Keep Austin Weird, indeed
If you know me, you might know that I’ve been into metaphysics and the occult since I was fairly young and especially got into during my undergraduate college years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill because I had access to stacks of occult topic paperbacks and hardcover books in Davis Library.
My neighbor who was also 18 when I was 18 years old, Brian Walsh, also got me into playing with his Ouija Board. He and I talked with beings and this was before we had laptops or google, so we’d ride our bicycles from Carrboro (a town neighboring Chapel Hill) where we lived to our college campus and looked up the name of a boy from Greece we contacted and it was a real person from history. Walsh and I also had a series of dreams of the same thing. As a control, I’d have him describe them without telling him how mine went and they would match up.
I spent half of my childhood out in the woods of Southern Maryland, where my family has had land for going on half a century across from Salem Farm (belonging to the Baldus Family) and near the Potomac River, some houses up from the birthplace of John Hansen at Mulberry Grove and Declaration of Independence signer Thomas Stone’s Havredegrace homestead.
Our land in Southern Maryland holds its mysteries. It was traversed by the scoundrel John Wilkes Booth who shot President Lincoln. I went to high school with a descendant of Dr. Samuel Mudd who patched up the assassin. Our town of Port Tobacco is also home to “America’s oldest recorded ghost story” called The Legend of the Blue Dog. I wrote a screenplay about it.
A magical day:
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending the first ever Strange & Extraordinary Fest at KMFA Studios in East Austin, Texas, a few blocks from the Colorado River flowing along. The facility is absolutely beautiful with a second floor outdoor deck with downtown views, an auditorium, old media displays (CD-s) and musical instrument displays. Thank you to our lovely founder and organizer Denise Garza and the whole team for having me.
Our Master of Ceremonies was the very funny and sharp Ayden Castellanos, host of the Susto Podcast. I learned that Susto means “fright” in Spanish. The hosts of two other well known podcasts were on hand— Theories of the Third Kind and Night Owl. They have years worth of material for your curious listening pleasure.
I liked that the event had a balanced blend of skepticism, science-based reasoning and practical discussions of the occult. The Austin area paranormal community is an exceptionally well organized and spirited group who all know and support one another. There was also a great oddities shop built into the event, with vendors from all over the land.
I made it in time to see Chad Wendal’s presentation about how our mind can trick us or how our brain is easily open to suggestion, and how we really can’t multi-task. Wendal and his wife own the haunted Olde Park Hotel in Ballinger, Texas, built circa 1886. The hotel is turning 140 years old this year and has been investigated by Jack Osbourne’s Fright Club as well as Ghost Lab and others.
Wendal showed a video of people in a circle, some with white shirts and some with black shirts on. We were told to count how many times a basketball was passed by those in white shirts. When distracted by a task, our brain can miss major visual disruptions. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but if you message me, I’ll tell you more. Wendal taught us about the Tritone Paradox, Shepard’s Tone, the Spinning Dancer Illusion and the McGurk Effect— some things to look up in your spare time if you’re into audial and visual manipulations.
Next was Brandon Hodge, a collector and historian of spirit boards. This was a fantastic and detailed lecture about what we know as Ouija Boards and how Hollywood has made up new lore and misleading information about how they really work. Hodge has an impressive collection of boards and gorgeous bejeweled and ornate planchettes, the likes I didn’t know could exist. Hodge also helped set up IAPSOP, a free online occult library.
It was wild to learn about various spirit contacting devices and how they spread to and from North America and Europe, and also about the fraud that accompanied the spiritualists movements of the 1800s. I already knew about the Fox Sisters (aka the Rochester Knockers) who talked with ghosts who knocked on walls and tables. It was great to learn about other history that I am not fully aware of— like “Scratching Fanny” and mesmerist Andrew Jackson Davis. Hodge has a huge book coming out about all of this and more called SUPERNATURAL MACHINES. I’m excited to get hands on a copy.
Another author was in the house— Greg Lawson, a long time veteran of the Austin Police Department who never meant to be a cop. Lawson wrote MESSAGES FROM MOTHMAN, which delves into the lore of this mysterious figure who may be an angel, someone who warns mankind about disasters, or perhaps an entity who causes them. Lawson humorously describes himself as “the county version of Mulder”. Unable to find other kinds of work after college, he joined the police force as serving in the US army at a time when Travis County practiced something called “de-population” where people were released from mental asylums and public institutions that housed mental health patients. Lawson was part of the PD psych department as a plain clothed officer who drove unmarked vehicles sent out to aid in cases of people attempting to commit suicide, child abuse and the like, ie. not the lightest beat to cover.
It was very cool to listen to the Night Owl Podcast team and learn how they met and how they work together, along with anecdotes from paranormal investigations that have stuck with them. Stephen Belyeu and Alexis A. Arredondo met while in college at Texas A&M at Corpus Christi. They were both studying film. Arrendondo owns the East Austin “witch store” called City Alchemist. I went here three days after my eldest dog, Bea, passed away in January of 2025 and they were the kindest to me when I asked for help regarding her transition into spirit. Franklyn Gould is their resident techie/skeptic and Jeffrey Downs is their psychic. You can find out more about all of these gentlemen here.
The dynamic duo known as ND ParaHouse (aka Nicole Riccardo and Damian Schillaci) out of Dripping Springs, Texas set up their traveling haunted museum onsite with items from the Victorian era and haunted objects from around the state of Texas including a scrying mirror that gave me a woozy feeling, an overly strong magnetic pull. They also had a chair with a whistling ghost attachment who likes to follow people home. Nicole and Damian also have a podcast called Parapeculiar and a Top 5% podcast named The Real Ghosts Of… for all of your frightful delight needs! They travel the US sharing their knowledge, headlining various events and felt like the Austin area needed its own conference for things that encompass ghost lore, aliens, big foot and the like.
The big finale was a four-table simultaneous seance using different kids of Ouija Boards and planchettes and sweeping radios with headphones and eye-covers for the Estes Method of spirit contact. This is where it got really, really interesting.
I was with three other women who were strangers to me at that point. I mainly observed and wrote down what was seen and heard from the board and the radio. I’ve done the Estes Method before in my own backyard of Port Tobacco, Maryland with a ghost-hunting group local to there – at Port Tobacco Village. The spirits we met were attached to those centuries old buildings there.
Last night’s contact was super specific and personal to one of the women and to myself. The other gal in our group had a beloved family matriarch come through. The answers from the Ouija Board were so super-specific, I kept getting full body chills- sharp tingling sensations like I have never had before. The responses started out slow, then became ultra-fast movements. I won’t get into the specifics because they are personal details of this other participant’s family and life.
As for my part- I was in the bathroom and came back to a sheet of paper with words written on it when one of the other gals took over creating a written record of our group’s findings for me. It seemed like a bunch of unconnected words until I really looked at them:
B-Wheels
LINK
Spielberg
Younger Sister
Yours Again
Spanish Music
I’m Free
Older. Old.
Heart Warm (twice)
Spielberg again
Yours Again, a second time
You are Love
Coming Soon
The Spice
Epic
Absolute
Spanish Music
Dance
I asked: Are you a dog?
Response: Maybe…
These could mean anything, anything at all. What I got from this series of words is:
Bea-Wheez is what I called my dog of 18 years who passed away at the old age of 20.
Beagle-Weaselle translates to Bea-Wheez for short, something I called her when we were on our own. I didn’t call her this when we were around other people.
LINK – could be a golf link, a chain link. LINK is also a management and production company in Los Angeles where my literary rep was housed for years.
Spielberg – movie talk, film director
Younger Sister – I have a human younger sister and also referred to Bea as my younger sister (not just my dog) – as my parents were our parents
I am working on an Epic (Historic Drama feature film about an interracial couple named Lucy Parsons and Albert Parsons of Waco, Texas who were anarchists), Coming Soon
Bea was found as a street dog in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, which at the time was still heavily Hispanic, Chicano, Latino and always full of “Spanish Music”. We lived for most of our time together in El Sereno 90032, a neighboring area with the same kind of residents with Spanish music blaring all the time.
Maybe Yours Again means she will re-incarnate back to me. Time will tell.
I confirmed with the other gals. The voice that said these words over the sweeping static was feminine sounding.
The historic Driskill Hotel in Downtown Austin opened in 1886. The Olde Park in Ballinger was built in 1886. 1886 is the pivotal year that the Haymarket Affair happened that involves Lucy and Albert Parsons and kicked off the American labor movement that gave us things like overtime pay and weekends. All of this— 140 years ago.
I think I’m going to have to drive out to Ballinger and see if there are other clues. I think my Beagle-Weaselle would want me to.
Thank you to everyone at Strange and Extraordinary Fest for such a remarkable day together, new friends and for actually doing your part to “Keep Austin Weird”. Your event was a real full-circle moment for me, as I’ve never had anyone I’ve known come through to me, much less someone so close to my heart like my beloved eldest girl soul-dog.
I’ve never spent 18 human years successively, day-to-day, on earth with anyone like I did with Bea, not even my parents. Now, I feel like Bea’s little brothers and fellow soul-dogs, Roger and Jasper, are safe with her too if she could come through so clearly to me. I have the Strange & Extraordinary Fest team and all the positive energy surrounding all of us for being an environment where love energy was transmitted.
Spooky Spaces 