What's that happen.

It's spooky.

Hey, Joky, I'm really sure it's dead.

It's coming this way.

Wait a minute, I said, Ima Nanda's please Hey boo, it's me Roz and welcome to Ghosted by Roz Hernandez, the podcast where I talk to people that I like about the paranormal.

It is October twentieth.

You know what that means.

It is my birthday.

It is indeed my birthday.

Yeah, I mean my birthday is Halloween time, favorite time of the year for so many reasons.

And we've got a doozy for you.

I'm currently eating a donut to celebrate.

Actually it's to celebrate me coming home from my forty six city comedy tour, which was fantastic, and when I arrived here today, my lovely team that works on this podcast with me here at exactly right, got me donuts.

It's also the day that we're recording this.

It's not my birthday.

It's actually the twenty third of September, which was supposed to be the rapture.

And I would say, typically I would not be eating this donut because I want to be light enough to be taken up into the sky.

But since it doesn't seem like it's happening.

I don't know what is it.

It's two o'clock in the afternoon.

Yeah, I think it's probably not going to happen, So I'm going to eat this donut anyway.

Happy Halloween time, everyone, Happy birthday to me.

I got to talk to the director of a film called A Cursed Man and this documentary.

I'm sorry but this person.

When I first heard about it, I said, this man has lost his marbles, he has lost his pay nuts.

I don't know if that.

I don't know what that means.

But what I mean is he he's going into some dangerous territory.

Because this man Liam, he decided I'm gonna go see if I can get cursed.

So he travels the world looking to see if he does indeed get a curse put on him and see some evidence of that, and I'm like, I gotta watch.

This did not disappoint and we talk about it all throughout this episode.

So check out that film and you'll know what I'm talking about even more.

Hey, I got a story from a listener.

This one comes from Heather.

This story says, I have a story for you.

For many years I worked in a county owned building that was totally run down, Tiles falling from the ceiling, flickering lights, an elevator that constantly broke down.

You get the picture.

The building had been many different things over the years, most recently probation and mental health services.

As you can guess, the energy in the building wasn't always the greatest.

One day, I went to use the restroom on the first floor.

I had just sat on the toilet to do my business when the bathroom door opened and someone walked into the third stall and latched the door.

Now, I have a shy bladder and can't go if someone else is in the room, saying so, I patiently waited for the person to finish and leave, but after a couple of minutes, they still had not left.

I thought that was odd, and then I noticed there were no feet and the third stall.

I quickly flushed and went to wash my hands, and I was shocked to see there was no one in the third stall.

The bathroom is set up in such a way that you can see if a person is in the stall through the gaps and the doors.

Oh, I hate that.

I ran as fast as I could from the bathroom and told my coworker, who is coincidentally a psychic medium.

She asked, was it the third Stall?

And I was like, how do you know that?

And she replied I've seen it too.

Oh my god.

I'm already terrified to go into public restrooms.

This is scary as always.

I believe that bathroom should be a no ghost zone, but apparently that's not how it works.

Thank you for sending me this, Heather.

Okay, let's get into our conversation.

Of course, while it's Halloween time, I should plug that.

I've got some Halloween stuff going on right now.

Well.

My YouTube channel where I go ghost hunting and haunted hotel rooms and look for guys on grinder to join me.

That is called Rozernandez the Haunted Doll.

You can find that on YouTube.

I've also been hosting a horror movie game show, which you can find on YouTube.

I'm doing it with Paramount and Realm Media and it has been so much fun.

It's called Tickle to Death and it's a comedic game show where we sort of test people's knowledge on horror films.

If that's sort of your thing, you might want to go check that out.

Anyway, here we go.

Here's my conversation with Liam Legill on with the show.

I hope I'm not cursed because I am joined today by filmmaker Leah Like you did I say it right?

I did say it right?

Yeah?

That was great, that was great.

Why am I American?

You're wait, you're British?

M M cool.

Okay, So you do this film A Cursed Man, which I don't even know how I stumbled upon it.

It just like came across my desk somehow, and I was so intrigued just by the premise alone, which is you're looking to get cursed.

Yeah.

Absolutely, I mean it's ridiculous as that sounds.

I thought it'd be a good idea to go out and just see what would happen if I put a curse on me.

I mean, why not?

Right?

So, before you embarked on this journey, where were you at on any of this kind of stuff?

Yeah?

I mean you have to be interested in this world to even think about doing something like this.

So I've been a lifelong fan of everything spooky, everything supernatural, and I've I've sort of studied it, you know, as a layman, and just been interested in it my whole life.

There's only some family elements with my family were into this kind of stuff, and so I've always been around it but never seen any proof.

You know, if anyone who's been fascinated by this, you want to know, right, you want to know where's the proof.

Yeah, So I figured, well, if.

I haven't seen anything, it's my take is is it might not be true.

So I don't really think anything would really happen to me.

So instead of like going looking for a ghost or whatever, a million people have done that already, I figured, why not go put a curse on me, you know, let's go for the big guns.

That's how I feel as well.

With you know, it's interesting because I've done a lot of ghost hunting, and in some ways I feel like I've become more skeptical of all of this stuff as I go out and look for it.

You know, I'm just always like, Okay, maybe it's true for other people, but for me, I'm like, I just don't trust myself most of the time.

But then I've had a couple of things happen where I'm like, okay, wait a minute, that's a sampthing.

So before you had done this film, you, I mean, you're living in England, isn't everything hunted in England?

I mean, yeah, you think so, right.

All of our buildings are super old, Like people say, oh, this building here in la is like it's make sixty years old and I'm like, that's the newborn.

So yeah, we have all of this history.

I grew up on an island.

Actually I'm from the UK, but I'm from the British island of Jersey, the original Jersey, and it's an island that has medieval castles on it, and we get to play in medieval castles.

In my almost back garden.

Across the field from where I grew up, there was a Neolithic Dolman site, so neolithic burial structure across the back garden from me.

We have old chip.

We do it pretty well.

But like growing up, there were you constantly around friends and family that like that they had stories but just not you.

Yeah, so we I definitely had family.

My grandmother felt that she had a psychic ability, and she passed when I was quite young, so I didn't really know or see that much myself, but she said she passed some of that on to my mom, who didn't dabble in anything but was very much a believer.

What was your grandma's ability, what was her expertise?

She felt that she describes herself as a spirit catcher.

I don't know exactly what that meant because I didn't get to talk to her about that, but my mom had told me that's how she described herself.

Now, my mom didn't practice or dabble too much, but she was told that she had some of this passed on to her, and she suspected that some of it had been passed on to me, which is why I probably have this interest.

But my brain's like, I want to know the proof.

You know, I'm just going to believe this.

I'm not going to go woo woo.

That's just not my style, right, So I have a fascination, but I want to find the evidence, you know, I want to find the truth.

Yeah, me too.

I'm very similar in that way.

You.

I mean, have you had moments in your life where you're like, how did I know that?

Or like, I don't know, do you think you're a little psychic?

I have had a number of kind of odd experiences.

Like what give it to us?

Well, so this one so the most I had a recent one, actually, and it comes after the back of the film, so we can talk a bit more about like what I did with the film after but after going through the film, after going for all the processes and things that I did, whether I got cursed or not, we'll talk about that in a moment.

But afterwards, I felt like I'd come onto out of the other side of all of this.

And I was coming back from a friend's house in North Hollywood somewhere, and my car was parked on a street, and it was mid evening, nine o'clock something.

I was coming back to my car, and you know, North Hollywood area, a coyote just walks down the street.

That's not unheard of in LA for anyone who's lived here, Like, yeah, happens for sure.

But it walks down the street.

It stops directly in front of my car, the door that I needed to get into drive home.

It stops and it turns and it just looks at me, and it dead eye looks at me for like twenty thirty seconds, and I'm thinking, what is happening right now?

I mean, he's looking at me, and then he's just like, okay, that's enough, and he just turns and walks off again.

I thought, okay, that was it just felt eerie, but you know whatever, and make of that as what you will.

I get on the road, I'm heading home.

I'm driving down the four or five.

Fifteen minutes or so later.

You know, for anyone out here in La knows it, huge road, lots of traffic.

All of a sudden, all the brake lights up front start turning coming on, and everyone's stopping.

I'm like, oh, what's happened now?

And I move over the lanes to try and get around it.

Just everything slows.

By the time I get to it, people are just getting out of their cars.

There was a big pilot maybe five or six cars smashed into each terrifying about fifteen twenty seconds in front of me in the lane that I was in.

So if that coyote has stopped me for fifteen twenty seconds, I may have been right in the middle of that.

Oh my god.

And that to me made me think, Wow, this spooky stuff is like around me right now?

And am I out of this curse situation?

You know?

Am I gleassed?

Now?

What's going on?

I'm there, Go find that coyote, be friends with it.

Maybe I can keep you away from all kinds of stuff.

Right I mean I spoke to one of the witches who was involved in the film about that afterwards.

And this happened like a year or so after we'd really been through the film, and she said to me, the coyote in Native American folklore is a trickster.

It plays on destiny, likes to disrupt what we're supposed to happen.

And so she said, yeah, I mean, it could be a good thing, or it could just be you're kind of intertwined in this world now and the trickster just wanted to let you know what's going on.

You know, like make of that what you will.

You can always I'm not saying that's proof of anything supernatural, but when these things start happening, you definitely raise an eyebrow.

I mean, it could also be because this is Los Angeles and even our wildlife is trying to get into the movies, and that coyote knew you've directed some films and was like, wait a minute, hey, and was trying to give you their head shot or something.

Could have been that he.

Or she was very charismatic, So yeah, I should have taken down the details, and yeah, talked about.

It the same I always say I've been to over one hundred psychics.

I'm constantly going to psychis because the same thing where I'm like, I want to I want to see I want one to tell me something.

There's no way they would have known or what.

You know, it's just an experiment I've done for myself.

But at least it's like, no one's going to get hurt.

But a curse, you're crazy.

I've been getting that a lot.

Yeah, I still find it really hard to justify.

People say why would you do this?

Why a curse?

Why?

Honestly I struggled to answer that.

I really struggle to answer that because it is ridiculous who would do that?

And the reality is, I think if I one percent believed in this world, I wouldn't look for a curse.

So I absolutely went in as a skeptic, as an open minded skeptic.

But I also saw it as a unique thing that I haven't really seen it on do before.

Yeah, totally, because who would were you raised with religion or anything like that.

Yeah, so my mum, you know, we have churches on every corner in the UK right, really old, beautiful, stunning buildings, And so my parents sent me to a Sunday School, a Christian Sunday school when I was very young.

I think I went three or four times and was like, what's all this mystical guy all about?

It wasn't for me.

I didn't buy into it.

I was skeptical there, I was, But also there was a reverence to it because of these amazing buildings.

You knew this was important, but I don't know, didn't.

It didn't really click for me.

So I was like, well, how about parapsychology?

Can I read about that instead?

And so I started reading about that stuff since I was like ten or eleven years old, as very young, when I really start nutting out about that stuff.

Yeah, you know, I've been thinking so much lately about critical thinking in our society.

I mean, that's how I like to approach that kind of you know, these unseen, unexplained type things.

It's like, I want to think of it critically rather than just being like, Okay, I believe you, and so I think that like, okay, today was supposed to be the rapture when we're recording this, did you hear about you know about this?

I've that Yeah, it has not happened.

Yes, not the end of the day yet though the day's not the days I've been looking forward to this, but apparently it has not happened.

But there's surely thousands of people that have heard about this and are like, Okay, people are telling me it's the rapture today, so let's sell my belongings.

Let's by the way.

I don't know how many of these people are like donating all their things to charity or giving all their money away to I don't know what they're doing in that regard, but they're under the impression that the world is going to end.

I mean, for me, I think this isn't my first rapture.

Okay, I've been around a little while now.

Yeah, we're all going to die, you know, y two K thing.

You know, there's been the heavy Bob Colmt thing.

There's been a whole bunch of raptures in twenty twelve.

Yeah, twenty twelve mine calendar stuff, you know.

Yeah, I'm excuse me for not believing too much and all of that, and just like, well, we'll see how it goes.

It's and it's hard when like, okay, so then it doesn't happen, Like, how are you gonna get your way out of how are you gonna explain this one away?

Like, I don't I don't know, but you know, there's a lot of it does a lot.

Having these beliefs can do a lot of great for a lot of people, but also certain things.

It's like, come on, now, you really think that's gonna happen.

I don't know.

All of a sudden, I beam up, that'd be amazing.

Okay, So you go on this journey, you've decided to go the curse route.

Did I mean, did it cross your mind at all to like to try something like psychic or I don't just and you just went, You're like, curse, let's do it.

We're going note to sixty.

We're getting straight into it.

Yeah, I went.

You know, I had this idea nobody's done the curse thing before, and I didn't want to make a film that everyone's heard and seen before.

He goes looking for a go So he goes looking for this.

I wanted to do something new, and I wanted to do something that was like, Okay, if we're going to do it, let's go all in.

So yeah, I went looking for the Curse.

I went, and I also knew this was going to be ridiculous.

Who am I going to find you to do this?

Because instantly it's hard enough to get anyone who has a spiritual practice to show you any of their spiritual practice, right, and then let alone get a curse.

Like so, I figured everyone's going to slam the phone down and shut the door in my face.

And I got a lot of that.

You know, my first few weeks were like, Okay, I've told everyone we can do this, and yeah, I don't know how I'm going to do this.

I'm trying to remember because I saw it a couple of months ago.

Did you ever go like the eBay or Etsy route?

No.

So there's a shot in the film where I referenced that happens like I'm looking on screen, But I didn't do that.

I know that people have been doing that as a big thing on TikTok, getting like curses and stuff on that.

Yeah, I wanted to I didn't want to get a mail order curse, you know.

I really wanted to get out there.

We needed to film something.

Yeah.

I feel like once USPS gets it, like things get kind of, it loses its its value.

The curse exactly, it just comes undone in the postal service.

It's a lot, yeah, totally, and it's encountering a lot of people, and yeah, you want those straight direct to consumer, right, Yeah, So okay, because you know that's another thing is like objects, like some objects will give you a curse.

Did you encounter that kind of thing?

I mean, that was something we looked at.

I figured, you know, we could go looking for cursed objects or curse locations, and then that was just going to like spiral the film bigger than we needed to be.

We need to focus find a curse, put it on me and see what happened.

And of course people said, why would you do that to yourself?

And I'm like, well, I'm not going to curse someone else.

I mean, I'm not going to go out and say, okay, look, we all have people we don't like in the world and maybe wish one around in the world.

But it's completely unethical.

It's not something I was going to do to try and put a cuss.

On because whatever it does work, I imagine.

Right, So so look, I'll do it to me and then there's we see what happens, and then maybe I could get myself out of it.

If it did work or not, we'll see.

So I don't want to give it all the way to the people listening.

But so, but who are the different practices you went to?

So you went to some witches.

Yeah, so first of all, starting on my doorsteps, so who's around?

So I'm reaching out to anyone close to me.

And I found a witches coven here in.

La Yeah, wasn't it the green Man?

Yeah?

So it's a green Man's store and and they have a coven that operates out of there.

It's called the ked Covin.

And this just happens to be a British witch who happens to live here.

And he answered my call and said, okay, you sound crazy, but you also sound authentic, and so I want to try and talk you out of this.

So he says, that's come along, let's have a chat.

You can film what you want and I'll try and talk you out of it.

So we had this and I was determined though.

At this point, I'm like, okay, we're going to do it.

So he set me on my journey, did a little spell for us, which is amazing, a spell to help me find what I was looking for.

But he hoped it wouldn't be a curse and if I go, and then the journey takes me to New Orleans, where we look at voodoo and hohodoo practitioners down there and look without giving away too much, but I also want to let the audience know that stuff goes on.

Yeah, I do find a curse in New Orleans, and you'd think that would be enough, but no, I'm kind of on a mission now to see a lot of different magical practices.

I'm excited by it.

So we go to India and we went looking for tantricks in India.

We have a spiritual experience and ritual there and then I continue on to Mexico and it kind of like gets even bigger in Mexico.

So yeah, there's a lot going on in this film.

I kind of wanted as much magic as I could find.

I mean, it is really fascinating to see.

It's and it's a part of culture.

I was just in New Orleans and it's such a such a special place in America, and it's so there is so much culture just I mean obviously so many different cultures that have come together to create this.

I don't know, energetic world went, I don't I don't know.

When you're there you're just like, Wow, there's stuff going on in this place.

Yeah.

I mean it's got that energy of like an old world city, right, you feel it, and it feels feels European to me and has that sort of European and so, yeah, it's alive, it's electric, and it's you know, it's it's walkable in the center of it.

And so you're in and amongst everything which feels great, that feels European.

So I think that creates an energy and whether or not that's a supernatural energy, I don't know.

A lot of people talked about that stuff, but you know, you feel it.

And so New Lens for me was amazing and one of the absolute highlights of my trip.

And finding finding someone to put a curse on me down there was and it was crazy.

And I also found a number of people that really got upset with me for looking for a curse down there.

They were like, what are you doing?

It's ridiculous.

And I think it's important to keep all sides of this story in the film, and I wanted the film to be balanced and objective, and I wanted people to see, Okay, here's the reasons why you shouldn't be doing this and here's the reasons why.

Okay, well, maybe we do test ourselves in our spiritual practice.

There's a bit of both sides of that journey, and so that was sort of fun to take on.

If you're one of these practitioners and you obviously believe very strongly in all of this, it's such a moral dilemma for them.

It's almost I mean it's almost like assisted suicide or something that in their mind I would think, right.

Yeah, I mean certainly.

We go to see a chap called Prince Tayanika, who's a wonderful voodoo practitioner, and he really takes me to task on this.

He's like, what are you doing?

Like this is almost you coming in, as he rightfully points out, as a white person coming into our practice looking for a curse.

Almost seems entitled that you're coming into our and doing this.

But he actually said that to me on the phone before we went down there, and I said to him, you're right, I need to be aware of this.

Can we do this on camera?

And he goes, well, I'm not going to do this for you.

I'm going to tell you off if anything, and I went, please, I want to hear that point of view.

I don't want to keep that out, like, I don't want people to think that I'm not aware of this.

I'm still on this search to find magic.

And maybe I won't carry on, or maybe I will, but you come, you know, tell me.

So we do that, and he was wonderful and so you know in the film where he definitely like, lets me have it, and I think it's important, it's an important valid point.

I really struggled after that because he didn't hold back, and I genuinely was really upset afterwards.

And I, look, I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes here.

I'm genuinely trying to seek and find out for myself.

People say they have this ability to create curses, you know, will it happen to me?

Could it happen?

So it's a really I really struggled because I didn't want to upset people.

I didn't want to make this, despite looking for causes a negative film.

And then then the next day or two we found sent Elias in New Orleans and I called him up and said we'd already spoken on the phone.

I said, you still prepared to you talk about this and do this?

He said, come, down, come see me, Let's do a reading and we'll go from there.

So I kind of like with then letting the sequence of events unfold.

I could have stopped the film right there after being told not to do it.

That wasn't really in me.

I was still hungry.

But we went to see senilias he did a reading and he was like, okay, there's I see stuff for you to learn through this, and so he said, and I asked him, were you still prepared to do this, you know?

And he went yeah, and he has this wonderful line he goes, yeah, but now it's going to be a lot more fun.

And his energy, I mean, I genuinely think this is I'm deeply proud of this as a cinematic moment and experience.

We film an actual curse being put around wrapped around an old coffin nail around the piece of my hair that he cuts off into a charm to be worn around my neck to literally curse me, and his whole energy changed.

He's such a warm, really friendly guy, and when he was working this negative magic, it got scary.

I was genuinely at that point, oh shit, what have I just done?

Ties this thing around my neck?

And and a funny story.

Right afterwards, he cleanses himself with this cleansing lotion and then he asked the cruise and you guys want anything.

They couldn't grab the bottle fast.

One of my caraman, Sam was pouring this around his neck.

He was just like, get it on me.

We were all freaked out a little bit.

And that was definitely a moment when I went, oh, this is real.

I just did this.

Okay, yeah, here we are what happens next?

So do you feel like that one started to work?

Yeah?

So in the film it's really condensed.

You're nineteen minutes trying and tell the story, and that we filmed and made this over a year or so and so over the year, so it did definitely.

Did I start having these dreams?

It started in my dreams.

I had a lot of really bad nightmares and the sense of anxiety starts to come on.

This is the thing that's interesting about this, Like what is a curse?

Is a curse?

Psychology is a curse something we tell ourselves and we make ourselves believe.

And also how powerful is our subconscious because that's working twenty four hours a day, driving us, driving out Psychology and so I've just put myself under a curse.

And so this is happening under the hood, if you know, as you were.

And so I'm having these dreams, I'm feeling this anxiety, like my wife would come home late from work and I'm like, oh, hope there wasn't a traffic accident.

Or once you start living a life like that, you start feeling it and that starts to seep into you physically.

You know, if you're feeling tense, you know, if you're feeling that anxiety.

So some people are like, you got curse, buddy, that's what you wanted.

You got a curse.

Some people would say that psychology, I think the two are really intertwined, and I I don't know that I could easily differentiate which is which.

Right, especially if you have a bunch of different curses.

It's like which one is doing this right?

So despite that right out, so I've got this, I'm starting to feel anxiety, but I'm still like, well, let's let's go.

We'd planned earlier on like India's on our list of places we wanted to go, so we hopped on a plane.

I still, you know, I think this might upset some people but I still have the curse around my neck when I hopped on a plane, and it was only ever meant to harm me.

I was very careful about that.

And we hop on a plane.

We fly to India.

Interestingly enough, we we missed a connecting flight and we almost because of our visa situations.

I wasn't sure we were actually going to be allowed into into India.

Curses starting to work.

I'm scratching my head trying to figure out, how do we get over this visa situation we've messed up?

And alah, so yeah, curse and uh.

We get to India and we go looking for a magic practice there and just a beautiful, wonderful experience to find and look for people in India as well.

I wonder if it like works the same if you want it, you know what I mean?

Like ninety nine point nine nine percent of the time you hear about someone's cursed, whether it's real or not or whatever, it's like someone put the curse on them, or they somehow did something that got them cursed.

It's not necessarily it's never people asking for it.

So I just wonder, I wonder if you know if any.

Of this is real?

These curses if that, which, by the way, I'm skeptical of curses.

But if anyone listening to this is a witch or whatever, please I don't want to find out.

Which is how I approach all of this stuff.

I'm like, like, like your crew members, I'm like, I'll I'll put this all over me.

I don't care.

Was your crew skeptical or where were they on it?

Yeah?

I think they were skeptical, but they were also a lot more cautious.

I noticed they started wearing like black tormaline trinkets and things to grab that negative energy.

You know, they went and got some protection just in case.

And I don't blame them for that at all.

How is your wife with this?

So my wife is a mental health therapist, so she's very practical minded, and she's very much like, I don't believe in this.

I don't think this is going to have an effect on you.

So yeah she was because obviously after her at the beginning, like are you going to be cool with this?

So I go run around looking for curses?

She was like, yeah, do me one favor though, just make sure your life insurance is up today.

Yeah, which is a fair it's a fair comment.

And I think that's also more to do with going into the jungle of India and like the jungles of Mexico, looking for curses with people you don't know, people who like who are people are open to the idea of practicing harmful magic.

Who knows who you're gonna.

Find, especially if you're like going out in the woods or wherever.

Yeah, I mean, particularly in India.

We struggled to find anyone who would practice magic.

And it's important to note that in India, black magic is outlawed.

It's illegal to practice in India, so it wasn't going to be easy for anyone to just come up say yeah, I'll do that for you and do it on camera and get myself into trouble.

So I didn't realize that actually it was that illegal until we got there.

So you know, we had a time of trying to figure out how do we navigate this, and we kept asking people, and eventually we found someone who was like, I have a place.

It's deep in the jungle.

It's two miles into the jungle.

We can only do this at night.

It's full of wild animals, and wild animals do attack people in India in the.

Jungles and what are we talking wild animals.

Oh, we're talking you know, tigers and you know things that will prey on you.

You won't know they're coming until they're eating you.

And so and they were like, okay, we can only go up there at night.

We can't come back down.

We have to sleep up there on the top of this mountain at night.

And yeah, this is these are my terms if you want me to practice.

And he works with a spirit called Well, a spirit that is around black magic and magic in India.

And I forgot the name of the deity.

Will come back to me.

But and he said, I can open up this portal and she will judge upon you what she should give you.

And he said, look, if she wants to cut off your head, she'll do it.

I'm like, okay, so this is all quite worrying.

Other tantrick practitioners in the area told us, hey, don't maybe don't go with this guy because he's new in the area.

We don't really know him and so, but nobody else was prepared to show us some things.

So I was like, you're there.

You got the cameras.

We spent like a week in India, like running around looking for this, I'm like, So there was definitely a moment.

My crew and I we had a talk and they were like, Leam, we don't think you should go up there, and we don't want to go up there, and we don't think you should.

So I said, cool, let's sleep on it and we'll all decide in the morning.

And I called my wife that night.

Actually, I called my wife and said, hey, I'm going to go do this crazy thing, and she's like, look, I trust your instincts to take care of yourself.

I've been a documentary filmmaker in all sorts of unusual places for twenty years.

She said, look, you've got good instincts, but just do me a favor, like, just really take care of yourself and make like sensible decisions.

So I decided I wouldn't take the crew up there.

I didn't want to put anyone else at risk.

And I decided to take a camera and some GoPros and I'd go do it on my own.

For a number of reasons, I felt I was safe enough to do it.

I had.

I have a location producer there who I've worked with before in India.

I spoke to him a lot about this person and he's an amazing judge of character.

He's worked in war zones before, and between us we felt safe.

And then the next morning, one of my camera guys was like, hey, I've thought it through.

I want to come with you.

And another caraman I knew was on the fence, so I told him we needed some more be roll footage somewhere else, and he was super excited to go get that and not come with us, And so yeah, we went up, and you know, I'm I'm still here to talk about it.

So well, at that point and the journey, how much were you starting to believe that this cursed stuff is a little real?

Yeah, well, I mean this was still fair India was still fairly early days on since I got the Curse of New Leans.

It's still weeks after, I think, so I'm still beginning to feel this sense of anxiety, like, you know, if anything bad's gonna happen, it's gonna happen now.

Like if meet the evil versions of the Jungle Book coming out to eat me tonight.

Yeah, you have your cursed necklace on, You're going to the tigers.

Yeah, so you know, if anything bad's happening, it's coming now.

So there was always that in the back of my mind.

I yeah, I mean, you can't help for wildlife.

I can protect about other things.

But so yeah, I'm a bit worried about it, but I went for anyway, you know, and that experience.

I won't say too much of what happens up there, but that experience is more of an enlightening experience for me about my journey, and it opened up some things in my mind about what I was actually looking for.

So, you know, we come back from that, and that's definitely probably a good point to stop.

But right from the beginning of this, I'd heard about this event that happens in Catemaco in Mexico, and it's called the Night of the Witches, and it's when a whole bunch of witches brewjos get together and celebrate their craft.

And it's a huge event and there's hundreds of them down there, and I thought, this is just an amazing experience.

We've got to go see it.

And so like, if I'm going down there, I can't just go down there and just get b roll footage, Like I gotta go look for another curl.

I get another one?

Why not?

Right?

So yeah, I go down there, I go looking for another curse and I find a brujo who practices his spiritual practice with a chap called Satan.

I heard of that one, yeah, we may have heard of him.

And he sees Satan as a fallen angel, but an angel nonetheless, and an angel that can help humans with their day to day lives, trivialities and whatnot.

And and I'm like, cool, cool, So could he put a curse on me?

And he laughed the first time.

He said, never in my experience of anyone ever asked me this question, can you put a curse on me?

And so I was like, yeah, I kind of get that a lot.

And yeah, he said, okay, we can do it.

But how this is going to work is I will take you to my place where we worship and we work with Satan in a cave again deep in the jungle.

And you've got to go to this place, and now it feels like an Indiana Jones story of getting there.

We have to cross a lake in probably the smallest boat in all of Mexico, and then we climb up into the jungle again at night.

We arrive at the cave and it's just erupting with bats.

Thousands and thousands of bats streaming out of this cave there, and again one of my Carra guys was like, I'm not going in.

It's like it's the bats flying everywhere, and I'm like, well, I'm I'm we came all this way, I got to go look for this.

So we do go into the cave, and I do enter into what turned out to be a blood packed with Satan in order to seek my demise, as it were.

And I think what was in a way more scary about this one was the fact that I had to petition, had to write what I wanted to happen, and I had to petition that to Satan and then bring it upon myself.

So at this point, I'm now really really cursing myself.

The previous this one was a charm given to me by someone else, right, But this one was me really asking for it.

And that's where we get into that psychology again.

Now I've really brought this onto myself.

So whether it is Satan doing what Satan likes to do, or whether or not it's me doing it to myself, I'm deep in this now, and yeah, definitely life began to get a lot harder.

Well, because that's the thing, like you know, manifesting and all of that sort of idea, which I believe, like if you're putting out negativity or you're asking for trouble, I mean, you certainly have a better chance of finding it than that I would think.

Yeah, I mean when you go looking for this stuff.

And I do speak to a psychologist about this in the process, and she's like saying, look, you're doing this to your subconscious and we're not in control of our subconscious, Like this is going to start whether or not you believe or not, this is going to start affecting you.

Now, of course, all the people who come from a spiritual background saying, yes, this is going to start affecting you.

You've just engaged with some of the worst spirits possible, Like you're in trouble, buddy.

And so I really did begin to like I started getting terrible headaches, really awful headaches.

I started having terrible, terrible nightmares.

I you know, the anxiety was through the roof.

I really was beginning to live this and I'm thinking, what have I done to myself?

And I will say one of the dreams, I think one of the moments when the dreams got really bad.

Was I actually had a sleep paralysis experience, and it's happened, and it happened to me twice in my life, once when I was very very young, and I felt there was a spirit in the room with me when I was very very young, and it terrified me and I you know, if for anyone's ever experienced it, it's horrible.

You wake up, I'm throzen to the bed.

I couldn't move.

I felt like there was this spirit in my room.

That happened when I was young after an awful, awful dream, and then happened to me again.

And so I'm in my bedroom at home, I'm with my wife.

I wake up, I cannot move, and I swear I can see a shape in my doorway watching me.

I was genuinely like, this is messing now.

Either there's now there's a demon in my house or I have messed up my psychology and my subconscious that could be with me for the rest of my life.

Yeah, and well you asked for this, right, That's what people would say.

And so at that point, I thought, I need to find my way out of this.

I need I need to undo this, because regardless of what's happening to me.

Something is happening to me.

Yeah, that is a really interesting thing to think about the subconscious aspect of it, because, I mean, we talk about this stuff all the time on this podcast, and well, what I'm realizing they're talking to you is that I'm not I'm not as skeptical as I like to think I am, because I'm like, Okay, that's a demon.

I got a demon on me and that's that.

So yeah, it is interesting to think, Yeah, you're kind of planting these seeds in your brain all the time, so it makes sense that that can manifest in different ways.

But wow, Okay, so now that this project is over, how's it changed your beliefs?

Yeah, so that's really interesting.

I mean I would like to say, having come through it, I have found the evidence I was seeking for for the supernatural.

Like a million people have done that before me.

I mean people like Houdini himself was a complete like hooked on this trying to prove find the proof.

He didn't as much as I haven't either.

I have found that it did affect me for sure.

So I've learned for sure the words we tell ourselves the very least I've found I would say is the words we tell ourselves and the things we choose to believe and the things we choose to be around can have a really deep effect on us on a subconscious level that really gets into the makeup of who we are, and that will then change the choices we make in our life, the places we take our lives, the people we want to be around, the people we want to be Everything changes once you start to believe something, and so it's super powerful that you question your own beliefs.

It's super powerful that you be careful what you tell yourself.

You know you're in a narrative is hugely powerful.

And so at the very least I found that that has all the more.

I mean, I felt physical reaction to what was happening to me.

So if my brain was doing that to me, I was having a physical response to what I was My subconscious at least was beginning to breathe.

So that's the least I found.

The most I found.

Do I feel like I changed and my sort of spiritual belief Like I don't have the proof for it, but I kind of feel like I feel like I'm my toes a little bit more in the water.

I feel like I'm just a little bit closer to like the psychology explanation might not be one hundred percent hmmm, I feel like there's a little bit more and I'm just like a tiny bit further over the line, you know.

So, yeah, is there gonna be a sequel?

I'm not looking for a curse again.

Yeah.

The way people keep asking me that would you do this again?

Is there a sequel?

You know, what other countries can you go to?

I'm still fascinated by the subject, but i don't want to get cursed again, so I'm not sure how I'll do it as a sequel.

I would love to make a show based around people's belief in dark and negative magic around the world.

There's so many other practices and countries and spiritualities.

I'd love to explore and maybe hear about other people's experiences and not necessarily have one for myself.

Yeah, that's what I'm always wondering with that kind of stuck.

I mean, I'm so fascinated by all our religions, but I'm also thinking about your findings with the psychological side of things.

The typical intended practice is that they put a curse and someone else, like probably them not knowing.

So if they don't know that they're being cursed, what do we think there?

Yeah, can it work if they don't know about it?

My gout is it doesn't work that way.

I mean I haven't seen proof of it working.

I mean that comes into like, you know, I'm going to curse someone that they don't know about it, and you know, my experience is that that doesn't necessarily work.

There's an example in the film where Prince Tayamaka of New Orleans.

He explains if someone broke into his house and messed up his altar, and then bad things happened to that guy.

So and I don't know if that guy believes or not, but he wasn't aware of what was potentially happening or around him, and yet bad things happen.

So certainly some people believe that they can do that and they that's a thing.

My take on it is, I think you need to be a bit more aware of what's happening, but that's potentially easy to do as well.

And also to sort of speak about why in traditionally, in like Whodoo and voodoo, why they have this practice of cursing, And they explained it to me for really solid reasons, Like when you are a marginalized community, marginalized people that are, you know, being oppressed, sometimes all we have is this ability to defend ourselves through our magic.

So yeah, more power to them, and that's why they have this ability.

They're not doing it because they want to do negative things.

They're like, no, we got some self defense chops and we'll use it exactly.

Yeah, it's self defense.

What do you think about like the famous curses, Like I'm obsessed with James Dene's car.

Do you know about that curse?

Yeah, that's a spooky one, right, there's a lot of crazy stuff with that.

But with that one, there's that one I'm obsessed with.

And then the other one I'm obsessed with is the Cursed movie script?

Do you know that one?

Atok I'm not sure if I did too much about that one though.

Basically it's this movie script where every leading male actor that's that got offered it died young.

Right.

But it's like so much any of these you can explain away.

Yeah, I mean, there's meant to be curses connected to the omen film people around the world.

Oh film.

Then there's that show Cursed Films did you see that and shudder.

The Omen what is scary?

He was in a plane and guy hit by lightning.

Yeah.

Absolutely, there was a bunch of things that happened on the Omen Curse that yeah, scarier than the film potentially.

I mean films like that.

I mean, I'm a huge horror movie fan to like The Omen and The Exorcist.

There are huge films for me.

But yeah, are their curses connected to them?

I mean, bad stuff happens in life, and there's something that you know.

My wife and I said before I went on there, she said, look, bad things are going to happen to you after making this film, sure, and so you need to be comfortable and be able to know the difference of like, Okay, this is just things are going to happen.

You can't live a life without bad things happening and be able to separate this two or else you might be blaming yourself for everything that happens bad for the rest of your.

Life, of course.

And I think that is something that happens is that people go, well, I'm cursed, so that's why this happened.

Or I'm sure there's people that it keeps them from living life because they're like, you know, my family's cursed or whatever, so I'm not going to do this or that or I don't know.

I think if people live like that, do something about it.

Like this is my point.

I don't think you even need to believe that it would work or not work.

I think it can work on your subconscious level.

And I think that happened to me.

I think my subconscious was definitely beginning to make it work.

So if you believe you're cursed, go do Even if you're I'm cursed, but you don't believe someone could help you or whatever, go do something about it.

Find someone who could help you.

Because even on a subconscious level, that subconscious like, yeah, but we got that clans, we got that shit out of us.

We're all good now.

That might actually help you.

Yeah, so dude, try it.

Why not?

That's what I'm all about, Like the placebo, I don't need to Like if I'm going ghost hunting or someplace spooky, I bring it all with me.

Everything, evil eye, crystals, Jesus, all of it.

Absolutely come told up.

Why not?

You know?

Yeah?

Well, anyway, I think that that's about it.

But this is so cool.

I'm so happy that you did this.

It's fantastic.

I hope you do more paranormal stuff because especially having someone that's like clearly quite fearless and you know, again way more skeptical than even me, I think that you should be out there looking for this stuff.

And I want to watch from the comfort of my own home with my holy water.

I've been described as brave or stupid, and so we'll figure out what.

That's a great place to be, right, So tell people all the things you want them to know.

Yeah, So, I mean, please check out the film.

A Curse Man is available to rental buy on all the good places like Amazon and Apple and and yeah, check it out.

And we can find us on social media.

Look up A Cursed Man.

We're all tiktoks and Instagram and yeah, find us join in.

I'm actually on that posting and replying.

So yeah, if you got questions, you can find me on that.

And uh yeah, I'd love to know what people think.

Great, Thank you, don't curse me.

I'll keep it to myself.

Don't worry, You're safe.

Thank you.

Liam.

You gotta check out this film.

I mean I'm obsessed with this.

First of all, the British, they've got great investigative documentarians over there, and I'm a big documentary fan.

Honestly, I'm gonna say, one of these days, I'm gonna set out on a journey like this.

I think I'm gonna make documentaries at some point because I am so curious about, like exactly what he was doing in this documentary, going around trying to find answers and meeting different cultures along the way.

I mean, I just love it.

So yeah, one of these days I'll make I'll make one for you anyway.

He's so cool.

Thanks Liam.

All Right, it's Halloween time.

Get out there, do something spooky, take a break from the news today, put on a scary movie, put on a costume just for fun, eat too much candy, and enjoy the season.

I love you all, both living and dead.

But if I didn't ask you to haunt me, don't haunt me came back.

This has been an exactly right production.

Want to share your paranormal experience on the podcast.

I read stories out loud and sometimes I'll even call you, so email me at ghosted by Roz at gmail dot com.

You can send a DM or voice message to the show's Instagram at ghosted by Roz give us a follow while you're there, and follow me Roz on Instagram at roz Hernandez and on TikTok and Twitter at It's Roz Hernandez.

My senior producer is the startling Jiha Lee.

Associate producer is the alarming Christina Chamberlain.

This episode was mixed and sound designed by the eerie Edson Choi.

My guest booker is the petrifying Patrick Kuttner.

My theme music is by the spine chilling Brendan Lynch Salomon.

Artwork by the spooky Vanessa Lilac.

Photography by the terrifying Elizabeth Karen.

Executive produced by the chilling Karen Kilgareff, the spooky Georgia hart Stark, and the frightening Danielle Kramer.

Listen to Ghosted by Roz Hernandez on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.