Somewhere in the Skies - Chasing the Shadows of Ghost Stories

Episode Date: October 8, 2018

On episode 77 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, we ignite the flame of the Halloween season. In the first installment of the Halloween series, "Somewhere on the Spooky Ground," Ryan is joined by Shannon LeGro of Into the Fray Radio and Midnight in the Desert. They speak with paranormal investigator and professional storyteller, Chris Soucy. He tells the terrifying story of what ignited his passion for hunting ghosts, his approaches to the investigating, and some startling stories he's come across from around the world. If you have a ghost, monster, or strange story you'd like to tell on this October series, contact Ryan through the website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Guest Bio: Christopher Soucy is a paranormal enthusiast, storyteller, writer, director, producer living in Savannah, Georgia. He can be reached on Twitter @chrissoucystory or on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/Soucyman ALIENCON lands in Baltimore on Nov. 9th-11th. For discount tickets, use promo code: SKIES at check out. Visit: www.TheAlienCon.com/register Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Opening and Closing Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is produced by Third Kind Productions, in association with eOne Entertainment SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is sponsored by HelloFresh. To receive 50% off your first order, use promo code: SOMEWHERE50 at checkout by visiting www.HelloFresh.ca Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greetings Skywatchers. This is Ryan Sprague, the host of the Summer in the Sky's podcast, and I want you to join me at AlienCon. AlienCon lands in Baltimore, Maryland on November 9th, 10th, and 11th. Explore the Unexplained with your favorite ancient aliens contributors, UFO researchers, and stars from hit sci-fi and sci-fact television shows and films. I'll personally be giving my solo presentation, and I'll also be joining my good friend and colleague, Mason McClellan of Roke Planet to moderate and take part in panel discussions throughout the weekend. It's going to be a fun and informative weekend for families, serious researchers, and all curious minds alike. And right now, you can get an exclusive Somewhere in the Sky's discount on all tickets by visiting the

aliencon.com slash register and using the code Skies at checkout. We hope to see you at the Baltimore Convention Center in November, and now on to the show. Today on the first installment of the Halloween series, we talk to Chris Sousie, paranormal investigator and master ghost storyteller. The most fascinating phenomenons to me are people who really, really want to see ghosts or UFOs or something, but never do. That phenomenon is fascinating to me, because I wonder, is there an inhibiting factor to it? And what I've learned from many of them is that,

that they have a genuine disbelief. What they're looking for is something to make them believe. And it's like, I don't think it works that way. I don't think it's seeing as believing. I think it's believing as seeing. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Welcome to the Halloween season of Somewhere in the Skies. I'm your host, Ryan Sprague.

And for the rest of the month of October, we're going to be taking a little break from searching somewhere in the skies. And we're going to be looking at the Miss. histories that haunt us somewhere on the ground. From ghosts to monsters to true crimes and urban legends, it's going to be a spooky, tragic, fun, and possibly even terrifying journey as we count down the days until Halloween. You'll hear from listeners at the beginning of every episode about their own personal interactions

with the unexplained, the weird, and the creatures that lurk in the darkest corners of our world, and our minds. Today we're going to hear from paranormal investigator and professional storyteller, Chris Sousie, all about his ghostly adventures around the world. But first, here is a listener's story from Alan, you won't soon forget. My name is Alan. I'm a paranormal researcher and investigator. I've been studying paranormal phenomena for over 20 years.

I've been on over 150 investigations, but nothing was going to prepare me for when I got the call to investigate an old tattoo parlor. Now, this old tattoo parlor resided inside a historical building that was on the main street of a very conservative Christian town. So it wasn't universally liked, and most people hoped that they would go out of business and leave. When I contacted the owner to find out what was going on,

he did tell me indeed he was financially struggling because he was having a hard time keeping artists, employed there because of the phenomena that was happening. So I asked them, you know, what kind of things are going on? And he said everything from being shoved and pushed and scratched and hair being pulled and posters being ripped off the wall and religious items that were left behind from the mortuary being used as decorations ripped off the wall thrown on the ground, people feeling physically ill, people claiming to have things follow them home, you know, everything that you can think of.

So obviously we were intrigued and we wanted to investigate it, so we agreed to come out and investigate. I gathered my team and my equipment, and we went down to investigate this old tattoo parlor. And one of the things that I like to do when I investigate is I like to go in first by myself to kind of get a feel for the place, to get an understanding of what the vibe is like. Also, it's a vulnerable thing. I'm exposing myself to supposed spirits that are inside this building, and I don't know where they are, and I'm in complete darkness, and I can't see them coming if they're coming. And so it's a vulnerability that I really, really enjoy and I think it helps with spirit communication. So I went down into the waiting room, which used to be the embalming room, and I sat down on the couch. I got out my digital voice recorder to try to capture spirit voices.

One of the things that I did is I put my arm straight out to my side and I started to communicate. And I asked, if there's any spirits here that want to communicate with me, please come to me now. I give you permission to use my body or the equipment that I have here to muster up enough energy to physically touch my hand because I know you can do some physical things and I'd like to experience it myself. And right as I said that, I felt this extremely cold sensation come across the top of my hand. And that cold sensation turned to a very warm sensation to a very stinging sensation like a burn. I got my flashlight out and I looked at the top of my hand and the whole top of my hand was bright, right? red like somebody had just smacked the top of my hand. And right as that happened, I got sick to my stomach.

I felt like a 300 pound weight just got put on my body. I couldn't get up. I couldn't move. And then I heard this voice in my head. And it said, get out. You're not supposed to be here. What are you doing here? Leave.

And as much as I wanted to, I couldn't move. I felt paralyzed. I felt discompeted. completely in a different world. My team was trying to contact me. They were concerned. I wasn't aware that they had actually come in the room and called me by my name three or four times

before I even recognized they were there. I was in a trance. Where did I go? What was I experiencing? Who was doing this to me? It scared me so bad that I left that place and I said, I can't investigate here tonight. This thing has got a hold of me.

I can't go back in there. So we decided to cancel the information. investigation for the night and come back in another time. So I went home. And typically when I get home, I get sage out, which is something that I burn and the smoke I use to kind of get off the negative energies that are around me so that I don't bring anything into my home because I have a family, a wife and daughter, and I didn't want to bring any harm to them. But for some reason that night, I was so out of it that I forgot to sage myself before I went in the house. So I'll go down and I lay in bed next to my wife and my two little dogs at the foot of my bed and I start to go to sleep.

And I hear this voice say, hey. And it sounded just like the voice in the tattoo parlor. And I opened my eyes and looked around and thought, oh, it's just because I got all messed up from earlier. So it's nothing really. I'm just going to go back to sleep. So I started to go back to sleep again and then I hear it again. Hey. And this time I opened my eyes and look at the foot of my bed and my two little dogs are also looking at the foot of my bed like they heard it too. And I knew that I wasn't crazy. And just then I see this shadow figure at the other side of my room, come out of the wall and go right into the middle of the room like it's just looking right at me. And then it slowly drifted back into the wall. And then it did it again. It came out of the wall and walked right into the

middle of the room. And I didn't realize that my wife was awake. And she whispers to me, what in the hell is that? And I said, I don't know. And it just kind of disappeared. So the very next day, everything was fine. A couple days after that, everything was fine. And then one night, my daughter comes into my room, middle of the night. And she says, dad, there's a shadow figure in my room watching me. And obviously, you know, I think she's a little kid. So she's a little kid. So she's probably just her imagination. In the back of my mind, it makes me wonder, you know, of course. So I went into her room to find out what was going on and just kind of hear what she had to say.

And as I was leaving her room after I put her in bed and made her feel comfortable, I was coming back to my room, there's that shadow figure. I see it dart down my hallway and I knew that my daughter had seen it. What was it? Why did this thing follow me home? What did it do? Why is it still here? I couldn't grasp it. I'm a paranormal investigator.

I'm supposed to be the one with the answers. I'm supposed to be the one that knows what to do. But I've never had anything attached itself to me. I had never had anything come to me and stay with me in my home. I didn't know what to do. And then I realized that we're really vulnerable in this field. And we're all just trying to figure this out. So I contacted a local psychic in my area who I've worked with in the past.

And she came out and she informed me. She said, you got yourself. involved in something that you shouldn't have and you didn't protect yourself and then I immediately clicked oh yeah I didn't sage myself when I came home and so because of that fact this spirit had attached itself to me and was using my energy to manifest and do things in my own home and so she went and she got her sage and we saged my entire house and we saged my daughter's room we saged everywhere and saged everybody that was in the house. And after a couple of days, the activity slowly dissipated until it was gone. So I'm sitting here thinking to myself,

what was it that I was dealing with? What was it that I experienced? Who was it that was in my mind? And the only thing I can think of is the spirits that were in this mortuary. Maybe it was the mortician that used to live there. Maybe it was one of the spirits of one of the people, that had died. Maybe I was showing disrespect. I don't know. I can't explain what it was. Other than to say that the veil between our world and the next is a lot thinner than you think. Well, for anyone who's met me, you know I've got to make, so I know where I'm going for my next tattoo. As long as it's a living, breathing human being putting that needle on my skin. Thank you so much to Alan for sharing this story.

And I know he has many more to tell, so stay tuned for that in the near future. And now, let's get to this week's gasply guest. During a brief expedition through the south, I had the immense pleasure of landing in one of the most beautiful cities in America. Savannah, Georgia, separated from South Carolina by the Savannah River. This coastal city is known for its pristine manicure. parks, horse-drawn carriages, and antebellum architecture. Its historic district is filled with cobblestone squares and parks, shaded by oak trees covered with Spanish moss. At the center of this picturesque district is the landmark Gothic Revival Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, but below the beautiful

surface of downtown Savannah lay a history wrought with controversy, tragedy, and a death told beyond imagination. I gathered the courage to stay at the 1790 hotel, known to be haunted. And while I didn't experience anything paranormal or ghostly during my stay there, I did have the rare opportunity to have an exclusive ghost tour by the city's leading guide and storyteller, Chris Sousie. Chris brought me through the winding streets full of history, but they were also full of stories so brutal and so tragic that you could feel the spirits all around you, beckoning to be heard.

Below our feet at local cemeteries were thousands and thousands of bodies, their lives, and names, never known to those above the ground. But as we made our way around the graveyards, the local businesses, theaters, and the homes in Savannah, their stories began to take shape through the genuine and sympathetic words of a master storyteller. Today, I'm joined by Shannon LaGroe of Into the Frey Radio and Midnight in the Desert as my co-host. We hear about some of Chris Sussie's most memorable moments in investigating the paranormal, the history of ghosts and the supernatural throughout Savannah, and we hear the terrifying stories of the dark forces that got Chris involved, that followed him throughout his life in how he

and we all can approach these mysteries that lay somewhere on and below the ground. I hope you enjoy. Thanks for joining us today, Chris. Thank you. So, Chris, what is your, I guess, origin story, as it were, on how you got interested in investigating ghost cases? The story, as I tell it, is actually begins when I was six years old. When I was six years old, I haphazardly went into an old abandoned house in Amberg, Germany. And the house itself just spoke of being haunted. You look at certain houses

and you see them and you think, oh, that place has definitely got to be haunted. And this was just one of them, an old gray, you know, boarded up house. And it was actually at the prompting of one of my friends who was significantly older than me. And, you know, we were all military brats. And so we kind of lived in this gypsy lifestyle and going out and investigating and poking around. That's just second nature to us. And there was this house just off of the military base that had every indication that it was an adventure waiting to happen. And as it turned out, it was a completely scarring and damaging adventure.

It was this terrible and frightening building that kind of, scarred me in a way left me with this question that I carry with me all my life, this sensation that there's more the there's more to the world than we can see or understand

and the pursuit of understanding it is worth the danger. What brought you to Georgia then, Chris? Well, being a military child, we bounced around all over the world. I actually ended up graduating high school about 45 miles south of Savannah, Georgia. And then I joined the army myself. So again, sort of bouncing around the world. But at the end of all that

bouncing, there was this weird sensation that I didn't have a home, that there was no place that was beckoning me or calling to me. And my sister had made this attempt at roots. And she decided that she didn't want to move around it anymore. She didn't want to bounce around anymore. So she just like dug in here in Savannah, Georgia, I admired that so much. And I felt that the only home I have is family. So I came to be close to her. And it was originally going to be just like a, you know, two or three years stint. But it's, it's been over 20 years now. Chris, do you mind if I back you up to your previous statement about the house? And I don't know if you feel comfortable talking about it. I was just going to ask that. Yeah, it's kind of nagging on me. I'm like, I don't think I can let that go.

Do you mind talking about what happened in that house that got you started on this path? Oh, no, not at all. It was me and my friend Dave, David, and we basically went into the basement of this house. And inside the house, it was kind of this pitch-black wreckage. And it was in the middle of the day that we started this adventure. But having stuck into the basement window, there was no way back out the window because it was a drop down into the basement. And the window itself is very small and we couldn't get back up out of it. Now, David actually went before me.

And so I was following him and we were separated. And I spent all this time in the house alone trying to find him. And going floor by floor through this darkened and very atmospheric house, I felt all this dread, this dread that was indescribable, being six years old, not understanding the world, not understanding anything. All I felt was the peril of the place. And I could not find my friend. And I found myself up on the second floor in a little shaft of light that was coming through from one window that wasn't boarded up.

And I just clung to the light. And I stayed there as the sunset, as the night came on, as the streetlights were the only thing that were coming through that window. and it made it all dim and frightening and scary, and there's all these strange sounds. And it's my, I always say I was there for eight hours, but all I know was I was there into the night. And in the silence of the night,

I began to hear these sounds. It started with chains rattling, which even as a six-year-old, I was like, that's a little cliche. But it was chains rattling. And it was heavy footsteps, just these booming footsteps. And it felt like they were coming right at me,

but it was on the ceiling. And then there was this pristine scream, this high-pitched, chilling scream. And I realized into the scream that it was David screaming. And then he comes pounding through the wall, or what appeared to be the wall. He just came running out in front of me, screaming. And of course, you know, when one person screams,

everyone screams, so I'm screaming. And we rush out of the house. now he goes barreling down the stairs and he was nine years old he's bigger than me he goes barreling down the stairs and he hits a nailed shut door with such force that he knocks it off its hinges and he keeps going so i'm running past him i get out of the house i'm full of all the panic but once i'm out of the house i'm fine i feel okay but david's gone he's you know he's still running now david did not come back to school not the next day, not the next day, not ever. I would go and try to visit him, and there was no sign of him. His mother would never let me see him. And from that night forward, I had these terrible, horrible nightmares, these nightmares, I guess they were innocuous.

I would have these dreams where it was a chest of drawers that would appear in my dreams. And whenever the chest of drawers would appear in my dreams, I would be compelled to go to them. compelled to open them. And inside the drawers were gore, blood and guts and all these things, which it would take me a long time to understand or comprehend, but it didn't look like anything that I could understand, but I knew it made me sick. I knew that it made me uneasy and horrified. But there was no way of knowing what it was. A lot of people don't understand that the inside of the human body isn't just red. You know, it's not just blood and all the organs are red. there's all these colors. He's invisible and hidden colors from us. And that's what was in this drawer, this, this terrible secret colors of the human body. And so it would take me two years before I would see David again. And when I saw him, it was the day before he left Germany. I went over to his house because I wasn't going to let him get away without talking to me. And he told me that when we got into the house,

house. When he first dipped into that house, he heard children's laughter. And he followed the children's laughter through the house until he found himself in the attic behind what was a sort of a swinging door that looked like a piece of the wall. And once he was up into the attic, he found this chest of drawers. And when he said that, you know, my stomach just tightened. And I tried to shake it. And he said that he felt like drawn to go to the chest of chores. But as he is walking towards the chest of drawers, he saw in the corner a man that looked like he had never eaten food. He was just like all bones and skin. And he was just like coming out of the shadows towards him. And he was laden with chains. And I remember hearing the chains. I remember the footsteps. I never saw

David again after that day. You know, the habit of military families moving about. There's just no no reconnecting. So another two years would go by. The nightmare still plaguing me almost every night. I was a very young insomniac. And in that time, the nightmares, starting pretty much

when I was six or seven years old, I started looking for really scary things. I started wanting and urging myself to go into the black forest or, oh, that place is haunted. I'll go and look in there. It's funny because I don't think kids could do that today, but

in the 70s, when you're a kid, it was all, I don't know, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer adventures. You just leave in the morning and be back before the lights go down. So I poked around anywhere that there was a haunting. And it took me years to understand that what I was trying to do was I was trying to find something that scared me more than that house. I was trying to cure myself of my nightmares by giving me new nightmares, finding monsters to fight my monsters. And would you go back to that house now if you had the chance? Three years ago, just three years ago, we went back to Amber for the first time. And I tried to find the house, but it was a weird maze of memory and even the military base itself was gone.

And I wanted to, but I couldn't find it. My guess is it's gone. My guess is that it is no more. Probably for the better. Probably, probably. Well, you know, it's interesting because just before, we left Germany, I did go back to that house. I did go back just to see it.

Just to acknowledge that it existed. By happenstance, there was a landscape person there or maybe the house's caretaker. And he explained that they didn't want to tear it down because

it was reminiscent of a bad time. And he explained that a man murdered his family in the house. But he did it. Yeah. Well, and the explanation was the Nazis were coming for his family.

And he did not know what to do. He did not know how to protect them. And so he chopped them up and hid them in the house in pieces. Do you think there's any written record of that anywhere there? I doubt it. I honestly do. I mean, I've casually looked for it. I've casually tried to find it.

But in essence, most stories come down. to what people say and talk about, you know, because for all I know, that's just some crazy guy who, you know, wanted to scare a little kid on the sidewalk. Right. Oh, we can definitely relate with that, Chris. I mean, with these topics, we always find that really all we have to rely on is witness testimony. So we're with you on that, brother. I have definitely, you know, done the, I'll find the newspaper article.

I'll find this. And like in the business of telling ghost stories, it's always handed to have that. that. And in many cases, you know, that's, that's what makes a ghost story tellable is, oh, and I have this, you know, this little bit of information. I have this little thing. But in essence, most ghost stories are not that convenient. There's not this great written, you know, history to back you up because people's lives are not documented. So, well, I mean, I guess nowadays, you know, with the way we document our own lives, it might actually be be easier for future people to find out what happened to us on a daily basis.

Yeah, the corroboration between you and David, though, is fascinating. Well, speaking of history, Chris, the history of downtown Savannah is clearly undeniable. Underneath the ground there, there lays many, many stories of tragedy. Why do many consider Savannah one of the most haunted places in America in terms of that? There are a lot of beliefs as to why places are haunted, and in many regards, as far as I'm concerned, one of the things that goes hand in hand with ghost stories is an unchanged environment, old houses, old buildings, long histories. One of the things you always hear about is like ghosts getting kind of riled when you're doing renovations. And it's my belief

that while you're renovating, you are changing an environment that the spirits actually use to present their energy and keep their energy vibrant. And if you change that environment, then their hold on this world, the physical world, be continuous. Now, downtown Savannah happens to be one of the largest historic districts, continuous, contiguous historic districts in America. It is a mile by mile square of solid these buildings have been here since. And they are the same way.

The streets are the same way. squares are the same. All of these things harken to an idea that energy remains in flow as long as there is something to flow through. As long as you don't put up new building. As long as you don't change the streets too much, as long as you don't do all these things,

you are given this opportunity to have energy that has been flowing the same way for hundreds of years. I do believe in part. Savannah does have such a remarkable haunted history is that they have made stringent laws against the changing of anything historical in Savannah, that it is a large and dedicated historic space. Yeah, I mean, my first time being there, Chris, I had traveled through Colonial Park Cemetery

during the day, and, you know, just like any cemetery, it was sad. It was a little, you know, depressing walking through. But at night, it took on a completely. completely different beast. And your tour stopped at this location. Could you tell us a bit about Colonial Park Cemetery and the lore behind that?

Colonial Park Cemetery sits right there at the center of the heart of downtown Savannah, and it is a curious cemetery, to be sure. They remarked that there are over 11,000 bodies in the cemetery, but only like 700 grave marker.

One of the most enduring beliefs in ghosts is don't mess with the graves. You're not disturbed the graves. Show no distress to the graves. This is partly why we have cemeteries is to show respect for the dead. When you do anything that alters that respect or alters that kind of solemnity, you are dealing with a harbinger of haunting. So in Colonial Park Cemetery, there have been so many. many recorded mischiefs and and bizarre occurrences.

One of the most recent that came to such a fascinating note was that in 2004, there were a mass of animal slaughter, really, inside the cemetery. Cats and chickens and dogs and all kinds of different animals that were just found butchered in the cemetery. And many people believe that it was a part of some voodoo-like ritual, some root-doctoring ritual, because the cemetery itself has so much of that vibrant energy that you need from what is typically called, the Garden of Good and Abel, from a cemetery where spirits are restless, where you can contain or collect or find these spiritual entities. And so Colonial Park Cemetery, which is a public. Park is actually locked from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. trying to bar a lot of people from going in and vandalizing.

It has a long history of vandalism. It has a long history of people being just supremely disrespectful to it. Chris, is voodoo prominently practiced there in Savannah? Oh, absolutely. And I have always believed even more so than New Orleans. It is just held in a very secretive fashion. I think that they have really gone into hiding in the last 20 years because of the book, Midnight and the Garden of Good and Evil. I remember coming to Savannah and being able to go to voodoo shops. These voodoo shops were not tourist locations. They were shops for faithful. There were shops for the people who practiced this faith.

And it is a faith and a religion. And therefore, it was interesting to see that there was an openness about voodoo. voodoo practice here in Savannah, but it was not touted, it was not celebrated, it was not sold. So when people started coming on the stories of, you know, Minerva, the Voodoo Witch and all these stories that were coming around, they kind of closed shop because they didn't want this tourist dollar. They didn't want people to just come rooting through their stores and taking their faith and turning it into, you know, kits. So a lot of the voodoo practitioners of Savannah kind of packed up and went just across the bridge into South Carolina, and there's a settlement in South Carolina, but a lot of those practitioners have to come into Savannah to do their work.

Piggybacking off of the whole witch aspect, Chris. You mentioned on our tour about another location known as the Witch's Graveyard, which is just south of Savannah. Could you tell us a little about that? The Witch's Graveyard was probably what would, what I would consider to be my first, legitimate investigation. The Witch's Graveyard is in Allenhurst, Georgia, and it's about 45 miles south of Savannah,

and I was in high school, in Heinsville, Georgia. And as you can imagine, Hinesville is not the most happening place in the world. So you have to find ways to entertain yourself or get up to mischief. And the witch's graveyard was this peculiar totally

word-of-mouth ghost story and it was introduced to me. I was having a party at my house, and my sister, who was in college at the time, comes bursting into the house, and she's white as a sheet. She's, you know, panicked because she's just had this very peculiar experience. And she, you know, exclaims that she had just been to the witch's graveyard.

And so we were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, that's so much better than a Heinzville party. What are you talking about? And she's, so the story, as she told me, was there's this grave. graveyard, down a maze of dirt roads in Islandhurst, Georgia, where these three women were actually tried, hanged, and then their bodies burned in the 1800s, which is far past any time that, you know, witch trials or anything like that on. Their bodies were then put into boxes, buried into the ground, and then they wrapped a cage around them.

The cage actually comes out of the ground and is sealed outside of the ground. The tombstones are facing away from the bodies to show that they were, they died it not in good standing. And so there's all this interesting things. But these three cages, side by side, out of one cage, a tree grew, and it broke open the cage.

The second cage, a thorn bush grew, broke through the cage. And in the third, nothing grew. It was just sand. And so she says, you know, if you go there at midnight on a full moon, you go to the thorn bush, and you're supposed to hear or see the witches that surround the graveyard, around the graves. And so we're like, oh, my God, we got to go. Come on. Let's go. And so we had 12 people with us. And we all went driving in a, you know, caravan out to the witch's graveyard. And it was in the dead of night, in the middle of the night. And I'll never forget it because it was the first time I ever heard. the wind howl. I'd heard the phrase and the wind howled, but when we got out of the car, it sounded like a train in the distance was coming at us. The sound was just resonating through the woods, and we're like, are we close to train tracks? I don't know. And that's when we realized,

no, it's the wind. The wind is literally whistling through the trees. And it came with such force that it broke through the tree line and we could see, leave, scattering, and feel the wind flow past us and it was so eerie and so cinematic in a way. And this was before we even set foot in that cemetery.

Now, we were armed with, you know, flashlights and baseball bats and we had no real concept of what we were in for. It had old iron gates that made that horrible screeching sound in the middle of the night and we're walking in And I get about, I'm thinking I'm 10 feet in, and my friend, Daphne, is screaming.

She is screaming bloody murder. And now there are 12 of us, so we're all screaming. Because, you know, one person can't scream without everyone's. Of course. So we rushed to her, we're shining lights on her, and she has sunk into the ground. Her leg had gone completely into the ground all the way to the hip in the cemetery. And, I mean, it was horrifying. It was, you know, that's super nightmare scenario.

So we pull her out and we shine our lights and there are these holes, these very suspicious holes all over, some of them leading directly into or out of graves. And it's like, okay, this is already one of the worst things I've seen. So we start our trek through, but of course, Daphne is not going any further. several people will not go anywhere further. So as we move along to the cemetery, I remember people just seeing things and feeling things until

finally there were only three of us at the actual witch's graves. We're actually standing there outside the witch's graves. And we're looking at the graves. And it's just like they said. A tree broke out of one. A thorn bush broke out of another. And then just plain sand in the third.

Now, when we shine our lights on all of the tombstones that were in the same line as or the same row as the the empty grave all the tombstones had fallen over and it was this incredibly atmospheric incredibly

frightening sensation of being in that cemetery this stillness down the canopy of oaks with Spanish moss it felt like we were in a cave Spelunky and as we stood there in front of these graves we heard the

violent whispering of a woman right in front of us, right where the thornbush was. And so I turned to my sister. And I was like, run! To which she just started streaming bloody murder. And so we all screamed and we all ran. But what was fascinating about it was everybody had different experiences in the cemetery. When we sat and we talked, because we were up all night until the sun came up,

everybody told a different sensation, a different feeling that they had, things that they saw, things that they heard. So the cemetery became kind of this hot spot for us, this place that we would return to time and time again just to test our wits and see how well we could keep

it together. And it's where I learned more than anything that you don't need to rely on equipment. You don't need to rely on this concept that there's some kind of scientific chasing of ghosts. To me, that is kind of folly in a way.

these are all questions of faith and you can't quantify it nor can you capture it you have to go with what you feel and what you sense and trust it otherwise you're not dealing with faith

you can cut anything to pieces everything to pieces in fact a lot of times I watch your ghost hunting shows where they spend all the time debunking things and it's like but you're kind of missing the point kind of missing that somebody is terrorized and terrified.

And you can say, well, it's just this wire that's causing this magnetic thing, and that's what's happening. But that's not addressing the terror. That's not addressing their perception. That's addressing a condition or symptom. It's a chicken and the egg situation. You have to allow for the idea that we are very highly attuned instruments, human body. We have so many things that perceive and connect.

and things that we don't even understand, things that we don't even know about. You go into a room and you're like, there's something wrong here. That's something worth, you know, paying attention to. Chris, the belief behind the cages over the graves

is fascinating to me. The myth of the story of the belief behind it. The belief was, obviously, that as long as the cage itself was intact whole, that the witch's bad spirit or her ghost could not come out

but the puncturing of the cage even partially with the bushes and the tree, then they could escape? Was that the thinking behind that? That's basically the conceit. The idea is that by closing the cage, the spirits could not wreak havoc. And over the course of a hundred years or so, the cages were broken open. And have they been fixed now?

Well, unfortunately, our adventures became. the adventures of many, many people past us and behind us. And what's fascinating to me, and I'll never understand this, when you come across something like this, a story like this, almost immediately people choose vandalism, deep exploitation. People choose, you know, in the years that followed, people stole the tombstones, people, you know, clipped away pieces of the tree, of the thorn bush.

It became such a havoc because it is a very, in truth, a lovely small little cemetery in a rural setting that was suddenly, you know, ground zero for bored teenagers everywhere. And, you know, a lot of the stories that I tell, I regret telling. A lot of times I have told a story where later I have found out that people have broken in or done damage. or, you know, become obsessive over it. And it's that obsessive quality sometimes helps prove that the place has some merit because somebody getting that obsessed over it is fascinating. But at the same time, I feel this guilt because I told that story. And now, you know, that story is causing people to think that they own the right to do damage to it.

Really good point. Yeah. I mean, it's almost, it's cyclical in a way. Like, we want these stories out there, but in turn, you know, at what cost? Exactly. Especially with amateur investigators or people who think they're ghost hunters and aren't responsible and start fires or this or that. Exactly. You know, we have a house in Savannah where people break in all the time and they think they haunts. And it's been on fire like 10 times since I've been here because people go in there with their candles and they sit around and they, and they,

try to get things and they freak out and they run and they leave their candles there and they knock their candles over. It's like you don't have the right to damage a place. There's no reason to assume that because your curiosity is so great that it warrants the destruction or even the trespass of a place. And I'm guilty of it. I admit it. In my youth, I trust a lot. I was the rest of the time for being in the wrong place. Because I felt compelled. I felt this, you know, a compulsion to seek out these things. But not necessarily so that I can televise or broadcast them.

It's really for my own piece, I guess. Touching back on that sort of innate feeling of something, either being wrong or not right and not quantifying in terms of science, have you ever had on a tour or investigation something so intense or dangerous that you had to stop, you know, shut it down, we're done. Has that, has anything like that ever happened to you? Oh, yes. Actually, many times. I am what you would call a runner. I feel that there is a point at which the activity can be too much, not even for like physical harm.

it's just what your mind can handle, what you want to deal with. Like, what comes to my mind most is I was giving a ghost tour. And we went into the Moon River Brewing Company right there on Bay Street in Savannah, Georgia. It's pretty well known. It's been on ghost adventurers and ghost hunters. And so there's a lot of press about how haunted a place it is. And it is. It's a remarkably haunted place.

And I remember that we were, I was telling my stories. I had my tour group of about 20, 30 people. And there's one guy who almost immediately, like, sat down in the corner and he just seemed like he was off. And his wife, you know, I remember literally stopping and saying, is he okay? And his wife saying, oh, well, you know, we had some seafood. Maybe that's not sitting well with him. And I was like, okay. So in the middle of telling a story, this man shouts, belay the mass.

So what he said, belay the mass. ass. And his wife ran behind me. And I was like, what's wrong? And she said, that is not my husband's voice. Whoa. And then he, he reched as if he were vomiting. And we even heard what sounded like something hitting the floor,

hitting the floor, but there was nothing there. And so we had to like pick him up, you know, shoulder him out, carry him out of the building. And when we got outside, we kind of walked around, corner and and he started to get his wits about him and he was literally like what happened i don't i don't remember how how do we get out here and i was pretty much like okay ladies and gentlemen that's the end of the tour oh my gosh home and he had no collection of anything he remembers going into moon river but he doesn't remember anything of the activities the stories or certainly saying belay the mass wow makes me want to stop drinking yeah all right maybe not quite that

that much right now. Just kidding. Oh, baby. Chris, you've already shared an incredible story from Germany. That one's going to be on my mind for a couple weeks. Do you have any other interesting or creepy stories from the road or from another country that you can share? Absolutely.

The story that I kind of hold on to a lot, because of the implications of it, is in Potice, Bolivia. While I was in the Army, we were stationed in La Pazzo, Olivia, and we had to evacuate up into POTUSY. Potosi is way up in the mountains. It's way up into the Andes Mountains. And as we were moving from the city of POTC to our camp, which was actually an old silver camp, we had to make passage through this narrow canyon. Narrow Canyon was guarded at both ends.

There was an arm that stretched over the road. and there was this, you know, machine gun army official at each end. And so going in, we're like, what is this? We're asking our guide, the guy driving. We're like, what's going on? Why is this? It's like, oh, it's, you know, Tio's Canyon. No one can go through it at night.

It's illegal to pass through at night. And it's like, oh, okay. So as we're driving along, the top of the canyon on both sides were covered in a low white fence. But the white fence was peculiar. It looked strange. It was oddly made. And it took us a while to realize that it was actually those crosses

that you see on the sides of the road when there's been an auto accident. They were lining the top of the canyon so thickly that they just looked like a short white wall. So again, to our guide, we're like, excuse me, what is that? What are those things? And it was like, oh,

each cross represents a person who has died in the canyon. But when you're looking, it's, it's imperceptible, thousands upon thousands, hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands as you're going through the canyon because it is, you know, several miles of canyon. And so we're like, what happened to them? And he answers, as Theo kills them. Now, Tio means uncle. And so it's uncle's canyon. And we're like, well, that's really weird. So we're pulling around a corner of the canyon. And on this wall, wall of the canyon, there is painted a 30-foot-tall portrait of the devil. Oh, my God.

Goat-headed, goat-legged, human-torsoed devil. You're looking at it, you're like, what the hell is that? And you're asking, you're like, why, why? Why is that? The devil is your uncle? He's, ah, we don't, we don't call him that. And so we come out the other end. coming out on the other end, you know, armed guard there too, and we go up to our campsite, and it plagues us what we have seen.

There is no way we're not going to go back to Devil's Canyon, as we called it from then on Devil's Canyon. So me and a group of friends, we decided to hike down and take a closer look. Now, I'll go ahead and say that measuring time on foot versus in a vehicle, I'm not great at. So it took us much longer to get to Devil's Canyon. The guard there agreed to let us in knowing that we would come right back to that guard because we weren't trying to walk the whole length. And so finally I was like, okay, don't worry about it. We're just going to go to the painting.

We'd like to look at the painting up close. So as we get there, we're walking and the sun is moving extraordinarily fast. And we're realizing we are hedging our bets getting into this canyon. we need to get out. So the sun is setting, casting the shadow in the canyon. So inside the canyon, it's already kind of dark. So we start running back. Now, we're running back at such a pace, but still time was going so fast.

The sun had set. The stars were showing. The night was full on, and we're running. And we're running back towards the guard post. We see the guard post, and we're trying to get to the guard post. And the guard comes out with his. weapon up. And we're screaming, you know, Americans. No, wait. It's us. It's us. It's us. It's us. And he begins to fire. But it's obvious he's not shooting at us. He's shooting beyond us. Because as we get there, he's still shooting. We're at the guard post and he's shooting. And we're shouting at. What are you shooting at? What are you shooting at? And he shrugs and says, El Tio. So we turn. We're Turn and look, and just past the halo of the light from the guard tower, just passed into the darkness, there is a mass moving in the shadows.

And it is massive. It's huge. And we can't make it out. It looks like an ox or something. But you get the sensation that even in the dimness of the darkness, even in the full cover of night, that whatever it is, it's red. So we take the hike back up to our camp and the whole time we're like, what do you think it was? One of my friends is animate. He said, I know what it is. You know what it is. That was the devil. And I've never really been able to shake it.

I've never been able to admit that, yes, that was the devil. But I do consider it. And I think in my life there have been three times when I saw something that I would consider, that I would deep. consider, could have been the devil. And Chris, when you go to these locations, are you guys usually snapping photos, and have you ever caught anything on a photo that was very questionable? I have taken billions of pictures in my life. But, you know, what's fascinating is I don't use equipment a lot.

And that's much to my discredit. I mean, when I have equipment, I love using equipment. Go something is actually very boring. A lot of people want to believe that, I mean, you know, these are, a handful of stories out of thousands of thousands of investigations, which were just me standing in the dark going, did you hear that?

So if you have equipment, equipment makes the time go by quicker. But in essence, I always rely on the experience. I find the experience more rewarding when you are present,

aren't hunting, when you're not actually hunting, when you're not actually hunting, when what you're doing is you're presenting yourself to the idea, to the notion, and to the place. And in that, I feel there is a sincere conversation with the universe. There's a sincere shedding of your cynicism because there's something about investigating that becomes about proof. And if you are only looking for proof, I think you'll have a hard time finding it.

You know, ghosts often get a bad rap. and it's usually the scare factor. As far as a ghost helping people, in your opinion, is there any interesting cases where a ghost has helped someone versus frightened them? I will go ahead and say that. I've interviewed tens and thousands of people about ghost experiences. I have talked to so many people about it. And in the large-scale percentage, ghosts are open.

overwhelmingly good. I'd say 95% of all ghost stories are good ghost stories. The 5% that are terrible, they are the ones that people like to tell. They are the ones that people really, you know, get around the campfire to listen to. But the rest of them, because a lot of people don't even think their ghost stories. A lot of people don't even realize their ghost stories. The most common ghost story to me goes like this. On the night my blank died, it visited me in a dream. On the night my grandmother died, on the night my husband died, on the night my cousin died, they came to me in a dream, usually to speak words of comfort, usually to say I love you. To me, those are ghost stories. And to me, they represent the most likely cause of hauntings.

People talk about unfinished business. Yes, your unfinished business isn't going to always be that you were brutally murdered. A very small percentage of the human population is brutally murdered. So who are you going to try to contact? Who are you going to go after? What are you going to do? You're going to travel the lines that meant most of you. You're going to go through love and find those people and try to connect one last time.

So you always hear these stories. Oh, my grandmother, she's always with me. I sense this. And you hear all these stories. My favorite one was I was interviewing a guy. And he was talking about when his father died. and how his father, in a dream, told him to go to his grandfather's house. His father's father's house.

On the back porch, there are wooden steps, the middle step, pry it open. And inside the step was a whole huge container of jewelry worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I kept asking, I was like, well, do you think that might have been a latent memory? you know, maybe you had heard that before. And he was like, I had never heard that before in my life. And the house didn't even belong to the family anymore. So he like snuck up on the property, pried up step, and got this box. And he didn't even know what was in it until they got home and opened it.

So I hear stories like that a lot. Well, not like that. I mean, that was a pretty significant one. But I hear stories about family members coming to comfort, family members coming to console. and to express that there's love. And this is something that we discuss on into the fray quite a bit. Do you think there's a connection at all between ghosts, aliens, cryptids, anything else paranormal? I believe that we live in a world defined by our perception.

Our perception can lock out things we just choose not to have exist. And I think that society as a whole has grown. through this method of closing doors to the incredible, closing doors to things that are transmitting on a different wavelength, a different reality, a different sense of what can be. And I think that our brains are so finely attuned that we can adjust and tighten what is and isn't perceptible or real. So I believe that all these things people are open to or they get kind of,

like hit in the head by something or there's some external thing that causes them to sort of step out of the perception that they've been trained into that they have been indoctrinated in to allow for a wider span of vision. I mean, we talk about it all the time, like we know scientifically that our eyes can only see a certain level of light. And beyond that, the spectrum of light goes left, right, and in all directions. why do we not think that that's true for the perception of everything? So in a lot of ways, I think that we have these, starting in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,

and as people began to bolster themselves against evil spirits and things that confuse them or frighten them, they start to shut it out and they made it the societal norm that these things do not exist, trained that these things do not exist. I would have to agree with you, Chris. I feel like we're sort of conditioned to think, oh, so logically, when in reality, our reality itself is illogical. And like you said, the perception is a filtering mechanism in a way. So I think once we open up to that and each individual has an experience, that's our disclosure, whether it's aliens, cryptids, ghosts. That's our just personal disclosure sort of influencing the collective.

consciousness as it were. So I would have to agree wholeheartedly with that. I always compare it to a radio. A radio has all these stations on it. But in order to be included in society at large, we all have to be on the same channel, the same station. So we'll say, you know, 105.3 is the reality station. But there's still all these broadcasts and all these other stations. And let's say you, you know, get into an accident. And now you're on 105.4. There you have perception of something else, something further, greater. You still have enough of perception of the reality, but you have this other thing. But if you went all the way up to like 107.9,

you would be crazy. You would be able to relate to reality. You would be so far from the reality that everyone has accepts as norm, that you would be incomprehensible. So I do think that we are dealing with a constructed reality. I do believe that the human mind is more

powerful than we give it credit for. Do you think a lot of it is our imagining or projecting things from our own mind? Absolutely. I believe that it's not even in reference. It's like radar. You put something out. Boom.

It goes out and when it hits something, it gives it shape. But a lot of people don't use that radar. A lot of people don't put it out. A lot of people aren't trying. Like, one of the most fascinating phenomenons to me are people who really, really want to see ghosts or something, but never do. That phenomenon is fascinating. fascinating to me because I wonder what is there an inhibiting factor to it? And what I've learned

from many of them is that they have a genuine disbelief. What they're looking for is something to make them believe. And it's like, I don't think it works that way. I don't think it's seeing as believing. I think it's believing as seeing. Chris, what are your thoughts on poltergeist activity tied to maybe a young woman going through puberty? I've heard that attributed many a time. I have many stories that seem to corroborate that story. And I think that it's it makes perfect sense because the specific purpose of puberty is, is the awakening of the human body to be ready to create new life. Becoming a doorway for a new soul.

And whether you want to be scientific about it, it literally is becoming a part of a line. a lineage, a whole of humanity. And it makes sense that at the time, and, you know, far more for women than men. You know, men do not have to bear the life. They do not have to carry the life. They do not have to nourish and, you know, have this thing. So it is this idea of an amazing threshold that the heightened sensibilities that come from it you know, not just the hormones, not just the body chain.

The fact that you are becoming a vessel for life must have a profound effect on your spiritual sensitivity, on your environmental sensitivity. I've heard so many stories that seem to suggest that that is the truth, that during that period, the heightenedness of it, the hysteria of it that people saw, you know, once upon time that they turned into witchcraft. is because you become open to a possibility that is frankly miraculous, which is beyond compare. You can't come up with a more miraculous event than having a child grow inside you,

a human being. So my guess is preparing the body for that is also a spiritual journey. It's also a preternatural thing. it's a supernatural thing. You know, I hate that science thinks that they can explain something and then rob it of its miracle. Because they know how it happens, they think it makes it commonplace somehow.

No, it's no less magic just because you can explain it. And that is the fallacy of science to me. The fallacy of science is the suggestion that things are not wonder, that they are not awe, that they're not magic. You just look behind the curtain. Wonderful point, Chris. In terms of those who want to look behind that curtain or that veil, as it were, where do you suggest they go? Where do people turn to to investigate hauntings or ghost, quote unquote, hunting? What is the responsible way to go about this? And where do you think they should turn? You know, the easiest way to do it is, and, you know, God bless the internet, because when I started, there was no such thing. And it was really just finding creepy places and breaking in.

But what you do is you find locations, and there are plenty of public locations that you can probably find. There are plenty of places, you know, that are just a little out in the woods and stuff. But you find a place that interests you, that intrigues you, that's near you. and you find the people responsible for the caretating of it, and you ask permission. And a lot of times they're very open. They like having stories. They like these things.

Sometimes they don't. You know, you have to give it to them. But a lot of times people are very quick to say, oh, sure, you can come in and take a look around. I mean, we've had amazing success with going to museums

and went to the St. Augustine Lighthouse, and they let us in overnight. And we're nobody. We're not, you know, it's not like we're insured or bonded. We're just, you know, people who are like really interested in getting stories together. And so I do say, suggest, you know, you can join local.

Usually there's within driving distance of everyone, a paranormal investigating group. Or you can strike out on your own and contact people who are in charge of locations that have haunted histories. And read, read as much as you can on the subject, due diligence as much as I can. I do go to the archives. I do try to read up on buildings.

Just try not to get discouraged because it's very, very difficult. You know, ghost hunting shows make it look really easy to find the history of a place. I'm like, wow, as you can see, in 1906, this person was, you know, brutally murdered here. Yeah, no, it's not as easy as it looks. Chris, where can people find out more about you and what you do? I'm around. You can find me. on the interwebs

just about Chris Sousie or Christopher Sussi I don't actually have a website per se I do I did run a show out of the Savannah theater which was a late night ghost storytelling session because one of my things that I really love is the idea that storytelling can be kept alive and

and I think in ghost stories you have this wonderful venue for people to pay attention and be enraptured by just words you know just just storytelling and an audience. And those things to me are really super valuable. So I do a lot of storytelling around the region. So if you look me up, you should find me. I'm not invisible. Well, you're a wonderful storyteller, Chris. Thank you so much for joining Ryan and I today.

Thank you very much for having me. That's it for this week's first installment of Somewhere on the Spooky Ground. If you're ever in the city of Savannah, Georgia, be sure to look up Chris Sousie for a ghost tour. You'll never forget. If you have a ghost story to tell, I'd love to hear from you. You can contact me through the website, somewhere in the skies.com. Please take a few moments to subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts and iTunes. I know not everyone listens from these platforms, but they are the largest in the world.

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