The Confessionals - RELOADED | 486: The Dark Holler

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

On Episode 486: The Dark Holler we are joined by Ward Hiney who is the producer, writer, and director of the hit docu-series called, "Dark Holler." Ward reached out to me last year to see if I would be interested in reviewing the first episode of Dark Holler, and we struck up a friendship. He became the main videographer for Merkel Media films as he has an extensive background in videography, which includes filming for Glenn Beck at The Blaze.On Episode 486, Ward shares all about Dark Holler, and how a short trip to West Virginia to make a 15-minute video with a new camera rig turned into a five-episode docu-series gave him the realization that there is more to the spiritual realm than he ever could have imagined. UFOs. Poltergeists. Demonic possession. Premonitions from interdimensional psychedelic entities. Thin places in the veil. A paranormal parade of the highest strangeness in the lowest places. Old gods and ancient demons, names absent from the mouths of man for centuries, but are being uttered once more in reverence over backwoods altars. Could it all be connected? What if the truth lies beyond our predictable world, but closer than we think? Over our heads, under our feet. Maybe we only see what fits the rules we've chosen. Maybe it’s been in front of us the whole time. Deeper than we dream, darker than we imagine.These are all things that with which Ward has been faced and had to come to grips with when he stumbled across a family that has a forgotten and not often talked-about history.WATCH DARK HOLLER NOW: darkhollerfilm.comSasquatch and the Missing ManWatch the Live Premiere on REPLAY here: https://www.moment.co/sasquatchTeaser Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3b4tTY9bssThe Confessionals Members App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZBecome a member for AD FREE listening and EXTRA shows: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinWatch The Shape of Shadows: merkelfilms.comWatch Expedition Dogman: merkelfilms.comAFFILIATESPrepare with Valley Food Storage: https://alnk.to/2uG55AOGet your Nephilim Blaster 2000: https://alnk.to/9mnHak1Bluecosmo Satellite phones: https://alnk.to/e769EipSee Bigfoot with Sionyx night vision: https://alnk.to/bEhxr3FEmergency medical with My Medic: https://alnk.to/dpr6QM4Black Beard Fire Starters: https://alnk.to/4BFcIbeEcoFlow Power Generators: https://alnk.to/flvpAQwGoDark Faraday Bags: https://alnk.to/5jke3rkEMP Shield: empshield.com Coupon Code: "tony" for $50 off every item you purchase!SPONSORSSIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletterMAILING ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelProduced by: @jack_theproducerOUTRO MUSICJoel Thomas - ShutUp N DriveYouTube | Apple Music | Spotify

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 This was all circulating around the base that a giant had to kill but no one was supposed to talk about it. Reach up underneath the door,

curl up to grab it, and then disappear. When he came over to me, dude, he slithered over to me. A giant comes out of the cave and they're all frozen. And he starts running and firing at this giant. With a 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 them in the face shoot them in the face they basically decapitated and i look over and there are two small gray entities and they're literally i'm getting pulled off the bed i was bush and i touch air couldn't breathe and i couldn't move because i know i'm seeing a monster okay i reloaded welcome to the show everybody listening to the confessionals i'm your host tony merkle thanks for being here if you've a crazy wild experience you want to share with me on the show go ahead and shoot me an email or go to the website the confessionalspodcast.com, hit the contact section and you can reach me that way as well. Either way it works for me, just get a hold of me. If you want more shows on a weekly basis, go to the confessionalspodcast.com, hit the join button and become a member. There you're going to get access to bonus shows every Thursdays for members only, plus the Tuesday shows add free and access to all the overtime content waiting right there for you when you become a member on the confessionalspodcast.com.

All right, friends, now this week we have Ward coming. on the show. And Ward is actually the cameraman for my films that we're doing through Merkel Media. Ward has an extensive background with videography, and he is a 100% professional when it comes to it. Now, that said, when I met Ward, how we got connected is about what we're going to talk about with him today. Dark Holler is a docu-series that he created. If any of you, which many of you have, seen the docu-series Hellyer and how that will captivate you, and you'll keep wanting more, even though the episode's over, you're hit and play on the next one because I don't care if I got to work tomorrow. I got to see how this ends. That's what Dark Holler is all about. It really captures that kind of an essence for you as the viewer.

And he comes on to talk about this whole storyline and how it went from him trying to shoot a 15-minute video into a five-episode docu-series that is absolutely bonkers and will drive you up the wall. Let's get to Ward and this conversation I had about his docu-series, Dark Holler and all that information that you need to watch Dark Holler, is in the description right now below. But let's get to Ward and talk to him about this whole story that unfolded where he thought it was going to be a 15-minute video and it turned into hours of content and a further investigation that needs to happen still. All right, today we got a great guest coming on,

somebody that I'm very fond of. Ward, how you doing, man? I'm great, Tony. I'm glad to be talking to you. How are you? I'm good, man. So let me tell the people how you and I sparked up a relationship. Actually, to be honest with you, I don't remember much. All I know is that I think you contacted me about what we're going to be talking about today, isn't that right?

Yeah, I think I sent you a trailer, and I thought that you might be interested. And I'd heard you, you know, I've heard your podcast before. So we ended up talking for like four hours about calling, I think. Probably. I just know that it was a super long conversation. It was a very unproductive day in the office, but it's okay because I felt like I made a new friend. I'm sorry But no

I remember you contacted me about dark holler Which is what we're going to be talking today And that's your docu series And it turned out that You know because you know people contact you And they're like hey you know I do this and it's like Okay let me see it

And then you see it and you're like oh Okay you know And so when you and I were talking though you said that you had a professional camera work experience and you told me who you used to work for. I was like, okay, all right, so you probably are pretty good. And I decided to check out your dark holler first episode. I saw probably over a year ago now. And it was absolutely awesome. And that was in the early stages. And now the whole series, except for one episode's released now, right? Yep. Next up, the last episode, the season finale, comes out on Halloween for everybody.

Gotcha. Okay. So what I find interesting about part, there's a lot about this, this, this, uh, docu series that's interesting. Uh, and one thing that for me, I find interesting is knowing you personally and knowing how you view the world, uh, and how that, this whole experience of you documenting this journey, uh, forces you to start, thinking about things maybe a little different and maybe not differently like compromising the way you you view your faith in things but maybe putting you in a position where it's like, okay, maybe I just need to reassess some things and maybe try finding how to view this because clearly it's happening. And it's been really cool to kind of see you challenged as an

individual and also seeing the people involved in this project being challenged. And as as a charismatic Pentecostal, born and raised kind of guy, seeing my friends who are more reformed theology. And we're kind of meeting in the middle here. We're like, oh, yeah, the world's crazy. And everybody agrees on that. I'm just like, this is fun. This is a lot of fun. Yeah. So let's start digging into this, man. Dark holler. I want you to first tell the people the details as far as where they can get it and all that good stuff. And then we'll get into the storyline on how this whole thing unfolded for you. Awesome. Okay.

So, yep, the film is available at dark hollerfilm.com. And I say film, but it's a series of five episodes. And there's also some behind the scenes content that you can get there. Yeah. And the darkhaarfilm.com is D-A-R-K-H-O-L-L-E-R-F-I-L-M.com. And, yeah, everything's available there. Awesome. Yeah.

So you can rent or purchase it right there. on the website. And I'm telling you, friends, I've seen the whole series. It's absolutely awesome. I actually watched the whole series when I was out of town doing some of my own investigations. And I almost, I had a drive to another state to pick up Christian, the director. And I almost was late picking him up because I was like, oh, crap, I need to leave. So I was kind of engulfed in it. I was not bored at all. So let's start it off, man. How did this whole thing come about for you because I know it was kind of accidental. You didn't set out to be on this journey. Yeah. So I really didn't intend to make what we've ended up making. I started out

probably like a lot of people in 2020 when COVID was happening and in all that. Like there was a lot of stuff even politically coming together to make people, I think, in general, question. and the narratives that they were told. So started looking at the world kind of like sideways, you know. And one of the things that sparked me looking at this sideways was I ran into a guy named Ray Boucher who tells a story about being approached by some government intelligence types, who were talking about intelligence agencies contacting non-human entities that they thought were extraterrestrial, but using ritual magic to do it.

And this is not what Darkhalla is about, but that idea, and then I had seen another project called Hellyer about some high strangeness in Appalachia that tied into the Mothman case in Point Pleasant. Now, I had grown up in West Virginia, so I was familiar with the Mothman, and it was always sort of like, like a cute, endearing little, idiosyncrasy about the place that you grew up, right? But it took on more significance with Hellyer. And at the time, you know, you could, if you've seen it, you know, that they end up in a much different place in terms of how they view what's happening to them than as a Christian watching

it than I end up. And so about the same time I had finished that. It's about some stuff in eastern Kentucky. And I had a friend who I'd known for four or five years, and I knew that he wasn't crazy. He wasn't even charismatic. He was very buttoned-downed, academically, well-read, reformed guy. And he had planted a church about an hour away from this area in eastern Kentucky, just across the border in West Virginia. And I asked him, you know, have you seen this show?

And he had. and we were both sort of like dancing around the subject a little bit because no one wanted to come out and ask, but I asked, like, have you ever seen anything strange down there? You know, you're deep in the coalfields, West Virginia, in these Appalachian Mountains. And he said, well, funny enough, a couple weeks ago, I believe that I performed an exorcism in a baptism. And at the time, I had just gotten this camera kit to start doing freelance work. And I was like, let's go practice using the camera and make like a little YouTube video maybe interviewing this girl and some of the people that were there at the baptism. And maybe it'll be, you know, a fun little project for YouTube and a practice. And when we got down there, a lot of the experiences that Kristen is the name of the girl who was baptized and she believes, as well as the people that witnessed it, that there was. an exorcism that occurred in her baptism. And when talking to her, and I came to find out this is fairly common in demonic possession cases, she didn't have clear memory of the events. She was blacked out or sort of out of body

for a lot of it. But she said that her mother had experienced a lot of very strange stuff the night or two prior to the baptism. And so I knew that I had to talk to her mom. And so I came back maybe three weeks after and really with the goal of talking to her mom about this one event. And when I finally got her mom to talk, it turned out that there was a whole lot more than even Kristen knew about going back in her family history that connected with the phenomena that she was experiencing and that, the things that were happening to her and that family. And that sort of kicked us off into a wild ride down this rabbit hole of tracking synchronicities and strange things that had happened to us started to take on significance. Things that happened early in the week start to take on significance as we figure out

what it is that we're dealing with later on in the week. So it goes pretty deep at that point. Probably the easiest way. Do you just want me to tell the story of shooting it from the beginning? Yeah, sure. That's fine. But let me, before you, because that definitely 100%, but before you do that,

you mentioned about her experience. Did she say that she was saying that she blacked out during the baptism? Kind of like doesn't have the memory of the baptism, essentially? Yeah. So, well, she remembers bits and pieces. For the two days prior, she was in and out. So she remembers some of it, like, from outside of her body as if she's watching herself. And she says that she had had that experience for, like, days at a time prior to the baptism as well.

But she remembers most of those nights from either, doesn't remember them. and just is going on what her mom told her she was doing and was happening to her. Or she remembers it from that third person perspective kind of thing. Okay. So on the third person perspective, this might be a question that you don't have an answer to because you're not as good as asking questions as I am, naturally. No, but the perspective that she has as the third person out of body type perspective, because one could argue that, well, she's probably sort of, videos of her baptism and she's just her mind is is replaying those videos essentially and she

that's what she's remembering. So she blacked out and then her memories are the video. But is it, did she describe the angle of what, of what she's seeing? Like it is like that she's like hovering over herself seeing her go down or is it from a distance, from behind? She did not describe the angle. And most of her, most of the out of body stuff that she describes is prior to the baptism. Most of the, her memory of the baptism is bits and pieces or it's just black. But it's from her perspective, I think. I mean, as far as she described it.

Interesting. Okay. So I just, I wanted to make sure I asked that first because I knew I was going to forget. And it's very important to me because I personally wanted to know. So if you could, though, yeah, walk us through this story and how this kind of unfolds for you and the team. are we allowed to mention the pastor that you're talking to and who is? Okay, so I just want to give him a shout out. I've been talking with him quite a bit. In fact, he's called me twice now in the past couple of days and I haven't answered because he's been catching me the wrong times. But his name is Josh Robinson from Sword and Staff podcast.

These guys over there, I hear doing great things. A lot of people are talking to me about them. And I say you guys, because I know you're closely associated with them. But that's who we're talking about. So people maybe out there listening who maybe listen to Sword and Staff, they can understand that we're talking about one of the hosts on that show. Yeah. Yeah, that's Josh. And Richie, at the same time, you know, we were sort of in a background. We were talking about what we were experiencing the week that we shot most of this and that most of the weird stuff happened. I would, because Richie's got a background on paranormal investigation.

and like 14 or 15 years, I think, doing that. And so when we would experience something in the evening, I would message Josh and Richie, and we would talk about it and try and figure out, you know, are there material explanations for this that are easy, is there ways to debunk that this is something weird, or is it possible this is something really weird? So, yeah.

Let me ask you this before you go any further. with Ritchie. Now, I know you and Josh come from reformed background. What about Ritchie? With the paranormal investigative experience and stuff, it doesn't strike me as a very Calvinistic thing to do. No, he, I think in so, I think when he converted, so he hasn't been a Christian for that whole time.

Gotcha. He was practicing a cultist, so he was very familiar with the things that Kristen described doing in the run-up to her possession case. So she was engaged in eclectic folk magic witchcraft and hoodoo. And I was able to kind of consult some of the stuff in the first episode where I'm very carefully, very deliberately

recreating to an extent, not fully, but to an extent to show what she was doing. I was able to pick Richie's brain and her brain at the same time. Like, you know, what's the significance of this? That, um, the symbol, uh,

yep. So, yeah, it was helpful to have his, he was not, uh, Calvinist. I think that, um, he was friends with Josh prior, um, to Josh's experience here. And I, it's really interesting. If you listen to the sword and staff, you get a feel for this, how they bring

their backgrounds, together now. I think if it weren't for, if it weren't for Richie knowing Josh, he would probably be Catholic. I don't think, I think he would not mind me saying that. We joke about him being more Catholic than Pope Francis,

but that doesn't take a whole lot. But, yeah, that's sort of more his background. And when he was doing investigative work, he was doing it for the church. So if you were Catholic and you wanted an exorcism performed in your house, you would have to establish that with some data. And so one of the things that he was doing, and this is what paranormal investigation, you know, it was a common thing for paranormal investigators to do early on with the warrants and such would be to establish with evidence that something was actually happening so that the church would bring someone in to do a blessing or an exorcism.

That's interesting. It sounds like I need to have a conversation with Richie, too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He's super interesting. So, all right, let's get into the story. We're 15 minutes into the show and people are like, get to the story. We don't care about sword and staff. What the heck is that? So check it out and you'll find out. But let's get into the story. I guess where do you want to start with Kristen or what? So there's, yeah, let's just tell this in the order that it happened. And maybe that'll, it'll, it'll make. sense of why it's so weird when you, the things happen like out of order. So Monday, Sunday actually, we get into town to shoot and the place that we're staying is with my in-laws, and they live in a town called Cross-Lanes, West Virginia. Now, the Sunday that we get in,

over top of Cross-Lanes, there is a, the largest, and that doesn't even do it justice, There's a herd of vultures circling the town that Sunday. And that lasted through, I think, Wednesday or Thursday. But it was the biggest one we got there. And it was like, I mean, seriously, I don't know, you've seen the video out if you've seen the show, like a couple hundred, maybe more. I don't know, vultures in the sky circling where I was sleeping. Now, I didn't, at the time that it doesn't have any significance to me, it's just weird. Like I saw people standing outside and I asked them, have you seen this before?

No, this is weird. I thought maybe it was just a thing that happened there that I had forgotten since I moved. But it happens. It doesn't happen normally, but we've got this huge herd of birds. So it was just weird enough that I shot video of it and then put it out of mind, right? Monday, I go and get, I'm trying to get Kristen's mom to do an interview, but she's hesitant so we end up pushing it. But we end up going to this house that's rumored to be very haunted.

And the only real connection, it was kind of a plan B thing because I didn't have anything that day that I could shoot related to Kristen's story, or at least that I thought was related to Kristen's story. But Kristen's childhood friend, her grandmother owned this property where there was this house that it had, the rumor was it had been like a slave owner's house, and it had separate slave quarters in the back. So they had their own stairwell. They weren't to share, you know, space with the owners. And so there's, you know, all the emotional content of, and trauma of having been a place where that happened. But it was also like a really old house was not in great shape. And the room that was the slaves quarters

in this house, people reported seeing things in the windows and that kind of thing. So I thought, you know, why not? We'll go shoot at this house. If nothing else, it's interesting B-roll to have this old spooky-looking house.

But we get there and we start talking to the lady who owns the property and her name's Glenda. And she tells us a couple of stories. I mean, there are many stories about this house, but she tells a couple that end up being important later. The first is

her husband was in the house at the time with, I believe, her parents. And I think it was her mom first sees it. There's something, a small childlike figure that it's night and this thing comes up to the screen door

and all she sees are hands and the face pressed against the screen of the door. And she described the face as being that of like a child with a burned face. And so she assumed it must have been someone in a mask, but it scared her very badly. And so she goes and gets her husband, who comes, sees it, and immediately goes and gets his rifle. And he's trying to load his rifle, but he's so

scared that he's not able to get the fine motor control to get shells in there. So eventually gets a shell in and comes into the kitchen where he can see this thing and he shoots at it. And when he shoots at it, it jumps and runs away. Okay, so if you're familiar with the Hopkinsville Goblin case out of Kentucky, it's like one of the first of its kind of interactions with ETs where this family reports basically going to war with these little childlike figures with giant ears. They shoot at them and they run away and that kind of thing. And if you're also familiar with the hellier, high strangeness case, it's linked by this goblin-esque kind of small figures terrorizing people.

So given that that was in my background knowledge as I was coming into this, I was like, that's odd. There's a story of small figure, burned face, looking through windows. That's like a common thing. And then, so that's where my head was. Now, the other story that she tells that really stuck out, not at the time, but by Wednesday

it will, was the story of a lady who was living there called her frantic on the phone saying, you've got to come look out in the driveway of this house. There is like the largest bird

I've ever seen. Like the size of a human. It's the largest owl I've ever seen. And Glenda says she was scared to death. Now, by the time Glenda gets outside and looks, there's nothing there. Okay. But, and the association that Glenda and there was another lady there, the association that they make, the first question they ask is, was this around the time of the mothman? And she said, well, I never heard of the mothman, but this would have to be like the 70s, so early 70s. So the Mothman case really culminated and ended in 67. So this is a few years after that, maybe like 72, 73.

So those were the two like big stories that came out of talking to the people who own the property. So then we go up to the house and we go inside and it is indeed like not in great shape. and Kristen's friend, who was our original connection to this house, apparently also experienced something where she saw a small figure out of one of the upstairs windows. She said it was a small orange figure that went up through the woods and around the house. And if you're familiar at all with Appalachian folklore, it's very similar to fairy stories from Ireland, where you're not supposed to follow things into the woods that look like,

children but aren't, right? Or go after a noise that sounds human but isn't like a woman screaming or a baby crying. So, you know, everything is fitting this pattern that relates to Hopkinsville Mothman Hellyer. And we find a couple other things in the house that are interesting. One is a mirror. And no one had been in this house for several months. In fact, the lady who was, visiting Clinda had been the last person in that house months ago. And when last occupants died, they had cleaned out stuff, and she was the last one in there, no one in there for months. There was a mirror. And in this mirror, the occupants, like multiple occupants, told the story of having seen figures in the mirror.

So one talked about like a haided man, like the hat man thing. Others had talked about shadow figures in this mirror. And Kristen, even on our way up to the house, talking about those stories that said, in Houdo, mirrors have a significance. So you'll see people like hang mirrors outside the house as a way of repelling things. They're also used for scrying. But the one thing you don't do with a mirror in a cult practice when you're doing something like that, scrying or whatever, is you don't touch it. So this mirror has a uniform coat of dust on it when we get up there. Except for there's a single place where it looks like someone has taken four fingers

and drug a streak down the mirror and it's cleared of dust. So none had been up there for two months and the last person that was there had, in fact, this lady who had cleaned out the stuff had taken a picture of the mirror. and because she thought she had seen something in it. So she tried to take a picture of it. And in the picture and in her memory, there's no streaks. Now, you might be able to miss it, right?

But in any case, there was that. So there was the mirror, there was also this painting that was in the slave's quarters. So in the slaves' quarters, that room had stayed padlocked by the last occupants. So no one was allowed in there.

it obviously been unlocked to get all the stuff out and in the center of that room on the back wall when you walk up the stairs the first thing that arrests your attention immediately it grabs you is there's this painting of a tree on, it's done on like MDF or like plywood and it's sitting in the middle of the room sitting on top of this little green hamper

like in the center of the back wall and everyone who walked in there commented on it and noticed it. Okay, so there was that and then there was one other thing. And I mentioned these three things because they become important later. The third thing was called the Star Book for Ministers. And it was a manual from a long time ago on how to do liturgics in a particular denomination. Okay. So those three things at that house. And then we go have a campfire and sort of debrief and talk about the things from the house. One of the other things that happened while we were in this house

is there's an EVP that we think we caught, although the people that were there heard something too. So the people that were there described it as like a howl or a scream. To me, it sort of sounds like a little girl yelling from far away. And there were three people in the house that heard it, and we picked it up on the camera. Now, it's not a very controlled environment, right? It's an old house. We had more than one person in it, more than just the recording. So, like, again, talking to Richie, it's one of those things that maybe it's that, maybe it's not.

We can't, we don't have good isolation to say this is what this has to be. But in any case, it happened. So we go out and sort of debrief at a campfire, and, and tell stories. And one of the things that comes out at the campfire is Kristen's family has Native American background. So they're heavily Native American,

like more than just, more than Elizabeth Warren, right? Like, actually you Native American. So that comes out of the campfire. The next day, we end up interviewing Kristen's friend who's associated with this house, we ask about the house and about her experience of Kristen's baptism.

And she was, she said if she wasn't there, she would not share our opinion that an exorcism is what happened. And at this point, I'm pretty much on board just because I know Josh. And I know that Josh wouldn't say that unless there was reason to. But Darian says this.

And I'm trying to get Kristen's mom again. And Kristen's mom is again hesitant, and so we push her another day. So the next day comes around. And we finally get Kristen's mom to agree to come in and talk. But we figured it would be make her more comfortable if it's sort of everyone in her families around there and they're just like having a conversation rather than me sitting her under the lights in front of the camera and grilling her. Not that I do that, but that's kind of the perception when you're sat down in front of a camera with a giant light. So she, that interview

had really so many keys and tie-ins to everything that happened that week. It's hard to talk about all of it at once. But the first real thing that we find out that that's crazy is that Kristen's uncle, his name was Craig.

And he had ended up practicing witchcraft with his brother Bob and their friend whom Kristen's mother, whose name is Heather, she remembered that that friend was named

Geraldine. That was the name that she remembered. So she thought that Geraldine had sort of gotten Craig and Bob into this witchcraft practice that they did. Now, at the time, this was going on, Heather was very young. She was like six or seven. So she didn't know that's what it was, but she knew

that they would get in the dark around a table. They had, she called it a star, but she identified it as a pentagram or pentagram. feathers, birdfoot, different, like, tarot cards, that kind of thing. And they would

like pray together around the table with these things, candles and stuff, lit, and that no one else, Heather didn't want to be around it, neither did her brother, Todd.

So, and so it's interesting that we've got practice across generations, but hold on to that because the connections get crazier. She tells us that Craig had had two instances where he had acted not himself and sort of acted out violently. So in one of those, after this practice had been going on a while, he grew more and more isolated from everyone, stayed in his room, wanted it dark everywhere, wanted to black out

specifically three windows in this house, and eventually someone, the family had decided to get a preacher to come talk to him. The preacher comes and talks to him, and Craig would become violently angry whenever mention of God or any of Bible, anything like that. So that preacher said, this is too much for me to handle. Let me bring my brother, who is an exorcist. So the brother comes, they try to exercise Craig because he's violently angry. He won't respond to his name. He will not, like he says, that's not my name. His voice is not his own, that kind of thing.

So the exorcism is taking place and during it, I guess, Craig admits to having a machete stored under his bed. And his intent with a machete, he says, was to, his words, sacrifice everyone in the house, cut their heads off and arrange their heads around the kitchen table. There were six people in the house, and apparently Craig found that number significant. there would be then six heads around the house. So that story is pretty crazy. And so I later verified it with another member of the family.

But that led to, he eventually was taken away to mental hospital diagnosed schizophrenic. at a later point he got out and had a similar thing happen again where he claimed that he had to sacrifice someone and he went back now i didn't christian didn't know this um and i certainly didn't and what's interesting about that is after the second event um i guess Craig was better through the through the end of his life but Kristen had spent time living with him. She left home at like 14 and would live with different relatives, and one of those was Craig. And Craig had, in her words, Craig had a significant influence in sort of how she viewed the world and spirituality. He was an influence on her, to the point that in one of her altars that she kept, she had his picture on it.

we don't find this out till later, but I'll tell it now because it makes these, the connection start to get kind of insane. Later in the week, we had this weird synchronicity happen with Psalm 91, where Kristen had had this nightmare after her baptism of this demonic presence that she says that she had sort of witnessed this shadow figure or this dark figure. following her throughout her life from the time that she was a child. And one of the reasons that she took on the witchcraft practices that she did was to exercise a degree of control over this thing, over finding it, like she didn't want to experience it, and the witchcraft was a way of getting control over it. It didn't, of course.

And as the witchcraft got darker in tone and what she was trying to do, there was, you know, she ended up where she ended up. But she had this dream afterward where the same figure appears to her. And it says, it's going to take a lot more than that. We're not going anywhere. And she wakes up feeling as if she's being choked, like something's hands on her throat choking her. She tells us about that nightmare Monday night at the campfire.

and I believe it was that night I happened to see, I think it was Mike Heiser posted something about Psalm 91 being an exorcistic psalm or like a spiritual warfare psalm and so I had center that. The next day,

without any interaction from me, Josh had posted something about Psalm 91 on Facebook and Kristen said that by the time we figured out the synchronicity was happening,

Kristen said that Psalm 91 had occurred to her and she had written it down at the post office the other day. At some point after this nightmare, but before we had talked about it. And what's interesting about that is that Psalm 91 references this Mesopotamian entity that first occurs in the epic of Gilgamesh,

but is referenced in scripture in other places named Lilith, or Lalitu, or Li Liliu. it's where we get the modern conception of Lilith the goddess although there's a bunch of Jewish Kabbalah mixed in there with what we think of it but so that name Lilith Kristen when we

mentioned this about Psalm 91 Kristen says oh that's weird I paid like I would work with Lilith like she would conjure and work with what she was aiming at was this deity lilith. We came to find out later, I think this was Friday. Heather's brother, Todd, they get in a conversation after our interview. And Todd points out, he was slightly older than Heather. And so he remembers the events of around the table and the witchcraft thing. He remembers

that a little better. And what he remembers is that the person that Heather identified is Geraldine. and Heather had mentioned that this person was a man dressed as a woman. So she thought, Heather thought, that Geraldine was a, I guess at the time a transvestite would be the language to use. Todd remembered, and he swore by this before we told him any of the significance of anything else that Geraldine was actually named Gerald. That was his given name.

And she remembered him as Geraldine because she remembered him appearing as a woman. Todd said it wasn't Geraldine. His name was Gerald, but he demanded to be called Lilith. So that was his taken name. And they both said that

he had traded, sort of traded his soul for the transformation. That was this person's, the Geraldine Lilith character, that was their take on the transition, was that they had traded their soul to become this Lilith character. Now, all this comes out like, as we're talking to Heather. So now we've got Kristen worshipping a thing called Lilith that she consciously recognizes Lilith. We've got her uncle practicing witchcraft, her uncle who is influential

in our practicing witchcraft with this person who wanted to be called Lilith. And this is a connection that Kristen did not know before we do this. So we get, in talking to Heather, another thing that comes up is I remember this story

so one of the things that like an emblem of Lilith one of her symbols is the owl and when Josh mentions that I think because if you read scripture and you find like in Isaiah 34 the Terror of the Night

is sometimes translated screech owl or owl of the night that is Lilith that is an idiomatic reference to the Lilit and at that point when Josh brings this up, Heather and Kristen, everyone in this extended family had had experiences with owls that are extraordinary. So Kristen had an experience where as she was practicing,

she came home one night with Heather, and there was an owl waiting for her at the bottom of her stairs at her apartment. And Kristen is able, like on the ground, Kristen's able to walk up to the owl and greet it. It doesn't attack her or fly away until she's standing there next to it for a long time. And then it looks up at her and then gently flies away. Heather had had an experience with owls. And this came out because I asked Heather, remembering from Monday, the giant owl thing,

I asked her, I said this is pretty crazy, but have you ever had any experiences with overly large birds? And the look on her face was like, right? You're laughing because you've seen it. She goes, that's so creepy that you ask that because she was riding with Craig, right? The same uncle who was practicing with Lilith in a car one night. and a giant bird, she said the wingspan, she described basically a thunderbird, wingspan of the road flew,

she was like, I don't know how the car didn't hit it, flew like through or over their vehicle as they're driving. In a second instance, she was driving with Craig, and he hit like a large owl. She described as a giant owl, but he kept it.

Like he hit it, it was dead, I guess, and he kept it in the vehicle. They don't know what he did with it, but anyway. So that, Kristen's experience, and then everyone sort of starts chiming in, oh, I've had, like, this, I remember one time I was with, you know, cousin Josh in a river, and we saw a giant bird fly over. Like, all of these things start coming together. And then later, I would ask, without Todd, who is Heather's brother,

without having any of this information, without having seen anything or knowing what we've talked about, he had an experience where he and his daughter had seen what they described as the thunderbird. I mean, they didn't use those words, but they described a giant black bird

that flew over their truck and out over them. They both saw it. They thought it was a plane, except it was moving, right? It was like flapping wings. So we have like multiple people in this family having these experiences with birds and owls. And so that starts to give me chills because of the experience from when we first got there with all of these vultures flying over where we're staying.

So one of the things, particularly when we take that Lilith archetype and we go look at, scripture as Christians, that's what we would do. So we go look at Isaiah 34 and the things mentioned in conjunction with the night owl with Lilith are like vultures. Like carry on eating birds are a thing attached to this entity when it's described in scripture. So like that's starting to get spooky. It wasn't until and then there's a lot of stuff in the documentary about the mothman flap as documented by John Keel in the Mothman prophecies

also had a lot of giant bird, thunderbird, large flocks of fulcher stuff that happened along with the Mothman and UFO phenomena and the inner cold stuff that most people think of. I didn't know that until I read his book on the case, but there was a lot of people experiencing that kind of stuff as well. So one of the things that then Josh had been sort of reading about was sort of the Native American history of the area itself. So Logan was originally

called Erycoma, and it was named after Princess Ericoma, who Indians didn't really have princesses. We anglicize the thing. It's really a wise woman. So like probably a practitioner of some hidden art, but she was the daughter of Chief Cornstalk. Now, Chief Cornstalk is sort of in folklore, in the mythology surrounding the mothman,

flap, and Point Pleasant. Chief Cornstalk is responsible for cursing Point Pleasant, with a 200-year curse, and the idea is that at the end of that 200-year curse, the mothman phenomena happened, and the Silver Bridge collapsed, and it killed a lot of people. So his daughter is Ericoma,

for whom Logan West Virginia, where all this is taking place, was originally named. Not only was it named for her, her remains, along with 50 native bodies, were found under the Eiracoma Hotel. when it burned down

when they bulldozed it the hotel having burned down they found all these remains one of the bodies that was found were a what in the report is described as a marine shell gorgeet necklace so a necklace with a pendant

on it that had a depiction of a bird man so the birdman mothman thing is a common motif in among the who Ericoma and Chief Cornstalk belonged to that tribe. So we've got these synchronicities about the bird thing.

We've got this tie-in to the mothman thing, which the thing that gets weird about that with the owls is a lot of the mothman imagery is very owl-like. And it's also one of the proposed explanations, like the rational explanations for what people were seeing with the mothman, was, oh, you're seeing an owl. So the A lot of this case and a lot of the documentary

At least up toward the end of it Where stuff really starts to happen to us was It was synchronicity and like symbolism Just so heavy that it's kind of beating you over the head So it gets to the point with the birds where it's just It's like It can't be coincidence and there's more stuff I'm probably missing

in retelling it verbally. So toward the end of the week, Heather had told us about this house where she had lived in a town called Man. Now, Man is even further south than Logan. It's like another hour deeper into Appalachia. And it's a tiny little town,

but Heather had lived in this house and both she and then later Todd would tell us of experiences in this house where multiple people, even people that came and visited, would have experiences surrounding the upstairs. And there's one particular room upstairs where you would hear, Heather would describe it as like hearing hardwood shoes

walking across the second story from this one room across the hall. Todd described it as like a dog's untrimmed fingernail, like a claws. You're here a dog without with real long claws walk across the floor that kind of click-clack. Now,

and other, like we verified this with other people in the family off the record, but those were the two main ones. So people have these experiences there. Heather told us the story of,

and I can't go into all the family history, there's more of it in the documentary, but her father was named Jesse. And at the point, they were living in this house, he was a very religious man. And he would stay up in the room

with all the activity whenever he came to stay with them, which the separation is explained in the show. It's a long story. But he would carry a Bible with him, and they would hear him like praying or talking to this thing up

there as he was moving. There was a day where Jesse Heather's father was standing at the top of the stairs, and he was, he said, pushed down the stairs. So he flies down the stairs.

He results in a compound fracture of his shin. So like bone sticking through skin, he had to go to the hospital a whole deal. And his explanation was, he said, they pushed me. So we've got the footstep phenomena. They,

Heather also talked about like shadow figures walking this particular route. So out of the one room, down the stairs, back up the stairs, down the stairs. We had the last day we were there, we had started kicking around the idea of, wouldn't it be wild to go to this house? And we were kind of like, there's no way they're going to let us in. This is the day after Thanksgiving. They're either going to have family in or if they don't,

they're certainly not going to want people to come in and talk about this, even if they are experiencing stuff. Yeah, especially with cameras. Like people get shy around cameras when they don't, when they don't, they're not used to, you know? Right.

So we were like, well, kind of the whole thing had been like, if it's meant to happen, it's going to happen. So we drove down and we just walk up and knock on the door. And, uh,

no answers for a while. And then this guy comes walking up behind us who had parked like a little down the road. And, uh, he was looking at us weird. So we were like, maybe this is the owner of the house.

He sees a guy with a camera and another dude standing there on his porch. And it turns out he was the owner of the house. When we told him that we were there because we were doing a documentary on a family that had lived there 30 years ago. And for a long time, he kept referring to us as psychics, but we tried to, like, we're not psychics. We're just working on this story. But he invited us in.

And the first story that he told us, was that he was pushed down the stairs, resulting in a compound fracture of his collarbone. And he walked over and he showed us where the holes in the wall were, where his head and shoulder had impacted the wall. And he said, something pushed me down those steps. And we said, well, that's crazy because the family, you know, had the same experience.

And it was like when we opened the door to that house, everybody that was there had had stories to tell. And it was like they all wanted to get them out. So it's very like, it's very chaotic. But we go upstairs and we start talking to there. There are two kids that live there. I say kids or teenagers with their grandfather and their grandma. So there's four people in the house total.

There's three men. And the kids both live. There are two rooms upstairs. One kid lives in one and the other and the other. the kid that's in the room where everyone had reported the activity, he's really quiet, but the other kid's very talkative. He has lots of things to say. And he talks about, it was like almost every night at 3 a.m., I get woken up by this shadow figure standing, like, in the space between the rooms. And he described sort of watching what would be the tail end

of the same path that Heather talked about hearing this thing walk. It would go into his room, back and then down the stairs. So, like every night, 3 a.m. The other kid confirmed that he had seen it going down the stairs. The grandfather

who lived there, who had been pushed down the stairs, he took us down to his room. And his room would incidentally be the same room that Craig stayed in and the room that Craig was in in that second instance where he sort of became violent and

had to be taken to the hospital. In that room, this guy had a whole bunch of dream catchers. And so that made me ask, you know, do you struggle with nightmares? And at that point,

everyone that's there immediately starts like, oh yeah, we have nightmares all the time. The kid characterizes his nightmares as a demon choking him. He has a dream of a demon choking him, which is really parallel with Kristen's experience. And anyway, the grandfather has all this dream catchers up,

and he starts talking about how he found them out in the hallway. And he said, I don't know, something just told me, something in my brain told me, take him out of there and put him in here, hang them up. And I said, did it help with nightmares? said, how yeah, it helped? What Heather's doing the whole time that we're here,

her eyes are getting wider because Craig, it turned out, who lived in that room, had also, like, covered the walls in dream catchers. Also, the windows that Craig had blacked out in that house are still,

by these people, I guess, covered in black sheeting, same windows. So the same three windows. We've got the dream catchers. We've got the same experience of being pushed down the steps. We've got the same path walked by this black figure. We've also got the experience, I forgot this, of the grandfather having the experience of something

when he lived in the upstairs room coming and sitting down with him in the bed. Now, Heather had described this experience two days prior on Wednesday, and later Todd, her brother, would go on to relate having had the same experience in that house. So we get sort of through them telling all those stories. And I was like, why not? Let's ask, if you guys have any experience with birds? And it turns out that they had had flocks of crows, so carrying. and eating birds around their house in these three particular trees. There were a huge nuisance.

They kept tearing their garbage open and stuff. That was interesting because a couple of days prior, when we had started talking about the birds, Kristen had this experience of she would have this experience with owls at night and crows during the day. To the point that she had actually gotten a tattoo years prior, of a tree with a bunch of crows in it, like on her arm because it was a thing that followed her.

So there's that symbolism as well. We get done talking to them. And upstairs, okay, last piece, upstairs in this room where all the activity is, there is a, like a wooden cut out of a moon, like a crescent moon with stairs on it hanging on the wall. And when I came in, I noticed it. The only reason that I noticed it was when we initially drove past the house, Kristen had grabbed my attention and been like, did you see all of the moons hanging outside?

I said, no, it doesn't make any, like, I don't know any significance of that. And she was like, that is a witch's symbol. The moon, the three phases of the moon represent maiden mother crone. So like three stages in a witch's life. It's a common symbol if you've seen there's like a crescent one way, full moon crescent the other way. And so when we came upstairs and saw that in that room, I asked the kid if he had put it up, right?

It seemed like a weird thing you would have. And he said, no, that was there when I moved in. So the rest of the family says the same thing. That's there when we moved in. So I asked Heather, was this, do you remember this? And she remembers it in that. room from when she was there like 30 years ago. She doesn't remember putting it up either. Can I can I just interject one thing? Yeah. It's kind of it's kind of weird that you would move

into a place and not take down something so odd. Right. It like there's a human side. It's like, who does that? You know, who like, but also like literally who does that? It makes you wonder if there was some kind of compelling force or something that just it didn't cross their mind. It's just It was almost like, that's the wall. We're not going to take the wall down. And it was like, that's the moon on the wall. It just doesn't, it doesn't even cross your mind to take it down. Yeah.

Yeah, no, exactly. Like, how does that survive multiple owners? It's very, uh, yeah. Multiple people living in that room, never being like, I don't want that moon up there. Uh, so that was that. The one thing that I didn't, I didn't pay any attention to it at the time until I noticed later.

So because of the experience from Monday, where we were getting these stories of small figures at that house, and because we were going into it of kind of this background information of the Hellyer case, one of the tools that they use in Hellyer, and I would not do this now, and I would recommend that no one does this at all, was they used the what's called the secret cipher of the euphonauts. The secret cipher of the euphonauts is a cipher.

So a cipher is a thing where you give an input value. It runs through the cipher and you get an output value. And the way that these work is the output value represents letters and phrases and things. So for one input value, you might get a number that represents many different phrases. So it's open to interpretation just in the nature of the case. But that's one of the things I used in Hellyer. we were talking about this goblin stuff

that we were getting stories of Monday night and we thought well I thought it almost as a joke like why don't I throw some of the things that stood out to us from this house into the secret cipher and again I wouldn't do this now

but the thing is called secret cipher of the euphonots it sounds like the most absurd like larping whatever so you're saying that you wouldn't do it now because you you know different now? Is that what you're saying? Like, did you do this ignorantly?

Is that what you're saying? Or was it a lax? Or was it in the moment you kind of got carried away with yourself? I think it was a mixture of both. Like, I didn't know how serious it was. But now I would characterize it as like not a whole lot different

from like using a Ouija board. But I wasn't thinking of it in those terms at the time. I was just thinking it's weird and it's kind of a, absurd. And because it's so open to interpretation where the phrase that you get back could be a million different things, I was like, I was, you know, so anyway, I feed some descriptors of things that we found in that house that stuck out to us. I feed them into the cipher. And Josh, at the same time, Josh and Richie were talking about looking for a cave or a mine to check out. And, because it's like in the Hopkinsville slash Hellyer Mythos

it's possible that those things were supposed to have lived in the caves under Kentucky which run from Kentucky all the way up to like New York or something so we're like

any mines or caves that we could go check out near this house with had the activity of the small figures and Josh says you know up my holler I have a mine entrance

and one of the things that kept popping up in the cipher results was the phrase hold bear. And I made a joke just like not thinking of it. I was like, well, this thing keeps saying hold bear. We might want to be careful going in any caves, right? You don't run into a bear. And not even like complete throwaway, not even, I didn't remember it by Friday.

So Friday, when we were there shooting the house, I did not notice under the moon. there was a teddy bear. And I wasn't paying attention to the talkative kid anymore because everyone was talking. But it picked it up on the camera. He says, yeah, I don't know where that bear came from. It just kind of randomly spawned there. And I think I heard that going through the footage. And so I started looking back for and just like scrolling through.

And it turns out that like every, wall of this house anywhere where there's any decor like possible there are bears bear tracks pictures of bears statues of bears fervable references to bears

like it's all over this house to the point where it yeah it's it's insane everywhere I point the camera there's a bear like like literally I just people have to see it to believe it I mean it's not like you know oh, in this room they had

a bear. It's like everywhere. Yeah, these were people that were holding bears. Like, I can't really describe the feeling, but like, I don't know. So that was something that came up Monday

that didn't make any sense until not just the day we were there. Like I put it so far out of my mind, I didn't even think of it while we were there. It wasn't until I got back and was looking through the footage. That I was like, what? And so I sent Josh and Ritchie a message.

I screenshotted the little hold bear conversation that we had had and I sent it back to them and I was like do you remember this? And then I started just one after the other like here's a bear, here's a bear, here's three bears on this stand, here's four, here's another one holding a thing like just over and over and over again to the point where it was

like, it really was like getting beaten over the head with like I don't know, like it felt so obvious that it was stupefying. And so anyway, I swore off the use of the secret cipher because it really felt like, I don't know, it felt like knowing something out of time

or something that you shouldn't. And I for sure can see how that promise of secret wisdom or secret knowledge works as a bait to hook you into stuff like a cult practice. Like I can absolutely see because the temptation was strong. Even knowing what it was, the temptation was strong every time I wondered about something. Be like,

yeah, let's throw it in the secret cipher and see what comes up. So let me ask you real quick. What were you guys, so you mentioned you guys are talking about going and looking for a cave entrance. He mentioned a mine entrance. And then you put that in the,

the cipher. What were you looking for when you did that with the cipher? were you looking for some kind of entrance way of some kind? Is that why you put that in it? Like, what was the reasoning behind you putting it into the cipher and then getting that, that spit back to you and that relating to the guys looking for cave entrance? Is there, is there any correlation?

Because, like, I'm sitting here thinking, is the house a portal? Like, you know, my mind goes there. And so I'm like, is the house some kind of portal spot? So I didn't put anything about caves or mines into it. It was, we had been at this house where they had had stories of childlike figures with burned faces, such that they thought they were wearing masks. So that related to the Hopkinsville and the Hellyer like goblin thing. And then being in a place in Appalachia where mine entrances and caves are like ubiquitous there everywhere. we were like

and the the goblins in those other cases like the conception is that they come up from the caves and so we were like wouldn't it be weird if there was like a mine entrance right up from that house

and so that's what we were talking about trying to find some yeah possible an entrance into that might connect into the mammoth cave system was what we were thinking and so that's why we put it in the and the secret cipher just came from the fact of having watched Hellyer

so yeah so the thing that the fact that it spit back hold bare with nothing related to caves or mines um it felt oddly and then and then finding all that in the footage it just felt so oddly specific that i don't know and my remarking on it as a joke that I didn't remember was just bizarre. Yeah. There's other stuff about that house too, like the significance of numbers in the house. There were three houses on the property.

A three-year-old child had died three days before we got there in a fire, they said. There were three men in the house. There were three windows that were blacked out. the same windows that Craig blacked out. There were, um, like, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, and, uh, yeah, and everything kicked off, of course, at 3 a.m., which is a,

you know, it's a common thing, but, um, that was also the case with the phenomenon that Kristen experienced and Heather. So, anyway,

um, we get done shooting with them on Friday and we go back, to talk about that experience. And of course, Heather had been in the house at that point. And she had been wondering about this house for 30 years. So we go back to sort of talk about debrief it and talk about what we found. And we do that. Heather sort of we read.

Oh, it's totally, there's so much about this house. I keep forgetting stuff. the kids had done like an impromptu investigation in the house where they were up one night at three o'clock and they were going around the house. The current tenants? Yeah, the kids that currently live in that house in man. They had been up at like 3 a.m. going around taking pictures and they said, now I don't have the photo because they said they deleted it. But they said that they had taken a picture of the one kid who lived in the more active room, the one with the moon hanging, the one with the bear that randomly spawned there.

They took a picture of him in the downstairs hallway, and they said that there was what appeared to be a goat man over his shoulder, like behind him. So I wasn't even going to include that, except that on the way back to, we were going to one of the folks' house that was in the documentary. We stopped and talked to Josh briefly, and we mentioned

the crows thing, the goat man thing, like seeing the goat-headed man behind him. And he immediately pulled up Isaiah 34, which if you want to read it

in Young's literal is probably the best translation to read it, but there's the mention of accompanying Lilith a sater, a fawn, a goat man is one of the things that accompanies her along with the carrion-eating birds,

the vultures. And it says that it's a condemnation, Isaiah 34, God condemning Babylon, and he says that it'll make it a dwelling place for all of these like supernatural evil creatures. And it says there Lilith

will find her resting place. And so Heather's question, in that debrief is so what this place that I lived as a child is some kind of resting place for this thing. So we get through that and I want to

because Kristen mentioned that she has the moon tattoos on her arm. She has that triple moon symbol on her arm which also ties into Lilith worship. She has the tattoo of the tree with the crows in it. She has

another tattoo that oddly connects into the dog band stuff we would eventually end up doing of a kate on her arm. So I wanted to shoot the tattoos, but she had a long-sleeve shirt, so she ran upstairs to change shirts so that she could show the tattoos on camera. And she's up there a minute or two, and she comes back down, and I'm shooting the tattoos, and that probably, based on the time code that I have running, So I'm running continuous time code on the cameras. It's at maximum 10 minutes from the time that she leaves that bathroom upstairs until this next thing happens.

So I'm putting the camera away after shooting the tattoos. I've said by, I'm packing the camera up and I hear someone scream from the hallway. And I'm like, okay, I just, I don't even go look. I try and get the camera back together because I'm like, okay, something's kicking off now that I'm done, of course. And I come around the corner and I look up at the light fiction. and the light fixture in the hallway, the downstairs hallway, like water is pouring out of it, and there's like standing water a couple inches deep in the floor of the hallway. I want to just say that like when you say pouring, it was pouring out.

I mean, this was like this wasn't a trickle, this wasn't dripping. Water was pouring out of it and it was piling on the floor. And to remind people, it wasn't like that. would you say 10 minutes before that? Yeah. Yeah. So we go upstairs looking for the source of the water. And Kristen and Heather are ahead of me.

And as they turn the corner, the kids, like everyone's kids had been hanging out watching TV in this room. As they turn the corner in that upstairs hallway, the door to the kids' room slammed shut. The kids didn't do it and we didn't do it. Both of us thought the other had slammed the door for some reason. we go down to the end of the hallway and look into the master bathroom where Kristen had been just 10 minutes prior and there's water standing in the floor like several inches deep. There's no source of water. Nothing's leaking. In panic, they turned the water feed to the toilet off.

But after they turned it back on, it functioned normally flushed fire. there was no leak. It's been two years now since the event. Nothing's been replaced. There is no leak. There was no water in the bathtub. No sink running, nothing. There's no source.

Just like a huge amount of water standing in the floor. We go back downstairs because Heather has gone down and is looking at the outside of the house and there's water that's run. So much water there's run through the floor joists and is running down the siding outside of the house. the house, like on to the front porch. So what happened was, like, these are the facts of my experience.

Kristen was in that room, 10 minutes later, without an identifiable source of water, there was enough water, not just in that floor, that bathroom, but it would have had to have been there long enough that it was running through floor choice between the second in the first story, pouring out of a light fixture into closets and out the outside of the house. And I don't have an explanation for that. And to this day, it is

one of the strangest things. It may be the strangest thing that's happened to me, because I don't have another explanation for that other than, what, just apportation of water, I guess. You know, this whole,

this whole docu-series is filled with so many curves and unexpected, like, it literally was what you described earlier. You went down there for a 15-minute video and it turned into a journey and you documented

the journey. And, the journey's not over, though. So, like, you, you're putting this out and

Dark Holler is five episodes right? Yep. And it's each episode is what about 40, 45 minutes? Yeah, they're all around there. So like there's like all these like in this five episode series like all these twists and turns

and information, you know, given to people. But it turns out that what started out as a pursuit of a 15 minute video to play with your new camera turned into not only a docu series, but now you guys are planning more in, I guess, in-depth research and looking into investigations and stuff like that in this area, because it's now being, going from the family to the general area. Am I correct in saying that? Am I saying something that I shouldn't be saying right now?

No, no, no. You're good. Yeah, we can talk about that. So one of the things that after this event, one of the things that I did with the footage of, I didn't show it to anybody for a long time. But I eventually, I took it back down and I met with the guys from Swarton's Staff again. And I wanted both of their takes on it. I really wanted kind of Richie's take on it

because Richie will not hesitate to debunk some stuff. And so I showed them the video of this incident of the house flooding. And I didn't know at the time, but they had been

reading up on the Liel or Lelit or Lilitu, this Lilith entity. And one of the things that they had found in, I think it's in the dictionary of

deities and demons, is that the Lyrrith is associated with entering via a window. That's like the archetypal way that she gets in the house has come through the window. One of the things that

Misty, who is Kristen's sister and owned the house we were at, the house that flooded, one of the things that she told me in the aftermath of the flood is that she had had an experience a couple days prior while we had been shooting that week where they had this like decorative fake window.

It's got like a galvanized steel backing and the shape of a window had moved when she should have been able to hear and see it move. It had moved from the wall where it was hung to lie flat on the floor. So it was like a window that went from the wall to the floor. And I didn't know any significance of that, but it just happened to be in the flood video because it happened at the same time. And so Josh and Richie and the Swarden staff guys saw it. And one of the things in this, you know,

so we've got the window thing also learning at the same time that that's like the way that Lilith traverses from into and out of a house through a window. And the other interesting thing about it is that even though modern sort of Wiccans view Lilith as a singular entity, and they kind of view it in this like Jewish Kabbalah, first wife of Adam's sense.

The original conception was it's a type of entity. The Liel or the Lelit or Lilitu is a kind of demonic entity. And the question arises then, okay, we've got all of this symbolism that connects to the scriptural and the Mesopotamian vision of this Lilith kind of entity.

is there a Lilith kind of entity in the folklore of the area? And it turns out that there absolutely is. The Shawnee Creator Deity is named Cochamthina, referred to as our grandmother as well. Coquemthina is pictured, bizarrely, with owl's feet, with features of an owl,

is her son in the mythos is responsible for flooding like responsible for having flooded the earth, right? Like their cataclysm comes via that. And so now we've got this Shawnee deity that is a Lilit.

Like it fits this pattern of the lead being associated with birds, owls, the whole thing. And what we're doing for probably the next year is we're going to be doing sort of a combination of paranormal and mytho-historical

kind of investigation of sites and high strangeness in the area in the effort to just sort of chase the implications of what happened in Dark Haller of that case and the things that are happening there and kind of

zoom out and look at the areas a whole and see if what kind of patterns emerge from that. And I think that, you know, the native history there and even pre-native, like, Adina history there is going to be pretty crazy. And there's some stuff already that we've found that may have fairly significant archaeological significance as well as kind of mytho-historical or paranormal significance as well. All I can say is, can I come?

Yeah, no, that's one of the ideas, is to get Tony on an investigation. So we get one of these places sort of scouted out and get ready to use. You know, Richie's got all of the paranormal investigation tech and gear ready to go and go see what happens. I think, I mean, you talk about going into, I don't want to give away too much, but some of these places that are effigies or depictions or dedicated to, you know, worship of fallen principalities and walking in as Christians, you know, we're not going there to make friends. Yeah.

Fireworks. We're not going to make friends. Yeah. So like what, what I find this is exciting for me. And I wanted to kind of give you the opportunity to say that because I didn't want to say anything that it's not, you know, I just wanted to make sure I didn't spoil things. But one thing, I'll tell you this, I have been doing this podcasting for six years. And when I started doing the podcasting, I was one of the few people doing content creation

in this field that was a Christian. And I told Josh this. I've told you this. It got lonely. And over time, people have been coming up that I believe God has been raising up alongside of me to keep me company. And no, but there's different roles we all. have. And so I feel like I'm the one that has been kind of given the opportunity to collect

stories, make a search engine of type of people's experiences, have conversational relationship with people. That's like my strong suit. And then there's like the brains, which I like to call you guys, which you know, you guys like you guys think on different levels. But here's the thing. for the longest time, I have been wanting to get involved in paranormal investigative type stuff, but on my terms. And everywhere I had turned and looked, everybody was bringing Ouija boards. They wanted to do seances and summon spirits and all that stuff. And I've been part of those things. I have. I'm more an observer. I'm not participating, but I'm observing. but it's like you walk away from you're like, yeah, I can't get involved in doing that kind of

stuff actively. Like that's not the, like, and I always had this, this idea, I guess. If I was going to do paranormal investigative work, I was going to go to places that were perceived to be haunted that had issues. And I was going to go and exist in those environments without trying to summon anything. If there's really an issue going on, it shouldn't require me to ask for it to show itself. And everywhere I turn, there's people going into places, show me yourself. Can you come out? Can you pull my shirt? Can you tickle my armpit? Like, it's just like, if it's really here, if it's really here, we shouldn't have to do those kind of things. And I also won't have to break God's laws. So like, I, uh, well, go ahead. One of the things that,

um, and this, I did a little bit while we were out, uh, at Skinwalker. But, um, pause we didn't we didn't say any of that before you're you're the guy who runs the camera for our films so okay yeah so one of the things that dark holler has really uh gotten me into and allowed me to do is is we'll meet you and go do the like the kentucky dogman thing um and i think that like making content and building culture in this space is something that thing that I'm called to and I think something that we're going to continue to do. So the thing with Josh and Ritchie and the Sword and Staff guys called Shadow Appalachia, like that's, I think I can give you the trailer for it.

You can put in the description or something. But that's part of that. The expeditions that we go in with you guys, I feel like that's a part of that. And they're definitely like different tones and genres and a little different niches. but yeah so that's right so but what I was saying is like

one of the things that say the warrants would do when coming into a space was utilized what they refer to as religious provocation which is essentially being a Christian and doing Christian things in places

with stuff that's offended by it and the stuff that they get back is some of the some of the best evidence that we have for the unseen. I'm so excited. I am so excited. Yeah, it's going to be great. What you just said and stuff, it's literally, we talk about spiritual warfare and

waging war, like that's literally in the moment what that is. And I dig it. I love it. And I can't wait. Yeah, I think one of the, I mean, reflecting, it on the experience of shooting dark collar making it. I think and really all of this stuff, I think

what it's done is I've been given an opportunity to take a camera in and sort of get a window into how this stuff works. And to bring that back and show people

in a way that's like this is these are the facts, this is what happened. Like, find a way to make sense of it or just dismiss it. But I think this stuff's pretty hard to just dismiss at this point. Absolutely. Absolutely. People got to watch it.

They'll see what we're talking about. And when you do watch it, just know that this is just the beginning. There's more coming now because of this. So what started as a 15-minute little video, so Ward to play with his new toy turns into this whole new adventure but also lifestyle change for you in the sense that like your perspectives have changed. It took you to places you've never could have imagined. We wouldn't be talking right now if it wasn't for it.

And so it's very exciting to see what's coming, what has already arrived here with Dark Holler. And I think that people, I think they're going to be super excited once they finish the series to know that there is more investigative stuff coming, intentional investigative. It's not just documenting, but actually going. and investigating. It's really cool. Yeah, Dark Harler was very much like, oh man, things are happening. It was just, it was wild.

But then this is going to be a much more deliberate and controlled experimentation investigation. And some of the experiments that they've got planned are really wild. I can tell you about one off air. I don't want to give it away. It's got to be secret as part of the investigation itself. But yeah, it's, it's wild. I think it's going to, I don't think anything like, I mean, I said this about our stuff too. Like, I don't think anything like this exists in this space. I think that not just like tooting my own horn about production quality, but that plus the

worldview, I don't think anything like this really exists right now. And it should. It should. Well, it is. And it's going to. We are, uh, I, I, I, We're in a transition period in this world right now, and I think that there are people like us being raised up to pursue the creative content realm. Like culture setting is what you mentioned. And that's the big thing for Merkel Media is just we want to shape culture. We realize that everything that happens in this world is downwind from who is setting the culture. And we want to be engaged in that what we believe is a war. and, you know, I'm not going to take too much time here, but I will do it because I take every

opportunity I can to do this. The church has really failed at that over the last years of shaping and molding culture. And so, hey, listen, when somebody drops the ball and stuff, you know, the mission isn't over, God just gives the task of somebody else. And so that's kind of like where we're at here, I think. Yeah, I mean, one of the, that's one of the motivating factors in making it bigger than just that 15-minute thing was seeing, like, for example, I don't want to beat up on the hell your guys, but like, seeing that that narrative is where people, if someone is experiencing something and you go to your local, like, regular mainline evangelical church, the response you're going to get is probably like, that's entirely psychological, right? And you're like, well, no, I'm actually experiencing this and you go to look on Google who are the experts in supernatural stuff right now? Like who are the

biggest voices? What's the narrative? And it is not the true narrative. Like it is a you know, from our perspective, it's just not true and it's dangerous. And so if we can participate

in you know, speaking into that space, that's it. like it's just the phenomenon itself is fascinating to study. And fun. It's so much fun. You got to live a little. You got to enjoy life. And that's what we're out here doing. We're enjoying life and creating some fun stuff along the way. Ward, before we get out of here, just let people know again, what are the details that they need

to know as far as where to find dark holler? And, you know, this is something that they could they could get the first four episodes. Fifth one's coming here soon to be released. When again? Yeah, the fifth one drops on Halloween. So the finale will be available out to everybody on Halloween. So you purchase it now or rent it now and you'll get the fifth one as soon as it drops. But yeah, the website is darkhollerfilm.com. D-A-R-K-H-L-L-E-R-F-I-L-M dot com. And the trailer is there. and then there's a button to rent or purchase the rest of the series. And also, if you want to check out the first episode, it's free on YouTube right now. All you got to do is just in HD, not in 4K.

The show itself is 4K on Vimeo. But if you just search Dark Holler on YouTube, it'll be the first thing that comes up. Yeah, and so I'll put the links in the description of all this stuff below in this episode. So people can just go ahead and check it out right there. You should have put it up on YouTube in like 720. just to really, you know, I'm playing. No, but if people want, they can check it out on YouTube as well just to kind of get a taste to see where things are going. But I promise you, you're going to love it. I absolutely love it. And I appreciate you being on today to tell

this story because this has been a long time coming. And I'm glad we finally got it done. Ward, thanks for being here, man. Dude, thanks for having me. Love it. Well, that's the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did enjoy, please share the show with your friends. I don't care where or how you share. the show, just share the show. If you enjoyed it, that's the best thing you can do to help this show grow. And while you're at it and helping shows grow, go ahead and check out darkhollerfilm.com. That's dark holler film.com and get yourself some dark holler action going. It is five episodes.

This is something you're going to want to binge just like Stranger Things. And in fact, there's a lot of shadows of Stranger Things in this docu-series. I promise you guys, this is so well done. I'm actually feeling very fortunate to be able call Ward my friend. And now I'm telling you, as my friends, go ahead and check out dark hollerfilm.com and get your dark holler action on. And until next week, friends, stay safe, take care, and remember, the truth will set you free, but first it'll piss you off. Bye.