You're listening to the Paranormal UK Radio Network and this is six Degrees of John
Keel. Hello and welcome to the six Degrees of John Kiel podcast. I'm
your host Barbara Fisher. Tonight I'm talking with Carly Lapham Latham Latham. See
I told you i'm professional people, I really am Latham. And she goes
by the village to row which on Instagram. She's a very interesting person.
And we had just been talking about what's haunted houses or people or both,
and so why don't you jump in with your haunted house story, my haunted
house story. I am really excited for this because I just had a phone
call with my realtor. The house in question is for sale at the moment.
I'm not gonna say where, because if you buy that house, like,
that's on you, buddy, you know, So that's that's not my
problem anymore. But I would say that I am someone that has always been
sensitive, but I lacked the information and the understanding of what was going on.
So like I can look back at my life and pinpoint several several times
when I felt like I wasn't alone, Like I had experiences that I couldn't
explain but I was raised Mormon, so I was raised in a very black
and white this is what's real, this is what's not religion, And as
a result, when I had these experiences, I almost always would chalk them
up to anxiety like that that it was the only way that I had to
interpret what was going on. Is I would be alone in a room and
be feeling watched and I had no explanation for it other than I must have
watched too many horror movies. You know, Like I am an anxious person
that runs in my family. So like that's that's logical, right, So
fast forward to my adult years. I left the Mormon religion, which is
a whole thing. Yeah a thing. It's a big thing. Yeah,
it's a big thing. It was hard on my family, It was hard
on a lot of the people that I was friends with. It's the reason
that I'm not active on Facebook is because I have a Facebook account. But
Facebook is where all of my Mormon people live, and so I just I
know that strategically going on Facebook is good for me, but I avoid it
at all costs. So it is fair, you know, Facebook is kind
of an ick place anyways. So I left the Mormon religion. And within
a couple of years, I moved to Florida. And I had lived in
Texas essentially my whole life. So like we're talking born into this religion,
left it, and then left my home state behind in a very short amount
of time. Okay, So I got to Florida, and I am fully
an atheist at this point. I don't believe in anything. If you know
anything about Mormonism, it is that they teach that that is the one true
church, and they actually will actively tell you if this isn't true, nothing
is. So like I worked through that conditioning. I had that moment where
I was like, this religion, this story that I've been told my entire
life, there's no basis in reality. This isn't real. I don't have
to stick with this, right And it was huge for me because I had
always been very unhappy within Mormonism. I did not fit in like I'm here
on this podcast. Do you think that I fit in with Mormonism? Like
I didn't fit in there. I didn't really fit in super well with my
family, like I've always been a little bit odd, you know. And
so I'm moving into this house and almost immediately I started noticing strange things that
like I felt my whole life, but they were really amplified in this house.
Like one of the first nights that I was alone, which was very
few and far between. I at the time, I was a military spouse.
I my ex was working for SpaceX, and so like my entire existence
was being a stay at home mom to my kids to be there while he
was out taking care of business. Right, other military spouses and even SpaceX
wives will say the same thing. There's not a lot of flexibility in our
lives because we tend to just like revolve around what's happening with our spouses at
the time. Right, So I didn't get a lot of time to myself.
I was alone very rarely, and so in the house in Florida,
I started having these moments where I was alone for the first time and I
was getting really it wasn't even like jumpy. It was more like it was
almost like when you're watching a horror movie and the main character knows that she's
being watched and is like looking around and there's like there's a bad guy lurking
around the corner. Right. It's that type of feeling, except that I
really was alone and so I'd be looking around my house and being like,
I don't understand what the problem is. But it was intensified to a degree
that I had never felt before. So it even got to the point where
I was afraid to be in the main house by myself. So if I
was alone, which again, I live to be alone. I love I
love my and I love I love when the house is to myself, like
I thrive in alone time. I don't like. I don't like it when
my house is too loud or too crowded or too busy, which is hilarious
because I homeschool my kids, so it's always all of the above, right,
But I would go into my bedroom and I was scared to the degree
that I was locking myself in my bedroom and just like kind of hanging out
there and watching TV in bed until my kids would come home. Right,
So this is happening. And then meanwhile I meet these new friends in the
neighborhood I had joined. I homeschool my kids, so before we moved to
Florida, I did a lot of research on homeschool groups, on trying to
find ways for us to get involved in the community so it wouldn't be as
hard of a transition as you know, it's a pretty big move. So
I met these women and they started talking about birth charts and things that I
was like, Okay, I like, I'm a little bit familiar, but
I also don't know because keep in mind, I'm an ex Mormon. Mormons
don't talk about any of those things ever. Ever X Mormon atheist at this
point, Okay, So I am forever fucking gout my feet, like it
is just a rite of passage. I will injure my feet in the most
bizarre and ridiculous manners ever. Ever, Like, I don't have a single
story that I like that's that makes sense. No, it's the dumbest stories
that lead me to injuring my feet. So this particular day, I'm walking
up the stairs and I stubbed my big toe and that's ridiculous. But I
remember at the time being like, oh, you know, and then just
going about my day. I took the kids swimming, we went for a
walk around the neighborhood with our new friends. We're doing this, We're doing
that. I put the kids to bed, I at my My ex at
the time was working night shifts, so he was gone, so I like
tucked the kids in and I am laying in bed, and my foot starts
to hurt so bad, Like it's just getting worse and worse and worse.
And the longer that I sit there, the worse the pain is becoming.
And I'm like, I you know this is this is ridiculous. I my
fucking clumsy ass, right So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna get up.
I'm gonna get some ibuprofen. My bedroom was on the second story,
so I opened the door to my bedroom and there was like a little hallway
and a landing area. So I take a few steps down the hallway.
I'm almost to the landing area, and I just get hit by this wall
of fear. So I stood there and I was like, I don't know
how to process what I'm feeling right now, because I was I was aware
that I was more afraid than the situation warranted, because I'm like looking around
and I'm like, I'm alone. I'm alone right now. I put my
children to bed, like they are in their bedrooms. There is no reason
for me to feel this afraid. And so I tried to take another step,
and the fear just intensified to the level that I was like, I
don't know what to do here. So I went back into my bedroom and
I was like, I guess I'm just gonna wait this out, like,
you know, what do you even do here? So, like that night
was dramatic. And then the next day I had mentioned this to my new
friends because it just was such a bewildering experience for me that like I didn't
have any way to logically explain what had happened to me, Like, yes,
I am prone to anxiety. I've always been prone to anxiety, but
I've never had had that experience where I was rooted to the spot petrified for
seemingly no reason. Right, So you had none of the anxiety thought loops,
none of the anxiety thought loops. Right, Oh, that I'm so
glad you about that doesn't feel right. It didn't feel right, but there
also wasn't a reason for it to feel wrong. Like, you know,
I do have anxiety thought loops when I'm alone, but they always take a
very specific pattern, Like I could tell you exactly what I worry about when
I'm alone, and that night, none of those things were happening. It
just was my foot hurt so bad, and I was like looking at my
empty house and being like I don't understand, like what is happening to me
because there is no reason to feel this way, and like there were no
traumad other than the move, which you could count as traumatic, but like
it really wasn't that bad, you know what I mean, Like, yeah,
it was sad, it was really hard to leave my home, it
was hard to leave my friends, but it wasn't like a traumatic move.
So I mentioned it to my friends and they started encouraging me to have a
psychic that they know come to my house and clear it. And it was
really resistant to the idea for a little while because I was like I don't
believe in that. That's perfectly logical, you know, yeah, yeah yeah.
So I was like, I don't know, that seems like a stretch,
Like I've always been anxious, Like I'm sure, I'm sure that there's
some explanation. But one one of like another night, I was laying in
my bed and I was like, what if what if my kids experienced something
like that? And I was like, you know, I don't know what
happened to me. I don't I can't explain why I felt this level of
fear, but I am an adult. What if my kids had that same
experience? And then I was like, okay, that was hard for me.
I'm in my thirties. I'm thirty five now, so I probably was
like I don't know earlier thirties, right, Like, if it made that
level of an impact on me, what would it do to my kids?
So that was the motivating factor to call this woman to my house, and
that alone was an entire experience because she came over and she's blessing my house
with holy water, She's calling archangel Michael, like she's saying these prayers,
these rights that I am not familiar with because I was raised Mormon, and
Mormons don't have the archangels, they don't have holy water, they don't do
they don't even really talk about ghosts. So like all of this, and
I'm just following her through my house and my eyes are like wide as fucking
saucers. I'm like, okay, okay. But then she sat down with
me in my living room and she was like, I would love to do
a reading with you, and she pulled out some oracle cards, and mind
you, by this point, it's been like maybe a month and a half.
It hasn't been a whole lot of time in Florida, So the friends
who referred this woman don't know all that much about me. And I say
that because like, i am like open to a degree, but I'm also
very hard to get to know. I am very I'm like a weird mixture
of open and closed off. Like you're gonna have a few good conversations with
me and then it's just gonna be like, what happened. That's weird.
And I'm like, I know, sorry, Like I don't know what to
tell you about that, but so and I say that not as like a
cautionary tale, but to say that this woman sat down in front of me
and told me things about myself that like I hadn't even told some of my
very closest friends. There was literally no way that she could have known these
things about me. She was telling me deeply personal details about my thoughts and
my feelings, and I was like, what the fuck. Yeah, I'm
sorry, I've had that happen with with psychics, ye readers, And it's
just like but I wait, wait, how did how how did you know
that about me? Though? You know, like like yeah, I'm still
stuck on. I barely admit this to myself. How do you like what?
You know? It was that level of So she stopped mid reading and
she reached into her bag and she handed me a deck of her own cards
and was like, they're telling me that you're going to need these. These
are going to be important for you, right. And it's like a movie
moment when I say it like that, but like if you were there,
in reality, it was like awkward as shit, because if people get be
presents, I don't know what to do with them, and so I'm just
like, thank you. It's awkward. It's awkward. You know, it's
awkward, especially if it's a stranger. Then it's like one hundred times off.
Yeah, a stranger who's just told you about very very detailed, very
personal details about your life. Right, And then she's just like, here
you go, you're gonna need these. I'm like, what the fuck?
Like what do I even do with these? I don't know what these are.
It was a deck of angel cards by Dorian Virtue. I don't have
them anymore because I gave them to a friend. I don't know if you
can tell this about me, but I'm not super religious. I use them
for a really long time, and then I passed them on to one of
my best friends because they seemed better suited for her. But either way,
it was a big It was a big turning moment for me. So now
I had these cards and I was like, awesome, I don't know how
to use these, and so like it really wasn't like like I wasn't getting
like instruction or anything. I just was like, Okay, well, I'm
gonna shuffle these cards and I'm gonna pull one and I'm gonna see what happens.
And then every time I was pulling them, I had a little journal
and I was writing on the card and what the guide book said and how
I thought it fit into my life. And I kind of taught myself how
to read like that, which then opened the door for mediumship and more hauntings,
because yes, because they they all go together. But my like looking
back on it now, like from wearing sitting out, I don't live in
Florida anymore, but I can look back at that time period of my life
and be like, yeah, all of these things needed to happen for me
to be in that exact moment ready to understand and to receive the information that
I was going to be given because if that same experience had happened in my
house in Texas, even as an ex Mormon, I would have been a
fresh ex Mormon and been like, no, sorry, I don't believe in
that. That's just like a weird it's a weird coincidence. And now I
believe in all sorts of crazy shits. It's like just like the rest of
me. I know, I know. I like to say I'm a skeptical
believer. Now I'm like Molder and Scully combined because I go to the logical
side first, and if I can't disprove it, then I move into the
okay, what could it be? Area? But yeah, that house was.
It's the ongoing debate is it the person or is it the house?
And in my case, I think it's both. I think I've always been
a little bit more aware, a little bit more attuned. I think I
think I can't tell you for sure, but I think that when I was
little, I saw something that scared me enough that I've like shut down that
part of my senses because I don't see. Occasionally I hear, but very
rarely, so like I have a very limited skill set with which I can
communicate with the other side, and that works for me, you know,
I'm not, so it makes it a little bit more frustrating sometimes if I'm
trying to figure something out and it's like, you know, you're talking to
someone shouting at you while your eyes are closed and ears are plugged. But
it's still it's still satisfying in a way. But like I can, I
can look back at my life and be like, was this were you really
afraid? Or was that potentially a ghost interacting with you and you perceived it
as fear because there's no way to explain why, because if you can't see
and you can't here, and you only feel someone in your space, it's
like jarring, you know, mm hmmm, and there's clearly no one and
there's clearly no one else, right, That's yeah, it's it's a huge
one. Yeah, yeah, it's it's uncomfortable. So yeah, it's I
think I've always been predisposed, But once I moved into the house in Florida
and I kind of had that jolt of like waking up and being like,
Okay, so Mormonism is not real, but apparently ghosts are a thing,
and like working through all that and opening my mind and kind of stepping into
the person that I always was, or I was always meant to be in
like a weird way, but like all kind of figuring it out as I
go. Right. So, the next thing that happened is I broke my
foot. So again too, we got two foot stories in the same sitting.
My origin story involves a lot of feet, which is uncomfortable for all
of us. No, but I one of my kids dropped it. Seriously,
was like a nickel size amount of milk, and I walked past it,
and I was like, I should wipe up that milk. And then
I got busy doing mom things and you skid it on it. That's exactly
what happened. I skid on it. I I fractured the bones on the
top of my foot, and I broke our arts. I didn't break,
I tore the muscles and the ligaments. Apparently. It was very close to
like being one of those foot injuries that like you're fucked, you know.
It was like you're just gonna be like that forever. Yeah, there was
an actual name for it. I can't remember what it was called anymore,
but I my doctor always gave me this pain scale question based on pennies,
and I just like every time I went there, I forgot everything that he
told me, because he was always like, since the last time you were
here, on a scale from one two hundred penn how many pennies do you
have left? And I was like, I'm bad at answering one to ten
pages word problem, you know what, Like yeah, like look at me.
I'm not made for math. I'm not a math person. And I
would try to describe what I was feeling, and he was like, no,
just to answer the questions, like but I don't understand this. I
don't know what you want from me. But so I broke my foot.
I spent several weeks in a cast. I it was right before Halloween,
and so I started watching ghost hunting shows naturally, and that's what you do
when exactly that's what you do when you break your foot right before Halloween,
right like I couldn't. It was also during COVID, so this is twenty
twenty. I my foots my foot's in a boot, my right foot,
and so you can't drive when your right foot's in a boost, Like there
just is nothing to do. So I start watching these ghost hunting shows,
and I was like, why is this explaining my life to me? Like
the more watching, the more stories I'm hearing and people describing feeling entities around
them, I'm like, what the fuck? Like I was sorry what it
was? I'm like, is that are you explaining my life to me right
now? Like what is even happening? So I like it was the first
moment where like I had a psychic come to my house, Like I understand
how this. So I had a psychic come to my house to clear it
because it was haunted as shit. And then I'm still like in this moment
of like wait a second, what And so've I've learned to read cards by
now I'm reading tarot and oracle like fairly confidently. And I saw a paranormal
investigator out in Florida post on Instagram like I'm going to do this investigation.
Here is this taro spread if anybody wants to pull any cards ahead of my
investigation, like here it is, you know, here it is. See
what you get? And so I was like, well, what else do
I have to do right now? My foot's broken, you know, and
I have a I have a deck that's one of my favorites to use for
mediumship. It's called art History Tarot for Past lives. It's a deck specifically
made to help you tune into your past lives, but it works very well
for mediumship. So I had that deck and I was like, sure,
I'm going to give it a go. So I followed the prompts and I
wrote it up and later I heard back from him and he was like,
that actually was you know? That was there was some accuracy there, and
I was like, sweet, this is something I didn't know that I could
do, but now I know this, and it ended up being a really
great relationship. I met that person. It's Eric ghost Hunter. South ghost
Hunter of South Florida. Was a part of a or is a part of
a paranormal team or party paranormal, so I got to know a lot of
them. I pulled from them ahead of pulled for them, ahead of some
other investigations, and I went out into the field with them a lot and
I would pull cards while they were using their devices. And that's probably my
favorite thing still to this day, because like, I miss doing that a
lot because it really is cool to sit there and most of the time if
I am pulling cards for a haunting, I will, almost to an obnoxious
degree, say I'm not sure about this. But and I do that not
because I doubt myself, but because the logical part of my brain will not
shut itself off until I have given myself permission to say, to process,
to verbally process this information that I have no way of knowing. Right.
So, like, if you're with me on an investigation, I will say,
I will tell you what the cards mean, and then I will say,
I'm not sure about this, but this is what I think. And
you know, occasionally it rubs people the wrong way, which is why I
now give my disclaimer that I'm like. It's not that I think I'm like
making it up. It's just I'm hardwired for that black and white thinking.
I'm not the gray area doesn't come easily to me. So if I'm stepping
into the gray area willingly, I have to give myself that caveat that I
could be wrong, right, But but it was and still is really rewarding.
When I am sitting there like sprawled in the fucking dirt sometimes, or
like I'm usually on the floor. I almost never sat at the table.
Why, I don't know, I'm just on the floor. I have cards
everywhere, and I'm spouting what could be nonsense, like I could be pulling
stories out of my ass. I tell them what I think that my cards
are saying, and then they play back the EVP recorders and there's some sort
of confirmation for the words that I've just said. And that's the moment that
I'm like this though this, Yeah, I love this. Yeah. I
like the idea that you're sprawling on the floor too. I still read sprawled,
so you know, that's that's how I've been doing my research for my
book. I'm sprawled sprawld me. So yeah, I feel like if you
are a neurodivergent person or just like any kind of cool person, you're gonna
sprawl yourself on the floor because things make more sense on the floor. Yes.
Plus it's easier for the cats and dogs. Hell, easier for the
cats. For the dogs. You can make little piles all around yourself like
a fortress of information. Yep, yep, yes, yeah, this book,
that book, the other book, the notes, things, the notepads,
Hey give me my pen backs. That's usually a cat or a dog
exactly, a dog who likes to eat highlighters. You know it's wild.
Yeah yeah, so you so you went on these these uh ghost investigations,
and you were finding out information from those areas, from the from the houses.
Yep. So I was getting information from the houses. And I feel
like every investigation that I went on, or every opportunity that I had to
pull kind of just helped me refine this skill set. And what ended up
happening is that when things would happen in my own house, which did start
to escalate, the more aware I was, the more activity was going on
around me. And that does bring into question again It's another bit of a
gray area from is it the person, is it the house? Is it
the situation? Is it some combination of all of the three. But along
the lines, I ended up doing research with some friends about my house,
the property itself, and it turns out that it was right along the trail
of a battle trail where soldiers or civilians. It really was like it.
I had other people describe the energy of my house being like a railroad station,
where it was like it wasn't the same set of spirits, it was
people coming and going, which matched up with what I was feeling because it
was not the same energy every night. It was like some days I would
wake up with a woman, some days this, some days that it just
was like an unsettling knowing that you weren't alone. So I learned to ask
what was happening, because understanding what's happening, even if I can't see it,
removes an element of fear from the table for me. So like having
this experience, like most of my experiences involve me sleeping, So like I
do have ADHD, So like during the day, I have ADHG and I
have three kids that a homeschool, So like you know, getting getting you
know, getting my attention during the day is not like the easiest thing not
to mention, like the million and one projects that I'm constantly doing. So
like when I'm awake, I'm on the go, I'm distracted. I'm not
easy to like, hey, I'd like a word with you, right But
at night, all my guards drop and that would be the opportunity that the
ghosts would have to like step up and be like, hey, I was
just wondering if maybe you wanted to hear this terribly sad story about me.
And what I started doing is I would wake up in the moment. It
was always scary because you don't ever want to wake up feeling like somebody's standing
by your bed, right, And that's the way it feels to me,
is like an actual living person is by my bed. It's the moment where
Michael Meyer. You open your eyes and Michael Myers is standing over you,
right. And I learned to calm myself down, like I would have a
mental checklist and be like, the doors are locked, the alarms turned on,
my dog's not barking, my kids aren't awake, like there's nobody here,
right, And then the next morning I would ask my cards about it
and be like, well, who was this person? And I would get
information about who they were, and then I would say, okay, well
what did they want? Like what was so important? Like what did they
want to tell me? And I learned to start getting bits and pieces of
these spirits lives. And at the time, what I was doing is I
would go onto my Instagram and I would do little installments of this was my
experience, this is the spirit. Here's a follow up breeding because I'm still
thinking about the spirit. I haven't done anything like that in a while,
but I just I haven't really had the opportunity for a hot minute here,
But it was a moment of like I had the awareness that ghosts are real.
Whatever you want to call a ghost, whatever you think that a ghost
is, the energetic imprint of another human is real. And then I had
the process of learning what works for me to communicate because I have done some
of the traditional mediumship classes and they just my brain doesn't process information the same
way that most of it's being taught. And it could be the way that
my brain chemistry works, It could be a lot of different factors, and
it could also just be that the way that I learned was through feeling and
imagery, and that is the way that my medium ship works. So I
need both of them to give you, like a clear description of what I
think is happening. I'm not always entirely accurate, like, but I am
accurate to a point. That's you know, that's the best you can ask,
really, that is perfectly accurate. Yeah, Yeah, well you know
that's it's it's just how that works. It is, Yeah, it's how
it works. So, yeah, I had a lot, a lot of
experiences in Florida. I actually kind of miss it, especially now that we're
we're in October right now when we're recording, and like, you know,
there definitely is part of me that are like I miss getting haunted, you
know. But so now I am. I am living with my parents now,
I am in the process. I'm separated now, so I you know,
that process is happening. So I'm in a very different space now,
and there just isn't a lot of opportunity for that type of thing. There's
not like I know there's haunted stuff around where I live, but I'm just
like it's different now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So you've written a
book I have to write about. So right now I have two different books
out. I have a novel out. It is called a Collection of Eyes,
and my book is about a woman who is stalked by a serial killer.
Hey, that's uplifting. It's so fun. It's so fun. So
this book started as a birthday present for my best friend. Her name is
Joy. If you are on Instagram, you can find her at the Wild
Underscore. Her story in like historian but her and she lives in England.
So I wanted to do something for her birthday. But I don't remember what
was happening. But I couldn't send her a box at the time. So
I was like, I'm gonna write her something, and I wrote her this
short story. And if you have ever met Joy, she is fierce and
just so brave, and she has done so much to help me before and
after I got my PTSD diagnosis. She was helping me sort through the mess
that was my life, right like she was. She was one of the
people that not the only person, but she was one of the people there
that saw everything that I was up against and was like, I'm here and
I'm going to help you through this. And so I based the character of
my story on the on Joy as this like tough final girl. She's been
through it, She's come out the other side stronger, right. So it
started as this short story and she was facing down the man who kidnaps her
basically you know that in the first few paragraphs, if that's not a spoiler,
she survives their initial encounter. And what I did is I fell in
love with the character. I fell in love with the storyline, and Joy
was like, I love this so much, it should be a full book.
And I was like, oh, okay, how do I Like,
I'm already done, what do I do from here? So what I did
is. I took that as an opportunity to explore explaining the way that PTSD
feels to me, So my descriptions in the book will not be the way
experiencing PTSD feels to everyone. But at the time, I was having a
really hard time with nightmares. To a lot of people with PTSD experience,
and if you've never had a I usually refer to them as trauma dreams.
So if you've never had a trauma dream, it's not like a regular nightmare.
It feels more real than that. It feels like the biggest reference that
people make are when you're a soldier and it feels like you're back in battle,
but there's not a lot of references for the people who were not in
battle. Right, So my story thing nothing like what was in my book
happened to me, But it's it's not that at all. It just was
that I was looking for a way to express the feelings that were drowning me
at the time, and I wanted to do it in a way that I
didn't have to talk about what happened to me because I just still don't.
I don't want to talk about it like you talked about it with your therapist,
exactly if you if you were exactly if you're talking about it in therapy,
if you're talking about it and you're safe with your safe people and you
are still struggling. I turned to writing, and so I had this initial
idea, and then I was like, what would it be like to watch
a like we already know she survived, she is a final girl from the
beginning pages, But what's it like after that? And that's what I went
in with the rest of the book to explore was was the after effect.
And of course there's twin and turns, and there's ghosts, and there's spice,
because that's just who I am as a person. But the intent there
was to showcase the resiliency of human being a human and experiencing something that shatters
your idea and your expectation of the world, and then learning how to put
yourself back together, because that's the part that there's not a lot of people
who are like, guess what, your world just got rocked? Like you
know, it's like it's either the before or the well after that we get.
It's not the people who are sitting in the middle of the mess and
being like I just I don't know how to feel better. I don't want
to feel like this. I miss who I was before, but I don't
know how to feel better. And yeah, I like I am better now.
I'm like, am I am? I healed? No, but like
I'm in a better place than I was now when I wrote it. But
the act of writing it really was therapeutic for me because I got to give
all of my symptoms to a fictional character. But the act of doing that
really allowed me to look at it and see, like, because you know,
there are days when you wake up and you're like, I should I
shouldn't still be struggling with this, or like, you know, it's the
thoughts that once you have a mental illness, they don't they get better,
but they don't necessarily go away. That's like you should be over this by
now, you're being over dramatic. You're imagining how bad this was. It's
those thoughts like that that when they weren't mine anymore, and when they belonged
to a fictional character, I was able to look at it and be like,
God, damn, look at me. Go you know, im Peter
what. I didn't face a serial killer, but I'm doing a pretty fucking
good. Yeah, yeah, so that is my That is my first novel.
I don't write a lot of happy things, but why, but why
there's always an element of happiness to it. But I whether it's ghosts or
whether it's my writing, I appreciate the happy moments. And I think it's
hard for some people who aren't curious about humanity or like human nature in the
way that I am, because it's like, I think that all emotions are
meant to be felt. I think that the good emotions and the bad emotions,
and I think that sometimes the delicate weaving of the two are what it
means to be human. It can't all be good and it can't all be
bad, because then what's left if everything good, than what makes anything special?
You know? It's like, do I want to have PTSD and feel
the lowest of the lows as often as I do? No, not at
all, you know. But also I can recognize that when I'm having a
bad day, it makes me appreciate the good days that much more because I
do know, I do know what it's like to feel those depths, and
I try to write from that perspective too, and that I don't use a
ton of descriptive language. I'm trying to get a little bit better at that,
but I write in a way that lets you imagine how it feels to
be in that situation. So if you read my book, it's scary because
you feel like you are having the emotions that she is feeling. It's not
that my wording is super scary. It's just it's you're putting yourself in somebody
else's shoes for a while. I love monks. Yeah, Yeah, it's
a safe way to learn things. It's a safe way to experience things that
are outside of your experience. And if you have actual empathy when you read,
you can't help but get into the shoes of whichever character is being written
about, you know, and you experience with them their life and the way
that they cope with awful shit, you know, just just terrible. I
mean, you know, one of the things about being an author is you
come up with these characters and you love them, but then you put them
through awful, terrible things. Yeah, because because if you don't, who's
going to read it. The point is to is to see what people endure
and then come back from right or yes or they they surpass yes, what
they beat are faced with, yet they beat the odds and it makes you
feel like you can beat the odds too. And that's like that That's what
literature, That's what stories do for us, is that it gives us,
even if it's like a fucked up kind of role model, it's still someone
to be like, you know what, if they can survive this, I
can fucking get through this. You know it even't like it doesn't matter that
it's not real. And that that is something that my friend Joy that my
book is based off of. She would tell me a lot when I was
still in Florida, was like, pick a fictional character. It doesn't have
to be a perfect character. It just needs to be someone that you look
up to, someone that you can find some hope in. Right, And
this was before I started writing. But for me it was Sherlock Holmes,
Robert Jowney Junior, Sherlock Holmes and P. T. Barnum from the Greatest
Showman in the movie, not in real life, because he was the piece
of shit in real life. Let me just say, oh, he's terrible.
It was terrible to me. He was kind of terrible in the movie
too, but like in the Moon, not as terrible. But the aspect
of the movie that got me was that he thinks of the impossible things and
he doesn't let logic tell him why it won't work. And so by the
time I was already practicing this exercise, I already had PTSD. I didn't
have the diagnosis yet, but I was unwell. I was not a healthy
person, right, And so I was being told to look to fictional characters.
And that is something that I've done my whole life. I've always read,
read stories, and I've immersed myself in these fictional worlds. And now
I've just learned to adapt what's in my mind onto pages. So like odds
are you won't read the happiest stories from me, Like they're they're they're gonna
end well and I build in happiness, but they're that's it's not the point
of my writing, because it's not the point of my existence. Like I
don't like I love I love rom comms, I love Happily Ever afters.
It's just I am more interested in the people who have been through the trenches,
so to speak, and have come out and be like, you know
what, you're a little bit weird and you're a little bit fucked, But
you're my kind of people, So come on, let's go. You know.
It's the Yeah, it's it's that. And recently it's been allowing me
to explore hauntings and the pair normal in a new way as well, because
I had a lot of freedom to explore that when I was in Flora.
I had people around me that I could go out and explore with. But
I also, like, I have a hard time going new places by myself,
and it's not a PTSD thing. That's the way that I've always been.
I find new places really really intimidating and really scary, and I love
experiencing new things and I love going new places, but I have a really
hard time getting there myself. So like if I was like, I've never
been to this place before and I want to go, it will take me
a long time to work up to doing it right. But in the aftermath
of having PTSD, sometimes that's a lot worse. And sometimes it's hard for
me to go to the grocery store, you know, or to do things
that are easy for other people to do. Because I am from Texas.
I'm a Texan. Texans love our grocery store called AGB okay, Like,
yeah, yeah, Texans, all Texans love chibhib is my favorite place.
I go to AGB sometimes, not even to buy stuff, just because I
like AGB. Right, It's like I don't have a lot of places here
and HB is my place. But there have been times when going to the
grocery store was more than I could handle. I have had recently, I
had a panic attack in Target and I was feeling fine when I got there,
but everything was loud and there was just too much happening at once,
and I like, I left the store. I paid for my stuff,
but I didn't get half of it. And it's it's those moments where I'm
like, I want to explore more. I want to explore the paranormal more,
but how do you do that when you're afraid to leave your house?
Enter fiction? Yeah, so it's you know, writing has done a lot
for me. On an alternate side of that, I have been exploring more
about the paranormal through writing because, as I mentioned before, I live with
my parents, who are lovely, very supportive in taking me and my kids
and my pets into their house. But it's not like what I do isn't
necessarily like like we don't talk about it, you know. So it's just
like, and in my current situation, it's easier for me to put those
things into a world of fiction than it is to be like, this is
what I do, because I could be like, look, i've written a
book. Yeah, so ye, writing has given me the keys to freedom
in a way that I didn't expect and I wasn't anticipating, Like it wasn't
necessarily on my bingo card for my life to like end up where I am.
I would have liked to avoid the severe mental damage. But I also
can look at the trajectory that my life has taken and the lessons that I've
learned talking to ghosts and investigating and all the different things that I've learned how
to do, and from where I'm at now, I can also see that,
like is it unfortunate? Yes, I can. I can give myself
that sympathy that, yeah, it sucks to be where I am. But
also I didn't lose any of those things. I'm just translating them in a
different way than I used to, so like it's different, yeah, but
I'm proud of it, you know. I like where I'm at. Yeah,
Now do you do readings from a distance still, I mean, do
you so pull cards, you know, for other people or other investigators?
I will if you I do for investigators, and I will for people.
I don't charge, which is like counterproductive. But I have had a really
big problem with scam accounts on my page, So it just is not something
that, like, with what was happening in my personal life, it wasn't
sustainable for me to try to be like, no, that's not me,
that's not me, that's not me. You should buy this from me,
but this isn't me, you know. It's like I removed that from the
table for my own mental health, where like the the scam accounts that I
was facing, like it got real bad for a while, but the scam
accounts that I was dealing with the worst of it coincided at a time when
my personal life was also at very rocky points. So for me, it's
not that the scam accounts themselves are this bad. It's just that it puts
my mind into a place where things were that bad. So I don't do
personal readings. I will, Like if you messaged me and you're like,
hey, can you help me with this, I will. I don't charge
for them, and that way I could keep up going. It's just not
me. Just don't worry about it because it's not me. And if you
are investigating and you would like help, I do investigate from a distance.
I love to do that. I'm happy to do that literally anytime. I
work with a couple of friends Scottie the Medium he's on TikTok and Melissa the
ghost doctor, who's on Instagram and on TikTok, and we do most of
our work from a distance to so hopefully more in the future. But yeah,
that's you really just have to like, if you message me, I'm
pretty good at responding to my messages. I don't catch all of them,
but I'm pretty good at responding in my messages. And that is something that
I love to do and I really missed doing, especially where I'm at right
now. It's just like it's that like I can't advertise it too much because
yeah, yeah, yeah, oh mom, that's just my friend the witch.
You're gonna go talk to the ghost exactly. Yeah. You know that
graveyard down the road, there's ghosts waiting. I told him i'd be there
by midnight. Yeah, that's not gonna say. Yeah, So you know,
but that that is how to do it. If you, I will
add the the extra warning that I normally get people in the way that I
read taro is more for what's going on with you mentally emotionally. I don't
do fortune telling. So if you come to me and ask if you will
ever find love or are you going to get this job? Can I ask
that question in my card? Yes? Will the answer be what you want?
Probably not? So, yeah, I understand, you know, Yeah,
it's I'll do my best to give you the correct answer. But if
you come to me asking about your love life, I'm probably gonna tell you
why you think you're not worthy of being loved if I'm being if I'm being
perfectly honest, like, that's what it's gonna come down to. It's not
that you haven't met the right person. It's that you feel like you don't
deserve the right person. So well, but that's true, and ye's actually
a useful answer. It is a useful answer, but people don't always want
the useful way. People don't want the useful answer. People want the the
live TikTok readings that or the videos that say he left you and he's going
to come back and I don't do that kind of reading. Yeah, I
know. Yeah yeah. So when you when you think about to row cards,
how much of it did you learn from traditional to row sources like books?
Not necessarily the little tiny booklet that they give you, which is whatever
it is, It is what it is. Let's just I love those well
to an extent, to an extent, yeah yeah, but but how did
did you learn it from books? Or how did what is your method?
So I did learn it from books, I I think. Actually, I'm
pretty sure that this is my first hair right here. It's just like a
basic yeah, right orway. So I had the Oracle cards first. So
I the Angel Deck by Dreene Virtue, and I started by shuffling and asking
what do I need to know today? And I would just pull one card,
and then once I was feeling like I was understanding the one card,
I moved on. So now my daily pulls are wild. I never know
how many cards are gonna come out. Like, I still do the same
thing. I'm like, what do I need to know today? And I,
you know, I pull and however many cards comes out comes out.
But I used bitty taro is. It's a big account, but I got
her guide book and I actually have it on my little trunk over here.
The pages are literally falling out of the book. So I use a blend
of intuition and the basic card meaning in that I enjoy diferencing what the card
actually means. I like, I like getting decks made by artists, and
I like reading their guide books because sometimes what they mean for the card is
different than the traditional card. Yes, two of my favorite examples of this
are the I think it's called the hurt taro. It's really beautiful. I'll
send you a picture after this, and then the Horror Taro, which I've
been using a lot recently, and the meetings are different, the wording is
different, and it changes the traditional meetings. So I will When I was
first learning how like, I would pull cards and I would look up the
cards meetings, and I would get my journal and I would write the card.
I would write the keywords or whatever I was taking away from the meaning,
and then I would write how it applied to me so or how I
saw it applying to me in my life in that moment. So those are
all packed, but those exist somewhere. There's just journals of me being like
I pulled the three of swords today, you know whatever. And so now
I read Taro in a combination of the two because I don't need the guide
book. I like the guidebook because sometimes little phrases will pop out at me,
so like I enjoy I enjoy it when that happens because I'm like,
oh, I didn't think about that way to go, you know. But
it's it's a blend of both for me, and I know people that will
look more at the imagery or will that stick to the core energy of the
card or this or that. But I think that that's what makes reading Taro
so fun is that it is subjective. There's no right or wrong way,
and my method isn't necessarily right. It isn't necessarily wrong either. It's a
little it's a hodgepodge of all sorts of different things, and it looks different
from day to day. Sometimes I'll pull my cards out and be like,
oh my god, okay, I get it, and I'll put them away,
and then the next day I'll do the exact same thing, and I'll
be like, oh, I should look that card up, and I'll look
it up, and I'll have a whole detailed, you know, journal like
I used to do it. Just it just kind of depends. But that
is one thing that when I was learning to read Taro, I also was
in a lot of Facebook groups, which I'm I said, already, I'm
not on Facebook a ton, like I have a Facebook page, I'm just
not super active on there. But in the Facebook groups, they would always
be like, if you're not reading on intuition, then you're not a real
reader and so and I'd be like, okay, I guess I'm not a
real reader then you know, okay, but I'm over here with my guide
books and being like fuck, yeah, yeah, yeah, look look at
that ten of cubs. I didn't see that one coming, you know.
It's like it's it's I just I just think that it's such a personal tool.
And it's like I love how mainstream and how popular Taro has gone,
because like I can go to Barnes and Noble and buy a new Tarot deck
if I really want to, Like, they're there even in my like small
Texas town, there are there's a spirituality section. I love how accessible it
is, but I also don't love that there are so many people out there
that are like this is the way to read taro or like and this is
the only way. And again you can follow my life trail back and be
like, she just doesn't like to be told what to do because the way
she grew up, And that's absolutely true. I don't like it if you
tell me what to believe, I will immediately say no, thank you.
I don't like that. And it applies to my spiritual practice too, and
that I have. I used to share a lot more of my practice on
my page. If you go back far enough, it was only taro.
It was spelled candles, it was bind rooms, it was things like that.
And I really pulled a lot away from that, partially because what was
happening in my personal life mixed with the scam accounts just made it to where
I was like, this is important to me. This is important enough to
me that I'm not gonna share this all of the time. And it's been
hard finding like my footing on, Like I have this public platform, the
fuck am I going to do with it? If I'm no longer the village
Taro witch, you know, like that name is still there, but I
go by Carly dot Latham now on Instagram and it's I missed the days when
I could just be like my full, witchy self. But also I appreciate
that now it is more private to me, that those moments aren't. I'm
I never I'm not one to manufacture the moment. So if I've posted about
it, or if I'm talking about it, it's because it happened, or
it's because it's on my mind. It's not just like I have to do
something today, you know. But I do feel like my relationship with spirituality
and with the tools that I prefer were damaged along the way. I mean,
there's not a lot that PTSD doesn't affect once you've been diagnosed with that,
and not even just that, but I could say mental health in general.
It's it's not like I wanted that to be like the pocket that wasn't
touched and it could just be like this happy, safe space, but that
I don't want to use the word tainted, but that's the way it feels
to me, like that my spiritual practice was tainted by the events that went
on in my life. And so like now again I'm leaning into the writing,
but behind the scenes, I'm also working on rebuilding my personal relationship and
my personal practice because it got derailed so much in the process that like,
it's it's a weird one. It's a weird one to talk to people about
because that was the essence of my page for so long, and I've kind
of been like drifting in the wind for a for a long time. For
like the past year or so, I've been trying to find like where what
do I do? What do I do with this platform that I've built,
with these things that I'm so passionate about, And the answer for me has
been writing. It doesn't mean that it's going away, it doesn't mean that
I'm not going to share these things about my life. It's just I've learned
new tools to channel that information so much in the way that, like,
if you had been following me for any amount of time and you read my
captions, they are usually fairly deep on whatever is on my mind at the
time. You know, I kind of I go all in for it.
And you'll find that in my writing too, is that I don't write happy
things. And it's not that I'm not a happy person. It's just that
there's so much to explore if you give your self permission to see what's hidden
just beyond the veil, or if you turn the lights off and you get
comfortable with the monsters that are in the dark. You know, there's a
whole world out there, and not all of it is scary. It's just
that we're trained to believe that these things are bad. So I am retraining
myself to have hope and to believe in magic and to see the unknown possibilities.
It's just the things that I love were tangled up in my mental illness.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's yeah, I understand that a lot.
Yeah, I was. I was involved in a court case and you know,
I got pointed at by a lawyer who said she's a witch. She's
a witch. Even her own mother doesn't talk to her. You know,
that'll that'll harden you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then you know,
after that was over, I still, you know, had PTSD and
bad dreams about it. But you know, I was like, well,
I was outed, Yeah, so I might as well do something with it,
might as well. Yeah, So I do understand, though, it
does feel like what you were doing to help people is then held against you.
Yeah, And that's just that's just not a good feeling at and it
it does make it feel tainted. It does. Yeah, I was having
that conversation with a friend of mine because it's not like it's not like I'm
not proud of what I've accomplished, and it's not like I don't recognize that
like I love what I do. I show up every day almost every day
because I love what I do. It's just like there is an element of
I like I there's no going backwards. I think that's what it is,
is that, like I desperately I want to go back in time. I
want to be in the space that I was in before all of these things
happened, where it just was like this is you know, this is what
I'm sharing, this is what I'm good at. I'm going ghost hunting,
I'm doing all those things like that is where I want to be. But
that's not where I am. And the things that have happened in between have
just made like it does. It feels tainted. It feels like it feels
like I am reaching for a person's dreams who doesn't exist anymore. And you
know what I mean, like it is a past version of me. So
we were talking about me haunting my own house. I forgot we were going
to talk about this, but this is the perfect transition. It's it's yeah,
this is going in a circle. It is going in a circle.
This is the perfect transition because my when I lived in Florida, it was
the first time that I had the space and the freedom to really explore who
I am without outside eyes looking in on me, without my family being like,
you know, you're pretty fucking weird or like, you know, they
would never say that to my face, but they say it with their eyes,
so message received, you know, like h it's things like that,
where Like, it was really hard for me to move there because I've I
lived in Texas my whole life. I'd never lived more than a car rides
away from my family. But once I was removed from that situation, I
had this enormous experience and I was able to grow so much. Right so
a core part of my identity was built in my haunted house in Florida.
Right. So I made the decision to move back in with my parents,
And it was not an easy decision. It was a decision that I made
knowing that I would be breaking my own heart in some ways, and I
did. I cried, and I mourned my life in Florida for months.
I'm actually like rite about my one year anniversary of moving here, and I
still feel like I am going through the grief process like I had. I
had a really good life in Florida. I had really good friends, but
it wasn't healthy and I needed help to regain my health, and there was
a bunch of other big factors at play. But I made the choice to
move back in with my parents, and recently my house in Florida is on
the market now. I signed the paperwork to put it up and I was
going through those emotions because while I had a lot of time to discover myself
and who I am, I also had some of the worst experiences of my
life in that house. So it was it was both all at once.
And so when my house went on the market, it's something that I had
been waiting for for a very long time. I've known that this was coming.
It's you know, there were there was some logistics that needed to be
worked out before or it could get put on the market, and so once
once it went on, it was like I had a few days where I
felt like I felt the depths of being like this is my home, though
like this is my home I live with my parents. I can't even like
I can't read cards outside of my room. Like I felt, I felt
trapped, and I felt limited in a way that I don't like feeling.
Because anybody who reads taro I will say that it's more of like an aid
of sores energy where you're feeling like you're trapped and like there's no way out.
There is a way out, it's just it doesn't feel that way.
And so I was stuck in that moment where I was like, I really
don't want to live here. I'm grateful that I have this safe space to
come to and that I was able to recuperate here, but I don't want
to live here. I missed my life, I missed my friend. And
I cried so much that day. And it wasn't that exact day, but
it was. It was around then and I had this dream and in my
dream, my house was empty like it is right now. It wasn't like
when I lived there, and it had furniture, it had my decorations and
it had I used to paint the walls of that house. I would just
like sometimes I was dressed, sometimes I was bored, but I painted like
a flower mural on a wall, and I had a chalkboard wall, and
I had a wall that was covered in yellow polka dots, and it had
my personality. It had so much of my love poured into that house.
And so in my dream, I was walking through my house and it was
empty, and I could see that they had painted the walls, and I
remember touching the walls and feeling the texture of you know, the whatever wall
texture they put on. And the dining room was one of my favorite rooms
in that house. It's where I filmed a lot of content for my Instagram
page. It was like there was these shelves built and I had all my
oddities on there, and it just was a room that I loved. The
kids didn't really use that room. I loved the dining room. We didn't
eat there. It just was a spot for me to like sit and do
whatever, excuse me, do whatever. But there was a spot on the
ceiling where when I painted that wall, I got dark blue on the ceiling
and I never fixed it because it's my toxic trait. I don't know what
buck. If you live with me, I am a paint of the ass.
I will paint stuff and then I will leave it half finished for months
until I finish it, or I will have these like it's not really manic,
but for lack of a better word, I call it like manic when
I'm painting flower murals on the walls, you know, and I do things
like get paint on the seat and I just never go back and fix it.
And I noticed in my dream that that spot had been painted over,
and it made me so sad because it was I was like, I was
like, it looks really nice. They painted that room was dark gray now,
so they repainted it, but the house is still empty. But it
was this moment where I do a lot of dream traveling, which we haven't
gotten into, so that sounds like kind of out of left field. I'm
sure your listeners will be through it anyways, though. But I do a
lot of dream traveling, and those dreams feel different. It's not like your
normal dream because you don't have that level of awareness. Like I was actively
processing my emotions while I was standing in my house in Florida, and it
was my house, no one else was living in there. It wasn't like
a weird in between space. That was my house as it is right now,
empty and freshly painted. You know, And so the next morning I
woke up and what I usually do when I have these experiences is I will
talk to a couple, I will talk it over with a couple of my
friends, and then I'll usually grab my cards and be like, what was
this? You know, Like, what did I just experience? So from
what I've been able to tell, that was me astral traveling, like whatever
language, whatever terminology you want to use. I missed my life and I
missed my house, and I traveled back to it. I went there in
my sleep, and I feel like I interacted with someone. I can't remember
that one right now, but like that was the core of the moment that
I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to be in this house.
I wanted my space, I wanted my freedom. So I went back
to the last place that I had it, which was my house in Florida,
and I started talking about it and Jordan. Jordan Keith and I had
been talking a lot recently about different ghost theories and what a haunting even is,
and that led me to the most fascinating question to me, which is,
if another person had been there, would they have been able to feel
me there? Because you know how they say that, like when you move
things around in a house or when there's renovations, it stirs the spirits up.
My walls got painted, and I was sad about it. Me a
living human, which just makes me wonder about so much about hauntings in general.
I have a million and one different haunting theories. But in this particular
instance, I am dying to know if somebody else had been there, would
they been able to sense me? Would they have been able to feel the
grief that I felt in knowing that I have to give up my home that
like this. I know why I don't live there, I know why I
can't move back there, but this is still my home, and I'm still
sad about it, you know, Yeah, Yeah, it's really interesting I
have. I have dreams all the time about my last childhood home and my
ex mother in law's home which I lived in for a period of time.
And I don't know if anybody, I mean, I know somebody's living in
my old childhood home, but I know that my mother in law still lives
in her home, and she has some of my letters and poems and writings
away in her attic. She never gave them back. So that's a piece
of you in her attic, uh huh huh, and her heart felt piece
of you yeaheah, yeah, her house was already haunted. So I can't
help but think, is there a part of me, you know, my
twenty something year old self floating around up in that attic, around that box?
Right? Yeah? It's like, yeah, if anybody could see me,
it could could somebody see if if I walked into my house, if
I wasn't me and I walked into my house, would I be able to
feel that that piece of me, that part of me that still exists there.
That's that's the question, and that that's what makes everything that what that
we do so interesting, whether it's like you know, I write about it
in a fictional sense now, but like it. It's that kind of curiosity
for the way that the world works, and to say, what if,
what if you're still in your mother in law's attic, What if twenty year
old you is still really upset that you didn't get your poems back? What
if the me that went through everything that I did in Florida is still there
and still being like I'm here, what do you mean? I live here?
This is my house. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of
like it. It's like the living version of the movie the Others exactly,
yeah, exactly. And and if that's the case, WHOA I know that
has a lot of implications. It's it's wild to me. Well, I
started noticing when when I got to my parents' house and I didn't have the
constant influx that I had when I was in Florida. I started to notice
that the spirits that seek me out more often than not are women who have
seen some shit or children sometimes, right, I don't. Every once in
a while I get a man, but most of the time I get women
who want to tell me what happened to them. And I started thinking about
it because sometimes they're able to tell me all about their life, and they'll
tell me what their childhood was like, and they'll tell me beyond the moment
of pain. But I also have spoken to several spirits who seems to only
exist in their pain. Like when I had asked about their childhood, it
was like like like a fuzzy radio where it's like the coming in and out
and then they loop around and they repeat the same message of this is what
happened to me, This is what I'm feeling. I'm upset about this,
and in the past I didn't necessarily disregard, but I didn't have a lot
of experience with spirits who were like splintered. Like really, the the idea
of the concept, the theory that a piece of your soul is stuck in
that moment of pain, and it's not that you're unable to move on,
it's just that you don't know that you're not in that moment anymore. So
like mm hmm, you in your former in laws attic, it reasonably could
be a piece of you. And maybe the reason why these spirits can't give
more than that moment is because that's all that matters. That's all that's real
to them, is that the rest of them is moved on, and for
whatever reason, it's just this piece, this sliver of their life that impacted
them so much that a piece of them is still reliving it, which sounds
terrible and kind of sad, but that's why people like us exist to saying,
Okay, what about that, then let's let's see if we can release
that. That's not good good. Well, that's the thing that I learned
in shamanic training was soul retrieval is that when traumas happen, sometimes a bit
of the soul just just like I can't deal breaks up, I'm out of
here. Yep, yeap, Like it depends. But what happens is that
it gets stuck and then people, you know, wander around with pieces of
themselves. Yes, exactly, and that's that can't be good. It can't
be good. It can't be good. I like to reference Foldemort from Harry
Potter with that with the horcruxes, because he did that on purpose, So
that is that is a distinction. He did that to himself, and these
cases are not like nobody is like, cool, I'm gonna do this.
Sounds fun, you know what sounds great? Haunting my house in Florida forever?
Oh yeah, yeah it is. It's just it's interesting to me,
like what what does make a ghost? And there I'm sure that there's times
in the past that I've been like, I'm pretty sure that this is what
a ghost is, and now I'm like, I don't know. It could
be so many different things. It could be so many different things, and
it could be different things all at once just to make it more confusing.
Yeah, I completely agree. We should we should do another episode just about
ghosts and what we think they are? It would be fun. That's just
it's such a can of worms and it is yeah, it's a uh yeah,
yeah, it's a can of worms. And there's just there's so many
theories. And I will say I am a skeptical believer, so I tend
to believe things that I've experienced. And so, like, I had already
been like noticing this pattern of like, you know what I'm I don't get
people's loved ones who have passed on and been like, hey, can you
tell so and so that I really love them and I missed them. No,
I don't get ghosts like that. And I had already been like in
the process of being like why is that? What is it about me that
I'm like, like, what frequency do I shine on? That's like,
hey, ghosts, tell me your most fucked up stories, because I want
to hear them. I do to be fair, But you know, it's
like, I don't know if I hadn't already been thinking about those things when
I had that dream of my house in Florida, would I have entertained the
idea that I had actually been in my house in Florida, Or would I
just have logically assumed that I was homesick and I didn't like my situation,
so I'm dreaming about it, you know what I mean. It's like it's
those small differations in thought that like, it doesn't mean that both are not
true because I was unhappy, I didn't want to be here, But that
doesn't mean that I wasn't actually there either. Yeah, and that's the wild
part to me. Yeah, and I will get of corroborating testimony that I
certainly don't want to be in my ex mother in law's attic at all.
No, that's the place I always dream about, Yep. I mean I
dream about the rest of the house too, but the attic is but the
attic, specifically the attic is where you have the tie to your belonging still
in the attic. So that, Yeah, it makes perfect sense to me,
exactly it does. But you know, I didn't want to go there,
so it may be that, you know, sometimes we just go where
we want or go where we were left. Yep. Yeah, I think
it can be both. Like I will say that I have I do not
know how to travel places on purpose. I've been trying to experiment with it
because like I'm like, well, I'm doing this more and more, I
might as well figure out how it works. I have no clue. I
have no clue, but it has been interesting once you were if you're willing
to open your mind to the possibility that some of these things could be real
and to just kind of track like it doesn't even have to be like,
well, tonight, I'm going to go to sleep and I'm going to go
to Bermuda or whatever like that sounds fantastic. First of all, I love
a beach, but it for me, it's almost more like, huh,
this thinking is happening. I should make note of it and see if there's
a pattern here and see see where it leads me. And my case,
I would never go to Bermuda because I'd get stuck there because you know the
triangle that you know. I just watched the like my compass has spinning,
I can't get home. I watch I watched The Adams Family yesterday, so
it was on my mind where Wednesday was like, nobody gets out of the
Bermuda triangle. But yeah, that's that is that That is me and hauntings
in a nutshell, that's I believe a lot of different things are possible.
I think that more things about hauntings are true than I am aware of,
than I know, than I probably will ever know. And I think that
that's true for most things. And I'm okay with that. I like I
like the unknown. I like exploring. I like I like theorizing and trying
to figure out what could be real, even if I'm a skeptical asshole for
half of it. Oh, you know, when I'm experiencing something, I
am skeptical. It's all that out. I sit there, you know,
there's a light in the sky and it's doing weird crap, and I'm looking
at it, going, uh, is it a plane? Is it not?
They a light's okay? Is it No? There's no strobe. Oh,
it's changing colors and it's doing a right angle turn. It's definitely not
a plane. Okay. You know, is it a drone? Because now
we have to worry about drone right? Oh? Yes, but they have
to have a specific light as well. So I'm like, what is it?
There's no noise, you know. So I sit there and I run
through all of these different things, and but when people tell me stories,
I don't do that because I'm like, I'm in the same way. No,
these these people have experienced something, and you know, I believe if
they're going to talk about it yep, in front of people, that they've
experienced it in the same way, Because what what benefit do you have from
talking about these things? Like, like I have stories that make me I
literally just told you that I dream traveled to my house in Florida, right,
But like I have wilder stories than that, And like, if I'm
willing to say that, it's because I I understand that it happened to me,
and I feel like other people deserve that same respect, where like I
might not understand what happened to you, but I will always try my best
to be open minded and to listen to your experience, because was it actual,
paranormal? Was it not? I don't know, but it happened to
you, and that makes it real. And that's the thing. If you
experienced it and it's real to you, then it is real. It's not
fake. It's not you know, like is there a muggle interpretation? Maybe
sometimes there is, Yeah, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't a real
event that you experienced exactly exactly. I am so the same way, because
I truly see no benefit in people just making up stories right like that,
well, especially in the hair, nor if you're gonna write it down and
get money for it. I'm right, yeah, Like I have yet to
be able to transform any of my like actual encounters onto paper because I'm so
obsessed with getting all the details right. And I'm like, who who would
subject themselves to this? This is terrible? This is absolutely terrible. But
yeah, and especially if you look at alien abductions or or hauntings or possessions,
which I'm a little bit on the fence about if I'm being perfectly honest,
there are so many cases that involve the strange and unusual that automatically get
cast with such suspicion and doubt that like, why would anyone get up here
and be like, this thing happened to me? Let me tell you all
about it, because you sound a crazy and do you really want to sound
crazy right public? You know, like the yeah, it's if it's like
a clear money grab, then I'm a little bit wary. But most people
aren't trying to do that, and most people are terrified when they're telling you
about what they've experienced. Some like they'll they'll be telling you stories and they'll
start shaking or really reliving it and choke up. Ye can't speak exactly.
Yeah, every everyone I've talked about who's had those intense experiences, there is
the truth right there in their voice and on their faces. Yeah. And
even though I don't post the video, I'm still looking at them exactly while
we're talking. Yep, and they're not they're not. They're not bullshitting.
You're telling the truth as they understand it, as they experience, as they
understand it, as they experienced it, which makes it real. And that's
another thing that I like to explore, but maybe not everybody does that.
Technically, that is the fabric of reality. It's because you experienced it that
means it is real. It's your reality. Yeah it's not, is it
everyone? Maybe not? But it's yours. It's yours. That is your
experience. And we are honored to be the people that get to hear those
experiences and whatever we do with them. I again, I haven't done any
of these readings for quite some time, but if I have had someone ask
me for a paranormal reading, I will. I will share the reading without
sharing any details and so basically I will say I was asked to do this,
this is what I've learned, but without giving any details about the person
or too much about the case itself, because to me, that moment is
private. And I even have people be like, no, no, you
can share all the details. You can give all of this, And sometimes
I share more on those ones if I'm like really sure, but it's like,
you know, it's it. It's an honor to hear any of these
stories. Like I miss being in the position where I heard more of them
and I got to interact more with them. But the ones that I've been
able to hear and the ones that I've been able to share have done so
much for me in opening my mind up. So like, even if you
want to look at the paranormal in that sense that like, okay, you
don't believe in ghosts, but what did you learn from the situation or if
this isn't paranormal, Like what did you think when you were feeling those feelings?
You know? I just I think that there's so much to be learned
by studying people's experiences period, whether it's supernatural, whether it's not supernatural,
and being one of those people that gets to hear this crazy thing happened to
me, What do you think about it? Is one of my favorite things
that I don't get to do as often anymore, but I really appreciate it
when I do. Yeah. Yeah, it fascinates me in a lot of
ways. It makes me feel hopeful in a way about reality that you know,
the reality I've been living in since I was a kid is not so
crazy. After all, there are other people moving through that reality, right
you know. They may not be moving through right at the exact place I
was at and am at, but they're in there, yep. And every
person I hear from who you know, then stabilizes there, you know,
after telling their story, I feel like just listening yep was helpful to them
and was healing to them. And that means a lot to me to be
able to say, you know what, you're not crazy? Yeah, yeah,
at all? It is. It's an important moment to be like,
yeah, thank you, because when you see the relief that they have,
it's just it's really nice. And I'm not always able to provide answers.
I'm always honest about it if I don't know, but you know, I'm
not always able to provide the answers. But what I am able to do
is to sit and listen and at least just hold space for the thing that
you experienced. And you know, there's definitely times when I haven't really had
much to say or like besides, like, whoa, I can't believe that
just happened, you know, but it still is. It's a really cool
part of being in this community is knowing that people trust you enough to come
to you with these bizarre stories and say this happened to me, and know
that you're not going to turn away and you're not going to tell them that
they're imagining it or that they're crazy, because they've probably been hearing that their
whole lives anyways, and the fact that they've approached you means that they've already
thought. Maybe not every time, but a lot of the time, people
have already thought about like what are they going to think about me if I
bring ghosts up right now? What are they going to think about me if
I say I'm pretty sure my house is haunted, or you know, things
like that. So just being someone that people feel comfortable coming to and saying
I experience something heavy, whether it's real life trauma or it's something supernatural and
just listening is It's big for me, and a lot of that translates into
my writing now. But at my core, what I love doing is exactly
this. It's talking ghosts, it's theorizing. It's helping people understand their experiences
in a new light if I can, and if I can't, then that's
okay too. But I like exploring people's memories with them and saying, you
know, well, how did that feel. I mean, that's like a
normal therapist question, but like you know, exploring it with cards or with
the metaphysical, or taking those moments and turning them into a story like I
did with my life, where it's like this isn't me anymore, but it's
it's all, as Jordan likes to say fingers. On the same hand,
it's it's exploration into the unknown. I'm just using different tools than I used
to, and it's it's an adjustment, but I love it. I agree.
I agree, that's the best part of having a podcast asked and I
love being able to say to people no, no, this this is real
and it's okay yep, and you will be okay, you will be okay.
It's gonna be hard, but you're gonna be okay. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, and yeah, I just I just feel like it's it's an
important thing to do. So yeah, here we are here, we are
doing it, yes, doing the thing, as we say in our family,
doing the thing, doing it right, not fucking up, and it
works. It just works. That's amazing. I love that doing the thing,
doing it right and it just works. I'm gonna use that now.
My favorite thing to say is, well, I say, feel the fear
and do it anyways. That's what I and that's what braves exactly. You
know what, you could be as scared as you want and you still do
the fucking thing and way to go. Even if it didn't work, you
did so yeah win, but did it even though you were skar did it
exactly it yep. Yeah, And that's that's the way to be. That's
the way to be. Yeah. Well, well, thank you so much.
I was looking forward to this. This is great, This was wonderful.
Thank you so much for talking to me. This has been a lot
of fun. It has been fun, and you're welcome back anytime. I'd
really love to talk ghost theory with you. Oh yeah, I love that
and yeah, yeah, yeah, that'll be fun. That would be super
cool. I would love that. So yeah, thank you, thank you.
Well that's all for this week's episode of the Six Degrees of John Keel
podcast. If you have any questions or thoughts about the podcast, or would
like to come and talk about your experiences of the paranormal, you can contact
us at six d JK six seven at gmail dot dot com. We promised
even answer you, and we are always happy to hear from you. Thank you,