Speaker 1: You're listening to the paranorl 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 you good. 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.
Speaker 2: 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 that's not 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 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 the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah thing, it's a big thing.
Speaker 2: 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 flexible 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, like, 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 children, 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 got 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 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
had 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
that experience where I was rooted to the spot petrified
for seemingly no reason.
Speaker 1: Right, So you had none of the anxiety thought.
Speaker 2: Loops, none of the anxiety thought loops. Right.
Speaker 1: Oh that I'm so glad you got. That doesn't feel right.
Speaker 2: 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 traumatic
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.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sorry, I've had that happen with with psychics readers,
and it's just like but I.
Speaker 2: 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 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 can
be presents, I don't know what to do with them,
and so I'm just like, thank you.
Speaker 1: It's awkward.
Speaker 2: It's awkward.
Speaker 1: You know, it's awkward, especially if it's a stranger. Then
it's like one hundred times off.
Speaker 2: 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 going to 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 all 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.
Speaker 1: Just like the rest of it.
Speaker 2: 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 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 hear, and you only feel someone
in your space, it's like jarring, you know.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, and there's clearly no one and.
Speaker 2: There's clearly no one else, right, That's yeah, it's a
huge one. Yeah, yeah, it's it's uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: 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 it like all kind of figuring it
out as I go. Right. So the next thing that
happened is I my foot. So again 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.
Speaker 1: Things and and you skid it on it.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what happened. I skid on it. I I
fractured the bones on the top of my foot, and
I broke our SR 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.
Speaker 1: It was like you're just gonna forever.
Speaker 2: 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 pennies, how many pennies do you
have left? And I was like, I'm bad at answering.
Speaker 1: One to ten pages word problem, you.
Speaker 2: 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 answer the questions.
Speaker 1: Like but I don't understand this.
Speaker 2: 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 you 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 I'm watching, the more stories I'm hearing and people
describing feeling entities around them, I'm like, what the fuck?
Speaker 1: Like I was sorry what it was?
Speaker 2: 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 have 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 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? 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: So 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.
Speaker 1: Plus it's easier for the cats and dogs.
Speaker 2: Hell, easier for the cats. For the dogs. You can
make a little poiles all around yourself like a fortress
of information.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, yes, yeah, this book, that book, the other book,
the notes, things, the notepads. Hey give me my pen
back is 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.
Speaker 2: 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 druck and that
would be the opportunity that the ghosts would have to
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? 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 reading, 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 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So you've written a book I have
to write about.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Hefting. That's a fun thing.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: So I.
Speaker 2: 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 going
to 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 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, so 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, 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 reference says for the
people who were not in battle. Right, So my story nothing,
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.
Speaker 1: It like you talked about it with your therapist.
Speaker 2: 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 were 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 the
after effect. And of course there's twists 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 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, I pea 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 is good, then 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 the my wording is super scary. It's just
it's you're you're putting yourself in somebody else's shoes for
a while, which is why I love books.
Speaker 1: 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 now 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. Yeah, 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?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: 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 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
a piece of shit in real life.
Speaker 1: Let me just say, oh, he's terrible. It was terrible.
Speaker 2: He was kind of terrible in the movie too, But
like in the Moon that 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 story, 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 as well, because I had a lot of
freedom to explore that when I was in Florida. 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 like I am from Texas, I'm a Texan. Texans
love our grocery store called AGB. Okay, like, yeah, yeah, Texans,
all Texans love achbhib 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
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 yeah,
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 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: 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 this 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 too, 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 missdoing, especially where
I'm at right now. It's just like it's that like
I can't advertise it too much because.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh mom, that's just my friend the witch.
You know, we're gonna go talk to the ghost.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Say, yeah, so you know, but that that is how
how to do it. If you, I will add the
the extra warning that I normally get people in that
my the 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?
Speaker 1: So yeah, I understand, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 2: 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 going to 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.
Speaker 1: So well, but that's true, and ye's actually a useful land.
Speaker 2: It is a useful answer.
Speaker 1: But people don't always want the useful.
Speaker 2: People don't want the useful answer. People want 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Let's just I love those well to an extent, to
an extent.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but but how did did you learn it
from books or how did what is your method?
Speaker 2: So I I did like it from books. I I
think Actually, I'm pretty sure that this is my first
tear deck 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
a blend of intuition and the basic card meaning in
that I enjoy referencing what the card actually means.
Speaker 1: I like.
Speaker 2: 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 meanings, 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 necessary 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 I 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 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 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 I 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
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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: 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 all, and it it it
does make it feel tainted.
Speaker 2: 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.
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 it
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.
Speaker 1: It's it's yeah, this is going in a circle.
Speaker 2: 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, yeah,
it's thing like that. Where Like, it was really hard
for me to move there because I've I lived in
Texas my whole life. I've 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 write
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 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 it could get put
on the market, and so once it 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, 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 sours 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
I really don't want to live here. I'm grateful that
I have this safe space to come too and that
I was able to recuperate here, but I don't want
to live here. I missed my life, I missed my friends.
And I cried.
Speaker 1: So much that day.
Speaker 2: 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 ceiling 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 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 house. 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.
Speaker 1: 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 stored away in her attic. She
never gave them back.
Speaker 2: So that's a piece of you in her attic, uh
huh huh and her heart felt piece of you yeaheah.
Speaker 1: 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?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's like, yeah, if anybody could see me?
Speaker 2: 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'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.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's kind of like it. It's like
the living version of the movie The Others.
Speaker 2: Exactly, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And and if that's the case, WHOA I know that
has a lot of implications.
Speaker 2: 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, it's 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 or
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 hm, 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 say, Okay,
what about that, then.
Speaker 1: Let's let's see if we can release that. That's not 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, yep.
Speaker 2: It it defends.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Cool, I'm gonna do this.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I completely agree. We should. We should do another
episode just about ghosts and what we think they are.
Speaker 2: It would be fun.
Speaker 1: That's just it's such a can of worms and it.
Speaker 2: 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, that's
the wild part to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I will give corroborating testimony that I certainly
don't want to be in my ex mother in law's
attic at all. That's the place I always dream about.
I mean, I dream about the rest of the house too,
but the attic is.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: And my case, I would never go to Bermuda because
I'd get stuck there because you know triangle that you know.
I just watched the compass has spinning. I can't get home.
Speaker 2: I don't 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.
Speaker 1: Oh, you know, when I'm experiencing something, I am skeptical
as 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? There's not any FAA lights. 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?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: 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, they know, 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.
Speaker 2: In the same way, because what what benefit do you
have from talking about these things? Like even like I
have stories that make me I literally just told you
that I dream traveled to my house Florida, right, but
like I have wilder stories than that, And like, if
I'm willing to say that, it's because 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.
Speaker 1: I am so the same way, because I truly see
no benefit it in people just making up stories, right
like that, well, especially in the paranorm write it down
and get money for it.
Speaker 2: I'm right, yeah, Like I have yet to be able
to transform any of my 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 say,
sound a crazy and.
Speaker 1: Do you really want to sound crazy right publicly? You know, like.
Speaker 2: 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 tell you stories and they'll start shaking or
really reliving it.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: 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 experienced.
Speaker 2: Stand 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 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.
Speaker 1: 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. 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.
Speaker 2: 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 yeah, 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 yeah, it still is. It's 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 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.
Speaker 1: I agree. I agree, that's the best part of having
a podcast. And I love being able to say to people, no, no, this,
this is real and it's okay yep, and you will be.
Speaker 2: Okay, you will be okay. It's going to be hard,
but you're going to be okay.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: That's what I and that's what braves.
Speaker 2: Exactly what you could be as scared as you wind,
you still do the fucking thing and way to go.
Even if it didn't work, you.
Speaker 1: Did it, so you win. But did it even though
you were scared, did it exactly it?
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's that's the way to be.
Speaker 2: That's the way to be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, well, thank you so much. I was looking forward
to this.
Speaker 2: This is great, this was wonderful. Thank you so much
for talking to me. This has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: That would be super cool. I would love that.
Speaker 1: 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 pay a Normal you can contact us at
six D j K six seven at gmail dot com.
We promised even answer you, and we are always happy
to hear from you. Thank you,