iNTO THE FRAY 503: Dont Turn Around

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The infinite complaces people went to and pro fears about
their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion
over this small binning fragment of solar driftwood, which, by
chance or design, man has inherited out of the dark
mystery of time and face?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Are we living in a multiverse with other dimensions all
around us? What if the encounters reported by people on
podcasts like Into the Fray are true? What if there's
bleed through? What if there are creatures and entities crossing
over into our world all the time? Who could protect us?
This is the premise of Project Threshold, a series of novellas.

(01:27):
Project Threshold is about a secret group who walks in
the shadows, standing against malevolent beings in order to keep
us safe. Both dark horror and sci fi jump in
with three different teams of agents as they keep back
the darkness. Project Threshold Season one released in twenty twenty three,
and it's back with season two releasing now. Go to

(01:52):
Project Threshold dot com to check out the books and
an audible release of the entire first season. Join the
newsletter and join the team to help protect humanity from darkness.
Go to Project Threshold dot com again, that's Project Threshold
dot com. On this episode of Into the Fray, I

(02:13):
welcome Phil Rossi and he is of the Don't Turn
Around podcast and he happened to catch my Instagram video
plea for people you know, to come on and share
their their encounters, their stories or experiences, and he he's like,
I have a few, so here we are, Phil, welcome

(02:33):
on the show.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Hey, thank you so much Sandon for having me on.
It's a great honor to be on your show. Congratulations
on your five hundredth episode. And just you've done so
much for the paranormal podcast community and just the podcast
community overalls. You do great work.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Thank you so much, Phil. I honestly love it. I
am humbled every day that anyone still even wants to
talk to me, and that listeners still want to hear
this voice. Because, as you know, as a podcaster, when
you go back and you edit, you're like, how do
people listen to me?

Speaker 3 (03:06):
I know, hundreds of hours of listening to your own voice?
Oh my gosh, I mean a person.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah. As time goes on, I edit myself less, which
makes me look like even more of an ass. But
that's okay. I'm fine. With that, I'm comfortable in my
ass how to read.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
So yeah, it's being authentic, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, it's no fun if you're not. It makes for
very long editing if you're trying to make yourself sound
like someone else.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah, completely all right.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
So Phil, before we get into your experiences, I would
like to talk about your podcast. What's the format? You know,
how often do you do it? Before we officially started,
you mention that you just began a live version of
this show.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
That is all. That is all accurate. So I started
Don't Turn Around in twenty twenty, This after podcasting for
going on twenty years now. So I started podcasting in
late two thousand and five. I was doing a lot
of my own fiction. It was That's all I was
pretty much doing, was my short stories and my novels.

(04:09):
I was part of sort of that first movement of
podcasts and podcast novels way back in those days. And
it wasn't until twenty eighteen or so where I started
listening to a lot more paranormal podcasts that I got
the idea of, Hey, I've been doing this for so long.
I've been doing the same thing for so long, why

(04:31):
don't I try something a little bit new, and so
that's where the idea of Don't Turn Around came from.
So it's, you know, it's talk radio show format. We
have the standard audio podcast feed and video version of
the show now on YouTube. And really, to summarize it,
it's about people's paranormal experiences, good ghost stories, encounters with

(04:56):
cryptids and UFOs. But that intersection between those experiences and
those spooky stories and the human experience. That's what I'm
really interested in getting down to is how have these
strange occurrences impacted your journey on this planet? Your philosophy
is your perspective. I just find that all very, very fascinating.

(05:17):
Sometimes we incorporate some mental health topics along, just as
the conversations tend to go organically. But it's been such
a wonderful experience. I've talked to so many incredible people
over the last several years, and my own perspective has
really grown. So it's been a really great way for
me to learn about what's going on in the paranormal

(05:38):
world and also learn about myself too.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
So Phil this fiction podcast can people still listen.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
To that it is, Yes, it's still available. They can
find links to all the stuff on my website. But yeah,
two thousand and seven was my debut novel called Crescent,
which is still listened to today, which absolutely blows my mind.
I got a small book deal out of it. It
was an Amazon bestseller, which blew my mind for several weeks.

(06:08):
And yeah, it was. It was quite an experience. And
then there's and then I have several other books out
there as well, available in serialized format.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
And that's assuming under the name that I mentioned in
the beginning, Phil Rossi Rossi.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
That's correct. If a quick Google search will I will
likely bring up all of that stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
So all you're doing now is the Don't turn Around podcast? Right?
Are you doing any fictional stuff at the moment?

Speaker 3 (06:35):
So I'm still writing. I'm actually planning on a second
edition of my first novel, because, after you know, ten
years of life and of my own human experience, I
am a I'm a different writer. I'm a different person.
But I've always loved the story, but I see the
whole story in the whole world through a different lens.

(06:55):
So I'm working on a rewrite of that while I'm
working on a follow up to that book that people
have been been eagerly begging me to begging me to
do and then I occasionally will publish some fiction in
some anthologies and so on as well.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
I guess if you have the writing bug, you've got
the writing bug.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
Right, Yeah, it's you know, it's a blessing and it's
a curse. There's some really good memes about it. Or
it's like shows a person saying, like I love you
know when I get a time to finally sit down
and write, and basically shows a person pulling their hair out.
Sometimes it can sometimes it can be like that. I
find for me, if I'm able to stay number one,

(07:37):
present in the moment and just to tell the story
because I've been a storyteller since even before I've started writing,
then usually it's it's I get in that zone and
it's a really good experience.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Well before we jump into the encounters, if you guys,
and I will have Phil mention all of this again
at the end like I normally do. But if you
want to check out the website for Don't Turn Around Podcast,
it is DTA paranormal dot com. You can hop over
there and check things out. As we're getting started here.
So okay, Phil, looks like we're starting somewhere in Connecticut, right.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yes, yes, So probably my earliest and most profound paranormal
experience happened when I was in high school and was
taking a class called Call of the Wild, and it
was about the intersection of nature with literature, and so
we read a lot of the Jack London books and
the class culminated in a field trip that the teacher

(08:36):
had been doing for years before I even was a
high school senior to a place that some of your
listeners may be familiar with called Dudleytown, which is a
reported to be one of the most haunted places in
the state of Connecticut. Has a long and very spooky history.
It was founded in the seventeen hundreds, but just for

(08:57):
whatever reason, couldn't seem to take home. There were mysterious
deaths and suicides, people losing their minds there, and so
the town just went into ruin. And so every year
mister Gillette, who was just such an incredible, incredible teacher,
would take the high school seniors in his class up
for camping trip up to Dudley Town in Cornwall, Connecticut. So,

(09:22):
just to jump right into it, the day that we
were going into the town, we did a daytime tour
of the town, and what was really fascinating was this
is springtime, so the bugs are starting to chirp, the
peepers are singing their songs from all the different creeks,
and so the forest was alive right, a lot of sound.
But once you crossed into the town proper, things got

(09:46):
very still, like noticeably still, so much so that teenagers
were commenting on it. And I think, we know how
no offense to any teenage listeners, but sometimes, you know,
I know, having two teenage daughters, they can be a
little aloof or oblivious to what's going on around them.
But we all noticed right away that things were just

(10:08):
so quiet, and there was just this sense of a
just presence there. And I didn't back then have the
vocabulary to describe any of this, because this, while I
had experiences when I was growing up, this was the
most in your face something is just not quite right here,

(10:30):
or normal, or however you want to describe it. And
so we went around the town and checked out some
of the foundations of the old buildings and some old
fireplaces that were still standing, and then that was it
for the daytime. We went back, we had some dinner
and then as the sun was starting to go down,
we hiked back out to the town. So this is

(10:52):
where the first experience happened, was on the way back
to Dudley Town. And at the time I wrote it
off and even so much as went to forget it
all about it until I was on another paranormal podcast,
Strange Familiars, hosted by Timothy Renner, which is another incredible show,

(11:15):
and he talks a lot about this archetype and this
flannel man on the show. And so we're marching through
the woods, we see these headlights up between the trees.
And what was immediately odd about that was there's no
road that you can drive to get to Dudley Town itself.

(11:38):
You have to park at the trailhead and then you
hike several miles into the woods to get to the town.
So there are no roads at all, just a narrow
path that gets you there. So that was a little strange.
So we come through the trees and in the waning daylight,
there is this might have been like a nineteen seventies

(12:00):
maybe a Cadillac, some kind of a sedan. It was
sort of a faded green color sitting there amongst the trees.
Engine idling headlights on, and there was a man standing
outside of the the driver's side of the car, and
he had sort of longish dark hair, a beard, a
army style sort of olive green jacket, and underneath that

(12:21):
he was wearing a buffalo plaid a red and black shirt.
And my teacher went up and they exchanged some words,
and then we just moved on and teaching and commented
on it. None of us students commented on it, and
we just went on and like I said, I had
forgotten pretty much all about that until the last couple

(12:42):
of years. So in looking back, it fits the vibe
of the place. Now, we get into the town and
what happens is for the class, you get left, either
individually or with a small group in one of the
foundations and he spread everyone out to see if anyone
has any any experiences. And at the time, again not

(13:09):
knowing much more about the paranormal than I did from
the books that I read or anything that I saw
on TV, it was just terrifying. This whole thing was
just absolutely terrifying. And I remember clutching my friends as
we're sitting there in this foundation. I'll be honest, I
had my eyes squeeze shut for the portion of the time,

(13:32):
but we started after a few minutes of being left
there again, it's very still. Let me back it up.
Another weird thing happened just as we entered the town.
We're standing and he's telling us what's going to be happening,
and it's maybe seventy degrees out. It was a fairly
warm spring day for Connecticut, but all of a sudden,

(13:53):
this pocket of cold air just descended on the group.
It wasn't a draft, it was almost just like a
bubble of cold air. And I remember thinking, number One,
this is weird, but number two that I wish I
had brought the sweatshirt or something because it had gotten
it got that cold. So fast forward, we're sitting in
the foundation. Everything is very still, as it was in

(14:15):
the daytime, but the air was just somehow heavier. It
almost felt like it was static charged. And then we
started hearing sounds like rustling sounds of of what might
have been animals, but a few times it sounded very
much like footsteps, so much so that I thought that
mister Gillette was coming back to take us out early.

(14:37):
And I did hazard to peek out of my eyes
then and saw that we were still all alone. And
before I closed my eyes, and again you passed us
off as a as a as a young person, or
as a person not going out investigations or whatnot. But
I saw a shadow kind of shift between the trees,
and it was so dark, it was like a It

(14:59):
was like a black than black on the darkness. It
was very quick and it could have just been my imagination,
but it was enough to me squeeze my eyes shut
for the rest of the time. Then a few minutes later,
we heard like a screen door bang very loudly, or
it could have just been a regular door, but it
was a big bang. But you heard the creak of

(15:21):
hinges that led up to the bang. But there are
no doors in Dudley Town. The buildings are just foundations,
and the nearest house is you, maybe ten miles away.
It's far away, so you would not hear a door
closing like it was in the same vicinity as you.
And just there's just continued to be sounds. I thought

(15:41):
I heard voices of my classmates maybe, or voices of
mister Gillette. But later it came to find out the
way he kind of set us up was to make
sure that no one could really hear anyone, and I
heard a couple clear voices while I was in there.
This only lasted about ten minutes, but it felt like
we were there for at least forty five minutes or

(16:04):
an hour before he came and got us and took
us back. And so once we leave the town, we
start hearing night sounds again. The air gets warmer, I'll
tell you, But after that, I was as exhausted as
a person could be. And that is my that is
my Dudley Town experience.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
So what happened to make you initially close your eyes?

Speaker 3 (16:30):
I closed my eyes because I did not want to
see something that I could not unsee.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
So it was the footsteps then.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
Yeah, yeah, I think I felt like and even before
I heard the footsteps, I've got this sense that something
was coming. Yeah, something was just coming in closer, and
I just didn't want to see it. I just would
have died happy not to have seen anything that nice. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, we've heard a lot of stories like that, haven't we.
People are going you know, I really wish I had
a show in the flashlight over in that corner. That
would have been great.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yeah. Yeah, And I'll be honest too, I don't think
I slept for a week after that trip because my
mind was just playing over everything that we had experienced.
I was afraid something maybe followed me back from there.
It was I don't think that you would see a
field trip like this these days.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah, I mean considering you know, you talk about the
whole mental health aspect of what we talk about. I mean,
but that's a legitimate thing, because these are things that
as far as the human aspect goes, which I'm also
fascinated by. Is my questioning at the end of somebody's
experiences would be, you know, how much did you sleep

(17:46):
after this? Did you ever sleep again after this? And
usually it's kind of trying to be lighthearted, but most
of the time it's legit. It's not lighthearted. These things
can and do affect people's entire lives afterwards.

Speaker 3 (17:59):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, any event that makes you fundamentally
question your concept of reality is going to have a
lasting effect. And that's exactly what this event was. It
was I fundamentally questioned the reality of the afterlife of

(18:22):
if spirits and ghosts walk this earth. I always had
hope they did. Being into the paranormal but this felt
more like a confirmation. And I don't know that at
the time that I was ready for it. I mean,
growing up in my house, when I grew up in
the house that my grandfather built, paranormal was not something
that was talked about. I would hear sounds at night,

(18:44):
as a lot of kids do, things would fall off
my shelves, and my parents would just play it off.
They'd say, oh, it must have been sitting on the
edge of your shelf, or my favorite, that's just the
pipes banging in the walls, and you're not really hearing
anything spooky. Go get a glass of water, and go
to bed. So I was not prepared to face so

(19:06):
abruptly the possibility that all of this Israel.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
So you mentioned that you, at least for a time,
thought that something may have followed you home. Is that
still your opinion.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
That was I don't think that something did actually follow
me home. I think I was just so spooked that
I was just worried that I was not alone in
my bedroom at night. But then again, then again, and
that's an aspect of the tale that I haven't really revisited, right,

(19:40):
I'm so I've been so focused on the trip itself
on the retelling of this story that I didn't consider
the days afterwards, but for at least three or four days,
And it wasn't always at night. It was sometimes during
the daytime where I'd be in my room playing on

(20:00):
my Commo Verse sixty four that I would get this then,
just that I wasn't alone, that there was someone like
I had come into the room. I would look over
my shoulder or just felt like there was someone there.
And it's really funny that I haven't thought much about that.
So it's possible. One, I see two possibilities. One yes,
something tagged along or two, being in that intense sort

(20:25):
of paranormally charged space had flipped on my receiver or
opened my band with a little bit more where my
awareness had increased. And so maybe it was something that
had been in my house all along that I was
just becoming aware of.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
So as far as Dudley Town itself goes, is the
thought that it's and it could be both. Of course,
it could be a fifty to fifty situation, But is
the thought more that it's like a stone tape theory,
like a residual quote unquote haunting situation, or that it's
an active, an interactive like a window area. I mean,

(21:02):
obviously the flannel man was a very interactive entity, because
that's what that was terrifying, by the way. But then
like you said, there's like doors banging when there's no
doors around, it's just foundations. So that would, I guess
be more of a residual kind of a situation.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yeah, I think it is. I think it's a bit
of both. I think there's an energy there that is
very much, for lack of a better word, a living energy,
that is that is aware of people that are coming
in and out of its space. And then I also
think that there are echoes there right of the past

(21:41):
and that maybe are imprinted there because of how strong
the energy of this place is.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
It makes you wonder, you know. I did very recently
with my patrons an Urban Legends Part one. You know,
there's so many urban legends, but I covered or one
of my choices, the Black Volga, which is a limo
in Europe that is said to basically stock and abduct children.
And I've also recently read Nosferatu by Joe Hill, which

(22:13):
is essentially that. Yes, I think, yeah, a great book,
of course, but it makes me wonder, and I would
love to hear what the conversation was with the flannel man.
Let's we'll go ahead and call him. But what happens
if you get in that dude's car? Right? Where do
you go? What happens to you?

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Yeah? Where do you end up? You know? I've I've
wondered that. I wondered. I wondered long and hard. Once
I remembered that that had happened, what was the discussion?
And then where does? Where did he go? Because the
car wasn't there when we came back, and in fact,
we you know, once we got past you know, a

(22:54):
certain distance, we didn't hear the engine idly anymore. And
it wasn't like it drove off or wasn't like the
car was turned off. It was just a very much
of an abrupt like one minute we heard it and
the next minute we didn't. And so, yeah, where wou'd
he go? And what would happen if you were to
tag along? Would you end up in the same place

(23:15):
or whatever that place may be?

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Because you know, when you talk about men in black,
they're supposed to have very strange mannerisms and they just
can't quite get things right even when they're speaking, So
I just wonder if there was anything just kind of
off about him besides the fact that he was there.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
He seemed pretty sort of casually well you know what,
now that you mention it again, it wasn't like he
was leaning against the car or taking in the sights.
He was standing there next to the car pretty rigidly,

(23:55):
you shoulders kind of squared, just standing there. And he
didn't gesticulate or make any gestures or lean into my
teacher when they were talking. He was still very he
was very still, as still as that forest was. And
that is a little strange now that I think of it.

(24:18):
You're asking all the right questions. By the way, now,
I'm not going to sleep.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
And don't turn around.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
Yeah, it's exactly. Yeah, I might be taking that.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
I just I'm trying to put myself in that guy's shoes.
And it's not like he was out there like you
guys with a group to kind of go check out
this creepy town. It's just kind of a random dude
just going to this place that's only foundations and kind
of going, why are you there? What are you doing?

Speaker 3 (24:47):
Yeah? And how the hell did you get here?

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah? And if he's got this, And what kind of
car was it?

Speaker 3 (24:52):
It looked like some kind of like a nineteen seventies catallazed.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
So something loud.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
I mean those are loud, big, it was loud. Have
the big metal bumpers on that. Oh, the trees were
not wide enough in most places to accommodate that thing.
It was just sitting there in the woods.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
That's the that's the mob car. You pack all the
boys in the very very back, if you know what
I'm saying. I mean, those cars make some racket when
they're getting around. So that is interesting that you said
we didn't hear them leave like it was idling and
then there was no rev of an engine. So that
is strange.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yeah, very strange.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Dudley Town. All right, let's go so what's going on
with Dudley Town now? Like, are the found out foundations
even there? Is it? You know built over? Now?

Speaker 3 (25:36):
So, as far as I'm aware, the foundations are still there.
It's not built over because it's it's pretty inaccessible. As mentioned. Uh,
it's owned by a private association called the Dark Entry
Forest Association.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
What what is that?

Speaker 3 (25:53):
And that's just the name of the forest there, right,
that's that's what the woods there are called, not because
of dark entity, I think in the shadow of Mohawk Mountain,
so it tends to be a little darker. Maybe this
is I'm sort of infer based on my knowledge of
the area. But now you can't go up there. You'll

(26:15):
get arrested for trespassing. People do still sneak up there,
but they don't let people up there in the woods anymore.
And there's of course many different theories on why that is.
I think the likely theory is that the landowners were
not happy with people going out there and leaving all
their trash and being generally not great to nature. But

(26:38):
other theories are that people are kept out there because
it is so hauntingly charged. There's actually a story about
the Warrens. We're going to take a group of people
up there and learn more and to explore Dudley Town.
And it was a fairly expensive I've heard numbers of

(27:01):
like one thousand dollars per ticket. I think that's been
exaggerated over the years, but it was no small fee
to go up there. And apparently Lauri and Warren took
one step in the town and said, no, this is
the it's the energy here is just it's just too
much and they've refunded everyone their money. So again, maybe

(27:21):
that's why people aren't allowed up there. That to keep
people safe.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
I love learning about just every time I hop on
there's something new that I learned. I have never heard
of Dudley Town. This sounds like a really whole spot.
I mean to be kept out there too.

Speaker 3 (27:37):
Yeah, I would love. I would love to go back.
I would love to go back. I might just for
fun reach out to the association and say, hey, you know,
I'm a I'm not some teenager. I'm a a podcaster
and an author, and I would love to have the
opportunity to come spend a little time up there, and maybe,

(27:58):
who knows, maybe I'd be able to work something out.
Though I would think if I were in their shoes
and it is just to keep people out, to keep
things nice and tidy and not full of trash and
beer bottles, I would be concerned that if there was
any hype around this, they would see it influx of people. Right,
But it's still worth it. That's not to say that

(28:20):
it doesn't hurt to ask.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
It does not, And I think that is one hundred
percent worth the try. Yeah, I wish I had a
place like that around here. I would be doing everything
in my power to get out there. Is that at
all tied to Native American stuff or anything.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
Like that, Yes, so there are. So it was the
Mohawk tribe and I think one other tribe that I
can't name off the top of my head, but they
were very active in that area. And during the French
Indian War. I believe a family was according to worries

(29:00):
according to the I thinks there's a historical record of it,
but they were unfortunately lost their lives at the hands
of this angry tribe.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
That area of the country just has so much history.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
It really does. It's amazing. That's where I grew up
in Connecticut. I'm no longer in Connecticut, and now I
live in Virginia these days, another state that has a
very vibrant, haunted history.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
Well, let's move away from Dudley Town and now we'll
talk about some of your investigations that you have gone
out on.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
Yes. Absolutely, so, there's a spot in Maryland known as Daniels, Maryland.
It used to be a textile town. Starting in the
eighteen hundreds, they actually made the canvas. The canvas for
all the tents used by the Union Army. So there's
a little historical tidbit for you. The textile company changed

(30:01):
hands and when that happened, the people that were living
there were told that they would have to leave, leave
the town, and that they were going to bulldoze their homes.
But even still some people Stallwartley stayed there until nineteen
seventy two, when Hurricane Agnes blew through the mid Atlantic
and watched the entire town out. We went up there

(30:27):
with the intent of seeing is there anything? Is there
anything going on in this abandoned space? Do abandoned spaces
in general, do they host this paranormal energy? Something I'm
still interested in is just because the space is abandoned
doesn't mean that it's haunted. And again I don't have

(30:47):
those answers. So we hike out there. It's maybe a
three or four mile hike, or maybe less, maybe about
two miles. It's not too far from civilization. But again
it's the neatest spot you'll see. There's a It's right
along the Potapsco River and the Potapsco River Valley, which
after doing some research after our first trip there, I

(31:09):
found out has actually seen quite a bit of paranormal
activity from strange lights UFOs, even a big foot sighting
or two. So that just that just blew my mind,
but it added up. So the first time I went
out there was with my wife and my daughter. They

(31:31):
took me out there for Father's Day, which I think
was a very sweet way to celebrate Father's Day with
a little paranormal investigation. And so we explored some of
the town, which is mostly just foundations, and there's a
couple there's ruins of a couple churches there, and the
town like the lower I'll call it the Lower Town,
and then we'll talk about the Upper Town and two

(31:53):
separate pieces here. We explored the area where the tenements
had been, where the workers have lived, and I had
some very interesting anomalist spikes in EMF. There were a
couple times where I thought I saw something moving. Again,
hard to judge the out of the corner of your

(32:15):
eye phenomena, but I saw numerous times enough that I
was not able to either prove that I saw something
or discount that I was seeing something. But I did
manage to bring back a couple EVPs from that part
of the forest, which was very exciting. I think catching
an EVP when you're in nature is a pretty solid

(32:38):
feat because, of course, as you know, there's a lot
of environmental variables to deal with, but to get some
clear voices was pretty exciting. So we started there and
then as the day was as the day was waning,
we went up to the ruins of this Catholic church,
the Church of Stancisla, and it had been struck by lightning,

(33:03):
I believe in the nineteen hundreds and burned to the ground,
and so it's just a couple of walls left and
a bunch of rubble and that's all that's really left
of it. And the first thing that happened when we
went up there we found this it was like a
crown made out of vines, just sitting on the steps

(33:27):
of the church. It was very very peculiar, clearly left
there by someone. And we also noted that compared to
the other church, which was an old Pentecostal church, that
church was covered in graffiti, but at this time there
was not a single blemish of graffiti that we could

(33:47):
see marring this church. But there were signs that people
had been there because there was a fire pit in
the church building itself, that had some charcoal left in it,
so it looked like there might have been a recent
fire there. So between the strange crown that was sitting on,
the sitting on the steps, and the fire pit, it

(34:09):
was hard not to wonder if people were going up
there to engage in certain practices that maybe they you know,
certain magical practices that they didn't want to do in
more public public spots. I had shared that image and
some other images with a friend of mine that's a
practicing which and they said, yeah, you know, I don't

(34:31):
want to go out and say that someone's practicing something
dark up there. But typically people that are practicing nature
worship or witchcraft, they'll go do it in a park
because they don't feel like they have anything to hide.
But to go deep into the woods into this spot
could mean that someone was doing something that they wanted
to keep to themselves. So the vibe in there was

(34:55):
in part dictated by that early by those discoveries, but
it just felt from the rest of the town it
was heavier and it didn't feel as as welcoming, and
as time went on it started to feel even even heavier.
We started just getting very uncomfortable that nothing really happened.

(35:17):
Others well, I say nothing, but some of our devices
were going off. The rempod was pretty active. I was
getting some hits, some consistent hits on my K two
meter and my other EMF meter, and he g, there
are no power lines, there are no power sources, no
cell phone towers, nothing like that. It's a it's a

(35:38):
very dead dead spot. And doing a baseline revealed no EMF.
So that was it was interesting. And as the sun
started to get a little lower, it just felt more
and more oppressive. So we left right away. About a
year maybe or maybe eight months later, we went back

(35:59):
and in December of twenty twenty two, I believe, And
so this was myself, my wife, and both of my
daughters and we went. We ended up getting out there
later in the day because as with teenagers, sometimes it
takes a little more time to get out of the house.
So we didn't get up there until around three two,

(36:20):
between two and three o'clock, so the day was already
long in the tooth by that point, and so we decided,
why don't we just go straight to the church. We
know there's some weird stuff going on there and it'll
be it should be fun and so immediately we're struck
by that same sort of heavy vibe. We did a
couple esta sessions and it was really interesting because the

(36:46):
whatever was coming through was almost giving directions, saying, go back,
go back there behind behind, it kept saying, and two
minutes later my wife, who had kind of gone off
on her own she's a very good photographer, to go
take some pictures. So she came back and she had
been wanting to find the cemetery that had been there,

(37:08):
and lo and behold, she found it, maybe twenty thirty
feet beyond the church, behind the church, and as she
was coming back in, she was literally saying the words,
I found the cemetery behind the church, at the same
time that the spirit box was saying behind So that
was again wild. Whether it was her own conscious making

(37:35):
the words come out of the spirit box, or there
was something that was trying to guide us there, it's
again hard to say. In the cemetery itself, when we
went back and checked it out, it was a much
mellower vibe. It felt a little better, and she started
cleaning off one of the graves that had started to
sink and was covered in weeds, and we started getting

(37:56):
some chatter through the spirit box that was expressing some
phrases of gratitude, so again corroborated with what was going on,
and these were some pretty strong moments. But what happened
next was one of the strangest things that I have
yet to experience exploring the paranormal. So my wife and

(38:20):
my younger daughter decided to head off to explore the
other side of the church, and she wanted to take
pictures of this old rusted car that was down down
in this ditch, and so my older daughter and I
were still doing a few things inside the church itself,
but then she just got very pale and felt very drained,

(38:43):
and it seemed like something was almost tapping her energy,
and so immediately knew it was time to go. So
we go back out to the front of the church
and I'm just checking on her, seeing how she's doing,
and she's like, I just don't feel great, so tired,
and moments later, moments earlier, she had been full of

(39:04):
energy and participating, and so it was just like a
hard stop with where her energy was. And so we're
getting ready to walk down the hill to find my
wife and my younger daughter, and I get this idea
in my head that I had left a recorder on
the other side of the church. It just popped in

(39:25):
there that, oh, no, I left this recorder on the
other side of the church. And so I told her,
wait here, I'm going to go hurry up. I'm going
to grab that recorder. And so I rushed around the
back of the church, and as I enter the church
building itself, it was almost like I was moving underwater.
Things got very The way I described it was like

(39:48):
almost like wavy, like when you see heat waves rising
off the off the concrete in the summer. It was
like that, but in slow motion. And I just felt
so off and disoriented. And I'm trying to move through
the church quickly and I just I couldn't find any

(40:09):
speed whatsoever. And then I go around the back of
the church to where I thought I had left the recorder,
and when I got there, I realized not only did
I not leave that recorder there, I never brought that
recorder there at all. And I got this sense that
something had drawn me back there, and it was not
a really good feeling. And so I head back into

(40:31):
the church to go back out and meet everyone up front,
and I'm yelling to them, yelling that I'm I'm on
my way back. I'm on my way back. See something
out of the corner of my eye. I kind of
looked like a shadow. I turn it looked like just
a tree stump. So I turned back and Kenny and
continued yelling to them. Unbeknownst to me, they're on the

(40:52):
other side of the church, maybe twelve feet away from
where I am. They're yelling to me, but none of
us can hear each other. Only we get reunited, and
we quickly pack up our stuff and we leave. And
as we are marching back out of the town, we
hear this singing, this woman singing. It was very faint,

(41:14):
but it was it was very clear, almost like they
were singing under their kind of under their voice. And
along the path there there's these very high bluffs, like
these cliffs, and again I think I'm seeing shadows out
of the corner of my eye. And as I review

(41:35):
the tape later, you see, and I remember this happening.
My daughter, my younger daughter stopped, turned fully to face
the cliffs, put her hand over her mouth, and then
kept moving. And when I reviewed the footage, there's what
looks like a shadow figure up there in the distance,
you know, that sort of extra dark, kind of fuzzy,

(41:58):
fuzzy shadow look that was up there, kind of on
the edge of the cliff, and it showing up coincided
perfectly with her looking back up there. And then as
we're still heading out, my wife had a ponytail and
she had it tucked into her hood, and something we

(42:20):
still can't explain this. We've watched the footage a dozen
times to see if it was a branch or anything,
but something yanked that ponytail right out of her hood hard,
because you see her head jerk back, and I wish
I was exaggerating, but this is, I mean, this is
exactly as it happened. So we left there feeling pretty spooked.
I was feeling spooked, but I was also feeling very

(42:43):
excited about what had happened, because this was another moment
that being out in nature investigating where things just really
happened in a big way. And as you know from investigating,
things like this don't happen often. A lot of times
you might get some hits on devices, or you might
get nothing at all. It's like fishing. But those moments

(43:07):
where things do seem to come together. It is. It
is explosive, it's exhilarating, it's and it and it sticks
with you. But one final note, I had been wearing
a body cam when we had been up there, and
I reviewed the footage from when I was coming back

(43:29):
through when I had thought I had seen the shadow
and in the footage, and it's not the best. It's
not the best footage. I hacked like an older go
pro knockoff to turn it into into a more of
a paranormal investigator's camera rig. But there is something in

(43:50):
that footage that I cannot explain that looks like a
shadow kind of rise up on top of the stump
that I had seen with this sort of glowing center.
And I shared it with some folks that I know
in the community and and they all agreed that, well,
it's not nothing. I can't say that it's something, but

(44:10):
it's definitely not nothing. And so that was probably our
most intense script up there. We've been there a few
times since, but we have gone earlier in the day
because we get the We get this sense that around
that liminal time of sunset, and I'd be curious if
it's around sunrise too, is when things when activity really

(44:32):
starts to starts to kick up.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
I'm sure you're curious about sunrise, but I don't think
you'd want to be there through the night to find
out about that sunrise time.

Speaker 3 (44:40):
Oh that's funny. I would. I would love to go
back at night, but I have been told I would
be kicked out of the family if I.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
Or you're just simply going alone, or they're like, hey Dad,
you're not you're not bringing anything back from from this post.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
Sorry, So they'll send me with all this age.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Oh my gosh, you'd be you'd be just covered in
sage like Lady Gaga was covered in that meat dress, right,
like dress. It smell a lot better than the meat dress.
So this whole idea of I call them the muted places.
It's actually one of my favorite IF episodes that I've

(45:22):
ever recorded, and it was with Ash and you. You
guys are in the same church and you cannot hear
each other, and there is something so dark and sinister
about that to me that to me, my mind instantly
goes to like a I'm like, this is what goes

(45:43):
on in the missing four one one situation. It has
to be because these are people that are there right
next to each other, damn near. In a lot of cases,
they turn around or they crest a hill and the
other person's just gone, and you're going, how is that
even possible? Even if they were physically gone, and that
also would mean that they're audibly gone as well, how

(46:04):
is this possible? And in these cases, now you're going, well,
now we see an example of it, but what does
that really mean? What's really happening?

Speaker 3 (46:14):
You know? That is such a it's a beautiful question.
I mean, it's one that can really really stretch your brain.
I mean, there is a let's say there's a cross.
I try to think of it sometimes in terms of physics, right,
and how how sound transmits, and maybe if there's a
some kind of a reality crossover or overlay, the physics

(46:37):
are off and the sounds not transmitting as it normally would,
because it even sounded muffled to myself at the time.
So it could be that crossover that you are simultaneously
existing in two realities. Or maybe you're all you're already
in a whole other reality and maybe that's why your
voice isn't coming through. Yeah, maybe maybe I was a

(46:59):
ghost for a minute there. I mean, it could be anything.

Speaker 4 (47:03):
See.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
You know, that's something that's definitely come up before, right,
this idea of what really constitutes a ghost and what
we're actually hearing. And oh, that's a perfect segue into
another question I had about the EVPs from the forest.
Were these EVPs in direct response to questions that you
guys were asking One.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
Of them was one of them was It wasn't like
a high enough grade to make out what it was saying.
But one of the other ones I had asked, you know,
is there is there anyone here or something along those lines,
and it replied to something along the lines of I'm here.
And so that was pretty that one was pretty clear,

(47:45):
and it was this weird sort of again it was
a distant kind of echoe sound, almost like someone speaking
from inside a room, and we were just there were
no rooms.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
And how many people do when the hurricane came through.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
That's a great question that I don't have the details
on that. I would have to I would have to
look that up. I mean, my understanding is not many
people did die, but the town itself was just absolutely
decimated and there's still some leftover signs of the hurricane
coming through. I mean, there's cars and the river beds.

(48:22):
There's a train car for hauling raw materials sitting in
the river. Very neat.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
Yeah, because just like with Dudley Town, you're kind of going, well,
is some of this activity from the people that passed away?
Or is it? And or is it these folks that
come in and now are doing this dark worship you
know in the.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
Church and all that, right, right, I mean you have
to wonder. I mean, these are old forests. You know,
they are on the Appalachian Trail, so that's old old woods, right,
And I think there could just be older forces there,
older spirits or even nature spirits, And I think that

(49:09):
there is some sort of hybridization going on or some
sort of just mixing of energies. And another thought I
have too about the presence there and overall in Daniels.
You think about these people that worked and toiled in
the textile factory. This town was their lives and they're

(49:29):
told that you have to leave your homes that you've
been living in for years because we're not taking care
of you anymore, and we're shutting down the factory and
you have to leave. That's incredibly traumatic. It's a high emotion,
so even some of that emotion could be imprinted in
the land there.

Speaker 2 (49:51):
Yeah, once you start to talk about just a complete
heartbreak that gets left as people are gathering up what's
left at their lives, Ye, you got to imagine some
that that does stick around a place.

Speaker 3 (50:06):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean it's important, I think, to recognize
the word tragedy doesn't necessarily have to be hand in
hand with death happening. There's all all kinds of tragedies
where people are very much alive, right.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Oh, absolutely absolutely, But and I already know because you
did send along the bullet point list, of course. But
there's something about plane crashes I think that taps into
a very legitimate fear that we all have. Nine to
eleven definitely cemented that in all of our brains even more.
But plane crashes are a horrific thing, and I can't

(50:47):
even imagine the terror that would come along with that
if you weren't maybe you were mercifully passed out before hand.
And I've always said that many times. I'm like, I
would just like to be passed the hell out and
not be away, Yeah, and not be awake for you know,
a minute or however long while you're plumbing to your death.
But the next up we are going to talk about

(51:10):
TWA five to one for the crash site actually that
you went to.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
So this was really a fascinating investigation. So a little backstory.
December first, nineteen seventy four, four years before I was born,
this plane, TWA FLY five fourteen, was flying into I

(51:36):
believe initially they were supposed to land at Reagan International Airport,
but they were diverted to Dulles Airport because of inclement weather.
It was just a rainy, foul winter day. Visibility was
was nil and they're approaching Mount Weather, which is part

(51:57):
of the Appalachian Mountains, and and this had been the
site of many near misses because it is right there
in the flight path. It is at an altitude that
is where the planes are roughly descending to and at
the time, and these regulations because of this accident have

(52:18):
been were revised. The language between air traffic controllers and pilots.
Certain things that an air traffic controller would say didn't
always mean the same thing that a pilot would say.
And so the pilot was under the impression that they
were good to descend right because they're flying by instrument

(52:39):
and by what the air traffic controllers are telling them
because they can't see anything. While unfortunately they descended too
early and going out roughly several hundred miles an hour,
they crashed right into the side of Mount Weather and
ninety four people were on the plane. All ninety four
of them died from what they believe is almost instantaneously,

(53:00):
and it's just very very tragic, so tragic. So that's
what happened there, and I had been looking for. This
was early on in my investigating where I was trying
to figure out do I want to be a paranormal investigator.
This is something that would be exciting to me because
from doing the podcast, I had talked to people that

(53:21):
had gone out and done this and have had these
amazing experiences, but also have done so in ways that
have been shockingly convenient and not involved going somewhere at
night or renting out a place that you could just
go find a local haunted spots or places with these
urban legends and just go out there. So that's how
I came across this crash site. So I convinced my

(53:43):
buddy t who was part of my investigation group Old Spirits, investigations.
We founded that together, but this is even before that
time that hey, we should go check this site out.
Are you free over the weekend? And he was, but
I decided that my wife Tina and I would go
out and check it out first, just to kind of
get the lay of the land. Well, we left later.

(54:05):
Of course, you're noticing a theme here now. We left
later than we planned on. And as you know, in
the forest, it gets darker a lot faster than it
does when you're out in the open terrain. So by
the time we got up there it was nightfall. We
found the sort of the exterior facing side of the

(54:27):
crash site. It's this big rock that kind of juts
out of the side of the hill there or out
over the side of the road, and that's actually where
the fuselage, that the nose of the plane apparently what
was left, and it came to rest, and there was
a whole memorial set up there. There were flowers and
there were notes. It was it was really it was

(54:49):
really nice to see that people were still remembering this
tragedy so many years later. So we get out of
the car, I've got a video camera and and just
checking things out. Almost right away, and I didn't know
this just at first, because I was very excited to
be out there. I was excited to be out there
at night. I think this was the first nighttime wilderness

(55:12):
investigation quote unquote that I had been on since going
to Dudley Town, so there were some nostalgic vibes there,
but I felt like I had this new sort of
tool set in my brain to be able to be
excited and not scared. Right well, I didn't notice that
Tina had been getting quieter and quieter. Apparently she started

(55:32):
feeling very ill while we were standing there by the
crash site, and a few minutes later I started to
feel kind of funny too. I didn't feel sick, I
just felt off, like almost a little bit of vertigo.
And there was a note that someone had left there
as part of this memorial, and I remember trying to

(55:53):
read it and it was as if the letters were
jumping around the page and shifting around and changing or orientation,
and it was whatever was going on with my head.
I don't think the letters were actually moving on the page,
but I felt that same sort of weird, shifting sense
of reality that I had felt later on in Daniels, Maryland.

(56:14):
It was a very similar feeling. So we decided, okay,
let's take off. We've been here long enough. Once Tina
told me she was feeling sick, we left. Several days later,
we go back out there in the daytime with Tea
and with Tina. She was going to take some pictures,
and so we're trying to figure out how do we
get how do we get into the craft site because
it was this was August, so all the vegetation was

(56:37):
in full bloom, and I decided to have a Josh
Gates moment and just plunged through the woods, like we
got totally like scratched up by all these thorns and
it was a mess. Meanwhile, they found a path that
went like right around into the clearing where the core
where the site was. But I was still proud of

(56:58):
myself for doing that. So there's a big clearing and
there's some new growth in there, some younger what looked
like younger trees, right, but then there are older trees
where the tops are just sheared off from where the
plane went through. And that I got to be honest you,
and that gave me such pause that took it from

(57:19):
being the story of this plane crash to suddenly becoming
very very very real, and the reality of it, I
think is what enabled us to approach this investigation, which
with a lot of compassion. There was that was the
intent was to be compassionate. We, as we say on

(57:43):
all of our investigations, were storytellers, and we're here to
tell your story so that your story's not forgotten and
so that you can have a voice. Immediately started getting
some pretty wild activity on the rampod. It seemed to
be interacting conversationally, had some very interesting stuff on the
spirit box. There was the word pilot came through several

(58:07):
times on the spirit box, which was which again you
can get anything through a spirit box, right.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
But.

Speaker 3 (58:14):
Considering where we were and what happened there, it was
hard not to find that compelling. Meanwhile, on the other
side of the clearing, Tea and Tina are engaged in
this very I mean very cohesive conversation with the ghost
stop Flux two and this was the first time that

(58:34):
Tea had had it for a few months, and this
was the first time that he really was getting hits
on it. And the end of the conversation this was interesting.
So I come up to them. I say, you know, guys,
I'd really like to come back here at night, And
immediately they had established red or green frie yes red
for now. Immediately the flux to whit red, and so

(58:57):
ts okay, is it okay? You know, be safe if
we came back here at night and it went off
red again. And then I chime in, and I'm basically
trying to sweet talk whatever's there, saying that we just
want to come experience how nighttime is different, and we
just really want to use this for our own research purposes,

(59:17):
and we won't stay long. Boom read again never got
a green asking him to come back at night. So
we head back home. I bribed Tea with some pizza
and convince him that yeah, let's go back out there
at night. So back out at night we went, and
we park on the side of the road, and Tea

(59:40):
was a little bit newer to this than I was.
Granted I hadn't done any real nighttime investigations. But I
turned off the car and I killed all the lights
and we were plunged into darkness. I said, this is
how it's going to be when we're out there. Are
you cool with this? And he was gung home. We
were both feeling very just excited to do this. We
didn't a shred of fear between us. Even walking up

(01:00:02):
the path to the site, we had no fear, no apprehension.
You can hear us talking excitedly, excitedly on the recording.
As we cross into the site itself, there's a big
shift in the energy. It goes from us being excited
to this sense of apprehension. The air is very heavy

(01:00:24):
now it's not it's still, but it's not quiet. The
insects are singing, but it just feels a lot more
still than it felt during the daytime. I don't want
to use the word foreboding, but it definitely wasn't a
totally great feeling, but it wasn't so intense that we
didn't keep moving forward. And we set up some of

(01:00:46):
our gear and then we let in with our preamble.
We introduced ourselves. We said, you know, we're here out
of the utmost respect. We are here to tell your
story and we're just hoping that we can reach out
and communicate with you. And then he asked, is there
anyone here that would like to communicate And it was

(01:01:07):
like flipping a switch. Immediately we went from being just
a little apprehensive do we started feeling this sense of
fear building with it in us. And it wasn't like
it started off as like a lizard brain of fear. Right.
It wasn't that, oh, I'm afraid that I'm going to
see this or that, or that I felt like I
had to squeeze my eyes shut like I had in

(01:01:29):
Dudley Town. It was just this more of this primal
sense of something is out of place here, something is
not right. But we tried to We pushed through it,
and we're asking questions of the flux too, and we're
not getting any any responses. So we decided maybe we're
crowding the device a little bit, so maybe we should
go stand on the other side of the clearing, which

(01:01:50):
we did. So our backs were kind of to the
roadside of the clearing initially, and then we went to
the other side and now our backs are to the
full forest. And I got to tell you that that
did not feel that great. In the meantime, I had
started hearing some strange sounds, heard sounds of movement, which
again hard to say definitively that it's not an animal

(01:02:11):
when you're doing an investigation out in the wilderness. But
at the same time, some of it did very much
sound like footsteps. To me heard what sounded like some voices.
I heard at one point what sounded like a cry
or a scream, and that's when I started to feel like,
maybe it's time to go. Maybe it's time to get
out of here. We got a couple responses off the flux.

(01:02:33):
I think we got one initial response off of flux two.
When we ask is there anyone here that would like
to communicate? It went green, so we started asking questions,
but then it didn't go off again. Then I say
to Tea because at this point I I have moved
from just being a little bit afraid to I felt
genuine terror that I cannot explain to this day because

(01:02:55):
it's not like anything was really happening, but I felt terrified.
And I've since this time, I have not felt that
on a single investigation. And I said to Tea and
I said, hey, I think it's time for us to go.
And he said, well, Phil, before we go, I'm going
to double down, and he asked is it safe for
us to be here? And we waited. We watched that

(01:03:18):
blue light on the flux two pulse pulse pulse. We
didn't get an answer, but we felt like the silence
was answer enough. We packed up our gear quickly and
we left there as safely as we could, because God
forbid one of us twisted an ankle. Then I think
we would have been really screwed. And then we left.

(01:03:40):
But what was interesting was I thought we had been
out there for forty five minutes or an hour, maybe
even just thirty minutes, and I checked the time on
the recorder. We had only been there for thirteen minutes.
And I'm being honest when I say it felt so
much longer. And I don't know if that was the
fear playing into it or if there was something else

(01:04:02):
going on with time there, but it was just it was.
It was startling how little time had passed from when
we had been out there. But yeah, that's the TWA
crash site story.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
With this being the crash site essentially on and into
Mount Weather, I am surprised that this wasn't a restricted area,
seeing as how it houses such a significant underground facility.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Oh yes, well, there are actually houses up there too,
There are like residents. In fact, there at the time
were new constructions going up around the crash site, and
I would not I would not be entirely surprised if
they put something on the crash site itself. With the
way real estate development is going out here, Yeah, we

(01:04:50):
were shocked to see how many new builds were going up.
I mean it was at least two or three right
in that area. So yeah, it's yeah, but with Mount Weather,
with the FACI there, you think it would have been
more of a of a lockdown spot, but it's it's not.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
That is nuts. I'm sure I've heard that before. I
guess I forgot that there was actually there always has been,
like the houses on top of what is essentially not
exactly a hollow mountain, but there is an underground facility there.
It's a little bug out place for some of the
top folks in government if so needed. And can you

(01:05:26):
imagine Phil being able to go and knock on some doors,
especially of these houses that are maybe even on top
of the crash site, and going how do you sleep?
Do you have anything going on in your house?

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
You know, that thought has crossed my mind, And in
another world maybe that would be something that would even
be possible, because I would love to know if people
experience anything strange there.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
When uh Clark Gables who crashed into Potesy right here,
which I could see from my house. What is her name?
Who is Kark Clark Gable's wife? Anyhow?

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
Yeah, I know who you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
It's gonna come to me as the second we hang up. Anyhow,
they still to this day fine piece pieces of that aircraft.
So I'm sure that. I mean, stuff just goes everywhere.
I mean, it was everywhere, huge explosion from these.

Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
I will send you a picture of the crash itself.
I mean there's debris everywhere. There's almost nothing of the
plane left. It is. It's wild. Yeah, So, I mean
people have been I saw YouTube video of someone digging
up something and taking it, which I just think is
so disrespectful.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Yeah, and you know what, if you get haunted after that,
you kind of deserve it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
Yeah. You you asked for that. That that is your
you know, that is your come up in.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
Yeah, yeah, great idea take a piece of that. With
all that, I mean, but as you mentioned in the story,
thank you for small favors. They didn't even know what
was coming. So I guess if there's any consolation there
not that the outcome was any different, and it's horrific,
but at least they didn't know.

Speaker 3 (01:07:07):
Yeah, I believe on the flight recorder and alarm sounds
and then nothing, So it was as close to instant
as you can get. So that is a mercy.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
You know, when you talk about nature spirits and you know,
you start to talk about fay and tricksters and little
people and all this stuff, it also makes you wonder
once an event occurs like that where people have passed
away and then people kind of converge on an area
and there's all this different these energies converging just over here.
With that, If that then the nature spirits and the fay,

(01:07:44):
good and bad types of things also take notice of
that and want to unteract.

Speaker 3 (01:07:49):
Yes, that's definitely a thought that crossed my mind, because
the sense was that I got at night at the
very least, you know, wasn't necessarily something that walked this
earth in human form when we were there. It was
some type of some type of nature or some type
of elemental energy that was there that either was drawn

(01:08:12):
there by the crash or who knows, maybe had been
there even before the crash.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
I gotta tell you, the elementals and little people and
things like that. I'm fascinated by it, but some of
them are so on the no list I can't even.

Speaker 3 (01:08:26):
Begin to tell you, right, that's right list.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
Yeah, it's such a big bag of nope with a
lot of those guys, because there, they just there, they
just seem bored and they just want to f with you.
And what are you gonna do about it? Not much?

Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
Yeah, board f And I mean with a either nun
or a very foreign sense of morality. What we have
as human.

Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
Beings, absolutely absolutely, and they they have endless little really
endless amounts of time to do as such with you
whatever they want.

Speaker 3 (01:09:04):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, because we don't even know the
nature of time. Time is, as far as we know,
it's a human construct, right, so they might not be
bound by time in the way that we feel we are.

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
I think it's a gift also that a lot of
these things, especially if we're talking about just the liminal
spaces out in the forest that they choose to like
it is actually a lot of times just an audible event,
you know, like like the woman singing in Daniels Marylynd
that you mentioned or not that I'm saying, she's an
elemental but anyway, Yeah, if you're in the forest and

(01:09:41):
you hear babies crying, it's not a baby, okay, you know,
whistling and strange footsteps like you were talking about, you're
kind of going, don't no, no, no, don't don't think
that you were know that you are being enticed out there,
and it's not probably going to be a pretty thing.
So I I think it is a small favor also

(01:10:01):
that a lot of times we don't see these things,
but audibly they are trying to screw with you right.

Speaker 3 (01:10:08):
Right, trying to get your attention, trying to draw you in,
get you off your guard a little bit. Yeah, it's
so you gotta approaching this, I think, especially approaching these
wilderness investigations, you have to be self aware, you have
to be responsible, and you have to be safe.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
Well, besides that, there's probably just separate from all that.
And this is not a discussion about whether bigfoot is
you know, paranormal or not. But there's probably bigfoot sightings.
I'm sure there's UFO stuff going on out there. I've
heard all kinds of things in that area a mount weather.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
Yes, yeah, yeah, it absolutely bears further research, and it's
on my It's on my to do list.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
Like an overnight camping to do list.

Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
If I could find a spot to camp there, then
absolutely I might be camping alone.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
But yeah, all of a sudden, all your friends are
sick or just busy.

Speaker 3 (01:10:58):
Fil Sorry, something came up, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
I just remembered I have a last minute root canal.
Dang it yea bingo and funny enough. I love root canal,
So I'm gonna go do that.

Speaker 3 (01:11:10):
Phil, Yeah, I love it. I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
You're like a root canal at two am.

Speaker 3 (01:11:14):
Okay, all right, you're off the hook.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
Yeah, emergency dentist appointments, all right. So last, but not least,
I what in the world is a paranormal boot camp?

Speaker 3 (01:11:27):
I have to hear about this, okay, So last last story.
It takes place at a place called Crescin State Correctional
Institute in Cambria County, Pennsylvania. This has been featured on
Ghost Hunters and on Project Fear, as well as and

(01:11:49):
Destination Fear. When it was Destination Fear, we were one
of the first groups to get to go in there.
I think it had been open for investigation for maybe
a month or two. When our colleagues in West Virginia
Paranormal reached out to us and said, hey, would you
like to go join us for this six hour earth
excuse me, twelve hour lockdown at Cresson sci. We had

(01:12:14):
never done anything like this before. We had only done
three four hour investigations. We did a few spots up
in Gettysburg, but very very light stuff. So this was
the first opportunity we had to do something on such
a scale. And that's why I refer to it as
paranormal boot camp, because again this was New territory. This
was a sprawling campus of about fifteen buildings, all with

(01:12:38):
a very dark, very dark history. Cressin began its life
as a tuberculosis sanatorium, and then it became a mental
health facility, an asylum, and then finally it ended it.
It ended its practical existence as a medium state correctional

(01:13:00):
institution that was shut down in twenty thirteen because of
many egregious civil rights violations. So it had a dark
history and it was this sort of rare trifecta of sanatorium, asylum, prison,
all wrapped into one fog shrouded bach. And so when

(01:13:20):
we got up there, a tail end of the Nor'easter
was coming through and so it was drizzling as we
were touring the buildings, but by the time we went
out to actually start the investigation, a fog had settled
over everything. And the way it worked was they wanted

(01:13:40):
to make sure groups were staying separate, so you each
group would go in a separate building for a couple
hours and we regroup at base camp, and then we
would go back out. So you have T and I
walking through the fog and the rain with a map
trying to find these buildings. And I'll just comment on
a couple the spots. So there was one building that

(01:14:03):
was I think they did some of their mental health
treatments in this building. It was previously thought to be
the sort of hospice building. I think that has since
been debunked. But either way, we approach this building not
knowing it's there, knowing that we're looking for it, and
then all of a sudden, it just looms out of
the fog like something out of Silent Hill, and just

(01:14:24):
the ambiance could not have been better. And so we
go in this building and we explore around. We're getting
some hits on our devices. The Rempod and Flux are
the champions of champions of the investigation. We decide to

(01:14:44):
and just to kind of paint a picture of the
interior of this building. It has not been maintained, and
the ceilings coming down in places, you can hear the
sound of the rain coming in. It's as just perfectly
spooky as you can get. It was such a beautiful thing.
And we decided to head down to the bottom floor
and we're going to do an est session down there,

(01:15:07):
and so I volunteer to be you know, I volunteer
his tribute. I put on the headphones and I go
under and Tea starts asking me questions. I'm not getting
much through the spirit box. It's pretty much just static.
But then all of a sudden, he like grabs my leg,
scares the shit out of me, and he's going Phil, Phil,

(01:15:32):
And so I take off the headphones and what is
fascinating to me is my name comes out through the
headphones from the spirit box right after he yells my name,
which was such a wild thing. I didn't notice it
at the time, heard that back on the recording and
that definitely gave me goosebumps. So he wanted to tell

(01:15:54):
me that the flux had gone off while he had
started asking me questions. I said, you don't have to
do that again, because you almost gave me a freaking
a heart attack. So I go back under and my
responses coming through are very relevant, you know, their responses
about being sick, being stuck, being imprisoned, needing help, which

(01:16:20):
was again from where we were, was all very compelling. Meanwhile,
in that building, we also heard a number of voices
and did capture a few of those in EVPs as well.
So that was just you know, we were there for
an hour and it was super just super intense, but
the Yes' session there was probably the most intense portion

(01:16:42):
of that of that particular investigation. We then move into
the administration building, which was the oldest building on the property.
This is where the tuberculosis sanatorium had been, and we
start off in the basement where we are just doing

(01:17:02):
your basic interaction with devices. Again, we're getting responses on
some of the devices. Heard a lot of footsteps though,
we heard a lot of footsteps coming up the hall.
At one point you hear tea interacting as asking if
it's a nurse that's coming up the hallway. Some of
the devices were triggered out in the hallway again, but

(01:17:23):
we didn't We didn't see anything definitive, but we knew
that we were definitely one hundred percent alone in that building.
We go up to the second floor and decide to
just explore up there because time is it's about four
in the morning at this point. The investigation itself wraps
up at six am, and we had one more stop

(01:17:44):
with the whole group to explore the tunnels. So we decided,
let's head up to the top floor and we'll leave
our gear running downstairs while we do that, and then
we'll get out of here. So we cross to the
opposite side into this room that I believe was where
when it got overcrowded that they started putting patients in there.
I think it might have been the cafeteria maybe. And

(01:18:08):
so we're uh interacting, We're asking questions of the space.
Uh we're not getting responses up there on the on
the rempod that we brought up there. But when we
listen back and reviewed the evidence, the flux two is
going off in the basement. All we're asking questions on
that main floor, which I thought was very interesting. But

(01:18:31):
he nudges me and he says, Phil, I want to
I want to show you something. So he had go
stop fasem cam and he was projecting it to his
iPad and he said, do you see that across the room?
And I look, and there's what looks like a shadow
kind of peeking out by the door over there. And
so then he puts it down and we're we're staring

(01:18:52):
and and we're convinced that we were able to see
that shadow figure with our own eyes and and and
we shared that footage with others and the consensus is that, yeah,
we caught a shadow figure. But what is remarkable is
earlier in the night we had caught another shadow figure
in one of the cell blocks that we didn't see,

(01:19:14):
uh until until we went and reviewed the evidence. And
and to me, the investigation part is exciting, but you
sometimes can miss a lot, which is why it's if
you're gonna if you're if you're going to collect anything
beyond an experience, if you're going to collect evidence, redundancy
is key. It helps to have multiple devices pointing where

(01:19:36):
you're not looking. While I haven't worn one in a while,
body cams are a pretty good way to catch things.
But uh, yeah, I caught a caught a shadow figure
on the second floor tier of the cell block, kind
of peering around one of the columns. And it's exciting
to be on the investigation, but when you come back
with stuff and you find stuff in your in your footage,

(01:19:59):
that is just that's what really gives me pause. I
think when things are happening, you've got so much adrenaline
running through you, you're not really processing so much what's
going on. It's after the fact when the processing begins.
It's when you review the evidence is when the processing begins.
And I think that's when you really have those moments
of just questioning things, because at least for me, no

(01:20:22):
matter how many times I encounter something out there, it's
still to this day after doing this for years now,
just really gives me so much pause and really just
makes me question reality and question my understanding of reality.
And I think that is one of the biggest gifts
of being a paranormal investigator and of being into this

(01:20:44):
so deeply, is to have those opportunities for introspection and
those opportunities to ask questions that don't necessarily have answers.

Speaker 2 (01:20:55):
When it comes to shadow figures, and you're not going
to know the final answer. I don't expect you to.
But just your opinion. Do you think that shadow figures
were any of them were ever people, or they're just
wholly something else.

Speaker 3 (01:21:11):
I think they are wholly something else. They may be
an aspect of a person. I don't think they are
a full representation of, you know, a person's spirit or
a formerly living person. I think either they are an
aspect of that person, or that they could be an

(01:21:32):
aggregor you know, a sort of amalgama of emotion and
thought take in shape, or a focus of negative energy.
I don't think shadow persons are necessarily I don't think
of them as benevolent. I don't necessarily think of them
as as malevolent, but I do think that there is

(01:21:55):
more of a negative or darker energy associated with them,
at least has been my experience.

Speaker 2 (01:22:03):
All right, So final question, Yes, is there an entity
or a cryptid that you absolutely would never want to
encounter or see?

Speaker 3 (01:22:17):
Ooh, that is a wonderful question. Entity or cryptid I
would never want to encounter or see? I would say
maybe the Cubaicapra would be one that I could pass on.

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
I like it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:30):
Yeah, I feel like I would. That would not be
a good encounter.

Speaker 2 (01:22:34):
You don't like something called the aka the goat Sucker.
Like you don't think that would be pleasant?

Speaker 3 (01:22:43):
Doesn't sound like it would be the best way to
spend an evening.

Speaker 2 (01:22:49):
Oh that's a good answer. I like that. I wasn't
expecting that. Very good.

Speaker 3 (01:22:54):
Yes, that's it just jumped right to the top of
the list.

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
I like it that that is on Phil's big bag
of Nope is theoper cap That is right? Well, Phil,
I am so pleased that you decided to get in
touch and thanks for spending all this time today with
me sharing all this. You know that it's plug time,
so let everybody know where to find you.

Speaker 3 (01:23:16):
Oh yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity to
plug away. So the sort of home base for everything
that I do is Phil Rossimedia Studios dot com. So
there you can find my podcasts, you can find your
way to my books, to the little articles that I
write occasionally. That all lives on Phil rossimediastudios dot com.

(01:23:37):
I'm most active on social media on Instagram, so the
best place to follow me on social media would be
on Instagram. And that's at Don't turn Around Podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:23:48):
Excellent. Well, Phil, it's been a wonderful chat and you're
welcome back any old time. Are you still going out
actively on these investigations.

Speaker 3 (01:23:56):
Yes, yes, we're still actively going out on investigations. We are.
Actually we have a bucket list investigation coming up this summer.
We're going to trans Alleghany at long last, so very
very excited about that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:12):
Gracious, Well, when you I'm not expecting you to break
the news here, but once you do it on don't
turn around on your own show, which is fitting. Then
please come back. I would love to hear all about
what you've got going on.

Speaker 3 (01:24:25):
I would I would be happy to share that and
any other adventures that happened between now and then.

Speaker 5 (01:24:34):
Well, I'm so and so. I was given the name
by my parents.

Speaker 3 (01:24:36):
My business was such a college.

Speaker 5 (01:24:38):
I've done these dates as my profession.

Speaker 2 (01:24:40):
My producers in the blog.

Speaker 5 (01:24:42):
But that's some of your story. That's all gone, that's
all possible. I want to see the million. Nobody knows
who that is, cause we don't to listening to Americas

(01:25:03):
and consulting our members. But then that's a really and
then again leads suspect this question.

Speaker 2 (01:25:11):
What are you?

Speaker 4 (01:25:13):
That is the meaning.

Speaker 5 (01:25:15):
We shall see how they play with the success or
buy the coms to get you.

Speaker 3 (01:25:21):
To come out of your show and find out.

Speaker 4 (01:25:24):
It will be very old stay stass Puss Puss Puss

(01:26:41):
Puss Spots, for.

Speaker 3 (01:27:17):
Example, are quite divided on us.

Speaker 5 (01:27:19):
They will say, no, we don't believe literally in reincarnation
that after your funeral you will suddenly become suddenly different,
there being somewhere else. They will say, reincarnation means this
that if you sitting here now are really convinced that
you're the same.

Speaker 4 (01:27:39):
Person folding at the door half an hour.

Speaker 5 (01:27:41):
Ago, you'll be be incarneted if you are liberate with
res now that you're gone. The past hasn't been tested,
the future hasn't existence.

Speaker 1 (01:27:53):
There is only the present.

Speaker 4 (01:27:55):
That's the only amenia.

Speaker 5 (01:27:56):
That is the send master dogget was said, string.

Speaker 3 (01:28:03):
It does not become sounds.

Speaker 5 (01:28:06):
Because there is something every.

Speaker 4 (01:28:09):
Springs its puss, Puss, Puss Puss, starless Puss.

Speaker 5 (01:30:00):
Ts has the same idea in his point four Days
where he says, when you've settled down in the train
and can read your newspaper and so they were not
the same person at a while ago, and lift the plan.
If you think you are, you are linking your moments
up in the change. And this is what binds the

(01:30:24):
wheel of both. When you know that every moment which
you are is the only moment. This comes intos and
the Master will say to somebody, I can have a
walk across the room and it can be back. And
he says, where are your foot? They've gone, So where

(01:30:44):
are you?

Speaker 2 (01:30:45):
Who are you?

Speaker 5 (01:30:46):
When we are asked who we are, we usually give
a kind of recitation of an instrm instry for inst

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