Edition 287 - Dark Waters
Direct from New Orleans... true-life paranormal story teller Dark Waters...
Direct from New Orleans... true-life paranormal story teller Dark Waters...
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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast. | |
My name is Howard Hughes, and this is the return of the unexplained. | |
Well, thank you very much for bearing with me. | |
The reason there haven't been new shows for the last couple of weeks, I will explain in just a moment. | |
And thank you to Adam at Creative Hotspot, also, my webmaster, for bearing with me during this period. | |
I'm going to do some of your shout-outs very, very soon. | |
I can't get round to everybody because this would take about an hour or so, but I'm going to do as many as I possibly can. | |
And thank you very much for emailing, especially if you've emailed recently to ask exactly where am I. All will be clear. | |
On this show, we're going to take a bit of a walk on the wild side. | |
A guest who's been on American radio quite a bit, somebody who contacted me a couple of weeks ago and recommended that I put him on this show, and we reached a worldwide and a European audience, as well as our US and Canadian audience, which I think is a great idea. | |
His name, well, he's known by the name of Dark Waters, and he is a gatherer of, interpreter of, and teller of paranormal stories. | |
He's based in New Orleans. | |
I don't know his real name. | |
He's a little bit like the Lone Ranger. | |
He rides into town and then people shout after him, who was that messed man? | |
So Dark Waters, I think you're going to enjoy him. | |
I haven't prepared anything for this show, so who knows which way it's going to go? | |
So that's what's coming up. | |
The reason I haven't been here, I alluded before Christmas to the fact that I've had an ongoing health issue, which has taken me to hospital a couple of times for various tests. | |
It's been five and a half months of it. | |
And as I say, it's ongoing. | |
Thank you for your good thoughts. | |
But it stopped me working a week ago. | |
And therein lies a very long story. | |
But I just wanted to explain to you, and thank you very much. | |
Of course, when I can't work, it means I'm not earning any money. | |
And that starts to be even more of a worry, which tends to compound things. | |
I'm sure you understand how that is. | |
But here we are back. | |
And although there may not be quite as many shows in the next couple of weeks, I'm hoping to get, as we used to say on television here, normal service resumed as soon as possible. | |
You know, they used to put those captions up on television saying normal service will be resumed as soon as possible on the jolly old BBC back in the day. | |
All right, let's do some shout-outs before we get to Dark Waters. | |
Findlay in Jakarta, Indonesia, we're trying to get Robin Gardner, the Titanic man, back on the show, but from what I understand, his availability is a little limited right now, but we're trying. | |
John Grant in Ireland says, just wondering if you're okay, haven't seen a new podcast or update on your website for nearly two weeks. | |
John, I hope that explains everything. | |
Richard Ray, many thanks for your kind email that I got today, Richard. | |
Marcus says, love all the shows. | |
Wondering if it's possible to listen to them on my Roberts Internet Radio. | |
Some internet radios have my shows. | |
The pure ones do. | |
What I would recommend, if you get in touch, they're nice people, Marcus, with the Roberts Radio people in the UK. | |
And they will get it included in their list of podcasts, I'm sure. | |
And let me know what happens about that. | |
Peter, can you tell me more about the guest you wanted some more information on? | |
I think it's somebody who was on my radio show you wanted to know more about a couple of weeks ago. | |
Peter, if you can just tell me what that person was talking about, I'll try and track down the information. | |
Louise from London says, I love your shows and have been listening to you for many years when you were first broadcast on LBC radio. | |
Oh, that's a long time ago. | |
They go through an awful lot of people at LBC, Louise. | |
That's many, many people ago, I think. | |
Louise says, do you have any plans to extend future shows to two hours? | |
Money's always the problem, Louise, but yes, I am looking to do more, and thanks very much for your support. | |
Juka in Finland, thank you for your suggestions. | |
Lee in Phoenix, Arizona says, with just listening to your podcast, wanted to make a donation, thank you. | |
I found the donate link on your website, but it just opens to PayPal. | |
That's what you have to do. | |
There is a PayPal link there that you have to follow. | |
And then you can make donations. | |
And if you have made a donation recently, thank you very much. | |
Paul Regan in Slough says, I suspect you're aware of this already, but in case you don't know, there's a recent film that might be of interest. | |
It's called Hostage to the Devil, and it focuses on the great and late Father Malachi Martin, a stalwart of the Art Bell Show. | |
I'm going to look it out, and thank you, Paul, for telling me. | |
Paul in Slough, Berkshire. | |
Nikki Vanny, thanks for the suggestions, Nikki. | |
Nice to hear from you. | |
Gaz in Yorkshire, good to hear from you. | |
Raphael in Canada, suggesting J.J. Hertak. | |
Good call. | |
Thanks, Raphael. | |
Mike in Louisiana commented about Steve Bassett. | |
He thinks that Steve is losing credibility on the disclosure issue now. | |
But Carl Marriott loved the Steve Bassett edition and everything he said. | |
James Devol, can you tell me more about what you were asking about, James? | |
Gil Anderson listens while cooking. | |
That's good. | |
Thank you. | |
And this is from A. DeLaurentis, I think it is. | |
I sent you an email several months ago, says A. De Laurentis. | |
And I wanted to tell you what I thought about your show. | |
It will be very pleasant to receive an answer from you simply to be polite, simply thank you infinitely. | |
It is very rare indeed from an Englishman. | |
I would like to apologize for my English if I commit some mistakes. | |
Not my mother tongue, no problem. | |
The reason you didn't get a reply from me, A. De Laurentis, is I'm trying to find your first email. | |
I'm going to go back through all of my files because I do see all of the emails when they come in. | |
I don't just say that like some media organizations claim that they see and respond and deal with everybody's emails and they just don't. | |
That I know from personal experience. | |
But I'm going to go back and look for yours and we'll take it from there. | |
And I'm sorry that you haven't had a reply if you needed one. | |
And that's it. | |
If you want to get in touch with the show, please tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show. | |
Please tell me your location. | |
It's really important if you do that. | |
And thank you very much for the nice things you've been saying. | |
All right, let's get to the United States now, to the mysterious city of New Orleans and Dark Waters. | |
First time on the unexplained. | |
If I may call you Dark, thank you very much for coming on the show. | |
Oh, thank you for having me on your show. | |
I'm excited. | |
It's a great opportunity for me, and I love to share some of the information that I've gathered with your audience. | |
And I think it's going to be awesome. | |
I think it's going to be very entertaining. | |
Well, I think so too. | |
I've done a little bit of research, not much about you, because I just want to let this one roll. | |
Question one: Why did you get in touch with me? | |
Well, I've been working in the paranormal. | |
I could consider myself working in the paranormal industry. | |
I've been sharing the paranormal stories that I've gathered from my lifetime and other people's encounters over the past 12 months. | |
And then I started doing some research and I saw your show. | |
You had a number of the guys that I admired on your show. | |
Like you had David Ike on your show, which is somebody I really, really admire. | |
And you ended up having one or two other people that I really, really liked. | |
And I was like, well, I really want to hear this guy's opinion on some of the things that I've encountered and people have encountered. | |
When I go out and reach out to people about doing radio interviews, it's more so I love the conversation and I love talking to people, but it's kind of hard for me to find people who, I wouldn't call them regular people, but it's kind of hard for me to find other people who deal with this weird stuff on a level to where there can be a substantive conversation. | |
So it's almost like I have to hold conversations with people who are in the radio industries and podcast community in order to get some answers for myself. | |
Well, that's great. | |
I mean, as you may know, I don't really do a Gee Wiz show. | |
It's a little more journalistic than that. | |
So I'm pleased that that's what you're looking for because that's what we're going to do. | |
New Orleans. | |
Tell me about New Orleans. | |
The only thing I know about it are the hard times the city's been through in the last 10, 15 years or so. | |
A great city, fantastic culture, great people who've been through a lot of trouble and turmoil. | |
Yes, but that's the history of New Orleans. | |
You know, it really is. | |
It's the history of New Orleans. | |
New Orleans has always been through turmoil and traumatic events, but it's a very resilient city. | |
It's a city that's steeped in mysteries. | |
It's a city that I call home. | |
I've been here my whole life, born and raised in New Orleans. | |
I think I only moved away for like three years. | |
It's a very seductive city. | |
In fact, right now we're in the middle of Mardi Gras. | |
Our house is three blocks away from a Mardi Gras route. | |
So when you're driving down the streets right now, there are these ladders and chairs stacked up in the street where people are going to go out and party and hang out. | |
So New Orleans is a great place. | |
It's a place where I say that paranormal is the norm. | |
And I think that because of the history of New Orleans, because of the wars that have been fought in and around the city of New Orleans, because of the Native American influences and the French influence and the Haitian influence and every other influence that we have here, it's created this very unique paranormal gumbo. | |
And when I tell people paranormal is the norm here, I mean, it really, really is. | |
I mean, it's one of those, it's a city where I like to say it oozes paranormal activity. | |
And it's well documented because people have come here from all over the world to visit and research the paranormal. | |
Yeah, now that Haitian influence, I would guess from what I've read and what I've seen, because I don't live in the U.S., but I've seen and read a lot. | |
I guess that adds a certain darkness to it all. | |
Yes, it does. | |
I mean, it definitely does. | |
I mean, when you start talking about the Haitian influence, you start talking about voodoo and hoodoo. | |
Well, exactly. | |
Hoodoo is something I know a lot about. | |
And because my, and I will, let's go ahead and get into it right now. | |
But let's do it in just a second because I wanted to ask just a couple of things about you first. | |
You know, if you've got a biography, let's pick through the bones of it right now. | |
You know, what brought you to doing this stuff? | |
Well, my paranormal experiences as a child. | |
That's what brought me to this. | |
It really has. | |
I had so many paranormal encounters from age 13 to, I would say, age 17. | |
Stuff like Doppler gangers when I was babysitting, a large shadow creature or shadow figure that came for me when I was 12, going on 13 years old in Mississippi. | |
So I've had these paranormal encounters my whole life. | |
It just took a while for me to get comfortable to share those encounters. | |
Now, look, I've never talked to anybody about having a Doppler experience. | |
So I've got to hear about yours. | |
Even though you were young, it clearly made an impact on you. | |
Oh, absolutely. | |
Absolutely. | |
And it wasn't anything that was like, oh, super traumatic, but I know what happened. | |
I'm babysitting this little guy that was 17 years old and I'm babysitting, right? | |
Family around the corner from Mars and the kid who I'm babysitting, actually, there's two brothers. | |
There's an older brother, younger brother. | |
And I'm sitting on the sofa watching TV. | |
And the two brothers are around me, you know, just being kids, jumping around. | |
I go put them to bed. | |
And to put them in the bed, you have to go upstairs, make a right, and go into their bedroom. | |
I walk them up the steps, put them in the bed. | |
Five minutes later, I'm watching TV and I see one of them run around the steps and into the kitchen, the smallest one. | |
And I'm like, hey, man, did not, or that's not the language I use. | |
I lose profane language. | |
Say, you're supposed to be in the bed, right? | |
I get up, I run around those steps and go into the kitchen. | |
Nobody's there. | |
But I know I saw this kid running into this kitchen. | |
And I hustle up the steps, go into the bedroom where they are. | |
Well, the younger brother is sleeping with the older brother and the older brother is pretty much laying on top of him. | |
So there's no way within that 15-second time period that that kid got into that kitchen, got back upstairs, and got into that bedroom. | |
So those are the kind of things that have been happening to me my whole life. | |
And a lot of crazy, even more crazy stuff has happened since I've been doing this Dark Waters thing. | |
I mean, it's kind of amped up the paranormal activity that I deal with. | |
And look, did you ever ask in the middle of all of that, albeit you were young, did you ever ask yourself the question, how much of this is about me and how much of this is about stuff that's happening around me? | |
I asked myself one question. | |
Was I losing my mind? | |
And that's what I really asked myself. | |
That was my nice British way of saying that, really. | |
Yeah, I asked myself that question. | |
I know it's what you were saying. | |
I asked myself, you know, am I losing my mind? | |
Because you have to realize I never told a backporter story. | |
So I have to come back down the steps and sit back on the sofa. | |
And for the next two hours, I'm saying, well, maybe I didn't see this, but I actually saw it and I heard the footsteps of the kid running around the side of the, running around into the kitchen. | |
And I sat there and I reflected on it for a long time. | |
And I said, no, I experienced what I experienced. | |
And unfortunately, and this is one of the things I love about doing this, When it comes to the paranormal, sometimes people talk themselves out of their experience because, you know, we justify and we rationalize. | |
That's human nature. | |
So we have to come up with some rationale for what we experience. | |
So essentially, people have paranormal encounters on a daily basis. | |
Some people experience des a vu where they get premonitions where, oh, don't go down this street because something's bad happened. | |
But we rationalize and justify those things out of our mind because it's just too hard for us to comprehend. | |
And it's too hard for us to kind of compartmentalize and put into one of the buckets of our life. | |
You know, I think you're so right. | |
I think you are right about that. | |
I mean, these things have sort of hung around me all of my life. | |
And I'm quite a rational guy, trained as a journalist, you know, worked for the BBC and commercial radio over here. | |
So I'm not a pushover. | |
But in the last week or so, I've had some issues to deal with. | |
And I've been finding pennies. | |
Okay, now the shape of a penny and the metal that it's made of is the same in the US and UK. | |
So you know the coin I'm talking about. | |
I kept finding those. | |
You know, I was a little concerned about something. | |
Everywhere I went, I would look down and there would be a penny. | |
Now, I don't think, you know, you read about these things, but I'm inclined, maybe I'm just an old fool, probably I am. | |
I'm inclined to think that that was not just a coincidence. | |
I'm inclined to think it's not just a coincidence as well, because I've spoken to people who have those encounters, and it's my understanding that that's your spirit guide prove asshole itself to you. | |
There are several people that I've talked to who, when they go through traumatic times, and the question I would have to ask is, are you in a place where now you're making important decisions or there's a lot of turmoil going on? | |
Because at those times are when our spirit guides kind of show themselves to us and they leave little small things like pennies or sometimes I've had things happen where stuff has been moved, literally moved around. | |
And at first I thought it was, you know, just regular paranormal ghost activity. | |
But then I discovered that something was moved on top of a receipt that I needed a month later. | |
And I was like, well, I only found this receipt because something was, a candle was moved on top of it. | |
So there's a lot of paranormal activity. | |
And I'm starting to get the chills while I talk about this. | |
Well, no, listen, and you talk about it so brilliantly, but you talked about, I love the phrase that you use, regular paranormal ghost activity. | |
I've never been to New Orleans. | |
Hopefully one of these days I'm going to be able to make that trip because I want to. | |
You know, how regular is this kind of stuff there? | |
Is it something that people, you said that people are very connected there? | |
Those things happen a lot. | |
Yeah. | |
Oh, yeah, it's, you would be amazed. | |
So a little history about the Darkwater channel, how I got started. | |
And this will explain, it'll answer that question. | |
So when I decided to do this, I sent a mass email out to friends, you know, email lists of friends, 3,000 people that I've known since I've been born and raised here. | |
And said, it was simple. | |
Hey, guys, have any of you guys ever had any paranormal activity? | |
Started off slow. | |
I'm getting one or two messages. | |
And I started a brand new email account. | |
Some people are like, well, who is this? | |
Who are you? | |
Blah, how did you get my email? | |
Once people realized it was me, 200 encounters within the first week of people coming back. | |
My secretary at one of the businesses that I run, this is just last week. | |
She's sharing with me a story about her house being haunted and her grandmother knowing that the house is haunted and how she's walking down the hallway and something brushes against her as she's walking down the hallway. | |
She bumps into the wall. | |
She runs and tells her grandmother. | |
Grandmother says, baby, you know this house has been haunted your whole life. | |
Don't worry about that. | |
Them spirits are not going to do you anything. | |
So it's a part of our culture. | |
Even when we get down to Mardi Gras, right? | |
Mardi Gras, we have what are called the Mardi Gras Indians here. | |
And if anybody who's listening, just Google New Orleans, Mardi Gras Indians, you see these people with these beautiful costumes with feathers and everything on them, right? | |
Well, and back in the days in the 60s and the 70s, the Mardi Gras Indian Mardi Gras Indian tradition was one of war. | |
It was warring neighborhood. | |
So the seventh ward of New Orleans versus the ninth war. | |
And these men would march across the city and fight with shotguns, bats, and sticks. | |
That activity has led to people seeing like headless Mardi Gras Indians in their bedrooms. | |
Like it's crazy stuff that happens, insane stuff that once you're on the inside and you have people that are willing to talk to you, you find out about it. | |
So New Orleans is the most paranormally active city in the world, in my opinion. | |
And how much of that do you think is about people knowing that New Orleans is a place where weird stuff happens and convincing themselves that that is the stuff that's going on rather than something a little more rational? | |
I don't think that if the question is how much of it is it people, I'm sorry, I hate it. | |
All right. | |
Let's make it clear. | |
How much of it is mind over matter? | |
Yeah, how much of is it mind over matter? | |
I would say there's a small percentage of it. | |
But when we start talking, and that can be a, you know, let's to quantify, let's say 20%, right? | |
20% of it is for show. | |
20% of it is for entertainment. | |
Let's say 25% of it is exaggerations. | |
But then I can take you, you and I can walk into Sabiza's cafe on Decatur Street in New Orleans, where they cannot employ, they cannot have any female employees because all the female employees get followed home by a shadow man that they call the angry man. | |
I can walk you into Rick's Cabaret Strip Club on Bourbon Street and we can walk to the VIP room and we can talk to people there and they'll tell you about at night when they close down the club that the mops and buckets fall over and it happens every night. | |
Stuff gets moved around. | |
Okay, well, no, no, but tell me about that. | |
I mean, what force do we think had a problem with the closing of the strip club? | |
Who would be concerned about that? | |
No, that's one that I can't tell you what force exactly it is. | |
It just, these are the things that come out in conversation. | |
I can tell you how I got to it. | |
And unfortunately, I'm not going to invest. | |
I'm not investigating any more haunted locations. | |
I made that mistake and had problems associated with it. | |
Well, hang on, hang on, hang on. | |
I mean, this is all too. | |
I mean, you're throwing nuggets of gold at me every two seconds. | |
So forgive me for interrupting. | |
But you don't investigate directly haunted locations in New Orleans anymore because of stuff that's happened to you. | |
We can't let that point fly by. | |
Okay, well, we'll pick up on that when it will go back. | |
So Sabezas, the very place I was telling you about, I went to Sabiza's Cafe right before I went to Coast to Coast A.M. because I wanted to make sure that I got all the Inside baseball on the story. | |
And while I'm there in Sabezas, I'm being shown the evidence of the shadow man and all these other things that are going on. | |
I'm doing a tour and I go up to this top room that they have. | |
And this room is a place where it was a speakeasy and it was run by Huey P. Long and his criminal crew and the mafia. | |
And you got to remember, we got all those ties here in New Orleans as well. | |
And there's supposed to be the story at this point in time. | |
I'm very skeptical of the story of Mary, who's this woman in white who committed suicide. | |
You know, the everyday kind of woman in white stories. | |
I'm like, ah, bada bing, bada boom. | |
I don't know if I believe this, right? | |
So I'm standing there talking to the guy about Mary, and he says, hey, you know, you should move from under the chandelier. | |
And I'm like, well, why would I move from under the chandelier? | |
That's Mary's face. | |
And I said, really? | |
And he's like, yeah. | |
I'm like, how would I like? | |
I'm not moving. | |
I'm going to stay here. | |
Right. | |
I stand under the chandelier. | |
We continue to talk. | |
The lights start kind of flickering in the room. | |
I'm like, oh, maybe they got some light dimmers. | |
He's screwing around with me. | |
I'm not going to worry about it. | |
I know my body very, very well. | |
I know the body issues I have. | |
I got acid reflux outside of that, nothing. | |
My body starts getting hot and sweaty. | |
And I mean, like, I'm sweating, clammy. | |
And we're not even talking about Mary. | |
We're just talking about the building. | |
He says, man, you're starting to sweat. | |
You might want to move. | |
That's one of the things that happens to people. | |
I said, no, I'm okay. | |
I sweat to the point where sweat is dripping down my face. | |
Now I know something physically is happening to me. | |
So I step away from that chandelier, continue to talk, calm down. | |
Everything's fine. | |
I said, okay, it's time for me to step back under it, step back under it again. | |
Five minutes later, I start sweating again. | |
He says, man, I really want you to move because you're looking, he said, you're dark, you're black, you're very dark, but you're starting to look funny, you're looking weird. | |
I need you to move. | |
I insist on standing there. | |
Seconds later, I feel what felt like two fingers sliding to my back pocket where my wallet is. | |
If you just turn around, slid your two fingers into the corner of your back jeans pocket and pull, not tug, I mean pull, like pulling me out of there. | |
And I lean back and I'm like, whoa, what's going on? | |
And he just, the guy's just, his name is Greg. | |
He's just standing there looking at me like, man, I tried to tell you. | |
You think it's a game. | |
This is not a joke. | |
We leave. | |
We go downstairs. | |
I actually exit out of the building to the front side on Decatur Street. | |
We can continue our conversation there because I know what I felt. | |
I've been dealing with this since I was a child. | |
So I know what's paranormal and what's not. | |
For me personally, I know what it is. | |
So I know something tugged me. | |
I know something was interacting with my body. | |
And based on what's happened to me at a young age and based on my family's experiences with hoodoo and voodoo and the things that have happened with my family, I stopped. | |
I said, you know, that's a little bit too much for me. | |
I don't want to open myself up to too much. | |
And so I decided I wasn't going to do it anymore. | |
I wasn't going to be going into these haunted places because at the end of the day, I don't know what's coming for me at that location. | |
I don't know what's really attracted to me personally at that location based on what was done when I was 12 years old. | |
Well, let's get it. | |
I've interviewed on this show, a guy called Richard Estep, who's a British guy. | |
He's an emergency room worker. | |
He's paramedic actually in the U.S., but he's British. | |
And he does this kind of investigation routinely. | |
And he told me chilling stories of sometimes stuff that he's taken home from investigations. | |
Was that your fear that you might actually accrue something from one of these locations? | |
Take it back home, might have a deleterious effect upon you? | |
Not only that, not only that as a fear, but also just to answer that question, I really need to give you the background. | |
So I'm going to pause and I'm going to come back. | |
12 years old, Mississippi, right? | |
My grandmother is a hoodoo priestess. | |
So at 12 years old, I have this encounter where I'm moving from one piece of our property to the next where as I'm walking, I'm 12 years old. | |
This is Mississippi. | |
It's dark. | |
I mean, it's like, this is, you know, there's no, it's not like a city. | |
There's no streetlights. | |
There's one light off in the distance about 100 yards away, 75 yards away. | |
And I see this large shadow creature with red eyes coming towards me. | |
So I freeze and pretty much like clam up. | |
But this thing is coming towards me. | |
One of my older cousins comes out of the other property, scoops me up, grabs me, runs me into the house, puts me in a room, and stays in a room with me for the night. | |
The story is way more dramatic. | |
There's a lot more to it than that. | |
But just to give you the background, we discovered that my grandmother, who's a hoodoo priestess, had made a deal with the demon. | |
I discovered this years later, that in exchange for one of her 12-year-old, 13-year-old grandchildren, she would be gifted with longevity. | |
My grandmother's still alive right now. | |
She's 99 years old. | |
Hang on. | |
When you say in exchange for, what kind of deal is that? | |
In exchange for life extension, longevity to live longer. | |
Yeah, but what is the other part of the trade? | |
You said the 13-year-old, 12 or 13-year-old boy. | |
The soul of. | |
Yes. | |
That is deeply spooky stuff. | |
And it's man, man, you have no clue. | |
So that's what I was saying. | |
So when you take that background experience, by the way, one of my 12-year-old cousins died suddenly. | |
I mean, he just kid running around playing soccer, having fun, doing what he does, ends up in a hospital, passes away, right? | |
You take that background and you take me with that knowledge and you put me inside of haunted locations. | |
This thing, whatever it was, it was coming for me at that age. | |
So do you think that that thing knew that you had some connection, that you were not a portal, but you were quite sensitive to these things? | |
It obviously did, didn't it? | |
It had to know something. | |
It had to know something, or simply I had to be a target. | |
Essentially, I think that's what it was. | |
I was a target at that point in time. | |
Because at that point in time, I was the only one of that age. | |
Okay, now, British listeners will be a little concerned about the story of your grandmother. | |
I am a little concerned about what I heard. | |
But I suppose we have to filter in the fact that, A, times were very different. | |
And B, all of this stuff was a regular part of people's lives then. | |
Oh, no, there's no need to be concerned. | |
I mean, there are still hoodoo and voodoo practitioners here in New Orleans right now. | |
I mean, so when we start, and this is the thing, you have to understand the culture of the southeastern part of the United States. | |
So, we're talking about a culture steeped in slavery. | |
We're talking about cultures that's steeped where you have Creole families where there's all these melds and blends of cultures and religions. | |
So, it's all about the history and what historically happened in America. | |
So, you talk about families who at sometimes their only defenses were the use of dark arts of hoodoo and magic from even their slave owners. | |
That was their only defense. | |
So, those are traditions that are passed on along family lines as well as other things. | |
So, it's not like somebody just wakes up in the morning and say, woo, I'm a hoodoo priestess. | |
This is stuff that's passed on from generation to generation to generation to generation. | |
Just like I have an auntie who now is kind of the practitioner for the family. | |
But it's passed on generationally. | |
So there's nothing to be dismayed about. | |
And you can find that. | |
You find that here. | |
You talk about Marie Laveau here in New Orleans and who she passed it on to. | |
So it's nothing surprising. | |
It's just that people have to understand the history of this area and what happened, the slave trade, how that brought those traditions and those religions over. | |
And they mixed in with Catholicism and everything else that happened. | |
Now, look, your European listeners, of whom I have many, you know, I've got a following in the United States, also in Europe here and in Australia and New Zealand. | |
Some of those people are not going to know what hoodoo is. | |
We've heard of voodoo. | |
Tell me the difference between hoodoo and voodoo. | |
Absolutely. | |
So traditionally, voodoo is the one that's kind of promoted. | |
Voodoo is very marketable, right? | |
I mean, it really is. | |
So voodoo is the one that you see where people are going after certain things, love, success, health, relationships, right? | |
And voodoo is one of those, it's an art where people go after these things that they simply and purely want. | |
It's about your desires and what you want and manifest it in your life. | |
Now, hoodoo, if you had two sides of a coin, you flip on the other side of the coin, that's hoodoo. | |
And now there's, I don't believe in any light magic and dark magic. | |
I think it's all magic and it's all about the intent of the person. | |
But when you flip the other side of the coin, hoodoo is where you get into the darker side. | |
Hoodoo is where you get into poppets and stabbing, you know, dolls with needles stuck into them. | |
I heard on another interview that you did recently, I heard you talk about poppets, but just explain what they are. | |
Well, poppets are pretty much voodoo slash hoodoo dolls. | |
That's how you, it's where you make an image of someone and then you do things to that image in order to manifest ailments to that individual, right? | |
So that's what a poppet is. | |
It's basically a mirror image of somebody that's smaller that you can cast spells against. | |
All right, two questions to do with that then. | |
I'm sorry I'm firing all these questions. | |
I am the question guy. | |
But if somebody has that used against them, number one, is it likely really to work? | |
And number two, how on earth do they defend themselves against it? | |
I can tell you, I can answer those questions for you. | |
Is it likely to work? | |
Yes, it is likely to work based on your faith. | |
So, and this is, wow, let's jump. | |
We're just going deep. | |
So from a spiritual warfare standpoint, right? | |
Because that's what we're getting to, spiritual warfare. | |
Your faith and whatever it is that you believe in is what you have to rely on to defend yourself from a spiritual attack. | |
So if you're a person who only believes in self and there's no higher power to you, then you may be subjected to that unless your self-image, your self-worth, your inner strength is strong enough to defend you from it, then you're subjected to it. | |
If you're a person who believes in a higher power or a higher being, whatever that higher power or being may be, but you have 100% faith in that higher power and being, then you can lean on that for protection and for strength. | |
Since I've been doing this, I've had witches who were upset with some of the things I did, who sent curses my way. | |
And I know for a fact they did. | |
It didn't work because the higher power that I believe in, my relationship has only been strengthened by dealing in the paranormal. | |
And I maintain that relationship by doing daily prayers, nightly prayers, burning candles, because I know I have to protect myself in a way that the average individual is not aware of spiritual warfare because the average person is not aware of the spiritual warfare that goes on on a daily basis. | |
So we're just drudging along, you know, putting gas in our cars, paying bills, taking kids to school. | |
We're not aware of the spiritual aspect of the world. | |
Well, I do remember an Indian guy that I once saw talk to me about, because, you know, the entertainment industry, there are those who say, and I'm not sure I believe this, but there are people in the entertainment industry who do these things, use these things. | |
Somebody once advised me to put limes over my front door. | |
And I have to tell you, I did for a while. | |
You know, I was interested and concerned, let's put it that way, just as an experiment. | |
He said, hang limes. | |
I think it was an old Indian tradition, you know, from the Indian continent, subcontinent. | |
And that's what I did. | |
So, you know, there are people who no doubt believe this stuff. | |
But doesn't it come down to one of two things, really? | |
That it only works if people believe that they've been affected. | |
And isn't there another aspect to this, Dark, that it is said that people who try to do these things, assuming, of course, that they exist, if they try and send out bad stuff, the bad stuff, doesn't it in a karmic way come back to them anyway? | |
Absolutely. | |
There's a price for each and every spell that those people cast. | |
But you have to understand that person is aware of that price and they're willing to pay that price in order to do that. | |
So when people talk about the karmic aspects of it, once that person is committed to what they're doing, they know what they're doing. | |
They know there's a consequence and they're fine with paying that consequence. | |
So they are willing to pay that. | |
Now, what would the consequence be, though? | |
Does that mean they're ready to coin a phrase that go to hell? | |
I can't accurately answer. | |
That's really interesting. | |
Your line, just as I said that, your line started breaking up. | |
I think it's probably okay now. | |
Yeah, it's probably okay. | |
I don't want to get into that because I can't tell you every consequence because I don't run around casting spells and using hoodoo on people. | |
So I can't tell you the consequences of it. | |
I do know that people who I've spoken to, who are Wiccans, that's one of the things that they've always told me: hey, there's a consequence for every action, and people have to pay those consequences, but they are prepared to pay those consequences once they do what they do. | |
Now, to answer your question about is it wise for, not is it wise, but is your belief, do you have to believe in something for it to affect you? | |
People say you have to believe in hoodoo or voodoo in order for it to affect you. | |
I don't believe that's so. | |
Because again, from a spiritual standpoint, from a spiritual welfare aspect, my experience has been that there are many of things that I didn't believe in until until I started a Dark Water Channel. | |
But I've had visits from shadow creatures here at my house. | |
I've had visits from ghost little girls here at my house. | |
I didn't believe all that stuff could happen, but it happened. | |
You know, I didn't believe that a ghost can manifest itself next to your bed. | |
I didn't believe it. | |
I believe there were ghosts, but I didn't believe that could happen to me, but it happened. | |
So I don't think that you have to believe in the forces of voodoo or hoodoo in order for those forces to affect you. | |
Those forces have been around for a very, very long time, affecting people for a very long time. | |
And it's documented where Christian missionaries who went into certain areas were affected by those forces. | |
So I don't think that your belief in the force is as much of a factor as your belief in your own faith is. | |
If you believe in your own faith and you're secure in your faith, then you let those spiritual forces on your behalf fight whatever's coming your way. | |
And what about people, and there will be quite a few listening to this, who regard all of this stuff as just hooey, not hoodoo. | |
They just think it's all rubbish. | |
Can those people, are they immune? | |
Are they not affected by anything that might be in their way? | |
If they simply don't believe in any of it, they think it's all trash, then they think they're protected. | |
No, no, no. | |
I think that person's in a, I think that person, it's a gift and a curse for that person, right? | |
They don't believe, therefore, it's on that radar. | |
So they don't particularly care. | |
So either way it goes, whatever spiritual forces come their way and interfere in their lives, they're oblivious to it, right? | |
It's a responsibility for people like you and me to be aware of these things and that they go on. | |
And it's a burden at times. | |
So for that person who doesn't believe, I think they're not necessarily in a bad place. | |
I think they're unaware of what's going on. | |
And that's fine. | |
You know, I tell people that all the time. | |
If you're unaware of what's going on and that's not your life experience, it's not your life encounters, then you have to embrace your life experience. | |
But at some point in time, when you do cross that bridge, where you do have that experience, when you do run into something paranormal, which is inevitable, maybe it's on your deathbed when you're about to pass away. | |
Maybe it's when your daughter or sister or uncle or cousin passes away. | |
When you do have that experience, that's when they will find people like us and seek us out. | |
And they'll say, okay, well, these guys were talking about this 10 years ago, 20 years ago. | |
So I say that to say that I think that for those people, they're in a great place. | |
But for people like us, we can't ignore it. | |
We can't get around it. | |
You just told me you hung limes over your door. | |
I did. | |
You know, so there's no reason why you did that unless you thought there was something there that would be a problem for you. | |
It's like people salt outside their doors. | |
You know, I am a professional skeptic. | |
That's just me because it's my training. | |
But many, many years ago when I was in my 20s, and that is a few years ago now, I was having some career issues. | |
When you work in this business, you know, very few people, one of my first bosses said, Howard, no one's fireproof. | |
And that's true. | |
You know, everybody has to go through a little rain to get to the sunlit uplands. | |
And, you know, you have your period in the sunshine and then you've got to weather some storms again. | |
That's just the way this business goes, as a great man once sang. | |
But anyway, I was having some career problems in my 20s. | |
And somebody suggested to me, I went to see this woman in North London whose name I cannot remember, an old lady, and we went into her front parlour, as they call them there, a terraced house, UK style, very little room. | |
The thing had a fish tank in it, I remember, and a sofa in it, and that was about all there was room for. | |
And it was in the winter, it was in the darkness, and she laid, she was about 65, maybe 70, laid her hands on my head, and I closed my eyes, and I've told this story before because I've never understood what it was. | |
She claimed that something had been affecting me somehow. | |
And behind my closed eyes, in other words, with my eyes closed, I saw a halo of bright light go circular around my head as if I had a halo around my head. | |
Now, from that day, after that, I thought no more about it. | |
I can't remember her name. | |
I can't even remember precisely where in North London this place was that I think it was my sister recommended I went to. | |
Have you ever heard stories like that? | |
You know, I've always wondered, what was she doing? | |
What was that? | |
How was I seeing a light when my eyes were closed? | |
You know, I've never heard a story where somebody was seeing a light. | |
I have heard stories of people who've had generational curses lifted from them and attachments lifted from them. | |
And I've heard stories where people got attachments by going to visit haunted places or playing around with paranormal Ouija boards and getting those attachments lifted. | |
Now, I'm really pleased you said that because there's a question that's been that occurred to me about 10 minutes ago and I made a little note of it. | |
Got to ask him this. | |
No idea why I've got to ask him this, but I have a feeling that you're going to have an answer that will be interesting to this. | |
At some stage in your life, did you play with a Ouija board? | |
Never. | |
You didn't? | |
No. | |
No, no, no, no, never. | |
Not once in my life. | |
Now, you say that advisedly. | |
You don't just say that by the sounds of it. | |
It sounds to me like you have a reason for not getting involved with those. | |
Absolutely, because at the end of the day, you have no clue of who or what you're contacting. | |
And, you know, playing with a Ouija board is opening a portal. | |
It's open a portal to another world, in another dimension. | |
And you're not sure what you're going to invite in. | |
You're not sure who you're contacting. | |
There's no, you know, there's no Google verification to verify who you're talking to on the opposite side of that Ouija board, you know? | |
So I've talked to a number of people who do this, and it really bothers me because not only do I share these paranormal stories, but I spend a significant amount of time kind of coaching People out of these things and connecting people with resources, whether it's demonologists or people who can get them out of those situations. | |
And the people who get into those, the people who play with the Ouija boards always upset me and it irks me because it's like, why are you messing with that? | |
The last woman I spoke to, she wanted to contact her mother who recently passed away. | |
Well, she thought she contacted her mother until stuff started moving around in the house and she realized that her mother wouldn't do some of the things to her that were going on, like pulling covers off the bed, touching her at night. | |
Her mother wouldn't do that. | |
So, you know, for me personally, I just feel like people shouldn't do that. | |
There's no reason to do that. | |
I mean, there's absolutely no reason to dibble-dabble in that stuff. | |
And it's those people who dabble in the paranormal, dabble in Wiccan, dabble in hoodoo, and dabble in voodoo. | |
Those are the people who have the problems. | |
Now, the people who are practitioners who actually go all the way through and they find a mentor and they find someone who can kind of coach them through and teach them, those people end up being okay because they know all the consequences of the actions. | |
But it's the dabblers that have the problems. | |
And I'm no dabbling at all. | |
Here comes my UK broadcast training here and all the regulations and stuff that we have. | |
And just to make it very clear that we do not recommend, and that is not what we're doing, that you get involved with anything like this or dabble with these things. | |
And as we say, we're offering you this content for entertainment purposes only, which is what you have to say on the radio here to be okay with the regulators when you talk about stuff like this. | |
But there are people who do these things. | |
I wouldn't go near anything like that because I don't understand it. | |
And I would rather not mess with things that I don't understand, to be perfectly frank with you. | |
You mentioned to me, Doc, that you have a couple, or you had or you have a couple of businesses, regular businesses. | |
How does all of this paranormality chime with your day-to-day existence of trying to make a living like we all have to do? | |
Well, there are times when they clash. | |
I mean, there really are times when they clash. | |
But for the most part, I've compartmentalized them well enough. | |
You know, that's why I continue to keep the word, you know, the name Dark Waters, even though slowly but surely who I really am is getting out there. | |
But there are times when they clash are the times when the paranormal activity kind of heightens and it gets pretty bad. | |
And I have these spikes in paranormal activity that I deal with. | |
And a lot of times it's based on the people that I'm talking to. | |
So for example, the number of the stories that I get that I share, I have a public phone number out there where people can call me and they share their stories. | |
And the process that I go through of vetting their story is really, really an intense and extensive process. | |
I talk to these people for hours and hours and hours, talk to their wives, talk to their children, and I continue and I actually get to know these people. | |
Well, in some cases where people have had demonic attachments, me opening myself up to that individual and their family has been a threat to that demonic entity. | |
So me opening myself up and coming into their world and saying, hey, you know, this is not good. | |
I can help you. | |
You know, there are people that you need to talk to. | |
Then I, in turn, get a visit. | |
You know, the worst one was I was talking to a woman whose family has had been under a generational curse from Yugoslavia. | |
And I didn't realize until like the fifth conversation. | |
I knew it was a generational curse, but I didn't know it was like a demonic curse. | |
I didn't realize until the very last conversation when she told me about an incident that happened to her where this dark figure stuck its finger in places that it shouldn't have, right? | |
Let's just leave it at that. | |
And that same night, after getting off the phone with her, I go to bed and go to sleep. | |
And in between the waking state and the dreaming state, I mean, you know, you're just falling asleep and you're half woke and half asleep. | |
I start to feel what feels like a finger going into my mouth. | |
And so I literally bite down and taste this kind of soily, earthy taste in my mouth. | |
Open my eyes, nothing's there, right? | |
Completely freaks me out. | |
I sit up in the bed. | |
I'm like, whoa, I don't know what's going on. | |
I go back to sleep. | |
I feel that same thing going into my nose. | |
I feel like that finger goes down my nose and touches inside and like my esophagus inside my throat. | |
From that day forward, I've had acid reflux issues. | |
I mean, horrific acid reflux issues. | |
I've had an ulcer. | |
I've had, I mean, to where, you know, like a couple of nights ago, I vomited and there was blood at the end of the vomit. | |
You know, it's like from that day forward, I've had that problem. | |
So I've had those encounters where because I've opened myself up to people and because I've tried to help people, there's a price that I've paid. | |
And remember earlier I was alluding to it. | |
I was saying that, hey, this has brought me, this has strengthened my spiritual relationship. | |
And that's how I know that this spirit is spiritual warfare. | |
It's because that particular encounter put me in contact with demonologists who, after extensive talks and conversations, what was told to me was, hey, you impeded and intruded into this entity's business. | |
So you took a hit. | |
It hit you. | |
It came after you. | |
Now, it's not a bad hit, but it's something to remind you that, hey, these are spiritual forces are powerful. | |
And so since that day, I mean, I do prayers religiously. | |
I mean, in the morning, at lunch, before I go to bed, I burn candles. | |
I do everything that I need to do to protect myself because when it gets that real, when it gets to the point to where, you know, you're attacking your household in a manner in which, you know, it's undeniable, where there's these effects that manifest in your life on a daily basis. | |
Like I'm looking at Prolisec right now that I have to take, right? | |
Then you know without a doubt, irregardless of who's skeptical or who's not skeptic, irregardless of another person's opinion about the paranormal, I know what's true and what's real for me, you know? | |
I've got to say, if it was me, I think I would be inclined to get on the Greyhound bus with all of my possessions if I could load them into a bag and move to Minneapolis, St. Paul, and work in Walmart. | |
I think it'd be too strong for me. | |
I don't think I could handle it. | |
Well, I mean, that's where my faith comes in at, you know, and I'm very proud to say that. | |
Because at the end of the day, what I've discovered is that fear only makes it stronger. | |
Because when that first happened, I mean, I was afraid, dude. | |
When I say I was afraid, I'll tell you the whole story. | |
Like, I get up and the only thing I knew to do was to pray, right? | |
But I didn't, and I know how to pray, but then there's a certain way to pray to deal with this. | |
So the only thing I could do was get up, go out to the balcony, sit. | |
I lit a cigar. | |
I just, I couldn't go back to sleep, especially after he stuck his finger down my nose. | |
I couldn't go back to sleep. | |
So I just went out and I found whatever preacher I could find preaching on YouTube. | |
I mean, I don't even know who it was. | |
It was like a random pastor. | |
And I played it for the rest of the morning. | |
I mean, I didn't go to sleep until like 6.30. | |
I didn't go back to bed until the sun was up, but I played that until I felt better, right? | |
Because I just felt like, oh, I felt so violated. | |
Like, oh my God, I was just violated by this thing. | |
And there's nothing I can do because it was spiritual. | |
It wasn't physical. | |
It wasn't like this big, strong guy came in my house and was like, yeah, you know, I'm going to beat you up because I can deal with that. | |
I'm fine with that. | |
I'm from New Orleans. | |
I'm from one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. | |
I can deal with the tough guy. | |
I can't deal with the spiritual aspect. | |
So all I could do is pray. | |
And then when I talked to the demonologist who explained everything to me, he said, hey, man, you need to understand that there really is spiritual warfare. | |
Our country is our world is going through spiritual warfare. | |
And when you become a part of the war, his exact words, when you become a part of the war in the manner in which you've become, then you're going to take hits. | |
From that day forward, I really, really took it personally and I realized that, hey, this is spiritual warfare. | |
I am a warrior in this spiritual war and I need to protect myself. | |
Well, by the sounds of it, you certainly do. | |
But if you say it's a war, how do you think you're going to win? | |
How do I think I'm personally going to win? | |
Yeah, because if you're engaged in a conflict, you need to make sure that you're not a big-time loser, don't you? | |
I think that at the end of the day, there's no way I'll ever be a big-time loser. | |
I mean that in the nicest possible way, by the way. | |
I know it just came out so funny, dude. | |
I think the way to answer your question is this. | |
What I do is, when you get down to the bottom of it, what I do really is a public service to people. | |
And what I mean by that is this. | |
There's no person that, there's very few people, virtually no person. | |
Let's use the words for radio. | |
There's virtually no one that people can call and say, hey, I'm having problems with X, Y, and Z. Or hey, I'm having problems with stuff moving in my household. | |
Or hey, I'm having problems where my walls are bleeding. | |
There's not very many people out there that individual, random individuals can contact and hold the conversation with. | |
Whether they're completely psychopathic, because I've talked to some people who are just completely, they completely jump the shark. | |
I mean, that's a real risk for you, isn't it? | |
Because, look, there are an awful lot of deluded and sadly, I'm trying to find a way. | |
Deranged is a bad word. | |
I don't mean that, but there are a lot of people with issues out there. | |
There are people with issues out there, and you are going to attract all of them. | |
Oh, I've been through it. | |
But here's the thing. | |
There's the public Darkwaters, and then there's the other guy. | |
That other guy can pretty much, the guy who grew up in New Orleans in the lower night ward, that guy can match any deranged personality that there's out there. | |
So I'm not worried about that. | |
I don't concern myself with that. | |
But rather than offering to help certain people deal with their demons, shouldn't you be kind of saying, well, look, here's a number for, we have an organization here called the Samaritans. | |
I don't know if you have them there. | |
They're a telephone help charity. | |
Or here's a number for the psychological services downtown. | |
Rather than try and assist them yourself. | |
I think we might have got off. | |
Let's get back on the same page. | |
I do not, under any circumstances, say, I'm coming to your house and I'm going to bless your house and cast your demons. | |
To be specific, to make sure you clearly understand, if I'm talking to someone who has a demonic problem or entity, it comes out in the conversation. | |
Because how you got to understand something, however, people don't just call you and say, yeah, I got a demon at my house. | |
They don't say that. | |
It's, I'm having some type of activity. | |
Something's going on. | |
I don't know what's happening to me. | |
Right. | |
So you make it clear to them that you're interested as a researcher and they have to understand that you, you know, although you know a certain amount about this, you're not going to come and be a white knight on a charger and save them. | |
Oh, under no circumstances am I, do I have a shield and a white hat and a sword and I'm running in your house trying to save you from a demon. | |
What I do is once I understand that that person has that demonic entity or something that's particularly malicious, because sometimes it's not even, then that's when I refer them out to my network of demonologists and people who can help them. | |
So I've said, and unfortunately, unfortunately and unfortunately, I had to set up that network because when I first started doing this, I was getting people who had these things happening, but it was a limitation of what I could do. | |
And to go back to your question, it's very smart and that I did do that because I don't want to be, you know, fighting those battles for each individual. | |
But what you have to understand also as well, to go back to the spiritual warfare question and there being a war, absolutely by interjecting myself into people's lives and becoming a part of their lives, then it is a war and it is a battle. | |
And then when I refer those people off, it's almost like being a medic in the army. | |
You know, somebody's injured, wound spiritually, something's going on. | |
I kind of funnel you to the right, you know, get you passed up, funnel you to the right doctor that can help you. | |
So it is essentially a public service and it's helping people, but there's a price that you pay for it. | |
Now, for some of those people who are listening to this thinking this is all poop, some of those people, though, may in their lives have bought these self-help books that were very big about 10, 15 years ago. | |
The ones that say, you do this XYZ and you are going to get the riches that you want. | |
You're going to get the promotion you want. | |
You're going to find the love of your life. | |
It's all going to come to you if you do this. | |
You know, they might be living in New York City or some smart suburb somewhere, Vancouver, whatever. | |
And they might have done that. | |
And, you know, all these things, as you said in another context a little while ago, everything has a cost. | |
So I would even be a little worried about doing that in, you know, in a nice, sophisticated suburb wherever I might happen to be. | |
Yeah. | |
And also, I mean, because essentially, when you just talk like, for example, the secret, right? | |
The whole concept that you ask what you want of the universe and the universe will give it to you, right? | |
And you have to, from a biblical perspective, ask, seek, and knock, you know, where it talks about if you ask, you seek, and you knock, then you'll find what it is that you're looking for. | |
Once we get off, once we get away from the everyday perspective and get to the spiritual perspective and the spiritual world, it has its own rules and regulations and things that rules that people have to live by in order to achieve certain levels of success. | |
So for a person, what I would say to a person who's skeptic is, first of all, for my, just me personally, I respect everyone who's skeptic of anything that I'm saying. | |
But I don't even care to speak to the skeptic because at some point in time, that skeptical person is going to encounter something that's going to prove to them and show them. | |
But here we're talking about people who will be skeptical about all the voodoo stuff and hoodoo stuff that you talked about. | |
But they might in their own lives have for fun, you know, tried to use these sophisticated tools that supposedly bring them promotion, love, success, the things they want. | |
So those people are conflicted, I think. | |
No, I don't think they're conflicted. | |
I just think that they believe in something different. | |
See, it's okay for the, and that's what I was going to get to. | |
It's okay for the, it's okay for it to work, essentially call upon the powers of the universe. | |
It's okay for that to work in your favor when you want a promotion or when you want a job, right? | |
But for, it's hard for them to make that leap to someone else can call upon the powers of the universe to help them defeat an enemy or to help them curse someone who, that they don't like or for a fee. | |
So those two issues are not too far away from each other. | |
Not too, you know, they actually run parallel. | |
If you're looking at parallel lanes on a highway and you got a three-lane highway, you know, you have your traditional religious, you have your, whether it be Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, you got those traditional religious sects. | |
You got the kind of esoterical, universal kind of perspectives where somebody who says, you know, I call upon a universe to do this for me. | |
And then you have that other aspect, which is the darker sides, which are the hoodoos, voodoos, sangrias, all those different things. | |
So you believe they're all connected. | |
They're all different roots to the same sort of thing. | |
They're all different roots to the same sources of higher power, in my opinion. | |
They're all sources of higher power. | |
Now, how you tap into that power and how you use that power is what differentiates them to me. | |
Difficult area that you're in. | |
I know people tell you stories all the time. | |
And one of the great things about that YouTube channel that you have that you were talking about is that you actually put these stories out there. | |
How do you, you know, talk to me about the process of how you put together in a form that makes a good story to listen to, somebody's story when they leave a message on your voicemail saying, have I got a paranormal story for you? | |
What's the process? | |
For example, we can do it live. | |
Let's take your story, the one that you were telling me about how you went to go visit this woman and she touched your head. | |
What I would do in that concept is I would start with asking you, I would say, well, you know, Howard, what did you feel at that moment when she touched you? | |
What did you feel, by the way? | |
It was like, it's funny you should say that, because it was like a low voltage, tingling electric shock around the top of my head. | |
And is that when you saw the light or is that, did it happen simultaneously? | |
That was as if she got some kind of coil, head-shaped, that generated some kind of electricity. | |
And it was all simultaneous. | |
It was all simultaneous. | |
What was the weather like when you went to visit her? | |
Was it a cold, rainy night? | |
Was it just a regular day? | |
These are all the questions that I gather from the person in order to create the story. | |
What was the weather like when you walked up to the door? | |
You know what? | |
can see it in my mind's eye right now. | |
It was a typical, you know, It's changing. | |
You know that only too well in New Orleans. | |
But this was a night in London that was a typical kind of late winter, early spring night. | |
It was dark. | |
It was a little breezy, and there was a misty rain hanging in the air. | |
I'm starting to tell the story, aren't I? | |
And this is exactly what people go through. | |
Then the next thing I would say is, well, you're walking up to this door. | |
It's misty. | |
It's rainy. | |
When you actually knocked on the door, what did you feel? | |
What was going through your head? | |
What did your body tell? | |
I was thinking, what the hell am I doing is what I was thinking. | |
Exactly. | |
And so now, based on that right there, the way I would create your story is I take all those elements and just how you laughed and you said, I thought to myself, what was I thinking? | |
When I tell your story, I would describe the evening air. | |
I would describe it as being misty. | |
I would describe the building. | |
And more importantly, I would describe what you felt. | |
And this is why my stories, because there are a lot of horror narrators that narrate horror stories, they kind of get this fake stuff. | |
These are why my stories have brought me to the point and elevated me to the level where I'm at is because I try and capture the essence of you and what you experience. | |
So when you say, I was thinking to myself, what in the world am I doing? | |
That is a true human emotion. | |
And only thing that we can relate to across the seas, across the world, one thing we can relate to is the human emotion because we all feel those same emotions. | |
Everybody's went to do something and said, man, why in the world am I doing this? | |
Yeah. | |
And more than a quarter of a century after this thing happened somewhere in North London, I think it was Acton in London, but I'm not sure. | |
Anyway, people in London will know what I'm talking about. | |
I can remember the feeling of coming out of there, and I felt relaxed and a bit shocked, thinking to myself, I'm not sure, and I'm never going to be what's just gone on inside that house. | |
And that's true. | |
And that's perfectly fine. | |
And you know, that's the most amazing. | |
Remember, we were talking about earlier about how people kind of rationalize and justify, and we kind of work our way to try and come up with this explanation. | |
That's the one thing that people don't understand. | |
It's okay for you not to understand what happened. | |
It's okay. | |
I mean, it really is okay because you had something happen. | |
You're like, man, I don't know what that was about. | |
I have no clue. | |
It's perfectly fine for you to come to that conclusion. | |
What I say is wrong is for you to take that experience and bury it. | |
Like, you know, it's Because it's a jewel. | |
It's like taking a jewel, taking a diamond, and sticking it in the sand. | |
Somebody else can use that. | |
So as long as you don't bury it, you're fine. | |
You're not going to always come to a peaceful conclusion with what happened to you. | |
You're not going to always be at peace with those encounters of things that have happened. | |
It's just not, that's not how life works. | |
You know, people go through divorces and they're messy. | |
People get fired from jobs and they got to get on unemployment. | |
Life is not just that well organized to where everything works out perfectly. | |
So when you jump to the other side and you're dealing with the paranormal, I can guarantee you everything that happens paranormal is not going to end in this perfect manner. | |
Now, look, whether these things exist or whether they don't, and my listeners will email me to tell me their thoughts on it, and I'll get emails from both sides. | |
I've always kind of believed that, and I've always tried to live my life this way, is if you're an honest and nice guy about stuff and you don't hurt people and you do your business as well as you can, then you're going to be as okay as you can be in this crazy world that we live in. | |
That's been my way of doing stuff. | |
And I think that's the right approach to take. | |
Personally, my approach is this. | |
I treat every person with the utmost respect possible. | |
Until you show me that you don't deserve my respect and you don't deserve for me to extend my arm and my hand to you in any manner in which that would be amicable. | |
There have been people called me who are, woo, they are out there. | |
But I'll give that person 10 minutes of my time. | |
I'll listen to their story. | |
But there are certain elements of a story that ring true. | |
And I know when you're lying, when we start the conversation, because of the questions that I ask and how I loop the conversation back around and kind of seize on one thing, but even that individual, but in their mind, that experience is real to them. | |
So I feel like, look, that's real to you. | |
It's not what I do. | |
I know in my heart of parts that that's not necessarily right. | |
So, but I appreciate you sharing that story with me. | |
Do you ever feel when you talk to people like that? | |
And, you know, in the broadcasting industry, you hear from people of all kinds. | |
I mean, do you, in your position, do you never feel that you shouldn't really be getting involved at all on any level? | |
Because really, it's for other people, professionals, to deal with and not really you? | |
No, no, no, no, no. | |
Because I'm not, it's not like I'm advising that. | |
It's not like I'm diagnosing that person and saying, oh, you're crazy. | |
And I'm prescribing them a prescription. | |
What I'm doing is I'm assessing that person based on what they're saying for what I personally do as the narrator of the Dark Waters Channel. | |
So as a narrator who collects stories from around the world, there has to be some type of filter that I put in place in order for me to get the great stories, the good stories, and filter out the BS. | |
So I have to filter those stories. | |
And if the question is, should I be talking to the public in general and taking those stories, then absolutely, because I think at the end of the day, I've done a lot more good by speaking to people than bad ever. | |
All right. | |
So last question. | |
It's an important one. | |
Why are you doing this? | |
Are you doing this to be a new media star? | |
Are you doing this to further the cause of your own understanding and knowledge? | |
You know, what's this all about? | |
Are you doing this for, you know, to, in the quest for fame? | |
A lot of people, there's nothing wrong with that. | |
A lot of people seek for fame. | |
I mean, look, when I was younger, I did too. | |
And now I see that as being the imposter that it is. | |
But, you know, I wanted to be famous at one point. | |
God knows why. | |
But I'm just curious. | |
Why are you doing this? | |
Well, the reason why I do this is because of what happened to me and the experiences that I've had over my lifetime. | |
And I really believe that people need someone that they can talk to. | |
You would be amazed of the number of people who I spoke to who just say, hey, man, you know, I'm just so appreciative that I can hold a conversation with someone outside of my family. | |
I can't talk to my wife about what happened to me because she thinks I'm crazy, but I know something happened to me. | |
And so that's why I do it. | |
I do it to help people. | |
Now, as far as the promotion aspect of it, I promote myself because I'm very competitive. | |
Since I've decided to do this and I've decided to help people, then I want to be the best at it. | |
And there really is no one else who does what I do. | |
So I'm competitive. | |
How would you do? | |
I'm going to have to write for my website just a one-line description of you. | |
What should I be calling you? | |
Apart from Dark Waters. | |
I prefer to just be relayed to as a paranormal storyteller because that's what I'm going to say. | |
I was going to call you a paranormal storyteller, investigator of extreme paranormality. | |
Would that hurt? | |
I don't think it would hurt, but I think it's not the investigator of extreme paranormality. | |
It's not 100% truth because I'm not going into a haunted house and investigating. | |
So, you know, so it could give the wrong impression. | |
I can tell you now, I'm not doing that. | |
Paranormal storyteller it is then, I think, Doc. | |
Yeah. | |
Listen, I've loved this conversation. | |
And I know that when you go on other radio shows, you play little clips of your stories. | |
And that's if you come on my radio show at some point in the UK, then we'll get you to do that. | |
But I hope this has been as interesting an experience for you as it has been for me. | |
No, it's been one of my best interviews because as you started off saying, you do it from a journalistic perspective and you ask questions, I really think more people should ask me, to be honest with you, because most of the time people want the entertainment side. | |
So they want the stories. | |
They want this, but nobody really asks those questions. | |
So I appreciate you asking those questions. | |
And I like the fact that you kind of dug deeper into it because there's a lot more to it. | |
And I rarely get a chance to talk about the spiritual warfare aspect of what's going on. | |
I think people need to be aware of it. | |
So I really appreciate it. | |
Well, thank you for making time for me. | |
And I'm glad you emailed me, Dark. | |
Please take care. | |
If people want to, have you got a website as well where people can go or is it just the YouTube channel? | |
Darkh201 is the website.com. | |
My Facebook page and Twitter accounts are DarkH201. | |
I'm more active on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube than I am on the website. | |
It's just kind of a holding page. | |
But if you want to, you know, there'll be people who want to connect with you, I think, after hearing you. | |
Thanks for talking with me. | |
I appreciate it, and I hope to be back with you soon. | |
Thank you to the man they call Dark Waters for a fascinating and chilling edition of The Unexplained, I think you'll find. | |
I'll put a link to him and his work on my website, theunexplained.tv. | |
Look, thank you very much for bearing with me over this period. | |
I have to tell you, has not been easy, and I've tried as best I can to navigate my way through a difficult few months. | |
There's all I can say about it. | |
And look, we all have these times in our lives. | |
Nobody ever told any of us that any of it was going to be easy, and the person who said that was absolutely right. | |
I'm here to tell you. | |
But thank you for bearing with me and for all of your support. | |
If you can make a donation to the show at this time, that would be great. | |
Thank you. | |
TheUnexplained.tv, designed by Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot, is the website. | |
Go there. | |
You can follow the link, and you can also follow the other link there that allows you to send me an email with guest suggestions and thoughts on the show. | |
Thank you very much from me, Howard Hughes in London. | |
This has been The Unexplained. | |
And until next we meet, please stay safe. | |
Please stay calm. | |
And above all, please stay in touch. | |
Thank you very much. | |
Take care. |