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Episode Summary: the Ghosts of Santa Monica and Real Vampires of Romania

During our recent trip to California, Amber and Diana took the Santa Monica Pier ghost tour. And the tour guide was none other than today’s guest, Mihaela! She shares with us a little of the history of the city and where you can get the best view of its otherworldly residents. She also gives us some insight into the real vampires from her hometown in Romania. Settle in for some sunny and sinister ghost stories.

Haunted History of Santa Monica

Pearl of the Pacific. Jewel of Sunset Bay. And home to many, many ghosts. Groups of crows gather around the cannons in Palisades Park to carry supernatural messages to the spirits of the soldiers that haunt there.

Spirits from a car crash haunt boldly in broad daylight under the Arizona Avenue Pedestrian Bridge, seen here in the background on the right.

About the Guest: Mihaela Roe

Mihaela Roe is a ghost tour guide in the blissful oceanside city of Santa Monica, California. If you’d like to take the tour that Diana and Amber took with Mihaela, it’s the US Ghost Adventures Santa Monica Pier Ghost Tour. She’s also a retired professor. But, as she says, one never truly retires from being a professor. She currently teaches Romanian and Latin language classes through Strommen. You can sign up for a Latin or Romanian language class with Mihaela here.

Saint Monica, The Patron Saint of Santa Monica, California

The patron saint of widows, alcoholics, victims of abuse and adultery, and mothers facing family difficulties is also the patron saint of this city by the sea. Before Saint Monica was a saint, she was a real woman, born in 333 AD North Africa. In this episode, Mihaela shares a little bit of Santa Monica’s inspiring story, but she reviews even more details during the live ghost tour of the pier.

And if you want to be a patron as well, why, we make it much easier than it was in the 4th century! Nowadays, all you have to do is head over to Patreon.com/homespunhaints. Even the lowest tier membership comes with free admission to our big basement secret passage reveal livestream on September 24th, 2023.

Premonitions in Dreams

Mihaela had a vivid dream about her long lost colleague losing a pregnancy at the exact time that was really happening in a distant land. Then, her own dead relatives kept telling her what to do in her dreams. In one recurring dream, her father’s spirit wouldn’t leave her alone about moving to America. When she realized that her dream about her colleague’s pregnancy was a real-time premonition of an actual event, that lent weight to her deceased father’s argument.

Mihaela speculates that her paranormal sensory experiences, including these premonitions of death, might be due to her Romanian DNA.

Are There Real Vampires in Romania?

Mihaela says that the spirits haunting the Santa Monica Pier are nonconfrontational (as long as you don’t take their jewelry). But some of the spirits in her hometown in Romania might not be so friendly. She explains that the line between the living world and the “other world” is traditionally very thin in Romania. And that many people there have had actual experiences with real Romanian vampires.

Far from the sexy, immortal monsters we associate with the word, real, traditional Romanian vampires are the restless spirits of real people who, during life, engaged in evil deeds and dark sorcery. These vampiric spirits, still in league with dark forces of the underworld, maintain the habit of doing harm to other people, even after death.

Many Eastern European vampire stories we’ve heard have more in common with ghost stories than the story of Dracula. At the northern reaches of Eastern Europe, vampires are way worse than their fictional American counterparts. The Polish strzyga is a particularly terrifying monster. But on the east coast of the region, vampires are less monstrous, and more just…well, annoying and sad.

Do Real Vampires Drink Blood?

In Romanian tradition, vampires don’t necessarily drink blood. Nor can they create other vampires this way. In Romanian folklore, someone can become a vampire if that person did something despicable in life, and died never having had the chance or the inspiration to atone and confess. In other words, Romanian vampires are similar to your classic restless haints. A vampire demonstrates it’s presence via sudden spikes in misfortune or illness after the death of a local wicked person.

Modern Vampire Hunting and Vanquishing

If you get the chance to visit Romania, you can leave your wooden stakes and garlic at home. Sure, small remote areas across the globe all have their quirky traditions and superstitions, some of which likely inspired Stoker to pen the rules which would become canon to the Western concept of vampire-vanquishing. But modern Romanian rituals to help real vampires rest in peace more commonly involve an exorcism by a priest, and basically nothing else from the Hollywood vampire-fighting repertoire. Except maybe a cross. Nowadays, Romanian vampire rituals focus instead on helping the tormented spirit to break the cycle of harm and attain God’s forgiveness.

I’ll Eat Your Skin to Gain Your Beauty

Did glue used to be made out of bulls or horses? What about gelatin? What about fancy tea? There are likely several benefits to consuming collagen (or gelatin, but definitely not glue). But they probably aren’t the benefits that you’d intuit.

It is sadly not true that eating collagen will result in that collagen becoming big pouty duck lips. It is true that dietary and supplemental collagen contains the 4 amino acids that your body needs to produce collagen: glycine, proline, lysine and hydroxyproline. But so do many animal products (and some vegetarian foods, too). The consumed collagen is digested down into its parts; amino acids. Your body then uses dietary vitamin C, zinc, copper, and manganese to reassemble these 4 amino acids BACK into collagen within the body, if your body deems it appropriate to do so in the moment.

A tall, refreshing glass of iced meat

Some “collagen” supplements contain all 8 of these building blocks, and thus might result in more collagen production in the body…maybe, if the diet is otherwise deficient in these building blocks. And that might have an effect on how you look…maybe, if you are young and healthy enough to do this whole process efficiently. Collagen supplements without these additional nutrients and trace minerals, well, you might as well slap a “supports healthy, beautiful skin, hair, nails, and joints” label on every single package of meat at the grocery store.

That’s right; hydrolyzed collagen protein is basically pure liquid meat. Oh, don’t go making that face. You eat broth and gelatin, don’t you?

Romanian Vampire Folklore and The Haunted Santa Monica Pier

What a twofer! This really was only a very small part of the history of Santa Monica that we heard on the ghost tour we took with Mihaela. If you take a ghost tour of the Santa Monica Pier, let us know what you think. If you think you witnessed a haunting, submit your ghost story to be invited as a guest on a future episode of Homespun Haints. And if you find Arcadia’s ghostly jewelry on the ground by the cannons in Palisades Park, don’t take it! Or you’ll risk having a spooky day!

The post The Westernmost Haunting on Route 66 appeared first on Homespun Haints.

The Tunnel of Death

On October 2, 1925, workers for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad were in the process of trying to widen the Church Hill Tunnel, a long-unused railway tunnel that had been closed a decade prior. The tunnel already carried the moniker of “The Tunnel of Death”—the passageway had been constructed through soft, quicksand-like soil that liked to eat workers and dislodge building foundations much like the living sand in McDowell’s The Elementals.

But alas, for some reason on that fateful day, the C&O sent nearly hundreds of workers and a steam engine into the tunnel of doom in hopes of getting it ready for recommission.

You know where this is going, right? The tunnel collapsed. Most of the men made it out alive. A few, however, were not so lucky. Tom Mason, the engineer, was pinned inside the cab of the train; rescuers recovered his body nine days later. Benjamin Mosby, the train’s fireman, was shoveling coal when the tunnel collapsed. The boiler exploded, severely burning Mosby. He made it out of the tunnel alive—barely—by crawling under the train. But he died shortly thereafter from his injuries.

The Richmond Vampire

Here’s where the legend begins. Witnesses claimed to see a man hovering over an injured worker outside of the tunnel. At first, onlookers thought the man was a doctor come to help the survivors. But, legend tells that the man began drinking the blood of the victim. When others tried to stop the mysterious man, he darted off and disappeared into the crypt of William Wortham Pool’s grave in Hollywood Cemetery. And thus, the lore of the Richmond Vampire was born.

W.W. Pool was a bookkeeper who died in 1922—three years before the tunnel collapse. His crypt in Hollywood Cemetery has suffered so much vandalism by would-be vampire seekers that his body and his wife’s body have been moved. The crypt remains, and it’s pretty creepy looking. The crypt is inscribed with the date 1913, which is the year Mrs. Pool died.

So, was W.W. Pool of Richmond a vampire who snuck out of his tomb to feed on the blood of the injured? Perhaps, but more commonly it’s believed that Mosby, burned, mangled, and disoriented, resembled a vampire as he stumbled out of the tunnel. Perhaps he wandered toward Pool’s crypt in his delirium before being taken away to the hospital where he eventually died.

But New Orleans has vampires, right?

And what of New Orleans’ vampires? GenXers like myself are well aware of the stories of Lestat and Louis navigating the centuries in this Spanish-moss dripping town, and younger generations grew up with Sookie and her entourage hanging in nearby small-town Louisiana. But New Orleans does have a bit of history that helps justify the its vampiric undertones. Look up the “casket girls” to learn about the New Orleans legend of the mysterious flock of women who arrived with some very unusual luggage.

Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post W.W. Pool, the Vampire of Richmond appeared first on Homespun Haints.

On this episode of Homespun Haints, hear Michelle’s real ghost story about what she and her roommate saw during the most frightening night of their lives. Unlike most of the ghosts Michelle has encountered, the figure in her DC apartment did not seem to have a benign agenda.

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About the Guest: Michelle Mercurio

We’re so excited to meet Michelle Mercurio, and we’re sure you will be, too! Check out her professional branding and copywriting site at michellemercurio.com, her more esoteric professional witchy business site yourresidentwitch.com, or follow her on Instagram at @michmerc. You can also check out her podcast, Open Sesame, the same places you listen to ours.

The Vampire of Richmond

A train crash, a mysterious man drinking the blood of the victims, and a disappearance into a crypt! All these legends (or history?) surround the mysterious William Wortham Pool. But was he a real vampire?

Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post The Richmond Vampire appeared first on Homespun Haints.

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Episode Summary

Running a podcast out of a haunted building can be a bit tricky at times, especially when the haints start messing with the internet. Luckily, someone in our office left some palo santo, which I used with verve to clear out all the nasties. Once the spirits left, the internet connection stabilized.

Next, we spoke with Beth, a minister’s daughter born with her family’s hereditary ability to see and sense spirits. Beth told us about living in the parsonage next to an old cemetery, and all the strange shells of the dead who bothered her from time to time. Strange men walked through the halls, an early 19th-century woman floated by her bedroom window, and a back door periodically shook as if someone unseen were trying to open it. And that’s just the beginning.

Haunted Buildings From This Story

Beth recounted other spooky experiences that continued to happen to her throughout adulthood, in Richmond, New Orleans, Eureka Springs, and in Michigan. She wouldn’t tell us too much about her current home, however, because she didn’t want to disturb the spirits residing in her house. We did record this interview at night, after all.

The Row Houses of Richmond Virginia

Beth’s roommates were real assholes by not telling her of the history of the row house they all rented together in Richmond. One shared experience, however, and they all bolted from that abode.

Richmond is an incredibly historic (and haunted) city, and the row houses are no exception. If you aren’t familiar with the architecture of Richmond, here are some beautiful photos of the Fan District of Richmond, showcasing some gorgeous Edwardian row house architecture.

Also, what the hell is a vegan punk?

The Absurdly Haunted Le Richelieu Hotel Building

Even if you haven’t listened to the episode yet, you’ve probably heard of the Le Richelieu – a haunted building. It’s stupid haunted. But, then again, so is all of New Orleans. Which is probably why Beth noted the uneasy feelings coming from the convent next to the hotel.

Then again, that particular convent is special. Stories abound. The St. Ursuline nuns of this particular convent housed the newly-arrived, sickly-looking girls and their casket-shaped luggage until they could be married off. The nuns housed the girls on the third floor, and nailed the shutters closed from the outside. With nails blessed by the Pope himself. If you haven’t heard the story of this particular convent and its strange inhabitants, you’ve probably already made the connection with New Orleans vampires.

There’s so much more to this episode, but we don’t want to ruin the surprise. So listen in!

Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post We’re Walking Through Blood appeared first on Homespun Haints.

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Who is the Top Hat Man?

This has been documented all over the world, yet they remain a complete mystery.

This uninvited shadow stranger even appears in Netflix’s series The Haunting of Hill House. Or, at least, he’s referenced. Want to learn more? Of course you do. Check out this article (if you dare).

For some images of this phenomenon caught on camera, and for information about support groups for those who have encountered this traumatizing evil entity, check out the Hatman Project.

What is the Hat Man?

Several theories exist. The Hat Man could be a ghost, a shadow person, an evil spirit, a sleep paralysis demon, or even the Devil. One favorite theory of ours was inspired by our interview with April the Psychic Housewife, when she was teaching us about the different types of ghosts. One of the entities she described was a kind of evil soul wrangler, who collects lost spirits, turning them away from the light and making them into shadow people. This could very well mean that the shadow man we call the Hat Man might in fact be multiple entities of this nature.

Is the Hat Man a Shadow Person?

It’s hard to answer this question, considering there’s no universal definition of shadow people, either. We’ve heard that shadow people are the earthbound spirits of the deceased, but also that they’re evil shadow entities that never were people to begin with. Shadow people tend to be more ephemeral than descriptions of the Hat Man, who has a relatively strong energy, a more well-defined (albeit dark) face and form, and causes more fear.

You can also find some interesting information and pictures at the older site of Shadow People archives.

There’s something different about this tall shadow figure.

Many paranormal enthusiasts believe that shadow people are a type of spirit. We hear terms like “shadows of the deceased” and “shadows of the dead,” implying that these shadow people are just another way some folks observe ghosts.

Is the Hat Man a living person?

What people see is probably not a physically-present body of a living human person, dressed in an actual hat and coat. They’re probably not even seeing an actual living person casting a real shadow. Hat Man sightings definitely seem to be paranormal phenomena, based on accounts.

However, we’ve heard the theory that the Hat Man is the astral projection of a living person. In other words, at the very moment one person is seeing the shadowy figure of the Hat Man, somewhere else, perhaps in a totally different corner of the world, is practicing astral projection, sending their consciousness out into the world to…do what?

What does he want?

There’s no real consensus to what the Hat Man wants, or what is the main purpose of him appearing to someone. Examining his behavior hardly helps. Most of the time, witnesses describe his actions as pretty banal, even when they come with strong feelings of fear or doom. The Hat Man is known mainly for basically standing still in the same place for a while, at a bit of a distance (like in the corner of a dark room, just outside the bedroom door, or across a street) and silently observing people.

In at least one account we’ve heard, he approached someone’s bed without waking them from sleep (we know because his sister was watching from her bed in the other corner of the room). Is it possible nobody has managed to catch the Hat Man acting out his true intentions because he already did so while they were still asleep?

What does the Hat Man look like?

This notorious shadow man can appear in different ways, from purely physical to pure shadow. He is, however, always dressed basically the same way: a very tall shadowy figure wearing a black brimmed hat like a top hat, and a long trench coat-style garment. People describe him as similar to a shadow: ill-defined, and hard to focus on, but not usually transparent. We’ve heard that even when he’s standing under a bright light, the light does not really illuminate him, almost as if he’s actually made of shadow. The scariest thing we’ve heard about the Hat Man’s appearance from our true paranormal story interviews is that you can’t quite see the facial features of the shadow man, but you just know he is smiling. That just feels soooooo wrong.

Depending on the witness, he may even be wearing various hats. Most people see him wearing a top hat, but others report a fedora, a southwestern cowboy hat, or even a gaucho hat. Also, depending on the popular culture of the time period when he’s spotted, that trench coat he’s wearing could be the solid outline of more old-timey clothes, like a duster, or a cloak, or a cape.

Does the Hat Man always appear as a dark shadow?

Some reports include an unusual detail that feels out of place on a shadow, like a gold pocket watch, or glowing red eyes, but those are less common. To be honest, these inconsistencies sound like embellishments. The rare sightings of the Hat Man having red eyes and a golden pocket watch feel more likely to be dreams or hallucinations or even false accounts, but I suppose these could be explained by a secondary source of red light or golden reflection showing through the shadow from behind or something. Or, perhaps what we think is just one shadow man in a hat is actually multiple shadow people who dress and act alike?

A true story about seeing the Hat Man

In her story, our guest speaker Marjorie says the Hat Man looks a little like Nosferatu to her. That’s not particularly comforting to us. After all, the iconic vampire villain, played by Max Schreck in the 1921 silent film, is still surrounded in dark mystery and intrigue. Where did these legends come from? Was Max Schreck really a vampire himself, and Nosferatu is his personal story? Why were most original copies of the movie burned? Find these answers and more in this Mental Floss article.

Our guest Marjorie also says the Hat Man looks like a cross between Max Schreck and Gabriel Byrne from Miller’s Crossing. We’ll let you mentally put that one together yourself. Listen to Marjorie’s personal story about the Hat Man’s visit to her childhood home.

How to see the Hat Man

You might want to reconsider your desire to see the Hat Man for yourself. Many encounters are described as incredibly scary, ominous, and dark. Many who have a story about seeing the Hat Man in real life believe he had evil intentions, or attempted to cause some sort of harm. There are some reports of the Hat Man actually attacking people.

Two other common methods of seeing the Hat Man are in dreams and during sleep paralysis.

What does it mean to see this shadow figure in a Nightmare?

Depending on your beliefs, dreams might be complete fanciful imagination, or they could be an important message to the asleep person, either from the subconscious or an external entity. Therefore, a nightmare about the Hat Man could mean anything, couldn’t it?

When we picture having a nightmare of the Hat Man, we have to wonder: was Freddy Krueger inspired by a real sighting of the Hat Man? After all, both get you while you sleep, and neither is ever without their signature brimmed hat.

Is the Hat Man a sleep paralysis demon?

The crazy thing about sleep paralysis is that during this phenomenon, one is kind of both awake and asleep at the same time. When we go into REM sleep, our brain turns down our ability to move our body; that’s why most people don’t sleepwalk or roll off their bed every night while they dream, like they might do during night terrors.

Sleep paralysis is a phenomenon that happens when a person is in the process of waking up (or sometimes falling asleep. The part of the brain with our consciousness wakes up, and the eyes open, but the part of the brain that shuts down movement in sleep is still somewhat active. The result being, one feels fully awake and paralyzed Also, that person can see the room or the dark world in shadow around them, but may also see…other things. The nature of these other things is debatable…are they seeing ghosts, demons, hallucinations, or dreams?

What is a sleep paralysis demon?

Dreams would be the most likely explanation, given that the person experiencing the phenomenon is only half awake, half stuck in REM sleep. The timeless nature of dreams would also explain why it seems to go on for a while after coming out of full sleep, when in reality it probably only lasts a few seconds. Yet we know of at least one true sleep paralysis demon story where multiple people seemed to be seeing the same black figure in the room during sleep paralysis. And many people who report seeing a dark shadow entity during sleep paralysis describe that shadow person as evil, or even demonic.

Another crazy phenomenon people experience during sleep paralysis is the feeling of something—or someone—sitting or standing on their chest, pinning their body down to their bed. This is usually explained away as just their body trying to fight the sleep paralysis, but in the moment it can seem to correlate with seeing a shadow person sitting on their chest, so the fear is real.

While it’s probably not a good idea, it is possible to intentionally induce sleep paralysis through sleep deprivation.

Is the Hat Man real?

We aren’t convinced that the Hat Man is so easily explained as sleep paralysis. After all, at least one of our guests saw the Hat Man out in the world while completely awake, not in their bed room or in any way close to falling asleep.

Thoroughly spooked yet? So are we!

Have you seen the Hat Man, or other Shadow People?

Here at Homespun Haints Podcast, we interview people who have true first-hand stories about shadow people, ghosts, paranormal activity, cryptids, not-so-mythical monsters from folk lore, and the like. If you feel like it’s about time you finally told your story, we would love to have you as a guest on our podcast. Just submit your story here, and we’ll be in touch soon.

Until then, have a spooky day!

The post Have You Seen The Hat Man? appeared first on Homespun Haints.