A Study of Ghosts

There are things in this world we see and things we don't. But what if the unseen is watching us? Imagine for a moment shadows that move in the corner of your eye. Whispers in empty rooms. Or a presence that chills the air. Tonight we venture into the unknown. A place where belief takes over. If ghosts are real. What could they be? Echoes of the past. Lost souls or something far stranger. The dead are not really dead. They live on in another state of being.

One that we cannot yet fully understand. Arthur Conan Doyle. Welcome to the edge of reality. You're about to enter a study of strange. Welcome back to the show. I'm Michael, the lover of all things strange and mysterious and all that goodness. Today on the show, my guest is Kim Beam and Intuitive Reader. How are you doing, Kim? I'm good. How are you? Good. So the listeners know, we just spent probably five minutes talking about various milk frothing things.

So we're we're setting ourselves up for a very good episode. I think we're off to a good start. But we are going to talk about something different than almond milk and and plant based milk. We're going to talk about spirits and spooks, and I'm trying to think of alliteration here. Spooks and spirits and scary things. Ghosts and ghouls. That's always one of my favorite alliteration with this stuff. But it is.

It's October, it's Halloween time, and I thought you would be a good guest to have on just to have a general discussion about some experiences. And also, if ghosts are real, what are they? Oh, I don't know what I mean. Well, I have a theory about what they are. I mean, that's all we have. That's all anybody has, right? Exactly. Is is a theory. Like, what's the theory about when you die? Right. Like I have theories about what happens when you die.

I yes, I heard a death doula once said that every time somebody dies, the look of surprise on their face every time. And I saw that look on my dad when he died, the look of, oh, I missed this the whole time. And then you can't ask any questions because they're already gone, right? But at that moment, everybody dies with a look of surprise. Wow. Well, I'm already loving where this is going.

So before we dive into this, though, I do want to give some people some background about you as an intuitive reader. So can you describe what that is and what you do? Sure. So everything is energy. If we go back to like middle school science, right. And you talk about atoms and how atoms are all swirling around like even a table is energy, right? Which doesn't make any sense. And glass is classified as a liquid, which is something that my little brain was like, what?

But then like when you get in the old 1800 house in the wall and the glass is all wavy because the liquid has moved to the bottom where it's thicker and the top is thinner. It's just fascinated you can actually see it happen. I'm gonna diverge for just one second. I was an English teacher for years, and I used to tell my students that English and language is like glass. It's classified as a liquid, but it's solid enough to cut you if you break the rules. Yeah. That's correct.

Constantly changing because Shakespeare was what people were talking in that time period, which we don't understand now without somebody translating. So. Right, like so for me, if everything is energy, if everything is energy, then you should eat. And energy is something that other people can experience, right? I am an empath, so I walk into other people's energy all the time and I'm like, oh, you're super sad. I'm so sorry.

There was a moment I was a school therapist and I opened my office door or kid knocked on it. I looked at him and within two seconds I was like, you're having a panic attack? Oh yeah. And then he looked at me and said, how do you know? And I was like, and he's like, that's amazing. He was just like his little seventh grade. Mine just went. Yeah. But we expect even like managers and supervisors of major corporations to use the empathy skill by reading the room. Right.

We expect people to be able to read a room. It's now a phrase that's used all the time. You need to see how you're being received. You need to be able to know when something, how whatever you're giving is landing, right? Like Steve Carell in The Office did not have the gift of reading The Room ever. Very truly. And so that's what makes The Office so funny, is that everybody else is able to read the room but the boss, and so it's now become expected that people are able to tap into.

And I say empathy is the first level of intuition, and we expect everybody just happened to their empathy. And I would say that's the first level. If you're able to be empathic and you're able to pick up somebody's emotion without them having to say anything, you've just dipped your toes in the ocean of intuition. Yeah, I love that. I absolutely love that.

And it also harkens back and I'll I'll save this a little bit for a little bit later in this episode, but it's that kind of dives in a little bit into some of my own personal theories of ghosts. If they're so because of that sort of energy energy stuff and, and empathy. So as an intuitive reader, how do you if you have a session with somebody or do you do individual sessions? Student sessions okay. Individual sessions are better.

There's a I have a podcast called Intuitive Insights and I had two sisters come on and I had to like give the disclaimer. I may give you energy reading for one person when it belongs to the other person, because both of you are in the space. And I'm reading your energy and you're so close and I'm so close, I might put one thing on one person, but it actually belongs to the other person, so one on one is actually better. Yeah, yeah, that would make sense to me.

And it also makes me think, as I grew up in the theater, I've been an actor and in entertainment my whole life, and reading the room is a huge part of live performances. I think about stand up comics, reading a room very specifically and in the moment, but even doing live stage shows, you do get instant feedback and you can read the room of like, I think they're not into it tonight. Maybe we got to pick the energy we got to pick up the pace, we got to do something.

Yeah. But I'll also say by stepping into by stepping into how is the future audience? But I can't see, I can't feel and I don't know how are they receiving this. That is you stepping into your intuition because there is no answer to that question except your gut. Yeah, yeah. And I do think it can be a and this is totally a tangent, but any time someone's creating something and they're thinking about that ahead of time, you can get into a lot of trouble.

So I try not to do that. So But by trying to but by trying to be like, is this landing well, as you're doing it, that's intuition. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. So now that we've gotten that out of the way, can I see do you have any experiences with something? I'm just going to use the term paranormal just because it's a nice sort of blanket term for things. But any experiences that you could not explain that might be paranormal?

I have a few. Yeah. So, here's the deal. I live in this little condo, right in this little town outside of Philadelphia where I, like, have a semi day job where I walk to the hospital in the town that I work in. Right. Like this is this is the little life I'm living. But there was a woman who used to live in this condo before me, not the people before me. They were like a young couple with a kid. But the woman before them, and they. Everybody in this condo complex, there's not a lot of people.

But like everybody in this condo complex talks about the woman who used to live here. Her name was Mary. And I have to tell you, every time I start talking about her, she shows up in the back of my head and says, why do you always talk about me? Mary was a ghost when I moved in. Oh. And her energy still sort of creep. Ifis I have a I have a two bedroom place, but her but her her energy sometimes still sort of creep atthis the middle the bedroom. I don't use. And there was, there was a date.

Okay, so I'm a weirdo. I just own it, like, I, I've go on silent retreats where, like, I don't talk for a week, but I tried to do this for a month at a, at a place in the northern Poconos. And they said, we don't do silence. Well. So I knew going in it wasn't going to be perfect silence for a month. And I was glad for that, because I don't think my mental health would handle a whole month of silence. Yeah. So I went away for five weeks to do a most what I call a mostly silent retreat.

When I came back, I bumped into her spirit in the hallway between my bedroom and the bathroom and I kind of lost it on her now. The way I knew she was there is. Oh, how do I explain this? Like the hair on the back of your neck kind of stands up and you feel sort of like something's not right. Right?

You know that moment where, like, you're alone or you're not alone, but like you, you're not alone, but you feel like you should be alone and but you feel creep ified, and there's no reason why you should be scared. Right then that's probably. That's the energy of it. Yeah. And so I like looked at where the energy was sort of resting and I said out loud, what are you doing here? And then I heard in my head, while you were gone. And then I responded with, if my am I allowed to swear?

Yeah, yeah, okay. I said, if my shit still here, I'm still here. And she was just sort of like. And I was like, listen, here's the deal. We've already talked about you not being allowed to be here. Like we've had this conversation before. This is not a new conversation.

So now I'm really putting down the law and I'm saying by the sort of Michael, like the sort of arching Archangel Michael, you either you either go to the light, you, you leave the land and I don't you never come back here while I'm living here, while my shit is here. You never come back here. And if I find you again, I am banishing you from the property forever. By the sword of our Archangel Michael. And she decided to go to the light. Thank goodness.

So now she can show up and yell at me and be like, I can't believe you're talking about me again! Because she's in the light, right? She's got a completely different feel. She's no longer a ghost, she's just a spirit. And so, like since she's crossed over into the light, her her entire being here is different. It's more beneficent. It's more kind, it's more. It's more gentle. It's like a looking over rather than a protective thing.

Okay. So in the way you think about these things, you just described sort of two different beings. I'm using the right. I don't want to use beings, but you know what I mean. Yeah. So tell me the difference between two. Different iterations of the thing. So if you have the creepy doesn't make me feel right. I have a ghost in my house right? It's fine until it's not right. It's okay.

But then you're going to change the color of the wall, or you're going to like, switch out a couch, or you're going to rearrange the furniture in the living room, and then that thing isn't going to like it anymore, and they're going to get pissed, and your refrigerator is going to die and your, like, furnace is going to crap out. And it's just things are going to go broken fast. So you can't have a ghost in your house because as a friend of mine says, Christina, Lisa.

And she says there's no such thing as a friendly ghost there. Just isn't there. They're going to they're going to turn on you when you do something because you're living your life. Yeah. So a ghost is just a spirit, one of us who hasn't made that crossover into the bigger, the bigger wide space. So in my philosophy, right when I said that, there's that shocking moment when you die, a light shows up and you go to the light.

So before my dad died, I just kept telling him over and over, you need to go to the light. When you see the light, dad, you go to the light. So I told that from like from August to November of the year that he died, I was just like, anytime you had the opportunity, dad, and you see the light, you take it. I think he thought it was nutty at first. But then towards the end, he started asking me, well, why do I want to go to the light? Like, what's the difference?

And I was like, well, if you don't go to the light, you're choosing to stay here in the spirit realm. And I'm like, and then you'll be a ghost. And he's like, I don't want that. And I was like, right? Which is why you want to go to the light. Yep. So let me, let me take that a little bit. So I did some preparation for this episode today where I wanted to look at a couple different series from the scientific world and also from the religious world.

And I am by no means an expert in either one of these. So this is this is my own sort of interpretation of a bit of research. Take it with a grain of salt. But in the I believe there's a I didn't save the link. I should try to look it up and put it in the show notes. But there's a show on YouTube I think it's called esoteric, or esoteric and, and it's a religious scholar that shares weird things from religious texts throughout history.

And he talks about in the, in the Christianity beliefs there during the Reformation, during the schism, you know, people leaving Catholicism part of that had to do with, the belief that when you die in the Bible, it talks about you die once you go to heaven or hell. There it is. There's nothing in between. Catholicism believes in purgatory. And so there's a little bit of, you know, gray area there when it comes to that.

But a lot of the beliefs in Christianity outside of the Catholic Church is ghost can't be real because you go to heaven or hell. And that's it. So if there is a spirit, then it's a demon. Yes, exactly. And and so that that's an interesting thought. Especially when you put it that like, they can turn bad. It's like maybe there is, you know, there is. They just get pissed off that they're not in control. Yeah. And you do.

There's a so many stories, so many that I can't even pick one off the top of my head. But we've all seen them in movies and shows and just talking to people where a lot of experiences with the paranormal happens when you move the moving into a new place is a great thing that comes up because you're tearing down a wall, you're putting in new furniture, you're repainting, you're adding on a room, and that's when weird stuff happens. So yeah, interesting example of that. Yeah.

Poltergeist. There you go. So yeah, that's an it's an interesting it's an interesting thought for sure. So before we started recording today, you also mentioned something that happened to you when you were younger. Do you mind sharing that? No. This is one of those that I don't know that I've heard my. Okay, so this is the story. All right? I had I was in the bedroom of my house with, you know, my mom, my parents were divorced when I was, like, two, so, like, dad was never there.

And I had my bed set up in such a way that it was right by the door and the the light to come in. So the foot of my bed was the door to the room, and the light to, like, turn on. And I went to bed that night and I had a terrible ringing in my ears, like it was really bad, like, unusually bad. And I was like, okay. And in the middle of the night, I woke up and there was a ghost woman standing at the edge of my bed at the end of my bed, right.

And I sort of freaked out, and I and at that point, I think I was a hardcore Christian. I think I was, I don't know, I might not have been and I'm not now. So like whatever it was like in some time period, and I and I basically didn't know what to do. And I told her to go away and write. She didn't. And she was just hanging out at the end of my bed. And so I sat up really fast, which means I had to get into her space to turn on the light. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's creepy, right? Yeah.

But that's what I did. And then I got up and I went into my mom's room, and I sat down on her bed, and she woke up because I was shaking so bad. The whole bed was vibrating like, I, I, like, shook her awake by my own trembling. Not from like me touching her. And she was basically like, what are you doing in here? And I was like, there's a ghost in my room. And her response was, tell it to leave. And I was like, I did, and she won't go. And then I slept with the light on for six months.

Yeah, a year. I slept with the light on for a really long time. She has shown up once since, and I was in college. And I didn't think that. I didn't know who was going to tell this one, but I'm telling it. So she showed up once when I was in college. I was at my dad's house. So now this is a completely different house, completely different like scenario. I'm at least, I don't know, five, seven years older, ten years older, I don't know.

But I was in college, I was with my dad and I, I was like deep into studying the Bible at that point. And she showed up and I went to bed that night with the really terrible ringing in my ears. And when I woke up, the ringing was louder, just like the last time. And there she is. She's standing same kind of face, same kind of woman standing in my bedroom. And I looked at her and I said, do whatever you want. I'm like, if I die, I was like, I'm going to heaven, so there's no way you can hurt me.

And I rolled over and went back to sleep. And then the next morning I was trying to do my Bible study and I had like one pencil that was the most important pencil, blah, blah, blah. It was a big thing at the time, and now I think it's hilarious, but whatever. And so I like went to do the Bible study and I didn't have the maroon pencil, like where the hell is the maroon pencil?

So I wandered through the house and I was like, there's no reason to go to the extra bedroom because I haven't even been in the extra bedroom all trip. Like there's no reason for me to even go in there to look. But I went in there to look, and there's been a couple of times in my life where my hand has moved and my hand following, and my eye following my hand found the thing. This happened recently at a restaurant.

I can tell you that story, but like, I reached out and grabbed the pencil before I even saw the pencil. Yeah. And she had moved it. So when you saw the two times that you've seen this. Excuse me? This figure, is it somebody you recognized or is this is the only time you've ever seen that figure? Is those experience? I'm. I'm wondering if it's like an entity that's like my grandmother because it kind of has the hair and she's female. And since she's older.

So maybe she's like an older woman from my generational line, but I have no clue who she is. And let me also be really honest, like without my context and I'm blind as a bat. So like. So it could have been someone, you know, and you. Could have been I mean, I if you, somebody, you know walks in and it's not their voice, I would have no idea who they are if my contacts aren't in. Right, right. Oh, I love that. I love the idea.

I want to see that in like, a, in a ghost movie, some sort of haunted house movie where the person, the, you know, the protagonist finds out the whole time, it's like their mom and she's there peacefully, but they're freaked out and thinks it's evil. And it's like, oh, my glasses were on mom. It's you. Hi. Sorry about that. All right, let me just real quick tell this other story.

There was a couple of months ago, I was in a restaurant, and the waiter came up and said, have any of you seen a black iPhone? And we said, no. And he goes, okay, great, right. Like, fine. And so we're leaving. And my hand as we're going away, we pass the host desk and I say to him, I turned to him and I point back at him and I'm like, hey, I hope you find your phone. Like in that general. Like, hey, I hope you're find your phone.

And then as I'm bringing my hand back around, I look at where my arm is pointing and I'm like, oh, is that your phone? And I pointed right to his iPhone. But my hand did it on its own. Like I didn't know it was there until I pointed at it. Yeah. That's interesting. It makes me think of I know it's a little different, but it makes me think of dowsing rods. Oh, you know those? Yeah. Yeah, which I've never been around those in my life.

And I'm really curious because so many people are like, look, it's just it's a it's all, it's all bullshit and none of it's real. And then there's people that are super big skeptics of anything like that. They're like, I used it and holy shit, it works. And it's like I had no control over. And it just like suddenly they crossed and pointed out, you know. So, but it makes me think of that a little bit. That's really interesting. I don't have a lot of experience with them, but I do have.

Yeah, I, I know the concept. Like, I use a tarot card or I use a la Norman card when I'm like at an event and I need there's a lot of energy around and I need to have a focused energy. I'll use a card in those situations. So I'm like focused on that person and not picking up somebody else's energy. Absolutely.

So before we go a little further, let me actually share a I think a lot of people are aware of these things, but I'd love to share, some of this thinking of what experiences or what ghosts could be. And this is not in relation to your stories just now. I was just like, it's probably nice to to share with people because not every experience, if goes to real, not every experience is a ghost, because people are going to think things that aren't aren't real in those situations.

So just so people are aware, and I love being a skeptic about things myself. I try to keep an open mind, but I love being a skeptic. So some of the things that that the science world talks about in terms of these experiences are infrasound, which is its sound below where humans can hear. I'm actually using it in a, in a movie I'm working on right now.

We are putting infrasound in because it makes you feel a sense of dread, and it makes you sometimes people think they see things or experience literally like ghost experiences when there's infrasound around. And it's sound that we as humans cannot hear. It is literally just a wavelength that vibrates. And carbon monoxide poisoning is another one. There's a lot of experiences of people seeing strange things, being haunted by stuff.

And then it turns out there's a carbon monoxide link, and once it's fixed, everything goes away. But it does a similar thing to infrasound, where it gives you a sense of dread. Sorry. You're going to say something. A UTI does the same thing. Yes, absolutely. It does. That's part of it as well. Yeah. And, sleep paralysis. I've experienced I'll share some of my stories with sleep. Oh, really? Yeah. But you share yours.

Yeah. No. So I, I've experienced it less than ten times in my life, but I've experienced it a handful of times. I'm such a dorky person that my mind doesn't always go to something scary. There was one of my experiences. This is when I had just moved to Los Angeles, and I was 18 or 19 years old and I'm in my apartment and I wake up one morning, but I can't move, and I'm just sitting there staring like at the ceiling, and I can't move.

And a big sense of dread and then I saw a spider, a spider about the size of my hand on the door to my the my bedroom door was open and it was just on the side of the door. And I was laying there going, I've got to get that spider. That's a huge spider. That's oh my God, that's a terrifying spider. I got to get rid of it. But I couldn't move. And eventually I was able to finally get out of bed. But I still just felt weird.

And I went towards the spider and as I did, it crawled on the other side of the door and like, hid from my view. And so I took the door and I like and I grabbed something to hit it with, I don't remember what. Probably magazine, a book, whatever. And I move the door to get to the back side where it was, and it crawled back around to the other side, and I kept going back and forth because I'm a dork. So I'm like, where is it?

And I kept, like, pushing the door closed and open, trying to chase the spider. And after doing this for what felt like ten minutes, but it was probably 10s it was just gone. It just like poof disappeared and it was never real. And I stood there. I was so confused because I was like, I know this wasn't real, but it felt so real in the moment. Were really at the door. I was, I was I had kind of I was in bed for a long time. I couldn't move.

When I finally could move, I was able to go, but it was just like residual, like leftover still. And this weird mix of like half asleep saying the the first experience I had with it is much more typical, which I was 16 or 17, something like that. And I woke up in the middle of the night and I could not move. And my, my head was sort of pointed at an angle that it saw my lamp post next to my bed, which was a gold color and very reflective.

And I'm just staring at the lamp post and I could see this figure, which I'll describe as kind of like a, a oh, shoot, what is it called? The guy with the the Grim Reaper. The Grim Reaper, thank you. And the cloaked Grim Reaper esque figure reflected in that. I could see him at the foot of my bed, and he was kind of moving around a little bit, like standing there and pacing, and I was just absolutely mortified. You need to use that in a movie. Oh, absolutely.

You look in the lamp like you're looking in the global lamp and you see the Grim Reaper reflected. That is. Yeah, it looks like some old mini shit right there. Absolutely. And it was absolutely just bonkers, terrifying and just a I guess I don't know how long it was, you know, I've lost it's been years. But also in the moment you don't actually have a good sense of time either.

And I was finally able to get up, and I remember running out of my room and running into my brother's room and just being like, oh my God, something in my room. And there was nothing there. But that was my first experience with it, and I've had a few other since then, but those are probably the two best stories, because it shows both something terrifying and something just incredibly strange and dorky, which fits my personality perfectly.

But anyway, a lot of people that do experience things like, like a woman at the end of their bed, I actually know someone else that had an experience similar to yours, except she was an adult, and I think I think it was sleep paralysis. She thinks it was a ghost, but she couldn't move. And that that does go into the sleep paralysis things. And for those that don't know, that is a I forget what it's called, but it's you get woken in a period of sleep where you shouldn't be awoke.

And there's that thing about how your body operates that it's so when you're dreaming, you don't actually run out of your bed and fall off a cliff. It kind of. You're supposed to be still when you dream as like a safety thing, but it's like you're you wake up, but that's still happening, where you're essentially just immovable and your brain is still somewhat dreaming. I explained. That's the one time that ever happened to me. I was sleeping at my sister's.

My sister had just gotten married, and I was living in her house while she was on her honeymoon in Hawaii for like three weeks, and I was sleeping in the guest room that had like the stairs that led up to the attic. And I left that closet door open. And I, being where I was in my life at that point, assumed it was demonic. Yeah. And assumed it had come out of the attic. And I like it. It happened. I was like, there's a there's a ghost in the attic, and I'm not dealing with it.

So I just shut the door and then it never happened again. So I thought I dealt with it. Yeah. There you go. Stay up there. No, it's a terrifying experience. And and it does explain a lot of people that think that they're haunted and stuff and people are, aren't aware of sleep paralysis or just refuse because they believe so strongly in ghosts. They kind of refuse to look at it that way. But sleep paralysis is definitely one of the things that could go into these experiences.

There's also a thing I was reading about called intentional blindness, which is the way our brains work when we're focused on something, you actually kind of close everything else off and not kind of you do close everything else off to the point of you can be having a conversation with somebody and like a tiger can walk behind you and you have no idea. And, well, there's there's proof of that. Have you ever. Oh, absolutely. People playing the basketball game and the gorilla, the.

Gorilla goes through you. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. It's it is a true saying. And that goes into, you know, a lot of people when they experience something and it could be debunked by a light, a car, you know, the many things that can go into being like, no, you didn't see a ghost. It was this. But there's so focused on what they think is the ghost or the spirit or the whatever it may be, that they don't see what else is happening around them.

And there's also paradox, which is our brains want to make sense of shapes and patterns and objects and color. And it probably goes back to us trying to survive in the wilderness and whatever. But it's the same thing when you look at a cloud and you think, oh, that cloud looks like a car, it's the same thing we make. Our brain takes things in and tries to create a person or an animal out of it. So if you're in the dark and shadows and whatever you do, try to create things out of that.

Looking in mirrors, a lot of haunted mirrors, they tend to be old mirrors where the glass has sort of settled and shifted, and it's got stains and whatever. And people think that there is a ghost that you can see in the mirror and it's like, no, it's most likely just pareidolia. And the silver on the back isn't as strong as it used to be. Absolutely. Yes. Like wears away as well. So those are some of the typical things when you read about like our ghost real.

Here's some scientific thoughts about it. Those are some of the things where I like your stories and where I can get a little, even though I, I tend to be a skeptic. Where I get a little weird about this stuff is just energy. And I told you when we first talked on the phone, like a month ago, I was like, there's times when I'm in a room and someone can enter behind me and I'm like, oh, they're having a bad day. Like the energy of the room just shifts and I don't even know they're there.

But like, you can pick up on that energy. And I do think that there's things that we, we are not close to understanding in terms of energy and how it relates, even like it may tie into quantum mechanics and quantum physics and string theory, which is where everything is connected in the universe. And I do think that some of my thoughts. It is all connected.

It's like those twins that are like on other sides of the world, and the one has something catastrophic happen, and the other one's like, my world just ended. What what's going on? And we've all heard those stories of like, here's here's the one I like to use because this is, you know, this is a real person.

And that is Lisa Beamer in her book. Let's Roll, told the story about, how she was standing in her living room and before she even, like, knew by hard facts that her husband was on the plane that crashed on 911 in Pennsylvania. She knew before she knew, and her body just crumpled and she was pregnant when that happened. So like, there was like repercussions to crumpling, right? Baby was fine, but like, she crumpled before she knew. She just knew that she knew before she knew. Oh, yeah.

I could not imagine that situation. That is. That's awful. So tell me a little bit more about your theories of what these spirits could be. You've already talked a bit of spirit and a ghost, and you're kind of idea of these, these two different types of spirits. But what else? What else should we know about your thoughts and what are what are your other series? Well, I don't know if I have theories, I just have experiences.

Right. Like. Yeah. So, I have a good friend and she's actually on one of the early iterations of my business. I interviewed her and we talked a little bit. Her husband died and we were on the phone having a conversation about her husband having died. And the next thing I know, her husband as a ghost is in my kitchen because we've been talking about him. And we we hung up and I and I knew at that point that he had committed suicide and he was Catholic.

And so I knew these things about him already. Yeah. So I don't want to be like he told that to me. But like, as we were, as I turned around and sort of faced him and he was sort of in my refrigerator area, like looking in my refrigerator area, I'm like, what are you doing in here? Because this place is locked down and you're not supposed to be able to get in here. So what you're doing and his response was, basically, I don't know what else to do.

He's he I didn't he was just like, floundering and he didn't really say anything. And I was like, you need you need to go to the light. Like you need to go to the light. And his response basically was, I can't like, I'm not allowed. And I was like, no, no, that's just like a that's just like a religious construct. Like, that doesn't really count. You'll be better off over there. Like you'll be able to watch over your daughter over there. You'll be able to watch over Bree over there.

Like you'll just be able to do everything on that side than this side. And he went over. And then a couple of weeks later, I was talking to the person. I already said her name, but there it is. I was talking to her, and she basically said that her daughter was like, standing at a window on the second floor of their house, pounding on the window, yelling her husband's name because she saw him outside the window. Oh, wow. And so, like, the daughter was like, there's Jimmy, like Jimmy is outside.

I want to get to Jimmy. And Bri was like, no. And she said that there were other times that, like Jimmy, like she was in her bed and she heard her. She woke up because she heard her and she went over and like, said, what's like to look at her? And she was having a chat with Jimmy. In her crib. But that was he had already crossed over. So he wasn't creepy. He was now he was now okay to hang out with his daughter. Yeah. Okay. That's that's a really interesting.

So when he talked to you are you hearing a voice. Is it a feeling. Is it a sense like what is that experience. That's a really good question. So the sense that they're there is physical. And then once I have the physical sensation I turn inward the way that I would hear when I'm looking to hear or for intuition purposes. So I turn into the inner knowing and it's taken me a very long time and a lot of wrong to learn how I hear my intuition.

And so I just turn like I'm going to listen to my intuition for something. And instead of listening for my intuition, I listen for the energy that's in front of me and what they want to say. And I hear it as a thought in my head. But it's not my thought. It's not. Which could be a schizophrenic moment if you wanted to go that way. But I had sat down with the head of psychology for all of Main Line Health. He's a psychiatrist.

I think he's a doctor. He's an MD. He went to medical school, so he's a psychiatrist, the head of M.D, head of psychiatry for all of Main Line Health, which is the hospital system in my area. And he and I have had multiple chats and he has affirmed that I am not insane. And I have openly said, is this insane? And he has said no. So yeah.

And you know, when it when it comes specifically to like ghosts, in, in some of the research I was doing in preparation today when I was trying to read all these different things there, there are a lot of scientist, I would say probably most of them. I'm going to guess on that. I could be wrong. I do not believe in ghosts and spirits, but there are some that do.

When you look at, like some of the religious scholars and some of the religious point of views, there's a lot that don't believe in ghosts and there's a lot that do. Even the one of the things that came across was the apostles and talking about the apostles and what, you know, ghosts and spirits and life after or life after death could be even the apostles disagree. Like if you're Catholic, some of them believe that you come back in spirit form. Some say, no, you definitely can't.

So there's not a consensus even within these communities, that people go to for guidance when it comes to these kind of topics. There's not, you know, the spiritual or scientific world and, you know, there's it's my brain is just going is I've been reading all this stuff and I love these things, but when we die, you know, energy can't, can't. What is it, Einstein saying energy doesn't just die or stop. You know, it's got it got to go on. So shifting more to something else.

Which is why which is why I think we have multiple lives. Ooh. Interesting. Okay. I do not think we have just one life. I think I think that, and I'll give you an experience of that in a moment. I'll go ahead. You. You keep talking. Oh, no. I was just going to say that there's different thoughts about that. A lot of, scientists say that the energy when we die, it does morph, it does change, it does evolve, but it's heat.

We release a lot of heat when we die, but it's also decomposition and getting eaten by the blast. So it's like it doesn't go into a spirit form somewhere. Ghosts aren't real. Because of that all dissipates and changes in those ways. And there's other people that say, no, no, no. There's still there's still some weird things we don't understand about what happens with the the form of our body when we die, the energy of that. So I was just going to say again, there's just kind of two.

Well, have you read the study where like a body gets lighter when the soul. Yes, yes, I have, yes I have. And then again that that's actually where some of this comes from, as some people say. Well that's it's sweat, it's moisture, it's heat. It's all that actually does affect the weight. Some people compared to dogs, when dogs die, they don't. You lose the weight. So some people say it's because they don't have a spirit, but they also don't have sweat glands. So there's like there's these are.

People I've talked to overall, people who I've talked to about coming back from past lives. They all come back as people I don't. I've never bumped into anybody who has ever said in a past life I was a dog. Yeah, yeah, that's that's interesting. Yeah. So, yeah. So tell me you were going to say you have an experience about that. Yeah. So I was in England when I was 19 years old. I was like, they're studying, for a semester. And while I was there, we went to bath, which is, you know, normal town.

Lots of lots of things happen in bath. It's not nothing fancy. And then we got to this section, a little bit like walking up out of town. There's this, this spot that actually all up, there's a scene where Oliver is filmed here, like the the old, old Oliver. Yeah. And Oliver is singing as he's walking along. It's a big giant circle. And there's all. There's a tree in the middle, and there's all these townhouses that are, like, clumped together in a circle.

And then there's a break, and then there's like, they're all like sort of round. They kind of move around like there. And I got into this spot and I was like, this is magical. Like this whole place. Like I was like, whoa, what is this place? And it felt it felt weird, like amusement park to me, like, oh, what is this? And everybody looked at me and was like, it's a rotary with a bunch of houses around it.

I was like, no, no, it's really not years and years later, I did a past life regression and I found out I was like a maid in that in one of those townhouses in bath, England. And I have had two extreme fears in this lifetime or not, extreme fear is more like one is an extreme fear and the other one is a fascination, and that the extreme fear is like getting an appendicitis. Like I'm terrified of getting appendicitis.

And, and I'm also afraid of, like, I think tuberculosis is the most fascinating of diseases, right? Because you die of drowning. Like, that's just fascinating to me. And so I actually found out in that lifetime where I was a servant in bath, I died of tuberculosis. Oh, yeah. Wow. Wow. Well, what did they call tuberculosis? Back in the old days? Consumption, consumption. There we go. It was consumption. Because you got consumption. Your lungs got consumed.

Yeah, yeah, just like Doc Holliday in tombstone. So, I totally, I just I just completely sidetracked my own thought. There I was, thinking about Doc Holliday in the Old West with consumption. So, yeah, I mean, I could talk about this kind of stuff all day. To be very honest, Kim, I've really enjoyed this. Is there anything else you want us to know? Any other experiences before we go?

Or even. Just. I will say this for all the experiences people have asked me, will you contact this person on the other side for me? I have done it a couple of times. It's not one. It's not my favorite thing to do. It's not. It's not something that comes or super naturally for me. Yeah. It doesn't it's not easy. It's not good. It's not easy. It's just that that's not where my gifting is. Can I walk into it as a as a thing? Yes. Is it the thing that comes to me naturally? No.

Can I do it? Yes. Do I consider myself a medium? No, I really don't, because I've had people who are like, they've they've told a story where they were like standing around in a crowd of people and like, all of a sudden this dead guy is standing there with them and she knows they're a dead guy, and she knows her name is Phil and she knows all this stuff about him. And then they go in the house and she's like, so tell me about Phil.

And then the person who's like, putting the thing in the sink drops it and it breaks, right? Like, these are the things that happen for her and they don't happen that way. For me. I don't bump into dead people the way that it like in The Sixth Sense or the way that. And I don't know if that's because I've shut it down, because I got so scared when I was little by the thing at the end of my bed that I'm like, I don't want to see.

And then, like, sometimes I think I see something at the corner of my eye and I flinch, and then I hear in my head with my little intuitive voice for the like, see? You're not ready yet. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And so maybe I'm not in this lifetime supposed to see. And so I am not, I get like, I get ideas and images and ideas the way that a person who has a strong imagination and reads does, but I don't like actually see the physical form very often. It's happened once or twice.

I went on a weekend where I was like, studying how to do this, and then, I came back and one I've had it. And at the hospital I've had like, no joke. I'm not lying. I've been there since 2016 and I've had like eight bosses. So, like one of the many bosses I've had was standing behind me on the unit I was working on, and she had just come back from New Mexico and she or Mexico or Arizona or wherever she had been, and she said that she had been doing some Native American things.

And I turned around and I looked at her, and now I just come back from a weekend where we were practicing, seeing, and we were practicing stepping in and seeing. Right. So I turned and I looked at her and standing behind her was the tallest Native American in full leather and the crown of feathers. And he was standing there behind her. And I turned back around and I just started typing madly. And then I looked back and he was gone. And I was like, okay, so that's one of her guides.

And I was like, I saw him. Like, I freaking saw him. And I was like, that's one of the few times I've seen. Yeah, wow. It's incredible. I would not have even thought to even ask you about that. So I'm so glad you shared that. That's that's really fascinating. So let's do this camp. So yeah. Before we go, thank you for for sharing all these experiences and your thoughts on this, this the spirit world, spooks and spirits. As I said at the top, it's always fascinated me.

I've always loved ghost stories. I definitely my own personal bias is to to lean more into, like, let's figure out what this really could have been instead of something paranormal or supernatural. But I really do try to keep an open mind and especially like I've like I've already said to you a few times, energy. There's just something about it that we don't fully understand. Science doesn't fully understand it.

And that's really what kind of keeps my mind open to the idea that there are things out there that we don't understand. And, and also I just I'm fascinated with this and also the human brain. I'm also fascinated with stories on when when it is a story that isn't supernatural. Why did that person think that way? And then seeing how the human brain operates. So this is just a topic I absolutely love and I could talk about all day. So before we go, where can people find you?

You've been doing so much. I know you have. You have more than one book, right? You have multiple books. I do have multiple books. Yes. So tell us about books, podcast, everything else that you want people to know about. Okay. So the original the book, there's a book that came out that's now out of print. So I'm not going to talk about it because you can't find it.

There's a book on Amazon called What the Doctors Don't Tell You One Woman's Journey Through Hodgkin's Lymphoma, which was written after I got diagnosed and treated for Hodgkin's, and I wrote it as sort of a trauma narrative, but I also wrote it as a, hey, you have to go through this shit. Let me tell you, this is absolutely normal. It's really important book. That's great. Yeah, yeah. So that's out there.

I have a book coming out this month, called Walk in Courage with, trusting the whispers of your intuition. And then, I'm at on Instagram and Facebook at I am Kim Beam, and then my in my email address is info at Kim beam.com. I make a joke. It's Kim Beam, like Jim Beam. I don't know what the hell my parents were thinking, but I don't drink, which makes it even funnier. Yeah, it's nice and I'll provide some links in the show notes for that. I really appreciate it. Yeah, and two other quick things.

I do give intuitive readings. And then the other thing is, I give a free 15 minute intuitive reading, which is just really dipping your foot in the water. Like, it doesn't really tell you. I mean, it tells you a little bit, really doesn't tell you enough, but most people are starving for more by the time I'm done with the 15 minutes. On my podcast. And that's free. And so. Yeah. Nice. And one last thing too, I want to pick your brain about here is the importance of scary stories.

I don't know if we have to be scary. Let me just say stories about spirits. I think culturally are really important, and it's something I try to. My wife is afraid of anything slightly remotely scary or paranormal or weird, like she's not a fan of scary movies or scary stories. And so trying to introduce these things to my son has been interesting because she tries to keep all that stuff away and I'm like, no, no, no, he should, you should. Let's, let's talk about this kind of stuff.

The more you normalize something, the less enticing it'll be. So if you get her, if you get her to relax a little, he'll get into it. But he won't, like, make it big. Yeah. He won't be going to. Be a horror writer, which he might do if she doesn't calm down. Exactly, exactly what she would think would be hilarious if he does become one, because he's very much scared of everything. But I do think there's importance to these stories culturally.

Sitting by the campfire as an exist as an example, before, you know, the advent of television and books and all that. But yeah. Do you think stories like this are important and and why? So I have an example of this. I, I did a ghost tour, which I will never do another ghost tour because I love them. I love ghost tours. Oh, that's like one of my favorite things.

Sorry. Go ahead. Part of it is because I had too much respect for the spirit realm that, like, I don't I'm not okay with poking them, right? I don't I don't feel the need to go around and harass. No, no, that's one of the things I don't like about some of them. Like I, I don't. You have your own thing going on. I don't want to give you a hard time. And there's, Have you ever done one in Williamsburg, Virginia? No, but I have been to Williamsburg and. Okay. Yeah. Fascinating.

The most haunted building considered in the United States is in Williamsburg, Virginia. And their security guard went in at dark because in the winter, it's dark early. And so he went in at like 5 or 6:00 at night, but it was already dark outside. He had to walk through and make sure it was completely empty. And when he got in the basement, he got trapped down there and the door closed and wouldn't let him out.

And it like the building held him in and he had to call for backup, and the backup couldn't get in the backup like they tried to open the door, and the door wouldn't open for the backup. And so by the time he eventually there's a whole long story about what happened in that building, what by the time he got out and was, like, released from the basement, he came outside and found a garbage can and threw up. Which is what happens when you encounter a ghost you throw up.

Yeah. So like he came out and he chucked and he said, I'm never I'm any quick right there on the spot. He's like, I'm never doing this again. And now Williamsburg Park has a rule that whoever goes through that house has to go through that house. I think it's not alone. But maybe they're allowed to do it alone, but they cannot do it once it's dark. It's the first house that gets closed up at night and it is done. While it was still daylight.

So the government is recognizing there is something crazy wonky, not quite right going on with this particular building, because there is now a policy written that you can't go in there at night. Oh, I love it, I love that, so I love that. But what I, what what the story does for me is a couple of things. Oh I'm sorry, you're trying to wrap up and I am going a tangent. No, this is great. Please. Sure.

Go for it. Yeah. So I live really close to Valley Forge, and there was one day I went for a walk with a friend and I saw a crowd. Normally I don't see, but I saw a crowd of redcoats walking down the hill and I called my mom and I was like, were the redcoats ever at Washington? Like, we're ever at Valley Forge? And I'm like, I know Washington camp there for the winter. She's like, well, Washington camp for the winter. I'm like, I know he camp there for the winter.

But was there ever a moment when, like, the Redcoats crossed through, maybe when we weren't camping there for the winter and my mom was like, I have no idea. And I was like, well, I saw them. I, I was in this weird I was standing on the street corner about to cross, and this was kind of before I saw the redcoats. I think it was sort of a blur when all these things happened, but I got super nauseated, like super nauseated, like I'm going to throw up right here all over the sidewalk.

I was completely fine, and now I'm not. And then I moved out of that pocket of space, and I was completely fine again. And because I had heard that story about the guy in the basement who was ready to toss his cookies, I was like, oh, that nausea was probably me in some cloud of energy space that was being consumed by some other energy space, and I was just too close to it, and it made me feel ill. Well, it normalizes by hearing these stories.

When they happen to you, it normalizes the experience. Yes, yes. And I feel like you can learn from them. You can learn to face all sorts of fears and and just understanding. Excuse me. I'm losing my voice today. It's great for radio. Well, if if we learned nothing else, we learned that another term for throwing up is toss your cookies. I had never heard that before, and I'm absolutely going to use that from now on. Well. It's my favorite term for being sick because I, like, have it.

It's a it's a I have like panic attacks when like people are throwing up like it's a thing that happens. I work in a hospital and I have panic attacks. When people. Throw up. It makes sense. Make sense? So cookies. Yeah. So I just say toss your cookies because it sounds so much nicer than it really is. I really like it. I really like that a lot. I'm going to try to remember that. Well, thank you Kim. I really appreciate it.

And and that story was definitely worth telling, so don't worry about that at all. But yes, I'll provide links for in the show notes for everybody to find Kim. And thank you. And I'll talk to you soon. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for listening to a study of Strange. Check out the show notes to learn more about Kim Beam, and take a quick second to subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcast. And if you're on Apple and Spotify, please leave us a rating and review.

It goes a really long way to helping others find the show. If you'd like to support a study of strange in other ways, you can check out our Substack, which you'll find through our support tab on our website. A study of strange.com and that'll just about do it. Thank you and good night.