00;00;00;28 - 00;00;09;28
Unknown
Yeah. But, you know, it's it's. Come on.

00;00;10;01 - 00;00;22;24
Unknown
You come to me when I'm lonely. I take your hand and we go home.

00;00;22;26 - 00;00;27;08
Unknown
You cover me with your love.

00;00;27;10 - 00;00;56;23
Sasha Graham
Hello, and welcome to Sasha Graham's ghost stories by the fire. I'm delighted to be broadcasting from a new home w H and Y Western Catskill radio on 93.6 FM on your radio dial. It's just after midnight. We all know midnight til one belongs to the dead. But right now it also belongs to you and me. And I've been out in the wild.

00;00;56;23 - 00;01;25;14
Sasha Graham
Gathering ghost stories for you. I'm inviting you to listen along with me as I broadcast from the old fire tower in wants hollow, New York. So for you locals listening in, we have a fog bank moving into our area from the southwest. If you are out there on the road, slow down and use those low beams. Now for tonight's season two premiere.

00;01;25;17 - 00;01;56;27
Sasha Graham
Episode 18 Spectral Connections. Thanks to the movies, we often think of house hauntings as an open shut case or a one sided issue. You know the story. A young family moves into their dream home, only to find blood dripping down the walls and teeming with vengeful entities. Their choice is simple exercise the ghosts or move the whole family out.

00;01;57;00 - 00;02;29;06
Sasha Graham
But in tonight's episode, Spectral Connections, we discover that hauntings are often far more complex. In fact, just like interpersonal relationships with those in our waking life, we can sometimes learn to live peacefully with those who have crossed over. And they are with us, after all. Beyond the physical blood and bone body, aren't we all just spirits and souls?

00;02;29;08 - 00;03;03;16
Sasha Graham
Perhaps the only difference between being alive and being dead is our human container. It is quite possible to cultivate a healthy relationship with a phantom, as we are about to find out. Our first story, echoes of the oil painting, comes from Andrea Jaynes, who is the founder of burros of the dead, a company that provides New York City walking tours, exploring the dark and the calm history of the five boroughs.

00;03;03;19 - 00;03;34;11
Sasha Graham
Andrea Jaynes is also the coauthor of A Haunted History of Invisible Women, a book that looks beyond the legends of maligned female ghosts and gives us their real histories. It is both a meditation on the misogyny of a ghost hunting culture that capitalizes on false narratives of sex and death, and a fascinating look at the flesh and blood women behind the ghost stories.

00;03;34;13 - 00;04;00;10
Sasha Graham
A Haunted History of Invisible Women is available at fine booksellers everywhere. Now, Andrea's story was recorded at a Sasha Graham's Ghost Stories by the fire event at the Barrows Intense Tasting Room in Brooklyn, New York, on May 10th, 2022. So now here's Andrea Jane with echoes of an oil.

00;04;00;12 - 00;04;26;02
Andrea Janes
The really great thing about doing what I do is getting to hear other people's stories. Yeah, we tell stories on our tours for sure. I see some of my customers over here who have come back again and again. That's awesome. But the absolute best and favorite part of my job is hearing customers come up to me as we're strolling between stops on the tour and they're like, come here, I want to tell you something that happened to me.

00;04;26;04 - 00;04;40;02
Andrea Janes
And that's been really fun tonight, because I kind of feel like I'm experiencing that all over again everywhere I go. Once people find out who I am and what I do, that's what they want to do is tell me their ghost stories. 100. You were the first to speak, were you? Did you say you're from Colombia? Yes I am.

00;04;40;04 - 00;05;12;26
Andrea Janes
So when I. I'm an immigrant, when I immigrated from an exotic nation called Canada, I had my interview with the officer at the USCIS, and he was like, oh, hey, what? Burrows of the dead. What? What's that? And he's like, you know, I'm from Colombia. And let me tell you a ghost story. So I'm sitting there in my, like, citizenship interview, and this guy's, like, growing up in my small town where I grew up, we had a guy who was a medical medium, and he could just read you, and he could diagnose you, and he would recommend things.

00;05;12;26 - 00;05;35;11
Andrea Janes
He would diagnose you, he would like, write prescriptions, and he just got all of his information from the spirits. And it was amazing. And then after like 15 minutes of hearing this incredible tale, he was like, oh yeah, welcome to America for your past. So it was really cool. And I love that. Joe, I loved the literary flourish on the end of your story as you were gaming, that little handprint came closer.

00;05;35;17 - 00;05;55;07
Andrea Janes
That's great. I might steal that. I love that you're from Coney Island, my spiritual home. I just hop on the train and I'm there. It's so good to be with you all. I've had customers come up to me and tell me stuff like, you know, growing up in Saint Louis, we lived in the old house and in the basement there was this whole secret room behind the drywall.

00;05;55;14 - 00;06;22;23
Andrea Janes
And when we knocked down the drywall, we found an octagonal room painted blue, covered with mirrors. And in the center of the room was just a Rolodex. And on each card, the words blond blue were written over and over again thousands of times. This is the kind of stuff people tell me one woman told me. I am haunted by the ghost of my former lover who killed himself on my bed with my gun.

00;06;22;25 - 00;06;46;04
Andrea Janes
These are the things people tell me. But the best story I was ever told, was from a woman who lived on the Upper East Side. And I'm going to keep her name private. I'm just going to call her JM. JM she lived on the Upper East Side and she told me a story. A bit of a trigger warning here.

00;06;46;04 - 00;07;07;01
Andrea Janes
Her husband passed away also by his own hand. Seems like that kind of woman on my story. And she was like I had recently been widowed. My husband had just committed suicide, I was bereft, I was distraught, I was on my own for the first time, and I decided I was going to do the, you know, one thing I had wanted to do my whole life that I never did.

00;07;07;01 - 00;07;28;17
Andrea Janes
I was going to buy myself an apartment. I was going to buy myself a home. I was alone, but I was going to have a home. And me and my dog, we're going to have a home. And she poured everything she had into buying a condominium. And it was cheap. Really cheap. Suspiciously cheap, for the Upper East Side.

00;07;28;17 - 00;07;46;23
Andrea Janes
But she bought it. She fixed it up, she renovated it. It took months and months and months, and like every cent she had was in this place. And it was such an intense renovation, like a studs down renovation, you know, like she didn't even live in the place for the first couple of months. She owned it. She spent a lot of time at her home.

00;07;46;23 - 00;07;59;26
Andrea Janes
She's from Long Island. It's just been a long time home, and she would drive back and forth to check on the place. And it was just about the end of the summers Labor Day weekend. She was driving in. She was stuck in traffic. She was checking on the place. She was in a car, their dog under her arm.

00;07;59;26 - 00;08;28;00
Andrea Janes
She finally gets to her apartment, her new apartment, her home that she longed for for so long. And she gets up in there and she is shocked to discover that though all of the beautiful renovations have been executed to her precise specifications, the walls of her freshly painted home have been scrawled with mysterious graffiti that she can only describe as obscene, obscene, pornographic, disgusting.

00;08;28;00 - 00;08;47;03
Andrea Janes
She can't go into any further detail about it, but she's shocked. She's like, what do the workmen do this? What is going on? Meanwhile, she's looking at this aghast and her dog has wriggled out from under her arm. Run out the door, has sat in the hallway and refuses to cross the threshold. Won't go into this apartment. So I'm not.

00;08;47;04 - 00;09;06;02
Andrea Janes
I'm not going in. And she's like, okay, this is weird. She goes downstairs and she's talking to the doorman of the building and she's like, this is really strange. My dog hates this apartment. He won't go in. There's some writing on the walls. It's very upsetting. I don't know what is happening. And the guy just says, oh, Mrs. Spencer is back.

00;09;06;05 - 00;09;30;09
Andrea Janes
Mrs. Spencer is back. Turns out, apparently there was a woman named Julia Spencer who lived in that house before her with a really, like, apparently fairly famous and wealthy family. She's got a pretty good pedigree. She apparently was the niece of J.P. Morgan. Back before the building became condominiums. It was a single family home. It was a mansion, and it was this fine ladies home.

00;09;30;11 - 00;09;53;27
Andrea Janes
So suddenly this woman's, like, got to contend with the fact that her dream home that she sunk every cent she has into, is haunted by Mrs. Spencer. But she's like, look, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to do something about this. And she brings and this is her terminology. She brings a voodoo priestess from New Orleans. She flies her up from New Orleans, and she has her come in.

00;09;54;00 - 00;10;08;18
Andrea Janes
She has her cleanse the house, and they do her ritual. And she's like, it was like something out of a bad horror movie. It was really cheesy, was really over the top. And I'm like, this is not going to work. This is insane. And yet, lo and behold, by the time they're done, it's about 230 in the morning.

00;10;08;20 - 00;10;35;21
Andrea Janes
She feels a strange sort of peace settle over her, and she feels calm, and she's like, I feel as though this is actually effective. And they do this very weird thing. They go around knocking on the doors of every other apartment in the building. It's 230 in the morning and they're like, listen, we just had this cleansing ceremony and we're here and we would like to offer you a chance to have it done in your apartment as well.

00;10;35;23 - 00;10;58;01
Andrea Janes
And not one single person slammed the door in their face, which is astonishing because I'm pretty sure I would have anyway. So she's feeling good. She's feeling confident. She's like, I'm going to move in. This is done. It's finished. Close the book on Mrs. Spencer. Goodbye. She moves in. But fairly soon after she moves in. Some strange disturbances start to happen in her apartment again, and she's like, I don't feel like I'm alone.

00;10;58;01 - 00;11;14;08
Andrea Janes
I feel like there's a presence here with me. She's later cleaning out her storage unit in the basement, and she finds an old oil painting buried beneath layers and layers and layers of years and years and years of junk and detritus like you find in a basement. She's like, this is an oil painting of. I'm pretty sure this is a mrs. Spencer.

00;11;14;10 - 00;11;37;22
Andrea Janes
So she consults her friend from New Orleans again. She says, what should I do? And she is told that she should put this oil painting in the lobby, which she does. She's already like on the board at this point. She's on the condo board. She's going to put this painting in the lobby. You're going to do it. And her friend from New Orleans says you should always have fresh flowers by the painting and in your apartment at all times.

00;11;37;24 - 00;12;05;29
Andrea Janes
So she has fresh flowers by the painting. She's fresh flowers in her apartment at all times. And she says that eventually the disturbances became more and more innocuous, more and more gentle. And as time passed, and as the fresh flowers were maintained, and as the portrait had its pride of place in the lobby, events, when the spirit would wake her up at three in the morning, which she did with regularity, it would just wake her and speak to her, just be a presence next to her bed.

00;12;06;02 - 00;12;36;23
Andrea Janes
It became a sort of benevolent, comforting presence and somehow made her feel less lonely in her widowhood. And she formed a sort of bond with Mrs. Spencer. It's a kind of beautiful story, and in the end, even the dog learned to put up with her. That woman, by the way, is Joan Rivers.

00;12;36;25 - 00;13;14;07
Sasha Graham
There's a ghost story with a happy and glitzy ending. Joan sure was lucky to find a voodoo priestess to help her navigate her unseemly poltergeist. Sometimes, as our next storyteller found out, you don't have to look too far for advice on how to make friends with a specter who is keeping you from getting your freak on. Nyssa Lozano is an actor, performance artist, and intuitive tarot card reader who often appeared at my Sasha Graham's Spirited Away paranormal and psychic event.

00;13;14;09 - 00;13;46;28
Sasha Graham
Nyssa told her story on the same evening as Andrea Jayne's ghostly tale on May 10th, 2022. By the way, you'll often hear my voice interacting with the audience and introducing storytellers at my crowdsourced ghost story events. As in the case of the following story. Now here's Nyssa with the unknown roommate.

00;13;47;00 - 00;14;06;19
Sasha Graham
Nyssa is one of our sister tarot card readers. She often can be found here reading tarot cards at Spirited Away and she is amazing. And I'm just so excited that you're here and you're going to tell a story because you're going to love her as much as I do. Everyone, Nyssa.

00;14;06;22 - 00;14;28;16
 Neysa Lozano
Oh. Thank you. That was that was so lovely. So I have, like, I don't know, I have interactions with ghosts often when I was a kid, I came out and I told my mom, like, mommy, there's a man in my room. And then older, I remember being in a theater, and feeling someone tap my shoulder. And I turned around and nobody was there, and I was like, oh, great.

00;14;28;18 - 00;14;51;28
 Neysa Lozano
But that was shortly after this, like, really fun summer for me. So this is the story that I spent a summer and the Ezra Pound house in, Hailey, Idaho. Yeah. Ezra was not the ghost that I met, but it was super. It was like a very old house. Had been there since, like, the 1800s, and everyone kind of joked that it was haunted.

00;14;51;28 - 00;15;11;27
 Neysa Lozano
And the first day that we were there, like we heard running upstairs is the one thing. And my friend and I who were there like, we decided which room was which. And I got this giant addict room and and it was like this beautiful four post bed and like an old school TV, the kind that had like a button.

00;15;11;29 - 00;15;38;23
 Neysa Lozano
And I was super excited and exhausted because I had been traveling all day. It was like I had a red eye and I go over and I collapsed on the bed to take a nap, and I feel one of my cats crawl into bed with me. Except that my cats didn't come with me. And I look up and I see something run out of the corner of my eye, and I start freaking out because I knew there was something in that room.

00;15;38;26 - 00;15;52;15
 Neysa Lozano
And later on, like the next day, I was talking to my mom. And my mom is also part of the paranormal world and the spiritual world and all of that goodness. So I'm talking to her and I'm like, I swear there's something in my room. And she goes, yeah, there's a little girl on the bed behind you. And I'm like, what?

00;15;52;16 - 00;16;11;23
 Neysa Lozano
And she's like, yeah, she's just bouncing on the bed. And I'm like, great. So the entire time I'm there, there was a little bit of an inappropriate part of the story. And so I'm sorry. I couldn't watch porn on that bed. My internet would be working great. I would put on porn and it would immediately stop. Nothing.

00;16;11;25 - 00;16;31;24
 Neysa Lozano
So I couldn't watch porn. And then things started getting taken from me, like, just little. Like my earrings went missing or like, a piece of chicken went missing. Just stuff just started disappearing. And then one day, this girl left the door open because you had to lock the door to close it. And so we all were really particular about closing it.

00;16;31;26 - 00;16;55;22
 Neysa Lozano
And we go over to the door and it is wide open and there is no way that could have happened. And we searched the entire house because we had been out and we searched the entire house for somebody. No one is there. And it happened to us twice that this person just opens the door. So finally, I, I wish that it had a more climactic ending, but I bought her a little toy, a little blue toy, and there was a second bed in the room.

00;16;55;22 - 00;17;13;26
 Neysa Lozano
So I put the blue toy there and I was like, this is your bed. And I sage the room. And from that moment on, she was very good at not bothering me. And I could watch porn again and she was fine. Thank you.

00;17;13;28 - 00;17;14;24
Unknown
Oh my God.

00;17;14;24 - 00;17;17;08
 Neysa Lozano
I love it, I love it, I know, don't you.

00;17;17;08 - 00;17;43;10
Sasha Graham
Wonder if they're like, watching you right when you're in the shower, when you're having, when you're treating your body like an amusement park. When you think nobody else is around. Right. You never know. I mean, I'd be down for that. If I could come back and haunt, I'd totally be a creeper. I would. Don't we all wonder when we are alone and intimate with ourselves, if there might be some observing intelligence in the room?

00;17;43;12 - 00;18;11;19
Sasha Graham
Could it be a ghost, a god, a peeping roommate, or worse, hidden camera for a secret OnlyFans account? Thank you. Miss, here's to keeping your boundaries safe and secure, and making sure that all the ghosts in your life have what they need to stay satisfied. Speaking of boundaries, that fog Bank is now moving due east along one's hollow ridge.

00;18;11;22 - 00;18;40;01
Sasha Graham
I can actually see it from the fire tower. So if any of you are out there listening in your car, stay focused, roll down your windows and know when to pull over. If the fog is too thick, don't worry, I'm right here with you. And I've got one last story to keep you company tonight. Our final tale comes from Leary to rock Leary.

00;18;40;01 - 00;19;19;03
Sasha Graham
Durocher is a tarot reader, forager, and wild crafter. She comes from a family of farmers and grew up splitting her summers between her mother's natal Macedonia and her father's natal Kosovo. She is the founder of Potions by Leary, a combination of tarot and herbal services derived of intuitively crafted herbal preparations. Leary takes the hysteria and fear out of otherworldly encounters, and is a living example of honoring and sustaining relationships with the dead.

00;19;19;05 - 00;19;37;17
Sasha Graham
Her story, The Golden Mirror, was recorded May 10th, 2022 at a Sasha Graham's Ghost Stories by the fire event at the Barrows Intense Tasting Room in Brooklyn, New York.

00;19;37;20 - 00;19;48;14
Sasha Graham
Mary, would you like to come up? I happen to know this lovely lady. This is Leary, and I'm so happy she came tonight. Thank you.

00;19;48;16 - 00;20;12;23
Liri Duraku
My name is Leary. And I see dead people. And I've always seen dead people since I was a kid. I have had this blessing and this curse since I was a child, where I would always know if someone was passing. I would always know who has passed. And sometimes they would visit me. And it was always really overwhelming, but also really beautiful.

00;20;12;23 - 00;20;34;22
Liri Duraku
And I felt really blessed to have this gift. And it's shaped my whole existence in the way that I see the world and the way that I just know that all of us are so deep and we have so much to offer. And I don't know, I mean, now that I'm older, I feel so grateful for the life that I've lived in the people, and they're not people that I've met.

00;20;34;24 - 00;20;57;00
Liri Duraku
And it always feels like ghosts come into my life when, I'm in this space of an initiation and I'm ready to move into a new space or a new journey in my life, and these ghosts come in to welcome me. And so I'm going to tell a little bit of a story of this one ghost who, is my best friend.

00;20;57;02 - 00;21;16;19
Liri Duraku
But I don't mean it in like, a literal sense, but, she lived in the house that I lived in for a really long time, and we became very close. And to this day, we have this, like, portal of connection. So when I was like 22, 23, around that age, I moved to Narrows Bridge, New York, which I know some of you are familiar with.

00;21;16;21 - 00;21;43;19
Liri Duraku
And I lived in this old house that was big and ride in the farmhouse, and it was there since the 1860s. And, very immediately I met the spirit of this woman, and her name was Juliette. And we had this really intense connection, and I knew that she had been there for a long time, and she would communicate to me pretty easily just what she wanted and what she needed.

00;21;43;19 - 00;22;13;29
Liri Duraku
And we had this reciprocal relationship and friendship. And, I was in a really interesting space in my life where I was really young, but also felt a little old to be doing what I was doing. And, she helped guide me through that space. And it almost felt like every time I called upon Juliette, I called also upon a deeper part of myself where I knew that I could be more than what I was, and that I had the potential to grow past who I am in this moment.

00;22;14;02 - 00;22;42;05
Liri Duraku
And Juliette was this spirit or this ghost that also was that potential. And so every time I was in communion with her or in relationship with her conversation with her, I was also in conversation with myself. And we had this really beautiful reciprocal communication. And I found this cold mirror in the basement of that house and every place that I've ever lived since then, I've brought that golden year with me.

00;22;42;08 - 00;23;07;03
Liri Duraku
And whenever I need a little bit of encouragement or just like a moment of somebody feeling like they have faith in me, I look in that gold mirror and I ask for Juliette to come forward. And that day I will always find either feathers or gold beads or crystal that shouldn't be there. And I know that that was Juliette's way of saying like, yes, you're in your next stage.

00;23;07;05 - 00;23;29;12
Liri Duraku
So I don't know if this is much of a ghost story, but it's more so this combination of like, is it psyche? Is it spirit? Does it really matter? It's all coming from this space of encouragement, of growth and expansion. So no matter what, it's part of who we are. So thank you guys all for listening to me tonight.

00;23;29;15 - 00;23;39;12
Liri Duraku
Thank you.

00;23;39;14 - 00;24;15;26
Sasha Graham
I love Larry Story one because mirrors are highly charged magical items and doorways between worlds. But to Leary's story, her attitude serves as a reminder that the energy of the universe is always sending you messages. The question is, are you paying attention? Are you open to the messages that are coming at you? For any listeners who are curious about communicating with the dead, one of the easiest ways to do it is by using tarot cards.

00;24;15;29 - 00;24;47;10
Sasha Graham
Tarot is much less intimidating than a Ouija board, and you only need yourself and the cards. Hold the tarot deck in your hands and clear your mind. Simply ask the space you're in or the presumed ghost who they are. Flip a card. Focus on the image and observe what pulls your attention. This will always be the answer. Continue asking questions of your cards and trust what unfolds.

00;24;47;16 - 00;25;12;02
Sasha Graham
And always assert boundaries and manners when dealing with humans and spirits alike. Now for more information on beginning a tarot practice, see my book The Magic of Tarot, available at bookstores everywhere or through my website at slash graham.com. Speaking of which, do you have an interesting ghost story? I'd love to hear it. Maybe have you on my show.

00;25;12;05 - 00;37;47;15
Sasha Graham
Drop me a line at Sasha graham.com and put ghost stories in the subject line. That's all for now. I'm your host, Sasha Graham, signing off for tonight on NY Western Catskills radio in wants. Hello. New York. I'm 93.6 FM. Stay spooky, stay cozy. You don't have to be afraid of the dark.