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In the years that would follow, he'd find himself being drawn to a patch of woods that one would call demonic, visiting time and time again, trying to find answers. This would only be the start of his adventures and exploration into the paranormal. Today he shares his story on the Grave Talks. So we can definitely go back to my childhood. I was incredibly close with my mom's dad, my grandfather, while I was growing up. He was almost like a parent to me. And he ended up having a heart attack two days before my 13th birthday passed away, which devastated me simply in a word for it. But I remember shortly after this funeral, I awoke in a dream, but I could tell it was more than a dream, if that makes sense at all. I was in a very bright room. The walls were white, the light was practically blinding. And the room seemed like it went on forever. In Harry and walking around in this room went, "Okay, why am I here?" Because this is more than a dream. I could feel it. And although suddenly I heard a voice call out to me at the very end of the room, and it sounded familiar so I started walking toward it. And soon enough, I got to this person and it turned out to be my grandfather, who was sitting on this, what I can only begin to describe as a thrown-up sword. So it was completely white. He was sitting upon a white suit and he looked very youthful, a big smile on his face. And he said, "Come over here, I need to talk to you." And I went over and he said, "Look, I didn't get the chance to say goodbye. I just wanted you to know how much I love you, and I hope you have a good life." And he said, "Be good," which was something he always said to me. And two seconds later, I woke up and feeling like I was still there, but I was back to reality within the comforts of my own bedroom. And I cried my eyes out about it. I went and woke my mom up, told her, she said, "You know, you know, you're upset, your grandfather died, your mind's playing tricks on you, go back to sleep." And I, you know, I told anyone and everyone who would listen to the local reverent at my church. And finally, it got down to telling my grandmother about it. And she said, "You know, that's very interesting. You had that dream because you were actually the last person that your grandfather asked about before you had his heart attack. Wow. Yeah. So I mean, to this day, I'm, I'm more than certain he visited me. I had multiple dreams like that throughout the years. Did any of your family or friends accept it as more than just a dream, or has it been mainly you who's just kind of accepted it as being, you know, more than what it was, or more than what others would think it was? There were a few friends of mine that accepted it for what it was, but, you know, mainly at the time, you know, being I was a child, any adult, with a rational mind, was like, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't get talking about ghosts." Yeah. Stuff like that. I tried to kind of brush it off. But yeah, I know. So you have this experience and it's, you know, kind of, you know, mind bending to kind of contemplate this whole idea of, did I can communicate with someone who was deceased? As you kind of grew older and that thought kind of simmered with you longer and longer, what did that do for your kind of understanding or interest into the world of ghost and paranormal beyond your grandfather and the idea of a loved one that came back to give you a message? So pretty much what it all boiled down to was, I would go to the public library a lot as a young teenager and I would just spend hours and hours in the archives and, you know, various books absorbing folklore and different bits of information that I could pick up on about the paranormal and the afterlife and, you know, a deceased family of members coming back to visit you. And then soon enough, the opportunity came knocking at my door and I went, I guess you could say ghost hunting for the very first time and had a, I guess, another online altering experience that definitely paved the way for the rest of my paranormal career. I guess you could say what happened? So where I grew up, a little place called Matthews County, it's actually in Virginia, one of the smallest counties in Virginia. Deep within Matthews, there is a haunted patch of woods called Old Housewoods and this is the ultimate place to go looking for ghosts. It's supposed to be haunted by pirates and British red coats, which is headless animals. I mean, you know, take any good Edgar Island post story and sit with Robert Lewis-Stevensen and boom, you've got it. And a friend of mine asked me to go with him ghost hunting one night. I said, you know, buddy, I've never done this before but I'm completely interested. He said, well, you know, just keep an open mind. I've got flashlights and audio reporters and stuff like that. You know, I'll show you the ropes and I was like, okay, all right. No idea what to expect. But the moment, the moment he took me into the woods, you know, we drove through the center of the woods and his vehicle and I could feel the energy of the place right away. It made my skin crawl almost. It was very electrifying and it put me on edge. And after a few moments, we got to the end of this dirt road and we turned around and started coming back out. All of a sudden, he pulled over to the side and encouraged me to get out. And I said, really, you want me to get out in the middle of the woods, you know, what's going on here? You try to kill me and you know, joking with him. He said no, he just trusts me. We got out and the next thing I know he's sitting in the middle of the road, he's telling me he's going to attempt astral projection. And I said, okay, I've heard bits and pieces about astral projection but I'm not fully familiar. He said they're an explain to me, he said, I'm basically going to try and get my spirit to leave my body so I can go out and interact with the spirits that well here within this woods. If you see anything, I need you to kind of be my lifeline and pull me back to reality. And all I'm thinking is, okay, this is a bad idea. This is however you good horror movie starts. But we said they're probably pervalt, 10, 15 minutes. And I remember the moon was coming down above us that the wind was blowing through the pine trees, which, you know, would smack up against each other. That sounded itself. It was quite terrifying. And all of a sudden I see what looks like somebody moving through the woods. And I can even hear the foliage being pushed round and whatnot. And my eyes adjust as best as they possibly can. And I can see physical arms grabbing branches, pushing them to the side. And right then my heart started dumping because I had no idea what was going on. But I could clearly see somebody coming through the woods toward us. And a few seconds later, whoever it was came out, but they weren't in a physical form. What came out of the woods was the best way I can put it is a, it's like a black cloud of vapor. And it kind of came out of the woods and settled on the road just several feet away from where me and my friend were. And I stood there, transphix watching this. And a few seconds later it kind of transformed. And there was a very distinct shadowy figure of a man standing there in its place. And I could easily see a tricorn hat in the outline of what looked like a long-flowing overcoat. And he kind of had his arms out like, you know, he was preparing to get into a duel or something. And the very distinct impression I got was, it's time to go. I yelled at my friend and I said, "Drily, wake up. Come on, we've got company." And I ran for the car and he woke up and he said, "Oh man, let's go, let's go." But that is, we took off to the car, I jumped in first and I hopped in the back seat and I looked down the back window. And here he comes, my buddy Charlie. And all of a sudden I see hand grab him by the shoulder and throw him against the back of the car. And a struggle ensues. He's screaming begging for me to get out and defend him. And I'm like, "Man, I have no idea what's going on here." Come on, let's go. I can't do this. I see him throw a punch and then he jumps in the car completely out of breath. His shirt's pretty much ripped off of his body. And he starts up the car and we drive away. The last thing I did and that I can clearly recall was I turned around and I looked out the back window of the car and this shadowy figure of a man and the tricorn had a long fly over his. He was chasing after the car and he was actually keeping up with it, which just totally blew my mind. But he was more visible now. You could actually see more details. He could tell he was essentially dressed like a pirate for the most part. By the looks of it I was guessing probably 17th century. Clothes were very raggedy, worn looking. I could see an necklace around his neck and everything. And he was illuminated by the light of the moon. After I guess a good minute or so he finally gave up and stopped chasing us. And that's when I saw six more men dressed very similar, similarly to him show up standing all around him. Do you believe or let's just talk about how this this occurred. Do you think your friend essentially conjured up this experience to happen through him attempting astral projection to begin with? I actually pondered that quite a bit over the years because for something like that to take place, unless you have an entity that was just waiting in the shadows for a couple of schmucks to come along. I had this sort of energy. I mean, what else could there be? You know, I'm more inclined to go with, you know, he was doing something and didn't understand the four repercussions of what could happen and conjured this up himself. Almost like giving energy or a lifeline to something to for it to manifest. If you guys have just been sitting there drinking some beers and talking, do you think the same experience would have happened? You know, I honestly can't say it would because it would probably be a different story. For sure, we'd be telling a different story right now. I can't say that I have spent the night in that woods because after that I did go back. I went looking for answers and I brought a group of six people with me. We obtained permission to spend the night in the woods. I remember we had dinner late that evening. We had a big, big pot of stew. We were sitting around the fire. We hadn't seen anything or heard anything the entire time. We stayed up incredibly late talking and eating and whatnot. I remember as I got into my tent, I was lying down. I was looking out into the woods and I saw what looked like seven people walking toward the camp. They were far off at a distance, but they were again, much like the pirates. They were illuminated by the light of the moon. They were blue from head to toe. I could see Sikhs rather call what looked like possibly adult males and a child walking in front of them. Not so long after that, I fell asleep and didn't really think anything else of it. I thought, "I'm warning." I woke up and I was the first one out into the camp. My buddy is one by one, started getting up. I realized that our pot of stew that we had left out had been toppled over and the ladle was on the other side of the camp. I went looking into pot, the pot was empty and I thought, "Oh great. Animals must have come in and helped themselves to our food." Not a big deal. My buddy, Tencent, he was from Nepal. He came out and he said, "I had the strangest dream last night and I honestly can't say I have an explanation." I said, "Okay. Tell me what happened." He said, "So I woke to what sounded like somebody raiding our camp. I climbed out of my tent. I went out and I looked and there were six grown men dressed like pirates sitting around our campfire with a little girl and a similar old-time-e type outfit. They were eating our stew." I was flabbergasted. I yelled at them. I said, "Hey, I don't know who you are, but that's ours. It buzz off." Next thing you know, this little girl took the ladle and threw it at me and she laughed maniacally and I could see you right through her. He said, "Right after that, it scared him so much at Sprangham Lake." We looked at each other and I was like, "Okay, wait a second." I put two and two together and said, "Okay, so obviously this happened and we weren't really expecting it to happen because I was falling asleep. I saw them coming to the camp." Then you had the dream that was obviously more than just a dream. Yeah. Let me ask you this because there's a lot of questions I have here and a lot to unpack with that whole thing. Going back to your first experience there in the woods with seeing those figures coming out and between that and you deciding to get a group together to go stay in the woods, how were you processing that? That's a lot to take in. Seeing all those figures, being able to make out their clothing and almost kind of place them at a certain place in time, I mean, are you questioning yourself at any point? Are you going, "Am I okay?" I mean, your friend obviously had experiences there too, so you weren't alone. That kind of puts more validity to it to one when you have an experience like that when someone else has it with you. you. But how are you processing it after that first encounter? Well, you know, it's funny because I've had a lot of people tell me over the years that, you know, obviously I must be crazy doing what I do. You know, it's the fact that I went back after that first experience in Old House Woods, that right there is solidified my insanity, so to speak. But I question myself quite a bit through and through, you know, and I contemplated, "Okay, did me and, you know, in this atmosphere create some kind of hysteria?" My friend and I together, you know, possibly put this out into the atmosphere, and you know, at the end of the night, I kind of hold it out, and I knew, you know, because my intuition was telling me that there was something more to this place than meets the eye, and that I needed to go back and try to find some kind of answers for those questions that I now had. Having those questions, what did you find? Obviously you had these experiences there when you went into the woods. Your friend had this dream. It was your friend aware of your experiences. Did you give them any context as to why we're all going out into the woods tonight for this sleepover in this kind of creepy, weird environment? So they all knew of my experience. I didn't want to leave them completely hanging. You know, in the dark about it, I wanted them to at least know, "This is what happened to me, and I'm bringing all of you here to spend the night with me just in the off-chance, something happens." You know, in that way, I had multiple points of view on whatever takes place. And they were surprisingly okay with it. I do recall we did lose one guy, I think it was like five o'clock in the morning, because I guess nerves must have gotten the better of him in the end. But he said that he needed to take off. He couldn't deal with it. We respected that and let him move on. The woods has always been a bit of an interesting place. It sounds like it. And you obviously are someone who likes to do their research and try to find answers to these situations. What did you find out beyond obviously having those experiences back in the woods, as far as just the history of that setting in itself? It's actually quite interesting. Growing up with all the different folklore, we do know that pirates, for example, were actually in that area and used old households as cover. When I was growing up, there was this one story about Blackbeard, the pirate gang, the infamous Edward Tate, who came up to Virginia and he had accidentally got blown off course, and sealed up white scruits, who had turned along the edge of the woods, and he came on shore with about a dozen or so of his crew, and they buried treasure and killed them all and buried them in the hole with the treasure that way there, so this would protect it for all eternity. And he of course got killed off of a Ocargog North Carolina and never made it back to retrieve that treasure. The interesting thing is we did find out, being a couple of friends who are digging to the history more of that, that actually never happened at all. Blackbeard never stepped foot in Virginia at all, whatsoever. But we did actually discover that Captain William Kid did. He and some of his men actually, we can't pinpoint to that exact location now. I just started kind of revisiting that old stomping ground of mine. I just went in an investigation there for the first time in ten years. I've been avoiding the place, despite how much it calls out to me. But we're going to start doing some serious spur-box sessions and things of that nature to see if we can start getting some names, so that way we can go back and look at the history, particularly with Captain Kid's crew, and see if we can make any kind of connection. You said you're avoiding the place. Why is that? So I had a, I had a right-by feeling done that. This guy was just a few years back, and the lady who did it for me, she was an empath. And she gave me an empathic reading, and she told me that I had a truly deep connection to a certain patch of woods that was haunted. And she wanted me to know that my soul was tainted because of that location, which was a very deep for me. And I asked her what she meant, and she said, "Well, I don't want to scare you, but your soul has been tainted by demonic energy from that woods." And I said, "Is it still there?" And she said, "Not from what I can tell, but you encountered something, and it left its mark on you." So that right there kind of made me take a major step back, and I just started to kind of slowly visually avoid the place, even though people would still contact me and ask me about different bits of historical research and things that I'd done. And I was always more than happy to have balance, and never greedily, theoretically step foot into the woods again. But I changed that actually about a month ago. Now, yeah. What did it feel like going back? I mean, after having this piece of knowledge now that you did not have, and when someone tells you something like that, especially when you get the words demonic throw it into the mix of things, that causes one to pause a little bit. Because it goes beyond, you know, I guess one may consider more of a safe type spirit, one of a grandfather, for example. Yeah. Something like that, you do tend to pause. So when you went back after having that information, how did you handle it? How did you process it? Well, the first thing I did was kind of prep myself. I've been doing a lot of grounding and meditation work recently. I've been working with some friends who have been teaching me about crystals and things of that nature that, you know, I can use whenever I go to any particular place that might even be remotely haunted that way. Nothing attaches itself to me or, you know, affects me mentally, physically emotional, emotionally at all whatsoever. And by doing that, I've kind of given myself the confidence to be able to step back into old house woods and not really worry about anything potentially, you know, trying to tape my soul and you further than what's already been done. Because the killer did that, she said that if darkness ever grabbed my soul again, then I would take a turn for the worse. And, you know, I'll never forget that probably as long as I live. So, you know, I always make sure, you know, whether it's old house woods or, you know, wavily hill sanatorium. Any of these places that I've trapped into, I always make sure to protect myself. And I encourage any entities that I encounter to not follow me and stay wherever it is that they're staying. And that's interesting. I mean, of course, it's one of those things and the verbiage that we use, you encourage them to not attach themselves to you. At some point is that merely a suggestion to them, I mean, because at the end of the day, if things have kind of free will, and you can do all the protection that you want. And that's great. And it probably does a great deal to protect you. But is there ever essentially, you know, the invincibility Mario star that you can get where you're not going to be touched by anything. Are you inherently taking a risk no matter what when you go into these places with the protection on top of everything that that something could take grasp of your soul as the rakey healer told you and make you take a turn for the worst. Honestly, you know, you can do whatever you want in terms of protection, you know. But kind of like you said, you know, it's really important. just a suggestion. I'm all about the power of intent. It's not what you say, but it's how you say it. Yeah. And I find that some spirits will respect you on that count and go, okay, no problem. You know, and like I've actually had some ask me to come back the next day after work, which kind of blew me away. I'm like, oh, you want me to come back after work? Okay, perfect. How convenient. Yeah. And consider it. I had to hold up that bargain. Yeah. But, you know, then there are those who disregard that, you know, and they're like, okay, will you tell me not to attach myself, but what if I just hit your ride and don't take in your energy or make you feel ill or anything like that? And then they'll follow me home and end up in my home for however long, you know, they decide to stay until I realize they're there and have to ask the debate. Yeah. I mean, there's just a lot of possibilities there that I'm sure run through your mind when going through, having those sort of experiences. Let's move on from the woods. That's a very, very intriguing story. Thank you for sharing that. Tell me more about as you continue to dig into this world of paranormal and begin to investigate things. Beyond just, you know, from initial experiences that drew you in, what were some of the areas, or give me one or two areas that you really wanted to go and dig into deeper after that experience? So I, I, you know, I slowly became intrigued about life after death in general, you know, what, what's beyond this life and prompts weren't to come back as it goes because, you know, if we go with what Christianity teaches us, you know, when one dies, we go to heaven, we go to hell, that's the end of the story. So to speak, unless you want to get into reincarnation and all that. Sure. But I needed to know, you know, what, what all is there? And, you know, I've had this conversation with different spirits throughout my endeavors in the paranormal field, and, you know, and I've gotten various answers. And, you know, some of them have told me, oh, there's music and light with friends on what family. Some have told me there's nothing, you know, that's dark as miserable and they're alone. So that kind of, you know, it keeps me going. I guess you could say at the end of the day, I keep pushing forward, looking for more and more. And I'm always, you know, when it comes to quarantines, that's like, I have to look at history to kind of put me on the path that I feel like I should be on. Because if we don't learn from the mistakes of the past, we're obviously going to repeat it. And the old adage goes. Sure. And as you dug into that mindset and just that, that whole, you know, essentially, mantra of how you're going to take a look at these things, where did that take you? Physically, in terms of investigating locations. Well, I eventually became drawn to a place called Williamsburg, Virginia, which is full of history to the ground. And I actually kind of discovered that it was the perfect place to go looking for answers to all my paranormal questions. Because we're talking about a city that was initially formed in 1638, when a group of colonists broke off from Jamestown for it to look for better protection, I guess, than the neighbor Americans. And then the city itself ended up getting officially created in 1699. And boy, oh boy, oh boy, little that I know that would kind of open up a lot of doors. And eventually, I actually take me into being a ghost tour guide for the city and working for the Columbia Williamsburg Foundation and kind of getting to know all the history and getting very intimate with some of these, you know, original 18th century houses that they have there on the property and getting to know the ghosts who live there as well. That wraps up part one of our conversation with DC in part two. What drew him to learn more about the Peyton Randolph house in Williamsburg? What's the story on the more than 37 deaths at the Peyton Randolph house? And when a spirit seems to be stuck, do we have a responsibility to help them cross over? All of that in more in part two of our conversation. Until next time for the grave talks, I'm Tony Brusky. Thanks for listening. Ryan Reynolds here from int mobile. 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