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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.

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.

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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!

The post What Bit Me? A True Paranormal Story from Iowa appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Listen here:

Listen to “The Ghost Hunter of South Florida” on Spreaker.

Episode Summary of The Ghost Hunter of South Florida

Paranormal investigators use countless tools and devices to capture impressions from the other side. Us mere mortals usually can’t perceive this faint evidence with our regular five senses. But lore tells us that the more we expose ourselves to ghosts, the more we develop our ability to see them. So, does that mean if you regularly investigate haunted locations, you may start seeing more with your eyes than with your recording devices?

Today, on Homespun Haints, we sit down with paranormal investigator Eric, the Ghost Hunter of South Florida. We chatted about some of the things he has experienced while on his myriad investigations. Pour yourself a nice, hot cup of cocoa, cause this episode might give you the chills.

Episode Promos

This week’s podcast promo is for The West London Witch. We were guests on her show and it was a delight, but we really enjoy listening to her podcast as well!

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Show Notes from The Ghost Hunter of South Florida

About Eric

Eric goes by The Ghost Hunter of South Florida, but that’s not all. Eric helped to found the company Ghostly Experiences, Inc. According to their website, the vision of Ghostly Experiences, Inc. is two-fold. One, to bring ghost hunting into the main stream and give the public an opportunity to search for answers. Two, to teach and share their decades of experience in the paranormal field. Their aim is to teach civilians how to conduct a proper and honest investigation. They hope to bolster the reputation of the entire field of paranormal research by promoting evidence-based ghost hunting.

You can follow Eric on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. War Party Paranormal, is also on FB and IG. Eric works at the nonprofit with his buddy Joe, who helps people with haunted homes get answers. War Party is also featured regularly on Univision paranormal shows. Eric has investigated with our friends Karly of the Haunted Housewives. He has also worked with Stephanie of Stephanie Marie Marketing, and Kat from The Bewitching Hour. He’s been a guest on The Dead Hours YouTube show. He also spoke at ParaExperience 2021 at the Biltmore in Tahoe, NV.

Why is this crappy old recorder so good for ghost hunting?

The Panasonic DR60 is an old, glitchy audio recorder that is no longer in production because it basically sucks. And yet, Eric credits some of his ghost hunting success to owning most of the Panasonic DR60s still in existence. Apparently, ghost hunters will pay thousands for these recorders any time one pops up on ebay. They owe their usefulness to the same quality that made them fall out of mainstream favor: they often pick up strange sounds that nobody heard in real time. Hmmm…sounds familiar.

No language barrier for spirits

As a regular contributor on Univision, the biggest Spanish-language televsion channel in the US, Eric is at least somewhat bilingual. But the ghosts speak to him in English. He has enough experience with EVPs, spirit boxes, and oviluses (ovili?) to confidently say that spirits will use the language of the investigator to communicate. This despite all evidence suggesting that the deceased never spoke that language. We’re thrilled to hear this, as we believe it finally settles Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous debate over faked spiritualism. Well, we’re mostly just excited about what this means for our goal of a haunted world tour someday.

Haunted museums

There are a lot of haunted museums in Florida! Eric talks about the Gold Coast Railroad Museum, which apparently has a haunted blimp hangar, whaaa?! War Party Paranormal also investigated at the 1911 Old Davie Schoolhouse Museum. And next time you’re in South Florida, so can you, through Ghostly Experiences, Inc.

Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post The Ghost Hunter of South Florida appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Listen to her story below.

Episode Summary

You’ve probably been told that ghosts can’t hurt you. Is that really true?

Erin has lived a pretty haunted life. What would you do if you encountered multiple supernatural entities—from the battlefields of Gettysburg to dark and cold cemeteries? If you were Erin, you’d turn it into a lifelong hobby and career as a paranormal investigator! The many terrifying stories she recounts in this episode were about enough to scare us away from ghost hunting, but they only made Erin curious to investigate more!

About the Guest: Erin Egnatz, Paranormal Investigator

Erin is a paranormal investigator who will not be deterred, no matter how scary her investigations get! You can find her blog and videos on her ghost hunts at hauntingsaroundamerica.com. Then, check out Erin’s books, including Hauntings Around America, available on Amazon. Finally, follow her on Facebook or Instagram to keep up with her upcoming investigations.

How to Use Crystals for Protection from Dangerous Ghosts

Erin never visits any haunted place without a layer of protection from her favorite crystals. Two of the stones she showed us during the interview included selenite, a crystalline form of gypsum, and smoky quartz, a clouded version of the popular watch component.

Does Selenite protect you from ghosts?

Have you considered using crystals as protection from dangerous paranormal entities? Check out medium Dixie Tantardini’s guide to spiritual protection. In this article, Tantardini says that selenite “cleanses/purifies, invites guides to be present to support your efforts, provides spiritual insights, clarifies situations, promotes access to past and future lives.”

Can smoky quartz protect paranormal investigators from harm?

Caroline Lucas of meanings.crystalsandjewelry.com states that smoky quartz can improve your survival instinct and ground you in the physical world, while also banishing negative energy and heightening insight.

Using crystals for spiritual protection is getting quite mainstream nowadays. For instance, even big popular publications Bustle and Refinery29 suggest using selenite for protection from potentially dangerous hauntings and bringing smoky quartz along on a paranormal investigation.

Erin gets her personal protection crystals from The Crystal Lady of Crown Point, IN.

John Dillinger’s Escape from the Crown Point Jail

Have you heard of how John Dillinger escaped prison? It involves a classic escape plan, including whittling a fake gun. Sounds pretty looney tunes now, but apparently there was a time when this was highly effective. This dangerous haunted jail is just one of many that this intrepid paranormal investigator has hunted ghosts at.

Want more ghost stories from paranormal investigators?

Some of our best paranormal podcast episodes are interviews with paranormal investigators! After you finish this episode, you might want to listen to our interview with Daryl Marston from Ghost Hunters or the interview with Leslie and Makayla from The Southern Ghost Girls.

Hungry for more? Head over to Patreon to listen to an extra bonus story Erin tells us about yet another haunted bridge in Indiana, plus hear Becky and Diana pontificate about trolls. Please join us; it’s the best way to support our podcast and have a spooky day!

The post You Can’t See its Mouth, But You Know it’s Grinning appeared first on Homespun Haints.