MYSTICAL: Naga Fireballs

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All right, I need to clear the air on something.

Just because I live and breathe true crime dox does not mean your girl can't let loose.

In fact, I actually might need to blow off steam more than your average working mom, mostly because of all the heavy stuff that I research on a day-to-day basis. So, all to say, I love a good party.

Food, music, dancing, drinks, getting dressed up. I live for it.
Especially when it's celebrating some old tradition.

Especially if that tradition is supernatural. Like you guys, I love Halloween.
So when I heard about this festival in Thailand, I was like, Rasha, Yvette, pack your bags.

We need to book tickets immediately. It's called the Naga Fireball Festival.
It happens every year in October along the banks of the Mekong River.

There's costumes, dance performances, boat parades,

but it all culminates in one baffling event. Hundreds of glowing red fireballs rise from the river and drift off into the skies.

The best part is, and this is the part I'm obsessed with, no one knows what the heck causes them.

Some say it's a bizarre fluke of nature, one we have yet to fully understand.

But others say there is something more supernatural going on, like it might be evidence of a giant serpent living in the waters.

I'm Ashley Flowers, and we're back again for another episode of So Supernatural.

When you cover enough stories about the supernatural, you start to notice some patterns.

Like how a lot of the time, the strange event will happen behind closed doors with very few witnesses, and nobody ever manages to get a photo or a video, making the story impossible to verify.

But today's case is the exact opposite of that. It involves a recurring phenomenon that happens so reliably and so predictably that there's an entire annual festival planned around it.

And it still can't be explained. I'm Rasha Pecaro.
And I'm her big sister, Yvette Gentile.

And today we're covering the Naga Fireballs. Once every year, these big orange or red glowing fireballs rise out of the Mekong River in northeastern Thailand.
And honestly, it looks spectacular.

If you've never been or heard of the festival, Just sit back and try picturing this. Imagine it's an important holiday.
You have the day off from school or work. You've been out at all the parties.

You're stuffing your face with delicious food and catching up with all your old friends. But now it's time to go home.

So after sunset, you decide to take a walk along a river for some fresh air and a nice breeze. And when you turn to look at the river, you see a flash of light.

It's a fireball flying up and out of the water into the sky. You can see it as it gets higher and higher, like a small floating orb traveling into space.

You don't know exactly what caused it, but it's not the only one that night. There are dozens, maybe even hundreds more.
It feels like you just witnessed something magical.

And if you hadn't seen it with your own eyes, you might have thought it was fake or even made up.

And that's exactly what a man named Andrew Biggs thought.

Andrew was born and raised in Australia. Growing up, he didn't know a whole lot about Thai culture.

He'd never heard of the Naga fireballs before, but in 1989, when he was 27 years old, he ends up moving to Bangkok, Thailand for a journalism job.

Fast forward 15 years or so to sometime in the mid-2000s, Andrew still lives in Thailand and now he's a host of a live morning news broadcast.

One day, he and his male co-host are bantering on air, getting through the headlines like usual, when Andrew's colleague makes a comment about the Naga fireballs.

And I am not sure how, but even though Andrew has been in Thailand for well over a decade, he has still never heard of these before.

And unfortunately, his knee-jerk reaction is to say, on camera that fireballs that fly out of rivers can't possibly possibly be real.

He actually thinks his co-host might be playing a practical joke on him.

So Andrew ends up blurting out this,

quote,

anyone with any education could hardly believe the lights of Naga, end quote.

As soon as those words come out of his mouth, his co-host is stunned. So are his director and his cameraman.
They end up cutting to a commercial right away.

Then they explain to him that of course the Naga fireballs are real. They are a very well-documented phenomenon.
They have even been filmed and photographed.

And Andrew just announced on live TV that he thinks anyone who believes in them must be either stupid or uneducated.

And almost immediately, the hate mail comes pouring in, including letters from people who are very smart and know the Naga fireballs are real.

Viewers accuse him of being condescending, of disrespecting Thai culture. There are even groups campaigning to have him deported back to Australia.

So he was getting canceled before canceled was even a thing.

Now, the good news for Andrew is you can't kick someone out of your country just because they they don't believe in fireballs.

But the pushback is so intense that Andrew decides these fiery orbs are probably worth looking into.

He learns that while they look like something out of a Marvel movie or even a fantasy novel, the fireballs are a very real fact of life for the people who live in northeastern Thailand.

particularly in a region called the Nong Kai province. I'm just thinking about this guy.
He's lived there for over a decade, right?

And this is etched in Thai culture and he has no clue about it. And he's disrespectful about it, which is the saddest part to me.
Yeah, which is the worst part about it.

Like, just if you don't believe it, keep your mouth closed, but don't disrespect the people. 100%.

Anyway, the Nankai province is a very rural area. far from any big towns or cities.
In fact, a lot of the province doesn't have paved streets.

Nankai also sits right on the border with the country of Laos.

The Mekong River actually marks the boundary between these two countries. And one day a year, every year and always on the same exact day, fire literally erupts from the Mekong River.

These glowing flaming balls shoot out of the water then fly upward, high enough to be visible all through the Nankai province. But they don't appear anywhere else in all of Laos or Thailand.

It only happens on a religious holiday called Bun Orkpanza.

It marks the end of a three-month season that's sometimes known as the Rain's Retreat.

As you can probably guess, the Rain's Retreat happens during Thailand's rainy season. It also corresponds to important religious dates.

It begins at the onset of the monsoon season and was declared by the Buddha as a time for monks to retreat from the world and reflect on religious practice.

And it ends on a day called Pavarana when monks accept criticism from other monks about any misconduct they may have committed as part of their return to the larger community.

Devout Buddhist monks spend the entirety of these three months inside. They don't travel, they don't run errands, or even pop outdoors to check the mail.

Instead, they use the Rain's Retreat to focus on studying holy text, meditating, and basically trying to grow in their faith.

To help them focus on spiritual matters, monks and some Buddhist followers give up earthly pleasures like meat, tobacco, and alcohol for a full three months.

I mean, this basically sounds like Lent, but we only do it for 30 days. So three months, that's a long time.
The rains retreat ends with Boon Orkpanza.

But since the Buddhist monks use a lunar calendar, it doesn't have a set date according to Western timekeeping.

Though it usually occurs in late October or mid-November, Boon Orkpanza marks the end of this time of quiet meditation and study.

And when it arrives, everyone's allowed to drink, smoke, and eat meat again. For the first time in months, devout Buddhists can cheers over a glass of wine or a mug of beer.

So understandably, it's a big drinking holiday in majority Buddhist Thailand. But that's not the only way the Thai people celebrate.

In the Nankai province, the Naga Fireball Festival also happens to land on the same date as the end of Boon Ork Panza every single year, on the full moon of the 11th lunar month.

The locals put on a parade, play traditional music, and sell souvenirs. And then the main attraction begins after sunset.
That's when the balls of fire begin bursting out of the river.

And they can be pretty unpredictable. Sometimes thousands of them come rocketing out of the water over the course of several hours.
Other times there are far fewer, maybe only a few dozen.

And it's usually just that one day of the year. There might be a few on the nights before or after,

but the most spectacular sighting is on that full moon holiday. These glowing orbs can be as small as an egg or as big as a basketball.
Depending on the year, they might be red, orange, or even pink.

There's one other trait that's always consistent. The fireballs, which have also been called ghost lights or Mekong lights, are always super bright.

They're brilliant enough to be spotted from very far away and to illuminate the entire sky. It's almost like watching a fireworks show, except there aren't any technicians firing the orbs.

They apparently burst out of the river all on their own.

It's hard to say why this happens and nobody really knows exactly when the fireballs started exploding out of the river.

Some locals say the ghost lights have been a thing for hundreds of years, but they don't appear in any written records until the 1980s or so, which might seem a little odd.

I mean, you'd think there'd be some mention of the fireballs before then, but the thinking is that the ancient people just treated them like an ordinary part of life, nothing to be overly excited about.

But something changed somewhere along the way. In the 1980s or so, the people of Nankai apparently realized these orbs were very unique and very special.

And that's when they officially named them Naga Fireballs. The name Naga stems from a popular Thai mythical creature, almost like a sea dragon.

It was around that same time that the local government in Nankai province decided to start throwing celebrations around the coinciding fireballs and Boon Ork Panza.

They called it, of course, the Naga Fireball Festival. During this event, tons of people gather on the river.

They photograph the fireballs, film them on their phones, and describe them to their friends, family, and of course, their social media followers.

I mean, there are a ton of eyewitnesses and a bunch of footage, meaning the Naga fireballs certainly aren't imaginary. So remember the Australian reporter Andrew?

Well, once he finishes his research on the Naga fireballs, he has no choice but to admit the phenomenon is definitely real.

But he's still confused because it's hard for him to accept that balls of light can just burst out of a river all on their own once a year and on the same date, no less.

And it's perfectly aligned with the end of a very important religious holiday in Thailand. So he figures something has to be creating the fireballs.

And he finds that it might be related to one of Thailand's most iconic legends.

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For decades, or by some accounts, hundreds of years, balls of fire burst out of the Mekong River on the border between Laos and Thailand.

Nobody knew where they came from or why they only appeared during a holy day. called Bun Orkpanza.

It turns out the answer might lie in a mythical creature who exists in both Buddhist and Hindu tradition.

See, many people in Southeast Asia think you can't communicate with the Buddha or the gods directly. Instead, there needs to be a go-between, essentially the equivalent of a guardian angel.

These entities are called Naga. They carry messages between humanity and the heavens.
But that's not all they do.

They can also cause natural disasters if people are behaving badly or neglecting their religious duties. And they protect those who follow the religion correctly and do what's right.

In Buddhist and Hindu tradition, Naga are shapeshifters who can make themselves look like any creature, including human beings. But they tend to take the form of giant snakes.

They can also breathe fire just like dragons. And the local legend also says that the king of the Nagas, the most powerful one of all, lives in the Mekong River.

And it's not just the fireballs that make them think a Naga lives in their waters.

Apparently, there are tons of reports from eyewitnesses who've claimed to see a massive snake-like creature swimming in their river.

Yeah, it definitely sounds like the Lochnus monster, which of course we've covered in the past, and you should definitely check out that episode if you haven't already.

And some of the explanations for the Naga sightings are similar too. Scientists believe people could be seeing something called an oarfish, an eel-like creature that can grow to be up to 30 feet long.

But tradition says that some of these sightings are in fact actual Naga.

After all, we know oarfish can't breathe fire and something has to be creating these fireballs. So it makes sense that maybe there is a Naga in the Mekong River.
In fact, the local legends say this.

Every year on Boon Ork Panza, the Mekong Naga sees that everyone is doing a good job with their religious duties.

And as a way to acknowledge its appreciation, It exhales these little fireballs, which bursts out of the water and float off into the heavens. There, Buddha sees the balls of light and is pleased.

But Andrew Biggs, the reporter that we talked about, just can't accept the idea that magical or supernatural beings exist

or that they're responsible for the ghost lights. And he's not alone.
The world,

as we all know, especially on so supernatural, is full of skeptics who think there has to be a scientific explanation for the Naga fireballs.

Researchers begin studying the Mekong River in the late 1990s and early 2000s to try and learn what causes the ghost lights.

And after they're done with their studies, they say that it all comes down to one simple thing, swamp gas.

The theory goes that there are a ton of plants and algae in the Mekong River. And when they die, they sink to the bottom.
And then all of that dead plant matter begins to decompose.

And along the way, the decaying matter starts releasing gases, including flammable ones like methane and a blend of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide.

And when you mix all of these together, you get a ball of air that can light on fire very easily.

So maybe the decaying plants are basically creating bubbles of highly flammable gas that ignites, creating the Naga fireballs. I mean, scientifically, like that does make sense to me in my head.

Yeah, but it doesn't make sense to me because

it only happens

one day a year. True that the Mekong lights only appear on Boon Ork Ponza.

If this was a naturally occurring phenomenon like swamp gas, the perfect timing just doesn't make sense. I give you that for sure.

However, there are theories, and one of them has to do with the phases of the moon. And we know the moon can affect tides.

Some studies even suggest that it can influence our moods and our ability to fall asleep at night.

And remember, Boon Orkpanza also happens during a full moon, which is why at least one Thai researcher named Dr. Manas

Silp says that somehow the phase of the moon can change the composition of the gases in the Mekong River.

Unfortunately, he doesn't know how it does that or why it only happens in this particular stretch of the Mekong and nowhere else.

But he theorizes that maybe the fireballs appear during Boon Orkpanza because it happens during the first full moon. after monsoon season.

So perhaps months of heavy rains stir up the water of the Mekong River, then the full moon does something to change the composition of those materials. And the end result is the Naga fireballs.

To test his theory, Dr. Konel Silk actually collected water samples from the Mekong River.
He did this during six different years around the turn of the century.

And then he tested the gases in the water to see if they actually did change with the phases of the moon.

And he learned that during the full moons in October and April, there was a lot more oxygen in the water than at other times of the year.

Canelsil took this as evidence that something about the lunar cycle changed the chemical composition of the water.

I hate to point out another problem, but that explanation doesn't make sense to me either. because we still don't know what actually lights the flames.

It can't be static electricity or a natural charge because it would take a huge spark to ignite a basketball-sized bubble of naturally occurring gas.

And electric jolts that intense simply don't occur in nature outside of a lightning strike. All sorts of researchers, including Dr.

Kinok Sil, admit they don't know how the balls catch fire or much else about how this theory could actually work.

Which has a lot of people thinking, okay,

maybe the Naga fireballs aren't natural after all.

Perhaps someone is faking the phenomenon for some reason. But the question is why?

In 2002, a Thai film crew decided to investigate. They also made a documentary about everything they learned.

They covered some of the theories we've discussed here already, like the Naga creating the fireballs and the possibility that it was a natural phenomenon.

They also interviewed someone who accused some local Buddhist monks of faking the ghost lights to inspire people to be more faithful. Except they didn't have any evidence or proof, just theories.

The finished documentary is called Mekong Full Moon Party, and I'm sorry to say, it does not solve the mystery.

By the end of the production, the crew were still no closer to figuring out where the ghost lights came from.

But the film helped make the Naga Fireballs even more famous in Thailand.

People flocked to the movie theaters to learn about this strange phenomenon. Reporters also started covering the Naga Fireballs, and some of their broadcasts got distributed internationally.

Before long, people all across the world were hearing about the lights, and they all wanted to see it for themselves.

The annual fireball event became a huge tourist attraction.

Some estimates say that in 2001, the year before the Mekong Full Moon Party came out, there were 150,000 people visiting Nankai for the festival.

The next year, in 2002, That number almost tripled to 400,000 people.

Every single hotel and hostel was sold out during the event.

And every year after that, even more people came. Of course, with the exception of 2020 and 2021, when the festival was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns.

But pandemic aside, the ghost lights became a massive phenomenon, one that sparked new theories that could have some pretty huge political implications.

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For decades, nobody knew what made balls of fire fly out of the Mekong River on Boon Ork Ponza. Some people speculated they were created by an ancient snake spirit or that it was swamp gas.

Then a group of reporters with an independent Thai station called ITV began investigating it for themselves. And in late 2002, the ITV crew traveled to the Nankai province for a closer look.

As part of their investigation, they crossed the river into Laos.

And there, they noticed that there are a lot of Laotian soldiers stationed on the riverbanks.

They're basically like border patrol agents, making sure nobody from the Thailand side crosses the Mekong illegally.

Some of these soldiers were armed with traditional guns, but others had guns with tracer rounds.

Ammunition with a special charge that lights up after firing and makes the speeding bullet look an awful lot like a glowing ball of orange, yellow, or red light.

In fact, when one soldier demonstrated his tracer ammo for the documentarians, it looked exactly like a Naga fireball.

So the reporter wondered this, maybe Laotian soldiers have been firing tracer ammo at the river every year on Boon Ork Panza.

And the Thai people who see the tracers just assume they're coming out of the water rather than from the opposite banks and consistently mistake them for something supernatural.

I know, that's a shocking idea, but once the documentarians start considering this possibility, they find even more evidence suggesting the fireballs are a hoax, like the fact that the ghost lights have dramatically changed over the years.

As we said before, there isn't any record of the fireballs from before the 1980s, and some people have even suggested that the fireballs didn't exist until that time.

Maybe the rumors about them being centuries old are simply misinformation.

I don't know if that's true, but I can say that in the 1980s, when only the locals in Nankai province knew about the ghost lights, the fireball show was pretty underwhelming.

There were only a handful of small white orbs popping out of the water. and they only drifted 10 feet or so into the air before dissipating.

It was still cool and difficult to explain, but nothing to write home about. Not anything of what it's compared to now.

But because the Naga fireballs became famous and started attracting more tourists, the lights also became more dramatic. They got bigger, they flew higher into the sky before they disappeared.

They were all different colors. And there was way more of them.
Somewhere along the way, the fireballs also start erupting out of the water on the day after Boon Orkpanza.

Meaning, if you missed the show on the first night, you could still see the encore the next evening, which is kind of strange, right?

I would agree. And in Hawaiian culture, we call that Hana Ho one more time.
It's almost like the more people that paid attention to the phenomenon of the Naga fireballs, the more stunning it became.

Which could mean the Mekong River Naga is celebrating extra hard now that it's getting a lot of attention. I want to believe that.

But skeptics say that this is exactly what you would expect if the locals were faking the Mekong lights to drum up more tourism dollars. After all, the Naga fireballs bring in tons of paying tourists.

Some say the Mekong lights are worth anywhere between one to two and a half million dollars in US currency per year.

That's a lot of money, right? Yeah. And now you may be wondering, why would Laotian soldiers go to such great lengths to help a Thai district on the other side of the river get rich?

Now, I don't know the answer to that question because nobody has ever fessed up to being part of the alleged hoax.

But one theory is that the Naga fireballs started as a prank that actually got out of hand. Maybe some soldiers fired tracer rounds or flares to freak the villagers out on the other side of the river.

And the river is huge, so you wouldn't be able to see who was actually on the other side of the bank. So technically, it could happen.

Except, once reporters and documentarians got involved, they had to keep up the ruse year after year.

There's another explanation though, and it has to do with the fact that the lights bring plenty of tourists to Laos.

After all, the glowing orbs are visible on both sides of the river.

So naturally, some travelers come to Laos, stay in Laotian hotels, eat at Laotian restaurants, and buy Laotian souvenirs from Laotian vendors.

And they create a major financial incentive for Laotian military officers to keep creating fireballs. And ensure they're always impressive.
And if they can top the show from last year, even better.

But there is one exception to this rule. The fireballs don't always get more elaborate from one year to the next.

In fact, anytime the economy is bad in Laos, the Naga fireballs seem to be a bit more modest that year.

It seems the show is only as elaborate as the Laotian people can afford to make it.

So skeptics point to this as another sign that the ghost lights are a man-made hoax.

Once the ITV documentary crew learns all of this, their finished film really pushes the theory that the Mekong lights are a fraud.

But as you might expect, this report makes a lot of people very, very angry. There is a huge outcry right after the ITV documentary airs.

First and foremost, the people of Thailand do not like the implication that they're too gullible or ignorant to tell the difference between tracer ammo and a truly holy miracle.

They also don't think this explanation makes much sense. Because remember, Some believe the Naga fireballs have been appearing for hundreds of years.

Maybe even before tracer bullets were invented during World War I.

Not to mention, the guns are really loud. And the people at the Naga Fireball Festival have never reported hearing a gun blast when an orb appears.

Except the ITV reporters can explain that criticism away. They say the Mekong River is very wide, more than a half mile across in some places, and the festival is very loud.

I mean, you have to remember, you have musicians playing traditional songs, vendors selling products, and of course, 100,000 or more people cheering every time they see a light.

And naturally, all of that noise is possibly going to drown out the occasional blasts from a very distant gun.

Some people don't buy this explanation, but the reporter, Andrew Biggs, does.

As soon as he hears about the soldiers with guns and the noisy crowds, he thinks this must be where the fireballs come from.

But Andrew also doesn't want to make the same mistake twice like he did on live television.

He has already gotten into trouble for jumping to conclusions about the Mekong lights and not getting all of the facts straight.

So before Andrew publicly says anything else, he wants to find definitive proof that the Naga fireballs are fake.

In the fall of 2019, Andrew books a trip to the Nankai province to investigate for himself.

He just has this feeling that if he can see the fireballs with his own eyes, rather than looking at grainy cell phone video or photos, he'll figure out what's really behind them.

He plans to arrive during Boon Ork Panza, except an unexpected delay makes him miss the entire festival. All Andrew can do is read other people's reports online until the next year rolls around.

But he sees that he missed an unusually small year. Instead of a show with thousands of fireballs, only about 300 appeared over the course of the night in 2019.

But Andrew can't help but think, 300 tracer rounds or flares is still a lot.

I mean, imagine being on a team of Border Patrol officers who are firing 300 rounds of ammunition across the river. How would you explain that to your superior officer? Who's paying for the rounds?

Who'd approve of such a risky quote-unquote prank?

I mean, it's dangerous to fire guns just straight up into the dark, especially when you know there's a huge festival with hundreds of thousands of people going on right across the river.

Could you imagine what kind of international incident would happen if a Laotian soldier fired a flare gun, then hurt or killed someone on the Thai side of the border?

In Andrew's mind, nobody would get away with a prank that sloppy or dangerous for very long, let alone decades.

It's enough to make him start reevaluating some of his beliefs. After that, he's less convinced than ever that the ghost lights are a hoax.

But clearly, others are still very skeptical, and this includes a Thai man named Sompap Kamsava.

The main thing you need to know about Sampap is that he's obsessed with Naga fireballs, but he's also convinced they're a hoax, and it is his personal calling to debunk them.

He even runs a Facebook page called Disproving the Naga Fireballs. In 2021, he actually takes a trip to Laos to meet these soldiers with flare guns, hoping to confirm they're really behind it all.

Then he announces that he's found hard proof. The fireballs really are flares.
Unfortunately, he doesn't say what the proof is or where he found it, only that he shared it with the Thai authorities.

And soon, his evidence will be made public. A short while later, both the Thai and the Laotian government announce they're investigating the Naga fireballs and Sompop's evidence.

And I've got to say, the Laotian government is taking the situation pretty seriously.

A team of public security officers who oversee the military, the police, and the border patrol say that if someone is firing their weapons across the Mekong, they're going to catch them and throw them in jail.

All throughout October and November, they send officers to patrol up and down the banks of the river.

They're watching for anyone who's violating COVID shelter at home orders and for anyone with a flare gun who might be faking the Naga fireballs.

But they don't find a single person at the river shooting their weapons during Boon Orkpanza. An official announces in October of 2021 that the ghost lights are definitely not a hoax.

And then he adds, this is a quote, I am confident in concluding that reports of gunfire or the use of flare ammunition in my district has no basis in fact whatsoever.

And that official isn't alone. Lots of other people have looked into this flare gun theory and nobody's ever found any hard evidence to support it.

In non-pandemic years, there are hundreds of thousands of tourists at the Naga Fireball Festival.

Most of them have their phones out and pointed at the river so they can capture the exact moment the glowing orbs burst out of the water.

Now, granted, it is after sunset and therefore pretty dark, but still, with that many phones pointed in the same direction, You'd think someone would have captured footage of a Laotian soldier with a flare gun on the other bank.

Except there's also never been a single frame of footage that could be of a prankster faking the phenomenon.

And if nobody has ever been caught firing ghost lights into the Mekong, that could mean this isn't a human-made phenomenon. And there's something natural or supernatural at play.

Maybe the king of the Naga is responsible for it after all.

As for Andrew, our reporter that we've talked about, even after all this, he decides he still doesn't believe in magic.

He thinks there has to be a logical explanation for the Mekong lights, but he's also willing to be a bit more open-minded and consider the possibility that the world is stranger and harder to explain than he assumes.

Andrew even publicly announced that he was going to participate in more religious rituals in Thailand.

He said it's psychologically healthy to be open to the possibilities that otherworldly powers might exist.

But the most beautiful thing about the Naga fireballs is how accessible they are, not only as a mystery, but as a living tradition.

You don't need special instruments or an imitation from the universe.

You go to Nankai province during Boon Orkpanza, you stand among the people who have long long honored this moment and you witness something held sacred by an entire community.

The fireballs remain impossible to fully explain, maybe even a little magical.

And that is part of their power.

They remind us that some mysteries aren't just for scientists or skeptics. They belong to the people, to the place, and to the beliefs.

To the people of Thailand Thailand who carry these stories forward with reverence and grace. Thank you.
Thank you so much for keeping this wonder alive.

So whether you come here for answers or for the awe,

the Naga fireballs welcome you into the story.

And that, my friends, is a kind of miracle we can all stand beside.

This is So Supernatural, an audio Chuck original produced by Crime House. You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod and visit our website at sosupernaturalpodcast.com.

Join Yvette and Me next Friday for an all-new episode.

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