Live Campfire Tales at the Spirit Social 2025

Summary

The Night Owl: True Ghost Stories
Live Campfire Tales at the Spirit Social 2025
March 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

This special “Live Campfire Tales” podcast episode transports listeners to the 2025 Spirit Social in Austin, Texas—a gathering where members of the Night Owl Paranormal community come together to share true, deeply personal paranormal encounters. Hosted by Stephen Belyeu, the night features three storytellers, each recounting a unique brush with the unexplained:

1. A paranormal investigation into America’s first reported possession case that may have turned disturbingly personal.
2. A late-night drive that reveals a mysterious, spectral encounter on a remote Texas highway.
3. A police officer whose years patrolling Austin led to an unnerving brush with the city’s darkest history and its possible lingering spirits.

Each story not only entertains, but also warns and invites reflection on what lies just outside the realm of the explainable.

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Story One: Danger of the “Friendly” Spirit – Damian and Nicole of Parapeculiar

Segment Begins: [04:05]
Summary:
Damian and Nicole—a dynamic paranormal investigation duo—detail their brush with the infamous "Watseka Wonder" possession case of 19th-century Illinois. What was meant to be a historical investigation quickly turns into an unnerving personal haunting.

Key Points & Insights:

• Background (Watseka Wonder):

  • 1878: Lurancy Venom, a young girl, allegedly becomes possessed by Mary Roff, a deceased child from the same town. The possession was unique for being “friendly”—the spirit claimed knowledge only the deceased would know and even “jumped” between living individuals during séances.
  • Quote:

    “Anyone here ever heard of the story of the Watseka Wonder? ...it is considered America’s very first possession case.” – Damian [05:43]

• Damian & Nicole’s Preparation:

  • Inspired by strange synchronicities (a watery mishap while being told about the case).
  • Damian, after reading The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts (noting deception by allegedly communicating spirits), confronts unseen entities:

    “After I had that conversation, everything felt weird. Something felt like it was not happy. Our house was in disarray… We have a very haunted house that we live in. It’s our fault.” – Damian [10:53]

  • Both (unbeknownst to each other at the time) invite the spirit to possess them, thinking it could not happen.

• Investigation Night 2:

  • Nicole uses altered state goggles and frequency machines for a séance. Both make flippant invitations to the spirit to “hop in.”
  • Nicole reports an immediate sense of a dark, invasive presence:

    “Like, one second later, I start seeing in my mind’s eye and feeling this big black mass coming up behind me. Just did not feel good.” – Nicole [14:46]

• Damian’s Experience of Possible Possession:

  • Eyes roll back, speech becomes strange, then a period of missing memory.
  • The group’s attempt at grounding after session—Damian is left with a soaking wet face (but no memory of crying) and unable to speak or communicate, even in writing.

    “What we experienced was not that...We’re all sitting around a table...when it was done, all I remember was...my face, it was soaking wet. Soaking wet.” – Damian [17:27]

  • Nicole describes him alternating between weeping and hysterical laughter, refusing to meet her gaze, demanding that she “get the light off” him, then lapsing into unresponsiveness.

• Terrifying Manifestation:

  • As Damian “comes to,” both see a human-shaped shadow figure in the woods, filling them with terror.

    “It was the scariest shadow figure I’ve ever seen in my life because this thing is standing between two trees...and you could just feel fear, like you could cut it with a flipping knife.” – Damian [23:14]

• Aftermath (the Attachment Follows Home):

  • Their dog is traumatized; odd voices are heard in the empty house; Nicole hears Damian’s voice behind her when he is not present.
  • After attempting a spiritual cleansing, the phenomena subside, but only temporarily.
  • Damian is left anxious and unable to work for weeks.

    “It’s not possession, but it’s a spiritual attack. And it is a warning. For anyone that does this kind of thing, please just have the due diligence to think to yourself, I can’t take everything at face value.” – Damian [29:40]

Takeaway/WARNING:

• Spirits encountered may be deceptive.
• Be cautious in investigations, diligent about boundaries and aftercare.

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Story Two: The Shadow on I-35 – Elaine Ireland

Segment Begins: [36:08]
Summary:
Veteran psychic medium Elaine Ireland recounts a hair-raising experience on a rainy Texas highway—an encounter that blurred the line between poltergeist and potential predator, and later matched chilling patterns in local lore.

Key Points & Insights:

• Setting the Scene:

  • 38 years ago, late-night drive from Austin to Arlington, after a psychic fair.
  • The storm makes visibility difficult; the rural highway is eerily empty.

• The Encounter:

  • Ahead, a car appears to be backing up, surrounded by three “energies”; trunk open.

  • As Elaine and her friend switch drivers, she rounds the back of their car:

    “Get in the car. Get in the car. Get in the car now. Now, now, now, now. You know, it’s panicky. This woman never panics over anything.” – Elaine’s friend [41:53]

  • Elaine sees a floating, human-shaped shadow crossing the highway’s median—likened to a Death Eater from Harry Potter.

  • As they flee, Elaine loses a high heel, “sucked off my foot and stuck in the ground, pointed south,” while they were driving north.

• Police Confirmation:

  • Days later, Elaine calls the Texas Highway Department, worried it could’ve been real people in distress. Dispatcher reveals:

    “We get at least three to five calls a week about that area of strange things that happen...our guys won’t go in a car [in that area] alone anymore.” – Highway Dept. Officer [45:10]

  • Weeks later, police return her (untouched) shoe, found embedded facing the wrong direction. Officer confides: the area has a grisly history as a dumping ground for women’s bodies since the 1930s.

• Chilling Realization:

  • Officer shares: “Other people have had very unpleasant issues happen out there...That’s area was known as a dumping ground for bodies, all young women. You might have been very lucky.” [52:10]

Takeaway:

• Some roadside hauntings may be echoes—or warnings—tied to real tragedies.
• The uncanny may join hands with true crime, deepening the mystery and the danger.

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Story Three: The Midnight Beat – Officer Greg Lawson, the Paranormal Detective

Segment Begins: [59:07]
Summary:
Greg Lawson, once a police officer and later a “paranormal detective,” recounts the convergence of Austin’s forgotten, institutional history and persistent spectral sightings.

Key Points & Insights:

• The Backdrop:

  • 1980s: After new mental health laws release patients into the streets, young Officer Lawson is assigned to mental health cases, many linked to the old Texas State Lunatic Asylum.
  • Late-night patrols along Guadalupe Street (once Asylum Road), memories of the abandoned hospital.

• Evidence from the Snake Pits:

  • Greg explores condemned State Hospital buildings after hours, reading century-old case files in the basement “snake pits.”
  • Repeatedly hears disembodied voices in empty corridors:

    “This is the only time that I ever could speak, say that I heard a disembodied voice...It was very, very disconcerting.” – Greg [61:51]

• A Consistent Ghostly Pattern:

  • Hears similar stories from unrelated people: “a black woman in a white dress” asking for directions on Guadalupe. She appears solid until people realize she is translucent or off—always wandering, always lost.

• A Historical Connection:

  • Digs through archives to confirm a pattern. Among the “Servant Girl Murders” of the 1880s—possibly America’s first serial killer—the story of Rebecca Ramey, a Black domestic attacked alongside her daughter, is found.
  • Rebecca survives but suffers memory loss, is committed to the State Hospital, and for years is seen daily wandering from the asylum down Asylum Road, searching for her lost daughter:

    “Every morning...she would look for her daughter and she would walk down Asylum Road to Guadalupe...They would find her down there...and give her a ride back every day.” – Greg [71:55]

Takeaway:

• Modern hauntings often map directly onto historic trauma.
• Reports of ghosts may be literal echoes of individuals forever imprinted in the city’s “residual” past.

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Memorable Quotes

• Nicole:

  “We fuck around and find out, if you will, bada boom.” [12:51]

• Damian:

  “It attacked me in a way that I’ve never been attacked before, to the point where it did feel intrusive, like something was in me there for a moment and I’m still trying to process it.” [28:50]

• Elaine (on the aftermath):

  “She said, ‘I know if we...had not gotten out of there, we would not be alive.’ And she said it over and over.” [44:11]

• Greg (on history, hauntings, and patterns):

  “Why would there be a bunch of people on Guadalupe that talk about a black woman in a white dress...that’s what I’m going to leave you with.” [74:39]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Opening and Campfire Introduction – [00:00–04:05]
• Damian & Nicole: Watseka Wonder & Aftermath – [04:05–29:40]
• Historical Context: Watseka Wonder – [29:40–36:08]
• Elaine Ireland: Shadow in the Headlights – [36:08–53:24]
• Greg Lawson: The Midnight Beat – [59:07–75:10]

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Thematic Links & Final Thoughts

• Each story emphasizes the unreliability of the world we see—spirits that lie, shadows that turn into warnings, and trauma that resists the passage of time.
• The storytellers blend humor, humility, and a healthy skepticism, highlighting the emotional danger and lasting impact of paranormal encounters.
• Host Stephen Belyeu closes by reminding listeners:

  “The unexplained doesn’t just belong in old legends or dusty archives. Sometimes it happens to ordinary people. Sometimes it happens close to home.” [75:10]

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Resources & How to Connect

• Damian and Nicole:

  • Podcasts: The Real Ghost Of and Parapeculiar
  • Social: @therealghostof, @parapeculiar

• Elaine Ireland:

  • Psychic readings: [e-mail]
  • Latest project: www.conversationswiththeancients.com

• Greg Lawson:

  • Website: www.theparanormaldetective.com
  • Social: @eghlawson

• Host/Show:

  • www.thenightowlpodcast.com
  • Instagram/Facebook: The Night Owl Podcast

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For New and Veteran Listeners

This episode is a compelling showcase of how personal and raw the paranormal can be when told directly by those who live it. It’s a must-listen—and a caution—both for enthusiasts and for those who may think these stories are “just old legends.”

“Stay restless out there.” —Stephen Belyeu

Transcript

[A]

The Night Owl Podcast Live Campfire tales from the 2025 Spirit Social before we begin, please note that the views and opinions expressed in this episode are those of the storytellers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Night Owl Podcast. Welcome to the Night Owl Podcast. I'm your host, Stephen Ballew, and this is a place for all you restless spirits out there to tune in and hear true tales of the paranormal. I hunt these stories down, capture them from the mouths of those who've experienced them, and share them with you right here. We're currently looking for more personal ghost stories or haunted locations, so if you or someone you know has one, please submit it to us. For consideration, go to thenight owlpodcast.com click on the submit your story page and let us hear your ghost story. Tonight we're taking you back to the special night during the 2025 Spirit Social in Austin, Texas, where members of the Night owl community gathered to share something deeply personal their own encounters with the unexplained. Three storytellers stepped onto the stage that evening, each carrying an experience that has stayed with them long after it happened. A paranormal investigation that may have brought something home from one of the most infamous possession cases in American history. A late night drive through a storm on a remote Texas highway where two women encounter something in the road that shouldn't be there and later learn they weren't the only ones. And finally, a police officer working the night shift in Austin discovers that some of the city's darkest history may not be finished with the living. These are the campfire tales of the 2025 Spirit Social. Stay tuned. Just want to mention one thing before we begin. If you're enjoying the Night Owl and want to go deeper, consider joining us on Patreon. It's the best way to support the show and get access to exclusive content, early releases, behind the scenes material from our investigations, bonus content, virtual hangouts, and special experiences like the Hidden Haunt Society. Being a patron also helps us keep traveling, investigating and telling these stories the way that they deserve to be told. You can join for as little as a dollar a month at patreon.com thenight owlpodcast or join us and step into the hidden inner circle of the Night Owl. Halloween night in Austin carries a certain energy. Maybe it's the cooler air finally arriving after a long Texas summer. Maybe it's the costumes, the laughter, the candles flickering in dim corners. Or maybe it's something older, a feeling that this night has always belonged to stories. For generations, people have gathered on Halloween to share ghost stories around fireplaces, campfires, candlelit tables where shadows move just enough to make you wonder what might be listening. At our 2025 Spirit Social, we invited members of our night owl community to do exactly that. One by one, they stepped onto the stage and shared personal experiences with the unexplained moments that stayed with them long after they'd happened. Moments that made them question what they thought they understood about this world and what might possibly exist beyond it. Our first campfire tale of the evening comes from paranormal investigators Damien and Nicole of Parapeculiar and the real ghosts of podcasts. In this particular tale, they traveled to Illinois to research one of the most unsettling possession cases in American history, the story of the Watseka wonder. But what began as research into a historic case may have turned into something much more personal. Because sometimes the most unsettling question after an investigation isn't what you encountered there. It's what might have followed you home.

[B]

Thank you, Stephen, for that marvelous introduction.

[C]

Yes, it is a horror story.

[B]

We just watched Hocus Pocus. That's why I did that. Hello, everybody. Has everyone had a good time this evening? There we go. That's the kind of participation I like. Yeah, this is gonna be interesting. And I wanna start this off by saying, I don't even know how this is going to be the first time that we are telling this story, this experience to anybody other than people very close to us.

[C]

It's still very fresh.

[B]

It's still very fresh.

[C]

Damian is still coming to terms with

[B]

what happened to him, and it's something that. Yeah, it's very fresh. Something that we haven't even gone back and listened to or looked at the footage of, because it's very difficult, sort of for me.

[C]

I think it's going to be a long time until we are able to revisit this footage, to be honest with you.

[B]

So for those of you that don't know who we are, Damian, Nicole, Austin's worst weirdos, I don't know. But, you know, we travel around the country, we collect haunted items. Of course, we have two podcasts. That's so cliche, right? But, like, we do that, and we are experienced chasers. We have lots of weird ideas, lots of weird experiments, and this story, I think, starts potentially even. How many of you were here last year? All right, good number.

[C]

And. Or listened to the episode of the Storytellers from last year.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

The story of the chair.

[B]

This may or may not have started then. So in the interest of time, we recently went To a place, Watseca, Illinois. Has anyone here ever heard of the story of the Watseca wonder? I didn't think so. It's a very.

[C]

She hadn't either.

[B]

It's a very unknown story, but it is considered America's very first possession case. It's an interesting story in Watseca, Illinois where there was this little girl, Lurancy Venom, that was her name.

[C]

So cool.

[B]

It's so cool. Who started having these weird fits these days we might look at it and call it epilepsy, whatever, but she was apparently possessed by this little girl who had lived in the town who had died like 20 years prior. So they wouldn't have known each other, whatever. Anyways, this possession had gone on for months and this family lived with this little girl. And it was this kind of. For the spiritualist movement. Anyone here that is involved in spiritualism, you know of the story probably because it was all over for those people

[C]

and to the point that this girl, like possession, like she went and lived with this other girl's family, the girl who was possessing her, I guess, and like knew things about that family and the house and where they lived and all these things that only their actual child would have known. Very weird. Very cool. Very weird.

[B]

Well, important to note that when Lorancy was having these fits at first, well, her parents did what most people would do and they turned to what was at the time considered good modern medicine. This was back in the 1800s, guys. This is where when you went to a place for having fits, they were doing things called watering, where they would put you in scolding hot water and then freezing cold water. And this was supposed to fix you. This is what they were doing.

[C]

Better than a lobotomy.

[B]

Well, not better than a. Well, tomato, tomato. But this guy who had had his daughter die about 10 years ago, 15 years ago, he went to this family and said, no, don't send her there, it's gonna make it worse. Let's see what this. He was a spiritualist. So anyways, long story short, you have this six month long possession that happens. The girl finally comes back and the other girl leaves. It was an interesting possession because not only was it the first known in America, but it was friendly.

[C]

It was friendly and it would jump into other people.

[B]

That's the thing. So the spiritualist would come over and they would have these meetings in the living room there and they would say things like, well, hey, if you are in her, can you jump to other people? And it would say sure. And it would jump into Other people. And other people would start saying all this stuff and they would jump right back in. That's important to keep in your mind. All right, so fast forward to when we were alive. We hear about this story through a wild synchronicity. We're in Chicago, we're speaking at a paranormal fest, and I'm talking to one of these ladies who's a member of a paranormal group called TWAT

[C]

the Wisconsin Apparition Tracking Society. Yeah, TWATs for short.

[B]

And she's telling me about this place they investigate. I've never heard of it. Which is wild because, you know, if you were to see our library at home, it is ridiculous the amount of paranormal information we have at our fingertips. So she's telling me about this story, and as she's telling it to me, it's the wildest thing. Water just starts pouring down from the ceiling. Now normal people are gonna say, oh, shit, water pipe busted. Not me. I'm like, okay. She's telling me about this place that happened. We're going. So I tell Nicole. Nicole, of course, being the lovely individual she is, is like, fuck, yeah, we're going.

[D]

Yep.

[B]

You up? So anyways, we do, and we dive into the story a little bit. It's very interesting. You should dive into the story. For anyone that's interested in this stuff, it's one of the most profound stories you'll have ever heard. Shortly before our trip up to Watseka, I had been on this interesting kick. And through synchronicities, I had found a book that I recommend. Anyone that's involved in the paranormal or interested in it reads and finds it and reads it. It's called.

[C]

Oh, boy.

[B]

Yeah, it's called the Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts. This was a journalist who was studying trance mediumship. Keep in mind, not a paranormal guy, but a journalist. And a journalist is typically going to be a lot better about research than most of your people in our world. This is just the truth. He spent five years with these channelers. Things were coming through well. He did things that most people wouldn't. These voices would come through. They'd say, we your guides. And he would talk to them and they would tell them relevant things. Now, this was back in the 80s, so there was no Internet, no fancy future phones to get on and find information. Well, he did something that people don't typically do, and he was traveling now to Europe to, like, put the story together. He was finding some things that the.

[E]

The.

[B]

The thing coming through, the guide was saying were true, but some were outright lies. So he goes back and he confronts this being. From that point on, they were mad at him because he had said, you lied to me. Why'd you do that? And they got mad. They started trying to manipulate him. Long story short, this goes on for years after he had had this revelation. The spirits did not leave him alone. He ended up killing himself. God, I love when I get that kind of reaction. That's amazing. No, he ends up throwing himself off a limestone cliff. And he told his publishers. He goes, ever since I went this route with my book. Because he started to write a book about how to look at and do trance mediumship. Well, at the end of the story, he concluded that everything that's coming through the trance mediumship was a liar and not what it said it was. So I read that, and it was interesting to me because if any of you here know anything about Nicole and I, we've had some wild experiences with some entities that come into our lives that seemingly like to masquerade as whatever the flavor of the month is for us. We've had the Bell witch. We've had Jeff Dahmer. We've had things called Anna. They're always telling us to go places. Wild goose hunt chases. So before we went up there, after reading this book, I remember having a conversation with these things in my head, as I often do, and I said, I've got your card pulled. I think whatever you are, we're communicating with. You're not what you say you are, you're lying to me for some reason. Why? After I had that conversation, everything felt weird. Something felt like it was not happy. Our house was in disarray. We have a very haunted house that we live in. It's our fault. So let's fast forward to Waseca. Because of that, as we're heading there, I'm telling myself, okay, entity, whatever you are, if you're here, if you can masquerade as whatever I need you to masquerade as, could you do something as silly as jump into one of us during the investigation? Yeah.

[C]

As we said on a panel earlier, we're stupid.

[B]

Oh, boy. So, yeah, long story short, so we get there, we're there for an entire weekend. I will say, this house is wild.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

I've never seen so much shadow play. Weird stuff like radio frequencies coming through the EMF machine. Wild things. First night, one of the guys gets tranced out. Don't even know what's happening to him. He's being very strange.

[C]

Two potentially, yeah.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Two potentially. So it was a weird first night. Second night. This is when things start to get a little bit scary. I am not a person that typically is ever going to be afraid of this stuff. We go to the craziest places that some people won't go to, and we go often and we never really scared, right? We never had a reason to be. I don't believe in a lot of the stuff that. That people say about whatever the phenomena is, right? Like, I'm not a guy that's gonna say, close your Ouija board off. I don't do any of that. I don't even do grounding or, like cleansings or whatever. I don't like it.

[C]

We fuck around and find out, if you will, bada boom.

[B]

She can say it more eloquently than I can, but. So second night, Nicole and I, we go down to the basement.

[C]

Well, everybody's kind of. They're having fun, they're having a grand old time. And for me, I start noticing things are amiss. If my anxiety starts going through the roof, okay? I am an anxiety girly. And that is how I know when you know, you know. And I was like, we gotta go down to the basement right now, okay? And he's mid conversation with other people. I'm like, no, we gotta go. I think I interrupted you like three times. Very rude of me. Didn't care. I was like, we gotta go. So we grab some ge. If you were here earlier, you saw, we use these. They're mind machine goggles. It's lights that are specifically done to induce an altered state of consciousness. And we combine that with a machine that we had custom built for us that has all of the frequencies for the different chakra tones. So you grab this, we go down there, and I typically am the one that is going under. So I pull out a little cot, I get everything set up, and you are asking the questions. I go under. Getting into this and me unaware of pretty much any of the actual history of this place. I knew that, you know, the basic gist that there was some little girl that possessed some other little girl and was like, I'm this other little girl. And that's pretty much the extent of what I knew, right? I didn't know that she would jump into other people, whatever. I didn't know that he had in his mind, said, hey, come jump into me. So as I'm laying there, me, we're more alike than we know, I guess. I out loud said, well, Mary Roff, I guess if you're here, go ahead and come on in. Like, jump on in. Just leave at some point tonight. Because, yes, I will out myself here. I 100% as a medium, okay? I 100% do not believe that that could happen to me. 100%.

[B]

It's funny because you also never believed that you could get scratched.

[C]

I did not. And I did get scratched, yes, at Hill House. But anyway, so fuck around and find out. Right again, we're stupid. So I said this, and I'm laying there, and I'm under at this point. And seriously, like, one second later, I start seeing in my mind's eye and feeling this big black mass coming up behind me. Just did not feel good. And I'm like, not you only. What would have been the actual spirit of Mary Roff. Like, Mary Roff. The spirit of Mary Roff. If you are here, hop on in. Have fun. Not you. Okay? So I do that. I'm unaware that Damian is saying the same thing at the same time while I am under. So we go through this, start hearing some weird things. Whatever. I get out, I'm like, hey, you gotta listen to this. I swear I just heard a voice come through. This is not a spirit box, okay? It's literally just playing a tone. We should not be hearing voices. So I have him lay down, I put it on him, whatever. And here's where things start to get a little weird. So. So he is laying there. He has the headphones on, and he did not have the goggles on. He just had the headphones on. He's listening. And I notice his eyes open and start rolling into the back of his head. If you are sitting there watching your person and you are seeing this, you might feel a little uncomfy.

[B]

A little uncomfy?

[C]

Yes. It was a little weird. And I'm, of course, like, logic. I'm trying to be like, well, I don't know. I know sometimes people, like, when they go to sleep, they sleep with their eyes open, or they're doing that. Because the thing was, he was still talking. He was describing what he was seeing, feeling, whatever. Just talking, like normal, you know? So I just kind of was like, oh, that's weird. But I don't know. Like, I guess he's fine. He's talking like normal. But I still, you know, I let it happen for, like, a minute. And then I'm like, okay, I don't love this. So we're gonna stop. So we finish up downstairs, we go back upstairs, join the group. I'll let you take over for what you remember here.

[B]

And this is where it gets weird, because there is a Whole portion of this that I absolutely 100% do not remember. So then we'll bring it back over to Nicole. But we go up there, and everyone's there, and they're like, hey, you know, the twats are like, we want to do our grounding that we typically do. And. All right, I took the bait. I played around. I said, I'll do your grounding with you. I don't do groundings or anything like that. What we experienced was not that I don't think we're all sitting around a table and she's doing this, like, soft voice that you might hear in these, what the kids call ASMR videos.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

I want you to put your. Oh, my God, it drives me nuts. Right? I can't stand it. So I'm sitting there, and in my mind, at first, I'm confused, because usually in that moment, I would be thinking, this is fucking stupid. Right? But I wasn't thinking anything. I remember that. That kind of jarred me. Well, we have our heads down. Everyone's holding hands. This is, like, sounds like cult shit, right? But we're all holding hands. And when it was done, all that I remember was I could feel in my face, it was soaking wet. Soaking wet. So I wasn't crying, like, visibly or audibly, but it was like. The only way to describe it is if someone turn to faucet, and then all the water's come out, so my whole face is just soaking wet. That's the last thing I remember.

[C]

Yeah. So this is happening. And if y' all heard us talk earlier, Damian shared that, you know. Okay. Sometimes in these scenarios, he'll have what's called a little menti B. Okay.

[B]

He'll have this menti B, by the way.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Mental breakdown.

[C]

Yes. Thank you for translating Nicole to everyone.

[B]

We feel if we say it nice and fluffy, it's not as bad.

[C]

Yes. It makes me feel better. Okay. So I was just trying to identify at this point, like, I don't know, did he just have some sort of emotional experience and he's just, like, crying about it? I guess. I don't know. So I'm trying to decipher this. But the weird thing is he's sitting there and his hands are just clenched like this on the table. His head is down. He won't look up at anyone. It was almost tangible. Like, you could tell he wanted to say something, but he couldn't. And everybody's asking, like, are you okay? What's going on? Are you okay? And he just. You tell he's trying to talk, but he couldn't. So we put a pencil in his hand. We're like, okay, try to write it. And he can't. I put my hand on his, and it's like, you could tell he's trying to write something, but he couldn't. Okay, so fast forward. I'm like, okay, let's get you some fresh air. Let's put some feet in some grass. Let's go outside. So I managed to get him up. We get outside. Hindsight is 2020 maybe not the best idea. We went way into the yard, like, far away from the house, because I'm like, I don't know. We're going to get some air. And maybe he wants some privacy and doesn't want to be like, right on the back patio of the house. Like, if you want to have a menti. Be. I don't want somebody here and me having a mentib. So we're out there. And the only way that I know how to describe this, and I will say, I typically do not get scared by things. Okay? This was probably the scariest experience I've ever had in my life because it was almost like two different people. We get out there, and he's crying, and then he's laughing hysterically. And then he kind of has this moment where he comes through, and I can tell it's Damian. And he's looking around. He's like, why is everybody out here? Why are all these people. Get off of me with your woo woo shit. Everybody get your hands off me. And I'm like, nobody is out here, bruv. Nobody is. It's just me and you. I'm so sorry. And then he goes back under, and he's like, laughing this weird laugh again. And all the while, by the way, he still won't let me look at his face. It's dark. We're in the middle of nowhere. I turn my flashlight on on my phone. I'm trying to. And he immediately gets mad. He's like, get that off me. Get the light off of me. So the part that scared me is at one point, he slumps over in his chair. His head goes to the side. His eyes are rolling in the back of his head again. I'm literally shaking him. And nothing. To me, it felt like it was like an hour. I'm sure it was probably only 30 seconds. But he finally comes to, and I'm genuinely scared at this point. I'm like, I think we might need to call an ambulance. Like, I think we might need to go to the hospital. And again, demeanor change. He starts laughing in my face. Okay, fast forward a little bit more through some weird shit. I get him up. We go to the patio at the back of the house, and he's sitting there. And again, he does one of these. Like, Damian comes through. Simultaneously, this occurs. I look over to the side, and it looks like there is a person standing in the woods next to us. Like, most of you have probably seen shadow figures. You're familiar with this.

[B]

I'm getting chills even thinking about it. It was fucking awful.

[C]

It looked like a straight up person standing there. And then, God, then he freaking sees it. He's like, what's that? Do you see that? Oh, my God. There's a person standing there. This was, like, full Ed and Lorraine moment. I grab your face. I'm like, if you have ever trusted anything I've ever said to you in our entire lives, I need you to shut the fuck up right now.

[B]

That's not how it happened. It was. If you've ever trusted me. No. Yes, it was.

[C]

I promise. I promise you, it was not very lovey.

[B]

Yes. Yes.

[C]

Anyway, I'm like, I need you to stop pointing at this thing and stop looking at this thing. It's like, don't whistle back. Right? I'm like, we need to get inside right now. So we get inside, and he's still doing it. He's looking out.

[D]

What is that? What is that?

[C]

I'm like, oh, my God. Shut the fuck up.

[B]

Well, it's kind of worth noting, too, that during the whole experience, one thing I do remember is I kept doing this thing. I'll have to just do it in front of you so I'll look very weird and stupid here. But I kept being like that.

[C]

What?

[B]

Yeah, Yeah, I kept lunging. Exactly. Was that you right there? Perfect. I love it. No, I kept doing that, though. And I don't know why that is, but after I stopped doing that is when we saw that damn thing.

[C]

It was almost like it came out of you, for lack of a better way of saying it. And I know it sounds weird. Trust me, I think I'm weird. I don't believe me telling this, but I was there. I experienced, literally, because it happened simultaneously to you coming through again. And then I see this thing standing there.

[B]

At this point, I am coming through. And this is weird because I'm starting to process things and put it together. Anyone that knows me knows that that theatrical display is not something I do at all in front of you. I don't do any of that it was very foreign. It was very weird. It was the scariest shadow figure I've ever seen in my life because this thing is standing between two trees, from what I remember, just. Still just looking right at you. And you could feel. You could just feel fear, like you could cut it with a flipping knife. I got really hot to the point where people were touching me and I was, like, on fire.

[C]

Yeah. We literally had to put ice packs on you.

[B]

Yeah. So that happens. I kind of get my bearings. And I remember telling Nicole, I was like, okay, something is not happy that I've called it out because again, we have over the past couple of years, had these experiments going on where with whatever flavor of the week it is that we're looking at, this entity will masquerade itself as that night. After this happened, I remember having this conversation with myself again because I was a little pissed off. Nothing like that's ever happened to me. We've been to the scariest places.

[C]

Oh. It said, hold my beer to both of us.

[B]

Oh, totally. But I remember saying, this is. I found out what you are to this thing, and boy didn't like that. This idea. A lot of us do this work and we think, oh, I'm connecting with so and so's dead loved one. I'm connecting with the dead person in this old building. Okay, how do you know that? How do you know it's not something that's masquerading as this? And this is. When you look at this world, this is something you must be weary of. So that happens. We are stuck there in Watseca, Illinois, and the house starts to come alive. And I'm talking shadow play like I've never seen in my life. I put an EMF mic up. I've got radio frequencies coming through. I've got all this weird stuff happening. Long story short, we end up leaving. We come home. I feel off the whole plane ride. We get home, and then probably, in my opinion, the weirdest part happens with Hurricane.

[C]

Yes. So the Pearpup did not go with us on this trip. And very Too Long didn't read because it's such a long story, but we got home, and the entire time that we were gone, something was messing with my wives, Rachel and Marcella. Rachel, they were watching the house, and something was messing with them the entire time we were gone. Something was messing with Hurricane the entire time we were gone. He was just acting weird. We whining, howling. And when we got home, he was like. Like, you know, there's a difference between when dogs Are, like, barking, whatever, like, happy to see you, versus, like, I'm scared. Like, tail between the legs, like, not doing good. Okay? And so listen, if there's one way to get me out of the way, it's make me worry about my dog. Like, that is my child. That is the closest I am ever getting to birthing something. Okay? And so the house got a very stern talking to.

[B]

We come in, the dog's got his tail between his legs, and it's the weirdest thing. You then are in the room, I'm out in the kitchen or whatever. What happens to you?

[C]

Yeah, I was in the bedroom, and some. Well, it was your voice behind me and the door was closed, said Nicole. And you know it's bad when you get a Nicole reaction. Okay. I'm notorious for, like, I just don't react. And you see me because we have a dog camera in there, and you see me. I'm like. And so then they got a stern talking.

[B]

That's the Nicole reaction.

[C]

Yes. A fast turn.

[B]

Yeah. At that point, we got pissed because I had just had this spiritual attack where I'm not gonna use that word. Possession. Right. That would be ridiculous. Right. But it's the closest thing that people would equate to that. I see what it had done to the dog. I see it's now whispering in Nicole. We got home, the house felt weird. So we just freak out. We get mad. We start walking through the house, flipping holy water over everything, yelling at this invisible presence. So if you can imagine that if you could be a fly on the wall at our house on a Friday night, like, here we are, freaking out, yelling at nothing.

[C]

Well, it stopped.

[B]

So I know it did for a little bit. It did for a little bit, which is interesting. But I felt weird probably for the next week or two. I canceled podcast episodes. We canceled a bunch of stuff because I could not get out of this anxiety state, this weird state of not feeling like myself. It was very odd. But yes, when we went through the house and we're throwing the holy Waterhouse, it stopped for a while. The house felt very comfortable. Well, okay, well, great. Fast forward to tonight. We're here doing this, and we have a good friend of ours who's not here now stop by to feed the dog, and they walk in our house, and what do they hear? They hear freaking conversations. Her boyfriend's a deaf guy, and he heard the conversations. Right. It's wild.

[C]

Welcome to the para house. Yes.

[B]

So the point of all this, you know, guys, is it's difficult to tell a story like this and really paint the picture of what it felt like having that experience. But more importantly, to try to understand that this stuff that we're in, this world that we're in, these things that we're communicating with. In no way should you ever let anyone tell you that we know what we are communicating with. If they tell you that, run because the research is there, the truth is there. Has anyone here ever been on a paranormal investigation, by the way? It's funny. It always happens like this. It's a trickster element. They call it a trickster element. You'll hear a big bang in the wall in one room, you go running over there and then it happens somewhere else. It's always a wild goose chase.

[C]

Well, it happened on the Sunset Strip episode, like go find this box on the wall, there's nothing and you find

[B]

a box of parts, you know, it was wild. So when the scary thing here is when I vocalized that and said, I know that you're a liar, whatever you are, it didn't like it. And it attacked me in a way that I've never been attacked before, to the point where it did feel intrusive, like something was in me there for a moment and I'm still trying to process it. I guess the house has since started to pop off a little bit again. So we're happy about that. But yeah, that is our story. It's not possession, but it's a spiritual attack. And it is a warning. For anyone that does this kind of thing, please just have the due diligence to think to yourself, I can't take everything at face value. Just like a human. Humans are bad. Humans are good. Spirit's bad, Spirit's good. Be careful.

[A]

What Damian and Nicole experienced in Woodsika connects back to one of the most well documented possession cases in American history. The story of the Witseka Wonder. The case centered around a 13 year old girl named Lurancy Venom who in 1878 began suffering from a series of seizures and extended periods of unconsciousness. When she'd come out of those states, she claimed to have visited heaven, seen angels and communicated with deceased members of her family. Over time, her condition appeared to evolve into something even more unusual. During these episodes, Lurancy reportedly began speaking and behaving as though she were different individuals, most notably Mary Roff, a young woman who had died years earlier after experiencing similar seizures and being committed to an asylum. Physician and spiritualist, Dr. Winchester Stevens was brought in to examine the case. During the alleged possession, Lorenzi was said to recognize members of the Roff family, identify personal belongings within their home, and recount detailed memories from Mary Roth's life. These accounts became the foundation for what many at the time believed to be compelling evidence of spirit possession. This reported possession came to an end In May of 1878, when Lorenzi returned to her own personality and went on to live what was described as a normal life. For those interested in exploring the case further, Dr. Stevens original study is still preserved and available through the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Archives Lives and for Damien and Nicole, what they encountered while researching that case may be something they're still trying to understand. However, not every encounter with the unexplained begins with an investigation. Sometimes it finds you on a long stretch of highway late at night when there's no one else around. When we get back from this short break, we'll hear from a veteran psychic medium about an experience she had on Interstate 35 that's haunted her for 38 years. Stay tuned. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. For 10% off your first month, go to betterhelp.com Night Owl this month, BetterHelp would like to take a moment to recognize and celebrate the incredible women in our lives. Personally, I'd like to honor a very special woman, my beautiful mother. I truly don't know where I'd be today without her guidance, support and unconditional love. There's something incredibly powerful about knowing you have someone in your life who always has your back, no matter what. Unfortunately, not everyone is as fortunate. Many people are navigating life's challenges without that kind of support system, without someone they can turn to for guidance, encouragement or understanding. That's where BetterHelp online therapy can make a meaningful difference. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms. It also holds an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for live sessions based on more than 1.7 million client reviews. Getting started is simple and convenient. Just go online, complete a brief questionnaire to help match you with a therapist who fits your needs, and schedule an appointment that works with your unique schedule. If you're needing guidance, support, or someone to talk to while navigating life's challenges, BetterHelp can be there for you. Everyone deserves a helping hand, and sometimes the first step is Simply reaching out. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% [e-mail] NightOwl that's betterhelp.com NightOwl Are you curious about edible gummies and all their benefits, but not sure which brand to trust with so many options out there. I'll make it easy for you. Let me tell you about our sponsor, Lume Gummies. 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Lumi Gummies come in three strains to match your Sativa for energy focus and uplifting mood, Indica for relaxation and winding down, and lastly, Hybrid for a balanced mix of calm, creativity and energy. Each strain is available in a variety of amazing flavors and every product is rigorously tested for quality and consistency so you can feel confident in what you're getting. Are you ready for a much needed energy boost at the end of the day? Give Lumi Gummies a try. Lumi Gummies are available nationwide. Go to lumigumis.com that's L U M I gummies.com and use code night owl for 30% off your order. Again, that's L U M I gums.com code night owl lumigummies.com code night owl our next story comes from Elaine Ireland, a psychic medium many of you will recognize from past Night Owl investigations. But this experience didn't happen during a case of hers. It happened decades ago after a late night in Austin as she and a friend made their drive back home to the dark, rain soaked roads of Central Texas. Somewhere along that drive, they saw something ahead of them on the highway. At first it just looked like something familiar, but the closer they got, the less it made sense. And what they experienced together has stayed with Elaine ever since. This is the shadow in the headlights.

[D]

Good evening. Have y' all had a Good time tonight. Have most of you been here all day? Thank you for being here and for staying for this. Okay, we have a time thing, so I'm gonna try to make this as juicy as it was within a limited time. I was 38 years old. I'm a whole lot older now, so this was a while back. I know, and I can remember it. Right. Okay, so we're coming through. I had been in Austin. A friend of mine and I, who we both lived in Dallas at the time, well, Arlington. And 38 years ago, i35 was very different than it is now. It was dark, very dark. And on our way home, we always stopped at a yummy place. Family owned place in Hillsboro, Texas. Anybody know that? German place? Yay. Yeah. Open 24 hours, everything fresh. You can smell it before you ever get there. And we had stopped and we'd done our bakery run, as we called it, to take two people who kept the house and the cats and all that stuff. So while we were there, we heard people talking about the. This was a spring. And, you know, spring in Texas can be rainy or it can be real dry, and you know what the summer's gonna be like. Well, that night it was rainy and. And people were saying that's not a big storm, just enough to make the roads slick. Right, of course. So by the time we had gotten there, it was close to midnight because we had stayed in Austin and had dinner after a psychic fair. So my mind is still at the psychic fair and with psychics, we'd had dinner, which we rarely did on a Sunday. We usually packed it up and headed home. Wherever we were that night we stayed, had dinner with some folks. So it was around midnight when we got to Hillsborough to this yummy German place. And we heard conversations. You could see people's clothing was a little bit wet, but everybody was saying, no big deal. It's just slick and you'll need your windshield wipers. Okay. So we got in the car, headed out, took our right, headed towards the Dallas area. And how beautiful. Probably 15 minutes in the car, we drove literally right into it as though a line had been drawn. And it was sort of dry on this side and wet there. And we drove into it, and it wasn't bad, if you can imagine your windshield wipers just going, but you're still getting floody and it's distorted. And the lights coming at you were a little bit strange. And all of a sudden, of course, we're headed north. But in addition to the. And I think the roads were still just Two roads at the. At that time it hadn't been widened yet, but there was an additional, I call them country roads on both sides. Okay, we're headed north. And we saw these lights off in the distance and they were so bright. And I said to my friend who was driving, I said, maybe it's just the water making them look weird. I mean, they look like truckers lights. But we could tell that it was a car light. And the closer we got to it. Now this is where it begins to get weird. The closer we got to that car, it looked like it was backing up, but yet we could see three energies around the car and we could tell that the trunk was open. Well, of course she said, maybe they've got a flat tire. And I said, well, there's no way we can help them. Meanwhile we're moving. And so it is. So the closer we get, the smaller that car gets, but the brighter the lights get. And again we're trying to figure out, well, maybe it's just the rain because it's still distorted. Meanwhile, she makes the comment, where'd all the traffic go? This is Sunday night, right? People are coming up and down I35. It's a major highway. But once you got past that town, Hillsborough, there was nothing at that point in line, there was not one single tall state light. It was black period. In the wintertime you might see lights from homes that were set back. There were no groups of homes, there were just a dotted farm. You might see that. But when the leaves were thick trees, there were. You couldn't see those. So we're on this dark highway. Very few cars all of a sudden coming, are going. And that car is still backing up in our minds, it's still backing up and we're still seeing movement around it. Three, three dark figures. Now, I knew my friend well enough, it's about time for her to not be able to drive. We traveled a lot together. So sure enough, she said, you know, sweetheart, I don't feel like I'm safe to drive. And I just laughed. Okay, I'll take it. Pull over. No problem. I'm okay. I'm good. I eat sugar, I get loopy. So it was okay. As we're pulling over, we somehow line up with that car, which we both thought was weird. And we were sort of dressed. I had heels on, brand new pair of pink high heels that I'd worn for the first time. I was not happy right at all. Three inchers and they were really pretty. I got out to go around. She got out to Go around the front. Well, as she curved the front to get in the passenger seat and I had gone around the back, she said, get in the car. Get in the car. Get in the car. Now. Now, now, now, now. You know, it's panicky. This woman never panics over anything. She was calm even in the most difficult of situations. I said, what's wrong? She said, get in the car and get out of here. I looked over and I see now keep in mind in between the north and the south is this wide grassy area that by now we could see was glistening. So it would have been muddyish and wide for somebody to come running. I saw one figure floating, floating. When I saw Harry Potter, Remember the Death Eaters? When I saw them, I went, holy crap. The memory came back immediately. What I saw was not as dramatic because it didn't have the feathery things. It looked like a figure that was floating. And my first thought was, how are they running like that? And then I realized they weren't. By then, I'm in the driver's seat, she's screaming at me. She barely shuts the door. And by the time I barely go two or three blocks, I realized I'd lost a heel. And I said my heel got sucked off my foot and kind of giggled. And she said, we are not going back for it. And yeah, she pretty much. She said, I'll buy you another pair. Get out of here. And we just kept going, didn't say very much. Now the kicker to this is I saw that thing float. It landed right behind our car before I took off. And when it landed, it was a human looking male, right? I know. And I looked in the mirror and she was watching it. She said, you watch the road. You watch the road. Get out of here. Get out of here. My foot was as fast as I could go and I was afraid the car was gonna die from getting too much gas too fast. I know that was years ago, so I'm moving. She said, I know if we had not have gotten out of there, we would not be alive. And she said it over and over and over again until she said, I can't go to sleep now. Do you want me to drive? I looked at her and I said, this car is not stopping until we get to our garage.

[B]

No.

[D]

Okay. We didn't even unpack the car. We locked everything down. Our neighbor had already taken care of the critters, left us a nice note. We knew everything was okay. We loved on the cats and went to bed. Did we sleep? No. No. Got up, made A pot of coffee, talked until daylight. She went to work. I went back to. I was taking some college courses. Yeah, old lady. And I was doing my thing. We didn't talk about that incident for a week. And then we were out with some friends in the metaphysical community. And she said, shall we tell? I mean, out of the blue, she said, shall we tell them? And I knew what she was talking about. And I said, well, they won't think we're crazy. Yeah, share it. So she did, and that was the last time we talked about it for a couple of days. And I said, you know, that's very barren out there. And that happened in a really scary area. So what if it was three people? And we both misread what we thought we saw? I think I should call the highway department. And she said, they'll think you're crazy. I said, okay. And she said, are you going to tell them you're also a psychic? And I said, yeah, they'll really think you're crazy. I'm going to call them. Don't give them my name, okay? We went back and forth. So a couple of days later, I got the nerve up, and I did call the Texas Highway Department. And I. I told the operator, yes, they had actual operators at that time. I said, I need to talk to somebody about an incident on the highway between Hillsboro and Arlington, actually, where you turned off to go to Dallas or turned off to go to Arlington or turn to the left to go to. She said, I know what you're talking about, honey. They could call people honey and sweetheart back then without anybody getting sued, right? So I said, she hooked me up with this gentleman, this very nice gentleman, very patient. I said, I have a scary story to tell you, and you're going to think I'm crazy, but I really don't care. I want you to know that this happened. We did not imagine it. We were not drunk. We're two adults. And yes, I'm a practicing psychic, but you're still going to have to listen to what I have to say. He chuckled and he said, I'll try to believe you. And I said, good deal. So I told him. He was very quiet, and he did this clearing of the throat thing. And I thought, okay, here comes the lecture. And he said, you're not crazy. Very quietly. And he said, we get at least three to five calls a week about that area of strange things that happen. And that's how he said it. And he said, ma', am, you're lucky because other people have had very unpleasant Issues happen out there. And he said, it's so bad these days that our guys won't go in a car between the turnoff that comes into this area and Hillsborough. They go two together. Our two singles follow up. They won't go by themselves. Now he took a deep breath and he said. Because I'd given him the whole thing about losing the shoe and all that and anything else I could think of in terms of detail, I said, are you going to write up a report? He said, absolutely, absolutely. And we will keep it. It will go in our regular files just like no crime was committed. But I said, thank you very much. I appreciate that. And he gave me his phone number. He said, you were directed right by the telephone board thing? I said, yes. He said, well, let me give you my desk number. And he did, which I thought was nice. He said, if anything comes up, I'll call you. How about that? Now, back then we didn't have fancy cell phones. This is important because I told my friend what had happened. And she said, you think he's going to send somebody to talk to us? And I said, I gave him everything. No, I don't think so. But he did say if it would. It would be a better idea if we drove in the daylight. Because he had asked me if we often traveled that road. I had family, she had friends and family in Austin. And I told him about once a month, maybe. Maybe once every other month. And no, we don't drive at night. Then we drive in the daytime, we come back in the daytime. He said, that's probably a good idea for that stretch of road. Okay, I got it. Okay. Told her we kind of forgot about it. About two or three weeks later was a Friday. There's. Remember landlines with recordings on them? Yeah, those things still work, too. There was a message from this gentleman and he just simply asked if I would call him or if someone would call him within the next day or when we had time. No hurry. He was going to be on duty on Saturday, if we had time. And he left the number again. An extension Saturday, mid morning. I called him. Didn't expect him to answer the phone. He's not supposed to be a desk jockey, he's sheriff. I thought he'd be out running around. Right. He answered the phone, he said, well, thank you for calling. He said, I just had a few more questions. And I went, oh. She asked me if they were. What did I leave out? And he said, no, they're just verifications. You were going north, right? You were going north. You were going to Arlington. Did I understand that? He said, and you and your friend, you're okay, you weren't hurt in any way? I said, just my loss of the shoe, that's all. He said, well, let me tell you what's happened. And I went, oh, geez. And I could hear a guy behind him. And I knew they were going through the file because the man was saying, ask about this. Make sure she said this, okay? And I said, why don't you put your guy on speaker? And we just kind of chuckled. So he said, well, this is the gentleman. This is the officer that wants to tell you about this. I said, okay. He said, we were on patrol, another officer and myself, and we saw a bicycle. I don't think a bicycle. Okay, we saw a bicycle. So of course we stopped to check it out. And as we were going up and down, making sure no one was hurt, you know, the. The bicycle was really damaged. It could not be driven anymore. We checked the license number on it. Does that mean anything to you? No, no, not at all. And he said, well, while we were looking around, we found a heel, a pink high heel, but there's not a full description. That's what I would like to verify. And he said, what did your heel look like? I said, it was a left shoe, size 6, pale pink, kind of looked like linen heel, not a block. A lot of people wearing block thingies. This was a heel and it had a strap around the back of the heel that was a braided strap in pale pink, variegation of pinks. And I could hear the guy say, holy shit. I said, but it's. What's the deal? He said, while we were looking, we walked all the way across the highway going south. And it was stuck in the ground, pointed south. We were going north. That shoe, remember? I said, it felt like it had been sucked off my foot. It was in the ground, pointed south and we have it and it's unharmed. It looks like it never got wet. I said, did you find any bodies out there? The other one came on and he said, that's what I didn't tell you before, is that area was known since the 30s to be a dumping ground for bodies, all young women. You might have been very lucky. And I said, but what about those shadowy looking thing that suddenly turned into a human looking male? He said, that's not the first time we've heard that. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[A]

As you just heard, some experiences don't fade with time. For Elaine, that night on i35 is as vivid as ever and, as she admits, will never leave her memory. After this short sponsor break, we'll return to hear a hair raising tale of a former Austin police officer whose time spent thumbing through the archives of an abandoned asylum led him to his own haunting experience. Stay tuned. Well, night owls, it's late March already and that means one thing in South Texas Spring break. Whether you're a college student headed for the beach or parents loading up the kids and heading out for a week long adventure in the great outdoors, travel is on the minds of everyone. It's definitely a good thing to take a break from your school or work routine, but that doesn't mean you have to take a break from your daily health routine. AG1 provides easy health support with travel packs you can take along on any adventure. Go to drinkag1.com nightowl to get an AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of vitamin D3K2 for free in your AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription order only while supplies last. It's definitely challenging to stay consistent with your daily health routines when traveling or just trying to adjust to the shifting schedules that come with springtime and longer daylight hours. AG1 takes all the complications out of maintaining your daily health routine. AG1 simplifies your nutrition by supplying you with multivitamins, pre and probiotics, superfoods and antioxidants all in one scoop. With those extra daylight hours, I'm finding myself with extra time for taking my dog Kodo on evening walks in the neighborhood or at the lake. The superfoods and B vitamins in AG1 provide me with that extra energy to keep me going at the end of a long day. AG1 is clinically shown to support gut health and fill in common nutrient gaps with over 75 ingredients, including five clinically studied probiotic strains. AG1 can fill all my daily health needs with one simple scoop in the morning to kickstart my day with the AG1 travel packs. It's extremely easy and convenient to maintain my daily health routine on the go as well. Why not do yourself a favor, give AG1 a try and simplify your daily health routine as well. AG1 now comes in original citrus, berry and tropical flavors. Go to drinkag1.com nightowl to get an AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of vitamin D3K2 for free in your AG1 welcome kit with your first AG1 subscription. Order only while supplies last. That's drinkag1.com night owl shorts and swimsuit Weather is rapidly approaching Night Owl, so if you haven't already started, now might be the perfect time to start thinking about eating a little healthier, if you know what I mean. Factor Meals is how I get quick, easy and most importantly, healthy meals in spite of my busy schedule. Thank you Factor for sponsoring the show. Head over to FactorMeals.com NightOwl50OFF and use code NightOwl50OFF to get 50% off plus free breakfast for one year. All kidding aside, we all want to look good while enjoying the great outdoors and sporting the latest summer fashions. Whether it's hiking shorts or that new swimsuit, healthier eating is a great first step toward feeling good about what you're wearing. Not only are Factor Meals super healthy, they're also incredibly delicious. I tend to go for the high protein meals because they fit my lifestyle. Recently I tried the Caramelized Onion meatballs with cheesy potatoes and broccoli and carrots. This meal is listed as high protein, Calorie smart, Sodium smart and fiber filled, but honestly, it should also be listed as high in taste. The combination of well seasoned meatballs with the cheesy potatoes was fantastic and the entire meal was only 530 calories with a whopping 30 grams of protein. The beauty of Factor Meals is that they can be tailored to each person's preferences. There are 100 rotating weekly meals with options including High protein, Calorie Smart, Keto friendly, Mediterranean diet, GLP1 support, and even ready to eat salads. Factor Meals are chef prepared with no refined sugars, no artificial sweeteners and no refined seed oils. Meals are delivered straight to your doorstep fresh, never frozen, making them a no prep, no stress solution to the daily question, what's for dinner? Head to FactorMeals.com NightOwl50OFF and use code NightOwl50OFF to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. Offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor. Our final story of the evening comes from someone whose job is rooted in facts, evidence and investigation. Greg Lawson is known to many as the paranormal detective, but his background begins in law enforcement. Early in his career, Greg worked the late shift as a police officer here in Austin, Texas, often serving as the department's mental health officer. Part of that work involved reviewing old case reports and historical files connected to one of the city's darkest chapters, the Servant Girl murders of the 1880s. The killings terrified Austin at the time, and the identity of the murderer was Never conclusively determined. But while working nights in the shadows of the old asylum and combing through those forgotten records, Greg began to uncover something that didn't feel entirely like history. This is the Midnight Beat.

[D]

Hi.

[E]

So, for what it's worth, I was never supposed to be a cop. Ever. All right, 1982. 1981. 82. There was a big downturn in the economy, and all of a sudden, there weren't any jobs. When I got out of high school, next thing I know, I was in the army. Next thing I know, I'm traveling around the world and coming back, and I'm like, okay, I'm back four years later, and I'm going to go to ut and I'm going to be in the fine arts program, and I'm going to be an artist. It didn't work either. It takes money to, like, go to school and eat, and I wasn't smart enough to do both. So my sister said, hey, you should go to work for the sheriff's office. You can work part time and then go to school. And I was like, I'm not going to be a cop. Are you kidding me? And I went out and rode with a guy named Rick Patino, and we did a whole shift together to just see what it was like. And it was the most fun I'd had in a long time. So I ended up working as a cop, and I was a new deputy. 1986. 87. And we had a thing going on here in Austin. Actually, it was nationwide. It's called the DE Hospitalization act of. Of 1987. Thank you. And a bunch of very, well, you know, people that thought well of others felt that people should not be incarcerated in places like the state school and the state hospital if they haven't committed a crime. So they changed the law to where you had to be an immediate danger to yourself or others. And so they depopulated the state schools and the state hospitals, and we see what's going on now right here in Austin. But back then, they were trying to figure out what to do, because all of a sudden we had all of these folks coming out on the street, and a lot of them would come right down here on Guadalupe, right? So being a brand new deputy, they needed a thing called a mental health officer. And no cop wants to do that. You know, they're like, what? No, I'm going to go run lights and siren and chase bad guys and put people in jail and stuff. And so they were like, hey, Lawson, guess what? We're going to send you over to the mental health unit and get you squared away. So you go over there and you get certified as a mental health officer and a CIT member. It's a critical incident team member. You go to suicide mediation school, you go to hostage negotiation school, and you go out on all of the critical incidents. But on top of that, all of a sudden we have this big population out there. So we're having to go in and start policing the folks that haven't maybe ever been out of the hospital, like over the state school in their entire life. They've been in the state school the whole time, and all of a sudden they don't have any place to live and they're on the street. And so we're spending a lot of time down here on Guadalupe. And I would be working midnight shift because I was the new guy, right? I was 23 years old. And I'm walking up and down, you know, Guadeloupe looking for the people that the folks that own businesses are saying are doing different things like taking their clothes off or doing whatever they're doing out there. And. And so we would be down there a lot around, you know, two o' clock or so, things would start slowing down a little bit. And I would drive up to the state hospital right up here and I would go, they. They were doing a renovation of the original building that's up there, the, the big admin building. You can see, see it still standing. A lot of you that have not seen pictures, look online and look at what the state hospital used to look like. It was amazing. It was huge. It was a state of the art place in the United States. Right here in Austin, it was called the Texas State Lunatic Asylum. That's what the name was. Lunatic was not a bad word then. That was a diagnosis word. So that's kind of what happened with that. The interesting thing is, what I find really interesting is we have evidence of certain things. And as a former homicide detective, as a former child abuse detective, sex crimes detective, mental health officer, critical incident team member, I look for evidence. I look for little flags that will pop up and go, that's not right. Or that shouldn't be there. That's kind of what I'm looking for. If you drive down Guadalupe right here, it's not right. I don't know if you've ever noticed, this actually is kind of right. But when you're driving down right here, the road turns right. Isn't that weird? And it's still called Guadeloupe. Do you know? It wasn't called Guadeloupe in 1885. Asylum Road. Yep. They renamed it in the 1920s right over here. So Asylum Road, you went up Guadeloupe and you took a right on Asylum Road. You got to think about what it was like in 1884, 1885. At that time, there's nothing out here. There are farms out here, and then you have Asylum Road. And it was a big, nice road. They put a lot of money into it. The state of Texas put a lot of money into it, and they put a lot of money into that hospital. The director of the hospital at that time, in 1884, 1885, had this kind of. He was very progressive when he went out there. He took down all the fencing. There was fencing around, took all the fencing down. He put up ponds and he put up flowers and trees, and he had all these programs. And it was an open campus at that time. If you were not locked up in the snake pits, it was open campus. You could go out, you could walk around, you could go do stuff. And at the end, you know, in the evening, the people that weren't as sick as some of them would come back because that's where they lived. And the ones that would get a little lost or whatever, the sheriffs or the city marshals would kind of corral them back up there. So I'm out here at 2 o' clock in the morning. There's nothing to do. I would go over to the main administration's office, and I would get the keys for the main building. I would go over the main building, open it up, and it was all, like I said, they were doing a renovation. I would go down into the basement there, and that's where the snake pits were. The snake pits were where the chronically ill people would be. And they would lock them up in there, and that's where they stayed. Right. Well, there was a lawsuit probably back in the 30s, and they had shut all that stuff down. And there were these big oak doors that would be worth thousands and thousands of dollars a day. Absolutely beautiful, big, thick oak doors with these bars in front of them. And they had taken off all those oak doors. They had big locking mechanisms on. They had taken them off because the court ordered that. And they just leaned them up against the wall and they closed the snake's pit down. And they just sat there and they started using them as storage. Well, when I was there, when they were doing the renovation, they had taken all of the original documents and all of the admin paperwork and stored it all down there. So all the patient records were down there from the 1870s on. So I would go in there by myself at night, three o' clock in the morning, and I'd go down in there and I would start looking through these boxes and I would read this stuff. And there was typically three things that you went to the state hospital for. One religious. It's really interesting how mental illness is very contemporary to the things that are happening like right now. Like today. There's, you know, CIA operatives and the UFOs and aliens, stuff like that. Back then they didn't have spaceships and stuff, but what they did have was a lot of religious upbringing, right. So they would become Jesus or they would be an angel or they would say things like that. So you could get sent to the state hospital for, you know, manifesting, that sort of thing. You could get sent to the state hospital for consumption, tuberculosis. They'd send you over there and also, man, get ready for this. Masturbation. Yeah, there was a bunch of people in the state hospital and that's what their diagnosis was. I'm like, what, oh my God, what year is this? I'm glad it's 18. Anyway, so I, I got away with that. Anyway, there was a couple of other diagnosis that they were coming up with, but it was really interesting looking at this. So I spent 32 years law enforcement and finally got out of there and I. And plus another 10 years military on top of that. And until last year that I retired, I wasn't really able to. To talk about a lot of things just because, you know, if I get called into a grand jury for a deposition or something like that and somebody finds out that, oh, so you're the paranormal detective. You know, that might ruin my credibility a little bit as far as, you know, doing a big criminal case. So I had to be very, very siloed in what I did in law enforcement than what I do in paranormal. Right. So I, I've been able to speak on some of this stuff. This is the only time that I ever could speak, say that I heard a disembodied voice was when I was down in the snake pits down there. And there's nobody else in the building? No, it's. The building is condemned. They're working on it. They're using this as storage. I'm essentially breaking in, using the keys from the admin to get in there and would hear things and I would, you know, yeah, I'm coming, you know, and I'd kind of pack everything up and just kind of meander on out of there. And it was very, very disconcerting. Well, that was one thing, but the other thing was, is as I'm going back and forth from Guadalupe and dealing with the folks that are depopulated out of the state hospital, and, you know, spending my time down there in the snake pits was some stories that matched other people's stories and they didn't know each other. It would be continuous stories of one particular thing and you'd hear all kinds of stuff. I would go down there and talk to folks. You know, they're standing on the corner or standing on top of a mailbox or whatever, yelling, screaming. And we get called out there and then we talk to them, spend some time with them. Other people would come up and I would end up having a conversation with three or four people. And many of these people strayed out of the state hospital. One of the things that came up continuously was Guadalupe was haunted right along here. And it was. The story was essentially a black woman in a white dress that would. Would ask for directions. And I don't remember specifically what exactly she asked, but she would walk up and down the road out on Guadalupe, and people would see her and they wouldn't pay any attention to her because she looked like a full bodied apparition, looked like a person walking along. But then other people that would actually interact with her would realize that she's translucent or something would be odd about her. So there was a consistent story over maybe, I don't know, a year that I was kind of assigned in this area before they moved us out. And Austin police department ended up taking over their own mental health unit at the time. And I was like this, this is really odd, right? So that was always kind of in the back of my mind. Well, I know Stephen. The way he does investigations is very similar to the way that I kind of do investigations. And I started looking at this more and more, and it kind of ate on me over. I mean, this is like over a 20 year period that I would think about this. I'm like, well, if there was a ghost of a black woman walking along up and down Guadalupe, you know, where would that come from? So, you know, you take the big deep dive in the archives, you go over to the library, and you go to some of the other historical societies and things like that, and you start looking through things, and you'll have to remember there was a thing called testimony back in the day. Cops didn't write reports, they testified, and reports didn't start until man, 1915 19, 20, something like that, Cops started writing things down. Otherwise you'd just be subpoenaed or summons to court and you would testify. Right. So there's not a lot of cop reports out there prior to that. But what you would end up seeing is in the historical records is the Austin Statesman, the Austin American Statesman. But back then, the Austin statesmen, they would write all kinds of things that were going on. And when they're setting their type, it wasn't the sports page and it wasn't the cry page, it wasn't the front page or anything like that. They just told stories as it came. The story would come in and they would set the type. And then Bob wants to sell his chicken for $2. They put that in there and you know, Jimmy killed his wife. There's that. And then it goes right on to I'm selling wagons. And then, you know, we're having a parade next week. It was all a jumble, right? So you really have to read. There was one rooster that everybody was mad at back then. He was mad. He was a bad dude. I'm not sure what his name was, but there was a lot of rooster stuff in there. And I'm reading through all this stuff and of course I stumble into the servant girl murders. I don't know if you've heard about this or not, but look it up. We had possibly the first American serial killer right here in Austin, Texas, 1884-1886. He, the canonical eight people that he killed were right here in Austin, and one of them was a Courtyard by Marriott. It's san Jacinto at 4th Street. Okay? A guy named Valentine Weed owned the house right there. And he had a lady named Rebecca Ramey that worked for him. She was 50 years old. She took care of his house and, you know, cooked for him, cleaned for him and that sort of stuff. And she had a 10 year old daughter named Mary Ramey. One night a man came into their house and bludgeoned them both, killed Mary, the 10 year old, and you can read about the rest, what happened. But Rebekah survived and she had a horrific head injury. Because this guy was also known as the servant girl Annihilator. He was known as Austin Axeman, the Austin Ax Murderer, the Midnight Assassin. He had a bunch of monikers because the media likes hyping stuff. I don't know if y' all know that or not, but they do. And so Rebecca, serious head injury, really bad. She recovered, but was hospitalized for the rest of her life at the Austin State Hospital. Lunatic asylum. Every morning when she would wake up, she wouldn't have any memory of what happened and she would look for her daughter and she would walk down Asylum Road to Guadeloupe, all the way down to 4th street in San Jacinto. They would find her down there, the marshals or the sheriff's office or whatever, and they would give her a ride back every day. So that's interesting thing for what I do is I look for. For patterns and I look for things that make sense of why something happens. So why would there be a bunch of people on Guadalupe that talk about a black woman in a white dress walking down lost all the time? That's what I'm going to leave you with.

[A]

Awesome. Thank you to Greg, to Damon, Nicole, to Elaine, and thank you all for spending Halloween night with us. Thank you. I hope y' all have had a great Halloween so far. Stories have always been one of the ways we try to make sense of the unknown. Sometimes they're warnings. Sometimes they're attempts to explain the unexplainable. And. And sometimes they're simply moments that stay with us. Strange encounters that refuse to fade with time. The stories shared that night at the Spirit Social were more than entertainment. They were personal experiences offered by members of this community. Reminders that the unexplained doesn't just belong in old legends or dusty archives. Sometimes it happens to ordinary people. Sometimes it happens close to home. A huge thank you to everyone who joined us that evening and had the courage to step up to that microphone and share their stories. And to those of you listening tonight, if you've ever experienced something you can't quite explain, you're not alone. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Night Owl podcast. Be sure to join us for a new paranormal adventure dropping on April 27th. Stay restless out there. I also wanted to give a huge thank you to all our incredible storytellers for sharing their ghostly tales with us tonight. Be sure to check out Damian and Nicole and their podcast, the Real Ghost of and parapeculiar. You can connect with them on social media. Herealghostof and para Peculiar for Elaine Ireland. You can reach out for virtual readings via email@elaine ireland65mail.com and don't miss out on her most Recent project. Visit www.conversationswiththeancients.com for more details. And lastly, you can find the paranormal detective greg [e-mail] or connect with him on social media. Eghlawson that's Greg the letter H. Lawson Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter on our website thenight owlpodcast.com follow us on Instagram or Facebook the Night Owl Podcast and consider becoming a patron and supporting our show on patreon.com thenight owlpodcast to stay up to date with our show's news and events. Stay restless out there. I'd like to thank my investigative team, Alexis, Franklin and Jeffrey for going on these crazy adventures with me Nicholas Fair for his talented musical contributions to this show my dad Sam for his incredible historical research Mikey for his assistance editing Beau Tristan and Devin for their help with our Night Owl events and tours Sandra for keeping us all on schedule and on budget and last but not least, David Dalton of driftworks Sound for mastering every single episode on the tight turnarounds I give him. Please support their works by visiting our website thenight owlpodcast.com and clicking on the about tab. There you can find links to all their individual works and websites. This podcast was mastered by David Dalton of Driftworks Sound. Do you have a song that could use a professional touch to get it across the finish line? Do you wish you could remove the sound of a loud air conditioner or distracting mouth noises from your podcast recording? Whatever your issue, David can repair and enhance your audio and help you achieve rich, full professional sound at industry standard loudness levels. Quit struggling with audio engineering and get back to creating. To discuss your options, reach out to [e-mail]. that's Dr. I ftworksound.com and set your creative self free.