What's that at the bed spooky? I'm pretty sure it's dead. It's coming this way. Wait a minute, i'd hiros dress. Hey boo, it's me Raz, Happy Halloween time. I can't think of a better guest to be joined by than Michelle Bell and j who has been on this show before. People went crazy for her, so gotta get her back on and I'm sure I'm hoping this won't be the
last time. And if you don't know who Michelle is, she's been on TV shows like Paranormal State and one of my favorites, Portal to Hell, and she's been on this show also, And so if you want to go back and hear more about her haunted AIRB and B her psychic abilities. She's also a demonologist, you can go back and listen. Actually, not that long ago, maybe six
months ago or so. She was on the show that was posted on April fifteenth, and it was a two parter, so also April twenty second, so go check that out as well. She also was a great website that is very comprehensive. She's written a lot of books as well, So on this week's episode today we're going to be talking more about that haunted airb and b of hers and you know, protecting yourself from dark energies, and we get into psychic vampirism, which is something I don't think
has ever come up on the show. And this is also going to be a two part so we'll have more to talk about next week with Michelle as well. And this week on Patreon, I asked her a question I've always wondered. Can human spirits possess living humans? You know what I mean? Like it's always so always talking about these demons are possessing people, but like, you know, could just like you know, your good old fashioned ghost get inside of a human. And Michelle had an answer
and an incredible story to share. So that's on my second tier Patreon Patreon dot com slash roles dres Falas. And while I'm promoting things, I should also tell you that indeed, the first live show back after Lockdown and everything, a COVID Safe Ghosted live show in Los Angeles, has
sold out. So I've decided to add another show and I'm going to do that on Saturday of Halloween weekend, So it's Saturday, the thirtieth of October, and that is at the Cavern clubs, celebrity theater at Casita del Campo, gorgeous Mexican restaurant. Eat, go, eat some Mexican food, and then come on down, come on down to the little theater that people say is haunted. And I've got some silly you know, just typical raws, stupid, silly paranormal comedy
for you. And I'm also gonna have a surprise guest or too. Different shows, different nights, well, different guests, different nights. I'm sure there'll be similarities between the shows, so if you're able to go, that will be the thirtieth. I have the ticket link in the description of this episode, and also in there the ghosted merch link is back up. It was down for a minute, it's back. I've got pins, I've got stickers, I've got t shirts, I've got teut bags.
You can find all of that in the description of this episode. Okay, I think it's time to get into another conversation with one of my favorite guests, Michelle Bell and Jay On with the show. I am so honored to be joined again by one of the most brilliant minds on the occult, the paranormal, the supernatural, all the things that we love to talk about. Michelle Bellanjay, welcome back.
Hello, thank you for having me again.
I loved having you last time, and you answered so many of my questions. And don't you worry, I have got I've got a lot more for you. I was actually just watching I stumbled upon this show that I've fallen in love with on Netflix. It's called what is it called The Most the World's Most Amazing Vacation Rentals? And who do I see but you and the B and B your Airbnb, your haunted Airbnb that we talked about the last time you were here, and I loved it?
How was that? How was that experience having them come by?
The hardest thing was keeping quiet about it for nearly two years because that was in the works for a while and the pandemic sort of hung it up a little bit. But they were so sweet. I love the hosts.
They're so cute. I love them so much energy.
They were just enthusiastic about everything, and the folks who filmed there were very respectful of the place and as for like. As for inspiration House's debut on a television show, I couldn't have asked for better because it was more about the house and its history and why I love it than just trying to make it spooky sensational.
Yeah, because it does seem like a very positive haunting. You know, it's not a spooky haunting from what I've seen and from what you've said. So have you have you considered or has it come up or I don't know if you can answer, I'm not sure, but having other paranormal shows go to the house, I.
Am definitely open to the possibility. I know that one thing working against it for that is the fact that it's not a really scary haunting. Yes, multiple people have died in the house, but they all died of natural causes. There's no deep, dark, spooky history. It's just a charming haunting. It is really active though, like the music boxes play
by themselves. You hear people walking up and down the halls, doors open and closed, the typewriter types, and on multiple occasions, like the order, the basement will rattle like somebody's on the other side of it. So kind of horror movie level stuff and yet also nothing threatening, just really physical.
Yeah, because that's the thing these paranormal shows. They always wanted to be the scariest. Yeah, for the first time in television history. We're gonna see the devil walk. Yeah, that's what they want.
Toddy Dimmon's an inspiration House. They are things that I brought there myself, with the things into the display room.
Yeah. We actually last time you were here, we didn't talk about why the house is haunted. Can you tell the story of that.
I wish I knew precisely why, But I think it's a combination of the land place, the age of the house, and possibly what it's constructed of. Something about inspiration House really holds onto energy and emotional impressions, and this is something that we find in a lot of classic hauntings every place, from Waverley Hills to trans Eleganty Lunatic Asylum to all the haunted prisons. Most of them are of a brick or stone construction. I mean that's not exclusive,
but an awful lot of them are. And something about where they're at and the length of time that people either stayed there or had strong emotional experiences there, seems to wear its way into the fabric of the space. An Inspiration House is no different.
Huh. Yeah, because I've heard is that sort of what like the stone Tape theory.
Is it's related to it, and some of the stone tape theory comes down to whether or not the stones have a high courtz content. I've heard series about it being limestone or a high like ferros magnet like like
a lot of iron influencing electromagnetic forces. Some of that gets into some dodgy pseudoscience, but there there is something interesting about the topography, the actual like geology of locations where haunts seem to occur, and I think it bears a little bit more research than maybe has been given to it over time.
Okay, Yeah, that's something that I feel like I don't I don't hear enough about, like you know, the relationship to the earth, water, you know, all these elements. I think sometimes people look over them and they get so caught up on tragic murders that happen in a location or just the deaths in general, and they don't think about all of that.
Yeah, and something is definitely about is connected to the land there. Some of that might also be The house was built in eighteen sixty nine, finished in eighteen seventy, but there was another house on that property that predated it that does have a very historic connection to the Underground Railroad. Reverend James Fitch and his wife lived there.
I believe his brother in law lived there as well, and they were connected to something called the Wellington Rescue, where James Fitch ended up in jail for over one hundred days. I think it might have been more than a year, protesting the recapture of a freedom seeker, John Price. And it was something that predated the Civil War but really kind of fanned the flames in a way that we would relate to sort of the George Floyd murder these days in terms of public outcry for how people
are being treated. John Price was someone who was abducted on his way to work. They beat him, they threw him in a carriage. They drove him one town over where they knew they would be received a little bit more kindly as slave catchers from Kentucky and Oberlin, which is where Inspiration Houses had been an abolitionist town since its founding. And the brother in law of Reverend Fitch heard John Price crying for help, and there was like this daring carriage race to try to get to where
they were keeping him in prison. A ton of folks from Overlood showed up they staged a protest, and while they were keeping everybody occupied in the front, somebody broke John Price out and the first place they hid him was the Fitch property where Inspiration House currently stands.
Wow, so when you move into this player, when you know acquire this property, did you know this history or that it might be haunted.
I did not know that history at all. The only reason I started to dig into the underground railroad connection was enough of my friends and like local investigators had gotten dps and things that started to steer them toward the underground railroad. And I was like, but the house was built after the Civil War, that doesn't make sense. And then found that what it was built on was one of the few houses that they knew for sure had hidden passageways and booby traps to better hide people
and to deter their capture. So the Fitches were not messing around for their whole conductor thing like they they were pretty into it.
Oh my god. So during the pandemic, you know, I guess, really, since I've talked to you last, which wasn't even that long ago, has there been a lot of activity at the house.
Yeah. I will say that when we were looking for a place to be kind of my location for in person classes. I'd been hoping for something that was haunted, and when we first walked into Inspiration House, there was definitely a feel to it, so I had a sense that there was going to be something going on there. I really didn't anticipate that I had hit the jackpot in terms of a friendly spirits and be really physically
active ones with the pandemic. The one downside is I can't do classes and stuff in person anymore, but we do still let people go there and do self directed stays so they can stay for a weekend, stay for a week however long they want, and then just get to know the house. And there's been a lot of that going on and a lot of feedback from people where you know, over and over again, certain consistent activity is confirmed, including my favorite ghost on the property, a ghost dog.
Oh oh, I like that. I mean there's something about ghost dogs that like slightly creeps me out, only because my I think that my legs must taste good or something, because dogs always lick my legs, and the thought of feeling a lick on my leg that I disembodied tongue on my leg would scare the shit on me. I mean, what does this dog do?
People will hear him moving up and down the halls, so like the attack of like, you know, clad feet people. Yeah, people have heard him, especially in the king bedroom, trying to crawl up on the bed. Several people have felt him crawl up on the bed. And he's actually a full bodied apparition. People have mistaken him for an actual living dog looking out the windows. We have a neighbor. We can't convince that we don't have a dog. They all report the same general look of a dog, which
actually fits interestingly an English setter. And because I am a researcher of an obsessive degree, I was able to find one of the families that moved in in the turn of the century, the early nineteen hundreds, they had a dog registered to the American Kennel Association. His name was Nick Gleam and he was an English Setter. Wow.
Wow, who finds that out? I mean, that's pretty incredible.
I was really lucky. I was poking around through Google books, just basically google whack their names to see where they came up. And since all of it was copyright free stuff, A circular from the American Kennels Association popped up with the name of one of the residents, and I'm like, well, this is interesting, and then I'm like, holy crap, it's the dog.
Well, so when you said that there, if there were demons, it could have been because of something you brought in. I mean, do you why would you say that.
I have what I referred to as my big box of demons. And it's not that there is like actually, you know, demon spirits locked in it. But when I was doing my book, The Dictionary of Demons for the first edition, there were several sigils that I needed better
images of. So on the night of December thirty first, two thousand and nine, moving to January first, twenty ten, I sat down with some modern parchment paper and a fountain pen and I recreated several of these and how there's maybe twenty twenty five of them, and I didn't want to throw them out, like I scanned them, sent them into the publisher. And so there's a big box of these like little hand drawn siguls that I just
kind of keep around. They're not necessarily sigels for demons, especially in the magic of the Middle Ages and renaissance are less about While they are used in summoning, they are more used to control and protect yourself from the spirit, and so I usually will warn people if they go poking around the display row. If you open this box and you don't know what you're dealing with, this might
be really disconcerting. And also these are harmless. Really, they're just art unless they are used in a much more elaborate ritual setup than we have on the property, or that most people even know how to do.
Currently, I read the second edition of Ghost Hunter's Guide to the Occult, which I love, and I encourage people listening to this to go out and get it and the glossary alone. I mean, there's so much good stuff in here. And it made me think a lot about this kind of this idea of well your intentions with Like the first thing I was thinking was like a Oija board, for example, Everyone's favorite topic a Oija board.
So if you're not looking for trouble, or you're not looking to open a door or talk to the two demons or something, how does it still happen been or does it still happen or what's going on with that?
Well? I mean, obviously Ouiji boards are pretty controversial, although mostly that reputation was earned through the movie The Exorcist. There's a lot of pop culture baggage that comes with this. In the late eighteen hundreds early early twentieth century, Wiji boards were a parlor game, like literally a way of
just sitting around. Sometimes it was an excuse for a lady and her gentleman friend to bend very closely over a table in close quarters and flirt with one another, and sort of the way that I think in the seventies and the eighties you would take your girlfriend to or your friend of choice to a scary movie and hope that everybody would be so upset that you would have to wrapprehand around them and like pull them in tight to comfort them.
Class So orig that flix and chill.
It really was. But what we see with Wiji boards in their pop culture presentation really gives them a reputation that they don't deserve. There any other method of spirit communication. You will see people on ghost shows using everything from a K two meter to a novelist to a spirit box, and every one of these is using in theory a spirit stability to affect something physical to then give the living audience a physical palpable communication. Wijia boards no different.
The real trouble with the Ouiji board is what it probably operates on in most cases, and I would see, like probably ninety five percent of the time something called idio motor response. So you're sitting there with this board and you have a planch that's the little pointer, and everybody puts a couple of fingers on that, or if you're doing it solo, you put your fingers on it, and you're holding your hands over that very carefully, expecting
or dreading it to move at some point. Well, our bodies do micro motions, like there's a small amount of movement that we're doing unconsciously, whether we mean to or not, and with the expectation that this is an object that will move in response to communications. It's very easy for us to set up the expectation and to unconsciously cause it to move, not even when somebody's trying to fake it,
but without meaning to. Often the movement is caused by the people who are sitting on the board, which is also why it's so frequently likely to tell you the things that you are expecting to hear, or the things you hear you fear most.
Right, Well, it's no fun if you're at a slump party and the wija boards just like, Hi, you look pretty like now people they wanted to say something terrifying.
I have a slumber party memory with a Ouiji board where and I can only imagine I know the friends that I was with so where we had a long dissertation about which of our teachers were virgins.
So, but what I'm wondering is similar to what I was just thinking with a wija board. If you have these symbols in your home that like, for example, I see a lot of Baphomet merch these days, and I think some people might think that that draws demons towards you, or you know, having these items a pentagram upside down or you know, these things can can that happen? Are they? Are they? You know? Signals for dark energies?
Not really. A symbol has exactly as much power and meaning as the person who's using it gives to it. So if you've acquired this because you want to put it on your altar, and you are using it as a focal point for the spirit of bafume or anything, then it will have more ability to connect to that, But most of that ability is coming from you, the person, than the object. And I've seen that again and again.
It's important to keep in mind that some symbols that we as a culture will look at and find incredibly terrifying. A five pointed star, even an upside down five pointed star, has been sort of promoted as a Satanic symbol. But if you go back one hundred years, one hundred and fifty years, you may find a five pointed start, even upside down as an architectural device, even in certain churches,
even as hex symbols on barns in Pennsylvania. It's an old symbol and it's had many uses, and in order to understand what it's supposed to do, you have to understand the context. So that alone tells us that it's not the symbol itself. It's the intention. It's the use that is being put to, and it's the people who
are making use of it. So if you just buy it because it looks cool and you want to like class up your Halloween sort of atmosphere, you are not going to have a house full of terrifying things unless you really want it. Ah.
Okay, now, but what about the fact that I constantly am the opposite, like stay away, stay away, stay away? Does does that work that way? Does it really keep them away?
Most spirits are polite and will listen to boundaries when you set them. There are obviously exceptions to the rule, in the same way that there's exceptions of the rule with people. Most people, if you say, hey, don't touch me, they will in fact respect that. And then there are a few people who are just awful. And the same goes for the spirit world. There are some things that are awful, but they're really not as widespread as so many of the shows and movies make them out to be.
Yeah, well, I'm always talking about ghosts touching people and not asking for consent and just they just if they want to touch you. They seems like they just go ahead and touch you. But if I tell that, if I walk into a haunted space and say, don't touch me, do you think that that will work? Typically I do that all the time.
It's the one thing that crosses the line for me, and I do not like to be touched unless I have invited the touch. And that goes for a living people, dead people in between. So yeah, I make a point of saying, like I basically of setting the rules of engagement. What boundaries of interaction am I willing to tolerate. I don't have a problem with things communicating in images and words, you know, passing emotions along so I can feel them, but you know, don't grab me.
Have you been grabbed by an unseen force?
A couple of times when I was younger, I had something I could push me down on the bed in a way that I really did not like at a hotel in Wisconsin, Milwaukee that was I would have written it off as a night terror, except the same thing happened to my buddy who was sleeping in the room as well. And when we compare notes, we had had identical experiences.
Like it pushed you like you were standing and it pushed you down or.
Held me down. I was, I was already down on the bed, and there was it was that classic like hag attack of something like looming over you and pressing you into the bed and not being able to get up. And like I said, I pretty logically was like, well, this is this is just a you know, sleep paralysis. But my buddy was acting kind of cagey as well. And I'm like, hey, are you sleeping okay in this room? Then he's like, nope, tell me what you experienced. And you know we're up there for gen con so or
not gen coin was it? Was it origins Gaming Convention? Big geek thing?
Okay? Yeah. I've always felt that sleep paralysis gets real uh freaky seeky when more than one person experiences it, or you know, if anytime someone sleeps in that room they experience And that's when I'm like, I don't know if this is just a sleep paralysis occurrence.
That's usually my measuring stick for whether or not it's not straight up sleep paralysis if multiple people are experiencing it, or if when someone is experiencing sleep paralysis, someone else in the room or the house is also perceiving something, or if pets are responding to a presence, that makes me want to dig a little deeper into what's going on.
What do you know about the sleeping on your face as opposed to your back or you sleep on your stomach as opposed to your back with sleep paralysis because I'm always sleeping on my stomach because I've heard that it doesn't happen if you as much. If you do. That Is that true?
Ncdotally, if you sleep on your back, you are more prone to it. But I I don't know what the statistics are for that, whether or not it's been like one hundred percent scientifically proven. I will say for myself, I do a lot of dreamwork and a lot of visionary stuff while I'm sleeping. If I want to contain like a sort of hypnogogic consciousness like that in between state between sleeping and waking, doing it while on my
back is better. I'm more likely to just fall asleep if I roll over on my side.
Well, let's talk about the occult some more, because now I'm like, I've got so much on my mind from reading your book, and uh, you know a lot about this stuff. I don't know how a human can have so much knowledge. You are you blow my mind. But I guess that's a simple question. What what is the occult?
It really means secret, hidden. I think it the same root word as occluded. I know a lot of people these days will see occult and all they hear is cult and think that it means, you know, dark satanic evil, and that's really misleading. Anything that delves into the hidden or mysterious side of our experiences, and the world is technically occult. So the paranormal thirty forty fifty years ago certainly would have still be seen as the occult. We've
just kind of rebranded it these days. I would say that most people who use the term occult or occultist as a personal identifier are folks who are proving for me, folks who are probing a little more deeply than simply ghost where there's a little bit more practice of magic, a little bit more ritual research, delving into some of the more forbidden aspects, or at least things perceived to be forbidden, the study not only of human spirits, but of non human entities, even demons.
Well that's the part that I can't help. But I'm drawn to the spooky shaitan me too. So what is the benefit of a ghost hunter knowing about the occult?
First and foremost, if you are educated in the occult, you are better able to assess what might actually have happened in a location, confirm or rule out claims that there were rituals or some sort of like Satanic sacrifice, because you are able to recognize accurate symbols accurate relics of ritual activity as opposed to, know, some fifteen year old who was listening to too much Ozzy Osbourne and just decided to slap a bunch of weird things on
the wall and feel really spooky, which you know, not to knock that, Like there's some fun in that, but it easily gets mistaken for much more formal and effective
ritual work. In addition to that, there are a lot of techniques in occult practices for dealing with spirits, not only experiencing them, but finding ways to protect yourself against them, to protect a space against them, to drive things out, to recognize what's good, what's bad, what's in between, and you don't want to, you know, get on its bad side, but it'll be fine if you leave it alone.
Yeah, the the protection part again constantly like I'll try anything like what crystal do I need to buy? Like I'm constantly and it always goes back to the fact that I'm talking about demons all the time and joking and and I just just don't want them to show up one day and say, hey, we heard you're running
your mouth. So I definitely am fascinated and curious. The part that I will constantly keep going back to in this book is the parts about protection, which uh so again with the intent and and that sort of conversation seems to be pretty a pretty big common thread throughout a lot of this is, you know, is saying a prayer or lighting your or your palo santo? Is that
enough for or do you need to believe it? Can someone just do that stuff because they read it in a book and they're good to go, or is there another step to it?
With the belief, it definitely helps for it to be meaningful to you to just grab a bundle of sage and try to act out what you think is a Native American ceremony without context or background, you are not going to have the same result. Which also means if smoke cleansing is something that resonates with you, you don't have to strictly settle for sage. There's a whole history of different types of incense and things that you could use, and I always recommend to people to experiment with what
feels like it resonates for them. You know, does polo santo seem like it is something that clears things for you better? Are you more of a lavender and rosemary. Person I personally like benzoin and sandalwood and frankincense. Actually not all at once. It's either frankincense or benzouin with
a little sandalwood. The idea, especially in terms of smoke cleansing, is that the smoke itself is sort of like the closest physical thing to the energy of the spirit world, and so you're sort of vibing with that to kind of crisscross between your realm and their roalm to get this stuff to cleanse. Now, I think it's also important to note that several of the things traditionally used for cleansing, especially with smoke cleansing, also have antiseptic, antibacterial, and antiviral properties.
So there's a very real likelihood that some of those traditions were handed down to us by our ancestors because they literally helped to clean a space.
Well, what I've also heard in more recent times that say to really had her moment, and now there's been lots of problems with over harvesting and just lots of shadiness going on with that. So I think it is good for people to explore other options besides just sage. Yeah, I think it's kind of the most popular, most commonly known one. But yeah, I like to hear about the other stuff too well. So let's say you don't have access to this stuff, or you don't have any prayers
of protection committed to memory. So so then what.
So salt Supernatural got a few things right? Or I should say that the folks who are writing Supernatural clearly read a few books. Salt has been used for cleansing for a long time. It's very popular among a lot of witches. Wigan practice. You don't necessarily need to use like an entire higher you know, box of morton salt and roll it across the threshold and all of the windows.
It's more seen as a sink for negative energy. So in the eighties, I remember raiki practitioners having like a little ball, a little bowl of salt, or a big salt crystal, one of those pink Bibetan lamps, the supposedly humalayan rock salt.
Oh, I have one just because I heard it could it might help.
They when they were clearing some people's energy, or when they felt that they were clearing out negativity. They would then focus it and literally like place it into the salt, almost like the recycling bind as a way to sort of imagine sending that back to the Earth or whatever forces then can take it and clear it and cycle the negative out of it without destroying the energy itself. A really quick and easy technique that builds on that that I recommended to people. And this is something you
can do because you have it in your house. If you feel overwhelmed by something or there's there's something you want to let go of, get a little bit of salt, put it in your hand, close your hand around it, think about what you're trying to let go of, and then just wash it off your hand, down the sink, let it go.
Hmm, okay.
Ninety nine percent of magic is also psychology. It helps you focus your intention. It gives you a meaningful symbol to kind of hang onto. So you have a tangible thing. So salt, smoke from various things. If you're asthmatic or allergic to smoke, don't worry about it. You don't have to use sage. Water is also another thing that has a long standing history as a cleansing agent. We see that with like the power of Christ compels you, you know,
throwing the Holy water all over the room. But the Catholics aren't the only ones who have in a corner of the market on the idea of holy water as something that clears and cleanses and blesses is something you can find in multiple religious systems as well as well
as folk traditions. And again we've all got that. Just nip into the bathroom you want to clear something off, put on the tap, put your hands under it, and just let whatever you need to let go of flow down the drain and also let that sensation of the cool water on your wrists and your hands help you
focus on what you want to let go of. It also help you bring yourself back to your body, being grounded, being centered, reminding yourself that you are in your body in this moment and you are in control is probably the most powerful tool you have for protecting yourself.
There's also the ball of white light. That's something that I hear about a lot.
Yes, that is really called shielding, and it is again another technique where you're using a focus to remind yourself that you have boundaries, that you have barriers, that you can be protected. You can do this through your own will power where it doesn't have to be a ball of white light. It can be any kind of shield or protective thing. There. There's a really really ancient prayer
that was adopted into Judaism and Christianity. I don't know if it has a cognate in Islam, and I apologize for that lack, but it goes back to Summer and Babylon, where you've got Michael on my right and Gabriel on my left, and basically you space out the four corners with different entities that you find protective. In Sumer and Babylon, it was Shamish and Inky and a couple of other gods that were associated with protection from from demail and
evil spirits. But you think about being protected at your right and on your left, before you and behind you, above you, and below you, and going through those steps. Protection on my right hand, protection on my left hand, protection in front of me, protection behind me, protection above me,
protection beneath me. Helps to orient you focus. You remind yourself that you have boundaries, that there is a step between you and the rest of the world, whether you see that as something that you're holding in your mind as a conceptual barrier of white light or whatever, or as something that you are asking for outside of yourself, a higher power to also facilitate in setting up those boundaries.
So is it too unfocused if somebody maybe like me, it does a little bit of everything.
I don't think that that's too unfocused. I think that there's a lot of power in trying things out and seeing what works for you. Right, and really like this Morgesborg technique is fine.
That's definitely what's going on over here. So when we're talking about like protecting ourselves from energies, this applies to both humans and you know, other worldly forces, right. Yeah, So can we talk about psychic vamporism, which I know is a topic you know a lot about. I've never talked about this with anybody.
Yeah, absolutely, So what is it? Psychic vamporism is the ability some people have to take energy, vitality, spirit from other people. Most of the time we're present with the idea of a psychic vampire as a negative person. So think of there are two broad topics for this, and I will call them Old Aunt Edna and that ass while at work, because we've all encountered these where you've got like this elderly relative who maybe she doesn't get out so much anymore, and she doesn't have a whole
lot of like social stimulation. And when you come over to visit, you will hear about every possible bad thing that has gone on in her life, all of the drama, from her bunions to her hemorrhoids, to the fact that like her dog vomited on her sneakers that day, and like she just you can feel her without meaning to, just literally sucking the life and the very will to live out of you. And by the time you're done, you kind of drag us out and you're just like, oh,
but why do I do this to myself? And she's very chipper now that she's you know, basically sucked you dry of your attention and your emotions and has almost certainly not the first clue that there was anything other than a conversation in that that she was what some people might call a vampire.
Okay, the other.
Person also may not be conscious of it. They might also be to some extent aware that they're preying on people. And this is the person who's a little bit more aggressive about it. They still find a way to push buttons. They will usually get up in your personal space. They will find ways to incite strong emotional reactions, usually through confrontation, but sometimes just in guilt or shame, and they will
incite this. They will find ways to create charged emotional interactions with people, and they clearly get something out of it. They are motivated by this need to pray off people to feel more powerful than them. They may also be a hybrid of aunt edna, and we see that in what we do in the Shadows with Colin, who is not necessarily aggressive all the time, but certainly just sucks the life out of people by not letting them go just constantly, is like, you know, just sipping off of
their attention and their focus. So there's some psychological things that can be going on with that. But if you believe that there is such a thing as energy or life force, that like reiki practitioners and shegoing specialists to work with every conversation we have, every interaction with another human being, there's some exchange that happens, and it's usually an equal exchange. Theater people are probably the most keenly aware of how this works. It Usually they don't frame
it in terms of psychicism or metaphysics. It's simply how theater works. Where if you're up there on the stage and the audience is not engaged, all of the energy you put into your performance just sort of falls flat and you end up exhausted by the end of it.
Oh yeah, right, right, you know how that goes? Like, there's there's this feel but you can feel when you're up on stage, when it's clicking, when everything that you're putting out is actually getting put back to you and then some and so it turns into this this reciprocal cycle. There is a give and take between you and the audience where everybody goes home feeling better.
Yeah, stand up comedy is that. I mean, I've done a lot of stand up, I've done a lot of theater, and and I've noticed that, like with stand up, if it's not going well, you have to figure out how to make it go well. Like with theater, if it's not going well, you have to keep doing the thing. Any stand up it's like, oh no, the energy is off. How do I get this energy back? And that is it can be very exhausting.
My favorite performer who is aware that this is a psychic effect as well as just how theater works, Dolly Parton. Oh, there is an interview. There is an interview where she straight up says I'm a psychic vampire.
Wow what that is, and.
Explains how that works and how she uses it as a performer. So the aunt Edna and the asphalt Works representations that I gave, those are folks who don't necessarily know what they're doing. Some people need more energy than others. Sort of makes sense, like some people are like really really high energy, some people less so, and some of those people have an invulnerability to take it from others
if they need it. And a conscious psychic vampire is someone he's just figured out how that works and can do it consciously and within the community, there are people who realize that this is a capacity that they have. It's part of their psychic ability, part of like their particular relationship with energy, and they simply choose to do
it in ways that are not destructive. See also Dolly Parton, who makes use of enormous crowds to get this cycle going in order to sustain what she needs, or or someone like me where I will do exchanges with someone who is trained in energy work, has enough to spare and is consensual in this exchange.
So in theory, if a human is a psychic vampire and they die and now they're a ghost. Does the ghost is the ghost you know, still a psychic vampire. Someone suck the life out of you.
Some of the some works about psycho vamporism and astro vamporism absolutely say yes. Now. I also think all spirits are vampiric to some degree or another. Every ghost hunter has experienced the fairly widespread battery drain, but more than that, the sense of going into a space and feeling really exhausted, like really oppressed on some level when it is a very active haunting. There's a point right before something physical happens in haunted places that everybody can feel a shift
in the energy. A lot of people will parse it a little bit like a barometric pressure shift, but many others will feel like something's been taken out of the space in order to fuel this effect. Personally, I believe that all spirits being energy need to support what they do and how they exist, and they need to eat and then it can no longer go down to the McDonald's and have a hamburger, so they need to take energy.
And I also think that living psychic vampires are folks I actually, I know for a fact that all the living psychic vampires that I know who are at least conscious about it are also fairly powerful energy workers in psychics. They're fueling something and they need fuel more than what they can eat with just you know, regular flesh and blood.
Wow, well thanks for that. I didn't you know. It's never come up, so thank you. I think it's a good thing to know about.
Handy handed Any tip if you think that you have if you think that you are being victimized by psychic vampire, first thing, move out of whatever.
Room you're in. If you're interacting with people, the highest likelihood is it's someone that you just interacted with in the past fifteen minutes. It's probablyably someone who either made physical contact or eye contact with you. It's probably somebody who talked to you. They may not be aware that they are taking your energy and that they're feeding off of you, which makes it kind of awkward to ask
them to stop. So if you move yourself out of their sphere of control, out of their space, you're likely to break their contact, their focus on you, and then just step into a bathroom or somewhere where you can control the space. Take a few moments to collect yourself, kind of check in to make sure that what you're feeling isn't just you know, a panic attack or you know,
asi reflux or something worse that's just purely physical. And if you're still one hundred percent sure this is an energetic thing, go through that step that I suggested with turn on the taps on the water, put your hands under the water, feel the water going over your wrists
and your hands. Bring yourself back into your body. Remind yourself that you do have boundaries, and assert those boundaries through whatever method of shielding works for you, whether that is the ball of white light or actually calling on a higher power. But make sure that by the end of it you have a strong sense of where you
begin and the rest of the world ends. And also that you have both the right and that you are sorry, and also that you are carrying your protections, that you have a right to be protected, that you are not a victim.
So how is this different than obsessing spirits?
I don't find too much of a difference. Some of it depends on the ultimate influence and intent of the spirit. Obsessing spirits that are trying to obsess or oppress a person will kind of connect to that person. Think of them like psychic lampreys or leeches. They make a can to the person, and sometimes they're content to just slurp off a little of your energy and your vitality.
Yeah, blurp off a little.
Some of them need a little bit more of an emotional engagement. Again, think about those psychic vampire examples, where strong emotional reactions get more out of the engagement. So some obsessing entities prefer terror, prefer your pain, prefer your depression, and they will find ways to incite those reactions. They will exude them until you mistake those emotions for your
own and feedback into whatever cycle they prefer. In my opinion, some of the most devastating psychic attacks and spiritual attacks are things randomly scratching you or or pushing you. It's something that puts out a miasma of negative emotion that's
so subtle you don't realize it's not yours. Before you know it, you're just sort of soaked in achy horrible negativity, whether it's depression or stuff that verges on suicidal ideation, or anger and rage and fury, and you're so saturated you no longer stop to ask why do I feel like this? Is this me? You just act on it.
Now. Is this different than possession?
Yes, there are sort of stages that lead up to possession. That can be a stage that leads to full possession, and not everything is trying to possess people. Some spirits really are motive to want to crawl around in a person's skin. I think of them a little bit, at least some of them, like teenagers that want a joy ride in a car. They don't really care so much about the body, at least not in the long term.
They want something out of being able to be in a physical body, whether it's pleasure, whether it's causing violence, whether it's just the thrill of it. So it usually goes oppression, obsession, possession where something is sort of think of it in terms of orbit. Something is orbiting near you and starting to have an influence on how you feel. Something has attached to the outside of you and is having a more significant impact on how you think, how
you feel, how you react. And then something finds a way inside of you, has warned you down to a point where where it can steer some of your movements, make you say things make you do things. Maybe you're conscious while this is happening, and maybe it's full possession where the person who was born into that body is shoved in a corner and may have no recollection of
the possessory state. Now that sounds terrifying, and I think it's important to mention that there are a number of religious and spiritual traditions where that is a desired state under certain circumstances. Voodoo is probably the best example where transpossessory states are a part of worship and spirit interaction. But there are very very clear circumstances under which that
is engaged with. There's structure, there's protections in place so that you know broadly what's going to take you over and how, and there are people there to basically act as your spotters.
Thank you so much to Michelle Belanja. And if you want to hear just a little bit more, gootopatreon dot com, slash roz dress Las in my second tier you can hear what Michelle has to say about human spirits possessing living humans. Also, go get you some ghosted merch in the description of this episode, and a ticket to the live show, which will be happening on the thirtieth in silver like Los Angeles, California. You can find that link
in this description of this episode. And I should also tell you that Michelle will be back next week and we get into religions and we you know, we're talking more occult stuff and it's fantastic. So make sure you're subscribed. Tell your friends about the show right at five stars if you like it. If you don't like it, why are you listening? If you have a ghost or you could leave it in a five star review, you could put it in our Facebook group called Ghosted by Roz
dress Fales. I want to do a listener episode again soon, so send those on over to Ghosted by Roz at gmail dot com with the subject line listener episode. You can find me on Instagram at Roz Hernandez. I'm on cameo Roz dress fALS. Wow, I have a lot to say about myself. I love you all, both living and dead. But if I didn't ask you to haunt me, don't haunt me. Came Back Star a podcast network