Did This Family Have A Guardian Angel?

Summary

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Haunted Cosmos: Did This Family Have A Guardian Angel?

Podcast: Haunted Cosmos
Hosts: Ben Garrett & Brian Sauvé
Guest: Thomas Freed
Date: February 18, 2026
Episode: Graveyard Shift

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Episode Overview

In this episode of the Graveyard Shift, Ben and Brian are joined by parishioner and friend Thomas Freed, who shares a series of strange, interconnected stories from his family's past. The central question: did Thomas’s family experience the ongoing presence of a guardian angel—or perhaps something else entirely? The discussion veers between humorous banter, chilling anecdotes, and thoughtful reflection on the boundaries of the supernatural in everyday life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Meet Thomas Freed with Icebreakers

• [02:19] Icebreaker: Thomas is asked about his favorite Lord of the Rings character (Theoden) and does a “two truths and a lie.”

  • Quote: “I think it’s Theoden. He shows a wide range of what it’s like to be a ruler and to have people underneath you, to be fallible, to mess up, to redeem yourself.” - Thomas Freed (02:28)

• [04:52] Two truths and a lie:

  • Says he’s a classically trained pianist, ran for political office, and that spaghetti is his favorite food.
  • The lie: never ran for office.

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2. The “Guy” Who Saves Children: A Series of Small Strangenesses

• [07:48] Setting Up the Stories: Thomas notes his childhood was filled with “bizarre happenings,” many unexplainable. He recounts three short tales—always involving the mysterious “guy.”

Story 1: The Monkey Bars Incident

• [09:27]
  • Thomas’s younger sister falls from playground monkey bars onto asphalt, comes out unharmed.
  • When asked how she’s okay, she simply says, “The guy caught me.”
  • No one else was present.
  • Quote: “Well, yeah, but the guy caught me.” - Thomas’s Sister (09:55 as told by Thomas Freed)
  • Generates a discussion on “constant minor amounts of weirdness” in Thomas’s family.

Story 2: The Snow Sheet

• [10:44]
  • Same sister is nearly buried by a heavy sheet of snow sliding off a roof.
  • She emerges fine, explaining, “It’s real lucky that that guy pushed me out of the way.”
  • Again, “the guy” is unseen by adults.

Story 3: The Living Room Presence

• [14:08]

  • Thomas’s other sister reports sometimes seeing “one of dad’s friends” in the living room at night.
  • Family can’t identify this person, who seems to only be seen by the children.

• Reflection: All stories share a mysterious, sometimes nameless male figure helping or watching out for the children—unseen by adults but reported naturally by the sisters.

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3. A Terrifying Childhood Dream

• [16:23] Thomas shares the only dream he’s ever remembered vividly.
  • He dreams he’s awake, senses a “malevolent presence” in his sister’s room, and sees her being sucked into a dark portal.
  • A loving, gentle hand (not his father’s) pulls him back—he wakes up.
  • Leaves lasting psychological impact and a sense of being protected.
  • Quote: “There’s this hand on my shoulder, a warm, loving hand that pulls me back...I just get the sense it’s an older gentleman that’s not my dad.” - Thomas Freed (17:53)

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4. A Medium-Sized Miracle: The Coat-Connector Angel

• [25:34] Thomas recalls a more “objective” incident involving his family and a mysterious stranger.

The Incident

• [26:54] Family is donating coats on a frigid winter day in Omaha.
• They see a man walking in a thin shirt and jeans.
• [27:01] Dad, uncharacteristically, pulls over, offers ride and coats.
• Man says he lives in a group home—his coat (and others) all ruined by animal urine.
• They drive him to the group home. He helps unload coats and goes to fetch a staff member, Sharon.
• [29:01] Sharon emerges, but the man has vanished—she never saw him enter.
• [29:59] His name, a strange foreign-sounding one, is not remembered by anyone. Sharon denies anyone brought her to them.
• The incident is immediately recognized as highly unusual by the family and staff.
• Quote: “She opens the door to her office and there’s like one tiny window in there. Not even a closet.” - Thomas Freed (31:06)

Angel, Connector, or Coincidence?

• The man’s story about the coats is validated—everyone at the group home did desperately need coats.
• Thomas identifies a whole genre of “connector angel stories” where the angel’s role seems to be simply arranging practical help.
  • Quote: “It seems like the angel’s sole purpose in the story is literally just to connect... the logistics guy.” - Thomas Freed (32:06, 32:20)
• On the drive home, his usually shy sister says:
  • “Yeah, I really like that guy. I wonder when I’ll see him again... he’s always been nice to me.” - Thomas's Sister (33:24 as told by Thomas Freed)

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5. Discussion: Angels, Dopplegangers, and Family Weirdness

• The hosts reflect on the nature of the stories—humdrum, not fantastical, but with an “ordinary supernatural” feel.

  • Quote: “I call it small strangeness... not high strangeness, it’s just, like, peculiarities.” - Thomas Freed (35:37)

• Brian and Ben joke about the “logistics angel” and compare it to fictional guardian angels.

• Brian: “That’s one of the best [angel stories] I’ve ever heard.” (36:19)

• Thomas notes that, looking back, his upbringing felt “normal” at the time—compared to life since, it feels much stranger in retrospect.

  • Quote: “Honestly, once we kind of left that whole situation... life was a lot more boring than I was expecting it to be. When I was eight I thought there would be weekend adventures with strange men.” - Thomas Freed (37:43)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “What did your family do to get this? Like, God, what did that angel do? God’s like, ‘You’re gonna have a responsibility. This family’s constantly going to be trying to die, and you’re gonna be there.’”
  - Brian Sauvé (13:41)

• “Take the Niko. Go to sleep now.” [Deadpan, after a creepy “purple man” anecdote about children seeing apparitions.]
  - Thomas Freed (15:51)

• “I call it small strangeness—you know, it’s not high strangeness, just peculiarities.”
  - Thomas Freed (35:37)

• “That’s one of the best [angel stories] I’ve ever heard.”
  - Brian Sauvé (36:19)

• “Even if it wasn’t an angel... how amazing is it that providentially, the Lord orders things so that even just, like, small needs are taken care of?”
  - Ben Garrett (38:44)

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Important Timestamps

• 02:19: Lord of the Rings & Icebreakers
• 09:27: Monkey bars, the first “guy” story
• 10:44: Snow incident and mysterious saving “guy”
• 14:08: Sister’s encounters with “dad’s friend”
• 16:23: Thomas’s dream of a malevolent presence and gentle protector
• 25:34: The “coat angel” story begins
• 29:01: The mysterious man disappears
• 32:06: Reflection on “connector angels”
• 33:24: Sister recognizes the “angel” from previous incidents
• 35:37: “Small strangeness,” angelic logistics
• 36:19: Brian calls it one of his favorite angel stories
• 38:44: Ben’s reflection on providence

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Tone & Takeaways

• The tone is informal, humorous, and slightly irreverent, but always genuine and curious about the supernatural.
• The stories each blend the mundane with the inexplicable, making the possibility of angelic intervention feel oddly plausible—and a little unsettling.
• Listeners are left to ponder: Do angels sometimes operate in unnoticed, practical roles? Or are these simply strings of providential coincidences interpreted through the lens of faith and childhood memory?

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For Listeners

If you enjoy tales where the supernatural brushes up against the everyday and love hosts who keep things light while discussing the strange and the sacred, this is a classic Graveyard Shift episode not to miss.

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Transcript

[Ben Garrett]

Want more Haunted Cosmos? Then make your way over to Patreon where you can get early access to our content as well as exclusive content and regular dusty tomes and monthly live streams with Brian and myself. Plus, right now we're running a special offer, 90% off of your first month. You heard that right. So go to patreon.com haunted cosmos and sign up now. This episode is brought to you by Jake Muller Adventures. A thrilling Christian audio drama.

[Brian Sa]

In this episode of the Graveyard Shift, you're gonna hear one of the craziest stories about angels that I've ever heard.

[Ben Garrett]

Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Graveyard Shift. We are happy to be back with all of you. My name is Ben Garrett. I have funny fingers on both hands.

[Brian Sa]

I was doing drag and. Yeah, like, you know, a shadow ball.

[Ben Garrett]

The dog thing. Yeah. Anyway, my name is Ben Garrett. I'm joined as always by my friend and co host, Brian Sa. Most handsome and talented guy.

[Thomas Freed]

What?

[Ben Garrett]

Period?

[Brian Sa]

What? Matthew McConaughey.

[Ben Garrett]

Brad Pitt.

[Brian Sa]

Fight Club.

[Ben Garrett]

Brad Pitt, dude. Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt.

[Brian Sa]

You're talking Henry Cavill, whom you look like every day. Dude, the rumors that we start every time we get in front of the mics that start like gassing each other up. Gassing each other up. It doesn't help. Yeah. Hey, welcome to the show, listeners. You're the real mvp, like third string.

[Ben Garrett]

We are also. We are also joined in studio today by one of our parishioners at this church.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah.

[Ben Garrett]

And his name is Thomas Freed. Thomas, say hello to the people.

[Thomas Freed]

Hello, people.

[Ben Garrett]

Yes, Thomas is a fan of the show. He's great to have around. Really cool guy. And we're just happy to have him here. So, Thomas, we do a little thing. Yeah, we do. During the graveyard shifts.

[Thomas Freed]

Oh, boy.

[Ben Garrett]

You gotta be ready to start out. And it's an icebreaker. Now I know that we don't really need an icebreaker because we know you, but the people do listen.

[Thomas Freed]

As somebody who is in children's ministries for 10 years, I'm aware of the concept. I'm ready for this.

[Brian Sa]

He's the dream.

[Ben Garrett]

Give it to me.

[Brian Sa]

We need.

[Ben Garrett]

You know what? Since you were in kids ministry for so long, we're actually going to do it a little different.

[Thomas Freed]

No, we're.

[Ben Garrett]

I'm going to ask you an icebreaker question, but then I'm going to have a follow up task. Okay. So the question is, who is your favorite character in Lord of the Rings and why?

[Thomas Freed]

Okay. Favorite character in Lord of the Rings and why? I think it's Theoden and I think he shows a wide range of what it's like to be a ruler and to have people underneath you, to be fallible, to mess up, to redeem yourself.

[Ben Garrett]

He's kind of the everyman king, Lord of the Rings, you know, I, I.

[Thomas Freed]

Also, his lines are fire.

[Ben Garrett]

He does have some of the best lines. What can men do against such reckless hate?

[Brian Sa]

At least in the movie.

[Ben Garrett]

And then Saruant. Gibbit and crows.

[Thomas Freed]

Git and crows.

[Brian Sa]

Gibbit and crows.

[Thomas Freed]

Well, him yelling like death before the.

[Brian Sa]

In his exchange with Saruman, when he says, we will have peace. We will have peace. When your body, you know, like for the sport of your crowd.

[Ben Garrett]

When you hang from a gibbet for the support of your own crows.

[Brian Sa]

When, when Theoden though, and all his people are like, they're getting sucked in by Saruman's voice. But Theoden shows the royal blood.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ben Garrett]

And then, and then Theoden's like, he's dying.

[Brian Sa]

The hewed hamaspati before the gate, before.

[Ben Garrett]

The gate of the Hornburg. And then Theoden, when he's dying. I go now to my father's, in whose presence I will not know. And then the best, that goes home.

[Brian Sa]

The best part though is that like in the whole thing, he's like, I have slain the evil beast.

[Ben Garrett]

Literally.

[Brian Sa]

No, you didn't.

[Ben Garrett]

You were pinned under a hors hey.

[Brian Sa]

But hey, I'm so like, we're gonna overlook it. No, I will not feel okay.

[Ben Garrett]

So you say, you say Theoden.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah, Theoden's up there. It's like, it's a tough question because it's all. There's so many good characters. Yeah. I used to like in my youth, I was a big Gimli fan.

[Ben Garrett]

Oh yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

Just because. Yeah. Who doesn't like a cranky dwarf?

[Ben Garrett]

You got a Gimli vibe. You got the beard.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Garrett]

Do you have any really cool helmets? Like metal helmets?

[Thomas Freed]

So I, I once went to a. For the screening of the third movie in two, three, I think it was. There was a midnight showing and they had a costume party and basically my costume was just Gimli. Like a sign that said Gimli. Cuz, you know, this was your costume.

[Ben Garrett]

You're actually in it. It was a label. It was.

[Thomas Freed]

I got third place out of like 40 people.

[Ben Garrett]

Dang. Out of 40. I thought you were going to say like 400. What's, what's the follow up? Okay, so the follow up is this. Now you got to do this quick, all right?

[Thomas Freed]

I don't, I don't.

[Ben Garrett]

You got to do this quick. I think you can.

[Thomas Freed]

I don't.

[Ben Garrett]

Because of your history. Two truths and a lie about yourself. Go.

[Thomas Freed]

Okay, let's see here. Quick.

[Brian Sa]

Wow.

[Thomas Freed]

The first one is that I was a classically trained pianist.

[Brian Sa]

Okay.

[Thomas Freed]

I've run for political office.

[Ben Garrett]

Okay.

[Thomas Freed]

And spaghetti is my favorite food.

[Brian Sa]

Okay. Okay. Those are like.

[Ben Garrett]

That's a lot, I think. What's the lime penis?

[Brian Sa]

Spaghetti is your not your favorite food.

[Ben Garrett]

That's the lie.

[Thomas Freed]

No, I haven't run for political.

[Ben Garrett]

All right, well, now we all know Thomas a little bit better and we.

[Brian Sa]

And that we are bad at that game.

[Ben Garrett]

We're really bad at reading people in general, apparently. Great. Hey, way to play along. Thanks for being a good sport. So here's what we're going to do. Neither Brian nor myself really know what you're going to say. It's going to be a surprise to both of us.

[Thomas Freed]

So you didn't read the email?

[Ben Garrett]

I did read the email, but I forgot what it said.

[Brian Sa]

I didn't.

[Ben Garrett]

I. Yeah, he did. I forgot what it said.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah.

[Ben Garrett]

Okay, so that's what we like to do and we're basically going to let you take it away. Take your time telling the story. We'll try not to interrupt and I'm sure we'll have questions. We can talk about it.

[Brian Sa]

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[Ben Garrett]

Ooh, what's that?

[Brian Sa]

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[Ben Garrett]

Is it fully immersive sound effects and cast and everything?

[Brian Sa]

Yes, full cast cinematic sound. It's like you can hear the danger coming.

[Thomas Freed]

Ooh.

[Ben Garrett]

So kind of similar to Hana Cosmos, but no your mom jokes and more drama.

[Brian Sa]

No mom jokes yet, but yeah, tons of drama.

[Ben Garrett]

So it's kind of like your mom then?

[Brian Sa]

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[Ben Garrett]

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[Brian Sa]

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[Ben Garrett]

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[Brian Sa]

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[Thomas Freed]

So I got three tiny stories and then kind of one medium sized story. Nice. So the three smaller stories I can kind of group together. And I'm picking stories out of my childhood because all of these stories happened roughly within a year or two of each other. It's, the timeline's fuzzy because it was like when I was eight. Concentration though, you know, it's, it's so it was, it was quite a while ago, at least 15 years. And. Yeah. And, and so it's like I tried to pick stories that I was, I have firsthand knowledge of. These were stories that I was in the vicinity or directly took place in the story. So. But there are several other dozens of stories where I heard secondhand from family members that are like this. Growing up in my house, it was, it was, there was just a lot of bizarre happenings. So the first story is, is my family went to a playground and my dad took me and one of my sisters. I'm a, you know, my younger sister's like 4 years old and we went out to do some like T ball batting practice type stuff in the field. And my mom was with the other sister. Okay. And it was just our family at the playground and my mom is watching my younger sister and she's on the monkey bars and she's hanging upside down and my mom sees her from across the way. And this is like this, this is in the 90s. So it was asphalt underneath the monkey bars. It was not like wood chips monkey bars.

[Brian Sa]

I remember that, I remember that. I'm, I'm a 90s.

[Thomas Freed]

And so it, it was, you know, so she falls and my mom runs across the, the playground. She gets to her and, and, and my sister's fine, she's happy, she's, she's standing upright, no physical harm to her or anything. And, and my mom's like, what happened? And she's like, no, nothing. And it's just like I saw you fall. It's just like, well, yeah, but the guy caught me and all right.

[Brian Sa]

No.

[Ben Garrett]

Hey, what guy?

[Thomas Freed]

Shut up. So to like, kind of like, it kind of explains a little bit like about. Or describes a little bit of the, the constant minor amounts of weirdness that surrounded my family. That this was not like a huge. This was not like hugely.

[Ben Garrett]

It wasn't like breaking news.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah, well, it wasn't. I mean, my mom was a little weirded out for it, but it wasn't like, you know, totally out of left field like that something like this would happen. And my mom's like, what guy? The guy.

[Ben Garrett]

What guy?

[Thomas Freed]

The guy, you know, and it's like, yeah, talking with the six year old, you know, it's like my mom's like, look around, there's nobody here.

[Brian Sa]

Invisible ghost, man. Caught me.

[Thomas Freed]

Mom point at the guy, right?

[Brian Sa]

Yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

Do you mean dad? As we. She, you know, point, gestures across like, you know, the parking lot and in a baseball field. No, it was a guy. All right, well, whatever. Okay. And so later on, I think it was, it was that winter and we were in a, a private school and it was like in a kind of a downtown area of Omaha, Nebraska. And in. My dad comes to pick us up after school and it's been snowing a lot, but it was a warmer day and we used to hang out in between these two buildings and, and my sister is, is off playing and so my dad comes, I was like, hey dad, come on, let's go. You know, like, sorry, my sister's not here. You know, I'll take you to where she is. And you know, dad, dad kind of grumpy and like. Okay, let's go. Right, so. So she's playing up against the, the, the exterior wall of the school and the, the warm air and the warm weather had like started to melt the snow on top of the roof and it just comes down in a sheet right on top of my sister. Okay. And, and so my dad and I, we go running and it left a huge pile. The pile's like, you know, 4 or 5ft tall. It was a ton of snow. Yeah, right. And, and we go looking and she's behind the snow, kind of like wedged in between the snow pile and the wall and, and she's totally fine. And we kind of like have to get her out of there a little bit. Like, she's not like stuck, but she's also like 6, 7. Just needs a little help climbing out. Right. And we're like, wow, that was, you know, you got lucky. You know, my dad was kind of. I could tell that my dad was a little Unsettled by the whole thing. And we're just talking about it. And it wasn't until, like, we were on the way home, I think that she said something like, yeah, it's real lucky that that guy pushed me out of the way.

[Ben Garrett]

The guy's bad.

[Thomas Freed]

The guy, guardian angel.

[Brian Sa]

But in the creepiest possible way to.

[Ben Garrett]

Describe one, the second sister, right.

[Thomas Freed]

It is the same sister. The other sister had encounters. And I also, like, I have. The next story is. Is like my encounter, but the other sister had encounters, but I was not a first person. Sure. Witness. Witness to those encounters. But, like, it's just kind of like. It's just like a lot of small stories like that where there was just always a guy conveniently placed to just put a hand out to keep somebody from running out traffic, Something like that.

[Ben Garrett]

But it was a guy that, like, no one ever saw him.

[Thomas Freed]

Nobody. Nobody ever saw him.

[Brian Sa]

What did your family do to get this? Like, God, what did that angel do? God's like, you're gonna have a responsibility. This family's constantly going to be trying to die, and you're gonna be there. But also, like, it's gonna really creep everybody out because the sister's just gonna look her mom in the eye after every story and say, the man saved me.

[Thomas Freed]

I believe she said it just like that too.

[Ben Garrett]

Yeah, no, I believe it.

[Thomas Freed]

But like, some of this. So one of the secondhand things that I. I never saw, it was never witnessed to. I was never around when it happened. Like in the middle of the night, the other sister would say that she would go out and, you know, like, get a glass of water in the middle of the night. And. And every now and then she would see one of dad's friends just in the living room.

[Ben Garrett]

Dude.

[Thomas Freed]

Hanging out.

[Ben Garrett]

Dude. Now they're doppelgangers.

[Thomas Freed]

No, no. And it was like, well, which friend? And she would never be able, like, tell which friend. It was just, you know, that's weird.

[Brian Sa]

Little kids are so funny because stuff just happens to them in their life. They're just like, oh, we're going to baseball practice now. Oh, it's dinner time. Oh, whatever. Like, oh, in the middle of the night, there's a random ganger of a doppel of my friend, my dad's friend. And to them it's all the same, right? They're like, yeah, we're having spaghetti for dinner. And like there and 2am is a random, maybe semi demonic creature that is imitating the likeness of one of my father's friends. Yeah, no big deal. I'm gonna get a glass of water.

[Thomas Freed]

Like, so I'm not even sure that it was imitating the likeness of one of his friends. He just had a. The sense I get is he just had a warm presence. And my dad was just a. My dad was a great, like, affable guy. Really likable, warm, warm guy. And she just probably assumed, like, oh, this is one of dad's friends.

[Brian Sa]

Oh, it's gotta be one of dad's friends. It's like, I heard this story of, like, the creepy things kids say kind of stories.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah.

[Brian Sa]

And it was a mom who's putting her kids to bed, and the. The daughter, every once in a while for like, a couple years, would say, who's that man over in the corner? And she'd be like, what man? The purple man over there in the corner. And you're just like, I don't. Even if you're just making it up, and it's just a kid being a kid.

[Thomas Freed]

Take the Niko. Go to sleep now.

[Brian Sa]

Like, what more terrifying things.

[Ben Garrett]

I need you to stop making this up.

[Brian Sa]

I need you to stop.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah. And so. And so then the, like, the. So there's just, like, lots of stuff like that in and around our family. It came in bursts sometimes. Had a. Had a lot of bad dreams in the house growing up. I didn't. I didn't. I don't remember having too many, but my sisters had them a lot.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

And they had a. They had more complicated life situation later on. And. And sometimes it just makes me wonder, like, what this was all leading up to or whatever. And so the. The last small short story is. Is the. It's the only dream that I have ever remembered with such clarity. And again, this happened at least 15 years ago when I was, like, eight. Okay. And. And is. Is so in the dream, I wake up from the dream, but, you know.

[Ben Garrett]

I'm still dreaming already. Confusing.

[Thomas Freed]

Yes. Okay. But in the dream, I'm awake.

[Ben Garrett]

Yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

Okay. Okay. And. And my bedroom was at the end of a hall. And my sister's bedroom was like, cattywampus to that. Okay. So the door. Our doors were like three feet apart from each other. And I just sense this really malevolent presence in my sister's room.

[Brian Sa]

Was it your sister?

[Thomas Freed]

It could have been.

[Ben Garrett]

Sorry.

[Thomas Freed]

No. And it. But it was like. It was. It was weird. It was really unsettling in the moment. But then also afterwards, like, this dream has literally stuck with me my whole life. It was that unsettling. And. And so I creep my head around the Corner, not sure what I'll find. It's like, almost like Dreamy was walking forward, but, like, real me was, like, in the background of my own dream being like, what are you doing, you idiot?

[Ben Garrett]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brian Sa]

Never go in the room where the creepy presence is.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah. No. And so I turned my head into the corner, and basically in the corner of the room, there's like, this dark portal into the void with, like, this evil, maniacal presence that's sucking my sister through the wall. And she's barely grabbing onto the wall while being sucked into this way. Like I said, this is this dream. Terrifying. It's the only dream like this that I've. Like, I've ever had that was like this. And I make a motion to go forward to help my sister. And then there's this hand on my shoulder, and it's a. It's a warm, loving hand that pulls me back. And as I'm being pulled back, I just get the sense it's. It's a. It's a older, gentle man that's not my dad. And I wake up and. And that's the. And that's the dream. And I don't, like, you know, I don't know what to do with this. I'm eight years old.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

And, like, I didn't know what to do with this most of my life. Right. And still don't really know what to do with it. But, like, there's just. It's. It was just really weird. And, you know, my sister went on to have some. Some difficulties over the next, you know, 20 years or so, but she's. She's walking with the Lord now. But it was. It was really bizarre. Like, sometimes I wonder if it was like a. A foreshadowing what it was. I don't know what it was. Right. It's like. And so I. I'm like. I would speculate, but, like, it's just. Almost any speculation seems kind of, like, pointless. It just is what it is. It was what it was.

[Ben Garrett]

But it's uncanny that, like, her doppelganger, dad's friend, guardian angel, was there in your dream. Maybe.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah.

[Brian Sa]

I mean.

[Ben Garrett]

Oh, definitely. There's no doubt.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah. So, like, I don't know what to. I don't know what to do. Do with that.

[Ben Garrett]

Yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

In an angel appearing in, like, a dream, if it was an angel, who know? Who knows? It was an angel. Right.

[Ben Garrett]

That's crazy.

[Brian Sa]

A dream angel.

[Thomas Freed]

Dream angel.

[Ben Garrett]

That reminds me. I. I have. I forgot about this story until, for whatever reason, the void thing reminded me I don't know if this is a. If this is made up. I don't know if this was a dream or if my dad is claiming that this actually happened. Okay. But years. I don't think it's made up because I was an adult and I wasn't doing Haunted Cosmos yet. But my dad told me one time that, like, he and my stepmom, they used to go backpacking in North Carolina all the time. Like, all the time. They're a little older now, so they don't go as much, but they would go constantly. And he was like, yeah, one time we were up. You remember that.

[Brian Sa]

That.

[Ben Garrett]

Looking glass, like, whatever that you and I went to? Yeah, I remember that. Well, you remember how you can camp up on the rock and you're looking over the whole valley? Yeah, I remember that. And he said that my stepmom was. She had set her hammock up between two of the trees up there, and then he was on, like, a step above her between two trees, and that he just randomly woke up in the middle of the night and. And saw. And this is where I'm like, I don't know, but. But saw her. When you're in a hammock, you know it's sinking down.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah.

[Ben Garrett]

And he was like. And she was not sinking down. It was like. She was, like, parallel to the ground. Her whole hammock was parallel to the ground. And it was pulled over to the side as if she was, like, going towards the cliff edge. Sorry, I got really far away from the mic there. As if she's going towards the cliff edge. And then. And then he was like. And I saw this, like, really thick mist or thick fog going from her nose out over the cliff and into the valley. And he said that he got down and, like, pulled her back down. And of course she woke up, but it stopped and it didn't happen again. And anyway, that just reminded me.

[Brian Sa]

And then he's like, nothing happened, babe. What do you say?

[Ben Garrett]

I know, I have no idea.

[Brian Sa]

Don't let the Voids brand get you.

[Ben Garrett]

I have no idea if that's made up, if it was a dream or if he's saying it really happened, it was too long ago. But when he told me, I remember being like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on, cuz.

[Brian Sa]

He.

[Ben Garrett]

He treated it as this, like, throwaway thing. Anyway, as you were saying, dang, we.

[Brian Sa]

Need to do a graveyard shift with him. Yeah, that'd be fun.

[Thomas Freed]

So this. This. This house, we. We lived there for another, like, four years after this, and there was, like, There was always an unsettling, I don't want to say presence dude, because it just sounds like way too melodramatic.

[Brian Sa]

So cliche.

[Thomas Freed]

No, that house was just always unsettling.

[Ben Garrett]

So anyway, presence and we eventually, and.

[Thomas Freed]

We eventually moved like three or four years later into a, a home that my grandfather had lived in and he was moving out of. So we moved into like a, a home that family had previously lived in. And it was the. Let's. It was just, it had that aura of home to it and it was much more warm.

[Ben Garrett]

Oh yeah, it was a homely house.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah, it is. It's the home. It was the home my dad grew up in. And so it, and like he still owns it now. And so it's been in the family now for probably I think 60 years. And so it's just, it's the house that is the home. Right. And so, and then like that's when like this stuff started like fading out. Right? Like the, the weird, the weird issues that we were having which. And didn't put that together until many years later in retrospect. But going back to the last story now, this is a little bit longer story.

[Ben Garrett]

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[Brian Sa]

Hey Ben, I just read that our great grandparents probably experimented with butter on their dry Skin as a moisturizer. Is that why you look so radiant?

[Ben Garrett]

Maybe it's grandma's butter recipe. Or maybe it's gray toe tallow.

[Brian Sa]

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[Ben Garrett]

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[Brian Sa]

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[Thomas Freed]

We're back when I was about 8 years old. This is still in the same rough time period, and we were not so well off as a family. And there were a couple of families at the church that had children that were two to three years ahead of us. And we got a lot of hand me down clothing. And so, you know, we would often just, like, take that. They. They would give it to us and say, just donate that. Whatever you don't want. Right. And so we would, we would make a lot of trips down to shelter and, you know, do that kind of thing. Donate it. It's like, I don't think I even owned, like, a pair of pants that my parents bought me until I was, like, in my teens. Like, we just were tons of clothes all the time. And so this was a usual thing that we did. And so one winter, I think it was that same winter, we're driving down to the Salvation army and we have 10 to 20 coats in the back of our station wagon, and we're just gonna donate them. And it's a really cold day. It's. It's one of those bitter days in Omaha, Nebraska, where it's. It's like humid, but really cold. Oh, yeah. And there's a lot of snow on the ground. And we see this. This guy now. We see this guy, like a presence.

[Brian Sa]

We saw a presence.

[Thomas Freed]

We see this guy and he's just. Just walking down the street and, like, he's wearing a white T shirt and jeans.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

And my dad did something that, like, he's never done before. He's never done since. Like, we did not do this as a family. He pulls over and says, where you going? Do you need a ride? You know, we got these coats, right? Do you need a coat?

[Brian Sa]

Yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

Starts talking to the stranger on the road. Yeah. And so my dad's talked to him. I'm eight. I'm barely following along with the conversation. I Get the gist of it though. Like, this guy's not wearing a coat. It's really cold outside.

[Brian Sa]

Right.

[Thomas Freed]

And. And so, you know, he, he ends up telling us that like he lives in this. I want to say it's a halfway house. It might not have been a halfway house, a group home of some sort where multiple people lived. And he says, hey, we just had. The reason I'm not wearing my coat is we just had like this incident. I. I think an animal got into like a closet and sprayed a bunch of coats and.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

And it's just one of those things where. That's why he's not wearing the coat. It's. Yeah. Smelled like dog pee or cat.

[Brian Sa]

Sure.

[Thomas Freed]

Like. Yeah. And he's like, he's just manning up, angeling up maybe and foreshadowing. And he's just not wearing. He's not. He's just not wearing. Wearing a coat. And he. So we, he hops in the, in the back seat with us and we all scooch over. I think one of my sisters jumps in the way back, you know, and we drive him two minutes away to this group home. And when we get there, he helps us unload the coats and stuff. And we walk into the group home, it opens up into like this parlor area and we have all the coats and stuff. And he's like, let me go get. I don't see Sharon around here. I think, you know, I don't know what her name was, but like, I don't see Sharon. Let me go get Sharon. And so he, he goes off into this adjoin room and we can see the door from the parlor. That's an important detail. He did not turn a corner, go down a hall. We see the door.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

From the parlor that he goes into. And so he goes in there and like 30 seconds to a minute later, Sharon comes out. Okay. And Sharon is like, oh, hey, what do you got here? You know, it's like, hey, we figured, you know, we. We have all these coats and stuff, you know, and we're kind of explaining it to him and somewhere in the explanation the guy gets brought up. Now this guy, he had like a weird like kind of. He introduced himself, he had like a foreign sounding name.

[Brian Sa]

Wait, Sharon is a man?

[Thomas Freed]

No, Sharon's a. Sharon's the. The lady. I'm talking about the guy.

[Brian Sa]

The guy in the car. Yeah, sorry, the. Yup. And my white.

[Thomas Freed]

But yeah, yeah, like he had, he had introduced himself. Yeah, that's funny. He introduced himself and he had like a foreign sounding Name said, hello, my name is Abdiel.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah. I am from the beyond. Right.

[Thomas Freed]

Like, he spoke like it. He spoke like a normal American.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah. But he had a weird name and so I don't remember it.

[Ben Garrett]

I.

[Thomas Freed]

And honestly, I was bored to tears by all of this.

[Ben Garrett]

You don't want to be going to the.

[Brian Sa]

You're like, I'm.

[Ben Garrett]

You're like, I'm 8 years old. We're going to the Salvation army on a Saturday. Don't. I'm like barely paying attention.

[Thomas Freed]

I think that was the year that my parents bought me just tons of Lincoln Logs too.

[Ben Garrett]

Oh.

[Thomas Freed]

And so I'm like, you're like, I.

[Ben Garrett]

Got to get my Lincoln log and.

[Brian Sa]

I got to build a second story.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah, it's second story. Like an eighth story.

[Ben Garrett]

Still got to put windows in.

[Thomas Freed]

I had a ton of Lincoln Logs. Yeah. And so. So like I. Anyway, we mentioned his name, his. And. And you can see that Sharon is like. She like lets it go the first time. But like after we keep, you know, the guy, she's like. And finally she's like, what. What are you talking about? And she's like, well, this. We picked this guy up. You brought him and then he went in there to get you. It's just like, nobody came in to get me. And we're like, what are you? Like, my dad. I remember. I remember my dad, who was a very soft spoken man.

[Brian Sa]

What? It's like, like, wait, wait, wait, hold up.

[Ben Garrett]

Your dad's like, yeah, yeah, someone did.

[Thomas Freed]

And my mom, My mom was not soft spoken, you know, and she was like, lady, the guy that went in to get you, we gave him a ride here. And she opens the door to her office and there's like one tiny window in there. Not even a closet.

[Brian Sa]

I knew it.

[Thomas Freed]

She's like, I knew.

[Brian Sa]

She's like, I knew it.

[Thomas Freed]

Where did he go? Where did he go?

[Brian Sa]

The man?

[Ben Garrett]

Where did Michael go?

[Brian Sa]

And the little girl goes, the man who saved me from the monkey bars.

[Thomas Freed]

And so we're. We're having this. We're. We're like having. Having this out with the lady. And. And it like she ends up being a Christian.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

And we all kind of end up laughing and joking about it being an angel. And. And that's the. And that's the story.

[Brian Sa]

Did they need the coats?

[Thomas Freed]

They actually did need coats because the. The. Everybody's.

[Brian Sa]

That was true.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah. In the house, the. The coats were foul.

[Brian Sa]

So the angel let like, he told the. It was all correct, corroborated.

[Thomas Freed]

So I found a small genre of Story like this on the Internet, where I call it a connector angel story, where it seems like the angel's sole purpose in the story is literally just a connect.

[Brian Sa]

You need coats over here. You got coats over here.

[Ben Garrett]

The logistics guy, Martin, was an angel.

[Brian Sa]

Martin will be like, on Monday.com.

[Thomas Freed]

I got you. And what I find most compelling about these. These stories is that, like, the. They're not, like, super fantastical usually.

[Brian Sa]

It's like.

[Ben Garrett]

It's, like, ordinary.

[Thomas Freed]

There's no way ordinary. And then the. And then the connector angel, like, kind of evaporates into the background at some point.

[Brian Sa]

He's like, I've done my job.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah. And then nobody, like. No. Turns out nobody at the family reunion knows him, you know?

[Ben Garrett]

Well, dude, that's how it worked. And It's a Wonderful Life, dude.

[Brian Sa]

That is insane, though.

[Thomas Freed]

Well, so. So on the way home.

[Brian Sa]

But wait, there's.

[Ben Garrett]

Oh, there's more.

[Thomas Freed]

Well, it's just a little bit more here. And so on the way home, you know, we're talking about how weird this is. And the sister that was in the first couple stories, she was super shy, and so that can't be, like, emphasized enough. She would never speak up in front of a stranger about something like this. So while Sharon was in the room, this was not coming out, but, like, on the way home, she was like, yeah, I was like, I really like that guy. I wonder when I'll see him again, you know, Like. And she. She made, like, a reference to, like, he's always been nice to me and.

[Brian Sa]

Oh, dude, get the flip out of here.

[Thomas Freed]

And we just all kind of. We just all kind of, like. I just remember, like, it was almost a comical scene where everybody in the car just kind of looks at her because she's six.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah, she's six.

[Ben Garrett]

But she's six.

[Brian Sa]

I have a six year old, actually. They're pretty advanced in their understanding of, like, people materializing or not. You know what I mean?

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah. Yeah. And so. And so it's like, you know, we. We just kind of just looked at her, and we just kind of went on about our business, and that was it.

[Ben Garrett]

And so y' all are way more.

[Brian Sa]

Chill than I am.

[Ben Garrett]

Yeah, that's the guy. I just. I'm sorry. I thought of a joke about the Martin thing where, like, if Martin was. I gotta say it, it's not gonna be funny anymore.

[Brian Sa]

And no one knows Martina McBride the way we do.

[Ben Garrett]

Yeah, Martina McBride.

[Brian Sa]

He's a logistics.

[Ben Garrett]

The most important thing, you know about him is that he's from Mexico.

[Brian Sa]

He's like, I gotta optimize this system.

[Ben Garrett]

Yeah. And so if he was an angel, he'd be like, hey, Heavenly Father, you really need to get all The Angels on Monday.com?

[Brian Sa]

Yeah. It is inefficient the way we are connecting people from 1.1 demand to another. All right.

[Ben Garrett]

Sorry. That was all I had to say. That's crazy.

[Brian Sa]

There are some key KPIs we need to be tracking and the.

[Ben Garrett]

The thing that. The thing. So as you were saying it, the email did start coming back to me where I was like, wait a minute, I do.

[Thomas Freed]

And I.

[Ben Garrett]

And I remembered what was coming. But the crazy thing that I didn't remember was that your sister was basically like, hey, that's the guy that saved me from the monkey bars and from the snow.

[Thomas Freed]

Right. That was, you know, the other sister said would just sometimes chill in our living room in the middle of the night.

[Brian Sa]

I wonder when I'll see him again. And like that. Now you know that when she saw him in the living room, he was like stopping the bullets of a drive by shooting.

[Thomas Freed]

Entirely possible.

[Ben Garrett]

And if he's in the living room, he's like, do they have any coats?

[Brian Sa]

He's listening to the closet. I'm going to have to arrange.

[Ben Garrett]

Maybe I could use them for the coat thing.

[Thomas Freed]

Listen, that neighborhood was not a great one. All right. Yeah.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

And so it's like. I mean, this was like typical. So this was like typical for our family. Like just kind of like. I call it small strangeness. You know, it's not high strength. It's just like peculiarities, you know, something supernatural happened. You're not sure what it was or like nobody got miraculously transformed. Nothing was like healed.

[Brian Sa]

You lose the remote. That same guy shows up again. He's like, hey, man, I was walking by.

[Ben Garrett]

You know, got to be more.

[Thomas Freed]

They didn't do anything creepy. It's just.

[Ben Garrett]

But like stuff like you're gonna miss.

[Brian Sa]

Touched by an Angel.

[Thomas Freed]

Stuff like that would just always be kind of happening.

[Ben Garrett]

Yeah.

[Thomas Freed]

That's so funny in the background, right?

[Ben Garrett]

Dang. That's crazy. That. No, that. Those are amazing stories.

[Brian Sa]

That's one of the best I've ever heard.

[Ben Garrett]

Those are some of my favorite stories too, because they're. It's like, it's. It's fun.

[Brian Sa]

We need to add an intro. Bump positive. Just really quick. This is now going to be at the beginning the episode. It's gonna be super meta. In this episode of the Graveyard Shift, you're gonna hear one of the craziest stories about Angels that I've ever heard. Okay. Now they'll see it twice.

[Thomas Freed]

Thank you for that. Yeah. Because it's true. It doesn't seem that crazy.

[Ben Garrett]

Let's be honest, Evan, don't put that at the beginning.

[Brian Sa]

If it's not at the beginning, I walk.

[Ben Garrett]

There are no. There are no consequences.

[Brian Sa]

Evan's like, all right.

[Ben Garrett]

Oh, man, that. No, that's wild. That's wild.

[Thomas Freed]

And it's like, you know, so in my. I have a kind of a larger extended family in Omaha at this time. Like, and so there's things going on in my church which are really weird. One of my uncles married a Wiccan priestess.

[Brian Sa]

Terrible idea.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah. And knew it almost right away.

[Brian Sa]

Almost right away. It took time.

[Thomas Freed]

Listen. Ah. And so, you know, you can't win them all. Well, yeah. And so there was just, like, a lot of, like, weird stuff going around in the extended family. Well, yeah, in our friend group. In our church group. And so, like, the growing up around this stuff. I'm 8 years old. I think it's kind of normal.

[Ben Garrett]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brian Sa]

You're. You're. Your baseline was very strange.

[Thomas Freed]

Honestly, once we kind of left that whole situation, I grew up a little bit, got into my. My, you know, mid-20s, started going to a normal church. Life was a lot more boring than I was expecting it to be. When I was eight, I thought there would be weekend adventures with.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah.

[Ben Garrett]

With angels.

[Thomas Freed]

Strange men.

[Brian Sa]

Yeah. Every Saturday from then on, you go around your house, you just pick up random items that someone might need, and you just start driving around.

[Ben Garrett]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Sa]

Looking for the.

[Ben Garrett]

You're like, where's that guy?

[Brian Sa]

He's like, oh, you got a tape measure? There's a guy trying to put together a bunk bed.

[Thomas Freed]

Dude.

[Brian Sa]

He really needs.

[Ben Garrett]

Wait a minute. What's your name, man? Well, Thomas. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing those stories. Genuinely awesome. And just really fascinating stuff. Praise God, by the way. Praise God that, you know, even. Hey, even if it wasn't an angel, which, I. I would go to my deathbed, but I'm just. I'm just leaving it over there as a possibility. How amazing is it that providentially, the Lord orders things so that even just, like, small needs are taken care of, you know, Sharon is a Christian, and she's managing this house, and she needs help with coats, like. And the Lord is kind, and that's amazing.

[Thomas Freed]

Yeah. Yeah. I. I thank God all the time because I grew up, like, I. I often look back where I came from. Came from this really weird background, and now I'm here with the two most normal pastors in America, totally having a pretty mundane existence here.

[Ben Garrett]

So true.

[Brian Sa]

No one's ever, for example, upset with us about anything.

[Thomas Freed]

Anything.

[Brian Sa]

Nah, don't look at Haunted Cosmos sisters. Don't look it up.

[Ben Garrett]

Well, hey, that's going to do it for this episode of the Graveyard Shift. We hope that you have been enjoying this content. If you have, you should go check us out on Patreon. There's going to be more graveyard shifts that maybe are released a little bit early there throughout these Graveyard Shift season breaks. There's also going to be Patreon exclusive content in the dusty tome. And if you're in the upper tiers, you can get access to live shows both early and ad free. And so if that interests you, definitely go check it out. But this is going to be Haunted Cosmos signing off with this episode of the Graveyard Shift. Again, Thomas, thank you. Thank you, Brian. Thank you. Amy Lee over there. Yes, sir. All right, we'll see you guys next time.