Michelle Belanger’s Haunted AirBnB & Paranormal State

now when did the blindfold start somebody on the production team just wanted to see what the difference would be with our walkthroughs if they put me and cl me and um chip both in blindfolds I felt so liberated by that blindfold I'm a very perceptive person I go into places and I take in all the stuff I've got a fairly good working knowledge of things that you wouldn't think can skew your read for a haunting but like you walk into a house and you see people's pictures on the walls and people put their lives right out there there's so much information that you can read without meaning to read taking my eyes away meant that I was not self-editing the one that really I mean knocked my socks off was H I'm in the blindfold we're in this house hey everybody my name is Misty Gaither and welcome to Quest a journey into True Crime and the Paranormal I'm excited and I know I you know say that just about every week how excited I am to have this guest or that guest tonight I'm extremely excited because I have with me Michelle bang is that how you say it is that pretty close or that's close enough okay or Michelle be no yeah bell bell that's it Belling if you have got a strong American accent and I'm not picky okay well I have this country hick accent so I don't know I try that's all I can do is just try to to pronounce it the best way I can but uh they are a a psychic vampire author and I found out recently singer and just all around very cool and so I was so excited uh when you to be on the show and I feel real honored um let's let's go back to when I first discovered you this was back in I would say 2007 and it started off with Paranormal State which I know uh probably a lot of you are familiar with and so tell us about how that started long ago in the Stone Age uh the folks at Penn State University who were the Paranormal research Society they were a student group they ran the largest like indoor paranormal convention uh in in the US and it was called unifon uh at that point in time i' had several books published on Psychic development psychic ability psychic vampires dream walking a bunch of different topics and in 2016 they asked me to come out and be a guest of honor uh as part of the lineup with let me see who I got to meet that year Lorraine Warren uh Dr Hans Holzer who was just the sweetest little a whole ton of other people like Jason HW and Grant Wilson were there it's just like a laundry list of people that we recognize as paranormal Elite now um just all hanging out it was the time when the PRS folks had just been signed to an's Paranormal State uh and I got asked to be actually a researcher behind the scenes I I wasn't going to be on camera at first I was just kind of support so like I remember one time where I was in Michigan working on a Tarot deck with an art artist friend and I get this weird call from Elfie music and they're in the middle of Backwoods Maine they've got Lorraine Warren stomping around the woods with them in a linen skirt and her little heeled shoes and they want me to do like if people are familiar with Supernatural I was Bobby minus the alcoholism so they like like call up and be like hey there's like this thing happening and that thing happening and there's like you know this like maybe like local Legend could you with your enormous like research Library tell us where to kind of maybe look for what's actually going on here so I'm like okay well like Nick Mech I'm not an expert on Native American stuff but like all the stuff that you're describing kind of hits this so see if you could find a local tribal Elder to go talk to and off they went so anytime you have like the Native American and whenever somebody says say you know there was Native Americans here whatever I'm like here we go you know because it's always going to be just rich with such uh paranormal things I think it's really important to like find the people who are an expert on the thing so like I've got a library of about 5,000 books um of just occult paranormal magical topics folklore you name it U my degrees in comparative religious studies with a concentration in psychology of religion so like what I got called on to do was to kind of like hear what they were experiencing what the people were talking about and go that sounds like this thing I read here's either me as the expert or here's where you should look for an expert to tell you what might be going on I actually was known for writing books and had been teaching classes in psychic development for for several years at that point um actually got over a decade and somehow uh it's funny how like we wear hats and it's it's people will get to know you for one hat but not realize you wear others like there are people who follow me only for my music and there are people who follow me only for the fiction that I write and then there are people who only know that I'm on Paranormal State not that I ever wrote books so long story short the Paranormal research Society folks didn't necessarily know that I did psychic work until I got called out initially to help Elfie on camera uh do research basically to be like her a cult research Mentor um Elie was struggling at the time she had lost her father and her brother in Rapid succession and now she's like this shy introverted like amazing person but like not necessarily comfortable on camera on a good day but she's dealing with a lot so they thought having a study buddy would help her right so that's what they brought me out for um it was the episode that is now known as the messenger and it was in I think Gold Beach Oregon uh so I got flown out there were flying delays there was a whole bunch of different like things that just kept us from getting on Set uh at this private residence so Chip and I and one of the production assistants uh were like the last to arrive we took a wrong turn on a Logging Road that took us like 52 miles out of our way like it was a very long long turn it was a harrowing long turn and in the course of it chip recognized that like I kept calling out like hey don't turn here or hey don't do this he's like are you psyching I'm like well yeah so once we show up I'm supposed to just do occult stuff uh as a as a research buddy but chip actually says Hey what if I do my walkr and you keep you know Michelle over here uh and then you Chuck Michelle into the house and see where we match up and uh that was really cool honestly because without you know sight on scene of what he had picked up sight on scene of the house this was before the blindfold for either of us uh and learning that we both hit on some very specific locations in the house uh the way we interpreted our Impressions you know we're very in tune with our personalities but still the information was the same um and thereafter I was a psychic medium on Paranormal State well you know what episode really sticks out to me of and I just recently watched it again and I was like yep and that's what really um you know I was like you know they have it it's it's just amazing and that was the glove episode yeah come on wife beer that one yeah when when you did that and you were like uh come on wife beer um you know like just calling that person out and and uh then y'all went back for a part two but on the the first one I mean the light started falling and and everything when you had uh called you know called that Spirit out there was so much that didn't even make it onto like the final cut for the episode there was a point where we were standing downstairs around the table kind of having a huddle and both Josh light and I something like yanked on the back of our shirts as we were talking about you know our theories for what this entity was uh because I know the family initially was worried that maybe it was demonic maybe it was like some sort of negative you know inhuman thing but I fell firmly on the no this is this is like this is a human this is a relative just someone who never stopped being a horrible person just because they're dead doesn't mean they stopped like this guy needed a lot of therapy in life and he certainly didn't get it in Death right um and he definitely was uh misogynist he he acted up against anybody he perceived to be uh female and I wasn't having any of it oh yeah you stood your ground and that just really impressed me uh because if you think about it back in that time of 2007 I mean we had Ghost Hunters that came on about 2004 okay then Paranormal State started around uh 2007 and that was even before Ghost Adventures began so we basically had ghost uh hunters and paranormal States so it was like kind of a learning um experience for a lot of people too that maybe had been interested in the paranor but really you couldn't you know you didn't see a lot of it mainstream and on TV and so you know to have that and it just really opened doors and it opened just so many different Avenues well and Ghost Hunters because they were on sci-fi and sort of like their approach they really didn't work with uh the the more spiritual or psychic aspect of things in Paranormal State although like we made a point of presenting the skeptical you know sidebar of you know I would insist on even if I did a psychic reading double check like don't assume because I think that there's a ghost standing over in the corner that there always is going to be like use that as like a psychic blood hound and point all of the equipment that way and see if we all converge but it was one of the first places where you could have conversations about there are some people who can pick this stuff up uh you know it's not like you know weird mystical like like it's an ability a lot of people have uh so many of the private hauntings that we investigated on that show often came down to the fact that at least one family member was sensitive and just didn't have the training or the knowledge to really put into context what they were experiencing and it was taking a situation that might not have been bad and making it scary simply because it was unknown now when did the blindfold start there was an episode I think it was following the the Connie Lake one uh behind the scenes they were talking about um you know interesting theories about the Paranormal including the idea of like thought forms where like some hauntings aren't Spirits at all they're things that are projected by the people yes uh and somebody on the production team just wanted to see what the difference would be with our walkthroughs if they put me and cl me and um chip both in blindfolds and Chip really wasn't a fan of the blindfold I felt so liberated uh by that blindfold because so I am I'm a very perceptive person I go into places and I take in uh you know all of the stuff I've got a fairly good working knowledge of things that you wouldn't think can skew your read for a haunting but architecture and like old clothing styles and like you walk into a house and you see people's pictures on the walls and people put their lives right out there there's so much information that you can read without meaning to read well like basically you're being front loaded without intending to be um so taking my eyes away meant that I was not self-editing uh I remember explicitly there had been one where I walked in and I'm like I kept picturing a little boy and he was blonde and he had a certain look uh but then I like I looked over my shoulder and I saw that there was a photo that looked an awful lot like him and I was like well did I see the photo before I had this image in my head or is the fot and and I had no way to know the one that really I mean knocked my socks off was I'm in the blindfold we're in this house it it was I forget the name of the episode three played some role in the episode uh because there were three daughters and I'm describing the people in this house and when I see the episode Ryan has moved me in front of the family wall of photos as I in my blindfold am describing all of the the people in the house amazing like knowing it like he's like pointing at them as I am describing and you can see them like you know kind of like making faces at each other and trying to like you know not not just kind of like laugh or be like how the hell how how how right right one of my favorite episodes I believe this happened with you with a blindfold I believe it was on portals to hell and it was it was like a private house I believe and it had a church across the the street of the road from it and they they put put you you know you're still in the blindfold and they put you in a truck or a van and then they take you and drive you around and pull you up across the road and of course you didn't know about it and then you came out and you were just like just spot on with everything and it was just amazing and it really impressed me I do what I do on the shows partly because it's it's an exploration for me like I've had these abilities since I was Tiny I grew up in a family where it wasn't forbidden like it was stuff that like it ran in the family people talked about it uh but I also you know I had a 35 on the ACT and like science like like I like science I'm not a science doesn't work kind of person so the scientific part of my brain is like how though like seriously how you this this shouldn't work based on what I was taught in school but also my experience tells me something's going on so how can I you know it's not like I'm going to ever have access to like a fullon lab um although I did get a chance to go to the r Institute once um oh yeah but but like in the field like how do I find ways to put it to the test as much as I can uh to get a good sense in like in my interior experience like how does this work how does this feel right because that really you know like I said it really impressed me because you have to be so sure of yourself and your gifts and you know especially if if you're you know doing that on TV or wherever just wherever but especially with that you know manyi eyes and everything on you and because when you're a a psychic medium uh you know a psychic it is you know reputation is a lot you know and then a quote that you said uh anyone can be a psychic after the fact you know it's easy for someone like to be a what what do they call it the armchair of you know the quarterback and armchair psychic had a dream about that totally I never wrote it down I have no record of it but I'm totally Sol right yeah yeah or or wait I was about to say you know and I guess that's why that you know you have to be sure of yourself and say it it weirdly what helped a lot with it is I was in goth and metal bands in the 90s and the early 2000s and you know toured and you get up on stage and you're dressed up in like you know wild wacky costumes and you're just you know having fun whether you're playing to 50 people or 500 people and you have to just hit a point where you're doing it for yourself and you're not thinking about anybody around you watching you uh and that is how I do the readings with any of the paranormal shows like I just do it for me um maybe there's people around me I do like it doesn't even cross my mind anymore that there are people watching I just get into the zone and whatever happens happens right um and I try not to go in with any expectation that I'm going to be wrong or right or that it looks silly uh because the instant you start self-editing like doubting like oh that's that's going to seem really weird you hold back everything in the past what how many decades have I been doing this like Paran what nearly 20 years now with Paranormal State uh every time I held back something that I thought was just too weird to say it turned out to be really spoton and I know krina Weidman has has mentioned that like as as time has gone on I've gotten more accurate I'm like no I've just gotten more less edited like I I stopped going well this is going to make me look like a like really off um and I just rattle off whatever yeah so tell me about berberin Ohio it is uh a fun little corner of the world uh I have a haunted Airbnb in Overland it we didn't start off with the intention of renting an Airbnb because it was haunted um I was looking before the pandemic for a place where I could do like little weekend Retreats and like you know kind of intensive classes I teach psychic development and self- protection and and dream walking and a bunch of things like that um but then the pandemic happened and made inperson stuff especially in the 2020 is kind of kind of tough right uh so we started putting it um just as a place to rent out on Airbnb knowing that the place was haunted but not in like a you know your hair's on fire and everything's like you know falling off the wall scary um just what I will typify is a fairly gentle but very physically present haunting that very physically present aspect of the haunting led to a couple of very interesting private messages over the Airbnb app uh they were very nice about it and uh hesitant in a couple of cases but they had experiences and uh a couple of folks were not thrilled so it just became necessary to be like full disclosed [Music] it's okay if you don't believe in ghosts but this house is haunted you may have experiences here's some of what you might experience and just know what you're getting into if you're coming here uh which means that we have some regular folks that are just going to Oberlin to the to the university there um or the Music Conservatory and are just kind of in town for a weekend or something and then we've got a lot of paranormal investigating teams that take advantage of the fact that they have running water and heat and air conditioning which are luxuries you don't usually get in a lot of you are correct for real andzy now you said that uh Ohio is a really a haunted place but the only place that would kind of uh weirdly you know would parallel that would be Louisiana me I don't want to say blanket it quite much like that but I will say Ohio just the land here the space it's it's just weird like I'll joke that we call Our Lake Eerie for a reason right if you if you poke around you see how many folks who are involved in like you know Jim Harold of the Paranormal podcast and you know Raymond Buckland and the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft like the number of people who are involved in weird stuff who grew up and lived in Ohio uh it it's a fairly High number so there's just there's something in the water there's something in the air um I mean I've got theories about it but I will say there's an awful lot of haunted locations here just growing up around here you you can't throw a stone without hitting something spooky uh nor Orleans the French Quarter yeah it is one of the places that for me is as alive as Bas around here where I live now some of that might just be that I resonate with that place better um but I've been to other places that people were like this is 100% haunted like the Stanley Hotel I really didn't get a lot from um um and I'm that that is not saying there's nothing going on there I will say one thing I've learned over time is hauntings react to people as much as people react to hauntings some people are just the right frequency what personality whatever to really draw out the activity and it will vary from place to place and person to person and sometimes from like throughout the course of a year uh like inspiration how um you know having owned it now for a while there's you know it was an old farmhouse it was people who lived there from uh what it was they started construction of the house in 1869 they finished in 1870 um and you know they're rural Ohio so in the winter they just sort of you know batten down the hatches and hung around and like the house quiets down around like November and December kind of like they're snowed in and they don't really feel like going anywhere and they're just kind of getting through the winter um and then it like Peaks back up and gets really active in uh the summer and the fall I neglected to say when I introduced you that you were also an oul expert but not only that you are like a crazy cat person oh yes yeah uh currently we only have three we lost our Main um last November to cancer uh but I I have I'm a cat whisperer I get along with cats better than people generally I mean maybe it's just an author thing like uh just a stereotypical author with the the cats around you have Bliss and is it Ria Ria uh yeah Ria is the the newer one um she she had some virus uh possibly Co it's not like they do covid test for cats um and had just recovered from it when we got her so she's she's got almost no sense of smell which you wouldn't think was such a big deal for a cat but she she's got some challenges with like navigating the world she does her absolute best and she's just sort of like delightfully Derpy sometimes like you can tell she's a very smart cat but there's just parts of the world that that she can't experience the way a cat normally would and she's very confused by it now how what's the uh highest number of cats at the same time have you owned uh I think four I usually have a rule of like a person to cat ratio of like how many people live in the house how many cats you're allowed to have right uh we had four here U because there were four folks in a living there's me and my wife um the the fellow who's been my roommate since 1999 who might as well be a brother at this point um and someone who we you know had they were in a bad situation so we' let them move in a couple of years ago and just so they could kind of like get their life together get like finish their degree do do stuff um and Remy ended up bonding with them uh with let Paul get Ria um because Paul didn't have a cat so for a little while we had a perfect ratio of one cat per person now on your um your book you wrote the uh dictionary of demons and the psychic of vampire the ghost Hunter's guy to the occult which one's your favorite that you wrote dictionary of demons because of all of the ones it's the one where I really got to bring the full force of my college degree back like like into it um without making be like a big dry academic text uh you know I I am one of the few people active in the Paranormal who learned demonology like I took demonology as a course in college from Jesuits uh so like I I come to it from an academic uh standpoint and the dictionary demons is just a fun ride into not just like the concept of demons but the history of it and I I feel like it really lets me shine with the research that I love to do through literature and you know art and just how society and belief kind of converge to to shape how we see the world let's talk about your music now I just recently discovered that you you know have music out there and do you write your own stuff or or do you um I mean I listened to uh several songs and they were just beautiful they were different than you know like like mainstream that you would hear but it was they were just so captivating and beautiful so like what what do you have to get at a a specific state of mind when you write or or what do you have uh kind of steps that you have to go through so I come from a musical family um my mom and my grandfather my mom was a violinist um my grandfather was a guitarist and keyboardist and we all sing and the music is a thing that I kept for myself so I I have to be in a certain head space to do songs I do write the music for a lot of them I write the lyrics for for almost all of them uh a lot of them are collaborations uh so in college we had a band called sacran um which was very very like velvet drippy goth uh and I founded that with my my good friend um and psychology lab partner uh Charlie hickey who performed under the stage name Dominic St Charles and we collaborated on a number of P pie together including angels are Weeping um which is sort of like my goth power ballad uh and the other folks that I do a lot of collaboration with would be H noox Arana so Joseph Fargo of month graphics and William petski uh who live around here uh and Vargo does uh amazing art like if you do like Universal Studios like haunted attraction stuff you've seen his stuff uh and you've heard his music and with with Vargo stuff with noox Arana weirdly because of my work with noox Arana I can say I have been on a billboard top 10 list two years in a row and I I did see that and I was really impressed I'm like wow like hey and all like they that was a holiday album we wanted to do like Fargo wanted to do a thing that was not just like super cheery Christmas carols but like the the ones that had like a more somber tone to them like God rescue mared gentlemen um the one that I sang at his request was past time with good company a couple of like older like medieval magical and whatnot um and just I I love I love singing um it's a way of like really releasing like emotions and ideas that don't fit neatly in words otherwise like they just sort of like open you know your heart up and it just pours out now you were saying that your mom played the vibe and is there instrument that you play I I can play piano and flute um I am best used with my voice um at this point I'm very very out of practice with the flute when my mom passed H to honor her memory I tried to learn her violin and then I decided that the absolute best way to honor her memory was to not touch her violin again got you good point strings are not my are not my thing like if I I can pick up anything that's a woodwind and probably figure out how to how to get some sort of Melody out of it in a couple of hours um read read instruments as well so i' I've played clarinet I've played saxophone um I am less thrilled with brass but it's more because of just like the amuser the way it makes my mouth feel um but strings just evade me um my grandfather was very dis he wanted me to like you know be able to play guitar with him and it's just it's not my thing well you do great at singing so there you have that uh let me ask you something can you explain to maybe people who do not know that's swatching um what a psychic vampire is okay so a psychic vampire is a person who needs to regularly and actively take human vital energy in order to maintain their health and well-being most folks in the Paranormal or in you know psychic circles encounter the idea of a psychic vampire as a predatory person or or entity uh that takes this from you without your permission but the the quality the characteristic of being vampiric is something that some people just have um and it is a thing that runs in my family uh and most my grandfather never called it vampirism um he just understood what it was and how it worked and what it meant he had to do in terms of his relationship with energy uh and you know I I didn't get to find that out until I was my TW in my 20s we we complicated family things I didn't meet him until I was in my 20s um but as I was learning about my psychic abilities as a child uh you know here I am in this family where it was okay to be psychic and sensitive and have dreams that come true and completely freak out when I dream about the space shuttle Challenger blowing up the night before it happened um but becoming aware that there was something about my awareness of the energy of other people and and recognizing that I was having this interaction with it uh that I could take it and that I that I actually kind of needed to um that was a more complicated Journey uh it it sent me down some rabbit holes where at the time the only books that described that capacity were very negative uh that you know anybody who did this was automatically you know evil and horrible and there was something just wrong with them um and I that wasn't my experience like if I were doing it without somebody's permission sure that a that's a dick move um but you know learning to work with people's energy and do an exchange rather than just become you know a classic movie Vampire uh that was more the thing it functions on the exact same mechanics that giving energy with like raiki or hands of light does like it's just that exact same mechanic in Reverse uh the funny thing in college was running into a first generation Chinese and americ I was doing research to find like you know do you have the word vampire for you know in your culture and in your language do you have the word psychic vampire and like they were like no we don't because if you have low Chi you have high Chi you just share Chi and everything's fine and I'm like wow my life would be way less complicated if that was the attitude I'd been raised with but instead I'm like here going like does energy exist is this all in my head what's going on right um so so I wrote my book the psychic vampire codex so other people didn't have to grope in the dark the way I did and sort of wrestle with the am I a monster like what's wrong with me nothing you're just it's like um you know it's like being neurode Divergent now like we used to look at things like that as like this great stigma um it's a horrible thing there's something wrong with you you're broken as opposed to some people are just different and that's not necessarily bad or wrong it just means that they interface with the world differently and it's um really nothing wrong with that you know everybody like you said everybody's different and I think that it's good like you said it's kind of a give and take situation instead of you know like because uh you think you hear a psychic vampire and you think of somebody just sucking the life out of you or all depleting your energy when it's not necessarily the case I mean the key is consent and the thing is we don't think about consent in every case like energy healing I've met plenty of uh very well meaning like raiki practitioners like they're they're like really really they just learn a new maneuver and they like walk up to you without even asking and start just like beaming energy at you to heal you and that's the exact same thing like they did not ask for my consent they are doing a thing that is that is affecting me uh so whether you give or take or read someone you know anything that is going to impact them personally ask for their permission like make sure they're okay with it before you do it uh if you don't that's an attack whether you're giving or taking I like that that is a good philosophy um where do you see yourself like in like five years 10 years I mean slowly scaling back I mean I'm not quite retired at this point but I will say that after 20 plus years of bopping around the country to conventions and haunted locations and everything I really like sleeping in my own bed yeah uh and like the whole shutdown with the pandemic really drove that home like I so many people languished when they couldn't leave the house and I was like oh finally quiet I can read all the books I was like B just Meredith from that old classic uh Twilight Zone you know time enough At Last I can read anything I want right U so I see myself probably reading more books um I've been doing um like creative projects that just that are just there because I take joy in doing them uh so I I make little games and I create these uh little journaling journaling experiences like I just did one called Feast of Ravens that is uh an exploration of like an afterlife journey and you know it it tells a story but it also challenges the person who's reading it to like think about like what what decisions would I make if I was moving from one life and moving on to the next and I had to give up parts of myself like how do I change how do I grow um so playing a little bit more with my Fiction with my gamees um you know with different like hybridized art projects and I don't know letting myself relax into that the world is yours I mean it's just out there and I mean you're so creative and and there's very a lot of avenues that you can take that you know would be good artistically like you said now do you cook or or does your wife she cooks mostly or uh my wife's idea of cooking is opening a can without shame or or like like that I I I actually enjoy cooking a lot um I love working with different types of spices uh and I also like like anything that it's like Alchemy like it's it's like magic I love baking much to the uh detriment of everybody's waistlines around here what's your specialty brownies I like to make um my my legendary brownies involve uh a little bit of shamb board uh and then a thin ribbon of like sour cream not sour cream um cream cheese oh cream well that's even better cream cheese yeah yeah no not sour cream a basically like a little little cream cheese ribbon uh with raspberry jam and then in the batter is chamboard so it's like this like dark chocolate and then like the sharpness of the raspberry and it just pops hey everybody I want to uh talk to you about our sponsors of quest we have Chef Ron's gumbo stop in mety Louisiana the best gumbo it is an award-winning gumbo by an award-winning shelf fabulous bread pudding red beans everything you want be sure to check out chef Ron gumbos stop.com and we also have Area 51 gallery and uh rocket will take care of your merch needs for your business your if you're having a party an event your organization I mean he does the quest buttons for us and so it's really cool and be sure just to reach out at Area 51 gallery and talk to Rocket and he will hook you up also we have Louisiana Pizza Kitchen Uptown wonderful place to eat it is right there by the river bin they have a wonderful patio where you can eat outside it's just really lovely on Wednesday nights is family and friends night where all adult beverages including bottles of wine are half off so you know I'm there and be sure uh to try my favorite the Thai curry no not the Tha Curry the Thai chicken pasta and uh just tell them that Misty sent you and then we have Louisiana Spirits they are a paranormal group here in the state of Louisiana and they are Statewide and they do wonderful investigations they just uh hosted the first ever Cajun Country paraca that was in New Iberia this last weekend and Brandon and I and Katherine we went and set up had a wonderful time got to meet a lot of wonderful people in the Paranormal field so be sure to check out Louisiana Spirits thank you I really appreciate you being on the show um it's like I said it's a huge honor for me I've been following um you know you for a long time and hope that you'll want to come back and and uh visit with us again and if you're ever y'all are ever out this way in New Orleans you know let us know and um I mean it's only 16 hours away from I've Got Friends down there New Orleans is one of those cities where it feels like a second home to me it calls to me yeah I actually have um a cadan French family in Lafayette oh okay um so like there's I've Got Roots down there there's a reason why that space speaks to me but I don't I don't know if you know like New Orleans as a city like she decides who gets to who gets to stay and my experience with New Orleans I'm allowed to visit I'm not allowed to live there like like she she can only tolerate me mucking around in her little Ghost World for so long I think um which is fine but I really do love that City there's so many things about it I mean Frenchman Street and and just the art uh the tarot readers uh and just New Orleans especially the French border is one of the few places on Earth where if I'm walking down the street I genuinely am not sure if the person I'm looking at is physically a person or is a spirit because it is so so thick there it's just i' I've had experiences that I don't think I could have had anywhere but the French Quarter in New Orleans and they're that's it's a very different world I love it and you're right because I mean New Orleans like I always say it gets in your heart and yeah like I've been here like 20s something years and and I just I don't even think about you know living anywhere else because it just gets a hold of you and I just love it here so oh speak speaking of the music I hope you heard bitter ashes I did Bitter ashes I did yes for for Katrina because oh wow that yeah I was here during that and that was that's definitely a whole another story about no i' I've Got Friends with so many stories some really harrowing ones friends who ended up in Houston because they were in the ended up getting stuck in the stadium and those are stories that we will leave for a completely different podcast because they are yes really traumatic yes they are um I want to leave you with with some of your words here um Echoes I seem to have Echoes In My Mind have forgotten memories of ancient time what are they from where do they come maybe From Another Life overlapping this one that's thought provoking and so true so everybody be sure you can uh get Michelle's books on Amazon or go to uh Michelle Banger on bang on.com is that right yeah Michelle Banger if you want to figure out how to spell it just think uh B anger yes last name uh and yeah all of my books all of the games like pretty much everything is like we just sort of like made it a One-Stop shop um I make handmade incense there there's honestly probably an overwhelming amount of stuff because I'm always doing something okay and I can see that because I mean you've always did stuff and you will continue to do that thank you so much for uh being a guest on the show it was so like I said such an honor and so nice to get to talk to you and I will be back next week everyone and until then see you next time [Music]

Channel: Quest

Views: 23,763

Keywords: true crime, paranormal, crime, quest, Louisiana, New Orleans, drag, drag queen, drag king, LGBTQ, ghosts, ghost, nola, medium, mediums, psychic, lgbtq+, gay, gay medium, unsolved, unsolved murders, unsolved cases, haunted, ghost stories, gay community, hauntings, haunting, paracon, paranormal conference, cajun, cajun country, curious crypt, stranger than usual, podcast, queer crypt, psychic vampire, portals to hell, michelle belanger, michele belanger, michelle bellanger, hans holzer

Id: 4UuQ-h-9dY0

Length: 42min 10sec (2530 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2024