Haunted

Speaker 1 This is exactly right.

Speaker 2 Here's something good on women's health and longevity, a new podcast on iHeart. Join us for groundbreaking conversations with renowned medical experts.

Speaker 2 They'll share the latest breakthroughs, the good news about women's health, and the simple steps women can take to help them live healthier and happier every day.

Speaker 2 Be sure to listen to our episode, Perimenopause and Menopause: From Taboo to Transformation.

Speaker 2 We explore what's happening in the body, why awareness matters, and practical tips to help women manage symptoms with confidence and comfort.

Speaker 2 Brought to you by Always Discreet, offering products that can support you in your daily life. Found at Walgreens, the women's well-being destination.

Speaker 2 Listen to hear something good on women's health and longevity on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

Speaker 4 Ah, greetings for my bath, festive friends.

Speaker 6 The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money.

Speaker 7 Getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

Speaker 9 No fees, no interest.

Speaker 10 I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 9 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 12 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 13 Save the offer in the app. NS1231, see paypal.com slash promo terms.
Points can be renewed for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval.

Speaker 14 PayPal Inc. and MLS 910457.

Speaker 3 Noticed unwanted facial volume loss after GLP1 weight loss? The weight came off, but volume loss and dull, sagging skin are making you look older. Now you can reclaim your youthful-looking appearance.

Speaker 3 Learn more at faceafterweightloss.com. That's faceafterweightloss.com.

Speaker 1 This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 1 I thought, okay, he's sleepwalking. Wake up.
You're sleepwalking. And then he just started laughing.
It was the creepiest, scariest laugh. Just, ha ha.

Speaker 15 Welcome to the Knife. I'm Paisha Eaton.

Speaker 1 I'm Hannah Smith. And today we've got something a little different.
In the spirit of Halloween, we're bringing you something spooky.

Speaker 1 When Jamie and her family moved into a 200-year-old home in Lamar, Arkansas, it felt like a dream come true. That is, until strange and eerie things started to occur.

Speaker 15 Jamie and her family endured years of unexplainable sounds and sights. Unexplainable unless, of course, you believe in ghosts.
Let's get into the interview.

Speaker 15 Hi, Jamie. Thank you for joining us today.

Speaker 1 Hello. I'm happy to be here.
We're so excited to talk with you. Yeah.
And so excited to talk to you guys too.

Speaker 15 So take us to

Speaker 15 your life prior to 2002 when you end up moving into this house. what was life looking like for you?

Speaker 1 I was actually working as a legal assistant. My mom was an attorney.
She's retired now, but I worked for her law office.

Speaker 1 And then my husband, Ben, was a nurse, but he was also going to school full-time. So it was hectic.
We had a new baby. Jackson was less than a year old, I think around eight months old or so.

Speaker 1 We were living in a rental, just an apartment, and we were looking for a house

Speaker 1 that kids could run and play. And

Speaker 1 we wanted to keep it in a small town with, you know, small schools and plenty of space. So we were on the hunt for a house and I grew up in Lamar.
That's where I graduated high school.

Speaker 1 And so we thought that was the perfect place to start.

Speaker 15 Can you tell us like a little bit about Lamar and what it's like there? I think most most people may not know.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's tiny.

Speaker 1 No stoplights. There's one gas station.
There is a post office. So we basically have a school, a fire station, a little small police station.

Speaker 1 Back in the day, there was a little diner called the Lamar Drive-In, but that's even closed now. Originally, it was called Cabin Creek instead of Lamar.

Speaker 1 And it was going to be the state capitol. They considered it for the state capitol at one time because the rivers are right there and it had a strong railroad system.

Speaker 1 It used to be this bustling town, but now it's just a tiny little small town where most people play sports because that's the only thing they have to offer. There's no nightlife or anything like that.

Speaker 15 So what I'm hearing is there's a lot of history in Lamar.

Speaker 1 A lot of history. A lot of history.
Yes.

Speaker 15 What drew you to this house in particular?

Speaker 1 My aunt and uncle owned the house. They were debating on whether to rent it out or to sell it.
And so they said, we know you're looking if you want to check it out. They hadn't had it for long.

Speaker 1 I don't believe they had any renters in there or anything. It was kind of just sitting empty for a while.
So they said, you know, it might be a fixer-upper, but take a look.

Speaker 1 And if you want it, we'll give you first dibs on it. We really didn't look much because as soon as we pulled up, I was like, this is the one.

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 15 Did they ever live in that house while they owned it?

Speaker 1 They never lived in it, no. That seems like a really exciting time.
What was it like when you first moved in? Well, first it was perfect. The trees were massive and it was.

Speaker 1 you know, these beautiful, like gnarly, old, old trees, big. It was, it had five acres, so I could picture my kids running.

Speaker 1 Back in those days, the houses were built with two front doors, and so it had this big front porch, kind of antebellum style. It just looked like a dream home.
I mean, it definitely needed some work.

Speaker 1 There was some chip paint, and you know, we could, we knew that we were going to have to eventually do some renovations inside and out.

Speaker 1 But there were so many little character things that drew us to it. It had these massive fireplaces that kind of bookended the house.
And so the chimneys went up both sides.

Speaker 1 And that was what I always picked. I always wanted an older house.
And I just couldn't believe that this was in our price range. And so we were really excited about that.
How old was the house?

Speaker 1 Well, from what I can tell, it was built in the 1800s on one of the chimneys at the very top in the stone. You can see it is etched 1811, maybe 1841, but definitely one of those two.

Speaker 1 You can see it etched in the stone. So, I, from what I know, that it was built sometime in that time, but also on a stone inside the house on one of the fireplaces, it said 1780 something.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 I don't know, but sometime in the late 1700s or 1800s, but I was told that that was odd because there were only like a handful of French trappers in the area.

Speaker 1 So it was one of the original houses in that area.

Speaker 1 Oh, I wanted to mention that when we did the first walkthrough of the house down one hallway, the very last room we looked at when we were first looking at the house, and I mentioned this several times when I tell the story, but one of the fireplaces was boarded up and it looked like someone had broken in.

Speaker 1 There were some like candles and some paraphernalia laying around, beer cans, you know, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 And then painted on the board was a pentagram and it had the name of a boy painted next to it. So it looked like some kids had been messing around.

Speaker 1 We didn't really think that much about it because, I mean, it had been sitting empty.

Speaker 1 Because Lamar is a very small town, Jamie soon learned that the name painted on the pentagram was a local boy who had died.

Speaker 1 It seemed like some teenagers had seen that no one was living in the house, broken in, and hung out.

Speaker 1 But Jamie and her family wouldn't let this deter them from buying their first home, their dream home. Around September of 2002, Jamie, her husband Ben, and their three kids moved into the house.

Speaker 1 The kids were excited because they each got their own room. And at first, all was well.
But then about a month in, strange things started to happen. I feel like we had just unpacked our last box.

Speaker 1 This is the way I remember it in my head. We had, you know, the TV set up.
We were just exhausted. I remember I was in my recliner and Ben was on the couch and we were just relaxing.

Speaker 1 And I thought I had heard one of the kids get up. because we heard walking, like footsteps coming down the stairs.
And I remember going, hey, you know, it's late, go back to bed.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 nothing. We just kept hearing a little bit of stomping.
It sounded like small feet, not big, you know, boots or anything.

Speaker 1 So I really thought it was one of the kids. Bridger liked to get up a lot and come down after he was already sent to bed.
And so I went to check and the kids were all in bed.

Speaker 1 And so that was the first thing that I remember happening. So I would say about a month after when we kind of felt totally settled in is when we first started hearing noises that we couldn't explain.

Speaker 1 How are you like interpreting those noises at that time? Old house,

Speaker 1 things settling in.

Speaker 1 I even thought, well, maybe, you know, when the kids got up and then heard me coming up the stairs and is pretending like they're sleeping, Ben and I talked about it and we're like, we're probably going to hear a lot of, you know, things in this house because it's old and old houses do weird things, I guess, when they're settling.

Speaker 1 So then how do things progress where you start to notice, you know, what else happens over the course of a couple weeks or a month?

Speaker 1 It seemed like in the beginning, once we started hearing footsteps, we'd also hear something that sounded like a ball bouncing down the stairs.

Speaker 1 It was almost like someone took a rubber ball and started at the top of the stairs and it would just be thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, you know, kind kind of like it was rolling down the stairs.

Speaker 1 We heard that. Also, when we would get settled in to sleep, we would hear a pounding.
It sounded almost like it was right above our heads when we were trying to sleep.

Speaker 1 So it sounded like it was something pounding on the wall, very loud.

Speaker 15 Would you and your husband like turn to each other? Did you hear that?

Speaker 1 What would the conversation be? That was pretty much it. Did you hear that? And he was like, yeah, I heard that.
So, you know, again, did a tree limb fall outside? It was so loud.

Speaker 1 It was almost like it was in the wall. I don't know how to explain it, but it was just very loud and right above our heads.

Speaker 1 My middle son, Bridger, gosh, I want to say we moved in, he had to be around five.

Speaker 1 And he would come down and say that he couldn't sleep because people were talking. in his room.
He kept hearing talking.

Speaker 1 And I thought, okay, you know, we were watching TVs, hearing the sounds from the TV through the walls or through the ceiling.

Speaker 1 But then he'd say, no, it sounds like a lot of people talking over each other. And I can't understand what they're saying, and I can't sleep.
And

Speaker 1 again, I mean, this was pretty much a few months after we moved in. And so I just,

Speaker 1 again, thought it's the TV or it's his imagination. You know, we didn't jump straight to, oh, gosh, there's a sea of ghosts in his room.

Speaker 1 Jamie and Ben would eventually start to wonder if there was something more going on in that old house, something paranormal.

Speaker 1 But in those first months, they just continued to think, this is an old house. Old houses make weird noises.

Speaker 1 So it was mostly just sounds throughout the house at first. But then a month or so would go by, and that's when my son started reporting hearing people talking in his room.

Speaker 1 He started reporting that his toys would start making noises and kind of turn on by themselves. So this was kind of over the first few months.

Speaker 1 I would say from fall to winter, these things started to happen. It wasn't every day.
Sometimes there would be a few days in between, sometimes there would be a week or so in between.

Speaker 1 So it wasn't like we were constantly, you know, hearing these things, but it started to happen a little more frequently as the months went by.

Speaker 1 My daughter actually thought my son was awake and playing with his toys in his room. And she would come down and kind of like tattle on him, you know, Richard's awake.

Speaker 1 He's playing with his toys in his room. Or she would go and look and he'd be sound asleep.
And so she couldn't explain why she was hearing.

Speaker 1 toys moving around or, you know, sirens going off on the fire truck. Jamie and Ben continued to hear noises that didn't make sense.

Speaker 1 Voices of people they didn't know, toys turning on in the middle of the night, someone walking around upstairs, a ball bouncing. Still, they explained it away as the sounds of an old house.

Speaker 1 Jamie was really clear that she didn't bring up the idea of ghosts to her kids. Instead, she would tell them, you're probably just hearing the TV through the wall, or maybe it's the wind.

Speaker 1 Slowly but surely, more odd things started to happen.

Speaker 1 After a while, when I was sleeping, it felt like someone was going

Speaker 1 and just like flicking my hair.

Speaker 1 And Ben actually saw my hair flick. Really? Yeah.

Speaker 15 That's terrifying.

Speaker 1 That would take me. It was so scary.
So that happened. And I was like, okay, you know, now it's beyond just noises.

Speaker 1 Ben was sleeping. He worked.
He was the factory nurse at Tyson. So he worked overnight, but then he would sleep for just a few hours and then go to class.

Speaker 1 And so we had one of my friends, I worked at the law office. And so she would come and kind of help with Jackson because the other two were in school while Ben could get some sleep.

Speaker 1 And then she would stay with him until I got off work. And Ben was trying to sleep, and he heard Jackson crying because we had the baby monitor in our room.

Speaker 1 And he heard Jackson crying and he was like,

Speaker 1 you know, Dessa, you know, are you going to get the baby?

Speaker 1 And he thought that she was just ignoring the baby. So he finally got up and he was real grumpy about it because, you know, he was trying to sleep.

Speaker 1 And so he kind of stomped upstairs and Jackson was not there. Dessa was not there.
They were gone. But he heard this loud crying in the monitor and there was no baby.

Speaker 15 It was a sound-only monitor, I'm assuming.

Speaker 1 No video. No video, yeah.
But he never mentioned that to me at first. He didn't want to freak me out.
I mean, we had already started going,

Speaker 1 I don't know, maybe we have something else going on. But I mean, we just, we were busy people and we really just wanted it to be nothing.
And so we would try to explain it away.

Speaker 1 Even as it progressed, we would try to, you know, is it our imagination? Is it just the old house? What is it? It's hard because your imagination can do crazy things, you know?

Speaker 1 And so we, you know, everything we just kind of

Speaker 1 were suspicious, but nothing was like 100% this house is haunted yet.

Speaker 17 We know no one's journey is the same.

Speaker 16 That's why Delta Sky Miles lets you do it your way.

Speaker 18 From earning miles on reloads for coffee runs, shopping, and things you do every day, to connecting you to new places and experiences, a Sky Miles membership fits into your lifestyle, letting you do more of what makes you, you.

Speaker 20 It's more than travel.

Speaker 21 It's the membership that flies, dines, streams, rides, and arrives with you.

Speaker 22 Every great journey deserves a great story.

Speaker 18 And when you have a membership that's as unique as you are, There's no telling how your story will unfold or where that journey will take you next.

Speaker 16 SkyMiles is the membership that will be here for all your big and small moments.

Speaker 19 The membership that's there for every solo adventure or family trip.

Speaker 17 The membership that comes with the power of partnership from brands you love.

Speaker 20 The membership that moves with you.

Speaker 16 Learn more at delta.com slash skymiles.

Speaker 23 Some moments in your life stay with you forever.

Speaker 23 In a special segment of On Purpose, I share a story about a book that changed my life early in my journey and how I was able to find the exact same edition on eBay years later.

Speaker 23 There are certain books that don't just give you information, they shift the way you see the world. I remember reading one when I was younger that completely changed me.

Speaker 23 Years later, I found myself thinking about that book again. I wanted the same edition back.
Not a reprint, not a different cover, that exact one. So I started searching.

Speaker 23 And that's when I found it on eBay. That's what I love about eBay.
It's not just a marketplace, it's a place where stories live. Shop eBay for millions of finds, each with a story.

Speaker 23 eBay, things people love.

Speaker 23 Listen to on purpose on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 4 Greetings from my bath, festive friends.

Speaker 6 The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money, getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

Speaker 9 No fees, no interest.

Speaker 10 I used it to get this portable spa with Jets.

Speaker 9 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 12 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 13 Save the offer in the app. NS1231, see PayPal.com/slash promo terms, points keep your renewing for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval.

Speaker 14 PayPal Inc. and MLS 910-457.

Speaker 1 I went to Walmart, and again, it's a small town. There was a greeter.
She was young. I didn't know her, but she said, hey, is your name Jamie? And I said, yes.

Speaker 1 And she said, do you live in that house on Cabin Creek? And I said, yeah.

Speaker 1 And she said, well, some of my family used to live there and it's haunted. And I said, oh, really? And I said, well, I'd love to hear more.
She wrote down her number.

Speaker 1 This was like, cell phones weren't really a thing then. I was like, okay, but I was in a rush and I was like, I would love to talk to you more.
She wrote down her name and number.

Speaker 1 And then I just kind of put it aside and thought, well, you know, I'd like to hear more at some point.

Speaker 1 But it wasn't like we had experienced enough to where I felt like I was desperate for information at that time.

Speaker 15 Yeah. And prior to this experience in your life, I guess prior to this chapter, were you, you know, a believer in ghosts or the paranormal?

Speaker 1 Yes, but it wasn't, I've never felt really scared.

Speaker 1 When I was a teenager, we had a lot of things happen in one of the houses I lived in.

Speaker 1 My mom has experienced some things. So I've always believed in ghosts, but none of them have ever felt like a threat or anything like that.

Speaker 1 It was just something I've always believed was there, but couldn't explain.

Speaker 15 So things are progressing, you know, slowly but surely. You're hearing more and more.

Speaker 15 Then you run into this person at Walmart who knows a little bit about other people who have experienced that maybe the house is haunted. When is the moment of,

Speaker 15 okay, this is paranormal?

Speaker 1 Well, as soon as Ben told me about the baby monitor, for me, that was enough. Okay, yeah.
With everything else that has happened, that kind of sealed the deal for me. I'm like, something's not right.

Speaker 1 But at the same time, what do you do? You just bought a house. We put every penny we have into it.
What are we going to do? I mean, if our house is haunted, I mean,

Speaker 1 seems like they're harmless. If there are ghosts here, nobody's being hurt.
So what do you do? But then the thing that kind of changed my mind to maybe it's not just a harmless ghost.

Speaker 1 My friend that was helping me with the baby, we also had some creative projects. We were doing a writing project and it was late at night.
Ben was working overnight

Speaker 1 and we were both sitting at this computer monitor and just kind of talking and the kids were already in bed. It was probably 10 or 11 at night and working away.

Speaker 1 And then we saw what looked like just a kind of a shadow pass, you know, just a reflection on the monitor. And we both jumped and she was like, did you see that? And I said, yep, I sure did.

Speaker 1 So we were freaked out. But again, was it a passing car? Was it some kind of reflection through the window? You just don't know.

Speaker 1 And we were already kind of jumpy because of things that had happened in the house. So we kept working.
But then I heard one of the kids coming down the stairs.

Speaker 1 He rounded the corner, walked straight up to us, just blank face, walked right up next to me. You know, I'm like I'm sitting here.
He was just standing right next to me and looking straight ahead.

Speaker 1 And it looked like he was in a trance. And so, you know, I was like, Bridger, are you okay? What's going on?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 nothing, just a blank stare. So I thought, okay, he's sleepwalking.
And so I kind of, you know, like, shook his little shoulders and, you know, like, wake up, Bridger, you know, you're sleepwalking.

Speaker 1 And then he just started laughing. Like,

Speaker 1 it was the creepiest, scariest laugh. Just ha,

Speaker 1 just like right in my face. And I could not snap him out of it at all.
It was the scariest thing I've ever seen. I mean, it's not a laugh I've ever heard him make before.

Speaker 1 So laughing, laughing. I finally was like, Pretty sure, you know, just were like frantically trying to wake him up at this point.
He finally snapped out of it. He was so confused.

Speaker 1 He had no idea what was going on. He just seemed completely unaware of how he made it down the stairs.
He didn't remember laughing. He didn't remember anything.
We did have a dog.

Speaker 1 And at that point, the dog just took off like a bolt up the stairs, just bolted up the stairs. And we could hear the dog just barking, barking, barking like ferociously.

Speaker 1 And so Dessa and I ran up the stairs after the dog. And the dog was on Bridger's bed, jumped up on Bridger's bed, went to the corner.

Speaker 1 It looked like it had something pinned in the corner and was just barking, barking, barking. And it was terrifying.
So Dessa and I were so scared. And we ran back down the stairs.

Speaker 1 And as we were coming down the stairs, we noticed that the dog's leash was at the bottom of the stairs. It was not there.
We just ran up the stairs 30 seconds before that.

Speaker 1 So it was almost like whatever it was was saying, get this dog out of here.

Speaker 15 So Dessa saw all of this happen with Bridget.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 15 What was her reaction in that moment?

Speaker 1 No, she was freaked out. Yeah.
Yeah. She was very freaked out.

Speaker 15 Had he ever sleptwalked before?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 How old was he at this time?

Speaker 1 Five or six. I can't remember how long it had been at this point, but we definitely had been there for a while.
So at least a year. Yeah.
And then did he ever sleepwalk again after that? No.

Speaker 1 Nope. So this was like one isolated incident.
Yeah. And I mean, that's got to be scary in and of itself.

Speaker 1 I've been around people who sleepwalk and it sort of feels like this creepy experience no matter what because you're like your eyes are open, you're walking around, you're not aware.

Speaker 1 You're like a weird zombie person. Yeah.
But the laughing and then also in combination of as soon as he sort of comes out of it, the dog

Speaker 1 would freak me out so much because like, like you said, humans, whatever i think once we have it in our heads maybe that something's haunted there's all these ways that we could interpret something right to be like well yes was that paranormal but like a dog doesn't know that nope and dogs are very perceptive we love dogs on this podcast yes had the dog ever done anything like that no

Speaker 1 no wow that's so strange that was by far the scariest thing that happened i don't know i'm i don't want to say he was possessed because everything was fine after that.

Speaker 1 You know, he was perfectly normal, but something, I don't know what it was. It was like a scary trance of some sort that he was in.

Speaker 15 Yeah. And I'm just like, as a mom, like, how do you put him back down to bed? Or what did you do?

Speaker 1 He slept with us. Yeah.
Yeah. He slept with us.
Jackson later on slept with us as well. We had a very crowded bed.

Speaker 1 Tori, my oldest, was the only one really that slept in her room.

Speaker 15 Sounds like a good dog.

Speaker 1 I know. She was the best.
Her name was Callie, and she was very protective. Yeah.

Speaker 15 So what did you tell Ben?

Speaker 1 Oh, I mean, I just, I told him what had happened, and he was really freaked out.

Speaker 1 I mean, he was kind of skeptical and always tried to explain in a way up to the baby monitor thing, which then that started his wheels turning that maybe we had a ghost.

Speaker 1 But then other things had happened, like him seeing my hair being flipped. And there were things that were happening that he couldn't explain anymore.

Speaker 1 And so by the time this happened with Bridger, he was scared. Yeah.
So then what do you do? Because as you said, you've bought this house.

Speaker 1 You know, that's a huge sort of purchase and accomplishment to like be like, we bought a house and we put all our money in it. It's not an easy thing to just

Speaker 1 undo, but now you're seeing and hearing things. But at this point, now it's sort of crossed over to your son seems to have been affected in this scary way.
Right. So, what do you do next?

Speaker 1 Like, what are you thinking at that point? Well, I had started talking to my family, my mom, and, you know, just like, what, what do I do? And we can't just move.

Speaker 1 We have all of our money tied up in this. I mean, Ben was going to school.
It was a very, very financially stressful time already.

Speaker 1 On top of all the things that have happened in this house, it also had a lot of old house problems, trouble with the central heat and air and appliances were constantly breaking and we'd have electrical problems and it was just always something and the stress of it was just a lot.

Speaker 1 But we were kind of stuck there. It was pretty impossible for us to move.
The thing that was our saving grace, grace, I think, was that this was not constant.

Speaker 1 So we would have several months where things would happen, you know, and we'd hear these noises and that happened with Bridger. And then we would have several months where nothing,

Speaker 1 nothing, completely quiet. And we're like, okay, you know, maybe everything's okay.
And so we start to settle in again and get comfortable in the house. And then something else would happen.

Speaker 1 This was a pattern. and this went on for two or three years

Speaker 1 of

Speaker 1 very active and then really quiet.

Speaker 15 When you say more active, can you give some examples of like things that were happening when things became active again?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it would be all over the place, really. We heard the noises like the ball bouncing.

Speaker 1 off and that was something that happened more than once stomping the knocking on the walls would happen a lot weird things would happen Like we'd wake up, and there would be dimes in our shoes and like slippers, you know, took your slippers off, get into bed, wake up the next day, put your feet in your shoes, and there's dimes in there or a Cheeto, you know, and it's just like, what is going on?

Speaker 1 I heard someone call my name from the laundry room. I was in the kitchen, and it sounded like one of the kids going, Mom, you know, mom.
So I went in there.

Speaker 1 No, nobody was in there. My brother came to stay at the house and he saw what looks like a stream of smoke, like maybe someone had set like a cigarette or a cigar or a pipe or something down.

Speaker 1 And there was just this stream of smoke coming up from the counter. I saw that as well at a different time.

Speaker 1 There were just so many different

Speaker 1 things going on in the house. Jamie tried to look into the history of the house.

Speaker 1 She knew the house was really old, and she wondered if maybe there was a clue in the history that might shed light on what was going on in the home. She reached out to the Historical Society.

Speaker 1 She asked around the neighborhood. She ended up being told that the written history of the house had been lost to a fire, but there were many local rumors about this house.

Speaker 1 It was rumored to be the original stagecoach stop. It was rumored that it was a speakeasy at one time.
It was rumored that it was even used temporarily as the county jail.

Speaker 1 So we were hearing all these things and we heard that a boy had fallen from the upstairs window. I also heard that someone got hit by a stagecoach.
I heard all these stories.

Speaker 1 I can't verify any of them. It was all just this was rumors, but we started talking about it and what it could be.
There was also a cemetery, a Confederate cemetery about 200 yards from the house.

Speaker 1 It was on the property. It was five acres.
So that was part of the five acres, but it was deeded off. So the city, you know, the town took care of the cemetery itself.
But it was on the property.

Speaker 1 So there were so many

Speaker 1 things that we just thought there's been a lot of history here. Maybe it's just, you know, spirits.
that there's been so many people in and out, so much happened here,

Speaker 1 hundreds of years worth of activity. And so that's kind of what we wrote it off as.
It's just, it's a very active house because it has a rich history.

Speaker 15 Did you think back to that person at Walmart?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I actually wanted to talk to her again.

Speaker 1 A lot of time had gone by. I can't keep track of anything.
So I lost her name or number. I had no idea.

Speaker 1 All I knew was what she looked like and that she was from Lamar, that her family had lived there. That's what she told me.
It was a very brief conversation the first time.

Speaker 1 She didn't go into any detail. She just said, Oh, my family used to live in that house and it's haunted.
So I did go back and just kind of look for her.

Speaker 1 I just said, you know, hey, you know, there was a greeter here.

Speaker 1 This is what she looks like. I don't remember her name.
And they're like, oh, yeah, that's so-and-so. And she doesn't work here anymore.
So I didn't know how to get back in touch with her.

Speaker 15 Yeah. and house is the biggest purchase most of us ever make.
You can't just up and leave. Did you take any sort of action to try to rid the house of the ghosts?

Speaker 1 Yes. After

Speaker 1 the thing with Bridger, I had talked to my mom and was like, what do we do?

Speaker 1 And she's like, well, maybe you can get the house cleansed or have some investigators come and see, you know, what they can find. And we I've never done anything like that.

Speaker 1 My mom had seen, I think, an article in the the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and it was talking about CASPER, which is Central Arkansas Society for Paranormal Research. I love that acronym.

Speaker 1 It's great.

Speaker 1 Classic. Yeah, so I found their email.
I emailed them. I said, look, this is what's going on.
Do you want to come and do an investigation? Is there anything you can do to help us?

Speaker 1 Jamie planned to have this paranormal society come check out their home to do an investigation and hopefully a cleansing. But before they could even schedule that, something terrible happened.

Speaker 1 I had gone to pick up the kids from school. I had the two boys.
They were in there. Ridger was about five, so he was still in a booster seat.
Jackson was still in a car seat.

Speaker 1 And Tori was sitting with me up front. And it wasn't a long drive, maybe three or four miles from the school to the house.
And we were driving home. It had been raining for

Speaker 1 last few days, so the road was a little wet.

Speaker 1 They were doing construction, and one of the construction barrels looked like someone had tapped it and it had, you know, rolled out into the middle of the road.

Speaker 1 And I went to go around it, and I over-corrected, and we ended up, you know, sliding, and the road was wet, and we ended up flipping several times.

Speaker 1 The van ended up rolling and landing upside down. It's terrifying.

Speaker 1 I did not know where Tori was. She was not in her seat.
I got out after figuring out what was going on and that we had just wrecked, and the boys were upside down.

Speaker 1 They were still in their seats, completely fine. I could tell that they were fine.
So I went and tried to find Tori. I didn't know if she had flown out and she was in the ditch or what.

Speaker 1 And someone came running that had witnessed the accident was running full speed towards me and said there's someone under the van

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 i

Speaker 1 i didn't know what i was going to find but i knew it was tori

Speaker 1 and i crawled on my hands and knees under the van there was a little bit of a space enough for my body to get under the van and she was there. she was pinned under the van she wasn't moving

Speaker 1 it was very hard i touched her hand and she

Speaker 1 did kind of come to and i remember her saying what what what's happened and i told her you know we were in an accident and i was so glad that she was okay but she could barely i mean she was the weight of the van was on top of her so she had no breath she could barely get any words out and she's I can't you know I can't breathe and I just said just keep talking to me as long as you're talking you're breathing you know and so I stayed there someone had called 911 and it was very fast it seemed like almost instant that the state troopers arrived on the scene she was just like am I gonna die and it was the worst

Speaker 1 worst moment of my life.

Speaker 1 We were able to get the van. They came with special tow truck and was able to lift the van straight off of her.

Speaker 1 They said the only reason why she survived is because it had rained for days and the ground was super soft. So she was able to sink into the mud.

Speaker 1 So the weight of the van was taken off of her because she was able to sink into the ground.

Speaker 15 How old was she when this happened?

Speaker 1 She was 10. She's.
She was 10 years old. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was the worst day of my life. Yeah.
The worst day of my life by far. But she was rushed to children's hospital and she broke several ribs.
She broke her back.

Speaker 1 She had compression fractures on her back in several places. Knocked some of her teeth out.
She was covered in glass. It was awful.
The boys didn't even have a scratch on them.

Speaker 1 Cautionary tale,

Speaker 1 she had her seatbelt, the strap tucked behind her back. And just with all the rolling and her being so small, it didn't hold her in.
She was in the hospital for a couple weeks and then came home.

Speaker 1 She was in an immobilizing back brace. And so I took off work.
She was out of school and I stayed with her full time.

Speaker 1 I mean, we were already in financial trouble. And then this happens.
And, you know, I have a healing child.

Speaker 1 And so it kind of felt like we were just stuck there in the house until at least till she healed, you know?

Speaker 17 We know no one's journey is the same.

Speaker 16 That's why Delta Sky Miles lets you do it your way.

Speaker 18 From earning miles on reloads for coffee runs, shopping, and things you do every day to connecting you to new places and experiences, a Sky Miles membership fits into your lifestyle, letting you do more of what makes you, you.

Speaker 20 It's more than travel.

Speaker 21 It's the membership that flies, dines, streams, rides, and and arrives with you.

Speaker 22 Every great journey deserves a great story.

Speaker 18 And when you have a membership that's as unique as you are, there's no telling how your story will unfold or where that journey will take you next.

Speaker 16 Skymiles is the membership that will be here for all your big and small moments.

Speaker 22 The membership that's there for every solo adventure or family trip.

Speaker 17 The membership that comes with the power of partnership from brands you love.

Speaker 20 The membership that moves with you.

Speaker 16 Learn more at delta.com slash skymiles.

Speaker 23 Some moments in your life stay with you forever.

Speaker 23 In a special segment of On Purpose, I share a story about a book that changed my life early in my journey and how I was able to find the exact same edition on eBay years later.

Speaker 23 There are certain books that don't just give you information, they shift the way you see the world. I remember reading one when I was younger that completely changed me.

Speaker 23 Years later, I found myself thinking about that book again. I wanted the same edition back.
Not a reprint, not a different cover, that exact one. So I started searching.

Speaker 23 And that's when I found it on eBay. That's what I love about eBay.
It's not just a marketplace, it's a place where stories live. Shop eBay for millions of finds, each with a story.

Speaker 1 eBay, things people love.

Speaker 23 Listen to on purpose on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 9 No fees, no interest.

Speaker 10 I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 9 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 12 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 13 Save the offer in the app. NS1231, see paypal.com slash promo terms, points keep your renee for cash and more paying for for, subject to terms and approval.

Speaker 14 PayPal link and MLS 910-457.

Speaker 1 Jamie said this was an incredibly stressful period of her life. They were struggling financially.
The house seemed to need constant repairs. She was sleep deprived, incredibly sleep-deprived.

Speaker 1 And two of her kids were also sleeping in their bed because of the scary voices they were hearing in their rooms.

Speaker 1 Jamie and Ben really wanted to leave this house, but they just couldn't do it financially. Not yet.

Speaker 1 But Jamie wants to be really clear that she doesn't believe anything paranormal caused this car wreck.

Speaker 1 She said she previously told her story and it was interpreted that perhaps a ghost might have grabbed the wheel, but that is not how Jamie sees it.

Speaker 1 No, and you know, this story has been told by a major network, and I was really upset when I saw their rendition of it because I do not believe that it was a paranormal thing that caused the wreck.

Speaker 1 I feel like I, I mean, it just was one of those things and it could have happened if I was, you know, fully rested too.

Speaker 1 I just remember feeling so exhausted that day.

Speaker 1 And I don't know if my, you know, reflexes were not where they should have been or what. But I think if I'm going to blame the house at all, it would just be that we were exhausted.

Speaker 15 Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it was a very stressful time.
And it was, you know, sleep deprivation with little kids is so real. Yeah.
Even in the best of circumstances.

Speaker 15 And then you're dealing with like this older home that has issues and strange activity and the financial stress. It's a lot at once.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was.

Speaker 15 And so then you obviously have no choice, but to go back home and now

Speaker 15 your child is in this, I think you called it an immobilizing back brace.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 15 And you had said earlier, like, the house was just full of actual, just problems.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 15 That must have been so difficult to care for her in that space.

Speaker 1 It was. I mean, she was in excruciating pain all the time.
I mean, sometimes she would just howl with pain.

Speaker 1 You couldn't go to school, you know, so we were, I was homeschooling her and then still trying to keep up with working from home. And it was a lot.

Speaker 1 And she's doing great now. So So I

Speaker 1 always told her she was meant for great things, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It seems like a miracle that she survived that accident.

Speaker 15 Sounds like a miracle.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Once Jamie's daughter, Tori, was recovered, Jamie reached back out to the paranormal investigation organization. She thought, well, we can't leave the house right now.

Speaker 1 But maybe this organization can help stop the paranormal activity and make our lives easier. They had a skeptic come with them.
They always brought someone that was, I believe he was an electrician.

Speaker 1 I could have this wrong, but he at least knew something about, you know, electrical problems that could check out the house because we had one hallway, the one that was leading to Bridger's room.

Speaker 1 We could never keep the lights on in that hallway. And so that made it extra creepy because he was reporting all this stuff from his room.

Speaker 1 And so we had Alan, one of the skeptics with Casper, check out the electricity and he couldn't see anything that was wrong. And what was the issue with the light?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we would put even like LED bulbs, you know, in there to, they were supposed to last for years and within hours, the light would go out. It just wouldn't work.

Speaker 1 It was just like it used all the power from the bulb within a few hours.

Speaker 1 We even got touch lamps specifically for when the investigators were coming, you know, the kind that you can just stick to the wall and you touch them and they come on until they're battery operated.

Speaker 1 Got several of those and just lined them down the hallway with new batteries and backup batteries. And within a few minutes, they would burn out and wouldn't work.

Speaker 15 A touch lamp in a haunted house feels like, okay, you're inviting some weird stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know, I know. But that's not even connected to the like old house electric system.
No, and they're still going out. That's that's creepy.
That's freaky. It was very freaky, very freaky.

Speaker 1 And it was just in that one hallway that was leading to Bridger's room.

Speaker 15 And what do people who do the work that Casper does, what do they do to cleanse a house?

Speaker 1 Well, when they first came in, they just kind of kind of took over. the house.
They had a psychic with them, and they would just kind of go and sit in different spaces in the house.

Speaker 1 So Bridger's room was one of the major places that they would sit because that's where we had the most activity reported.

Speaker 1 So they would just sit and then kind of just tell us if they picked up on anything. I had my friend that watched Jackson was with us.
One of my cousins was there.

Speaker 1 So I had several people with me and then they had, Casper had several members with them and so we kind of just waited for something to happen for a while.

Speaker 1 One of the psychics, I believe her name was Violet, said that when she was in Bridger's room, she just heard like a sea of

Speaker 1 voices, which is kind of what Bridger was describing. She said there were so many that she couldn't tell what they were saying.

Speaker 1 None of the words they were saying were clear. It was just like everyone was talking over each other.
And that's what Bridger had described. And they did have video cameras set up in several places.

Speaker 1 I know one was set up kind of from Bridger's room, pointing down the hallway where the lights we couldn't get to stay on.

Speaker 1 One of the investigators said that's where they felt the biggest oppressive feeling, almost like that was a negative energy in the house.

Speaker 1 And also the psychic said that she felt that there was both good and bad spirits in the house. That she felt that some were benign and that some seemed a little more malignant.

Speaker 1 You know, we were hearing all this, and so ultimately they decided that they wanted to try to communicate

Speaker 1 with some of these spirits.

Speaker 1 And this is when they brought out a Ouija board. You know, looking back, I never would have agreed to this if I had known more about what was going to happen.

Speaker 1 What was your feeling about Ouija boards before that? I didn't have a good feeling, but also I didn't know what to believe.

Speaker 1 You know, I didn't know if it was just there's all these scary stories attached to it, but I didn't know if it's something I should be really afraid of.

Speaker 1 But again, I thought they're the professional investigators, so let's, I guess, let them do their thing. They had several people, I want to say four people that had their hands on the Blanchette.

Speaker 1 They started asking questions, is there a spirit in the house that wants to speak to us? That kind of thing.

Speaker 1 It would say, yes, there was. So the Blanchette would go to yes.
And then it would say, you know, have we seen you?

Speaker 1 What is your name? Was one of the questions. What is your name? And it spelled out Seth.
So S-E-T-H went to each of the letters. And then they asked when this spirit was alive.

Speaker 1 And it said never.

Speaker 1 And so everyone freaked out when that happened because they said if it's never, that means it's a demon that they're communicating with. Oh, wow.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so the question was,

Speaker 1 is this something that's been in the house or is this something that they conjured up because they started using the Ouija board?

Speaker 1 And so that's something I've never known because up to that point, I never felt like we had a demon. I just felt like we had

Speaker 1 very active ghosts. I didn't feel like our lives were in danger.
But once that happened, it felt like the energy in the house changed. Really?

Speaker 1 So you noticed a difference after this happened yeah you do get kind of swept away in the moment i mean if you're you're sitting there and you're hearing this and of course you're terrified yeah i don't want anyone telling me that a demon named seth lives in my house yeah because if you like believe in this stuff or are at least like open to it then people who then die and maybe exist in some sort of like ghost state

Speaker 15 you know i think most people are inherently good or have good in them, but a demon, right?

Speaker 1 It's like,

Speaker 15 that's really terrifying.

Speaker 1 It was very terrifying. And then they asked the spirit if anyone had seen him tonight, that night.
And it said yes.

Speaker 1 And so they asked, you know, who, and it looked like the Blanchette started moving in a figure eight almost, almost like an affinity sign, you know, kind of.

Speaker 1 And then it went off the board and went and pointed at one of the cameras. Yeah.
So almost like, yes, someone saw me. It's on this camera right here.

Speaker 1 And then was there some sort of footage that they aired? I wish I could get my hands on this footage. Supposedly there was a figure in the hallway.

Speaker 1 It was from the camera that was pointing from Bridger's room down the hallway.

Speaker 1 And it looked like a shadow figure that was kind of forming almost to a human shape, starting at the ceiling, kind of coming down and making a human form, but then would fade away.

Speaker 15 Did they ever show it to you?

Speaker 1 I could see it, but it was very, it was hard. You know, it was very dark.
You know how video footage is. To me, it looked like something forming, but

Speaker 1 I, you know, I don't know. Yeah.
Obviously, who knows what was really going on? And maybe, maybe they were picking up on something.

Speaker 1 But so my brother works in film and he worked for one of these ghost investigator shows for a while. Obviously, not this one, but a different one.

Speaker 1 And, you know, they're all different. But this one sounded very almost like predatory on people, like coming into their home, telling them that there's all these things there.

Speaker 1 He at one point sort of was in the background and like flushed a toilet or something. And he was like, oh, sorry, that was me.
Like, you know, we should stop filming.

Speaker 1 And they were like, no, just be be quiet. We'll get that in the background.
There was a lot of fabricating of stuff

Speaker 1 for the TV because it has to look big and it has to look, you know, you're, you have a crew, you're paying, you have a show. So you have to make sure that there's some payoffs.

Speaker 1 Not to say that every place does that, but there's part of my brain that's like, oh, they came into your house and told you that it was demon-possessed and then pointed to the camera, like the camera has the footage.

Speaker 1 Not to say that it's not real, but regardless if it was real or even if they made it up it's like kind of rude to you because now you think that there is a demon in your home yes it was terrifying it was terrifying so up to that point i mean we just thought let's cleanse the house let's have these people you know we're stuck here you know financially there's nothing we can do we have an injured child we're not going anywhere maybe these people can come in and give us some peace of mind, give us some answers or anything.

Speaker 1 And then when they brought out the Ouija board,

Speaker 1 it changed my perspective. I was terrified after that.

Speaker 1 Jamie and Ben had come to believe that their house was haunted and the haunting had been affecting the entire family. They were on edge, stressed, scared.

Speaker 1 So the whole reason Jamie invited this paranormal investigation group into her home was to cleanse it. What she wanted was peace and for her family to feel less afraid in the house.

Speaker 1 Instead, what happened was this group came in and introduced an even scarier idea that a demon named Seth was living there.

Speaker 1 Jamie said she had never felt more terrified in her own home than at that moment. So it makes you wonder if this group was potentially making things worse, giving them more reasons to feel unsettled.

Speaker 1 Jamie did say that after they announced the presence of the demon, they then performed some cleansing

Speaker 1 They went through with sage. They had brought sage and, you know, all this stuff.
And so they went through and they were saying, you know, cleanse this house. They were doing some chanting and

Speaker 1 please, by all means, you know, do this. At this point, I was all for them doing this.
I was terrified. But then they did like a circle of salt around the house and some of these other rituals.

Speaker 1 And I don't know if it was just the power of suggestion or what, but it did feel

Speaker 1 almost instantly like it had helped, like things had calmed down. But, you know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't know if what they did really worked or if it was just the power of suggestion, like this is going to help, you know, made me feel a little more relaxed.

Speaker 1 But it was kind of like, okay, you know, they did the cleansing and then they left.

Speaker 1 So it was just, okay, you have a demon in your house. We're going to do this cleansing and now we're out.
You know, good luck kind of thing. But it didn't stop the activity.

Speaker 1 Within a couple days, we started hearing the noises and cabinet doors opening and it hadn't really changed much.

Speaker 1 Sometime after this, Jamie and Ben both got jobs working on a TV show in Joplin, Missouri. They put the house on the market.
It didn't sell.

Speaker 1 So they ended up renting renting it out through a realty company. They packed up their lives and they moved to Joplin.

Speaker 1 It felt great. It felt great for so many reasons.
I mean, I didn't feel like the spirits followed us or anything. I feel like I slept so well

Speaker 1 in a new space. And also, we didn't have the responsibilities of maintenance.

Speaker 1 We had a landlord, and it just seemed like such a relief compared to what we've been going through for the last four years. We were there, I think, about a year, close to a year.

Speaker 1 And while we were in Jopa, actually, it was when the Discovery Channel contacted us and they wanted to do a story on our house.

Speaker 1 Jamie and Ben decided to participate in the Discovery Channel story about their haunted house. And then eventually, they actually moved back to Lamar, back into the haunted house.

Speaker 1 They were finally able to do some renovations and they sold the house in 2007.

Speaker 15 How do you think the experience of living at a house that felt haunted has

Speaker 15 impacted you?

Speaker 1 I mean, at the time, it was exhausting. I think even I made the joke, I guess, it would be a joke, but when people ask me about the house, I still have people contacting me like you guys.

Speaker 1 After the Discovery Channel did the episode of A Haunting for years,

Speaker 1 people would reach out to me. They would find me on Facebook or social media or, you know, find my email and reach out.
And so I made the joke that now that's the only thing haunting me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, is that story? All these Instagram messages. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
But no, I mean, I remember it as one of the most stressful times of my life.

Speaker 1 It was such a relief when we finally left, not just because of the haunting, but just because it was such an old house. It just didn't have the vibe that we thought it was going to have.

Speaker 1 It was scary and it was also always breaking. And just between the two, it was just an exhausting experience.

Speaker 1 Yeah. An old house is like really charming as an idea.
Right. But the reality is like, oh, this is really old.
And

Speaker 1 a lot of maintenance. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, love the craftsmanship, hate the ghosts. That's right.
Exactly. It was so needs to be a t-shirt.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Love the craftsmanship. We don't have any marks yet.

Speaker 1 Patia,

Speaker 1 happy Halloween. Happy Halloween.
Do you plan to dress up?

Speaker 15 You know, gosh, I haven't dressed up for Halloween in a long time. I think I did like a very lazy sort of cat

Speaker 15 costume

Speaker 15 back in 2022. Yeah, drew on some whiskers, had like a little headband.
But no, I mean, I don't have any night of Halloween plans, and I certainly don't have any party plans.

Speaker 15 But I assume the chapter I'm in right now will involve a lot of trips to the pumpkin patch, a lot of painting the pumpkins, a lot of petting zoos.

Speaker 1 Will Turner dress up?

Speaker 15 She will. She will.
I think she has an Elsa costume locked and loaded that she's pretty excited about.

Speaker 1 Frozen has really taken young children by storm for many, many years.

Speaker 15 I never thought I would be that parent that knows every word to every Disney movie. And she doesn't even watch that much, but they are just so catchy and good that I learned them all.

Speaker 1 It's a pretty good movie. I recently watched it with Ben mainly because it's always in crossword clues.
And we're like, I don't really know what this movie is about.

Speaker 1 So we watched it so that we could understand the crossword clues. And I enjoyed it.

Speaker 15 Okay. It's a good movie.
Yeah, it's good, right? Even since like my day, they've come so far. Like I remember thinking Toy Story was like amazing.
Amazing. Wow.
And it is. And it was then.
But

Speaker 15 yeah, they've gotten even better. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, I usually go to a Halloween party, but I panic and try to decide my costume about two hours before I leave, even though I have 365 days since the last Halloween.

Speaker 15 And you strike me as someone who would plan that.

Speaker 1 Literally never have. Wow.
No. There's been many years that I've dressed up as Christmas.
Oh, okay. Halloween.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Because it was like, I have like a tree green, just like Christmas, not like any specific object, like a green dress.

Speaker 1 And then I would just like wrap my body in garlands and lights and find, and then I'd be like, I'm Christmas. And it's sort of an easy go-to.

Speaker 1 You know, I've thought about maybe doing that again this year or trying a different holiday, but

Speaker 1 there's not like, I don't know. I don't want to be Thanksgiving or like 4th of July.
Like no one wants to dress up like that.

Speaker 15 It could be Easter.

Speaker 1 I guess I could be Easter. Yeah.

Speaker 15 I've got nothing to offer as inspiration for Halloween costumes. I think it's commendable anybody that puts the effort in to dress up.
And I love the Christmas idea.

Speaker 1 Okay, maybe I'll do that. I do love Halloween.
And we had a fun Halloween episode today.

Speaker 1 You know, it got me thinking.

Speaker 1 about how many people believe in ghosts. Jamie said that she believes in ghosts and a lot of people in her life also believe in ghosts.

Speaker 1 And so I looked this up and according to a Gallup poll from 2025, nearly half of US adults, 48%, believe in psychic or spiritual healing.

Speaker 15 Slightly fewer, 39%,

Speaker 1 express a belief in ghosts, while between 24 and 29% say they believe in other supernatural phenomena, such as telepathy, communicating with the dead, astrology i guess astrology is included in that reincarnation and witches that's a long list but like that means 39 of people believe in ghosts there was another poll that had it much higher but i guess like that surprised me i didn't i guess i didn't realize so many people believed in ghosts yeah i think it's maybe

Speaker 15 when we think about like psychics or what's the motivation for that right a lot of times it's like sadness it's someone wanting to communicate with someone that has passed that they can't communicate with anymore or even a pet or something, right?

Speaker 15 And that is easier for me to understand.

Speaker 1 But I mean, I feel like, I don't know, do you believe in ghosts?

Speaker 1 I don't think I do. I know a lot of people that do.
And I think I knew a lot more people that believed in ghosts when I lived in Oklahoma than in LA. And it's also maybe like a regional thing.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think people believe everywhere. So I never grew up believing in ghosts, but I grew up really religiously.

Speaker 1 And so it was like, we didn't believe in ghosts, but there was a belief in the supernatural.

Speaker 1 But if I had been in that house and experiencing those things as a child, I would have thought those were like demons.

Speaker 1 So in my growing up, it was like there's either angels who are like, they work for God, or there's demons, they work for the devil. So it's like very like.
black and white, good and evil. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But no, there was like scary stories of people waking up and talking about how there was like a demon on the end of their bed. And I mean, terrifying.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 15 No, that is, that is so terrifying. Did you ever, as a kid, feel like

Speaker 1 you were

Speaker 15 in the midst of a demon?

Speaker 1 No, I never saw anything like that, but I was scared about it. You know, it's so scary to me.
And then I think later in my life, I was like, I don't believe in any of this.

Speaker 1 This is all like, you know, I don't believe in demons and. angels, anything, definitely not ghosts.

Speaker 1 And then I think now I'm sort of like more at a place where I'm I'm just more okay to know that I don't know everything.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 15 I think for me, I grew up in a household that had zero religion, which is, you know, fine by me. It was like, I feel like

Speaker 15 I've had a really good upbringing and I grew up around people who were members of different faiths. And that was also fine.

Speaker 15 But yeah, I didn't have any sort of belief in anything supernatural ever or paranormal or however you want to explain it.

Speaker 15 But, you know, I think like everybody else, when you experience the death of someone close to you, like the finality of that makes you wonder, you're like, could it be, like, could it be that I'm never

Speaker 15 going to see that person again, talk to that person again? And that becomes just almost impossible to reconcile. And so, you know, I think I'm probably closer to where you are.

Speaker 15 I don't know what I don't know. And

Speaker 1 there's.

Speaker 15 answers that we're just not going to get.

Speaker 1 And I'm okay with that. Yeah.
You know, it is a nice idea to think that you would be haunted by someone that you love who's passed away. Yeah.
That's a better haunting. Yeah.

Speaker 15 That's a good haunting. Oh, yeah.
Like if my light flickers, I'll just be like, oh, that's bunker. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's bunker R.I.P. R.I.P.
Bunker, a great dog. I know.

Speaker 15 And like, I do like the idea of that.

Speaker 15 And there's a lot of like strange occurrences in the world and a lot of things that you're like, how could it be that this little thing that happened has resulted in all of this or whatever?

Speaker 15 And I think that leaves my mind like open to all ideas about it. But I've never experienced what I felt like was a ghost, but I don't think I would rule it out.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I've definitely been in old, old houses that have a creepy vibe. Yeah.
But I don't think I've, I mean, I've for sure never experienced anything like a ghost.

Speaker 1 There's part of me that thinks the moment you start believing in these things is the moment you start seeing them. Totally.
You know, I don't know. The brain works in mysterious ways.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 It's like you see people how you want to see them you see ghosts if you want to see them yeah and so yeah i'm like i don't believe in them and i think that means they won't bother me yeah i mean also just like the work that we do and maybe just the content i would consume anyway i have bigger problems like serial killers to worry about scarier things but you know this haunted house story I still felt like was so compelling because,

Speaker 15 you know, this was someone's true experience.

Speaker 15 And as we get into the story and learn about it, like you really see their reaction was the result of feeling like, okay, we tried to write this off, but we can't write it off as just an old house making weird sounds anymore.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 I could totally get behind that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I thought it was interesting.

Speaker 1 And then the sort of psychological terror that comes from that, that Jamie talked about, of experiencing these events, the house is haunted and this is scaring her, scaring her children.

Speaker 1 And then that affects her everyday life. Like they're sleeping in her bed, there's sleep disruption, it's stressful.

Speaker 1 This idea of being trapped in a house that scares you that you can't get out of is a real life nightmare. Totally.

Speaker 15 Yeah. And I had one, I wouldn't consider this like a ghost encounter, but I had a strange thing happen when I was in, I would have been in seventh grade.

Speaker 15 My grandmother passed away and I remember it was Pie Day because we were all supposed to bring these pies to school.

Speaker 1 March 14th. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Yes. March 14th.
And I had a horse show that coming weekend and my grandmother was going to come up and go to this show. She passed in her sleep peacefully.

Speaker 15 So of course we drive down to where she lived, which was like five hours from where we lived. And so we get to the house and she passed peacefully.
She was older.

Speaker 15 There was nothing, you know, strange about it, even though it was sad. So we ended up actually staying at the house that night and we were all going going to start packing up her stuff the next day.

Speaker 15 It was a pretty small house.

Speaker 1 It wasn't like a big endeavor.

Speaker 15 And I had this dream and my grandma was not super physically affectionate. She was like a loving, wonderful grandma, but she wasn't like a big on hugs.

Speaker 15 And in my dream, we were standing in her kitchen, in her house that we were at, and she just gave me a hug. And I don't remember if any like if we spoke at all, but it was like a very nice moment.

Speaker 15 It was like morning light in the kitchen and there were boxes in in the kitchen and they were stacked in this really specific way.

Speaker 15 And so I woke up and I kind of, you know, that groggy dream state where you're like, oh, that was nice, I guess. Like, who knows what that is, but that was nice.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 Well, so I go into the kitchen later that day and the boxes are now in the kitchen stacked in the exact way that they were in my dream.

Speaker 1 And they hadn't been the day before.

Speaker 15 No, because we had just started packing that morning when everyone woke up.

Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah.
That's wild.

Speaker 15 It was really wild. And I've never had anything like that before or since.
But yeah, whether it was just like my brain making me feel better or something else, like I was glad about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's really nice. Yeah.
I do feel like when we have loved ones pass away, there's like more

Speaker 1 sort of unexplainable stuff that happens around that time. Like

Speaker 1 when I've had people that I love pass away, I think that I see them a lot. Like, I'll see them in a crowd and stuff and or like have dreams about them.
And I don't know.

Speaker 1 It's interesting that that happens at that time.

Speaker 15 Yeah. It's like either you're just seeing things in a new way because you're kind of looking or maybe it's the universe being like, it's okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah. They're okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 That's sweet. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So we have a little bit of history of Lamar that you found. We tried to look into the history of Jamie's house.
You know, in the interview, she talked about how it's an old house. It was built.

Speaker 1 potentially in the early 1800s, maybe even in the late 1700s. And there were all these rumors about there had been maybe a jail there, a stagecoach stop.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it was a stagecoach stop. It was like where you would,

Speaker 15 you know, if you were traveling through town, you would stop there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But we weren't able to find anything.

Speaker 15 Yeah, nothing on her specific home. But Lamar, Arkansas, like much of our country, especially the South, has a lot of history that is quite sad.

Speaker 15 So before Lamar, Arkansas became Lamar, Arkansas, it was inhabited by Indigenous people. And those Indigenous people were part of what is now a federally recognized tribe, the Caddo Nation.

Speaker 15 There were populations of Caddo people all along the southeastern states, including Arkansas, Oklahoma, I think some up into Tennessee, maybe.

Speaker 15 So in the early 1800s, white settlers reached what is now Lamar and pushed a lot of these Caddo people, almost all of them actually, to reservations in Texas, which, you know, is an awful thing that occurred in our nation's history.

Speaker 15 So Lamar is actually named after a Confederate officer, although I did learn through this process that Arkansas actually supplied more troops to the Union Army than any other state except Tennessee.

Speaker 15 And no Confederate battles took place in Lamar, but it was named after this Confederate officer.

Speaker 15 And there are many cemeteries around Johnson County and Lamar that people say there's lots of Confederate soldiers buried there.

Speaker 15 So as far as Jamie's actual house, I did find something that was really close in location to where she lived, which is that in 1844, Thomas Stevenson Drew was elected governor of Arkansas.

Speaker 15 And his plantation in Johnson County was first called Stream of Cabins because of the many homes he built for his slaves.

Speaker 15 And later it was called Cabin Creek, which, of course, is the name of the street that Jamie's house was on. So this is obviously a really dark part of their history.

Speaker 15 And I don't know that it has any correlation to Jamie's story, but for whatever it's worth to anyone who's thinking, like, well, what was the history of the area? That's what we could find.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, thanks for looking into that.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So if you love stories about stuff that's scary or maybe hard to explain, you can check out Jamie's podcast, The Unexplained Archives, where she and her co-host Jennifer discuss everything everything from the paranormal to aliens.

Speaker 15 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 1 We'll be back next week.

Speaker 15 If you have a story for us, we would love to hear it. Our email is theknife at exactlyrightmedia.com, or you can follow us on Instagram at theKnife Podcast, or Blue Sky, at the Knife Podcast.

Speaker 1 This has been an Exactly Right Production, hosted and produced by me, Hannah Smith, and me, Tayshia Eaton.

Speaker 15 Our producers are Tom Breifogel and Alexis Amorosi.

Speaker 1 This episode was mixed by Tom Breifogel.

Speaker 15 Our associate producer is Christina Christina Chamberlain.

Speaker 1 Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.

Speaker 15 Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 1 Executive produced by Karen Kilgarif, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

Speaker 24 This is Karen from My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstark. No one brings out your inner monster like a bad neighbor.

Speaker 2 Claire Daines and Matthew Reese find that out for themselves in The Beast in Me, a new eight-episode drama from the team that brought you homeland. Banes plays Aggie Wiggs, a grieving writer.

Speaker 2 Rhys plays Niall Jarvis, her new neighbor and possible murderer.

Speaker 24 But who's the monster and who's the bad neighbor? That's another story.

Speaker 2 It's a game of cat and mouse that sets them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

Speaker 24 The Beast in Me, now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 2 You will not want to miss this.

Speaker 1 Goodbye. Goodbye.

Speaker 4 Ah, greetings from my bath, festive friends.

Speaker 6 The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money, getting 5% cash back when I pay pay in four.

Speaker 9 No fees, no interest.

Speaker 10 I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 9 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body.

Speaker 11 Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 13 Save the offer in the app. NS1231, see PayPal.com/slash promo terms.
Points can be redeemed for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval.

Speaker 14 PayPal Inc. at MLS 910-457.

Speaker 1 Siusas la Frace persona precavida vale pordos. The Colgate Total Active Prevention System is for you.
Cono pasta rental reformulada.

Speaker 1 Unse pigo dentes y innovor y una en juage bucal antibacterial diceñados para trabajar juntos y serquín se veces másificases al reducir elimio de bacterias in just six weeks, starting from week one.

Speaker 1 Compared to a non-antibacterial fluoride toothpaste and flat-trim toothbrush, helping you prevent oral health problems like cavities and gingivitis before they start.

Speaker 1 Compralo en shop punto, callgate, punto com, yagunal todro, and be dentist ready.