Jeffrey Epstein Tarot Reading: Revisiting a 2019 Prediction

Tall Shadow Figures in the Pennsylvania Woods

Reports of tall shadow figures have appeared in folklore, paranormal investigations, and witness accounts for decades. In this interview, investigators from Podcast of the Paranormal discuss years of encounters in a remote Pennsylvania woodland involving strange lights, antler entities, unexplained sounds, ritual activity, and a presence that seemed to interact with visitors in unsettling ways.

In this episode, Heather Woodward speaks with investigators from Podcast of the Paranormal about a series of encounters in a wooded area in Northeastern Pennsylvania that they have been investigating for several years.

The guests explain how they originally became involved in paranormal investigation, starting with team investigations in college and later returning to the field shortly before the pandemic. Their renewed interest led them to form their own team, with their first investigation taking place in a wooded location tied to local urban legends.

They describe the area as heavily forested, remote, and historically associated with reports of a woman in white, rumors of witchcraft and ritual activity, and a nearby hospital or asylum that burned down. The site is also located near moving water and is accessed by walking a significant distance away from visible roads or lights.

During early visits, they began observing unexplained lights in the woods. These lights appeared in multiple colors, did not behave like lightning bugs, and seemed to increase in activity depending on the emotional state of the investigators. Over time, they noticed the lights became dimmer after nearby construction work altered the flow of a stream.

The investigators describe performing ritual work at the site to attempt direct communication with whatever presence might be there. They report that the communication was brief and conveyed that it was time for them to leave. After this initial interaction, the presence did not visually manifest again, though the investigators continued returning to the site regularly and leaving offerings.

They recount a specific night in April following a full moon when multiple people were present. After walking family members back to their vehicles, the remaining investigators stayed near their cars. At that point, they began hearing movement in the woods and observed a large shadow cross the road. Shortly afterward, something charged toward them from the woods, producing heavy footsteps and animal-like sounds.

They describe encountering a large, black shadow figure estimated to be seven to eight feet tall with prominent antlers. The witnesses perceived the figure differently, with one describing it as upright and humanoid and another describing it as moving on all fours. When flashlights were directed toward it, the figure disappeared immediately. All witnesses reported feeling that the encounter was a clear signal to leave the area.

Since that night, the investigators report consistently feeling watched and sensing a boundary when visiting the location at night. They describe additional Estes sessions that referenced doorways, instructions to enter the water, and requests involving offerings and penance.

They note environmental patterns associated with the site, including moving water, underground mines, alterations to the land, and disappearing rocks previously used as seating or altars. They report that offerings left at the site appeared to be acknowledged through changes in the environment, including arrangements that mirrored the number of people present.

The conversation expands to include broader patterns observed by Heather Woodward across similar locations, including the presence of converging waterways, underground disturbances, traumatic histories, and proximity to nuclear power plants. The guests confirm that their site feeds into the Susquehanna River and is located within proximity to a nuclear facility.

They also discuss a specific instance where an Estes session instructed them to return on November 5th, coinciding with election night. The group describes widespread feelings of unease and disorientation on that date, as well as inconsistencies in intuitive and tarot-based predictions.

Additional corroborating experiences are discussed, including childhood encounters with shadow figures in cemeteries, later confirmed by other witnesses, and accounts from other investigators who independently reported similar sightings in the same Pennsylvania location.

Throughout the episode, the guests emphasize that they still do not know what the entity or phenomenon is. They acknowledge similarities to folklore, cryptid reports, and nature spirit traditions but do not settle on a definitive explanation. They continue to visit the site regularly, perform investigations, and leave offerings while remaining cautious about further contact.

Encounters with tall shadow figures appear in reports from all over the world. If you’re interested in recurring paranormal patterns, you may also enjoy my article on Gates of Hell Cemetery and the strange entities reported at one of Oklahoma’s haunted locations.

Safe Spirit Communication Practices

Spirit communication is one of the most misunderstood topics in the paranormal field. Between television shows, social media influencers, and misinformation, many people never learn the practical techniques, safety practices, and discernment skills needed for meaningful spirit contact.

In this episode, Stephanie and I pulled apart something most people in the paranormal world take for granted. Spirit communication. Not the cute Instagram version with aesthetic candles and soft-focus angels. The real thing, with all its mess, trickster energy, and human ego.

This all started because I watched someone at a metaphysical fair do almost everything wrong in front of a room full of people. And I realized how much of what Stephanie and I do in the field is instinctive now. Protection. Discernment. Ethics. Knowing when the “ghost” is actually the land. Or a thoughtform. Or you.

So this episode is about that. How we actually work with spirit. Why “exclusive” machines and “paranormal experts” piss me off. And how you can talk to the dead without getting wrecked by someone else’s theatrics.

Spirit communication is not a lottery win.

Stephanie and I have been investigating together for years. Not cute little haunted B&Bs once a season. I mean, road trips across the country, “most haunted” locations, sanitariums, hotels, battlefields, private homes, the whole thing.

We work very differently, which is why it works. Stephanie is deeply empathic. She embodies spirits. She feels their personalities, emotional landscapes, and inner weather more than she sees or hears them. When someone comes through, she usually knows their flavor before we get a single EVP.

I’m more of an antenna and facilitator. I attract things and pull them into the room. I can talk to them, but half the time I’d rather point at the energy and say, “you, deal with Stephanie,” and then ask questions from the side. I’m the one who sets the circle, frames the questions, pushes back, and watches for trickster patterns.

We’ve done this long enough that a lot of it is muscle memory now. Which is why what happened at that metaphysical fair hit a nerve.

The metaphysical fair machine guy.

Picture this. I’m at a metaphysical fair, selling books and doing readings. There’s a guy there doing a “talk to your dead loved one” demo with a special machine he built. Cool in theory. I am absolutely the person who will sit front row for a new weird device. I have built spirit boxes. I love gadgets. If you tell me “I made a thing that talks to the dead,” I want to see it work.

Instead, I watched a 45-minute TED Talk on quantum immortality and entanglement that did not need to happen.

If you’ve never heard the term, “quantum immortality” is basically a dramatic way of saying energy doesn’t die, it changes form, and every choice spins off a different possible timeline. Cool. Fine. We do not need a graduate seminar on this in a hotel conference room. Say “parallel universes” and “multiverse” and call it a day. Everyone has seen Marvel.

Then he shifted into the “exclusive opportunity” pitch. He announced that only one person in the room would get a chance to use his machine and speak with a loved one. Already gross. Spirit communication is not a raffle prize. You do not need to win a spot on someone’s list to talk to the dead.

He had everyone raise their hands if they wanted to participate. I raised mine. Not because I needed to talk to anyone, but because I wanted to see how the machine responded if I didn’t feed it a sob story. I lied and told him no one close to me had died. Which is absolutely not true. I simply wanted to see if he was willing to work with “let’s see who comes through” instead of preloaded grief.

He was not. He bypassed me and picked a girl who was under sixteen, already emotional, and obviously still raw from her father’s death.

Red flag number one.

Then came the machine.

The “exclusive” machine that did what a seven-dollar app can do. Update: It’s now free.

His device was basically a dressed-up version of something I already use. Think Huff Paranormal’s Portal concept. He had phonetic fragments, audio chopped into small bits that can be recombined into words. The machine would spit these out in real time, so whatever energy was present could use it like a magnetic poetry kit.

Here’s the information straight from the app page:

Experimental ITC Tool optimized for use with the Portal/Wonder Box/similar device or can be used alone.

Steve Huff of Huff Paranormal was looking to experiment with vocal banks from various age & gender people. This app will sweep randomly between 7 short single file reversed human speech vocal banks. Young male & female/Middle aged male & female/Elderly male & female & 1 whisper bank. During your sessions look for intelligent replies to questions asked & always keep the audio reversed for better validation of audio manipulation.

This is not new. This is not proprietary.

He made a big deal about his machine “removing the static” spirit boxes usually have. You can do that with a basic noise gate or guitar effects pedal from Amazon for twenty bucks. I know this because I have done it. I’ve also built my own spirit box with crystals and an anti-distortion pedal. It cost me fifty dollars and a Saturday afternoon.

His special twist was a giant crystal bolted to the front and a copper handle that the sitter had to hold, which supposedly connected them energetically to the machine. Only one person could hold it at a time. Which, if you’ve ever done group spirit work, is already backward. You want the group field. You want shared energy. You want the hive mind.

He never explained what the knobs did while he was turning them.

He never set an intention.

He never grounded the room.

He never talked about protection.

He never said, “Here is how you validate who you’re talking to.”

He put this teenager on the spot, handed her the copper piece, and then let the whole thing turn into a spectacle.

Leading questions, trickster answers

The questions he fed her were long, leading, and designed to generate drama, not clarity.

“Do you remember that one time when we went on a drive in the forest, and we played that one song?”

The machine would spit out “yes.”

He would point and say, “See how clear that is?”

It wasn’t.

There were maybe two or three phrases that sounded like actual speech. The rest was vague noise and pareidolia. But he treated all of it like gospel. At one point,t the machine said, “I’m behind you.”

If you’ve ever done ethical mediumship, you know how wrong that is. Her dad, who she adored, is not going to lurk “behind” her like a horror movie extra. He is going to be beside her. In front of her. Holding her hand. The “behind you” line is classic fear theater. Trickster energy. It reads like something trying to get a reaction, not a father trying to comfort his daughter.

She started crying and hyperventilating. He did not stop. He did not give her grounding tools. He did not ask for confirmation; only she would know. He did not ask for a specific detail. He simply kept pushing, while his assistant beamed at the audience like they were witnessing something profound.

Someone else in the room had to go comfort the girl.

I sat there angry. Not just because of him, but because an entire room of people watched this and thought, “This is how spirit communication works.”

And it gets worse. This same guy is the “official investigator” for a very famous, very accessible haunted hotel. He uses this same machine at their paranormal weekend as a premium, exclusive add-on.

Which is ridiculous. I have been to that hotel with friends, stayed there with equipment, and had a full run of the hallways. Staff literally step over you while you sit in the hall with your spirit box. Sometimes they even point you toward the “good spots.” There is nothing exclusive about talking to the dead in that building. You can walk in with a seven-dollar app on your phone and talk to whoever is there.

That is the problem. Not the tech itself. The performance. The upsell. The message that you need a special machine and an “expert” to talk to your own dead.

We are chaos witches, not hall monitors

Stephanie and I are not pearl clutchers.

We use Ouija boards. We use tarot. We have sat in dark basements and told things that claimed to be demons to chill out and give us something useful. We have had things thrown at us. We have been in old hospitals, prisons, cemeteries, and private homes where the activity went sideways.

We are absolutely “fuck around and find out” people.

We are not love and light, sage everything to death, never touch a talking board types.

What we are is intentional.

We do not walk into liminal spaces blind. We do not hand the steering wheel to whatever wants attention the most. And we do not treat people’s grief like a stage prop.

Over time, without really naming it, we built a protocol. Not a rigid ritual. More like a set of habits and expectations that keep us safe and keep the work honest.

Our actual protocol, underneath the chaos

Before we investigate with a group, we almost always eat together. We sit. We talk. We relax. Everyone comes down from the drive and their adrenaline. You cannot do clean spirit work when everyone is brittle, hungry, and anxious.

When we start, we set an intention. Out loud. Simple. Clear. Something like:

“We intend to communicate with whoever is present who is aligned with the highest good. We are not here for tricksters, parasites, or bullshit. If you are those things, you are not welcome in this circle.”

We usually create a circle energetically, even if it’s just a felt boundary. Sometimes we’ll cast in a more formal sense. Sometimes it is more casual. Either way, there is a container.

We acknowledge that the trickster is real. That thoughtforms are real. That feedback loops are real. We assume that at least part of what we experience is our own energy mirrored back to us. That assumption actually makes the work stronger, not weaker.

We ask very specific questions. We do not lead.

We ask spirits to show us they understand the tools we are using. With a talking board, we might ask, “Do you know how to use this?” or “Do you know how to spell?” You can tell a lot by how the planchette moves, by the language, by the mistakes.

We validate with details. We ask for names, dates, locations, and specific phrases. We cross-check what we receive with research later. We do not build entire narratives off one dramatic phrase that “sounds right.”

We command the space. If something feels off, we say so. If something feels like a trickster, we tell it to leave. If something claims to be a demon, we treat that as a bit first, not as truth.

The point is agency. We expect communication. We are not chasing scraps. We are hosting a conversation.

One of the best examples of how this plays out is the Fee House.

By the time we went, a TV show had already filmed an episode there. The story of the house was pretty established. Certain named ghosts. Certain tragedies. Certain “known” hauntings. There was a script.

Before the trip, we did dream machine work, pulled cards, and ran Estes sessions to get a feel for who or what we were actually going to meet.

What we got did not match the public story.

Where everyone else described playful, chatty spirits who loved to respond on cue, we were getting angry, frustrated people living with secrets, double lives, and unresolved mess. We were picking up on something heavier, more complex, and much less marketable.

When we arrived and started working in person, the “famous ghosts” did not show up for us at all. The personalities, language, and emotional tone we picked up matched our pre-work, not the TV script.

Later, the owner confirmed some of what we found. Off camera. Quietly.

It fits a pattern we see everywhere. Hotel ghosts that never existed in life. Entities like “Theodora” at the Crescent Hotel who are actually stitched together from multiple people’s experiences and rumors. Thoughtforms born out of repetition, investigator attention, and the expectation of a haunting.

None of this means the phenomenon is fake. It means a lot of what people are talking to are egregores, not the original dead. If you walk into a place assuming the legend is true, then any blinking meter becomes “proof.”

If you go in with discernment, you start asking, “Who are you really?” and “Who made you?”

When people ask me how to talk to their dead, I do not say “buy a portal device from a guy in a hotel ballroom.” I tell them to start with:

Cards.

Any kind. Tarot. Oracle. Mediumship decks made specifically for connecting with passed loved ones. Shuffle. Ask a clear question. Pull a card. Sit with it. Look at the image, the keyword, and the feeling you get.

Automatic writing.

It freaks people out, but it is simple. Sit down with a notebook. Ask to talk to one specific person. Write whatever comes without editing. Most of it might be junk. One or two words might be gold. I have seen people channel the title of a painting they had never heard of that later checked out historically. Two words is enough.

You do not have to go to their grave. You do not have to sit in a dark room at midnight. You do not have to earn the right by being sad enough.

You can talk to your grandpa from your kitchen table.

If you want to invite a specific person in, say their full name and birthdate out loud. State clearly that you only invite that person, and that nothing else is welcome. Then ask them to give you something only you would recognize. A phrase. A joke. A location. A very specific memory.

You are allowed to say, “If you cannot give me that, I don’t believe you are who you say you are.”

You are allowed to say “no.”

Which brings me to fear.

You are probably the haunting

Here is the part most TV shows skip.

A lot of “hauntings” are human emotions with nowhere to go.

If you are in a heightened state for a long time, you can absolutely affect the physical world. Doors slam. Lights flicker. Plumbing fails. Dark figures appear in hallways that feel like “someone watching you.”

I have lost count of how many clients told me they saw a tall dark shadow at the end of their hall, and their lights keep flickering and things move around the house, and when I ask what is going on in their life, they say:

“I just went through a divorce.”

or

“Someone close to me died, and I haven’t cried about it yet.”

Or they grew up being told their feelings do not matter, so their body and their house start screaming for them.

Water signs are especially bad for this. I recently talked to someone whose rising sign is Cancer. Her house kept having water issues. Pipes. Flooding. Backups. She felt invisible and unwanted. As soon as she started setting boundaries and talking about her feelings, the water calmed down.

Stephanie has had multiple floods at emotionally intense times in her life. Washer hoses exploding. House flooded. You cannot convince me that is random.

We are not separate from our environment. We are generating phenomena all the time. So if you get an EVP that screams “run” in a room full of jumpy people, that might be the room reading you, not an outside entity.

When we investigate, we always ask:

What state were we in emotionally when that happened?

Is this us?

Is this the land?

Is this a thoughtform?

Is this something truly other?

We do not assume every noise is a ghost with a tragic backstory.

So how do you do this “the right way”

There is no single correct way. There are ways that are less stupid.

Set an intention. Know who you want to talk to, or at least what kind of energy you are willing to entertain.

Claim your authority. This is your body, your mind, your circle, your house, your time. You are not a victim wandering into the dark with a flashlight. You are a host. Act like it.

Work with people you trust. At least at first. Go out with folks who have done more than binge-watch paranormal TV. Let their calm regulate your nervous system.

Keep your nervous system online. One drink is fine. Seven is not. Weed, psychedelics, anything that blows the doors off your perception can also blow the doors off your discernment. If you already struggle with anxiety or intrusive thoughts, you need more protection, not less.

Be specific with your questions. Avoid leading and yes or no questions. Ask for details and be willing to sit in silence while the answer forms.

Document everything. Video. Audio. Little notes in your phone. You will not remember half the weirdness later. You will see patterns only when you zoom out over time.

Research what you get. Names. Phrases. Locations. Titles of things. Sometimes you will find nothing. Sometimes you will find enough that you sit back and go, “Okay, that was not from my head.”

Stay open to layers. A phrase can mean one thing now and a different thing years from now. It can refer to a person, a place, and a project all at once. Liminal work is rarely linear.

Most importantly, drop the idea that spirit communication belongs to people with special titles or special machines.

Spirit communication without the performance

The reason this episode exists is because I watched a teenager be used as content. Her grief was a prop to make a machine seem powerful. No intention. No protection. No grounding. No education. Just trauma theater.

You deserve better than that.

If you want to talk to your dead, you have that right. You can do it at your kitchen table with a deck of cards and a notebook. You can go into haunted locations with your friends, a cheap K2 meter, and a clear head, and get incredible results.

What you need is not gear.

You need intention. Discernment. A sense of humor. The ability to say “no” and “prove it.”

And the willingness to accept that sometimes the ghost you are chasing is your own reflection, blinking back at you from the dark.

If you’re interested in practical methods for contacting spirits, you may also enjoy my Spirit Calls Tarot Spread for Spirit Communication, designed specifically for safe and intentional spirit contact.

Bigfoot Research in Oklahoma

What starts as Bigfoot in Oklahoma research doesn’t always stay that way. In Oklahoma, investigator Coleman Atchley and the team at Red Dirt Cryptid Investigations found themselves chasing reports that blurred the lines between cryptids, paranormal activity, UFO encounters, and something much harder to define. The deeper they went, the stranger the phenomenon became.

This conversation started as a discussion about Bigfoot research in Oklahoma and turned into something else entirely. Time slips. EVPs that talk back. The Lady in White showing up where she doesn’t belong. Places where phenomena stack on top of each other like bad architecture.

This is one of those interviews where the lines between categories collapse. Bigfoot. Paranormal. UFOs. Consciousness. The land itself doing something we don’t have language for yet. You’ll hear it unfold in real time.

Below is the written version of my conversation with Coleman Atchley , field investigator with Red Dirt Cryptid Investigations and the filmmaker behind Whispers From the Woods.

Coleman didn’t set out to be a documentary filmmaker. He started filming in 2021–2022 with friends who were brand new to Bigfoot research in Oklahoma. The first project was exactly what you’d expect. People learning as they went. Mimicking what they’d seen on TV. Hollering in the woods and cringing later.

But something stuck. The filming. The interviews. The fieldwork. Being in places where people reported encounters. That part hooked him.

After the first documentary, Coleman reached out to Brian of Red Dirt Cryptid Investigations. A message. A meeting. An invite to investigate. That was the beginning of a long collaboration with Brian and Eric, and eventually, Whispers From the Woods.

This time, Coleman wanted to do it differently. Less performance. More research. Something he could watch without embarrassment. In Bigfoot research, there’s a dominant framework. Flesh and blood. A biological species. A primate. Something explainable if we just find the right evidence.

Coleman started there, too.

But the longer you stay in the field, the harder it gets to ignore what doesn’t fit that model. Reports of mind speak. Cloaking. Lights. Experiences that don’t behave like animals.

And then there was the Lady in White.

Coleman jokes that he went looking for Bigfoot and found ghosts. But that experience changed how he understood the work. Not because he suddenly believed in the paranormal, but because he couldn’t unsee it.

When he started researching further, he found something unsettling. The Lady in White wasn’t just a haunted house phenomenon. She showed up in Bigfoot hotspots too. Places where multiple types of phenomena overlap. Not everywhere. But enough to notice a pattern.

Brown Springs doesn’t feel neutral.

Even people who aren’t into paranormal research describe it as heavy. Historically, it’s been a dumping ground. First for bodies in the 1800s. Later for organized crime. Violence layered on violence. Coleman didn’t know that history when he first had his experience. He didn’t research it until afterward.

What he remembers most is the woman’s hair. Wet. Clumped. As if she’d just come out of water. Her clothing looked 1800s. Her face had a Native quality. The possibility that she was a victim, not a symbol, lingers. Speculation, yes. But the land holds memory. And Brown Springs feels like it knows what it’s for.

Bigfoot sightings. Dogman reports. UFO activity. Paranormal experiences. They don’t compete here. They coexist. While filming Whispers From the Woods, the team followed witnesses to the location where a Bigfoot print had been cast. On the walk back, they heard it. A deep, guttural growl. Loud. Close. Too close.

Five times. It faded, then stopped. They searched. Nothing. Brian, who had always leaned toward the flesh-and-blood explanation, couldn’t reconcile it. Whatever made that sound should have been visible. It wasn’t. That moment shifted the entire documentary.

Later, at Brown Springs, while walking near the springs at the base of the cemetery, an EVP was captured. No one reacted at the time. No one heard it. Months later, while editing, Coleman isolated the audio. The voice was clear. Calm. Close.

“Say this place is haunted.”

It sounded like it was spoken directly into Brian’s lapel mic. Coleman wasn’t wearing one. No one remembers speaking. No one reacts on camera. The spectrogram made it stranger. Brian’s voice lights up the screen with layered frequencies, like a normal human voice should. The EVP appears as three faint purple dots. Minimal signature. Wrong shape.

Researchers familiar with EVP work say this happens. Clear voices without human vocal structure.

But that wasn’t the end of it. About thirty minutes after the EVP, the team conducted an EVP session in the cemetery. When Coleman starts the session, something feels off. He forgets how he usually begins. He hesitates.

Then he says it.

“A lot of people say this place is haunted.”

The same sentence. The same phrasing. The EVP had instructed him before he said it. No one knew until months later. Coincidence is possible. But it doesn’t explain why that exact phrase surfaced, unprompted, in a moment of confusion. One theory is subconscious pickup. Another is a feedback loop. Another is time folding in on itself.

Coleman describes another experience where an EVP recorder played audio out of order. Words spoken later appeared at the beginning of the recording. The opening appeared at the end.

It’s rare. But it happens. And it never happens at home. It happens in hotspots. Places where time feels thin. Flexible. Less linear.

I shared my own experience with sessions where language, imagery, and real-world events synced in real time. Not metaphorically. Literally. Birds. Volcanoes. Words spoken in trance were reflected moments later by people unaware of the session.

If time isn’t linear everywhere, then maybe these places aren’t haunted. Maybe they’re unstable. This is the question I couldn’t ignore. Why does the phenomenon keep interacting with Coleman? Not just appearing. Not just happening near him. But responding. Using his words. Folding him into the event.

Coleman doesn’t claim anything special about himself. But he talks about “lighthouse” people. Sensitive individuals who seem to draw activity, whether they want to or not. Not everyone notices. Not everyone reacts. But some people become part of the system. Observers and participants at the same time. That’s when things escalate. Coleman’s position is simple.

Bigfoot is weird.

It always has been.

Eight to nine-foot beings have been seen worldwide. Physical evidence without bodies. Telepathy reported by credible witnesses. Lights. High strangeness. Pretending this is just a primate problem is limiting the research.

At the same time, not everything in the woods is Bigfoot. Tall shadow figures throwing rocks may be categorized wrong simply because of location. If it happened in a house, we’d call it paranormal. In the woods, we call it Bigfoot.

That’s a problem. Without better categories, we can’t sort what’s happening. We just label and move on. Coleman is currently working on a Dogman documentary and preparing for a full-scale project focused entirely on Brown Springs.

Multiple investigations. Historical research. Folklore. EVP work. Time spent letting the place respond. Not chasing proof. Listening. Nothing in this conversation resolves cleanly. That’s the point.

If you’re waiting for the moment where someone explains it all, you won’t find it here. What you’ll find instead is a crack in the narrative. A place where explanations stop working.

Reports of strange lights, unseen presences, and unexplained entities appear in investigations all over the country. For another account involving shadow figures, antler entities, and activity near moving water, check out my article on paranormal encounters in the Pennsylvania woods.

The Haunted Vermont Farmhouse

The haunted Vermont farmhouse at the center of this story wasn’t just rumored to be haunted. According to witnesses, it became the site of poltergeist activity, unexplained photographs, missing time, shadow figures, and a growing sense that something unseen occupied the property.

On this episode of the NVus Alien Podcast, I sat down with Paul Dulski from the Haunted Vermont podcast to talk about the paranormal experiences that shaped his life and eventually pushed him into investigating the unexplained.

Like many investigators, Paul didn’t start out looking for the paranormal.

The paranormal found him.

What began as strange childhood events in a Vermont farmhouse slowly unfolded into a long series of eerie encounters involving unexplained shadows, missing time during sleep, mysterious photographs, EVP recordings, and something investigators often describe as a “zone of fear.”

In this conversation, Paul shares the experiences that led him down the paranormal path and the evidence that still makes him question what might actually exist beyond the normal world.

Paul grew up in Holland, Vermont, and says his first real encounter with the unexplained happened when he was in fourth grade. At the time he and his friend Justin were just kids watching paranormal shows like Ghost Hunters. The idea of ghosts was more entertainment than reality.mThat changed when Justin’s family farmhouse suddenly became the center of strange activity.

Looking back now, Paul says he wishes they had documented what happened. At the time, they were just kids trying to make sense of something that felt impossible. Even today, he admits the story sounds unbelievable when he tells it. But the experiences were real. And they stuck with him.

Some of the most unsettling events happened during sleepovers in Justin’s bedroom. One night, three of them fell asleep on a futon placed against the wall beneath a window. When they woke up the next morning, all three were in completely different positions than where they had fallen asleep.

Paul had started the night on the edge of the bed. When he woke up, he was now at the window. Justin had somehow ended up half on the floor and partially under the futon. Justin later remembered waking up half inside his closet. None of them remembered moving. And none of them remembered anyone getting up during the night.

For that to happen normally, someone would have had to:

• throw off the blankets

• crawl past the other two people

• step over them in the dark

• and somehow reposition everyone without waking anyone up

None of them recalls anything like that happening. To this day, none of them can explain it.

Another night in the farmhouse produced something even stranger. Paul and Justin looked out the bedroom window and saw a shadow figure outside. The shape was unusual and didn’t resemble anything they could replicate later. Even more confusing was the lighting. They couldn’t determine what could have been casting the shadow, or where the light source could have come from.

Justin also remembers an incident involving an orange juice container that appeared to suddenly explode or fly across the room and hit the wall. Paul wasn’t present for that particular moment, but it’s one of the memories Justin still talks about. Before the farmhouse events, Paul had already experienced smaller moments that he now looks back on differently.

When he was about seven years old, several deaths in his family happened close together. His grandfather died in 1994. Within 24 hours in June of 1995, he lost another grandfather and an uncle. That was the first time he truly understood death.

Around that same time, something strange happened one night in his childhood bedroom. He woke up in complete darkness and tried to leave the room. But he could not find the doorknob. He searched the wall and door over and over again, feeling for it, but it simply wasn’t there. Eventually, his mother opened the door.

She told him the doorknob had been only a few inches away from where he had been reaching the entire time. But for reasons he still can’t explain, he couldn’t locate it. Another strange detail from that house involved the attic. Some nights, he thought he could hear voices coming from above, almost like people laughing and talking.

Later, he wondered if it could have been the television in another part of the house. But at the time, the voices sounded like people gathered together, almost like a group playing cards or talking. Years later, in 2007, Paul and his band visited an abandoned church to take photos for fun. That night, they heard what sounded like a woman screaming in the distance, almost like someone being attacked. They dismissed it at the time because animals can sometimes produce similar sounds.

But the location would become important later.

In 2011, Paul returned to the same area with friends while exploring local haunted locations. When they stepped out of the vehicle near the abandoned church, something immediately felt wrong. Paul suddenly felt overwhelming nausea, strong enough that he thought he might throw up. One friend heard what sounded like a growl. Another thought he heard chains dragging against the church wall.

All three of them experienced an intense wave of fear at the same time. They quickly returned to the vehicle and left the area. The moment they drove away, the feeling disappeared. Paul describes it as stepping into what investigators sometimes call a “zone of fear.” Something about that specific location triggered a powerful physical reaction. Interestingly, Paul says he has visited the site about seven times, but that experience only happened once.

The road near the abandoned church has its own folklore. One story involves a male hitchhiker ghost that people claim to see walking along the road. Another nearby legend involves a woman in white who appears along Marble Street in West Rutland. According to one witness, an older man named Frank saw a glowing woman in a veil standing by the road. He offered her a ride. She entered the car. Then vanished.

Stories like that appear across the country, but the Vermont case follows the same pattern that many investigators recognize.

The hitchhiker gets in the vehicle. And disappears moments later.

The event that truly pushed Paul into paranormal investigation happened on October 28, 2011.

While exploring a cemetery with friends, Paul felt something strange to his left. He asked his friend to take a photo. When they looked at the image, something unusual appeared beside him. The photograph shows Paul’s shoulder and arm. Next to him appears to be a floating form. Some people suggested it could be cigarette smoke.

Paul says that the explanation doesn’t fit.

He was smoking at the time, but the smoke in the image looks completely different from the shape beside him.

To him, the form looks like a female figure floating vertically, almost as if it were demonstrating it could move in ways a human body cannot.

When the image is zoomed and rotated, Paul believes he can see:

• hair

• a face

• a gown

• and possibly a raised hand

Five months later, Paul and his friends returned to the cemetery to see if anything else would happen. They recorded audio while taking photos. At one point, Paul thought he heard a voice whisper:

“What is that?”

The voice seemed to be reacting to the equipment they were holding. He had a voice recorder. His friend had a camera. As if whatever was present had never seen those objects before. Later, they took more photos. One image appeared to show particles or condensation forming unusual shapes in the air.

Another photograph captured something that looked eerily similar to the raised hand from the original image. To Paul, the shape looks like the same hand appearing again, but more clearly formed. Looking at the photos together, we discussed what the shapes might represent.

To Paul, the original image looks like a floating female spirit raising its hand. To me, the shapes in the photo resemble something else entirely. Almost like a creature on all fours, possibly with wings. That raises a fascinating possibility that appears in many paranormal cases.

Multiple witnesses can observe the same phenomenon. But each person perceives it differently. Some investigators believe these entities might not have a fixed form at all. Instead, they may appear differently depending on the person experiencing them. Which raises the bigger question.

Are these beings physical?

Or are they something more like energy that our minds interpret into shapes we recognize?

Reports of poltergeist activity and unexplained encounters aren’t limited to Vermont. You may also enjoy my investigation into the Hopkinsville Goblins encounter and the strange events that continue to puzzle researchers decades later.

The Elevator Game and the Elisa Lam Connection

The Elevator Game is a Korean urban legend that blew up in popularity thanks to the hauntingly bizarre Elisa Lam case. If you’re unfamiliar, Elisa Lam was a twenty-something Canadian woman whose body was found in a water tank on the roof of the infamous Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. How she got to the roof—or why—is a mystery that still baffles everyone. To make things even weirder, she somehow managed to lift the tank’s heavy lid, climb inside, and strip off her clothes before her tragic end.

And that’s just the tip of the creeptastic iceberg. If you’re ready to dive into a rabbit hole of eerie details and chilling theories, check out this video series by Brain Scratch. Fair warning: you might not sleep for a few nights because this case will get way under your skin.

Check out my podcast about the case here:

But the most unsettling piece of evidence? The elevator footage. If you’ve seen it (and if not, what are you even doing—scroll down and watch), you’ll know what I mean. Lam’s erratic behavior—pressing random buttons, stepping in and out of the elevator, and peeking out as if she’s hiding from someone—has fueled countless theories. One of the wildest? That she was playing the Elevator Game at the Cecil Hotel and ended up being lured to her death by some paranormal force.

Personally, I don’t buy the supernatural angle. My take? Someone at the hotel lured her to the roof, killed her, and staged the scene to look like a tragic accident. The Cecil Hotel is no stranger to dark history, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the perpetrator got away scot-free. I think the cops probably had a suspect but didn’t have enough evidence to press charges, so they swept it under the rug and called it a day.

Still, paranormal theories always add an extra layer of intrigue, and the Elevator Game itself is weird enough to make you wonder. The origins of the game are murky at best. The rules first surfaced on a Korean website and seemed to tie into a comic. Thankfully, some intrepid internet sleuths have translated the rules, which you can find here if you are a purist.

For simplicity, I used Daniel Haye’s Thought Catalog post, which breaks down the steps super clearly. I cross-checked it against the other translations, and it holds up.

HERE ARE THE RULES:

Only one person can play at a time. You can only perform this ritual in a building at least 10 stories high with at least one elevator in it. You cannot proceed otherwise.

Instructions:

Traveling:

Enter the elevator from the first floor by yourself. If anyone else gets on then understand that you cannot continue from the first floor and wait until the elevator can be taken alone.

Press the button for the fourth floor.

Do not get out when the elevator reaches the fourth floor. Stay in the elevator and press the button for the second floor.

Do not get out when you reach the second floor. Stay on the elevator and then press the button for the sixth floor.

Do not get out when you reach the sixth floor, remain in the elevator and press the button for the second floor.

Do not get out when you reach the second floor. Stay on the elevator and press the button for the tenth floor. Some have reported hearing a voice calling to them on the second floor during this middle section of the ritual. Do not reply. Do not answer in any way.

Do not get out once you have reached the tenth floor. Stay on and press the button for the fifth floor.

It has been reported by some that a woman may enter the elevator on floor five. She may appear as a stranger who wishes to engage with you. More importantly, she  may appear as someone you know. It is important that you do not acknowledge her in word or glance. If the elevator you are in is reflective then stare at the floor or the buttons only.

Now press the button to head to the first floor. If instead of going towards the first floor, you instead begin to ascend to the tenth, then you have performed the ritual correctly. However, and this is very important, if you instead descend to the first floor, then you have done something wrong. Get off on the first floor immediately. If the woman is on the elevator, then remember not to acknowledge her.

If you reach the tenth floor, you can either stay on the elevator or exit the elevator. Some have reported that upon attempting to leave the elevator, the woman will try one last time to engage with you. She may raise her voice and ask where you are going or “what’s wrong”. She may shriek as you cross the door’s threshold. Keep your wits about you and do not engage or look at her even out of fear.

There is only one way to know whether you have traveled to the Other world for sure. You will know because you will be the only person there.

Traveling Back To Your Home World:

Alternatively, if you do not exit on the 10th floor:

Press the button for the first floor and keep pressing it until the elevator begins to move.

Once you have reached the first floor, exit immediately. Do not exit on any other floors but the first. Do not acknowledge the woman if she is on the elevator. If anyone else gets on then do not speak to them either. Remain silent.

If you do exit the elevator at the tenth floor:

The elevator you used to get there is the only one you can use to return. Remember it.

When you get back on the elevator, press the buttons in the same order you did in steps 2 through 8, which you used to travel. This should take you to the fifth floor.

Once you have reached the fifth floor, press the button for the first floor. Do not be surprised when you instead begin to ascend again to the tenth floor. Do not panic. You can press the button of any floor lower than ten to stop ascending but you have to do it before you again reach the tenth floor. Some have described feeling called not to cancel the elevator’s ascension. You must.

Once you have canceled the ascension and reached the first floor, make sure that everything seems normal to you. If anything seems remotely strange. If you hear anything you should not be hearing. If you smell something you don’t recognize then do not exit the elevator. You have to repeat step two until everything on the first floor seems normal. This is very important.

Once you are satisfied that everything on the first floor is as it should be in your world, then you can exit the elevator.

If you do decide to play, please report back. And if you end up on the “other side,” make sure to let us know what it’s like. Good luck—you’re gonna need it.

If strange phenomena and thoughtforms fascinate you, check out my article on the Crescent Hotel thoughtform and modern egregores.