My spooky friends. I'm John, your host of Dairyland Frights. And welcome to another episode of Dairyland Frights, the paranormal podcast that covers everything spooky, creepy and mysterious in the midwest. And again, I don't know what I do to deserve this, but I have another great special guest with me. Very special guest, Risa. Welcome.
Thank you so much, John. It's a pleasure to be here.
Yes. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about Rissa, and then we're going to be having some great time to ask her some questions because she has such a great, expansive, excuse me, maybe expensive history knowledge, the paranormal, including ghosts, witchcraft, cryptids. So she is a living and breathing Google or encyclopedia for my old school fans. So let's get into a little bit about her storytelling.
Her storytelling expertise stems from extensive research into the area of esoteric history, which again, when I've had Cynthia from the Netherlands, my practicing witch, remember, esoteric history has to deal usually with paranormal, the occult, but not all the time. But she also, as it includes ghosts, witchcraft, which we'll talk about today, cryptids and folklore.
So Rissa believes that the most enduring stories teach us not only about humanity's past, but also give us reason to reflect on our own present beliefs and realities. She often leads on top of this, she also leads ghost tours and gives lively history talks. So again, welcome to the podcast. And what I want to ask you first, that I asked all my guests, is what interested you in history, the paranormal, so on and so forth. What interested you in that?
Honestly, I think I was kind of born into a chan.
Okay.
I can't remember a time when it wasn't part of my world. As a little girl, I had a lot of really interesting paranormal experiences. I remember seeing ghosts, being able to interact with them, and not being told that it was wrong or abnormal, that I was just experiencing a part of the world as it is. And I realized that that's not the story most people have about their parents. My parents were amazing about that, though.
So I became very used to thinking that that was regular life, and it never really changed. It just kind of always stuck with me. And I went on my very first ghost tour in a town in England called York, England. It's a city with a wall around it, lots of fascinating history there. My parents took me on my first ghost tour when I was eight years old. Well, I wasn't scared. I had not been taught to be fearful about ghosts or history. It is my firm belief that those things are taught.
We are taught to be afraid of those things. And I feel like because I approached it very differently from the beginning, I don't approach it with fear now. And I also don't approach things with a lot of superstition. I think superstition is fascinating, and I studied it a lot. I give talks about it. I don't personally practice a ton of superstition in my own life, so that just eliminates the need for a lot of fear. So all of that said, it's just always been around.
It's always been part of who I am. And it seems as natural to me to lean into these kind of mysterious topics that some people think of as dark and I think of as simply part of the human experience. When we look at the reality of being alive, there has to be dark to go with the light. It's part of what makes us complete.
Yeah, that is awesome. That's what I always get a lot from my guests is they kind of grew up with it. They may have a mom or a dad that was very into the paranormal one way or another, right? Or they lived in a haunted house. I have many of my guests on who lived in a haunted house. I have two guests on recently from the UK. And they talk about the rich history and really all the different things that they look at differently in the UK because they grew up around it.
So you grew up around castles, right? You grew up the mystery of ghosts, the mystery of the paranormal. It was just right out your door, right? You walk out your door. Oh, there's the Tower of London, or there's a castle, or there's, like a street which Jack the Ripper was on. Or there's where the Beatles recorded on Abbey Road. And it's just normal, right?
You just walk out, and that's sometimes in bigger cities, you might get that, but typically, like, me, who live in a small town, don't really get that. But my mom was. She would share with me. She read, which I thought was always funny. And my spooky friends know this. My mom would read books on serial killers, Ed Gein, you know, all the big ones, Jack the Ripper. And when I would ask my mom, she would not be, no, no, you don't need to see this. She'd be like, what do you want to know?
And she would tell me, walk me through that. So I kind of learned through that, too, as well, right? You kind of grew up with that. So tell me, when's the first time, if you can remember, your first profound paranormal experience, did you remember the age and what it was about.
Profound.
Yes.
Because I'm going back really far into my childhood here. Probably being able to remember in dreams a past life. And that happened. It was one of my very first memories. So that goes way back into my very early childhood. And I still have some of the same memories today. I have gone under regressions to try to sort it out, to try to understand what happened, which was actually very helpful in reconciling it.
But, yeah, I would say that was probably the earliest, and it's still among the most profound that I have experienced.
So can you share a little bit about that, if that's okay?
Yes. I can remember a death. I can remember how I died.
Wow.
It was a different time, a different place. I was in the form of a man, and I was forced to walk a plank, and I sank because there were weights tied to my feet. And I remember going down through the water and the weight of the water crushing in, and I couldn't breathe. And I remember the drowning. And in the regression, I found out that I had actually been a thief in that life. I was being punished for my crimes.
Wow.
And that was how they chose to punish me.
Oh, wow. That is fascinating.
It's very fascinating, especially because as a child, I wasn't in a place where I would have understand what a ship was or what tropical fish were, but I knew what they were. I knew without having ever seen them.
Yeah, that's amazing. That leads me to one of my guests, too, is doing a different type of service for therapy that I never heard of before. And God bless her, if this works, she's trying to develop a paranormal therapy for people who have not. How do you say, they haven't dealt with the paranormal experience? So you're like eight years old, you see a ghost walk through your walls, you're scared out of your wits, and you carry that forever. Right.
And you don't have no one you can talk to because people are going to be like, yeah, sure, you're eight years old. There's a ghost going through there, blah, blah, blah. Carry that. And that weighs on you, and that extends to your life and extends to absolutely everything you live with.
So you learn self doubt, you learn not to trust yourself.
Yes, absolutely.
I mean, I'm very lucky that. Lucky that wasn't my story because I wasn't taught to doubt myself in that way. And as a ghost tour guide, it is surprising how many people go to a ghost tour just because they want someone to talk to that will give them a willing listen. Some compassion about whatever their paranormal experience is.
In all of the years I've been doing this, I have heard stories about ghosts, stories about cryptids, stories about ufos, people who are just sort of lingering around at the end of the tour saying, hey, do you have a minute? Or they send me an email afterwards. I have dozens and dozens and dozens of these stories from people that they say, oh, my family doesn't believe. Now, these are adults, too, right? My family doesn't believe me. My wife thinks I'm crazy. My husband thinks I'm crazy.
My kids think I'm crazy. My colleagues laughed at me. And I'm like, first of all, you're in the majority. According to USA Today's survey, the majority of people living in the United States have had a paranormal experience and or believe it. So the fact that your colleagues have friends say that you're crazy, it's because they've been conditioned and taught to say that, not because it's where they actually, you know.
And the very next thing I would say after that, know podcasts like this, like what you're doing, John, it's so important to normalize the conversation, to really put it out there as, yes, this is something that happens in our world. We don't have a scientific explanation for it. But, you know, there was a time not that long ago we did not have a scientific explanation for weather either. But here we are, we now understand weather.
So it's kind of like, I feel like eventually we will be sophisticated enough in science to understand the things that we don't yet. But in the meantime, it's really important not to tear people down and to say they did or didn't experience something when quite honestly, I know that they know what they saw, they know what they heard. And I think it's important to offer respect and compassion in those situations.
Yes, absolutely. And it's no different from maybe being in a car accident or watching someone you love die in front of you. It's a traumatic experience. I get it. But people just have weird ways of dealing with it. And I think, like I said, it goes into their lives and just can cause problems, especially relationship problems.
Yeah, it definitely does. I've definitely seen that in the folks that stay to talk to me after my ghost tours or that are reaching out later or they have an active haunting and they don't understand it. They don't understand what it wants. They don't know how to talk to it. And I can't help in every situation, but I always offer assistance as best I can. And if I can't, I'm like, you need a medium. Here are some names.
Absolutely. So we're going to get into now the spooky stuff and the fun stories and the scary stories and whatever else stories we have today, because they're going to be great for my audience to have somebody like you so well rounded in. So all my spooky friends, I will share Risa's all her social media, YouTube, whatever she has in my story notes in the episode, so you can see them and please visit her and interact with her if she's okay with that.
That'd be great. Yeah.
And we'll have some good time. So in today's episode, we're going to discuss a number of topics. Okay. And I have a bunch of questions for you.
Great. And they will do it.
Cover magic in the occult, some ghost stories, maybe some cryptid stories. I love history. I love talking about it. And then we'll also talk about witch trap and some of the different things associated with that. I know you read tea leaves, is that correct? Could you explain a little bit of what that means to my audience?
Oh, sure. I'm so sorry, I don't have a teacup ready. Okay. It is a form of divination, and it's actually a form of scrying. Scrying is one of the more esoteric families of divination. It's basically the act of gazing into something. And most people, when I say scrying, they imagine the cliche fortune teller with a crystal ball. So that's not exactly what I do, nor is it exactly what anybody else does either.
That's another one of those popular cliches that doesn't have a lot of weight behind it, not when you know the history.
Right.
So tea leaves, the origin of tea leaf reading is really ancient. It goes back into times BC. Now, nobody knows if it originated in Asia or if it originated in the Middle east because it was actively done in both places. But it's past recorded history when it started. So basically, you put loose tea or coffee grounds into a cup. You drink the cup of tea, and then you turn it and you look at the patterns on the cup or the saucer, depending how you do it.
So from that point, as the taciographer, the person who reads the leaves, you have a set of symbols that you already have committed to memory. And I say that casually, but it takes a long time to get to that place. I started when I was 16, and I have been reading for over 30 years now. And it changes all the time your symbols get updated, your symbols can change. And as you learn and go through life, your symbol vocabulary keeps getting bigger.
So that said, you read the leaves in symbols and put them together in context of the querence question or what's going on in their life, does that answer make sense to you?
Yes, absolutely. And what is the outcome? Meaning, like with tarot cards, people want to know, am I going to die soon? Am I going to meet my new boyfriend? You know what I mean? Some crazy things they want to know. And you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on.
Generally speaking, I'm super nerdy, John. And over the pandemic, when all the colleges were offering free classes and all the big universities, Harvard University's ancient religions department offered a history of divination. I took it because I was like, I'll never get a chance to take a free class from Harvard again, ever. And, yeah, it's not free anymore, I could tell you for sure.
So when I was studying in that course, they said, and my own experience reflects this, the number one question asked of any diviner is about relationships, usually love or partnerships, sometimes parent child. The second most common is about money. And the variations on that could be like career education. But money and relationships are what everybody mostly wants to know about. I do occasionally get questions about health. I do occasionally get questions about people's pets.
I do get questions about people's spiritual path. This happened actually a lot in 2020, 2021. A lot of people, this is a funny thing to say, started really questioning their faith because the world was going through this collective trauma and loss and serious grief, and people were like, how could my faith let down the world this way?
Right?
And it was really fascinating. I actually, during that time did a tarot reading for a former nun who, because of the pandemic, left her faith. It was quite an honor to be her first reading in her life. And she was in her seventy s, and she said, you know, I've always wanted to do this, and now that I have left the church, I could come do this. And she goes, I could see there's nothing wrong with it. And there never was.
Never was, right?
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, go ahead.
No, I was going to say my first question for you. What is you think the number one, because this is a great segue, misconception about divination and I'm going to throw witchcraft in there. What do you think is the number one thing where you get all the time, where it's a misconception, you have to correct people and say, hey, I'm.
Going to answer those two things in two separate ways. So the number one misconception about divination is that all diviners are psychics, or, I'm sorry, that all psychics are mediums. Not all psychics are mediums. All mediums are psychic, but not all psychics are mediums. Not all of us talk to the dead. Not all of us have an open channel to speak specifically to people's ancestors. Some do. Now, if you get on Netflix and watch Tyler Henry, it seems like he has a direct right. It's amazing.
He has an amazing gift. And he's not the only one. There's a native man who is canadian, and he has a show on PBS called Spirit Talker. And of course, his name is slipping. Sean Leonard. Sean Leonard is an amazing medium, and he works within the structure of his native faith. It is an amazing television show, and I hope some of your listeners will check it out, because it's a very different perspective on a medium than what you might expect.
So, that said, not all psychics, not all diviners are mediums. That's probably the number one misconception. And the number one misconception about witchcraft. Wow. Which one is number one? That's a good question. Either that. Oh, gosh, I don't know. The media has twisted the perception of witchcraft so heavily over time. Yes. And I don't just mean the modern media, I mean, even media. Since the 16 hundreds, even since then.
Innocent people have died over it.
Thousands of innocent people have died. Men, women, children and animals.
Yeah.
Many thousands of lives. Because of superstition and misinformation about what witches are or are not. I'm going to go with. I'm tossing back and forth between that all witches are trying to act upon evil or that all witches are involved with the devil. And let me deal with each one of those separately. So the idea of the devil is a christian construct. There is no devil in many other pictures of faith.
And most witches that I know, whether they are pagan or witches or wiccans, they don't have the devil as part of their pantheon of worship. It's just not there because it's christian. And it's interesting that so many people think witches are affiliated with the devil when it's not even on their radar. That particular. What do you want to call it? System of belief has nothing to do with what they're doing at all.
And so they're certainly not worshipping the devil because he's not even part of their system. So that's a fascinating misconception that was purposefully started during the burning times. Gosh, who knows exactly when it started. Probably the one three hundreds in Europe. That was sort of the time when right before the hammer of witches was published and people decided to go. People, Catholics, decided to go after witches as their villain du jour.
Now, if you peek back into history before that, Jews, the jewish folks, were their villain du jour. And when they were done with them, they decided to go after witches. And the witch hunts lasted for, unfortunately, centuries. It was like the 18 hundreds, I'm sorry. Till the United States had their very last witch trial. So, I mean, we embraced it here, too. The colonials brought that same fear with them.
It was definitely a learned fear, because the idea of what witchcraft is, a nature based faith, predates all mainline religions that are currently practiced on this planet. So how can we come from that perspective and get it so twisted? I don't know. And like I said, it's a nature based faith system that doesn't involve the christian pantheon of characters. So, that said, the devil is irrelevant in the conversation, and yet there he is all the time.
He is right there, hanging around the corner.
Yeah. I'm like, seriously, what is the story with him? He's not even supposed to be here. He's in the wrong show. So the other one, that all witches are evil? Well, I would have to argue that all people have the capacity to do evil, no matter what faith or how they identify. And you don't have to be a witch or a villain to do evil. Evil is subjective, right? You and I might know what we think evil is, but our gauge on that might be totally different than the next person or from each other.
So I think that saying witches are out to do evil literally makes no sense. A lot of people who died during the witchcraft trials were people who were healers or were people whose only crime was being a single woman in the wrong place at the wrong time, or being a woman who owned land and didn't want to marry some guy to give him her land, and he had her put to death for witchcraft. So that wasn't doing evil on the woman's part, honestly, let's be real. Yeah, that was doing evil.
I mean, not that it's my particular cause to judge people, but there was evil doing, but I don't think it was by the women.
Absolutely. And, you know, the thing is, when I had Cynthia, who is a practicing witch from the Netherlands, she even told me people still look at her. She's strange. Like, she's different, but she says because of her beliefs in witchcraft and other magic, she feels stronger. She feels like she can be like, yeah, I'm strange, I'm weird, and I'm okay with that. Now, how many people out there in today's world would love to be like, yeah, I'm weird, I'm strange, I'm cool with it?
No, what they do is they hide it. Right? They hide it, and then they say, like, well, actually, I'm a super nerd, but I don't want anybody to know that.
I'm like, why?
Right. You think power from that. She gets the power. So she has, like, spell jars and she does certain ceremonies, and she gets the power from that to not only help people, but to help herself. That's amazing.
I'm totally in favor of that. And I feel like whatever works for people to feel more empowered to be themselves, do more of that, especially if by helping yourself, you're also helping others. I can see literally no problem with that whatsoever. I feel like a lot of the fear that we're taught to have about anybody who's different than us, or other, if you will, other. It is all fear based belief.
And at the end of the day, the idea that someone can feel comfortable in their own skin and feel at peace with who they are, that's amazing. It's a great goal to shoot for because we don't live in a society where that's a particularly easy thing to do anymore. No, I don't know if it ever was. I mean, I can't remember in my past lives if that was easy for me or not then.
But all of that said, I do feel that if any person who wants to identify as a pagan or a witch or a druid or any of these faiths that get clumped into witchcraft, because they're all very different. They're very different from each other, and yet they all get sort of shoved in the same box. We don't shove the other mainline religions in the same box, and yet these are. So that's another whole discussion.
But that said, I think that if it is what sings to your soul, go with, you know, always be on the safe side if you live in a society where these things are frowned upon. So, for example, in Pennsylvania, I don't know if you know about this, there is a young woman the police went after very recently because she's doing illegal tarot card readings. Because tarot card reading and love spells are still illegal in the state of Pennsylvania.
Oh, boy.
Yeah. And they actually, in a different part of Pennsylvania actually prosecuted someone in April of this year for illegal tarot card reading, and she had to pay a fine and go to court. So that fear is still with us as Americans. We have not moved on. We have not gotten over. And also, let's talk about the freedom of religion.
Yeah, right.
Let's talk about that for a minute. It's like freedom for some and not for all.
Yeah, right. How's that?
That was the whole point of the colonists coming here so that they could equally embrace freedom of religion for others and as well as themselves. And here we are, this country that was founded based on the principles of freedom, and others still are not free to practice their faith. Yeah, I don't get that at all.
I don't either. And that's a whole new episode podcast that we could do. But I'm going to ask you some questions about some magic in the hole. So again, this might get a little dark territory. So if you got the kitties listening to this in the car, you might want to have them put on your headphones if you're listening to this and if it upsets you or something, that's okay. Skip ahead. We will be talking about other subjects.
So my first question for you is there are a number of different magics, but predominantly the magics that come up with witchcraft is, and this is always in the movies and everything, they take it too far, black magic and white magic. And so let me ask you this. Is that something, Risa, that you categorize when you're talking about witchcraft? Like, how do you categorize witchcraft? Is it something like, again, left hand magic, right hand magic, folk magic, high magic?
I mean, like, all these different categories. Right. How do you view, like, how do you explain to someone who goes, oh, that's black magic. Oh, I'm scared. Right. Please don't curse me, turn me into a toad, whatever. Right. Yeah. So I just like. Thoughts on that.
So let's jump in on that. So this is going to go right back to the. So the folk magic and high magic are different. So let me put that out there first. So the idea of white and black magic. So I don't even like to use those words anymore because honestly, they feel so racist.
And I know that is not what the origin of those words are, but especially as we're coming into a more educated time and trying to be more inclusive, I don't even use those phrases because they imply that white is good and black is bad. And I really don't like that. I'm not on board with that as an individual. Now, from a historical perspective. Yeah, there's something behind that. And one of the places you could take that all the way back is to the dark and light fay.
So the dark fay were tricksters. They did things like steal your babies and leave a changeling. They were always kind of up to no good, whereas the light fay, like, dined on flower nectar and might make a wish come true for you maybe, if they felt like it, maybe not. But all of that said, the idea of good and bad is so subjective, and quite frankly, there are probably people out there that if a witch turned them into a toad and set them aside in a terrarium, it might be good for all of us.
Who am I to judge, right? But, yeah, obviously, this is all about a fear of power, and the idea that one magic might be stronger than the other is kind of what this is about and the means by which that is attained. Are you working with spirit entities who have, like, they're from the underworld, or are you working with spirit entities that are land spirits? Or are you working with gods or goddesses or angels?
There's so many questions when you are looking at how a witch or practitioner or wiccan or pagan is going to do their spellwork. Now, like I said, there's so many different paths that you can speak about with this, and I wouldn't say there's any one blanket way to talk about it. You can't say all blood magic is dark. It's not. Someone could use blood magic to try to help someone who's sick. That's not dark at all. That's a kind and compassionate thing to do.
And it's kind of like how the media portrays voodoo. Voodoo is an actual faith. It is practiced by thousands of people all over the country, and of course, all over Latin America. There are variations of voodoo that have spread across the world. And to assume that it is just folks who are trying to make zombies and sticking pins in dolls is incredibly dismissive and very simplistic. It is not about that at all. That is not what voodoo is.
And anybody who portrays it that way still in this day and age, really needs to spend a little more time doing their research and understanding the complexity of the faith and the way they venerate their ancestors and what voodoo dolls are actually for, because the way they show it in movies, that's not my understanding. From talking to practitioners of what it's actually all know.
I think when we picture the pick nowadays, of course, we picture the Harry Potter witches, and they draw a very distinct line between good and evil in Harry Potter. And I think a lot of that, again, is to do with how those people are using power. Are they using power to aid themselves, or are they using power to aid the greater good? So it comes down to that same question. What are you using the power you have for? And we could ask that to any non magical
person as well, right? What are you using your power for? Are you using it to go to some greedy end, or are you using it to go towards the greater good for yourself as well as others? So when you look at the dark and light of magic, you're looking at the dark and light of what humanity can and cannot do as a species. And it is really as simple as who are you with or without magic?
Before you add magic into the equation? And people have always feared those with more power, those that can do more than they can do, which is one reason that witches have always scared people. The idea that somebody has this mystical gift, I guess you could say the same thing about diviners, too. Sure. If somebody has this gift that you don't understand, it's intimidating. You immediately are like, I don't get it. And they become like the word I used a moment ago, other.
They become a really long answer to.
Your, no, no, that's great. I love it. I love it. So let me ask you, has anyone come to you and said, risa, can you help me with this? Maybe it's a big thing. Maybe it's like, I want to make more money to put a down payment on a house, or there's this bad person in my neighborhood, and I want to get rid of them. Has anybody asked you an extreme thing? Like, really extreme, where you went like, okay, wait, hold on.
So the most extreme question I've personally gotten, I think, is, can you come get rid of my ghost? Can you rehome my spirit entity that's in the house? And I always try to help as much as I can in those situations. So if they're local to me, I can go in person. Otherwise, I have to give them the best possible instructions that I can from a distance.
Yeah.
Nobody's ever asked me to help them win the lottery.
That's what I was going to ask, too.
Yeah, nobody's ever asked me to do that or help me to do it, actually. Yes. Nobody's helped me to do that either. Come on, what do we do? I think the question you're asking also is a lot of times people ask about manifesting is the word about manifesting money, or manifesting a new love or manifesting a new house or manifesting someone to buy the house they're in so they can get out of it. And I think that that's a huge topic. And manifesting is complicated and also individual.
So the way that it might be that you need to manifest, say some other person needs to manifest their financial dream, is to reconcile things from their past that they haven't quite dealt with yet. And they could be transgressions against other people. They could be financial transgressions. But one of the best ways to start moving forward is to lighten the load that you're dragging behind. This is, again, my personal experience. Right.
And then if you want to switch it around and say it's about relationships, well, what unresolved thing is still hanging behind you and you're not able to meet that fantastic new person because you're still dragging around the baggage. You keep seeming to meet the same person in a different form. Well, it's something that you need to look at and really examine. Why do you keep selecting the same person? And again, this isn't necessarily an all magical thing. This can be a mundane thing.
This can be I need to work with a therapist thing or I need to spend more time journaling thing.
Right.
There's a lot of facets to manifesting, and they're not all magical. Some of them are completely mundane.
Yeah. Have you ever told someone like, hey, look, I'm going to try my best to help you with this, but you need to do this or that rather than. Because that's what a lot of psychics, what they want to do, unfortunately, is just keep milking people. Oh, it's this and it's that. Oh, give me another $500 and I'll tell you if you're going to meet that perfect husband or wife or partner or whoever. Right.
Well, first of all, I don't charge $500 for readings. Okay. There you go. I really like to know that when folks walk away from a reading with me that they have the information to create an action plan. I think an action plan in life is key. Love that no matter what your goal is, if you don't take steps in real life, it's not going to happen. You can't put a wish out there like, I really want to meet an amazing partner and then literally sit on your sofa and watch tv.
You're not going to meet someone on your sofa. You're going to have to actively do something, and there's a million ways to go about it. I've heard people say, well, I don't like dating apps. Well, neither do I. I don't use them. And nobody else has to either if they don't want to. You do what's right for you, but you've got to do something. You can't just sit there and be like, you know, I'm going to sit here in this chair and a million dollars is going to come.
Right?
Good luck.
Yeah, good luck with that. That's refreshing. That's refreshing that you say that.
I think an action plan is key in life. And if what you want to do is be a famous actor or actress, you're going to need an action plan. You need to get out there, you need to get seen. What is your action plan?
Yeah, I love that.
That's what I like to leave people with when they're done with their reading, whatever it was they were looking for. How can we make it go forward?
That is so refreshing, Rissa. I love that. So you mentioned about Ghost, and you are ghost tour. So we're going to switch topics here a little bit. One of the things I would like to know is you talked about someone coming to you and this ghost. I got this spirit, whatever entity in my house, I want to get rid of it. Could you tell people, like, a story?
Obviously, you don't have to name names, but you tell a story about something related to that where, wow, that's kind of spooky or scary, or at least interesting.
Obviously, I've got the perfect story. I've got the perfect one, John. So I'm going to start by saying that I don't think all ghosts or spirit entities need to be ejected from the home. Some of them want to be there because it's their home, too. Or they're your family. And maybe not necessarily like the family, you know, maybe they're an ancestor or a spirit guide. So in those cases, I think it's totally fine if they share space with you. You just have to learn to be okay with them.
Okay.
Now, that's not always the case. So I'm going to tell the story of a woman who I helped clear her space. And some people call this a house blessing. Some people call it a space clearing. Whatever works for you. So I got to her space, and she was having incredible anxiety. Every time she came home, she felt like she was being watched. So I got into her space, and I immediately felt like. I feel like yucky. Something yucky here. It was a beautiful old apartment, great old building.
So I'm not a medium, but sometimes I can hear sometimes. I can be clear. Audience and I could immediately hear the spirit in her house. I said, does the name George mean anything to you? And she said, yeah, that was the man who lived here before me. And I said, oh, guess what? He's still. Yeah. So George was still there. And George was a total creeper. And he was watching her sleep and bathe and go to the bathroom. And she said she felt like people didn't really want to come to her home.
Her pet was uncomfortable. There was every sign of an entity who really was just not the best. So I was able to interact with George. We did clear the space physically. There are several ways to do that. You can use bells, you can use sage or other herbs to burn. Like I said, there's lots of ways to go about it. And I helped her figure out how she would maintain her boundaries in this space clearing situation. And George agreed to leave.
But I asked him if he would actually leave the whole building. Because it was a building of all women.
Wow.
Yeah. It was a space that was just all apartments for women and female identifying people. And I was just like, George, it'd be really great if you could find somewhere else to be besides watching these ladies sleep and undress. So, yeah, George was not ready to cross over into a new life. He was kind of a miserable spirit. And in his case, I could Claire audiently hear him. That's not always the case, but I'm really glad I could, because he definitely needed to go.
He was sapping the energy of that woman very specifically, but probably also the building in general. And because he had lived there, he felt entitled to the space. He felt like, I have every right to be here. I lived here too. And, in fact, the curtains in her living room were hung by him during his physical life.
Wow.
So, yeah, he was just like, well, this is still my stuff. And I'm like, guess what? You can't use this anymore. You have to go. What you're doing isn't right, and you know it. You know, you're invading on her privacy.
Did he ever get physically abusive? Any complaints about that?
No. Luckily, no. He was not the type of entity that was touching and or moving objects. Either he didn't want to, or he was just a voyeur, maybe.
Got you.
He was a voyeur. Let's leave it at that.
You're kind of a dirty old guy. I got you. We've explained this before. There's residual hauntings and intelligent hauntings.
Correct.
So this would be what you would say, intelligent because he's not showing up at 03:00 in the morning every time at the bedside. Intelligent. Yeah.
No, he was very much. He was an interactive. I use residual and interactive when I talk about ghosts. But, yeah, same idea. He was an interactive, intelligent. He was. That might be too much of a compliment.
George, you old. Anyway, what do you think? I always ask this to all my guests. What do you think is worse? And I don't mean worse in the sense of like, it's really bad or whatever, but would you rather have a residual haunting in your house or an intelligent haunting, which you think would be like if you had to deal with it? Which one?
Oh, I don't see why a residual will be a problem at all. I think you would just get used to it. You're assuming also that I could see or hear it, right? Yeah. It would be lovely not to have a residual. That's somebody getting murdered at 03:00 a.m. Every day. I don't necessarily want to see that over and over.
Yeah, right.
I could probably rearrange a little bit and move and let them do their thing. But I understand that a residual is just like a scar on time space. It's nothing personal. They're never going to change. I have a scar in my hand right here from a curling iron. It's never going to go away. I'll always remember that day that I was rushing to curl my hair. And it just is what it is. So I don't take those kinds of hauntings very personally. Some of them are tragic, to be sure.
There's a space in Ellicott City, Maryland, where I give ghost tours that there was a young man who got shot in the back and fell down a staircase. And that is the residual. It is when he gets shot and falls. I mean, it's a really terrible way to kill someone, shoot them in the back. And it was a military situation, so it wasn't exactly honorable. But poor guy. Yes. He shows up in the same staircase, getting shot in the back over and over. But it's not an interactive haunting. It never changes.
It's been that way for over 100 years. But the interactive spirits can be something else. Some other totally different ball of wax. You hope you get one that's friendly and in a good mood, or that's even useful.
Yeah, there you go.
Within my ghost tours, there are actually quite helpful spirits that are very.
Speaking of ghost tours, why don't you share some stories from that? So that's a good segue.
Sure. So there's a space where I give ghost tours in Pennsylvania, and there's a housekeeper. The space is now an arcade. It was an apartment building when she was the housekeeper there. And she will wake up sleeping employees, and you hear a vacuum running. And I was just like, this is the kind of haunting that every business needs. Every business needs a ghost housekeeper who will keep the employees in line and make sure they're not literally sleeping on the job and keep the place clean.
I feel like if this is what people's ghost experience is, they'd be like, I'm in favor of it. This sounds great.
Yeah, absolutely. I had a guest on just episode ago where there was a ghost in his laundry room. And I said, well, as long as he's doing the laundry, what's the problem? And he says, no, he wasn't doing the laundry, unfortunately.
Yeah. There's another really helpful ghost in Ellicott City, Maryland. And she's called the cooking ghost, and she works in what's now a law library. Used to be a residence. She was the cook there. So there's no kitchen in the space anymore. It's a law library. But there is a coffee maker. And frequently the people who work in that law library will come in in the morning, and the space is tidy and the coffee is made, and no one has been there. Like, there's fresh coffee in the pot.
And I'm like, I don't see why anybody'd have trouble with a haunting like that. Now, occasionally they're spooked because they see her, and she'll be sitting in a rocking chair that's not there, rocking, looking out the window. And I'm like, you know, can you deal with that for the fact that she also makes your coffee and cleans up? I think that's a fair trade.
Absolutely. On your ghost tours, have you ever had something not bad happen, but something like, out of the ordinary that was affected, maybe you and the people you were with?
So I don't startle too easily, I'm guessing.
No.
Yeah, I don't startle too easily. And I have interacted with lots and lots of spirit entities in my lifetime, and there are some that are very familiar to me, so I'm almost disappointed when they don't show up. But I'm like, seriously, where were you? I was here.
Yeah.
I have another practice that you might find eccentric, but I'm going to share it anyway. I like to go out before my tours and stop at the buildings where I know I'm going to be telling ghost stories and let the ghosts know, we're coming and say, so, betsy, for example, at one of the, say, you know, betsy, I'm bringing some folks by tomorrow night. I just wanted to let you know we'll be here.
And you don't have to show up in the window or anything, but I just wanted you to know we're then, you know, when I close up my tours for the year, which is where we're at right now, it's wintertime and ghost tours are over. We're in the off season. I usually swing by all the spaces, and I tell my ghosts, like, I won't be back for a while. It's not because we don't want to talk about you. It's just because tourists don't come at this time of year.
So have a good winter, and I'll be back and visit you again soon.
That's really cool. That is a really nice way to kind of end up with that, because I know during COVID what the biggest thing for people was. And you maybe heard some stories that people who are stuck at home, they knew their houses was haunted, right? Was kind of like, oh, man, now.
I get 24/7 with that ghost. Well, the ghosts were probably also like, why are you here? Go away. This is my house. During the day when you're at work.
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm guessing just because of your history and all the things you've talked about, Risa, that you haven't had, have you ever had an experience where something really shook you because you said you don't get shaken very easy, but was there any time where you were just really shaken by something, whether it be mentally, physically, or bold?
So I have encountered a shadow person. I'm sure you know the stories of them. Yeah.
Yes, I do.
I was a child, and I knew it was not a good thing, but I was a very precocious little girl. And as it was trying to interact with me, I remember saying, like, why would I make that deal with you? I really don't understand. I think I eventually annoyed it so much by asking so many questions that it finally walked through the wall and left. But I knew that it was different from the other spirits. It looked different, it felt different.
And I look back sometimes, and I'm like, I can't believe I just kind of, like, annoyed the **** out of that dark entity and finally made it go away. But I guess that was one way to go. Go ahead.
No, keep on going. I'm just curious about how this ended or what you did with it.
It's never come back. And I do give ghost tours at places where I know there are shadow people, but I haven't witnessed one. I actually had a medium tell me that because I wear all black a lot, and I definitely would fall into a goth girl category. But let me tell you, I definitely am a cheerful, upbeat person as well. The spirits that tend to like me and to linger with me tend to be really positive and upbeat as well.
And I think that I attract that, and I also treat all spirit entities with respect. I don't walk up to the building and start banging on the door. I have had people do that on my ghost tours, and I'm like, you need to step back. First of all, that is historic building and private property. Stop immediately. So I did go on a ghost hunt one time with a group, and some of the folks on it were incredibly disrespectful and to the point where some of the guests were crying.
And I just don't think that's the right way to treat anybody. It doesn't matter if they're in this realm or the next. Like, yelling at people and banging on walls and doors is really not a respectful way to communicate with anything. Yeah. And I was like, I understand the idea to walk in and put out an energy that you're in charge, but you don't have to do that.
You don't have to raise your voice to do that at all, because I know when they handed me the reins, then they were like, oh, this is coming so easily to you. I was like, yeah, I just apologized for how rude you were and said that if they want to have a respectful conversation with me, I'm open. And it went much more smoothly. I think that.
Imagine you're an intelligent, interactive entity, and you're, for whatever reason, either choosing to stay in a space or stuck in a space, because I think there are both situations. Would you want someone to treat you rudely?
Probably not, no.
Yeah. So I think that part of my approach is just that I don't enter in assuming the worst. I enter in assuming rapport. And I don't know why that. It seems to work pretty well. I walk in with confidence, and I assume rapport.
Yeah, that is great. Have you ever witnessed, you said a little bit about people being, unfortunately, obnoxious and rude and disrespectful? Have you ever witnessed where someone did that and then kind of got their comeuppance, if you want to say, kind of got retaliated?
Again, I have stories about it. I didn't personally witness it. I know of a ghost in Maryland that has pushed people. Not.
It isn't George.
No, George was actually in Pennsylvania. George was a pretty disrespectful spirit, but, yeah, as far as spirits go. There is a spirit at one of the museums where I occasionally give talks that if you are being bad, like, say, a child on a school group, it'll give you a push in the back. It will let you know or scratch you. It will say, like, stop. Now, this is my place, and you're disrespecting the integrity of the space. So you need to straighten out yourself out.
Okay. There is an entity that's considered kind of a dark entity in one of the spaces where I give chores, and I haven't personally encountered it. I've been in the space. It didn't come out for me, which honestly, like I said, doesn't surprise me all that much. But that said, it has pushed people down the stairs. It pushed a construction worker down, and he needed stitches across his neck because he was bleeding across his neck.
When this spirit entity, I guess it did not like the construction that was going on there.
Sure.
So, yeah, that's the thing, too. A lot of times, spirits don't want you to change their.
Right? Yeah, just like you're saying with George. Like, if the women would have came in and ripped everything down and started, I don't know, doing whatever, putting on fresh paint, ripping down walls, renovating the. Hey, hey, this is my stuff. You threw it around with that. And that obviously is a lot of stories with that. So wrapping up, man, I could talk to you for hours.
Well, you can always have me back another time, if you like.
I will have you back. I guarantee you I'll have you back another time because we could talk another hour. But let me ask you, that favorite cryptid, do you have one up the top of your cryptid?
I do love the chupacabra. Chupacabra is a new cryptid, as cryptids go.
Can you please explain that to my spooky friends who may not know what chupacabra is?
Oh, sure. So chupacabra is a cryptid that was first sighted in Puerto Rico in the 90s. So chupacabra is a new cryptid, and chupacabra is the goat sucker. It is a vampireic cryptid. It does live in the category of vampires as well because it literally sucks livestock dry of blood. Now, it has migrated with people across the. So up here in the mid Atlantic, there's actually police reports now of chupacabra sightings I have not personally seen one, but I absolutely love the artwork.
And sometimes they're very small, like the size of a dog or a coyote. And sometimes they're large and they have wings, and they're quite wild looking. They look like. So, you know, if you love the idea of a chupacabra, Netflix did do a children's movie about Chupa, which is a baby chupacabra, and it's absolutely adorable. And it will make fall in love with chupacabras.
Yes, you will.
Because, of course, spoiler alert, the baby Chupacabra is super cute and saved the hero. I do love a chupacabra, and I love the fact that it's such a new cryptid, and yet it's already been endeared to hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe not the people who believe it is the culprit for killing their goats, but maybe not them. They're not endeared to it at all.
They're not to it. Yes.
But even though I've definitely collected many, many cryptid stories from eyewitnesses, I have not yet personally experienced a. Neither have it. They just haven't shown up for me.
Yeah, neither have I. We here in Wisconsin have the beast of many stories about it. Right. Kind of a werewolf and stuff. But people have done numerous documentaries on us. There's been sightings. There's been a lot of stories.
One of these days, actually.
Yeah, it's fun. One of the things, too. Also, we have some serpents in the lakes. We also have, well, the Michigan dog man, that's in Michigan. But we have something similar, because if you go up north in Wisconsin, just know in your area, if you go up anywhere up in the woods and northern wherever, there's going to be woods, usually. And just a lot of area for maybe, who knows? Right? And Bigfoot's still going to be the grandpa of everything. Always going to be the grandfather.
I think that some of the other cryptids that are just as old as Bigfoot, but maybe don't get as much press are the sea and lake monsters, as well as the large flying birds like the thunderbird. They go back to native lore. The Bigfoot goes back to native lore as well, of course. But there are others, too. There are others that are just as old, but for whatever reason, they haven't captured the public's imagination in the same.
Yeah, like, we have a serpent in a lake that's supposed to be similar to kind of loch Ness monster. Kind of similar that. Also one in devil's Lake here. It's shaped like a devil's horns. That's the only reason he calls Devil's leg. It's nothing to do with the devil at all. But anyway, thank you so much for being on the show, Russo. I'm definitely going to have you back because I have 8 million other questions to ask you. Different topics and history.
And so I didn't get to them because, like I said, I could talk to you for hours. But let me ask you this. If people were to get a hold of you, what would you say to them? If they're reaching out to you, what's the best way and kind of what you could help them with? Maybe. I don't know.
You tell me. Yeah. So the best way to find me is my website. It's tandsmoke.com. Like, everything's spelled out, t. Like, you drink and smoke, like, from a sage bunch, right? So I have a website. From there, you could find me on YouTube and Instagram. And I'm not always super fast, but I answer questions. I always reply if you have a question.
And that website will lead you to where I give talks and ghost tours, as well as how to get a tea leaf reading if you want one, which I do most of them remotely.
Yes. Amazing. Please. I will put this all in the show. Notes and everything. Please reach out Thereissa. She's amazing. I can tell already. We're going to be spooky friends. We're going to be good. And I'll definitely have you back on the show to talk about some folklore, which I didn't get to, some history, maybe some occult stuff. So again, thank you so much. It's been great having you on the show. We always end the show two ways. Different ways. One, say hi to your ghost. Hello, ghost.
Because you never know, you might have a ghost there. And then stay spooky. Thank you so much, Risa.
Thank you.
Have a great day.