who is so magical. Okay. Okay. This is from our listener Pamela and it is called Spooky and Strange Stories. Hello. Good evening, ladies. Pamela sent this email in 2019. I saw your podcast advertised on Stitcher for the upcoming offerings to enjoy Halloween. I am hooked and I've been staying up until 3:00 or 4 in the mornings listening to as many episodes as I can. I thought I would share experiences with my family. So, I'm going to tell you about my grandmother. She was a very shy, quiet woman who was small in stature, but made a very big impact on everyone she met. Born in 1905, she resided in rural northern

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Wisconsin until her death in 1989. She and my grandfather had four children, three daughters, and one son. I grew up knowing that my grandmother had certain skills. One of the earliest stories my mother told me was of my grandma and her violin. My mom, the eldest, told me that my grandmother would play her violin and immediately go into a translike state. Nothing would phase her when she would get like this. My mom said the house could have burnt down around her and she would have continued playing unnoticing the fire. I love this. My mom said that she grew to hate the violin and apparently my grandfather felt the very same way. One day he became so angry he took the violin, threw it out the front door, and as it spun across the ice, it eventually came to a stop. After a few seconds, my mom said that they watched it combust and burst into flames. What? They all watched stunned. I think it was probably the friction of the violin on the ice, but my mom was not convinced. Another story regarding my grandmother's

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special skills is during the Algar Hist trial in December of 1948. Whitaker Chambers was an American writer editor, a former member of the Communist Party, and Soviet spy from 1932 until his defection from the Soviet underground in 1938. He became increasingly disturbed by Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, which began in 1936. It's a lot of history here, but it leads up to something very interesting. Upon the murder of a highranking spy and a disappearance of another who were disillusioned with Stalin and the purge, Chambers began to fear for his own life. Ignoring several orders to travel to Moscow, he began to conceal documents from his sources. Rolls of microfilm photographs of documents were kept to prevent the Soviets from killing him and his family. These were stored in a dumb waiter at the home of his relatives and Chambers admitted publicly to being a former spy. Wow. In August of 1948, Chambers was called to testify before the House of Unamerican Activities Committee where he gave names of people that were part of the underground. Of course, this was a

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huge news and discussions were on all the radio shows. As Chambers said he had documents proving all of this, discussions were even on the small town radio stations where my grandmother lived. As people called in to join in on the talks, my grandmother called and said that the evidence was hidden inside of a pumpkin. Of course, they thought my grandmother was calling in as a prank, but she kept calling back, reiterating that the documents of proof were in a pumpkin. She wouldn't let it go. By this time, the radio host was getting sick of her and hang up on her, not even allowing her calls to go on air. On December 5th, 1948, The Evening Star of Washington DC published an article that stated, "Armed with a subpoena, investigators visited the Westminster, Maryland home of Chambers, where they found the small cans of film hidden inside a pumpkin." I can't even describe the feeling that just went like from my throat down into my heart and down into my stomach because that is so specific. So specific. Also, it takes a certain

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amount of bravery to call in with the information because what if you become a suspect? I think they like lived so far away though. But these documents have now been known in history as the pumpkin papers. Oh my god. Okay. Then when I was in eighth or nth grade, my grandmother called one evening and begged my mother to keep us all together that evening as she was fearful that something terrible was going to happen to someone in the family. She made my mother promise to call her first thing in the morning to report in on our status. My mother spoke to her sisters who said that my grandmother insisted that they all come to her house and stay the night. She wanted everyone together to know that they were safe. My uncle also received the same phone call we did and promised to call the next morning. When grandma was this insistent, no one asked questions. Everyone just did what she said. So after all the phone calls were returned the next morning and everything was okay, Grandma still felt uneasy. Her fears were not unfounded because as she came to find out and as we all came to find out that morning, the evening prior

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my mother's cousin and her daughter were tragically murdered. Now, for some more meat of my story, as if we haven't already gotten to the meat, this happened after my mother was married and out of the house. The only two children left at home were my mom's youngest sister and their brother. This particular evening, both my aunt and uncle were at a dance at the high school. My mom's other sister, who detailed this story, had stopped by the house to visit my grandparents with her new baby. Now, I've never known my grandfather to be anything other than brave. When he was a kid and too small to help with the farming, he would go and pick blueberries in the woods, miles from their house for his mother to can and use over the winter. He would be given sandwiches and packed up for 2 days with buckets to fill with blueberries, a loaded gun, and ammo in case he came upon a bear, and was sent off for days. He was also a great hunter. Way to grow up. I know. He was also a great hunter, fisherman, and carpenter. Always watching a penny. When they decided to add on the house, he was on the lookout for a bargain. Now, near

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this house, there was a community of Native Americans living. And apparently, they had experienced a few fires that damaged some homes. Some of the wood that was unaffected in the structures were for sale. And my grandfather advised not to purchase any of this wood because he felt it would bring nothing good with it. But it was added to their home. And as it was, strange things began to happen. The barn, garage, and pump house doors and lights were often found open or on after being locked up and off for the night. This particular night, as my aunt stopped by with her baby for a visit, she said my grandfather came out of the bedroom with his gun, was angry. She had never seen him like this. She still had her baby in her arms, turned, and ran out of the house and down the driveway. She didn't know what was going on, and she felt scared. My grandmother called her brother-in-law who lived on the next farm and my great uncle came over and he too felt frightened. He insisted my grandparents and their son and daughter all stay overnight at their house instead that evening. But my grandfather refused to leave and insisted my grandmother go and wait for their son and daughter to return from the school

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dance. My grandmother then called the priest and asked him to come out to the house, bless and perform an exorcism on it. The priest came out and with him came the police chief and a mayor. They were all wondering what was going on. I love this idea that the like police chief and the mayor are like a little nosy. Wanted to check it out. It feels like a fictionalized like scripted TV show, right? Like Riverdale. Once there, the priest refused to step foot in the house while the police chief and mayor also refused to get out of the car for they had terrible feelings. My grandfather never spoke of the events in the house that night when he was alone, but he said it was the worst night he had ever spent in his entire life. So, I don't really know what happened. I don't know if these things tend to be inherited or not, but I have seen things in my eldest daughter. When she was small, her uncle was stationed in Germany and his wife was expecting their first child. One night, she added to her prayers for God bless her new baby girl cousin. Next morning, we got a call and sure enough, a baby girl was born at around the same time that my daughter

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was saying her prayers. Oh my gosh, this is so cool. She also told her Sunday school teacher that she had a baby brother. I had not delivered at this time and I did not know the sex of my baby. When my father was dying of cancer, it was not unusual for me to run over to his home at night because there were many false alarms. The evening he died, I called my mother first and then I called home to let my husband know. He asked what time my dad had passed and I told him. He said to me that he had let the kids stay up a little later that night as it was a weekend and no school was the next day. And during her prayers, our eldest daughter once again asked God to bless her granddad who was now in heaven. I told him, and apparently the time she was praying was the exact same time my father had passed. My last story is after my dad passed away. We wanted him buried up north with his twin sister who had died when they were 2 and a half years old. Oh, he was to be buried in a cemetery that someone had donated to the church years ago and was set quite a distance off from the main road. Due to the weather and pipeline construction that

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summer and a gravel road, the trucks needed to dig the grave were too heavy to go back there without sinking. So, my dad was put in cold storage. And my my kids like to say he was a popsicle. He was put in cold storage until spring and I received a phone call and said that they could get back in there and we were able to be there in 2 days. So, my husband liked to leave at 2:00 a.m. when we took that 350 m drive up there. This visit was no different. After the burial, lunch with my mom, and a drive back, this is all done within a 24-hour period. When we got home, our phone rang. Now, I would not wake up during tornadoes. Nothing. So, I could not believe that my husband didn't hear the phone ring. I heard it and I answered it. And I hear, "Hi, I asked, who am I speaking to?" The voice on the other end said, "Oh, how soon they forget it was my dad." What? I told him it couldn't be him as we just buried him earlier that day. And he was like, "Did

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you look in the casket?" I told him, "Of course I didn't look in the casket." And then he said jokingly, "Then you'll never be too sure, huh?" He hung up. I stood there with the phone in my hand. What? Called to wake up my husband. He insisted that he never heard the phone ring. I really have no idea. Did I speak to my dad? Was this something else? Was my dad playing a joke on me? Anyway, you get one phone call when you die just like when you're arrested. Who knows? Maybe. Or like you get to choose from these five things. What do you want? And a phone call is one of them. I'm also curious if this is like very similar to what her dad was like in life. But this is this is from Pamela. We got a whole family history of hauntings. Oh my god. Pamela, your family is very powerful. Very. I don't even know what to say, but I don't have to say it because I bet your family already knows what I'm thinking. You're that in tune. The pumpkin thing. The pumpkin papers is wild. Cuz that's like there's no relation to those people, right? It's

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just Yeah. Oh my god. I wonder if there's records of the radio cuz she was on the radio at least like once, but then she kept calling and then they were like, "We're not putting you on air." I wonderations that the radio station had afterwards. They're like, "Oh my god, that pumpkin woman who used to keep calling screening your calls." And then it's like, what are people's reactions? Because I feel like people can either be amazed or terrified of that person, you know? Right. Or both. I don't know. Maybe in love. Am I in love with your grandma? I am. And your daughter is so magical and in tune. I know. And how sweet that's finding things out from her daughter just adding to her prayers. Like just adding in good intentions or just like in a conversation, just adding little bits and details here and there that she clearly doesn't understand or maybe it doesn't seem remarkable to her cuz she doesn't understand like how impressive it is that she's Yeah. what she's experiencing is not like just

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known by everyone. Well, that's why I'm curious, Pamela, how old your daughter is now and if she remembers like what is she seeing? Did she get a visit from your dad? Did she get a visit from the baby girl who was born? Like, is she astral projecting? What is the visual or the information that she's getting in these moments? Yeah. What's the download? Tell us. Tell us. Tell us everything. All of you tell us everything. Spill your secrets, paranormal or not. Email us at two girls onego podcastmail.com. I really want to do like a nonp paranormal episode, but like just really creepy weird things that have happened in your life in anyone's lives. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good I mean Yeah, because it doesn't always have to be paranormal. It's just this is a podcast of stranges. Yeah. Unusualness. Things that leave you petrified. Mhm. Or questioning, itching, scratching your head, being like, "Huh?" A mystery, if you will. Yes. So, email

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us all of that. And if you want episodes ad free and one week early, plus bonus content, plus campfire stories every Tuesday, join us over on Patreon. It's a good time. Thank you to Jamie for editing and producing our podcast. And thank you to all of you. We love you and we will see you on the other side. Very spooky.