I’ve Spent Years Listening to Ghost Stories. Here’s What I Think.

[00:00:00] Wo gibt's eigentlich die weißen Rosen aus Athen? Und wo regnet's für mich nochmal rote Rosen? Natürlich im Europa-Rosarium Sangerhausen, mit der größten Rosensammlung der Welt. Viele tausend Rosenarten warten auf Sie, mit prachtvollen Blüten und herrlichem Duft. www.rosarium.de People call me to tell me about their ghost stories. And you would think that after listening to and researching thousands of these stories,

[00:00:26] I would have a pretty solid idea on whether or not ghosts are real, but I don't. And it's even more complicated than that because there's been things that have happened to me that I still can't explain. You ready? My name is Edwin. This is Paranormal Club.

[00:00:51] I started listening to scary stories from people as a bit of a spinoff to another podcast that I have called Scary Story Podcast. In that show, I tell short fictional stories that I write, and eventually people started submitting their own. Thing was, I can't publish them there. So I was like, yeah, I'll take your stories, but I wanted it like a step further. Why don't you call me and tell me your stories? At first, it was hard to like get these stories in, but eventually people started calling me and now I take these stories weekly.

[00:01:19] So we record the audio, edit and publish them in the podcast called True Scary Story. We know how it is. Normally when I take these calls, I literally, I I get a summary of the story before I sit down and I'm just listening, taking notes on what they're saying. And what I feel very privileged about in this case is getting to hear their personal stories, like actually stepping into their lives and listening something like about something from their perspective, which is a very unique thing. Sometimes they tell me, I've never told anybody

[00:01:49] else about this, but I heard this other story that reminded me of this and I feel like I have to share it just in case it helps someone else. But after listening to all these stories, stories, here's what I think. Number one, ghost stories are not really about ghosts. There was this young man who called me. His episode is called The Last Hug. And in it, he tells me about when he lost his father. It was the last time he said goodbye to him. He didn't actually get to say bye. Like he was in the shower. His dad is, hey mijo, I'm about to leave. He's like, okay,

[00:02:19] like, you know, have safe travels and everything. The dad left. He left to Mexico. And that was the last time he actually had him that close when he was alive. The things that happened after, the experiences that he had in dreams, voices, things that he would think up or experience along with other people. Now, these things, if we were to define a ghost as a thing that we're able to

[00:02:44] perceive something that's there, he was witnessing like a ghostly experience. But the thing is, there were things there obviously that are supernatural, things that we can't explain how these things magically happen. But as I'm listening to this, I figure, you know what? Yeah, we're telling a ghost story. But this is much more than that. This is somebody's life, somebody's experience about losing their father, in this case, grief. But we also have stories on guilt, loss and fear and all

[00:03:13] these other things that, you know, confusion sometimes, things that people cannot understand. And all these things are what makes us human. And I always tell people, you know, when we talk about scary stories, I always say scary stories are stories first, then they're ghost stories. So they're always human. And then they're ghost stories. You know, kind of ironic there, because it's like we're hearing something about the paranormal, something about ghosts. And yet we're going to the

[00:03:39] opposite, like we're going human mode, and not like supernatural ghost mode. I find that personally very interesting how we think ghost stories are all about ghosts and demons and monsters and stuff. And yeah, those things can be involved. But again, they're more way, way, way more than that. The second thing about this is that the stories I believe the most are the least dramatic. Now, sure, it's fun, you know, to hear about monsters, and the light being blocked from underneath

[00:04:08] the bedroom door, or a shadow figure standing at the foot of your bed, relative playing around with the Ouija board, and all of a sudden, everything going wrong. All those things are very interesting, and they're very real to the people that they happen to. But the things that I believe the most that I can say, whoa, like the ones that get me closest to believing that ghosts are 100% real, that these things exist, and these things are there, are the most mundane things. Imagine a child

[00:04:36] telling me about how she was sitting in the couch, and she watched this girl coming up to her, spinning around the table, and her being unable to walk, or to talk, or to move because she was so scared. She's tearing up, she's crying as we're recording this. Now, we have the recording of this story. It's called The Little Girl on the podcast, True Scary Story. Of course, the mom was there in the

[00:05:02] call. We had her daughter on as well with full permissions and everything, and it made me wonder right there, right? We also got a couple comments about this, that perhaps this isn't entertainment. Hearing a little girl cry is not something that we can listen to for fun, but it's her telling us her experience about this. Now, she did something that a lot of us can't even really comprehend here,

[00:05:27] but it's when she's sharing her story, and another person listens to that experience, and they experience something similar, they're more likely to share it, and to identify with it, first of all, than to share it. And if they share it, and it can reach another person's ears, they have also experienced something, and they're like, hey, that sounds something that happened, like something that happened to me. And I think this is why the little girl in this case shared that story with us, because she said she liked listening to these stories, because she didn't feel as crazy. Her words.

[00:05:57] So when you hear about also little things, right? Like two people seeing the same thing at the same time. There's a story that seems actually one of the very first call that I received from a person that I didn't know, or that wasn't referred to me by a friend or somebody who, you know, because I was trying to get stories in, and I remember asking around, hey, you know, somebody who has a story, please, please, please have them send it in. The very first person that I didn't know or had no

[00:06:25] connection to that actually reached out, her name was Lassandra. And when I was listening to her story, I realized right then, like, oh, these are the kinds of stories that are real. Because it was interesting to think that this, that was going to set off like the pretty much the base of what our podcast was going to turn into. She starts off her story like this. She lived in these apartments, and this takes place in Texas, I believe. Temple, is it? I forgot what it is. But that,

[00:06:53] the episode is called Stranger in the House. She lives with her siblings, and her mom goes off to work. Her dad's a trucker. She's like, you know, don't open the door, and everybody, everybody's fine. You know, this is, back then, it was like that. It was for me too. Like, I used to stay home and say, hey, don't open the door, don't answer the phone. Make sure the stove's off. Like, don't use it. You can use the microwave for a little bit, but make sure you check the time. Like, I'm like, okay. Anyway, this is the situation for Sunny. She's there by herself, watching TV. All of a sudden,

[00:07:20] they see this man comes out of the bathroom in a towel, and he goes into the bedroom. Of course, they freak out. So they call. Like, they call their mom. They call their dad. But there was nobody there. What the heck, right? And you would think, okay, you thought you saw somebody, but you also had witnesses there. And then it gets even stranger because when, you know, time goes by, she's off into,

[00:07:45] I believe is a basketball camp or something like that. And they start talking about ghost stories and everything, and she shares her experiences. One of the teammates, one of the people there says, is it the apartment on so-and-so? And she's like, yeah. And the story gets confirmed about somebody being seen in that same apartment complex. Now, notice how that story doesn't have, you know,

[00:08:09] creepy, like monsters or shadow figures or demons or anything like that, but rather a very human-looking person walking in the house when nobody else is supposed to be there. You know, by the way, they ended up searching the house, and, you know, once they arrived, there's nobody there, again, as expected, right, from a ghost story. But this is what I mean. They're not very dramatic, and these are the ones that really make me, like, they give me the chills because they seem like everyday

[00:08:36] mundane things, but they're really, really, really creepy. Number three, people are terrible witnesses. Now, I'm not saying this because of our storytellers, right, on the podcast or anything, or people who share their stories, but it's like, in general, how we share a story, even how I share a story too, even right now, as I told you about these things, I might have skipped a detail or two. I might have over-exaggerated something. I might have missed something completely.

[00:09:03] So our memories also fail us. Our memories fail us, along with how we tell them and how we're able to express them also fails us. Our ability to storytell. The way that we perceive something that happened based on our own experiences, like, I don't know, let's say you were surrounded by ghost stories growing up. Suddenly, when you experience something that's the wind closing the door, you

[00:09:30] might experience as, oh, ghost just closed the door, right? Because it's just how we see it. It's just the, you know, how it is. Things like houses making noises, sleep paralysis is real. It happens. Gas leaks are a thing too that get people sick and get them to hallucinate a little bit. People, as they're telling each other stories, they also influence their own stories and their own memory of the stories. You know what I mean? Like, you hear somebody tell you some, like, if you and your friend experience something, but as you're telling it, you start believing kind of like what each of

[00:09:59] them adds to the story, that can happen. The way, what I mean by this is, as I'm listening to these stories from people, I'm also very aware that we're just terrible at remembering and telling things. We're not that good at it. But the gist of it, the things after the story, like what remains, for example, we're able to understand explanations of things, right? Things like a door opening, like I said, it might be the wind. It might be something else. Gravity, you know, might be

[00:10:28] leaning that way. I don't know. But after we go through all the things, like all the explanations, possible stuff, what remains that no matter how small it is, what remains is a paranormal. Like, what if you exhaust all those options? What if it, yeah, it wasn't the wind. It's like, what if it was? Yeah, but what if it wasn't? What if the voice you heard wasn't a neighbor, wasn't your stomach growling? It was something else. What if that little thing right there,

[00:10:57] that snippet of info is a paranormal? And that's what I'm after. Number four, where you grow up affects what you think of ghosts. In our last episode, we're talking about how Mexican ghost stories are just really creepy. Like they get really, really, really dark. And I think, why are they super creepy? Because I can identify with them a little bit more. Might be a reason. I actually have a whole bunch of reasons. Go check out that video if you haven't seen it yet.

[00:11:23] If you grow up around people who generally talk about ghosts openly, the experiences are not paranormal anymore. They're just stories of things that happen. For example, there's a running story that it really affected me recently, actually, because I actually took these cameras. I went out to a campfire with my family. We sat down and started talking about this. And I learned things that I

[00:11:47] didn't even imagine. Back in the day, my grandpa and my grandma used to live in this very small town in Mexico. There, there was a woman who was into my grandpa. Apparently, how the story goes is that she cast a curse to try to get him. But it didn't affect my grandpa. It actually ended up affecting my grandma. My grandma got sick really, like unexpectedly, like there was no no real reason.

[00:12:14] They kept seeing doctors, nobody could figure out what was wrong. They eventually called a witch doctor. And he came by is like, Yeah, you have a trabajo, you have somebody, somebody like a Daniel, somebody's trying to harm you through witchcraft. Now, whether you believe that or not, up until this point, you might be like, Yeah, witchcraft. And you know, what people say? Like, and something about the

[00:12:35] tooth fairy or something. Yeah, you might make fun of that. You might think of that, right? But I'm tied into this. This is my family. And you have multiple aunts and uncles talking about this and how it really affected their lives. They were the ones who were seeing fear in my grandma's eyes, right? In their mother's eyes. They would see her saying, Hey, I'm going to get better, right?

[00:13:00] They remember taking her to the hospital. They remember seeing this, this, this witch doctor coming down and trying to cure her. They remember the looks on the people's eyes, the ones that cast this spell. They knew the patterns. They weren't at the funeral. They weren't anywhere else. They were like cockroaches scurrying around, trying to act as if, Oh, it was just a coincidence. And they were the ones that were responsible for this. Now, when you hear that kind of that level of anger and the

[00:13:30] debates on whether or not you want to undo that witchcraft thing and have it go against the original people who cast that spell and then debating, should we do it? Should we not do this? And then still to this day saying, no, that's not how it happened. This is what happened. And they confirmed to each other what went up and how it affected them. Like I used to see there, there's an uncle that I have was very funny. Like he's a, he's a funny dude. It's cool talking with him and

[00:13:56] everything. But seeing his face when we were sharing these stories and him changing, he's just serious, looking down at the sand. It was a, it was a different experience. So it wasn't so much of did this happen? Did it not happen? It's more like this happened. This is a story of it. It happens to be supernatural in nature. It happens to be paranormal and really scary telling you that these things exist out there in the world. People are trying to cause harm upon you. Recently, I actually got this,

[00:14:24] this story that really, really, really tripped me out. Like it was a very strange story about a woman who people were envious of her. She was given food. She ate it and it happened to have a curse on it. Basically. Now the way that this was done is very nasty, right? It's basically menstruation blood.

[00:14:50] And they would always try to push food on her, like try to give her food and separate her food from the others that, you know, to tear eat this, eat this, eat this. She ate it once she started seeing things like really ugly, like dead people. She would dream she would have these really bad nightmares. Things started going bad. At one point, she seemed kind of possessed actually have a video

[00:15:13] that was sent to me that I still have not seen. Because of the effect that had on this woman when she called me and was telling me the stories, she pressed play and I got to hear a little bit of it. And then we had to stop. And then her son comes on the phone and says, hey, sorry, like my mom, my mom's crying. She hasn't really looked at this video in a while and it affected her. She can't remember what happened with her. When we think of these things, you know, growing up around people,

[00:15:41] at least for me, it's been this way all the time, right? When mom used to tell me, she doesn't tell me that much anymore, but she used to tell me as a kid, like, don't flaunt stuff that you have. Like, you know, she also used to give me this example about saying like, you know, when you have a girlfriend and she is, you know, and you're out somewhere or no, no, no, here's here. It's even more. Imagine telling this to a little kid, right? My mom used to tell me this.

[00:16:06] But she was like, so if you're at a party or something and the girlfriend of some other guy sees you and she's into you, even if you don't want the girl or anything, but the guy is jealous of you now, you can cause trouble for yourself. She'd be like, well, this won't even be my fault. It's like, this is how it works. Like that's, you have to be really careful. Envy is a real bad thing. Of course, it took years for me to be able to find out why she was talking about this,

[00:16:34] but that advice goes down, right? And like through generations, in this case, with a story about the woman who eats the food that's cursed and she started experiencing these really, really bad things, actually strange coincidences go on. I'm actually going to publish that story soon. So please hang tight. But it is, it's a very creepy story about not just like an exorcism thing. Like what I said to you is, it's the tip of the iceberg here because there were really strange coincidences

[00:17:00] there. I'm saying phone calls that arrived at just the right time, connecting with people that weren't even the same area, trying to tell her, hey, something's going on. This is what she looks like. This is what the person who tried to do something bad upon you, what she looks like, what she did and everything. It was all these, these things that were too much for them to just be a coincidence. Back to, to all this stuff, right? About envy. My mom would tell me about envy.

[00:17:25] This woman, guess what she tells me? Don't accept food from strangers. That's her advice, right? Because you don't know why they're offering you this stuff. So of course, it's a real thing. When we experience something, we try to pass it on, pass it along, pass on advice. But when it's supernatural in nature, it just, you know, it depends a lot on where you grew up and where you come from. What's your family like? There was, I remember I had a friend who used to tell me something about when I had a stomach ache, what it meant. I thought I had, I was like lactose. At one point,

[00:17:55] I feel like everybody at one point is lactose and then we get over it. I remember thinking like, that's because I had ice cream. Like, that's why. And they're like, no, no, no. That means that I forgot what it was, but like, you're supposed to do this and do that. And she'd be like, okay, but that's how she grew up. That was her, her style. I've had other, other people tell me about just some other pretty strange things that I'm like, oh, it's just, obviously it's where they're from that really brings that out. It affects like where you grew up affects how you think of ghosts.

[00:18:22] And finally, after all of these stories that have been told to me, I still don't know if ghosts are real. It doesn't make any sense, right? Because when I used to work as a, as a hostel administrator, you know, when we were backpacking and traveling and everything, I was down in Ecuador in South America. And there was one very specific time. I've shared this before, but I was going into the

[00:18:48] lobby area. And as you're going through the lobby, we had a half door. I forgot what they're called. Somebody always tells me, but I always forget. It's a door that you open. It's kind of like a counter. Like it's a half door. It's a full door. You can open it and close it, but you can also just only open the top and it's like a little counter. Well, that thing was open. I go into the lobby and I see somebody going through some, like, like looking through something standing and facing the wall.

[00:19:15] So it's a guy. I go around, right? Like I don't lose sight of that first door, right? I'm just going around. I go right in and I start looking around. Why? Because this was the reception desk of our hostel and the hostel had, you know, we had papers in there. We had passports. We have personal information. We have money in there. So I was like, nobody's supposed to be in here. And I thought that it was the receptionist's boyfriend or something. So I look around and I don't see anybody. And I finally looked to Rosita and she's looking at me like, what's wrong with you?

[00:19:43] So she's the receptionist. Rosita, is there somebody here? And she's like, no, it's just me. And I kind of lose it a little bit. Like, I feel like my mind went blank for an instant and I just took a step back thinking that I was just going to go into nothing. But instead I bumped into the wall and I'm leaning against it and I start sliding down to the floor. And all this time Rosita is looking at me like, like, are you okay? Like what happened?

[00:20:08] And I'm like, I just saw somebody standing here in the office. Like, are you sure nobody's here? She's like, nobody's here. You could see the whole office. It wasn't that big, right? And you could see it from the door. You could see everywhere. And she's like, what do you look like? And I was like, he was kind of tall, kind of with beard, dark hair. And she's like, that's him. Like, that's the Chiquito. That's the entity that we've seen around this place.

[00:20:35] I didn't process it at that moment, right? Like I just saw a ghost. I didn't process it. It took me a little bit. I stood back up and I'm like, whoa. And I started running up all the way to the cafeteria because we had like a cafeteria at the very, very top, like in the terrace area. And my girlfriend was there. She's now my wife. And she's sitting at a table with her computer. And I said, you're not going to believe what just happened. She's like, what? And I just said it. I just saw a ghost. And she looks at me like, what?

[00:21:04] Wo gibt's eigentlich die weißen Rosen aus Athen? Und wo regnet's für mich nochmal rote Rosen? Natürlich im Europa Rosarium Sangerhausen mit der größten Rosensammlung der Welt. Viele tausend Rosenarten warten auf sie mit prachtvollen Blüten und herrlichem Duft. www.rosarium.de

[00:21:41] So I say, you know, I just saw a ghost. I was down at the reception desk. And as I'm telling the story, a light starts flickering above me. Now we have tables up there. It's a cafeteria area. So each table had a light started flickering on and off, on and off. And I'm thinking to myself, like, another thing we have to fix. I didn't even think about it being a ghost or anything. I just thought this is weird. Another guy that was around there, he came up. He's like, yeah, that's weird. Let me try to tighten it. But it didn't work.

[00:22:09] Now, the light flickering thing had a whole other story to it. Because while I was getting my visa ready to head back to Ecuador, I had to fly to the U.S., get my visa stuff so I could work there and everything. And I went back. They had a story about the restaurant not being able to have the lights on. Like, they wouldn't turn on. So they had actually come by. Somebody came and looked at the lights. They couldn't figure out what was wrong. And out of nowhere, they saw a light flickering or whatever. And they went in. And they realized the light bulbs were just loose.

[00:22:39] So they started tightening them. And these weren't, like, regular. Like, you can just access the light bulb. Like, you had to go into, like, a cup. Like, a cup to get in there and, like, untwist and twist. Everything was very DIY in that place. Now, eventually, you know, we had more of a story there where eventually they were able to get rid of the thing that was there. And things really calmed down because it was kind of like a bad vibe in the place. And eventually, everything calmed down.

[00:23:07] The volunteers there who were from Argentina, they decided to do a thing where they were going to do an offering to the place, giving something that you like. For example, a coin, a dollar bill. I gave up a kebab, a beef kebab. You know, I was like, I'm not going to eat this. I'm going to give this to the hostel. So they went and buried it. And things kind of calmed down. Now, there's more to this story, too, because they, at the very top of the, like, the cafeteria area, they had this dome. It was like a concrete.

[00:23:35] Imagine, like, an igloo made out of concrete. And you would go in there to basically do, like, a sweat cleansing. Like, you would go in. It's like a sweat lodge. So you would go in there. We would heat up these stones and make steam in there. And people would go in there and, you know, spiritually cleansed. I never tried it. I never really found out how it worked. But one time this guy came up and he was like, you guys got to clean that. And there was a cleaning people there. And they were like, oh, dang. They went out, tried to clean. And I'm like, no, no, no. He's like, no, no, no. Like, you have to cleanse it.

[00:24:05] Because when people come in here with really bad energy and they get cleansed in there, that energy stays in there. So you have to go and clean it. As in cleanse the bad energies out. And we hadn't done that. But, you know, eventually we started doing that. And things got a lot better. It was a strange thing because lots of bad things were happening around that place. And I'm saying, like, things that involve the police. Things that we just couldn't explain. Financial issues, like everything. And then things kind of got better.

[00:24:32] It was really, really weird when I think about it now, you know. Back then it was just confusing. And I was like, well, what is this? But even after going through that, I still can't say, you know, that these things are 100% real. Like, it's not. By the way, here I'm not talking about whether I believe in ghosts or not. The possibility is there. I believe in the possibility. What I'm saying is when you say, are ghosts real? I don't know.

[00:24:59] Even if I've seen or I felt like I've seen one, I feel like I can't trust my own perception after all this stuff that I've told you. Us as humans, we're like terrible witnesses. It depends on where you're from. Whether you're going to believe this or not. Right? There's all these things. Like, it really did affect me. Like, also, the ghost stories might not. Like, this thing about me seeing a ghost might not have been just about the ghost. And it was about things that were happening around the hostel at the time. Things that I might have perceived.

[00:25:29] I don't know. To me, to be able to see this and say, well, this is a pretty mundane thing. Like, you know, it wasn't like I saw a monster or a floating woman in a white dress. This is what makes me lean toward believing it. It's because it was just an everyday thing. It's what happened. This is what I saw. And now I just have to trust in what I saw. Have you ever had any experiences like that? Anything that you're like, did I really see that? Did that actually happen? Maybe you might have believed it at the time.

[00:25:58] But as time went by, you're like, maybe I made that up. Or maybe that never happened. Maybe my brain perceived it as that. You know? Like I said, I've spent years listening to and researching all these stories. And after all this, I still, I don't know. But I say this and I say this all the time. That all these stories that we hear that try to point to the paranormal, the supernatural existing, ghosts and all these other things existing.

[00:26:26] They always think like, I can't disprove them. And we can't ask for proof about them. Because it would be really, really, really dumb to think that we know everything. And that we're 100% sure that these things cannot exist. Science is developing. We discover new things all the time. Things that were true a long time ago are no longer true today. So what does that tell you about the truth? And most importantly, what does that tell you about the paranormal?

[00:26:56] Let me know what you think of this. Let me know what you think about any of the ghost stories that you've heard or things that you've experienced. If you want to share something with me, please let me know. My contact info is always in the description. As always, thank you very much for listening or watching. Keep it scary, everyone. See you soon.