Parlour Stories: Haunted Headaches Edition

March 2, 2020·54 min·3 clips

Rick felt his wife kiss him, opened his eyes, and the room was empty with the door still shut.

1. Odd Tonic’s “Parlour Stories: Haunted Headaches Edition” frames a first-anniversary return to listener-submitted hauntings, migraines, and strange science. 2. Jennifer and Maxwell host the episode, and both open with the show’s one-year milestone and the promise of “frights, perplexities, and strangeness.” 3. The episode asks what happens when reported supernatural experiences overlap with medical symptoms, family memory, and ritual practice. 4. Rick’s update begins with increased migraines, auditory, tactile, and visual hallucinations, sleep paralysis, and daytime sleepiness before a doctor considers narcolepsy. 5. Rick says a CT scan showed no tumors, an MRI showed no signs of stroke or brain deformities, and a sleep test also came back clear. 6. Rick describes a midday nap where he feels a bed depress, hears a voice, and then wakes to an empty room with the door still shut. 7. Rick’s sleep paralysis returns immediately after that nap, and he hears a familiar voice calling “hey” from what he calls the ether. 8. Christopher’s story returns to a Denver apartment and a later night at a theater complex bar where his wife sees a woman in a period costume. 9. Christopher compares the woman to “Marie Laveau of New Orleans fame,” and says she stared at his wife through a mirror without blinking. 10. Christopher explains that his wife later began speaking in a Spanish-French hybrid and stayed in that state for hours on the walk home. 11. Christopher says he traced an inverted pentagram on her forehead after deciding the situation might involve possession. 12. Christopher reports that she fell limp, sweated, shook, and later had no memory of the bathroom, the walk home, or the missing hours. 13. Christopher says years later his wife could speak Spanish fluently, but still could not interpret or read it, and people asked whether she was Creole or Scottish. 14. A psychic in Salem later told his wife that a dark shadow was over her and described the same bathroom woman as attached to her back. 15. Christopher says he believes the inverted pentagram seared the spirit to his wife because of his intent to harm and scare it away. 16. Christopher says he later used Kabbalah and Golden Dawn methods to release the spirit, and he links the work to intent, meditation, and helping rather than striking. 17. Gina’s account begins in fall 2013 on a rural road outside a national park, where migraines, vertigo, numbness, and tunnel or rainbow vision made driving difficult. 18. Gina says a gray farmhand figure moved closer on the road, appeared in her rearview mirror, and then seemed to sit in the passenger seat before she reached her driveway. 19. Gina later says a neurologist diagnosed her with pseudotumor cerebri and brain surgery followed, which makes the farmhand story likely appeal to listeners who like personal hauntings tied to illness. 20. Laura’s story centers on a cold house in Mobile, Alabama, a dead child named Renee, and a childhood memory of footsteps toward the couch that may appeal to listeners who like family ghost stories.

As heard by us

A fireside anniversary episode turns one haunting into a reflective story about responsibility, belief, and release.

Odd Tonic takes on a fireside mood as Jennifer and Maxwell mark the show's first anniversary and ease into another set of listener-submitted paranormal accounts.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a fireside haunting that turns a reckless occult act into a personal reckoning.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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