Homespun Haints: True Ghost Stories
True ghost stories are scarier (and funnier) when you hear them from the real people who experienced them. We’re Becky and Diana, and we interview people who have seen ghosts--so you can feel their fear with them. Each episode features true, personal stories of ghosts, demons, haints, hauntings, haunted houses, and paranormal experiences, sprinkled with humorous conversations about the random strange events in our own haunted lives.
Homespun Haints: True Ghost Stories
Ultimate Demonology Smackdown: Appalachia Vs Japan
JJ of Southern Demonology shares his fascinating journey from growing up in a haunted log cabin in rural Tennessee to encountering far more sinister spirits in Japan. His experiences reveal striking cultural differences in how ghosts and demons manifest across different parts of the world.
• Growing up in a 200-year-old log cabin with a ghost named Patrick who would mysteriously open the attic door
• Visiting Aokigahara (Japan's "Suicide Forest") and hearing an unexplainable sound that his companions couldn't detect
• Encountering a terrifying entity in Tokyo that demanded entry by repeating "hairu" directly into his mind
• Explaining the differences between Japanese spirit categories (yurei, yokai, and tsukumogami) and Western demonology
• Sharing his academic knowledge of Judeo-Christian demons, including the evolution of Lilith from Akkadian wind goddess to Jewish folklore
• Experiencing precognitive dreams that predicted future events, always appearing in black and white
If you'd like to learn more about demonology and paranormal experiences from around the world, check out JJ's podcasts: Southern Demonology and Paranormal Rundown.
Have you had a paranormal experience you want to tell a story about? Apply to be featured on our next episode: https://homespunhaints.com/submit-real-ghost-stories
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Diana's notes, details, musings, and links for this particular episode:
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Can a place's culture determine how its ghosts and demons interact with the living? Jj, who grew up in a haunted house in rural Tennessee, thought he could handle any kind of ghost, but when he moved to Japan he realized that spirits in the land of the rising sun operate differently than the ghosts he was used to. Let's take a journey from one side of the globe to the other and learn about all the sinister creatures in between. Today, on Homespun Hates Hello, hated loves, Welcome to Homespun Haints. I'm Becky, hey, I'm Diana, and I may sound a little husky to you.
Speaker 2:Ooh husky like your dog Fluffy. I have a cold and a minor concussion, so I'm kind of like and Becky, I'm just impressed that the only cold that can keep you down for more than 24 hours is one that comes with a concussion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was sick, but I went roller skating anyway.
Speaker 2:Let that be a lesson to everybody.
Speaker 1:Do not roller skate when you have a head cold and you're not quite on balance and doing your best anyway, especially if you haven't done it for 40 years, I think a head cold moves your center of gravity to like right at your third eye. Well, my third eye was not operating properly because it caused me to wipe out and I broke the fall with my skull. Anyway, today on the show. We are so thrilled to bring on JJ of Southern Demonology. Diana, I'm sure you also had so much fun talking to this guy.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, he's amazing, he's so knowledgeable.
Speaker 2:I was expecting him to be just kind of basically like us, collecting tales about paranormal etc. No, he's got like 400 advanced degrees in stuff like this. And he puts us to shame with his knowledge.
Speaker 1:Well, not only is he incredibly knowledgeable, but then he's been to some of these places that are so haunted and then, of course, he had experiences there. So you guys are really, really going to love this. So, as you all know, I have two kids my son. The other day I came upstairs and I found my son sitting on the bridge. You know, we have a bridge in our house because we have a weird ass house. So he's sitting up on the bridge on the second floor and he's grinning from ear to ear. Uh oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, it's like what's going on? This can't be good news.
Speaker 1:And he's like mom I made a friend. Oh, and of course my little ghosty sensors go off and I'm like was it an imaginary friend? No, unfortunately, it was very, very real.
Speaker 2:Oh, was it a cockroach.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2:Of course it was.
Speaker 1:And he's like yeah, we've been hanging out and talking. He's like his name is Stephen. And I was like okay, I don't see it anywhere. Was this's like? Yeah, we've been hanging out and talking. He's like his name is Stephen. And I was like, okay, I don't see it anywhere. Was this an imaginary cockroach friend? And he's like no, he's, he's real. And of course, my daughter's like starts running around screaming and I don't see this roach anywhere, right, and I'm like are you sure, bud? And I'm leaning on the railing of the bridge and he's like there he is, and like there's Steven, like right up to my hand.
Speaker 3:And I'm like and my daughter's screaming.
Speaker 1:And my son's like, hi, hi, steven, this is my mom, meet my mom. And I'm like, oh gosh, my son is like dancing, he's so delighted, I'm screaming. My son is like dancing, he's so delighted, I'm screaming, I nearly fall off the bridge and I'm like, okay, all right, stephen's got to go. And my son is like, don't kill him, he's my friend. I found one of those like solo cups that I keep around for parties. Stephen became the party and I managed to like get him in the solo cup and like run down the door, just as he's like climbing out and starting to like climb on my hand. I'm like, no, stephen, no, don't touch me. And we ran out the front door and I like I just like slung him and the cup out in the yard. But yeah, I was able to, confidently. I was so proud of myself. I found a solution to get Stephen out of the house without upsetting my son, who was like genuinely disturbed by the idea that I would kill his new friend it's a friend.
Speaker 2:You can't kill a friend. Your son and I are kindred spirits and I used to entertain my mom by filling my pockets with terrestrial isopods every day. Well, not, no, sorry, that would have been predictable. Not every day, maybe like once, once every couple of weeks. So she's doing laundry and turning the pockets inside out.
Speaker 2:Roly polies, just go fly out of the pockets once every couple of weeks, suddenly surprise, and of course I I got chastised for hiding bugs in my pockets, but that didn't stop me because I still had to make friends somehow. However, now I want to say that as a successfully networked adult, I now keep my roly polies in this plant right here behind me and they're eating the leaves and they're having roly poly sex and they are the happiest little roly-poly farm I have ever seen. They're so happy they don't leave the plant. I finally found the perfect friend pet um, aren't they like pests?
Speaker 1:are they? They're not supposed to. You don't want them in your plant, do you?
Speaker 2:my plant's healthier than it's ever been. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, becky, just like finding cockroaches in your house.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, another fun story about my son, just because we're on a roll here the next day my daughter's about to go to high school. So the next day we were going to the high school to check it out and of course I'm like let's bring the whole family, why not? I don't want to leave my son home by himself. He might befriend more bugs. So we're walking through the parking lot, past the music building, into the main building of the high school and there's some high schoolers like joking around on the steps and one of them jumps up Maybe he saw a roach and he goes oh shit, like that. And then he looks over and he sees me holding the hand of an 11 year old boy and he's like oh, I mean, oh crap, I mean I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And my son, without skipping a beat, goes how dare you? I'm a child.
Speaker 1:Which mortified this poor high schooler. I mean, this kid looked like he was like rough and tough. And then he suddenly is so humbled, he's like I'm really, really sorry. And he's looking at me horrified, looking at my son horrified, who manages to keep a straight face through all of this. Seriously, and I lost it. I burst out laughing. I was doubled over. I think this poor kid was so confused.
Speaker 2:I used to being outsmarted by a tween. I love it. What a weirdo.
Speaker 1:I love him.
Speaker 2:Oh, that was a fabulous story and for those of you who enjoy our stories more than our guests' stories you weirdos don't forget that we do have a Patreon at patreoncom slash homespunhaints, where you'll get content. That's basically just this crap.
Speaker 1:With some actual like really cool ghost stories, facts and things. Yeah, we just posted something about what to do on the equinox for our higher level tiers, and then we also have a book club and we're doing a tarot reading soon. We hadn't asked us anything recently. That went really well. So, yeah, there's sorry, my bra strap is showing. Hang on, get up in there.
Speaker 2:How dare you? I'm a child been there.
Speaker 1:How dare you? I'm a child, so be sure you check it out at patreoncom.
Speaker 2:slash homespun hates. But if that's not for you, that's okay. This commercial is.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I had a rough day. What happened, honey? I was out with the guys and they well, and, and they said I wasn't spooky enough. Oh honey, how could they say that to you? You're hella spooky. You think so, of course. After all, you came up with the ectoplasm being ghost jizz theory and you've been scratched by more horny ghosts than anyone else.
Speaker 1:I know, Well, I suppose you're right. But if you're really worried about it, I have just the thing oh wow, a spooky AF t-shirt. The thing oh wow, a Spooky AF t-shirt. That's right. Our Spooky AF line comes in shirt, sweatshirt, pillow and even a high-quality mug man. Those are super awesome, especially for something with profanity on it. What's even better, all these items were hand-lettered exclusively from Homespun Hates by world-renowned calligrapher Nikki Malick. Holy ghostly cannoli. That's amazing. From now on, whenever you brandish your spooky AF gear, no one will accuse you of being boring. Yeah, I'm spooky AF. Visit HomespunHatescom for all spooky AF merchandise. Today, on the show, we are thrilled to bring on jj, who is, like us, a podcaster of very, very scary things. He is the creator and host of Southern Demonology podcast, which has just completed its fifth season. Is that correct, jj?
Speaker 3:That's correct.
Speaker 1:Congratulations. And he is also one of the regular hosts of Paranormal Rundown. Thank you so much for being here with us.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I have really been looking forward to speaking with y'all. The moment that I read Haint in your podcast title, you already had my heart just from the get-go. I grew up with it. So that's all my grandmother ever referred to.
Speaker 1:So JJ, tell us where you're located, because we can already gather that you're somewhere in the South.
Speaker 3:I grew up in the smallest town in Tennessee, which is Slayton. That's about an hour and a half northwest of Nashville. So I spent my entire life there until I went off to college in Virginia and then went to Harvard for grad school, and since then I've lived in a lot of places, including Japan, for a couple of years, before now settling into northern Virginia.
Speaker 1:So you really have been around the world, and then you came back to your roots.
Speaker 3:I do, although I spend more and more time in in West Tokyo now.
Speaker 1:So, oh, jealous, I love Tokyo.
Speaker 3:It is one of the most incredible cities in the world and the food Yum yum, yum, yum yum. And it's known for this green road. And it is a multi-city walking path, slash biking path that has multiple parks, beautiful old sakura trees, tons of old kadima or little protector deities scattered along its route. It's one of the most beautiful places in the world and it's one of my most favorite places to ever be. It's a lot less scary than Akihabara the suicide forest of Aokigahara.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I would dare venture into that.
Speaker 3:Have you ever been in that forest? I have, and it was one of the scariest experiences of my life. So I lived in Japan from shortly after the calamity of 311, where Fukushima Daiichi kind of went up, and was there for two years, and shortly after getting there I convinced a few of my co-workers to go with me to Aokigahara, which in Japanese translates to the Sea of Trees, because I have heard about it for years. I was just dying to experience it. There is something horribly different about japanese spirits, to the point where it's a lot more sinister, and people that visit these psychic spots, as they're called, or hot spots they they're literally taking their lives in their hands, because a lot of them are just duds, but the ones that are truly active are as scary as anything. So we took the three-and-a-half-hour drive to Okegahara, which is this 32-kilometer forest at the base of Mount Fuji, and they have a lot of different like very interesting tourist attractions there, such as these ice and volcano caves that have really interesting cardboard dioramas that depict all the ways that you can die If you misstep in these places. If they were in the US, they would be sued into oblivion after the first day of operation.
Speaker 3:But anyway, after visiting a few of these things, we then went into the forest itself. So I had about five coworkers with me. We parked the car, we walked into the forest and it's very, very old. The trees are absolutely massive and one of the particular quirks about this place is, the moment that you walk in, all sound dies out because it's just, it's such a sound barrier Like there's a massive highway just right next door. The moment you walk past that forest line, you hear nothing. However, I was hearing something in the background and it was this slow and steady and it would repeat and it never stopped. And we didn't go that far into the forest. And, if your listeners don't know, akigahara is very famous for people that go there and they commit suicide in this place, and this place has a long history of death and desecration and it has a very sinister reputation, and it's a well-deserved reputation at that. It's the second most popular suicide spot in the world, next to the Golden Gate Bridge.
Speaker 3:The further we went into this forest and we walked for maybe about 15, 20 minutes, the louder the sound got. And I would ask my coworkers do you hear this? And they said no, we don't hear anything and I am not psychic, I am not sensitive by any stretch of the imagination, but this sound just kept getting under my skin in a way that I don't think I've ever experienced before, and the hackles in the back of my neck just was constantly going. I had goosebumps going up and down my arms constantly. We took a few photos and then after about 20 minutes, I would say, exploring around, I said we've got to go and they were shocked. They're like you're the one who wanted to come here, why are we leaving right now? And I said there's something really wrong about this place. We have to get out. And we did, and I have never been back. I don't ever want to go back.
Speaker 3:I have no idea what the sound was, although most interesting. On the recent episode of the Paranormal Rundown, which is this roundtable show of four different hosts and we have guests occasionally where we just bring up these random paranormal topics by random number generator and go to town on them this topic came up and we were talking and we have one researcher that's on staff and they started looking into this, and other people have heard a similar sound. Some people claim that it's a baby crying, but other people more commonly refer to it as hearing a monk intoning a sutra. I still have no idea. I don't claim to know, but I will never escape that sound. I don't think, because I still hear it.
Speaker 2:So you couldn't place the sound at all. And yet some other people are saying they clearly heard a monk singing or a baby crying. If you had to just speculate guess about what was making that noise that you heard, what would be the closest thing?
Speaker 3:I don't know if it's spirits of the dead that are whining out. That's the closest thing that I could possibly speculate about. But I also kind of resist that idea because I, even though I I grew up with ghost stories, I thoroughly believe in them. I had other supernatural experiences in japan, one in particular that I cannot even possibly begin to describe or explain. I'm still very scientifically minded and it bugs the ever-living crap out of me that I can't come up with a good explanation for it.
Speaker 2:I'll put it that way, Okegahara is what it's called right.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Having been there physically, do you feel like you understand a little bit more why people go to the forest to take their life?
Speaker 3:There is absolutely an attracting force to that place. It is old, it is ancient, it is deep and it is dark. And the saddest part is that even when people go there to commit this act and sometimes they go alone, sometimes they travel in a pack and then they disperse after the fact a lot of them don't have the courage to do it immediately and so they will camp out until they gather the courage to commit that final act. And yeah, people there used to be very frequent, like monthly treks that the authorities would take through the forest to find these individuals. After COVID that was cut down to like once every six months or so, but you could still find abandoned tents and it's just horribly, horribly sad.
Speaker 2:Why do you think the group that you went with didn't hear anything and you heard it so clearly and so constantly?
Speaker 3:Maybe it's just because I was more open to it.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, when you go looking for it, it shows up right.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Even if you're not, as you say, sensitive, there's still a sensitivity that comes from knowledge. I do want to get back to some of the scary experiences you had in Japan, but I also know that you are an expert in demonology. Think of, in the Western world, which are mostly, from you know, judeo-christian perspective, versus the demons in Japan, because it's a completely different way of thinking of spirits, demons, kami, you have in that, like the Shinto Buddhist culture.
Speaker 3:Yep, absolutely. There's roughly two different kinds of categories that you have. You have your yude, which are your ghosts, and then you have your bakimono, your monsters, or yokai, as they're more commonly referred to here. It's the yokai that tend to fall into the more evil category, I guess you can say, although there are various shades to that.
Speaker 3:You have your oni, which are like kind of japanese ogres. You have your tengu, which are winged creatures that are usually depicted with very long noses and they're more tricksters than they are just outright evil, although they have very deliberate, mean streaks in them. And then you even have the comic relief of the kami world, which is like kamikaze obake, which is this umbrella monster that has a long tongue and one eye and it's depicted on one leg, but that kind of crosses into a third dimension, which is a tsukimori. These are entities that arise from an object being futile or old and used often, which means that they get a soul that's attached to them and they become alive, and this is everything from umbrellas to lanterns, to even paper walls that have holes in them and eyes will develop within those crevices.
Speaker 1:So, jj, you also study a lot of Christian demonology and Jewish demonology? I know that you have on your season five finale. You had a priest and a deacon on your show. Is that correct?
Speaker 3:Yes, that would be the exorcist duo from Georgia, father Birdsong and his son, deacon Josh. We are very fast friends. They have dealt with a ton of different experiences in helping people experiences and helping people. I'm very strongly drawn to aiding or assisting exorcists because everything that they do is an act of loving sacrifice. But I am much more of an academic when it comes to the study of demonology. I am not a practicer, I'm not an exorcist, although I know more than enough protection stuff now to get by, and I mainly focus in Second Temple Judaism. So I'm much more familiar with well, I'm equally familiar with the Christian side and with the Judaic side.
Speaker 1:There's a really rich history in demonology that is, like you said, very particular to Judaism. Could you care to give us a little bit of information about that?
Speaker 3:So there's a few different aspects to it. There's a lot of interconnectedness when it comes to the belief systems that sprouted up within the Middle Eastern area, and one of the primary examples of that is Lilith, who started off as one of three Akkadian wind goddesses Lilu Lili and Water Lil lilit and that last one especially was associated more with wanton sexuality and sexuality aimed at very young girls. I hate to say that she became more of a protector demon, but then, when she was brought, brought into Judaism, that name Lilit is actually the Hebrew word for darkness, and there's a lot of folk etymology that takes place during this time. For example, the old phrase that most people know as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. That's not actually the shadow of death, that is a folk etymology that took place. It's actually Salamoweth, which means the deepest, darkest places, but because it combined the word shadow and Moweth, which is death, people like, oh, it means shadow of death. That's so awesome and it kind of stuck and it stayed that way.
Speaker 3:Lilith, she was essentially a night hag in Jewish belief systems that stayed in the desert Dudael, which is where all of the really, really bad things happened to live happened to live until she eventually evolved into what was more commonly known after, like the midrash and the talmud, to be adam's first wife.
Speaker 3:But that is much, much later and there's a wide period of kind of um fluidity. But we know that, at least within the dead sea scrolls, she was still considered to be a very powerful knight entity, because there's a very famous prayer uh, that's found in cave 4, 4, q, 5, 10 and 11 that and I'll just briefly give you a little translation of it which is my own and I, the instructor, am making a proclamation of his meaning God's glorious splendor, in order to instill dread and to terrify all of the spirits of the angels of destruction, which are the watchers from first Enoch, the spirits of the bastards, which are the Nephilim, the giants, demons, lilith, howlers, desert dwellers and those who suddenly strike in suddenness to lead astray an established spirit and to charm hearts, meaning, no matter how faithful you were, these things could still tempt you away from God's light.
Speaker 1:They called out Lilith specifically, amongst all the other creatures.
Speaker 3:She was very important because she's one of theseudepigrapha, which are the collection of writings between the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament. There are a ton of mentions of the demonic and that's where you kind of get this evolution of thought and there's a lot of reasons why I'm not going to bore you with particular details here, although I have a lot of episodes on Southern Demonology that kind of explore all that.
Speaker 1:We'll make sure we link to those.
Speaker 2:Exactly that's why you're here. So, yes, so that our listeners can get that backstory.
Speaker 1:I cannot wait to binge all of that. I am so fascinated. Jj, I'm just sitting here going whoa, you know so much. You said your own translation. Are you fluent in Aramaic and Hebrew?
Speaker 3:Hebrew was one of my primary languages of 14 that I studied while in undergrad and in grad school.
Speaker 1:You mentioned that you had other terrifying experiences, not just limited to Japan. You grew up with ghost stories here in the South. What are some stories that you would like to share with us?
Speaker 3:I grew up in a 200 plus year old log cabin in a town of 113 people. I call it a land of patchworked nightmares because there are ghost stories for almost every single parcel of land around. There were Native American burial mounds all over the place, ones directly behind our house and I grew up hearing ghost stories my entire life. In fact, even before I knew what storytelling was, I was boring my friends and classmates with all of the tales I had accumulated and continue to accumulate. So the property right in front of where I grew up it's called the Colons because it's a wooded area which is pitted with these very deep holes, and the people that own the place they actually have blocked it off with gates and everything else, because there's been more than a few different accidents down there. Because there's been more than a few different accidents down there.
Speaker 3:One night right around Halloween it was like two nights before Halloween I was out playing with the neighborhood kids and they had like three foster kids and two blood children and we were all playing in the front yard and we were playing Fright Night. So I was trying to scare all the other kids and it was like a modified version of the game of tag. There came a period where I couldn't find anybody. So I went around to the back of the house and I was facing into the colons, which is a very dangerous area that we all knew not to go near, and I saw a white figure in the woods.
Speaker 3:At first, the only thing my mind could reach onto was that it had to be the eldest daughter, because she was tall, she was thin and she was kind of pale, not glowing like what I was seeing in front of me, but still, it's the only thing that my mind made sense of, and I was getting freaked out, and so I walked into the door down there and there the entire family was laughing at me because I had been outside for 10 minutes by myself and they had hid so that I couldn't find them. And, of course, the eldest daughter was there as well. And I still have no idea what it was. It was glowing and it was way off in the back of the woods behind a closed gate.
Speaker 2:What was its behavior like other than glowing?
Speaker 3:It was just standing there, it was almost like it was attracting moonlight to itself, and it was radiant. It was almost as if it was wearing a skin of LED lights, even though such things didn't exist back when I was 10 years old.
Speaker 1:You said there are a lot of accidents that happened there.
Speaker 3:So yeah, it very well could be. In the house that I grew up in, the log cabin, there was just one floor besides an attic. My entire family said that it was haunted by a spirit called Patrick, and Patrick had shown up at various points in time during everyone's life. We used to have a uncle that lived upstairs back when my mom was a kid, and they would go upstairs and he would be gone, but there would still be a body print laying on the bed, so your uncle had to share a bed with Patrick.
Speaker 1:That's not cool. Your uncle had to share a bed with Patrick. That's not cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that attic had a lot of weird stuff in it, to the point where, even when I was a kid growing up, all the doors would be closed. It was winter, there is no air moving around, and yet that attic door, which was only held together by a wooden block that you would twist up and down, it would open itself up slowly and then close itself again, and that happened all the time. I hated that attic door. One night I was sleeping and where I slept it was essentially two beds in the living room. We were poor. I mean, we were very, very poor. The bed that I slept in was directly across from the attic door and I had this old picture of my grandfather, great-great-grandfather, that hung above the bed. And one night I dreamed that that attic door opened up. Attic door opened up, and then I heard a voices out. That memory until after November 2nd. It's like I can't think of that day until after it happens, and then I'll randomly go oh, I made it through another November 2nd, that's great.
Speaker 2:The year is more important, Grandpa. Yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:JJ. We have time for maybe one more story all right.
Speaker 3:Well then, let me finish up with my my biggest story. I was living in tokyo itself and I was working for a japanese company. I will never work for another japanese company. It was very exploitative in nature, I guess, from the amount of work and the amount of hours that you had to pump into it. But anyway, it was around 5 am, I had just finished working for the night and I crashed out on the bed. On the bed and I dreamed of an entity standing on my balcony, this particular place that we were staying in. It was only about 400 square feet in size, so it's very small, but the balcony was about the same size as the room, and the balcony overlooked Tokyo tower, so it was a phenomenal location that, thankfully, I didn't pay $6,000 a month for it, but the company did.
Speaker 3:But anyway, I dreamed that there is this thing on the outside and it was banging on the glass to get in and it kept saying one word over and over again, which is haeru, haeru, haeru, haeru, haeru. The weirdest part about it was I did not hear it with my ears. Instead, it was as if the sound was being pumped directly into the center of my brain and it caused physical pain. It was almost as if there was a loud, screeching Norwegian death band playing, but it was pumped directly into my brain. The next thing I know I'm being awoken by an earthquake alarm going off on my cell phone, but that word stuck in my head and so I rushed to this japanese english dictionary that I had. I look it up and this is what convinced me that this was not just a dream. The word means to enter. This thing was demanding entry, and I know that even if I wasn't paralyzed in fear, if I had opened that balcony door, I would no longer be in this world. I would no longer be in this world.
Speaker 3:The weirdest part is that I live directly across a little intersection from a very large graveyard and there is a lot of Japanese superstition around not walking near graveyards because you will attract something and it will follow you back home. I grew up in graveyards. I grew up mowing graveyards of various family members. I have spent more time in graveyard than I can possibly count. I still remember burying my own headstone marker when I was six years old. That was a very interesting introduction to mortality, let me put it that way. I never thought anything about it until that night, and I never walked by that graveyard again, and I kept a very healthy supply of purified salt poured into little bowls by that balcony door to ward off anything that may be coming from that direction. Yeah, it really taught me, though. That, along with my experience in Naoki Kahata, convinced me that even though I love ghost stories, I will never seek them out in Japan because they are terrifying.
Speaker 2:Whoa. What did it look like in the dream? It was transparent.
Speaker 3:That's the thing. I had a vague sense of humanoid shape, but that was it. And, even weirder, there is a TikTok channel. There is a TikTok channel which is ran by a Japanese group that makes these kind of very short horror stories and they're very well done. But they had one in which it was a. You just see a frosted pane of very large glass like a sliding door and there's a dark figure behind it and it essentially is saying the same thing that I heard. It says more, but the main thing is Haidu, haidu, and they're stupid enough to open it and the consequences are immediate. But I saw that and I'm a horror connoisseur. I watch almost nothing but horror movies. I saw this and I flung my phone across the room because it reminded me so vividly of that experience. To this day, I still can't watch that video because it terrifies the ever-living heck out of me.
Speaker 1:And you did not know what this word hairu meant before this happened.
Speaker 3:I had no idea.
Speaker 2:no, that's creepy. Oh man, with all the experience, with dreams that you've had, what do you think about the notion of dream premonitions or precognitive dreams?
Speaker 3:I honestly believe it's real because of the fact that when I grew up, I would have two distinct types of dreams. The regular ones are in very vibrant color, but I would have these other ones in which they were in black and white. I would have these other ones in which they were in black and white and I never dream in black and white and they always pictured the idealized person of how I viewed myself in my head, in my dreams. In this idealized version it was a little boy that had blonde hair and was thin and I notoriously am not and was thin and I notoriously am not. But whatever happened in those dreams always came true, and it may be a week later, it may be a month later, but it always came true.
Speaker 3:There is one dream in which I had that I was running around a cactus pot, a very large cactus pot, and I fell into it and got hurt. And a month later I was over at my great aunt's house playing around. Running around, this giant potted cactus fell into it, got hurt not severely, but enough as a kid and suddenly this dream came back to me as a horrible sense of deja vu. So I haven't had them since I was a kid, but I very much believe that. Yeah, dreams are a precursor, and especially when dreams cause physical pain, that should never happen like ever. But they do In. In fact I've read in my dreams before and that's also supposed to never happen.
Speaker 2:and yes, yeah, becky does the same. You're not supposed to be yeah I read I punch.
Speaker 1:In fact, one of the ways that I know that I'm dreaming is it's hard for me to use the gps on my phone. Like I, I switch letters when I'm trying to punch things in the GPS on my phone.
Speaker 3:Wow, that is amazing. Now, it's not a frequent occurrence for me. In fact, I only read in ancient languages when I dream, I don't know why. It's either in Hebrew or Ge'ez, and that's it.
Speaker 1:Scream. Well, JJ, this has been a really amazing conversation.
Speaker 3:I have loved every minute of it and I can't thank y'all enough for this. I would love to talk to y'all again. I really would.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you have a lot more stories. We'll definitely be reaching out again. This was wonderful. So your podcasts are Southern Demonology, which is hosted by ACAST, but you can find it on any podcatcher, and then also Paranormal Rundown, which you can also find everywhere. Do you have specific websites for each of these?
Speaker 3:Paranormal Rundown is still coming. But for Southern Demonology, yeah, it is southerndemonologycom, and it has our various social media platforms, in addition to specific podcasting platforms, and then you can also contact me through it, or you can also listen to episodes directly from the website as well.
Speaker 2:Painted loves. What do you think? Would you enter the cold to find the glowing spirit behind the gate? Would you enter the suicide forest and embrace the silence? Either way, we hope you had a spooky day.
Speaker 1:Homespun Haints is hosted by Becky Kilimnik and Diana Doty and produced by Homespun Haints Media LLC. Editing and music by Becky Kilimnik. Show notes by Diana Doty. If you have a ghost story and you'd like to be considered as a guest for this podcast, please visit our website at homespunhaintscom. Slash submit.