Halloween Hootenanny

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very spooky hello hi it's our last episode of October I know I was thinking about it and I just don't want to take down my decorations yet I might keep them up a little while longer well the nice thing is that we are recording what this is October 19th or something like that yeah we're recording this one definitely two weeks early yeah so we have plenty of time to keep our decorations up and I feel like the November episodes will have them for a little bit just because we record them in October

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but I know it is sad to think okay I'm not even no you know what let's not even talk about that because it's just not worse sadness we're here for happiness because tomorrow is Halloween yes oh my gosh and something exciting is coming on Halloween if you're listening to this um but that's all we will say a.m wake up for all of you yes you might even get two episodes at once if you are one of those people who like to listen on like Monday morning instead of Sunday yeah so just uh Beware there is something coming to the doorstep that is wherever you listen yes this is two girls one ghost and we are your ghostesses that is Corrine and I'm Sabrina and this is an episode where we're going to go back to like the format we used to do where we both tell you stories and they're in the beginning whatever we

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want now we have released ourselves from the constraints that was our previous format that we were just for some reason had so much trouble getting past I think it was me you were always like we could do whatever we want I was like no it's always been the same we can't but I really wished our own got to yes yes yeah controls us anyway so whatever just do whatever the universe wants us should we talk a little bit about our time in Salem about our readings do you want to do that here or should we do it somewhere else we can do it here I actually am wearing my Marblehead sweatshirt because I miss it there already good did you and everything you responded to my oh I forgot it was I was like you didn't respond to my text and then I just realized it I had messaged you on Instagram or like commented on your Instagram post of your you did like a marble head dump of photos I was like it's calling to you come back come back Sabrina you know I will probably go back at

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another point I I feel like that will be my writer's Retreat spot or I'm gonna do like a writer's Retreat every quarter just to you know get the inspiration flowing creativity going beautiful I've got five drinks if you're watching on YouTube I have a coffee I have a protein smoothie and I have a glass of water so it's gonna be the episode of drinks oh uh okay well to start off when you were in Marblehead yeah you teased me by allowing us to go to an open house but we we learned I was like so this is it Sabrina's moving and my life is complete and then three days later you're like I'm not actually moving I'm like no I changed my whole life around thinking on you moving out here but one day maybe but just not one day where I am in my life it's not just not not quite but I'll still send you listings I mean I love that that was the thing is that it was a house from like built in the 1700s and

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despite also just wanting to go see it and like oh like entertaining the idea because I love Marblehead it is just so fascinating my dream is to be able to walk into people's homes and just see how they decorate what the architecture is like I just am so fascinated by it so given the opportunity to go see a house from the 1700s grin I had to take it up yes and it was very it was really interesting because there had been work done to it over time but like very little it needed a lot of love it it needed a lot of work and what had been done was new it wasn't like someone redid the current space and kept it up to date so you basically got to walk through a maze of a house because it was like oh we want another room let's just build it over here and then there'll be like this little skinny hallway that used to like Crouch down into and basically crawl through then here's an open hole in the middle of the floor and if you fall through a while we might find another room it was yeah the real amazing the family with 12 kids lived

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there before and I don't know how that I mean it would have been a really fun house to play hide and seek there were just so many random so great cabinets and cupboards and places to hide and the the wild thing is that it was one of those houses that every room connects to the other room so the in order to get to like one bedroom you had to go through all the other bedrooms and there really weren't hallways it was just doors we were lost quite a bit still don't understand the layout but we did ask so as we're wrapping up the tour I said is it haunted and then they laughed and they said no it's not haunted actually I don't think they laughed I think they were like no no it's not no one died no one died here yeah but a lot of people have been born here and so when you first walked into the house there was this little Nook on the side that would be great for an office space in present time but back in the day that was the birthing room that's where everybody gave birth yeah imagine working out of what used to be the birthing room this is my office

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it used to be a birthing room a lot of babies were born here yeah there's which I mean it's also the original old wood floor so there's a lot of like birthing remnants probably on that floor crusties of placenta within the green of the wood I don't know why but the way you just said it made it sound so much more um a little bit yeah it's not as heartwarming but it is interesting I wish we'd learned more about that house yeah specifically the birthing room because I was curious is it a birthing room was that like where everybody from the town went was was the person who lived there like the the nurse the Midwife the yeah I know it was a gesture of the plaque outside because it did say the year was born year was born year it was built and the name of the original owner so it probably would have said there um because a lot of the houses had the plaques with like their professions as

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well I don't know but it's so cool oh also okay I start I stayed at this place I highly recommend it if you're staying in Marblehead it's called Harbor Light Inn and it's this beautiful historic bed and breakfast and they have Apartments if you want to stay in an apartment I stayed in an apartment but they have three binders full of the history of the house and I started reading them right before I checked out but it's there's so much history three binders I wish and then there's like photos of the renovations and the history of the families who owned it it's really really cool I kind of wish I want to email them it was on the in that fireplace room where we were working it was on the mantle or not the mantle on like the book dresser oh I keep like oh Shadows okay I'm just gonna go back I'm gonna walk in well yeah you said that we didn't know that this existed because you and I definitely would have looked through it thoroughly and also there was like a two hour period where I was

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sitting in the inn and we were separated because you were doing work and I was waiting separated if we were separated and I I wasn't doing it I was sitting there eating chocolate like just thinking about how great my life was in front of this fireplace and I it could have been better I could have read all about the house you could have read all about it well I'm curious do you remember to email them and ask if they have the email copy of it because I would love to Josh yes explore it and read it do you remember any of the facts that you read no because I didn't completely get to read much of it because there was like it was one of those things where like I opened it and I tried to like to see how much there was and I got I didn't have time it was truly as Nick and I were leaving it was I was waiting I was checking out to then get jump in your car yes I was also there we were all leaving together yes it was like a let's go um but yeah it was so beautiful and so nice and I just loved Marblehead but oh we the reason we got here was because we wanted to talk about Salem and our

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experience and we got our auras red or we did the Polaroid and Karin and I have very very similar auras or at that moment we did right well that's another thing that I guess I hadn't really known was that your aura can change day to day even yeah like I had thought you know it was just like as you evolve as you develop as certain things happen to you maybe like every few months you might look slightly different but it was it was day to day and so one of the things I said was a lot of parent and child relationships like people who come in like a mother and and daughter or specifically female best friends female friend groups who come in like Austin Times Like Us oftentimes like that day when they get their auras photographed will have the same or very very close to the same Aura which is what we experienced yeah went back to back and I had what they said was a male entity

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with me a spirit so maybe I do have a guardian you definitely do well because when we look at the photos there's different I mean we don't really know what we're talking about this is all like us trying to remember what the experts told us but they said basically like as they're the different colors that are around you and how how they layer mean certain things and then there are these sort of like orb looking things above you and based on the number of them those are your spirit guys and then if you have a light to the right or to the left of you that's a feminine or a masculine energy that's present like someone else looking over you and Sabrina you had you had someone it kind of looks human shaped too if you look at I think I posted on my Instagram but then grin you and I are gonna we should post them on our tgog two girls one ghost Instagram for people to see we'll make them our little apple we don't have profile pictures on Apple podcast maybe we'll do that yes that's a great idea um yeah so we did that and then we did

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readings at Ascend which is a shop in Salem we highly recommend it and it was really fascinating I mean I feel like that we should do like a separate full breakdown I recorded mine so I can share some of that audio and then we you took pictures of your cards yes are really hard to reiterate because there's so many it goes through so many different like parts of your life and it's hard to retell it in the same way and I feel like it doesn't always do it justice but the one thing that was really interesting was this woman goes I sense a move in your life and she's like I'm thinking I'm getting like Colorado Denver and Nick and I literally just bought it's an investment property it's a

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rental that we're gonna rent out but like in Denver Colorado so I was just like how Wild that that is so wild to me that it's so specific so it's so specific and of all the places in the world right exactly she also knew the only things that this woman knew when we walked in were that we were friends and that I was local and you lived in California like that that was yeah that's it that is it we didn't have we didn't schedule appointments ahead of time there was no chance to like Google anything it was literally we walked in we said we want a reading they said great go to this back room and we did yeah and we only said our first names anyway and then oh this is a thing that really got me excited and it was so fascinating so she mentioned she saw like a female an elderly female spirit who watches over me and she said that she's holding my daughter

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on her knee right now and keeping her safe until she's ready to be in our lives and I was so I mean even just thinking about it I get chills because it's like that is so powerful and also just so incredible because we've heard stories of like children who are going to come into your life just waiting to be there yeah so like you're pre-selected so far in advance yeah and your relatives know her yeah already from from Beyond and are you there with her waiting I'm just gonna we know you don't need a gender reveal at all and when you're pregnant one day we know now because the spirits told you yeah this is so awesome for everyone my reading just to give like it will definitely go into I feel like you got way more that was specific in your reading and mine was a lot of like partial suggestions and then the special guides

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would come in again and interrupt and be like but really the reason she's here and why she what she truly needs to listen to is like she has to unlock her her basically am I like spiritual and witchy power like they kept being like great I'm glad she has questions but we don't really care to answer them it's about what she needs to do uh but they're they're better yeah this is so specific the ghost the tattle-tailed on me yeah I haven't told anyone this but it's not like it even means much to me but basically in the reading she she said they're saying you have a lot of stuff like a lot of little things and at first I was thinking like oh this is this is BS like I am I'm someone who goes through my stuff like every two months and like clears it out everything has a purpose everything has a place yeah and she goes it's just a couple little things but from each of your each of your ex-boyfriends one or two things and you keep them and your guides are telling you that if

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you really must keep them take a picture but you got to get rid of it like basically it was lowering my vibration and I need to not at all look into the past and fully into the future and I was like oh my God I do I literally have like a little ex-boyfriend it's at my parents house it's not even here with me okay no that's good no it's like a little ex-boyfriend box where it's like you know like a scarf that my when I was 12 years old my first part if it goes that far back yes that's why I was like it's so weird because it's not even it's not even these like sentimental things of people that are are recent you know like there's there's nothing obstructing me from moving forward in my current relationship it's not it's not like oh two years ago this person like it is literally like holding on to one of my first kiss like the first Valentine's Day card I ever got like it's it's little things like that that but I yeah I was told I gotta get rid of the Box yeah take a photo those are cute like if you're you know

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like your little pre you know young loves or not yeah they were like yep you know pre-teen relationships take a photo because that is the you know cute and sentimental and something you can look back on when you're telling your kids like about their first relationships or whatnot but I'm not at all thinking about the person I was in a relationship with it's just about like oh this is a this is a milestone this is a marker of who I was and what I was doing when I was 13. you know yeah good riddance anyway that was incredibly specific and I've like never told anyone that I have that or talk about it because why and yeah but yeah no guides no longer see that's why I'm like oh that was so specific and you said that not much specific came up and I'm like excuse me that is the most specific thing well I will say everything that was specific that came up was incredibly accurate there wasn't anything that was a guess that just didn't hit the mark it was all

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pretty real but we'll we'll talk more in a future episode on it and include some of the recordings because Sabrina did yeah get to record the audio Yeah and hers yeah and I took pictures I wish I recorded audio but uh we we figured out we could do that a little too late at the end of mine before you went in yeah I was like wait a second you were the first of the day so she forgot to tell you yeah that's okay um it's all up here yes okay do you want me to go first sure yes okay okay wait should we say what we're doing I'm like yeah arms out to the side well because tomorrow's Halloween we were like let's come together and let's pick Let's each pick something that is somehow symbolic of Halloween or witchiness or this time of year in some way and do a little Deep dive as to how and why that became a bit of a simple or just cool facts about it yeah I mean I'm more just I didn't really do that I more just did like something spooky and Halloween

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themed okay great well I did the other so it doesn't matter we make our own rules now yeah yeah this is just like a fun Halloween special and I'm obsessed with vampires I think I've had a very um I've been very forthcoming about my love of Damon on Vampire Diaries and um just vampires I don't know I think they're hot yes so so if you have any vampire smut book recommendations comment below please let me know or if you know any vampires I'm in my way no know we don't know enough yet I would love to be a vampire only purely for the sake that I could then spend the rest of my life reading books but I think it would be hard because I'm a vegetarian so I don't really know how it would happen however yeah okay so when we think of vampires we probably think of like Bram Stoker's

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Dracula or Vlad the Impaler Twilight Vampire Diaries movies those kinds of things but back in 1892 the vampire capital of the world was actually in our very own American backyard Rhode Island no way yeah that is a quick drive from me very quick yes and I'm sure a lot of people if you listen to lore I'm sure you kind of will recognize this story and just wanted to give a little bit of a disclaimer that the story I'm about to share with you is very much not the result of vampires running rampant but it's Halloween I love vampires I love history so I'm going to share this on our ghostly podcast because it's fascinating and I'm sure also as I think a lot of empathetic people listen to our podcast as people who have empathy and can put themselves in other people's shoes I'm sure that while you're hearing this story you will understand where the panic and the fear

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came from and why there was a vampire panic so without further ado I present the story of the New England vampire panic New England was settled by Europeans and thus many European beliefs were incorporated into the New England lifestyles and I actually I went on like a tangent figure out like what these like folklore and legends and beliefs were I feel like I'm bobbing a lot because I'm really excited um should we put a warning like there's a lot of quick movement in this episode yes may get dizzy on this ride oh whoa so I went a little bit on a tangent of my own during my research and I found some things that were just interesting and they're kind of not really related to the story but I thought they were fascinating so there are a lot of wedding Customs that came from the from Europe to New England like wearing a borrowed

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object and this is so interesting a lot of people would get married in cold weather so as not to interfere with farm work and there was a rhyme to help the New England bride choose the day of their marriage and it's kind of disturbing okay uh-oh Monday for health Tuesday for wealth Wednesday the best day of all Thursday for losses Friday for crosses and Saturday no luck at all that's the opposite okay so all of us are having bad luck wedding days now yes Saturday is not the date and also Friday for crosses is like it's like almost like hey death is going to happen on Fridays right okay so we're all just supposed to have like a little week weekday ceremony Wednesday is the best day of all everyone just so you know okay is it too

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late to change your plans it is yeah I'm kidding we'll I'll take it away let's not look back to Traditions from the 1800s to change your wedding um another tradition and belief that traveled across the Atlantic to the New England settlements was that of vampires there was a belief and a fear that the dead once buried could still harm the living and this fear took a very real and for those living at the time turn in New England in the 1790s during this time there was a very mysterious illness that spread throughout New England it was called the Great White plague because of how sickly pale and white the victims would turn it consumed the victims From the Inside Out weakening them turning them into lifeless pale gaunt versions of themselves oh boy it was also called consumption today we know it as tuberculosis but during this

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time when it first struck the settlers of New England it was just really hard to explain what it was and what was causing it and because of that people were like this is something so out of our control it's something Supernatural and more sinister because they didn't have the words or the ability to explain it and this led to then the belief that perhaps the dead were causing the living to become ill one of the earlier cases it's not entirely untrue right if now what we know about Airborne diseases yeah there is some fact of you think about it but and there's no there was no human coming alive and and there's a lot of this that like isn't so far off like they're kind of close to it but it just took a couple more years and

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a little bit more time to figure it out properly so they're like okay what is causing this perhaps it's something from the dead and one of the earliest cases of New England vampira's vampirism vampirism vampirism why I don't know I think they all sound good vampire vampirism why is it doesn't sound weird vampirism is definitely wrong so vampire vampirism vampire you're right yeah okay first time I'm never gonna say that word again in the rest of the story um is that of Rachel Harris in Manchester Vermont Karen oh okay Rachel was married to Captain Isaac Burton but she fell ill and unfortunately died in 1790. that following year Captain Burton married Rachel's stepsister and within weeks of their wedding Rachel's stepsister started exhibiting

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very similar symptoms to what Rachel had before she died so basically everyone was like oh Rachel has come back from the dead to enact revenge on her stepsister for marrying her husband wow yeah yeah I just like somehow I transported myself back into that time period in Manchester Vermont and was just thinking like what the hell yeah what's going on here like I can't imagine that family in that Community both having the loss of this person and then and then that person's death now is spiraling into something so monstrous and scary there's just a lot to to handle all at once I think again it's just like not being able to explain it so they're like we need to find something to put blame on her like have a cup you know there's a reason for it so this town

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turns to what the Europeans had done during their own outbreak of vampire attacks and they exhumed Rachel's body it was now February 1793 so nearly three years after Rachel had died so just imagine the state that Rachel's body is in the entire town I think it's like 600 people Gather in the freezing cold in February to watch as the internal organs were removed from Rachel's Court corpse the liver heart and lungs and then all of them were burned and then some of the remaining organs were preserved and turned into a concoction for Rachel's stepsister to consume so it's a bit of a medicine if you will and while it says sometimes how it feels a little bit also correct like I don't know anything about about medicine here but but if I would guess like you know destroying infected parts so that they can't reach other people would be good

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and then now like vaccines have the vaccines that we take in our own arms are like dead versions of viruses right right and illnesses so yeah I mean this is like a modern older or not modern an old and diversion of a vaccine it's a little bit grotesque don't get me wrong but they were not far off unfortunately this ridding of vampire ritual did not rid Rachel's stepsister of her illness and she too died that September so then the townspeople were like oh well then Rachel wasn't a vampire she was probably a witch and there's no way to have prevented her from enacting her revenge from beyond the grave in that way so they're like we did what we could and then in February of 1796 Lavinia Staples fell ill and started having terrible dreams of a shadowy figure sitting on her chest

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preventing her from breathing and I did not write where this one happened but I don't believe it was in Vermont I think it might have been anywhere so it was somewhere else in New England New England so Lavinia one evening in Her Dream remembers calling out the name Abigail which is the name of her sister who had died not too long before of a very similar illness that Rachel had died of and like people were dying of again the great white plague and there was a fear that Abigail was Haunting her sister from Beyond the Grave giving her the same illness because of these dreams and nightmares that Lavinia was experiencing so the town granted lavinia's family permission to exhume Abigail's body and try and experiment but this is really interesting because no one there seems to be no record of what happened after they exhumed Abigail's body but I can feel I feel pretty certain that Lavinia passed away Not only was

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that 226 years ago but also the real illness that Lavinia was battling was taking a lot of lives and most people who suffered it didn't really recover from it because they didn't know how to recover from it right in dumberston Vermont is that did I say it right I have no idea I've never heard of that place so yes I did I said it right um the Spalding family was tormented by death Lieutenant Leonard Spalding had lost six of his 11 children to this terrible illness and had grown so convinced that his deceased children were coming back as vampires to claim their siblings so he would exhume the bodies burn their lungs hearts and livers to prevent the chain of vampirism but when that did not work he and the local started to believe that Vines would grow Between the Buried caskets and once all of the burials in a plot had been connected another family member would die

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so then they began burying the children in Graves very far away from one another in order to hopefully break the chain of vines and then this chain of death this is just horribly sad it's so sad and at this point you know everyone's so desperate and frightened and fearful of loosening their loved ones that they're just like we are going to try anything and you're doing these things to someone that to the body of someone that you love in order to protect someone else you love like that's just it's just so hard I feel like it would just be such a battle internally to be able to bring yourself to do that but you're you're desperate and then also I mean what we know of TB now like I'm actually shocked that entire families just didn't get wiped out all right because the amount of people back then that would it's it's still today like we a lot of people don't live in these massive homes all by themselves like we have a lot of family we have multiple Generations we have children and pets all packed into a single space and if there's this Airborne illness going around then the

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chances that everybody in your household gets it yeah it's pretty high right and I think that's the hard thing is that there was no they couldn't explain how people were getting it right like some families were completely getting wiped out like this this balding's family sticks of their 11 children had died at this point and but then their neighbors are completely fine so it's like why them and why not someone else it's just hard for them to understand and I get that and then this is happening all over the New England and probably the world but it's just there are dozens of stories and a lot of uncertainty and inability to explain so in Exeter Rhode Island Sarah tillingas died and she was one of 14 children after her death the other children began to complain of Sarah's Spirit visiting them at night the visits continued and then five more children died so they exhumed all six bodies and found

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that Sarah's body had not decomposed or at least not at the rate it should have so she was the first to die and yet for some reason her body was like the least decomposed so they were convinced that she was a vampire sucking life out of her siblings as to live longer they removed her heart and I think it was this story where when they removed her organs they found that like they still had blood in them so that also convinced them I think it was just like the way her body was decaying there's still like remnants of things left behind yeah um so they removed her heart and burned it in front of the family home and they report peace came to the family after that happened but one more child died before peace fully came to them uh others took to burning the organs of the deceased and inhaling the smoke from the burning remains in a ritual thinking

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it would protect them from the curse of vampires that were was said to be running around the world or this area uh in 1845 in Jewett City Connecticut a string of death led to a belief that vampires were afflicting the town then there was the case of Mercy Brown in Exeter Rhode Island and this is perhaps the best documented case of suspected vampirism in 1883 Mercy's mother died from consumption seven months later Mercy's sister died and then mercy and her brother Edwin both grew ill Edwin was sent away to get better but then mercy died Mercy's dad George was heartbroken and desperate to save his surviving family members and while he did not believe in the whole vampire ordeal the townspeople were convinced that there was vampire activity at the root of the Brown family chain of deaths so they exhumed the bodies and again George was like while I don't believe in

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this I'm willing to do anything to try to save the rest of my family and if I understand people you know if this is what people are saying will work then I have to try it so they exhume the bodies and as they removed Mercy's organs they found a large quantity of blood dripping from them in their minds this should not have happened and thus it was proof that she was still alive and taking the lives of the living I'm pretty sure I looked it up I think she was buried during the winter time so her body was more preserved um that's like the science of why there was blood in her organs still the family removed Mercy's heart and liver burned them mixed them with water and gave it to Edwin to drink there is some belief that the mercy Brown case led to the story of Bram Stoker's Dracula because there are rumors that when uh Bram Stoker passed away there were newspaper clippings of the mercy Brown story along his belonging in his

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belongings but I also think Dracula was very heavily inspired by Vlad the Impaler there's you know I'm sure it was influenced by a lot of the stories that were happening exactly the most interesting thing about all of this is that they were so concerned with vampires and ended up doing vampiric things to combat it cannibalize their loved ones organs you're right and taking out their hearts you know those that's something that it's the classic vampire you you put a stake a silver steak or something a wooden stake through the heart of a a vampire you're right I didn't think about that this whole time it's they became basically the vampires the vampires yeah in fear of a vampire right just fascinating and I think there were quite a few people who argued that as well and I'm sure this

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was it brought up a lot of debate because there was fear but then there was also like people who were like you're doing vampire related things now by because you're afraid of it there was even a anti-vampire party that was formed and the newspapers were riddled with articles and like kind of like advertisements claiming that vampires were real and that the living was being attacked and preyed upon by representatives of an Unseen World so it was like it was it was almost a hysteria in the sense that people were so afraid that they just were consumed it's interesting they were consumed by this illness but also consumed with their fear of vampires frightened villagers believe that the first to die were the vampires and that they were being inhabited by some evil spirit that was sustaining Life by draining life from the living and the spiritual possession had to be destroyed and the evil bond between living and dead had to be broken so that's why they would exhume the bodies

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and then burn the organs and sometimes feed the Ashes to the living who were ill oh just so much desecration of bodies in this story yes okay so it's interesting because around the same time as the mercy Brown case in 1882 Robert Koch identified the bacteria responsible for the white plague and published an article called the etiology of tuberculosis and then in 1890 he announced that he had discovered a cure which was inoculated as vaccine therapy so around the same time so kind of after the mercy Brown case this Panic seemed to start to dissipate but by this time I think there's over 80 vampiric rituals that had been performed whoa okay which if you think about how many people were dying of consumption that's actually not that many but it is still a significant amount I'm sure too there was some

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investigations going on too because it's not like one person dies in the town and then they say oh that person's clearly the vampire I'm sure there was out of the fear of everything people trying to talk about it and and figure out who was connection who and who the one vampire could be and that person is the one that gets exhumed based on people around them yeah for those of you who do not know tuberculosis still exists it is a terribly slow death it's like life being sucked out of the victims a lot of victims would cough up blood have terrible fevers and lose a significant amount of weight it was so severe during this time that it claimed about two percent of the Region's population and eventually killed 25 percent of New England residents at the time whoa okay that's a ton yes and now today we know it's an infectious disease that impacts the lungs and

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I just have one story to conclude the vampire panic and it actually happened more recently it was 1990 and a couple of children were playing around on a hill in Griswold Connecticut when they stumbled upon a human skull and of course they like brand their mom was like oh my God I just found a skull and I brought a lot of police media the police and media attention and the at this time in Connecticut there was a serial killer named Michael Ross and so they were afraid that they had stumbled upon his dumping a victim yeah so they immediately tape off the area as a crime scene and begin digging up the land and discover 29 bodies buried in unmarked Graves but upon further investigation they discovered that these bones were more than a century old and they were not the victims of a serial killer the dead many of which were children were laid to rest in the very simple manner that was common in the

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1800s wood coffins no personal belongings they're armed by their sides or crossed over their chests but then there was one very strange grave it was a stone Crypt of sorts and archaeologists uncovered The Remains and when they started to uncover them they're like oh these seem like they're in perfect at an anatomical position but then they realize that the body and the Bones have become been completely rearranged the skeleton was beheaded the skull and thigh bones were placed atop the ribs and vertebrae kind of like a skull and crossbones motif and then even more confounding they realized that the beheading and rib fractures had occurred five years post-mortem so someone had exhumed the body and performed these actions to the corpse and it was also placed face down so like chest down to the ground five years later this whole time I'm

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thinking like there's still you know flesh and hair and everything's still on someone's body by the time that it gets exhumed and deemed a vampire worthy of a vampiric ritual right but five years later that's a long time point the finger and blame someone the Rachel Harris story was three years after she had died you know I think it was just it got to a point where they're like we have to do whatever we can after quite a bit of studying and researching they came to the conclusion that this was another example of the vampire Panic from the 1800s in New England and was another attempt to prevent vampires from claiming lives they had exhumed this man removed his head and organs and put him face down so that it would be impossible for him to leave his grave and take the lives of others they believed that the other 28 bodies were victims of consumption as well and they were all buried in the same area to conclude

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I think it's very important to acknowledge that there was a lot of fear and a lot of unknown during this time so in an effort to not create chaos the people wanted to put a name to the horrors that they were going through that also in turn created a bit of a hysteria but because they did not have the knowledge or ability to understand tuberculosis what caused it or how to heal people patients from it they believed it was something outside of their control something Supernatural and evil and the only words and terms that I could put to it was vampire or witch yeah there are a lot of similarities between the vampire panic and The Witch Hunt that had happened about 200 years before or yeah because like in the 1600s yeah the supernatural ideal system was very much rooted in the New England DNA but the major difference that we need to draw attention to is that in Salem and The Witch Hunt they were very much alive

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when they were right whereas in the vampire Panic the accused were already deceased so therefore they were not Taking Lives of innocent still living people that's what I was going to say throughout this whole thing I'm like you know what at least people are already passed correct yes and if you want to learn more about the folklore and history of the vampire panic I highly recommend looking into Michael Bell he has spent over 20 years pursuing the Forgotten vampire tradition and is a folklorist with a PhD he has a book called food for the dead on the tale of New England's vampires and is all about he's been like researching and looking up old articles and basically digging into the history of this vampire panic but trying not to sensationalize the story because I think when people hear vampire they're like oh bloodthirsting monsters and all of this stuff but he's very much looking into the time and what was going on with the settlements

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or settlers and and just the influences that caused them to follow these rituals and believe it was vampires it is very fascinating because I mean I know this is going to sound ironic because obviously we're here as a ghost podcast who talks about magic and the belief in a lot of things but it does I it is curious to me that despite the witch trials having happened and basically what happened then being condemned some 200 years later and people realizing that you know more likely than not those people were just regular people that they yeah they murdered that they can then go and make these extra leaps to say that there are vampires like I understand that we didn't understand diseases it was also having lived through many New England Winters you go a little bit mad so I can

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understand where they're coming from but it's just it's interesting it's one of those things where I'd be like oh well can't they look back in history and maybe make some assumptions that like perhaps this is something similar that's going on and yet we have a podcast and we still haven't learned to understand yeah yeah I mean and also if they're very influenced by Europeans and they too have been dealing with something similar and are doing these rituals and it seems to be working or you know even if it's not it feels like oh if they're doing it let's try that as well right A lot of people are influenced totally it makes me think of when there's those psychology experience experiments where they'll put a button in a room and they'll say like do not press button you're like okay well nothing really will happen if I press the button but what if I do it's just you you battle your belief with your

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action right like you don't think that there is going to be these repercussions or this result of whatever you're about to do but what if what if and you didn't do it and because you didn't do it everyone around you dies right and there's a bit of herd mentality as well like if other people are doing it or pressuring you to do it then you feel like you need to do it it's the chain email from 2004. if you don't forward this to seven people there's going to be a choice scary no I think that's one of our rules on all of our social media we're like no seven days chainmail unless we do it oh gosh yeah you started this episode by saying we make our own rules and so I'm gonna write a crazy fun long chain email check your inboxes last time someone did something like that where they thought it was just this crazy fun really weird story it resulted

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in the Slender Man Sabrina so you must be careful with how you tread forward I know I'll create one that's like a really beautiful nice thing yes okay well I'll accept that okay you pass good blessings on to seven more people yeah that's a nice way to do it all right I'm so excited for yours suddenly my background has gotten really blue I feel like I'm suddenly I feel like I have the uh what what was it was it the first vampire oh my God I cannot think at all Twilight I almost said Vampire Diaries you know how each Twilight has a different sort of like a filter yes yeah am I am I in the original or am I in Twilight the second one if you really did just turn blue right I don't know what's going on I'm evolving evolving and so have our ideas around witches and some of the

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symbolism when we think of witches so the classic depiction when we talk about witches around Halloween there's usually a pointy block hat involved maybe a black cat as a sidekick or just a cat lays in the YouTube video right now definitely some you know magical potions some spells you know Double Double Toil in trouble I'm thinking of barricade naturally now oh yeah yeah I think you should think of like the large nose the like Snow White Witch the the come here my pretty with the red delicious apple and maybe exactly right on the warts a little Hansel and Gretel you know the person in the in the woods that's coming to eat you that's sort of what we what we think about and of course without a doubt in that depiction or what we're envisioning This Witch to look like there is a broomstick for transportation of course of course

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so in modern day we have some silly versions of which is brooms like which is writing vacuums and roombas like we saw on Netflix and focus books too of course uh but have you ever thought to yourself how did such a simple household staple become an iconic symbol of magic and this is a PSA to parents out there that this is about to be a little PG-13 yes oh we are going to venture back in time to 1324 lady Alice and I'm going to try to say this last name correctly but I I likely will butcher this kaitler so lady Alice keitler of Ireland was just accused of Witchcraft she was the first recorded person tried of Witchcraft in Ireland she had many children and many husbands and she had a lot of money so obviously people were a little bit jealous they

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didn't really like this Alice had it all they didn't have anything and so or at least you know the grass was greener on the other side so they felt a little bit suspicious of Alice and Allison her second husband had actually been accused of killing her first husband together but nothing came of it so just a lot of town gossip nosy people but then her fourth husband so now she's on her fourth husband all three others have passed away her fourth husband John Lepore started to get sick and he suspected that he was being poisoned so all eyes turned to Alice and now I think it's important to note he never said Alice is poisoning me he just said I think I'm getting poisoned um well this is also is that this is Alice's fifth husband at the time now she he is her fourth husband okay okay so and the other three and they've all done died yes so and she's she was already suspected of

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killing her first husband yeah so I I'm TR I'm coming to the defense of Alice but I guess if I also lived in that town I'd probably yeah I think that's how big issue yeah it does feel like an odd coincidence with so many so I can understand but also I also knowing history and how women often widows were often finger-pointing blamed for anything that happened or went wrong and called which it is um it makes me angry so yeah and actually to call back to when we were walking around Marblehead and all of the plaques saying the dates that the houses were built that they were added on to and who lived there and what their occupation was we saw a few that just said Widow so yeah there was there was a lot of that at the time yeah all right so he suspected that he was being poisoned and everybody started

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looking at Alice saying what the hell Alice did you kill your husband or are you trying to kill your husband and as much of the witch trials went that we saw years later people were very quick to join in on the finger pointing her step children were upset that John had recently redone his will to favor Alice and her first born son more than them so they quickly became accusers insisting that Alice used potions and sorcery and poisons poor Alice I feel like also where it was common during this time is if you weren't pointing the finger you there was concern that you would be blamed so it was better to point the finger at people to protect yourself not excusing it I'm just saying that right that was common totally and unfortunately what we saw later with Witch Trials is it doesn't even necessarily matter like there are some people that were in positions where you would never suspect them or they were accusers themselves and it all turned so you never really knew what

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position you could take to be safe but people were just trying to make guesses to protect themselves because it was it was a hard time to live then so an investigation is launched and some damning evidence is found in Alice's closet was a pipe of ointment which she used to grease her staff quote upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin and in a moment I'll tell you what this means I think I know what it means but okay yes people are probably visualizing what it could be and you're probably right but we'll get there because you did warn us it's PG-13 it's PG-13 Alice was charged for seven counts of Witchcraft the seven counts were and I'm going to shorten the actual description or or I guess the what's the word I'm looking for the basically like the official counts because it's okay it's a long-winded

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list of things that she was tried for in terms and convicted of yeah okay okay so essentially those seven counts were that she denied the power of Christ and the church that she sacrificed animals for demons that she asked demons for advice that she had sex with an incubus that she would hold coven meetings in the church without permission I like that it said without permission because then I was like could you do it with permission I feel like that's an odd statement making dark magic powders ointments and potions and bewitching and killing her husbands so that is what she was convicted of it's also just so sad because at that point there's nothing that she could have done too like to defend herself it's like they had no they had made up their mind it was not like innocent until proven guilty it is just like guilty if we say you're guilty it's reminding me of an Outlander when the two women are being

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tried basically and being called witches because of their use here's the thing most people that that we know in history as witches they either were doing absolutely nothing to call that to them or they were just being healers and using the natural medicine and working with plants around us and some people unfortunately had that labeled as a witch for them while other people could just sit there and be like oh yes that is that's the holy plant so that's actually okay and you are of God yeah it's it's hard to think about it's frustrating I'm getting fired it is super frustrating yes okay so Alice is convicted and you're probably thinking poor Alice she's succumbed to what many many other people did when it came to the witch trials and she was murdered but actually Alice escaped she fled presumably to England and then was never seen again but unfortunately her

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maid petronella was tortured into a confession basically made to say that she was also involved and had helped Alice oh and then she was convicted as a witch and burned to death at the stake awful it's so upsetting okay so what the hell is going on why does all of this matter and why did Alice have a staff or a broomstick covered with Salve in her closet so in the Middle Ages which I wrote down what centuries this means because one of my new pet peeves is that it's not really pet peeve I just don't know enough about it and I want to be more educated because I feel like we always default to saying Victorian age when we talk about ghosts and I think that's that's no one's fault but but the fault of the ghost because they were all just dying in the Victorian era yeah but I just want to give accurate descriptions of what was going on in certain times and what it will appeared to be

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so this was the Middle Ages or medieval times so this is the 5th through 15th century so during this time Europeans were eating a lot of bread mostly bread made from rye and Rye had this fungus that can grow in it or has a fungus that can grow in it ergot or air irrigate and a lot of people at this time didn't realize that they were eating this fungus that they had the bread with the fungus growing on it and they thought it was a normal part of the bread and that they were eating this fungus unknowingly the fungus had hallucinogenic properties and made people high as a kite which isn't that what happened with in France in like the dance hysteria they exactly consumed this fungus yeah the fungus from the bread yes I was going to say the same the same thing you covered that you you did a whole episode on the dancing hysteria yes so basically yes people have been unknowingly getting high off of Retinol for a long time yep so people they began experimenting with

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plants and herbs and things that could possibly bring on the same feeling as Erica once they realized that they were getting this Sensation from the mold but you know of course didn't want to keep eating moldy bread so they're turning to plants and they're trying to figure out how to use certain plants or parts of plants and make them into ointments and solves to give them this sort of high yeah but these plants were very dangerous I literally have in the YouTube video I have uh oh Nightshade right here framed a picture of it not a real one because you are gonna start channeling your your witchy powers and perhaps making salves yourself for my broomstick we'll see okay but these plants that people were turning to to get high essentially we're we're very dangerous deadly nightshade henbane Mandrake and Jimson weed were all poisonous plants that people started to use they these plants can be super deadly

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like children animals humans a very small amount is basically needed to to kill you so right it is it is dangerous but they were taking parts of these plants and using them so consume too much of these plants you will die consume just enough you'll hallucinate hallucinate you're working with the Devil so that is essentially the things to lose situation it's a lose-lose absolutely so somewhere in this experimentation of using these plants to get high people discovered that if you absorb it through different parts of your skin especially your sweat glands so basically like your armpits or via mucous membranes so your vaginal and rectum regions that you would get more High more quickly and you also got to avoid all of the awful side effects that came with the only ingesting or drinking these plants so if you just encapsulated them or just ate them or or drink them in a tea a lot of people are getting horrible stomach aches nausea vomiting

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rashes but when they inserted them in other ways they just basically got high and didn't have to have any of that other crappy stuff that happened just are just picturing this era the Medieval ages and people just experimenting strange things I mean even today like you you know you hear stories of people who work at emergency rooms and people patients who come in with very strange objects inside their body there are there are there are things that you never thought could get inside you but I think when people work in the ER they they seem to find how those things enter we should do like a just non-paranormal episode where we have people in the medical field just tell us the strangest things they have seen come into their hospitals yep I agree although I'd probably faint that episode so I'll read it close my ears over my eyes and it will be just delivered to you by Sabrina okay

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all right so the people discovering this are making now ointments in these cells to rub on themselves to to get them High and sometimes they were using things that they found around their house to help administer those ointments okay a broomstick for vaginal Administration according to the 15th naturally yep so they would so when they said that that woman Alice had a broomstick with Salve on it they basically were saying that she there was evidence of her lubing up her broomstick and administering this so to get high to work with the devil commune with the Devil so according to a 15th century text it is written that these witches confess to this so they're basically saying like yes this is this really happened in history which is yeah do admit that this is a thing that they quote anoint themselves under the arms and in other hairy places

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and apparently applying this ointment to your genitals would make you ride High into the sky floating towards the Stars transcending out of your body in a very LSD like State and so quite literally it felt like they were flying which is why it was eventually named The Flying ointment so it was basically like Not only was it just a broomstick but them riding the broomstick and then flying in the air was because the high that you would get the hallucinations you would get made you feel as if you were flying wow I don't know why I feel like I need to say this but please do not try this at home oh no no don't this is not a good thing or a safe thing I just feel like we need to like protect our own bums here and yes say disclaimer please do not try this at home we do not recommend this to anyone thank you yes there are a lot of safer things you can use to experiment with and also plant-wise just don't like what

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these are really deadly plants and most people don't know how to properly use them and don't take your chances and don't do drugs kids don't do drugs and brooms are either made of plastic or full of splinters so find something else and also meant for cleaning meant for cleaning yeah and for this so this Sal this potion it could either they the rumor was it would either be given to someone directly from the Devil Himself or it could be crafted by a witch so basically they would make this potion give it to someone else or to them give to themselves and it would allow them to take flight and even though the feeling of flying was in reality what was happening when people were taking the this concoction yes it was rumored that they really were flying that they were getting on these broomsticks and these witches were flying to the witch's

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Sabbath and essentially being corrupted and making everyone else corrupted and go against the church right right in 1453 edelin who was a priest who was pretty publicly criticizing the church he confessed he's first man confessed to flying on a broomstick and also watching his elderly mother straddle a broomstick and whisk up the chimney and out of the house so he was arrested I think there has to be some addictive properties to to doing this I think people were very much in this addicted repetitive nature of using this and also keep in mind during this time there's not a whole lot to do now not at all not at all there's a lot of down time so much downtime there's not much there's no electricity there's no like lights so you kind of like go to bed super

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early you wake up super early I don't know try out new things and then get addicted to it and get addicted to it exactly so he was arrested and convicted of Witchcraft he ended up repenting and spending the rest of his life in jail so he wasn't he wasn't killed but he was the first person to actually confess to this whole broomstick thing so there's a lot of other people that had the finger pointed at them or that were suspected of doing it but he was the first person on record to say yes I ride the broomstick baby yeah and now I will point out that uh of this time we can't really trust much of what was written down in text because of course there was a lot of fear similar to in what you were describing Sabrina with the Panic around vampires vampirism and with witchcraft there's the same right like everybody think they think something and they want

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you to confess to that one thing and so a lot of people work and they don't give up until you do exactly and so a lot of what we have as written text could be extremely embellished could be the result of someone being disgustingly tortured until they gave whatever the person torturing them was looking for and really it was just yeah it was just creating these Fantastical narratives to push people further away from from the thing that they feared most which was witchcraft right but this is where our current depiction of which is flying on broomsticks began paintings began to show half-naked women sitting on or near broomsticks and other items that could potentially Aid in applying the Salve or were just household items and the first image of women riding broomsticks appeared in the margins of a French poet Martin Le franc in his book Le Champions I did not take French I'm just trying to

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channel Sabrina so you can correct me if I I don't even pronounce it right my mom would be so embarrassed by how my might by my pronunciation it's it's okay well we're we tried if someone else can correct us that would be great but basically this French poet in his book that's translated to the defender of ladies there is a little painting of two women flying one is on a stick the other is on a broom I'm gonna zoom and I'm gonna show you but we're gonna have our editors slap this baby into YouTube so that it's a little easier lovely oh you see also I love that that's the font of a book oh it's so magical it's calligraphy fairy Lord of the Rings right yeah it's beautiful yeah oh but can you imagine the perfectionist in me would never be able to write like that because if I got one thing wrong I'd have to restart the page and it's one page takes you 20 minutes yeah that's how it took

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years to write yes all right so over the next few centuries many of these paintings were very racy you know witches and women on broomsticks uh it's all quite phallic and the women were quite mesmerizing they're losing more and more clothing as the years go by and this was very fitting for the depictions of female witches because there really wasn't much understood at the time about female sexuality and how it fit into the shifting culture and women were also spending a lot more time in home than they ever had before so they basically were given more of a role domestically and the women were really trying to figure out their own place in culture as well and kind of attempting to rebel against that a bit so these images of the women riding out of their homes on broomsticks or through chimneys it was a bit of a protest it was them seeking their independence from the domestic position that they were now in in the house it always makes me think of that tick tock song which woman in total control of herself

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yeah yeah it's a great one you can stream it on Spotify right it actually came up in my Spotify I was like oh my God I love this it's such a good song yeah she released the entire song it first went viral on Tick Tock yeah so great okay so showing these women riding broomsticks was a perfect symbol for showing women's Defiance to the role that was given to them both physically and spiritually by the church so while nudity has definitely been presented in artwork before this was a time period in Europe when it was shifting from medieval times into the Renaissance period and it was this sort of rebirth and there were many more images of women riding broomsticks nude sensual captivating I'm sure a lot of us have them pinned on our Dream Pinterest boards you know it was nice so things are shifting in in Europe there's reform

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there's a new branch of Christianity so protestantism Protestants came out of this time period And basically there were then those who broke off who were like you know Protestant light and then people who were really intensely Protestant and are known to us now as Puritans and then they headed over to North America to New England where the vampire situation also happened they established roots in New England and eventually in Salem Village the Puritan Community was shook when 11 year old Abigail Williams began to contort and utter nonsensical things and then another 11 year old and Putnam followed Abigail's footsteps the two of them pointing their fingers at three women tichiba Sarah good and Sarah Osborne yes as witches so this is all to say though we don't actually know whether or not these selves were used in the way that they said they were by by inserting them into

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you via broomstick right or if people writing broomsticks or witches writing broomsticks was created as a I guess creative way to describe the people that were using this and getting high or if it was just created by these like scared anxious religious people at the time who were scarred by you know women's sexual and religious freedom or their desire to have that you know it's quite threatening there's a lot of fear around women power and yeah yes totally so while broomsticks association with witches started in this way it has evolved and modern day practitioners of Witchcraft still use brooms from time to from time to time for various purposes but the main one is to clear away negative energy before a ritual and to protect your space and also it can be used to straight up clean debris from your home let's remember that brooms also are forklaining purposes yeah and there I was reading I I so believe this

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too because I feel the same way about myself when I get in a bad Funk my house represents that and I was reading about how not necessarily even in witchcraft but just like your space is a reflection of where you are and in yourself like physically and mentally and your health yeah and so just the act of sweeping and cleaning up is also showing your dedication and your commitment to taking care of yourself as well which I think is really beautiful it it's a literal and metaphorical cleanse it's actually interesting the the medium we met with in Salem and I knew this but it would talk she talked a lot about how water is very cleansing and water can literally take away negativity and it's very grounding so she was saying that when I'm in the shower to after I you know clean myself bathe and not wash my feet because I don't do that still um I to ask your Spirit guides and your

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Guardians to wash away your negativity and she was telling me this story about her Mentor once did this and truly the color of the water changed which is just so incredible yeah that I would believe everything from there on out you know like that would absolutely you need yeah well unfortunately for people back in the day there was no real proof people just thought something and believed it but I want to leave you with a few uses of brooms and more modern practices that I read uh so you know if you're practicing witch out there I would love to hear how how else it's used but I wrote down a few things yeah so you can hang a broom over your front window or door to prevent gossip unwanted guests or curses from entering your home okay if you have a guest over actually I I've been seeing this and here heard this for much of my life but if you have a guest over who's basically overstaying they're welcome and you want them to leave you take a broom and you stand it right up against the door of

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the room that they're in and they'll leave quickly or I've also heard that you can just flip the broom upside down and prop it up upside down and that will have basically the same effect I'm imagining that you're doing this and like kind of locking them in the room so that they get freaked out and they're like I can't stay here anymore you just yeah you stop talking and you just stare at them creep a H another one is I thought this would be good for where you live Sabrina okay Southern California to bring rain you can wet the bristles of the broom and you can shake it and in various directions you know north south east west oh visualizing and calling for rain as you do it oh I want rain okay I'm gonna do this right I know yes oh and I didn't write this down so I might I might totally tell it incorrectly but in the beginning of your research you were talking about wedding traditions and the broomstick represents masculinity and then the bristles represent femininity and so I know it

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used to be a tradition in marriage where when a bride and groom got married to each other they would jump over Abram to kind of represent them coming together symbolically can you and Brian please do this at your wedding I I have to actually I will gift you them that's cool right yeah okay like you guys I think you should I whoever is officiating should say we jump off of the broom you may kiss and then it's now jump over the broom yeah I think I'm gonna pitch it to him you know I love fish so there might be like a smashing of the class situation but we can do both we're gonna Hopscotch our way back down the aisle doing every single tradition you possibly can I love this I'm I'm so excited to be a part of it but no you should gift us a broom because I was thinking but I was like that would be really cool I would be able to do that absolutely gift you a broom uh okay but that that's the history that is wow history but also very much lore yeah as to why witches have broomsticks

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yeah because you know it's so fascinating because I had heard I think probably through another podcast or something that which is broomsticks where like the OG dildo dildo but it came from such a different I didn't realize that came from this like method of inserting selves or you know they need a lot of different practices for it and then it sounds like it's all or listening to that exactly right yeah I I'm not sure I mean I will say my my search history the first thing I put in was like broomstick says dildos that's what I was looking for because I think that's what we had heard so we had heard so frequently like that that is working from but I think you know it very well could have been I think it all just kind of goes back to women finding themselves or attempting to liberate themselves sexually and religiously and physically and finding

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the roles that that made sense for them and not the ones of the church or their Community bestowed upon them so you know a woman in total control of herself yeah words to live by should we do listener stories yes let's do it I have a story from our listener Lane and it is called my encounters so far a nice hello to the two of you I love listening to your podcast although I sometimes what I said howdy Duty nice hello annotations although I sometimes get too scared to fall asleep but since I had quite a number of experiences since my early childhood myself I have become very interested in the topic and want to believe this is actually a thing and I'm not just crazy I have quite a lot to tell and so my

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Story begins when I was a little boy between three and five years old my mother keeps telling me how I was talking about my dead grandparents as a toddler telling her things I could not possibly know about them but I didn't keep on seeing them instead I remember seeing someone else I used to see a boy in my room in the evenings I remember seeing him when it was dark outside but my lights were still turned on he was either hovering under the ceiling as if he was laying on the fan or on top of my bunk bed that's such a creepy image like hovering by the ceiling needless to say I never slept in that upper bed of my bunk again but understandable this boy would look down from the upper bed bending over from the top grinning at me ew nominal nope it felt so wrong when he would move on the bed like that there was no sound

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when someone moves the air around moves too you hear something but no nothing and he was so damn pale like a vampire I thought although he always smiled at me he was freaking me out and I ran crying and screaming to my mom so when I was around five years old my mother finally started to ask more questions or perhaps I started to open up more about the events she asked how the boy looked and I told her and she brought up a photo album from the basement and showed me a picture of a boy in a coffin I'm imagining this is a book of the Dead but I'm curious if it belongs to the house or why Lane's mom had this but right and to show to show a child another yeah dead child right so Lane's mom shows him a picture of a boy in a coffin and I went well yes he kind

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of looks like that boy but the boy I saw had light blonde hair she turned some pages and shows me some other pictures like this and I said yes that's the boy then she told me the whole story well you have to know I grew up in the house with my grandparents that had built and my mother had grown up there herself together with her eight siblings she told me that this boy was my Uncle Curtis who had died in the Attic when he was 11. he used to have lighter hair when he was younger and it turned quite dark before his death apparently she said he was bullied badly by the two sons of my grandfather's first marriage because he was the son of my grandmother's first marriage and the first marriage husband had died during World War One my mom told me that I needn't have to be afraid because he was there to look after us so now I naturally am all excited about my friend

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but shortly after this I stopped being scared and I never saw him again which I thought was quite odd but since I always had an uncomfortable feeling around him I thought how this negative energy must have had to do with how he had died because he had taken his own life I had one other experience with him when my friend and I were home alone at my place playing hide and seek this is this already gives me chills okay yep so I went looking for my friend in the upper rooms on the third floor and I heard someone giggling behind the computer I was certain it must be her and when I looked behind it nothing naturally I was freaked out ran downstairs and yelled for her to come out and turned out she was in the basement so there's no way I could have heard her up in the attic or third floor when I was older I thought a lot about him being stuck in there so I tried to pray for him and I would talk to him and try to guide him towards the light then the house was sold by my uncle a couple years ago so I really hope he was

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able to leave and let go I often felt a presence in the house that I believe wasn't the same as Curtis in the dark of my room I used to see a tall shadow figure by my door which moved closer to me when I looked at it and felt way darker than kerdi's spirit our dog sometimes acted weird too like once when I was home alone with him watching TV in my mom's bedroom on the second floor he stood up growling but not at the top of stair of the stairs like he did when he heard something outside no he stood there growling at the empty hallway towards the bathroom so creepy when I was older I got into a relationship with someone and after just a short time we met we went to visit his mother and her partner in Norway they told us about some events in the house that they thought must have been her first husband who had died a while ago so when the two of us got back from a tour his mother told us about something that had happened while we were gone

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she had heard a loud bang and went looking for what it was she found that there was a giant and heavy flower vase which had been originally standing on a little table was now on the floor it didn't even just shatter it just stood there on the floor straight up which felt impossible for it to happen on its own one evening during the visit my boyfriend at the time was already asleep and I was watching something on the laptop when I noticed a shadow in the shape of a man I kept looking around for what could have possibly cast a shadow like that and as I did I couldn't find anything and the shadow started to move around the room and then slowly fade but I felt no fear another small incident happened while I was at work in the hospital I went into an elevator on the ER floor and before I could push a button the button to the exit floor pushed itself oh I got a weird feeling but I hope the person realized that they had died my final story I'm also like who wants

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you to exit right who was trying to get you to leave right that's true that's actually a weirder scarier version of that yeah that someone else was just going going out and didn't recognize that they themselves had passed I was thinking like it was a very active move and sign yes interesting well Lane's okay so that's good to know but Lane's final story is one that goes on until today and I'm not sure whether it's the same Spirit or a different one because recently it has shifted to a much more negative and aggressive presence I always felt as if I might have someone or something attached to me so when I came together with that Norway guy I had a strange dream a guy came up to me and said something around the lines of now that you have him should I stay or leave and at that time I believe this guy was

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my run true love I was very wrong so I kept wondering if it actually might have been a spirit somehow attached to me asking if I wanted him to leave now since I had found someone else unfortunately this relationship with Norway guy turned pretty violent and destructive he didn't have any self-love accuse me of lying and cheating all the time for no reason no reason he gaslighted me so on I tried to break up a couple of times after it got too violent during fights but he somehow was able to convince me time after time that such a thing wouldn't happen again so when I had already moved out I made the mistake in a vulnerable moment to let him back into my life at this time I was listening to a show on YouTube where people told about the Paranormal encounters and I was watching it on my Xbox I turned the console off and turned on a Lord of the Rings audiobook on my tablet and laid it down on the windowsill and was going to sleep on the couch when all of a sudden I heard on repeat the door isn't open it

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won't open the door isn't open it won't open I think it repeated five times at least I was freaked out and paralyzed for a moment and then I took the tablet and saw it had jumped all by itself into the middle of the audiobook to another YouTube video from the Channel that I had been watching before on my Xbox to a video I hadn't watched yet and somehow somehow was repeating the same part of a couple lines I listened to that part of the video again and it did not repeat itself so I didn't really know what to make of this but the lines stuck out to me the door won't ever open he will never change it won't get better I then broke up with this Norway guy and I saw a shadow figure a couple of times in the corner of my eye and my new partner at the time who I talked about my experiences since he himself had experienced odd things in their house told me he too saw something

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behind me once when we were driving in my car what okay that would have been a good thing to to tell but maybe not while driving that seems dangerous not while driving but at least the next day I know or once you arrive to your destination to just say hey tomorrow let's figure out what to do with the question situation because I saw something in there behind you yeah till this day I sometimes feel a presence in my flat sometimes my console just turns on all by itself sometimes I hear my couch make sounds as if someone is sitting down on it but then the energy has shifted last year I started to experience sleep paralysis for the first time ever in my life it started when I was 26 which I think is a bit weird for itself but okay you never know when such things occur throughout life it started one night when I was about to fall asleep I felt something touching my hair and at first I thought oh damn ferret I'm trying to sleep here

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but then I felt something lifting up the blanket beside my head and I couldn't move and then I thought to myself oh hell no that is definitely not my pet ferret there but I was tired and annoyed and asked to be left alone because I wanted to sleep I fell asleep until I was awoken a couple of hours later by something pulling at my hands I couldn't move or say anything so in my mind I more or less nicely asked it to leave me alone because I get quite grumpy when I'm tired or woken up before it's time it didn't stop I panicked and I started praying to God and then was able to regain more and more control over my body until it stopped needless to say I didn't go back to sleep and had to watch some Netflix instead something similar has happened twice this year one more recently I felt something on me and this time I had trouble breathing I stayed kind of chill and tried to communicate somehow I tried to grab its hands and it actually took my hands what I was starting to freak

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out because it felt like actual hands I can't move or make a sound as usual but it felt so real I was starting to think it was an intruder I thought it might be my crazy Norway dude x with stalker habits since he has not stopped trying to contact me and so I panicked I panicked a lot and as the grip got looser I opened my eyes and looked up and saw a shadowy figure on top of me with their knees beside my body Fading Into nothingness I don't really know what to make out of this entity since I felt like it was trying to help me when I was in that bad relationship but now it doesn't really feel like it's kind I don't know is it a different spirit I have no idea what's going on with that at the moment so when a girl I was seeing talked about trying out a Ouija board I answered hell no same now with my girlfriend she apparently enjoys playing games alone somehow and I was very clear in telling

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her not to do such things when I'm around who knows what that might enable by the way my current girlfriend claims to be a witch and practices Wicca so maybe I should just ask her for cleansing but I'm curious absolutely yes uh I will send other thing other things if they come up in the future if my English is somewhat poor please excuse me I grew up in Germany so greetings from Germany y'all Lane hello Lane in Germany Germany okay well I just have to say so during the video game situation where it was basically saying to Lane through the the headset or whatever the the non-player characters repeating about him never being different or him never being able to leave like it was all about the exit which is reminding me again of when in the elevator there was the exit button pushed I just feel like some of these things are maybe connecting oh and I don't know necessarily when certain things happened in Lanes right life like if they were

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all around the same time or if one predated the other where it wasn't connected or not I'm curious but if it was around Norway ex-boyfriend or ex-partner than possibly so I'm gonna reset that but if it was around Norway ex-partner then perhaps it was just this entity saying leave the relationship leave the relationship leave the relationship like this is not a good Avenue to continue in which I think is really fascinating but I kind of agree with Lane it feels like a very different presence now um right but I will also remind us of the little boy who had passed yeah in her very in Lane's very first experience in that house with this little creepy boy who was smiling and I feel bad saying that he's creepy because we obviously know that he passed away there's evidence of him in the house but it was just his behaviors seemed so odd and so

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menacing yes that's my it's that smile that new smile movie that is what it's reminding me of and I feel like just because we know someone's backstory doesn't mean that whatever is appearing as them or the version of their spirit that is Still Remains is fully beneficial presence yes yeah definitely it's hard to know for sure Well Lane you will have to keep us updated I definitely think cleansing your space and setting your intentions is really good and someone emailed us recently I think we were very kind with our CL like clearing our space and setting our positive intentions before recording but she was like sometimes you just have to be brutally rude to demons and dark spirits and like say F AF get F off FFF get out welcome here I don't know bring out your New Jersey accent put your bump it in and be aggressive okay we can do that moving forward B and

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I think aggressive be aggressive aggressive why am I so blue so suddenly I don't know and your camera also so we got new little like extension cameras so our video is more clear I don't know if it works but yours keeps making like um focusing things all right I have a email for us to end on this is from Kate and it's called boo hag oh alrighty I'm unsure if y'all know this low country Legend I was raised in South Carolina where the Gullah people are located they have a certain demon or Monster or something that is known in the area and it's a popular Legend in their culture it's the boo hag or skin demon oh I have had friends that have had personal experiences with seeing it and I have felt and stopped it the big hag

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is a demon that sheds its skin at night looking for someone to sit on and steal your strength what if this is this is reminding me so much of both a plush pedestrian yeah and also the tocolosh tocolosh right in South Africa yeah and it's weird a bit where it's like leaving its lower half of its body behind searching it's yeah victims so gross if you struggle while they are there it is said that they will take your skin deeper's creepers much [Laughter] it has the same side effects as sleep paralysis basically but you just can't stop it by putting a straw broomstick up in the air by your bed it is said that they will become distracted and count all of the straw and then have to rush home before the sun comes up oh my God die okay another great practice for the

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broom right this is save your life hang up a broomstick yeah front door front window bedroom save yourself yes brooms everywhere broom's everywhere okay so Kate says now I have had friends who have seen this thing it's not uncommon to be driving in the islands with little lights around and all of the trees blocking your Moonlight well my friend Alice she saw him or whatever it was she said she stopped at a stop sign in the middle of nowhere trying to get home and on the road was a demon of some sort that had patches of skin all over its body like it had been collecting chunks and was wearing ew the eyes were black and void of light she said she looked away for a second and it was gone and so she started to speed away just to look in the rear view mirror and see it behind her car another friend had a similar experience

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to this on the way home from a friend's house he saw the same monster and described it just as she had we all freaked out as we all had had sleep paralysis lately and we decided to put straw brooms in our room and near our beds the sleep paralysis stopped after that oh the boo hag is a weird skin demon that I want no part of even though I moved away right well we're not we're not down in in the South Carolina I think we're okay hopefully yes even though I moved away from South Carolina when I come back to visit family I always have a straw broom in my bedroom this seems smart um I want to know more about the gold people like their experience too I also we should do an episode on the boo hag and look into this um it's terrifying it seems like a combination of so many Cryptids as I think a lot of Cryptids are like they

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they seem to borrow one another's tactics and just creepier and creepier um yeah I don't like the story where Kate's friend was driving and then looked in the rear view mirror and it was there behind the car oh oh I'm picturing in stranger things what was it season three or whatever a stranger things where the monster is is absorbing absorbing all the parts of people it's kind of what I'm picturing it's so gross but it also makes me more fearful of sleep paralysis too because it mimics sleep how do you know where you think yeah yes that you can just get out of it and basically like it's a lose-lose situation unless you have a broom because otherwise if you struggle they will take your skin if you do anything they will basically take yours you have to distract them by saying here's my big broom count the bristles should we start selling brooms on our merch and it's like in great the wood handles

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engraved with two girls one ghost it should be engraved with just all the different rituals and things that you should use your broom for this is like your your number one tool it's the Swiss army knife of spiritual tools everyone arm yourselves with your brooms and uh stay safe stay safe and this Halloween perhaps you might require a broom even more because something is coming tomorrow night or something is brewing something has been brewing and will finally come into your lives so we will see you we'll see you then um if you have any paranormal encounters or Supernatural Cryptid UFO alien encounters please email them to us at two girls one ghostpodcast gmail.com and thank you so much for joining us on this

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October Journey which was questionable um you did have to Pivot because it was we it got a little too scary we weren't prepared we didn't take the proper measures to protect ourselves and everyone else and how can we will do better next year well also how can you really properly prepare yourself to talk about demons I think you just have to be very I think we should minimize how often we talk about them um and not yeah not pile them all onto each other lesson learned in the creepiest month of the year of course as well but thank you for joining us we hope no one got possessed and um stay tuned for an encounters episode this week that is a light-hearted episode yeah to kick off November we have to have a little palette cleanser you can support us in a variety of ways you can break and review on iTunes you can check out our patreon we have a lot of exclusive content and bonuses and chat with everybody there we've Discord we have merchandise and the holidays are

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coming so order order head if you know you want something or to give you something yeah well because October just because October is over does not mean spooky stories need to be over we are here all year round and continuing to bring Ghost Stories paranormal stories all of that to all of you so continue to be a part of the triangle continue to spread the pyramid scheme and get lost in the triangle with us and with your friends and your family bring them all into our little like pyramid scheme and thank you so much digital yes for editing both our YouTube and our audio we appreciate you and we will see you on the other side someone recently reviewed saying that like we do that too slow but like it's beautiful it's a piece of art sorry appreciate it bye bye