Brennan's Eerie Accidental Exorcism

[00:00:01] Hello, listeners. It's me, Michelle. Christmas is coming, and we all know that's actually the spookiest season of all. So I'm doing a special call for Christmas-themed ghost stories. Christmas-themed ghost stories. Get that Christmas ghost story in today.

[00:00:26] Christmas. And then as I'm trying to hold it together and keep talking to the receptionist, that all-black head goes back behind the coat rack, and it's gone.

[00:00:44] Welcome to Tell Me A Ghost Story, the late-night call-in podcast where we delve into the world of the supernatural and explore the eerie and unexplained.

[00:00:56] I'm your host, Michelle Newman. This podcast features true stories from our callers that will send shivers down your spine and leave you questioning the existence of the afterlife.

[00:01:11] So grab a cozy blanket, turn down the lights.

[00:01:19] All right. My name is Brennan, and I am currently, I live in London, Ontario, but this story comes from when I was living in Victoria, BC, which is on the west coast of Canada.

[00:01:31] So I wrote a book. It's called Strangers of the Place, and it is the paranormal history of my hometown, the hometown of the mountains in western Canada.

[00:01:42] This all started when I began researching the book in 2012.

[00:01:46] Now, when I got into the, started researching it, I didn't really believe in ghost stories, you know, which might sound odd for a guy who is writing a book about it, but I felt like, you know, I'm just going to interview people.

[00:01:58] They'll tell me their stories. I'll write them up, and that's good enough. It is not necessary that I also believe this.

[00:02:04] In addition to this, at the time, I was the office manager for a consulting company, so I wanted to make sure I didn't come across as a kook because I still had to exist in a professional capacity.

[00:02:15] And so I started going, taking my vacation time, going back to my hometown, and interviewing people.

[00:02:22] I started at the museum. I had a couple names I found from Google searches, old, old Google pages.

[00:02:27] And I just started knocking on doors, asking questions, and that's how I researched the whole book.

[00:02:34] But when I got back from the first trip, I was at work. It was a sunny April morning.

[00:02:44] So at the time, in this huge, relatively huge office space, it was just me and the receptionist slash bookkeeper, and we were having a chat.

[00:02:51] I was telling her all the stories I had found. She was telling me some of her own from where she grew up.

[00:02:58] And as we're having this conversation on a lovely April morning, I see this all-black head peek out from behind the coat rack.

[00:03:10] And it holds there. It holds there just long enough for me to be able to say to myself, okay, I'm seeing that.

[00:03:17] That is, I'm not imagining it.

[00:03:19] And then as I am trying to hold it together and keep talking to the receptionist, that all-black head goes back behind the coat rack, and it's gone.

[00:03:28] And I felt this incredible sense of panic.

[00:03:33] Because I didn't really believe in the stuff, right?

[00:03:37] I was just, it was fun stories.

[00:03:39] But I had just seen what I'd seen.

[00:03:41] And I'd never seen anything like it before.

[00:03:44] The panic was real.

[00:03:45] And I felt the color.

[00:03:48] I saw the color drain from my vision.

[00:03:50] I was starting to panic.

[00:03:54] And I really had to, I just crunched down and just didn't show any sign of it, like, didn't talk about it, just kept talking to the receptionist, and that was it.

[00:04:05] So, I was like, that's weird, but sure, fine, okay.

[00:04:09] And I didn't see much more of it.

[00:04:11] Then about a couple weeks later, a month later, I was in, I was at home.

[00:04:16] And I always like to joke, my wife has grown-up jobs.

[00:04:19] You know, I always manage to finagle a workplace where I can kind of turn up whatever I feel like it.

[00:04:24] It's just, it's a gift of mine.

[00:04:27] But she has grown-up jobs.

[00:04:29] So, she had gone to work.

[00:04:30] I woke up.

[00:04:31] It was May by this point.

[00:04:33] It was, again, another bright morning.

[00:04:34] She had opened the blinds when she left.

[00:04:36] And I recall rolling over to look at the clock on her side of the bed, and I think I noted the time was 8.30.

[00:04:43] And I rolled back to my side, and that's when I realized I could see something out of the corner of my left hand.

[00:04:49] It was like there was someone standing next to me.

[00:04:52] But that didn't make sense, because where I perceived this person to be standing, there was a bedside table.

[00:05:00] Someone could not stand there.

[00:05:02] I turned to look at the thing in the corner of my eye, and I saw a shadow in the shape of a man.

[00:05:11] And before I could react to it, it fell across me in the bed.

[00:05:16] And when it contacted my skin, I felt electricity throughout my entire body.

[00:05:22] And this doesn't make a lot of sense, but I passed out.

[00:05:25] It was like I fell back asleep.

[00:05:29] I woke up about half an hour later.

[00:05:31] The shadow figure was gone.

[00:05:33] And I felt fine.

[00:05:36] Maybe a little weird, a little upset by what I had seen.

[00:05:39] But I thought, well, that's strange.

[00:05:42] And then I kept moving.

[00:05:44] Because, of course, I had never heard of shadow people at this point.

[00:05:47] This was not until later that I started my really in-depth paranormal research that I finally heard that term.

[00:05:54] And I didn't think too much about it.

[00:05:56] But over the course of the next two weeks, I began experiencing the most profound depression I had encountered since I was a teenager.

[00:06:06] It was as if there was something weighing, literally weighing on me.

[00:06:11] Like something just hanging off my neck, pulling me forward.

[00:06:16] And it lasted for, again, two weeks until I provoked an argument with my wife, which is not something I do.

[00:06:22] Like I'm not a, you know, I'm not exactly a paragon of good behavior, but I'm not someone who fights for fun.

[00:06:29] That's just not who I am.

[00:06:30] But I did.

[00:06:31] And we had this terrible argument.

[00:06:33] And after that, it was like it was gone.

[00:06:35] It was like a boil had popped.

[00:06:38] And I thought, well, that's weird.

[00:06:39] But again, you know, I didn't really have a frame of reference to this stuff.

[00:06:42] My family were not spooky growing up.

[00:06:44] It's not something, you know, I was raised in the Catholic Church, but I didn't really take.

[00:06:48] So none of that stuff kind of informed my growing up.

[00:06:51] As I would come to learn over the course of doing the podcast I do with Ghost Story Guys,

[00:06:57] I would come to realize I'd actually had more childhood experiences than I thought.

[00:07:01] But I had just memory hold all of them.

[00:07:11] And then a year later, I was in Vancouver for a series of three concerts across four days.

[00:07:19] And I had confidence for the first two shows.

[00:07:22] And then for the third one, I was on my own.

[00:07:24] And I was renting a room in someone's house.

[00:07:27] It was an early version of Airbnb.

[00:07:29] It wasn't Airbnb.

[00:07:30] It was something that kind of came, was a forerunner to it.

[00:07:34] It's about six o'clock in the evening, which is when I started thinking,

[00:07:37] it's time for a coffee.

[00:07:39] And I was reading a book.

[00:07:40] So I grabbed my book, walked out the front door.

[00:07:42] And it was, again, a lovely evening in April in Vancouver.

[00:07:46] And as I was stepping out of this house, I heard a voice say,

[00:07:50] Hey there.

[00:07:52] And I turned and looked.

[00:07:53] And there was an elderly First Nations gentleman, elderly Indigenous gentleman.

[00:07:57] He was wearing a sweatsuit, like a tracksuit.

[00:08:03] It looked pretty rough.

[00:08:04] You know, he himself, his skin was pretty rough.

[00:08:06] He had a gray gym bag over one corner.

[00:08:09] And he had a wooden cane with orange electrical tape bombed around the bottom of it.

[00:08:18] And I said, Oh, hey there.

[00:08:20] He said, How are you?

[00:08:21] I said, I'm well, thank you.

[00:08:22] How are you?

[00:08:23] He said, Oh, I could do with a coffee as I go along in my travels here.

[00:08:26] But he said, Otherwise, I'm well.

[00:08:28] And I said, Well, I'll tell you what.

[00:08:29] So I'm heading that direction anyways.

[00:08:31] Walk with me.

[00:08:32] I'll buy you a coffee.

[00:08:33] So he fell into step with me, this elderly gentleman.

[00:08:37] And we got talking.

[00:08:38] He said, My name's Dennis.

[00:08:42] That's what your name is.

[00:08:43] So it's Brennan.

[00:08:45] And I said, Okay.

[00:08:45] He's like, Would you like to know my spirit name?

[00:08:48] And I said, Yeah, sure, man.

[00:08:49] Go for it.

[00:08:50] And he said, No, it's Thunderbird Heartstrong.

[00:08:53] I said, Okay, cool.

[00:08:55] Sure.

[00:08:55] He's like, Would you like to know what yours is?

[00:08:59] Of course.

[00:08:59] The answer was yes.

[00:09:00] And he said, Well, when we get to the coffee shop, he said, I will ask.

[00:09:03] He said, Not everyone has one.

[00:09:05] But when we get there, I will ask.

[00:09:07] And he went on to explain the significance of his spiritual name to me and explain that Thunderbird, the spirit of Thunderbird was a thing that actually would visit him from time to time.

[00:09:17] And he said he was a shaman.

[00:09:19] And that's why.

[00:09:20] So we got to the coffee shop.

[00:09:21] And now I have to admit, I thought this gentleman was homeless.

[00:09:25] That's kind of how we looked.

[00:09:27] And I have bought coffees for homeless guys before.

[00:09:30] You know, it's, yeah, like, it's, we're all only one or two missed paychecks away from that place.

[00:09:35] So it pays to be nice to people.

[00:09:38] Or rather, it's easy to be nice to people.

[00:09:40] But, so I figured this is going to follow the pattern where you buy him a coffee.

[00:09:45] Then they ask if he can get something sweet.

[00:09:47] And then if you go along with that, maybe they ask for a pack of smokes.

[00:09:51] Instead of him asking for these things, he just said to me, I'll have what you're having, two cream, one sugar.

[00:09:56] I'll see if I can find us a table.

[00:09:58] I was like, okay, sure, man, fine.

[00:10:00] He found us a table out front of the Starbucks.

[00:10:04] And this was on Davy Street, which is a very busy street in Vancouver.

[00:10:07] And so as I tell you the rest of the story, bear in mind that this happened in front of a busy Starbucks on a busy urban street.

[00:10:13] And again, between six and eight o'clock on a Sunday evening.

[00:10:17] And we sat down and yeah, he explained to me, he said, I'm a shaman.

[00:10:21] And I've been a shaman since I was X years old.

[00:10:23] And he told me his whole story.

[00:10:25] And I thought, nah, you know, I don't ask people for advice all that often anymore.

[00:10:29] But I thought, I'm going to ask him his advice.

[00:10:32] So I said, look, I'd like to ask you something.

[00:10:36] And this was after he told me my, I should say, he told me my spirit name.

[00:10:40] And he asked, he kind of did the sing-songy thing.

[00:10:42] And he looked around and he said, you do have one.

[00:10:45] He said, not everyone does.

[00:10:47] He said, you're the stone buffalo.

[00:10:50] He said, stone because you're a fixed point around which things part.

[00:10:54] You are a source of comfort for people.

[00:10:56] You're a steady presence.

[00:10:59] He said, buffalo because you're very powerful.

[00:11:01] But he said, it is not destructive power.

[00:11:03] He said, the power of the buffalo is restorative power.

[00:11:06] It is life-giving power.

[00:11:07] So he said, you are the stone buffalo.

[00:11:09] And I thought, well, that's pretty cool as far as these things go.

[00:11:13] And that's when I asked him a question.

[00:11:14] I told him the story.

[00:11:15] I just told you, these shadow men I'd seen and who had impacted me and impacted my life.

[00:11:23] And he looked very serious.

[00:11:25] And he said, look, he said, I don't know why you're having these dreams.

[00:11:29] And I said, well, they weren't dreams.

[00:11:30] I was awake.

[00:11:31] And he put his hand up.

[00:11:32] He said, no, no.

[00:11:32] He said, it's best if we call them dreams.

[00:11:35] He said, I don't know why you're having these dreams, but I will ask.

[00:11:40] He sort of did this, again, sort of sing-songy humming thing.

[00:11:43] He looked around.

[00:11:44] He shook his head.

[00:11:45] He pulled, he reached into his gym bag, which was hanging off the back of his chair, or over the arm of one of his chair.

[00:11:51] And he pulled out a recorder, like kids play.

[00:11:56] And it was translated see-through, and it was purple, see-through.

[00:12:02] And he played the same note maybe, I don't know, 10 or 15 times, something like that.

[00:12:10] And he looked around, shook his head, put the recorder away.

[00:12:14] And out of the bag, he pulled a maraca.

[00:12:16] And the maraca was, it was gray, and it had Olmeca tequila on the side in faded red lettering.

[00:12:23] And I remember thinking that if this was like a white guy shaman in the valley, that thing would be hand-carved.

[00:12:29] It costs four grand.

[00:12:31] So you see, he shakes it a few times, and he kind of sings as he does it.

[00:12:36] And he looks around, and he said something about a doctor.

[00:12:38] I didn't hear, I didn't catch it.

[00:12:39] But he got up and walked away.

[00:12:41] And I thought, oh, are we done?

[00:12:44] So I sat there for a few more minutes trying to figure out what was happening.

[00:12:47] And then he comes back, and he's got something green in one of his hands.

[00:12:51] And before I can figure out what it is, he shoves it in my mouth.

[00:12:55] He says, chew that and swallow it down.

[00:13:03] So I did.

[00:13:04] I should say, I realized this was, and I really do think this was probably the biggest crossroads of my entire life,

[00:13:10] was I could either spit this stuff out and go, all right, we're done here.

[00:13:14] Or I could chew it and see what happens.

[00:13:17] And this was uncharacteristic of me.

[00:13:19] But I chewed it.

[00:13:21] And I swallowed it.

[00:13:23] And he says, is it gone?

[00:13:24] I nodded.

[00:13:25] So he had some left in his hand.

[00:13:26] He put it in his own mouth.

[00:13:28] He chewed it.

[00:13:29] And then he grabbed my head, put both of his hands, his hands on the side of my head,

[00:13:32] pulled me forward, and went, on the top of my head.

[00:13:37] Bear in mind, busy Starbucks.

[00:13:39] You know, 6, 8 p.m. on a Sunday evening in a busy metropolitan center.

[00:13:44] Pulls me forward, goes, on the back of my neck.

[00:13:47] Pulls me forward again.

[00:13:48] Does the same thing, all the way down my back.

[00:13:51] Sits me up, looks at me for a minute, and goes, okay, it's done.

[00:13:54] I said, what's done?

[00:13:56] He goes, just wait.

[00:13:57] And as I'm sitting there, I feel this strangeness spilling over me, this sensation that my body

[00:14:05] is not my own, that it is moving at my suggestion, but it is not mine.

[00:14:13] It is not me.

[00:14:14] And I start panicking.

[00:14:27] I was thinking, okay, so he poisoned me, and there's a hospital not far.

[00:14:32] If I throw up some of this crap, maybe if I take it to them, they can help me out.

[00:14:36] And it was almost like he knew what I was thinking, because he just went, calm down.

[00:14:40] You're fine.

[00:14:40] Calm down.

[00:14:42] I said, Dennis, man, I think you poisoned me, because I didn't poison you.

[00:14:47] It's going to be fine.

[00:14:48] It's relaxed.

[00:14:49] And I remember saying, I said, if I feel like if I try to stand up, I'm going to fall over.

[00:14:53] He goes, you won't.

[00:14:53] Stand up.

[00:14:54] You'll see.

[00:14:54] I stood up, and I was solid.

[00:14:56] Okay.

[00:14:57] So I sat back down.

[00:14:59] And I don't know, five, ten minutes later, the feeling passed.

[00:15:02] And he looked at me.

[00:15:03] He goes, how do you feel?

[00:15:04] I said, I think I'm fine.

[00:15:06] He goes, okay, yeah, yeah.

[00:15:07] I said, what was that?

[00:15:09] He said, well, you had the wrong spirit in you.

[00:15:12] He said, I removed it, and what you felt was the new spirit settling in.

[00:15:17] And then I said, okay.

[00:15:19] He said, do you ever wonder why your belly swells?

[00:15:21] And I used to be a very, very hefty guy.

[00:15:23] And I said, well, I assume because I eat too much.

[00:15:25] And he goes, well, yes.

[00:15:26] He said, that doesn't help.

[00:15:28] But he said, this also happens to people who have the wrong spirit in them.

[00:15:32] He said, now that this is done, he said, your belly will shrink.

[00:15:37] But he said, you need to know I'm sorry.

[00:15:40] And I said, well, what are you sorry about?

[00:15:42] He said, your life is going to be different now.

[00:15:44] And he said, I could not give you a choice in that.

[00:15:48] This had to be done.

[00:15:49] I couldn't give you an option of whether or not you wanted it to change.

[00:15:53] And he said, it's not going to be bad, but it's going to be different.

[00:15:57] And that is just something that you have to get used to.

[00:16:01] He said, again, I am sorry, but there was no other choice.

[00:16:06] So, okay.

[00:16:08] And I don't know how to respond to that.

[00:16:09] And he said, how do you feel?

[00:16:11] I said, the thing is okay.

[00:16:12] He goes, okay, good.

[00:16:13] He said, I'm going to go.

[00:16:14] I'm going to go have a drink.

[00:16:17] You take care of yourself.

[00:16:18] And he got up.

[00:16:19] He grabbed his cane.

[00:16:20] He grabbed his bag.

[00:16:22] He started walking away.

[00:16:23] And I said, oh, thanks, I guess.

[00:16:27] Thanks, man.

[00:16:27] And he points to the coffee.

[00:16:29] He said, you're welcome.

[00:16:29] He said, you gave me a gift.

[00:16:30] So this is my gift to you.

[00:16:32] And he walked away.

[00:16:33] And I never saw him again.

[00:16:36] But after that, I'm sitting there in front of a busy Starbucks on a busy metropolitan street between 6 and 8 p.m. on a Sunday evening.

[00:16:43] And I'm thinking, oh, boy.

[00:16:45] There are folks staring.

[00:16:46] I need to go.

[00:16:47] So I grabbed my book I've been reading and started walking back to the house.

[00:16:54] Texted my wife.

[00:16:55] You're not going to believe what just happened.

[00:16:58] And she said, if you feel okay, which I did, you're probably okay.

[00:17:02] Just talk about the experience and keep an eye out for anything that might happen after this.

[00:17:07] But she said, it sounds like you're okay.

[00:17:09] And I went back to my room.

[00:17:10] I was reading for a while.

[00:17:12] And I got really hungry.

[00:17:13] The night came on.

[00:17:14] I was really hungry.

[00:17:15] And I thought, oh, I've barely eaten today.

[00:17:17] That's why I feel so weird.

[00:17:18] That's why I thought, oh, of course.

[00:17:20] It all makes sense.

[00:17:23] And so I went out to the house.

[00:17:25] And so I was going to get my favorite burger joint in Vancouver.

[00:17:28] Walked out of the house.

[00:17:29] And man, whereas it was like I had been seeing the world through a window.

[00:17:35] And now someone had taken out the glass.

[00:17:39] Because the first car that passed me, I was terrified.

[00:17:45] Terrified.

[00:17:45] And I couldn't explain why.

[00:17:47] And all of a sudden I could hear everything.

[00:17:50] I could hear all the cars, the people, the noise, the lights.

[00:17:55] It was so bright and so loud.

[00:17:57] And I just started freaking out.

[00:18:03] And I had to really kind of clamp back, again, clamp back down and go, nope, you're fine.

[00:18:07] You're fine.

[00:18:07] Just roll with it.

[00:18:08] And I started walking towards the burger joint.

[00:18:10] And then I got to Davie.

[00:18:11] And I looked up Davie.

[00:18:13] And there's the, or at least there used to be, I don't know about now, the Sandman Inn

[00:18:16] Sweets is on Davie.

[00:18:17] And they got this big, big green neon sign on the side of the building.

[00:18:21] Or again, they used to.

[00:18:23] And I saw that sign hanging there in the dark.

[00:18:26] And all of a sudden I freaked out again.

[00:18:28] I was just, there's something about like, it's so high up and it's so bright.

[00:18:34] And I just kind of came back.

[00:18:36] So I clamped it back down, went to the burger joint, ordered my usual burger and a Coke,

[00:18:41] double burger and a Coke.

[00:18:42] But when it arrived, and I know how this sounds, but this is what it was.

[00:18:47] When it arrived, I didn't know what to do with it.

[00:18:50] Like I knew, you know, intellectually, that's a burger.

[00:18:53] We eat it.

[00:18:54] That's, you know, that's how we got this fine athletic physique, my guy.

[00:19:00] But I, it was like, oh, okay.

[00:19:02] So I unwrapped it and I peeled off a chunk of it and I ate it.

[00:19:04] And I ate it.

[00:19:05] Of course, food, yeah, burger, yeah.

[00:19:06] And I ate about half the burger and it was good.

[00:19:08] And I took a drink of a soda.

[00:19:09] I remember it looked like plastic.

[00:19:11] I took a drink.

[00:19:11] I'm like, oh, that's very sweet.

[00:19:13] But yeah, sure.

[00:19:13] Okay.

[00:19:15] And I, you know, ate it and drank it.

[00:19:18] And you can have about half of each.

[00:19:20] And then on the way back, I smelled the plants that he had shoved in my mouth that I couldn't identify.

[00:19:27] And I picked some.

[00:19:29] And then I basically like tried to find it.

[00:19:33] And it was juniper.

[00:19:37] And what I have since learned is that I went through a very stripped down version of a Native American cleansing ceremony.

[00:19:48] And that feeling every now and again, some nights, I still have it.

[00:19:54] Some nights it feels like the glass is out of the window.

[00:19:56] Everything seems very ultra real, ultra, you know, fair.

[00:20:01] And other times it's not.

[00:20:02] But what's interesting is I have in my life since then twice been approached by shadow creatures.

[00:20:10] And neither time could they touch me.

[00:20:13] It's only been, you know, four times in 11 years, 12 years.

[00:20:17] But it seems like after I had my shamanic experience, which is, I guess, what it was,

[00:20:21] like all my accidental exorcism, it was like it changed something.

[00:20:26] And they could no longer get to me.

[00:20:28] Like, for whatever reason, there was an interest.

[00:20:31] But they could not make contact.

[00:20:43] Thanks for calling in, Brennan.

[00:20:46] That's the best cup of coffee you've ever spent money on.

[00:20:50] If you want to check out more of Brennan's ghost stories, find him on the podcast The Ghost Story Guys.

[00:20:57] And his new project, Fear Daily, wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:21:03] That's all we have this week, folks.

[00:21:06] Do you have a ghost story?

[00:21:08] Call 701-484-2666.

[00:21:15] That's 701-484-2666.

[00:21:24] Or go to tellmeaghoststory.com and leave your story there.

[00:21:30] Go ahead and leave me a five-star review wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:21:34] Was something particularly scary in this episode?

[00:21:37] Or maybe you've had a similar experience?

[00:21:40] Leave your comments via our Spotify page.

[00:21:43] Thank you to all the callers who left messages this week.

[00:21:48] And as always, I'm your host, Michelle Newman.

[00:21:52] Signing off.

[00:21:54] See you next week.

[00:21:56] I mean it.