Tammy doesn’t go to haunted houses or ghost hunts on purpose, because she’s a scaredy cat. When she turned 44, however, she began consciously hearing and seeing spirits everywhere. That’s when she truly realized her life’s purpose: to be a healer. Her mother and youngest daughter have similar inherited gifts, although Tammy believes everyone has the capacity to develop clairvoyance. And John Lennon might be just the celebrity ghost to help you do so.

Here is part one of our interview with Tammy. In this episode, she discusses her famous dead friends and her journey into mediumship, along with the haunting of her float center.

Or listen to part one here:

Then, watch part two, where she tells us her experiences with shamanism, soul retrieval, and witch contracts.

Or listen to part two here:

About the Guest: Tammy Doublin

Tammy Doublin of Michigan practices as a contemporary shaman and psychic medium, and much more. More info about her practice is available at Tammydoublin.com. Follow her adventures on FB @TammyDoublin and IG @the.green.witch.33. If you live nearby, you can check out the float center Tammy talks about in this episode: Motor City Float in Clawson, MI. It’s not actually full of blood.

Ghosts of Celebrities

Ok, so the title is a little bit of hyperbole, because I suppose Jesus isn’t technically a ghost…but this story really got us wondering. Why do spirit guides tend to be ghosts of celebrities? Tammy tells us the first spirit she spoke to besides her son was John Lennon. Bob Marley, Prince, and Kurt Cobain soon joined her posse, and Jesus follows her around her house now for unknown reasons. All 6 of these figures continue to have a constant spirit guide type of presence in her life. When Diana heard this, the first thing she thought of was the Sheryl Crow lyric “She knows Jesus, John Lennon, and Cobain personally.”

It’s not all fun and games, though, channeling famous ghosts. Tammy has also spoken with infamous ghosts. Specifically, she has channeled notorious bad guys Charles Manson and Ted Bundy.

Are celebrities more likely to come back as ghosts?

We ourselves have noticed that it seems a lot more ghosts of famous people purportedly haunt public spaces. These specific celebrities appear quite a bit, although none of them were known (in life) for a passionate drive to communicate with the dead, or prove the existence of ghosts. Of all the people who have died on this planet, surely the percentage of hauntings attributed to celebrities wouldn’t naturally be so high?

Also, average ghosts tend to be seen mainly at one place, whereas celebrity ghosts are sometimes said to haunt various places simultaneously. Tammy herself says that the ghost of John Lennon gets around more than other spirits. In other words, he has ongoing (we’re guessing open) relationships with a lot of different mediums.

How can the ghost of a celebrity haunt two places at once?

We can think of many hypotheses that could explain this phenomenon.

For one, if ghosts can appear differently to different people, perhaps random ghosts tend to impersonate dead celebrities for attention. Perhaps we shouldn’t ask “why is Cobain so interested in ME,” but instead “what is it about me that these entities feel I’m more receptive to them if they appear as Cobain?”

On the other hand, if these really truly are ghosts of deceased celebrities, perhaps their ubiquity changes the way we think about the nature of ghosts. What if ghosts are actually somehow more visible if the person looking recognizes them? Or, what if ghosts are created or strengthened through acts that people place value on? Perhaps ghosts can haunt the location where they were most loved, instead of where they died? Celebrities are so widely beloved, that they might haunt many places.

Guardian Angel Appearance

Tammy sees them as black-hooded beings. We’ve heard a guardian angel described as looking like Popeye the Sailor Man (unlikely that was a celebrity ghost). A few of our guests who are mediums describe guardian angels as standing to one particular side in their visions. What do your guardian angels look like?

Repeating patterns that belie a haunting

Does painting your walls red or black attract ghosts?

Tammy tells us that a shocking amount of haunted houses have walls painted red or black. She says that sometimes, even if the walls haven’t been intentionally painted these colors, there’s a random red or black handprint on the wall somewhere. Diana’s bedroom walls have been red at 3 different times in her life, twice with a black ceiling. Do you think that could explain why Diana has so many ghost stories? Perhaps it does make sense, as these paint colors would be an extreme contrast to haint blue paint, which can repel ghosts.

Haunted houses also seem to have purple flowers in winter. Tammy interprets these purple flowers as symbols that she is currently where she belongs. Another thing Tammy sees repeating in several haunted houses is the negative faded space on a wall where a crucifix once hung. Do you think it’s the act of removing a crucifix, the nature of people who would hang a crucifix and then remove it, or simply the absence of iconography in general that results in the haunting?

Not that correlation necessarily implies causation. Maybe it’s the other way around, and ghosts cause the living to prefer red walls without crucifixes on them. Who can say for sure?

What is a witch contract? 

Tammy told us a story about a client whom she released from a witch contract. A witch contract may refer to a pact or agreement made between a witch and a supernatural entity, often for the exchange of services or power. In historical witch trials, accusations often included claims that the accused had made a pact with the devil. In the cases Tammy described, these contracts might be residual from past lives or the Akashic Records. 

The concept of a witch contract appears in various forms across folklore, mythology, literature, and media. Some common themes are exchange of power with a spirit/demon/deity, loyalty pact with a familiar, or placing a curse in exchange for a boon. One of the most common things traded by the witch is her soul. This creates a problem: the soul of the witch (or her descendant, or perhaps a person she reincarnates into) is stuck in the underworld, while the body remains on the earthly plain. The soul requires a shaman of sorts to retrieve it from that spooky place.

How to do a soul retrieval journey as a burgeoning shaman

Fortunately, Tammy tells us that everyone is a shaman, technically. Therefore, you shouldn’t hesitate to begin teaching yourself to do what she calls soul retrieval. In the second half of her interview, Tammy gives us some tips on how to train and prepare for this paranormal activity.

• Seek guidance from another experienced shaman or soul retrieval expert. Tammy skipped this step, possibly because she’s a natural intuitive and felt self-education would be satisfactory.
• Remain open-minded and meditate (Tammy used chakra music from YouTube) and wonder about the meaning of the things that come to mind. Drumming or chanting might help. Here is the audio clip of Tammy drumming that she mentioned in the second episode.
• Go on a journey for your own healing first. In this case, “journey” refers to a meditative trance. It can take one anywhere, from the inside of someone’s body to the Underworld.
• After successfully healing yourself, you can begin doing journeys for the benefit of others.

Do YOU communicate with the ghosts of dead celebrities?

Are your ghosts famous? Is your home painted red and haunted by dead celebrities? Do you have any personal experiences that would clarify why celebrity ghosts get around so much? PLEASE apply to come on Homespun Haints and explain it to us; we’re dying to know so we can have a spooky day!

The post My 5 Best Dead Friends Are Ghosts of Celebrities appeared first on Homespun Haints.

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Episode Summary

There’s something spooky about the remote upper peninsula of Michigan. Eerie lights, haunted woods, and children left to their own devices with sinister spells populate the snow-driven wilderness. Would you dare to visit?

Our guest today grew up amongst these ghosts and has his own memorable stories to share, along with some folklore from the area. Settle in for a cold night, today, on Homespun Haints.

About the Guest: Ron Riekki

With his imposingly large frame, Ron has been cold-recruited for horror movies and haunted houses on many occasions, but he’s still a bookworm at heart. Ron has written over a dozen books so far, and won’t be stopping any time soon.

Ron Riekki’s books include U.P.: a novel and Posttraumatic: A Memoir. Also the upcoming hybrid collection My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction. He co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice and The Many Lives of The Evil Dead: Essays on the Cult Film Franchise, and edited And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017, Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works. He has anthologies upcoming with McFarland and WSU Press.

His fiction has also been published in The Threepenny Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Wigleaf, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Akashic Books, Juked, New Ohio Review, Cleaver, Puerto del Sol, and many other literary journals. Riekki’s story “Accidents” received the 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize and “The Family Jewel” was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2015.

The Paulding Light

There is a mysterious light that appears over Bruce Crossing, MI. Ron says the area reminds him of the legend of Robert Johnson. Interestingly, Becky and Diana just performed an original musical composition about Robert Johnson at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. We’ll post clips from the live performance for our Patrons soon so y’all can have a spooky day!

The post The Devil Gets His Due in Michigan appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Episode Summary: A Haunted Michigander with a Shaking Bed

Are certain areas of the world more haunted than others? Are certain people more haunted than others? And what happens when you place a very haunted person into a very haunted place? It becomes hard to tell where the haunting originated.

For Nick, strange things have happened everywhere he has lived in Michigan. Then again, he knows for sure things have followed him from place to place. The reasons why he is so haunted remain a mystery. But maybe you can figure it out, today, on Homespun Haints.

About today’s guest: Nick

Nick Click is a haunted Michigander optician, and also a Homespun Haints listener. Thank you for coming on the show, Nick!

Haunted places in Michigan mentioned in this episode

Here are some of the locations we talked about in this episode, along with a helpful verbal map, based on the assumption that Michigan is shaped like a mitten.

• Alpena, MI, location of the party house that’s too haunted to sleep in, but too remote to leave. There’s a lot more to do there, nowadays, apparently! (Tip o’ the index finger)
• Nick’s haunted apartments and the cool, potentially-haunted cemetery with a giant orb (Mountain Home) were all in Kalamazoo, MI. (The, uhhhhhh, pisiform of the mitten?)
• Nick’s hometown of Dexter, MI is the site of one of the most famous UFO coverups in American history. (At the base of the first metacarpal of the mitt—ok, you know what? This isn’t as helpful as I expected.)
• Zak Bagins’ The Haunted Museum in Las Vegas, NV. (You’d rarely need mittens here. Or a map, really.)

What does it mean when your bed shakes at night for no reason?

Something is shaking Nick’s bed. Actually, all of Nick’s beds. No matter where he’s living, he gets woken up at night by his bed shaking.

Why does it feel like his bed is shaking while he’s sleeping? What could it be? It isn’t an earthquake, as none were recorded at the time. Nor is it his body jerking in a dream, because the shaking continues when he wakes up. It’s not sleep paralysis; he’s had that before and it’s entirely different.

And it’s not even the location. This has happened to Nick at multiple houses, alone or co-sleeping, in different beds over time. And the bed is shaking at night, when he’s in it. He never witnesses it happening during the day, or when he’s not in the bed.

Is a bed shaking for no reason a paranormal activity?

A bed that shakes is a fairly common Hollywood haunting trope, but you’d think it was pretty rare IRL. Until you notice that this Quora thread with a title beginning “Why does my bed shake/vibrate at night?” has over 170,000 views.

Why do so many people have this experience? Is the cause different for each of them? Why, if bed shaking is so common, do we not hear more about it? Also, and perhaps more importantly to the apparently many people who experience this shaking bed syndrome, how do you stop it?

So Many Haunted Houses in Michigan

We still have so many questions. Why did the creepy abandoned house have 70’s Christmas decorations? Can you fix a haunting with duct tape? What happens when you misgender a ghost? Why is Nick’s bed shaking by itself? And are we going to have a spooky day?

The post Why is My Bed Shaking? appeared first on Homespun Haints.

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Irish ghost stories and superstitions

Can the bonds we have with our loved ones go beyond this plane and into the next? Can we feel those connections so strongly that we know when someone we care about is in trouble? Is dying? Or is dead? And how do those connections persist throughout generations?

Today, we speak with Kelly Fordon, an author and podcaster, who has a myriad of experiences about these connections, and their effects on the living. Her stories are both spooky and uplifting, and we know you’re going to enjoy them.

About today’s guest, Kelly Fordon

Kelly tells us that POV matters more in fiction writing than the traditional hero’s journey story arc we learned in grade school. She’s published through Wayne State University press. Her books include I Have the Answer, Garden for the Blind and a full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, On the Street Where We Live, which won the 2011 Standing Rock Chapbook Contest, and Tell Me When It Starts to Hurt. Her fiction, poetry, and book reviews have appeared in The Boston Review, The Florida Review, Flashquake, The Kenyon Review, and various other journals.

You can find Kelly’s podcast, Let’s Deconstruct a Story, at kellyfordon.com.

Do we all get 6 weeks to haunt before moving on?

Kelly experienced messages from her father from beyond for just a short while, then his spirit must have moved on. She recalled hearing the belief that, when a person dies, their soul has 6 weeks to remain on Earth, tying up loose ends, before moving on to reincarnation or whatever other eternal reward they’ve earned.

Can you get directly into heaven by dying on a Saturday?

This type of heavenly fast pass isn’t canonical to Catholicism in general; it must have been a colloquial Irish superstition. Which really begs the question; what’s more likely: to manifest one’s own death with the strong belief that one will die on that day, or to have a premonition that accurately predicts one’s own death? Both may seem quite supernatural, and neither story is unique to Kelly.

By this point in the story, we were thinking “man, Kelly’s whole family has premonitions related to death!”

Are premonitions of death due to deep connections, or The Gift?

Far from taking her familial ghostly premonitions of death to mean she’s inherited a psychic gift, Kelly believes anyone can have these types of premonitions. It’s more who you’re close to, and based on what kind of a link you had in life.

Although she’s probably right about that last part, we’re curious if that explains her prediction of her dad’s friend’s death. Or all the people who lose loved ones without any sort of premonition, and never do hear from them again. Surely it must be a little of both?

Comforting hauntings and practical premonitions

It is a comforting thought that a loved one can reach out from the beyond, but that doesn’t mean they’re stuck in an Earthly purgatory between planes of existence for the long haul. We really like the idea of a 6 week goodbye tour. What do you believe? Even if we can predict someone’s death through premonitions, none of us will ever know for sure what happens after this life until it’s too late. But better to die on a Saturday, just in case. No need to go having a spooky day.

The post Irish Ghost Stories and Premonitions of Death appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Hear this paranormal podcast episode about haunted Michigan on YouTube:

Listen right here:

Episode Summary

There are haunted houses. And then there are very haunted houses. Houses where something almost always happens in the middle of the night, or the middle of the day. Houses where the spirits are extra restless and extra active, and the dead outnumber the living.

Today, we speak with Reverend Gerald Hunter, author and paranormal investigator, who’s incredibly haunted childhood home shaped his entire career. Would you have been able to sleep in the haunted Michigan house he grew up in? Listen and decide, today, on Homespun Haints.

AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

Sponsored by Dark Cottage

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About the Guest, Rev. Gerald Hunter

Gerry is from Brooklyn, Michigan, which is the scaphoid bone in relation to the mitten, a description I’m aware helps just about nobody. Including postal workers, who kept delivering his mail to New York. He has seen some wild hauntings and spirited spirits around the Midwest!

He is retired from ministry, and now works aboard the incredibly haunted USS Edson on the Saginaw River in Bay City, MI. Gerry has published 3 books about his encounters, including Haunted Michigan, More Haunted Michigan, and Haunted Michigan 3: The Haunting Continues… all available on Amazon. Someday soon his fourth book, Confessions of a Ghost Hunter, is coming out! Keep updated by following him on Facebook.

Masculinity and Paranormal Investigation

Is believing in ghosts contrary to machismo?

Gerry identifies wistfully as the least macho of all the men in his family, despite his best efforts. He chose the path of ministry, while all the other brothers followed their father into law enforcement. He’s also the only brother who seeks out ghostly encounters, as opposed to avoiding or denying them.

The theme of machismo comes up multiple times in his stories. He cited one manly friend who flew into a rage to deal with a ghost playfully taunting him with a towel. His father refused to believe when the boys talked about seeing ghosts. Conversely, his mother talked of her own ghostly experiences somewhat openly. His brother refused to stick around to witness any hauntings, despite denying belief.

What is it about ghosts, hauntings, and spirit communications that brings ones masculinity into question? Is it more masculine to bravely interact with the paranormal, or to eschew all participation therein? And what does it mean when masculinity and paranormal investigation combine?

Masculine ways to interact with spirits

There are many ways to be masculine. We think positive masculinity is embodied in qualities like providing fatherly guidance and protection to one’s wards, gallantly defending those who have less power or advantage than oneself, bravely accomplishing the intimidating, confidently taking action based on rational reasoning, and feats of physical strength and endurance.

• Our guest Kerry Blu attempted to create a safe space for the ghost who shared his apartment during COVID-19 quarantine.
• Our guest Daryl Marsten volunteered to take the more frightening lodgings at the haunted cabins.
• In one episode, Becky breaks down gender stereotypes in the male-dominated field of paranormal investigation reality television.

Let’s approach this rationally

Gerry tells us that his favorite way to conduct a paranormal investigation is to attempt to disprove everything. In other words, attempt to find evidence of a non-supernatural explanation for seemingly supernatural occurrences. This does seem to fit in with the spirit of scientific investigation. It also reinforces that skepticism does not equal disbelief.

There is both more courage and more rationality required for skepticism than for disbelief. To be skeptical is to embrace the vulnerable position that what you are hearing might be wrong, or what you personally believe to be true might be wrong. Skeptics must have the fortitude to investigate with an open mind until they have enough objective reasons to rationally form a opinion.

But was it a ghost?

Most people use heuristics to accept or reject ideas from within an established worldview, instead of attempting to re-evaluate their belief in various types of paranormal entities every time they find themselves confronted by a new strange occurrence. That’s why paranormal investigators focus on obtaining as much evidence as they can, with the goal of ruling out a mundane cause for a seemingly paranormal event, instead of focusing on proving “it was a ghost.” In other words, it’s quite possible to be a paranormal investigator who doesn’t believe in ghosts, since you’re merely attempting to answer questions like “is this occurrence explicable by any rationale other than the paranormal?” in most cases. When the answer is “no,” it’s not necessary to then jump to the conclusion “it was a ghost.”

Of course, paranormal investigation evidence is extra scrumptious when it is corroborated with something relevant to ghosts and hauntings. We might not have the patience to go looking for EVPs all night, but it still makes our spirit senses tingle with joy when we hear an EVP that mentions the name of an actual person who has died in the purportedly haunted house where the recording was captured. These synchronicities can be pleasurable to the believer, or upsetting to the disbeliever. But to the skeptic, they may just be more data points to consider on the long, winding path to the truth.

A scary paranormal investigation of a Michigan haunted hotel

After this interview, Gerry told us about another paranormal investigation he performed at the haunted South Lyon Hotel in South Lyon, Michigan. One of the employees had recently quit, because of the encounters she had with one of the hotel’s ghosts. She reluctantly agreed to attend the investigation on the condition that the team would never would be more than 6 feet away from her as she walked them through the eatery. 

At one point, she shouted, “He’s here,” and went into a panic. She hollered “what do you want?” and was thrown against the cooler wall. She started crying, and said her back burned. One of the investigators helped lift her shirt, revealing the backwards word “YOU” scratched into her back, deep enough to break the skin. They dabbed away the blood before taking this photo.

Have a spooky day!

The post Heaven is a Place Where Everything is Just Okay appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Listen here:

And you can listen to the bonus spin-off episode next:

Episode Summary

Like most of us, Bill stayed in some questionable lodgings during college. Every night at that apartment, a shadow figure emerged from Bill’s closet to stare at him. And hold it just one gosh darned minute before you jump to a sleep paralysis diagnosis…Bill knew he could move, but he was absolutely certain moving was a very bad idea.

The entity he’s seeing in his bedroom closet is starting to make him groggy. It induces brain fog and even manifests physical illness. As a self-proclaimed horror-freak and the offspring of generations of Roma people with inherited psychic gifts, he is open-minded yet rational about the paranormal. Eventually, he wonders if he might be seeing a demon. But by the light of day, Bill is able to convince himself there’s nothing too bad happening. That is, until his roommate and friend see it, too.

About the Guest: Bill Presley

Bill Presley is a geneticist who studies the molecular basis of pathogenesis in Mendelian diseases. These type of studies allow clinicians to diagnose patients with new and mysterious inherited medical issues. Although patients suffering from rare genetic conditions benefit from the work he does at his day job, our listeners might be more interested in his side gig as a horror fiction writer. Or…is it fiction?

Bill (@AnotherPresley on Twitter) straddles the line between skeptic and believer, analytic and creative. He grew up hearing stories of inherited psychic gifts from his grandmother. Does his strong belief in the paranormality of his experience run counter to his values of rational empiricism? Does one have to be wrong for the other to be right? His true story of demonic oppression is part of an anthology published by Timber Ghost Press. He also crafted the story into his fictional novella Aniela, which serves as the prelude to the series entitled The Apprentice’s Notebook, published by Little Demon Books and available on Amazon.

Who is Bonbibi?

In the mangrove forest of the Sundarbans in the West Bengal area of east India and Bangladesh, and a deity named Bonbibi protects the forest and those that live there. However, residents of the area who would exploit the lands and the forest for more than they need will anger the goddess and lose her protection. The tigers that roam these woods will likely eat these greedy souls if they do not learn to change their ways.

What is a Strzyga?

As Bill said, vintage monsters from Polish folklore are so extra because the horror stories had to be more horrible than the misery of daily life. After reading even a little Kosiński, we are inclined to say “could the strzyga really be worse than that?” To which the answer is a resounding “dayum, I guess so!”

A strzyga is basically a Polish vampire. The strzyga trait is not contagious, like the Western vampire, but congenital and inherited. Actually, perhaps we should call it a Polish manananggal.

Strzygi might be born of human parents, but upon closer examination may have 2 hearts, 2 souls, and 2 sets of teeth, no armpit hair, and may sleepwalk. Strzygi die young, but one of their two souls comes back from the dead to prey upon the living, eating their insides and sucking their blood. Unwitting onlookers may mistake them for owls, nocturnally flying low over inhabited areas, seeking prey. 

How can you protect yourself from a Strzyga?

When a strzyga dies, it is wise to take some precautions to keep it from rising to prey upon the living, like:

• Decapitation, or burying the body face down with a sickle around its head. Maybe it’ll cut its own head off trying to arise, and never see it coming.
• Hammering stakes through the body. Classic vampire move.
• Burning the body. Classic just-about-any-monster move.
• Placing a flint in its mouth. Perhaps it lights itself on fire when it tries to bite you?
• Slapping it across the face with the left hand. Or as we like to call it, The Sinister Hand of Vampire Intimidation. Just doff your glove so you don’t accidentally challenge it to a duel.
• Burying it outside of the village, pinned down with a large rock. Don’t come back now, y’hear?
• Placing poppy seeds in a cross shape in the corners of the house. And not having pets who will promptly walk through them.
• Exhumation in the presence of a priest (for safety, perhaps). Then, re-burying with a piece of paper with the word “Jesus” written on it under the strzyga’s tongue. Paper cuts in the name of the Lord sting the worst.
• And if all else fails, try my personal favorite: putting many small objects in the strzyga’s grave. The monster will feel compelled to count and sort them all before rising to terrorize the countryside. Classic haint move, which would also work on at least half of my OCD family.

Oh and just to be clear, we ALL have 2 sets of teeth inside our heads at some point in our lives. Dental xrays of children are indistinguishable from those of great white sharks (or strzyga).

What does it mean when a dwelling never seems to have enough light?

Bill felt like, no matter how many curtains he opened or lights he turned on, his apartment was always dim and grey. Diana feels the same about her current house…also her childhood home, also apparently haunted. Could haunted places just feel perpetually dim? And what does that mean?

Researchers have long known that dim lighting plays such a significant role in feeling haunted. Studies designed to replicate a haunting almost always include dim light as a prerequisite. But is there anything real about the correlation? Are ghosts attracted to dimly lit spaces? Does a haunting cause the haunted to perceive the space as dim? We can’t find any help answering these questions, let us know if you know! But, just in case you thought there wasn’t a joke in there somewhere…here are some dim sum ghosts. Aww!

Does depression trigger demonic interest? Or the other way around?

We’ve heard that being depressed can weaken one’s faith, leaving them more susceptible to dark forces that might seek to possess them. We’ve also heard that one of the symptoms of demonic oppression or possession (2 stages of the same process) is depression. This feels like a “chicken or the egg” kind of logic problem…which came first? Can anyone really know, for sure?

Are psychic gifts inherited?

Another causality dilemma to think about is the nature vs. nurture of familial psychic gifts. Many people we’ve spoken to believe that “the gift,” (e.g. clairsentience/clairvoyance/clairaudience) passes from generation to generation within families. Others believe that psychic abilities are something anyone can develop given enough time, energy, and proper training. This could mean that what we see as an inherited psychic ability might simply be a result of the traditions one experiences growing up.

Familial valuation of psychic gifts may make us more confident or determined to develop our own. Having psychics in the family would also logically make us less likely to suppress our natural psychic talents just to fit in. If that’s true, it also makes sense that there would be more psychics within cultures that embrace rather than eschew the concept itself.

Still, there’s something romantic about the idea that certain cultures and families have a higher number of natural-born psychic mediums due to genetically inherited psychic gifts. Is there an unbiased way to determine the source of psychic gifts? Will we ever determine that a specific set of genes can predispose a person to having “the gift”? If anyone is going to, we’re putting our money on Bill. Until then, have a spooky day!

The post Inherited Traits, Inherited Psychic Gifts appeared first on Homespun Haints.

What is a wendigo?

The wwndigo is a cannibalistic beast who consumes the flesh of people that it encounters. Despite appropriations in pop culture, the windigo usually appears in human form. However, the windigo can never satisfy its hunger. In some legends, the windigo grows proportionally to the bounty it eats, so that it will always remain voracious no matter how hard it tries to sate its terrible hunger.

Where does the Wendigo come from?

You’ll find the word “Wendigo” spelled several different ways, depending on who is using it. The word itself comes from proto-Algonquin, and the legend of the Wendigo originates with the Algonquin First Nations, such as the Cree (wihtikow) and the Ojibwe (wiindigoo). Interestingly enough, the original proto-Algonquin word wintekowa also means “owl.” Linguistic anthropologist John Hewson argues that this etymological crossover occurs because many see an owl as a harbinger of death.

When does the Windigo appear?

You may encounter the Windigo in the northern United States and Canada during the winter months. Even though the concept originated with the First Nations people in these areas, the legend has since spread into other populations. Many people in northern North America will refuse to utter the word “windigo” during winter months, regardless of their heritage. Often, you’ll see the word written as “w*ndigo” because even writing the word could accidentally summon this beast.

Is the Windigo real though?

The Windigo certainly has real-world effects. It is a real fear, a real belief, a real parable that permeates multiple peoples and cultures throughout a large swath of the northern hemisphere. It also serves as a metaphor for a very real phenomenon: extreme greed. When greed consumes a person, their hunger is never sated. Because what drives them to consume more and more is not a physical hunger, but a psychological impairment.

More of a parable than a cryptid

Unlike cryptids that you’d encounter in nature, like the pukwudgie, or mysterious paranormal entities that seem to exist solely to scare us, like the Hat Man, the Windigo mainly serves as a valuable warning on how not to be selfish during the scarce winter months in colder climes. People must conserve their food. Communities must come together and share if each member is to survive. Villages may be called upon to help other villages who have fallen upon hard times. Greed has no place in this environment; if someone in one of these communities begins to hoard their food, the entire community could break down.

Sound familiar?

We have seen this phenomenon recently, in fact, very recently here in the U.S. Remember the toilet paper crisis of 2020? It’s very possible that if we had all focused on reducing the amount we use, instead of hoarding as much as we could find, there would’ve been plenty of TP to go around.

Modern representation

During colonial times, the Windigo often represented (and still represents) many of the horrors the First Nations people endured at the hands of settlers and colonial governments. Today, it often serves as a metaphor for the greed associated with capitalism and colonialism. However, unlike Western depictions in pop culture, many modern First Nations Windigo stories end with triumph over greed, and hope for the future.

Thank you for listening!

Have you had an experience with a Windigo or other paranormal entity? Please submit your story here, and you could be a guest on Homespun Haints!

The post Are Wendigo real? appeared first on Homespun Haints.

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Podcast About Ghost Evidence

Shawnna has always been sensitive to specters, as she learned from living in 2 haunted houses in Detroit as a kid. But none of that could’ve prepared her for the truly bizarre experience she and some girlfriends had one eerie night while attempting some light ghost summoning in the Indiana woods. Imagine yourself in the car with them, that night at the bridge…what would YOU have done, if you’d suddenly realized there was a fifth girl who wanted a ride, and she wouldn’t take “no” for an answer? Would you see this podcast episode’s story as evidence of ghost existence?

In today’s episode, a carload of spooked teen girls encounter odd apparitions in the dark Indiana woods, including a naked cowboy (ghost?), a forlorn dog, and a dead hitchhiker.

About the Guest: Shawnna

Today’s guest, Shawnna, is a fellow podcaster: she and her co-host Kristel host The Round Room, an oc-culture podcast. If you like your spooky paranormal with a side of true crime, go check it out. Shawnna’s podcast explores many of the same topics as our own. Listen as she and her co-host explore various true crime and paranormal cases with a large dash of irreverence. Some of these stories you won’t find anywhere else but on this podcast, so it’s worth a listen! You can follow them on Instagram @theroundroom or listen to the podcast here.

References

The Edna Collings Bridge

Shawnna had heard the story of the Edna Collings Bridge deep in the dark Greencastle, Indiana woods, where little Edna and her dog are still waiting for her parents to pick them up after swimming. She wasn’t so sure she believed the urban legends surrounding this spooky landmark. But sometimes (like this time), the first-hand experience is more shocking than the hype! Would you honk 3 times?

Until next time, beware of hitchhiking ghosts, and have a spooky day!

The post The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Afterlife appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Did you ever go to a sleepaway camp when you were a kid? Stay in a cabin or a tent in the woods, go horseback riding during the day, and tell spooky ghost stories around the campfire at night?

Did you ever wonder what your counselors did after you went to sleep? Because, you know that there were ghosts in those woods. And someone—like your brave camp counselor—had to keep those ghosts from bugging you while you slept.

Today, on Homespun Haints, we talk to Emily, who had to serve as a buffer between her little campers and some very sinister entities, deep in the Michigan woods.

Listen now:

Episode Summary: Emily’s Scariest True Ghost Stories

Emily Brown, like us, is a podcaster and someone who finds herself running into unexplainable things on a regular basis. When she was much younger, she worked at a sleepaway camp in a particularly haunted section of Michigan woods, not too far from Flint. Many stories of ghosts circulated about these woods, including the following.

• A lake that the camp had to make off-limits because of repeated sightings of a boy jumping into the lake and never re-emerging. Years before, a boy about the age of the one seen drowned in that very section of lake. His ghost still goes for a dip on a regular basis.
• A strange man dressed as an 19th century cowboy seen laying traps in the woods around the campsite.
• The hat man who would appear in the haunted slaughterhouse where many of the counselors stayed.
• A woman who was murdered in the woods in the ’90s whose soul still wanders, tormented, among the trees.

We won’t tell you which of these things Emily came face to face with; you’ll need to listen to the episode and then decide for yourself if it was a ghost.

About the Guest: Emily Brown

Emily, our guest this episode, is the host of the podcast Practical Chaos. You can check out the podcast’s site at practicalchaospodcast.com, and you can check out her Facebook page here.

What is a banshee?

Diana says that what Emily saw in those woods resembles a banshee. But what is a banshee? And what would it be doing in Michigan? And why was Emily the only one to see or hear her?

Irish folklore legend has it that only descendants from 5 Irish families possess the ability to hear the banshee’s wail. We didn’t quiz Emily on her ancestry. Besides, this Irish ghost’s wail is only audible if a family member is about to die. We didn’t quiz Emily on her premonitions of death.

The ghost in the haunted woods

Interestingly, though, Emily has a completely different theory for why the “banshee” appeared to her. She discusses Slender Man, the Creepypasta legend that comes into being just by pure will.

The strange thing Emily saw as a camp counselor isn’t the only thing she saw in those woods in haunted Michigan. As a young child, she saw something else as well. Like the banshee, that entity also started appearing after the stories started. Did this ghost—if that’s what it was—appear in those woods from the power of pure thought?

Could the Hat Man of Episode 9 be something made manifest through thoughts and fears alone? Would that explain why he appears all over the world, but to only certain people?

Much current thought suggests that it is possible to make dreams, nightmares, and fears, manifest merely by devoting the right amount of thought to them. In business buzz this is usually meant to be a good thing (not a method for conjuring demons from pure thought), though most of these methods do insist you work with positive thoughts.

Want to learn how to bring your dreams into existence through positive words and thoughts alone? Here’s a step-by-step guide for you. (Yes, please keep them positive—we don’t need any more Michigan banshees).

We want to bring you the scariest true ghost stories

Think your story is scary enough? Submit it here for a chance to be the next guest on Homespun Haints. Until then, have a spooky day!

The post The Banshee of Michigan appeared first on Homespun Haints.