Are you interested in angels, demons, spirits, ghosts, and 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.
A few weeks ago, I got the scare of my life. I got a phone call from my aunt. On the surface, that doesn't sound particularly scary. After all, this wasn't a call from the beyond. My aunt is in perfect health, thank God. Nor do I owe her money or a vendetta of blood. Rather, I know that when I get a call from her, it is always without fail bad news about a family member. And unfortunately, that proved to be the case this time as well.
Thankfully, everyone is now fine, but I left in such a hurry to go back home to Tennessee and on such a cheap airline that did not have the time nor the means to bring any audio equipment with me. Did you know that if you fly on Allegiant Air, then there are charges for every single thing. We as consumers are used to paying for checked baggage, but how about for small suitcases that fit in the overhead bin? There's a charge for that. And that is only the beginning of the litany. And how about that airline food?
Yeah, thankfully, this is not an episode about the quality of airline food or flights. Lord knows I'm the furthest thing from a stand-up comedian that has ever existed, except for maybe a CPA. I just wanted to explain why I have been away and to beg your indulgence. And on that note, welcome back to season three, episode 10 of Southern Demonology. As always, I'm your host, JJ. Before launching in today's topic, I do have a few quick things to cover.
First, Southern Demonology was chosen as one of the top 10 paranormal-related podcasts by American Paranormal Press, which, of course, tickled my heart to death. If you've never checked them out, please give them a look. I was even featured in an article by them last year. I'll have both links in the show notes in case you want to take a gander.
If you've listened to this podcast for a while and have joined the grand rank of scholars that make up the audience, you may remember two episodes that were a little different called the Paranormal Rundown, where Vic, host of Trailer Trash Terrors podcast, David, an accomplished paranormal researcher, and myself got together to discuss random esoteric topics that we let a random number generator pick for us from a huge list of available topics. The second episode also featured Father Michael Birdsong, an exorcist who was interviewed on my podcast under the title The Kingdom of Hell.
Well, the Paranormal Rundown is now officially its own monthly podcast. The first two episodes with the expanded introduction and epilogue have been published already, and a new third episode featuring the author Anna Maria Manello is soon to hit the airwaves. We are all tremendously excited and hope that you'll give that one a listen as well. A link will be in the show notes. The website will be published soon as well, and I'll let y'all know when that is up and going. Lastly, did you know that you can listen to Southern Demonology on your platform of choice?
The website, Southern Demonology. com, has listen on badges for nearly all of them, whether that be Apple, Google, etc. Well, now there's a new option available called Potarama. I'll be adding a new link on the website so you can check it out, and I'll have a direct link to my show on Potorama in the show notes. Today I wanted to start off with a tale that really puts the Southern into Southern demonology. Where I grew up and where my mom still lives lies equidistant, two miles to be precise, from two very small towns, Slayden and Marion.
Neither are big enough to even have a gas station anymore, though ones existed beforehand. So in order to get anything, one has to drive more than 10 minutes in either direction, and both lead to the exact same establishment, a Dollar General store. The old joke about them being everywhere is not quite so much a joke anymore, but just a fact of life. To get to a real grocery store, one has to go to the nearest big town 30 minutes away. So Dollar General stores now serve as noesis to be able to pick up essentials and not so essentials when time or inclination prohibit the longer trips.
So one day when I was back at home, I went traipsing up to Van Lair, population 400 or so, to hit up the Dollar General. Before I could even walk into the store, a tall, lanky woman who has been, as we like to colloquially say, ridden hard and put up wet quite a few times, runs over to me and says, JJ, you are not going to believe what they are doing to me in there. She's dressed in a ratty t-shirt and shorts. She has obviously bleeding cuts on one arm and leg. She's wearing socks and no shoes and a scarf for a belt.
And with the manic energy of a thousand wiener dogs, she's telling me about how each of these things have come to pass. With narry a breath taken in her diatribe for me to interrupt, she drags me over to her car while asking me to call her cell phone because she'd lost it. When I am finally able to ask her what the number is, she rattles off a string of numbers that at least fit the pattern for a phone number in the U.S., but leaves me doubting if they have ever belonged to anyone she has ever possibly known.
When the calls go to an inoperable line, she then points to her car, which she gleefully points out has expired tags to a giant letter J, which is just sitting in the back seat for some reason and says, Look, it's a J, just like in your name. And people call me Gigi. She then takes back off into the store, leaving me to process, what in the hell just happened? I reluctantly enter the store myself, even though I knew I should have just left.
And I try to go about my business, but I hear the woman screaming to see the manager as they are trying to give her rotten food, as she says, to anyone that would listen. The manager, desperate to get away from her, walks past me and apologizes for all the commotion. I just tell her I'm sorry, she's having to go through all that. This manager is of good old country stock and is solidly built. And she's doing what she can to refrain from killing her overzealous and obviously unhinged customer.
Well, after a few minutes and cringing inwardly the entire time, I finally get what I need and I walk to the front to pay. And while waiting, Gigi magically spots me and comes back over to loudly complain about all of the horrible offenses she has suffered. Mainly that this door is trying to give her kids rotten food. The manager has apparently already called the law several minutes ago, and an elderly lady who is already paying offers to give her $20 so she can get her kids something to eat. But Gigi won't have any of it.
She says she's not a beggar and she'll just take her kids to Dixon to get something even better. She then storms off, and the manager quickly runs behind her to the door and locks it. Gigi returns, hammers on the doors a few times, bang, bang, and then proceeds to get into her car and speed away. All the while, another guy who's in line says that while she has kids, the state took them away a long time ago. Unfortunately, for pretty obvious reasons.
Two patrol cars show up right when the manager lets me out of the store, and they quickly take off after the woman after a quick conference with the manager. And sure enough, while driving back home, they pass me going the opposite direction with someone in the back. When I get home, I recount this story to my. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Calci products are not available in all jurisdictions. Prices, values, and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see Calci.com slash regulatory.
And it turns out that she was a girl who went to the same school as I did, but was two grades back. And the thing that baffles me to this day is how she recognized me. I can't remember the last time I had spoken to her, even indirectly, but it had to be more than 30 years ago, if not a day longer. And yet, inexplicably, she knew me as if we had been best friends our entire lives. I had just been to my college's 25th reunion, and I had trouble recognizing people that I am Facebook friends with.
I know that drugs have seized a hold of certain parts of the South, but I've never had firsthand knowledge of it until that day. And I reverently pray that I am spared any further encounters of this sort of heartbreaking reminder of that. You know, this was one of the prettiest girls in school, and her family doted on her, and yet now she's screaming in a dollar general store, caught up to hell and without shoes, bemoaning food for kids that she hasn't seen in years. You know, the South has a lot of dark undercurrents that run deep and unseen, and it needs no help in that department.
And yet, unfortunately, misery loves company, and in the mueling darkness, demon calls the devil. I'm sorry for sharing such a strange tale, but it has stuck with me ever since it happened. Alright, well, let's shift gears just a little bit and go back into territory that is much more suitable for this podcast. I forgive my French had the shit scared out of me yesterday. For those of us who thrive on horror, we normally do so in the vain hope that we will once again find a book, a movie, or a story that will instill the fear that once bit us at the beginning of our dark journey.
Yet rarely, if ever, does that happen. While that fear found me in the most unlikely of spots, and just like an individual who was searching for wishes, but instead found the monkey's paw, I very much wish that I had never found it. In the early days of this podcast, and on other shows and interviews that I've done, I've spoken about my run-in with an entity in Japan.
In short, in the wee hours of the morning in an apartment that I was living at at the time, which just so happened to look over a graveyard in the heart of Tokyo, I dreamed of a thing that was on my balcony that kept screaming directly into my head, a word that while I did not recognize it, its intention of entering my apartment was all too apparent. And I knew deep in my bones that if it succeeded, then that would be my death.
Yet the word was something not heard by my ears, but somehow tunneled straight into my brain, causing pain that I have never experienced in life, and certainly never in a dream. And to be clear, I have died in my dreams before, but those fabricated experiences never came with pain. Rather, there was a curious sense that I knew there should be agony, but I felt nothing. This thing's screams resulted not just in pain but psychic pain. Pain that had nothing to do with nerve endings, but something that resounded and cut into my very being.
And upon waking to an earthquake alarm going off on my phone, the pain slowly vanished. And most chilling of all, the word that thing outside had been repeatedly calling to me was Haidu, meaning to enter. This thing had been demanding entry. Now, flashback to yesterday, I was mindlessly scrolling on TikTok on my iPad, and I saw a new entry from a Japanese horror short creator that I really like called Kowizel, only 12 seconds in length and entitled Why You Should Not Respond. The video pictured the inside of a dark Japanese apartment.
The view is of a sliding door made of frosted glass, a very common feature in many apartments. And on the other side of this glass door was some sort of thing posing a simple question Hi or can I come in? The guy, confused, responds with eh or huh? And the thing says Dadimo show me hi te or two people together can I come in? The guy naturally asks Dada or who and then the camera pans over to a small open window where there's another one of these things and it honestly says Here or Home.
Yes, this video is a work of fiction, but it is the closest to anything I have ever seen that puts a visual to what I experienced. And I'm telling you, hearing the word spoken so matter of factly, if I happened to have needed to use the bathroom when I was watching that, then that would no longer be the case. My fight or flight instincts kicked in so quickly that my eyes began to water. My spine felt like it was trying to part ways with my skeleton. And I nearly threw my device across the room. I was literally left panting. That experience came flooding back.
And I felt like I was reliving it from more than a decade later. Even when I was recounting this lovely experience to my wife, I decided to show her the video. And that second viewing was just as palpable to the point where I did drop my phone on that final this it was equal it was the same intensity as that first experience of watching it. I think that in the future I am going to amend the hope of finding fear in horror entertainment to be rather the hope of finding new fears, not related to personal experiences that bring the past flooding back into crystal clarity.
If you want to check out this the video I have described pretty poorly, more than likely, I will have a link to that down below. You can also find a link to my own TikTok channel if you want to check that out. Lastly, I will say that if you've noticed that my voice is even more gravelly and rough than normal, I apologize. I am coming off being a little sick. Nothing horrible, but still not great. And my voice has still yet to recover. So I guess if you ever wanted to know what would your voice sound like even worse than it is now, then congratulations, you have finally reached that plateau.
Hooray! And that's going to do it for this episode of Southern Demonology. If you don't mind, please follow and rate us on whatever platform you happen to be listening, as that helps me out more than anything else. And if you're looking for more Southern Demonology content, come find us on Threads. I've been looking for a Twitter replacement, and while I'm not a huge fan of meta by any means of the word, it certainly beats the dumpster fire that the blue bird has become. Stay safe out there. 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.