Spirit Tales & Magic

  A haunting story lands in our inbox: twins who speak like they’re the same daughters a family lost years earlier. They point to “impact” marks, ask for toys they’ve never seen, and run through a village like they already know the way home. It’s the kind of reincarnation story that can make your stomach drop and your skepticism wobble at the same time. So we do what we always do in Spirit Tales and Magic: we tell it straight, then we test it.  We dig into why that specific tale doesn’t hold up as literal fact, and how urban legends about past lives travel the world by changing names, dates, and tragedies while keeping the emotional punch intact. From there, we zoom out to the bigger question: what do researchers and psychologists say about child past life memories, especially ages two to five? We talk about memory construction, subconscious association, suggestion, and why many experts dismiss these claims, even as investigators continue to collect thousands of reports and lo...

  Hey everybody, it's Dr. G, Spirit Tales and Magic. Hope this finds you well. I'd like to say hello to some new listeners in Blaine, Minnesota, Satchy, Texas. We have Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Frederickburg, Virginia checking in. And we've got some new folks in Pakistan, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand. So we appreciate you and thanks for listening. We're going to do an episode tonight on the superstitions, but we're going to change that up a little bit. Two pieces of mail. One was about superstitions. And of course, if you're a frequent flyer of the podcast, you know that we have a lot of things like that on the podcast. But the other one is, hey Doc, thought I saw you last night on the Queen Mary. Tried to get to you, but then I found out that the thing that you and Cassandra were doing is not open to the public. Are you guys going to do any public shows on the Queen Mary? And I saw you later taking a tour. Was that the haunted tour? Well, so it's k...

  A lone magpie shows up and suddenly you’re supposed to salute and ask about his wife. Someone offers you flowers and you have to count them. You glance away during a toast and now it’s seven years of bad luck. Superstitions can sound ridiculous until you realize how many of them you already follow without thinking, especially when life feels uncertain and you want a little protection on your side.  We start with the familiar: the Ohio rules I heard from my grandparents like never walking under a ladder and what to do when you spill salt, plus a Sicilian warning that you do not put a hat on a bed. From there we go global with lesser-known superstitions from the United Kingdom, Poland, Korea, Japan, India, Turkey, Spain, Greece, Russia, Romania, Kenya, Rwanda, and beyond. We dig into why the number four gets avoided in parts of Asia, why some cultures ban whistling after sunset, and how simple etiquette like eye contact during a toast turns into a high-stakes luck ritual in pa...

  A Civil War soldier in California sounds like a glitch in the story we learned in school until you trace the footsteps back to Drum Barracks near the Port of Los Angeles. We take a listener’s sighting seriously and use it as a doorway into a forgotten piece of American history: California’s divided loyalties, the creation of Camp San Pedro (later Drum Barracks), and how thousands of troops moved through Southern California as the Union fought to hold the Southwest. If you’ve ever wondered why certain places feel charged, this one gives you the receipts and the reason.   From there, the tone shifts from historical to personal and unsettling. Drum Barracks is now a Civil War museum in Wilmington, and it carries a long list of reported paranormal activity: chains dragging across floors, footsteps and mumbling in empty rooms, sudden smells of pipe smoke, and the repeated appearance of a woman known as “Maria,” often linked to lavender and violet perfume. We talk about why museum...

 Greetings everyone it’s Dr. G from Spirit tales and Magic. This will be spirit tales and Magic‘s blog home will keep you up-to-date on the podcast shows and how to share your paranormal stories with us. You can check out our website at spirit tales and magic.com and you can also find our podcast there thanks for listening. We’ll talk soon.