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While he remains a logical skeptic, Bailey from Iowa shares a number of paranormal experiences he cannot explain, many of which others could corroborate. From his creepy childhood basement, to his creepy encounter with the 3rd kind, to the creepy cemetery in his backyard, to creepy cryptids, Bailey reveals that the paranormal entities in the Hawkeye State are anything but corny.

Episode Summary: Paranormal Iowa

Sometimes ghost stories help to answer the questions we have about the paranormal. But sometimes, these stories only serve to create more questions. When you delve into the world of ghosts, demons, and other supernatural phenomena, you have to accept uncertainty, and know that some questions will never be answered.

Today, we present to you a string of incidents that occurred in the life of a young man living in Iowa. We leave it up to you to decide what to make of his experiences.

a road in Iowa on the way to ghost hunting in Iowa — Iowa, land of ghosts, cryptids, and other paranormal phenomena. Photo by Everett Bartels on Unsplash

About the guest, Bailey

Bailey still identifies as a skeptic because he’s never literally “seen a ghost”. Yet he has seen the hatman; and a shadowy figure that doesn’t show up on camera harrassed him. He’s witnessed a potential alien visitation; and, of course, a mysterious invisible creature bit him while in a bedroom that backed up to a cemetery.

Show Notes

Bedrooms that back up to cemeteries

We’ve had a shocking number of guests on this show that have slept in rooms where their view out the bedroom window involved cemeteries in some way. We have to wonder…does living cemetery-adjacent have something to do with their ongoing paranormal experiences? For more view-of-the-boneyard realness, listen to The Woman Who Lived in a Cemetery, Things That Crawl Out of Cemeteries, and We’re Walking Through Blood.

Is a shared imaginary friend still imaginary?

Bailey first starts to question his reality when his older brother has a childhood dreamtime vision of his own imaginary friend, Tim. If both children in the same house have the same imaginary friend, what does that mean? Could it be that one brother picked up on the other brother’s stories, and has a good imagination? Or could it be that Tim existed outside of the imagination?

The Villisca Axe Murder House

Ghost Hunters love to portray The Villisca Axe Murder House as the most haunted paranormal place in Iowa. The locals aren’t all so keen on its sordid past being exploited for it’s touristy present. But there’s no denying that the house has seen an above average number of murders within.

Aside from its sinister history, what makes this house so scary? According to the fabulous article our friends Karly and Tera of The Haunted Housewives Podcast wrote for our blog, “Tour guides, visitors, and investigators hear whispers and footsteps. A lot. People see shadows and catch them on camera. Rumor has it that if you don’t believe in ghosts, you will after spending the night at the super haunted Villisca Axe Murder House.”

The Beast of Land Between the Lakes

It’s a tale as old as time. A group of inebriated college students with too few survival skills and too many beers make their way out into the woods to go camping. As they hike, they come across holes in the ground lined with sticks and tufts of grey fur. As the darkness grows, the students feel like they’re being watched. Then the howling begins. But it’s a howl that sounds almost like maniacal laughter. Human Laughter. A few days later, police discover their half-eaten bodies lodged in nearby trees.

This is an amalgam of the modern reports of encounters with the Beast of LBL. Yet the legend goes as far back as the 1800s, when Shawnee fur traders warned French explorers to watch out for something in the woods. Their descriptions were suspiciously werewolfy. It’s uncertain whether the original beast was a true shapeshifter, or a man with an inherited family trait that caused him to go mad after nightfall. But the fact that people are still reporting sightings and evidence of the beast to this day implies that he must have fathered little beastlings to carry on his terrifying legacy.

(And yes, we know, technically, the paranormal cryptid called the Beast of Land Between the Lakes is from Kentucky, not Iowa. But with the surprising speed at which this wolfman allegedly moves, he just might get around.)

The urge to run up the basement stairs because you feel something is following you

Is this just a childhood thing, as Bailey says, or is it more sinister? Diana also had this feeling quite frequently growing up. The feeling is less since moving back into her childhood home, but still occurs from time to time. But then again, the other things happening in Diana’s basement nowadays are still quite creepy.

What is it about superstitions that allow them to overcome logic and skepticism?

Bailey had a very superstitious grandma, who helped him feel more normal when the paranormal threatened to rock his reality. In this article, Diana breaks down some reasons why we have superstitions. The post explains why you feel the illogical urge to toss salt over your shoulder. And how that might actually be making your life better.

Paranormal Iowa

We hope you enjoyed today’s episode about some of the paranormal encounters Bailey had growing up in Iowa. If you’re from Iowa and have seen strange paranormal entities there, please leave us a comment on our Facebook Group. And if you want to do some paranormal investigation in Iowa, we can vouch that Bailey would be an astute and open-minded companion. He’s also itching to visit the Villisca Axe Murder House and other haunted places around Iowa. So if you’re ghost hunting in Iowa and could use a hand, drop us a line and we’ll hook you up so you can both have a spooky day!