Scottsville Rd 3

Joshua and Raina discuss spooky stories related to supernatural experiences. Raina shares a story about seeing a girl from "The Ring" in her aunt and uncle's house, which her mom also witnessed. They discuss the similarities in paranormal experiences across different cultural backgrounds. Raina then tells a story about her great uncle, a coal miner, who had a terrifying encounter with a mysterious hand that ultimately foreshadowed his death. Joshua also shares a story about his great grandmother escaping an abusive relationship with the help of a witch in their Appalachian community. Okay, so I'm Joshua Oliver and I'm here with my wife Raina and for the Sharing the Supernatural part of the grimoire, the Supernatural Folklore class, we're going to be doing the Eerie Earpiece and Raina is going to tell us some spooky stories that's happened to her and in her family and hopefully relate this all to some of the stuff that we've done in the Folklore class. So to start, Raina, would you like to tell your story that happened in your aunt and uncle's house in Missouri? Sure. Go ahead. Okay, so I don't remember how old I was, I was very pretty young, but so the way that my aunt and uncle's house in Missouri was laid out, it was a basement, first floor, second floor, and the second floor had a huge living room area, stairs, if you're in the living room, stairs to your left, right at the top of the stairs was a door to the antique room, creepy, and then the other side of the stairs was the western themed room, a bathroom, and then a, like a room that had a bunch of bears, right? And so me and my little brother, who's two years younger than me, did not want to sleep in either the antique room or the room with all the bears, so we slept in the living room. So I wake up in the middle of the night, and I'm kind of groggy trying to figure out what's going on, and I kind of look over to where my mom is sleeping in the western room, and I see what looks like the girl from the ring standing in front of my mom's door. So little girl, black hair, long black hair in front of her face, and a white dress on. And it, I, that really scares me, so I turn the TV on, I turn it up and put the covers over my head, and my mom is a very light sleeper, so she wakes up, obviously, and comes in there and is trying to talk to me, like, you know, is everything okay? And I remember not wanting to talk to her, because at that time, as a child, like, to say it out loud almost makes it more real, you know? So I just was like, no, nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong, can I please have some water, I'm just thirsty, can I have some water? So she walks downstairs, gives me water, whatever. The next day, I remember, I think that was the day that we were leaving the next day, or whenever I start talking to my mom about this is the day that we're leaving, we're not spending the night in the house. I think that's why I felt comfortable talking to her. And so I tell her everything that happened, and she gets kind of weird, she gets a little pale, and I was like, what, what's wrong, mom, what's wrong? And she was like, that's crazy, because that night that happened, I went downstairs to get water, and when I turned around, you were there, or not you were there, but like, it looked like there was a little girl at the foot of the stairs with black hair in front of her face, and a white gown on. And it scared me. But she thought that she was just making it up in her head, right? So that was just one of the crazy things happened at that house. Yeah, I think it's really interesting, like, how that story, or just how like, we talked a lot in this class, I feel about, like how people's different experiences often are mirrored, like, I know this is you and your mom, so it's not really the same, but like are mirrored across different like cultural backgrounds, and how they'll almost be the same thing. Like, there, we went over this one section, if I remember correctly, like the old hags where it'll like show up in the middle of the night in your like house forever, and then like somebody will die or something after that point. The craziest story that you told me, I think I mentioned this in one of my discussion board posts of yours, not of yours, but like of my discussion board posts of something that you have, that you know of that has happened in your family, is your, I think like great uncle or something on your dad's side. Tell that story for me. So, my dad is from Letcher County in Appalachia. It's like essentially a hilltop over from Virginia, it's right in the middle of Appalachia, and I know you know what a holler looks like, but these are like real hollers. There's no way for you to get in or out, so let me just preface the story by saying that. So, it was my dad's cousin's grandpa, grandpa, yeah, and he was a coal miner, as everybody was at this time. This was probably in the 20s, 30s. He's laying in his bed, and at this time in Appalachia, you didn't have windows, you just had kind of openings in the wall that you would cover with sheets or whatever, and he was laying in bed, and his baby son was laying in bed next to him, and he kind of gets awoken by his son kind of rolling off the bed, and so he goes to grab him, and as he's going to grab him from underneath the sheets of the window, this gray, strong hand comes out from under it and grabs onto his wrist. This is a coal miner who is strong, able-bodied, like this man can get away from somebody, right? But he just can't get away from this hand. He's trying, he's pulling, and nothing can take this hand away, so he starts yelling, and people, you know, his wife next to him, she wakes up, he can't get away from this hand. Finally, this hand lets go, and they rip open the curtain, people are screaming in the holler, and you know, his whole family lives in the same holler, so they're all screaming, trying to get everybody awake, and all the men come out to search, and they can't find anything. And you know, they search and search, whatever, it's fine. He goes to bed. So he wakes up in the morning, he goes into the kitchen to get breakfast, and his wife asks him, you know, how'd you sleep last night? He says, I just felt like there was a hand pressing on me, the whole night, like I couldn't get a deep breath. And that night, he, or that morning, when he went to work, they had a mine accident, and a rock fell on his body, pressed him, and he died. And they said that when they took the rock off of his body, it looked like he took a deep breath. And that story, from the time that I heard it, when I was like six, seven years old, even to this day, gives me chills. My grandmother, until she died, told it the exact same way. Everyone in the family, this is a serious story in my family. I do think it's super interesting, like, I'll talk about one of my family's stories, basically, because my family is from Appalachia, my nanny, I think it's Nanny Banks. Now this is like, at this point, 110 years ago, my mom told me this story, it was told by her mamaw, which would have been my great grandmother. She had been married to a man, whenever she was really young, who was abusive. And I think this relates really interestingly to one of the things we learned in class, and when I read it on the readings from class and stuff, and on the recap videos, about how Appalachian witch lore, and witch cultures, and stories about that, is very distinct from other ones, because they tend to have the witches be a part of the community, like they'll be like medicine people, or just a person that you know who is capable of more supernatural things or something like that. It's not a scary thing. No, it's less of a scary thing than like the New England witches who are like hags in the woods that are going to steal your cattle or whatever, you know. But this story is crazy to me, because she had this husband who was really abusive whenever she was young, and that he used to like chain her up to the bed so she couldn't leave. And so this one night, and I'll preface this with, there was this witch that lived in the same hauler as her, and the name of the hauler was Arkahauler, it might have been a little bit farther away, but, and there was this witch that lived near her, and every time that she'd go out, this witch would look at her and say, you don't need to marry that man, you don't need to marry that man. And all of a sudden, one night, she gets loose from these chains, after she's been married and everything, gets loose from these chains, and she's running over these hills, and she said that... She ran for a couple miles, right? Yeah, like over the hills, which is crazy for somebody to do if you've seen them. And like, one of the stories that she had about her was that like the fences would dance. She would say at night, you could see the fences like balance up and down in a wavy motion, it's crazy. And like, the witch had like a black hat and everything, but she said that this witch like turned into a snake, and wasn't chasing her, but was like, guiding her, with her around the, around the, or insinuated that it was the snake with the witch, was guiding her over these hills or whatever, just with her, so that if old boys came after her, she, it would like, bite up or whatever, but I always thought it was a really neat story. But the other part of that story is she went to that witch's house, right? From what your mom said? No, she didn't go in that witch's house. Oh. Okay. Okay. Well, crazy. Okay. Well, I think we're good.