GEIST | The Watcher Of The Woods (with Jeremy Haig of When Walls Can Talk)

Ever felt a chill run down your spine as you walked into a room with no logical reason? Tune in to this riveting episode as we journey into the paranormal world with Jeremy Haig, the creator of the podcast, When Walls Can Talk. Jeremy takes us back to his childhood home in Orleans, Massachusetts, where his supernatural experiences began. From feeling an inexplicable dark entity chasing him up the stairs to lights turning off without any apparent cause, Jeremy's experiences are bound to give you goosebumps.

As we peel back the layers of Jeremy's fascinating journey, he opens up about his unique encounters with the spiritual realm. These are not mere stories; these are experiences that have shaped Jeremy's life and his approach to the paranormal. Brace yourself for an unforgettable exploration of the unknown that promises to fuel your curiosity and perhaps even challenge your conception of reality.

Written and Directed by Danielle Matar
Original Music and FX by Beau Jensen
Mixing and Mastering by Adam Esker
Geist Logo by Jake Carruthers

Check out more of their episodes and follow Geist! 

Chapters

• 0:00 Awakening to the Supernatural
• 17:29 Exploring Spirit Guides and Unexplained Encounters
• 28:30 Mediums and Haunted Locations

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The following podcast contains coarse language and subject matter that you might find disturbing. Listener, discretion is advised. If you look up at the night sky long enough, you can dive into it like an ocean, that sweet vortex that invites you to float in darkness. You realize how small you are and how alone you can be. Others navigate through darkness and your stories are a beacon of light. We will never know why it exists, but we know that it does. Get your pitchforks, burn us at the stake. Challenge us, if you'd like. We know the truth that the universe has so much to offer. If you just allow it to show, you, take you and consume. You. Just give in and come play with us forever. Welcome to the world beyond the veil. This is Geist.

Speaker 2: 2:10

I think it's infinitely more interesting, as human beings curious about the unexplained and the afterlife, to ask ourselves if we assume and accept that places are haunted, if we accept that paranormal activity is real, why does it exist?

Speaker 1: 2:32

Jeremy Hague is the creator of when Walls Can Talk, the podcast. His episodes feature stories of locations with rich history and disturbing pasts. This is his own personal journey of reconnecting with the suppressed gift and what sparked his interest in the paranormal.

Speaker 2: 2:52

I grew up in Orleans, massachusetts, on a little peninsula that sticks out into the ocean called Cape Cod. As a kid I didn't know what being a medium was. I didn't know anything about the afterlife or the paranormal. Orleans is a very old town with direct connections to the pilgrims. The city was actually founded in 1797, so it's extremely old and it has seen its own fair share of conflict. It was the site of part of the War of 1812. It also was blockaded by the British. It was bombed by the Germans in 1912. So it is seen its fair share of stress really.

Speaker 2: 3:50

So some of the buildings that I lived in and the reason I say buildings is because I actually was raised in, I would say with hesitancy, but I think it's a fact a form of religious cult. It was an established religious community. We all shared a collection of about 32 buildings across multiple acres of land. The building literally across the street for me as a kid was built in 1795, I believe it was the pub for the people of Orleans back in the War of 1812. And I always thought it was odd that when I looked up the property records for the house that I actually lived in, it says it was built in the 1940s. I remember one time we were doing a renovation on the deck in the back because it was rotted out and old, and when we tore it down we found cements and footings for the deck that had the early 1800s like written into it with fingers, like it had dried into the cement itself. The basement, at least in the core of the house, before there was a lot of additions done to it, the walls were literally stacked rocks with cement. It wasn't even like a true foundation, it was almost like a stone wall in the ground. And so I know for a fact that the history that we know of this building can't be true. We were the land that many First Nations people called home before the colonists arrived, I suppose, and I just felt that there was something much older present on the land. I didn't know anything about the afterlife or the paranormal outside of my own belief in the Bible, in Christianity and in that level of the unseen.

Speaker 2: 6:02

From a very young age I remember feeling extremely uneasy in the house. The basement terrified me. It was a big, meandering, labyrinthian basement with lots of dark corners and kind of hallways to nowhere and closets and strange places. It was just a very weird place, but I just remember as a kid feeling oppression from the basement. I began having these very strange experiences, especially at night. The house was huge. It was like 4,700 square feet. The house was massive.

Speaker 2: 6:44

Every night, before I would go to bed, I would crawl under the covers and repeat to myself Don't, let me see you, don't let me see you, don't let me see you, don't let me see you, don't let me see you.

Speaker 2: 6:59

I just always knew that if I was to peek out from under the covers and look towards my doorway, I knew that I would see something.

Speaker 2: 7:08

Maybe mail, maybe late 20s, early 30s, war of 1812, energy, some form of militia or soldier. It never felt oppressive, but just its existence challenged my idea of reality and I knew that if I allowed myself to truly see it, I would then be forced to come to terms with this new version of reality, and I didn't know that I was prepared to handle that or process that at the time. So for me, repeating Don't let me see you equates to me asking the universe Don't let me see anything. That's essentially what happened when I was 5, 6, 7 years old. I inadvertently shut down my ability and, reflecting back on that honestly. Thank God I did, because my childhood was anything but peaceful. As a member of the LGBT community, my experience with the church surrounding that in my teenage years was extremely traumatic, and I can only imagine if, being a medium and an empath on top of all of that, I don't know how I could have possibly handled that.

Speaker 1: 8:33

So Jeremy kept it to himself.

Speaker 2: 8:36

Throughout the rest of my time living in that property, I still would have that feeling of something dark chasing me up the stairs. Whenever I would come back up from the basement, lights would go out inexplicably. Corners of the basement would be inhumanly dark. It almost feels as though that darkness carries emotion. I hated going in that basement. I hated going down there. It was too much. Do I think that that energy was actually trying to threaten me? No, I don't, but I do think that its existence was a threat to my own worldview. When I see something, it almost feels a little bit like a film is laid over top of my subconscious, over that area of your brain that recognizes imagery and processes it. It almost feels like a direct download into that center of your brain. It's funny how, all these years later, refacing that ability, unlocking that door again, has changed everything.

Speaker 1: 9:48

Jeremy felt a shift and, without rhyme or reason, he was summoned to make drastic moves in his life, moves that would later help him understand everything.

Speaker 2: 10:01

So many years passed. After shutting down my abilities as a kid, I went to college in Philly. I moved back to Boston for a while and then, out of absolutely nowhere, I got this very intense knowledge that I needed to move to Denver. I just knew that I needed to be here and I decided to trust that knowing Borderline hippie kind of identity to Denver it's much more casual but there's also a very strong metaphysical community here. There's a thriving, witchy community. I've made so many friends here that have all transplanted to Denver. But I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know what I was looking for. I didn't know why Denver was calling to me.

Speaker 1: 10:58

But then Jeremy met somebody that helped support these awakenings.

Speaker 2: 11:07

Got into a relationship fairly quickly after I moved here with a person that was definitely meant to teach me a lot for the years that we were together. When I mentioned that I felt like I knew things or was receiving information from something outside of myself was the first person to my knowledge who ever said, okay, tell me more. And pushed me to start to expose myself to people in the witchcraft community, the mediumship community, start to really ask myself what is this for? What power do I have? What abilities do I have? What I knew is that the mountains were calling me and I remember that it really all changed one afternoon in the mountains. We escaped for the day, packed a lunch, packed some of my ghost hunting equipment and went for a hike in Golden Gate Canyon National Park. I've always been fascinated by ghost towns. Old mining settlements and stuff like that is so cool because it's such a moment in time, trapped and never changed.

Speaker 2: 12:32

I had picked a trail. I believe it was called Frazier Meadow. It was a pretty aggressive uphill hike through the mountains that arrived at John Frazier's plantation home, high in the mountains in this beautiful plantation surrounded by aspen trees and mountain irises everywhere. It was absolutely stunning. But I remember on my way down the mountain, I had a moment that I still look at as the true moment, when my mediumship returned. I was walking along the trail and through the trees. I immediately remember this sense of feeling that something was watching me. I saw an entity standing probably between 12 to 15 feet tall. It was somehow both broad and muscular, but also skeletal and gaunt, all at the same time, and what I remember more than anything else was the antlers. It had these bone antlers that stretched almost as wide as it was, tall, and hollow eyes. I just remember this moment that we shared. That could have been seconds, it could have been hours, I don't truly remember. It slipped out from behind the trees and I saw what I have taken to call a watcher. It looked at me and I looked at it and we just stood in like stunned, still silence, surveying each other. It was one of those entities that I feel would typically initially inspire this feeling of terror or fear, but my experience was more of awe and wonder. I was scared, but I wasn't scared because I was afraid. I was scared because it was so powerful. It was so strong, it was so old and the information that I received from it within my own mind was this sense that I protect this land. I was placed here with the charge to watch over it, to protect it. As we stared at each other, I expected some form of threat. For a long time and just as quickly as it was there, it was gone.

Speaker 2: 15:35

I'll be the first to admit that there's so much about indigenous magic and the magic of the First Nations people that I Don't know and don't understand, and probably never will, because it's not my, it's not meant for me to know, it's not meant for me, especially here in the mountains, in a land that was so sacred to them. Watchers are our spiritual beings that have been left behind to protect the land that people were removed from. Oftentimes, these things were placed as people were being displaced. The strength of people, the strength of spirituality, the strength of belief that it takes to successfully create something like this, is phenomenally powerful, and it took me a long time to really process what it happened, but it was so clear within my third eye, within my subconscious, that I can still see it to this day on. They'll never forget the energy that emanated off of it and and the silence of that moment.

Speaker 2: 16:51

That was the moment when truly everything changed. Because when I came down from the mountains and returned home, I now had an energy and an experience that I could use almost as a ruler for myself to hold up against the rest of my sensitivities in order to start to understand how it worked and what my purpose was. That's why I came back to the mountains is because the mountains represent where I come from and what I connect to. I've always connected to that energy. That's always made sense to me.

Speaker 1: 17:29

After reconnecting with his abilities, jeremy delved into practices that would help nurture his gifts and, when he discovered, surprised even him.

Speaker 2: 17:40

I threw myself into a study of eclectic witchcraft. I found a tarot reader and so I threw myself headlong into like 18 weeks of courses with her Began trying to channel for my friends and family. I started exploring all of the old cemeteries around Denver and, yeah, it just became a. It became a life-calling for me To begin to Peel back all the layers that I had built up around myself as a child. But I've shed that now because I don't feel afraid, I don't feel Threatened. I understand it and it understands me. So after this experience I Mentioned, everything changed, and I mean it. Basically, I felt like some form of veil, so to speak, had been removed and I I just started experiencing things that I couldn't explain.

Speaker 2: 18:42

Almost immediately afterwards I Was living in an old brick building that I still don't know much about the history of it. It was built in the 1930s in Denver. I Remember, almost as soon as I came back, noticing that there was a woman standing in the doorway of my studio apartment Almost 24-7. She just stood there and stared at me. One of the things that started happening very quickly for me was Something that's actually quite unusual in the mediumship world Was other people's spirit guides, particularly other people's spirit guides that took an animal form, a.

Speaker 1: 19:31

Spirit guide in Western spiritualism is an entity that remains as a spirit to act as a guide or protector to living individual. They can reveal themselves as past loved ones, ethereal beings, humans, animals or insects.

Speaker 2: 19:47

One night I rolled over in bed, sleeping in this apartment, and I saw the gigantic head of a black python on my partner side of the bed, but the only thing that could fit in our bedroom was the head, which was probably like 7 feet tall, from like under the jaw to the top of the head. I Was very afraid because I Immediately leapt to that something was wrong spiritually or I was in danger in some way. Maybe I'd opened myself up too much or I had Invited something in that I couldn't control. But it immediately communicated to me subconsciously, telling me that it was his spirit guide, that I was safe and that there was nothing to be afraid of and to go ahead and go back to sleep. Many skeptics out there will probably look at me and say well, you were probably dreaming, or. But then I had the next day. I remember bringing this up to him and saying that this is what I experienced, and he validated immediately because he knew that that was what his spirit guide looked like.

Speaker 2: 20:57

Many mediums that I've recounted some of these stories to have expressed how unusual that is, but it seems to be the one place that I'm particularly Gifted or have been given an ability, for whatever reason I still don't fully know. Many people out there who I read for have forms of Extraterrestrial or non-human forms as their spirit guides, but because that is a little bit intimidating to people, they will oftentimes appear as animals instead. So sometimes I will Investigate a little further and I'll show you what I'm talking about. I will investigate a little further if I see someone has an animal spirit guide, because that may not actually be what they are.

Speaker 1: 21:43

One terrifying night, jeremy encountered a spirit animal or something disguised as a spirit animal.

Speaker 2: 21:53

Sleeping one day and I rolled over and I saw standing in my doorway the black shape of a cat Actually say more like a panther, because it was probably four feet tall on all fours. But what I remember more than anything else was the eyes it had, piercing, piercing red eyes. People say shadow, like a dark shape, but it doesn't do it justice. It's like the absence of light, the absence of anything. It's just, it's a black hole. Once it saw me and saw that I had seen it, it retreated into my bathroom and I thought that I was fine. But that's when it charged me and it leapt at me like a panther, leaping on to pray. I can still feel the impact of its energy hitting me Just pure terror. And then, as soon as it hit me, it was gone.

Speaker 1: 23:04

As his abilities continued to resurface. Not all of Jeremy's encounters were terrifying, but definitely strange.

Speaker 2: 23:15

But I remember from there it developed further. I remember one time I woke up in the middle of the night to see this five year old little boy sitting on the floor next to me in dark denim overalls, playing with a wooden train. And I remember asking him why he was there and are you real? I asked him that too, I was like what's what's happening to me? Because this was all very new to me at the time and he said I'm here to protect you. Everything is fine, go back to sleep.

Speaker 2: 23:55

Contacted one of my friends who lived a floor below me and I was like you'll never believe what just happened to me last night. And he's like you met the boy, didn't you? How could you know that how he's been? My friend was like no, he appears to me all the time. I decided to test myself and test him. I said he was playing with something, what was it? And he said a wooden train. But I'll never forget those experiences and that's kind of where it went from zero to 100 very quickly of suddenly things were just happening to me and appearing in front of me in random moments.

Speaker 1: 24:40

Although Jeremy's encounters were random, they were often validated.

Speaker 2: 24:45

I think one of the things that keeps people from accessing their intuition to its full potential is a lack of forgiveness. I really had to take a moment and turn around and look at my past and look at the way that I was treated and forgive myself and forgive the other people who created these unsafe circumstances for younger Jeremy, not because they deserve it, but because I deserve it. My intention that they are not allowed to do me any harm is enough to protect me. From there it moved forward to a lot of different type of energy, a lot of different type of information coming in.

Speaker 1: 25:35

Jeremy had found a tool to help sort all of the information that started coming through after awakening his gift.

Speaker 2: 25:44

Tarot was a really natural development from this kind of overwhelming amount of information that I was receiving. It gave me a structure and a format with which to use the information in a way that felt a little bit more tactile. The tarot is a tool that's more ancient than time itself. It existed long before it was ever put into the form of 78 cards. It encompasses every emotion, every experience that you've ever had as a human being, or rather as a sacred soul having a human experience is reflected in the tarot. It's interesting too, because when I read for people, the space that I create within the tarot provides an opening, a window for more information to come through that's beyond just the cards themselves.

Speaker 1: 26:44

Jeremy's animal connection continued to shine through.

Speaker 2: 26:48

I remember one time I was reading for a client. I remember immediately having this impression of an elderly, extremely wise elephant standing with her. I immediately asked my client what does elephants mean to you? Because you have one stepping forward as a spirit guide, reflecting couple things, reflecting one wisdom, lived experience and strength. She screamed, she gasped, she turned her camera around and there on the bookshelf, floor to ceiling, was like 50 figurines of elephants, which is very reflective of the court cards in the tarot.

Speaker 2: 27:37

The court cards are our Kings, queens, pages and Knights, and when a court card comes forward, it's basically saying hey, I would like to run alongside you for this next chapter, for this next day, week, whatever it is, because I have an energy that you can benefit from. I remember she actually emailed me and followed up after that reading, saying and I chuckled to myself because I was like anybody who reads this email is going to be like what the ever living hell is going on Because she basically told me she's like I channeled my elephant and it went amazing, like, if you take a deep breath, look at yourself almost standing. With this energy, with this archetype, it has the ability to carry through whatever challenge you're facing.

Speaker 1: 28:30

Jeremy continued to connect with his clients, challenges some in which they had never spoken of.

Speaker 2: 28:40

I had a client very recently who I just got this very strong image of them standing on a cliff in Washington State. I was given the knowledge that there was a conversation that was had with themselves standing in this spot. I wasn't told what the conversation was, but I was told to bring it up and to say that it was true and that that moment was extremely important. And my client immediately got extremely emotional. They knew what it was that I was being told to remind them of and kind of like highlight and capitalize and underline, and it just affected the whole rest of the reading because it meant that there was a very specific moment, a specific battle that happened One of my first times ever doing live tarot readings on Facebook.

Speaker 2: 29:46

Somebody that I actually grew up with, that I hadn't seen in at least a decade, jumped on and very much surprised me.

Speaker 2: 29:55

I started pulling the cards that a lot of readers would look at as like the spiny cards, like Tower and Five of Wands, and that all were basically speaking about like the end of the road of something really big and that this person was probably experiencing a lot of turmoil and destruction. That felt unchecked and unbalanced and just and I was a little scary to me at the time because I was like, wow, this is very specific and very intense. She ended up following up with me afterwards to let me know that she was going through a very messy divorce and it was ugly and it was. There was legal proceedings going on. There are times where I'm not meant to know everything. And that can be hard for people is because the vision of mediums is just kind of knowing all the information and getting the names and the dates, and that's not always how it works. Sometimes our job is just to create a safe sacred space for people to access themselves.

Speaker 1: 31:04

Jeremy's gift started to be recognized by others and they started asking for help.

Speaker 2: 31:11

When it comes to paranormal investigations and exploring haunted locations I have been to many that have had lasting impressions on me In my day job. At the moment I work in property management and there was one property that everybody at work just had this sense that it was haunted. There was something going on there. At one point they asked me if I would come walk it. I remember we drove there and about halfway there I started immediately getting so much information. I was told that there was an object in the property that was original and had been there from the beginning, but I wasn't told what it was. When I arrived at the property to do the walk, I immediately saw a man standing in the window, overlooking the garage, looking down at me. From the driveway I was able to pinpoint which room it was. The house was more or less empty. It wasn't furnished or anything. But I knew immediately that that room had been a nursery and that something had happened in that room. I didn't feel welcome in it. I didn't feel there was something in it. The male entity in that room was very protective of the space and didn't want me in there, I think partially because it knew that I may have been one of the first people there in a very long time that could see it.

Speaker 2: 32:37

This house definitely had like six or seven different entities going on. 90% of them were nice and kind and benevolent and one of them was not. But that was one of the first times that I went in and I brought my pendulum with me as a tool to help kind of direct me in which space I need to go. They just let me walk the property and just kind of sense what I got. But the rest of the house was quite nice, found the object that was original and it was a piano from the 1800s that had just been in the home for centuries. I'm assuming there was a woman who was very attached to it and loved music and used to sit and play it for a very long time and her energy was very warm and comforting. But it's also very interesting how in houses like this, two entities and presences can be very focused in very specific areas of the property and not the whole thing.

Speaker 1: 33:43

And on another investigation.

Speaker 2: 33:47

When and did a seance with a bunch of my friends at Fairmount Cemetery, which is probably one of the most beautiful cemeteries here in Denver, we immediately were picking up on this energy of a French woman and she felt like an opera star. To me she was very much a diva. She was speaking to me in French and I luckily knew French, so I was able to kind of converse with her and had her lead me to her. And we found her. Her name is Jacqueline and we did Estes Method.

Speaker 1: 34:21

The Estes Method is a paranormal investigation technique that involves using sensory deprivation and a spirit box to communicate with potential spirits in a given location. To perform the Estes Method, one investigator wears a blindfold and noise canceling headphones connected to a spirit box, which is a device used to scan through radio frequencies and is believed to be a communication tool between the living and the dead. The other investigator will call out any potential spirits with questions. The idea is that the spirits will use the spirit box's white noise to communicate. The blindfolded investigator will then relay any messages or words without hearing the asked questions. The results can be fascinating.

Speaker 2: 35:12

I actually managed to use the spirit box to guide us into the mausoleum. The mausoleum was like a gigantic marble palatial building and was just full of rows and rows and rows and rows of bodies of the deceased that had been laid to rest inside the mausoleum.

Speaker 1: 35:33

But then things got darker.

Speaker 2: 35:36

We were in the middle of an Estes Method and I got this ping that somebody standing in line to speak with us had not had the chance to get to the spirit box yet. Something in that line was not human and did not wish us well.

Speaker 1: 35:56

Concerned, Jeremy looked at one of his team members who was also sensitive.

Speaker 2: 36:01

And she was looking at me with this feeling of absolute concern and I knew in that moment that we were getting the exact same information. We just nodded it to each other because we knew immediately and pulled the girl who was listening to the spirit box out immediately there was an absolute threat coming for us. The gift that I have been given allows me to let things know. You are absolutely not welcome here, leave immediately. And we did the circle of Florida water. We cleansed the space and then I looked up and I saw it. Many people have the experience with the wide brimmed hat man. It's a very common thing to see a black shadow with a wide brimmed hat.

Speaker 1: 36:58

The hat man. He's said to be an evil entity, often placed in the category of paranormal phenomena, referred to as shadow people, typically wearing a trench coat and a wide brimmed hat. Many have reported that this entity feeds on the terror that he afflicts and does not vanish, but simply walks away into darkness.

Speaker 2: 37:23

And it was standing like 50 feet away from us, hiding between the headstones, and it was dark. We were able to cleanse the space and kick it out pretty aggressively on the spiritual plane.

Speaker 1: 37:42

Jeremy found himself helping friends when they were faced with things that they couldn't understand.

Speaker 2: 37:48

I've had to step in and help people who are going through some dark, slightly oppressive circumstances. I had a friend once who was definitely experiencing some dark stuff going on, and oftentimes that was appearing as scratches on their body or really dark thoughts that felt very out of character for them. I sat down and put myself into a meditative trance and just kind of had a conversation with some of those entities, and so I did have to do that for a friend. There are those of us out there who are called to do this, to find these answers and to hunt for explanations. There is a world out there that we don't know. There's a world that we don't understand.

Speaker 2: 38:44

Everything in my life that's led up to this has set me up to be this kind of person, but I don't know everything. I don't know everything that there is to know about the spiritual world. I don't think I've even begun to scratch the surface of everything that I'm capable of and everything that the gifts that have been given to me are capable of. I'm very excited to see, with life and with time, where this goes. I just can't wait to see how, as I continue to grow, my abilities will continue to grow.

Speaker 1: 39:27

A very special thanks to Jeremy Hague for taking time to share his story. If you have a sec, please follow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. It helps those that can't sleep through the night Find us. Do you have a story you've been hiding? Submit it to us at hellogeistpodcast at gmailcom. Written and recorded submissions are welcome. Geist is written and edited by Daniel Matar, original music and effects by Bo Jensen. Geist is mixed by Adam Esker. Geist logo is by Jake Carruthers. Follow us on Instagram at geist underscore podcast and on tiktok at geist podcast. Thank you to everyone who constantly listens and follows us and until next time, sleep tight.