When The Demonic Knows Your Name

(Author's note--this is a 2019 reworking of a 2016 post that is very pertinent to what's going on right now. Enjoy it--except for Chip Coffey, who now hates me. Read on for why...it's hilarious. But make no mistake: the rest of this post is decidedly not funny, as you'll soon see for yourself.)

So you guys know I'm normally keeping myself pretty busy, and especially at this time of year. 2019 was originally supposed to be a leisurely writing year with a light publication schedule, but that has changed thanks to some stuff I can't announce yet. (Darn NDAs) So because I just cannot be too busy, this story is one I need to update, including new information we've learned that makes everything clearer.

And scarier.

I spent October of 2015 shredding the abysmal A&E television show Cursed: The Bell Witch and the absolutely execrable Destination America Exorcist Live! and putting together my blog series The Real Bell Witch, all of which you can see by going to the Paranormal, Bell Witch, and Zozo page tab at the top of the blog. I should probably mention here that because of me trashing Exorcist Live! I was blocked on Twitter by Chip Coffey, who must have psychically found my blog and gotten offended at the way I felt about his contributions to this said show. It's actually pretty damn funny when you think about it--I didn't follow him. Heck, I didn't really care enough to even check. Then a couple of years later someone directed me to a Tweet of his but I couldn't see it because I'd been blocked!

I had no idea a psychic needed Twitter. After all, shouldn't everything on their feed be old news? Shouldn't they have heebie-jeebied and known everything on their feed.

But I digress.

I'd been working with Tim Wood out at LiveSciFi on a series of articles about an investigation they did in Oklahoma City--an investigation into an entity known as Zozo or the Ouija board demon. If you've never heard of that name, do a quick Google search. In 2016, you would have turned up over 34 million results. 289,000 of those results were YouTube videos. And Tim was the king of the paranormal on YouTube with over 400,000 subscribers and 68 million views--and counting.

Now in 2019, those stats have all increased: 37 million results for Zozo on Google, 367,000 YouTube videos. Tim Wood's LSF channel now has over half a million subscribers and 90 million views. The weekend of the 2016 post, LSF was working with a guest investigator, Darren Evans, for a huge live stream collaboration. 

Let's link everything up real quick so that you can go see my 2015 articles, the Blogcritics interview, and the LiveSciFi site.

Tim and I subsequently conducted an experiment in 2017 where we tried to learn more about the entity. Tim contacted Zozo on the Ouija board every night for a month, while I stood as the control of the experiment. We live-streamed every video, documenting all the activity in front of the LiveSciFi audience. We collaborated on different things to try so we could arrive at a conclusion of what Zozo really was, and the evidence we got was actually pretty staggering. We subsequently co-wrote a book about our findings. Stalked by the Zozo Demon came out two months later, was a bestseller in paranormal non-fiction, and is available now on Amazon and other online e-tailers. (#ObligatoryBookPlug)

But the Zozo experiment led to serious repercussions.

I've since expanded my studies within the paranormal field and have delved deeply into the history and lore regarding the demonic. Won't be too much longer before I announce a couple of things that will encompass all that information. For that, you'll have to stay tuned. But this is my blog, so here I get to tell you about some of the crap that's gone on since Tim and I started researching the diabolical four years ago. We're still conducting that research--hell, the night we dissected a voodoo doll (video to the immediate right--> ) was the direct result of that research, and one of the creepiest paranormal objects I've ever seen by the way. (The woman who made that voodoo doll was consumed by hatred and rage that was seething through every stitch and ripple of fabric in the damn thing. That artifact is without a doubt the worst cursed/haunted object I've ever investigated.) But all this research also leads me to a story I've hinted about, but never told before the book came out.

My first encounter or battle against the diabolical. It's your lucky day.

In 2015, when I was interviewing Tim Wood and Darren Evans prior to the Zozo investigation,  I noticed several odd similarities in Tim and Darren's stories. Not the 'they talked ahead of time' similarities, but elements that popped up in their individual experiences with the demonic that had also popped up, frighteningly, in my own.  One of the articles I did, Ouija Board Demon Zozo--Connecting The Dots outlined those similarities. What I neglected to include in the story was how I shared many of those characteristics with the two investigators, and those events stemmed from my adolescence and two hauntings. One of those hauntings, of course, was the Bell Witch case in Adams, TN. You guys have heard all about my opinions and experiences with that right here on this blog (or you could hear about them if you click on the Bell Witch, Paranormal and Zozo tab). The other was the demonic oppression of a friend of mine in college--an oppression that manifested in activity right before my eyes that I absolutely could not explain. Seems appropriate to tell that story now. All the names, naturally, have been changed, and bear with me: by the end of this post, it'll all make sense.

My friend's oppression began after the death of his younger brother in a mysterious car wreck. The brother had been involved in a high school "coven" with nine friends. Of those ten kids, eight died: four in the same car accident, two by suicide, one murdered, and the last of some totally bizarre infection. I have no idea what happened to the other two. After his brother's funeral, the entity hopped to my friend, Jeno. 

Jeno was a smart, good-looking guy--football player, math whiz, popular kid with an infectious grin and a sweet personality. We attended the same college but I'd known him since high school, when he'd been in the same class I was. His family was Mormon and in every aspect he was just a normal, happy guy. But after his younger brother's death, everything suddenly went wrong. He literally started to almost wither into nothingness. Within a month, he looked gaunt and uptight. We shared a mutual friend--a guy named Rob and we would hang out some nights. We usually would go to this bizarre park in the middle of town, down this crazy steep hill and tucked away under the big railroad trestle that loomed hundreds of feet over our heads. That park was basically some fifty year old swings and a parking lot, but behind that were a few trails and a creek. We liked it there. People rarely went there during the day, much less the night, so we could hang out there and act like idiots or talk about our lives and no one ever disturbed us. 

On one of those nights during the fall of my sophomore year in college, we went to that park. It was September, and still warm but despite that, Jeno was wearing a turtleneck sweater. And as we sat in our usual spot in a clearing tucked out of sight of the road, Jeno told us what was happening to make him look so gaunt and stressed out. 

His house was haunted, he said, since his brother's death a few months earlier. He would wake up in the middle of the night, fighting with an unseen force pummeling him in the bed. Things would fly off his wall. Drawers would open and crash against the wall on the opposite side of the room. Strange shouts, bangs, and terrible smells would emanate from his younger brother's closed and unused bedroom.

I was fresh off my first investigation of the Bell Witch Cave and the Edens farm, where I'd experienced things much like what Jeno was talking about. In fact, I'd stood outside on the front porch of Bimms Eden's empty house and listened as the living room furniture was rearranged--things that neither Rob nor Jeno knew about. So I was able to take Jeno's story at face value.

But what I didn't expect was the condition of his body. 

The first time he lifted his shirt and showed the massive bruising on his torso, I was startled--and I couldn't help but be slightly skeptical as well. What I couldn't figure out was a trio of scratches that started on the right side of his neck and continued in an unbroken, continuous diagonal across his chest and finally terminated on his left hip. It was like someone had taken one of those little three-pronged gardening forks down his body, but the cuts were too deep and sharp-edged for that. They had scabbed over, and even the scabs were precise and identical.

For a few days after, I tried to figure out if there was some way to do that to oneself. It was so weird because the scratches were the same depth, the same width, and completely seamless. On top of that, Jeno was right-handed. There was no way he could have done that to himself with such perfect symmetry. But I didn't say anything to him about it at the time. When you're eighteen and a good-looking guy is telling you he's being attacked by a ghost his dead brother's coven conjured up, you figure it's probably not a good idea to interrogate him but just to act as if you totally buy into his story and be supportive of him that way. After all, he had just lost his brother. It only made sense to me that he would be have trouble dealing with his death. 

A few weeks later, we were hanging out in the same park. It was October--my birthday weekend, in fact--and it was one of those perfect, crisp autumn evenings you get in Tennessee when the season is changing. We weren't even talking about the haunting at the time; we were planning a road trip as I recollect. Jeno didn't drink, I couldn't drink, and Rob...was Rob. He was drinking, mean thing that he was. At any rate, we were laughing when all of a sudden Jeno screamed and fell backwards, landing basically on my lap. Instinctively, I grabbed his shoulders and his body was so hot (temperature) that I could feel the heat baking through his jacket and sweater.

The next thing I knew, three burns came up on the side of his throat. Each burn was as wide as my thumb and almost instantly blistered. Rob pulled off Jeno's shirt and those burns followed the exact same path as the scratches had. 

I saw those burns pop up. If you're a woman and have ever burned the side of your neck with a curling iron, that's exactly what it looked like. Except Jeno was six feet tall and those burns crossed his body like a sash and disappeared into the waistband of his jeans while he was wearing a thick cable-knit sweater and a Member's Only jacket. (dated myself there) And these weren't surface burns either; they were second degree burns. We took him to the ER--I don't even remember the BS story we told to try to spin the whole mess. That night after he was released, we took him back to Rob's place, figuring he might be able to rest there. Jeno pretty much passed out as soon as we tucked him up on the couch, exhausted as he was and full of pain meds, while Rob and I sat across the room trying to figure out what in the hell we'd just seen. 

I had been at the Bell Witch cave just a few days before, and had gotten several EVPs (my first ones, actually) before the cave suddenly went spook-monster on me and drove me out. So I was already a tad...jumpy and Rob knew this. But as we sat there trying to rationalize what had happened, the light bulb in the hanging lamp over his kitchen table exploded...like--legitimately exploded, glass shattering, sparks in the wiring, sounding like a pop gun kind of exploded. 

Rob and I just stared at each other over all that glass, and Jeno said suddenly from the couch, "It followed me here." 

My first thought at the moment was uncharitable to say the least. Thank you so fucking much for bringing your pet ghost, Jeno isn't the best retort in such a moment. But Jeno's voice was terrified and quiet all at the same time, and it made such an impact on me that I couldn't say a word. Rob, bless him, instantly popped up with, "Man, we need to take you to a church." 

That's when Jeno told us that the Mormon church in town had excommunicated him. He'd gone to them for help when all the manifestations began before his brother's death, and they had kicked him out of the church! 

Rob and I were both raised Catholic--Rob's mother was Spanish; mine was French--and we figured that if anyone would help Jeno, it would be the parish priest. So we loaded  Jeno into the back seat of my Bug (yes, I was a vintage VW kind of punk girl back in the day--a 1972 Superbeetle, Tennessee orange of course) and took him to the rectory next to the church both our families attended. Our parish priest was an awesome guy--a chain-smoking, Scotch-drinking, honest-to-God Irish lean whip of a man who had baptized, christened, and First Communion-ed me. The drive lasted maybe five minutes, and it was the longest five minutes of my life. After what we'd already seen that night, and the knowledge of how Jeno's brother had died, a VW Bug didn't seem like the safest place in the world to be. On top of that, it was three o'clock in the morning, and we were going to wake up a priest. 

It's a testament to who our priest was both as a man and a religious that we didn't even hesitate about going to him. This was the same priest I argued reproductive rights with, the same one who always told his congregation that if they were in spiritual trouble to come to him. Rob and I figured this would qualify, and all we wanted to do was to get Jeno to someone who knew what to do. 

The rectory was a sold-looking Victorian building. Rob, who was quite a bit smaller than Jeno, was literally hauling him up the front porch steps while I banged on the door and rang the doorbell. The porch light snapped on and our priest peered out then he opened the door. He took one look at the three of us (we probably looked like we were crazy) and immediately let us all into the house.

And what happened from that point on is something I don't talk about. I can't. We went through months of serious terror. There were further occasions when Jeno was attacked in front of me--the worst happened one night after he'd been kicked out of his parents' home and was living in a small apartment right off-campus. Jeno had two couches in his shabby living room. I was asleep on one and he was on the other when suddenly he screamed. I jumped up like a scalded cat and he was fighting for his life against something that was only visible because it was under the blanket with him, like some huge freaking guy had crept up on that couch with him and crawled under the quilt to strangle him. I hauled Jeno off the couch into the floor, the blanket went flat, and the attack stopped.

We sat up the rest of the night in the floor with every light in the house on and my rosary beads around his neck.

But there was nothing else I could do. I couldn't help him and organized religion wouldn't (at the time). The response of both the Mormon and Catholic Churches to Jeno's situation made me angry--angry enough to forego religion for a long, long time. Exorcisms were not something the Catholic church approved or even talked about openly at the time. Although our priest prayed with Jeno, blessed him, and conducted minor rites in the hope that something would alleviate his suffering he was told by his superiors to stop.

Father protested on Jeno's behalf (and also for Rob and me, since we were now getting peripheral notice from the entity), but the diocese was emphatic. The Catholic church rarely approved exorcisms, there was no exorcist in the diocese, and the bishop flat refused to sanction anything remotely resembling an exorcism for a non-Catholic. Probably as a result of his protests, our priest was moved to another parish within six months.  But before he left, he told me that it was dangerous to spend so much time with Jeno trying to help him and told Rob the same thing. Being know-it-all twenty-somethings, we ignored him.

Unfortunately, Rob told Jeno what the priest had said. Six weeks after that, Jeno left town and I have never heard from him again.

All that is history. Let's talk about the present, as in what has happened from 2015 to 2019 and specifically for Tim and me.

After I began to research and write the articles surrounding the 2015 investigation of the Zozo house, I was getting poked paranormally in my house. The notes I took that night and Darren's phone number mysteriously disappeared from my computer, even though I had saved my work (being a writer makes you autosave-suspicious) and turned off the computer that night. A pair of lights in my living room blew within three minutes of each other. One lamp fell from the end table for no reason--I watched it fall and there wasn't a cat near it or under it. My mother's rosary beads disappeared from my closed jewelry box in the bedroom. (I later found it under the living room couch.)  Had a few random bangs on the front door and one from inside the linen closet in the hallway. (I live in a century-old house). I spent three days looking at the TV or computer screen with one hand over my eye due to an almost incapacitating migraine that wouldn't respond to any kind of migraine medicines. Despite all this, I managed to get four articles and three press releases done on top of my normal, everyday workload.

The Zozo experiment exacerbated everything exponentially. As the month went on, Tim and I both began having parallel paranormal experiences including nightmares, poltergeist activity, shadow figures in our non-haunted homes, and extreme emotional swings. Lightning struck my house when I was interviewing I ended up quadruple-saving the rough draft of the book and my notes because they kept disappearing from my computer. We did several investigations together after the experiment, and no matter where we went, the demonic pursued us. I ended up taking a break from investigations for a while, and gradually the activity on my end slowed and stopped.

This year, Tim and I started investigating and working together again. The last trip we took we were deliberately looking to contact the Zozo entity, and once again Tim and I began to experience parallel activity. That started up in the two weeks prior to the investigation and has not only continued but increased and intensified. Eventually, once I can announce the super secret big projects we're working on, all of you will be able to hear the rest of that story. Shouldn't be too long.

Here's the thing. I know there are no coincidences when it comes to paranormal activity. For two hundred years, authors working on the Bell Witch story have reported losing their entire manuscripts. I know a writer who lost his entire book--back when writing a book required a typewriter and lots of Liquid Paper. The physical manuscript just disappeared from inside his locked desk drawer. Film crews would find their equipment malfunctioning inside the Bell Witch cave or the landing outside it--but it all worked perfectly on top of the cliff. This happened famously during the late 1980s when the show Unsolved Mysteries tried to film there. Also, when you're writing about the Bell Witch your source materials and research--particularly the Ingram book--disappear. So I know the history involved with writing about paranormal entities and resultant paranormal activity that interferes with that.

For the same thing to happen here makes me suspicious.

In an era when demonic attacks are perceived to be on the rise, when the Catholic church is suddenly embracing the rite of exorcism in order to meet the rising need to help victims of demonic oppression and possession, when non-Catholic "exorcists" are working openly with paranormal investigators who are looking into demonic hauntings you have to stop and think: is there some reason the diabolical forces are increasing? It's kind of a chicken or the egg sort of dilemma. Is the increased interest in the paranormal the reason we are hearing more about demons or demonic hauntings? Or are demons becoming more openly prevalent and that's why there are more paranormal investigations?

Make no mistake, any time an investigator like Tim or a researcher like me starts to poke at demonic entities, it's playing with fire. People who understand the dangers of this type of paranormal research also understand the need for protecting themselves as they proceed. But sometimes, depending on the entity, that protection isn't enough...or fails. Even the most experienced paranormal investigator can sometimes end up with an attachment or worse. And if multiple people on the same team end up with parallel activity--and especially if they don't live in the same place like Tim and me--that's a huge red flag. At that point, whatever methods of self-protection they employ have been compromised, leaving the investigators open to worse and increasing activity.

I knew when I first wrote this blog post that because we were investigating Zozo, an entity that has Ouija-bombed and stalked Tim for years, there would be paranormal consequences. That didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was how quick and how severe those consequences were. They had far-reaching effects on everyone involved.

Make no mistake: paranormal investigation is NOT a game. It's dangerous to everyone involved. So getting a cheap voice recorder and running around a deserted haunted house at night or "playing" with a Ouija board isn't some kind of cheap thrill. It's potentially deadly, and these cautionary tales shouldn't be ignored or dismissed. Leave it to the experts, because even the experts in the paranormal field know that this type of investigation weighs heavily in favor of the demonic, not the investigators.

Hopefully after this, you'll know that too. Stay tuned, folks. This ride is getting to be VERY bumpy. Oh, and if you want to learn more about Tim and his experiences with the Zozo entity, watch that last video I posted. You'll learn a lot.

Particularly why you don't want to get any closer to that entity than reading about it in a blog.

Author's note: I had just finished typing the line directly above this one when the ceiling in my office/spare bedroom suddenly collapsed. I was hit with plaster and insulation, and the guest bedroom which I had just finished renovating was pretty much destroyed. The collapse barely missed taking out all the electronics--tv, desktop, laptop, Nintendo Switch--but managed to destroy the overhead light. So allow me to reiterate one more time: dealing with the diabolical is not a game, is not "fun", is not an adrenaline rush. It's dangerous on multiple levels.

Once the diabolical knows your name, it never forgets it. When it knows you're planning to confront it, the demonic will make its presence known. 

Zozo Investigation and that Demonic Haunting Story I Never Told You

So you guys know I'm normally keeping myself pretty busy, and especially at this time of year. Not only is football season in full swing, which means writing for the Orange & White Report and my weekly Fact or Fanatic column, but I'm in the middle of publishing eight novels (two more to go in digital; six more in print). And because I just cannot be too busy, this month is also October which means my mind turns none-too-gently to the paranormal world. 

We spent October of 2015 shredding the abysmal A&E television show Cursed: The Bell Witch and the absolutely execrable Destination America Exorcist Live! and putting together my blog series The Real Bell Witch, all of which you can see by going to the Paranormal, Bell Witch, & Zozo page tab at the top of the blog. 

Wait...you noticed the extra name, didn't you? Well, that's because this year, I'm trying something different. 

I've been working with Tim Wood out at LiveSciFi on a series of articles about an investigation they're doing this weekend in Oklahoma City--an investigation into an entity known as Zozo or the Ouija board demon. If you've never heard of that name, do a quick Google search. You'll turn up over 34 million results. 289,000 of those results are YouTube videos. And Tim is the king of paranormal on YouTube with over 400,000 subscribers and 68 million views--and counting. This weekend, LSF is working with a guest investigator, Zozo expert Darren Evans. 

Let's link everything up real quick so that you can go see my articles, the Blogcritics interview, the LiveSciFi site, and Darren's blog and new book, just released in May, about the entity. That's my formal work. But this is my blog, so here I get to tell you about some of the crap that's gone on since I started doing interviews and crafting articles last week--and that leads me to a story I've hinted about, but never told before.

It's your lucky day.

Last Thursday, the three of us talked on a three-way call just as a preliminary. and you know me--I was taking serious notes. First off, I find paranormal things pretty fascinating, but primarily I was noticing similarities in Tim and Darren's stories. Not the 'they talked ahead of time' similarities, but elements that popped up in both their experiences that have also popped up, frighteningly, in mine.  One of the articles I did, Ouija Board Demon Zozo--Connecting The Dots outlined those similarities. What I neglect to include in the story was how I shared many of those characteristics, and they stem from my adolescence and two hauntings. One, of course, is the Bell Witch haunting in Adams, TN. You guys have heard all about that. The other was the demonic oppression of a friend of mine in college--an oppression that manifested in activity right before my eyes that absolutely could not be explained.

This is the story of that incident--an incident I referred to last year but did not tell. Seems appropriate to do so now. All the names, naturally, have been changed, and bear with me: by the end of this post, it'll all make sense.

My friend's oppression began after the death of his younger brother in a mysterious car wreck. The brother had been involved in a high school "coven" with nine friends. Of those ten kids, eight died: four in the same car accident, two by suicide, one murdered, and the last of some totally bizarre infection. I have no idea what happened to the other two. After his brother's funeral, the entity hopped to my friend, Jeno. 

Jeno was a smart, good-looking boy--football player and brain, infectious grin, and a sweet personality. I'd known him since high school, when he'd been in the same class I was. His family was Mormon and in every aspect he was just a normal, happy guy. But after his younger brother's death when we were both in college, everything suddenly went wrong. He literally started to almost wither into nothingness. Within a month, he looked gaunt and uptight. Our mutual friend Rob, Jeno, and I would hang out some nights. We usually would go to this bizarre park in the middle of Clarksville right off Crossland Avenue down this crazy steep hill. That park was basically some fifty year old swings and a parking lot, but behind it were a few trails and a creek. We liked it there. People rarely went there during the day, much less the night. 

On one of those nights that fall of my sophomore year in college, we went to that park. It was September, and still warm. Despite that, Jeno was wearing a turtleneck sweater. And as we sat in our usual spot in a clearing tucked out of sight of the road, Jeno told us what was happening. 

His house was haunted, he said, since his brother's death a few months earlier. He would wake up in the middle of the night, fighting with an unseen force pummeling him in the bed. Things would fly off his wall. Drawers would open and crash into the opposite side of the room. Voices would suddenly issue in an empty room, and terrible smells would emanate from his younger brother's closed and unused room.

I was fresh off my first investigation of the Bell Witch Cave and the Edens farm, where I'd experienced things much like what Jeno was talking about. In fact, I'd stood outside on the front porch of Bims Eden's empty house and listened as the living room furniture was rearranged--things that neither Rob nor Jeno knew about. So I was able to take Jeno's story at face value.

But what I didn't expect was the condition of his body. 

The first time he lifted his shirt and showed the massive bruising on his torso, I was startled--and I couldn't help but be slightly skeptical as well. What I couldn't figure out was a trio of scratches that started on the right side of his neck and continued in an unbroken, continuous diagonal across his chest and finally terminated on his left hip. It was like someone had taken one of those little three-pronged gardening forks down his body, but the cuts were too deep and sharp-edged for that. They had scabbed over, and even the scabs were precise and identical.

For a few days after, I tried to figure out if there was some way to do that to oneself. It was so weird because the scratches were the same depth, the same width, and completely seamless. On top of that, Jeno was right-handed. There was no way he could have done that to himself in such a perfect symmetry. But I didn't say anything to him about it at the time. When you're nineteen and a good-looking guy is telling you he's being attacked by a ghost his dead brother's coven conjured up, you figure it's probably not a good idea to comment but just to be supportive. 

A few weeks later, we were hanging out in the same park. It was October--my birthday weekend, in fact--and it was one of those perfect, crisp autumnal evenings you get in Tennessee when the season is changing. We weren't even talking about the haunting at the time; we were planning a road trip as I recollect. Jeno didn't drink, I couldn't drink, and Rob...was Rob. He was drinking, smartalec thing that he was. At any rate, we were laughing one minute and the next minute, Jeno screamed and fell backwards, landing basically on my lap. Instinctively, I grabbed his shoulders and his body was so hot (temperature) that I could feel the heat baking through his jacket and sweater.

The next thing I knew, three burns came up on the side of his throat. Each burn was as wide as my thumb. Rob pulled off Jeno's shirt and those burns followed the exact same path as the scratches had. 

I saw those burns pop up. If you're a woman and have ever burned the side of your neck with a curling iron, that's exactly what it looked like. Except Jeno was six feet tall and those burns crossed his body like a sash and disappeared into the waistband of his jeans while he was wearing a thick cable-knit sweater and a Member's Only jacket. (dated myself there) And these weren't surface burns either; they were second degree burns. We took him to the ER--I don't even remember the BS story we told to try to spin the whole mess. That night after he was released, we took him back to Rob's place, figuring he might be able to rest there. Jeno pretty much passed out as soon as we tucked him up on the couch, exhausted as he was and full of pain meds, while Rob and I sat across the room trying to figure out what in the hell we'd just seen. 

I had been at the Bell Witch cave just a few days before, and had gotten several EVPs (my first ones, actually) before the cave suddenly went spook-monster on me and drove me out. Ultimately I had been dive-bombed by crows on my way back up the cliffside trail. Creepy birds and animals tried to get hit by my car the whole twelve miles home--which has happened to me more than once on that winding country road between Adams and Clarksville. There is a strong voodoo element in the Bell Witch legend due to the fact the Bells owned slaves. The story is full of strange-looking black animals, blackbirds, dead men's lanterns, and "witchballs"--a kind of fetish the slaves made to protect themselves from the entity. So I was already a tad...jumpy and Rob knew this. But as we sat there trying to rationalize what had happened, the lightbulb in the hanging lamp over his kitchen table exploded. like--literally exploded, glass shattering, sparks in the wiring, sounding like a pop gun kind of exploded. 

Rob and I just stared at each other over all that glass, and Jeno said suddenly from the couch, "It followed me here." 

My first thought at the moment was uncharitable to say the least. Thank you so fucking much for bringing your pet ghost, Jeno isn't the best retort in such a moment. But Jeno's voice was hard to describe--terrified and quiet all at the same time--and it made such an impact on me that I couldn't say a word. Rob, bless him, instantly popped up with, "Man, we need to take you to a church." 

That's when we found out that the Mormon church in town had excommunicated Jeno. He'd gone to them for help when all the manifestations began after his brother's death, and they had literally shunned him. 

Rob and I were both Catholic. Clarksville is a military town. Rob's mother was Spanish; mine was French. 

So we loaded  Jeno into the back seat of my Bug (yes, I was a vintage VW kind of punk girl back in the day--a 1972 Superbeetle, Tennessee orange of course) and took him to the rectory next to the church both our families attended. Our parish priest was a great guy--a chain-smoking, Scotch-drinking, honest-to-God Irish lean whip of a man who had baptized, christened, and First Communion-ed me. The trip over lasted maybe five minutes, and it was the longest five minutes of my life. After what we'd already seen happen that night, and the knowledge of how Jeno's brother had died, a VW Bug didn't seem like the safest place in the world to be. On top of that, it was three o'clock in the morning, and we were going to wake up a priest. 

It's a testament to who Father Mike was that we didn't even hesitate to go to him though. This was the same priest I argued reproductive rights with, the same one who always told his congregation that if they were in spiritual trouble to come to him. I figured this would qualify, and all I wanted to do was to get Jeno to someone who knew what to do. 

The rectory is a sold-looking Victorian building next to the original Church of the Immaculate Conception in Clarksville. Rob, who was quite a bit smaller than Jeno, was literally hauling him up the front porch steps while I banged on the door and rang the doorbell. The porch light snapped on and Father Mike peered out when he opened the door. He took one look at me, then on to Rob and Jeno, and immediately pulled us all into the house.

And what happened from that point on is something I don't talk about. There were further occasions when Jeno was attacked in front of me--the worst happened one night after he'd been kicked out of his parents' home and was living in a small apartment right off-campus.Jeno had two couches in his shabby living room. I was asleep on one and he was on the other when suddenly he screamed. I jumped up like a scalded cat and he was fighting for his life against something that was only visible because it was under the blanket with him, like some huge freaking guy had crept up on that couch with him and crawled under the quilt to strangle him. I hauled Jeno off the couch into the floor, the blanket went flat, and the attack stopped.

We sat up the rest of the night in the floor with every light in the house on and my rosary beads around his neck.

But there was nothing else I could do. I couldn't help him and organized religion wouldn't. The response of both the Mormon and Catholic Churches to Jeno's situation made me angry--angry enough to forego religion for a long, long time.

As in decades. Father Mike protested on Jeno's behalf, and was moved to another parish within six months.  Before he left, he told me that it was dangerous to spend so much time with Jeno trying to help him and told Rob the same thing. But being know-it-all twenty year-olds, we ignored him. Unfortunately, Rob told Jeno what the priest had said.

Six weeks after that, Jeno left Clarksville and I never heard from him again.

So how does this all tie back to the Zozo investigation? 

Several elements of my story--French background, involvement with slavery, voodoo, blackbirds/crows, creepy-acting animals, death in a suspicious car accident, demonic oppression of friends or associates, Ouija boards, and paranormal activity--line up exactly with the similarities between Tim Wood and Darren Evans as I outlined in that Connecting the Dots article. 

All that is history. Let's talk the present.

Since last Thursday after I hung up the phone and began to research and write the articles surrounding this weekend's upcoming investigation of the Zozo house, I've been getting poked paranormally in my house. The notes I took that night and Darren's phone number mysteriously disappeared from my computer, even though I had saved my work (being a writer makes you autosave-suspicious) and turned off the computer that night. A pair of lights in my living room blew within three minutes of each other. One lamp fell from the end table for no reason--I watched it fall and there wasn't a cat near it or under it. My mother's rosary beads disappeared from my closed jewelry box in the bedroom. (found it under the living room couch)  Had a few random bangs on the front door and one from inside the linen closet in the hallway. (I live in a century-old house). I spent three days looking at the TV or computer screen with one hand over my eye due to an almost incapacitating migraine that wouldn't respond to any kind of migraine medicines. And one of our cats, a perfectly healthy eight-year old with no health issues, died for no apparent reason. Despite all this, I managed to get four articles and three press releases done on top of my normal, everyday workload.

Here's the thing. I know there are no coincidences when it comes to paranormal activity. For decades, authors working on the Bell Witch have reported losing their entire manuscripts. I know a writer who lost their entire book--back when writing a book required a typewriter and lots of Liquid Paper. Film crews would find their equipment malfunctioning inside the Bell Witch cave or the landing outside it--but it all worked perfectly on top of the cliff. This happened famously during the late 1980's when the show Unsolved Mysteries tried to film there. Also, when you're writing about the Bell Witch your source materials and research--particularly the Ingram book--disappear. So I know the history involved with writing about paranormal entities and resultant paranormal activity that interferes with that.

For the same thing to happen here makes me suspicious.

This weekend, Tim and his team along with Darren are investigating the house now infamously known as the Zozo house in Oklahoma City. Starting Friday night at 10 pm, they're going to live stream the investigation for the whole 72 hours. If you read my other articles, you'll see the history both Tim and Darren have with this entity. The chances of the entity not showing up for this investigation are practically non-existent. And it's fairly obvious to me that for some reason, I am being discouraged from writing about all this.

That never works.

So, I intend to live blog the investigation while it's ongoing with my thoughts, my observations, and how what occurs ties into the history I've uncovered and the theories currently percolating in my head. As you'll know from my blogs last October with those two aforementioned hokey 'reality' shows, my opinions will be unvarnished and blunt. If I think something is horseshit, I'll say so. If I think it's intriguing, I'll admit that too. And in the process, I'm hoping to create a unique narrative to accompany the investigation.

Plus I'm going to do a follow-up article to the interview piece I sent to Blogcritics.

I have to admit. This Zozo thing has me intrigued. Not in a "I want to play with a Ouija board!" kind of way, but in a "this history and entity makes me want to learn more" kind of way. So we'll see what happens. Check it out starting Friday night at 10 EST/9 CST, and join in what should be one of the craziest paranormal investigation events of the year. I'll be interested to hear what you think as well.

Author's note: Just as I hit send on the Twitter link to this post, Voodoo by Godsmack came on the radio. Think something's sending me a message? Timing is everything, isn't it?

Paranormal Reality Shows and Shifting Societal Beliefs--And The Profits

No matter where you turn, it seems like reality entertainment based on the paranormal is everywhere. From long-running television shows like SyFy’s Ghost Hunters to Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures and Dead Files and YouTube channels run by investigation groups, the options for the paranormal enthusiast are everywhere.

And while a segment of the population is strongly skeptical, a Harris Interactive poll indicates that 51% of the public, including 58% of women, and 65% of those aged 25 to 29 but only 27% of those aged 65 and over, believe in ghosts, while a Live Science article from 2011 indicates that 71% of Americans believe they have experienced some sort of paranormal phenomenon.

The popularity of paranormal-based entertainment seems to reinforce the empirical evidence. These shows are long-lived because the target audience is growing. And now that science is beginning to make a concerted effort to explain paranormal phenomena, that belief is growing. Whereas once, ghost hunting was done by groups seeking knowledge, now it’s big-time entertainment with big-time dollars – and not just in Hollywood. A October 31, 2014 Fortune article entitled “The Boo-tiful Business of Ghost Tourism”by Melissa Locker makes this clear.

Ghost tourism is its own cottage industry that stretches from coast to coast. San Diego’s Whaley House, home of the city’s first public gallows, runs ghost hunts for $50 per investigator with extra-spooky activities running throughout the month of October. Pennsylvania’s Eastern State Penitentiary is a boon for amateur and professional ghost hunters alike. The crumbling prison’s Halloween activities even have corporate sponsors, including the expected (Spirit Halloween stores) and the unexpected (Peanut Chews).

While supernatural attractions are cashing in on the public’s interest in the paranormal, theactual business of paranormal investigations isn’t really a business at all: “It’s a very expensive hobby.”

Paranormal tourism is taking off, and many families are starting to see the appeal.  John Williams of Kennesaw, Georgia took his wife and youngest son on a paranormal vacation last year. “My kid watches paranormal TV shows and was interested. My wife was thinking, ‘Whatever.’ But it was a great bonding experience for us as a family. We went to nine haunted sites in seven states. Best money I’ve ever spent. Great family experience, even though we had no experiences of our own.”

Many allegedly haunted sites offer ghost-hunting overnight stays if you’re an amateur investigator – another side of the ghost tourism business – and haunted location owners are cashing in. For example,The Sallie House in Atchison, Kansas is run by the local Chamber of Commerce and charges $189 per person per night.

Ghost-hunting groups have to pay those fees too, along with the cost of their equipment which can be extremely expensive. The added advantages of new video technology don’t come cheap. One night-vision camera can cost up to $500, while the thermal FLIR camera can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $8,000. These groups have tens of thousands of dollars of equipment without the benefits of a production company’s backing. And as most paranormal groups don’t charge to investigate a site, their hobby is very expensive indeed.

But most people live vicariously through ghost-hunting shows, and not all of those shows are on television. I’ve got a history of shredding poorly done paranormal shows like A&E’s Cursed: The Bell Witch(a legend I am intimately familiar with as I grew up in the area) and Destination America’s laughable Exorcism Live. Even the longest-running television paranormal shows have come under scrutiny amid accusations of faking evidence and hoaxing – both prospects being much easier with production company equipment and the drive to produce payoffs for each weekly episode.

Williams watches both televised ghost-hunting shows and online investigations. “It doesn’t seem like online groups have as much incentive to exaggerate,” he explained. “We love televised programs, but it seems like they would have more motivation to fake stuff. Shows like LiveScifi seem totally sincere.”

I agree. That’s why I believe the best paranormal shows can be found on YouTube. It’s where you’ll discover anything about ghost investigations you could possibly hope for – and in many cases in such a fashion as to preclude the possibility of hoaxing. To these groups, the money is unimportant. What they’re after is information – and knowledge. But you have to know how to negotiate the tangle of groups looking to cash in on the paranormal craze and find the few that balance more on the side of investigation than entertainment.

 
LiveSciFi Bloody Mary Ritual Investigation

One channel I enjoy a great deal is LiveSciFi. LiveSciFi offers a multitude of different investigative styles. Its founder, Tim Wood, does frequent Ouija Board sessions that he live-streams on YouTube. Feeling brave? Here’s a link to the terror. What makes those sessions interesting to me is that he also runs a voice recorder at the same time, and catches multiple EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) in most shows.

But even more interesting are the LiveSciFi live feeds from haunted locations, where viewers can watch uncut, unedited film for 48-72 hours as the investigations are occurring. LSF has done live feeds everywhere, from the infamous Sallie House to the Whispers Estate in Mitchell, Indiana. And for Creepypasta fans, his ritual live streams about legends like Bloody Mary or the Midnight Man are a lot of fun. LiveSciFi is the largest paranormal channel on YouTube with over 300,000 subscribers over its 10-year life span and over a billion views. The Sallie House alone provides hours of binge watching opportunities.

 
Living Dead Paranormal Investigation of Haunted Willow Creek Farm

The Living Dead Paranormal group is another outstanding online option. Comprised of three brothers – Josh, Rocky, and Shaun Fourman, who lived through a serious haunting in their childhood home – and a friend, Jeff Brown, their body of work is impressive. Their investigations are presented as documentaries, with high production values. The two investigations they’ve done at the Monroe house in Hartford City, Indiana are among the best work I’ve seen. (You can find those investigations here and here.) If you’re made of sterner stuff, a recent demonic haunting investigation is guaranteed to make you jumpy.

We’re not talking about Elvira, Mistress of the Dark shows here. We’re talking about regular guys in sweatshirts and jeans, alone in reputedly haunted locations, and only those guys. No tech crew. No directors. No producer hanging out in the background pulling fishing line attached to props. And trust me: You may watch for hours and see not one darn thing, which makes the things you do witness that much more interesting.

I approach most paranormal claims with a healthy dose of skepticism. You have to if you ever intend to sleep with the lights off. I’m not a gullible person, but my life experiences have led me to an interest in the paranormal – a search for validation of things I’ve seen or witnessed that defy logical explanation.

That doesn’t mean that I automatically accept everything I see; in fact, the jury is still out for me on Bigfoot and UFO sightings. I’ve laughed myself silly at some poorly executed hoaxes on television and at many, many paranormal “investigators” I’ve seen on YouTube. Kind of hard not to. Early Most Haunted  shows are great for that, by the way. Never underestimate the comedic possibilities with a Derek Acorah or a Chip Coffey.

But there are groups out there that might make you think – if you know where to look and what to look for. Hint: If the lead investigator looks like a high school sophomore or is obviously costumed in front of a set that looks like The Munsters, it’s probably best to just move on.

If, like me, you find the paranormal fascinating and entertaining, stop looking in your TV Guide and do a check on paranormal YouTube channels. You can experience all the aspects of an investigation from the comfort of your living room, and sometimes even simultaneously with the ghost hunters, without all the curse words getting beeped out. Because they can approach these alleged hauntings without the obligation to get bang for their buck, their credibility factor is higher. And believe me, if nothing has happened during the first three hours of a live stream, you’ll know that too – which is about 99% of what happens during any investigation.

That’s what this boils down to.

Instead of spending thousands of dollars on equipment and insurance, instead of staying up all night and evaluating scores of hours of footage, instead of walking around in the dark with instruments and talking to whatever inhabits an alleged haunted building, paranormal reality shows allow you to investigate without ever leaving your home. That, in turn, inspires some viewers to either explore paranormal tourism, at sites that now are charging fees so people can enjoy them for themselves – or to actively investigate, spending their money on equipment. And even if you stay at home and live secondhand through television, you’re subjected to commercials up to a third of the show’s running time. Paranormal investigating has turned into big profits for everybody involved.

Except the independents, the ones with their YouTube channels and blogs. That’s where the best paranormal reality can be found. But you have to know where to look as much as what to believe. And while each webisode has both creepy moments and uneventful ones, there’s unexpected fun too – the hilarity of finding out a big guy who hunts for ghosts is terrified of birds, or someone walking face-first into the corner of a wall, or sometimes just the nervous laughter that happens after they’ve been spooked. The entertainment factor of these independent channels is undeniable. The reality part I’ll leave to you to decide.

And that’s what paranormal reality shows are changing in our culture.

“My belief has definitely increased. I was a skeptic. I’ve gone from assuming it’s all BS to belief. Watching Ghost Adventures and then LiveSciFi shows – they’re hard to refute,” Williams explained. “In our family, we say, ‘Okay – whether it’s true or not, they seem to believe.’”

Originally published by Blogcritics, July 8, 2016