S19 Ep13: Sunshine State Scares: Paranormal Tales from Florida (Sn. 19 Ep. 13)
01:03:21 Share

Good evening and welcome to Monsters Among Us. I'm your guide, Derek Hayes. Good evening, listeners, and thank you so much for swinging by. I trust you all had an amazing three-day weekend. I know that I did. Well, with that amazing weekend behind us,

It's now time to move on to the next gnarly episode. And boy, do I have a good one lined up for you tonight. Because this evening we focus on the 27th state admitted to the Union, the third most populous state in the country, home to various indigenous peoples, which have inhabited that land for the last 14,000 years. That's right, tonight's tales all stem from the Land of the Flowers.

Florida, or as we know it today, just plain old Florida. But trust me when I say there's nothing plain about it. Florida is home to a number of infamously haunted locations. It's a known hotbed for UFO activity, and it's home to a number of purported cryptids, including but not limited to the Skunk Ape, mermaids, sea monsters, and of course, Florida Man.

And tonight I aim to explore as many of the Florida legends and stories as we can. Beginning with Tim, who's calling in from, you guessed it, the Sunshine State of Florida. Hey, this is Tim from Jacksonville, Florida. This may not be the kind of story you're looking for, but I figured I'd give it a shot anyway. A few years ago, I got a new scope for one of my rifles.

Me and my dad take off to our favorite target shooting spot deep in the woods, really, really thick woods, and start up like normal. Thick, thick woods. Find a spot where we can finally find 100 yards straight through the woods, set up the target, and for anyone that doesn't know how you sight in a rifle, you fire three shots, had to hike down to 100 yards through thick trees, see where the rounds landed, hike back, adjust the scope, rinse, repeat.

This goes on, you know, probably 30 minutes to do four or five sets of this, you know. Relaxed, no big deal. Smoked a little bit, drank a beer. Probably about the fifth iteration of this. You know, I'm getting pretty close to having the scope sighted in. First round, crack. Second round, crack. Third round, crack. And then, boom!

large, large caliber rifle within just feet of us. Super thick woods. Like I said, it's not uncommon to reach a complete dead end in these woods. Think it's just too thick to bypass, overgrowth, bog lands. Said it was really difficult to find 100 yards in a straight line. Of course, we both tense up, drop, freeze, and are silent for like 60 seconds.

scanned the woods around us intently not a sound no motion nothing and of course we relatively quickly packed up everything and took off out of there i haven't been back there since that was several years ago but it just never made sense to me had there been someone down range

After the first couple shots, you yell out, "Hey, there's people down here." Although we were being really safe. We were shooting at a solid field target. And like I said, the woods were so thick that a stray round couldn't go more than a few yards without burying itself in a tree.

I had someone, you know, was there a growth spot out there? And someone had literally crept up ghillie suit style to within a few feet of us just to fire one round. I don't know, but I've never forgotten it. And man, the hair still stands up on the back of my neck just thinking about it. It was a much larger rifle round than what we were firing that day. And it was...

I'd have called it point blank except I couldn't see anyone. Anyway, again, love the show. Keep up the good work, man. Take it easy. Thank you, Tim. Now this is certainly the type of call that I'm looking for. An unexplainable gunshot. And a big one, from what I understand. Now this doesn't seem to be anything paranormal to me. But that doesn't make it any less creepy. Or nerve-wracking.

Because if you can't see who's firing the weapon, then you're also not able to see if they're intending to make you their next target. So good choice, Tim, on getting out of there. Now whatever it was that was going on in the woods outside Jacksonville, it's certainly not something you want to mess with. But we thank you, Tim, for sharing that warning. And thank you again for sharing the story.

Now, folks, I'm going to slide one more quick call in before we take our first break of the evening. So if you would, please join me in welcoming Sarah to the program. Hi, Derek. This is Sarah from Florida. I binge on your podcast. I'm really enjoying it. I just hit the one of little people.

Well, my mother's grandmother was Irish, and so she told her a lot of stories back from Ireland. But in Florida, the Seminoles have always been able to keep their land. They won the Indian Wars, and they have little people, too, that they believe in.

In fact, there's an artist, Guy Labrie, who's passed away, but in every piece of artwork he did painting the Seminoles, he'd include a little person hidden in the painting. And I was trying to look up more information on the Seminoles and the little people, and it seems like just about every Native tribe has legends about the little people. Now that brings me to a story a friend told me

She came to work kind of freaked out. She said that her father was seeing things and she was really upset. And I asked her more about it. She said that he was an orange picker and he was taking a break in the orange grove and just sitting there and he heard singing, but it wasn't a language he understood. And he was looking around because he thought he was the only one there.

And he happened to look down into a ditch nearby, like a drainage ditch or irrigation ditch. And there was a bunch of little people dancing and marching along, just dancing and singing.

Thank you, Sarah.

You know, Sarah is right. Many different groups of native people across the country have long told legends about these little people. But it seems the seminal version of the tale is one of the more prominent ones. Now I had Delaney dig up a little info on these miniature mystery men. And this is what she found. According to the website accessmonday.com

In the folklore of the Seminole Indians, we talk often of a race of petty people, invisible most of the time, occasionally allowing themselves to be seen by children or daughters of medicine men. According to the Seminole, they are similar in appearance to Indians and speak the Muscogee language. Often they are said to wear ancient Indian clothes made from deer skin. Also, according to the Seminoles,

They show themselves to children who wander alone in the woods, take care of them, and they teach them how to use healing herbs. The adults of the community do not worry if a child disappears from time to time, as it is believed to be in the company of the little people, and will certainly reappear safe and sound within two or three days. The little people make their homes in the trees of the woods, and those homes can be distinguished by extra thick growth,

with small twigs of branches in the trees. So, from the sounds of things, if you find yourself in the Florida forests, you should keep your ears and eyes open, because you never know when one of these little guys might cross your path. Thank you again, Sarah, for sharing the entry. Now, folks, I'll be right back with more Florida stories right after this.

Now, if you would, please join me in welcoming Valerie to the program. Hey, Derek. This is Valerie from Jacksonville, Florida. Calling to tell you about an experience that one of my little grandsons had a few years ago.

First of all, the males in my family on my dad's side all seem to have experiences, either visions or seeing and hearing things or spiritual experiences. My dad did, my brother, my son, and now my son's son and my daughter's son.

have both had experiences. But my son's little boy, his happened when he was four. And my ex-husband, my children's father, had just passed away. And my little grandson was staying with friends at their house. They were babysitting him for the day. So everybody who had gathered in the kitchen, and right off the kitchen is the laundry room,

The laundry room door was open. The lights were off. The dad of the couple that was babysitting told my son, he said, that Taylor was standing there talking and playing and participating, and then all of a sudden, the family's little dog whipped around, looked at the laundry room, and started barking. And at the same time, Taylor leans around and looks into the laundry room.

and just kind of stares in there for a couple of seconds. And then he straightens back up and he looks up at his dad and he says, my G-pa died. So the friend told my son, he said, my first thought was, you know, please tell me G-pa's not here with us. But it was just so odd because it was out of the blue. They weren't talking about my ex's death. Nothing had been said about it.

And after a minute or so, the little dog quit barking and just turned around and walked back off. So, you know, we just wondered if G-Pa had made a visit to check in on Taylor. I just thought that one was really interesting. That's one that has always stuck with me. All right. Like everybody says, you're doing a great job. I love your podcast. You sure helped me get through work. Keep it up. I love the great stories. Thanks. Bye.

Thanks, Valerie. That's pretty incredible. Now, my first thought was that I thought it was unusual that the men in your family had all these experiences. Typically, it's the women of the family that have those extrasensory abilities, if anyone at all. So I found that a bit odd. But another thing I found to be interesting is that the dog and the grandson seem to share in this experience. Talk about instant validation.

And if you're going to come face to face with an entity, a spirit, a ghost, what have you, seeing the apparition of your grandfather might be one of the better versions of that experience. I know I probably wouldn't mind. Regardless, it's amazing stuff, Valerie. And we can't thank you enough for sharing the story here with us. And folks, if you too have a story to share, give our hotline a call.

at 888-608-NIGHT. That's 888-608-N-I-G-H-T. Or record your story as a voice memo on your cell phone and email it to me at monstersamonguspodcast at gmail.com. Now this next story is another in which a pet reacts to the paranormal. Lando, please go ahead with your version of this phenomena.

Hey, Derek. This is Lando calling you from South Florida. I just had two quick stories I wanted to share. My two stories date back to 2008, 2009-ish. After high school, it was our first semesters of college, that kind of thing.

My girlfriend and I, at the time, we had moved in together to an apartment. And within like the first two, three months of living there, we rescued a little black cat that we found in the street and kind of just kept her with us. But we had some strange occurrences happen.

The first thing I can think of is one time when she was a kitten, we were playing with her on the bed, playing with little toys and everything was going fine. Everything was normal. And then out of nowhere, she kind of freaked out. The hair on her back stood up. Her tail spiked up and she dug her nails into me and into the mattress and

And I just remember thinking, like, what the heck? Like, what are you doing? What's wrong? Like, we were fine.

And she wouldn't budge. I was trying to like move her and get her attention. And she just stared in one direction. I looked in the direction she was staring in. And she was staring at our bedroom closet. And it was really weird because she just slipped out of nowhere and just went into that mode, I guess. And my closet door was open for conversation.

For context, that's an important detail because at the time I was very obsessive about having all doors closed.

Closet doors, bathroom doors, rooms, everything. They had to be closed at all times. So the closet door was closed when we went in there and then we were like messing with her on the bed and she freaked out. And then we looked at the closet and the closet was open. And from time to time I would just catch her just sitting on the edge of the bed or on the dresser just staring at the closet and like not moving no matter what we tried to do.

So that was just freaky, and it was one of the first things that kind of caught my attention with that. Don't really know what to think about that too much. Never really talked about it much. The second story is a couple of months after that, my girlfriend and I split up for a while, and we both moved back with our parents.

And I would have like friends come and stay over my house and we'd be playing video games, watching movies, all nighters, that kind of thing. Well, eventually me and the girl got together again. And one night we were all there watching movies. Then it was time for her to go home. So I walked her outside. And as she got in her car and drove off, when I was going back up the steps, I heard somebody call my name.

And I immediately thought it was one of my friends from inside, goofing off, because my neighbors never really knew my name. I'd never really gotten past like small talk with neighbors. So I was like, oh, one of my friends has to be messing with me.

And then I went back in the house. My friends were in my room. One of them was on the computer. The other one was on my Xbox. So I asked them, hey, did you guys come outside and like call my name? Are you guys playing a prank on me? Like, we're trying to scare you or something. And they just looked at me like puzzled and just, you know, like, why would we do that? You were with your girlfriend. Why would we go mess with you?

And I was just thinking, okay, well, maybe it was her. Maybe she thought it was funny to turn back around as I was walking back up the steps to try to pull a prank on me. And I asked her and she was like, no, I didn't do that. I drove straight home. So I was like, okay, that's really weird. So then we're sitting there in my room with my friends and we're just kind of like, man, that's weird, dude. Like, who could it have been? Like, could it have been your neighbors? I'm like, no, I don't really talk to my neighbors like that. They don't know my name.

And then we suddenly heard like a little three taps at the window. And we were on the second floor and there was nothing by my window. No tree. My window had no edge for like a bird or anything. Nothing like that. So all three of us kind of freaked out and ran out to the living room and just were sitting there watching TV there. And we kind of refused to go back into my room for the rest of the night.

I get a little nervous talking about this because I never really talked about it with anyone besides the people who were there. We spent the night in the living room and the next day everything was back to normal. We just kind of laughed it off, shipped it off and just went about our day.

And when one of my friends left, his brother stayed there for the rest of the day with me. And he was playing on my Xbox in my room when I was on my computer. And I was playing games on the computer, like right next to him. We didn't really speak about what happened the night before or anything like that. And suddenly while I was playing on the computer, I felt like a strong burning sensation on my arm.

As I'm using like the mouse and keyboard and everything and I'm playing games and suddenly I just feel this burn on my arm. And when I look at it, I had like three scratches on my right forearm underneath it. And it freaked me out.

I turned to my friend and I was like, hey, do you see this? Like, do you see this on my arm? And he paused and he looked at me and he was like, yo, what is that? That's really strange. Like, you didn't have that yesterday. We talked about it and I was like, yeah, no, I didn't have this yesterday. Like, this just popped up. I didn't even have it this morning, but I had these three scratches running down my forearm and they burned.

And it freaked us out so much that we just were like, yeah, let's get dressed and let's get out of here, man. Like, we're going to go find something else to do for the rest of the day. Like, we're not going to just hang around here because we're kind of freaked out right now. At the time, we were like 18, 19, something like that. So we kind of freaked out, got dressed and left. And we never really talked about it or thought about it after that.

But that night and that day kind of sat with me forever. So it was just weird. Weird little story. Just want to say thanks, Derek, for everything you do. Keep it up. It's great. Love you guys. Thanks. Thank you, Lando. I have cats. A couple of black cats, actually. Not that the color of the animal makes any difference here. But ours get fixated on all sorts of strange things.

Bugs on the wall. A reflection bouncing around from a cell phone or a pair of glasses. Or they heard a sound from outside and were simply staring in the direction that they heard the sound come from. Either way, they get fixated on some strange things.

But Lando too had his own experience. So it's entirely possible that the kitten did have an experience. And it's also possible that whatever the kitten saw and or experienced was the exact same thing that put Lando on edge. Now regardless of the cause, we appreciate the story. So thank you again, Lando, for calling in. Can we get him in the building to watch? Best of both worlds, right?

Now this next one comes to us from Mike. Please join me in welcoming him to the program.

Hey, Derek, this is Mike from Florida. Love the show. Recently, I noticed you got some calls about glowing balls of light. I've heard a few calls recently. I want to tell you about my glowing ball of light story that happened to me and my wife. So one night, my kid is in our bathroom and she's taking a bath.

My wife and I are sitting on the couch. She's laying on a love seat, looking at the TV and our bedroom doors next to the TV. And I'm sitting on the big couch, looking straight at the TV. All of a sudden, now the right corner of my eye, I see a ball of light about the size of a softball. And it's going through my dining room that's to the right of me. And it just goes completely past us.

and right through the wall into my kid's room. I didn't say anything for a minute. I just wanted to see if my wife was going to say anything because we have had a bunch of weird stuff happen. We were recording videos and just having all these like weird things happen. And she told me to knock it off and stop messing around with this stuff. So I did. So as I'm sitting there, about 20 seconds goes by and all of a sudden my wife turns to me and she said,

Did you see that? And I was like, I don't know. What did you see? And then she goes, I just saw a glowing ball of light go through the house. And I'm like, that's what I saw too. I said, man, I didn't want to say anything to you because I just want to see if you saw it. And as we're discussing this, my kid comes out of our bedroom and she had just got out of the bath and she had a towel around her.

And she comes walking through the living room. She kind of hears us say something about a ball of light, but we stopped talking as she come in. And all of a sudden she looks at us and she said, did you see the light too? And we're like, no, honey, what did you see? And she goes, I don't know. In the bathroom, there was a ball of light and it goes and it went through the wall. And I said, well, show me what wall are you talking about?

She takes me by the hand and walks me back through my bedroom, back into our bathroom. And the wall she pointed at is the wall that this light came out of where we originally saw it when I was in the living room. I was blown away. So I didn't want to scare her, right? So I just come walking out and I said, no, I didn't see that. And she goes, that's funny.

Maybe we have the same imagination. And then she just kept walking and goes in her room to get dressed. And it was the cutest thing. The way she said it was so innocent. She's like, oh, whatever, you know. Maybe we have the same imagination. And she just kept walking. But my wife and I was blown away. I mean, how could we see this light fly through our house? And then my kid sees the same light.

and just points to the wall where it came out of on the other side where we were. We were in two totally different rooms. To this day, we're just baffled by it. The light, what I remember of it, it was about the size of a softball. It was like a whitish blue light. And it was weird. I mean, that's the only way I can explain it. It's just a glowing ball of light. Love the show. Love everything you do. I'm always a supporter. And just keep it up. Thanks, man.

Thank you, Mike. I really enjoy these ball of light stories, partly because I can't help but wonder if these are an extension of all these orb and tic-tac-shaped UFO stories that we hear about constantly. But I'm also interested in the concept of ball lightning. But admittedly, the former is much more exciting than the latter. And since this episode is about the state of Florida, why don't we explore a little data?

Data that just might play into Mike's experience. According to the National UFO Reporting Center, these are the Florida cities with the most UFO sightings. From least to most. Pensacola, 103 sightings. Fort Lauderdale, 105. Cape Coral, 114. St. Petersburg, 125.

Naples, 128. Sarasota, 146. Tampa, 247. Jacksonville, 291. Miami, 370. And topping the list is Orlando, with 401 sightings. So if you find yourself in one of these cities, I think you probably ought to get used to looking up when you're outside.

Fun stuff, Mike. And I love that your family got to experience it as well. It certainly goes a long way to help preserve a witness's sanity. Thank you again for the phone call. Alright, let's dip back into the ghostly realm. Please welcome Pete to the program.

Hey, this is just kind of a general story from me. I'm from Brevard County, Florida, Space Coast. This is from southern Brevard County, though. Not where all the space stuff is, much more quiet, bedroom community area. The high school I went to was a pretty new high school, and the theater attached to it, the theater arts program was even newer, but...

Theatre people in general are pretty superstitious people. You don't say the name of the Scottish play, you leave the ghost light on. They're very superstitious people by nature. And the theatre, despite its young age, already kind of built up its own lore and ghost stories. One of the previous theatre directors had already passed away in the short time it existed. He had been the theatre director there for only a couple of years.

I believe he actually died of cancer. The story that ran around was a heart attack, but I learned sometime later that it was actually cancer. But his ghost was always there to haunt the theater and all kinds of technical glitches and technical revelations. Whatever weird bumps happened from the corners of the shop were blamed on his ghost and his presence. Some of the things I remember

was one time during the show, it was a showing of the play Pippin. We have this little CRT monitor sitting on top of the kind of audio technical stack next to one of the kind of director's booths in the wings on the sides of the stage. And it's just a little monitor. It plays a feed. The camera looks out over the stage so the person sitting back in the wings can see what's going on.

And one day during that showing, the monitor just started freaking out. I mean, I know it's an old monitor, it's a CRT, I'm sure it wasn't put in the best cabling, but it kept losing color. It would turn on and off, it would go black and white, come back for a little bit. And none of us touched it during this. There's no real reason for interference, there's no real strong electrical stuff on set, nothing like that.

The other thing was you had catwalks obviously to hang all the lights on and I heard a few times stories of lights moving out of focus or spinning around in general but no one was up there. You know, someone would go up the catwalk, adjust the light, you know, go back down and next time they go up the light would be at a completely different angle.

One thing I can remember is we had, at the very back of the theater, way up high in the seats, there's a spotlight booth. And it's kind of generally kind of a dark area out there. There's like a second level up there that not a lot of people go into. And you're generally very lonely up there.

On several occasions we would have people who claimed to see shadows moving around up in that booth when no one was supposed to be up there. I don't think we ever had the big spotlight itself booth. There were definitely stories of shadows in the spotlight booth and weird clunks of people walking in footsteps when you were allegedly alone in the spotlight booth.

Thank you, Pete. You know what I always say about theaters? They're almost always haunted for some reason. At least that's the conclusion that I've come to. And it seems that the theater in Pete's story is no exception.

Now, although we expect these theaters to be haunted, we enjoy the stories that come out of each and every one of them. And we appreciate the time you took, Pete, to share your entry. So thank you again for the submission. Now, believe it or not, this next entry comes to us from Florida as well. Please welcome Alexi.

to tonight's program. Hi, Derek. My name is Alexi. I'm from the UK, but I'm now living in the United States. I used to live in Orlando, Florida. I don't live there anymore. Orlando is, I think the expression that you Americans have is get up spooky. It really is. I now live in Ocala, and that's not much different, but my experience I want to relate to tonight is Orlando. In the 90s,

I went to college in Orlando and my grandmother and my grandfather owned a property in Orlando. They were basically like, "We don't want you paying all this money and apartment fees and so forth. We own this property. Nobody's living there and we want you to live there because it's better that no one's living there." And I asked my grandmother, "Well, who used to live there before?" She said, "Well, it's not a big deal.

"You know, your grandfather and I own the property now, and it used to belong to an old guy." And I said, "What happened to him?" And apparently, he was cutting the lawn, and he had a heart attack and died on the lawn. Right there. I was like, "Okay, great, wonderful." Anyway, I also didn't understand that there was a huge amount of marriage problems between my grandmother and my grandfather. I had an idea, but not a real idea. But anyway,

So I was going to school or whatever and living in the property and everything seemed pretty okay. There was no real issue. Then all of a sudden, one day, my grandfather turns up in the property. I mean, he lives in Brooklyn, New York with my grandmother. So I was sort of surprised to get a visit from him with no notice. He's just there one day. I didn't even know he was coming.

And apparently he had keys, so he let himself in. So it was kind of a shock to come back and what's up? Anyway, he started saying, this is my house. I have a right to be here. And I'm like, okay, fine. So I called my grandmother who was still back in Brooklyn, New York. And I said, what is going on?

And at first she didn't even realize he was actually the property in Florida. So when she did realize he was, she was very angry and she started to say, this is just absolutely, you know, unbelievable. As far as she's concerned, she put the money out, pay for the property. She put the money out to furnish the property because it wasn't a rental property. She basically had a house. There was a vacation house.

You know, it was basically furnished. It had appliances and everything. You could live there. It was not an empty house. But according to my grandmother, she had put up the money to furnish this house. So she was very, very angry that my grandfather turned up and was sort of like laying claim to it. She felt that he did that deliberately because he retired first and his idea was to come down to Florida and leave her up there in New York while she was still at a working age to make all the money. And she resented that.

So I respectfully told my grandfather, "Hey, you could have told me you were coming." My grandmother is very upset about what's going on. I don't want to be in the middle of it, all of that sort of thing. So it was kind of a tense sort of thing. But anyway, I was going to college, and I was an age student, and I wanted to be an age student. I had plans to go to law school, so I was back at college every single day.

One day I came home, had to be four days later and he was gone. There was no letter, no note, nothing. He was just gone. I was like, okay, fine. You know, problem solved, I guess. So I ended up going out on the lanai, I believe you guys call it in America. It's completely screened in and locked.

And then I noticed out of the corner of my eye, there was like a gallon milk jug filled with what looked like water, not milk. And there was something underneath it. And when I pulled the jug away, I saw it was a dead bird. It was a black and white dead bird. It looked like a big bird. The thing I could think of, it looked like a magpie, but I wasn't sure if we had magpies in Florida. I definitely knew in England we had them.

so i don't know what the significance is of black and white bird under a gallon of water i don't know i will tell you that my grandmother and my grandfather were jamaican maybe there's some significance to that but i also knew the bird that was there was not native to florida so anyway i just got rid of it i put it in the trash and a couple of nights after that i fell asleep and

I was in my bedroom. The house was a one-story house. It wasn't two-story. And if you opened the bedroom door that I was sleeping in, it would be directly to the patio door. You could see outside of the patio door there. And I woke up for some reason at 2 a.m. And when I rolled over, I saw my cat. She was in the entrance door.

of my bedroom and she was looking out beyond the open door to something that was in the patio area. I don't know what she was looking at. But I had this feeling straight away, "Hide. Whatever you do, do not become visible. Do not show yourself visible." Luckily, because my door was open, I could hide behind that door and I would not be visible.

Then all of a sudden, I heard this tremendous noise. It sounded like a thousand gargoyles. I'll say gargoyles because it wasn't birds. It was so heavy. Whatever it was, that weight. And they descended upon the roof of the house. The noise was so deafening.

and so scary. I had no idea what to do. I was so incredibly frightened. I was frozen on the bed. And in those days, we had what we called portable phones. So I'd just grab my phone. The only thing I could think about was to

say goodbye because my mother was so far away in the UK. The only thing I could do was like, let me say goodbye to my grandmother. So I called her straight away and of course she picked up the phone and I said, listen, I'm not trying to, but I want to say goodbye. I just want to let you know, I love you. And she said, what happened? And I told her, I said, what's going on? She said, just stay in the house. Don't move wherever you are.

And of course, my grandfather was somewhere in the house in New York trying to pick up the phone in some location. He was trying to pick up the phone when she was on the phone. She was screaming at him, get off the phone. I don't need talking to her. They weren't talking to her at all. So this was going on the whole time. And then while they were arguing, the noise just suddenly stopped. I don't know why it stopped, but it did. So I just told my grandma, it's okay, it's all right.

There was no noise and I don't think I slept that night. But I remember I was also working while I was in college and the job required that I have to leave very early in the morning and certainly in wintertime, I would have to leave 6 a.m. in the morning and it was quite dark then. I do remember I would not, under no circumstances whatever, leave the house.

walking to my car, I would always make sure that I got into my car in the garage, hit the garage opener, rolled out while I was in my car, locked the doors. Then I would put the garage door down because I had this overwhelming feeling that something was on the roof watching me as I rolled out in my car. I never, ever forgot that feeling.

This was one of the most frightening experiences I ever had in my life. So anyway, thank you Derek for providing the platform for us to share it. I wish you all the best and safety to your family. Monsters Rock. Thank you. Thank you, Alexi. I don't know. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that your grandfather was up to something. And I checked and Magpie do not live in Florida.

So if that is what the bird was, someone would have had to have brought it there. Now it's for the gargoyle noise, as Alexei described it. What the hell was that? Or do we not want to know? Either way, we can't thank you enough, Alexei, for making our skin crawl. Absolutely nothing. It's given his opinion, right? So it ends up...

Now to kick off this final segment of Florida Stories, please welcome Megan to tonight's program. My name is Megan. I live in Punta Gorda, Florida. It's a small little town in southwest Florida. And this is a really random entry. I was honestly wondering if anyone else has had this happen to them.

This has happened to me and my mom, which she's also a huge fan of this podcast. Her name is Chrissy. So I was probably like 11 years old and it was a school night. I remember that I was in my old house and I was not asleep. I was about to go to bed. I was kind of like dozing in and out, you know, definitely not 100% alert, but not asleep either.

Basically, I was falling asleep and all of a sudden, like, this whisper, I could feel the warmth of someone's mouth. Like, you don't know if someone whispers in your ear. It's, like, very intimate. Like, you can feel their moisture and warmth. I could feel that in my ear. And I was hearing just a bunch of whispers in my ear. But it was, like...

I couldn't make out anything what this person or thing was saying. And I wanted to so bad, but I was also terrified. I was so scared. I remember I was alert enough to be so scared that I put a pillow over my head and tried to like, you know, wait it out. But that didn't stop it. And when it stopped, it was like dead silence.

It was like whisper, whisper, whisper, and then nothing. And I remember taking the pillow off my head and sitting up. I was in my room. I remember this. I was not asleep. This wasn't some sort of sleep paralysis. I was alert. I was awake. I knew this just happened to me. I was so scared. I sat up in my bed. My bed was dark, except my TV was left on.

But the DVD screen was up, like, you know, that blue DVD ray screen where it bounces from corner to corner. So it had this blue hue. And I just had experienced something so, like, scary for an 11-year-old. This is just such a vivid memory for me. I'm telling my mom this story one day, and the same thing has happened to her when she was pregnant with me, which is crazy.

When she was pregnant with me, like in 2005, she had the exact same thing happen and she explained it as being able to feel the moisture and heat in her ear. And there were whispers and she couldn't make it out and then it stopped. That's basically it. My mom and I are huge fans of your podcast.

I'm currently going through chemo and we listened to your podcast the whole way to my cancer clinic. Thank you for listening. Bye. Thank you, Megan. Now, I'll be honest. This all sort of sounds like exploding head syndrome to me. A strange sleep disorder that causes the sufferer to hear explosions, pounding voices, or a multitude of other sounds just as they're about to fall asleep. Now, I suffer from this condition from time to time.

Usually I hear an explosion sound or a loud bang, but I swear one time I did hear a voice say, hey, in that typical exploding head style. So perhaps it's that simple, Megan, a benign sleep disorder. But then again, maybe it's not. Maybe it is something a little more nefarious. Well, either way, we hope you're feeling better soon, Megan, and I'm glad that I could help keep you company. Thanks again for calling in.

And speaking of disembodied voices from Florida, please welcome tonight's final caller, Joanna. The mic is yours. Hey, Derek. My name is Joanna. I am calling from Florida. Absolutely love the show and wanted to share a weird experience that I had years ago. So when I was in college, I used to work as a housekeeper, uh,

for a company that would contract us out and send us out to individual homes to clean for them. And I had a lot of regular clients, but on the occasion you would get a call for somebody who needed a one-time thing, like maybe somebody who was moving out and wanted the house cleaned really thoroughly, or they were just seeing if it was for them, or they had a party coming up, or whatever.

So I was sent to this house that I had never been to before for a one-time clean. And it was like a pretty typical house. There wasn't anything about it that was off-putting. It wasn't particularly old or spooky. It was just like a normal, you know, relatively modern home in just like a regular neighborhood. So I didn't think anything of it. I got there.

And one of the first things I noticed was that the layout in this house was really kind of funky. They had a second floor, but it had almost like a Romeo and Juliet balcony. It looked like they had had a loft at one point that had been open to the first floor.

and then was enclosed to create a master. Their solution was to put these like windows sort of with these accordion doors that closed behind the windows. It was very odd.

And the only reason I'm mentioning that is because I thought maybe somehow that affected the acoustics, like the way the sound traveled in this house for what I was to hear a little while later. So the owner of the home is there and she greets me and she has like an adult son or maybe he's an older teenager and his friend is there.

And they're watching TV. So I could actually see the TV from this balcony or this loft overlooking the family room. So she, you know, gives me my to-do list and I go on about my day. And she tells me that she's leaving the house, but she left me, you know, my list and then the cash that, you know, I was to collect at the end of the cleaning session. I said, okay.

So I'm doing my thing. I'm upstairs and I'm cleaning. And I hear somebody call my name. And it's a woman's voice. And I just assumed it was the owner of the home. Like maybe she needed something and, you know, forgot to tell me. But it was the way she said it, like this expectation that you're going to respond. Kind of like a parent, you know, talking to their kid, like, yeah, I need you to empty the dishwasher or whatever. So it was just like, Joanna, Joanna, Joanna.

And I was like, yes, you know what I'm responding to this person and I'm calling back and I cannot find her. And it was really weird. And it sounded, she was definitely coming from upstairs. So I'm going from room to room and I'm, you know, responding to this voice that I'm hearing every now and then. And now it's Joanna, can you help me? Joanna, I need help. And I'm like, oh my gosh, you know what happens? So I'm looking around and

I still can't find anything. And I finally make it to this back bedroom that's almost like maybe it was originally the master because it had an en suite bathroom. And I walk in and I'm like, ma'am, are you in here? And I hear this voice go, hello. And I didn't see anybody, but it was coming from this room.

The voice was traveling from this level. Like if somebody were sitting on the bed, like kind of midway down the bed, that is where their voice would be coming from. And it really freaked me out. And then I thought, maybe this person's like sitting on the toilet. And then I went, nope. I mean, even if she is, sorry, you know.

So I just sort of, you know, what are the other options? Maybe it's the acoustics from that weird loft situation. Maybe they carry, and she's been downstairs the whole time, and I'm just walking around looking for her in the wrong place. Or maybe they have one of those intercom systems, you know, that like some of the big fancy houses that had back in the 90s. But I don't see anything like that. So I'm like, man, somebody's like, I feel like they're messing with me. What's going on? Because voices don't just come out of the air. So...

I go back down the hallway and I enter the current master and I open one of like the accordion things to look through this window down to the first floor. And the son and his friend are sitting there watching TV. And I called down to him. I said, hey, do you know where your mom is? And he goes, she left a few minutes ago. And I said, I said, OK, is there someone else at home?

And he looks at me and he got this really like tense facial expression. And he goes, what do you mean? And I said, I've been hearing a woman calling me.

And he goes, what is she saying? I said, she's just calling my name. And then I walked around looking for her. I was responding to her. And when I got to the back bedroom, I heard somebody say hello to me. His face went completely ashen. I mean, like all the blood drained out of his face. I could see it from the second floor. His friend looked at him.

And I kid you not, his friend, also looking absolutely terrified, says, I thought you said it was gone. And the kid is like, I'm going to call my mom. And he looks at me and he's like, you need to come downstairs right now and don't say anything else if this thing is talking to you. I said, what do you mean this thing? So now I'm not only very confused, but I'm also starting to get scared because I have no idea what's going on.

what that's supposed to mean. So I come down the stairs. The friend dips out. He nopes right out of there. He's like, I'm not staying anymore. So now I'm completely freaked out. Calls the mom. He tells me to just hang out there for a few minutes. And I'm thinking, I'm like, is this some kind of an elaborate prank? Like, am I on candid camera right now? Because this is ridiculous. She comes right

flying back into this house. And I mean, she's like flustered, like her hair's pooped out and stuff. And she's like, what did it say to you? What did it say to you? And I said, I heard a woman calling my name. She's like, is that all that it said? I said, it said, can I help her? And she's like, what did you say to that? And I said, I don't know. I just kept saying, where are you?

She goes, "Okay, okay." And I said, I went back in the back room and it said hello to me. She goes, "Oh my God." She goes, "Have you been baptized?" I said, "What?" And she's like, "Have you been baptized?" I said, "Yeah, I was baptized Catholic and I was confirmed." She's like, "Okay, I think you'll be fine." She goes, "But I need you to start praying." And I went, "What?" She goes, "Pray, I need you to pray." And she starts praying over me. I'm looking at the sun, like what in the actual is happening?

And he's looking at me dead serious. And I'm like, oh my God, either of these people are the best actors in the world or I need to like follow in the footsteps of the friend and nope the out of here right now. I'm still thinking maybe it's a joke, but then she hands me the cash that would have been owed to me at the end of the session, which is supposed to be like five and a half hours from now. So it's a significant amount of money. And she's like, you need to leave.

She's like, just pray. She's like, if you hear that thing at home, you need to call me immediately or you need to call a priest. And I'm like, oh my God. So now I'm heading home. I completely freaked out. I have no idea what the heck I'm going to tell my roommate. Like, what do you tell your roommate about that? I decided not to say anything to her. I never heard that voice again. Thank God. But

I wasn't even that afraid when I initially heard the voice. It was their response to the voice that really made me very, very scared. So I don't know what it was. Apparently it was some kind of a baddie. I don't know. I don't want to find out. I guess that would be considered a disembodied voice. And I hope I never hear one ever again because I don't like the idea of anything attaching to me.

Anyway, if anybody else has had a similar experience, I would love to hear it. But my advice always would be don't talk back to it and get the heck out of there as soon as you can. Have a great day. Thank you, Joanna. That's some good advice. Now this one is a little more complex. So I'd venture to guess that it's not an example of exploding head syndrome. Besides, I'm pretty sure you have to be asleep or falling asleep for that disorder to kick in.

And I don't think Joanna is dozing off while cleaning a home. So this one is just downright freaky. And that is my professional opinion. But whatever this thing is or was, the family seemed to know all about it, obviously. But typically folks in that situation try to hide the fact that they have an unwanted guest. It seemed to be the opposite for this family.

Which tells me one of two things. Either they were looking for attention, which I doubt. Or they were genuinely fearful for Joanna's safety. Which is obviously a concerning notion. I don't know what was in the house or what you experienced, Joanna. But whatever it was, it sounds worthy of the state of Florida. Because if tonight has taught us anything, it's that strange things occur in the Sunshine State.

A terrifying, disembodied voice is par for the course. So thank you again, Joanna, for the call. And thank you, listener, for tuning in. Because that's going to do it for this episode. A Monsters Among Us podcast is written and produced by me, Derek Hayes. Copyright Red Crow Media. Additional support is provided by Sarah Carter Hayes, Delaney Bowers, and Connor Ryan. All media used in this production is done so under the protection of fair use.

Give us a like and follow on our social media accounts. Give us a like and follow at YouTube as well. And don't forget to leave us a rate and review wherever that sort of thing is possible. We sure would appreciate all of that. And don't forget, every Saturday evening at 10 p.m. Eastern, you can find us on the Unexed Digital Network. Just visit unexednetwork.com to learn more. And finally, tonight's score was provided by Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse. Co.agmusic.com

and Carl Casey at White Bat Audio. Now our film Shadows in the Desert is streaming for free on Tubi. So go give it a watch or watch it again, please. And for all of you international folks waiting to watch the film, the process of getting the film to you has taken years off of my life. So I think we're going to take matters into our own hands here. My team is currently working on setting up some sort of watch party so you can all tune in for free.

And to make up for the long delay, I'll do what I can to participate in said watch party. Even if it's at 3 o'clock in the morning. But more on all of that in future episodes. And it's your last weeks to take advantage of our inventory clearing sale. MonstersAmongUsPodcast.com and click the shop tab. 20% off everything in the store. Now I'll catch you all back here on Thursday for a brand new installment. Chock full of terror. But for now...

Keep it spooky and have yourselves a good night.