Haunted Cosmos - Nightmares on the Ranch: The Hatman, Glowing Eyes, & The Field Witch

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

On today’s episode of Graveyard shift, we have Eli joining us on the show. Eli grew up in a ranch house and shares some terrifying encounters in that house. There he battled shadow figures with glowing red eyes, was spooked by the mysterious hat man, and concludes with an encounter in the woods that will leave the hair on your neck standing up. Enjoy this series finale of Graveyard Shift!New Haunted Cosmos shirt available for a limited time! - Get it here!Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes and monthly Livestreams, by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosThis episode is sponsored by: Jake Muller Adventures is an immersive, mysterious, and engaging audio drama. Use code "HAUNTED" to claim 10% off all digital downloads. https://www.jakemulleradventures.com/haunted Indigo Sundries Soap Company - Go to http://indigosundriessoap.com and use code HAUNTEDCOSMOS for 10% off your whole order!Stonecrop Wealth Advisors! Go to this link to check out their special offers to Haunted Cosmos listeners today. https://stonecropadvisors.com/hauntedcosmosTalk to Josh at Volenté Creative to get help you with your branding and marketing: https://volentecreative.com/ncpGray Toad Tallow. Visit their website here and use COSMOS15 at checkout for 15% off your order. https://graytoadtallow.com/Buy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!If you're a Christian business owner who wants to reach thousands of like-minded people and grow your company, we'd love to partner with you. Email us at [e-mail] Support the show

This episode is brought to you by Jake Mueller Adventures, a thrilling Christian audio drama. And she said, bring your gun. I want you to check the house. There was a shadow figure standing in the bathroom doorway. I just kind of froze and I stared at it. There was no face. There was... Well, hello everyone and welcome back to this episode of The Graveyard Shift. the spookiest name for any project that we have at Hunter Cosmos. I'm joined today by my regular co-host and very good friend Brian Sovey. So good to be here.

Oh, yeah. Man, it is so good to shift the graveyard with you. That's right. Dude, I love shifting graveyard. I'm sick of working graveyard chefs. I was hoping to get back on days soon. But, you know, still happy to be here. You know, if you got to do it, though, I would want to do it with you.

That's right. That's right. We're also joined by Evan essence has a microphone. Evan, say hello to the people. Hey, everybody. How's it going? Evan's like scrambling over there, touching buttons. It's so hard to speak on the mic and switch at the same time.

Well, you don't have to speak any more than you want to, my dear Evan. We're also joined, as usual for these graveyard shifts, by a special guest, a listener of the show, a friend of the show, who has some pretty interesting, very fascinating, and some outright terrifying stories to share with us. And his name is Eli Gentry. Eli, say hello to the people. Hello, people. It is an honor to be on the show. Love you guys.

Been listening to you for a couple years now. And I can't wait. I can't wait for every episode that drops. I really enjoy it. So thank you for what you do. Well, man, thank you for listening. And we can really vouch for how cool Eli is because right before we pressed record, he gave us one of the best Japanese accents that money could possibly buy.

So you know that he's real and he's the real deal. You can trust him. Yep, yep. Eli, before we get into kind of the little fun thing that I like to do before the stories, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? What do you do? What brought you to Honod Cosmos?

Yeah. So I am from Michigan, roughly like middle of the state. I am married. I've been married for going on 12 years. We have three sons together. a friend of mine that I helped him plant a church down in Dearborn, Michigan. He is actually the one that introduced me to y'all on the way to a camping trip. And we were checking out some pretty sketchy stuff while we were on our way into the woods.

And then the first night we stayed. And so it was a really great welcoming to your episodes. And man, I think I joined listening to you probably. probably near the end of season one. And so I was really psyched to be able to go back and listen to high strangeness on the seas and basically just kind of start you from the beginning. I've probably listened to at least three-quarter-year episodes a handful of times each. I love it.

I always go back to it. And honestly, I mean, the stories that I'll be sharing, it's stuff that I've experienced. And it's also stuff that I have a high interest in. I mean, if you can see the hat, I've got Bigfoot caddying for himself. So you don't see, but I've got Bigfoot being abducted by an alien ship by a UFO. And it says, that explains it over here on this wall. And I've got the stickers on the car.

No, those are new. I wouldn't call myself like a Bigfoot fanatic, but I really enjoy the topic. And so the topics y'all talk about are very interesting. and intriguing. And I can't tell you enough how I love that you point back to the scriptures and the gospel. And man, just anything that's preaching the good news of Jesus Christ is right up the alley. So I love listening to it. Let's go to all tribes and tongues, too, which is why we do the accents. That's right. Exactly. It's an evangelist. Absolutely. That's right. Yeah. Thank you. It very much is. I need to work on it because I'm going to Bolivia on a mission trip this summer.

and I don't know. I don't know how many accents I want to bring out there. I might just have to, you know, stick to the standard. Bolivians love Japanese accents. Yeah. I can say that with almost. I'll have to bring it out. Vives only, I can say that.

And cholo accents. I mean, how, like, listen to all the haters out there, what do you think, like, what am I supposed to do when I'm trying to share the gospel with a Mexican guy, he won't understand me? So I got to be like, hey, homie. Hey, homie. Jesus Christ die for your sin, though. Isn't that cool?

And that'll do the trick. Anyway, I should stop. You know what? I think it will do the trick. I'll have to whip out the Jesus Christ loves you, you know, and see if that's pretty well accepted in. I think that there are no risks to doing that. Only reward.

Yeah. Okay. Well, before we get into the stories, everyone knows the rules. We got to ask one question. as an icebreaker question that Eli is unprepared for, that Brian is unprepared for, that I was unprepared for until about 30 seconds ago. And that question is this. Eli Gentry, if you had to choose a marine creature to become, like to morph into, what marine creature would you choose and why? Oh, man, what a, what a question. There is a right answer. There's a right answer in my opinion.

I agree. Um, I would, I would probably say mainly because my kids, when they found out about, so I have three boys, when they found out about this creature, they're mesmerized by them. And I would probably stay an orca. Dude, that's what I was going to say. That's actually a really good answer. They're kind of, you know, they're kind of apex. Yeah.

Like they're, they're kind of apex. They are packed animals, um, creatures. Um, And I mean, I don't know. They're just, they're pretty awesome. They're also like beautiful creatures, but they're pretty terrorizing and mesmerizing at the same time. What a combination. And they won't eat people in the wild.

But they will eat great whites. Because they understand the fear of God was put into them. The orcas are among the most sanctified animals. They go up to a guy swimming. They look at them. They're like, I could mess you up. But God told me not to. But if we put it in captivity, then they start to eat people.

The Lord bless. you. Then they swim off. The Lord blessed you with dominion. So I think I'll pass today. I literally couldn't agree more. No, that's the right answer. Orca killer whales the right answer. What were you going to say? It was going to be something related to the orca.

I didn't really know what I said it. I'm just talking about it. Okay. Well, Eli, you have some stories for us today. From what I understand, that kind of increase in strangeness and amazement. So we're going to let you take it away. You tell the stories how you want to tell the stories. how you want to tell the stories. Brian and I will try not to interrupt.

And then we'll probably ask questions. We probably will interrupt a few times. Sorry in advance. And then we'll talk about it when you are done telling your story. So let it rip. Ben, have you heard of the Jake Mueller adventures? What's that? A Christian audio drama.

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we'd love to partner with you. Email us at Advertising at newchristendompress.com. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, they're definitely on a spectrum of intensity. I would say, from sometimes kind of like what you can hear to an actual, in my opinion, physical manifestation that I experienced. And so I think a lot of people have probably experienced the noises that you hear in the house. But in my opinion, it's immediately more terrifying when you hear a baby or a child's toy that turns on in the basement when nobody is there. Immediately peak horror movie-esque, it always is terrifying. And growing up in our home, so we lived out in the country. You know, my parents owned like 15 acres or so.

Some of it was wooded where we'll hunt a big three acre yard, a big field that wraps around the house. And, you know, my neighbors are 200 yards away from, each were 200 yards off the road. So it's, it's pretty isolated, I would say. I'm the youngest of my family. And so when I'm a preteen and I'm hearing what sounds like a baby toy going off with the lights and the gadgets and stuff, you can hear it from the basement. It's a ranch home. So it's unlike the Skinwalker Ranch where, you know, you're on the mesa. It is all one level. Yeah, I had to, I've been waiting to throw up.

that one out for you guys too. It's all one level. And so you can hear things downstairs through the vents that go up into our rooms. And so I only experienced it once where I heard like a like a baby toy, which is weird because at the time, it could have been maybe one of my nieces who would have been an infant at the time. But you hear the baby toy and I went downstairs and I flipped the lights on. It's it's nighttime. And there's nothing. And before I flip the lights on, I actually turned the corner to see, can I even see the lights going off on the toy? And there was nothing. There was nothing down there that was making noise.

So I put the lights on to see, is there anything out of the place, anything that might have got moved? Maybe something fell over, knocked it over and turned it on and nothing. But my mom, who I have turned into one of your biggest fans, I believe she's a supporter as well of the show. So she has heard countless times where she's laying in bed. Maybe it's 2 to 4 a.m. She used to get up at like 4 a.m. before everybody would get up and do her devotions. And the amount of times where she would hear it and she would go downstairs and check,

nothing's going off, no lights on, nothing's knocked over. And so she kind of felt an uneasiness in a way at times. But I think that escalated most to a situation. where she's at the other end of the house from the back door where we would walk into the garage. And she was, she said she was doing her makeup. And I wasn't home at the time. I was, I was already moved out. But she was doing her makeup. And she heard the seal of the door open. So you can kind of hear like when the seal separates. And what, what's a little bit unique about this situation is they have a couple of dogs and they have a almost 200-yard driveway. So,

So if somebody came down the driveway, you would have been alerted at some point. Those dogs are always seeing somebody come down, myself included coming down the driveway and they're barking and going crazy. She heard nothing, but she heard the door open. And so she kind of waits for a second and she hears the door shut. And she actually hears like the clank of the door shutting. And she calls out and says, hello and doesn't hear anything. So she gets up and she walks out of the bathroom and through the house. She goes to the door.

Maybe the Amazon delivery person brought the package inside, which would be weird, right? Like if you had an Amazon person deliver something to your house, like Walmart groceries, they're going to open the door and put them inside. That doesn't happen. That'd be a dead Amazon. And so she, yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I just started blasting, right?

The clocky-glock. Yeah. Two direct quotes from Mr. Sobe. And so. And so she goes to the door and she doesn't see a package near the door. And so then she goes outside in the garage and checks and sees there's no package there. And she immediately got this feeling that I should pray. And so she starts praying and she says, she told me that she prayed, God, I did not give permission for anything to enter my home.

any kind of an entity to enter my home. And so they're not playing by the rules or they're not playing fair. And God, I cast this out in your name. And it actually frightened her quite a bit. She called me and said, I need you to come pick me up. I was going to come pick her up anyway to babysit my son. And she said, bring your gun. I want you to check the house.

And so I ended up clear in every room to make sure that nobody had actually snuck in. because if somebody had, it would have been most likely a crazy person. And I don't know, it could have gotten crazy. So I checked the house. I checked every room. I went downstairs and there's nothing there. And so for it to then, I guess, result in a door opening and shutting kind of on its own. And again, she's across the entire house.

She was pretty freaked out. And she ended up staying the night at my house because my dad was gone that night. So I guess that terrified her. And I'll say my mom is cover to cover read the Bible a dozen times. I mean, she is, you want to talk about just somebody walking strong with the Lord. She is my prayer warrior. She is so knowledgeable, obviously a believer. And so for her to be kind of freaked out, raised a little bit of suspicion in my head. And when you hear the things that happened as I'll get to from the years prior to that, it makes sense. that that could have happened. I love that her response was like immediately, Lord, I didn't say that thing could come in. In the name of Jesus, get out of here. Yeah.

Ghost, big foot, crazy person, any of the above. Yeah. It's on site. Well, I bet it's also, it was probably a little bit surreal for you because, you know, I kind of have a little bit of a insider baseball knowledge of where these stories are going. and to your point about what happened in prior years, I bet it was probably unsettling for you to get that call from your mom,

saying like, hey, I need you to come over. I need you to sweep the house. Like, anyway, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but,

now I need to know. Well, now Brian needs to know. Oh, yeah, it's, it's, yeah,

and I'll be honest. I, I participated in watching horror movies. to the extreme. And my mom would warn me, you're opening up portals. And I always listened to that and thought, what an absolute nut to be thinking that I'm opening a portal,

mom, you need to chill. But you get older, you start having kids, and you realize the movie nefarious, in my opinion, really broke it down well. I don't know if y'all have seen that.

But the guy that's being interviewed in that movie says, we don't show ourselves in big, dramatic ways. It starts when we get your two-year-old to tell you no and the defiance at that age. And when I heard that, I thought, holy smokes, it all came to light. All these reflections of the decisions that I made as a kid and as a teenager living there, the things that I would davell in before I really committed my life to Jesus. And now as a dad and seeing it, I know what's happening. and I know the spiritual warfare behind it.

And so, yeah, it was unsettling. And one of the stories I'll get to, I didn't even know about until two years ago, maybe. And it happened 20 years ago. And then a friend of mine who experienced it at my house, at the same house, told me about it at a get-together. And that, it actually scared me. It kind of blew my mind to a point where I think that night I was looking at the doorway of our bedroom a handful of times, just making sure that everything was clear. Dang. Dang. Dang.

Yeah. It's, yeah. I mean, people have probably experienced crazier things, and it's not a competition by any means, but I think a lot of people have experienced similar things to this. And like I said at the beginning, the spiritual warfare is real. And if people can hear that there are tactics of the enemy that are not only there, but being exposed and how to combat them, in name of Jesus, over my home, over my property, they're going to start experiencing some freedom of things. And I think, um, the devil does not. want that to happen. So any way that he can keep people distracted, he's going to try to do. So tell us about some of the other things that you think, well, not that you think, that

you experienced, that maybe tie a little bit into that. Because I think that you have some examples of like, hey, here's the type of stuff that you may be inviting into your home. And I didn't even know about the horror movie thing, but as you participate in these things that you think are innocent and neutral. Yeah. Yeah. I remember a specific one. It was a movie with, um, oh, what's his name? He's a British actor. I think it's the movie's called The Wright and he was a priest. Um, he was the actor for, uh, Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. Yes. So he was in this movie and I remember distinctly as like a 17 year old watching this movie and the possession that happened and I think there was an exorcism. And I, it. kind of was like, okay, I think at this point I need to stop because that was terrified. It terrified me. So, yeah, I was I was probably 12, 13. And in my parents' bedroom, my mom has a closet. It's a double door closet and it's made out of mirrors. And I forget why I was in there. I think I was looking for a

toy or something that she might have put away. But I was, I had the doors open and I was looking inside. I'm home alone. It's like after practice. So it's evening, later evening. I was home alone. And I was looking in there and there was nothing in there that I was looking for. And so the lights are on in the room because it's dark out. And I go to shut the door. And with these mirrors, as they're angling, it turns into a panoramic view behind you. Right. And so I can see directly behind me as I'm shutting them. You start to see every. from your peripheral move over and sit directly behind you. And so as I was opening or shutting the door on the left side, the, the, uh, like the panoramic view started directly, uh, to the left of the room and started to pan out around me to behind my head. And during the closing, the bathroom door became exposed into the mirror. And there was a shadow figure standing in the bathroom doorway.

In fact, today I was just looking at it. When I was standing in my own bathroom doorway right now, I'm six foot and I'm almost as wide as the doorframe. This shadow figure was just shy of the doorframe, but as wide. And the thing that made me stop was it had glowing red eyes. And I distinctly remember that the eyes were not circular. they looked angled like he was like it was squinting at me almost like it was like menacing trying to be intimidating i would all i'd go as far as to argue it looked like its chest was puffed out like it was trying to be menacing so as i'm shutting the door i'm just looking like i'm it's just a

i'm just turning my eyes right like i'm i'm not looking for anything's it just happened to catch my attention and i stopped and i stared at it for a second in the in the doorway and i My brain is really running slow. Like, what in the world am I seeing? I didn't continue to shut the doors. I actually whipped my head around and looked at the doorway. And it's completely empty. The bathroom, I can see right through the bathroom.

I can see the light shining. I mean, the light would have been hitting it directly on the head. And so I just slammed him shut and ran out of the room. And I don't even think I told my parents about that. I was terrified. It made me freeze. But I still can see the angle of the eyes. It wasn't wide open staring at me.

It was squinting like it was trying to be intimidating, trying to be menacing. Like there was some kind of expression on its, you know, quote. Oh, 100%. It's interesting how the mirror thing, there's that tradition of vampires where like the vampire doesn't show up in the mirror, like an undead force. and you can't see it. Yeah, that's terrifying. It really makes it creepy that you, like,

looked at it for a second in the mirror. I like the subtle flex, too, of how broad your shoulders are. Like, I fill up basically the whole lot of the frame. Stop. That's not what I meant by that. That's not what I meant by it. Your dealt development is on point.

Send me the contact. No home for your peptide guy. Yeah, I just want you to know. Pause. I noticed. Okay, continue. No. No, I,

I, I, I was thinking about it this morning and I was like, you know what? I was 12. Let's see, I'm six foot now. Let's see where I stand in this door frame so that I can give you a better description. Because I never even thought about how big it, I guess it could have been. It had to have been, I don't know, 6-2, 6-3. Because it was only a couple inches below the door frame, but it was as wide as the door.

And like I said, I would argue, this is going to look goofy, but I would argue that it was doing this. It was pumping its chest out. It was slicking its shoulders back. And it was it was trying to be exactly. Yeah, like you're getting ready for bench. That's right. You two got it. You nail it.

Yeah. Was it looking at you like real humble or was it more like stretch? No. Like, like, oh, yeah. That's a really niche. Oh, he was smug about it. Oh, he was smug. That is a niche reference to an office blooper.

Like that's crazy how hopefully people caught that. That's amazing. I hope so. I had to finish it. so that in case they didn't, hopefully the dots connected. Exactly. Like, and you caught it too. This is epic.

We're locked in. Okay, so. And there's another story that's kind of similar to that that I would love to get into if you're ready to get into it. Yeah. Are you talking about what I saw or what my friend experienced? Which one? I want to talk about first what you saw and then what your friend experienced. because it's dude.

Yeah. And then when he experienced again. Yeah. I'm getting teased right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we got the carrot in front of you. So in my home, it's a ranch.

And it's, I can't say that word without hearing Skinwalker Ranch. With the accent, Mesa. So it's like 11.30 at night. It's in the summer. And you know that when you have, it's dark outside and the lights are on inside, all these windows turn into mirrors. Yeah. Basically, right? You can see everything inside the house. Now you can't see outside. And so I was just letting the dogs out before we went to sleep, before I went to sleep. My parents were already asleep and let them in. And I shut the front door. And the front door has like 12 panes of. of glass. And so like when the sun shines through it, you know, it's, it makes like a rainbow. The light reflects off of them. It wasn't just a solid pain. And when I shut the door right over this shoulder, okay, so I shut the door with my right arm and right here over this shoulder directly in the looking at the front door and seeing behind me was the hat man standing in my

kitchen underneath that light. And there was no face, but there was. was a distinct top top hat. In fact, because I was shorter and it was taller, I could even see the bottom of the trench coat went right to about the knees. And that was another one where I just kind of froze and I stared at it. There was no face. There was, you could almost look at a shadow figure and in like a 4K, kind of make out eye sockets, kind of make out a nose. Maybe my brain could be playing tricks on me. I didn't look hard enough for this. that. I just saw him standing there. And I whipped around, I tried to surprise it. And let me tell you, turning around and not only not seeing anything there, but seeing the sliding glass door

on the other side of the house and my reflection in that and how there was nothing standing between me and the reflection of that really terrified me because that to me was something was here and now you can't see it but you can see yourself and you can say how frightened you are and to this day this was 20 years ago almost to this day when I listen to stories about Hatman I can't finish the episode yours I think is the only one that I've powered through but when I listen to episodes about the Hatman, I legitimately get goosebumps and kind of afraid. I get to a point where I listen to a lot of these kind of stories at night

before I fall asleep. Don't know why. Naturally. And naturally, right? Like, I don't know how many of your, I would love to see the data, by the way, on a poll of how many of your listeners fall asleep listening to you. I do that.

Not because you're boring, but because y'all got the soothing voice. You guys should. you guys should try to do the vocals for like a golf course because I bet you listening to you to through a whole weekend of golf would be phenomenal content. I'm just saying. I really needed them. Because I'm not good at golf. Hey, listen.

Me either. I go to golf just to make everybody else smile and then we all have a good day. Vibes guy. But I, uh, hey, here we go. Um, but I'll, I got to a point where one night I distinctly remember and we're talking within the last couple years where I was laying in bed and a hat man episode was playing I think it was confessinals the confessionals I don't know if you've all if you've ever heard of them but um I was I was so scared that I had to shut the

episode off and I had to start praying and there's been nights where I've been praying and I would be I'd be lying if I didn't say there are times where I'm praying at night because I can feel this I wouldn't say oppression I think that's too strong of a word but there's definitely a, if I hadn't been praying for protection over my home, there'd be things coming in. And it feels like there's something with my eyes close on the other side of my eyelids. And there are times where it's like I can watch the movie happening in my prayer in bed where I watch the angels and demons fighting over top of my bed. And I know and I feel that the spiritual warfare is very real. And, you know, I've listened to enough to know,

I'm praying over my children. My oldest son is going to be nine this summer and he's saved. He got saved a couple years ago. And I'm praying over my children because I know that the oppression is so real that as a dad, I need to be able to physically protect them and care for them. But spiritually, I've got to do even more so. Yeah. And so the Hatman topic still terrifies me to this day, honestly.

Yeah, I can understand why. I mean, that checks out. Well, I was thinking about it more as you were talking to. And the thing that would really get to me, because I know exactly what you mean. When it's dark outside and a lot of lights are on in the house, the house is very bright. And it'd be hard to, like,

trick yourself into seeing the shadow of the hat man between you and the rear door that you can also see your own reflection in, especially when the hatman isn't something that you're like, oh yeah, and then there's the hat man. You know what I mean? Where you don't already have it somewhere.

Not primed. Like, yeah, archived away. And then also like with the lights on in the kitchen too. There's not as much of that pernumbra play. And you know, dude, that was good. Yeah. And you know that there's no, like the socially awkward kid from 2009

in the youth group is not there. who dresses like that man because he watched the metrics the one who sprints to the lunch yeah the one who runs to the cafeteria when it's announced that lunch lunchtime the hands are behind the back oh yeah and who now absolutely who now says you've never met someone like me before i'm a libertarian he's got a trench coat he's got the top he's got the fedora it's always a fedora so i guess it's slightly different but don't mess with my lady and you know that guy's not over at your house yeah so you're like it's not the right never invite him over to your house because he Yeah, because why would you?

Because he doesn't be invited anyway. See, that's nice. But never mind. That's why he's the way he was invited. But when you get, yeah, but when you get older, you offer him a stick of gum in the workplace. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then he says, and then he says, don't come into work tomorrow.

You say, I'm not going to. That's it. That's it. Okay. No, and honestly, up until that time, I had, I didn't know what it was that I saw. I knew what it was that I saw in terms of like I could describe it. Yeah. But I did not know about the.

hat man until probably five years ago. And I think that's why over the last couple years, I've really struggled with listening to that kind of content. Because when it happened, it was a freak thing. I'd never heard of it prior to that. I've never seen that in a movie. The podcasts weren't popular back in, what, 2009, 8, when I was 15 years old, you know?

And so that was just completely, It was unlabeled. And so now hearing what it was that I saw and listening to people describe it, that's where I realized, wow, that was what I saw. And it's one of the only topics that scares me nowadays still. Yeah. Yeah. And we know it wasn't the youth group kid. We know it wasn't one of your friends.

But speaking of friends. Yeah. Now get ready for this, dude. Eli's about to blow your ears off. Dude, I took one of my headphone monitors out just because I was scared. Oh, yeah. That's probably because my voice is kind of shrill and annoying, but I'll take your word for it, Brian. Stop.

So, okay, continue. No, so I, like I said, I just found out about this. A year and a half ago, we did like a young, married get together because I think at 30 you still consider yourself a young married person and at least in the Baptist circles you do. And we're just sitting there talking. The guys are on one side of my garage and the ladies around the other. All the wives are hanging out and talking. And a friend of mine brought this up. And like everybody else in the circle, they're hearing this for the first time, I didn't know he was talking about my house and me until he basically revealed it

halfway through the story. And I was kind of shaken by this because we're talking 20 years later and I'm finding out about it, maybe not quite 20. 15 years later, I'm finding out about this. So in our in our house, growing up, same house. It's a ranch style. So you can see the hallway with all the all the bedrooms in it. There was a counter that separated our living room and our kitchen. And he told me it was, I don't know, one, two a.m. Everybody's asleep, including myself. He walks out of my room, goes down the hall, goes into the kitchen, grab some water. And he said he got his cup of water, walked over to that counter and was just facing down the hall. He was basically just going to slam this cup of water, put it down, walk back into the room. But he said at the end of the

hall. We had, I must have had a TV still on, like I fell asleep to a movie or something. And he said that when he looked down the hall, he saw a shadow figure walk out of my room across the hall into my parents' room. And he wasn't sure if it was me. He told me a couple years ago when I heard this story. He thought I might have gotten up and gone to my parents' bathroom in the master bedroom or just gone to tell my mom or dad something. He put the glass down, walked down the hall, went straight down the hall, and he's already looking down the hall at my room, walks down the hall, goes into my room and sees me dead asleep on the floor. And so for somebody else to experience it is kind of wild.

And when you hear about it so long later, it really blew me away. You're like, what was it doing here? Now, that's my, that's what I'm saying is that it just walked out. And I will not be naive enough to say it's probably something that I brought into the house, which as I regret, I don't like that I say that, but it's the truth. Now, my friend, we've been friends for 20 years. We've gone to the same church together for 15 years. I coach his son in baseball.

He helps me coach. My son and his son are best friends. They're only a couple months apart. He's a born again believer. I mean, he helped me plant the church in Dearborn. Like, we've done a lot of spiritual things together. And we are very close to God. We help run the youth group together.

I mean, we are very close to the Lord and we're very close to each other. And for him to share that, I have no reason. Now, I didn't experience it, but I have no reason not to believe it, especially when you consider the other things that I've already bumped into at this house and that I'm still yet to encounter. It kind of is like, wow. it solidifies some of the things that I experienced in a negative way, but it just brings to light the reality of this kind of thing.

And if you mess around with it or you're not careful with it, it can haunt you. I mean, it can haunt you for years, you know. Does your outdated website give your visitors sleep paralysis? What? Is that a thing? Are you haunted by that logo your uncle's pet werewolf made? Brian, what are you talking about?

If you're ready to level up your brand and website, you need to talk to Josh at Valenti Creative. What's up, guys? Josh, my guy. What the heck? How did you just appear? Head to valentecreative.com slash nCP to talk with Josh about your brand and website. Oh, this is an ad that we're doing right now?

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And the thing, like, I would hesitate to say. this because it's a it's a joke but it's also not we're not talking about a French nun that's telling us these stories all right we're talking about hey you know what just tell the French nuns they they need to calm down yeah okay like and I think we know what I'm talking if a French nun told me this story I'd be like if a French nun or someone who biologically could be a French nun told me the story you do the math. No, I just want to emphasize the credibility like to Eli's point. It's not just some like kook off the street. This is a, a friend, a believer, mature, godly man by all accounts who's just like normal.

Yeah. And who's not putting this out for everybody. You know, he, he's even like a little bit muted. You know, he's like, yeah, I'll tell the story in this group in the garage and kind of freak people out. But it's not made up. Yeah. Like that, that genuinely is terrifying. Imagine you're sleeping over at your friend's house and all of a sudden you learn that there's shadow figure demons walking from room to room. Yeah, and you heard about it from a man. Yeah.

Can't emphasize it. No, we're talking to human male. From birth. Ladies, if you're getting worked up right now, can I just tell you like, you're proven our point. Calm down. You're proven our point.

Okay, you're proven our point. Okay, like, look. Okay, so Eli, I think that, I think that you have one more story to tell us. I've been really excited to hear it and also watch these guys hear it. So why don't you go into that and tell us what else happened? Yeah. So the last, I'd say big situation, there was another one that Ben and I were kind of going

back and forth on and decided it probably would not be something to share here. Brian, if that's something that interests you, I'd be more than happy to have a separate conversation with you. one was that one was pretty extreme arguably um this was pretty extreme too um because this there is a physical um manifestation and touch uh with this one and so a different friend and i it's the middle of the summer i grew up in this house without air conditioning um and so middle of the summer we got the windows wide open and uh we're playing xbox and we hear this noise outside of my window probably, I don't know, within 50, 60 yards away.

The only way my brain has been able to categorize it is that it was a turkey that was gobbling at one in the morning, which isn't impossible, but typically they're roosting by then. And so, I mean, I, you have that big yard, like you have a big yard surrounding your house. You have a lot of space between your neighbors. Like you mentioned that before, but I want people to keep that. in mind here. Yeah, and I'll paint a picture here in a second. I raised chickens for five years.

When it's, when it's getting dark out, they're going home. They're going to where they know it's safe. They're not out wandering. The amount of times that I've had to grab a chicken off of like a bird bath at midnight because it was too afraid to get down and go home. I don't think turkey are quite as docile as that. But again, it's not impossible that it wasn't a turkey at 1 a.m. But the likelihood of it, in my opinion, is a little bit lower.

So out this window faces my next door neighbor, who again is 200 yards away. Out there, everybody's got a pole barn and they have a light in the front of their pole barn. So there's a little bit of light shining towards us, but it's not bright enough, obviously, to reach my house. So we hear this noise. We paused the game and we're kind of like, what in the world could that be? We shut off the TV because, again, it's dark outside. It's light in my room. Let's shut the TV off so we can see better out the window.

And just like what you'd see in a cartoon, we put our chins on the window. And we're looking out the window to see, can we see anything related to this? And I think I saw a couple deer walking through the field. There's a three acre, four acre field that's on the, the other side of the yard and that that field butts up to my neighbor's property so the field's a hundred yards wide you know it's 60 70 yards to the field so it's a lot of space and i would say we saw deer i don't want to make the story dramatic and say we saw some creature crawling it was on four legs it had a long neck probably a deer i've seen many deer out here at 11 30 12 o'clock at

night, 10 yards from my house. I mean, it's super possible. But it didn't match the sound. That was the weird part is deer aren't making noises. But there was, and it wasn't a straight turkey gobble. That's just the closest thing that I can label it. It was a weird bubbling noise like that. And so 15, 16 years old, we're like the adrenaline pumping and I said, let's sneak out. We weren't going to go do anything nefarious. Don't really know what we were going to do. but we wanted to sneak out and maybe get close to whatever it is, maybe try to just hear it again. So we sneak out one of my windows and we didn't go through the house because I didn't want to wake up my parents at 1 a.m. saying, hey, we're just going to go outside real quick.

We heard a weird noise. We wanted to sneak out and just be, I don't know, just adrenaline junkies, I guess. So we sneak out of the house and we go over towards my pole barn that had the same kind of light. So we're standing in the light now and we're saying, what do we do next? And I've got my flashlight and I have my phone. And we're standing there kind of like talking, okay, what should we do? We get quiet for a minute. Let's just listen and see if we can hear anything coming.

No noise, no wind, nothing. There's no trees around me. The trees are 100 yards away. It's a very wide open flat land that I grew up on. And so we're standing there. and I'm looking at him and there's no noise, there's no wind, but all of a sudden, there is the loudest, clear as day, witch cackle that happens right into this ear so loudly that it actually hurt my ear, but I felt hot breath right here on my neck. And I can literally show you, if I can

show you the back of my neck, I would show you the exact patch of skin that the hot breath touched and this cackle just shook my head. It hurt my eardrum. I dropped what was in my hands, and I stood there. My friend is across from me. I didn't even lock eyes with them. I just kind of stared off into the distance.

It was like everything just kind of went blurry for a second. I reached down real quick. I grabbed my phone. I grabbed my flashlight. I turned around and I shined my flashlight. There's nothing there. There's nobody behind me. There's not anybody running away.

There's nothing there. and I turned back around to look at my friend. Did you hear that? He's 20 yards back to me sprinting away. I mean, he was gangly and uncoordinated. And so I distinctly recall the shape of his body trying to run as fast as he could away from me. Smart guy.

And smart guy. He deserved that physical description, though. For doing that to you. He did. because he deserved being called ganglily he he he did because the base of the window is four foot off the ground and he's halfway in still trying to get in by the time i got to him i grabbed his feet and threw him into my house and then i jump in and crawl behind him um now i grew up in a town where it's 800 people the graduating public school class is 35 to 40 the likelihood of a witch i mean everybody knows everybody The likelihood of a witch being in the town would have been the talk of the town like you wouldn't believe. The only thing I can recall about a witch growing up was a house about 30 minutes away from us in another town where a friend of mine, his dad would be driving us to his house from an event or something. And when we would pass the house, he would say the woman that lived there is a witch.

I think he saw her sacrificing a cat at one point. He went there to preach the gospel to her. She was very unreceptive. And that's it. I thought he was just telling me a story to scare me. But every time I passed that house growing up, I always had a weird feeling. But yeah, that scared me to another level. I had a conversation with a gentleman from the Bump podcast, Bo.

and he was wondering if it was potentially Lilith. I don't know much about Lilith, but it is a topic I avoid if that's true. The last thing I want to do is welcome that kind of content back into my life. But I can still feel that hot breath right here. And when I think about it, it gives me goosebumps. And it was unique. It was unique because I felt somebody that close to me. saying something, expressing themselves.

And the witch cackle was insane, insane, like typical witch cackle, but it was so loud because it was right in my ear. Yeah, that's terrible. And I did not sneak out again. Well, first of all, good, good call. My question immediately was like, how did Kamala Harris get out in the woods there at that time of night?

Dang. Right. Because cackle, Yeah. You've heard Kamala Harris. Put a clip. I mean, they're on the same. They're on the same wavelength for sure.

He's got to do it because it is uncannily witchlike when Kamala Harris cackles. It's true. Let me do an impression. Yeah. See what I'm saying? Now do a side-by-side comparison, Ben's versus hers. Thank you, Evan. I'll buy you Chipotle again.

It's uncanny. It's uncanny. Honestly, like that's one of my favorite collections of stories that we've had on graveyard shifts. Not to like, not to really install all the other guests. No, no, no. That's not actually what I was going to say. All the other stories are great too. What I love about this one, the thing that really drew me in with this is that it was like all of it was waking things.

You know, I think that sleep paralysis is something that maybe more people experienced than I was thinking when I first. looked into the topic because it never happened to me. And sleep paralysis is terrifying. But the thing that really stuck out with your stories, Eli, is these are things that you're like, no, I was lucid. I was preteen to teenage years. And this was like a hyper-concentrated collection of things that were occurring in a Christian home.

I mean, it's just not to like take pleasure and the stuff that's terrifying, but it is terrifying. And it really makes me think of something that you touched on, Eli, earlier. And this is what I would want to leave listeners and viewers with, is the responsibility of a husband and a father to protect his family as best he can in every area of life. Physically, yes, you want to be fit. You want to be able to physically protect your people, but also spiritually. And how do you do that? Well, it's by giving them up to the Lord constantly, equipping them with the truth of the gospel and the truth. truths of God and encouraging them always to hold those things as true in their own hearts, but also to be in consistent prayer for your people, asking the Lord to get to send the angels to

protect, asking the Lord to guard a home with His Holy Spirit and with, you know, the, when I was growing up, it was always the hedge of protection. But that's exactly what we're asking for. And basically, like, taking your, your people that God's given you and offering them back to him with open hands and just recognizing like there are things that are outside of my control, outside of my purview, but that I still, like, I love these people, would you please just keep them from this? And so I would encourage everyone to heed that encouragement from Eli and take that duty seriously to love your people, even in a spiritual sense, by praying and asking our good father in heaven to keep them safe from even unseen attacks.

threats. Dude, so true. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, it is. So true. No, so true, King. Well, I think with that, Eli, we really appreciate you coming on the show.

This has been an absolute pleasure. Even just getting to know you has been a real treat for us. And we appreciate you listening to our content and for being willing to come on here, taking time out of your day to share your very interesting stories with not only us, but all of our listeners. And if you are interested in the graveyard shift, then you can feel. find episodes of the Graveyard Shift early on our Patreon channel. You can also submit your own story to be featured on the graveyard shift at Stories at the hauntedcosmos.com. Stories at the hauntedcosmos.

And if it's a good story and we're able to connect, then you may very well be featured on a future season. We will have a season of the Graveyard Shift coming up during October this year. So if you have a story and you haven't reached out yet, do that. And we'll be in touch with you. Ryan, would you have any final words for our viewers? Don't sneak out of your window at night, kids. Listen to your parents. Yeah, don't go looking for the witch turkey deer goblin. Don't do it. If you see a you hear a strange turkey demon and then you see a strange deer demon or just a turkey and deer, I don't know. Don't shut your Xbox off and go outside. Just keep the Xbox on.

Play some Tony Hawk pro skater. Is that Xbox? I'm sure they had an Xbox. Oh yeah. Yeah, we definitely play the original. I think PlayStation was what I think I played it on. PlayStation 2, Need for Speed Underground? You know what I'm saying? Stick with that. Stay, stay inside. The one thing, I just had this thought, sorry.

Just to the point about Lilith. So the Lilith tradition is that she's like a knight witch in the form of a bird hominid thing. So she's kind of a chimera with bird features and lady features. And so anyway, the turkey. noise, the weird turkey bubbling, gobbling. Yeah. Like maybe that's part of the bait, you know? Maybe that's part of the lure.

What were you gonna? Turkey neck? Like your mom's like your mom's kind of like a chimera of a whale in a person. Okay. My mom commented on that video. I know. I'm so sorry. I'm so skinny.

I'm so sorry. Okay. We really deserve to be disowned by our mothers. To be like rebuked and hit with a flip flop. Yeah. You know what I mean? My mom's not an abuela. She'd hit me with a just-a-old-fashioned ruler.

She'd hit you with like a piece of wonder bread. Well, guys, thank you for tuning in to this episode of The Graveyard Shift. Thank you again, Eli. I really appreciate you. And we'll see you in either the next episode of Graveyard Shift or the next episode of Haunted Cosmos. We'll see in whatever comes next. We'll see you in something. Be there.

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