Eight years ago I was hunted by an evil spirit.
I was 25 at the time and I was living In a tiny house behind other house in L.A.
Is this guest house, kind of lapidaded Not taken care of for a long time
And one night I was sitting there and got this truly spooky feeling
Kind of the feelinglike you are being watched, but no one was there
Except my two dogs, they were just resting I look around and no one was there
I thought "Ok this is just my imagination" But the feeling just kept getting worse
I started to feel pressure in my chest Like the feeling when you get bad news
But it's starting to sink lower and lower Over the course of that week
This feeling got worse and worse And started to become convinced
That something was there In my little guest house haunting me
And I started to hear this sounds (Woosh) Kind of whisper like something passing by
I called my best friend Claire and said "I know this is going to sound crazy"
"But I think there is a ghost in my house" (Laughs) "I need to get rid of it"
She's very open minded and said "I don't think you are crazy"
"¡I think you just need to do a cleansing ritual!" (Laughs)
"Get some sage and burn it And tell it to go away"
So I said ok, I went and bought sage And I have never done this before
So, set the sage on fire, waved it about and said "¡Go away! This is my house"
"I live here, you don't live here!" But the feeling stayed nothing got better
Then I started to think "Ok this thing Is propably just laughing at me"
Because it hasn't laughed and I probably just look like this impotent and powerless
Thing that couldn't get it to go away So, everyday I come home and realize
This feeling got so bad that, I mean I'm laughing about it now
But I would sit in there in bed And cry every night
The feeling on my chest got worser It was physically painful
I even went to a psychiatrist and tried To get her to prescribe me medicine
And she wouldn't just beacuse I dont have schizophrenia (Laughs)
So finally I got on the internet and googled hauntings
I came upon this forum "Ghosthunters" But these were a special kind of hunters
They were skeptics. They believed that every case of ghosts that they had
Investigated so far had been explained away by science.
I was like "Ok smart guys, this is what's hapenning to me, and if you have
an explanation for me I would love to heart it" and one of them said
"¿Have you heard of carbon monoxide poisioning?" Yeah... like gas poisioning?
So carbon monoxide poisioning is when you have a gas leak in your home
I looked it up and the symptomps of carbon monoxide poisioning include
A pressure on your chest auditory hallucinations (Woosh)
And unexplained feeling of dread. So that night I called the gas company
I said I had an emergency. "I need you to come out, dont wanna tell the story now
But I need you to come out" (Laughs) They came, I said "I suspect a gas leak"
They brought their gas detector and the main said "It's really good thing
that you called us tonight because you could have been dead very soon"
37% of americans believe in haunted houses and I wonder how many of them
have been in a haunted house and how many of them in danger.
That haunting story has led me to my job I'm an investigator in two senses
I'm an investigative journalist and investigator of the claims of paranormal
In claims of the spiritual and that means a few things, sometimes I'm pretending
To need an exorcism so that I can go to an exorcist and see if he is using
Gimmicks or psychological tricks to try to convince someone that they are possesed.
Sometimes it means that I go undercover on a french group which I report on a podcast