Are you interested in angels, demons, spirits, ghosts, monsters? Are you curious about their origins, tales, and influence upon history and on the present day? If so, sit back, relax, and welcome to Southern Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more.
Hello all. Welcome back to another episode of Southern Demonology. As always, I'm your host, JJ. Today's episode is rather special in that I was able to interview Anna Maria Manello, who is a published author with three books already out and several more on the way. She has had a wealth of experience in dealing with uh not only the paranormal but also the demonic. And I thought that her insights would be highly valuable on this podcast. As a result, this episode does run a little bit long, and you have to forgive me for that.
I normally try to keep each episode to a you know 30 minutes or under. This one's probably gonna be more of the hour mark. This is even after dividing the conversation into two parts. But what she had was just so powerful and so dynamic. I wanted to make sure that the majority of this episode was devoted only to that. So uh I hope you really look forward to that. In the show notes, I do have links not only to her website, but also to her books that she has out. I do encourage you to go out and read them. They are really, really well done.
Also, just in terms of a bit of news, have you ever wanted to directly interact with my episodes? Whether that would be asking a question, posting a comment, uh wanting a clarification. Well, now you can. I have partnered with a Ukrainian development team who has developed an application called Gallows, and you can leave comments with not only typing, but also with your voice. So it's mobile ready, it's desktop ready, iPad ready, whatever it may be. This should allow you to easily be able to post something, and I keep an eye on this thing all the time. I respond to it.
I currently have over half of my catalog registered into Gallus, and I hope you give it a shot. It's a really sweet tool. I've been really excited to become a beta member of their web application, and I I really hope everyone will at least give it a shot. I have links in several locations, but it's definitely in the show notes. All you have to do is click on that link and it will take you straight to that episode where you can then see what other people have commented, etc.
And this really helps me because you know, a lot of these podcatcher applications, they have their own review systems, their own comment systems, and some of these apps I simply do not have. And so people will leave uh reviews that I will find months later, uh, once I actually do subscribe to that particular service, and I wish I had the immediacy to be able to say, hey, thanks, or you know, let me ask you about this. And with this, hopefully, this will you know concentrate all of that into one central repository where I do have immediate visibility. Anyway, I do have that coming up.
I've been really excited to try that out, and I hope that you will. Because, you know, one of the things that I have been trying to do, not only with Patreon, but with Discord as well, in addition to all of the various social media that I have, is you know, trying to increase interactability because that is the part that out of all of this I love the most. Being able to meet phenomenal people, have great conversations, you know, it helps to educate myself, and it's just a lot of fun. Two more pieces of news, and then I will let you go.
First, uh after resisting for goodness knows how long, I have finally opened up a TikTok account for Southern Demonology. So I have been slowly uploading videos there. You'll always will still find them on YouTube, but now you can check us out there, and I will have a direct link to my account in the show notes. Secondly, our Discord had a really fun activity on Wednesday. One of our members, Paranormal Will, had suggested why don't we do a movie night? And I thought that was a phenomenal idea, immediately adopted it.
We voted upon the movie, which wound up being The Exorcist, and we watched it as a group, and then afterwards had a 30-minute powwow, and it was a ton of fun. And even more, we are going to do this every Wednesday, unless something comes up. And I think that we haven't officially voted yet, but I think that the movie that we're going to do this coming Wednesday is The Terrified, which is one of my favorite shutter originals.
Not that there's a phenomenal amount of good ones out there, but that definitely takes the cake and is one of the best horror movies that has come out in the past couple of years, at least according to me, whether you put stock into that or not. So if you would like to join in on that activity, please feel free to join our Discord. You can find that information directly on Southern Demonology.com.
We would welcome you and we will have a lot of fun sitting around, watching a movie together, having some comments, and then at the end having you know a 15-30 minute session where we talk all about it. So if you'd like to join, please feel free. Anyway, thank you so much for listening. Stick around for Anna Maria. She is a phenomenal interview, and if you have half as much fun as I did listening to it, then you're in for a good time. So sit back, relax, and enjoy. Hello all. Thank you all for joining.
I am very excited to bring you Anna Maria, who is an accomplished author, has written three books, I know has a few more in the works, uh, written numerous screenplays as well, and has a wealth of paranormal and demonic experiences that I really wanted to bring to your attention today. Anna Maria, would you like to give a brief introduction to yourself?
Yes, JJ. Thank you so much for having me here. It's a pleasure. I am a writer, an author. I have published three books so far on the paranormal. I'm happy to be here. I write a lot of uh memoirs and anthologies. That's basically my type of specialty, focusing on supernatural encounters of people. So that that is the particular thing that I do. I gather information from various people. I used to be a travel photographer, also did a little bit of art, but I also have traveled extensively, you know, both for work and for leisure. So at this point, uh I think I've circled the globe.
I haven't hit every single country yet, but uh I think I have about maybe 26 to 27 countries at this point.
Oh, very interesting people.
Yes.
Before we begin then, let me ask you this. Since you know, we're coming off from horrendous pandemic, most of us are still very much stir crazy from being confined in. What are some of your favorite places that you've gotten to visit?
Well, I have to tell you that I I do like Europe in particular. Although one time my husband and I suggested that we go somewhere in North Africa, I ended up doing a photographic journey of Morocco, which I thought was just incredibly different.
Wow.
Very interesting, and of course, during the time because I was also working at a public school, I was confined to the months of June and July, and we ended up going in July, which is probably one of the hottest months in Morocco, but that has to be one of the most exotic destinations I've been to. It's hard to say I have a favorite country because there's just so many different things about a country that makes it distinctive. You it's kind of like comparing apples to oranges.
So it's tough to tease out what's better or what's I don't like the uh subway system in Budapest in Hungary only because the uh the escalators are really high, and we're talking probably two stories high, and it just goes downhill once you step up. So that was not my favorite.
I can imagine that Japan has quite a few of those stairways that just seem to lead forever into the earth, and they're freaky. Not for people with the fear of heights, like I do.
I ran across you on Instagram, and the moment I saw some of your works, I immediately went out and and bought Portal, one of your books, and have become entranced. And so it is really a pleasure to be able to talk to you. I wanted to plumb some of your knowledge just to be able to share with everyone else. And I guess I'll start with what drew you into writing about the paranormal.
Well, I come from a family of writers. One of the things I've noticed is that when people write down, even in just simple journal form, write down what their experiences are, what they observe, it kind of makes it like almost like a um a way of getting out there how we feel. So it's cleansing in that way for me. It gives me closure. When I wrote Portal, since you have that in your hands, I was actually still working for a school district, which I have to say now that I'm retired, I can really say it was pretty conservative.
I couldn't imagine.
Yeah, and and the first edition of Portal was actually written under a pseudonym for that reason. There was a lot of accounts there that I compiled, and through the years, as I was compiling them, I just felt compelled to write it down and make it a testament of what is out there that a lot of people at this point in time are still not understanding or denying that there is a multi-dimensionality to the world.
And though we only see with five senses, there's a lot of entities out there within the planet, outside the planet, and that there is to me, and this is just my humble opinion, after talking to so many people and experiencing a lot of things, there's a lot of forces around us. Some are very benevolent and some are not. To me, what is the truth behind all these supernatural paranormal experiences that people are encountering?
And it's not just in one particular country, since I'm from the Philippines where this all started, but it's all over the world, and there's commonalities there that are very uncanny.
True. In fact, something that we have brought up more than a few times on this show is don't go opening doors that you don't know how to close, or just don't open them at all.
Exactly. Yes, yes, and and it's difficult for people these days, I think, particularly with kids. They see an Ouija board, and I've seen so many cases that I've run across and an Ouija board that I ended up dabbling in for one session when I was still in college. These things are not to be taken lightly, they are actually instruments that reach certain realms that you don't want to open. You don't want to tap into a negative energy that tends to attach itself and just create a lot of havoc.
I mean, it could be someone ending up losing their job, losing their health, any of those various reasons. True.
And and some could be fatal. So, you know, yeah, JJ, it's it's horrible how people think it's a game. The Ouija board is not a game.
No, I mean, whether it's the Ouija board or if you're dealing with Japan and the common school kid game of Kakudi-sun, all of these things are highly dangerous. Yeah, I I messed with the Ouija board once when I was growing up. Thankfully nothing bad happened, but I I count myself lucky in that regard.
So yeah, yeah. Because you just never know.
Exactly. What in particular drew you into writing anthologies? Because those are typically like one of my favorite forms of storytelling, but I would love to get a professional author's view on the matter.
Well, I think the anthology is a good way to put together experiences of people. And the third book I wrote was also an anthology, just to give you an example. Through the years of my traveling and during the year when I was still in college, and up to the present time, actually, I was really enthralled with collecting antique objects. By doing that, I would go into different shops. And when I was in college, you know, we were dirt poor. We pretty much, you know, put all our money into tuition and kind of like just eating ramen all day long to try to make ends meet.
So having an interest like that is really not feasible. So it actually started as going from one flea market to another flea market, or is what they would call it in California, a swap meet, and being able to tease out those objects that are could be potentially unusual, rare, and well made. They could be antiques. People have been known to toss things in the trash or sell something for $5 and not realize it's something that's really rare, that it actually has value. So that was me looking at those things.
So through the years, I've met a lot of people as my interest developed and as you know, things went on with my career, I was able to venture through several different antique stores and got to know the dealers pretty well. So, to answer your question, and I know I can get long-winded here, what I love about the anthology is that I can actually compile stories from a particular set of people. And in the case of haunted heirlooms, as the name suggests, it was stories that were given to me by antique dealers I got to know. This started in the early 80s, so some of them I know pretty well.
Out of the five stories, which includes mine, one antique dealer is still working to date, still has a store open, the rest has already retired at this point. But you could see the commonalities in an anthology of stories. You can also see how events conspire to create that kind of malice, how things fall into someone's lap and what they learn from it. So that's what I like about an anthology.
So your third book, Haunted Heirlooms, I'm not trying to make you give away too much because I really do encourage people to go off and buy your books. They are very well done. What is your favorite story revolving these heirlooms?
Well, there's one in particular, this one is not so much a favorite as it personally kind of resonated with me. Because I'm in the mental health field, I'm constantly working uh with people who are trying to adjust or trying to rebalance their lives, trying to come back to center. One of the dealers I ended up getting to know really well and chose to share with me a very terrifying event in one time of their life. I think it actually lasted them four to five months before they let go of the object. Is a gentleman who lived up in Maine. I believe in the book, his story is the third one.
He was very terrified, frightened of this particular the antique in question is a lithograph. For the audience who might not be familiar with what a lithograph is, it's a picture, it's not a photograph, it's not a painting, but it's an Imprint that is made by putting ink on a surface that already has a carving, a very intricate carving on it, and then you take the entire plate and press it on a particular type of paper so that you actually leave it with an imprint. This particular lithograph was in color. There were various paints or inks that were used in the process. It was rare.
It definitely had great value. And the gentleman who ended up getting it got it as a gift. And the letting go of this was a very arduous and terrifying process that it got him mentally unhinged.
Oh God.
And in the book, you what I try and do with my books is not just recount what happened, but I actually go into the person's head, try to get into their feelings, their emotions at the time of the encounter, so I could replay back faithfully to the reader as it's happening. And I think my books are unique that way. I think in in script writing it's called cinematic storytelling. If you're going through a flood, by reading it, you're gonna feel the water coming in past your legs, and you're gonna start gasping for breath. That's what I aim for.
I aim for making it as realistic and urgent as possible.
Oh, that is beautiful.
Thank you. So in this particular case, that really hit home with me because I could sense the anxiety, I could really sense the raw fear. My heart reached out to the dealer because they were really reliving the event at some point during the interview, and these are a series of interviews, I had to stop it because I could sense the agitation, even though the experience was two years ago and it was already done. The lithograph was no longer in his hands. But his agitation was so much so that he was really reliving it.
Do you have a theory or uh an idea as to how negative entities or things can attach themselves to ancient objects or not quite so ancient?
I think there's two kinds. I think that there's one where the entity, you know, or the ghost, whatever we want to call it, the energy, is actually there, somehow still present around the object. And this I think is the case with people, and I see this most of the time, cut off from life unexpectedly. Someone who dies suddenly, someone who dies in violence, someone who had a lot of things that were unresolved and for the most part very attached to their property. There is a story there where the person was very attached to, of all things, wine, alcohol.
And when they passed tragically, they brought with them a habit they could not shake. So they started haunting a site, and the owners of the store didn't even know what was bringing it about, this apparition that was causing some interesting sightings to occur, let's put it that way, until they opened the chest and found its contents. So there's various reasons why people after death attached themselves to things. It could be they loved whatever it was that was given to them, or they purchased it, just could not let go. And so they're actually there with the object.
And whoever buys it, whoever moves it from its original location, becomes haunted by that apparition or that ghost, or it could be a poltergeist who's actually become very destructive. The other kind of attachment is called a curse. And my belief from what I've seen so far is that when an object is cursed, it's not so much that the ghost that owned it before is still there with the particular object. It's more they imbued it with a negative energy. A case that comes to mind very quickly is the Hope Diamond. Oh, yeah.
And you know, the Hope Diamond was a very priceless piece of jewelry. For some reason, whoever wears it, from what I understand, dies or gets gravely ill. My thinking, and I'm I'm not gonna profess to be an expert.
There are energies out there, and our minds are very powerful. When we're alive and when we pass, the mind continues. Anything that's a thought is energy, and energy coming from a human being is very, very strong. Obviously, coming from a deity, it's even stronger. When you intend something negative and you send your energy and wrap it around an object, even after you pass, that negative energy remains within the object and has a certain vibration. And you probably experienced this JJ out there with a haunted location. Feels heavy.
Oh, yes.
There's a heaviness, it's cold temperature-wise. There's a sense of malice, a sense of loneliness. Those are all negative energy that we're experiencing. And when you get a haunted object, if it's cursed, you're definitely going to sense that.
I couldn't have said it any better myself. I definitely have experienced that in more than a few cases. Yeah, it's uh f few things can ever unnerve someone. Quite as much as that. So I know that you've published three books Haunted Heirlooms, The Way Through the Woods, and Portal, A Lifetime of Paranormal Experiences. Do you have any books in the works? And can you tell us a little bit about them?
Yeah. I'm actually uh halfway through a fourth book. It's called Unholy Structure. And this is about a mansion. I had to change the location because we don't have contact with the current owners. It's based on the case files of a gentleman who is a wonderful paranormal investigator based in Harrisburg. His name is John Curley. And if he's listening, I'd like to thank him for this story and sharing it with me. The mansion in question has about 20 bedrooms, two ballrooms. It has everything you always ever wanted in an extremely large house.
It was built in the 1750s and it was owned by one family, but as time went, it changed hands a number of times. A lot of tragedy happened around that mansion and within the mansion. So finally, it goes into the hands, and this I believe is like five or six years ago, of one owner who had an interest in either cutting it up into different sections and maybe making it like an Airbnb for two to three nights of people coming in and visiting the area because it's in a tourist area, or making it an inn, a hotel.
So what this sadly, what this owner discovered is that none of the construction people in coming in, bringing in materials and starting to try and renovate were able to stay. It changed three different ones in a matter of a year.
Oh wow.
No one would agree to stay. And because of that, there were so many delays, one delay after another, that it changed hands into a new owner. The new owner also had the same issues. They even discovered all kinds of building materials in the back of the mansion that were left untouched. And no one understood why until John came into the picture. And I think we're now looking at the third renovator, the third owner, who finally decided they had to be a little bit more open as to what might be happening because none of the people would speak. But if you did, and that's what John worked on.
He interviewed people, he started a case file, and it spanned about five years. And the case file, which is very bulky, is something that is now being turned into a book.
Do you have an anticipated finish or publish date for that?
I'm thinking in the fall.
Okay.
Perhaps sometime in October or late October. You know, I have a contract with Beyond the Frey publishers. Two wonderful people there, G. Michael Hoff and Shannon LeGreux. They also have allowed me to write another one right after that one called The Talisman. And that one is based on a young girl who lived in New England who ended up turning into a witch. This was actually based on stories from people who lived in the area and a particular gentleman who grew up in the area that knew the girl personally.
So I know that you had mentioned earlier that you were involved in the mental health field. How did you find yourself getting involved in that?
Well, I was originally trained as a therapist, and I went on to get a master's degree in school counseling. Gotcha.
And entered a public school. So that was the route I uh originally actually I was in research. I worked in research for a number of years, both in anxiety and depression, and then veered off into a more of a clinical scope, and then went back, got a master's degree, and that's where the mental health background is coming from.
Gotcha. That makes total sense. Okay.
Yeah.
So according to your website, which I will have linked off from uh the Friends of the Page show and in the show notes of Southern Demonology.com. But according to that site, your father died tragically due to a demonic infestation. Not that I'm trying to dredge up bad memories at all, but could you tell us a little bit about what happened?
Well, JJ, that's a long, long story, and I have to tell you, this is probably the very first podcast where I am actually going to acknowledge that the child in Portal that you have in your hands was actually me. Oh God.
I devoted, yeah, I devoted the first half of this book, I believe it's until chapter 24, roughly. It it came out as a different person. And and and I mentioned to you before, I was working in a very conservative environment. And because of that, I had to turn things around so that I was not identified. So when I wrote that book, my intention was to let the world know that these things can happen, and they can happen for a very, very long time. Where whatever menace that was and whatever evil that was lasted a very long time with this family.
But I could not uh jeopardize my position at the time, so I had to couch it as if it was someone else.
Completely understandable.
Yeah, it was a very tragic event. It was 1962 when my father passed away, and he apparently was not supposed to have been left alone because he had attempted before. But let me talk a little bit since it's getting dark out there and the atmosphere is perfect, but I'm not inviting anything in by any means. I've talked about this infestation, probably going on about three or four years now, since the first edition. And for some reason, every time I talk about it, there's a certain brooding atmosphere that permeates the room.
So ever since then, I always have holy water on me, or somewhere in the room, I always wear a blessed cross. And and just so for background information, Filipinos, the Philippines, they're 99.9% Roman Catholic. I'm not by any means telling anybody out there, you have to be Roman Catholic to be protected. Whoever you believe, if they are benevolent, they will protect you, but you have to believe. So that is key. And so because I am Roman Catholic, I wear a blessed crucifix, I have a picture of the sacred heart.
I also say the Padre Pio prayer, who is a very strong saint, lived a lifetime of wearing, I shouldn't say wearing, but he had the mark of the wounds of Christ.
Absolutely the stigmata.
Yeah. And he used to cast out demons, from what I understand, for the 50 years that he lived on the planet. So it is a very powerful force to have when you start talking about these things. Because a lot of people I know out there already know when you start dabbling just by talking about it or writing about it, sometimes you end up inviting in, or perhaps something is hovering over you because you're interested. But I'm really not interested in them, JJ. I really am interested in what prevents them, what can defuse them, and what can chase them away.
And because of all this writing, it made me closer to God. Not to wax poetic, but I I now understand, you know, the power of the deity in getting rid of all these negativity. So I'm sorry, I'm digestion.
No, no, that's beautiful. In fact, uh if I can just ask one quick diversionary question. So, in addition to you know the implements that you have already described, prayer that I have always found to be uh because I'm Catholic as well, that I've always found imminently useful besides Psalm 91, has been prayer to St. Michael the Archangel. Oh, yes, rely upon that one as well, or are there any other prayers?
Yes, he is one of my weapons. And one of the things that I've noticed is that when you're sincerely praying with the strong intention of summoning the saints, this angel, they do somehow diffuse the gloom in the room. There is a certain lightness and a certain brightness that comes your way, and it's very, very hard for me to explain.
100%.
It is almost attached to a certain kind of joy. When I pray to St. Pio, I smell a very fresh scent that I can't even name to you, Jason.
Really?
I cannot name to you what that flower is, but it is so fresh, it is so delicate, and it just raises you up. You feel totally uplifted, and somehow the stress leaves you, the anxiety or whatever fear that you're getting because of what you're discussing or writing, it leaves you completely. So that's been my own personal experience with these things.
And I I would completely agree. Like if I'm at mass and I am in you know private prayer kneeling before the service begins, maybe it's just me, but I definitely feel like I'm not alone anymore. That there is something there with me looking over me, and I feel I don't really know how to say it, but suffused with light. And I never have felt that in any other situation ever. And it's yeah, it's such a beautiful moment. It truly like where the divine hits the mortal. It's um there there's no other words that I could give to him.
Yeah, it's it's indescribable. It is just really very profound.
So anyway, I I did not mean to distract from the question at hand. Yeah, if you wouldn't mind going more about that infestation.
So the infestation started, I believe, because he was feeling chronically depressed. Uh my father was also a writer. He wrote poetry in particular, graduated with a degree in creative writing. My mother graduated with a degree in journalism. She was, I would say, the more practical of the two. He was very much a person who preferred to be alone rather than the in the company of a number of people, very introspective, uh, very sensitive person. But internally it made him into someone who was very sensitive, sensitive to things that maybe you and I don't sense. Right.
One of the things that he intimated to my mother when they moved into this townhouse, and it was a pretty new townhouse, is that there was something that was across the window of his writing office. He had a huge window that spanned probably six feet from side to side of the room. Right outside it was a huge tree, and past the tree was a brook. And when the sun started to go down and it was twilight, that's when he started feeling something very palpably evil issuing from the tree.
At first, people thought maybe perhaps it was just because he was depressed, and there were suggestions from his parents that he was hallucinating. He ended up going on medication, there was a psychiatrist involved, from my understanding. I'm just going by what people are telling me, family members. It progressed from a few months to several months down the road. And at that point, he stopped sleeping because there was an entity that was at the window that he kept telling my mother as well as his siblings.
It was a large family that he had that lived close by, that whatever it was looked like a bat, it was probably. About seven to eight feet tall. It had a wingspan from tip to tip that went past the window. And if you see that the window is six feet, so the wingspan's larger, longer than six feet. So it's a monster. We're looking at a monster. And when I first saw the movie with Richard Gere, the Mothman Chronicles, I think it was called, I got a very distinctive shiver run up my spine because it I was told I had seen it as a child. I don't recall, I was only I was only an infant.
But viscerally, I really reacted. I left the theater because of it.
I couldn't imagine.
So he had been seeing this almost every night, and it would bear down its eyes on him, looking down at him as he was hovering over the typewriter trying to write. And it insinuated itself into him so much so he was afraid to sleep. He thought it would steal his soul. So he didn't sleep. He remained vigilant every night because he was afraid it would take him. So finally there was an attempt. And then my understanding is there was another attempt. And now there was a woman who was assigned to be at the house 24-7, so that he wouldn't be alone when you know other people were coming and going.
My mother was working or doing whatever. One day the woman decided to take a break, thinking, well, nothing is happening. So it was evening, which is the worst time to leave him alone because that's when that whatever that was. And so he was successful. But one of the things, JJ, I I I don't want to prolong this, but one of the things that was notable that made me think that it was see, I I had a couple of theories. First theory I had was that it was some kind of thought form.
Some kind of what I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with that.
A thought form, or what they call in Tibetan Buddhism, a tulpa.
Oh, okay, okay.
Is something that is created with the force of the mind. It's driven by strong emotion and intention. Another one was perhaps it was like the Mothman, like at the one in Point Pleasant, and it was foretelling some kind of a disaster, in this case a personal disaster. And then the third one was that the entity was actually demonic. My mother entered the room one night, his office, and lo and behold, it was there. She caught it. He was hovering outside the window. My father was in the room looking down at his typewriter, and you can hear a humming sound of some type.
It was a very low hum, very distinctive. She saw it, she grabbed the crucifix from the opposite wall, and then it turned and looked at her and had the face of a goat, and it had like a suggestion of a goatee, and then it had the horns on its head. And as she approached it with this cross, and I commend her for being brave enough to do this, as she approached the window, the creature folded one of its wings and covered its eyes as if to avert itself from the cross. And then it started to descend down. This room was on the second floor. It started to descend down and efferves.
Oh god, that I mean, just the the the mental imagery that uh inspires it's almost like the perverse invert of a serapheme protecting its face and its feet from the holiness of God.
Yes.
That definitely I mean, I I don't know for sure. I I definitely wasn't involved in any way, shape, or form, but I mean to me that sounds like the most clear-cut uh case of the demonic that I've heard in quite a while.
That's what I thought. Because it responded to a holy symbol. But the problem there was that there was no priest for some reason. My understanding is that the room was blessed, but the priest never followed up.
Oh dear lord.
So she left the room and things start to get fuzzy as to what occurred after that transpired. And then the next thing we know he succeeded.
For this uh caretaker that was assigned, I know that you're going off from just what has been told to you, but I mean, was this a responsible individual? Was it kind of out of character for her just to decide to take a break, especially at the worst time of you know, to do so?
You know, JJ, my understanding is that she was just a young maid. She was hired by my grandmother after a succession of them left, because there was a very negative vibe to the to the apartment. I had for my own closure visited the apartment, and it's actually a series of townhouses that are attached. There's probably about eight of them, and the one we lived in was somewhere in the middle. I went with an uncle who then retold to me all the details of what happened after he was discovered. And the maid apparently did not come back until after my own mother had returned to the townhouse.
Someone told me I was, you know, I was a toddler. I was walking into the apartment, and you know how toddlers are, and I was supposedly the first one that discovered that someone did or something was wrong.
Oh bless your heart.
And then my mother walked in, and then the maid came in much l obviously she was fired, but she came in much, much later when people were already coming in, and you know, the ambulance had been notified and all those things had happened. So it was a very emotional recounting from my uncle. And we're talking gosh, probably forty years later. The building was still standing, there were still people renting it. This is on the funny note, JJ, not to laugh because it's nothing laughable, but as he was recounting this to us, we were right outside the gates.
The building had gates all around it, as as they do in you know, places like the Philippines. And a gentleman was just walking back carrying a dozen eggs in his hand. It was probably like about nine or nine thirty in the morning, probably going into his apartment to make breakfast, and he pauses as he sees my uncle gesticulating and getting very emotional about this event. And finally, he probably was so riveted and so curious, he said, Which apartment are we talking about? And it ended up being his unit.
Did he regal with any you know experiences he may have had?
Or well, my uncle in passing, because he had to go in, he said, Did you ever? He said, No, I don't think so. He said, I hope not, and then he went in. So this was unique, and and in retrospect, I'm thinking it's not a haunting of the location, it's a haunting of the person. Right because of the energy, the negative energy that they were sending out. You know, as they say, you create the world that you live in, he was sending out all this negative energy from months and months of depression that somehow these things got drawn to him.
And I'm not blaming him by any means, but I'm thinking that I don't think there was anything there until they moved there, and obviously there was nothing after he had passed.
Well, thank you for sharing that. I know it can't be the easiest of topics to uh talk about, but being able to relate such stories and make people aware of all of this is is so important. So thank you for for actually going so detailed into that account.
Well, thank you for being patient. I uh I do tend to get long-winded sometimes.
Oh not at all. In fact, I I could sit here and listen all day and all night. Thank you for listening to Southern Demonology. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com where you can find all of our social and podcasting links. Also, if you have a moment, please feel free to rate this podcast and leave any encouraging feedbacks that you may have. As always, I am JJ and it has been a pleasure getting to talk to you today!