Why We Like To Be Scared & Listener Ghost Stories

It's spooky season and who doesn't love an old fashioned ghost story. Have you ever wondered why we love being scared? You would think that the reality of last year it was scary enough, but 2020 saw the horror genre take home its largest share of the box office in modern history. Without having any box offices, but I don't having any movie theaters open. Welcome to this shit works. Episode 64. I'm your host, Julie Brown. And today I am discussing why we love to be scared. And I'm also sharing some of your listeners ghost in paranormal stories. This episode is sponsored by Nickerson. Uh, fro service branding, marketing, and PR and communications agency with team members in Boston, Los Angeles, Miami and New York city. Visit them@nickersoncos.com. Uh, 2019 article by Michelle lease out five reasons to help explain why we love being scared. The first of which is that ghost stories, horror movies, and paranormal stories provide a safe container for us to feel our emotions. Although her article was written before the pandemic, this point may explain why 2020 was the biggest year for the horror genre. Because we were all so scared and filled with anxiety and the capsule of time that we spent watching a horror movie or something scary gave us a socially sanctioned outlet to express anxiety and actually shift for a brief moment in time. What we were actually anxious about. The second reason that Michelle lays out is that fear is actually good for us. And healthy dose of fear keeps us physically safe. It keeps us on our toes. It harks back to our fight or flight instinct. The third reason is that ghost stories are a metaphor for all the ghosts we are dealing with in our lives. Even if you don't necessarily believe in ghosts, we're all dealing with ghosts on some level. All of us are haunted by things in our past, or are struggling with our own ghosts of things that have failed such as relationships. Or careers or whatever you have. We all carry those ghosts with us. The fourth reason is that go stories, help us explain the unexplainable. We all have had events that have happened in our lives that we simply can't explain. And our brain is wired to dislike things we can't explain or don't understand. So a lot of the times we look for an explanation, even if it's a pretty unlikely or far-fetched one. The fifth reason is that sometimes we just want a good scare. And there was nothing wrong with that. And so with that, Onto your listener stories. And others that I've gathered. Diane says I grew up in a very old house, built in 1880. It's 141 years old right now. It was always cold at our house. Very drafty and my parents are very scrappy. He was not ever turned on to the fullest. So chills were very common. My cousin immigrated from Hong Kong at a young age. And he was always in tune with spirits like a sixth sense kind of thing. When he lived in Hong Kong, he'd always see things and hear things he wasn't supposed to. His parents never took him to cemeteries to pay respect to elders because he was so susceptible to things. He lived with us when he first came over to the states and told us he would see a white lady. Who looked very dark. In our house. And we had no idea what that meant. Years later. We had a break in at the house and we went around the neighborhoods, talk to the neighbors to see if they had seen anything while we were out. One of them. One of the neighbors told us. A story of a lady. Who died in our house. And a house fire. Years ago. She was trapped and couldn't get out. So, this is probably the lady, the white lady. Who looked very dark. We had weird stuff happened in the living room in a small bedroom. The stereo went off by itself often and the answering machine would go, hello? Hello. Hello. Any time someone came down the stairs for gotten near the living room. It scared the shit out of us. Yeah. It scared the shit out of me. Fucking kidding me. She goes on to say. When my husband and I moved home to live for a few months before we closed on our current house, he would get creepy vibes, sleeping upstairs. Like someone was watching him. He's always thought it was me, but I was super pregnant and not paying attention to him. You would hear footsteps coming down the hall and get creeped out. He swears, he heard someone typing on the computer in our room, in the middle of the night, but when he shined his phone in the corner, nothing was there. Oh, yeah. And I just found out by the way that my dad discovered a secret bedroom in the third floor. But in order to access that you had to go through a crawl space. And when you went into that secret bedroom, it was painted in all pink. Please. That's a lie. That's a lot for one house. Mr. Deb says, I have a ghost story about a boyfriend who happened to be my work contact. So several years after we ended our relationship. I had a very vivid dream. His father had come to me to visit and to ask that I design a Memorial trail at their cottage in upstate New York. The trail was to be symbolic and to be a place the family could go to, to be closer to him. It was very haunting and I remembered every detail of the dream. I called Joe the next day and asked him if everything was okay. He said that his dad had passed away the night before and that he was now contacting everyone to let them know. I told him my dream and we both agreed that in fact, Arnie had come to me in the night. The third one is a story that my little sister actually told me a couple of months ago. Which I had no idea about. My sister has two children, both boys, both delivered via Syrian, two kids, two boys. We're enough for her. She said so during her second scenario and she had her tubes tied. It's a pretty common in routine procedure. About three years or so later, my sister went to a girls night out event with one of her girlfriends. At the event or a number of different types of vendors and among them were two psychics where you could pay to have a reading. My sister's friend wanted to see one. So my sister agreed to see the other. During the course of her reading, the psychic told my sister that she was going to have another child. My sister laughed out loud and said to the woman, well, that ain't going to happen because I've already made sure of that. At this, my sister said the woman's steeled her eyes on her as if she was looking through her soul and said, never. Say. Never. My sister and her friend left time, went on and she forgot about the interaction with the psychic. During the summer of 2020, my sister wasn't feeling well. Because of COVID. She decided to go to the doctor and get checked out and make sure it wasn't that she was not as nauseous and lethargic and her body just hurt. The doctor asks, you know, routine questions that you ask on a patient intake form, including what was your last period. Uh, my sister couldn't remember, she's chasing her two kids around every day and has also been a little preoccupied with, I don't know, an ongoing pandemic. The doctor said that just to rule it out, they needed to do a pregnancy test, even though it would be negative, you know? Cause she had her tubes tied. Except that it wasn't negative. My sister was indeed seven weeks pregnant. Never. Say, never. I bring up another family story, because before doing research on this episode, I thought this experience was unique to my Nana. My Nana and my grandpa had a may December marriage. If you aren't familiar with this term, a may December romance is a term for a romantic relationship between two people with a considerable age difference. My grandpa was in his forties. When he married my Nana, who was in her early twenties. When he passed away from cancer at the age of 84, my Nana was still relatively young and she took care of him in their house until the night he died. In the days leading up to his death, my Nana would have a reoccurring dream. The first time the dream came to her, she was in the breezeway of their house, looking out the front door. She noticed a man walking up the street. He was wearing a black coat and a black hat. Every night, she had the dream and each night the man in the black coat and the black hat got closer and closer to the front door. The night before my grandfather passed away. The man in the black coat and the black cat knocked on her door. I never heard anyone else talk about the man in the black coat and the black hat until I started reading stories on Reddit. I found this story that says. I fell out of a tree when I was a young boy, I not only hit the ground hard. I hit several branches on the way down. I was alone when I fell and I wasn't found for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. I was heavily concussed, but I can clearly remember an elderly man in a dark suit with a dark hat standing over me while I lay on the ground. He was just looking at me the entire time and he offered no help. He had piercing eyes. And he scared me. Some teenagers found me. And when I came back to, there was no man in the hat. I asked him if they saw him. And he said there was nobody there. They stood me up and walked me home. And I just kept asking about the man and kept looking for him. Years later, I learned about the hat man. And now I'm convinced that I was close to death that day. And the man was there to take me to the other side. So after reading this Reddit story, I discovered that there are hundreds of people who have had visions of the hat, man. There's actually a website called the hat man project where people share their happy and stories. And in 2018, there was an article titled why everyone around the world is having the same nightmare. And it's all about. The man in the black coat in the black hat. Have you ever heard of this? I thought my Nana was the only one, but it seems she is not alone in your experience. The next story is from my friend, Brian, who writes about 10 years ago. We purchased a beautiful but long benignly neglected farmhouse. We planned an extensive renovation, but before beginning we spent some time living in house that time forgot. And in which 1953, still reigned. So, you know, as a side note here, I can attest to this. As I spent time in their house before it was renovated. And it still had some amazing mid century furniture left from the previous owner. In addition to the furniture and upright piano was also left behind. So he goes on to say, Often in a new place, your mind plays tricks on you. Is the water turning on and off on its own or the pipes just old digests awaken to the sound of someone playing the old upright piano that was left in the sun room. Or was I dreaming? It's really happened, guys. I remember them telling me this story of being woken up in the middle of the night because someone. But no one. I was playing that piano. Why is there a cold wind ripping through the dining room in the hottest of summer days? When our dog came home from one of her daily rabbit hunts covered in fresh bunny blood, we decided it was time to let the contractors take over and take a break from our new home. Surely all the renovations would roast the spirits that were seemingly messing with us. And if nothing else, the pipes would be more reliable when we returned. Six months later. We came back to our newly renovated home. All seemed quiet and freshly painted and we began to settle in. Several weeks later, I put on my shoes to get ready for work. And inside was a small rectangular piece of metal. I thought nothing of it and tossed it into the bushes in front of the house, as it got in my car. That evening I returned home and changed. And I grabbed my sneakers to walk the dog and I slid my feet into them. As my foot brushed against something cold and nettle. I rip the sneaker off and check it out. I picked up a small rectangular piece of metal off the floor and stared at it. And I grabbed the dog and walk to the, onto the porch casually flicking the metal into the Bush. Like I had that morning. On my way to walk the dog, I looked at my partner who was installing a light bulb on our front porch and told them about the bizarre metal piece with a twin that I had found. He slowly lowered his hands and stared at me. Babysit. I borrowed your shoes earlier. And when I put them on, there was a small rectangular piece of metal in the shoe. So I threw that piece in VR. Years later, the spirits are much quieter. We promptly smudged our house after the metal incident with Sage and some calming words to our ghostly resident. We rifled through the bushes and found the piece of metal and now proudly display it in our foyer. Having heard that goes to enjoy their gifts, being honored. Occasionally a while it goes missing later, turn up in an odd place. Or the car keys. Seemed to disappear only to later show up on the counter. It's of course entirely possible that these are signs of age or stress. We prefer to smile at our trickster ghost and pat the metal rectangle on our way out the door. So I love this particular story because I've been in this house and I know how respectful Brian and Lee, Michael have been with her home and the potential additional residents. No matter the reason, no matter the season, I love me a good ghost or paranormal story. maybe it's because of the reasons we discussed at the top of the episode, or maybe it's because belief in ghosts or spirits that live among us, or one of the traits shared throughout ancient cultures. Regardless. If you were to experienced it firsthand or not, the tradition of telling ghost stories has been a part of every culture around the world. It's a universal bond that we all have as humans. So maybe at your next networking events to falling prey to boring chitchat, simply ask. Do you have a scary story to share? Okay. So for this week's. Spooky cocktail. I'm pulling out one that takes a little bit of effort. It's called children of the corn. Cocktail. For those of you who don't know what children know the corny is. It's a book by Stephen King that was turned into a mediocre movie. It's about a young couple trapped in a remote town where dangerous religious called the children believes that everyone over the age of 18 must be killed. Yes. It's not great. So onto the cocktail. In order to make this, you need to first make some candy corn infused vodka. I know candy corn is a bit controversial, something it's amazing. Something is gross. I fall into the former because candy corn is delicious. Novaka needs only two hours to infuse. And Ben, you have left over boozy candy corn. Yes, please. Okay. So you make the candy corn with half a liter of vodka and half a cup of candy corn. You let that sit in the bowl for about two hours. You know, you start up a little and then you let it sit in the bowl for two hours, and then you strain out the candy corn. And of course you're going to eat it. And then you pour the vodka into a glass bottle. Now for the cocktail, you will need. That two ounces of that candy, corn and fusebox vodka. Three 40 ounces of lemon juice, three 14 ounces of cinnamon, simple syrup. You know how to make this it's just equal parts, water, and sugar. And you simply add some ground cinnamon. Three to five ounces of seltzer water, a lemon wheel. And if you want some of it that infused candy corn for garnish that to. So you pour the candy corn. Vodka, the lemon juice and a cinnamon syrup into a cocktail shaker. I used to shake it for like 10 seconds. And then you pour it into a cocktail glass. Um, that's filled with fresh eyes and you garnish with a lemon and maybe one of those boozy candy corns. All right friends. That's it for today. If you haven't had a chance to review the podcast on nine tunes, I am asking you, please take a moment to do so. It will mean so much to me. And until next week. Cheers.