Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Zozo...And A Few Things You Didn't Part Two

Author's note: This is the second part of our look at Zozo, the so-called Ouija Board demon. For part one, head to this page. And as always during paranormal season, DO NOT TRY ANYTHING WE DISCUSS ON THIS BLOG. DEALING WITH DEMONS IS DANGEROUS. LEAVE IT TO THE PROS. Just because you watch people trying to Ouija up Zozo on YouTube doesn't mean you can. Folks like Tim Wood at LiveSciFi know what they're doing. You don't. Okay? And yes, I know--some of you are already ignoring me. Read on for the consequences of that decision.)

Yesterday, we really dug into Zozo's origins on multiple levels, and believe me when I tell you that post could have been one hundred times as long and still wouldn't have scratched the surface. What we discussed yesterday was rudimentary demonology. Today, we're going to sort through Zozo in the modern day, and we'll be getting into some dark and dangerous stuff. Read at your own risk.

Ouija, Spirit, and Talking Boards and Zozo

The first patent issued for a device used for contacting the dead was in the mid-nineteenth century, not for a talking board but a gadget that could be used in automatic writing. The first mention of spirit boards was in 1886 by the Associated Press, when they were touted as the newest and most accurate communication device used in Ohio spiritualist camps. 

The Ouija board as we know it today was invented in 1890 and patented (the planchette was the reason the board could be patented considering that handmade spirit boards were already in common use at the time) by Charles Kennard in 1891. So many people were desperate to communicate with their loved ones following the Civil War and then three decades later for World War I that the Ouija board became an essential part of the grieving process as well as a drawing room's entertainment option. That is...until disturbing coincidences began to pop up in Ouija board communication. Zozo is perhaps the best-known of these today, having earned the nickname of “the Ouija board demon” in the past twenty-five years.

Encounters with the entity that called itself Zozo reportedly began to occur on the Ouija board in the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1960s and 70s, the Ouija board was marketed as a toy, thereby ensuring that most users of the board were under twenty-five. Ouija use had an upsurge in the eighties. As the internet was developed in subsequent decades and became more accessible, Zozo encounters gradually rose and victims began to compare notes. Darren Evans’s website publication in 2008 gave those victims a forum. Once video streaming equipment improved, Zozo videos increased at an exponential rate—particularly in the last four years. 

Of course, the reason for that is easily explained.More people are looking for Zozo.

There are non-paranormal explanations for Zozo as well. Zozo could be the result of a tulpa—an entity or phenomenon created through mental discipline, like the Philip experiment in Toronto, Ontario allegedly managed to do in the early 1970s. For that matter, what people take as communication on a Ouija board could actually be the result of ideomotor movements--involuntary twitches of the hands that propel the planchette across the spirit board in a predictable and repeated manner. 

With escalating visibility on platforms like YouTube, the unsuspecting, or the thrill seekers who "play" Ouija are a rich pool of potential prey for the demonic realm to feed upon.

That doesn't mean Zozo is fake. Tulpas are alleged to exist and take on personalities and agendas of their own. At the present moment, Zozo is a dangerous reality, whether it's hung around for centuries or was created by the subconscious minds of people popping LSD-laced sugar cubes in 1975. The Zozo entity is not only real, but it's growing stronger and being fed by the resulting craze around it.

And oh, how it's grown. Zozo has exploded on a global level, as has the number of people claiming to have had experiences with the entity. The 2012 movie I Am Zozo undoubtedly had a great deal to do with that, as did the 2014 major motion picture Ouija and investigations conducted by the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures show at about the same time. In fact, during the 2014 Christmas season, Ouija board sales were up 300% from the year before. 

Currently (August, 2019), there are 36.5 million hits on Google when searching for Zozo. That's a lot of people focusing their energy on the same entity or tulpa...a lot of fuel. If Zozo didn't exist before the Dictionnaire Infernal in 1818, it certainly does now. 

Zozo Characteristics/Behavior

Items associated with Zozo: Blackbirds, Louisiana, slavery, Voodoo and other French/African religious blends, the number 28, French/Basque and African etymology, sex or sexual assault, possession of humans, possession of animals, Ouija or spirit boards, death and/or suicide, and haunted locations.

Behavioral habits: When the entity first presents itself, it’s usually pretending to be a dead friend or family member so it can make a connection with the person it’s targeting on the board. Once the relationship between the Ouija user and the entity is established, Zozo announces its presence on the Ouija board when it appears. The planchette either begins to move rapidly from side to side in an arc between the letters Z and O, or it starts an escalating series of figure 8 movements in the center of the board.

But once the bond is established between Zozo and a board user, the entity departs from “normal” demonic behavior. The Zozo entity names itself at the beginning of each interaction. Zozo, Zaza, Zizi, Oz, Ozoz, Mama, and Abacus are all known aliases of the Zozo entity. The entity frequently refers to “paradise” and uses the word “abracadabra” as well, which has a disputed etymological history dating back to ancient times. 

The first known mention of the word was in the second century AD in a book called Liber Medicinalis by Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, who in chapter 51 prescribed that malaria sufferers wear an amulet containing the word written in the form of a triangle. "Abracadabra" has also been attributed to Gnostics, Greeks, and Sumerians, but is almost certainly Hebrew/Aramaic in origin. 

Perhaps the most ominous behavior of the entity is the countdown. The board counts down from ten to one, and that usually prefaces extremely negative paranormal activity.

The most terrifying behavior is its knowledge of things it shouldn't know, like something that happened in a board user's childhood and none of their current friends knows about *or* something as totally invasive as knowing what color a person's underwear is. 

And through it all, Zozo is acknowledged as a demonic entity. I absolutely think Zozo is demonic in nature. So do many paranormal researchers, investigators, and scholars...not to mention clergy.

So why, then, haven’t attempted exorcisms of the Zozo entity worked? In 2017, LiveSciFi founder Tim Wood and I conducted a month-long experiment, trying to learn as much about this puzzling entity as we cold without endangering ourselves, each other, or any of the half a million subscribers on YouTube who showed up nightly to witness our live-streamed investigation. I believe our conclusions from the Zozo experiment explain why this isn't just a demon, but an evolution of something entirely different.

The Zozo Experiment and Subsequent Conclusions

The Zozo demon can’t be exorcised for one very simple reason—Zozo isn’t a demon.We believe Zozo is something entirely different—an alias used by multiple demonic entities in order to gain access to potential victims. 

You can’t exorcise Zozo because it’s not a demon. It’s a gateway. Some kid can ‘play’ with the Ouija board one time and he’s opened the gate and invited whatever’s close by and looking for a victim to come on in. 

You’ve heard of demons or psychics or demonologists talking about Legion, right? Zozo is the revolving door of Legion, and you never know if you just invited the ghost of a pissed-off librarian to haunt your house *or* if you invited Beelzebub to possess your body and feast on your soul.

That’s why exorcisms of the Zozo entity don’t work. Victims of Zozo are actually being tormented by multiple demons who are using the name as an alias. Legitimate exorcisms that are conducted by the clergy of the Catholic church take weeks, months, or even years before the name of the demon is forced from the unwilling adversary. Many oppressions/possessions pit the exorcist against a number of demonic foes. With a Zozo attachment, this proves even worse than usual.

If the person has only the beginnings of an attachment to Zozo, then you just sever the person’s use of the name. Don’t say Zozo anymore or acknowledge it. But if a person has an actual attachment (a demonic infestation, oppression, or possession) then they have to discover the name of the actual demon attacking them and sever their attachment to the name of Zozo and the board. Only then can they have a clearing or deliverance done.

And that exorcism needs to be performed by a legitimate member of the clergy and not someone who started his own "church", maybe claiming it was an Old Catholic church that broke away from the Vatican because they disagreed with the canon of Papal infallibility in something called the Utrecht schism.  Yes, there are legitimate Old Catholic churches out there that did follow the bishop of Utrecht, but those churches have actual congregations. 

Most of the paranormal clergy advertising their services online aren't legitimately Old Catholic. Their entire church consists of several bishops under the dominion of a self-proclaimed archbishop and a deacon or two. No congregations. No physical churches. No parishioners despite naming these bishops as the head of parishes. Best way to tell is easy: Google maps. Put in their physical address and look up the location on street view. If it comes up as an apartment building, a house, a strip mall, or a church that's a completely different denomination? It's not a real church and therefore the archbishops and bishops and deacons aren't legitimate clergy. 

Did I mention the next article I do is about paranormal parasites like these? Okay, good. We'll break down the Utrecht schism and how that works in legit Old Catholic churches in that article. 

But in the meantime--and pay attention, folks. The best and easiest way to not have to deal with Zozo is not to go looking. Regardless of how it's marketed, the Ouija board is not a game. It's a form of conjuration, and opens the door to any kind of interaction with the spiritual world imaginable. But you can't trust what any entity says on the talking board. Not a word, and especially if that entity self-identifies as Zozo. 

By communicating with Zozo, you have invited the diabolical into your life. Once that door is open, it's almost impossible to close--and then I'll get an email or a phone call from a paranormal group trying to help you but that can't. That's the end result of most Zozo-created infestations, and unless there's a legitimate exorcist involved there's no way to know what demonic entities have come through that board. 

So yeah. 

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.

DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.

AND DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.

Everything You Wanted To Know About Zozo...Plus A Lot Of Things You Wish You Didn't Part One

The Zozo demon is commonly referred to as "the Ouija Board demon". Because of some paranormal groups' preference for using a Ouija board on investigations, Zozo has been a frequent...and frightening...guest on many videos. But who--or what--is Zozo, exactly? The historic and arcane history of the entity is fairly difficult to track and impossible to document. That is, until the internet's explosion in the late 2000s and early 2010s. 

But what's really terrifying is how impossible the entity is to combat. If Zozo is taken at face value, it's a demonic entity that can't be fought using the tools and methods that have expunged the demonic since Christ exorcised demons and sent them into the bodies of pigs. Two millennia of demonic warfare doesn't get rid of Zozo, and we want to know why.

In this two-part article, we'll break down the roots and history of the so-called "Ouija Board Demon", its growing visibility in modern society, what the diabolical agent seems to really be, and why exorcisms do not and cannot work. That's why my usual warning regarding the diabolical is appearing twice. TRYING TO CONTACT ZOZO IF YOU AREN'T A PROFESSIONAL RESEARCHER/INVESTIGATOR IS THE SPIRITUAL EQUIVALENT OF PLAYING RUSSIAN ROULETTE. Do NOT try any of this at home.

History Of Zozo

The first mention of any entity named Zozo occurred in an 1818 reference guide written by Jacques Collin de Plancy, a self-proclaimed occultist and author, in his Dictionnaire Infernal. The story as related in the Dictionnaire’s entry under the word POSSÉDÉS (Possession, in English) goes as follows:

In 1816, an unmarried girl from a town called Teilly in the Picardy region of France found out she was pregnant. She promptly announced that she was possessed by three “imps”—one named Mimi, one named Crapoulet, and the third Zozo. The girl would walk around the town on all fours or on her hands, and acted as if she was possessed. A Jesuit priest from Spain performed an exorcism on the girl, which was described in the text:  Mimi went quietly; Zozo was more tenacious and broke a window of the church when he tried to escape through the roof. As for Crapoulet, he was pursued in vain, even with the blessed tool (I think this tool is a holy item such as an aspergillum) he could not be removed, and eventually took a position in the genitals of the girl, only leaving at the Jesuit’s insistence. Eventually, the town leaders put the pregnant girl in the hospital and the Jesuit was told that if he did any more exorcisms, he’d be arrested as a fraud.

Nineteenth century France in the wake of the revolution and the ascendance of Napoleon, prided itself on its science and logic and fought against old “superstitions” like exorcism or demonic possession.

That being said, this incident is related in a book written by an author with no particular expertise in research and there’s no way to verify anything he wrote in that book either. In fact, Collin du Plancy was nothing more than a pulp fiction writer, capitalizing on the rise of the spiritual movement to sell more books. And it worked! The only positive thing the Dictionnaire Infernal actually did was to publish probably the greatest collection of early nineteenth century engravings and illustrations of the occult and demonic. That’s about it.

I have found absolutely no references to a demon named Zozo prior to the Dictionnaire Infernal. And despite multiple claims to the contrary, there are no references to a demonic entity named Zozo at any point of history before the publication of that one particular book. Specifically, there are no documented "medieval manuscripts" that list Zozo in the lexicon of known demons, in arcane

knowledge or grimoires, and not even in Church documents which is absolutely where you'd find such a reference. Regardless, one self-proclaimed Zozo-ologist told me personally that not only was there a history of Zozo the demon stretching back to medieval manuscripts in the twelfth century (1300) but that he personally has a copy/has seen a copy of that manuscript.

That, of course, became a challenge from the time we discussed it (in an August, 2017 Live Sci Fi investigation of Goatman's Bridge in Denton County, Texas). I was in the process of writing Stalked by the Zozo Demon with LSF founder Tim Wood and hadn't found even a whisper of a demon named Zozo despite having conducted (and still conducting) years of research regarding medieval demonology and the history of the Inquisition and the witchcraft trials. Fortunately, my background in Latin and Greek, not to mention being brought up in my French mother's bilingual home and therefore able to read/translate French put me in a great position to see what such a manuscript said. That's why I asked to see it. 

Unfortunately, I'm still waiting.

Here's the thing: if Zozo was even a minor demon on the fringes of some obscure diabolical lexicon, I am pretty sure I would have found it by now. That's why I'm a researcher--I know how to research things. Right? Instead of being provided a medieval manuscript or a link to a scan of it (because obviously, a 700-year old manuscript would require expensive protective storage and restoration), however, I found a story which I find fascinating. That story begins with this: 

There is a history of “zoso” stretching back (at least) to the sixteenth century in this form, but it’s not used in a book or document as a name for a demon and has nothing to do with what we call Zozo today. Zoso is a sigil, an illustration used to represent the Greco-Roman god Saturn who governs the house of Capricorn in the zodiac--essentially a drawing that can be used as a magical implement. It allegedly possesses arcane power. That's why self-confessed Thelemist Jimmy Page used the sigil on Led Zeppelin’s unnamed fourth album—because he’s a Capricorn, not because there is a demon named Zozo.

  

The earliest verified use I've found of the Zoso sigil is the 1521 (some references list the publication date as 1511, making the 1521 book a second edition) grimoire entitled Le Veritable Dragon Rouge--a book about necromancy that you can download if you really want to. The first well-documented use of the sigil appears in Gerolamo Cardano’s 1557 book Ars Magica Arteficii, which translates roughly to “The Art of Magic” or “The Magical Arts”. Cardano was a mathematician and physician, and in the sixteenth century astrology was an important part of both sciences. So the sigil, at least, appears some five hundred years ago.

But this history, while fascinating, has nothing to do with Zozo, demonology, or spirit boards. The sigil was used in astrology because most people couldn’t read. Most likely, this gentleman researched the sigil after seeing it on the Led Zeppelin album sleeve, found a link online for the sigil, and without comprehending what that actually meant assumed this was a direct reference to the entity. I don't think it was an intentional thing. 

I do think that misinformation, especially regarding the demonic, can be dangerous. 

So, the only real history for the name is linguistic as opposed to historic or religious.You can read more about the Zoso sigil, its meaning, and how it got tangled up with Led Zeppelin and demonology in modern culture on www.zososymbol.com, which is an outstanding resource and links to all the pertinent books, articles, and websites.

This 1850 version of Le Dragon Rouge is a reprint of  an earlier 1521 text “The Red Dragon and The Black Hen, including the secrets of Artephius, the secrets of Cleopatra and how to make yourself invisible“. Courtesy of www.zozosymbol.com

Zozo Etymology and the Power of A Diabolical Name 

The linguistic roots for Zozo are combined in both French-based and African tongues. In Haitian Creole, the word ‘zozo’ means bone (also slang for penis). In Louisiana French Creole, ‘zozo’ means blackbird or raven—a word which survived from the medieval Basque language of southern France/northern Spain. During the early twentieth century, French travel guides in Greece referred to

Zozo as an alternate name for the demon Pazuzu, but there is nothing else to support that claim. In Zulu, the word ‘uzozo’ means a wound that never heals, and the word moved into modern slang when the small huts crafted of tin in the poor areas of African cities were known as ‘izozo’ or today’s ‘zozo huts’. In current French slang, ‘zozo’ means nitwit or dude.

However, the linguistic roots of the name do give us a clue about something disturbing.

Every demonologist and exorcist will tell you that demons do not willingly give up their names to anyone, which is why the Catholic Rite of Exorcism is specifically designed to force the demon to name itself. Knowledge of an entity’s name gives the exorcist power over it. That's why any search for a legitimate historical trail involving the entity is pretty much a waste of time, regardless of how many people try to create a history for Zozo. 

Zozo creates a paradox.

Zozo identifies itself by name and claims to be a demonic entity, but demons just don't blurt out their real names to a teenager with a Ouija board.

Demons reveal their names only after long spiritual battles, like exorcisms. So right from the outset, there’s something suspicious about this entity. Zozo is either not a demon at all, or Zozo is just a bluff—an alias behind which one or multiple demons can approach the users in a spirit board session without endangering itself. And no matter what imaginary medieval manuscripts say, there's only one surefire link to Zozo. 

The Ouija board.

(Part 2 of this article is here and it deals with the Ouija board and the modern evolution of the Zozo entity, including observations and conclusions from the 2017 Zozo experiment with LSF founder Time Wood. As with any of my demonic articles, DO NOT TRY ANYTHING YOU READ ABOUT IN THIS ARTICLE AT HOME. If you do it's a really, really, REALLY bad idea. I'll link part two once it goes live, but until then you can check out my other paranormal articles including the Bell Witch series here. )

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. 

LiveSciFi Zozo Investigation Day Two Live Blog

So here's what sucks about falling asleep. You miss stuff. 

I was up early yesterday, had a conference with my literary agent, then wrote my column, and all that fun stuff. On top of that, considering the pain level a chronic pain sufferer deals with, the medications totally knock you out. Unthinkingly, I took my meds at the regular time last night. So by the time we started hitting 3:30 - 4 am, I was pretty much done for the night. 

I kept waking up when things would happen, but then dozed back off. My own fault. Should never have said, "I'll just lie down for a while." 

So now I'm hours behind, and will have to watch catch-up footage here in a bit when it's posted. My own fault. 

That being said, though, right now the house is empty and for the past hour it's been echoing with bangs and snaps and clicks on a fairly constant basis. To me this is compelling because there is literally no one there. 

10:56 HUGE bang in an empty house. Something feel somewhere.

11:12 Another huge bang followed by what sounded like a cough.

11:30 in the past half hour, we witnessed extensive tampering with the camera system in an empty house. IR lights going off and on, cams switching from day to night vision, and all accompanied by significant noises. This house isn't just haunted at night. It's haunted by day.

11:49 One of the things that makes a live streamed investigation interesting is the simultaneous chat. Even when the investigators aren't in the house, there are hundreds of people still monitoring the equipment. This serves a couple of purposes. First off, it keeps people engaged in the event. It also leads to an ongoing dialogue about what's happening. Sure you get your kooks talking about orbs or claiming to have seen stuff that isn't there. Middle school kids need hobbies too and for the most part that seems to be annoying grownups. But if something significant happens, like a loud noise, the chat rooms dissect it the same way investigators do. But second, those transcripts provide time stamps to evidence. The team can go back later and match up the video with the log the chat room creates, and that can lead to evidence they might otherwise have missed.

Although probably not in this house. No way to miss what's going on now.

12:36 If you talk on speaker phone during a live stream, the entire world hears your conversation. And nothing else. That is all.

1:03 If the tornado siren test is going on, it's probably not the best time to do an EVP session. Mostly because you can't hear anything. Just sayin', Darren.

1:47 Okay, I'm going to be a little stern here because I'm seeing things I do not like. First off, the only reason a paranormal investigation has any validity at all is through the strict adherence to protocols and running a controlled experiment. You eliminate as many external influences as possible. You turn off your phone. You create a control. You document any changes you observe, like something falling over. You use your own equipment. You handle other people's equipment with care. If a session is disrupted by outside sources, you end the session and discount any potential evidence.

For almost an hour and a half, I and the rest of the chat have watched in horror as all of the above strictures have been ignored. YOU DON'T HANDLE SOMEONE ELSE'S PERSONAL EQUIPMENT OR POSSESSIONS CARELESSLY, like holding an antique doll by the head or so roughly a limb falls off. You don't try to use someone's personal technology.

How do I know this? Because I did my first investigation in the late 1980s and multiple ones since. Pretty much the last two hours and counting can be tossed out the window because someone who doesn't know what he is doing is destroying the validity of the investigation with every step and decision he makes.

It's a damn shame.

2:27 And the torture continues, unabated. Talk about a room of pissed off viewers. Good lord.

The thing I've always liked about LSF is the interactive nature of their live streamed investigations. Evidence captured in a totally silent house while the investigators are asleep or out. All of that has been destroyed. We went from a morning of continuous activity, to an afternoon of absolute bullshit. What makes that even worse is that the LSF team isn't there and all this destruction is coming at the hands of a guest to the investigation who is trying to force activity when he didn't need to.

Paranormal investigation is about creating a situation in which activity can happen, not bombarding the place in the middle of the afternoon with frantic trigger object shifting and blaring music and constant movement. One of these dolls could get up, walk down the stairs, and dance a jig in the middle of the living room floor and it couldn't be construed as evidence because of what's going on around it.

3:45 and all's well. Torture has stopped--mercifully--for the time being. I'll be glad when the investigators get back and turn this back into a serious attempt to capture paranormal activity.

LIVE BLOG UPDATED EVERY 20-30 MINUTES

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?