Episode Summary: Paranormal Investigations and Ghost Tours in Alabama

When you visit a haunted location, it’s all fun and games until something follows you home. The Southern Ghost Girls, a team of paranormal investigators in Alabama and surrounding states, use period equipment, clothing, and tools to communicate with the ghosts in haunted homes, museums, and jails. However, they’ve had a few encounters with entities that wanted to keep interacting, even after they started on their way home.

Let’s chat with Lesley and Makayla, just two psychic Southern girls trying to preserve history and help people, today, on Homespun Haints.

AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

About the Guests: The Southern Ghost Girls

The Southern Ghost Girls Tours and Paranormal Investigations, LLC is a team of about 10 professional women who perform paranormal investigations and lead tours in Alabama, Georgia, and the rest of the South. They focus on US history and historical value. To honor that, they donate profits back into the historical venues they investigate to help with preservation. And even more fun, they dress in period costume to ghost hunt!

Everyone on the team has some sort of inborn or inherited psychic gifts. Also, they have all agreed to use their gift for the good of mankind. Today we speak with founder Leslie Ann Hyde of Birmingham, Alabama, and paranormal investigator Makayla Neighbors of Jasper, Georgia. Follow them on Facebook to keep up with their investigations. Join them on one of their tours or investigations at SouthernGhostGirls.com and experience a real live paranormal investigation for yourself!

Episode Show Notes about Psychics who Work with the Police and More

Ghosts of The Haunted Jasper Jail in Talking Rock, GA

Makayla tells us about the many ghosts at her hometown historic prison, including:

• Shadow Man on the men’s side upstairs.
• Cherokee spirits still bound up in the Trail of Tears on the Old Federal Road.
• Children of the old sheriff, in the sheriff’s quarters.
• The entire family haunting the Kirby Quinton Cabin next door.
• The elemental shape-shifter that attached to Leslie Ann and followed her on her drive home.

Since they lead tours of the jail, the Southern Ghost Girls are familiar with all of the above. But none of the Jasper Jail ghosts could have prepared them for what followed them home from the Brown-Proctor Museum.

What is a human pendulum?

Becky uses a pendulum to speak to ghosts when a Ouija board would be too clunky. Becky’s pendulum is a semi-precious, carved, polished stone in a plumb bob shape that dangles from the end of a delicate chain. But really, any necklace or bob can be used as a pendulum, as it purportedly runs on intention and spirit interaction. Several guests we’ve had on the show use some sort of pendulum similarly. But what else can you use as a pendulum?

According to our guests today, one’s very body can be a pendulum, in the right circumstances. Since the spirit has to directly manipulate the person acting as pendulum, this adds a whole new creepy factor to ghost hunting. According to Makayla, it can be a very intense physical experience for the person acting as the pendulum. Does the spirit possess the person-pendulum, or just shove them around a bit? Or does the spirit merely whisper suggestions into the person-pendulum’s subconscious, causing them to sway subconsciously in the direction that gets the spirit’s point across? Or is the person-pendulum allowing their intuition to subconsciously guide their sway?

What is a tipping table?

The tipping table is a classic Victorian spiritualist movement tool. Leslie Ann says it was popularized by Queen Victoria herself, and that mediums of the day may have used a tipping table for readings for the likes of Mary Todd Lincoln and Albert Einstein.

We had grand visions of ghosts literally toppling the séance table, like an angry drunk losing at Monopoly. But the reality is much more modest. Basically, a tipping table is a marble top lazy susan. The mediums and spiritual séance attendees put their fingertips lightly on the lazy susan like they would a planchette. When the lazy susan spins, the medium interprets the message based on a meaning she establishes with the ghosts. If you compare it to other spirit communication methods, a tipping table is basically a large pendulum.

Do the police really work with psychics to solve murders?

While it may sound like the theme of a TV show from the Naughties, the police in Auburn, Alabama are actually open to working with a psychic medium to solve crimes! In this episode, Leslie Ann tells a story about the time she just couldn’t not come forward with her knowledge. Most surprisingly, the police still treated her with respect even after they realized she had gleaned her knowledge on the case through clairvoyance.

Should you wear period costume while you ghost hunt?

Part of what sets The Southern Ghost Girls apart from other paranormal investigators is that they dress in period costume while they ghost hunt (and while they do live interviews, which is really what makes us love them). In today’s episode, they go into details about how this practice comforts the spirits they attempt to contact. As female-led and female-dominated team, they find their strength in gently and respectfully meeting the spirits on their own terms, at their own comfort levels. Leslie Ann believes this is what gets them the awesome evidence they frequently collect.

Paranormal investigations and Ghost Tours in Alabama

What do you think? Would the police in your town work with the evidence brought forth by a psychic medium? And would you dress in period costume to get better ghost hunt evidence? Would you visit the ghosts at the haunted Jasper Jail, knowing they might follow you home? Is there a right or wrong way how to be a medium? If you do, that’ll be a spooky day!

The post Do the police really work with psychics to solve murders? appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Listen to this episode here:

Episode Summary

Why do those shadow ghosts Joelle sees in her peripheral vision always disappear when she looks straight at them? Is it that they shy away from eye contact, or does looking directly at them somehow limit her ability to perceive them? And what do they have to do with the invisible visitor that shared her childhood bedroom?

Episode Show Notes

About Joelle Velez

Joelle reads tarot, performs reiki, designs shirts, and crafts candles and oils for use in magickal practice. You can purchase her mystical goods and distance reiki on her Etsy store, or get yourself an early Halloween present from her online clothing shop. Connect with her on Instagram to keep up with her latest news.

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Episode References about Shadow People

What’s the difference between shadow people in peripheral vision and spirits?

“Shadow people” is a phrase used to describe supernatural entities which appear as an absence of light. Physical objects cast shadows, but if you see a shadow that is not cast by a physical object, which appears to have agency—almost to cast itself—you might be looking at a shadow figure. The Hat Man is one famous shadow person with a sinister reputation. While previous guests have described shadow people as more sinister than spirits of the deceased, Joelle’s experience has been different.

Could anything else cause someone to see shadow people in their peripheral vision?

We’ve all seen things that we thought were eyelashes, stray hairs, or just plain shadows. But what if you eliminate all those “other” things and you still are seeing shadows in your peripheral vision. Could it be you’re seeing something that is supernatural?

Why do shadow people lurk in doorways?

Becky posits during this episode that doorways are liminal spaces, which always seem to be haunted. That comment led Diana deep down the rabbit hole of speculation, especially since she frequently saw shadows in her peripheral vision which darted through doorways while working at the haunted ski lodge. Catch up with Diana’s rambling thoughts here.

Can dogs sense spirits?

Joelle’s father recommended she bring the dog in her room to see if she would exhibit any strange behavior that could corroborate Joelle’s experiences. But throughout her stories, Joelle specifies multiple times that whatever dog was in the room had no reaction to what she was seeing.

It is indeed possible that, when a dog senses something that you sense, it’s not perceiving the ghost so much as perceiving your perception of the ghost. Smelling your fear, so to speak. It’s also very feasible that dogs just sense a lot of normal, rather than paranormal things that we cannot, and so they seem paranormal to us.

While the common trope of dogs’ superior sense of smell isn’t 100% scientifically accurate per-se, their hearing is demonstrably more sensitive, as is their night vision. With these heightened senses, there’s a good chance dogs can sense ghosts. And yet, as cat people, we just had to pose the argument that there’s at least one kind of companion animal that does it better.

What are spirit guides?

Joelle believes that everyone has a spirit guide. We’ve heard before that mediums have more of them, but that doesn’t mean that more are necessarily better. But what actually are spirit guides? Are spirit guides spirits of the deceased? If so, are they ancestors from this life, or friends from a past life? If not, are they guardian angels? Are they the same thing as spirit animals?

Based on an amalgam of the opinions of our diverse guests, my interpretation is as follows. Spirit guides are whatever you need them to be. They are equivalent to energy, a guiding force in our lives. Just because some people see a spectral wolf following beside them, while others see an angel of light descending from the heavens does not make either person wrong.

Even being able to see or sense this energy is a gift, or perhaps a talent that can be developed. but just because you may not see yours doesn’t mean it isn’t there. If you can’t sense yours, that may just mean its energy is taking a form that’s more amenable to you. You may sense it as a gut feeling. You may notice the recurrence of a particular number or image in the tangible world. They may just be those shadows in your peripheral vision.

How do you use a pendulum to communicate with ghosts and spirit guides?

A pendulum is a divining device used to answer yes/no questions. This can be complicated and meaningful, like an obsidian pyramid on a chain made of stones representing the colors of the chakras, and a board of potential answers, like yes, no, maybe, and undecided. You can watch how Becky used a fancy pendulum set to talk with some entities on a Civil War battlefield on our 2022 haunted Nashville trip. But a pendulum can also be Macgyvered out of your necklace by dropping a ring around it. Hell, a strand of hair with an earring or shoelace with a bead would even do the trick.

When using a pendulum for divining, the method is fairly simple. For your pleasure, here’s a quick primer on how to talk to ghosts with a pendulum.

How to use a pendulum to talk to ghosts and other entities:

1. Hold the dangling pendulum still.
2. Say (aloud, preferably) something like “give me your highest and truest ‘yes'”.
3. Wait patiently for the pendulum to sway back and forth. This direction now stands for “yes,” meaning the perpendicular direction would stand for “no”.
4. Completely still the pendulum with your other hand, and ask your yes/no question.
5. Wait patiently for the pendulum to swing back and forth, using the direction to glean your answer.
6. If the direction of sway is neither a clear yes or no, it’s either a “maybe” or your hand is jittery. You can always still the pendulum and try again.

Is pendulum divination real?

Is this practice vulnerable to faking or false-reads? Oh yes, absolutely. It’s ideal for the pendulum holder to attempt to relax, clear their mind, and focus on actually keeping their hand as still as possible. It’s tempting to try to hurry the pendulum up by giving it a little jostle, but if you consciously move your hand at all, you’ll never get an answer from anything outside your own conscious mind.

But with the fallibility of the human body, it’s easy to argue that your small subconscious movements influence the “answer” the “ghosts” are giving the pendulum. I’d like to reframe this objection with the response, “so what?” Our subconscious minds are amazing. Worlds worth of knowledge and information exist within our subconscious minds, that our conscious minds usually have very little access to. Some of this secret knowledge might come from the other side, or a higher power, who is really to say? I believe it’s fair to argue that, while the conscious mind is busy attempting to still the hand, the subconscious mind could be generating micro-movements that do actually answer our question. The pendulum is merely the amplifier which magnifies these tiny hints.

How do you use tarot cards to answer yes or no questions?

What if you don’t even have a hack pendulum, but you’ve got some cards? There are several ways card readers use the cards to quickly answer simple yes or no questions. One way is to pull any card as you usually do. If the card is upright it’s a yes, if it’s reversed, it’s a no.

Like a little more mysticism and well familiar with your deck? You could allow your own feelings about the card’s meaning to lean towards positive (“yes”) or negative (“no”). This technique allows for a third answer: “maybe,” for those cards that are neutral or unclear. It also allows the reader to use common playing cards, which may look identical when upright or reversed.

What can a parent do to help a haunted kid?

In this episode, Joelle laments that there was no right answer that her father could’ve known when she asked him about the entity in her bedroom. Really, “no right answer” is canon for being a parent in a lot of situations.

When your kids come to you saying they saw something that you can’t explain, our guests overwhelmingly advise reassuring your children that you believe they are telling the truth. Actually listen when they tell you about the entities they’re witnessing. And then go ahead and follow through on believing, because the kids are probably seeing more than you are. Those shadows you see in your peripheral vision might be images as clear as you and me to their young, impressionable eyes. Help them have the good kind of spooky day!

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