Episode #5: "Haunted Humanoids" with Paranormal TV Host Nicholas de Phares

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Lovely
You come to me when I'm lonely or I take your hand or we go home. You cover me with your lovely, you know, my.

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Sasha
What would you do if you were walking down your favorite trail and stumbled upon a massive humanoid figure moving through the woods? Why is it that ghost stories so often include keys and is manifestation sometimes as easy as just asking for something? Nicholas to fairies descends from a long line of witches and grew up in a home where divination and practicing magic was as normal as bacon and eggs for breakfast.

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Sasha
He's an actor, Tarot card reader and the host of a local paranormal show in Jefferson County, New York. Nicholas has been a frequent featured storyteller, and I love ghost stories by the fire events. And you are about to find out why he is a gifted and eloquent orator and entertainer. In this episode, he shares experiences of human hair dolls who pull themselves across the floor and why the stillness of the woods of upstate New York.

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Lovely
Thrums with otherworldly power. Huddle up and get cozy.

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Sasha
Because I'm your host, Sasha GREENE. And this is Ghost Stories by the Fire. My name, The Necklace. Welcome to Ghost Stories by the Fire.

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Nicholas
Thank you so much, Sasha. It is a pleasure to be here. I'm so excited.

00:03:03:02 - 00:03:21:04
Sasha
So let me ask you, Nicholas, did you grow up in a household? Did your family believe in ghosts and spirits? And did you have a tradition of ghost stories in your family as a kid when you were growing up?

00:03:21:07 - 00:03:54:09
Nicholas
Yeah, definitely. I would say to to to all the above. I would say, firstly, my mother's mother's mother's mother was a woman who read tea leaves and palms and told fortunes. And this was way back at the turn of the last century in very, very far upstate New York, where I live, almost the Canadian border. And my family has been here for a very long time.

00:03:54:11 - 00:04:21:24
Nicholas
You know, quite literally, they they got here after the American Revolution and, you know, started cutting down the trees and we're still here. And so she read fortunes for miners who would come to visit her house. And she had a house on the edge of a quartz crystal mine, literally a quartz crystal mine. And she would raise these canaries for the miners to take down into the mines.

00:04:21:29 - 00:04:39:09
Nicholas
And when they would come to her house to take canaries down into the mines, because the canary birds have lungs that are very small. So they would breathe down in the mines. And if there was a gas leak, the canaries would die first and the miners would know to get out of the mines. And when they would pick up these canary birds from her, she would also tell fortunes.

00:04:39:14 - 00:04:57:15
Nicholas
And so the women in my mother's family did all kinds of things like this. I grew up with a mother who read tarot cards, like I myself learned how to read cards. It was how I paid my rent in New York City. It was just kind of something that I thought was pretty normal in most families, to be perfectly honest.

00:04:57:18 - 00:05:24:21
Nicholas
And it wasn't until I moved away and went to college and saw the wider world that I realized that it was a bizarre thing. And so I grew up in a house, an old farmhouse that was built in the 1860s. And we definitely always, always, always told stories as a family of strange, interesting, supernatural things that we had encountered.

00:05:24:24 - 00:05:55:23
Nicholas
My great grandmother lived to be 101. And so it was not an uncommon thing for me my mom, my grandmother, my great grandmother, for us all to hang out and talk about weird and uncanny things that we had experienced and some of the things that have gone on, you know, way up here out in the middle of nowhere in the woods, you know, decades ago are still things that are haunting and bizarre and strange.

00:05:55:23 - 00:06:26:23
Nicholas
And you just think to yourself, gosh, like in some respects, I'm in a part of the world that is still almost as untouched and strange and unearthed as it has been for centuries. And so there's got to be all kinds of weird things that are here, you know, each and every day. And I, I kind of think in a lot of ways in comparison to my life in New York City versus my life here, because I lived in New York for seven years before moving up here.

00:06:26:25 - 00:06:45:06
Nicholas
Just how when you live out in the middle of the stillness and the quiet and, you know, these dark, creepy woods, that there are things there that goodness knows we don't even know what's out there. Half the time, you know, living not living of this world, not of this world. It just boggles the mind.

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Sasha
It's incredible. So let me ask you, because that's a really interesting dichotomy, because when we talk about any city, but especially I feel like Manhattan, because it's an island, because it's so much humanity and history on. I think it's something like nine square mile or it's it's a very however large, it's a small island. So. So all of that history, all of that humanity, life, death, murder, love, joy, all of its kind of jam packed in on itself, which I've always thought must be very, very challenging for people who are sensitive to walk through.

00:07:26:07 - 00:07:46:12
Sasha
Do you feel like in the country, especially when you're more into like a remote wilderness where things and do you feel like things really have an opportunity? Events and energies to settle and and almost to be themselves? Because in a sense, they have room?

00:07:46:15 - 00:08:19:22
Nicholas
Yeah, I think that is such an amazing question. And I, I think about it often because as someone who loves the supernatural and ghosts and interesting things that oftentimes are beyond our explanation, I think that there is a lot of that activity in places like New York City, don't get me wrong. And when I lived there, I often thought to myself, there's so many centuries worth, millennia worth really, of energy.

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Nicholas
People who have lived and loved and lost and died and all that energy compacted into a human life is still swirling around there centuries and centuries, millions and millions and millions of experiences there. But the thing about it to me was always that I think New York City is a very haunted place. I think there are millions of ghost stories there, just like there are millions of people there.

00:08:45:21 - 00:09:08:04
Nicholas
But I think just like with the millions of people there, it makes a lot of noise. And so sometimes I would be in my apartment, you know, in an A building, and I would say, well, there's so many stories above me and below me. And think of all the generations of people who have lived both above me and below me, and perhaps some of them are still sticking around.

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Nicholas
But just like this building is very crowded right now, and I don't know all my neighbors and probably never will. And, you know, they come and go just like me. So the cacophony of that noise, just like in New York, whether it is of our side of the veil or the other side of the veil is very loud.

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Nicholas
And you can hear it. You can pay attention to it. You can sift through it. But it's always that thrum of noise and commotion, which I think suits many people. I think that's probably very interesting for a lot of people. But at the same time, there is a totally different energy. Once you get out of a place like New York City and like you say, you come into a place that is otherwise very quiet.

00:09:54:14 - 00:10:24:04
Nicholas
And so you might have an area, a house, a forest, someplace where there is are so few people who have ever even walked on that land. You know, where where I live, for instance, it was an area that was actually between two different Native American peoples. So you had a lot of Iroquois to the south, and then there were Algonquin.

00:10:24:04 - 00:10:49:04
Nicholas
So in Canada to the north, and they didn't really use this stretch of northern New York to much. The Indians often said it was only fit for Muskrat and Beaver, and sometimes they would skirmish here and sometimes they would fish and they would hunt here. But otherwise the land is very, very virgin land not used by a whole lot of people over centuries.

00:10:49:06 - 00:11:18:03
Nicholas
And so the energy that does stick around in this place is singular, oftentimes solitary. And so when you do listen to it, those threads, those stories, whoever might have been there and left their energy around comes through sometimes clear as a bell because there's no interference. It's like a sink or radio signal that's coming through. And you can hear it loud and clear.

00:11:18:05 - 00:11:48:01
Nicholas
And it's quite remarkable. It is a different kind of ghostly energy, perhaps a little bit more lonesome and plaintive. But it's I think both New York City and up here can be very haunted. But up here, like I said, it's like that singular thread where if you like a good story, sometimes it can come through in a place that is more solitary, a lot clearer.

00:11:48:03 - 00:11:54:27
Sasha
And when you are the host of the Ghost Story Show. Yes.

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Nicholas
Yeah. Northern New York's Most Haunted with Nick Ferris and it's on ABC 50 up here, which is our local ABC station. And we it was actually my idea when I when I was hired here I well, I should preface this by saying I was working in New York as an off-Broadway actor, doing mostly Shakespeare for years and I was supplementing my income as a tarot card reader.

00:12:26:06 - 00:12:45:26
Nicholas
And so I had this kind of double interest in performance and storytelling. But also the occult, the paranormal and all that lies beyond you can say. And these two things have always very much been a part of me and for the longest time I thought, Well, the only place I can do it is in a big city like New York City.

00:12:45:28 - 00:13:07:24
Nicholas
But I would be in New York City and I'd be looking out the window and I would be dreaming of coming back to upstate New York, a place that has always been really dear to me. And interestingly enough, one night I you could say I sent a little prayer to my great great grandmother, the the famous tea leaf reader.

00:13:07:26 - 00:13:27:15
Nicholas
And and I said, if you can help me find a way home, that would be wonderful. I would be very appreciative because I would like to be able to do some of the things that I do here in New York City, perform, dabble in the occult, but do it up there. And I said, okay, all right. Well, that's lovely.

00:13:27:16 - 00:13:57:12
Nicholas
I'll sleep on it. And within days, this opportunity arose to work at a TV station. And during the course of the interview, I said, Hey, you know, could I, you know, pitch ideas for, you know, shows that I want to host and I want to produce? And the answer was yes. And so it was kind of like a no brainer that I could transport all those things that I was doing in New York up here.

00:13:57:14 - 00:14:08:20
Nicholas
And it's kind of a really strange and lovely coincidence that that happened. And I'd like to think that my great great grandmother pulled some strings from beyond.

00:14:08:22 - 00:14:41:07
Sasha
I'm so sure that she did. And it's so funny when you were telling when you were talking about her, her fortune telling practice and and she was, in a sense, like a canary in a coal mine, wasn't she? Because isn't that so often with fortune tellers quoted or psychics are asked to do is to kind of peek into the future, kind of kind of be as sensitive as those little canaries were to let go of their clients heads up as to what is coming.

00:14:41:10 - 00:15:07:06
Nicholas
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's I never kind of put put words to it in that way. And I think it's really beautiful. I would definitely say so. I've often thought that that the story of her and her canaries is quite lovely because, you know, throughout history we have we have lots of stories about different historical witches here and there.

00:15:07:08 - 00:15:20:22
Nicholas
We don't often know who their familiars were. Sometimes we do. But I would like to think in this little version of my own family history that my great great grandmother was familiar with the canary.

00:15:20:24 - 00:15:30:21
Sasha
That's so great. So on your on your on your show, do you actively go in with cameras and investigate haunted locations?

00:15:30:24 - 00:16:03:08
Nicholas
Yeah, absolutely. We recently the the kind of the big case to resistance that we did most recently for the show was I went inside of a masonic temple here in Watertown, New York, and it was built in 1914. And it's I mean, it is a grand, luxurious, luscious extra broad. And it looks like, you know, an Athenian temple, really.

00:16:03:10 - 00:16:31:03
Nicholas
And it was kind of like the crown jewel of Masonic lodges in northern New York. And you go inside and it's it's as though the Freemasons who were in there had kind of just dropped everything one day and left, you know, all of their tools and paraphernalia and books and I mean, it's just all there. And it hasn't been used for the longest time.

00:16:31:06 - 00:17:08:23
Nicholas
And this renewable energy company purchased the building and they're in the process of fixing it up. And I had heard some strange things about the history of the building. For instance, when it was being built in 1914, there were four stonemasons who were at work on the facade of the building, and one of them felt he described the hand of God touch his shoulder, and the pediment that they were installing fell down, and three of the other workers were dragged down and two were crushed and killed.

00:17:08:25 - 00:17:27:25
Nicholas
The only one who wasn't hurt was this one stonemason who said that he felt the hand of God on his shoulder. And from the very beginning, and that was in 1914. From the very beginning, over a century ago, there were strange things going on with this building. But of course, it was a masonic temple so nobody could go inside.

00:17:27:27 - 00:18:08:24
Nicholas
But because we were fortunate enough that this renewable energy company had begun to restore the building and then they were leasing out some space on the main floor for local businesses, I took a camera crew and we went in and did a complete tour of the building. Asked about the strange occurrences that go on in there and during the process of investigating this building, checking it out, asking about all the phenomena that occur inside there, we were told by a man who runs a radio station.

00:18:08:27 - 00:18:48:10
Nicholas
He said a lot of times the strange occurrences that happened within this building are are auditory. They have to do with sound. And he said, sometimes you hear strange things or sometimes there's weird decibel variation sessions as if there's like a party going on in the next room. And then you look in there and it's completely empty. And as he was describing these things, our entire audio system malfunctioned in such a bizarre way, all on camera, all this whole thing on tape, the right microphone goes out, then comes back, the left goes out, then comes back.

00:18:48:10 - 00:19:15:11
Nicholas
Then both of them go out as if literally whatever was in there, whoever was in there wanted us to know that they knew exactly what they were doing and could make any number of things malfunction on cue. It wasn't specific to one certain thing. And the strangest thing is that the Freemasons are a secret society. It is one of the largest and best known secret societies in the world.

00:19:15:13 - 00:19:46:25
Nicholas
And they do have a tradition of secrecy, and they do have a tradition of being a closed society. And, you know, I would imagine that whatever energy was there, probably wanted to remind us of that. And just the fact that, you know, this from our first go, this was all on tape was just incredible. So I, I, I do investigate things.

00:19:46:27 - 00:19:54:07
Nicholas
And sometimes the investigations themselves turn out to be even more than I bargained for.

00:19:54:09 - 00:19:56:20
Sasha
could you share an example?

00:19:56:22 - 00:20:26:10
Nicholas
like that. Like, I mean, just. Just like that crazy stuff. Some sometimes we've done things where, you know, we've gone into places that I am very familiar with. You know, like we we have a gorgeous library here in Watertown, New York, and the library director was explained to us how there's an entire collection of dolls inside the library which belonged to the benefactors who gave the money to found the library.

00:20:26:12 - 00:20:48:18
Nicholas
Turns out the dolls themselves, many of them are made with human hair. Many of them were mementos that were made for children who had died. And he was sitting in the library one day. Her desk used to be on the floor where the dolls are one of the dolls slumped over in behind its glass and started dragging across the ground.

00:20:48:18 - 00:21:13:09
Nicholas
And there was no one there. I mean, just like really downright bizarre stuff that, you know, even for me in my hometown, I think, wow, this is this is a lot. And it just makes you think how you know, I can remember being a kid and thinking like, like I always I wish I lived in one of those, like, creepy small towns where, you know, bizarre stuff happened.

00:21:13:12 - 00:21:19:01
Nicholas
And I, I do live in that. I, I am 100% living in that.

00:21:19:04 - 00:21:23:19
Sasha
So did you grow up in a home like, was your house itself haunted?

00:21:23:21 - 00:21:54:07
Nicholas
I would say so. I would say the house that I grew up in was it was an old farmhouse. Weird things would happen, like so my parents would be away and they have a babysitter at the house. I can remember so distinctly. One night we had a babysitter over. I was probably ten years old or so and a horrible storm started happening.

00:21:54:09 - 00:22:24:09
Nicholas
Thunder, lightning, rain. And my babysitter, her was friends at the time with my cousin. And I believe my cousin was away somewhere at a party or something. And then all of a sudden she looked out the window and she thought she saw my cousin standing in the yard outside the house and had called him and said or had called the party and said, hey, you know, is he still there or whatever?

00:22:24:11 - 00:22:51:08
Nicholas
And they said, Yeah, he's still here. And so then as we watched out the window, this figure that my babysitter had thought was my cousin would disappear, only to reemerge with each lightning strike coming closer and closer to the house. I would say that of all of the places that I lived, I would say that's probably one of the least haunted, you know, the house that I grew up.

00:22:51:08 - 00:23:17:05
Nicholas
It was haunted, I would say. Yes. Was it the most haunted? I would say middling. There was never there was never anything at that house that was really too astonishing. Now, there were other places that I have lived in the course of my life. I lived in Savannah, Georgia, for four years. That was extremely haunted. And then most recently is one of the more spooky ones.

00:23:17:07 - 00:23:42:27
Nicholas
And I wouldn't necessarily say anything bad, but things that are just tremendously obvious. Like, for instance, I'll give you an example of. So first of all, the house was built in 1880. It's a big Victorian farmhouse. There's five bedroom. One of the things what I really wanted it was it had a library on the main floor and I just I have so many books.

00:23:42:27 - 00:24:21:18
Nicholas
I need some place for all of them. But it didn't. It's quite a bit of work and work that I'm willing to do. That's fine. But my mother came to help me one weekend and we had noticed that there were quite a few things in the house that had one of the houses previous owners like written on it, you know, like, like he would write something on the doorway or, you know, like built by, you know, and he'd write his name or, you know, little tools and odds and ends and things like that.

00:24:21:20 - 00:24:53:13
Nicholas
And we had begun to do some work of disassembling some of the stuff that he had done. So there had been a closet that had been built and parts of the house or there was a drop ceiling that was put in or there was some carpeting and it was put in. And I said, No, I want the hardwood floors ripped the carpet up this seventies closet out, get the drop ceilings gone, you know, kind of like the 1970s of buying the house.

00:24:53:15 - 00:25:17:28
Nicholas
And so nevertheless, these were things that this previous owner of the house had put some work in, and his energy was probably all over them. And we had I had an old radio that was from the 1970s, and the only two people in the house were my mother and myself, and we were with each other the entire time.

00:25:18:00 - 00:25:52:23
Nicholas
And I took this radio out and said, it just said it was a box of stuff. I had, and I just set it on the kitchen countertops and with the sort of like, this seems like a good enough place to put a radio. So we just set it there. And then we were going through some drawers in the kitchen and one of the drawers all of a sudden, and I kid you not all of a sudden had stuff in.

00:25:52:23 - 00:26:14:09
Nicholas
It was full. Everything was completely empty, completely empty. And all these doors, when I bought this house, it was it was as it was the moment that I bought it. And then we were going to the store and I said, Mom, did you put stuff in this drawer, too? No, no. We had already gone through. We had already cleaned.

00:26:14:09 - 00:26:40:24
Nicholas
We we had already inspected the kitchen and gone through it all and started to decide what we were going to do. There was stuff in this drawer and it was all odds and ends and keys with chains with this previous owners name on it. It was as though he had filled the drawer, as if he had just come back to the house with his keys and his wallet and all these different things.

00:26:40:24 - 00:27:06:12
Nicholas
I said, This is so freaky. And there was in the drawer a big, huge skeleton and I still don't know what it goes to. But then my mom and I said, This is really weird. So we took some of the stuff out of the drawer and started like wiping the dust off of it, getting some of the grime off of these old keys and whatever.

00:27:06:14 - 00:27:28:08
Nicholas
And I took a set of keys that was in the drawer that had belonged to the previous owner of the house, and just so happened to set them down by this radio that I had placed on the kitchen countertop. And my mom and I left the room for a moment to go do something and came back into the room together again.

00:27:28:11 - 00:27:53:10
Nicholas
We'd never left each other's side this whole time. When I came back in, the radio had been plugged in and tuned to a country music station, and I said, Mom, did you plug the radio in? No. And she did. And I mean, I was there the whole time, but I thought, like, maybe I had hallucinated and she snapped back in and turned the light.

00:27:53:12 - 00:28:26:26
Nicholas
How the happened could not tell. You couldn't tell you, but it seems friendly and benevolent enough. But there are times also when I will, you know, have I'll be in the house and I'll have dreams of also being in the house, but it'll be like walking down hallways in the house and there's different people there, or sometimes there's animals there.

00:28:26:29 - 00:28:30:09
Nicholas
And it's just kind of an interesting.

00:28:30:14 - 00:28:33:03
Sasha
What kind of animals?

00:28:33:06 - 00:29:07:12
Nicholas
like they'll look, I'll have dreams or there'll be deer inside the house or different things like that. And it's just kind of there's something there, There's a there's a strength energy that that remains there in that house. But similar to some of the stuff that we talked about, the very beginning of our conversation here about how sometimes when you're in the country that the strange and interesting energies that are left behind are sometimes a little easier to discern.

00:29:07:15 - 00:29:40:23
Nicholas
And, you know, there's only been so many owners of this particular property of land, you know, right back to the settlement of of northern New York. And the land sits the house sits on land that was owned by the essentially the founder of the town, a man named John Lafarge, who was a French soldier. And he had left France shortly before the American Revolution in the French Revolution.

00:29:40:25 - 00:30:10:07
Nicholas
And was a soldier in thing which later became Haiti during a slave rebellion. And then he and his wife bought a bunch of land in upstate New York, and they had intended to sort of live like, you know, French aristocrats in the country. And it did not go very well. And they only stayed a few years before leaving more or less in horror and disgust.

00:30:10:09 - 00:30:34:18
Nicholas
And so, you know, again, there's just so much history of just interesting, bizarre little turns of events that happened here in this place. And those stories kind of come through cleanly. It's it's a strange thing, but I'm still wondering where this skeleton key that I found in my old house goes to. Who knows? We'll find out.

00:30:34:20 - 00:31:06:15
Sasha
I hope you find out something. I think that's so interesting is the more I'm doing this shows, the more I'm finding repeated themes with different people's experiences, with with their ghostly encounters. And and one of them that I actually have a history with. I lived in a very haunted building in midtown New York City. And when I went to my landlord to ask, you know, hey, like, am I just a little crazy or is this building haunted?

00:31:06:18 - 00:31:40:24
Sasha
My landlord owned the hardware store on the bottom floor and he was like, you know, I can't say if it's haunted or not, but let me show you something. And he takes me to the back office and pulls out a box of keys and padlocks and matchbooks, keys, padlocks and matchbooks. And he says, Sasha, I just come in and they're on the shelf.

00:31:40:26 - 00:32:10:22
Sasha
I don't know how they got there. I don't know why they're here. It just I just it is what they are. And so I wonder I mean, it's very easy to think about a key as a symbol. Obviously, something that unlocks mysteries or unlocks things that people want to hide away. But it it seems to me suddenly that there is a bit of a weighted ness in people's or in ghostly connections.

00:32:10:24 - 00:32:14:19
Sasha
You know, two keys here.

00:32:14:21 - 00:32:48:15
Nicholas
Yeah. I think that is 100% something that I have encountered in the in the realm of spooky stuff. So much so that there's, you know, there's been short stories and movies and stuff made about this phenomenon. And I think on the one hand, keys hold tremendous mystery in the human mind and imagination, right? A key is quite literally the symbol for humanity that is unlocks the mysteries.

00:32:48:15 - 00:33:18:09
Nicholas
You know, think about, you know, the Vatican, their symbol is two crossed keys. The key is used as a symbol in Freemasonry. For millennia, human beings have associated the key with unlocking the door to some other place, a place perhaps, that transports a spiritually, a place that transports our inner psyche, you know, whatever it might be. And so certainly that's true.

00:33:18:09 - 00:34:02:27
Nicholas
And I think so often things that are ghostly are going to communicate with us in ways that use universal symbols, in ways that use, you know, imagery, colors, sounds, whatever it might be that is heavily meaningful to us in that way. In the same themes are because again, very rarely would a ghost communicate like we're communicating right now for whatever reason, whether that's because it's something that's going on inside of us, or whether that's just because of the limitations of, you know, our two worlds.

00:34:03:00 - 00:34:29:03
Nicholas
I don't know. I can't explain that part. But I think the key phenomenon is something that is really a really serious thing that that for some reason they do pop up all the time with ghosts. There's been so many ghost stories I've heard about keys. They get moved or placed somewhere. And also, you know, just an even more basic and less philosophical level.

00:34:29:05 - 00:34:57:02
Nicholas
A key is something that we touch all the time. And so often ghost stories relate to things that we have the most physical interaction with. Oftentimes, a ghost story can take place. I think usually we hear about them at a place where someone died or the place where something happened. And if you think about that, that's one of the most physical things that can ever happen.

00:34:57:04 - 00:35:11:16
Nicholas
But there are other things we do that are very physical, like taking a key out of our pocket every single day and, you know, turning it in a certain lock. And I think something about that physicality leaves some piece of us behind.

00:35:11:19 - 00:35:40:18
Sasha
And I would agree, I am so and so. The thing that runs through my mind when I hear you saying this, you know, I think about the way we exist in the modern world. Think so. Is our future going to be haunted passwords? Because there seems to be something lost and in a in a place where so few of us even have actual keys to our car anymore, you know, or we live in smart homes where, you know.

00:35:40:20 - 00:35:48:01
Sasha
So I guess perhaps maybe it'll be more haunted. I don't know. Whatever our physical technology is, cell phones are.

00:35:48:03 - 00:36:21:05
Nicholas
Yeah. In, in some in some weird ways, I sometimes wonder perhaps the spirit realm as we continue to advance and become more technologically embedded in that world, maybe spirits will exist there as well. You know, maybe. Maybe they could, you know, come to the computer or live on the Internet, you know, who knows? But I also think, you know, would a ghost use a computer?

00:36:21:05 - 00:36:49:29
Nicholas
Would a ghost use an iPad? Would a ghost use a phone? Sure, I suppose. Although although now that you said that we never dream of our phones ever, most people say that they'd never, ever, ever have a dream with their phone in it. Why? Some people believe that that's one of the biggest reasons for why we live in a simulation.

00:36:50:02 - 00:37:10:23
Nicholas
And I don't know whether that's true, but I will say I have never dreamt with my phone. It's it's it's it's it's it has not yet emerged as something that the other side is able to use to communicate to us with that.

00:37:10:23 - 00:37:25:24
Sasha
While I have never thought about that or heard that. But you are 100% absolutely right. I've never dreamt of my I've never I don't I don't think I've even dreamt of my laptop, really. And I'm always with that. that's so interesting.

00:37:25:29 - 00:37:46:18
Nicholas
It's so weird. The first time I heard it, I, it blew my mind. I said, my gosh. Like, just think of the hours in a day that I am on my phone, but I never dream of it. I'll dream of a deer or a cigaret lighter or something. That is, you know, I'm using far less than a phone wires.

00:37:46:18 - 00:37:48:22
Nicholas
It never screams. I don't know.

00:37:48:25 - 00:38:20:15
Sasha
But it's interesting. Just this makes me think of something that I remember when Facebook kind of became like a thing. I'm the first person that I knew who passed away. I was like, What's going to happen to their Facebook profile? And it's interesting that Facebook profiles have become kind of digital monuments or spaces and places like a digital digital, I don't want to say a tomb, but a place where people can go and leave messages and look at photos.

00:38:20:17 - 00:39:04:06
Sasha
And so there's a lot of I don't know, I it I think that we're on an interesting precipice. I was just talking not too long ago in an interview with the actress Catherine Mary Stuart, talking about art and actors. And we are talking about, you know, now when you don't know if what you're looking at on a computer or on your phone is like an image or if immediately if a piece of news, if it's real or if it's not, it's kind of like waking up in the middle of the night and say, you think that you see someone at your window looking through like, did I really is that real or is it not?

00:39:04:08 - 00:39:37:22
Nicholas
Yeah, Yeah, that that is a wonderful point. I think that the it is kind of like that like hazy like in the middle or the on or you know, at dusk when it's like things that are should be familiar to us are sometimes not are sometimes shrouded in weird and it's like now you look at a picture online and you might recognize a celebrity or something like that, but then you look at it, you're like, Yeah, but is it real?

00:39:37:22 - 00:39:44:23
Nicholas
Is it could it be faked? You know, we do that sort of double take now with the way things are.

00:39:44:26 - 00:40:04:11
Sasha
Yeah, I think that's interesting. my gosh. I have so much more that I want to ask you. Can I. I don't want to take this to a harrowing place, but I would love to know. I would love to hear from you. What's the scariest one of the scariest things that's ever happened to you? So much experience.

00:40:04:14 - 00:40:44:16
Nicholas
Yeah. I will say this. This story is one that I've never told you. And to this day I really have no explanation for it. But I was reminded of it so much since I have come back to northern New York. So several years ago I would say probably 14 years ago I was about 20 years old and I had come home here to Jefferson County, New York, from college or something like that.

00:40:44:16 - 00:41:12:17
Nicholas
I was here for a little while and oftentimes I will walk around out in the woods. I'll go, you know, and it'll trails or, you know, go and just it's one of my favorite things to do is to be in nature. And I went with a friend of mine and there was this whole network of trails that winds around sort of behind where our old elementary school was.

00:41:12:19 - 00:41:48:11
Nicholas
And this whole network of trails goes, twists and wanes, and there's all kinds of wildlife and all kinds of stuff in there. And I'd been there so many times, so many times that I was very used to going off the paths. And it was always deserted. Nothing there. Now my friend and I had gone one early evening on a little hike and she goes off a ways.

00:41:48:13 - 00:42:18:24
Nicholas
I can kind of see her out of the corner of my eye and I was walking down one little kind of path, and then I decided I was going to veer off and go deep into the woods. And so I'm scratching around and something on the ground. And so all of a sudden I heard this crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.

00:42:18:27 - 00:42:52:12
Nicholas
And I look up from whatever rocks or twigs I was monkeying with on the ground. And then coming towards me is some sort of humanoid figure, very, very tall, moving through the woods, stepping on things Crunch, crunch, crunch, coming closer and closer and closer to me. And I'm kneeling down on the ground looking straight up at this thing.

00:42:52:15 - 00:43:23:23
Nicholas
And as it comes closer, it's all sort of like black and white, as if there's no color to it whatsoever, almost like some sort of black and white photograph almost. It's has long arms, long legs, long torso, tall body. And then the thing that is the most remarkable to me as it comes closer and closer and closer, is that I can see it has no facial features whatsoever.

00:43:23:25 - 00:43:49:13
Nicholas
Its face is completely void and empty, and it's coming closer and closer and closer to me, My friend is nowhere to be seen. This thing comes and closer and closer. I'm so paralyzed with fear I can't speak or move or or do anything. I want to run away from it, but I can't. And it's just crunching through the woods, coming closer and closer to me.

00:43:49:15 - 00:44:16:19
Nicholas
It comes so close I can see that it has fingers. I can see that its arms are very long. It feels almost as though it's about to tower over me. And then it passes almost behind a tree and disappears. Just like that. Well, I went and I found my friend and we. I said, Did you see that thing?

00:44:16:19 - 00:44:51:23
Nicholas
Whatever it was, She said, No. And I was kind of left. The only one who had this experience of the two of us. Now, I have never known what this what this thing was, but it was beyond shadow of a doubt. My closest encounter with something that was so tangibly not of this world or just of of of an unknown nature, of a deeply unsettling paranormal nature.

00:44:51:26 - 00:45:22:09
Nicholas
And I've always been very curious as to what it could be with no real solution whatsoever. Now, over the course of years that have gone by since this incident, the land that all of that was on was former farmland. So that didn't give me too much insight as to what it could have been. It was kind of like old, decrepit farms where the forest had kind of grown back over time.

00:45:22:11 - 00:46:05:08
Nicholas
However, I have this very old book from the 1890s about the history of Jefferson County and in this book, in one of the earliest chapters of this book, I read at some point in the ensuing years, since I read that when the first settlers arrived in Jefferson County from Connecticut and Massachusetts and Vermont and they started felling the trees and they started doing what the settlers do, they encountered something that they called a castle.

00:46:05:11 - 00:46:35:00
Nicholas
And they said that on the edges of the settlement that far, not too terribly far from where this woods is that I would go to and where I saw this thing, it was seemed to be the remains of some sort of stone structure built into the ground that had long since dilapidated or deteriorated. Some people thought perhaps it was a tomb.

00:46:35:03 - 00:47:03:28
Nicholas
Some people thought it was sort of like a big castle with many rooms. The settlers certainly weren't too sure what it was, but what they found inside, they wrote about with a level of great alarm. They said inside were the skeletons of what appeared to be something that looked human. But they were very tall. They were like eight, ten feet tall.

00:47:04:00 - 00:47:36:24
Nicholas
And there were lots of wild theories about what it was. Some people said, well, perhaps the native American population centuries ago, they were very tall, and that didn't seem to hold too much historical credence. Some people said perhaps it was a race of early man. No one's totally sure what it was and as the years went by, local historians wrote about this less and less and less.

00:47:36:27 - 00:48:04:29
Nicholas
But it was a real thing that was really discovered and it's remains a mystery. Now, remarkably, this is not something that is totally unique. County, New York, These strange burials of bodies that appear to be really, really tall is something that has been found in other parts of the world. It's something that has been found in other parts of the United States and other parts of North America.

00:48:05:02 - 00:49:01:01
Nicholas
It's something that is bizarre. But I wonder if there was any sort of relation to whatever that was and whatever I saw, I don't know. I really don't know. But I know that the more I dig into it, the more strange and bizarre the the findings are now, that's not the end of the story, though, because here is a few years after that, my friends and I decided that we were going to do a spell in the woods and because we decided we wanted to kind of invoke this the spirit of this of the forest, and we were going to go there and we were going to thank all these trees and everything for being

00:49:01:01 - 00:49:35:21
Nicholas
such a wonderful place for us. So we kind of cooked up this whole idea of what we were going to do. And so we went up there and we lit a fire in the woods, same woods where this took place, and we kind of joined hands around the fire and we started doing our little thing. And as this happened, we were unable to finish because one of my friends passed out and collapsed into the fire and we had to drag her out.

00:49:35:23 - 00:50:01:11
Nicholas
And she said as we essentially started speaking to the to the woods, she said some strange energy overtook her and she was no longer able to sink or stand or breathe. And she fell forward into the fire. And that was kind of one of the last times we really messed around up there.

00:50:01:13 - 00:50:06:22
Sasha
Wow, wow, wow. That's Crazy.

00:50:06:25 - 00:50:07:27
Nicholas
Yeah.

00:50:08:00 - 00:50:12:21
Sasha
That is a crazy story. my goodness.

00:50:12:23 - 00:50:37:26
Nicholas
It will be like that. That's sure. That little episode I tell people and that makes people say, it's crazy. Like Nick is just crazy like that. That's just bananas. I can tell other stories about, you know, that this, you know, the radio is plugged in and we don't know how that happened. You know, all true but that's more like humanly relatable.

00:50:37:26 - 00:50:47:02
Nicholas
This thing, if I bust this story out, people say, what the heck, You know, that is. And I agree. Yeah.

00:50:47:02 - 00:50:51:27
Sasha
I think. Well, the implications. The implications of that story.

00:50:51:29 - 00:50:52:29
Nicholas
Yeah.

00:50:53:02 - 00:51:15:15
Sasha
Do you know what what I think is interesting, too, with what happened to your friend at the fire, it's not like I when we see people, people who participate in ecstatic religion sort of get taken over by a spirit or speaking tongue. And often that seems to me like a learn it. It's a learned behavior in a sense.

00:51:15:15 - 00:51:22:00
Sasha
You see other points. But what's interesting is that that seems so spontaneous for for your friend.

00:51:22:03 - 00:51:47:22
Nicholas
And I will say this one friend of mine is I'm still friends with her to this day, an extremely rational, logical, no nonsense kind of person. And it's strange that that that happened, you know, she was the one that we had to even convince to go there. You know what I mean? That it would be an interesting thing to do.

00:51:47:24 - 00:52:07:06
Nicholas
And of course, you know, along with the story, you know, me and my friends, we certainly, you know, never we were never the kind of kids who would like you know, party and go drink in the woods and, you know, those kinds of things. So it's like everything that happened, you know, everyone was completely in their right mind.

00:52:07:08 - 00:52:30:26
Nicholas
And yet at the same, it's like, why did we go back there to mess around? You know what I mean? It's like there's still some culpability there also. And I've often been left wondering, you know, maybe we ought not to have done that. You know, him perhaps in some way. That was something there was a warning or or perhaps even more malicious.

00:52:30:26 - 00:52:41:04
Nicholas
I don't know. I truly, with this story, do not know of all the weird encounters I've had, this one is the weirdest.

00:52:41:06 - 00:53:10:24
Sasha
So wild. And I just. But I, I, I don't even know if haunted is the right word to use when you're out in nature, when you're out in a place. And I certainly have had experiences where I walk into pockets of silence and I know that I am I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I'm not alone.

00:53:10:26 - 00:53:34:23
Sasha
Yeah, whatever I'm walking with and I can feel the world kind of shift around me. And I just, you know, I think it's one of those things that I think that people who are interested in the paranormal and it's so it's for one thing to have like ghostly things in a house. But I think that nature is so second.

00:53:34:23 - 00:53:48:21
Sasha
And if you're brave enough to walk into the woods on your or just like take a photo, I think wild and interesting things can be uncovered just by, I don't know, mindfully moving through the forest.

00:53:48:24 - 00:53:52:12
Nicholas
Yeah, yeah.

00:53:52:15 - 00:53:58:01
Sasha
There's so much. There's so much I want to talk to you about. We've barely scratched the surface.

00:53:58:04 - 00:54:06:03
Nicholas
And I think in my mind, like, Yeah, but then I have these, like 14 other ghost stories that I want to say, but we've already talked.

00:54:06:05 - 00:54:42:25
Sasha
For months to come back. I must I mean, you must, must, must return, because I want to keep this conversation going. But I do want to ask you. I want to. I want to thank you for your time. But I also want to ask you, because we haven't even scratched the surface on the implications and complexities of growing up in a family of witches, essentially, which is something I think so many of us who love magical realism, kind of dream about how wonderful it would be to come from a family of fortune tellers or card slingers like like you come from.

00:54:42:27 - 00:55:09:15
Sasha
So I think that that's incredible. But based on how you grew up, your experiences with the invisible world, with the other side, what is your hunch? Obviously, we're not talking concrete. This is a factor, not a fact. But there was. Where do you think you were before you were born and where do you think you will move on to you after you pass?

00:55:09:18 - 00:55:34:01
Nicholas
wow. I think that's a wonderful question that I love to entertain in my own mind all the time. Well, firstly, I think most of us would like to think in our previous lives that we were Cleopatra or, you know, Marie Antoinette or Louis, the 14th or something like that, which is lovely. But there are going to be far more of us probably.

00:55:34:01 - 00:56:00:12
Nicholas
Who were the peasants then? We're Cleopatra. That doesn't stop me from from fantasizing that I was carried around on a litter with people feeding grapes off of golden platter. You know, to me, that isn't going to stop me from dreaming about that. But I think mostly if we have any kind of other lives, most of them were relatively ordinary and mundane lives.

00:56:00:15 - 00:56:32:13
Nicholas
That said, I'm sure every once in a while something interesting gets thrown in there. I once, when I lived down in the middle of Georgia, one of the best psychics I ever visited in my entire life, lived in a trailer way out in the back roads, down a dirt road, in a pine forest out side of Savannah, Georgia, way out in the middle of the boondocks.

00:56:32:15 - 00:57:03:13
Nicholas
And I went inside her trailer and she did a thing where she looked at me and she wrote some things down on a piece of paper and she said to me, You are very afraid of aliens, aren't you? And I said, Yes, I am, because indeed I am not so scared of ghosts, but I'm terrified of aliens. That's a whole nother episode.

00:57:03:13 - 00:57:31:00
Nicholas
I have to describe an alien. I have no idea what you are going to do. So that's the big thing. Anyway. So she said, You're very afraid of aliens. I said, Yes, I am. He said, That's because you are one. And I said, What? And she said, Well, let me put it to you this way. The universe is huge.

00:57:31:02 - 00:58:04:24
Nicholas
And we reincarnate from many, many different lives, from many different places all over the place. And sometimes it's from here on earth, sometimes it's not, because all the energy is all one and it's all connected. And in a strange way, that was kind of comforting. And I thought to myself, Wow, that's really cool. And she said, Oftentimes we fear the things because we have some sort of connection to them, because we have some sort of importance with them.

00:58:04:26 - 00:58:28:13
Nicholas
For instance, a lot of times people who say are very big into spirit animals will will tell you oftentimes the animal that speaks to you the most is the one that you're most afraid of because it has an important lesson for you or it has some important wisdom for you. And regardless of what you think about the whole spirit animal thing, I think that's kind of cool and beautiful and interesting.

00:58:28:13 - 00:59:01:11
Nicholas
Also. And so she also said to me as she was writing things down in a piece of paper, she said, You were here on Earth. Also, but you don't really remember it very well because it was so long ago that it was during a time when humans could live as a part of nature. And she said, And you lived sort of in and amongst the woods and trees and you could speak their language.

00:59:01:14 - 00:59:30:08
Nicholas
And you lived at a time so long ago, long before anybody would have recognized the Earth. As for what it was. And and I said, That's really cool. It's really beautiful. So I would like to believe that those things are true. And certainly I will say she was one of the coolest psychics I've ever visited. So I would like to believe that that is accurate.

00:59:30:10 - 00:59:57:10
Nicholas
But as far as my own, like, what am I thinking is going to happen to me after, I don't know. I don't know. I do believe that probably I don't know. I think that there are certain lessons I ought to learn while I am here in this incarnation as a human, in whatever way, shape or form they they happen, you know, be a good person, be kind.

00:59:57:10 - 01:00:18:06
Nicholas
You know, I think those things are are actually important. Treat people with respect and kindness. And if I don't do them, probably I might have to learn those lessons again. You know I would imagine otherwise. You know, then I, I don't know what the point of coming back would be. You know?

01:00:18:09 - 01:00:26:03
Sasha
Wow. Wow. I love that. Nicholas, thank you so much.

01:00:26:05 - 01:00:37:14
Nicholas
Thank you, Sasha. It was really an honor to be here and chat with you and so much fun. It's so fun to chat. The worst thing about talking to you is that at the end, I always feel like I wish we had another 5 hours to talk.

01:00:37:16 - 01:00:54:27
Sasha
I know. Which is why you must, must, must return home. Because I at least for two more, because I want to do one dedicated to your family and and the witchcraft and tarot and. And that. And then I just love to hear more stories. You're a phenomenal storyteller and you've.

01:00:54:29 - 01:01:02:10
Nicholas
Thank you so much. You definitely make very easy you're you It's so much fun to talk to you, Sasha. Always.

01:01:02:12 - 01:01:03:29
Sasha
Thank you, Nicholas.

01:01:04:01 - 01:01:05:14
Nicholas
Thank you.

01:01:05:16 - 01:01:41:26
Sasha
My name. Thank you so much for being part of Ghost Stories by the Fire. Do you have a spooky story, near-death experience or supernatural happening you'd like to share? I'd love to hear it. So submit your story to Sasha Grammy.com with ghost stories by the fire in the subject line. You might just wind up on this podcast, and if you want to support it and keep the ghost stories coming, head on over to Sasha Grammy.com to check my books and tarot decks which are available for purchase at your favorite bookseller.

01:01:41:29 - 01:02:09:00
Sasha
The Ghost Stories by the Fire theme song is titled Through Lovely from the original motion picture score of The Deeper You Dig a film about the lengths a mother will go to to find her daughter's killer, even if that means accepting a curse from beyond the grave. The film and song were created by The Addams Family with lead vocals by Zelda Adams Stream The Deeper You Dig On Amazon Prime or Tubi.

01:02:09:02 - 01:02:14:12
Sasha
Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I'm saving you a seat at the fire.