Today, we speak with author and antiques dealer Duane who has decades of experience buying, selling, and writing about the histories of objects with stories of their own to tell. So set an antique tea kettle on the stove and get ready for Homespun Haints.

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About the Guest: Duane Scott Cerny

Duane Scott Cerny, antiques dealer in Chicago, collects stories about the people, places, and things that pass through his shop. Duane owns Chicago’s oldest and largest antique store: Broadway Antique Market. provides the very best in vintage furnishings, art, lighting, objects, fashions and jewelry from 75 top dealers. If you’re not local to Chicago, you can browse the potentially haunted antiques on his Etsy store. You can read the piece he mentioned that he wrote for the New York Times here. And here are his published books, Selling Dead People’s Things and Vintage Confidential: Retro Rattled, Tales Tattled—Confessions of the World’s Third Oldest Profession.

Episode Promos:

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The Haunted Edgewater Hospital in Chicago

Duane told us a story about his first hand paranormal experiences buying vintage fixtures from the abandoned Edgewater Hospital. Back in 1929, Edgewater Hospital was a renowned medical center. It was also a pretty swanky place for big Hollywood stars to go and “dry out” in the days before rehab. The hospital’s reputation took a dark turn later on. Corruption scandals involving unnecessary surgeries and Medicare fraud lead to its closure in 2001. Also, apparently one of the doctors there experimented with limb transplants on dogs…Duane didn’t find that out until he’d spent quite some time there, wondering where that ethereal barking was coming from.

As it turns out, visitors are no longer welcome there. We think you’ll wanna take a peek at some creepy photos of the abandoned hospital that might have been taken somewhat illicitly a couple years after the place closed down. It really does look like something straight out of Fallout.

Other Ghost Stories from Haunted Chicago

We have interviewed so many haunted Chicagoans! Here are a few of our best paranormal podcast episodes from Chicago.

• DJ Cemetery feat. Guardian Grandma
• The Drum Circle for Haunted Brothels
• You Remind Me of My Dead Sister
• The Most Haunted Cemetery
• The Creepy Chicago Carriage House with the Death Door

Are Antiques Haunted, Usually?

What do you think, would you consider becoming an antiques dealer after hearing Duane’s personal paranormal stories? Do you have any haunted antiques among your family heirlooms? Are you having trouble getting your antique ghosts to adopt new technology? Did you know there is a Haunted Antiques Paranormal Research Centre in the UK? If you have any personal ghost stories about a haunted antiques shop or similar spooky business, submit your story here, and you could be featured on a future episode of Homespun Haints. Buyer beware: all sales final whether or not you have a spooky day!

The post The Man Who Sells Dead People’s Things appeared first on Homespun Haints.

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Summary of today’s stories of first-hand paranormal experiences

When you were a child, did you ever get in trouble for something that a ghost did? Can you imagine not only being tormented by a nasty entity, but then getting blamed for the havoc that it wreaked?

Our guest today grew up with something sinister in her attic. Something that liked to creep, to crawl, to make loud noises in the middle of the night…and to create endless nights of horror. Let’s hear her terrifying personal ghost stories, today, on Homespun Haints.

What is dowsing?

We’ve always heard the word dowsing used to refer to the very specific and uncommon practice of using a pair of rods or sticks held laterally in the hands in front of the body. Asking a yes or no question may result in the dowsing rods moving. A different meaning can be assigned to various rod movement patterns. Rods moving towards each other could be a “yes;” crossing an emphatic “YES!” And away from each other a “no.”

Rods specifically manufactured for the explicit purpose of dowsing have their handles encased in a low-friction tube, so they rotate freely. They’re designed to allow spirits to communicate without expending too much energy.

When Danielle talks about dowsing in this episode, she’s referring to the pendulum technique. You know, like the time Becky used a pendulum to speak with the spirits of soldiers in a haunted Civil War Battlefield in Nashville. In the great tradition of thrifty witchcraft, Danielle’s college friends used whatever they had on hand to ask yes or no questions of unseen entities. We guess anything dangly that moves back and forth without influence from a significant force can be a dowsing tool. A pendant necklace, a spider on a silk thread, a tube sock half-full of frozen corn…hell, get creative.

Can a haunting cause sleep paralysis?

Most people caught in the throes of sleep paralysis report seeing shadowy humanoid figures and experiencing fear. Some say that this stage between wakefulness and sleep causes hallucinations, and that the fear is a side effect of not being able to move. One of the most common causes of sleep paralysis is stress, coupled with sleep deprivation.

But this is the 21st century; we’re pretty much all stressed and sleep-deprived a lot of the time, no? So how come only some people experience sleep paralysis? And only in some situations, not every time they’re sleep-deprived and stressed?

Danielle’s theory, based on her own teenage first-hand paranormal experiences, is that sleep paralysis may have a third cause: ghosts. She believes that the shadow people were there in her childhood bedroom all the time. But she believes she could only see them when she was experiencing sleep paralysis. When the haunting subsided, and her entire family stopped noticing strange noises in the house, Danielle’s sleep paralysis demons resolved.

Are child ghosts or elderly ghosts more likely to be demons?

It’s a theory we’ve heard before; when you see an unidentified supernatural entity who is presenting as the spirit of a deceased child, it’s probably a trick. We’ve heard that this might be because children are so innocent that their souls immediately cross to a better place when they pass away. Therefore, they never become earthbound spirits.

This would imply that there are no real child ghosts. Every representation of a child ghost is something else disguised as a child ghost. Whether this is the case exclusively for nefarious reasons, or just because the entity enjoys identifying as their childish self, we have no way of determining.

Why do demons disguise themselves as child ghosts?

Because the living see children as innocent, they might be a good costume for a sneaky evildoer to get into one’s good graces. Danielle might be the first to tell us that the same is likely to be true about entities who present as the spirit of a very elderly person.

This seems counterintuitive at first. Children may be arguably innocent, but by that logic (e. g. if time lived begets corruption), why would we see an elderly spirit as innocent? Danielle’s theory is that, in addition to displaying innocence, a nefarious presence would also want to present as something or someone physically harmless.

If you think about it, maybe some of these entities really do see themselves as physically harmless. Since they’re non-corporeal, perhaps the harm they cause is only psychic harm. Indeed, psychic influence could manifest into physical injury, but perhaps these entities can only use roundabout ways to influence the physical realm. Maybe that’s why Danielle’s college friend group spent nearly 6 months interacting with a demon without experiencing serious harm?

Have you had any first-hand paranormal experiences like these?

Have you ever owned a haunted antique? Do you have haunting-induced sleep paralysis? What’s the weirdest thing you use to dowse with? If you were a ghost, would you prefer to communicate through dowsing rods, a pendulum, or a Ouija board? What percentage of child ghosts and/or elderly ghosts do you think are actually demons in disguise? Join the discussion in our Facebook Group, or on Patreon.

Speaking of sharing personal paranormal stories, let’s all cross our fingers that Danielle sees some spooky things at the haunted Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, and comes home with more haunted Arkansas stories to share. But most importantly, make sure to say goodbye when you finish dowsing, or you’re gonna have a spooky day.

The post Rocking Chair Man Can’t See You appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Episode Summary

You walk into an empty room, but you feel like you’re being watched. Pulling out your recorder, you start to ask questions, just in case. Maybe you don’t expect to hear anything. But a few hours later, when you listen back to the recording, you hear a voice that isn’t yours. Shivers run up your spine as you realize you were right. Someone, or something, else was in that room with you.

Our guest today is an expert on electronic voice phenomena, or EVPs. But her true ghost stories aren’t just about phantom voices. She’s been encountering strange things her whole life.

AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

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About the Guest, Cyn Shrader Hill

We met Cyn, founder of Elk Valley Paranormal, through our mutual friend Miranda Young of Ghost Biker Explorations. Cyn of Lincoln County, TN, has caught some creepy EVPs on her many paranormal investigations with her own group and with Ghost Hunters of Southern Tennessee. You can hear some examples of her EVPs right now on her website. She is the author of several books, including Whispers in the Dark, Web Of Terror, They’re Speaking, Are You Listening? and It’s Not Goodbye: Signs from Beyond.

She often partners with her friend, Mark Elliott Fults, author of the book she mentioned on the program, The Darkest Corner: Necrophilia, necromancy, and the functioning of a working psychic. Cyn does public storytelling at Young Vintage Antiques in Fayetteville, TN, where you can apparently purchase some really good sage.

Keep updated on Facebook @ElkValleyParanormal.

Show notes

What is an EVP?

In this case, the acronym EVP stands for electronic voice phenomena (or Elk Valley Paranormal, in other cases). Sometimes, recording equipment will pick up something that sounds like a spoken word or phrase, when no audible words are being spoken in the room where the recording is taking place. Often these messages are too quiet to hear until you turn up the volume.

Are EVP real? Are these actual messages from another realm? Could they be the quiet voices of spirits, amplified by technology? Or are we just hearing what we want to hear within the white noise? After listening to Cyn’s EVP collection, we’re pretty convinced these are actual voices. But whose voices are they?

How to get a good electronic voice phenomenon recording

• Wondering what EVP questions to ask? Try asking direct, open ended questions, but not leading questions.
• If you know a name associated with the location, use it! Try asking if that person is present. Direct your question to that person, addressing them by name.
• Leave plenty of time after asking your question. Remember, you can’t hear an EVP in real time, so you just have to trust something might be happening and keep recording the silence.
• Eliminate sources of background noise, and make sure nobody is speaking in another room while you’re recording.
• Use reliable EVP technology; something that picks up very quiet sounds.
• If you’re using something that records onto physical medium, like a cassette tape, never reuse a tape. Old recordings may not be 100% gone after being dubbed over.

How to protect your empathic self

Cyn gave us some tips for empaths doing paranormal investigations.

• Countdown meditation.
• Opening and closing prayer.
• Always close any kind of questioning by saying goodbye, otherwise the door stays open.
• Essential oils: lavender for anxiety, peach for interrupting an anxious event.
• Crystals, which can be cleansed with moonlight or sage smoke.
• Smoke from burning sage creates a barrier for spirits and ill intent, which you can draw then step over.

Have you caught an electronic voice phenomenon on tape?

While there are many methods of audio communication with paranormal entities and spirits, EVPs are one of the classics. If you’ve got a good EVP from a haunted location, we want to hear it! Show and tell is every day on our Facebook group, because every day is a spooky day.

The post EVPs, Turkey Ghosts, and the Shape of a Haunted House appeared first on Homespun Haints.