Episode 55: One Year of Haunts & the Ghost of Mr. Pugh
Three cheers to one year of Haunts!
Hey, everyone. I am so excited to be recording this episode because today marks the 52nd continuous week of Haunts podcast, which means that as of this episode, the show is officially 1 years old. Over the last year, I've had an absolute Podcast, bringing you guys some of the most haunting stories in paranormal research. And by the looks of it, it seems like you've been enjoying it as well. To be honest, when I first started the show back in February of 2023, I didn't think very many People were going to be into it, but you guys have seriously proven me wrong. I mean, I, of course, knew that there was a handful of paranormal enthusiasts who might be interested in a show that focused on the research side of the paranormal. But at the same time, I also knew that this was a very niche field. So suffice it to say, the support you gave the show week after week never went unnoticed and was incredibly appreciated.
I set out on this podcasting journey with the expressed intention of becoming a reliable resource when it came to the paranormal. And, of course, I wanted to share a few of my own experiences as well. But over the course of the last year, you and I together have created something that's so much more than that. Instead, we've become a community of friends, fellow researchers, investigators, and creators. And as a testament to that, I'd like to thank you all by sharing another one of my personal paranormal experiences. If you've been following the show for a while, then you probably recall the first 2 installments of this series. In the 1st episode, I discussed some of my earliest paranormal experiences with my friend Jimmy over at Spooky Appalachia. Then in the 2nd episode, I shared a chilling account of my experiences down at the Bell Witch cave.
That said, I've been going through my most prominent paranormal experiences in a chronological order on this show. That way you guys get a better understanding of who I am is a researcher and investigator. So if you missed the Host couple of episodes, make sure to go check them out. I'll have them linked in today's show notes. Now if you've been keeping track here, I think it's pretty obvious that a lot of my ghost stories share an ongoing theme. Regardless of where I'm living or how long I've been there, paranormal activity seems to ramp up every single time I move. We saw this when I moved out of my 1st apartment and, again, when we moved from Georgia out to Montana. And at least in my mind, that really only makes sense.
I mean, they say that paranormal activity tends to increase when there's a lot of changes going on within a haunted space. In seeing as how this happens, every time I disrupt a space with moving boxes and packing tape, Well, it goes without saying that it seems like we have a companion who doesn't enjoy the stress of moving. Of course, when we recorded our episode a while back, Jimmy asked me if I thought that something had followed me from my 1st apartment to my second one. Looking back now, I think it's pretty obvious that I was hesitant to answer that question mainly because the theories I have surrounding this topic are not mine alone. The same could also be said for the evidence and experiences that have contributed to those very theories. But on the other hand, you guys will never know who I am as a paranormal researcher if I don't share the stories that have brought me to this point. So to honestly answer that question, yes. At least in my opinion, something did follow us from our 1st apartment to the 2nd, and then from there to every other place that we've ever lived, rented, or owned.
So by now, you're probably wondering, if these theories and experiences aren't mine, then whose are they exactly? Well, unlike our 1st apartment where most of the occurrences were happening to me firsthand, when we moved to our 2nd place across town, the activity seemed to be much more directed at my husband. Now this is not to say that I didn't have my own experiences is, But at least in the beginning, it was Todd who had to deal with the situation directly. But before we get into that, think it's worth sharing a bit of context here. I've said it a 100 times, and I'll say it again today. Todd is a skeptic by nature, much more so than I am. And while he's sort of come around to the idea of the paranormal in recent years, at this point in time, he was pretty much a nonbeliever. Like I said, if you've been following the show for a while, you probably already have heard me talk about my husband's skepticism. And for that matter, you likely already know that, at least in my opinion, he's sensitive to the paranormal.
Maybe it's because the property he grew up on was shared by a rather old and somewhat forgotten cemetery. Perhaps it's because that very same property also has a tie to a rather grisly death, or maybe it's simply because his family tree has a long line of people with what I would call extraordinary gifts, whether he didn't meant that out loud or not. Now regardless of the reasoning here, out of the 2 of us, Todd is much more likely to have a paranormal experience. And, yes, in case you're wondering, that does make me a little bit jealous. But either way, the events that I'm about to share with you are more or less his origin story when it comes to these apparent gifts. It all started a few weeks after we moved into this new apartment. Of course, we had the incident on the 1st day with the packing tape, but other than that, the 1st few weeks were actually pretty quiet. Then I started to notice a tapping sound coming from the inside of the chimney.
We were up on the 3rd floor or the top floor, I should say. So, honestly, I just thought that it was a bird nesting in the chimney. But either way, it was really annoying and constant. Then the dream started. It was pretty slow at first, just like the tapping. But pretty soon, Todd was experiencing a distressed sort of sleep on a regular occasion. Now if I'm being fully transparent with you guys, Todd has always been a disturbed sleeper. Even when he was young, he would sleepwalk, have night terrors, the whole 9 yards.
But in this apartment, things were a bit more aggressive. For instance, it was in this apartment where he started to have sleep paralysis for the first time in his life. He would lay in bed at night, and right as he was about to drift off to sleep, he would hear this buzzing sort of vibration. Then his body would find sleep while his mind stayed awake and endured what I can really only describe as terrifying visions. There were a few occasions when he saw shadow figures around our bedroom. There were other times when he heard whispers, laughter or even music. But most often, he would be haunted by a pale little boy dressed in all black. What's worse is that the specter would just sit on his chest and make it hard for him to breathe.
Okay. So I'm sure that many of you are thinking that these instances, while terrifying, don't necessarily equate to paranormal activity. Hey. I'm usually right there with you. But as we learned back in episode 44, to many cultures, sleep paralysis is thought to be a form of spiritual attack. And for what it's worth, these episodes of paralysis weren't the only factors contributing to Todd's disturbed sleep. Along with these bouts of sleep paralysis, Todd was also having out of body experiences. I guess it's what most of us would call astral projection.
He would be asleep, and then he would wake up, and everything would seem normal until he physically got up from where he was sleeping. At which point, he would realize that he was out of his body, which was still asleep on the bed or the couch. For obvious reasons, Todd was really freaked out the Host time this happened. He actually began to panic, and within a couple of seconds, He was waking up again this time in his own body. But as time went on, the curiosity kicked in, and he eventually began to explore his surroundings in what I believe to be the astral plane. Now if you've ever tried to astral project yourself, Then you probably know that this isn't exactly an easy feat. I mean, even if you can get to that point of sleep per se, It's pretty easy to wake up while you're out exploring the world around you, or at least it was in Todd's experience. In other words, things started out slow.
The 1st time around, he managed to get just outside the bedroom. Then on another occasion, he could make it to the kitchen before waking up. After that, he was able to get to the living room, and eventually, he could make it to the guest room on the other side of the apartment. One time he left the building altogether, making it all the way down the 3 flights of stairs to the parking lot where he saw 2 forms of light sitting in the dog park. Moments later, Todd was waking up in our apartment. He got up from where he was napping on the couch, went out to the balcony, and sure enough discovered that a man and his husky were down in the dog park. Now maybe that's all a coincidence, but I've always considered this man and his dog to be the 2 forms of light Todd saw during his astral projection, mainly because it would have been nearly impossible for him to know they were down there. I mean, he had been asleep on the couch for nearly an hour before this happened.
So at least from where I'm standing, there's really only 1 logical explanation, no matter how illogical it may sound. Suffice it to say, Todd's sleeping patterns were wild throughout the course of our 2 year lease at this apartment. So, eventually, he started to keep a dream journal to document the experiences and get my opinions on them. Now as a quick aside here, to those of you who may know Todd personally, you would know that keeping a journal of any type isn't something that would typically keep his interest. So hopefully, you can vouch for the fact that these so called dreams were deeply affecting him. That said, when he started to tell me about these is. I was honestly pretty upset. I mean, to him, these were cool nighttime adventures, but to me, it all sounded like the opening scenes of the next Insidious movie.
Think about it this way. If your soul were to leave its human vessel to explore a plane that lies beyond this physical world, Then wouldn't that open up the opportunity for something else to hop in that vessel and take it for a spin? I don't know. Maybe I'm drawing too many conclusions here. But given the activity that occurs throughout the remainder of the story. I honestly think that it's still a pretty fair concern. So that brings me to this. Alongside the odd nature of Todd's sleep while we were living here, I was being haunted during my waking hours. And at least from where I'm standing, this activity was very reminiscent to what we saw in our 1st apartment.
Of course, there was the tapping that we spoke about earlier. But beyond that, there were other events that happened towards the end of our that I still can't explain. For example, 1 morning, I woke up and immediately went to go take a shower in the bathroom that sat just outside our bedroom door. For context, the kitchen sat just past this bathroom in the center of the apartment. I hadn't been in there yet that day, And I was in the bathroom showering for maybe 30 minutes before I went into the main part of the apartment. So you can imagine my surprise when I finally left the bathroom and walked into the kitchen to find a freshly brewed cup of coffee sitting on the counter. It was still hot. It couldn't have been there for more than 5 minutes.
I knew it wasn't me because, again, I hadn't been in the kitchen yet. And I knew it wasn't Todd because he was still asleep in the bedroom. So who had made the cup of coffee and why for that matter. On another occasion, I was cleaning up in the guest bathroom when I saw lights flickering in the mirror. I had this set of twinkle lights that were lining the walls in our guest bedroom, and on this occasion, they caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. So I looked up at them through the reflection of the mirror and watched as they turned on on their own accord. Then I turned around to get a better view of the bedroom and watched again as they turned back off. From that day, pretty much to the end of our lease, these lights would turn on and off all the time.
It was to the point where I thought that there was probably bad wiring, so eventually, I removed the batteries altogether. But even still, they would continue to turn on and off at their own will.
In hindsight, this is very similar to some activity that we have going on in our current house. But for the sake of clarity throughout the overarching story, I think I need to save those updates for the next installment of this series. That said, it's worth mentioning that all of the physical activity I had been experiencing occurred during the last several months of our 2 year long lease. It was the spring of 2020, the height of the COVID pandemic. So it goes without saying that for a few months there toward the end, Todd and I were pretty much confined to that apartment. Maybe that's why the activity was ramping up. It could sense the cloud of anxiety that had formed over both of our heads and took the opportunity to feed off of those emotions. Or perhaps it had always been that active, and we were just home now to see it.
But then again, maybe it was the fact that we had recently decided to not resign our lease and instead move back into Todd's childhood home to save a bit of money and be closer to family. Regardless of the reasoning, things were beginning to feel all too familiar. And by the time we had actually moved out, I was pretty much convinced that we had an attachment who is not too keen on the chaos that came with moving. As you can imagine, when we began unloading moving boxes at my in law's house, I was pretty curious to know if this spirit had followed us once again. So this time around, I decided to ask. And that, of course, brings us to the old cemetery that I mentioned at the top of the episode. At the end of the driveway on my in law's property, There's a quaint little family graveyard. It's not our family by any means, but I do know that the descendants of those buried there remain in this little Georgia mountain down, and, of course, they still keep in touch with my mother-in-law.
That said, this graveyard has always given me a weird vibe. I've said it time and time again on this show. Graveyards are typically not very haunted, but something about the Pew family cemetery has always given me the creeps. For starters, up until recently, the grounds were overgrown with weeds, and the gravestones were falling into disrepair. And, of course, it's not every day that a family cemetery would be left to decay in the front yard of a different family's home. I know. It's odd when you put it that way. But, hey, leave it to me to find and marry probably the only person to grow up with that view outside their window.
Now the immediate members of the Pugh family were living in this area back in the late 1800. During their time there, mister and missus Pew had several children who then grew up and had children of their own. It was those first 2 generations who are eventually buried in the family cemetery by their children and grandchildren. Then, of course, those descendants carried on their legacy, many remaining in that same little town where they built their own lives and families. Sometime after the pews were buried here, the acreage surrounding the cemetery was purchased and converted into a farm. Then after that, the land was subdivided. And, of course, one of those plots was purchased by Todd's parents. All of this is to say that the property itself has seen its fair share of history and sadly, a lot of death.
So at least from where I was standing, the Pugh family graveyard seemed like the ideal place to try and make contact with whatever spirit had been haunting us. It had been about a month after we moved in when Todd and I walked up to the Pew family cemetery with a spirit box in hand. I sat down in the grass just beside one of the few short rows of gravesites, switched on the spirit box, and began asking questions. I won't lie. At first, it was pretty quiet. Aside from the static sound of the spirit box Switching through channels. I asked all the basic questions. Is anyone there? Can you give us a sign? Can you speak into the box in my hand? Nothing.
So, obviously, I was beginning to lose hope that anyone would answer. But at the same time, we had walked up there for a very specific reason, And we hadn't yet asked the question that we most wanted to ask. It was a shot in the dark, but I went for it. Are there any spirits attached to us? Immediately, the spirit box answered yes. Okay. Do you know who is attached to us? Again, almost immediately, the spirit box answered, mister Pew. We asked a few more questions, but after that, nothing came through. So, eventually, we just gave up and left.
That said, for a while there, I think we both thought these answers were nothing more than a lucky coincidence. Maybe someone buried there had simply been identifying themselves. Perhaps we both wanted to hear the name Pew because we were in the Pew family cemetery, But it was interesting to us that these were the only 2 answers we got during what was roughly a 30 minute spirit box session. So by all appearances, we had our answer. Mister Pew had evidently been following us for quite some time. Of course, that answered question only led to another unanswered one. Why us? Why wasn't mister Pew haunting his own family? Well, I can't say that I have the exact answer here, but I do have a few theories that may explain this. For 1, mister Pew was likely very familiar with Todd.
After all, he would have watched him grow up, and that must have reminded him of his own children. Not to mention, if Todd really is sensitive to the paranormal, and for that matter, married someone who spends most of their time researching ghosts in the great beyond. Then to me, it only makes sense that the ghost of mister Pew may have been attracted to that kind of energy. Beyond that, our supposed connection to mister Pew's ghost doesn't necessarily mean that he isn't connected to his own family, And I at least like to think that he visits his descendants from time to time. I mean, who knows? Maybe that's the reason why his great grandchildren have recently made an effort to restore the family cemetery to its former glory. Okay. I might be drawing some conclusions here, But at the same time, the idea of a family ghost isn't that unheard of, but more on that next week.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Catch the rest of the series!