[SPEAKER_00]: The point of this show is we feature as many true experiences considered dark and real that we can, mainly focused around locations considered to be haunted, something truly terrifying to imagine, yes, but usually there can be an option to escape.

[SPEAKER_00]: moving house, selling up, etc.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what if, like today's seemingly reluctant believer, you can't opt out?

[SPEAKER_00]: What if you can't simply move away from it?

[SPEAKER_00]: What if, in my opinion, something more existentially terrifying, it is attached to you?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's the [SPEAKER_00]: Live from Liverpool, the Dark Paranormal Season 22.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Dark Paranormal Episode 7 Season 22.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't believe we're this close to the finale already, but what I am excited for is to tell you all about how there will be a completely fresh dark paranormal for Season 23.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I do mean completely fresh.

[SPEAKER_00]: To use an analogy of a car, it's not just a lick of paint, it's a complete rehall of the engine.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't worry the car will still be exactly as you know it, it will just appear to be slightly different and hopefully for the better.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mentioned earlier that both I and my network sent out some questioners regarding what people do and don't like about the show.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now there were two that stood out immediately as the most obvious ones.

[SPEAKER_00]: Both the network kind of pushed with and both I believe I might have won on.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I will tell you them now because there are enough changes going ahead that this is maybe 5% of the overall changes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the first big one, obviously, adverts.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now that I've said before, at this time of year, it's unavoidable.

[SPEAKER_00]: any podcast that draws big numbers and thankfully I'm very fortunate to say we do, but therefore, advertisers look at shows like ours and say yes please, but it does mean your experience gets more to doubt.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now I do strongly suggest and this is not just a push for Patreon, but at our lowest tier on Patreon for the cost of less than a coffee per month, you can get ad free access to all of our shows we put out on the main feed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not suggesting you join a new stay forever, I would, personally, join around thanks giving or the end of November, beginning of December, and end around the end of January.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your guarantee to have missed the bulk of all of the sales adverts, all of the holiday season adverts, etc.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, not everyone's in a position to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would say just make good use of that skip button during the holiday period.

[SPEAKER_00]: But to enhance your listening experience as you know we've introduced the heartbeat intro at the start a bit of a teaser and I've stated to the network I want no more than one advertisement going in at the start of the show.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now yes that will affect me monetarily as well the next decision I've made but these things are essential to make you feel more part of the experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: listener fatigue.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now our networks suggested to me that I start doing series.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now the networks suggested I start doing maybe series of episodes which I pointed out I do.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the next thing was I suggested I wanted to remove one of the three shows that we do reaching every week.

[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously they sell adverts on the shows and they did not want to do that and we've compromised that the mini-sold will now be by weekly.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I agree with that, because that will stop a form of burnout, and I did wonder about the amount of wonderful mini-sodes that you may not have heard simply through the amount of output we do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now remember that dark paranormal started out by weekly one show.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think this is a case of less is more.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, it affects my revenue, but your experience comes fast.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, from Season 23 onwards, these changes will take place.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I for one, along with the other changes yet to come, some of which will be surprises, know that Season 23 will be a complete change of direction into a very familiar land and our most interesting series yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, before I forget a big thank you to our Patreon community who keep this show going, and if you'd like to join them, click the link in the show notes, or head over to patreon.com forward slash the dark paranormal.

[SPEAKER_00]: But right now, it's time, lower your lights, make yourself comfortable and most importantly, leave your disbelief at the door.

[SPEAKER_00]: As we hear just why, I don't believe in ghosts, but.

[SPEAKER_00]: My name is absurdly long, foreign, and easily located in scientific literature, so for the [SPEAKER_00]: My wife introduced me to the dark paranormal a couple of years ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: We usually fall asleep listening to horror podcasts, this show being one of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have chronic insomnia, and have something to listen to help me keep my mind from spinning.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're both fans of the supernatural, and horror, and have listened to almost every episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's a Patreon, and I piggyback on her good taste.

[SPEAKER_00]: We currently live in New England, but I originally came over to the US over a decade ago for university as an international student.

[SPEAKER_00]: My family is Thai, and I was born and raised in Bangkok.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thailand is a bizarre hodgepodge of scientific advancement, strict that a father Buddhism and unchecked animism.

[SPEAKER_00]: The people believe in karma, mindfulness, and reincarnation.

[SPEAKER_00]: but also in black magic, mythical creatures, and nature spirits.

[SPEAKER_00]: Think which craft but Asian.

[SPEAKER_00]: My mother is deeply religious.

[SPEAKER_00]: My father and engineer, mostly humus her.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was raised Buddhist throughout my childhood, my brother and I would drag to the temple every month.

[SPEAKER_00]: are upbringing research that we were expected to believe in science, but also to take the supernatural at face value.

[SPEAKER_00]: My parents in the same breath would push me towards medical school while insisting that some obscure concoctioned bless by a monk would cure the flu.

[SPEAKER_00]: While I still practice mindfulness out of habit, I wouldn't call myself religious.

[SPEAKER_00]: Buddhism to me feels more like psychology than theology.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible is about as real to me as Greek or Norse mythology, which makes it easy to dismiss a lot of religious themes.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's harder to dismiss are the things that keep happening in and around my family.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of them long before I was born, so I can only retell what I've been told.

[SPEAKER_00]: My mother's side of the family has always been a bit off.

[SPEAKER_00]: Supposedly, my great grandmother came back from the dead.

[SPEAKER_00]: According to family law, she died, was placed in a coffin, and several days into the funeral, she climbed out of it in front of everyone.

[SPEAKER_00]: On surprisingly, guests fled in terror and never came back for the second funeral when she [SPEAKER_00]: In her first death, she said she remembered waking up to a large gate, where she was met by two men in loincloths, one with bright red skin and the other with skin and a naturally deep black.

[SPEAKER_00]: She felt charged and bent down to drink from a small pool in front of the gate.

[SPEAKER_00]: The men grabbed her by the arms, slammed her face burst into a wall, and she woke up [SPEAKER_00]: She was adamant that if she drank from that pool, she would not have come back.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now I've tried to probe this story over the years.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the only thing everyone agrees on is this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Embarming wasn't common then.

[SPEAKER_00]: And whatever the explanation, everyone present swore my great-grandmother, sat up in her coffin at her own funeral.

[SPEAKER_00]: Fastfall were to the 1960s, my mother was living with her parents and six siblings in a rundown house behind a distillery.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the most haunted places they ever lived.

[SPEAKER_00]: My mother was the odd-ball middle-child who had sneak-off to temple.

[SPEAKER_00]: She claimed she once actually projected whilst meditating, stepping out of her body and seeing herself cross [SPEAKER_00]: She said she saw spirits regularly in that house, but also learned to live around them.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was one incident though, one that changed her behavior.

[SPEAKER_00]: The house had three floors, but the family slept on the second.

[SPEAKER_00]: The third floor was mostly unfinished, a small office in a single bed.

[SPEAKER_00]: One night around 4am, she woke to an old woman demanding to climb into bed with her.

[SPEAKER_00]: My mother cried out in protest, but the woman climbed on top of her and began to strangle her.

[SPEAKER_00]: In panic, my mother shut her eyes and chanted prayers.

[SPEAKER_00]: After a wuff felt like several minutes the hands on the clenched from round her throat.

[SPEAKER_00]: she opened her eyes again to find herself alone in that room.

[SPEAKER_00]: She ran downstairs and never slept alone on that floor again.

[SPEAKER_00]: On another occasion, my aunt, a teenager at the time, was alone in the house during a home invasion.

[SPEAKER_00]: A stranger broke in, punched her in the [SPEAKER_00]: Then, suddenly, looked up at something in horror and ran screaming from the house, taking nothing with him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Upon the return of the family they found my aunt bound and bruised, the door clearly smashed it.

[SPEAKER_00]: The police couldn't believe nothing was stolen, and she wasn't assaulted.

[SPEAKER_00]: But she still vividly remembers the point for the goat and the vile stench of the rag he shoved in her mouth.

[SPEAKER_00]: But still has no idea what he saw.

[SPEAKER_00]: But perhaps the most unusual member of my maternal family was my grandmother.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was ethnically Chinese, her family long settled in Thailand.

[SPEAKER_00]: but an unwilling host.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody alive seems to know exactly how it started.

[SPEAKER_00]: Only that at some point, she began getting possessed.

[SPEAKER_00]: The pitch of her voice, her body language, even her posture would change dramatically.

[SPEAKER_00]: She would walk differently, sit comfortably in positions that normally would cause her pain.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she would behave like a completely different person.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was always the same few spirits, most notably an old man and a young boy.

[SPEAKER_00]: If the old man possessed her, she would smoke and drink, despite usually doing neither.

[SPEAKER_00]: When the young boy to cover, she developed a raging sweet tooth, was hyper and playful.

[SPEAKER_00]: These spirits weren't malevolent, overtly.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was, however, deeply distressing for her.

[SPEAKER_00]: My grandfather took her to a temple where a monk said that there was something about her bloodline that made her compatible as a medium, that the spirits chose her, and not much could be done.

[SPEAKER_00]: Over time, my grandmother became known in the community.

[SPEAKER_00]: The old man apparently knew herbs and traditional medicine.

[SPEAKER_00]: The boy was said to be clairvoyant.

[SPEAKER_00]: They advised on everything from home remedies to lottery numbers.

[SPEAKER_00]: My grandmother never charged for this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever it was, mental illness, performance or something else, there was no obvious benefit to her.

[SPEAKER_00]: She endured this for over a decade, [SPEAKER_00]: She hated the feeling of possession, the loss of control.

[SPEAKER_00]: The day she decided she would no longer act as a medium, she collapsed into a coma and died of a brain aneurysm a few weeks later.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was in her late 30s.

[SPEAKER_00]: No prior health issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: Doctors called it a freak accidents.

[SPEAKER_00]: The monk said, there was an order from above to be had her.

[SPEAKER_00]: My family believes the medium role died with my grandmother, but the ability to sense the supernatural seems to have blood down the line, which brings me to Thai folk religion and unfortunately to black magic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thai folk religion is technically separate from Theravada Buddhism.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is strange mix of animism, paganism and sorcery that predates Buddhism.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever Buddhism spread, it never fully replaced the folk belief.

[SPEAKER_00]: They kind of fused.

[SPEAKER_00]: To this day, many ties believe in both.

[SPEAKER_00]: The capabilities attributed to folk magic are unpalatable, conjuring clumps of hair and fingernails, and buffalo hide inside an enemy's stomach.

[SPEAKER_00]: casting mind control spells, inflicting horrifying hallucinations, all supposedly achievable by practitioners of black magic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Children grew up being told to avoid certain places and behaviours, because they might open the door to these things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then there is Cruman Thong.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's an amulet, believed to contain the spirit of a still-born or deceased child.

[SPEAKER_00]: Traditionally, the remains of a fetus or infant were ritually consecrated, coated in gold, leaf, and a noted with a nam man cry, or ghost oil, made from human fat, preferably taken from those who died violently, because their spirits were thought to be more powerful.

[SPEAKER_00]: Owners believe the Cumin Thong brings protection, good fortune, prosperity, and in exchange they would get food, toys, offerings, etc.

[SPEAKER_00]: My mother's family had one.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know where it came from, only that it lived with them and it was treated very much like a demanding invisible child.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even affectionately calling it, big, brother, cumin.

[SPEAKER_00]: When my grandmother died, my mother took the amulet with her into her first apartment with my father, and she continued the offerings, if less consistently.

[SPEAKER_00]: Years later, my parents were able to buy their first house and they rented out the old apartment.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not long after, the new tenants complained that they'd spent the last month seeing a little boy running around the apartment at night.

[SPEAKER_00]: Giggling, slamming doors, vanishing into hallways.

[SPEAKER_00]: My mother realized she'd never told the human they were moving.

[SPEAKER_00]: She'd prayed, told the spirit where they now lived, and invited him to follow.

[SPEAKER_00]: The tenants stopped complaining immediately.

[SPEAKER_00]: In our new house, visitors regularly reported doors opening and slamming on their own.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the sound of tiny footsteps upstairs when my brother and I were downstairs.

[SPEAKER_00]: At one point, my parents housed a cousin, whose high school was nearby.

[SPEAKER_00]: He snook a friend in for an authorised sleepover in the middle of the night.

[SPEAKER_00]: That friend, let's call him Leopold.

[SPEAKER_00]: Woke to find a naked boy, with an old fashioned tie, her style, straddling his chest, and pounding on him with both fists.

[SPEAKER_00]: When the apple tried to push him off, the child yank desires and kept screaming silently.

[SPEAKER_00]: The apple bolted from the room, shrieking, waking the whole house and refused to ever set foot in it again.

[SPEAKER_00]: My parents also claimed I had an imaginary friend as a toddler.

[SPEAKER_00]: When they asked who he was, I'd apparently say he's not little, he's very old, he says he died here.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember this, but my parents do.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I was about 8, my parents decided our current home wasn't creepy enough, so they bought a plot of land and built a new house in what was basically the wilderness.

[SPEAKER_00]: A few acres surrounded by trees and their roads.

[SPEAKER_00]: Closed to the city, but it felt like the middle of nowhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for the first time my brother and I would have separate rooms, I was thrilled.

[SPEAKER_00]: My father let me design my room and even drew up custom furniture.

[SPEAKER_00]: Very soon after moving in, my mother started insisting I sleep elsewhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: Usually in the master bedroom.

[SPEAKER_00]: She never really explained why.

[SPEAKER_00]: she just didn't want me sleeping alone in mine.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her explanations were odd.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Feng Shui was bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: The headboard faced the wrong direction.

[SPEAKER_00]: The room sat at the end of a tea intersection where evil spirits gather.

[SPEAKER_00]: I used the room mostly during the day for reading or homework, at night I slept anywhere else.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even in the day like though, the room did feel wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be sat at my desk, I'd look up, and I'd see a woman stood in my peripheral vision, pale skin, long straight dark hair, a white dress, and every time I turned to look straight at her, she was gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could never make out a face.

[SPEAKER_00]: I convinced myself it was my furniture tricking my eyes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I saw her like this for ten years and even later when I visited, only ever in that room.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I rarely slept there, it became a de facto guest room.

[SPEAKER_00]: One guest moved out of the room to sleep on the couch downstairs after one night, reporting only that something in the room was really unsettling.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I was nine, my mother took me on a religious retreat to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand.

[SPEAKER_00]: People go to these places to pray, meditate, be around the mountains, stay in wood cabins amongst the trees and gardens.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hated it.

[SPEAKER_00]: My attention span was not built for hours upon hours of meditation.

[SPEAKER_00]: We arrived after dark and collapsed straight into bed, and that night I had a nightmare.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the dream I walked out of our cabin onto a stone pathway lined with bushes and trees.

[SPEAKER_00]: The path wound round some small clearing were a broken wagon was sat as a decoration.

[SPEAKER_00]: Next to it stood something impossibly tall.

[SPEAKER_00]: A humanoid figure but as tall as the trees, may be 15 metres.

[SPEAKER_00]: It had pale gray as she skin, lank dark hair, and huge bulging red eyes.

[SPEAKER_00]: The ribs were shown clearly under its skin, the hands and feet were far too large.

[SPEAKER_00]: It seemed to be wailing, yet it had no mouth.

[SPEAKER_00]: I woke up terrified and I told my mother.

[SPEAKER_00]: She dismissed it as nerve from sleeping in a strange place.

[SPEAKER_00]: The next morning, on our way to meditation, I pointed at some red spider herbiscous flowers.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, the creatures eyes were that columnum, and then I froze.

[SPEAKER_00]: flanked by plants, leading to a clearing with a broken decorative wagon.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'd not come this way at night, we'd never seen it before.

[SPEAKER_00]: The ground next to the wagon looks slightly sunken, like something huge had been standing there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to go home, my mother reminded me that bit flown there and would be staying there the week.

[SPEAKER_00]: The monks and other adults took pity on me, the only child there.

[SPEAKER_00]: When my mother told one of the monks about my nightmare, he went quiet.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's seen a plethora, the monk said, a hungry ghost.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of them round here, they're drawn to prayers and meditation.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're here to ask him for merit and good karma.

[SPEAKER_00]: The monk replied, well why him, why not the adults?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because he can see them.

[SPEAKER_00]: He went on to explain that hungry ghosts had once been greedy, corrupt people who exploited others.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as punishment, they are now permanently starving, because their mouths are the size of a pinprint.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said it had no mouth, my mother pointed out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh it does, it's just that small, the monk said.

[SPEAKER_00]: They said a prayer for me and I didn't see the creature again.

[SPEAKER_00]: Over the years, monks who had never met each other told me variations of the same thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: That in a past life, I'd been some sort of soldier, a pyrim maniac who banned people.

[SPEAKER_00]: which was why I now reacted badly to heat and broke out in rashes.

[SPEAKER_00]: They also warned me they were vengeful spirits around me, trying to make my life miserable.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not exactly the standard fortune people get at tempo.

[SPEAKER_00]: By my teens I developed a kind of radar.

[SPEAKER_00]: Certain places just felt wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I transferred to a new high school, there were corridors I avoided because something in me required.

[SPEAKER_00]: Later, I learned that the school had once been a theatre that burned down mid-performance, trapping everyone inside.

[SPEAKER_00]: Life in Thailand was unstable for other reasons too.

[SPEAKER_00]: After a couple of violent riots and army tanks on my route to school, I decided I'd leave [SPEAKER_00]: I studied hard, got a place at university in the US, and I left just as a new military junta took power back home.

[SPEAKER_00]: My university was founded in the 1800s, America's first research institution.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lot of old buildings, lot of rumors about secret experiments.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was one building, Rams and Hall, that felt off from my very first week.

[SPEAKER_00]: Inside though, I constantly felt watched.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd walk down apparently empty corridors, and here footsteps behind me.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I bent a drink from an old brass fountain, I would feel eyes on the back of my neck.

[SPEAKER_00]: I told myself it was the stress or the architecture of the building.

[SPEAKER_00]: Years later, I learned Remson Hall is the only building on campus that houses human remains.

[SPEAKER_00]: The ashes of a former university president, Ira Remson, sealed into the wall behind a plaque at the entrance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Junior here, I finally moved off campus into my first apartment, and I soon realized there was already someone there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Out of the corner of my eye, I kept seeing the same figure.

[SPEAKER_00]: Showed the length, choppy brown hair, tan skin, always just at the edge of my vision.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever I turn my head, they would vanish.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was a woman, but I never saw her clearly enough to be sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: I decided my brain was playing tricks and I ignored it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Later that year, a flood in the basement caused an electrical fault, and the building caused fire.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thankfully nobody was hurt, but we couldn't return for a month.

[SPEAKER_00]: The building had been renovating in the new penthouse unit.

[SPEAKER_00]: After the fire, no one wanted it, so they slashed the rent.

[SPEAKER_00]: My friend and I took it.

[SPEAKER_00]: The not quite visible figure came with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: After college, I got a research job in a new city, working in a neurology lab, studying dementia.

[SPEAKER_00]: I should all be between the lab and the hospital, and eventually mapped a shortcut through the back entrance, which meant walking past the morgue.

[SPEAKER_00]: Vans carrying bodies in and out were a common sight, so it didn't bother me much.

[SPEAKER_00]: One day I happened to pass, just as a body bag was being unzipped.

[SPEAKER_00]: I caught a flash of a red plaid shirt inside, and it reminded me of a superstition from home.

[SPEAKER_00]: Never stir at newly dead bodies, or their spirits may latch onto you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I kept walking to the neurology clinic where I was scheduled to administer cognitive tests.

[SPEAKER_00]: One test required the patient to name as many items as possible that I was wearing or holding.

[SPEAKER_00]: I sat across from him and said, look at me, and name any items I'm holding or wearing.

[SPEAKER_00]: The patient's dementia was advanced, so I wasn't expecting much.

[SPEAKER_00]: He stirred past me unfocused.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once again, name any items I'm wearing or holding, I repeated, shirt, he said at last.

[SPEAKER_00]: I glanced down at my solid blue shirt, then jutifully wrote his incorrect response.

[SPEAKER_00]: shirt, red shirt, he kept saying, I continued to transcribe his answers, red plaat shirt, he said, I looked up, red plaat shirt, plaat shirt, red shirt.

[SPEAKER_00]: The whole time his eyes were fixed on a point just over my shoulder, as though something behind me was far more interesting than I was.

[SPEAKER_00]: After that, my life was supernaturally quiet for six years.

[SPEAKER_00]: I finished grad school, I got married, I changed jobs.

[SPEAKER_00]: For a while I thought maybe [SPEAKER_00]: Then, last year, my wife and I attended an aerospace medicine conference in Chicago.

[SPEAKER_00]: The high-ed was fully booked, so we ended up at an older hotel on the magnificent mile, built in the 1920s.

[SPEAKER_00]: Inside it was modern in north, but the bones, elevators, door frames, they all showed a stage.

[SPEAKER_00]: We checked our room, we liked it, and we went to bed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wake in the dark to a cold hand shaking my upper arm, firm the liberate.

[SPEAKER_00]: My wife is always freezing, so it's normal for me to wake up to her ice-block feet, pressed against my legs, but she fell asleep on my left.

[SPEAKER_00]: This hand was on my right.

[SPEAKER_00]: I checked the time, 349 a.n.

[SPEAKER_00]: What do you need?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mumbled.

[SPEAKER_00]: Expecting to hear my wife's voice, hoping to hear.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was no answer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just a sense of someone standing over me.

[SPEAKER_00]: As my eyes adjusted, I saw a figure on my right hand side.

[SPEAKER_00]: A woman, I think, in a dress with a polka dot pattern.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her head and shoulders bailed in something dark yet translucent, like a sheet of a shadow.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was something off about the way she moved or rather didn't move.

[SPEAKER_00]: She hovered over me with a faint unnatural swaying, like an idle non-playable character from a video game.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then to my left, I felt my wife stir in her sleep.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was still laying beside me, and the figure still remained to my right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Two thoughts hit me very clearly.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really did not want to wake my wife if I didn't have to.

[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, I had no plausible explanation for what I was seeing, and I hated that.

[SPEAKER_00]: If this was a hallucination, it wasn't just visual.

[SPEAKER_00]: Something cold had shaken me awake.

[SPEAKER_00]: I stirred that the figure trying to force it to resolve into a coat or a curtain or anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: As I watched, it began to fade.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not dissolving into smoke, just becoming less and less opaque, until it was simply not there.

[SPEAKER_00]: It took maybe 30 seconds, and it was only at this point that I realised how cold I was.

[SPEAKER_00]: I overheat easily and don't worry about it, but I wish shivering hard enough that I got up put on a t-shirt out of my suitcase and climb back under the covers.

[SPEAKER_00]: And our later, almost to the second, 449 a.m.

[SPEAKER_00]: I woke, again.

[SPEAKER_00]: A hand waved in front of my face, not touching, just hovering, like checking I'm alive.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was red, with knotted spindly fingers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, my wife's living peacefully beside me, I blinked, and the hand was long.

[SPEAKER_00]: It will be so comforting to write it's office, sleep paralysis, or some pimple-pumpier hallucination.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe my brain botched the transition between R-R-M and wakefulness, and dumped fragments of my dreams into the room.

[SPEAKER_00]: The problem was I wasn't paralyzed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I moved, I sat up, I felt the sheets the mattress, the bite of the cold air.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I woke properly in the morning, I was still wearing the shirt I put on in the middle of the night.

[SPEAKER_00]: so I know at least some of it happened in full consciousness.

[SPEAKER_00]: At the time, I was testing a sleep tracking biosensor as part of my job.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I checked the data, there were two sharper wakeinings logged exactly a 349 and 449 AM.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not conclusive proof of anything, but it did confirm I was awake and alert at those times.

[SPEAKER_00]: The following night I woke to see the same woman again.

[SPEAKER_00]: This time she was bent over in a crutch, hovering directly above my wife.

[SPEAKER_00]: Her failed face inches from my wife's face.

[SPEAKER_00]: My wife slept through it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I watched for a while, decided I had no tools to deal with this and I fell back to sleep.

[SPEAKER_00]: My wife made me include that last bit she cannot believe I just let it rule menacingly over her and did nothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't actually believe in ghosts for the record.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what happened in that hotel room was probably some perfect storm of exhaustion, cold, neurological misfires.

[SPEAKER_00]: still something about the timing, the physical contact, the way the figure faded as opposed to vanishing, and how neatly the sleep data lined up, while it's all sitting in my mind like a splinter.

[SPEAKER_00]: A few months ago my brother renovated our childhood home, he knocked down the wall between my old room and his to make one big master bedroom.

[SPEAKER_00]: He and his wife now sleep [SPEAKER_00]: Recently my mother called, and referring to my brother, I said, she says their dogs being barking at something in that room between three and four in the morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: Every night it won't stop, they can't see anything, but she says something feels off, she's scared.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hesitated, and then told my mother about the woman in my old bedroom.

[SPEAKER_00]: I figured that was the case, my mother replied calmly, [SPEAKER_00]: I went very, very still.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd never told her that detail.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I said, by the door.

[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't seen her, my mother said.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: She then told me something about the house that I'd never heard.

[SPEAKER_00]: On the very first night we spent there, someone rang the gatebell repeatedly at 2am.

[SPEAKER_00]: My parents went down and found a strange woman waiting at the gate.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, she said, smiling, so you too have arrived.

[SPEAKER_00]: Something in the way she said it made my mother feel she wasn't talking about arriving at the front gate, but about something else.

[SPEAKER_00]: As if she'd been waiting a long time for them to move there.

[SPEAKER_00]: The woman then asked to be let in.

[SPEAKER_00]: My parents deciding she was probably mentally unstable, refused.

[SPEAKER_00]: the stranger bowed and exclaimed, both if you hear, fancy that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then said something again what my mother described as an ancient sounding language, turned and walked down the road.

[SPEAKER_00]: My father looked after her.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was no one there.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was as if she'd vanished into thin air.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, that's all.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know this is long, I don't really have anyone in my everyday life.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can say these things too, without jeopardizing my reputation as a rational scientist.

[SPEAKER_00]: I spend my days being the voice of data and evidence, and I can't exactly turn around and start talking about hungry ghosts, necromancy babies and women at the gate to disappear.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm telling you instead.

[SPEAKER_00]: Many thanks, but...

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Beth, thank you so much for one of the most vivid and visual experiences I think we've had in a long time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also, Beth is probably listening as he's listening through his partner's Patreon, and well done you, for taking the wise choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I would say, Buzzy Mail was originally much longer, however, Barry is a very funny individual.

[SPEAKER_00]: and I did have to cut out some of the points which were a bit more humor-based after all.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a dark paranormal podcast and amongst the long email I did contain various bits of rather funny humour, there is a very dark experience that took place here and I think we can all agree on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, uh, thank you so much for spending the time to send in such a fantastic experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't forget guys, awesome missions never close, so if you have an experience that you think would suit the dark paranormal and mini-sode or indeed a shorter experience that could go on our Patreon show, Dark Bites.

[SPEAKER_00]: Either head over to our website, the DarkParanormal.com and click submit my experience or go to the links in the show notes and there you can click right through to that page.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also, in the show notes, I'll link to our Patreon where you can get a free week's trial period of any tier of our Patreon, full free, and at this time of year, when the adverts are thick, fast, and steady, it's a really great time to go and check out both the Patreon and the wonderful community over there.

[SPEAKER_00]: But right now, I'm going to bid you all farewell, thank you for joining me on this amazing experience from Bear, and I'll speak to all next week, but until then remember, when you're discussing the paranormal, always leave some of your disbelief at the door, and I'll see you next time right here on the dark, paranormal.