Letters From the Beyond 10

0:20 A cool friend. It's me Adrian or Aiden. Either way, I am still your host and you are still listening to SOUSTO, the Podcast of paranormal folklore from Latin American cultures. Welcome back, thank you for reanimating, for rejoining me, and if this is your first time, thank you so much for being here. I've gotten comments from first timers, like this one from Shadow on the Witch Trials of Chilowe and Shadow said, found you on the Cryptid Cocktail interdimensional Swap. Major shout out to Cryptic Cocktail Party for doing that swap with us last episode. Shadow continues, I'm really liking this podcast, Shadow, I like it too. I love everything Cryptid and love learning from other cultures. My mother was from Limerick, Ireland. They have tons of cool shit. Pops was from the American South and they have some wonky shit too lol. Looking forward to going through your back catalog and then two of these guys, these Cowabunga scigns, which you can see if you're subscribed on Patreon. Thank you, Shadow, that is so cool. Listen. There is tons of times where I come across folklore from other cultures. Of course, we're constantly doing that on the show, and I'm sure that I've made connections to stories from Ireland. Ireland has some of the coolest stories out there. It has some amazing history. I also looked up this place, Limerick, and it's beautiful. I want to go visit. Jeff and I have been wanting to visit Ireland for so so so long.

1:51 It's beautiful. It's just a little expensive right now, but that is definitely on our list of places that we want to travel to listen. I don't know what it is, or I do know what it is. It's history, but the Irish Mexican solidarity is so strong, so I'm excited to go and be with my Irish brethren and just like revel in the anti authoritarianism that I know runs deep in the Irish roots as well, So very excited for that. Either way, I'm so glad that you're liking the show Shadow, and I hope that you continue to like it really quick. I want to do a recap of some things. A lot has happened since I last spoke to you. Strange and Extraordinary Fest was last Saturday from when this episode comes out, and it was so much fun. I am definitely adding host and MC to my resume. They asked me to m see the event, and I was not gonna lie pretty nervous because I'd never done anything like that before. I've sat on panels, I've done interviews, I guess in a way I have, like I've led my own.

2:50 Events, but they're very small kind of. This is the thing that we're like, we're doing like a live storytelling, right, so it's just like doing Sustal in person. This was something completely different. I was essentially guiding the audience through the entire experience through the day full of panels. I was there from eleven am till eight pm, and there was back to back sessions all day long. It was so much fun. I met a lot of cool people. I'm very happy. I was very proud of myself at the end, especially because a handful of people made it a point to come up to me and let me know, Hey, you're doing a great job. It's been so entertaining. It's so much fun. Like in terms of what I was doing up there, which I was just trying to be my be yourself, I really was just trying to be myself, but still you know, try and be a professional, right, Like we were there to do something. So shout out to the organizers and everybody who attended and all of the speakers and the vendors who participated. I thought it was really cool. So listen, the goal is bookable. If you want me to MC your event to host something for you, I got it.

3:54 Apparently I can do it. So you let me know. That was so much fun. But anyway, something else that happened this weekend Sunday. This last Sunday, we had our book club meeting for Witchcraft for a Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix. I think the scale of the book club, which I haven't really spoken about too much publicly, but the scale for the Susto spell book Club is a book is either cursed it's text so it's maybe we didn't like it so much, or it's charmed and we liked it a lot. And on the spectrum, this one fell more on the charmed side. I'm gonna give her really quick. My personal opinion is I have read almost all of Grady Hendricks's work, and he is one of my favorite authors. I really enjoy reading his books. This one I did enjoy it, but I would have to say I think it falls towards the bottom of like if I had to rank all the books that I've read from him, and that's just my personal opinion, and that is also because I still did really like it, So it's not like it wasn't good. It's just that I would encourage you to read his other books as well on top of this one, because they're all really really good. With that being said, the next book should have been announced by the time that this airs, So if you're listening to this publicly, it comes out for everybody on Thursday, So that means that this was announced yesterday. Yes, if you were a subscriber on Patreon, that means that you get the episodes early in ad free, So this may be announced tomorrow or today, depending on when you're listening. Hey, listen at the end of the day. Just make sure that you're following social media at sustol podcast on every platform and you will get any and all updates about

5:26 the show, including the book club and what we are reading. Reminder, the book club is open to anybody. Anybody can join in. You just grab your copy of the book you read along throughout the month, and then we have the meeting at the end of the month. However, Patreon subscribers do get to vote on what we read, and they have access to the Discord channel throughout the month of the reading. It's a spoiler free channel. We do just kind of like update, like where you at, where you at? Did you read this yet? What did you think? So it's a lot of fun. I have one with that. At least, speaking of fun, something really cool is happening. Sousto's seventh anniversary is coming up this month in April. It's April nineteenth, which is mind blowing. I say this every time I say this every year. It's mind blowing. Seven years we've been doing this. So I don't really.

6:06 Have anything big planned. I will say, though, I think by then something that Jeff and I have been working on will have come to fruition. Two things actually, And I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say I have been dropping hints on Instagram and I think I may drop a major hint on Patreon before an announcement happens. But I don't want to jinx it, you know, I just I want to I want to let it happen and then we'll see it, and who knows. Maybe I'm doing all this talking now and then it doesn't happen, right, But I highly doubt it because we have put a lot of work into this. What I feel is the next evolution of the show. I think it's the next step, and I'm very very excited, and I'm very excited to share it with you all. So yeah, just stay tuned for updates. Okay, All right, With all of that being said, we are going to go ahead and get into today's episode, which is a Letters from the Beyond episode, and I want to encourage you all to continue sending in your stories.

7:03 Please visit the website sustopodcast dot com click that submit a story button. It's also on my link tree if you're on social media, and there's also a link to that in the description of this episode. It's a really nifty little Google form. You just fill it out send your story in. If you have multiple stories, please put them all in one entry or separate ones however you feel comfortable. You can also send in multimedia. There's a little section in that where you can drop in your media. So if you have a photo, a video, an EVP, anything that you think I should share on the show or on social media, please feel free to send it in. We love to hear your stories here, and there's some of my favorite episodes, because that's what this show is all about, right, It's all about swapping the scary story.

7:44 So again, make sure that you share yours prod around. Ask your family, ask your friend, ask your co workers. Do you have any scary stories? Has anything weird or spooky happened to you? And then either you send it to me or you have them send it to me and you watch them. You say, open it on your phone right now and you watch them. I'm kidding, but I would highly encourage that you encourage your wool friends to send their stories in because that's what keeps this kind of episode going in. I don't know about you, but I. Really like it. Okay, all of that out of the way, let's go ahead and get into today's Letters from the Beyond. So this first one is actually more of a follow up, I would say, than like a full story. But this is from Elena, and Elena wrote in hello Aiden or Orla Aiden, Hello Elena or Orla Elena. My name is Elena.

8:40 If I say Elena one more time, And I was Liam's sister who introduced me to your podcast and the one who watches The Exorcist the Conjuring the Nun at three am and doesn't get scared. If y'all remember, Liam wrote in the I think the most recent episode of Letters from the Beyond, so Letters from the Beyond number nine. Liam wrote in about some. Experiences that his sister had, and Elena is now writing into us, and she continues, he only has one sister who is me, and I've turned sixteen on the fourteenth of January. Happy belated birthday. Elena, She continues. My story goes that I went to the Cooper Queen Hotel with my friend Amata, Keana, Kathleen, Alexis or Alexi and Lily earlier in January, just after New Year's and it was a very unforgettable experience. For those who don't know, The Copper Queen Hotel is a three star hotel in Bisbee, Arizona, USA, and it's famous for being haunted by several ghosts, including a woman named Julia Llel often in Room three fifteen, a mysterious Irish Stonemason who fell from Room two eighteen, and a young boy named Billy. The ghosts Julia Llel in Room three fifteen.

9:52 The most infamous spirit a woman who reportedly haunts the hotel, with only men seeing her apparition and hearing her voice. Billy, a young boy whose voice and laughter are heard but who has never been seen. The Stone Mason, an Irish stone mason who died after falling from Room two eighteen, making it a particularly active spot. Other spirits, a bearded man lurking in shadows, and a woman who tragically took her own life, are also reported. The story is that I was playing charades with my friends in Room two eighteen and we were laughing and having fun. When it was Keana's turn. She went up and we all swore we heard a little kid laughing. We brushed it off until Amada finally guessed what Kana was acting, and as Amada went to grab her phone, it wasn't there. She found it in the bathroom the next day. On the last night, we all had our suitcases packed.

10:49 By the door. When we woke up, the room was a mess and our suitcases were by the window, open and empty. We don't all know what happened, but each night we heard a kid laughing and believed it was Billy, the kid who haunts the hotel. Take care of yourself, aiden yours truly, Elena, Elena, thank you so much. That is honestly, I don't know how y'all even made it to that final night after hearing all of those things and your items being moved around, and then on top of all of that, your final night, Billy the Kid played this wild prank on you. Honestly. Here's the thing, though, is I am the type of person when I travel, I become more type A like.

11:31 I'm the kind of person that when I get to my hotel room, I unpack. I move into that room, so that means I take all of my clothing out of my bag or my suitcase whatever it is, which is folded pristinely by the way, and then I place it into the dressers that are in there. Of course I always check the bibles for money first, you never know. But I place my clothes I laid like if it's my room, everything is laid out. And then I go in the restroom and I lay out all my toilet trees on the counter, and I set up all of my shower stuff in the shower like I fully like I need I neither to be a routine. That being said, when I'm leaving hotel room the night before, I go through and I pack what I don't need to see until I get back home, and I set up, like especially the restroom stuff, like the toilet trees and my skincare routine and all that stuff. I set it up in a way that I'm like, as soon as I'm done using it the next morning before I leave, it goes in the bag and it's ready to go. You know, there's a whole system. So if I, like you all were packed, you were ready. If I had pre packed, I did all that work, and then I find out that Billy the kid just tossed my shit around as a joke. I would first of all rude. I would be so mad. I'd more than scared. I'd be like, dude, really, I have a system. Why would you do this to me?

12:45 I have to now do everything all over again. So terrible joke that Billy played on you all. This next submission is from Cassandra, and Cassandra said, without my little sister, I would have thought I was out of my mind. From the time we could talk, we told our parents we could see things in the middle of the night, we would wake them up. Mom, I'm scared, there's a little girl in my room. Dad, I saw the old man again. Just go back to sleep, honey, it was just a dream. Eventually, my sister started knocking on my door instead. Did you see them tonight, Yeah, I'd say, and she'd crawl under the covers together. Was the only way we were able to sleep. Our house was half a mile from a cemetery. We went there often to play and talk with the spirits and shadows lurking between the headstones.

13:51 We peeked at coffins. Visible in the side of newly dug graves, and always knew when a funeral was. About to happen. One evening, standing near the entrance, a voice yelled, get out, rude. I think I know it's getting late, but he could have asked nicely. Seeing, hearing, and feeling entities became commonplace. We could hear them chatting and moving things around in the kitchen, and see them darting between rooms. Almost every day. During a particularly active time, we regularly saw a little girl, the old. Man, and the lady. In an attempt to verify our experiences, we each took out a piece of paper and described these three to show each other. We wrote down the same defining characteristics.

14:40 The little girl curly blonde hair, wearing a goofy white dress covered in lace, always mischievous and smiling. The old man a big, downturned nose with long white hair that hung over his chest. The lady straight, black hair, black clothes, skinny. We could never see her face. We didn't like the lady. The old man appeared to me often. I slowly got the impression he wanted something from me. So one day in the cemetery, I listened, go to the back under the pine tree. There I found a headstone hidden under dirt and grass. I cleared the debris, pulled the weeds around the forgotten stone, and placed a wild flower there for good measure. With a thank you and a warm feeling, I didn't see the old man again. The little girl preferred my sister. She would peek around corners, ringlets, bobbing and giggling, teasing my sister to join her in a game of hide and seek. One night, my cousin became involuntarily included in our little world. My sister and I were playing in her room when our cousin came in with a confused look to me, my sister. He asked, how did you change so fast?

16:04 Change? She questioned that big white dress, why were you wearing it? And how did you get from the living room to hear? She's been in here with me since you got here, I offered, as his eyes widened and his skin grew pale. We laughed it must have been his first time seeing a ghost. As for the lady, we couldn't sleep when she was close. We could feel her coming down the hallway and quickly turn on all the lights and huddle together under our blankets. She would stand in the doorway just watching us, her face blurry and contorted. On nights we were able to fall asleep, we would wake up screaming, with her standing over our beds, her oily black hair and tattered dress inches from our face. Our parents eventually listened to us and called in a priest to send her away. I ever had the courage to ask her what she wanted. Cassandra, this is amazing writing. If you ever feel like writing a story for SUSTL, you let me know you send one in and we will work it out. Because this was great. I mean, I truly I would imagine experiencing these things would be terrifying if these were actual experiences. But this was just so like written, like a true narrative. I loved reading this. I'd like and when I first got it, and I love reading it just now for everyone. Also, the bravery of you and your sister to just go play at the cemetery nearby.

17:35 I remember this reminded me the first time that I ever played with in quotes or used a Ouiji board or a spirit board, a talkingboard, what have you. I was at Surprise, Surprise theater camp, the first time I ever went to a theater camp. Was it the first time? Anyway? And one night we had like an off night where we didn't need to be up super early the next day, and so the group of boys that I made friends with, which was a couple of guys from my high school and then a couple of other guys. This was happening at some community college here in Texas. I forgot where exactly, but we were staying in the dorms. We realized on the first night that we were there that the boys dorm where we were staying there was like an alley way behind it, and then right on the other side of the alley, like ten fifteen feet away from the rooms was a cemetery and obviously we weren't allowed to go in there, and they had people making sure that we weren't sneaking out of the dorm at night whatever. But this like we could be within the dorm hanging out. And so on this night we were like, oh, fun, we can stay up late, we can hang out. You know, we're high schoolers, were kids, so we like wanted to have fun because we.

18:40 Didn't need to wake up early anyway. So our idea of fun was to make a makeshift Ouiji board. So of course we had paper and like markers and stuff, and so somebody drew it out and then I forgot what someone used. I think someone had like broken their glasses or something, or like their lens popped out of their glasses. So we were using the lens as the plant chet. And that was the first time that I ever used a Ouigia board. And that night we swore, you know, we swore that we were getting a genuine response and based on some of the other because I know I can say to this day that I was not forcing the thing to move, and the other guys that I was playing with. Based on the reactions, it seemed very genuine, especially this one guy who I still remember. He got a message from allegedly from a friend of his who had passed away, and he was asking things that seemingly nobody else really knew the answer to, and he had such an emotional reaction to it that he it was like so it wasn't even like scary for him, It was more emotional that That's what caused him to like want to end it.

19:46 He was like, all right, we need to stop. I don't want to do this anymore. And I could tell he was like really shaken by it. But of course because the cemetery was right there, so I'm also I'm like shocked by your bravery as a child to go play in the cemetery. But also I was kind of same way. You know. Also even in my hometown, there's this one cemetery. If anybody out there knows this, if anybody out there is from ed Keuchelsea or has been there, there's that one cemetery in ed Couch that's like in the like the Boonie's part of the town, like way. In the back. That place was allegedly haunted, like weird things happened there. I want to say. My sister said that she saw something weird there one night. I should ask her about that, actually, but my friends and I would go visit that place too, so it's not like too far festive an idea for weird.

20:31 I was like us, I guess anyway, Thank you Cassandra for sending this ine all right. This next one is from Zach, and Zach wrote, my name is Zach, and I love the paranormal. It's always interested me as a kid, but it wasn't until my teens that I actively engaged in it. I'd always been a little sensitive to energies and saw things here and there throughout my childhood. Some background about me. First, though, I grew up attending Catholic school, and although my family isn't strictly religious, there were some things that were off limits, that being the Luigi board.

21:15 My then high school girlfriend had one. Although we played with Luigi more than once in multiple locations, I want to share the time I didn't play and something was haunting her. From the beginning, we encountered what was said to be a child spirit, and I could say the energy was off. We asked if there were other spirits in the apartment complex, to which our spirit, who we nicknamed Soul, said yes. In the apartment next door, there was a darkness, something that didn't feel right. My then girlfriend Jesse would dog sit for the neighbor and mentioned how the apartment always felt heavy, but chalked it up to the lack of light. The neighbor was a young guy living on his own. He rarely was there, but was a good guy overall. We had gone through a time when we hadn't played the board for a while.

22:07 Her mental health was not the greatest during this time, and it typically isn't encouraged if your mental health isn't steady. The moments where I felt everything was okay, I'd ask if we were going to play. Her response would always suddenly be I'm not in the mood, when for the longest time it was her suggestion. One night we got home kind of early, I wanted to play given that her dad was gone to bed early and had the energy for a long night. She quickly turned down the. Idea, which left me puzzled again, but alas the night went on, once in bed, I tended to sleep on the outer side of the bed facing out to the room. It wasn't an issue until tonight. I typically sleep with my back facing the rest of the room as I would cuddle her to sleep. For some odd reason, I was facing the room when my eyes opened. I don't typically wake up through the night, only if her dog Bruha, would be snoring in my ear to wake up and carry her onto the bed. In the midst of waking, I didn't even go through a drowsy state. I felt very alert. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was able to make out a shape kneeling in front of her desk. By this point, my eyes had adjusted and I could see around her room. It wasn't very dark, since light came from outside, but this figure was a void and it was wrong. The mere fact that it was in a traditional Catholic kneeling position of prayer automatically told me it was mocking. This figure was mocking my background.

23:42 I would say. I stared at it for a moment until it recognized or felt me looking at it, because its head slowly started to turn to face me. Nope, nope, nope. I quickly turned around, pulled the blanket over me, and grabbed onto Jesse, who, because of my jostling, woke up. What's wrong, she asked me, sleepily under the blanket I pulled over us. Just hold me and don't look behind me. Please. At this point, my biggest fear was that the figure was going to pull me out of bed. I could only describe this sense of dread and fear I have never felt before, just pulling me to want to turn around, but I knew better. The curiosity got the better of her, and she peeked out of the blanket towards the room.

24:31 You saw something. She sounded a bit confused and puzzled, and I knew she wasn't seeing what I saw. I'll tell you about it in the morning. Just please don't let go of me. I still felt that dreadful fear, and I knew it was still there. It was mocking me. In all my experience, this level of fear was unknown and it was malicious. She could hear it in my voice and the way I was holding on to her that she accepted having to wait until morning. I don't remember when I actually fell asleep, but eventually I did, and just as promised, the next morning, she right away asked what had happened. I told her, and even demonstrated where and how the figure was posed. She didn't really say much, which should have been a red flag. I kept repeating how I didn't know where this energy came from, especially since we hadn't been playing. She eventually broke her silence guilt. Perhaps she admitted to playing alone one night.

25:32 One night, she was terribly angry and emotional, but she said nothing happened, nothing moved or anything. I don't believe her, even to this day. I really feel her emotions caught the attention of a dark energy and it's been attached to her. Her life has been bumpy, to say the least. We've spoken to each other here and there over the years, and her energy has been more and more dull each time we see each other. Her dad's wife, who was a type of meeting, had always avoided her room when they lived in that apartment, claiming that there was too much energy, and eventually she read her cards. Jesse, My then girlfriend, told me Letty her dad's wife told her she had a dark energy around her. I don't think it's related to that night, but it lives in my head, rent Free. I do believe it has impacted her mental health throughout the years too. I've brought it up, but she doesn't seem to believe. So hope this was spooky enough.

26:30 I have more if you'd like. My friend group did a whole Wigi summer loo. Well okay, so instead of hot girl summer, or even instead of hot Ghoul summer, it's Wuigi board summer, right. I think that's the new one. I need to make a sticker or a shirt or something that is so fun. Listen, I feel bad, you know, for your ex. That's obviously like not a spot that someone wants to be in, and you even mentioned it. You hit the nail on the head where when someone is in an emotionally vulnerable kind of space or like even like a stressed out headspace, and we've talked about this before on the show, that's not really a good mindset or a good place to be emotionally or spiritually when you're entertaining or working with these kinds of things, whether it's purely like I said, from an entertainment standpoint, or if you are attempting to work with spirit if this is your religion, it's always best to be in a sort of like level headed space and more calm space, because even if you look into a lot of practices, they will a lot of it starts with meditating. It's always you got to meditate. You have to ground yourself, you have to set your intention, you have to you know, set the circle of light, whatever it might be. There's always this idea of like grounding and like getting your shit together basically before doing any of that work. With that being said, it seems like, yeah, you're right, she may need some help that is more of like a mental health and like a health kind of intervention before a spiritual one. Or at the same time, like I

28:00 mentioned earlier, the first time I ever played with a board was when I was in high school, and then I don't think i'd ever done it again from then until maybe like even just a couple years ago, Like it had been a while because I did it that once, and like I said, that guy he had such a strong reaction to it, and it put him in this headspace where again he wasn't even scared, he was just emotional. And I think that quote unquote scared me more than anything else. Was like, oh, like this could make you confront something that you're not ready to handle, and not even like a spirit or an entity or what have you. I'm talking about like mental emotional things that maybe you were not ready to deal with. This can surface that And so maybe that happened that night where she said that she played without you, and she claims that nothing happened, but maybe it's not like, oh, like something scary happened or this entity or whatever, but it's like it made her confront something that she wasn't ready for. And there are I'm sure entities that feed on that. They feed on that lower vibration. So it's not even that she like welcomed it because she played with the board. It could be that it was lurking around. For example, here it is I just got chills. It's tied together in that apartment next door, where there was already like a dark, heavy energy. Maybe that thing was already existing there, and because she had this emotional reaction, it like got us attention and it was like, oh, I'm going to go over there now because there's there's a spike in energy, so I'm gonna feed on that. And so it hung out there and you happened to see it. That's my theory,

29:30 and to me, that makes all I listen, I'm kind of a genius. No I'm not, but I don't know. That kind of makes sense in my head. What do you think? Okay, this is the last entry and this is from Uri, and Uri says, Hi, I just gave you a five star review on apple pot, Urie, thank you so much. Listen. You all, following URI's lead, go where everywhere listening, leave a positive rating or review. If there's stars, leave as many stars as you can. If there's no stars, then you can only write something. Please ride away, whatever you can do. It all helps me, so thank you Uri so much for that. Uri continues really enjoying the show.

30:23 I just found you two days ago, and as a lover of scary stories and the paranormal, I'm truly loving it. I decided to start from the beginning, so I'm on episode eight. Yay. Anyway, I have a lot of stories, but for some reason today my dad has been on my mind. I have a couple stories that relate to him. In twenty ten, my dad passed away pretty unexpectedly from cancer. He was and still is my hero, the hardest worker, strongest and kindest person I've ever known. I was the. Apple of his eye, his first daughter. I have three other siblings. At the time, I was nineteen, my sister was fifteen, little sister was eleven, and then my little brother was eight. I was the strength of the family at the time, because of course, my mother was a mess, and at the time I was the only one out of the house and my mom knew nothing about finances bills.

31:19 It all happened within three months. I had it slept in two whole days. I was exhausted when I came home from the funeral home the day after he passed, and my mom told me to go lay on her bed and take a nap. I remember it being around two pm or something like that. There was light out. As I'm laying there falling asleep, absolutely exhausted, crying in disbelief and angry. I started drifting to sleep. I could still hear chatter in the kitchen. I don't remember who was there, but there were constantly people at our house during that week. I was laying there with my eyes closed when I kind of opened my eyes and saw that my arm was hanging off the side of the bed as well as my leg. I had just thrown myself on the bed and I couldn't even move. I started to fall asleep again, when all of a sudden, I felt my dad. I could sort of see him walking towards the bed in my state of half sleep and half awake. It was as if I was watching him from a camera in the corner, walking towards me.

32:22 And that's when I felt my dad's hand to grab my leg, put it back on the bed, and kind of tucked me under the blanket. I sat up rapidly because I could feel him, I felt his hand. I was so exhausted at that point, I just figured I had been dreaming, and that's when I fully drifted to sleep. Then I had this dream. In the dream, my dad was sitting on his wheelchair towards the end with chemo and radiation. He had to be transported as he was very weak, but still he was the guy racing and trying to get away from the doctor's in the oncology wing to make them laugh. Anyway, in the dream, he was sitting on the wheelchair and it kind of looked like just a normal hospital room. He was sitting there and I was freaking out asking him what happened, but he remembered what he saw when he passed away before the paramedics brought him back, and I'm crying and telling him I thought he was gone. As I'm sitting there kind of on my knees hugging him, he starts telling me a story. He says, I was in heaven. There were clouds, And the weird part is that as he is sitting there telling me this story, I could actually see what he was describing in real time. He continues, I was in front of this golden gate and I was standing there.

33:39 When the door is opened, I. Heard a voice, and the voice said, bienaventurados los Limpio's the corasson, butgueos veranavjos. He says, he was able to walk through the door, and in my dream, I could see him on the other side hugging Jesus. Then I woke up again. I was crying. It felt so real, like I was just laying there listening to the story. Every time I tell this story, my mom cries. She says that this was his goodbye to me, that he just wanted me to know that he was okay. We put that Bible verse on his gravestone. Dream or not, it was the craziest thing. Matthew five eight.

34:21 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Beauty. Okay, I had our time reading all of these. There's two more stories from Beauty, by the way, but this one really got me because it reminded me. And I'm going to try and talk about this without crying. Aiden don't cry, challenge, try that challenge. This reminded me of a friend of mine. And I had a friend who passed away when I was in high school. He was in a terrible accident and his name was Martine and I remember after he passed. And the reason that this struck me so hard was because I had a dream after he passed that I walked into a hospital room and it was one of those like from the movies, like a hospital galley room. I don't know if that makes sense, but like where there's multiple beds and there's like the curtains dividing the beds. And I remember walking into this large room with all the beds, and as I was walking down, I like all the rest of them were empty. But as I was walking down, I looked to my left and I remember this dream so clearly, and Martin was sitting in one of the beds, and I started asking him questions like this too, like you said, you know, you're freaking out, and because like in the dream, like you said, here you thought he was gone. I was like, I in the dream, I knew that Marden was gone. I went to his funeral, I said goodbye to him, and I was asking him what happened, what happened?

35:54 Are you okay? Where are you? I was like, I thought you were gone. Where are you? He was like, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm okay. I'm not hurting. He said, they're taking really good care of me here. They're taking really good care of me here. And I was like, are you sure. I was like, are you sure you don't want. To come back? You can come back. He said no, he said I can't come back, but it's okay. I'm fine. He was like I'm fine, I'm okay. And I was like, all right, man. It was like I was in high school, you guys, and I was like, all right, man. I was like, we really. Miss you, and he was like, he was like, it's okay. He was like, tell everyone that I'm fine. He was like, I know that y'all miss me. But tell everyone, I'm okay, I'm sorry, y'all, but this story, that hospital setting like that, I had the dream so similar and I had to say bye to him, and I knew. I don't know what it was, but I knew for some reason in the dream that that was the last time I was going to see him. And I prayed so many times to see him again, to have more dreams about him.

37:01 But I just I knew. I knew, like you said, like that was his goodbye to me, because I never got I never got to say goodbye to him. And so God, you read this story really got me. You can tell. And I'm sorry forgetting super emotional, y'all, but this is a beautiful story. Thank you so much. I'm gonna read through the rest of them, but I thought I would share my story with you. I don't remember the last time I spoke about that. I think after I had that dream, I told my mom, probably, and I'm sure she said something similar like, well me, old you you have to say goodbye, you have to let him go, and I didn't want to, and I was angry too. That was one of my best friends when I was a kid, and it sucks to lose anyone you know, ooh Yuri. Okay, moving on to story too.

37:55 There's a reason that I saved these for the end, because I knew this was going to happen. Okay, Story two. Fast forward to twenty twelve. The healing has begun. Life is rough, but we're adjusting. We lived in Texas while my mom and siblings still lived in a little mountaintown in New Mexico. We were headed that way. It was the night before Christmas Eve. There was a storm coming, and we decided last minute that we would make the drive that night before the storm hit and we were stuck in Texas without our family at Christmas. We were exhausted. It was probably three thirty in the morning. At this time, we had made it most of the way. We were almost in the last hour of our four hour trip, which ended up being longer as the storms rolled in.

38:37 We had been keeping each other awake by talking. My ex husband was driving and my daughter was in the back asleep. We had run out of energy to talk, and I'm in the passenger seat, exhausted, not wanting to fall asleep, and watching my ex drive. He kept rubbing his eyes and I could tell he could not wait to stop at the next gas station. To get an energy drink. We start going uphill on the last hill before the next town, when in the windshield we see a huge white wing. My ex kind of slammed on the brakes and we both yelled what the hell was that? We were shook. We both saw the wing, each feather. The wing was as big as the windshield, and I mean it was so close to the vehicle that we both thought it was going to hit the windshield and moved our bodies backwards as far away from the windshield out of instinct.

39:28 We could see the details of the wink for a split second and then didn't see it anymore. We rolled the windows down to see what we could see. We were almost to the next town. It was pitch black except for our headlights, and no other soul was on the road, so we decided to just keep going and pull over. Then we were quiet the rest of the way to the gas station. It looked like an angel wing, huge white wing. It made me think of an angel costume wing, or it would have to have been a very, very very big bird. We stopped at the gas station, got coffee and energy drinks, and while he drove. The last hour, I kept trying to research eagles in the area or different species of birds. Nothing, nothing even close to the size of the wing we saw, or even a bright wing like that. To this day, my ex husband says he was about to fall asleep, so that it was my dad waking him up as he had precious cargo in the vehicle. I believe it, Urie girl.

40:33 These are all beautiful experiences. But oh my God, like my heart is, you got me, gl I know your intention was not to do it got me, but to share these beautiful stories. So again, I thank you once more for sharing that. And that is I truly believe that things like that do happen. You know that we have our guardian angels, that they prevent us from experiencing bad things, or if we experience bad things, they prevent them from being worse. Maybe. Yeah, I truly believe your dad was watching out for you and your family and was like, hey, that's my Nina in the seat, wake up. But then he happened to freak you out in the same time. So yeah, Okay, story three, And before I read this one, I do want to give a heads up so that no one is caught off guard that there is a mention of infant mortality in this story, So if anybody is sensitive to that, I just want you to know that this story and involves that. But Urie writes, my younger sister was pregnant with her second daughter when she found out the baby had a very rare genetic disorder and that the baby would pass away as soon as she was born due to her lungs not being developed. It was a shock, sadness, and craziness. My mom lived twenty five hours away from us at the time, and I was even in a different city as my little sister, so once again I was the strong one in charge of getting my mother from the other side of the country, flying together, then driving to the hospital where my sister was for the last twelve hours as they had to induce labor. I had not slept in at least twenty

42:05 four hours. We finally got to the hospital and she was in and out of consciousness as she. Was very drugged up. They told us the baby would not be coming just yet, but that they would give us an update in the next hour. The nurse took one look at me and she said, there's a room two doors down where you can take a nap. We'll let you know when it's time. I obliged. I lay down on this super uncomfortable hospital bed and I started to fall asleep again, not fully. I could hear monitors in the distance. I could hear voices, and all of a sudden, I see my dad. I see him next to me as I sleep, I feel him kind of touching my hair. Then walk to my sister's hospital room. He's in my sister's room. I see my sister crying in pain. All of a sudden, I see my mom on a chair, just sitting there. I see my dad go close to my sister, kiss her forehead, and then I see him holding a tiny baby in his arms, going to the corner, looking at my mom, then disappearing. I jerked awake and ran out of the door.

43:12 I opened the. Door to my sister's room, and my mom is crying and in shock. My sister is screaming, and all I can hear is her screaming my dad was here, My dad was here, My dad was here. Then, being hysterical, the nurse came in with more drugs and they tell us it's time. When she pushed the final time, the baby had already passed. They said the baby never took a breath, she was already gone. When I told my mom about my dream, she just cried and said that it was crazy because the moment I opened the door without anyone waking me up was the same time my sister had started screaming and pointing at the corner where I. Saw my dad.

43:53 That was one of the most horrible experiences my family had to go through, and I'm glad that my dad was there watching over us, and I know he's taking care of my niece in heaven. Uri says, thank you. I hope you enjoy these stories. I know they're a little different, but needless to say, they have stuck with me. Uri, I can absolutely see why these stories have stuck with you. I think, yes, you're right, your family had a horrible experience, several horrible experiences. But if there's any silver lining in this, I think is that you have been gifted several reminders that your dad is still there, that you are being watched over, and I hope that that's a comfort to you.

44:36 I can't imagine the kind of loss that you feel, and I'm trying not to get to so you can already hear to my voice, I'm y'all, I am chiyon. I am such a kry baby, and when somebody shares like deeply personal experiences like this, it's just like ugh, it rips my little Cancrian heart open and I just feel all the feels for you. So, like I said, I hope that it brings you some comfort. And I again, I thank you so much for sharing these stories with us and we're back cool friends. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Thank you to everybody who wrote in, and thank you for powering through with me.

45:25 I hope I wasn't too much of an emotional mass, but listen, I'm not gonna apologize. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I think it is a strength and I'm not going to feel shamed for feeling feelings because those were some beautiful stories at the end there, and everybody's stories were great. So please send in your stories. You have just seen a great example of a variety of different kinds of stories and you can so if you're hesitant at all, please do not hesitate. Send it in. Send it in to me. I would love to hear from you. I know everybody else would love to hear your stories. You can do so by visiting the website podcast dot com and clicking the submit story button, and there's also a link in the episode description below. You can support Susto by engaging with the show wherever you are listening, like I mentioned earlier, leaving positive ratings and reviews, commenting, following online on social media.

46:16 That's at sustal podcast on every social media platform. And you can also support susto for three dollars or more a month on Patreon dot com slash sustal podcast. And a big, big thank you to this episode's patron saints for supporting the show, and you are Liza Rachel, Alejandra Luther, April d Josette, Mandy Lauri, Genie, Desiree, c Ashes, Nedesa, rachel A, Asusena, Marlen, Chata, Laney, Desiree A Ricardo, Vanessa, Mariza Manormal, Iris, Floor, Selena Nightingville, Clint, Rachel w Armani, Bianca and Johano. Thank you so so much for your support.

46:56 It truly means everything to me, the underworld, the outer space, everything in between. I really really do appreciate it. I will talk to you all in the next one, and until then not sustas. Bye.