ep 4 halloween special

Raven hosts a special Halloween episode with guest Tog, a New Orleans tour guide. They explore Samhain’s origins: an ancient Celtic festival marking the thinning veil between worlds, where ancestors returned and spirits lurked. Traditions like costumes (disguises against evil) and jack-o'-lanterns (originally turnips) stem from this era. Christianity later assimilated these customs into All Saints' Eve. Tog shares eerie personal tales, including hearing his name called in the Rockies and encountering impossible clearings or yellow eyes in the Sierras, illustrating the lingering supernatural mysteries of these old legends. And go for ghosts, which I'm not even sure if that's a thing we're keeping yet or not, but either way, hi, it's your favorite person on earth, it's Raven. Now I would like to tell you that Tropicus is here with me, but I cannot. She has been absconded with by her daughter, her firstborn, whose birthday it is today, the 21st, to go on a sacred journey down to New Orleans. So we have a special guest for us tonight. Introduce yourself, guest. Hi, my name's Tog. Are you the inevitable? I am the inevitable. Tog the inevitable. Tog the inevitable is a tour guide in New Orleans as well. He works for Witch's Brew Tours. And aside from that, he's been a trail guide, an explorer. He has a long, storied history throughout the Appalachias, the Rocky Mountains, and all throughout the North Americas. This guy is amazing. He has so many cool stories. But we are here because I know we promised the teeny episode part two, but look, Halloween's a couple days away, and we thought we would surprise you guys with a little special episode, kind of exploring a little bit of urban nightmares and legends, usually ancient legends, you know. And you know, Tog here has some really cool stories, and I do too. But I want to start off with Happy Samhain, and that's how you say Samhain, it's Samhain. And if you guys don't know the history of it, I'm going to read you a brief history. Originally, this is an ancient Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, or the darker half of the year. Celebrated from sunset on October 31st to sunset on November 1st, its history bridges ancient pagan pastoral life, medieval Irish mythology, and the modern traditions of Halloween. Now, if you guys don't know, there was like a whole story. There are lots of legends, like Odin would often leave during this time to go into the underworld. He would return on solstice. That's why there's a big celebration there. But people believed since time immemorial that this is when the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead was at its thinnest, which meant people would recognize that their dead relatives, the people who had gone, ancestors who had gone on before them, would have the opportunity to come feast with them once more. So people would have these big, beautiful parties on Halloween. For the ancient Celts, it was one of the four cross-quarter days of the year, alongside Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasadh. It was a crucial turning point for survival. This is where the communities gathered crops and brought livestock down from summer pastures. The animals that wouldn't be able to survive the winter were slaughtered, providing food for the colder months. Local hearth fires were extinguished. Druid priests kindled a massive communal wheel fire, often at the sacred hill of Ward Hill in Ireland. I'm not even going to pretend I can pronounce that Gaelic. From which everyone took an ember to relight their own home fires for winter protecting. And people believed that during this Samhain, the barrier let the loved ones come, but not only them, if they allowed, malicious spirits, fairies, and trickster gods would be able to cross over too. And people always wonder where we get these traditions of trick or treating, or when we get putting on costumes and things like that. Well, if you're going to visit your loved ones, you know, and there's malicious spirits out there, right, you don't want one to know who you are and like kidnap you or worse, right, and fae run off with you. That's exactly right. If I dress up like a vampire, then the other guy's not going to know I'm not a vampire, so they're going to be a little hesitant to come at me. And that was the whole reason that humans started dressing up is so they could be in disguise with any potential threat that might be roaming around, having crossed from the never never, or across the veil. Yeah. And I guess people would protect their homes too. It looks like they would, the carving pumpkins tradition comes from turnips. Initially, people would take turnips and they would carve them and make little lanterns. Oh yeah, have you ever seen a turnip lantern? It's terrifying. It's terrifying. Oh my god, I saw, like I grew up in New England, so you know, all the pumpkins. And I just love them. I've never been afraid of a pumpkin lantern, but I tell you what, them turnip lanterns make me want to go back to my house. Now, of course, Christians got a hold of that one, if you guys aren't aware, and I'm not mocking anybody's religion here, but Christianity set up all of its high holidays on top of pagan holidays. They realized that their religion wasn't very popular and you couldn't really force people to change religions, so what they did was they assimilated a lot of the pagan religions when they were conquered by the Romans into theirs. So they decided to make Halloween or Samhain All Saints' Day. That's actually where the name comes from. Halloween is hallow or holy eve. It's the holy evening and the night before All Saints' Day. Again, all the relatives come back from the dead, they get to spend time with the living, and people believed that they would do what's called souling and guising. And by the Middle Ages, the poor and children would go door to door during the holiday, offering prayers for the dead in exchange for soul cakes. In Scotland and Ireland, young people dressed in costumes, guising, performed songs or tricks in exchange for fruits or nuts. Of course, we still practice Halloween today. It's just amazing to me how many people are ignorant to the roots of it. But I think Tog here has some really good stories about some legends he encountered as a guide out there in the world when you're doing trail guiding. Did you have some cool stuff you interacted with? Well, not so much when I was actually acting as a tour guide. Being in larger groups of people out in the wilderness does kind of dissuade some of the other spirits and things from wanting to really interact with you. They prefer to do their one-on-one kind of interactions. So one of the spookiest things I ever had to deal with was up in the Rocky Mountains. I was hiking at about 9,000 feet, and I was just walking through the woods. It was getting a couple hours till sundown, so I was starting to look for a campsite. And the wind started picking up from the north, and I heard somebody call my name. Now, my real name is fairly unique. Nobody gets it right, but this, the wind said my name just right. And it was very startling to me. So, you know, naturally I turned around and I started walking just a little ways, you know, toward the sound, like somebody follow me, one of my friends decided to, you know, come running up on the trail. And then I hear it again, and I take a few more steps because it was clearer the second time, like I could tell which direction it was coming from. But then about that time I stopped, and I remembered that that's always a bad idea to follow your own name into the woods. And so I started backtracking down the trail, back the way I had came, because I decided I didn't really want to be on that mountain anymore that night. So I was going to hoof it all the way back to the car. And then I came to a clearing that shouldn't have existed. I have a clearing story in the mountains too. So what was supposed to be just a hard set trail in the thick Colorado timber opens up into this massive grassy clearing. And I walked into the clearing, it was like it's only a hundred yards across, I'll just keep going, maybe I just don't remember it. And it took me all night to cross that clearing. I kept walking and I kept walking, I kept watching the stars and watching the time go by, and it seemed like I wasn't going anywhere. By the time the sun came up, I had gotten to the trees. And I figured in my mind that's the only thing that saved me is that I didn't stop. If I would have set up camp in that clearing, I don't feel like I would ever been seen again. See, that's something, right, that's the Rockies. Now when I was out west in California, we were in the Sierra Nevadas, I met these kids who were traveling, one of them had inherited some land up in Berry Creek. And you know, we're hanging out in the woods, he had this old trailer, it didn't have electricity or plumbing or anything, but we were camped out there as base camp. And I don't know that this was a good idea as an adult, I'm like, what was I thinking, you know. But it was a full moon like tonight, you know, it was a clear sky, so I decided to start walking the mountains. And so I went down the little mountain, because we were up in the mountains, so I went down and up another peak, down and up again, just following the moon. I'm pretty good in the woods too, you know. And I came across this clearing on top of a mountain, and I'm telling you, you can look as far as the eye could see in any direction, there were not any lights, there were not any civilization, and we were very high up. Now I don't know the altitude like you did, but I was very high up. And there was a clearing that should not have been there, just like you said. But I did not go into it though, I stood at the edge. And there was giant boulder in a perfect circle. I started walking around a little bit, you know, just kind of noticing, and I was like, is this like a henge, is this like Stonehenge, except this is in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountains, you know. And I sat there, and I says, well, I'm going to sit here for a second, smoke a cigarette. And I'm glad I didn't go into the clearing, because I felt being watched. And I looked across the clearing, nobody called my name, but I looked and I saw a pair of yellow eyes watching me. And it was a wolf. Well, I know you don't run, because they like to hunt down prey, so I just sat perfectly still, hoping my cigarette, which I still had in my hand, would cover my scent, you know, maybe the smoke would make him go away, because you know wild animals don't like fire. And it sat there and looked at me for a long time, and it stepped out into the clearing in the moonlight, it was one of the most spiritual moments I've ever had. And another wolf came up beside it, this one sat, like a dog sits, and the other one stood there, and they both kept their eyes on me. And finally the one stood up, barked at me, and turned around and walked away, the other one stared at me a little longer, like... and pretty moved maybe you know and uh true love which is part of why my firstborn child's name is Wolf is because of that experience. I later learned that there are all kinds of really creepy spirits that I did not know about and we didn't have the internet back then so you just went off in the mountains not knowing about things not whistling or not answering your name or if someone walks up and goes may I have your name you don't know not to give it to them. We knew nothing. We were unwatched generation left in the woods. Oh yeah so yeah that was kind of creepy stuff. Were there any legends in that part of the mountains in the in the Rockies that you were aware of when you went up in there? Um well see like you said we didn't really have uh the access to all the information um that we do now so a lot of the legends that were going around were more ghost stories because they didn't really have names about like what was happening. But all throughout the uh the Rocky Mountains especially in Colorado there's so many um like mining towns and frontier towns and trading posts that would just be basically wiped out overnight. Every occupant just vanishing nobody figuring out what went wrong. One of the uh one of the most chilling tales I ever heard um is near as I can tell is probably a vampire story really and it happened in Divide Colorado. There was a travel house there so it's basically a big inn that has stables in the back and everybody who's traveling through the mountains can stop off here before they get into the mountains to resupply and and fix up their horses and rest and all that right. And this travel house was it was getting to be the the late fall so it was the final push to either go into the mountains or out because once the snows come you're not leaving. Well yeah we learned that from Donner. Yeah you want to make sure you get there before the snow. But uh the uh the house was packed up it had probably 30 occupants uh ten head of horses in the stables as well as a handful of uh the staff that lived and operated the place. But then one day the sheriff of uh Teller County comes riding up on his horse to check on them and sure enough the place is just a bloodbath. Blood everywhere but no bodies no body parts no survivors or evidence of what could have gone wrong. There was no evidence of animals or anything that we know of. Like a bloody fire hose just got squirted around? Like they they just kind of mystified into blood and covered the entire place. And yeah it was uh I don't remember what year it was it happened but that was one of the most chilling tales I was ever told because I was told on a trail that was just north of Divide Colorado at the time. Was it your dad? Oh yeah of course it was. Your dad does tell some stories. He he never misses an opportunity to terrify a teenager that's for sure. Well yeah I mean well right next right down the street in in Utah they have of course Skinwalker Ranch which we learned about from that TV show that that came about a few years back. Right. So the skinwalkers and I when I was living in Utah I'd heard about the shadow people and the skinwalkers and I tell you there is there is something absolutely both magical and terrifying about these mountain ranges you know from the Appalachians and I've lived in all three the Appalachians the the Rockies and the Sierras but the Rockies definitely had me like when we were in Utah there were there were some crazy stories you you know we were down at this place called Memory Grove Park and you know I had a sleeping problem insomnia when I was younger so I never got a lot of sleep anyway so maybe I was hallucinating but also I think not. We were down there one night just kind of messing around me and a couple friends and you know we we heard stories about like there was the house of the seven witches up in Memory Grove where seven generations of women who had never married but yet woman bore woman bore woman and they did human sacrifices. But seriously we went up there there was a destroyed um foundation of a house and there was an altar with a pentacle and a pentagram done in bronze and stone like way up this this trail like you really had to like get there and we found it. So I mean there was some crazy stuff like the the Salt Lake City has some really fucked up history. But we were down by the base and they have uh this little grassy area and it goes up to the woods and I saw shadow people. And I had known stories about the shadow people I swore I saw them in the Sierra Nevadas too but they were in like they're always described kind of in your peripheral vision you know like oh what was that and there's nothing there but you know you saw a person. Oh yeah. But there's no definitive features. And but this was definitive there's a tank in this park I remember and I was standing by the parking lot by the van and I saw three people walking along the tree line and it it was like tonight it was just a very you know very bright moon night and such so you could see them it was it was almost like the shadows of people in in a bright spotlight but there was no people to cast the shadows. And then one turned and looked at me and I want to say it was like the Disney cartoons you know where they show the shadow thing looking at you and the eyes glow but it wasn't like that. Yet you could feel although they were two dimensional you could feel that they had great power and I was paralyzed. I was I couldn't run I couldn't get in the van I couldn't move I couldn't look away. It was almost like I was held in trance and I have goosebumps telling you about it. Look at my goosebumps. Goosebumps. Oh my god. So kind of freaky stuff. Now you lived in the Appalachians too for a long time. Uh did you hear any good stories about things in the Appalachians? Uh so the Appalachians uh they yeah they are thick with a lot of uh a lot of crazy stories especially you know deep in the woods. You know the deeper you go the crazier the people get and the crazier the stories get. Um almost every area I ever traveled to had the stories of uh the women in the mist and the howling winds. And so the woman in the mist is uh you know the details vary but it's basically an enchanting young woman in a white flowing gown that you see either just down the road or just down the sidewalk not really nearby usually shrouded in a nice layer of mist so you can't really make out her features. And she'll just kind of sit there and turn around and glance your way and if you catch her eye she'll start being a little more playful and provocative toward you luring you tempting you to go her way. And if you ever take her hand it's the last hand you'll ever touch. Now see you didn't listen to our podcast yet right you just agreed to be a guest. Uh correct I have not heard uh. So you might not know that our first podcast our first one outside of our intro was about the woman in white. We explored the urban legends of how every city has a woman in white and everybody has a story and it goes for generations and eons. So do you know like ridiculous stories of them vanishing or did you just hear about people whose relatives vanished or? So there were there were stories of people seeing the woman and running away but then there were a couple of stories of people and their friends going out together seeing the woman and then one of their friends being taken into the darkness and never seen again. Is it always a man? It's always a man. I I gotta I gotta laugh here. It's like mermaids they lured us to our death. I mean they were just trying to just be mermaids. Right just trying to be a pretty ghost you came into her space and now we'll look what happened. Right now that's you asked for it. Oh my family is from the Appalachians too. My family uh hails from uh southwestern Virginia Virginia itself not West Virginia but southwestern Virginia uh around the Abington Saltville area. Very big mining towns there very remote back in in the 30s and 40s. My grandfather had told us stories uh especially the miners you know it probably had a lot to do with the coal dust and the sulfur and the lack of oxygen but maybe not. My my grandfather was Cherokee and so these stories were passed down from his mother to him his father from him. Had stories about coming in the mines themselves and how there would be different creatures down in there that would lure you deeper into the mines or off the the beaten path of the mine or into the caves if you will and then you know never be seen again which you probably felt like a mine shaft. But I mean maybe there was and maybe there was some truth to that. Uh he also talked about um a woman that that transformed into a cat. I think it's called the Wampus Cat. Uh my grandpa I had to look this up y'all. Um this is not something that I recalled my grandfather telling me crazy stories about Virginia when I was little and I loved them it was always around Halloween time but I took them as just stories you know. It wasn't until I got into the paranormals the supernatural really into this as an older person that and there's so many you know you how can you remember them all. So I did have to look up the the Wampus Cat but yep it was a woman who would lure men off out of the mines and into the mountains or off the trails of the mountains and turn into a cat and rip them to shreds. You know you figure with all these things luring these men off into the darkness and eating them men would learn their lesson. You would think but we love y'all. Now I was doing some research too before we sat down for this podcast and uh there was the the brown Mountain lights. Did you call them something different? What'd you call those? Oh, so what you were describing as the Brown Mountain lights sounds like the will-o'-the-wisps that we used to see all the time. Oh, you've seen them? Oh yeah. It's a pretty common sight once you get, you know, away from the cities and up into the hills. But you can also find them deep in the like swamps of Florida. I've seen them down there, and down there they're called the swamp lights. In Louisiana they're called the feu follet or folly fire. That's what the French called them, the French Acadians. Right. So yeah, this is another one of those legends that it's got origin stories from everywhere, basically, and they're all a little different, but it's more of those just mesmerizing lights. So it's different colored orbs of light that usually float around the top of a ridge or right in the bottom of a gully, just someplace where they're kind of out of notice until you get close enough. It's not like fireflies. So no, they're not like fireflies where they're like everywhere. There'll be a few of them, maybe one, two. If you see a bunch of them, you need to run away. No? I want to know what happens. Well, so these ones, I have a little more experience with these guys. It feels like they drain your life force straight from your body. Oh my god, you've experienced them? Down in Florida was my closest encounter. We were in the swamps just north of the Everglades, and we were on a three-day hike. I had gone off by myself to try to find a shortcut, and right about dusk, about a half hour or so before I was supposed to meet up with my party, I came across these lights. And at first I thought it was a campsite, you know, just a few lights kind of dancing off, people probably got lanterns, flashlights, whatever, so I go that way. Next thing I know, these three lights, orangish, silverish light, it's hard to describe, it was kind of like fluctuating in and out, just started kind of swirling around me. And about that time, flight instinct kicked in and I booked it. Yeah, I would too. But I felt just unbelievably drained, like it had just taken everything out of me. That's crazy. See, I lived out in Youngsville, Louisiana, and we lived right out in the bayou, but I really never experienced anything about that. You know, I'd heard the stories from old Cajuns. We had this old Cajun guy, Mr. Havis, and he would love to tell me all the stories about swamp things and such like that. When I, of course, became a tour guide in New Orleans, I wanted to really figure out what the French and the French Acadians did about that. Like, I don't know what they told you to do to protect yourself. Did they tell you anything when you were growing up there? Well, I was raised more redneck style, so it was a good knife and a shotgun. I was taught how to shoot when I was three years old, and I had my first rifle by the time I was five. So... We've learned from the TV show Supernatural that doesn't work against supernatural. Well, unless you have steel bullets. Iron filings in your lead ammunition does work, and not just on supernatural things. It creates a shrapnel effect, which is great for hunting. Well, that's something we all need to know now, isn't it? The French, they had different ways, the French Acadians, different ways of protecting themselves from the feu follet or the folly fire, or the Brown Mountain lights and such. Their thought was that it was the souls of unbaptized children that got, you know, out there and they were trying to sneak into the house to steal the souls or the bodies of children. So the idea was to take a sleeping baby and just switch with them and be like, ha ha, I get to live in this body now. So to protect the children, people would coat their nurseries with mustard seed, because it's believed that many of these supernatural creatures, such as vampires, the feu follet, etc., are obsessive compulsive. And I know you know that because I've heard you talk about that on your tours. But they have to stop and count everything. So if there's a bunch of different objects, maybe that's why I have so much nonsense and junk and stuff all over my house. Just keeping the fae at bay. Keeping the fae confused, as I should. I keep my husband confused, I keep the fae confused. But the French also believed that you could stick a three-bladed knife outside the windowsill, and it had to be real, real polished, you know, real shiny, so that the feu follet trying to come into your house would get so confused it would just stay trapped in there, and when the sunlight come it would burn them away. Well, that's similar to the iron nails or the iron horseshoe over the door to kind of create a barrier that they wouldn't want to cross. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, for sure. And my favorite though was that oftentimes the fishermen, when they'd go out in the swamps for alligator hunting or fishing at night, that they would take a large sewing needle, like a large-eyed sewing needle, like we use for leatherwork, you know, and they would put it in their hat. This way they felt like if a feu follet came to attack them, they could hold up the eye of the needle and the feu follet would get sucked through the eye of the needle and come out on the other side as harmless fireflies. And what's funny is I was told that story when I was 22 when I lived out in the bayou, and I noticed when I moved to the eastern side of the state how many fishermen do carry a sewing needle in their hat, and many of them don't even know why. Like I say, well, you got your fish hook, why do you have a sewing needle? Oh, my grandpappy just told me I always should have one. Is that for net repair? Because that ain't big enough, sir. Now I did have another question because I have been to your family's property in North Carolina, and it's way up there, y'all, it's Linville Valley, Linville Gorge Valley, right? That's the gorge. And that place is magical. It's beautiful, it's gorgeous land, but I have sat outside at night and I have heard strange noises. And I'm familiar with the woods and the mountains and animals, I'm not afraid of things. But I just recently learned of something that's going to terrify me the next time we go see your family, and that is called the Spear Finger. Had you ever heard of the Spear Finger when you were living out that way? Not by that name, for sure. Okay, well apparently this is a shapeshifter, which God knows, the Cherokee loved their shapeshifting stories. Like if you look into Cherokee traditions and folklore, you'll see at least five different creatures that are shapeshifters. So, and a lot of them are women, so y'all better learn how to behave there. But the Spear Finger apparently is a shapeshifting woman with stone skin, but one finger that's like a spear, and she uses that to rip the flesh from the bodies of her victims or targets or her prey. I don't know now, I feel like maybe she hang around your family's house, bro. Nah, those woods aren't old enough for anything like that. Right now those woods are only filled with some pixies and brownies and things like that. What's the difference between a pixie and a brownie? So, all right, a pixie is basically what most people think of as Tinkerbell, what most people think of when they say fairy. It's a pixie. And it's a smaller fae, usually diminutive in size, often shrouded by their own little aura of light, flying around on their lacy wings. They love to disguise themselves as large insects, dragonflies, praying mantis, things like that, you know. Or mantises, however you say it. Mantis. Praying mantis. We're going to do genres of bugs. Cactus would be having a connection right now. Then brownies are basically what people think of, like a smurf is a good example of like what a brownie would be, except less community driven. They're isolated creatures, but they love to collect shiny things, they love to build stuff, they love sweets. It me. Right? They're mostly benign or nice creatures. If you invade their territory, they can get very angry. It me. But when a brownie gets very angry, it can transform into what's known as a boggart. And a boggart is just a horrible little destructive thing, often referred to as gremlins. They get inside stuff, they tear things up, they make everything go wrong. You'll stub your toe on a chair that shouldn't be there. That's what a boggart does. Just makes your life inconvenient to the max. Like my ex. I couldn't help it. But those are the small little forest folk that just like to hang out. They don't really hurt nobody. Oh my god, but still, like, still how terrifying. Now, you mentioned earlier that everybody knows you shouldn't follow your name in the woods, but I didn't learn that one when I was a kid, and I'm pretty sure many of our listeners have no idea about that. So many people probably wandering out in the woods, how many missing people we got here in Lumberton. Like I was reading the other day, the missing people, there's like nine missing people in this tiny little town, this little area, just since COVID. You know, and so maybe they heard their name and just wandered off in the woods and what gets them, what's the... All right, so usually there's a couple things that use the same hunting tactic as whispering your name. But you can usually tell what's trying to get you by what's going on around you. So say if a storm is rolling in and there's heavy winds and you can feel... When the energy of the storm starts to build and you hear your name, either in the wind or in the thunder, that's a banshee. Yeah, and so banshees typically only go after men. Again, what right? But they lure their victims away from the shelter of light and thin and community in order to drain out their life force and absorb their being. But then there is also, and now I just forgot the name of the other one. So when it's calm and usually near dusk, probably the thing that was whispering to me. Man, I am gonna have to come back on when I remember that name. But this creature instead, it doesn't just target men; it targets everybody. And instead of devouring your essence or eating you, it takes you back across the veil to the never never, so you can then be enslaved by one of the fairy queens, depending on what time of year it is, would determine what court you would go to. That's what would have happened had you stayed in that clearing. Yes, that was what I was figuring is if I stayed in that clearing, I probably would have been dragged back across the veil and become a human servant. Did you ever go back on that trail and look for that clearing again? Yes, I've been down that trail many times. I have never again come across that clearing, and I've lived in that area for years. See, now I never went back to Berry Creek, so I never went back because we only stayed there those like two or three nights or whatever, but I never went back there. So I don't know if that clearing is real or if it was, but something my instinct told me not to step foot in that clearing and I just didn't. And I don't know if those wolves, like I think about this a lot, and this happened, I mean, God, I am like what five thousand years old now. Christy and I tried to figure it out the other day, I think it was like yeah fifty thousand, so I am so old, ancient. But thinking about it, I always wondered, were the wolves there to warn me away? You know, by staring me down because my impulse was to go forward until I saw the wolves. I didn't see the clearing and go, "Gosh, this shouldn't be here." I went, "This is cool, I wonder who dragged all these rocks up here." Because I was twenty-one, you know, I was a kid, just walking around. I am from the east coast, we don't have shit like this over there. So I mean, we do, but it's so much bigger in the Sierra Nevadas, you know. And I was like, my instinct was to go until I saw those wolves. I wondered now always if those were guardians, you know. And I met an old. Very well could be. Wolves have always been kind of looked at as a guardian spirit. They got kind of a bad rap in modern days being the vicious predator, and then the werewolf has always been stigmatized as this murderous monster that just tears everybody apart. But with all the different kinds of werewolves, almost all of them were meant to be guardian spirits that protected the natural order of things. Right, well that makes sense. You know, that's part of why I named my firstborn Wolf because that experience was so profound to me. It was so soul-moving and terrifying at the same time. Like I was not afraid, I didn't hurry back, you know, I just knew I shouldn't cross the clearing. I do always wonder what would have happened. Of course, to be fair, I was not thinking more in the supernatural realm. Honest, that was about that time that movie Fire in the Sky came out and I'd already had UFO experiences, which will be another podcast. But I already had UFO experiences and I was honest to God that I'd seen shit in the Sierra Nevadas. Like I seen a UFO land, you know, just very close to me, you know, things happened. I was more worried about UFOs abducting me than anything at that moment, you know. I slow-tailed it back to that trailer and you know, in hindsight, I am like, how the fuck, I just knew. You know, it's so weird. I had better instinct I feel when I was younger than I do now, you know. But now that I hear your story, I am like, wow, I really, you know, what about portals too? Because these are kind of portals. We talk about fairy circles and fairy rings. That's why we had slides made of iron for our kids so they didn't slide in right into the fairy ring. Yeah, fairy circles are usually just little systems, little portals that the fae have set up to make it easier for them to travel back and forth between our world and theirs. And they can be anything. They can be, oftentimes they're temporary. Usually as trees grow together, they can complete a magical circuit and open a temporary portal. But then as the trees grow bigger, that portal gets destroyed, ripped apart by the natural growth of the forest. But then there is more permanent ones like the one you saw, made of large heavy stones set into the earth. That one was probably set up with human cooperation and that way they could create a more substantial gateway. That makes sense. You know, when we were doing, playing around in the woods here many, many years ago, a portal actually opened up beside us. And this is, I'd known the existence. I always made it was a sense when there is portals as I learned about their existence as I got older. I could always sense where they were to avoid them, but I was just curious what was coming through. Although I never really observed anything until this time. And this was back when Serena and Taz were still alive. Some other people were here, I don't remember right now exactly who all was here, but a bunch of us were out in the woods. And it was near sound and we were doing a magic circle, you know, we were doing a peaceful circle. I was doing protection on the land here and stuff. And but to my left, just a portal, nowhere near where we were, I mean near but not very near, this portal opened up. And it was weird because it was almost like you'd see in the movies, you know, it was kind of shimmery. You could see through it, I could see my house, you know, I could see through it. But then I could see shimmers and in the shimmers I could see shadows. Not like the shadow people I told you about in Utah, but it was just shadows, like people were walking. And I saw my grandfather. But I didn't see him, you know, I saw just his shadow, but I knew it was him, I recognized him. And I was like, oh my god, it's my grandfather. And without a second thought, to my animals, to my family, to my children, I walked up to the portal and was about to go through it. I know I got my arm through it when Taz grabbed me by my hair. And that's fighting words right there, you don't touch this girl's hair, you know. And he grabbed my hair and he was like, no. And I was like, no, you don't understand, my grandfather's right there. And he's like, no, it is not your grandfather, you have to stay here. And I was like, but. And then I turned around and it started shimmering and it was gone. So I kind of sometimes wonder though if I went through the portal and it's just a parallel universe or mirror verse. They talk about how you know you could get lost in the mirror, how people believe since mirrors have been invented that they are a portal to another world. Even as a child, I would sit there and look in the puddles, the very reflective puddles, and I sensed and knew that if I could get in that puddle, it would be a world similar to this but different enough that it would be interesting, you know. I always wonder if I did go through that portal, if that's why they're all dead and I am still here, you know, or probably just smoked a lot of Mountain Dew, sorry, smoked a lot of cigarettes and drank a lot of soda, you know. Well, and that's one of the reasons where people who find themselves deep in the supernatural community tend not to keep mirrors or reflective objects in their house. And if they do, they're covered at all times because not only can things use them as windows to be able to peek through, but some things can use them as doorways and just walk right into your house. That's so weird because I used to love having mirrors and I used to love looking in the mirror when I was younger, you know, until one night I just sat there, I was having a little bit of fun and I got a little close to the mirror and I wanted to see what would happen if I stared in my own eyes long enough. And I just had no interest in having mirrors after that. You know, it's not our house here, there is one. And then I got one for when I put a full outfit on. It's just two mirrors, whole house, don't particularly care for them. But I also know that they're supposedly been able to, like there is a tradition that you walk in the front door, there should be a mirror facing you so that any evil entities that try to get in will be reflected back or cast out, you know. Well, that's more of a more modern legend to go in hand in hand with the whole vampires can't see their reflection thing. So if somebody's walking into your house and they cast no reflection, it's a vampire, get him. That makes sense. Oh my god, I joked about that this week and I was backing up my truck and Cactus was with me and I hit something. It was just in the road, you know, it was like a rock or something. And I went, you know, the truck bounced. And she's like, what was that? I am like, should not back up, just my mirrors. She says, why? I said, cause I just ran over another fucking vampire. She didn't get the joke. I love her, took her a whole minute too. She was like, oh. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Well, it's been a little bit longer than our normal, but it's a Halloween special if you will, or Samhain special. And I really appreciate your coming in as a guest tonight to fill in for Tropicus. Just important to spend time with family, especially on the twenty-first birthday. So happy birthday to Tropicus's baby Naya, her firstborn, twenty-one million years old. Well, that's gonna be our podcast tonight. Next week we'll have Chap and I back on and we will go ahead and finish that story of Timmy. You guys got to hear some of it. You're gonna really freak out when you hear Tropicus's side of it. So again, thanks for tuning in. Give us a like on Spotify. We would like to thank our one sponsor we have right now, which is Thorn and Thistle Leather Supply over here in Lumberton, Mississippi at 109 West Main Avenue. They graciously donated all the equipment for us. They donated a computer for us, and they donate their electricity and a space for us to do this podcast in. So if you guys are leather workers or you're crafters and you happen to be in Lumberton, pop on by. It's not just pop in anyway. Actually, the place is pretty cool. We'll let you take a selfie in there. But if you give us a like on Spotify, give us a rate if you like us, share us with your friends, it would mean a lot to us. Like I said, we're unedited, we're not AI, we're not trying to do anything fancy. We're just people who have a lot of weird collection of experiences and we want to share them with you. So go forth and make the world a weirder place than it was when you found it. Thanks for tuning in, y'all. Thank you for being with us, Tog. It was my pleasure. All right.