[SPEAKER_00]: There are several ways that people submit experiences for this show.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I say ways, it's usually by email, but they're normally either a full experience or a paragraph or sometimes even a sentence.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I usually just leave them at that and I read at what people send in.
[SPEAKER_00]: On occasion, what they've put in a paragraph, I think need a deeper look.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what you're going to hear today for a debut episode of Season 25,
[SPEAKER_00]: is exactly one of those.
[SPEAKER_00]: This started as a paragraph sent through to myself maybe a month and a half ago and over a series of back and forths it became the debut episode for season 25.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason for that is what you visualize as you are listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because when I read through the final completed edition of this episode, what I visualized stayed with me, honed
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't mean that literally, I mean that just subconsciously in my brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pictures were just flashing and making me kind of get a chill no matter where it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: And although we're in the middle of a heat wave, you can always still be terrified out of your skin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, as ever, it's down to you where your level of belief lies.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I, as the person who's interacted with this submitter, fully believe this experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: and so please.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first time in season 25, and the first time on video, lower the lights, make yourself comfortable, and of course leave your disbelief at the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we hear all about the holy demon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi Kev, I've never written in before, but I've listened to every episode I think twice, and I think it's finally time I got this experience out onto E-mail and sent to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll try to keep this in an order because it happened over years, not weeks or days, which is probably why it took a while for me to see the shape of what was going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just go to church on Christmas and Easter Catholic, as in proper devout Catholic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mass every Sunday, rosaries in the house, the lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mum was the one who kind of held all of that together.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad left when I was eight, no warning, just disappeared one Tuesday when I was in school.
[SPEAKER_00]: until she was diagnosed with cancer around six months later.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd just turn nine when she died.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember the priest at her funeral, saying she's with God now, and I remember thinking quite clearly for a nine-year-old.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he didn't do much for her while she was down here, did he?
[SPEAKER_00]: So obviously, a nine-year-old cannot live alone in a house, and I was shipped off to live with my auntie after that.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was my mom's sister, and she wasn't a bad woman by any means.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I say that now, because what I'm about to tell you may make her sound like an awful human being.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in reality, she just didn't know what to do with a traumatized kid, and back then, in reality,
[SPEAKER_00]: I started blacking out not long after I moved in with her, and these were serious blackouts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was lost, waking in places with no idea how I got there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be doing something perfectly normal, homework around the table, watching TV, and then I'd come around somewhere completely different to where I remembered being.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it was minutes, sometimes a chunk of the afternoon with disappear, and I'd have no memory of what I'd been doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet, even though I told my auntie, no one took me to see a doctor or a psychiatrist or anything like this, and I'd tell you this, because one morning I woke up and I went down to my
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I walked through the door, I noticed Kirby's cage door was open, and Kirby was lying on the table, dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I say dead, I mean his head had been twisted the full 180 back with his neck broken.
[SPEAKER_00]: he obviously hadn't done this himself, and the first eyes of suspicion landed on the girl who blacks out and doesn't know what she's been doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I understand that as a rational logical conclusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, what I now as an adult realise isn't logical or polite
[SPEAKER_00]: this is you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're a curse.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was on the day and in truth, she did apologize late, but the damage to me had already been done.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you see there's a thing when you're told your evil, etc.
[SPEAKER_00]: by a family member, by the person who is your caregiver.
[SPEAKER_00]: And although she didn't say, I know it became a fixed idea planted within her.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like she'd brought it into life, me being this evil person that snaps birds next.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now because of the blackouts I couldn't tell you if I did or didn't, but I truly believe I didn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, my auntie had decided I was evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I decided to give her evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I progressed through my teens, I lent in to evil, I became full goth, the eyeliner, I was reading about the left hand, path etc.
[SPEAKER_00]: My friend group, we were all kind of into witchcraft and mainly dark things, we would make blood packets with each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would try to do black masses, things you really shouldn't do, especially in that age.
[SPEAKER_00]: although, at the same time, I'm not ashamed of it either, because the truth is, it was some armour for a child to be protected.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, when you're a teenager, if somebody says you're the devil, you don't kind of say no, you lean into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I gave my auntie who she thought I was.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even up to the age of 19 when I finally left,
[SPEAKER_00]: Around that time I decided, maybe this life is it for me, when my best friend took her of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rumors abound that she was into all sorts of a major, occult blackness, but I don't think that was the case, I just think she had severe depression.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we will never know, or maybe I will one day, if I go to that place, but I won't
[SPEAKER_00]: However, I did decide to drop all of the darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything except the look.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still look like a god.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you saw me in the street, you would say there is a god.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I dropped all of the worship of the darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all of those things which literally, I didn't realize at the time, had affected me as a person.
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt like I had dropped a bag of everything, so when I did stop, which was exceptionally strange because I didn't realise I was carrying anything, but when I did stop, I felt lighter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I even considered going back to church, but I decided to church after the gods now helping your mother and me thinking, why didn't he help her back then?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this is where the story actually starts, can.
[SPEAKER_00]: So bow with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know there was a lot of scenes prior but this is why it all matters.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, about four years ago I was walking to work my usual route passing Bartholomew's, which is the church that I would go to on a particular road.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously that's not the real name of the church, but I'm trying to paint the picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now as I'm walking down the street, I see this old priest that stood outside of the gates of the church and there's a bus stop opposite these gates and as he looks like he's heading for the bus stop, he trips and lands really badly, dropping whatever was in his bag, et cetera, I ran over that street, I surprised myself without spontaneous reactions to that, but he properly went down.
[SPEAKER_00]: as in, could head, etc.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I ran over, I helped him up by, gathered his tins of the pavement.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was mortified, he kept apologizing, insisting that I was a beautiful person for helping him, and when we eventually got him fixed up in a local cafe, he said, I owe you a cup of tea.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now in truth, because I've been avoiding church, I thought to myself, well this is as close as I'll ever get.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, I'll sit with this priest and he seems like a nice guy, and he did.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was excellent company, he was warm, funny, in a dry way, he was easy to talk to.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he suggested we meet there, maybe want some more.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would meet and have a lovely few hours once a month in this cafe, then it became every two weeks, and I got to know, let's and let's about it, and that's the peculiar thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always interesting when you look back and realise just how easy it is to not realise something's going on when all somebody has to do is ask you about yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you'll find they have one hell of a hold of you and you don't realize just how vain you are in terms of, oh I'd love to tell you all about myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's only in hindsight I realized I asked them maybe three questions, but the questions I did ask are part of the reason I'm sending this email.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, I realized something.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, I'll get to that shortly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told him everything I told him all about my best friend, Chrissy, again, not a real name.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mother, my dad, Kirby's broken neck, my auntie, saying I was the devil, me deciding to kind of go that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I even told him about the group of people I hung around with, though I didn't mention the pact.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought, this guy's old, he probably hasn't heard sort of someone confessing to taking part in black masses, and who would want to give him that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as I say, he had this way of saying, go on, that made you feel human.
[SPEAKER_00]: If anything, it felt like the first time any of it had been properly heard by anyone since I was a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the other Goth kids had reacted in their own way.
[SPEAKER_00]: They treated my past like it made them unmay more interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: As opposed to something that actually happened to a child, but he listened.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was cathartic, genuinely.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to be clear about that because it makes what came after harder to accept, not easier.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see it's one thing to be frightened by a stranger.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's another when you realize the real fear has been sitting across the table from you all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: The real fear has been the one person who made you feel had less alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because somewhere when our meeting started getting into double figures, I began noticing things at the edge of my vision when we would be sitting together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not shapes of people but shapes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shapes that would move.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd be near the counter, they'd be near the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I say, they didn't move like people.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd just be there looking solid for a second and then they'd come apart like smoke losing its shape except quicker and wrong girl if that's a word.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it hadn't been smoke at all but something badly pretending to unravel like smoke.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told myself it was the light.
[SPEAKER_00]: Old cafes in the UK have bad lighting.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have patented wallpaper, especially this cafe, awful patented wallpaper that would play tricks with your eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it was a good while after these shapes appeared that I noticed the next thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And once I did, I couldn't stop noticing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, never once that I've seen this priest, who did give me his name, but I don't repeat it even giving him another name.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just can't bring myself to rename him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to leave him nameless for a reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: But never once that I've seen him on the church grounds, only outside the gate.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd wave me off as I would walk past as he'd go to the gate, but I'd never think to what she'd go through it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was always just stood at the gate never on the church grounds.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every single time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this is a very small thing you could say, and it's rarely not of my business what he does, but once I noticed it, it sat in me like a stone.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it was one of the questions I think, as I say, one of the maybe three questions I ever asked him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I brought it up gently, over tea.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tried to make a joke out of it and said, something like, you know, father, I don't think I've ever actually seen you go into that church, even past the gate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always just assume you do, and I kind of giggled.
[SPEAKER_00]: He laughed too, and stood, and said something about old habits, and that he like to make sure I was safe as I walked away.
[SPEAKER_00]: he said he needed the toilet, and I thought, that's a good explanation.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's been caring he's watching me, making sure I'm safe before entering.
[SPEAKER_00]: That very gentlemanly of him, and okay, fair enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he laughs walking to the toilet shaking his head.
[SPEAKER_00]: I smile and think I've been ridiculous, thinking that this poor old priest who's being kind, making sure I'm okay, is now some mysterious person, just because I've had rulings with things in the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I sip my tea, and I wait.
[SPEAKER_00]: Five minutes, ten minutes, and then I got concerned because this was an elderly gentleman.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the 20th minute of him not coming back arrived, I went to check myself, because by then something in me already knew something was wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't mean medically.
[SPEAKER_00]: The staff said, you can't go in, I asked them to go and check.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they came out and said, there is nobody in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, check again, I said, you did see the priest go in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even the lady who
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't explain it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are no windows in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I went back to my chair.
[SPEAKER_00]: I held my tea and I thought maybe he slipped past when I wasn't noticing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The more concerning thought was maybe you blacked out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I know that wasn't a case because I was looking at my phone, etc.
[SPEAKER_00]: and you had the time on your phone.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was pretty sure that was not the scenario we would deal with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I leave the cafe.
[SPEAKER_00]: No point being there if he's still haven't vanished.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't see or hear from him from maybe two weeks and then one day I'm walking to her past the church and I noticed him stood outside the gates, looking straight down at the pavement completely still, like an inanimate mannequin.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was going to just walk past as I was on the other side of the road and not make any sort of eye contact.
[SPEAKER_00]: But guilt, Catholic guilt, kind of got built up inside of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I waved, he didn't move.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, well, he's not in my eye line, everyone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: As you think, has seen me wave, I'm going to wave again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did, he didn't notice.
[SPEAKER_00]: I now felt embarrassed, as I know at least two people on the street and see me attempt to get his attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: The third wave, he noticed.
[SPEAKER_00]: thank God I thought, at least people now know we know each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: He looked at me and gave me the biggest smile I think I've ever seen him give since I've known him and he weighed back perfectly normal perfectly him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I smiled back and I looked in smile as I wore very carefully of course as I'm looking across the road.
[SPEAKER_00]: And about a second later, his entire face changed into some kind of fury I've never seen before on a living person.
[SPEAKER_00]: This wasn't just annoyance or someone who's looking to shout at someone this was total dark rage, venomously aimed at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stopped, and as I'm trying to think about why I could have upset him so, he copped his head back and spat in my direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, a priest, spat right at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though I was luckily across the street.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even so, I think I opened my mouth wide and was just like George for a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe 2.3 seconds later, his face dropped back into the warm smile.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he waved again, like this was some mere interruption, like none of it had happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sprinted to the next shop for safety.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was that terrified.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I came out he was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't there when I would walk past, but I decided I'm not going to risk it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want to see it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who would want to see that?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started getting a bus to work, which took much longer and it was much more out the way than my walk, which was kind of straight,
[SPEAKER_00]: However, thanks to this priest I am now getting on a bus and taking a tour of the area before getting to work each day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something I wasn't very happy with.
[SPEAKER_00]: However one day I'm sat on the bus, I'm thinking about something else.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he kept jumping in my mind, simply because this was someone I trusted, this was someone I was telling things to, I hadn't told anybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was wondering how he managed to get it out of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we just talk when the silence, I believe that's a thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, I noticed something else.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time I tried to remember a point where we'd had a cup of tea together, he seemed different to my head, as if someone was redraw oring the same person slightly different every time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But close enough that you'd still know it was him, however, a slight difference that you just couldn't
[SPEAKER_00]: It really got to me the fact that this guy in my memory couldn't hold a solid image.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one day as I say I'm on the bus I'm trying to force the images and memories of them out of my head completely, I start playing with my phone and I'm compelled to look up and when I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: sat directly in front of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But wearing civilian clothes is the same face.
[SPEAKER_00]: The same neck, the same skin texture, it's him.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the old priest.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's one jar and difference though.
[SPEAKER_00]: His eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, one of his eyes was blue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Previously there were both blue, but now one of
[SPEAKER_00]: and they didn't look like a person's eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: They looked like two separate things that are being pushed into some face by mistake.
[SPEAKER_00]: I screamed and I kind of fight it to get away from this man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I hit him accidentally in the process.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then his wife turned round and started trying to attack me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it turned out, this person was a real person.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was not the priest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though he was the twin of the priest, except for the different colored eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I left that bush so quickly I almost fell down the steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to the doctor shortly after that, because I knew I needed something but I didn't know what.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't tell him everything of course I gave him the very vague version.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said I'd been anxious, I'd been seeing things at the edge of my vision, I'd been struggling to sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: He put me on surgery, which is a standard response to what I just told him I guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first few weeks on the medication I felt flat, not better or worse, just leveled in a way that made me feel blank.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was nothing, and nothing is a strange thing to be frightened of, until you're living inside of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember being stood in a shop queue on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, the basket's half full, and thinking things over in my head, but the things I'm thinking on right, I know that now, but as I say, I was unfivalent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was genuinely thinking is my life worth anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could understand, wrongly, of course, how people could just take their own lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as I'm thinking this thought process through my head, the woman who was directly in front of me, in the queue, turned round and out of nowhere, mid-thought, like she'd had my thought, rather than being a thing in my head, she'd turned round and said, in your case, love, I'd end it, if I wish you, I'd just end it, it's best for everyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said it in the way you would tell someone I'm sorry about your dog's death, or the milk's gone off.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just information passed along kindly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then she smiled, she put her hand on mine, and her hand was ice cold, and I don't mean mildly cold, or more cold than mine, I mean ice cold.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she turned back to join the queue.
[SPEAKER_00]: But despite my ambivalence, some rage inside me just bubbled to the surface.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably, one emotion out of all of the ones that have been subdued, and I said, excuse me, what did you say to me, and I kind of touched on the shoulder.
[SPEAKER_00]: She spun round, completely bewildered, and scared, as did the entire crew in front, and the girl on the tail.
[SPEAKER_00]: and she said, I haven't said anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: The girl on the till back there up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Saying she didn't say a thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The woman in front of her said, are you okay, Lord?
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I wasn't okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I dropped my shopping on the floor and I ran home and sat on the kitchen floor for the best part of an hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the start of the worst week of my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I began seeing shadows at the edge of every room, every door frame.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't just confined to that cafe anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were in my own reflection.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were stood at the end of my bed at two in the morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were always in the corner of my eye.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were always gone when I turned to try and get a look.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I couldn't go back to the doctor even though I was thinking, I'm losing my mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: some part of me knew already by then.
[SPEAKER_00]: This wasn't something that a tablet was ever going to fix.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, in the back of my mind, the answer came forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I knew this was going to be the answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd been kind of putting it up in my head.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to go to the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, the only church I knew
[SPEAKER_00]: But I thought to myself, I know how church is what, there's a deacon, there are people around the church who work with the priest.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't work alone, he can't act in an evil way to me when he's surrounded by people he knows.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, despite the fact that I'd seen him spit at me, et cetera, I kind of hoped, as some parishes started to do, there's more than one priest.
[SPEAKER_00]: even though I didn't go to church, so I would have no idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I walked to that area where there's the gate and the bus stop, and the gate was on my right, the bus stop was on my left.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one was in the bus stop, I just kind of looked at the church and thought, what am I doing, Mrs. Steven?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I put my hand on the gate and looked at the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I turned around and there's the priest.
[SPEAKER_00]: In his full black and white collar garb sat in the bus stop, but in a way that a teenager would kind of sit, it rarely was a juxtaposition, considering this guy was at least 75.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started to shake inside because he was acting in a way of a teenager too, leaning forward
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he said, long time no see, and he sat down and crossed his legs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could feel my knees starting to buckle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't reply to what he said, I just opened the gate slightly, and he held his hand up and said, I've just locked up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's no point going in there now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I paused, and he gave me that smile, that same warm smile from the very first day with
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he looked at me straight in the eye and said, Bush is off for an armbay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he looked away for just a second, just a second, just long enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he looked back at me, his eyes were the same as the man's I'd seen on the bus.
[SPEAKER_00]: One blue, one brown, and wrong in the exact specific way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like two things that didn't belong in her face, and they knew it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not a normal laugh, it was like there were three laughs behind it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew I was about to fall, I had to lean on the gate.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know yourself when a laugh is about to stop, this didn't stop.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like a circular breathing, but a laughter version.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then as I think I'm about to pass out, I hear.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I help you?
[SPEAKER_00]: From behind.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just literally unlocked the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stare back to the bus stop and he's gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I look up and down the road and there's no sign of him.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way he could have made it anywhere he's disappeared again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I walked very tenderly up to the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again I didn't feel like I could tell this priest everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have that in me, but strangely not, with the old priest.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I did mention him in passing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the priest must have got the gist of what I was saying, based on what I was saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because he walked into whatever room he'd went into and came out with a little lather purse.
[SPEAKER_00]: He gave me a holy communion, that little right circle that we used to have in maths.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hadn't had long since I was a kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: he placed it in my mouth on my tongue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he whispered some kind of prayer which I didn't hear nor did I want to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he put some oil on my head which I think was a Psalm oil or prison oil or something similar.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not exactly sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I do know one thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to say when I left I felt light like an angel like you hear people say or everything lifted.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I can, hand on heart, say, the shadow stopped.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't say the old priest has disappeared for good, because I simply don't put myself in a situation where I have to go past that church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, however, I'm no longer, on Saturday, I'm on no medication at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've met a partner, we now live in the same area, but further away from the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: My life's gone well.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I thought I'd share this with your listeners after our back and forwards, just in case they had anything similar happened to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if they do, tell at them now, just go to church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lots of love Sarah from Chester.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an experience which I now know intimately thanks to our back and forth conversations that we've had in trying to get this information to become a full debut episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: And strangely I felt a bit like that old priest that you mentioned.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I know how difficult it was to get certain parts of that experience, out of you, but I'm so glad that you did, because as I say once we finally add everything glued together,
[SPEAKER_00]: The image I've got of that old man is never going to leave me, not once.
[SPEAKER_00]: It always comes up even now, as I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you for that, I joke, of course, but in all sincerity, the idea of somebody saying at the end of that email as you did, and we kind of agreed that that was a no case final, the go-to charge, that was your suggestion.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that stands for anyone, I believe, of any religious capacity or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: not necessarily if you don't believe go.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a belief system go to that because I think belief is the thing that will get you in and out of any trouble.
[SPEAKER_00]: And your sincerity in that belief is the very thing, the very key that will either unlock absolute devastation or absolute freedom from devastation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Belief is the thing which we still don't
[SPEAKER_00]: But that infamous saying of if you think you can and you think you can't, you're right either way.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a saying for a reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just a throwaway comment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's something that I think applies to a hauntings or should I say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Attempted possessions, I think I could argue a case for that in this experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's something that is definitely
[SPEAKER_00]: But so thank you so much for your own goodness when we've been communicating and for giving us our debut episode of Season 25.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now Season 25 is a very special season for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's obvious kind of anniversary season, a quarter of a century of episodes.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we complete this season, we will have 250 episodes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that's unbelievable, I never believe we'd get to that at all, and what we're actually building when I think about it is a catalog of current day paranormal events of the darker kind.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is the first time we've done video.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you are watching this on video,
[SPEAKER_00]: and you've not seen the podcast or heard the podcast even before, you can find links to that in the notes below, etc.
[SPEAKER_00]: or go and search the dark paranormal where everything is in the podcast and subscribe there and you will have access to that 240 back catalogue to listen to.
[SPEAKER_00]: I should mention as well, or Patreon team or the guys who allow this to all take place.
[SPEAKER_00]: and they are truly, sincerely, the most wonderful people in terms of a paranormal community, anywhere online.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not hyperbole, believe me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started a ghost club at a six, I'm now 47, so you can see how long I've been into the topic.
[SPEAKER_00]: My point is when the internet came around, yes, I can remember when that happened too.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first thing I had done was try to find
[SPEAKER_00]: and without doubt almost every group I joined, let me down in some way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not personally, I'm in in how they interact with.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was always ever a need for hierarchy, fighting between moderators, all this nonsense, people claiming to be experts in the paranormal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the first sign that you need to back away.
[SPEAKER_00]: When someone says, I know everything about the paranormal.
[SPEAKER_00]: You really want to wish, or hope, that they mean the historical events that are clasters paranormal that have taken place in the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not, I know how demon's act.
[SPEAKER_00]: If anyone says anything like that, personally I would say, turn the other way, and find somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this Patreon group is just like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, when you join our Patreon, not only do you support this, and everything we're trying to do, you also get early advocacy access to each episode of the dark paranormal and our mini-sodes and dark realms episodes, which you're coming out to.
[SPEAKER_00]: You also get dependent on the tier.
[SPEAKER_00]: access to two Patreon only episodes each and every week of the year.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's 52 times a year, so 104 episodes a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: And most shows say, once a month we're going to give you this, we're going to give you that note.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is every week, two episodes just for patrons.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is named DarkBytes where we take a look at the shorter experiences that we receive, that don't make a full episode and we put them together for one episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: And another is called after the dark, and after the dark is a video episode, while we talk or should I hear it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: and show our Patrons my thought process when I'm looking at an episode, so I literally press record, there's no editing, it's 30 minutes of me just talking to a camera, and sometimes there's a lot of silence as I try to work out different theories in my head, and our patrons then come back and say, either I disagree or I agree, it's just a wonderful community.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you'd like to join that, you can also support the show and do, so that's all to me in the below.
[SPEAKER_00]: As is the place to send your experiences, which is the website, the dark paranormal.com forward slash some myth your experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, I did not think that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But right now, I just want to say huge thank you to everyone for your patience because yes, this was Jardon Friday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many issues and many demons in the machine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not even sure if that's a joke and sincerely thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been a big effort to get this out and our team have them sterling job, so I want to thank them too.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for our first video episode and of course if you're listening on audio, please don't feel left out.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find this video on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you are watching on YouTube, I would go and listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and get access to that 240 episodes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why not?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoyed the paranormal, I certainly would.
[SPEAKER_00]: But until next time for episode 2, I want you all to stay safe, take care and remember, if you're ever discussing the paranormal, always leave some of your disbelief at the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I'll speak to you next week, the episode two of Season 25 of the Dark, Paranormal.