1x09: Tapping into the Unknown with Kaydra Brannan

[00:00:21] Welcome to Cryptic Encounters. My guest this time around is Kaydra Brannan, a medical speech-language pathologist and the host of the show, Perplexity, a mystery podcast. Thank you for coming on the show, Kaydra.

[00:00:34] Kaydra Brannan Absolutely. I'm so excited. And yeah, I really appreciate you having me.

[00:00:37] Yeah, definitely. We have a lot of interesting topics to get into, like the study of neurology and its connection with certain paranormal phenomena. And we'll talk about one of our favorite topics on the podcast, Out-of-Body Experiences, as well as a collection of your personal experiences with the supernatural. But before we get into any of that, could you just tell us a bit about yourself and your podcast?

[00:01:01] Kaydra Brannan Yes, absolutely. So like Andy was saying, I'm Kaydra. I live in Austin, Texas. I lived in Dallas-Fort Worth area most of my life. So I'm new to Austin, but loving it down here. Texas born and raised. And I've been a medical speech-language pathologist working with adults for a little over six years now.

[00:01:25] Kaydra Brannan And personal stuff, like got a dog and cat that I love very much. I'm a big pet person that me and Andy bonded over dogs earlier. And I started podcasting in December of 2022. And I started it just largely because I feel like my feet have kind of been in two worlds for a long time.

[00:01:49] Kaydra Brannan I've always been really into and I think pretty good with like science. And I love learning. I love the medical field. But there's also things that I just feel like have happened in my life and other people's lives that can't be so easily explained. And I've always loved the concepts of the paranormal and spirituality. So delving into my podcast, Perplexity, it's been all about unraveling mysteries every week.

[00:02:19] And it's been really cool because it's been a great opportunity for me to learn about a wide variety of topics, including some of the things that we'll be talking about today.

[00:02:28] Kaydra Brannan Good, good. And as you said, your personal experiences influence your desire to podcast, as has mine. So let's go back in time to your personal experiences with the unknown and how they began with childhood. This is very common with people like us, as all these types of things seem to happen during our childhood. Could you take us through some of these events that seem to spark your interest in the supernatural?

[00:02:55] Absolutely. Yeah. I largely had my experiences in childhood and they went away as I got older. And I've tried to attribute that to like my beliefs changing and then also just developmentally, like how our brains change as adults. And there's things that, you know, we can see or more capable of seeing when we're younger.

[00:03:19] So all of these experiences were like when I was younger. But one of the most insane ones and one of the earliest paranormal experiences that I can remember was when I was probably around like four years old.

[00:03:33] And I was in my bedroom one night just laying down trying to go to sleep. And I don't remember if it appeared or if it was just there, but I remember seeing a very large shadow figure in my room. It was floor to ceiling height just standing in the corner staring at me.

[00:03:55] And it gave me this like sense of fear. It frightened me to where I was screaming for my dad trying to get him to come into my room.

[00:04:05] And accompanied by the shadow figure were orbs floating all around the room. There were probably like three or four of them, but there could have been more because again, it's such an early memory.

[00:04:15] It was interesting because like the shadow figure frightened me, but the orbs didn't. The orbs were almost like funny and comforting. They were like rolling around the room and just doing like silly stuff.

[00:04:28] Yeah.

[00:04:30] And the best way I could describe them is being maybe like six inches in diameter somewhere around there. And like if you were to stare at a light for a while and then look away, kind of that like huey color changing glow that you get from a light. That's what they looked like.

[00:04:48] And I grew up in a Christian household. So whenever my dad came in, he said that it was a demon or Satan trying to attack me and told me to like cast them out.

[00:05:03] And it was interesting too, because when I cast them out, they seemed to be moving around the room and going away, the orbs and the shadow figure. And I never saw anything like that again, but it's definitely been like an experience that's stayed with me and something that I obviously can't explain. So that was one of my earliest ones.

[00:05:26] Did you experience any kind of sleep paralysis when you saw when you saw the shadow figure as we normally hear in these kinds of stories or were you completely in control of your faculties?

[00:05:38] You know, I didn't think about that, like how common that is, but I never had from what I remember and like just throughout life, I've never had sleep paralysis. I remember being up, moving around. I remember being fully awake when this happened as well. So that is that's really interesting.

[00:05:56] Yeah. Normally when we see these shadow people, we experience sleep paralysis as it's in this weird state between being awake and being asleep. I've been given theories on these shadow people, multiple theories on these shadow people from different folks that I've talked to on the podcast.

[00:06:14] They are anywhere from just hallucinations with our mind trying to kind of wake us up out of a dream to evil spirits or malevolent spirits that are there with us. We're kind of seeing them on the other side, on the other realm as we are in that relaxed state when we're waking up.

[00:06:32] And, you know, there are a lot of other theories about this, but one thing that is consistent throughout, regardless if they are spirits, entities, or simply hallucinations, they're definitely malevolent. I've never heard a good shadow person story. Maybe one or two on our Odd Trails podcast, but they're always, they're so far and few between. It's kind of like abduction stories with aliens.

[00:06:58] You hear a lot of abduction stories and they're horror stories. They're terrifying.

[00:07:02] But then every once in a while you hear like a positive one and we've had those on the show.

[00:07:07] So I don't know what you saw, but considering that you weren't in sleep paralysis, I would assume what you saw was some kind of spirit or entity. It wasn't a hallucination.

[00:07:18] Yeah. And that's what my dad attributed it to as well. And I, as early of a memory as it was, I very much remember being awake, being fully aware of all my faculties and being able to like scream for my dad.

[00:07:34] My dad also said that I got up and went to his room to get him, which I don't remember doing, but I do remember like being very much awake for that whole process.

[00:07:44] And even when, this is the other interesting thing is when my dad came into the room and I asked him about this story recently to make sure I was remembering it correctly, he said he could also see the shadow figure.

[00:07:55] So it was.

[00:07:57] Wow. Okay.

[00:07:57] Yeah. Which is just like a lot for me. I think that makes it more like believable, but it's also scary. Right.

[00:08:07] Right.

[00:08:07] Because it makes it that much more real.

[00:08:09] Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And then you went on to have a few other experiences where you said you heard your name when you were home alone. That's a pretty common poltergeist or other kind of trickster spirit staple that we hear about. Can you tell us about that?

[00:08:24] Yes. And similarly, this only happened to me one time. It was at the same house. I was older. I was probably in middle school and I was, yeah, I was just home alone. I want to say it was like afternoon, nothing crazy going on. And I was just up in my bedroom. And I remember getting this feeling or this urge to go out into the hallway.

[00:08:51] I don't remember if it was because of something that I heard or just a feeling, but I got up and went into the hallway and right next to my bedroom is my parents' office. So I kind of peered in there. I was getting a sensation that someone was in there.

[00:09:08] Right.

[00:09:09] And I felt uneasy because I knew that I was home alone. And we also like I was up on the second story of our house. So I would have heard somebody come in.

[00:09:18] Sure.

[00:09:19] So I'm kind of like sneaking over to the office and peering and I feel like I said hello because again, I felt like someone was there.

[00:09:31] And as soon as that happened, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I felt full body chills and clear as day.

[00:09:43] I heard someone whisper my name into my ear right behind me.

[00:09:46] Kedra.

[00:09:47] It was a strong, authoritative whisper.

[00:09:51] I couldn't assign a gender to it, but I just remember it was clear as day, very like a loud, strong whisper.

[00:10:00] But as soon as that happened, the sensation left. I didn't see anything in the house or experience anything else.

[00:10:09] So it was very random, but I remember it scared me quite bad.

[00:10:14] Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I was going to ask if it was a familiar voice, if it was somebody that you knew, but considering that you couldn't even assign a gender to it, it definitely sounds like an ethereal type experience or voice.

[00:10:29] Not any kind of mimic, because when we hear stories about the mimics, we often see them pretending to be somebody that we know or pretending to sound like somebody we know.

[00:10:41] Mm-hmm.

[00:11:11] Right.

[00:11:11] Type eyes.

[00:11:12] And he just walked past the doorway. I waited a few seconds, and then I realized, Dad's at work. And I was probably eight years old at the time, so I go into the kitchen and I tell my mom, hey, when did Dad get home?

[00:11:24] And she's like, Dad's not home. Dad's definitely not home. And we looked all around the house. There was nobody in the house. But, I mean, clear as day, a physical form. It wasn't even like a ghostly form.

[00:11:34] Right.

[00:11:34] I watched my dad walk right past the doorway. It didn't scare me. It was just kind of a confusing, silly little thing that happened that I never forgot about.

[00:11:43] Wow.

[00:11:44] Yeah.

[00:11:45] I've heard similar stories when I—so I did an episode quite a while back about twin telepathy and doppelgangers.

[00:11:53] Mm-hmm.

[00:11:53] And there were some similar doppelganger stories where, I mean, it's just as clear as day. That is—and it's very often a loved one.

[00:12:01] Yeah.

[00:12:02] That is my dad or that is my friend, whoever.

[00:12:05] But I have heard that before where there's, like, subtle physical characteristics that are slightly different. Like, there was—I don't know if you've heard of—they're calling them the mirrored men.

[00:12:15] The Monsters Among Us podcast did, like, a big deep dive into the mirrored men. And they're often sighted in threes, so this could be totally unrelated. But they have, like, large, wide-set eyes. They almost have, like, a frog-like look to them. And they're—they're human.

[00:12:35] That's what it was.

[00:12:36] Yeah, that's—that's what it reminded me of. As soon as you gave that physical description, I was like, oh, that's like the mirrored men. But very unsettling, very creepy. And, yeah, I mean, just other than that slight physical difference, they're just like us from what we can gather.

[00:12:51] Yeah, there was—it was just like I was looking at my dad, but with these weird, inhuman, large eyes. I'm definitely going to have to binge those episodes. I'm guessing it's multiple episodes with Monsters Among Us?

[00:13:02] I think so. The reason I know about it is because of Believing the Bizarre. They've been doing interviews lately, and they just interviewed the host of that podcast.

[00:13:13] Sure.

[00:13:13] And I've been seeing some of his clips about the mirrored men, but I haven't listened to the parts. And now I really want to. I just finished the interview yesterday.

[00:13:21] And he also just did an Amazon Prime documentary, The Guy for Monsters Among Us. And it's about the—I can't—sorry if I'm remembering this wrong. I want to say it's about the Bennington Triangle.

[00:13:36] So, it sounds really interesting. He, like, went out there and did some investigative work. It could be a different triangle, but really, really interesting.

[00:13:47] So, but yeah, I know that the mirrored men is what he's been assigning them as because he started getting, like, several encounter stories about them.

[00:13:55] But it's a relatively new concept, if that makes sense.

[00:14:27] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:29] Yes.

[00:14:29] My friend, Timothy Renner, the host of the podcast, Strange Familiars, he has—he interviewed someone who had a story about seeing—it was either, like, his brother or his cousin on a rooftop.

[00:14:42] And I'm probably misremembering every single detail, but this is how I remember it.

[00:14:47] I remember it as, like, a cousin or a friend or a brother who was looking at him through a window, or maybe he was on a rooftop.

[00:14:55] Man, I wish I could remember this right.

[00:14:57] But it was the same type of thing.

[00:14:59] He looked like this person that he knew, but something was off.

[00:15:03] His smile was wrong.

[00:15:04] It was like he wasn't smiling with his eyes.

[00:15:07] He was just smiling with his mouth.

[00:15:08] It was like somebody pretending to be human, which is beyond creepy.

[00:15:14] I mean, creepier than any monster, any ghost you could throw at me.

[00:15:17] Yes.

[00:15:17] I find something that mimics human beings, especially people that we know, to be the most terrifying thing out there.

[00:15:23] A thousand percent.

[00:15:24] One of the worst nightmares I ever had as a kid.

[00:15:27] I had a dream that my parents had been replaced by aliens, is what I called them.

[00:15:34] But they still looked like mom and dad, but it's like their eyes were too big.

[00:15:40] And I was, like, sneaking down the stairs, and I, like, heard them talking in a language I didn't recognize and, like, peered over the, like, little gap in our stairwell and saw them.

[00:15:50] And they looked like aliens, and I was like, oh, my gosh, mom and dad are aliens, and that's so scary.

[00:15:56] I always had this fear when I was a child, and it was a very real fear and a very real belief of mine that everybody was a monster or an alien, and they were pretending to be humans when I wasn't in the room or looking.

[00:16:09] And whenever I would come into the room, they knew I was coming, and they would change into their human form.

[00:16:14] That's just, like, my dream.

[00:16:15] Yeah, I believed everybody all around me was a hidden monster or alien.

[00:16:21] I probably got it from, like, a TV show or something when I was little, but it stuck with me, and I really believed it for a while.

[00:16:27] It's like something from, like, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

[00:16:38] So, moving on to your sister's story.

[00:16:41] I have told this story many times, and it's probably one of my favorite paranormal stories

[00:16:48] because my whole family experienced it in some way.

[00:16:52] So, basically, I was in high school.

[00:16:56] My sister's four years younger than me.

[00:16:57] She was in middle school.

[00:16:59] And I had a friend over at our house.

[00:17:02] My parents also had some friends over.

[00:17:05] They were doing, like, some type of church small group thing.

[00:17:08] And my sister was across the street playing with our neighbors.

[00:17:12] So, I'm in the backyard of our house.

[00:17:14] My sister's in the front yard of our neighbor's house.

[00:17:17] And I hear this blood-curdling scream.

[00:17:21] And it sounded like a woman, but turns out it was my sister.

[00:17:27] I had never heard her scream like that.

[00:17:29] But I ran to the fence and, like, peered over.

[00:17:33] And in the front yard, I see, and trigger warning,

[00:17:39] it looked like the rope was around her neck.

[00:17:41] It was not.

[00:17:42] But she was hanging from a tree.

[00:17:44] She had been on a rope swing.

[00:17:47] And what had happened is my friend was spinning her on the rope.

[00:17:52] And the rope got caught in her hair.

[00:17:55] But it looked like she was hanging from the tree

[00:17:58] with just the rope around her head, neck area.

[00:18:01] So, I'm immediately freaking out.

[00:18:03] I sprinted outside to check on her.

[00:18:07] And while I'm doing that, I, like, I ran through the house,

[00:18:10] tell my parents what's going on.

[00:18:12] Catrice or Carlyce is hanging from a tree, blah, blah, blah.

[00:18:15] Kind of notify them in the living room and then sprint across.

[00:18:18] And so, probably, like, within 20, 30 seconds,

[00:18:22] we're all in the front yard of our neighbor's house checking on my sister.

[00:18:26] She's hanging from this rope screaming.

[00:18:30] And between the time where I saw her at the fence line

[00:18:34] and ran through the living room to get across the street,

[00:18:37] this woman has appeared out of nowhere.

[00:18:41] And she had a baby stroller with her,

[00:18:44] like a kind of carrier stroller with wheels.

[00:18:48] She had parked that on the side of the sidewalk.

[00:18:52] And she had my sister's feet on her shoulders,

[00:18:56] just kind of supporting her weight

[00:18:58] so that the rope wouldn't pull on her hair.

[00:19:02] And me and my sister spent a lot of time outside.

[00:19:06] We were kids.

[00:19:07] We were outside, like, every day.

[00:19:09] Neither of us had ever seen this woman before,

[00:19:11] and we never saw her again after this.

[00:19:14] My parents had also never seen her before.

[00:19:17] And our neighborhood's pretty small.

[00:19:19] So that was already a little, like,

[00:19:20] huh, who is this woman?

[00:19:21] What is she doing here?

[00:19:24] But she was just as real as you and me.

[00:19:29] She had, like, a black and white t-shirt on,

[00:19:32] short, dark hair, Hispanic woman.

[00:19:34] And I specifically remember she did not say a single word the whole time.

[00:19:40] Completely silent, which was also kind of strange, right?

[00:19:43] You're not like, oh, don't worry, I got her.

[00:19:45] Like, no words.

[00:19:46] But she's holding my sister.

[00:19:48] And then as soon as my parents got there,

[00:19:51] my dad said something to her, like, don't worry, we got her.

[00:19:54] Thank you so much.

[00:19:55] And as soon as he said that, she was gone.

[00:19:59] No idea where she went.

[00:20:02] And where, like, how our neighborhood is situated, too.

[00:20:07] It was like, it wasn't like, okay, a couple seconds passed and she just turned the corner and we forgot.

[00:20:12] Like, there's a significant amount of space where you can turn a street or go somewhere else.

[00:20:18] Like, we would have seen her leave, you know?

[00:20:23] And the other thing that's really fascinating about this encounter is that my sister, my parents, me, I don't know if our friends saw her, but I would suspect they did because our whole family did.

[00:20:34] And the other thing that's really strange is we all had different physical descriptions of her.

[00:20:39] Like, very different.

[00:20:40] So it was like we were each perceiving her differently.

[00:20:46] I saw a short Hispanic woman with dark hair.

[00:20:49] I can't remember who exactly saw what, but, like, my dad, for example, would be like, oh, I saw a blonde woman.

[00:20:56] Like, my mom sees a redhead.

[00:20:58] Like, we all saw a woman.

[00:20:59] Wow.

[00:20:59] But vastly different physical descriptions.

[00:21:03] That's crazy.

[00:21:05] Yeah.

[00:21:05] So we've always called her our guardian angel in the family.

[00:21:08] And my sister has had multiple situations where something really bad should have happened to her and it didn't.

[00:21:16] So I'm, like, convinced she has some type of guardian angel that's always following her around.

[00:21:22] That's amazing.

[00:21:22] When you normally hear about guardian angels or spirit guides or whatever you want to call them, depending on what culture you're from, a lot of the times they're not taking a physical form.

[00:21:33] You hear stories about guardian angels more as the intuition or your inner voice.

[00:21:39] Yes.

[00:21:39] Talking to you or your gut feeling.

[00:21:42] That's sort of our guardian angels.

[00:21:44] Right.

[00:21:44] That third man, third man factor.

[00:21:47] Yeah.

[00:21:47] Yeah, exactly.

[00:21:49] So that's wild that she was able to, you were all able to see this person, but it was a different person for everybody.

[00:21:55] Now, moving on to the last of the notes that I have for your stories.

[00:21:59] You met a strange man at church when you were eight or nine.

[00:22:04] That's all, that's the only note I have.

[00:22:05] So I'm really curious what this story is.

[00:22:08] I did too.

[00:22:11] Didn't we all?

[00:22:12] Yeah.

[00:22:12] Oh, gosh.

[00:22:13] Um, I, this is, okay, so this is hands down the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me.

[00:22:21] And it's another story where my sister was with me.

[00:22:26] She remembers seeing this man.

[00:22:29] That's like the best thing I can call him.

[00:22:31] Um, but basically, it's interesting too, because it was in the middle of a weather phenomenon.

[00:22:40] There was supposed to be a tornado that night.

[00:22:41] And we've heard stories of like paranormal activity increasing during storms.

[00:22:46] So I don't remember how old I was, but I was there with my sister.

[00:22:52] And I want to say some of my cousins, we were at the church because my parents were on staff there.

[00:22:58] And during natural disasters, a lot of church people get together and they pray.

[00:23:04] So that's what they were doing.

[00:23:06] They were there having some type of small group and praying just basically like, didn't,

[00:23:10] you know, like, please don't let the tornado hurt our town, whatever.

[00:23:14] And since me and my sister and all the cousins were little, we were staying in like kind of a nursery area watching TV.

[00:23:22] We had one of those like roll up, like put the TV on wheels, put a VHS in.

[00:23:27] And we were watching like, I think like a Mary Kate and Ashley movie.

[00:23:31] And I remember I had to go to the bathroom.

[00:23:35] So the pastor's daughter that was watching us opened the little door so that I could go to the bathroom.

[00:23:41] It was one of those like half door things where like kids can get out from the short end.

[00:23:46] And then you have the tall part where they can't get out.

[00:23:49] So I kind of crouched down.

[00:23:50] I'm going through that and I go into the hallway.

[00:23:53] And as soon as I start to enter the hallway on the, because it's a long, dark hallway on the far right end of the hallway,

[00:24:01] I see this man just standing there.

[00:24:06] Never seen him before.

[00:24:08] And I remember he was dirty, disheveled.

[00:24:11] He had like long, scraggly hair.

[00:24:15] I, it's hard for me to describe it because I was so little, but I want to say he was wearing like basically a loincloth.

[00:24:25] Like I've compared him to Tarzan before.

[00:24:28] And he just started running down the hallway and he ran right past me, didn't say anything.

[00:24:36] And then just disappeared, ran and vanished.

[00:24:43] And I remember like freaking out, not knowing what was going on and screaming.

[00:24:49] Right.

[00:24:50] And it scared all the other little kids too.

[00:24:53] And I remember asking my sister about it later and she said she saw him.

[00:24:58] And then there was another point, it's kind of like hard to splice it all together.

[00:25:03] But I remember there was another point in the night where we were in the sanctuary.

[00:25:08] Maybe it was like they were wrapping up for the night with their prayer.

[00:25:11] But I saw this same man up on the balcony and he was just standing up on the ledge.

[00:25:18] And I don't remember if he like disappeared again or what, but I remember seeing him up there.

[00:25:23] And then at the end of the night, when it was time to leave, we all walked outside to go to the car.

[00:25:29] And I saw him again, just in like the front of the church, like garden area, just running around.

[00:25:37] And this wasn't any time near Halloween, correct?

[00:25:43] Not that I know of.

[00:25:44] So this isn't just a Halloween party or gone crazy on LSD.

[00:25:51] I don't, I mean, I don't think so.

[00:25:54] But it's such a, it's such a weird story.

[00:25:57] And I've told this story only on one other podcast, largely because it's so weird.

[00:26:06] If you, if we want to look at it from a supernatural standpoint and a fun way to look at it is you saw a time traveler who slipped through time.

[00:26:13] He was probably running from some prehistoric animal.

[00:26:16] I love that idea.

[00:26:18] He did seem prehistoric.

[00:26:20] Yeah.

[00:26:21] And he slipped into, to our reality and our time.

[00:26:24] That's crazy.

[00:26:25] You know, these experiences that we have as kids, I just wish that they didn't go away.

[00:26:32] The problems and distractions of real life seem to bog us down spiritually.

[00:26:36] And a lot of us just lose that connection with the spiritual world before we're even old enough to remember most of it.

[00:26:43] But I know you've commented on how, in both your career and in your personal experiences, you've come to merge both the scientific and the medical with the paranormal.

[00:26:56] And this seems to be a theme with the show.

[00:26:59] I've spoken with a consciousness researcher who did the same thing with her studies on out-of-body experiences.

[00:27:04] I've talked with an archaeologist who used her experience in the field to make sense of the paranormal.

[00:27:10] So this is definitely a safe place to talk about these ideas.

[00:27:13] No judgment here.

[00:27:14] It's welcomed.

[00:27:14] Could you please share a bit about how being a medical speech-language pathologist has affected your beliefs in other phenomena?

[00:27:24] Yes.

[00:27:25] It's interesting because this is actually the first time I've ever talked about this with somebody.

[00:27:29] So I'm excited.

[00:27:31] And it's cool that other people have talked about this as well.

[00:27:34] Yeah.

[00:27:34] Yeah.

[00:27:35] So after, you know, having those experiences and then them going away as an adult for me personally,

[00:27:44] I feel like I kind of got into that quote-unquote logical side of things for so long

[00:27:49] and was like really just looking at evidence-based practice, research.

[00:27:53] The medical speech pathology world is all about things that are evidence-based.

[00:27:59] Like the treatment you're doing should be backed by research, stuff like that.

[00:28:02] So I've been in that world for a long time and I respect it.

[00:28:07] But again, what's interesting is like when I work with patients that have these experiences that I can't really explain

[00:28:15] or it's like it could be this, it could be this, it could be this medication.

[00:28:19] Or it could be because you had a brain injury.

[00:28:22] It could be blah, blah, blah, right?

[00:28:23] So that's what's kind of fascinated me and kind of brought me into that link of like the scientific world

[00:28:30] and the paranormal world.

[00:28:31] And a lot of what I do every day is cognitive therapy.

[00:28:36] I work with patients that have a variety of cognitive communication disorders.

[00:28:42] So it's a lot of times people who have had some type of traumatic brain injury or a stroke

[00:28:48] or some type of progressive neurological disease like Parkinson's disease or dementia.

[00:28:53] And we want to help them not decline as rapidly.

[00:28:57] We want to maximize their functions that they have.

[00:29:00] So a lot of those patients will either lose or gain some type of spiritual ability.

[00:29:11] And it's really, really interesting.

[00:29:14] One of the first ones that I saw was in an inpatient rehab facility.

[00:29:19] It was a young guy.

[00:29:20] He had an anoxic brain injury.

[00:29:23] So oxygen loss to his brain and his deficits were very generalized because so many areas

[00:29:30] of his brain had been affected from the oxygen loss.

[00:29:33] So he had cognitive impairments.

[00:29:37] He had speech difficulties, difficulty controlling his muscles.

[00:29:41] He was also seeing a shadow figure and it was always on his right side.

[00:29:47] And he had such generalized damage to his brain that he was having visual impairments as well.

[00:29:57] So it was hard to know if it was like because of the brain damage, like, oh, you're just processing

[00:30:05] things differently.

[00:30:05] It's hard to make out what you're seeing on that side.

[00:30:09] Or if it was like psychosis, delirium, a medical medication side effect.

[00:30:15] Or is it like your brain is now processing things differently because of this brain injury and

[00:30:23] it's seeing things that it couldn't see before, you know?

[00:30:28] Right.

[00:30:28] Right.

[00:30:28] And I feel like this is, I know for me, I do recognize that for some people this can be

[00:30:35] a delicate topic just because like it's your brain.

[00:30:39] It was injured.

[00:30:40] So I am never going to be like, this is what it was.

[00:30:45] But I just think it's important to be open to all those different possibilities.

[00:30:50] Yeah, I agree.

[00:30:51] I can already tell just by your tone that you are very careful about these types of topics

[00:30:58] and connecting the two things because I can only imagine how much criticism our ideas

[00:31:04] like these theories get in that people with traumatic brain injuries, other types of neurological

[00:31:11] disorders are able to see other things that we aren't able to see rather than them just

[00:31:17] being hallucinations or rather than just being, you know, part of their disorder.

[00:31:23] It's like this wall that we're not supposed to break when talking about these kinds of things

[00:31:29] just out of respect for the injury or the disease.

[00:31:34] I can see how a lot of people would think this is kind of blasphemy to bring up these kinds

[00:31:38] of ideas.

[00:31:39] And I'm very thankful that you're willing to talk about this because it's really important

[00:31:44] to talk about these things.

[00:31:45] I mean, I've always found this to be fascinating.

[00:31:48] The first incident I remember hearing about related to this type of phenomenon was on a paranormal

[00:31:54] podcast about 10 to 15 years ago that they shared a story about a woman who came out

[00:31:58] of a coma with the ability to speak a completely different language that she had never been

[00:32:03] able to understand before.

[00:32:05] And in that same vein, why would people with injuries or neurological disorders not be able

[00:32:12] to have the ability to see other things that we can't see?

[00:32:16] You know what I mean?

[00:32:17] Why say we can't explain why this person woke up with the ability to, you know, speak another

[00:32:22] language, but we could definitely explain why this person is seeing a shadow person.

[00:32:25] It's a hallucination or it's a product of the injury.

[00:32:28] You know, it's like, why not both?

[00:32:31] Why can't they both be unexplained?

[00:32:33] Why can't they both be some way related to the unknown?

[00:32:36] Well, and I mean, to be fair, like when people try to label that acquisition of language from

[00:32:43] an injury, so xenoglossia is how they try to label it a lot.

[00:32:48] But there's very little research on xenoglossia.

[00:32:52] It's largely because it's incredibly rare.

[00:32:56] But yeah, there's very little research.

[00:32:59] So it's like you can't really objectively say there's no way this is paranormal.

[00:33:05] Exactly.

[00:33:06] You know, we just don't have enough information.

[00:33:08] And I actually have a similar story in my notes that I came across recently that I thought was

[00:33:16] really interesting.

[00:33:17] There's a woman, her name's Janet Mayer, and she had been going on these spiritual retreats

[00:33:26] and she was doing a lot of meditation.

[00:33:29] And seemingly out of nowhere, she started speaking in this other language that she had never heard

[00:33:37] before, didn't recognize.

[00:33:39] And so she was immediately like, what is this?

[00:33:42] And very curious.

[00:33:43] And she was reaching out to all these different experts, different linguists, different professors

[00:33:49] at different universities.

[00:33:50] And she eventually came across this guy who had ties to indigenous people in Brazil.

[00:33:59] And he recognized the language she was speaking as being part of their indigenous tribes there.

[00:34:06] And she was able to speak a variety of languages from that area, a variety of dialects.

[00:34:11] And they started mapping her brain.

[00:34:14] They did studies to figure out, like, why is this happening?

[00:34:17] What is going on?

[00:34:18] They did EEGs, all kinds of stuff.

[00:34:21] And I need to look at it more, but I know they were able to rule out, I don't know why,

[00:34:26] but they were able to rule out xenoglossia as being a possibility.

[00:34:30] Right.

[00:34:31] Something about the data not making sense.

[00:34:33] But her brainwaves were very irregular, very unnatural from what you would normally see

[00:34:40] in an EEG, specifically in her right parietal lobe, which is interesting because the parietal

[00:34:47] lobe is really important for, like, our perception and our sense of self and how we, like, how

[00:34:53] we take in sensory information, how we process and perceive it.

[00:34:57] And her brainwaves were, like, off the charts in that specific area.

[00:35:03] So there have been a lot of things that I've been coming across recently as I've been delving

[00:35:08] into this where it's, like, it's cool because we're able to actually see in the brain changes

[00:35:15] and irregularities in people who have these special abilities.

[00:35:27] I spoke to a woman on the show who had this tremendous experience and transformation

[00:35:33] through a near-death-like experience.

[00:35:35] She traveled to other dimensions, spoke with angels, other beings, and then came back and

[00:35:42] completely turned her life around.

[00:35:44] She got off of drugs, she got healthy, and she started to help people like herself.

[00:35:49] And in speaking with her, I could tell that something very real and something very special

[00:35:55] happened to her.

[00:35:56] You can always just tell when you talk to somebody who has had a drastic spiritual experience.

[00:36:03] They're different.

[00:36:05] And I'm just curious, have you come across any information on NDE stories in your research

[00:36:10] and how they've affected people post-NDE?

[00:36:14] NDEs, I can also largely speak to that with the populations that I've worked with, specifically

[00:36:21] like traumatic brain injuries.

[00:36:23] Similar to our personalities, how it affects you is different for a lot of people.

[00:36:30] You know, some people have different, like your mindset as you're processing all of that,

[00:36:35] I think is so important.

[00:36:37] So there's definitely research that shows like an increase in stress levels and an increase

[00:36:43] in anxiety and depression.

[00:36:44] But there's also research that supports how NDEs can have the opposite effect.

[00:36:53] They can help with lowering addiction, like what you were mentioning earlier.

[00:36:56] Um, it, it largely depends on, on the person.

[00:37:01] Something that I came across pretty recently was a really cool syndrome.

[00:37:08] It's called sudden savant syndrome.

[00:37:11] Yeah, I've heard of that.

[00:37:12] And it's so cool.

[00:37:14] Yeah.

[00:37:15] Uh, it's, it's similar to like that language acquisition where you're just like, how the

[00:37:19] heck did this happen?

[00:37:19] And it's, it largely occurs, uh, after near death experiences.

[00:37:26] And there's also been, uh, I did find a study as well in 1996 from neurologist Bruce Miller.

[00:37:34] But yeah, for those of you who don't know, sudden savant syndrome, it's where somebody suddenly,

[00:37:42] seemingly for no reason at all, acquires this incredible skill.

[00:37:46] And it could be in anything.

[00:37:48] I heard a story of this guy who like had, I want to say a concussion and he, the next

[00:37:55] day could remember the date for literally everything and not just related to him.

[00:38:02] Like someone could be like, when was John F. Kennedy born?

[00:38:07] And he could just spit out the date.

[00:38:09] And it's like, where are you getting this information?

[00:38:13] Yeah.

[00:38:13] Yeah.

[00:38:14] So just crazy stuff like that.

[00:38:17] Um, there, there's also sudden savant syndrome cases of people being able to like play the

[00:38:22] piano all of a sudden and having no idea how that happened or like artistic abilities are

[00:38:27] very common with this, um, number, uh, being really good with numbers and math is also really

[00:38:32] common with this.

[00:38:34] And the study that I was reading recently was from a neurologist named Bruce Miller in the

[00:38:39] 90s.

[00:38:40] He compiled 12 case studies and all of these people had frontotemporal dementia.

[00:38:48] And these patients seemed to have this sudden acquisition of music, artistic skills for the

[00:38:57] very first time.

[00:38:59] Uh, sometimes at really esteemed levels where it's like, oh my gosh, you could do this professionally.

[00:39:05] And they did not have those abilities before.

[00:39:09] So it's so fascinating because it's like, they're going through this cognitive decline,

[00:39:13] but at the same time they're gaining these abilities elsewhere.

[00:39:17] Right.

[00:39:18] It makes me wonder about the abilities that our brain has that we're just not able to tap into.

[00:39:28] It kind of makes me think of the matrix, a movie that I only just recently watched for

[00:39:34] the first time, believe it or not.

[00:39:35] Right.

[00:39:36] That unlocking.

[00:39:37] Yeah.

[00:39:38] Yeah.

[00:39:39] Such a simplified term, but you know, like that ability to quote unquote unlock those other

[00:39:43] parts of your brain.

[00:39:44] Yeah.

[00:39:44] It's like we have all of these amazing abilities in our brains that we just don't know how to

[00:39:49] unlock.

[00:39:50] I'm very much into lucid dreaming.

[00:39:52] Lucid dreaming has been a huge part of my life.

[00:39:56] And there are stories of those that have practiced lucid dreaming, dream yoga, different forms

[00:40:02] of dream.

[00:40:04] I guess you could say dream work and that they were able to practice instruments in their dreams.

[00:40:10] They were able to learn to read music.

[00:40:12] They were able to learn new skills in their dreams and they would carry over.

[00:40:17] These skills would carry over into their real life.

[00:40:20] And we hear about composers and musicians that were able to write music in their dreams.

[00:40:25] And then they wake up and they would just be able to play some of the greatest songs

[00:40:28] of all time.

[00:40:29] It's all in there.

[00:40:31] You know what I mean?

[00:40:31] It's all in our brain.

[00:40:34] And it's why aren't we able to access that at all times?

[00:40:38] It frustrates me.

[00:40:39] Yeah.

[00:40:40] It frustrates me too.

[00:40:41] It also frustrates me like how unreliable our memory is.

[00:40:45] Yeah.

[00:40:46] Uh, like by and large, I mean, like earlier when you were trying to remember that story,

[00:40:51] like we all have situations like that where it's like, why can't I remember this?

[00:40:56] And then there's people who, and I want to learn about this more too.

[00:41:00] There's people who do like hypnosis for a living and like can retrieve that information

[00:41:06] out of our subconscious to help solve crimes.

[00:41:09] Yeah.

[00:41:10] And it's proven to be reliable.

[00:41:13] So it's in there.

[00:41:14] It's just, it's a retrieval issue.

[00:41:16] I think trying to get it to our cerebral cortex and just get it to come out.

[00:41:21] It's like, ah, it's in there.

[00:41:23] I just got a deep dive in there and pull it out.

[00:41:25] So it makes sense that you're able to access more of that, those deeper levels of our subconscious

[00:41:30] in dreaming.

[00:41:32] Right.

[00:41:33] And to take it beyond just what's going on in our brains and the ability of our brains,

[00:41:38] there's also the phenomena of past lives and past life regressions.

[00:41:44] We have entire lives that we've lived somewhere deep in our psyche.

[00:41:49] And through hypnosis, we're able to bring those out and we're able to tell these elaborate

[00:41:54] stories.

[00:41:54] And then we have children that have been able to do this and they've been able to tell

[00:41:59] stories with details that no child would ever be able to recite.

[00:42:04] I mean, completely lived lives.

[00:42:05] I've talked about this on the podcast before.

[00:42:07] Oh yeah.

[00:42:08] But it's, it's like we have these complete lives that we've lived in, in the past, somewhere

[00:42:14] deep inside of our psyche.

[00:42:15] There's so much going on in there.

[00:42:17] And I think it's more than just skills that we're unlocking in our brain.

[00:42:21] I think that it's all a part of the simulation that we're in.

[00:42:26] It's all a part of the matrix, whatever you want to call it.

[00:42:29] This realm that we're in right now, we have so much more ability and control over it than

[00:42:35] I think we know.

[00:42:37] And I feel like we've lost so many abilities over the course of history.

[00:42:43] Just we're so focused on politics and the media and social media and all this noise and

[00:42:51] everything going on in our minds, completely zapping any time that we would have to put

[00:42:58] towards mindfulness or strengthening these parts of our brains with meditation.

[00:43:04] You know, the rewiring of neural pathways and connections is just an amazing ability that

[00:43:09] our brains have.

[00:43:10] And I have a lot of personal experience with this phenomenon through practicing meditation,

[00:43:16] somatic tracking and pain reprocessing therapy.

[00:43:20] After a lot of work and a lot of help from a very talented specialist in this field, I

[00:43:26] have successfully recovered from a number of chronic pain problems that I was plagued with

[00:43:31] for years.

[00:43:32] I went to a ton of doctors and specialists, tried to figure out what was wrong with me.

[00:43:36] And, you know, obviously all the tests have come back negative.

[00:43:39] And I can't tell you how many times I was told it's all in your head.

[00:43:42] I guess they weren't completely wrong.

[00:43:44] I won't go into too much detail, but I've talked about it quite a bit on other episodes.

[00:43:48] But I personally am a testament to both pain and damage that the brain itself can cause

[00:43:56] in your body, but also the power that the brain has to heal and improve our well-being.

[00:44:03] And meditation is such a simple practice anyone can do to cause deep change inside of us,

[00:44:10] both mentally, spiritually, and physically.

[00:44:13] Is there any relation between meditation and the acquisition of these new kinds of abilities

[00:44:20] that we've been talking about similar to having some type of brain injury or neurological disorder?

[00:44:28] Yes.

[00:44:28] No, absolutely.

[00:44:30] I remember one of the earliest things I heard about this, and I wish I knew the study offhand,

[00:44:35] but there is a study about the power of prayer and meditation and how that can enhance,

[00:44:45] strengthen different areas of your brain, your cerebral cortex, your hippocampus, which

[00:44:50] is super important for building memories.

[00:44:53] Right.

[00:44:53] And they have literally seen that difference in brain imaging.

[00:44:59] People who were in the control group and not practicing these things for several months,

[00:45:03] however long, and people who were.

[00:45:06] So that is something that can physically change your brain.

[00:45:11] And then there have also been studies about the physiological effects of prayer and meditation,

[00:45:16] how it can improve our memory, how it can improve our stress regulation, our anxiety,

[00:45:25] lower depression levels.

[00:45:27] So there's absolutely a huge, even if you're not a religious person, you know,

[00:45:34] you can always separate those things of like meditation, mindfulness.

[00:45:39] Those are scientifically proven as well to have incredible benefits for your mind.

[00:45:47] There was that woman that I mentioned too, the Janet Mayer story of her meditation and how

[00:45:53] she was able to acquire a lot of different abilities through that, learn different languages.

[00:46:00] I know I also just, I feel the best.

[00:46:04] I feel the most clear headed when I am good about practicing my, my yoga, my breathing, my,

[00:46:11] my mindfulness, my meditation.

[00:46:13] Yeah.

[00:46:13] And I do want to ask your opinion on this because this is something that I wouldn't say I've been

[00:46:19] scared of, but something that I've been cognizant of in meditating.

[00:46:24] I get very, very deep in meditation.

[00:46:27] It goes beyond just mindfulness and I've had out-of-body experiences and I have a lot of

[00:46:35] weird sensations.

[00:46:37] A lot of weird stuff happens when I meditate.

[00:46:40] And one thing that I read about a lot in books on meditation and a lot of Eastern practices is,

[00:46:47] you know, the death of the ego.

[00:46:49] And how that can sometimes, meditation and mindfulness practices can sometimes contribute

[00:46:56] to the ego death, which is supposed to be a positive thing, a good thing.

[00:47:01] But the effects of the ego death on paper are so similar to the effects of something like

[00:47:10] depersonalization, derealization.

[00:47:14] Do you have any thoughts on how these exercises like meditation or practices like this can somehow

[00:47:24] be related to, to these disorders?

[00:47:27] Yeah.

[00:47:28] D, depersonalization, for those of you who don't know, it's like that separation or that

[00:47:33] difficulty recognizing your sense of self.

[00:47:36] Yeah.

[00:47:36] And derealization is difficulty perceiving your reality, your immediate environment.

[00:47:44] Those things can change after a near-death experience.

[00:47:48] They can change after a traumatic brain injury.

[00:47:51] They can also change with things like meditation.

[00:47:54] So it all ties back to how our brain is processing that information.

[00:48:00] Right.

[00:48:00] And I mean, you can absolutely take that as a positive experience.

[00:48:05] But if you think about like how you've been perceiving your own self and your own environment

[00:48:11] for so long, to have that gradually, especially suddenly, but to even have that gradually change

[00:48:18] through like meditation, for example, that's a lot to handle.

[00:48:22] Yeah.

[00:48:23] You know?

[00:48:23] So I totally get like having some fear and anxiety about like, is this okay for this to happen?

[00:48:32] Yeah.

[00:48:32] I've come out of periods of meditation in my life and I've found myself to become almost

[00:48:38] depressed at times just because I'm getting to this place where I'm so focused on forgetting

[00:48:46] about my body, forgetting about reality and just focusing on consciousness, just focusing on

[00:48:53] mindfulness to the point where it's almost like things stop mattering that used to matter,

[00:48:59] you know?

[00:48:59] Yeah.

[00:49:00] And it could get to the point where it's like, I don't, I didn't even want to eat sometimes

[00:49:03] when I would go through these long meditation periods of life.

[00:49:07] I'd be meditating for hours a day and I'd be like, I don't need to eat.

[00:49:09] I'm fine.

[00:49:11] It definitely changes something in our brains when we meditate.

[00:49:16] And you can either use that for the positive or you can let it consume you.

[00:49:21] Right.

[00:49:22] And it can become, it can become a negative.

[00:49:24] I'm not trying to scare people out of meditation by all means.

[00:49:26] It's one of the most beneficial things you can do as a human being.

[00:49:31] It's important to balance.

[00:49:32] Exactly.

[00:49:33] That's what I was trying to, that's the word I was looking for.

[00:49:36] I completely agree.

[00:49:37] The balance is so hard to find there because you can get consumed with meditation and the

[00:49:41] idea of the ego death and it can become depersonalization rather than just being a positive ego death process.

[00:49:50] And it's, it's just scary when I think about it.

[00:49:53] I don't like to think about it.

[00:49:55] I mean, it is scary.

[00:49:57] Like too much, too much of anything.

[00:49:58] They say too much of anything can be a bad thing.

[00:50:00] Right.

[00:50:00] Yeah.

[00:50:01] And I mean, I've heard stories before of people who gradually increased their times of meditation.

[00:50:09] There was a story I heard.

[00:50:11] I want to say I might have read this on my podcast not too long ago, but it was someone who was practicing meditation and they got to where they were meditating for hours and hours a day, multiple times a week, sometimes every day.

[00:50:25] And they started to have these incredibly vivid periods of deja vu where they were predicting everything that was going to happen.

[00:50:38] Oh, my sister's going to pick up a glass in the kitchen and then she's going to ask me this question and it would happen.

[00:50:44] And they ended up stopping meditation because it scared them.

[00:50:48] So I, and I'm not saying that that's what people should do, like make that decision for yourself.

[00:50:54] But I do think that like as someone with anxiety disorder diagnosed, I think grounding techniques are also incredibly beneficial for the brain and have helped my anxiety immensely.

[00:51:08] Like when I would have really bad panic attacks, that was one of the only things that helped me outside of medication was like, okay, feel the texture of the chair that you're sitting in.

[00:51:20] Smell a candle.

[00:51:21] Do some deep breathing.

[00:51:23] It sounds silly, but it's like literally going back to that ancient part of your brain, that fight or flight.

[00:51:32] And you're, you're putting yourself, you're kind of re-personalizing yourself, you know, like you're putting yourself back in that sense of self and like, I'm safe.

[00:51:43] These things are around me.

[00:51:45] These things are safe.

[00:51:46] Everything's okay.

[00:51:47] So, you know, coming out of your body for a really long time when we're so used to having a human experience, I would imagine is very difficult sometimes.

[00:52:28] Yeah.

[00:52:34] And I remember feeling that, too.

[00:52:50] I remember feeling that, the coolness of it.

[00:52:53] And I was really, like, just kind of squeezing my hands into it and grounding myself.

[00:52:58] And immediately all of my anxiety and my fear went away and the dream became more vivid. And I got tricked by what I thought was my spirit guide, but it was some kind of something trying to mess with me for sure.

[00:53:14] And I won't go too far into the dream, but grounding works both in our consciousness, in our spirit realm, in our dreamscape, as well as in reality. It's our connection to, and I keep using this term, it's our connection to the simulation.

[00:53:32] And I firmly believe that, I think that simulation is just a good word for it, but I firmly believe that we are in a program or in a timeline that we chose to come to and we're participating in. This isn't just all an accident, you know.

[00:53:48] And I think that things like deja vu, things like lucid dreaming and all of everything that we're talking about here, it's just the matrix, the simulation, not failing, but we're breaking through it.

[00:54:03] And this time around on Earth, in this cycle, we retained more knowledge from the past lives. We retained more knowledge from before we reincarnated, before we came to Earth, and we're getting better at it. I think that's what it is. I think we're getting, I think we're, after all of our lives here on Earth, we're getting better and better at living in this simulation and we're learning these new abilities.

[00:54:29] I'm reminded of the quote in Jurassic Park where he's like, life finds a way. It's like we're constantly breaking through and figuring things out. So I love that idea. I've said for a long time that I feel like if any religious belief were to end up being true, I think reincarnation makes the most sense by and large.

[00:54:51] Yeah, I agree. And I've talked to so many different people from different walks of life all around the world at this point already on the podcast. And one continuing theme is that we chose to come here and we were here before.

[00:55:06] And this theory, this idea, this exists in cultures from all around the world. This isn't some new idea. The simulation isn't some new idea in theory. It's been around forever. And it seems like regardless if you're practicing witchcraft or if you're studying consciousness or you're a lucid dreamer or you're an archaeologist, one thing remains the same among all these people that I've talked to is that reincarnation is real.

[00:55:36] And it's not as scary as you'd think. It's not, oh, no, I got to live my life again. Oh, no, I have to go back. It's, oh, I want to go back and do this. I want to go back there. At least I want to experience this. I want to go through this. You know, I do believe just based on everybody that I've talked to on the podcast, reincarnation is the most viable explanation for why we're here.

[00:55:58] I love that. Yeah. I want to read more about reincarnation. I did like some old episode. I did like some child stories of reincarnation and I found it so fascinating. And I've heard other stories. I can't remember her name. I want to say it's like Shanti Devi. It's like a woman from India. It's a pretty famous reincarnation story.

[00:56:23] But she remembered her past life so vividly to where the husband of so is basically like this husband living on the other side of India had recently lost his wife.

[00:56:37] And all of a sudden, this little girl on the other side of India starts having these memories of a past life.

[00:56:46] And she could describe her husband and the street they lived on and all these memories.

[00:56:52] And the message eventually got throughout the country into him.

[00:56:56] And he came and met this little girl.

[00:56:59] And she ran up to him, called him by like his nickname.

[00:57:06] Remembered some very intimate memories of the two of them, which must have been incredibly odd to hear from a child, you know?

[00:57:15] Yeah. And I mean, people, people, experts, all kinds of people tried to discount her story and took all these data points down of all the things she remembered.

[00:57:27] And they couldn't. It's one of the most well-documented cases of the unexplained that seems to be a reincarnation case.

[00:57:44] The stories, they're countless all throughout history, proving this, the fact that we have lived previous lives.

[00:57:53] We definitely have. There's so much evidence out there.

[00:57:57] And it frustrates me that it's become such a novel thing.

[00:58:02] It frustrates me that these important ideas, these important theories have just become novel.

[00:58:07] They've become Hollywood plot devices for movies and books.

[00:58:12] Everybody's just lost their sense of wonder and their belief in anything outside of what they can or can't see.

[00:58:19] And I don't think that life is going to reveal itself to somebody who lives like that.

[00:58:24] You're not going to understand reincarnation.

[00:58:27] You're not going to have out-of-body experiences.

[00:58:29] You're not going to see apparitions or guardian angels if you live your life with your head in the sand and you're blocking these things out.

[00:58:38] You're not going to experience them.

[00:58:40] Sometimes it takes trauma to experience them, and that's what we're talking about today.

[00:58:45] It takes going through hell.

[00:58:47] It takes desperation sometimes.

[00:58:49] For instance, when I was talking about my friend with her near-death-like experience.

[00:58:54] It takes going to the edge of life and questioning everything for a lot of people to actually open their minds to all of these ideas and the things that we're talking about.

[00:59:06] And I just feel so bad for folks that—this is kind of messed up to say—

[00:59:11] I feel so bad for folks that have walked through life without any trauma or hardship because they haven't learned any lessons yet.

[00:59:18] You can't learn lessons, and you can't gain new insight and new abilities in life without a struggle, without work, without pain.

[00:59:27] It's all so important, and I think that's why we choose to come here.

[00:59:31] We choose to come here to experience these hardships.

[00:59:34] It's like the simulation theory is very similar to a video game.

[00:59:40] You don't play a video game to walk around and everything just be all beachy, and there's no challenges, and there's no hardships.

[00:59:48] You have unlimited lives.

[00:59:50] When you use the unlimited life cheat on a video game—

[00:59:52] Exactly.

[00:59:53] Exactly.

[00:59:53] I want a puzzle.

[00:59:54] I want something to have to struggle with.

[00:59:56] If you give me unlimited lives, I don't want to play the game because it's no fun anymore.

[01:00:01] And why would we want to come to this simulation and just not have any challenge or hardship at all?

[01:00:08] Because I think that's what gets us closer to evolving.

[01:00:12] It gets us closer to—and I'm getting way out there, man.

[01:00:16] I mean, it's okay.

[01:00:18] I'm in a mood today.

[01:00:20] It's okay.

[01:00:21] Yeah.

[01:00:22] No, I like this.

[01:00:23] I'm just here to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks right now.

[01:00:28] You know, it's actually really refreshing for me because I—this is another reason why I really enjoy doing this podcast is, like, I get to have conversations with people—

[01:00:42] Same.

[01:00:42] —who get me.

[01:00:44] Yeah, same.

[01:00:44] —like to talk about these things and they don't look at you like you have a third eye in the middle of your head.

[01:00:49] Yeah, I felt so alone for the longest time in all of these thoughts and ideas and beliefs and all the books that I was reading and, you know, the occult and supernatural things and paranormal stuff.

[01:01:01] It gets weird, as Lisa would say about Bart on The Simpsons, weird and isolated, you know, until I started talking to people on this podcast.

[01:01:12] And I was like, wow, wait, wait, wait.

[01:01:13] You're telling me I was right?

[01:01:15] You're telling me what I experienced isn't that weird?

[01:01:18] Like, there's an explanation for it?

[01:01:20] There's a bigger picture?

[01:01:21] Right.

[01:01:21] You know, there's a bigger picture to life than what we all think.

[01:01:24] And once you have that experience, once you go through the pain and the hardship that reveals these mysteries of life to you, you're a better person for it.

[01:01:34] Life is—it's like having a lucid dream.

[01:01:36] I've talked about this in the past, where when you have something like a lucid dream or a very intense synchronicity experience or deja vu, it's almost like your day is better.

[01:01:47] There's like this weird excitement, there's this fire that lights up inside of you when you have an experience like that.

[01:01:53] And it improves your day tenfold more than anything else really could.

[01:01:58] And it's crazy how accidents and injuries can bring upon these things.

[01:02:03] Like, for instance, you brought up in our emails Greta Alexander.

[01:02:07] I want to hear a little bit more about this story here.

[01:02:10] Absolutely.

[01:02:11] Yeah.

[01:02:11] Yeah.

[01:02:14] Our good friends, Cassidy and Amanda, talked about her recently.

[01:02:18] Yeah.

[01:02:19] They're who?

[01:02:19] Introduced me to Greta.

[01:02:21] And then I started digging more.

[01:02:22] So first of all, there has been a really interesting link in research between being struck by lightning and gaining psychic ability.

[01:02:32] Okay.

[01:02:32] Which is so, so niche and so fascinating.

[01:02:37] It's so specific, too.

[01:02:38] It's so specific, but I came across this recently when I heard Greta Alexander's story.

[01:02:44] But there's multiple other cases like hers.

[01:02:47] And there's even charts and studies of, like, people who have been struck by lightning and them doing, like, these questionnaires.

[01:02:54] And it'll ask them things like, did you gain psychic ability?

[01:02:58] Or do you have this sense of ESP?

[01:03:01] Have you, and did you have these things before your lightning strike?

[01:03:04] Like, and by and large, there's been a significant finding in research where people who are struck by lightning are more likely to gain a psychic ability.

[01:03:15] They're more likely to have ESP.

[01:03:17] They're more likely to have vivid dreams, including out-of-body experiences and lucid dreaming.

[01:03:22] Yeah.

[01:03:23] It's really, really fascinating.

[01:03:24] Greta Alexander is a famous psychic who gained her abilities from being struck by lightning.

[01:03:32] She was electrocuted once and struck by lightning once pretty close together.

[01:03:36] And she specialized in medical intuition.

[01:03:40] So she would help people with figuring out, like, diagnoses for things.

[01:03:45] Right.

[01:03:45] She helped police in a variety of missing persons cases.

[01:03:49] Wow.

[01:03:50] Yeah.

[01:03:51] But in the 60s, when she was pregnant one night, she was just lying in bed watching a thunderstorm.

[01:03:58] And she had her, either her window was open or it, like, broke the glass in the window.

[01:04:05] I want to say her window was open.

[01:04:07] But the lightning struck her bed and struck her.

[01:04:12] And it caught her bed on fire.

[01:04:14] Wait, so you're telling me we not only need to be scared of going outside during a lightning storm,

[01:04:19] but we can't even be safe in our bedrooms with our windows open?

[01:04:22] It swoops in the window?

[01:04:25] A lot of the stories I've come across are happening through open windows.

[01:04:30] Wow.

[01:04:30] Okay.

[01:04:30] Yeah.

[01:04:31] You heard it from the mouth of the podcast.

[01:04:35] Shut your windows during a lightning storm.

[01:04:37] It can get in.

[01:04:38] Also, just, like, stay inside.

[01:04:40] Because I actually worked with a patient who was struck by lightning, who had a brain injury from it.

[01:04:45] Jeez.

[01:04:46] And she was out on her balcony and she had her hands on the metal railing.

[01:04:51] And the lightning struck the railing and electrocuted her.

[01:04:56] So, just stay inside.

[01:04:59] Yeah.

[01:05:01] Yeah.

[01:05:02] And then there are people that are struck by lightning multiple times.

[01:05:05] That's insane to me.

[01:05:07] That's insane to me.

[01:05:07] I've heard those stories, too.

[01:05:09] It's like it makes you more magnetic to it.

[01:05:11] But, yeah, she was laying in bed and the bolt of lightning damaged her window.

[01:05:17] It knocked down their chimney.

[01:05:19] It set her bed on fire.

[01:05:21] And, I mean, thank God it didn't harm her or her unborn child.

[01:05:26] But she had that happen.

[01:05:28] And then there was another time where, like, she was plugging in this old refrigerator.

[01:05:33] And the electrical outlet was faulty.

[01:05:35] So, she got shocked by that.

[01:05:38] And so, soon after all of this, she said that she felt this, like, spiritual awakening was, like, the best way she could describe it.

[01:05:46] And she started having these moments of precognition, premonition, whatever you want to call it.

[01:05:53] These moments of deja vu.

[01:05:56] And she would, like, go to answer the phone before it would even ring.

[01:06:01] Like, things like that.

[01:06:03] She started noticing she could, like, read people's minds.

[01:06:07] And so, she started making a business out of it.

[01:06:11] But what was different about Greta is she didn't, like, make a business out of it to make money.

[01:06:15] She made a business out of it to help people.

[01:06:18] Because she largely did not make any money doing her job.

[01:06:24] Like, when she would help with police investigations, she would do it for free.

[01:06:27] Sometimes people would pay her.

[01:06:29] But it was, like, she didn't ask them for money.

[01:06:32] They just wanted to pay her.

[01:06:34] She helped solve a murder investigation, too.

[01:06:37] They helped, she helped locate the body of a woman named Mary Cousette in 1983.

[01:06:43] Right.

[01:06:43] The police knew who did it.

[01:06:45] It was her boyfriend.

[01:06:46] But they just couldn't find her body.

[01:06:48] And she was able to give them specific details that helped them locate where her body was.

[01:06:54] She was able to say, like, the victim's head is going to be separated from her body.

[01:07:03] Her feet are going to be separated from her body.

[01:07:05] And she was.

[01:07:07] She had been dismembered, which is horrific.

[01:07:10] And she said a man with a crippled hand would find her.

[01:07:15] And the man who found Mary's body had a deformed left hand from an injury that he had sustained in the past.

[01:07:23] So there were very specific details.

[01:07:25] The police said in their report it was, like, 20 different points that she made that all lined up.

[01:07:32] And there's a lot of stories about Greta.

[01:07:34] This is just one example.

[01:07:36] But there's tons and tons of situations where she helped people.

[01:07:40] Like, she would, like, warn them that there was, like, a faulty wire in their business or at their house.

[01:07:46] And, like, helped save them from having, like, fires in their house.

[01:07:50] All kinds of stuff.

[01:07:51] So, yeah, that's Greta Alexander.

[01:07:53] But her story is fascinating.

[01:07:55] Oh, good.

[01:07:56] There is a book.

[01:07:57] Okay.

[01:07:58] I was like, there's got to be books on Greta Alexander because I feel like I need to dive into this.

[01:08:03] Oh, I'm sure.

[01:08:04] Yeah.

[01:08:04] I'm sure.

[01:08:05] Yeah.

[01:08:06] This is going to be my next deep dive.

[01:08:09] We're going to be looking at Greta Alexander for sure.

[01:08:12] Yeah.

[01:08:12] She's a cool woman.

[01:08:14] I want to say Cassidy was the one who talked about her not too long ago.

[01:08:18] I need to get them on the podcast, too.

[01:08:20] I love those guys.

[01:08:21] You do?

[01:08:21] Yeah.

[01:08:21] Yeah.

[01:08:22] Yeah.

[01:08:22] Well, we have to wrap things up.

[01:08:24] There's still a ton more stuff we wanted to get into.

[01:08:26] Maybe we can do another part two.

[01:08:27] It's fine.

[01:08:27] It's a huge.

[01:08:28] Yeah, it's a huge topic.

[01:08:29] Yeah.

[01:08:30] Yeah.

[01:08:30] And like I've said to all of my guests, we'll do a part two at some point for sure.

[01:08:35] You just have, like, this wealth of knowledge and information on some really fascinating phenomena.

[01:08:40] And with all of my conversations here on Cryptic Encounters, you know, we've learned so much in just this small amount of time that we spent together.

[01:08:50] So before we wrap things up, I want to give you the space at the end of the show to talk about your podcast and, you know, basically plug anything and everything that you'd like to plug and tell everybody where they can find you.

[01:09:02] Oh, sure.

[01:09:03] Yeah.

[01:09:03] Well, thank you so much for saying I have a wealth of knowledge because that means a lot.

[01:09:08] And I was nervous to talk about this.

[01:09:10] I don't know.

[01:09:11] Not at all.

[01:09:12] Well, yeah.

[01:09:13] I host a podcast, Perplexity, a mystery podcast.

[01:09:18] I bring guests on sometimes.

[01:09:20] A lot of times I am by myself, though.

[01:09:23] But I am a storyteller.

[01:09:24] I talk about all of the strange, the spooky, so paranormal.

[01:09:31] I talk about psychological phenomena a lot as well.

[01:09:35] And true crime.

[01:09:37] Just anything mysterious, really.

[01:09:40] New episodes come out every Wednesday.

[01:09:42] I'm on YouTube as well.

[01:09:44] So it's all Perplexity Mystery Podcast.

[01:09:46] Wherever you get your podcasts on YouTube, you can find me there.

[01:09:50] Um, and I'm on, yeah, Instagram and TikTok, Perplexity Mystery Podcast.

[01:09:56] And, yeah, I would love to have you.

[01:09:59] Yeah, I'd love to come on the show, definitely.

[01:10:01] And thank you so much for coming on our show, Kedra.

[01:10:03] Absolutely.

[01:10:11] Well, that's a wrap for the first season of Cryptic Encounters.

[01:10:14] It's been a blast, and I've learned a lot.

[01:10:16] I hope you have as well.

[01:10:17] I'm really hoping to get started on another season of interviews in early to mid-2025,

[01:10:24] but we'll be taking a break until then.

[01:10:26] Finding these unique guests, reading their books, watching their videos, consuming all

[01:10:31] of their work, and writing all of these questions and talking points.

[01:10:34] It's a lot of work.

[01:10:35] And this show is a passion project, so I definitely don't want to rush things.

[01:10:39] I'm all about quality on this show, not quantity.

[01:10:42] So for updates on the future seasons of Cryptic Encounters, I'd recommend following my Instagram

[01:10:47] handle at letsnotmeetcast, and I'll leave a link for that in the show notes for you.

[01:10:52] Thanks again to Kedra Brandon for coming on the show, and be sure to check out her show,

[01:10:56] Perplexity, a mystery podcast, wherever you listen to your podcasts.

[01:11:00] If you or someone you know would be a good fit for the show, email me at crypticencounters

[01:11:05] podcast at gmail.com.

[01:11:07] I'll see you in season two.