October 20, 2025 • 52 mins
Roz is burning with questions when the daring filmmaker and director Liam Le Guillou pays a visit to discuss his documentary, “A Cursed Man,” in which he travels the world on a mission to get cursed. Clutching her crystals in one hand and a donut in the other, Roz shivers as Liam shares his terrifying yet enlightening journey from New Orleans to India to Mexico to answer the biggest question of them all: Are curses real?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
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
(00:31):
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
(00:51):
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
(01:15):
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
(01:36):
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.
(02:01):
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,
(02:23):
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
(02:46):
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,
(03:07):
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.
(03:29):
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,
(03:53):
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,
(04:16):
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
(04:39):
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.
(05:01):
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
(05:21):
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
(05:45):
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?
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah? That was great, that was great.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
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
(06:28):
intrigued just by the premise alone, which is you're looking
to get cursed.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
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?
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So, before you embarked on this journey, where were you
at on any of this kind of stuff?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
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
(07:12):
who's been fascinated by this, you want to know, right,
you want to know where's the proof.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, So I figured, well, if.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
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,
(07:55):
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?
Speaker 2 (08:15):
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
(08:37):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
But like growing up, there were you constantly around friends
and family that like that they had stories but just
not you.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
What was your grandma's ability, what was her expertise?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
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
(09:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, me too. I'm very similar in that way.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
You.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
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?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
I have had a number of kind of odd experiences.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Like what give it to us?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
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
(10:43):
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
(11:04):
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
(11:25):
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
(11:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
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?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I'm there, Go find that coyote, be friends with it.
Maybe I can keep you away from all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
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
(12:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Or she was very charismatic, So yeah, I should have
taken down the details, and yeah, talked about.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
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
(13:48):
a curse, you're crazy.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
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
(14:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, totally, because who would were you raised with religion
or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
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,
(14:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
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,
(15:28):
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
(15:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
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,
(16:35):
we'll see how it goes.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
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
(17:36):
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
(17:59):
told everyone we can do this, and yeah, I don't
know how I'm going to do this.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
I'm trying to remember because I saw it a couple
of months ago. Did you ever go like the eBay
or Etsy route?
Speaker 2 (18:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I feel like once USPS gets it, like things get
kind of, it loses its its value.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
The curse exactly, it just comes undone in the postal service.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
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?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
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
(19:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
On because whatever it does work, I imagine.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
La Yeah, wasn't it the green Man? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
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
(20:19):
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
(20:40):
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.
(21:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
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
(21:46):
don't I don't know. When you're there you're just like, Wow,
there's stuff going on in this place.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
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
(22:11):
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
(22:34):
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
(22:54):
a bit of both sides of that journey, and so
that was sort of fun to take on.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
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
(23:39):
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
(24:00):
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
(24:22):
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
(24:42):
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,
(25:03):
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
(25:23):
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
(25:46):
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,
(26:09):
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
(26:29):
a moment when I went, oh, this is real. I
just did this. Okay, yeah, here we are what happens next?
Speaker 1 (26:38):
So do you feel like that one started to work?
Speaker 2 (26:42):
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
(27:02):
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
(27:24):
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
(27:44):
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.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Right, especially if you have a bunch of different curses.
It's like which one is doing this right?
Speaker 2 (28:09):
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
(28:31):
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,
(28:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
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
(29:27):
never people asking for it. So I just wonder, I
wonder if you know if any.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Of this is real?
Speaker 1 (29:34):
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?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
How is your wife with this?
Speaker 2 (30:14):
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,
(30:37):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Find, especially if you're like going out in the woods
or wherever.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
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
(31:18):
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
(31:39):
in the.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Jungles and what are we talking wild animals.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
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
(32:05):
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,
(32:25):
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.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
So I was like, you're there. You got the cameras.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
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
(33:04):
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
(33:25):
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
(33:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
So well, at that point and the journey, how much
were you starting to believe that this cursed stuff is
a little real?
Speaker 2 (34:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah, you have your cursed necklace on, You're going to
the tigers.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
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
(35:01):
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
(35:26):
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
(35:47):
look for another curl.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
I get another one?
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Why not?
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:52):
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
(36:13):
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,
(36:37):
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
(36:57):
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
(37:19):
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
(37:43):
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
(38:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
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.
(39:06):
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
(39:29):
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.
(39:50):
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,
(40:10):
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.
(40:30):
I need I need to undo this, because regardless of
what's happening to me. Something is happening to me.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
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
(40:58):
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?
Speaker 2 (41:17):
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
(41:39):
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
(42:01):
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
(42:25):
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
(42:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
So, yeah, is there gonna be a sequel?
Speaker 2 (43:13):
I'm not looking for a curse again.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
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
(43:38):
explore and maybe hear about other people's experiences and not
necessarily have one for myself.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
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
(44:06):
do we think there?
Speaker 2 (44:07):
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
(44:28):
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
(44:48):
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,
(45:09):
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.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
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?
(45:47):
Do you know that one?
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Atok I'm not sure if I did too much about
that one though.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Basically it's this movie script where every leading male actor
that's that got offered it died young.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
But it's like so much any of these you can
explain away.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Yeah, I mean, there's meant to be curses connected to
the omen film people around the world. Oh film.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
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
(46:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
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,
(47:33):
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?
Speaker 1 (47:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Absolutely come told up.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Why not? You know?
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Well, anyway, I think that that's about it. But this
is so cool. I'm so happy that you did this.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
I've been described as brave or stupid, and so we'll
figure out what.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
That's a great place to be, right, So tell people
all the things you want them to know.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
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
(49:08):
to know what people think.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Great, Thank you, don't curse me.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
I'll keep it to myself. Don't worry, You're safe.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
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
(49:38):
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.
(50:01):
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
(50:23):
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
(50:46):
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
(51:11):
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
(51:33):
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.
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
(00:31):
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
(00:51):
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
(01:15):
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
(01:36):
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.
(02:01):
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,
(02:23):
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
(02:46):
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,
(03:07):
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.
(03:29):
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,
(03:53):
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,
(04:16):
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
(04:39):
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.
(05:01):
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
(05:21):
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
(05:45):
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?
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah? That was great, that was great.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
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
(06:28):
intrigued just by the premise alone, which is you're looking
to get cursed.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
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?
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So, before you embarked on this journey, where were you
at on any of this kind of stuff?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
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
(07:12):
who's been fascinated by this, you want to know, right,
you want to know where's the proof.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, So I figured, well, if.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
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.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
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,
(07:55):
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?
Speaker 2 (08:15):
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
(08:37):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
But like growing up, there were you constantly around friends
and family that like that they had stories but just
not you.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
What was your grandma's ability, what was her expertise?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
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
(09:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, me too. I'm very similar in that way.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
You.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
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?
Speaker 2 (10:15):
I have had a number of kind of odd experiences.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Like what give it to us?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
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
(10:43):
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
(11:04):
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
(11:25):
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
(11:46):
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.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
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?
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I'm there, Go find that coyote, be friends with it.
Maybe I can keep you away from all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
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
(12:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Or she was very charismatic, So yeah, I should have
taken down the details, and yeah, talked about.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
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
(13:48):
a curse, you're crazy.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
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
(14:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, totally, because who would were you raised with religion
or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
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,
(14:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
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,
(15:28):
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
(15:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
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,
(16:35):
we'll see how it goes.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
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
(17:36):
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
(17:59):
told everyone we can do this, and yeah, I don't
know how I'm going to do this.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
I'm trying to remember because I saw it a couple
of months ago. Did you ever go like the eBay
or Etsy route?
Speaker 2 (18:12):
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.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I feel like once USPS gets it, like things get
kind of, it loses its its value.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
The curse exactly, it just comes undone in the postal service.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
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?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
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
(19:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
On because whatever it does work, I imagine.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
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.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
La Yeah, wasn't it the green Man? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
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
(20:19):
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
(20:40):
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.
(21:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
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
(21:46):
don't I don't know. When you're there you're just like, Wow,
there's stuff going on in this place.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
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
(22:11):
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
(22:34):
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
(22:54):
a bit of both sides of that journey, and so
that was sort of fun to take on.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
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.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
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
(23:39):
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
(24:00):
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
(24:22):
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
(24:42):
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,
(25:03):
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
(25:23):
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
(25:46):
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,
(26:09):
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
(26:29):
a moment when I went, oh, this is real. I
just did this. Okay, yeah, here we are what happens next?
Speaker 1 (26:38):
So do you feel like that one started to work?
Speaker 2 (26:42):
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
(27:02):
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
(27:24):
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
(27:44):
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.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Right, especially if you have a bunch of different curses.
It's like which one is doing this right?
Speaker 2 (28:09):
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
(28:31):
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,
(28:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
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
(29:27):
never people asking for it. So I just wonder, I
wonder if you know if any.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
Of this is real?
Speaker 1 (29:34):
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?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
How is your wife with this?
Speaker 2 (30:14):
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,
(30:37):
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.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Find, especially if you're like going out in the woods
or wherever.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
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
(31:18):
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
(31:39):
in the.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Jungles and what are we talking wild animals.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
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
(32:05):
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,
(32:25):
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.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
So I was like, you're there. You got the cameras.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
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
(33:04):
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
(33:25):
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
(33:47):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
So well, at that point and the journey, how much
were you starting to believe that this cursed stuff is
a little real?
Speaker 2 (34:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah, you have your cursed necklace on, You're going to
the tigers.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
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
(35:01):
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
(35:26):
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
(35:47):
look for another curl.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
I get another one?
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Why not?
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Right?
Speaker 2 (35:52):
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
(36:13):
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,
(36:37):
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
(36:57):
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
(37:19):
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
(37:43):
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
(38:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
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.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
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.
(39:06):
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
(39:29):
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.
(39:50):
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,
(40:10):
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.
(40:30):
I need I need to undo this, because regardless of
what's happening to me. Something is happening to me.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
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
(40:58):
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?
Speaker 2 (41:17):
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
(41:39):
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
(42:01):
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
(42:25):
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
(42:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
So, yeah, is there gonna be a sequel?
Speaker 2 (43:13):
I'm not looking for a curse again.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
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
(43:38):
explore and maybe hear about other people's experiences and not
necessarily have one for myself.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
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
(44:06):
do we think there?
Speaker 2 (44:07):
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
(44:28):
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
(44:48):
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,
(45:09):
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.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
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?
(45:47):
Do you know that one?
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Atok I'm not sure if I did too much about
that one though.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Basically it's this movie script where every leading male actor
that's that got offered it died young.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Right.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
But it's like so much any of these you can
explain away.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Yeah, I mean, there's meant to be curses connected to
the omen film people around the world. Oh film.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
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.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
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
(46:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
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,
(47:33):
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?
Speaker 1 (47:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Absolutely come told up.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Why not? You know?
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Well, anyway, I think that that's about it. But this
is so cool. I'm so happy that you did this.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
It's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
I've been described as brave or stupid, and so we'll
figure out what.
Speaker 1 (48:41):
That's a great place to be, right, So tell people
all the things you want them to know.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
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
(49:08):
to know what people think.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Great, Thank you, don't curse me.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
I'll keep it to myself. Don't worry, You're safe.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
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
(49:38):
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.
(50:01):
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
(50:23):
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
(50:46):
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
(51:11):
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
(51:33):
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.
Host
Roz Hernandez
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