Listen right here.

Real Life Ghosts and Monsters

Do monsters eat negative energy? We know many children are able to see ghosts, but Michele and her sister held onto that ability well into adulthood. Which is why it’s so apropos that she lived in a house where a recently deceased former resident made her presence known through bizarre plumbing glitches. One night, after an angry, unresolved fight with her then partner, Michele’s sister went to bed in the guest room with Michele for solidarity. And it’s a good thing they were sharing that bed and not alone that night, considering there was suddenly, terrifyingly, something else in the room. Something that thought her sister smelled…tasty?

Episode Promotions

Our episode promo is from Lady Teal’s Curios. You might remember Lady Teal from several of our live séances, including the first, where we talked with tarot to haunted objects.

Other links to check out

The Pink House

Check out The Pink House, a touching memoir of triumph and sisterhood written by Michele’s mother.

A winery you should look into

Michele mentioned Hidden Hangar Vineyards, one of her favorite wineries in Texas. Check it out if you’re a Lone-Star oenophile.

About the Guest: Michele

Michele is a pilot, a writer and a sommelier. A sommelier, as far as we understand it, is a professional drinker who helps us philistines figure out how to wine. Not like in a course for credit, but usually on-the-fly, tableside. Michele tells us that the North-Central Texas climate is perfect for growing Tempranillo, a Spanish varietal red wine grape. As a sommelier, she might might tell us that Tempranillo grapes make “medium- to full-bodied reds of moderate to high levels of tannins and acidity,” taste like “a mix of red and dark fruits, including cherry and plum, as well as earth and herbal notes;” that “its acidity can sometimes be citrusy and orange peel–like,” and that its traditional oak aging is what causes the vanilla and cocoa flavors in the final product.

We, as novices, had to get that info from Wine Spectator. It would be too embarrassing to try to look this up on our phones while we’re trying to choose a wine to pair with our red meat and roasted root veggies. The sommelier saves the day and saves our face by educating us in a way that we could nod along to. “Yes, orange-peely, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”

Could the filled-in pool in the backyard cause occurrences of real life ghosts?

Would filling an in-ground pool with cement cause the type of weird plumbing issues Michele experienced in the bathrooms of her sister’s haunted house? There is actually a wikiHow for the appropriate way to fill in your unwanted in-ground concrete pool. Note that filling it with cement is not the advisable way. Recommendations include busting holes in the bottom of the concrete pool for drainage (otherwise the empty pool might float up out of the ground when the water table rises) and filling it with dirt, sand, or crushed rocks.

Even with proper drainage and filled with dirt, the structure may continue to settle for a long time. This makes it against building code to build a structure on top of the filled-in pool. We’re guessing that means if you neglected poking drainage holes and filled the pool with concrete, it’s going to settle quite a bit more, just due to the massive weight of a solid block of concrete buried in dirt. That type of settling might cause some havoc with the pipes buried under the yard. Although you would think that whoever put the pool there in the first place would have avoided putting it directly over plumbing, you never know.

But some of the plumbing issues at Michele’s sister’s house feel completely inexplicable by citing damage to the outside plumbing. For example, how did those wet footprints get up the stairs? How did the water suddenly turn colder than the tap water gets in a Texas Summer? The argument that the tragedy that occurred in this pool caused some paranormal activity to ensue seems equally worth entertaining. Especially considering how it all culminated.

Of course, then again, this podcast is no stranger to haunted pipes. Check out It Came up the Drain for more haunted bathroom action!

We hope this monster mashup got you in the spirit of Halloween!

Have you ever seen anything as weird as what Michele saw? What on earth could that have been? Join us on social to weigh in on these important questions. And, if you do have your own haunted bathroom, it’s pretty guaranteed you’ll have a spooky day!

The post What Do We Smell Like To Monsters? appeared first on Homespun Haints.

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Paranormal Stories

In this episode, we talk to Emma Kay, comedian and podcaster. Emma Kay delights us with two very strange stories. We have absolutely no explanation, and many weird theories, as to how these stories even happened. If you have any thoughts as to what’s going on once you listen to the episode, please reach out to us on Facebook or Instagram and let us know!

About the Guest: Emma Kay

When we are not in the middle of a global pandemic, you can find Emma Kay performing at the Broadway Comedy Club in Manhattan. Follow her Facebook page @EmmaKayComedy to learn about her next show times. You can also listen to Emma Kay’s podcast, Funny Not Funny, where she interviews other comedians and discusses the emotional struggles that many comedians deal with behind the scenes.

Episode Show Notes

Ghosts or UFOs?

We don’t know what exactly Emma Kay saw in those woods around Camp Cedar Creek. It could have been ghosts, but is it possible she and her friends encountered extra-terrestrials playing human? The latter fits with other sightings common in that area. New Jersey itself has quite an exhaustive list of sightings you can browse through if you’re so inclined. Furthermore, if you’d prefer, Patch has put together a nice article about Jersey is a hot spot of UFO activity.

Of course, the Navy has officially released UFO footage (because 2020 is apparently the year to do such things). In light of the US government semi-confirming that some alien stories are true, every theory is up for grabs.

What is it about haunted campgrounds?

Emma Kay is not our first guest to have a real life ghost encounter with paranormal phenomena of some sort at a campground. A few episodes back, we heard from Emily Brown who ran smack into a Banshee while a counselor at a Boy Scout Camp. And in one of our Patreon episodes, our guest Jennifer found herself stranded in a cabin on a mountain with a lively yet dead roommate.

Enjoying our stories of real-life ghost encounters?

We really appreciate the opportunity to interview a haunted comedian, since we value the funny side of the paranormal as much as the scary side. We see no reason the two can’t exist within the same true short ghost stories. Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post The Things In the Woods: Mysterious Encounters 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.