The Confessionals - RELOADED | 125: The Shapeshifting Witch

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

On Episode 125, guest Charles joins The Confessionals to share a creepy experience he had in North Carolina when he was hiking. As he was climbing in an isolated area known for its many waterfalls, Charles suddenly found himself confronted by an old woman with an unusual appearance. As Charles tried to leave the area, it became clear that this old woman was not only pursuing him, but had very supernatural abilities! Later Charles describes some other unique paranormal events that he also experienced, including interactions with ghosts on an old plantation and witnessing a naked humanoid running through his yard! Become a member for AD FREE listening and EXTRA shows: theconfessionalspodcast.com/join SPONSORSGET Surfshark: surfshark.deals/confessionals GET Cerebral: getcerebral.com/tony GET SIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionals GET Hello Fresh: hellofresh.com/confessionals16 Promo Code: "confessionals16" for 16 FREE MEALS!!! Get Emergency Food Supplies: www.preparewiththeconfessionals.com Get Beard Oil: bit.ly/2FbOhN5 CONNECT WITH US Website: www.theconfessionalspodcast.com Email: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletter SOCIAL MEDIA Subscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaI TikTok: @theconfessionals Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7h Show Instagram: theconfessionalspodcast Tony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficial Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcas Twitter: @TConfessionals Tony's Twitter: @tony_merkel

Merkel. Media. I guess it's time to go back in time. Are you telling me you built a time machine? Out of a Dolion? Time is but a stubborn illusion. I have a lot of memories of the past. People are time traveling within themselves.

Time travel is possible. Welcome to Reloaded Monday, everybody. We got episode 125. coming at you with Charles, and Charles came on to tell some fascinating stories that he's been through, including a time where he saw what seemed to me like a shape-shifting witch. I hope you guys enjoyed this Reloaded Monday episode. Let's get to it. Okay, I'll reload it.

This was all circulating around the base that a giant had to kill, but no one was supposed to talk about it. I saw three long, boning fingers, reach up underneath the door, curl up to grab it, and then disappeared. When he came over to me, dude, he slithered over to me. And this giant comes out of the cave and they're all frozen. And he starts running and firing up this giant. Well, the giant moves. He's got a spear in one hand and he's running really fast. And spears Dan holds him up like this. Somebody else, shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face. They basically decapitated. closer got closer when he feels something pulling at my leg and I look over and there are two small gray and they're literally I'm getting pulled off the bed I reached my hand into this bush and couldn't breathe

and I couldn't move because I know I'm seeing a monster yep welcome to the show everybody you're listening to the confessionals I am your host Tony Merkel thank you for being here if you've had an encounter or story you'd like to share with me on the show go ahead and shoot me an email My email address is The Confessionals Podcast at gmail.com. That's The Confessionalspodcast at gmail.com. Or go to the website, theconfessionalspodcast.com, hit the connection section, and you can reach me that way as well. Either way it works for me. Just get a hold of me.

All right, guys. Well, let's get into this week's show. We have Charles coming on. And Charles has a very interesting encounter where he was out climbing in the woods around a bunch of waterfalls. And he comes across what he believes was a shape-shifting witch. So let's get to Charles right now. It would have been summer of 2015. And the area that I was going to is called Dismal Creek.

And I was hiking out past an area that we camp in. But this, I mean, this hike is brutal. And so I went up. I started heading up. And I was about halfway up this hill. And I just, I had a descent that I was being watched from behind. And I was like, all right, it was. You know, my mind's playing tricks on me.

And so I just kept hiking. So I'm at the falls, sat at the bottom, he's going to sit down, have some water. And I heard a, I heard just like a slight noise. Because waterfalls will play tricks on your ears. If you sit by it too long. But I had not been there very long, and I thought I heard a voice. And so I looked up toward the top of the falls,

and there was a woman standing at the top of the waterfall. You could see that she was in a rope or a cloak. something of that nature. And she had curly hair, gray hair, that was about down to her shoulders. As soon as I looked at her, she turned and walked back off. So I decided I'm going to go up to the top of it. And by the time I finally get all the way up and I hear then from the bottom, a voice, heard it very clearly the second time. And it said, hey, it was really, it was a spectral voice.

It didn't quite sound like a real human voice. And when I looked down, there she was again. Like we switched positions entirely. And so I'm trying to figure out how she would have gotten down there past me without me seeing her. And at the same time, I just got this sick feeling. Just like a feeling of dread like I saw something that I was not supposed to see. or like I just was not supposed to be in that area. A very, very threatening feeling.

And so I, you know, I had my packing one already, and I took off. Finally hit my trail, and I climbed the ropes as fast as I could get up them. Okay, tonight I have a great guest coming on. We have Charles. And Charles, how you doing, man? Great. How's it going? Hey, man, I'm doing good, man. I'm rolling today.

You're my third interview, so I'm cooking along. I mean, I'm already, my gears are already rolling. But you emailed me back in April, I think it was. And you told me that you had a pretty weird experience out in the woods. And I remember reading it and just being like, wow. And I was like, I couldn't wait to get you on, you know? And so here you are. You're going to be telling me this story.

And then later on, you're going to talk to this about actually seeing some ghost-like entities and your haunted apartment and things like that. So I think I also wanted to let you know that our let the audience know that Charles was on Sasquatch Chronicles. If you do want to check that out, check episode 368. It's called Boy Scout Encounter Sasquatch episode 368. I don't want to go into it on this show because we're already on Sasquatch Chronicles less than a year ago.

So if anybody wants to check out Charles's Bigfoot experience, go to Sasquatch Chronicles. and search for episode 368 Boy Scout Encounter with Sasquatch. So Charles, all that said, talk to us about what happened in the woods that day because, dude, it sounds crazy. Yeah, it was quite the experience. So I give you a little background. At the time, this would have been summer of 2015. I was working for a therapy company.

So I was working for a wilderness therapy program, working with at-risk youth when I was a backpacking instructor. And a lot of the area that we were in is in Transylvania County, North Carolina, which is in southwestern North Carolina. It's pretty far out there. You've got to kind of drive off the beaten path, but it's not too far from Asheville. And when you get out there, you're just in, it's called the land of the island. waterfalls. That's what they call it. It's because there's thousands of waterfalls documented and undocumented that run throughout that county and all the surrounding counties as well.

Sorry, I'm getting over a little sickness here. But we were in Transylvania County. The area was right outside of the camp where this took place. So our base camp was tucked way out in the mountains at an old summer camp. that was built in in the 70s. I mean, this was an old, old camp. This didn't happen with anyone else.

I was alone in this experience, but I parked my car in the parking lot that I would have for work and hiked out from there. And the area that I was going to is called Dismal Creek. Dismal Creek is, it's really far out. You have to really put in some effort to get to Dismal Falls,

which is the water. I was going to see. It's a gorgeous waterfall, but you have to work for it. There are grades out there of when I tell people 70% grades, they don't believe me, but it's 100% true. They have to use ropes out there. It's not climbing or rappelling, but it's pretty close. Not as close as you can get and still be, you know, consider yourself a hiker rather than a climber. This area was written about in the, I believe the 16 or the 70s, a guy named Jim, Jim, and a guy named Jim, Bob Tensley wrote a book called Land of Waterfalls, and he wrote about Dismal Creek as being, I think he said one of the most foreboding places in the southern Appalachians.

And I didn't know that at the time. If I had known that, I might not would have gone out just because had experiences before this in the woods, and especially in that area. It's a weird place, and weird things happen. and I tend to believe the old timers a lot of the times when they talk about things like that. But I didn't know this until after I'd been out there and started researching the area that he had written about it in that way. But we were going out and, or I was going out, and I was hiking out past an area that we camp in with the students at the job that I was working. And you start the trail there up to Dismal Falls.

I've never been before. I've been up to the third waterfall from it because there's, four waterfalls that you can hit, including Gismel. And the first three we would regularly take our students to. The third of which is called Grotto Falls. And when you get

to Grotto, it's pretty waterfall. You have to hike kind of down into a bowl and it's almost like, not gravel, but it's like scree rock in the bottom. It's not like a big plunge pool. You can walk right up to the fall, like a shower.

and it's kind of a trickle, like a curtain over the top. It's a pretty waterfall, but it has a really weird feel. And I wasn't the only one that said that. I had students all the time. I took them there, that would say. It feels weird out here, and I would agree with them. But right after Grotto Falls, you start the real height that goes up and over a ridge, and then up and over another one, and then you're down into the waterfall.

But this, I mean, this hike is brutal. and I do a lot of hiking. And I can say this is one of the hardest ones that I'm a person done to get to a waterfall. It starts just pretty much with crawling kind of through rhododendrons. I mean, you're almost on hands and knees at certain points because the rhododendrons and the mountain laurels are so low to the ground and kind of over your head, almost like a little tunnel.

There's parts like that. I mean, there's parts where you're just going up, just through the forest at just crazy angles. And then you come to a point where the trail splits. And when I was at that point, I was trying to consult my map. I knew you could go downhill or almost straight uphill to the right. And looking at the map, it said that the dismal wall was the other way, which is a rock formation.

It's a huge boulder with these, this like blood red algae that grows on the side of it. And that's why they call it the dismal wall. So I decided to go the other way, because that's kind of what it looked like I needed to do. And so I went up. I started heading up, and I was about halfway up this hill, one of the steepest graves I had gotten to get. And I just, I had the sense that I was being watched from behind. So I looked back down toward the split in the trail and saw it was a foot, a cloaked foot, is the only way I can describe it. like if you saw somebody turn a corner and they were wearing a cloak and all you saw was the end of the robe and their foot.

But it was going off into the bushes. And I looked down and kind of, you know, had to blink, do a little double take. And I was like, all right. I was like, I'm, you know, I'm seeing things. I was a little hung over. I was tired. And I was like, all right, it was definitely a trick. You know, my mind's playing tricks on me.

And so I just kept hiking. I didn't think a whole lot of it at the time. kept moving and I got up this just I mean it's just a dragon spine of a ridge it was super gnarly to get up and over it with rock scrambles and all this and then down the other side of it you have to use two rope assists to get to the actual bottom otherwise I mean you're just going to slide in dismal creek so I get to the bottom of the creek and had to navigate some some slick rock I mean, it's just tons of rock out there, granite and whatnot, that's covered in moss. It's a dangerous waterfall to access, but once you get to it, it's gorgeous.

It's total, it's about 200 feet, but the only sheer drop is 40. And then there's several hundred feet of what's called a bridal veil that just runs down these cascading rocks. It's absolutely gorgeous. So I'm at the falls, that at the bottom, going to sit down, have some water. and I was chewing on some mint because mountain mint grows wild out there so I sat down and I was chewing on some mint

and I was at the bottom of the falls sitting on a log and I heard a I heard just like a slight noise that I thought it was more than just the water falling because waterfalls will play tricks on your ears if you sit out too long but I'd not been there very long

and I thought I heard a voice and so I looked up toward the top of the falls and there was a woman standing the top of the waterfall at the very top of the first plunge, the 40-footer plunge. And I couldn't sit, because she was fairly far away, a couple hundred feet. And so I could see, you could see her, I could see that she was in a robe or a cloak or something of that nature. And she had curly hair, gray hair that was fairly long and curly, kind of about down to her

shoulders. And as soon as I looked at her, she turned and walked back off. out of sight into the road of the dundum bushes up at the top of the waterfall. And so I'm like, well, that's, I'm like, that's crazy. So I decided I'm going to go up to the top of it. So I do all this rock scrambling and, I mean, just slick, slick rock, can't find a trail. And by the time I finally get all the way up to the point where I'm underneath the first plunge, so I'm like standing where the 40-footer is hitting down at the top of the bridal veil.

And I hear then from the bottom a voice, heard it very clearly a second time. And it said, hey, that's all it said. Hey, and it was really, it was a spectral voice, really hollow sounding, distorted. It didn't quite sound like a real human voice. And when I looked down, there she was again. She was down where I had been when I first saw her at the top. like we switched positions entirely. And I mean, it took me 45 minutes almost to get to where I was when I saw her the second time.

And so I'm, you know, trying to figure out how she would have gotten down there past me without me seeing her. And at the same time, I just got this sick feeling, just like a just a feeling of dread like I saw something that I was not supposed to see or like I just was not supposed to be in that area. I have very, very threatening feeling, even though it was from presumably an old lady. And so I had my pack of one already, and I took off. I found the crepe bed and took back off toward the trail to avoid the flick rock. I was trying to get out of there quick. So I'm just crashing through the bush and finally hit my trail, and I climbed the ropes as fast as I could get up them and came down the other side.

And when I crested the other side of that ridge, I just started running down. And I went back past the split where I had initially seen something move into the woods, ran past that, and then I ran on down the hillways down these steep trails. So I'm looking pretty fast down. Don't have a lot of control. It's just kind of what we call a holler run down south. Let me just run through the hollers, quick as you can run and jump over there. And it's fun unless you're running from something.

So I'm running down and I came around this big boulder. I mean, this is like the size of a house almost. It's huge. And when you first come up, you come around it. And it's a blind corner. And when I came back around this thing, I almost ran into her. She was standing right there in the trail on the blind corner around this rock. And, I mean, I went down.

I went down hard. And I rolled. And when I came up, my back was too. the boulder. And she was standing right over top of me, just looking at me. And, I mean, it felt like an eternity that she was standing there, just staring at me. Probably was only 10 or 15 seconds, but I got a good look at her. And she, uh, she wasn't had her looking or anything. I mean, looks like a fairly normal old woman that, you know, would have been really attractive, you know, in her youth and all this. Um, but she was wearing a cloak.

clearly. It was a robe or a cloak, and she had gray hair, and her eyes were absolutely striking, but they were terrifying. They were just, for as old as she was or seemed to be. I mean, she seemed that she had to be 80 plus. I mean, she was old, but her eyes were very, very useful. and her irises were so, so light blue that they were almost white. You could barely see them against the whites of her eyes, but they were there. And that's what I remember more than anything about it was the eyes. And they just kind of caught me until I was able to get my feet under me, and I hopped up and kept running. Well, she never broke gay the whole time.

She watched me from the time I settled to the time I got up and ran away. And she just watched me go. And so I ran down the mountain. And I mean, I don't think I stopped for the second mile. I'm not a runner. You know, I was going downhill, though. So I was just trucking as far as far as fast as I could get from the area. And I finally got kind of back into the last half mile or so.

So an area that I was familiar with, it's definitely, and it felt all right, so I slowed down, and I caught my breath, and I just started walking. And I got to a point, it's a down tree that you cross every time. It's just, I mean, it's a landmark for that trail.

And I got over that tree, kept walking a little bit, and I came another corner, and there was a bobcat sitting in the trail, which is entirely out of character for that animal. don't do that. You'd be lucky to ever see a bobcat in your life. I've seen one and I've spent,

you know, over 10 years hanging out in the woods on a regular basis. And I didn't see one until two years ago, you know. So this bobcat sitting in the middle of the trail, just sitting on its haunchies and it's looking at me and I'm looking at it. And the first thing I noticed is the eyes. It had that woman's eyes. The exact same ones. They weren't cat eyes. You know, they were human eyes and they were hers for sure. The same, that same really light shade of blue. And she was just looking at me.

I looked at her and, you know, I told her and started talking to her. You know, I said, I say, look, this is a beautiful mountain. I said, I'm out of here. I was like, I won't come back. And she walked off into the bushes again, into the rhododendron. And I took off. I got me car and left. I never did go back out there.

Your assumption, I'm assuming, is that she morphed into a bobcat, right? Yeah. I think it was a shape-shifting witch. It's crazy because of how she covered ground so fast around you. I mean, from the point of climbing up to where she was and she's down where you were to you running away and she still gets ahead of you. You know, it's like that's crazy. And the way you describe the eyes. I mean, I've never seen anybody with eyes like that, and I find it very, very fascinating.

Have you ever heard of like skin walkers, things like that? Have you ever considered that maybe she was a skin walker, or do you think that she was just straight up which that was able to, you know, transport, transport fast and, you know, change her body? Well, interestingly enough, my girlfriend is actually Navajo. She grew up on a reservation in New Mexico. And I talked to her about it. I've talked to a couple of her family members about it,

and they don't think it was a skin walker. And I tend to agree with them, just because that seems to be more of a native thing and very much more of a southwestern thing. This, though, this area that I was in, was heavily settled by the Scotch-Irish. in the early colonial period. So I think it would be more conceivable that it was just a witch,

like a, you know, I don't even know how to describe it, but like a, you know, it was like an old witch. Yeah. Like you'd talk about from the Salem trials and that type of thing. And I think that, I think she's been out there for a long, long time. Um, and I think that that's just, that's just her, her stopping grounds. the reason I think that is that there are classic signs of bewitchings

and a lot of those happened at the camp that I worked at, which was right there, like I said, at the bottom of that trail. And that had to do a lot with the horses. Horses in livestock, as all the old sayings go, when you go out and brush your horses every day and you come back the next day

and their mains and tails are knots, it's a sign of a belliger. And we would get that regularly with our horses. She sounds like one of those Disney characters. That's the way, when you're telling this story, I picture one of those Disney character witches that have the, like, I don't even know if it's beautiful,

but like there's just something so unique it's beautiful about the eyes. You know what I mean? The way you described it and just, honestly, dude, it's the only thing I could think of is like, a witch that is able to do these things. And the way you described her eyes, I think you said you described them as they looked young.

And I wonder, is there something that, you know, is key, like maybe she looks, maybe she looks like she's in her 80s, but she's really much, much older than that. And there's something that she's doing to keep herself alive. And that's why her eyes look so young, you know? And that's what I thought, too,

because, I mean, there was vitality in her eyes. I mean, it was like, you know, I was like looking into just the eyes of somebody that's my age, in their 20s or something. But the rest of her was old, visibly old. So it was strange. I'm sure. I mean, I would have been scared out of my mind, to be honest with you, the woods are creepy enough to come across an old woman in a cloak that seems to move faster than me running. That's pretty freaky.

Absolutely. do you think that maybe she was just protecting the area then? Yeah, yeah, that's generally the sense that I got from it. Because, yeah, I think she was making it very known that that was her area. And, you know, I don't think it's that, you know, some old lady was trying to tell me that she knows the trails better than me. It wasn't that sense of it, you know? It was just her being like, hey, this is my grounds. I know this area.

Get out of here. type of deal. But it was horrifying. If she didn't want it to, she could have done whatever when I was laying against that rock and just shocked. Didn't know what to do. Yeah. When you first saw her, you said that you just saw the foot.

And you mentioned the cloak. And the way you said it, at first I thought you meant that whatever was attached to the foot was cloaked as in invisible. But that's not what you meant, right? What you meant is that you actually saw a cloak, like a robe around somebody, and you just saw the foot. Exactly. Yeah, like if you were to just see one foot sticking out of a cloak like someone is walking. Got it. With that back foot would look like extended, that's what it was. It was like a back foot extended with a cloak, and then everything else was just disappearing behind a big thick grove of these rhododendron bushes.

at that moment when you saw the foot itself you said that you were thinking that maybe you were a little hung over and you were just tired uh were you really thinking that to yourself or were you were you trying to explain something away to yourself that you really thought was real it did seem real or were you just like i i'm just i don't know it seemed totally real it seemed totally real i mean i i knew i had seen it but what what was freaking me out was i couldn't hear anything and out there the leaf litter is so thick that you're going to hear, I mean, you can hear a squirrel, you can hear an insect out there. If it's quiet enough, you can hear an insect in the leaves. And this thing was walking clearly in an area that was covered in leaf litter, but I never

heard a thing, which is what made me think that I had just like seen it out of the corner of my eye or something, even though I was looking dead at it. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, especially now that you're saying that you didn't hear anything. I mean, you would think, okay, that's just my imagination because I'm out here crunching around. Anybody who would be out here would be doing the same thing. But then when you see her and her maneuvering, all of a sudden things change. Have you ever told anybody else's story? I mean, go ahead. Finish with your story. Well, you know, I told this story. I've told it to a few people. I told it just a friends and told her family. and I ended up, I didn't end up telling it to a lot of the groups of students that I had after

that happened because I was there for another few months working there and told that story a lot around the campfire. But I have never taught anybody else who has been to that area experienced anything like that. I wonder how many people out there have experienced something like that, though. I mean, it can't be something common. You know, having an encounter with somebody who seems to maneuver their physical body in a supernatural way in the forest. I can't imagine that the experience that you had is a very common experience at all. No, and I tried for a while when I was living there to ask around, you know, in nearby towns and all that. But just to ask about, you know, weird things in that area or I'd bring up Dismal Falls just to see if I got a response out of somebody.

And I never did. I never got anything other than, oh, it's a pretty waterfall. Hard hike, you know? Yeah. Hard hike. Yep. There's a reason for that. Tell me about it.

I mean, people are like, yeah, we never been up there because it's so a hard hike, and that's why she's there, you know? So that's absolutely crazy, man. I remember reading that story in the email stuff. I was just like, holy cow, what an experience. I mean, I know when I would go in the woods, especially as a kid alone, I would get these feelings that you're being watched. And I think a lot of those feelings and stuff are just because the woods are creepy, man. They are a creepy place to be, especially by yourself when it's getting

dark or even in the daytime. And I don't think that I was being watched by a big foot or anything like that. But it's just you get these creepy vibes. Now that you're, you've had that experience, have you gone into the woods since then? And if you have, even in that area, have you ever like had the feeling of just like, I can't handle this. I can't be in here. Um, no, I don't, I don't get that feeling much, um, because I'm stubborn and I really like being in the woods. So it's hard for me to, um, it's hard for me to stop getting deep into the woods just because I've had weird experiences. Um, and I just don't, I think they're part of being out there, those experiences. I think the, I think there's something in the woods that's older than time, basically.

I don't even know how to describe it because it doesn't have a quality that we have words for. It's just a presence or some kind of an energy or something. But it's older than people and it knows people really well and it knows how to manipulate people. And that's just the sense that I've gotten from being in the woods because there's so many things that's happened to me in the woods that are just inexplicable. Yeah. Now, when you experienced this, was this before or after your Bigfoot sighting that you shared on Sasquatch Chronicles?

This was after. The Bigfoot siting was in 2012, but that was in Minnesota, and this was in North Carolina. Gotcha. So you had the Bigfoot experience, then you have this experience, and you're still stubborn enough to still go in the woods. You, sir, are crazy. I've had.

I've actually, I've been stalked by, hillbillies have been, I mean, I've had, I've had more scary things happen with real people than with the supernatural, I think, in the woods. It's, while it's really scary to have an experience like that, a supernatural one, it's still, there's still some degree of separation, it feels like, between you and what you're experiencing, if that makes any sense. Whereas when a person comes up and is, you know, trying to assault you in your hammock, that's a totally different thing because they're real and they're there.

So I get more afraid of other people. I do carry a gun now. During that experience, my Bigfoot, when I wasn't carrying a firearm at all, I do carry a firearm in the woods every time. Yeah, I do the same thing, man.

I do the same thing. And I've never seen a Bigfoot. I've never seen anything in the woods other than normal stuff, but I still carry a gun because there's crazy people in the woods. And you come across a crazy person, and you're coming across there. territory, you don't know what they're going to do. And sometimes if you don't see them, and then they see you, they'll stalk you because they're crazy. That's why they're crazy

people. You know, I live... Well, I'm not... Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, I know. I just, I don't carry a gun for Bigfoot. No, I mean... I carry a gun for bears and mountain lions and people. And snakes. Don't forget snakes. And, well, we don't have any poisonous snakes after you're in Colorado. I don't this part anyway. I don't care. I hate snakes. I see a snake. I kill a snake. Oh, they're pretty good eating, though. I hate, I've never, I've never eaten one. I would eat one. I just never had the opportunity. But no, I definitely, totally hear what you're saying. I mean, if I came across a Bigfoot and it was being aggressive, I mean, my gun's not going to do anything, but I'll still shoot at it just for survival mode. But, oh, yeah, totally, totally. But yeah, my main concern is snakes and people.

And I live not too far from the Pine Barrens in South Jersey. And one of these days, I want to get out there and hike around there and stuff. But there are people out there in the pine barons that they live out there and they don't leave there. They're self-sustaining people out in the pine barons. You'll come across a house with no roads leading up to it. And people live there. It's really like you don't play games.

Like if you see a house out the middle, nowhere, don't explore it. Just walk the opposite direction. Hopefully they don't see you because they're. Yeah. Listen, if you live in the woods with no roads leading to your house, in one of the densest forests in America, there's something wrong with you. Like, like, don't, don't mess with those people because they're not right in the head. That's why they're out there to begin with.

You know what I mean? It's kind of crazy. I had this one guy on my, not on my show, actually. He was actually towing my truck for work because I had broke down the one day, got on the subject to what I do. And he told me, he said that he used to run around the Pine Barrens as a kid. And he came across a house on a couple of occasions where, there are people on the front porch and they just looked at him like,

what are you doing here? You know, they, like, they, like, they were baffled and they're like, you need to go, you know? And so he just kind of musied along with his buddies. And then he shared another time where they were actually camping near a lake or a pond or something. And this gigantic shadow appeared across the pond. And their light, when they shine the light on it, the light, whatever the shadow was,

like consume the light. it didn't like eliminate the shadow but the light kind of got absorbed by the shadow and uh yeah yeah and this is my truck that just another guy driving my tow truck driver driving me back to my terminal because my truck broke down i was like dang man wow yeah the pybearance are a crazy place and not to mention the jersey devil you know what i mean people talk about that oh yeah yeah but maybe whether the jersey devil is real or not maybe uh the jersey devil just say tail has derived from people's real true-life experiences of this forest being just a haunted, creepy place, you know?

Who knows? Well, as a kid, I grew up about 45 minutes from the devil's stomping grounds in North Carolina. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Got any stories for us? Oh, yeah. No, mine is such a wetdown. I actually camped in the middle of the circle and nothing happened to me.

Yeah, I know. Well, good for you, then. Yeah, right? I was like, all right, that's fine. That's fine. Well, dude, what happened here with the ghost settings? You said you actually had seen ghosts before, so what happened? Well, my first experience is with the paranormal as a kid, and I was probably, I don't know, like six or seven.

It stopped around 10. I never really saw much anymore, but this was, like I said, it was at my great-grandparents' house, and they lived in a house that was at one time a plantation during the Civil War. So this is really close to Benzenville Battleground in North Carolina, which was one of the bloodiest battles in the Civil War, actually. It was a third, in North Carolina during the Civil War anyway. It was a big one. There was a lot of casualties, and it was one of the last as well. But anyway, this was a plantation home during,

the war and they acquired it at some point in the, I'm not sure, 30s or 40s or something, but anyway, it'd been the family for a bit. So it was an older house. And we would go there pretty regularly every few Sundays we'd go and have lunch after church and all. You know, just southern tradition type deal. And every time I went there, I would have experiences because I was young enough that I would go out there more often with my grandma when she would go back. Because I would be with her a lot during the day sometimes when my parents were at work. And so she would take me out there with her. And, you know, we'd go and shell peas and chuck corn.

Just do all the things that, you know, that you do with grandmas. And I would have these experiences at the house. And the one that I remember really vividly was this lady. And I always describe her like Aunt Jamima. She was a black lady, and she would be out in the driveway area, which was kind of like the backyard type deal before you got into the fields and the barn. And she would be kind of right out there in that front area. And she would do these motions where she would bend down and then she would stand up and reach her hands up. And I think what it was, it was the motion of hanging laundry.

I didn't realize it at the time, but she would, she would be out there, but, and she would hum these, uh, she would, like,

hum these spirituals, you know, like, like spiritual music. And I would walk by and she would say, hello, child. That's all she ever said,

was hello, child. Um, and she was very nice. I mean, very benevolent. Uh, was really sweet.

And I didn't think anything of it. Because I was so young, I thought she just belonged there. When she was part of the, you know, like she was a maid or something, you know. Sure. Because she was, she was 100% of physical figure. You know, she wasn't like an apparition, like a real person.

And so she was the one that I remember more than anything feeling was her. There was a kid that would, a black child that would run behind the barn like he was playing high and seek. And I could never find him. I never found that kid. Like I would see him. He peek his head out and then he ducked behind and run. I never could find him.

There was a man that stood at the end of the hallway in the house going toward the bathroom. And he wore like a Colonel Sanders style bow tie with the tails that come down. Okay. And like a suit like that, like plantation suit basically. And he would stand at the end of the hallway. and he always just had this just menacing glare and I assumed that was the slave owner.

I'm not, you know, I don't know, but I would assume that's who that was. And I mean, these were all 100% real as if I was looking at you in person. And I just remember seeing these people and just thinking that it was kind of part of the house, you know, because I was a imaginative kid. You know, I didn't, you know,

didn't have a lot of experience with ghost stories, anything like that, not at that age anyway. And there was even a ghost dog there, actually. There was a ghost dog that would chase its tail. But it didn't have a tail. I had a little nub, but it would chase its tail out in the yard, and that's all it did.

It would just chase its tail. And, you know, I never said anything about it. So I said, I was a little kid. But it wasn't something that came up until way later in life. I brought it up to my mom, and she told me I should tell my grandma about it. So I told my grandma, and her jaw almost hit the table, because she said that she had seen all of those same apparitions when she was a little girl growing up in that house. The old man, the lady, the little kid, and the dog. The dog was hers.

That dog was actually her dog. It was named Jack, and it chased its tail so much. It eventually bit it off. Wow. So I saw the ghost of her dog and the same apparitions that she saw when she was a girl. I don't know what to say that other than, I mean, there's a lot of history to that property, obviously, because of the era it was from and what had gone on on it. And it seems to me like it's got some leftover stuff going on. I mean, I don't know how to describe it.

I mean, do you think that this is like residual energy, or do you think that this is like literally people who lived there at one time? I definitely think it. Well, I think a little bit of both. I think it's, you know, definitely the residual energy of people that did live there. Yeah. Well, I guess I should say, like, do you think that this residual energy, do you think that the specific energy that's residual there, do you think that has consciousness?

Or do you think that that's a separate thing? that I don't know that's one of the ones I can't really answer because I never got an interactive response from anything it was almost like

a like a pre-recording of something because it was always it was the same thing every time it was her going through the same motions or him standing at the hallway or the kid hiding and the dog chasing the tail

almost like it was stuck in repeat gotcha so when like she said I think you said, hi child or something like that. Hello child. Hello child, yeah. Yeah, like, so when she would say that, even though it was directed at you,

it was always the same thing like a recording over and over again. Well, it would just be one time. So I'd see her one time and she'd say, hello, child, and she'll go back to doing what she was doing. But then the next time I'd see her, that's the only thing she would say. She never said anything different than that. It's not like she was saying it over and over, like on skip.

But that was the only thing that she ever said. It's like an action doll, but that was her one line, basically. Gotcha. Yeah, you know, I don't know. I don't know. Like, so many questions, so little answers when it comes to this stuff. I wish I had more to tell you, but I was so young. I don't really remember anything else.

That's fine, man. I mean, it's still a fascinating story. I mean, you know, lots of people experience these hauntings, especially on Civil War era properties, properties that had actual battles on them. like Gettysburg. I just did a show a few weeks ago on Gettysburg. And, you know, it's like, that's one of the most haunted places in probably the world. I mean, it had one of the most bloody, if not the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. A lot of people died there, a lot of people. And so bottom line is, who knows? Who knows what's going on? But I enjoy talking about it. So why don't

you tell us? Civil War Battlegrounds, we could do a whole show on those. I mean, it's, Oh, sure. Even Bentonville, the one where this was near, there are tons of people who've claimed that they saw lights and cannon fire on the anniversary of the battle. If you go out there at night, lots of people say you could go hear the cannon fires. There's a lady who's a reenactor who said that she saw phantom campfires all the way down the translines, like dozens of campfires. and the next morning there was no soot, no ash, nothing. I mean, there's some weird stuff that happens out there. Yeah, you know, you could literally do a TV series on just battlegrounds in America and the hauntings of them.

I mean, there's so many stories, there's so many locations on these battlegrounds that are known for specific hauntings. I mean, you could do an entire season just on Gettysburg alone. And so, and then you got the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, you know, it's just we got, even the battles between the people coming here and the Native Americans. I mean, there's just so much bloodshed throughout this country and violence that it's just, you could even extend it to the ghettos of modern America. And because a lot of times, especially like, you know, cities like Chicago and cities from the past, like in the, I want to say it was like the early 80s, whenever, whenever in Philadelphia,

I think they called them like the race wars or something like that. It was before my time. But like in Philadelphia, it was a rough city back in the day when, you know, they had the real racist things going on where like people were getting killed left and right, white, black. I mean, there was just fighting and stuff. Like those kind of things, you know, like that, like you could do a whole season on that, you know? So. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Anyways. Where's Ken Burns when you need him? Right. Well, before we, you know, get too far off course here, why don't you just walk us into that experience with that apartment that you said was haunted that you lived in? Okay, yeah. So this was also in North Carolina. This was while I was in college. So this would have been between my Bigfoot experience and the experience with the witch.

This was, this apartment was in the town of Boone. I mean, it was like right in the middle of the town of Boone, but you had to go up to the top of this, not a mountain, but there's definitely a hill with several acres around it of just woods. And so even though we were right in town, we were up on the mountain top, kind of secluded, and there was a trail that would take you right down to the downtown area. It was about an eight-minute trail going down, probably 10 to 15 coming up, depending on how winded you're feeling that particular day. But I love that place. I lived in the, I don't know if I want to call it a guest house. Anyway, there was a studio apartment that they had built onto the main house in the 90s. But the main house has been there since the 60s.

But I live in the studio, which was off to the side. and we had a big backyard, which is the reason I like to it because I had a backyard for the dog to run around in. And that was new for her. So that's why I tolerated the high rent. The location was great. And the woods around it were really, really weird. I would go out there all the time because I'm a big outdoorsman, obviously. And how I would live a lot of that during that year that I was there was there was.

was by hunting in terms of like sustaining myself food-wise. So I got out and I hunt squirrels and rabbits and whatever other small game I could come across. And so I was out in this woods a lot. If I wasn't in class, that's where I was. I was out in the woods with my air rifle. We were in the city of women, so I hunted with a 22 air rifle. And when I would be out in the woods, the only way I can explain it is like, like the I don't want to say like a laughter of children

that like if you if you think about like a cartoon or a movie or something with fairies in it, there's this weird laughter that sometimes they'll do like a like a giggling sound. It's a flirty kind of giggle. And I would hear this when I would be out in the woods. And for the first couple of months that I lived there, I would be out hunting and I would hear these sounds.

And at first I thought the squirrels were making weird noises. but it just wasn't because I would all the squirrels out there made normal noises that you would always hear squirrels make. It wasn't chipmunks, you know, it wasn't anything like that. There's not an animal out there that makes a giggling sound that I'm aware of. And so you'd hear this

pretty much any time during the day when you're out there and none of the other people that live in the main house could confirm it because they never even really left the house unless they were just going to do normal stuff. They didn't hang out in the woods, basically. They talked about having experiences in the house, though, where there would be nights where they couldn't even sleep because of all the footsteps and the just popping sounds and banging sounds and things will get knocked off the countertops. And they said that house was noisy at night, like poltergeist status, noisy. And I never stayed in there to be able to confirm that, but that's what they talked about.

Now, my apartment itself was cozy. I never had anything happen inside the apartment itself, luckily. That was kind of my safe zone. But the woods around it, like I said, were highly active. And I remember specifically a couple of nights where I had hiked the trail down to town and going out to the bar with friends. And coming back, it was dark. And, you know, if you got enough liquid courage, you know, all right, I'll hike back up.

in the dark it was. Right. So I remember a few times that I hiked, you know, I hiked back up in the dark. And the, uh, it wasn't giggling anymore. It was like something running around me in the woods, like, um, but not like deer. Because deer, deer will take off from you and they'll scare you, but they're moving away. It was like if, if you're hiking through the woods and it's dark and you've got, you know, not a great flashlight.

So you're only seeing a couple feet ahead of you, and then behind you, it's like you'll see somebody to run across the trail. And then when you turn to look, you'll hear it'll be in front of you. And then you turn to look, and it's to the side. And it's like you were being surrounded

as you were moving, basically. But it was fast, whatever the sound was. I mean, it was moving quick. And it would go one way, and then it would come another way. And, but it's like when it would run, you'd hear it crunching leaves and twigs, and then the sound would just,

be gone, and then you'd hear it start somewhere else, and it would cross you again, and it'd be gone. And that happened, I mean, almost every time that I walked up through there. But that particular seven acres of woods has, I think, like, three or four oak trees that are over 200 years old. They're historic oak trees. They're very, very old, and that's why that area was preserved. So it's old-growth forests kind of right in that area. Some of it is. but really, really old woods right around that house.

And the kind of culmination of events that led me to actually move out of there was I was up one night. And at that time, you know, it's college you're regularly up late in the evening, especially around finals time. And this was right around finals. I believe it's my senior year that I was living up there. It was right around finals for one of those semesters that had to be. December-ish, because it was snowing. It was like to the end of the Christmas semester. It had just snowed up there probably almost two feet, which is significant for that area.

It's not unusual to get a little more or a little less, but that's pretty big snowfall. For sure. So, especially where the planet's at now. And that was, this would have been in 2000 and this would have been shortly after I got back from Minnesota. And so it was, you know, it had snowed a good little bit throughout the night. It was about three in the morning, 3.30. And I was in my apartment. I was doing schoolwork on the laptop.

And I remember looking at and see, it was like 243 or something. But yeah, I can remember. I was looked up and I looked at the time. And as soon as I did that, I heard the dog scratch on the door because she would normally just be in the yard. And I would leave the sun room door open for her. to come into the sunroom where she could access the apartment door. And so she came and she scratched the door, but not like frantically, not like she was freaking out. She just did.

She does a normal little scratch, almost like a knock when she wants to get in. And so I let her in and she came in and laid down, which I thought was weird because that apartment got really, really hot. And she's a husky. And if it was snowing out, she was generally going to be out in the snow and she would sleep out there all night. That's just how they are as a breed. I mean, I'm a musher. I work with her. They love the cold.

And so I thought it was weird that she would come inside. And I let her anyway and decided to, you know, close it down for the night. And I went outside to have a cigarette before I went to sleep. So I stepped out. I had my snow boots on. They weren't even lace, but I had them on. Steps out on the porch. And I lit up and I was standing there.

I was just looking kind of out across the yard. So we had a yard with a spot. split rail fence, and just across the split rail is where the wood line started. And I'm looking at the woodline, and just looking, the moon was super bright because the snow clouds had parted. And so you could see the moon reflecting off the snow, and it was lighting up the woods to where you could see the individual trees, basically. And so I'm looking out, and there's this one big poplar tree that was just over the fence. And it looked like there was somebody leaning against it.

Like you would see somebody with their hands flat against a wall and leaning against it, like with their legs kind of crossed. You're really casual looking? That's what it looked like. But it was a silhouette. So I could see the silhouette of a person leaning up against this tree. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, all right. like I've got to be way too tired.

So I stepped forward a little bit. And when I stepped forward, I stepped into like fresh kind of crunchy snow with dead leaves under it. And it made a noise. And when it made that noise, this guy took off from the side of that tree. And from what I could see,

once he got into the moonlight, he was entirely naked and hairless all over. Yo. And had to be about seven feet tall. Huge. I just didn't even comprehend it. And he ran down the side of the house out of sight. So, of course, I run in, and I grabbed my actual gun, my real rifle, and my spotlight.

And I ran back out into the yard and hopped over the fence and was going to start looking for tracks. Because I thought somebody was in our yard, like, you know, like an intruder. You know, so I'm thinking like, I'm in home defense mode, basically. And so I jump over the fence and run out, and I find the tracks starting the tree, and they're barefoot tracks. But they had to be like 13, 14 inches, huge, barefoot tracks. And so I follow the tracks all the way down the side of the house. There was a little corridor probably of, I don't know, 14, 15 feet of just kind of open grass that ran between the house and the woodline. And then once you got to the end of the house, the wood line just kind of picked up.

So he ran down that corridor, and I followed the tracks to just where they stopped. And they stopped about 10 or 12 feet from the woodline, and then they were just gone. Couldn't find where they picked back up. I mean, it was like the guy vanished, took or flew away or something. I don't know if it jumped into the woodline or what, but I never found any other tracks that next day. Couldn't find a thing. Wow. Wow. So you said that he was naked. Now, I'm assuming that you got a good enough look at him that you know it was a person, right? I mean, like, or do you think? Well, that's the thing. I don't know that. I couldn't. So I couldn't see, I didn't see any genitalia at all just because of the angle that he was running at. But there was not, there was not clothes on it. And it looked like a like, like, six.

and a half or seven-foot man that was just totally naked and barefooted. And hairless. I mean, there wasn't a hair on him. And that's the, you know, which is not entirely weird. Boone is a town that can be known a little bit

for drugs, especially psychedelics. So it's not the real possibility that somebody was just out of their mind. It ended up on our property. But for him to be standing in the snow that comfortably in bare feet does not seem right to me. And that really was what struck me about it. And just with all the other stuff that

happened up in that stretch of woods, people didn't come up there. It's not a place that people knew about. You had to know where our trail was to even get to it because you had to go behind a building. So it's, you know, it's, and I did a lot of cutting on that trail even to open it up. So I don't think people were even using it really before I found it. But it was weird. It was very weird. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, when you bring in the idea of drugs to the picture and stuff, I mean, dude, drugs do do some crazy stuff to people, you know? Like, you see those videos online. Oh, you're right about that. I mean, they're in the street, snacking their face off a pavement deliberately, and they're flipping around, and it's like they don't even feel a thing. So, I mean,

somebody's tripping on something good. I could totally see them, you know, not even knowing their feet are completely frozen, frostbitten, ready to fall off, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah, definitely. But the thing is, though, if it had been a person, it would make sense that I could find where they went, or at least which direction they got out. But the fact that those tracks just ended, like it had taken off. The tracks, I mean, you see, obviously you see a good impression into the snow. And I'm sure you're familiar a little bit with what they say.

big foot tracks look like where it's like, say it's 16 inches long, typically it should be about eight inches wide. You take it and split in and a half kind of thing. Is that what you're looking at here? Are you looking at like a thinner footprint like a humans would be? It was like a human footprint. It was like if you took, it was like a 14 or 15 size shoe, I would say. So like, you know, what a big basketball player would wear basically. And if you took his shoe off and was just running through the snow, that's what it was like. Okay. The gate was not significantly longer than somebody that size would have. But the thing is, I mean, there just wasn't, if there was somebody that big on that

campus, there's a chance I would have known about it because there's just, you know, it's a small, small campus. So there's not a huge chance that I wouldn't have known he was there. And if I had known he was there, he probably would have been on the basketball team. Yeah. You know, so then why would he be up in our yard? I'm telling you this is a small place. Not so much anymore.

It was when I was there, though. But I mean, there's only so much room there to be a six and a half, seven-foot guy and me not have run into him in the six years I live there. Yeah, you know what, Charles? I'll tell you, one of the patrons said, I feel like this guy is blowing his own mind, telling his stories. Because it's just like, because it's true, because hearing you tell your stories, you're just like, I still don't get it.

I still don't get it. I don't. I haven't. I still don't. Well, Charles, I'll tell you what, man. It's like, um, it's, it's one of those mysteries of life, man. I mean, there's a lot of things we don't get clearly. That's why we have the show, you know?

And, uh, this, this is definitely, you know, one for the books. Anyway, anywhere, anywhere you come from, I mean, with your experiences, uh, you've had some crazy stuff. I mean, the witch in the beginning of stuff, man, I tell you, it, fascinating me. Absolutely fascinating. And like I said, it kind of takes me back to just this idea of like almost like a, like a witch from Disney, you know? Like it's just, uh, just the way you described it, man. It just seems like one of those classic, um, witches that Disney would dream up, you know, it's just, it's, that's, that's what it seemed like. Minus the, minus the haggard face and the

hunchback. That's exactly what it seemed like. Right. Now, was she like a, a large woman, Like, was she, like, overweight or was she kind of more in shape? No, she was, I mean, she was very much in good form. And, yeah, I mean, just definitely seemed like somebody that gets around the mountains a lot, but I don't know anybody that can move that fast. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing you got to think about. Especially not in a cloak.

Right. I mean, the terrain is a big deal. It's not like you're on an open track, you know, where you can just, it's nice and flat. I mean, you're talking about a terrain that's difficult. it took you 45 minutes to walk to, well, climb up there. And it's something that, you know, should be noted. You know what I mean? Yeah.

I mean, as far as I know, there's not trails up there that move around other than that one. I mean, it'd be hard enough to build the one trail to get out there. So how she was moving out there is a mystery to me. Well, I've got a pretty good idea that she didn't do a lot of hiking to move around like that. She was an old lady that was stalking you out in the middle of the wood. I mean, that alone is creepy, then not to mention how fast she was able to maneuver as an old lady out in the woods. It just, it seems off, man. Seems off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, man, I really appreciate coming on and sharing these experiences, man. They are fascinating and I really want to thank you for that. Yeah, man, it was cool to come on. I first discovered your show through West's show at the beginning of the summer. And I don't know, I started listening. I figured this would be the perfect place to tell it since I've not really told this one a bunch. Well, I appreciate it, man. I really do. It's been a pleasure of mine, man. Truly.

Absolutely. It's a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. Well, that's a show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did enjoy it, go ahead and share the show around social media. That would help me expose the show to more people that might enjoy it just like you did. Also, if you want to stay informed with what's coming down the pike on the Confessionals, go to the Confessionalspodcast.com and sign up to become a subscriber to the newsletter. It's free, easy, and informative. Also, go to YouTube.com and be a become a subscriber. We're going to start uploading our shows to YouTube, and you can enjoy it in video format if you choose. Until next week, friends, stay safe, take care, and remember, the truth will set you free, but first, it'll piss you off. Bye.