Ghost Hunters Paranormal Events and Clearing Energy You Don’t Want

Deb (6s):
Welcome to spirited straight talk the ultimate podcast for anyone who is ready to live a life with intention and help from spirit. I am your host Deb Sheppard, spiritual teacher, medium and author helping you open up to the whole enchilada or like, we like to say the soul enchilada, so you can truly make your soul rise. So let’s go! This is kind of odd for us. We’re doing a day podcast with ghost hunters and it’s always made me curious because that’s not something I normally do.

Deb (47s):
However, over the years, and even recently people have reached out and said, Oh, I think there’s a ghost to my house. Who is it? What do they want to know? For me, it’s kind of our normal life. We’ve had activity in this house for years and part of my job and helping people who are wanting to know that these spirits are just here to say, hello. They’re not really here for any other reason. I know I got to, I think it was a Facebook post, someone asking about their activity in their house. I said, you don’t have to worry about what they want if they want you to know something. But part of it is they knew you can feel them. I think it was that they smelled cigarette smoke. That’s what it was. They smelled cigarette smoke.

Deb (1m 29s):
I just really think it’s another layer to understanding that the other side wants to make a connection. I think also that there are these imprints that they put in sometimes in energy or vortexes. These ghost hunters basically go out and use equipment to kind of validate what a medium does, right. Intuitively. We can go out there and we’ve been to some places that have been haunted or they’ve claimed that they’ve been haunted. Then we’ve been to places that said they were haunted and we felt Zippo zero, nothing. That was a couple of places here in Colorado.

Dana (2m 7s):
I’m not a ghost. I’m Dana, I am Deb Shepherd’s partner and her, what am I? I’m your support team? We get a lot of messages. We had one recently too, that they were scared about some happenings in their home with a door opening and closing, a pantry door I think it was. They took some video and they felt like they could see a figure waving at the camera from the door.

Dana (2m 52s):
I think it’s just knowing that they’re there and acknowledging them. I think some people will feel negative stuff. What do you think about that?

Deb (3m 4s):
Well, I think it was negative energy. It’s a lot of times, what are we attracting? What are we fearful of? Are we not in our power? Is it something that we feel like it’s the unknown and anytime anyone comes into your home that you don’t know you’re going to be fear-based. So let’s say you have someone that’s going door to door and selling something. I mean, you’re not going to just let someone come in and and see what’s happening with in your life. I think that comes with the energy. What does this spirit want? What are they doing here? Am I going to be safe? So it’s kind of answering those questions and helping people understand that if you’re feeling those things or connecting with those things, great. Maybe it’s time to expand your abilities or what can you know about that spirit that’s in your home or in your business?

Deb (3m 51s):
We’ve done businesses as well, where there were some energy going on. My entire purpose with this stuff is say, don’t be fear-based. There’s answers to it. There’s ways to understand it. There’s ways to communicate. There’s ways to tell it to move somewhere else. They’re not welcomed. Just like you would do a guest now they don’t have to stay forever. Of course, after you’ve lived here for what, five years, five and a half years, you’ve seen a lot of activity and it’s happened probably for over 20 years where I’ve seen activity happen. It’s never really been scary. Sometimes I’m like, it’s odd. Like just having an odd relative come to visit.

Dana (4m 30s):
Well, what’s odd is when you look over and say, Oh, there’s somebody standing there. And I don’t see anything. I’m like, well, why can’t I see it?

Deb (4m 39s):
Yeah. I mean, then you see all the other things that we need to take care of in life. So you see the physical and I see the, the spiritual world, but these guests that are here have been doing this for years. They’ve been very curious. When we met them a year or so ago, I was really fascinated. So that’s why we decided to have him on our show.

Dana (4m 58s):
Well let’s welcome them! Okay. We are happy to have a big group of people with us. What we decided. This is kind of a special episode. What we decided is delve into some paranormal stuff. This is unusual for our podcast.

Deb (5m 18s):
You know, we were on another podcast and JC, and I definitely wanted to continue kind of doing a podcast regarding the supernatural. And you want to say who’s with you today?

JC (5m 35s):
I brought my team with me today. We’re extreme vision paranormal based out of Northern Illinois. The team founders are behind me here, Gary and the cowboy hat, Gary Butler, and his wife, Jenny who’s, who’s all the way on the other end of the screen there. And we’re wearing our we’re wearing matching sweatshirts, Jenny and I, some branding for the team. And then, and then my wife right next to Jenny is Heidi here. So, so we’ve been with extreme version paranormals since 2010.

JC (6m 15s):
And I believe when Jenny, when did the team get founded? Was it just a couple of years before that? Right?

Jenny (6m 21s):
2009.

Deb (6m 22s):
Well, okay. Well, I’m certainly curious. There is no doubt we have had spirits in our house over the years. I always believe that when I die, they’re going to be some haunted tours in this half because there’s possibly activity. And before the show, we talked about you guys coming out and maybe seeing what kind of spirits we have, but we’ve had wine move across the room. We’ve had doors closed, TVs turned on and with a laundry room of vases thrown out of a cabinet and breaking. So we hear them talking a little bit all the time.

Deb (7m 2s):
So for us, it’s just kind of normal. We tell them to go away until it’s time for an appointment.

Dana (7m 10s):
And what’s funny is your website is the dead speak.net and Deb speaks to the dead.

Deb (7m 19s):
And I’ve always wanted to go into one of these searches to see if I could pick it up in a different words than you. But I used to. So maybe at some point we’ll have to collaborate and do that. But how did you guys get started in this? I know that there’s a curiosity, obviously. Who did you have? Something that happened that made you kind of like, okay, I want to know more about this. Is it more about scientific or trying to say this is not real? What was sort of the beginning of this

3 (7m 48s):
Here? He’s got the bike. It started with me. I guess I had the experience when I was a child. I had a quote, an imaginary friend that I always played with at my grandparents house. My grandparents, I used to watch me as I was younger. So I had a friend there that I always played with name Alvin or Allen. So when I grew up later, I found out in life that my mom had a brother that died when he was 18. He died in a tragic accident.

3 (8m 28s):
And guess what his name was? I never knew him. He died way before I was even born. So I don’t know how I know that he was my friend and I played with,

0 (8m 42s):
I got chills. It’s really interesting here because you’re just a dude, dude. I mean, you’re not one of these people. So for you to be talking about this childhood friend and having that connection and still talking about it today is really pretty incredible. So did you just start realizing you want to do an investigate if there’s more things like this?

4 (9m 5s):
Well, yeah, as I got older, actually, you know, I sorta, I guess grew out of it. You know what I mean? Then I sort of forgot about it. And then actually I saw like one of the shows on TV, you know, the ghost centers and started watching it and then started searching about it and actually joined a group, went investigating with them for a couple of years and then some differences with the founders or whatever. We decided to start our own group. And then going, ever since

0 (9m 30s):
What kind of equipment I know that you use special equipment. When there for me, I can just feel the energy. And so I’m kind of like, I own radar, but you guys have to have special equipment to go into these locations, right? I mean, what are you using?

4 (9m 45s):
We have several equipment too. We have a CCTV camera system. We use a voice recorders, recorders, cameras, EMF detectors, and pretty much, yeah. Yeah.

0 (10m 3s):
Well, I use dowsing rods and my dad used algae rods to find water. So I truly believe in dowsing rods. So when you’re using Danzy Robbins, you go into the hole or the location start using that to figure out what the energy is versus of your camera or your equipment.

4 (10m 19s):
I think one of the first things that we do is, you know, Gary talks talked about the EMF detectors, the electromagnetic fields, the theory behind that is that spirits manifest using energy and they use whatever energies in the room. So the theory is, is that one, a spirit will manifest. There will be a higher electromagnetic field from where that spirit might be. So there’s a lot of things in life. And especially if you think about it, we’re being pounded by radio waves constantly. So what we want to do is go into a room and just suss it out and make sure that you know, that there’s not something within the room that is already putting off electromagnetic fields.

4 (11m 4s):
So, so basically we’ll do a quick baseline reading with EMF detectors. And then from there we will know, okay, well, this room already has EMF in it. So if we see a spike above what the baseline readings were, then we would know, okay, there’s something weird going,

0 (11m 22s):
Where did my world was normal? But yeah, I know what you mean. So when you’re looking for this movement and proves that there is energy and goes and things like that, what is the end result that you’re looking for? I mean, what is it that you’re trying to accumulate to put together to prove?

4 (11m 44s):
Well, I mean, I’m just, this science is not necessarily science. You know? I mean a lot of stuff is all based in theory. And so that’s kind of what we’re, we’re going on. So, I mean, we’re always looking for data to back up the things that people are experiencing or finding ways that we can, you know, so if we’ve got a panicked homeowner and we can come in and say, say, say, look, you know, I understand you’re feeling all these things and I don’t want to discount anything that you’re feeling, but there may be alternative reasons why your experience

5 (12m 22s):
Yes or no. Explain what that’s going on. That may not be, I can tell you a little story. We were contacted by a lady and her name was bunny. And she, she called us and said that her husband was seeing, I was in the house and we went out there and these folks were in their seventies, high seventies. And I’m like, okay, what made you contact us? She’s like, Oh, I got on the internet. And you’re the only ones that look normal.

5 (12m 57s):
And then, Yeah, so actually we talked to them, we went in and we did an investigation with some fantastic results. We are really surprised. And when we went back, the home, the gentleman of the house sat there and cried cause we actually validated what he was seeing and it made it much better. I mean, we try to debunk a lot of stuff because a lot of stuff is not paranormal. I mean, it’s pretty rare that it, you know, we actually drill down and find something paranormal, anything that you see that we have deemed paranormal has been after hours of review discussion, more review, more discussion before we’ll put it out there and I’ll tell you that it’s called the peek-a-boo house.

5 (13m 51s):
And I think we may have some audio or visual video from that video, from that one. That, that is pretty, pretty awesome. So what’s here or was there anything else that you could do to help them? Or what was your kind of advice after we deemed there was something paranormal going on. I think they just wanted validation that they weren’t going crazy. They didn’t have a problem with what was there. We, we determined that it was somebody that used to live in the home and she was actually a piano teacher.

5 (14m 33s):
And the way that he was seeing her was she would be like looking out the door from the kitchen, into the family room they had built on and what it was was that’s where the house stopped when she was living there. So she never entered that room. She never entered that room at all, actually

0 (14m 53s):
Our kitchen, right. Can I find a home? I go into homes, the same thing. There was someone that had died there or the house was built where there’s maybe native Americans or other types of things that happened. And so that I call it residue that energy can stay there sometimes and you pick up on it. And it’s sort of like, in my opinion, it’s kind of like between the veil, there’s kind of like a vortex there with that makes sense for you guys to see is sort of there’s energy that kind of falls in these spirits to get better. And we see a lot of residual hauntings, which is stuff that happens over and over again because of the, I don’t want to see, but there’s a lot of emotion tied to that area or whatever.

0 (15m 38s):
We do see a lot of that

4 (15m 40s):
In the smells and stuff, especially. Yeah.

0 (15m 43s):
Yeah. I know that when I talked to JC, he said the same thing that people can draw these paranormals into their home and I agree it sort of mirrors the homeowners or what’s going on. And I think like what you were saying this man did wouldn’t think he was crazy because there’s put me in a straight jacket. I said, this is kind of crazy where there is sites where you put your do is doing a scientific proof that there is paranormal activity. No, mine is just my energy that I pick up on. But having the equipment is, well, you actually communicate with them in a different way. They start to tap into her memories and bring, show her things.

4 (16m 22s):
And I think, I think one of the things that, you know, we, we kind of talked about before that just kind of, you know, and I, I know that this is what, when I know I’m, I’m kind of following on the, the paranormal side is that, you know, we do a lot, we get a lot of residual, like Jenny mentioned, but, but you know, on the individual side, you know, I think I found that there are people who just have always had the ability to tap into something else. And they almost like, I don’t wanna say manifest, but they might either either attract it or they manifest it themselves. And I know that there’s a, there’s the theory of the Poltergeist and it’s completely different than the movies, which is a Poltergeist, essentially something that somebody could be creating themselves.

4 (17m 12s):
And it, because they themselves are tapping into something, they may, they might be mediums and don’t even know it. And, and so that energy doesn’t even know where to go. So it’s like talking to those people and finding out, okay, because once they leave the environment, then the environment is, is like, there’s nothing going on in that house anymore. And we’ve had that experience a couple of times, one of the times that we had was actually one of the, like one of our paranormal tourism investigations, where he went down to Cincinnati and what’s the sedan Deville rectory, which was featured on ghost hunters and goes to ventures and everything else. And of course they charge admission to stay the night and everything else. But it was, you know, while we were there with the owner of the location, several things happen as soon as he left, it was like this breath, like Aaliyah lights, which just everything completely changed in for us.

4 (18m 9s):
We didn’t really hardly get, we didn’t get anything.

0 (18m 14s):
Huh. That’s interesting. I do think that you have a famous person and there’s that paparazzi, they bring that energy in to someone that’s a lonely person. You know, you don’t see a lot of activity. And that’s exactly what I try to tell people. We’re all energy we attract like-minded and that’s what happens. And I always tell people that I think he lives on, we’re stuck to the spirit. I think humans are more stuck that we bring energy and sometimes to remind us of those things. So what are some of the jobs you guys or events that you went to, or whatever you guys call it that you were just like, wow, this was worth coming here and doing all this work.

4 (18m 55s):
And what’s wild is most of the time, you know, for us, it’s, it’s so boring while we’re there, that we have to find ways to entertain ourselves while we’re there. It isn’t until like hours of data review that things really get fun and interesting because, you know, I know Jenny and Gary can attest this. They’ve done a million more investigations than I have is just, just sitting and just listening and, you know,

0 (19m 22s):
So is it more like in the recording that you guys versus actually experiencing, it’s been recorded and you catch it in the record release, we’ll just be, we’ll just be chatting and having a normal conversation and something we’ll insert ourselves in work conversation on the recorder. We don’t hear it. So we go back and listen sometimes. Yeah, we do hear it more like what was that? You know, sometimes we do, but most of the times it’s on a recording. So with, like, with, with our podcasts, with all the work that Deb does, that we do really demystifying the spirit realm and letting people know that it’s okay, is what we’re about is, you know, letting people know that these things may happen, but it’s understanding and accepting the spirit realm as a part of this world is important.

0 (20m 18s):
I think it takes a lot of energy for them to be recorded to, you know, for them to show activity and to actually have their voices being recorded. Would I seen a lot of work in, that’s why you do hear a whole lot because you don’t have vocal chords. So they’re giving you information as much as possible by using all that energy. And it takes a lot of energy for them. So I would assume that that’s why you guys get small pockets, words. It’s usually,

4 (20m 48s):
You know, I think for the audio that we have, it, it, like you said, it is just small pockets. And then typically when we take it into the team and we all listen to stuff, we all try to listen to and find out if it was somebody who didn’t tag audio. So what we do is in every investigation, while we’re being quiet in a room, we have rules like don’t whisper first and foremost, don’t whisper. You know, if something happens like a stomach, Graley, it’s weird because when everybody’s quiet, right, then, then usually people’s stomach start growling. And so, and there’s trains and cars and things like that, that will go by.

4 (21m 29s):
So we need to make sure we tag all that audio. So when we go back and do the data review, we can say, okay, that was, that was this person or this person. But what’s weird is like, once the lights get dimmed and dark, we just, as humans have a tendency to want to whisper. So, so breaking those habits while we’re investigating and it’s tough. I mean, I know I still occasionally will forget and do it and everything else. So w we’re doing everything we can to make sure that we, we can rule out the normal things before we actually capture something. And I think, you know, for audio, I know that the stuff, some of the, you know, you ask about some of the favorite places we went. I know for me, personally, the Scott mansion in Joliet is, is a place where we caught things with our eyes and our ears while we were, while we were at this location, had personal experiences up the wazoo.

4 (22m 23s):
And, and then on top of that had audio, electronic voice phenomenon, EVP that we caught afterwards.

5 (22m 32s):
Yeah. It’s called the Scott mansion. It’s in Joliet. I don’t know if it’s still there. Somebody said that it was pretty much knocked down and disrepair. It’s a beautiful old building. Actually. It used to be called barber. Barbourville the barbed wire. Well, yeah, the guy that invented Barb wire actually lived, lived in this home and he had several patents on it and then it turned into a girls school and then it turned into the harem Scott museum and tea room. So that, and that’s when we started investigating, we’ve been there a couple of times and it never disappoints.

4 (23m 17s):
It’s just

5 (23m 25s):
Disturbing. I mean, a little bit, the doll room was disturbing,

4 (23m 40s):
So, okay. So we’re in a room and it’s covered in dolls, just covered. Yeah.

5 (23m 52s):
One of the tools we use is something called the ghost box or Frank’s box or the hack box, and pretty much what it is, is there’s an, I, there was a theory that spirits can, can use radio frequencies to communicate. And so basically the it’s either creating white noise or it’s surfing through frequencies to, to allow the spirits, to manifest use, to use this instrument, to communicate with us. So as we’re in this room myself, and I think Anna, one of our investigators, Gary was in there, we’re in this room and there’s like marionettes on the walls and everything else. It’s just the creepiest dollar room.

5 (24m 33s):
You can imagine who you will hear the ghost box. And the, we have a K2 right here. That’s on the floor that will, it’s just like stuff you see on ghost ghost hunters. It goes, the lights go up as there’s more electromagnetic fields in the room. So I’ll go ahead and rewind this and I’ll show it to you.

6 (24m 53s):
How many dolls are in this room?

5 (25m 11s):
So we asked him how many dolls were in the room? And it said, we think it said, Oh, we play electronics. That’s cool.

6 (25m 45s):
How many dolls are in this room?

5 (26m 3s):
Yeah.

6 (26m 3s):
So they had the room and they were like, Hey, let’s bring everybody,

5 (26m 17s):
I’m sorry. You have to record it. Or is it just more quiet at night? You know? Cause they think it’s more scary, but actually paranormal activity will happen during the day. It will happen anytime. It’s probably now we’re just not aware of it because of the noise or whatever. So, but it is quieter at night. It’s usually easier to go to a place at night when there’s not as much traffic outside and external noises that’s pretty much.

5 (26m 57s):
But like I said, activity happens everywhere. Yeah. I agree. That’s true. I don’t like it that they make it so scary though. I mean, they, they terrify you with it and then you get scared to go to immediate because you’re scared. You’re going to take your love bones back. Have you guys ever taken a medium on one of these events? Do you see if that was the difference you connecting?

4 (27m 28s):
Okay. We, we used to, we, there is a medium in Chicago who is very awesome and he made us his team for awhile when he did some of his investigations and stuff and he had different locations and he took us out and it was fantastic. He was, he was really great to work with. So we’ve, we’ve gone with him and he would do like a spirit circle and stuff like that. But for the most part, we just kind of let, let him do his thing and we did our thing and then we would take his people around and show him all the tools and stuff like that. But, but it wasn’t ever a like a combined effort, I guess, if that makes sense, which, you know, I guess it, it all, I guess it all depends if we’re on the same wavelength as the medium.

4 (28m 11s):
So, so he was very, yeah, he was, he was, he’s a great guy, but you know, he had, he had a lot of flare, if that makes sense.

5 (28m 27s):
the thing is, is, do you guys feel your own loved ones? You know, are you connected to that veil with your own loved ones? Or do you just kind of connect when you’re doing this kind of work? Does that make sense?

4 (28m 45s):
We’ve had, I mean, I think I know personally I’ve had some pers personal investigations that have been very personal. We’ve had, we’ve all, I think had things in our we’ve all had things in our life loss and have had experiences where we’ve lost people very, very close to us and have had things happen not too long after they’ve passed. But I mean, I think for our team, we have, I know we had one investigation that actually we did with ed, right. It was with the BDM where it was probably the most powerful, I mean, Jenny, you were there.

4 (29m 29s):
I don’t know if you want to talk about that, but that was probably one of the most personal and powerful experiences that I’ve heard of from a blue star auto.

5 (29m 41s):
Yeah. We were at blue star auto, which isn’t was in Chicago. It’s torn down now. It was an old auto shop and it was like a whole city block gone and another team member and I, we were, we were upstairs and yes, we were using dowsing rods, which these guys frowned on because they’re not, they’re not, I like them too, but they’re not as scientific as they said, but another team member and myself were using the dowsing rods. And we were in this hallway and this building had been a hotel or a brothel at one point in time, back in with Al Capone, it was actually owned by alcohol.

5 (30m 27s):
So at that, you know, back in the day before it became blue star. So actually we were S we were there and we were talking and we started feeling really weird. And then the other investigators started using her dowsing rods. And we came to determine that it was a person that was stuck there. She was part of the brothel, she’s she, we asked her questions. She confirmed that she had died during a botched abortion. And, you know, cause back in those days they didn’t do those things. And then the other team members started feeling sick.

5 (31m 8s):
So I kind of jumped in with my energy and my rides and all the equipment started going off all the K2, meters, everything. And we told her that she didn’t need to be scared. And we feel that because of the energy and the way it was going, we crossed her over my teammate, no other team member. And I crossed her over and then we couldn’t get her back. So we feel that she went where she was supposed to go. And to this day, the other team member is still kind of, I don’t know how to put it. She feels sick a lot. So I don’t know if this affected her emotionally because it was so intense, but it was pretty amazing.

5 (31m 54s):
And we don’t typically do that kind of stuff. This was a totally new thing for us. And it just felt right. It just felt right. And since then there’s been nothing like that. I’ve done some of those kinds of things. Cause we don’t really talk about, I’ve seen him, like I would say that people, humans are more stacks in the spirit realm as we get into different levels of the veil. But I remember I was called into this house, downtown Denver. It was a huge house.

5 (32m 37s):
And these guys were working at night.

0 (32m 41s):
They’re very Catholic, very much, you know, believe in kind of the saints and scary things there. We’re working. All of a sudden a room stood up in the middle of the room in the hallway and no one was holding the room. So all of these, all these Hispanic people ran cause they were like freaked out and said, we’re not going to come back until somebody comes in this house. So I went in there and basically it was someone that lost loved ones during what’s it called the regular sisters who were still kind of releasing the waves. Like, you know, you don’t have to stay hanging around here anymore, kind of done.

0 (33m 24s):
But some of that paranormal stuff is just so cool. They were trying to get attention for people. You know, we did a hotel. That’s very haunted to kind of like when you’re talking about it, it was a brothel for a period of time. So she could kill her husband or her lover. And when you go there, you could feel the energy where I started coughing and choking and bending over. So your friend, maybe an impasse where they’re taking on sort of that energy and they haven’t figured out how to kind of reduce it anymore. I carry that with them. And if it’s a past life or whether she’s had something to hang on to that as well.

0 (34m 7s):
So yeah. When you use some of those, you kind of remember the experience, correct. I personally have walked into and turned around and walked right back out because of the energy. Yeah. And then I go to someplace that you go, Oh, this is so hard to go in there. And my questions, Steve, when you were having those experiences it up until Judy like, Hey, let’s go get some equipment. I go find haunted houses. How did that conversation come to fruition? You guys, what did you talk to your wife one day instead of let’s go buy this.

0 (34m 55s):
Okay, I’m going to tell this story. he was part of another group or a part of a group. And I used to make fun of him. I’m like, Oh no, that’s not right. That’s what you’re doing is crap. That’s how can you believe that stuff? Right? And then one night I was home alone and I was reading a book. My bedroom door was closed and all of a sudden there was bam, bam, bam on the door and the door flew open. Nobody there, I get the baseball bat out from underneath the bed. I’m looking at all the house, whatever come to find out. My brother had passed at that time.

0 (35m 38s):
My sister

5 (35m 39s):
Called me like four in the morning and at 10 o’clock tomorrow, 10 o’clock or so is when he had passed. And that’s what I had experienced. And I’ve done a little research and they call that a fly by it’s somebody that goes by in they’re saying goodbye. Right. Pretty much. But, so that piqued my interest. So I joined the group he was in. And like I said, sometimes there’s things that people don’t get along with or whatever. So we kind of split off and we formed our own group and acquired equipment and decided, you know, we were going to take more of a scientific approach if we could. And that’s how that started. But I used to make fun of him for this.

4 (36m 18s):
Gary, tell your brother.

5 (36m 27s):
Absolutely. He showed up at the house during a paranormal. We had a Christmas party for the paranormal group and all of a sudden the music cut out and we could hear laughing up in our loft area. There was nobody up there. It was my brother. It was just so distinct. It was

4 (36m 42s):
Yeah, all the time. Tell them to leave me alone. So when you guys are doing these recordings is your hope that people will really realize that there is an afterlife or that energy continues on or their loved ones are close by me. What is the intention for what you do? The research you do

5 (37m 9s):
Is to help the people that need it that are upset or scared even. I mean, I mean, we’ve gone to homes and just found high EMF readings and had people move their beds or whatever. And then it stopped because it was just, you know, something in the home.

4 (37m 25s):
And I think sometimes there’s some in a weird way, like, especially with, with homeowners business owners, there’s some counseling almost involved too, where it’s, you know, there may be things going on in their own lives that is happening. That’s I mean, like leads to the paranormal stuff or whether or not the paranormal isn’t there and we’re not fighting it there, but there, you know, whenever you, I think whenever you talk about paranormal, especially with people, you gotta be real careful. And I found this early on in the group is that people will want to show you their paranormal stuff. And you know, by looking at it it’s dust. But if you go to them and say, Oh my gosh, that’s okay. As dosh did I just dismissed you.

4 (38m 6s):
They get people. People really want to Harbor those. Like if they believe it’s something or they believe it’s a family member or somebody that they need, they need to know that it’s them. And then I go in and I go, well, it’s dust that I’ve just brushed that individual, holding that hope, you know, that, that, that family member or something is still watching over them are still in their life, which they are, we know they are. But at the same point, that picture is not that evidence. It’s really,

0 (38m 39s):
It’s a fine line. And so I think, I mean, I know for me personally, maybe not tough speaking for the team, but I know that that now when, when somebody does that, I approach it completely differently and say, you know, what is it that you believe it is? And we start from that and then just kind of talk to them a little bit about it and about what that person meant to them and everything else and say, you know, there’s a lot of things that this could be, but if that’s, if that’s what you feel that it is, you know, and I hate to do, I hate to see that, you know, like I said, I’m speaking for myself, not necessarily the team in this, but ethics that we have to show up for because there aren’t written ethics. And so you’re trying to really honor someone’s fear or the situation they’re in.

0 (39m 22s):
And so you approach it by an individual basis. And I do that with my clients the same way, because it is tangible. And so, you know, you want to help them be able to embrace it and understand it. And if you grow from it and benefit from it. So I totally get where you guys are coming from. Each class can be a little different. They dealt with in their entire life. So someone’s gonna have to say Jimmy, if we don’t find anything or any evidence of the paranormal, we don’t feel about it. I mean, we, we flat out tell him that we didn’t have any evidence and there still might be something there.

0 (40m 9s):
But if they feel that feel that they needed another investigation, either from us or from a sister group or whatever, we will recommend that as well. So do you go on these times to Heidi? You’re kind of sitting in the background there. I do. My, I just started out wanting to do date night with my husband.

7 (40m 31s):
No, that’s a new one. Okay. I’m sorry with,

0 (40m 33s):
That should be out there. We had a four year old and two three-year-olds. So we were like any chance we could get to be alone in the dark.

7 (40m 53s):
Hopefully all the hands are your husband.

0 (40m 57s):
Well, what’s funny is we go on investigations. I always use leave her and Gary and I go off romances, legendary you walk into, and Heidi is a sketchy or I’m curious, or at least I’m watching gene divers and making dinner. I mean, what was sort of that interest? I went into early, not expecting much. I mean, I had had a few experiences growing up, you know, but my parents live in an old house and you know, it’s hard to say if it’s just the old house or if it was actually something, I wasn’t really going into it expecting anything to happen.

0 (41m 46s):
And my first time something happened, so it was a private and it was not caught on tape because we were all done investigating. And when I, we were just turning lights on and taking things down and I very distinctly when somebody whispers in your ear and it was really forceful, it was up. And I thought the person that was upstairs with me was right behind me doing that. And I turned and I said, did you say something? And she goes, I didn’t.

0 (42m 26s):
She goes, did you hear something? And then we found out that the gentleman who owned the home, his mother used to live upstairs, that when she was annoyed with people, she would at people. So that was my experience. And then after that, I was like, okay, that was pretty cool. I was not, I wasn’t expecting anything to happen to me, but I, you know, I was kind of glad that it did. Cause it kinda opened it. We watched all the ghost shows and it is a lot. Everybody’s like, Oh my gosh.

0 (43m 6s):
So scary. I can’t believe we do that. And I’m like, really? You’re sitting in the dark talking to yourself most

4 (43m 12s):
Of the time. So you feel a little

0 (43m 14s):
Funny about it?

4 (43m 19s):
Yeah. Yeah. What, so I can show you, I know Jenny talked about peek-a-boo house. I can show you that. We also recently had a team member. We went out like I was talking about old South pit while we were there. We did a, a couple of team members, went out and did some civil Wars stuff in Franklin, Tennessee. And like last week, this is weird. Cause she didn’t even know that we had anything scheduled and she just got a thing on her iPhone that like said, Hey, you went to Nashville five years ago. Do you want to look at these pictures? So she pulled them up on her phone and started scrolling through and found some weird stuff.

4 (43m 59s):
So we haven’t shared these with anybody yet. And even as this is like, yeah, our team member, Julie, who’s been with us for a long time. She’s fantastic. I asked her if she could, she wants she’s vaccinated. So we’re like, you wanna come hang with us? And she had to work today. Otherwise she probably would have come in and presented this. But, but the, the, the, I believe called the McGavock cemetery in Franklin, Tennessee, the McGavock family, John and Curie, we’re responsible for, I guess, finding graves for Confederate soldiers.

4 (44m 39s):
So they had reentered 1500 Confederate soldiers on their property. So they have a McGavock family cemetery and Julia was walking when she captured these. So I’m going to kind of bring, bring these up for you. So this is the family cemetery. Julia is walking here and she’s just snapping pictures. And the second picture, she just wasn’t even paid. Like when you look at it like this and you scroll through on your iPhone, you wouldn’t even think anything of it. But what was interesting when she zoomed in and of course, why don’t you zoom in to anything? You start to lose quality right away. So there’s, there’s a, there’s a concept in, in, in, when we’re doing paranormal reviews called matrix, which is like your eyes just kind of make sense of things.

4 (45m 26s):
And so we always try to find ways to make sure that what we’re looking at isn’t matrix, but as we start to scroll in here,

3 (45m 34s):
Oh, I see it.

4 (45m 36s):
We’ve got somebody standing.

3 (45m 38s):
Yeah. Well, I just get chills

4 (45m 43s):
Is I have the timestamps on these photos and there are a minute apart, the two photos and they’re they’re pretty far apart. So somebody like in the cemetery or moving around the cemetery would have been noticed by Julie and the rest of the team that was with her that day. They didn’t notice anything. And then the other photos I have the first two are through our minute apart, the next one’s like almost 10 minutes as they’re walking a little bit farther past that they’re walking this path and they, they didn’t see anything. It wasn’t until just recently, like I said, that she’s zoomed in and she saw this figure standing in the, in the cemetery. What’s interesting is the red here. And this is where I’m having a hard time figuring out like if it’s fake or not, and you know, like not fake, but if it’s not paranormal, it’s something else that’s causing these.

4 (46m 31s):
But what I’m almost getting, we’re almost getting like this outline of a head. We could see this. And then what’s interesting. Is this here? I mean, it is kind of translucent too, so you can almost see through the figure, but what’s interesting is this here? It almost is like civil war era.

3 (46m 51s):
Yeah.

4 (46m 52s):
So I did a little research on the McGavock photos that, that the McGahn McGavock home is one of the, what they say most haunted locations in Tennessee, where, you know, where Carrie McGavick would sit on her. They people have seen her sitting on the family porch wearing pink, staring at the cemetery. They’ve also seen Confederates spirits rise from their graves and in inside the cemetery too. But I have not heard of anybody capturing Carey inside the cemetery, but I thought it was interesting though, is once I did a little bit more research and this is just me.

3 (47m 30s):
So here’s Carrie herself in the picture of her. I thought it was interesting too. If you look at the style of dress, you know, in a black and white picture, we’re not gonna be able to see if they wore colors around their collars like this. But I thought that was interesting. The other thing is, is I pull up a picture of John’s grave, her husband’s grave. And I’m again, I just found this today, but I am almost certain that the picture we have is Carrie’s standing right here next to this stone, looking at her husband’s grave. I mean, it feels like it’s to me and I got the chills, which is always for me a validation.

3 (48m 14s):
Yeah. It’s a real spirit. But yeah, if we pull that back up here and I’ll see if I can zoom back to that picture, right. You didn’t have shown up now where you see the soldier here is something on the left. That is interesting. It feels more than a soldier to me. This does. Yeah. It’s just like the male to me. Okay. But again, I think you’re right about the closing. Do you see, when you’re looking at that, see the far left, it looks like a gray stone.

3 (48m 56s):
That is transparent right there. Yeah. Yeah. You see that? Yeah. It looks like a transit, something translucent or transparent. There’s not a gravestone really there. No. Interesting to see if there was something there 50 years ago.

3 (49m 38s):
Yeah. Yeah. This made me want to go back to Nashville. So we’re going to start traveling again. Yeah, absolutely. Well, what do you want to leave? I mean, are you invited, you go to people’s homes, you talk about your website, kind of how you do this for a business. Yeah. I mean, it’s not every everything we do is completely non-for-profit. So we don’t charge for any investigations or anything like that. If somebody has any questions and they want us to come help them, we’re we do have an EVP helpline that people can call and leave messages and Jenny and the rest of the case managers can get back and just kinda talk about what’s going on.

3 (50m 18s):
So, I mean there’s houses or businesses. We try to stay within Illinois for some of that stuff, just cause it’s easier for all of our schedules. And you know, we, we do travel out of state, but typically for our paranormal and you know, paranormal like trips, a little vacation for us. Absolutely. But those are typically done, you know, with peoples, you know, around this area. So I have never smoke into those tenors to this for me was just really a blessing and fun and just love what you guys do. And the curiosity that you bring out there.

3 (50m 59s):
I know for Dan and I, this is really not him that you guys are willing to do this and share your stories, but we’ll let people know how to follow you and see you can post more things and then maybe reach out when they have some peer model. And if you’re out in Colorado places, including our house, yeah. We’re planning to get out and get out there. Cause our niece, our niece, Heidi and I, we, our niece lives in Denver. So at some point, make our way out there. This we’d love to host you and give you some good hunting. Thank you guys so much.

3 (51m 39s):
Thank you for having us. Well, that was fascinating.

Deb (51m 43s):
It is because it’s sort of outside my realm of what I do, but also people that connect with spirits. So it was kind of nice.

Dana (51m 53s):
They really go looking to disprove everything. They want to disprove that these happenings are ghosts. But what we talked about that it’s more energy imprints and you agree with that. That it’s kind of more of an energy imprint that we can leave behind when we cross over, even though we are not here anymore or we’re in the spirit realm,

Deb (52m 23s):
I think it’s people understanding that we’re energy and energy. You can never destroy, never create. I mean, it’s scientific. I always say thumbprints are energy that’s left behind. It’s not a negative thing or something that they haven’t crossed over. I get asked that a lot like, are they stuck? I’ve always believed that I think humans in the human body are more stuck than those that are in the spirit world. But I also wanted to kind of give some tools that if you’re feeling a lot of energy in your house, you’re feeling that maybe kids are scared or you’re uncomfortable and you want to move that energy. It’s sort of like making your guests uncomfortable. So they’ll leave.

Deb (53m 3s):
Yeah. My mom always said, don’t make the room too comfortable. Don’t feed them too well because you don’t,

Dana (53m 8s):
Don’t put good pillows on the guest bed.

Deb (53m 11s):
That’s sort of the same thing in the spirit world. If you’re feeling uncomfortable, if you’re going through a lot in your life and you just feel like this is one extra guest that you don’t want, really look at the history of the home. Look at the history of the land. I have that have purchased homes where someone had died in the house and they still feel their spirit. They’re okay with that. They welcome it.

Dana (53m 33s):
So I guess this is kind of twofold, right? Like if it’s your loved one, people ask for signs, they want signs. They want their loved ones to be around. They want them to see what they’re going through and they want to feel them. But if it’s somebody else’s loved one, we’re like, okay,

Deb (53m 52s):
People have to realize that’s what I do for a living. I’m communicating with other people’s loved ones that are in our home. So to me it’s like the more you can kind of connect with these energies and know why they’re there, that’s going to help you expand yours, but it’s also depending on what you believe, what you feel, what you want to deal with, and what’s going on in your life.

Dana (54m 16s):
So number one, you tell people not to do ouija boards. Those give me the creepiest…

Deb (54m 21s):
The only reason I don’t like people, I don’t mind if people use tools and we, you know, we have them on our website and I bring tools into a home or a business when I’m doing work. But the ouija board was founded on really negative energy. I just don’t know what the intention is with those, for people that are using them. So I don’t recommend them, but if it’s something you’re really comfortable with and you’ve used for a long time, that’s great. It was just something that I would not highly recommend is to connect with that. Our whole soul or how body are, is an antenna. We can connect. It’s just whether we opened up enough, we process that we don’t get into fear and things like that. You don’t need all these devices. The devices are just tools to help validate if you’re getting something.

Dana (55m 4s):
So what would you say are the top five tools you can use to help you with energy that you’re feeling that you don’t want in your home? Let’s say it’s either residual energy or you think it’s a ghost or you think it’s something you don’t want in your home. An unwelcome guest. Yeah.

Deb (55m 25s):
I, to me, that’s the way to look at it. So, you know, you can do things by even just asking them to leave. You can say if you need to be here for a reason, let me know. Most of the time they don’t have a message for you. People want to know, is there a message for me, there’s just kind of like, hi, guess what I mean? Well, you know, cause I’ve done that.

Dana (55m 43s):
You’re saying, just ask them to leave. You ask them to leave. So verbally,

Deb (55m 47s):
Totally. If that’s not happening, it’s an old relative that you don’t want around anymore, you can do things like a ceremony of any sorts. If you have a religious background, you can use any of those kinds of things, but you can even like, Holy water, you know, you can burn Sage, you can do drumming, you can do great music. You can basically say that I really don’t want you to unless you want to pay rent, you got to leave.

Dana (56m 15s):
So number two would be, do a ceremony of some sort, whether it’s burning Sage. So sageing your home. Which you have the home cleansing kits that have the Sage and the crystals.

Deb (56m 27s):
So if anyone feels like they really need that cleansing, and that cleansing can even come from a change in your life. Let’s say you’re getting divorced or a child has moved out or there’s just a big change you can bring in that cleansing kit just to kind of get rid of that energy. Maybe you don’t want in your house and you want to start over. So it’s for any type of energy that you’re looking for. One thing that I I’ve learned through this process is having a big fun party. I know we have COVID, but you can invite a few friends over that have been safe from COVID

Dana (56m 58s):
Can it be on zoom?

Deb (57m 0s):
It can be on zoom and have a little party. If you drink bring out some champagne, play some great music, have some good food..

Dana (57m 8s):
And just with intention, right?

Deb (57m 10s):
Intention of bringing up the vibe and allowing that spirit or soul to move on. I know I had one reading this was years ago and went to their house and it was just so heavy. I said, play this music all the time and really have fun and party. Within a few days, the energy shifted because they brought up all this energy that was positive. And you know…

Dana (57m 33s):
When you say party, you can include alcohol, but it doesn’t have to. You mean like turn on music, dance around the room, have fun

Deb (57m 43s):
Watch comedy. Yeah. You know, it could be anything that you believe is your party. You can paint, you can read a great book. You can have friends over and play a game. It’s just bringing it up that vibe and that energy. I think the biggest thing is most people know what makes them feel good and what makes them feel sad. Just remembering that those things that you want to bring in is going to be helpful. If you’re feeling a lot of energy in your house that might be negative. Is there a lot of stress? Has someone been sick? Is there been unemployment issues? What things have been going on in your life that you feel all of a sudden this other entity and what we can think sometimes is all as the entity that’s doing this when it really is attracting that energy to say, this is what’s going on.

Deb (58m 32s):
,

Dana (58m 32s):
So you’re attracting it. You’re mirroring your mirror. The universe is mirroring what your projecting.

Deb (58m 37s):
Yeah. So how do you feel like when let’s have just make chocolate chip cookies and milk and have fun, whatever that is. Do kind of shift that. And put the intention that you’re going to be Okay. Cause I think when we live in that fear based place and feel like there’s no hope that’s when all that other energy can be almost a distraction for us versus understanding why they’re there.

Dana (59m 0s):
Okay. So one other thing I think that you’ve talked about is things of the earth, like stone or gems or rocks. I know in your kit, you have selenite, which cleanses energy in your home. You also have amethyst, which raises the vibration. So placing things in certain places in your home will change the energy or vibe or help you change that energy or vibe as well.

Deb (59m 32s):
One way to look at this, to make it simplistic is when you go into a room, whether it’s a bedroom or a craft room or a bathroom or kitchen, you look at it and think what makes me feel good here? Where should the artwork go? How about the lighting? What is the texture or the colors? All those things mean something. We went to a friend’s house yesterday, briefly, and he collects rocks. I was just like, wow. I mean, he had these large rocks in his house, which probably really helps ground him. He’s very calm. He’s always just very grounded, very chill, very chill. So nature is a great, I mean, mother earth knows how to cleanse and she knows how to change energy. So anything that you get from mother earth is going to really help those things too.

Deb (1h 0m 14s):
Intuitively we all know where things feel like, as we’ve been changing things in our home, we go put something there we go, well, we’re not sure. Then we move up and go, yeah, that feels right. So to me, we can put things in a box and say, this is what you can do. Like your intuition is going to tell you what feels right.

Dana (1h 0m 32s):
So we have, that’s like number four, bury the rocks, or, bring in other stones, bring in mother earth, clean water,

Deb (1h 0m 41s):
Fresh flowers, plants would be the fifth thing. Well, just before we go on, Dana is that person that has at least 50 plants that are all very healthy. Bringing in live healthy plants and healthy animals is definitely a positive thing too.

Dana (1h 0m 60s):
We try to follow yourFeng Shui practices with the Western Feng Shui guide, which it’s very simple. It’s very simple to understand, and people can find that blog on your website, but we try to place plants in places that bring in life in certain places like our health corner or

Deb (1h 1m 22s):
Recently Dana’s been working on our health corner because I’ve been in the last year, I’ve been in the hospital twice and getting healthier, but she completely shifted her office space. And brought in some plants that are going crazy. We just got artwork today. Part of it is just to change the energy and the intention. That’s what all of this is about is clarity, intention and things like that.

Dana (1h 1m 48s):
Right. So one of the things I’ve heard you talk about too, is using salt around the perimeter of your home.

Deb (1h 1m 59s):
Yeah. There’s so many things that people can do and it’s, again, I’ve always told people it’s your intention. If you’re really feeling there is some negative, heavy energy, whether it’s from the land or who’s lived in the house before, or what’s been going on, you can take salt, what’s the kind of salt I’m thinking of, it’s a Himalayan. You can do that. Then there’s also another salt. I’ll think about it and just a minute. But it’s just some salt. You go around the perimeter, either of your building, your house or the land or whatever that looks like for you. Can be the front door and going to the areas that you can connect with.

Deb (1h 2m 40s):
Again, you’re saying a mantra or an intention of that this house was protected. There are boundaries there. So energy cannot leave or energy can leave. They can’t come in. But again, at the same time, you want to make sure that the energy is set up, that you’re trying to remove things that are not good. It might be that you have some negative things in your house. You may have things that people gave you that you’re no longer in a relationship with. Do you want to keep those things? The salt that you put around your home is to really say, these are my boundaries. This is my place. You only can be invited in.

Dana (1h 3m 16s):
Again, setting your intention. It’s not necessarily a magical trick, but it’s setting your intention so that you and the energy around you have clear boundaries.

Deb (1h 3m 28s):
A lot of us don’t. I mean, I know I’ve had to learn over time to be more vocal about boundaries. I still struggle with those things, but it’s also okay just saying, you know what, I need to make some changes and creating whatever symbolism or tradition that you feel is right for you.

Dana (1h 3m 44s):
Yeah. Well that was so fun talking to the guys from the ghost Hunter paranormal investigators. That was really cool.

Deb (1h 3m 55s):
Hopefully we can have more stories from it on another feature. We invited them, of course you heard to come to our house cause it’s got lots of energy. Thanks for joining us once again, on spirited straight talk.

Dana (1h 4m 8s):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Spirited straight talk. If you enjoy the show, make sure you subscribe so that you get notified of new shows. We’d also love it if you’d leave us a review. And let’s connect, visit Deb sheppard.com for more insights support workshops, and to book a session with Deb, plus enter to get a free reading with Deb. All you have to do is sign up for the email list and you’ll automatically be entered. Just go to Deb shepherd.com. That’s Deb S H E P P a R d.com.