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 hello all. Welcome back to another episode of Southern Demonology. As always, I'm your host, JJ. This week we're continuing with the last part of my interview with Brandon from Cookville Ghost Hunters podcast.
On June 7th, you can actually find an interview with me on his show where we discuss some of the finer points of demonology. Be sure to check out Southern Demonology.com or our social media to get links once that comes out. Speaking of social media, Southern Demonology just passed 550 followers on Instagram and 100 on YouTube, which just tickles my heart to death. Also, the website has just been updated to include dedicated listen buttons for various podcast platforms like Apple, Google, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, and quite a few more.
While you could always listen to the episodes through the included ACAST player on the site, now it should be much easier to do the same through your player of choice. You can find that on both the homepage and on how to listen page as well. I've recently had some consulting done for the podcast by the fine people over at OneFind Play, a software as a service or SAS website, in order to make Southern Demonology as good as it can be. Stay tuned for some great news that is coming out of that initiative.
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Every single investigation, which I can go on a tangent for hours, but each and every investigation, we say an opening prayer asking for God's protection, and if that there are any spirits there that need our assistance to have God use us as like a conduit to assist any spirits in need and to protect us from negative or evil entities. And we say a closing prayer every investigation. Because the problem is being a paranormator in like the Bible belt of the South, everyone believes, or okay, that's a very general statement, and I do apologize for that.
Uh, most people believe that things are either an angel or a demon. There's nothing in between, like no gray area at all. And investigators are just out conjuring demons. And I would like to go ahead and say that is 100% straight up false. Many investigators like us, we are just as religious, just as Christian as everyone else.
Well, the fact that you hold opening and closing prayers just sounds not only incredibly intelligent to do, but a beautiful thing to, you know, to commemorate in the sessions as well. So yeah, I mean, that sounds really phenomenal.
And like a lot of people, they ask me, like, how do I protect myself? And I say, well, the best and easiest thing you can do, which it doesn't cost any money, basically, you need in in terms of uh Christians, you need to believe in God. If you have a different religion, you need to believe in your higher power, whatever that may be, because this being that you prayed to has the authority or the power to protect you from what you are investigating, essentially.
Do you get the chance to work with people from different walks of faith in your investigations? Uh, to my knowledge, no, not yet.
I mean, I am not against it by no means, but I don't believe I have. Gotcha.
No, I was curious. I mean, I know that this is the heart of the Bible belt, it is the buckle, essentially. So I was just really curious. Oh, it's a hard buckle right there. Yes, it is. So, in our communications, you have mentioned a spirit guide. How did it come to be in your life and how does it age you?
So, actually, there's no way I can fully answer this question in the time we have. I'll just briefly talk about it. But I will say I do have an episode on our podcast that talks about spirit guides, and I tell many stories about mine. But uh basically, one day I was Google or Googling, of course, and I came across the term spirit guide. And I thought, oh, well, it it says here everyone has one, but I I don't know mine. I've never talked with mine, so I just didn't think much more of it. And so I kept wondering, like throughout the days and the weeks, I thought, I wonder who my guide is.
And so as I was driving to work one day, this car kind of cut me off. And I thought, what are you doing? And then I looked at the license plate and it had a name on it, which I don't know of many people whose license plate is a name. And I looked at that and I thought, hmm, okay, that's interesting. And later on, it was just one thing after another, after another. And I came to the conclusion that, okay, maybe this is the name of my guide. And so, long story short, the reason my dowsing rods is my go-to equipment is that is how I communicate with my guide.
I I guess she is my eyes to a world I can't see. Like I'll ask her, point to the closest spirit, and the rods will move. And I've come to the conclusion that I can like this. This is gonna sound very weird, and I completely understand that, but I have found out that I can communicate with my guide, I guess telepathically would be the right word for it. And a bunch of groups that I investigate with, they often do like live investigations on their Facebook pages. And one in particular, if you look at it, you will see that my rods are moving and they're pointing, but my mouth never moves.
I never open my mouth. And that was me communicating with my guide because in that way I know, okay, there are X amount of spirits in this room with us. Certain amount of them are like a positive or negative. There's say a demon in here, where is it? That type of thing. Because I was helping out a group at this location in Gainsboro. And I told them, I said, just understand that you are safe here. I said, we have protection. If anything goes wrong, we know what to do. I said, and also whatever we communicate with, whatever spirit, I said, I will find out if it's who it actually is.
And so we would be using dowsing rods and the the guests would ask questions and the rods being in my hand would move. And they would ask questions like, Are we speaking with a child? And the rods would cross for yes. And in my experience with teaching myself demonology, I've gone to the point where if a spirit crosses the rods for yes, as I ask, are you a demon? And it says yes, I am not as phased by getting a confirmation that I am talking to a child.
Like if I'm if I find out we're communicating with a child, my guard shoots up more than anything because I'm thinking, okay, is this really a child? And my guide will tell me either yes or no. I understand a lot of people, if they do listen to this, and especially if they're really strong in their faith as Christians, they will say that, well, spirit guides are in the Bible, so they're not real. Which actually I do address that exact question and actually go in depth with it in the episode I did.
Pretty much like there are signs, and I'm sure you are well aware that there are signs of a demonic presence. And at least from my research, there are zero signs in my house, and I can communicate with my guide. Uh, we actually were talking during church service today. It's like you have, I would say, like a really good friend that helps you. And I feel that with my guide, investigations are actually like 10 times more fun for me, if that makes any sense.
It it does. And actually, the the way in which you came to understand that you had a guide is interesting because after you had mentioned it, I went and looked it up myself because I have zero experience with uh with the spirit guide. And you know, most of the sources that I found, it did say you will find, you know, small little pointers to your guide and the fact that you did the same thing. I mean, the it's just it's really interesting to me. Thank you for sharing all of that. I will definitely have a link to your podcast in this description so everyone can go and look that up.
Highly recommend it. It's uh it's a new podcast, but it's already off to an extremely strong start, and uh yeah, it's just chock full of fantastic information.
I know, thank you. And I guess one other story, Tad, about my guide was we made an agreement that if ever she wanted to give me information that I'm not knowing or I'm not hearing, one of two things. And the first one, my parents, they will kind of nod their head and yeah, that sounds like Brandon, while I'm driving, or like a video on YouTube would play or something, they newer blue Corvette, which Corvettes are my all-time favorite. Uh the third generation in particular, but it would be the seventh generation exactly. And it has to be like a dark blue, not not a light blue, a dark blue.
And I'll drive through town, just not even paying attention, just driving how I normally drive. And here will come a dark blue Corvette. And I'd often ask her, Do you have a message for me? Yes. And the second thing is her name needs to be mentioned. So either someone says her name in a conversation, or I see her name on like Facebook or whatever. And a story with that, the second one is we were at this same location in Gainesborough doing the Estes method. Uh, the spirit box said her name.
And me and the other investigator who knows of my guide, we kind of looked at each other, but we we didn't say anything. And so when the Estes method started, I think it was like the second or third person that did it, she said her name. And of course, no one knows of spirit guides, no one knows of her name in particular, but she said her name. Again, me and the other investigator looked at each other, but we didn't say anything. And then the fourth person, the one after her that did the Estes method, he said her name too, because they heard her name come through the spirit box.
And at that point, I thought, okay, three times in a row, something's going on. And I asked her, Are you trying to give me a message? Yes. I said, okay, what is it? And she said, something malevolent has shown up. And then after that, the whole room we were in, like the atmosphere, just it got darker. You could actually see it get darker. You felt like a heavier presence in the room. And I thought, oh, okay, yeah, we might want to just wrap this up. And so later on we did. Wow.
Now I'm not going to ask the name. I don't want to know it, but is it a common name or is it something that would never come up ordinarily?
You could consider it common. It I found out it's a biblical name. Uh well, I can go and tell you the name. It's Hannah. I mean, I don't come across a lot of Hannah's. And in that story, I asked the investigator who works with this location to restore it, asked her, can you please look into the history and see if the name Hannah has anything to do with this location? And a couple days later, she got back with me and said, No, the name Hannah has no connection with this location at all.
That is fascinating. If somebody wanted to get into this field, what advice or pointers would you give to them?
So the the first piece of advice I would give is I would say, don't do it by yourself. I learned the hard way. You do not go to a location by yourself. Like what would the hard way you learned? This story, I talk about it in part one of uh my demonology series. But pretty much I came across an evil spirit at a location called Crazy George's Bridge up in uh Monterey, Tennessee. And my guide informed me of what it was, and I almost lost it. I about had a panic attack.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, I have bad memories of Monterey. One of my friends that I went to governor school with wound up becoming a murderer, and he is currently stashed deep, deep in the system in Monterey. So whenever I hear that name, I always get slight chills, which I know has nothing to do with this, but still.
Yeah, that that's Monterey. Uh, no offense to anyone living in Monterey, of course. Not trying to insult anybody either. But anyway, please continue. Sorry. I I guess form a group, either by your closest friends or people that really you trust. Because, like I said, it can go from you're having a good time to dangerous in a second. So, really, you need people that you can trust and depend on and know that they're not gonna just run out and bell on you if things do end up getting bad.
I guess a second piece of advice is always at least have someone in your group do research on the location you're going to. Because if this location is known for, I don't know, say satanic rituals, there's going to be something there. And first off, you shouldn't be going to that place, but at least someone needs to be aware of the history of this place. I guess to better me personally, I have to know at least something of the location I'm going to. And what I don't know, my guide tells me later on throughout the investigation.
Have you ran into many places that have satanic rituals performed there?
That we know of that's been confirmed? No. However, there are several places where it's been rumored that there have been rituals. They say sacrifices, but I I don't know. I think they're meaning like animal sacrifices. But we have been to some places where it's been heavily rumored to have cult like activity going on.
And have you, I mean, in those places that have been rumored, I'm just really curious. Have you encountered like heavy activity or malevolent activity there?
So there are three places that come to my mind. Uh, the first one is the bridge out of Monterey, which yeah, I I would not doubt it if rituals actually did take place there. Because if you go under the bridge, there's like spray painted or a graffiti of like a pentagram, uh, the words like blood and die, just really eerie stuff. And actually, I guess like a quarter of an mile from there is a cemetery called uh Stamp Cemetery, which the locals call it the witch's cemetery.
So, of course, the rumor is if you touch the headstone on the pentagram on it at midnight, you summon up a demon or whatever. So there's been rumors of cult-like activity out there as well. And there is a third place. This location's uh around Gainesboro. And of course, there'll be like a spray-painted pentagram here and there. Uh it was a pretty big location, but other than that, it's just rumored cult-like activity. But when you walk into the area, you can kind of get a sense that okay, there's at least something here. Gotcha.
That is interesting. Are there it's uh before we move away, are there any other pieces of advice that you can give?
Guess the last one, which I don't know why I didn't give this one first, because it's I feel the most important. Uh, have some type of protection, but know what the protection does. So just because you buy, as we let's use white sage, for example. Just because you buy white sage and you know, okay, as long as I light it, it'll work. In my opinion, it doesn't really work that way. You need to know the difference between for, like, for example, white sage and blue sage, what each one does compared to Palo Santo wood, or what it does in differentiating between holy water type thing.
Bring protection, I would advise white sage because basically what it does, to my understanding, is it's like a uh clean slate, so to speak. It gets rid of positive and negative energies, or say weakened spirits, but in terms of like something demonic, yeah, sage, don't work on them. You gotta leave. Uh absolutely either leave or get a blessed, one of the two.
The last question I had, and it was just something that you were talking about, was I I remember listening to older episodes of Art Bell's program back in the day where they were actually going through like um EVPs or electronic voice phenomena, and the investigators would encounter child spirits a lot more than what what you would think, and they always wrestled with it. And I'm curious, I know that you've mentioned them. Have you encountered some like truly child spirits?
And you know, how how do you reckon with that in terms of you know, if they're supposed to be innocents, how could they still be ghosts? I know it's a difficult question. I'm not trying to flut you on the spot. I'm just from someone who actually has practical experience, I'd just be curious to to know what you think about that.
So honestly, I asked that very same question myself. One location that I've been to that, yes, it's confirmed they have. Children's spirits there is a place called the uh Thomas House Hotel in uh Red Bowling Springs, Tennessee. And to my knowledge, let's see, uh one drowned, actually, no, two or three drowned, one died in a fire. Uh, so there's at least like four or five different children. Oh, no, I'm sorry, uh, there's a sixth one, too. I think there's about five or six uh children spirits at the hotel. And I don't know. I me personally, I cannot answer that question.
Why a child spirit, if it truly is a child spirit of that individual and not some type of entity uh posing as one, I have no idea. I can't answer that.
I I don't either. But let me actually open that up just a little bit. So, you know, I've heard you know, ghosts could be classified as you know, mere echoes, they could be a an actual entity. Have you how do you classify them? Are they can they be split into those different categories? Are there additional categories? Are they really just one and the same?
So technically, from my understanding, there are mainly two types. There are intelligent spirits, intelligent hauntings, where the the ghosts there, they can interact with you. You ask them questions, they'll tap on a wall or they'll do something. And the second type is called residual. So basically, it goes in residuals goes into what's referred to as the stone tape theory. And a perfect example of residual hauntings is take your pick on any battlefield in any war. And and I'll I'll use a parable, Kentucky, because we actually just did an investigation there yesterday.
And there's, of course, it's just an open field. So when you're walking around, they had a lot of cannons around, but all of them were replicas. Essentially, they were fakes, they can't be fired. There's no way you can use them. But if you hear gunshot or like a cannon shots, people screaming like they're in a battle, but there's nothing going on. Most often that is a residual that some type of activity has left like a negative mark or negative imprint, and it just replays over and over.
Residual uh hauntings, technically, they aren't there, they're just memories replaying, so you cannot interact with them as you can intelligent hauntings. Right.
Yeah, that makes total sense. All righty. Well, I think that is about all the time that we have for today. How can other people find your podcast?
Uh, so we are on uh the main ones, uh, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Spotify, want a couple others as Cookville Ghost Hunters. So that's C O O K E V I L L E, Cookville Ghost Hunters. We're also on Facebook as Couple Ghost Hunters, we're on YouTube, but I'm I put that on hold because right now I I can't do everything and a full-time job. So I have YouTube on hold, but that's pretty much the best ways to reach out to us. Gotcha.
And if you go to southerndemonology.com on the friends of the show page, you'll also find direct links over to the Cookville Ghost Hunters podcast as well. Brandon, it has been an absolute pleasure getting to speak to you today. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your wealth of knowledge to all the listeners. Oh no, the pleasure is all mine. 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.