A conversation with International Spiritual Medium, Barrie John, on topics such as the Ouija board, his supportive upbringing, the loss of beloved pets, the use of cards in mediumship, his work with trance and physical mediumship, health of the mind body and spirit, contacting deceased loved ones, and dealing with attachments, among other topics.
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Demonologist and paranormal researcher Keith Johnson shares of his journey, and his view and experience on the topic of Demonology. Also, past and future television appearances, and being a Science Fiction and Gothic stories nerd!
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In this episode, Patrick talks to 2 local high school students for a research project about the paranormal subculture. And we dig into the Charlie Charlie Challenge phenomenon. Have you taken the challenge?
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The Big Seance Podcast can be found right here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, Google Play Music, and iHeart Radio. Please subscribe, submit a rating, or share with a fellow paranerd! Do you have any comments or feedback? Please contact me at Patrick@BigSeance.com. Consider recording your voice feedback directly from your device on my SpeakPipe page! You can also call the show and leave feedback at (775) 583-5563 (or 7755-TELL-ME). I would love to include your voice feedback in a future show. The candles are already lit, so come on in and join the séance!
I am so very excited to finally introduce what I’ve been working so hard on for several weeks now! The Big Séance Podcast is a place for an open discussion on ALL things paranormal, but specifically topics like ghosts & hauntings, paranormal research, spirit communication, psychics and mediums, and life after death. So basically, anything that pops up in my paranormal world. The candles are already lit, so come on in and join the séance!
The podcast can also be found on iTunes, and so many of you may be able to subscribe and download more easily from there. One of the nicest things that you could do to help me out, is to share an episode of this podcast with all of your fellow paranerds. Do you have any comments or thoughts? Please contact me at Patrick@BigSeance.com. I could decide to include them in a future show. Thanks for listening!
Marilyn Painter, a psychic medium, spiritual counselor, and energy linguist, talks about Empowering Individuals with Methods and Tools to Deal with Lower Energies/Demons/Possessions. We also chat about some paranormal hot topics!
Thanks for being a great first guest, Marilyn!
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For more on Marilyn:
Facebook: Psychic Medium Marilyn Painter
Paranormal Hot Topics Discussed:
Other blog posts and articles mentioned in this episode:
Demons, Possession, and the Book I Almost Didn’t Finish (BigSéance.com)
The Hand That Rocks Your Dreams (BigSéance.com)
The 3 Stages of Demonic Possession (Examiner.com – incorrectly cited in the show)
A New Haunted Hotel! (Augoeides)
The Big Seance Podcast can be found right here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, Google Play Music, and iHeart Radio. Please subscribe, submit a rating, or share with a fellow paranerd! Do you have any comments or feedback? Please contact me at Patrick@BigSeance.com. Consider recording your voice feedback directly from your device on my SpeakPipe page! You can also call the show and leave feedback at (775) 583-5563 (or 7755-TELL-ME). I would love to include your voice feedback in a future show. The candles are already lit, so come on in and join the séance!
A photo I took from inside the Lemp Mansion in St. Louis, Missouri.
I’ve done a pretty good job of avoiding the subject of demons or demonic possession on this blog. This isn’t due to being afraid of the topic or needing to leave the closet light on when I talk about it, but because the BS-o-meter tends to immediately start flashing in my head when the topic is brought up. It’s not something I do on purpose, and it’s not that I’m trying to be a jerk, it just doesn’t resonate with me, I guess. I’ve always done my best to not offend anyone in discussions about their beliefs, or when people recount their demonic experiences. As Jim Harold famously says, “I keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out.” Most of the time I just listen and try to see the activity as simply paranormal, just like any other experience that may or may not be explainable, rather than attach a demonic name or entity to it.
But I think I need to finally come clean and admit that I have issues believing in the concept. Oh I know what some of you will use to argue already. Light can’t exist without darkness. A belief in angels requires a belief in demons. Those arguments sound nice, but they don’t settle anything for me, and to be fair, I have the same issues wrapping my head around angels sometimes too, with their names and their color coded wings. For a while last year I was involved in a few phone conversations with a popular television production company about the possibility of being involved in a pilot about angels and investigating whether or not they really existed. I’m not sure where the project ended up going, but many of the personalities they were interested in just had a knowing that angels existed, and that’s not what they were looking for. They wanted someone who needed the proof. It was exciting to be approached, but I’m not sure the topic of angels would have been enough to keep me focused or serious for a whole series. One thing is for sure, though. I’d have to see some evidence before I could confidently say I believed in angels. Now ask me if I believe in spirit guides. (Well… I can’t wait all night for you to ask, but just know the answer is YES. My regular readers already knew this.)
Oh I believe in evil, in a sense that there are bad people, good people, and a whole spectrum of people in between. Those same people may just end up being either the innocent ghost or the trouble-making poltergeist in a haunted house. Many people believe, as I do, that we’re placed here on earth, maybe more than once, to learn lessons and allow our souls to grow spiritually. Perhaps these “bad people” are here to be a part of those lessons, and maybe their struggle with being bad has something to do with their own lesson. But believing in an inhuman demonic entity, or the devil himself, is something that I admittedly struggle to take seriously. Some popular paranormal television shows haven’t helped my opinion, either. Often those suddenly possessed investigators or home owners seem to look like they’re simply starving for attention, and oh look, there just happens to be a camera rolling! The spotlight is on me! I don’t mean to be flip, but that’s how it appears. I have absolutely no doubt that spirit can make use of our energy, or manipulate the world around us, and I believe in some cases a person with a gift can be used as a channel for spirit. But sometimes I wonder if people confuse being mentally unstable, or just plain drama, with demon possession.
This post was originally intended to be a book review, but like it or not, I’ve always had a policy about not mentioning a book by name if I don’t have many good things to say about it. Therefore, I’ll be somewhat cryptic in talking about it, and I hope that isn’t seen as poor taste. I’m far from being qualified to be an English teacher, but if I have the urge to take out a red pen to correct grammar and spelling in every chapter of your book, you simply didn’t try very hard to edit it, and so that certainly means I’m going to have a hard time taking you seriously or trusting your qualifications. The book contains story after story of what is supposed to be taken from actual case files of demonic activity, but they just sounded like good fictional storytelling to me… and I’m not big on reading fiction. I simply don’t believe much of those events happened. And people shouldn’t be led to believe that a simple creek, a rap on the wall in response to a question, or an occasional shadow is a reason to convert to Catholicism, get a crucifix for every room, or look for an exorcist.
If you know me, you know that I can’t NOT finish a book, even if I’m not enjoying it. I take pride in finishing the last word and shelving it ceremoniously. But for the first time in years, I considered not finishing this one. I felt a little silly spending the time on it. It took me forever, but I finished it, sighed, and moved on to the next book on my “to be read” shelf.
Like some things I’ve brought up in this blog, I might change my mind about all of this in a year or two, or maybe even next week! If I’m suddenly involved in an investigation where I have pea soup spat by someone walking across the ceiling while cursing me in 12 different languages, you’ll be the first to hear from me. Until then, this is where I am with it all. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not out in search of evil. I’ve always preferred pleasant spirits “from the light”, but until I’ve experienced it, I refuse to make it something dramatic to fear.
Now it’s your turn to tell me why I’m right or wrong.
I know that many of my readers will disagree with me on this. As I say to my students, “you’ll still like me, right?”
As a counter to probably every opinion I just gave here, you may be interested in checking out the ongoing Hidden Astral World series from Gary Leigh’s Psychic Empaths blog, where he quite literally introduces you to Omen, who he claims is a demonic entity. Gary is a loyal reader of the Big Séance and I have a lot of respect for him, so I hope he chooses to still like me after this post. He’s writing about fascinating stuff. I’m just not sure where I am with it all or how to respond. Go check it out!
Categorizing Hauntings (Big Séance)
Hey folks! I’m on page 218 of the first volume of House of Darkness House of Light, the true story of the events that happened in the movie The Conjuring, written by Andrea Perron, the oldest daughter. I’ve got to be honest. I was initially intimidated by the size of these books (the third and final book is yet to come), but at this point I’m pretty sure that there’s virtually no chance of me not buying into all three volumes. I’ve been sucked into the story all weekend, and I’ve not been able to think of anything else in the last two days. It is such a good book!
Early on in their story, not long after moving in, the Perrons experienced supernatural and never-ending amounts of flies that seemed to come from nowhere. This was in the middle of a very cold and snowy winter. No amount of swatting or extermination could solve their problem. It was making them crazy, and along with other bone-chilling events, it was gradually tearing a family apart.
Most likely, when you think of flies and hauntings, you think of the famous scene from the movie The Amityville Horror from 1979. Usually when I hear someone describe flies as being a sign of a haunting, I get the instant urge to roll my eyes. You won’t find many “experts” in the paranormal who are willing to validate flies as being harbingers of things to come in a haunted location, though Lorraine Warren supposedly told Mrs. Perron that this was the case. Referring to their nasty fly situation, Warren is quoted in the book as saying “You can’t really kill what’s already dead.” In The Conjuring, James Wan apparently chose to nod to Alfred Hitchcock and use birds as a harbinger, rather than flies. It could be that birds play a role in the book as well, but I haven’t gotten there yet. I’ll admit I’m conflicted. It just seems so Hollywood to me… and like talk of “demons” (which I’m sure I’ll be discussing soon), it seems to require a certain kind of religious belief that I don’t usually buy into. But I’ve done lots of researching into this story and the Perrons recently, and unlike the questionable history of the Amityville haunting, and though I don’t know the family personally (though I’ve enjoyed recently being connected with Andrea on Facebook), I really believe their story. So here it is. I feel like I have to tell you that all of this is really making me re-think my position on evil harbinger flies.
Thoughts? Experiences? Fly swatter recommendations?
The Conjuring Movie Review (Big Séance)
True Haunting: Reads Like Fiction… But it’s Not! (Big Séance)
Andrea Perron’s House of Darkness House of Light trilogy (Big Séance)
My last post about Scole discussed creative energy, music and vibrations, and light. Here is my final post about my thoughts on The Scole Experiment: Scientific Evidence for Life After Death by Grant and Jane Solomon.
Photograph from 28 February 1994 of the front page of the ‘Daily Mirror’, 16 December 1936. A copy of the original was obtained. It was almost identical to the photograph, with some minor differences which indicated it might have been from another edition on the same day. The newspaper was tested and proved to be genuine wartime paper. (Caption taken from the book) This showed up on sealed photographic film after a sitting.
During a session, instructions for building a Germanium receptor (for better communication) manifested on sealed photographic film. This signature appeared at the end and is thought to be that of Thomas Edison, since compared to existing documents, his signature from life seems to be identical.
All of the color photos of phenomena and apports that are included in the book can be found on the Scole Experimental Group’s page, or you can click on the photos above.
The spirit team answered many of the Scole group’s questions, which are included in the book. Here are some of the shorter question/answers that I find interesting.
I’ve always found it interesting how many people insist on there being a heaven and a hell, angels, devil, demons, dark side, etc. My current opinion is that it’s all nonsense, but I’m always open to learning and changing my opinions. It felt good to read this first question/answer. Is the spirit team saying there’s no evil outside of us? No hell? No devil?
Is there a negative side that fights this very positive energy?
No. It is man in his ignorance that causes problems. If man lives his life without aspiring to a spiritual awareness, he lives in ignorance. Ignorance breeds negativity and negative thoughts create a negative force as, in a similar way, positive thinking creates a positive force, so we have to work on the negative forces. Not, however, those outside of man, but those within man.
Do the Akashic Records exist and can we have access to them?
It is true to say that much information is stored in other realms and spheres. But again, perhaps not as much as you are led to believe. Some of the records are accessible to higher beings. There are also some on Earth who claim to have access to them, but I do not know if this is true.
As always, any thoughts?
