Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Coast to Coast AM. My guest Sterling
Speaker 2: moon Is. She has a new book out called Talking
Speaker 2: to Spirits, a Modern Medium's Practical Advice for Spirit Communication,
Speaker 2: And I wanted to ask you, Sterling about we were
Speaker 2: talking a little bit about animal communication beforehand. What are
Speaker 2: some of the the benefits of communicating with spirits and
Speaker 2: some of the downsides of it, Like how do you
Speaker 2: do it safely?
Speaker 3: So some of the benefits I think are just it
Speaker 3: makes the world a lot more interesting. It also, you know,
Speaker 3: I feel like the longer you've probably heard this before
Speaker 3: that like I feel like the longer that you dive
Speaker 3: into this type of stuff often the less concrete answers
Speaker 3: you realize. You realize that we don't have any cock answers,
Speaker 3: you know, especially when we come to spirit of the dead.
Speaker 3: You know, we're not going to know what happens until
Speaker 3: we cross that threshold ourselves. And I even kind of
Speaker 3: wonder if we will ever fully get the you know,
Speaker 3: I have a feeling there's even more mysteries that will.
Speaker 4: No one's ever really come back to tell.
Speaker 3: Right it's true. And yeah, and so I feel like
Speaker 3: in some ways it almost can. It can bring comfort,
Speaker 3: It can bring it can help people to you know,
Speaker 3: establish faith. It can just make things fun and more interesting.
Speaker 3: It can help you to not be scared, you know,
Speaker 3: especially for folks who maybe they've you know, experienced like
Speaker 3: living or working or having to be in places that
Speaker 3: have a lot of spirit activities. Sometimes learning how to
Speaker 3: proactively you know, state your boundaries. And also just it
Speaker 3: gets pretty empowering to get over that that fear. Some
Speaker 3: of the drawbacks can be not having good you know,
Speaker 3: if you don't have good boundaries, if you you know,
Speaker 3: because it's it's kind of like even with living folks, right,
Speaker 3: Like we will invite people maybe into our home, but
Speaker 3: most folks we want them to eventually go back to
Speaker 3: their own home. Or we don't want them with us around,
Speaker 3: you know, we don't want people necessarily maybe joining us
Speaker 3: in the bathroom. Or I'm always amazed by how many
Speaker 3: folks will be like spirits will come and visit me
Speaker 3: in the shower. Shower dough seems to be like a
Speaker 3: common thing. You want boundaries when you're in the shop, right, right,
Speaker 3: and so, and also I think sometimes folks don't are
Speaker 3: just a little fool There are some folks who are
Speaker 3: a little foolhardy, I think with who they tried. Like
Speaker 3: if you are somebody who's like, I want to go
Speaker 3: out and contact this person that maybe did terrible things.
Speaker 3: Like every time I hear about somebody who's like, I
Speaker 3: want to go and like, you know, try to communicate
Speaker 3: with somebody that was like a you know, serial killer
Speaker 3: or something like that, I'm just like, do you not
Speaker 3: see how that could end poorly?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: Now, what are some of these super interesting communications that
Speaker 2: you've had, maybe that you remember with one of your clients,
Speaker 2: or experiences that you personally had.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, There's been so many over so many years.
Speaker 3: Here's a couple of my favorites. One was when I
Speaker 3: had I had one of my students. She had been
Speaker 3: living in a rental house that was in her It
Speaker 3: was in the you're familiar with Colorado, so Golden Colorado,
Speaker 3: this adorable little mountain community community or you know, it's
Speaker 3: like at the base of the foothills. It's only like
Speaker 3: twenty minutes outside of Denver. But she had been living
Speaker 3: in this little house that she thought was built in
Speaker 3: around nineteen twenty, and she just and she's definitely, you know,
Speaker 3: really sensitive. She studied mediumship with me and just kept
Speaker 3: She's like, I just don't feel like I'm alone here,
Speaker 3: and I don't feel like this house is meant to
Speaker 3: be mine, and would you be willing to come and
Speaker 3: just check it out? And so I did, and we
Speaker 3: we've been I brought out combination of like you know,
Speaker 3: mediumship stuff, but also like bringing out some like you know,
Speaker 3: spirit boxes and things like that. I'm a big fan of,
Speaker 3: like dowsing rods. I always find that those are really
Speaker 3: helpful for kind of pointing me in the direction of
Speaker 3: like where a spirit is kind of hanging out. And
Speaker 3: there were a couple of folks that we were able
Speaker 3: to make contact with. One was this really nice guy
Speaker 3: that seemed to be more connected with a building that
Speaker 3: was this had been there were like several buildings that
Speaker 3: were all rentals, but they had once upon a time
Speaker 3: been all together on kind of like a like a
Speaker 3: bigger plot of land. He seemed to be more connected
Speaker 3: with one of the other old buildings, but he was
Speaker 3: more like a handyman, and so he would kind of
Speaker 3: come in and he was really focused on the kitchen,
Speaker 3: which had been recently renovated, and there were some things
Speaker 3: that just weren't working quite right, and so lights would
Speaker 3: kind of come. She'd feel this presence, and sometimes the
Speaker 3: lights would kind of like strengthen and then dim. But
Speaker 3: in her front room, which was the oldest part of
Speaker 3: the house, she just felt like like there was a
Speaker 3: presence that wasn't super welcoming. And so I tapped into
Speaker 3: the spirit of this older woman and it was very
Speaker 3: I got this strong feeling that she had lived there
Speaker 3: and you know, spent a good chunk of her life there,
Speaker 3: and she liked to sit in a chair that was
Speaker 3: by this certain window. And I kept getting the word
Speaker 3: the name May, and I was like, I feel like
Speaker 3: this woman's name is May. I think that she just
Speaker 3: really wants to be able to sit in this spot
Speaker 3: by the window. She would prefer it if maybe there
Speaker 3: was like a chair here that was kind of like
Speaker 3: her chair. You know, maybe you could give that a
Speaker 3: world just you know, it's gonna be a little weird
Speaker 3: having a chair that only that nobody really sits in,
Speaker 3: but maybe see if that helps things to feel better.
Speaker 3: And I also asked my friend if she sometimes felt
Speaker 3: like if there was like a ghost cat, because I
Speaker 3: kept seeing this little like darting small shadow that was
Speaker 3: like it was small. And she said, yep, sometimes my
Speaker 3: cat will be sleeping right next to me, but I'll
Speaker 3: hear the sound of like little kitty nails in the night.
Speaker 3: So those were all really interesting. But then later on,
Speaker 3: it was probably a few months later, she sent me
Speaker 3: a message saying that she had told her landlord about
Speaker 3: all of this, and it turned out that the house
Speaker 3: was much older than she originally sought, and he had
Speaker 3: found some old original windows in one of these outbuildings,
Speaker 3: and there was a name and a date that was
Speaker 3: etched into one of them, and it was from the
Speaker 3: late eighteen hundreds. And this woman's name was Martha, but
Speaker 3: she went by May. And so that was like that's
Speaker 3: always gold. When you see this stuff and you can
Speaker 3: get verifiable information, that always feels really good.
Speaker 4: She never left.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we get, yeah, I mean we get
Speaker 2: you can get really attached to a home, and I
Speaker 2: sometimes you know, you could your home could really I
Speaker 2: mean what homes protect you. They have roofs over your heads,
Speaker 2: they hold energy, and sometimes the house itself takes on
Speaker 2: a role in or an energy itself, so I can
Speaker 2: understand how the house would be. I mean if I
Speaker 2: don't know if you've seen this before, but not only
Speaker 2: the people in the house, but the house itself takes
Speaker 2: on an energy.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2: This has been a family joke in our family for
Speaker 2: a very long time that the house that my mom
Speaker 2: lives in is just never wants her to leave. It
Speaker 2: will not and every time she tries to get out
Speaker 2: of there, it's like takes her twenty minutes longer.
Speaker 4: It's it's interesting that house.
Speaker 3: Do you think it feels like something that because I
Speaker 3: always wonder too with the houses that are just like
Speaker 3: and there's so many layers you can peel back. Where
Speaker 3: is it something that we create, you know, that idea
Speaker 3: of like how we can create aggrigors, thought forms, whatever
Speaker 3: you want to call it. There's spirits of the dead
Speaker 3: that have like you know, maybe you're attached to the
Speaker 3: land or the house itself. But then I also there's
Speaker 3: like the earth spirits or like the elemental type spirits,
Speaker 3: and that's like and that's like rooted, that's rooted well
Speaker 3: beyond the existence of the structure. And sometimes I wonder,
Speaker 3: do you have any theories on why what it is
Speaker 3: that makes your mom's house so powerful.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's very interesting.
Speaker 2: It's almost like an entity that doesn't want her to leave,
Speaker 2: and we talked about it all the time. It makes
Speaker 2: it really hard for her to get out the door,
Speaker 2: and we used to when my brother and I live
Speaker 2: their same experience, and then even when we go back
Speaker 2: to visit, there's like always something that prevents us from walking.
Speaker 4: Out the door.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if it's the house, So how
Speaker 2: would you remove something like that?
Speaker 3: Well, see, and this is where kind of the way
Speaker 3: that I was taught differs a tiny bit in some
Speaker 3: of the other like series that are out there. So
Speaker 3: I studied with a this Swedish fellow named Johannes or
Speaker 3: Johannes Bjorn guard bach Uh studying folk magic and the
Speaker 3: ways that you know, he taught me to kind of
Speaker 3: approach haunted situation. Spirit encounters was kind of with diplomacy first,
Speaker 3: and so with a situation like this, probably one of
Speaker 3: the first things I'd want to do is just you know,
Speaker 3: have a conversation with like, you know, hey, it seems
Speaker 3: like there's someone here who's making it really difficult for
Speaker 3: us to be able to leave the house. We don't
Speaker 3: like that and we need that to change. But is
Speaker 3: there something that you need? Is there a reason? And yeah,
Speaker 3: he I kind of had always had come at these
Speaker 3: situations with more of a like you need to leave.
Speaker 3: And it's one of those balances too, where we have
Speaker 3: the we are the living beings, this physical plane belongs
Speaker 3: to us. We have a right to feel safe in
Speaker 3: our homes. We have a right to leave our houses
Speaker 3: whenever we want. And at the same time, sometimes like
Speaker 3: if you I've approaching things with diplomacy sometimes like smooth
Speaker 3: things out a lot easier than kind of like coming
Speaker 3: at it of like I will clear you out of
Speaker 3: this house, because then it sometimes can I've seen a
Speaker 3: lot of situations where it can escalate things unnecessarily. But
Speaker 3: you know, so clearing out a house, though, let's like
Speaker 3: let's say the diplomacy doesn't work.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know, oh gosh, I'm more like spiritual
Speaker 5: hygiene for the home is one of the things that
Speaker 5: I think is really important.
Speaker 3: And so you know, a clean home, both physically clean
Speaker 3: and also spiritually clean, can often push out things that
Speaker 3: you don't want there. And so there's like a combination
Speaker 3: of things that I like to use, whether it's you know,
Speaker 3: floor washes that are really specific to whatever is happening
Speaker 3: in the home. In senses, there's definitely in sense blends
Speaker 3: that I've I've been taught that are particularly good at
Speaker 3: like pushing out and clearing out tricksters and negative type
Speaker 3: spirits or spirits with a negative influence, but also kind
Speaker 3: of feeding and bolstering any positive spirit that you know,
Speaker 3: you maybe want hanging around you kind of stay in
Speaker 3: their lane and they're you know, they help to keep
Speaker 3: an eye on things. There's also like once your house
Speaker 3: is clean, you know, you can put up protections and
Speaker 3: wards to make sure that nothing else can come back in.
Speaker 3: There's different you know, kind of every every haunting has
Speaker 3: its own unique like they're there. I mean, every spirit
Speaker 3: is unique, right, and so sometimes which you need to
Speaker 3: push something out or to smooth things over and and
Speaker 3: you know, make things better, it all, it all depends.
Speaker 3: But if you are wanting to keep something out, there's
Speaker 3: something you see in a lot of traditions or like
Speaker 3: witsch bottles us their bottles filled with like you know,
Speaker 3: sharp pokey objects and either ammonia or urine. If you
Speaker 3: want to go old school, and those can be you know,
Speaker 3: placed at different specific points in the home entry points
Speaker 3: to the home, lines of salt or scorched flax seeds
Speaker 3: to uh with with the dedication that you know, no
Speaker 3: spirit can enter, like with the with flax seeds unless
Speaker 3: they can cause those seats to sprout, which obviously they can't.
Speaker 3: You see in a lot of traditions like putting a
Speaker 3: ring of salt around us around a home or at
Speaker 3: the entrances of like doorways or windows, and with the
Speaker 3: directive that no spirit shall patch or pass or like
Speaker 3: in Europe I think it was no witch shall be
Speaker 3: able to pass unless they have counted all of the
Speaker 3: grains of salt. That's so that's the old classic there too.
Speaker 3: But yeah, there's a lot of different like cleaning and
Speaker 3: pushing things out and then protecting and putting words over
Speaker 3: your house is one of the that's kind of a standard.
Speaker 3: That's a classic, and a lot of traditions that's great.
Speaker 2: And I mean, is there just one thing that you
Speaker 2: would say or there's many different things from the folklore
Speaker 2: that you've learned.
Speaker 3: Well, so I would I always start with you got
Speaker 3: to you gotta literally clean your house and so some
Speaker 3: of the things I really like. Again, so it's starting
Speaker 3: with sweeping. You know, there's a lot of traditions that
Speaker 3: like use sleeping as a magical practice, and you're going
Speaker 3: to want to start in the back of your house.
Speaker 3: Start from the back and move to the front, top
Speaker 3: floor to bottom floor, if that's applicable. If you live
Speaker 3: in a fully carpeted place, you can get a room
Speaker 3: or a broom that is I don't know if it's
Speaker 3: pronounced beesome or bessom, but it's like a basically a
Speaker 3: witch broom.
Speaker 4: I was going to say, is that the room is
Speaker 4: associated with the witch.
Speaker 3: And yeah, yeah, or you know, and it's basically just
Speaker 3: like a handmade room that's like used more for like
Speaker 3: energetic or magical purposes. And so you can sweep the
Speaker 3: air like close to the floor, and it's the point
Speaker 3: that you are sweeping out all stagnant energy. It's always
Speaker 3: great if you can sweep right out the front door.
Speaker 3: Open your windows when you clean, even if it's the
Speaker 3: dead of winter, open the window that you are of
Speaker 3: the room that you're clearing. You know you're you're working in,
Speaker 3: because if you want something to leave your house, it
Speaker 3: has to have an exit point in the way that
Speaker 3: I always think about it.
Speaker 2: So when you're doing clearing, any type of clearing ritual,
Speaker 2: you want to open the windows.
Speaker 5: Yeah, windows, Oh, but get it out of the house,
Speaker 5: floor washes.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm a I'm I really like laundry bluing.
Speaker 3: So sometimes you'll see these little you'll find them. It's
Speaker 3: they're little. It's like blue anial. You'll find them in botanicas,
Speaker 3: and they're really great for just like raising the energy
Speaker 3: of a home, banishing out negative spirits. It's kind of
Speaker 3: just like a wonderful catch all. Florida Water is another.
Speaker 3: You know, that's another It's a cologne technically, but it's
Speaker 3: got like, you know, one hundred and thirty years of
Speaker 3: people using it for magical purposes, and it's like a blessing,
Speaker 3: protection and cleansing, so it kind of covers all your bases.
Speaker 4: I've recently heard of Florida water. Where does that origin
Speaker 4: come from?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Geez, so I can't. I know that. I researched it
Speaker 3: for the you know, you just it's one of those
Speaker 3: things you just kind of learn about. And then I
Speaker 3: researched the origins of it from my for my book,
Speaker 3: but I'm going to tell you what I can remember
Speaker 3: off the top of my head. So Murray and Lanam
Speaker 3: is kind of like the standard cologne. I mean literally
Speaker 3: it's just Colonne and uh, but there's just it's been
Speaker 3: like there there's like a whole host of like colognes
Speaker 3: and waters that have been used for different like magical purposes,
Speaker 3: like another one that still here. Folks use particularly in
Speaker 3: like more like you know American you know, root work
Speaker 3: kind of communities is like hoit's cologne that's like something
Speaker 3: you use for gambling, luck or like to feel power
Speaker 3: powerful and get like a really like solid like boost.
Speaker 3: Florida water though has like it's got citrus, it has
Speaker 3: rows in orange orange blossom, it's got a really pretty
Speaker 3: pretty smell. And there's folks you can make your own.
Speaker 3: There's really wonderful makers out Like there's all kinds of
Speaker 3: like you know, handmade Florida waters that you use. But
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, over time it just has and spent
Speaker 3: and a lot of it is like due to like
Speaker 3: the botanicals, which I don't think Marine Lanham probably has
Speaker 3: any botanicals. I think it's probably artificial fragrance at this point.
Speaker 3: But it's been used for so long for these purposes
Speaker 3: that it has, it's like it's almost like there'sn't been
Speaker 3: an aggregre created around that.
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