Amityville Horror, Amanda Woods, Encounters: A Paranormal Experience

In this episode, Anne Marie talks to Amanda Woods, cohost of Encounters: A Paranormal Experience. You guessed it, a podcast about the paranormal. Amanda chose to talk about a haunting in the United States that began a movie franchise, but more than that, it is the haunting that helped to launch the paranormal into the mainstream. Whether you believe in ghosts or not this episode has some fun facts and campfire-worthy stories that may stray off course, but will ultimately lead back to the spooky factor.

The Encounters: A Paranormal Experience is a Paranormal / Supernatural discussion between Amanda and Dakota who seek to unravel the unexplained and unknown.

Encounters: A Paranormal Experience Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/c/EncountersAParanormalExperienceThePodcast

Instagram: @encountersaparanormal

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/encountersthepodcast/

Armchair Historians episodes mentioned:

Eric Walter: My Amityville Horror: https://bit.ly/3kVwNap 

My Amityville Horror Trailer: https://youtu.be/iyZqxv0eWog

Transcript

Anne Marie Cannon: 0:00

Hello, my name is Anne Marie Cannon and I'm the host of armchair historians. What's your favorite history? Each episode begins with this one question. Our guests come from all walks of life. YouTube celebrities, comedians, historians, even neighbors from the small mountain community that I live in. There are people who love history and get really excited about a particular time, place or person from our distance or not so distant past. The jumping off point is the place where they became curious that entered the rabbit hole into discovery. Fueled by an unrelenting need to know more, we look at history through the filter of other people's eyes. armchair historians is a Belgian rabbit production. Stay up to date with us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Wherever you listen to your podcast. That is where you'll find us. I'm chair historians as an independent, commercial free podcast. If you'd like to support the show and keep it ad free, you can buy us a cup of coffee through coffee, or you can become a patron through Patreon links to both in the Episode Notes. Hello, fellow armchair historians. In this episode, I talked to Amanda woods, co host of encounters a paranormal experience. You guessed it, a podcast about the paranormal. Amanda chose to talk about a haunting in the United States that began a movie franchise. But more than that, it is the haunting that helped to launch the paranormal into the mainstream. Whether you believe in ghosts or not. This episode has some fun facts and campfire worthy stories that may stray off course, but will ultimately lead back to the spooky factor. Amanda would welcome and thank you for being here today.

Amanda Woods: 1:53

I thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Anne Marie Cannon: 1:57

I'm so excited because this is for our Halloween season episodes and I love being spooked. And I do ghost tours. And you know I have had I have had some paranormal experiences. So I feel like this is you know, it's my favorite holiday. Halloween is my favorite holiday. So

Amanda Woods: 2:20

yeah, yeah, I love Halloween. I actually have Halloween decorations just like incorporated into my just,

Anne Marie Cannon: 2:28

Oh, you don't even take them down. I don't know. So we're just going to get right off to the races and I'm going to ask you what is your favorite history that we're going to talk about today?

Amanda Woods: 2:43

Okay, so for me when it comes to my favorite history, it's definitely in the paranormal realm. And the paranormal history like paranormal history itself is so in depth and crazy. But to me the one that sticks out the most would be Amityville.

Anne Marie Cannon: 2:59

Oh, yeah.

Amanda Woods: 3:02

I was a little nervous. I won't lie because I had two in mind. It was Amityville or the Myrtles Plantation. Alright, or anything about that? Oh, so that one's from Louisiana. A ghost. It's there's a lot of activity there. But when I think of like, what set paranormal history and like, what made a stamp in paranormal history, it's always comes back to Amityville. Okay. The fact there's so many questions that you can really go into with Amityville. You don't really know. At the time so much paranormal things happen and then it kind of like moves on average evil always sticks out. Do you want me to go into a little bit of the history but yeah, definitely

Anne Marie Cannon: 3:40

because there might be listeners that don't don't know anything about

Amanda Woods: 3:43

it. Okay, yeah. So ever. The Amityville Horror, as a lot of people know it is in a town in like in Long Island, New York. So unfortunately, like with most paranormal stories, it starts with a tragic murder of a family. It's the defeo family. And on November 13 1974, their oldest son Ronald, took a rifle and killed everyone in his family. So that would be six people, both of his parents and his four siblings. And the there was even weird things with the murder because when it happened, none of the neighbors heard any gunshots. And it seems like no one in the family heard anything either, because everyone was found laying the same way in bed. They were all laying on their stomachs. And it was said that this all happened in about 15 minutes and nobody got up and moved or anything. It was very, very tragic. And Ronald himself was saying that he was hearing voices telling him to commit these crimes. After that, in December of 1975, George and Kathy Lutz move in with their three children, George's, the stepfather to Kathy's three children. And they say from the moment that they moved into this place where things are happening,

Anne Marie Cannon: 5:11

did they know about the murders?

Amanda Woods: 5:15

I think so because the defectos furniture was still in the house. They didn't even move it. He was still in the same place. It was quite weird. That is another really creepy thing about this. And George is said to have dabbled in the occult. So the first thing they did do was have a priest come and bless the house. And when this was happening, the priest said he felt a slap across his face and a voice Tell him to get out. Yes, exactly. this all happen in the sewing room. And they said that when they moved in, they could never get the house warm. They had odd smells. There's cabinets being slammed closed, there was doors being ripped off the hinges, and there was also supposedly a green ooze, dripping from the ceiling. There was things with flies, it was just weird from the get go. George also said he experienced his wife transforming into an old woman and even levitating offer their bed. And he said one night he could hear the children's bed slamming up and down up on the ceiling, but he was paralyzed and couldn't move. And they only stayed there for about 28 days and then the family left. Yeah, left all their stuff there and moved out. And okay. And that's and then the story kit continues because two months later, a news crew had a bunch of Ghost Hunters come in, and this is when the Warrens are introduced into the story.

Anne Marie Cannon: 6:48

Okay, just FYI. I lived the next town over from them and Connecticut. Oh, yeah. Do you? I did. I did. I did okay, I'm in Colorado now, but I did and I remember people saying, Oh my god, the Warrens are talking and I'm like, who are the Warrens Okay, and then the person who would tell me the story about would be like, they'd look spooked. And they tell me, I always remember about the Weegee board. And you should never do a Weegee board and you're inviting demonic spirits into your world and all this stuff. So yeah, exactly.

Amanda Woods: 7:26

I have and I will say this I have a strong opinion about the Warrens. But I think they did a lot for the paranormal community. So I have a lot of respect for them in the same breath. But they are creepy and they are involved in this story. They are the ones who are credited with taking the photo of this ghost boy on the staircase. Have you seen this? I

Anne Marie Cannon: 7:49

have seen that.

Amanda Woods: 7:50

Okay, yeah. So it's this boy, he has glowing eyes. I mean, it looks like he's like peering around the staircase. And when they took the picture, supposedly nobody's there. It's really creepy. I mean, if you see it gives you the chills. And it supposedly looks a lot like one of the kids who were tragically killed in that house. So it definitely gives it more credit. And then after that, that's when things really take off. You get a book deal. You get a movie, it just goes from there. Yeah. Yeah.

Anne Marie Cannon: 8:20

And I remember, I think they were on the phil donahue show. Mm hmm. The couple the Lutz's Mm hmm. Yeah, I remember when all that happened.

Amanda Woods: 8:32

Yeah, I mean, it was really, really popular. It really took over the news, everything. That's why it sticks out to me too. One thing I also forgot to mention is George also said that he would wake up every night at 315. And that was supposedly when these murders happened. Oh, yeah. And that that actually, that number follows the story. Beyond even just the Lutz's Okay, that is also really like important to this story. Yeah, yeah. And so they started doing like doing news interviews, being on TV shows, writing a book and it becoming a best seller and then the two years later, in 1979, they made the first Amityville movie

Anne Marie Cannon: 9:16

why this history?

Amanda Woods: 9:19

Because to me, it impacted the paranormal space. Before Amityville, you didn't really have stories taking on a life of its own like that getting book deals, getting movies made out of them. But after that, you know, you're seeing that even the Warrens To this day, The Conjuring movies are million dollar franchises. They're making annabell four or five, they really introduce the paranormal world into the mainstream world where you have ghost hunting shows travel channel is now ghosts, mostly ghost hunting shows, which I really, I really like. Because people are starting to rediscover that spiritual side, and I like, I like it better when it's done in a respectful manner. Some of these ghost hunting shows take it a little too far, in my opinion, because these are spirits like, yeah, so and that's another reason kind of we do encounters because we feel like, all these things should be done as respectful as possible, but still entertaining, and it can be fun. There is something entertaining about telling these stories, their stories, too, you know? Well,

Anne Marie Cannon: 10:33

I think it comes back to and I say this pretty much every tour, every ghost tour I give is that, you know, Why are my ghost tour so popular? It's because it's the big question. It's a big unknown. We want to know, when our loved ones pass on, that they're not just gone. And we want to know that that you know, and, and even though we'll never know until it happens, maybe even not then but yeah, you know, it's it's looking at it talking about it. We all want to do it, whether we admit it or not. Exactly. So, before I go to this next question, is there anything else about the history that you wanted to share with me?

Amanda Woods: 11:11

Ronald changes his story a lot, by the way. At first he would kept talking about that's why a lot of people question Amityville is because Ronald defeo first would say, Oh, I hear voices. And then he said, No, my sister actually committed all these murders and killed herself. And then he said, No, she killed everyone. And then I killed her. And then he's like, No, actually, someone else did it completely. He changed the story a lot. So then people really started questioning if the lessons were telling the truth or not. Because people started coming out saying, Oh, no, we came up with this story together. And when he started changing his story, it started dis kind of discrediting it, discarding it in a in a, in a way. Yeah. But then you had the kids come out and say, come up with a documentary talking about they did experience something and that George Lutz may have been in more demonic practices than we really thought before. And it might be something a little more connected to,

Anne Marie Cannon: 12:22

sir, do you believe the haunting story?

Amanda Woods: 12:26

I think it happened. I think parts of it happened. And I think parts of it might have been dramatize to you know, make a good story. And I but I don't know exactly what it was what who was doing what but there's a lot of questions to it. And that's another thing that I find interesting when you start looking into these hauntings especially popular hauntings. Yeah, so I don't know. I just wanted to mention that too. Because I like to, I like to present both sides. Well, I

Anne Marie Cannon: 12:55

I like, you know, I keep going back to my ghost tours. I consider myself a storyteller. Yeah, a lot of the stories I tell on my tour stories that have been told to me, or stories that I've read about, that I might not really have an opinion about. Or my honestly might not even believe, but I fashioned the story and I tell it and I think that's part of storytelling is that even if it is something that really happened, you know, it might go off the rails a bit and move into fiction or whatever filling in the gaps with fiction. That doesn't mean that it didn't happen. So I do like to try to tell set my stories up in such a way that it's going to be shocking to the person the PBA telling it to. Yeah, exactly. It is shocking what happened with the debate. Oh, family that's just it's horrible, right by Amityville Horror is the name of the documentary that I interviewed the creator of that documentary. They do interview the sun. The the Warrens in the sun and Natha Warren, they interview the wife because husband. Yeah, so I mean, he's, obviously Georgia's very disturbed

Amanda Woods: 14:18

Exactly. I didn't me personally I hadn't watched it yet. But Dakota did watch it. We talked about it in our episode. That was our third episode. When we first started encounters. Our third episode was everything fell back and he watched it and that's why I believe things happen because that man did come out and said, George had some stuff going on. He was doing some weird stuff in there. That's the thing that worries me a lot about when people take the paranormal stuff too far. Yeah, it's because we also cover demonology on encounters. Okay. I don't know what's out there like you just mentioned. I'm not trying to mess with any of it. But I think it's cool to go to these places, you can go to Myrtles stay the night there and you can maybe have a paranormal experience. And like you said, you do tours you like take people probably to places. But you're like, kind of like telling them the story. When people go in are like hunting for ghost. Yeah. So I really do respect it. And I really do like it. I just think I just always want people to do it in a safe way, because we don't know what we're dealing with. Yeah. So I'm sorry. That's one of my little.

Anne Marie Cannon: 15:33

I don't know, I don't get creeped out too much. couple years back, I gave a tour to a mother and her teenage daughter through the teenage daughters sensitive and she could see what do you call that begins with an A apparition? Yeah, she could see them, she could hear them. It was a common occurrence in her life. And it really disturbed her. And so her mother being of the mind that she was decided that, well, this is just a part of who she is. And I have to help her to not be afraid of it. So she, I mean, one of the things she did is she took her on my ghost tour. Yeah. When we were talking that I think the teenager told me that. So there was something in her closet. And she kept experiencing it. And it was really upsetting her it scared her. But she got to a point one day or one night where she got so. So scared. She was angry of being scared all the time. Yeah. And so she yelled, and she said, What do you want for me? And it stopped. And her takeaway from that is that they just want to be acknowledged. Yeah. So I don't know if that's true or not, but it sounded, you know, like, she was really convinced about that. And so I think her mother was doing the right thing, trying to help her to come to terms with this sense, this extra sense, right? That she had.

Amanda Woods: 17:04

And I kind of had an experience like that when I was younger, I wouldn't say that I'm sensitive. I kind of had something like that, too. And that's why I've always been so fascinated with the paranormal and with like, What is going on?

Anne Marie Cannon: 17:18

I was gonna ask you, so what do you what do you think is going on? Do you have a theory about it? Or are you just taking in information? And yeah,

Amanda Woods: 17:30

there's a lot with multi versus shadow people. I couldn't. That's why we cover so much. That's why we don't only just cover ghosts, we cover aliens and cryptids. Because there's so much there's parts of space. We don't even we've clearly we're never going to discover there's parts of the ocean right here on Earth. We don't know what's going on down there. I lean towards multi verses. But I wouldn't stand solid on that either. You know, I just noticed spiritual.

Anne Marie Cannon: 18:03

Yeah, it's energy. Right, exactly. And we don't really understand energy. That's what I always come back to. And I don't really know, I don't I'm not a religious person. You know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. But right. There's a couple things that have happened since I've been doing ghost tours. One of them is, so my friend is the director of museum. It's called hotel, the Paris Museum, and it's in Georgetown. And one of his docents was working one day by herself. And I think she considers herself to be a little bit sensitive. She was there by yourself one day, and she felt there was a presence there. And she went upstairs. And she started recording with her phone. And you hear her say she whispers Is there anybody here today? And then what you hear next, and she didn't hear this with her ears. She's saw it on the video that she took you here and I have the recording and I will send it to you. So yes, please into it. Because this is really this is the one this is the one that makes me say scratch my head. Yeah. So she is lit. She says that, and then you hear a voice and it's another voice. And it's a man's voice. And it's, he's mumbling. And then my friend Kevin, who is executive director of the Hotel de Paris museum says it's almost as if all of a sudden he realizes that somebody hears him. And then he goes, he says I'm not sure the order he says it in but two of the things that he says one is I work here any whispers that I, Joe? And so Kevin's like, after he, you know, observed saw the video. He's like there's no Joe that worked here. But then he started doing research and he found out that there was a Joe. And Joe was very connected to the owner of the hotel that got the founder of the hotel. Yeah. And they had a mining company together. Yeah, they were both from France, I think. And then when Louie depuis dies, who is the owner of the hotel, he dies suddenly joke. This guy Joe takes over, and he's the cook. And then Sophie galley who inherits the hotel from Louie depuis, she's also from the old country from France. She also dies suddenly. And when she gets sick, Joe is running the place. And in the end, Sophie galley leaves him $500 at the turn of the century, so I don't know what that would be today, but it was a lot of money, right? So I love when, well, first, the digital proof proof. And then when the history lines up after exactly, it's amazing. That that's the thing about that that really, because I'm a history geek, so

Amanda Woods: 21:24

yeah, and I mean, so are we, we love it. Like, it's so amazing. And it's amazing how stories connect to like, what I was saying earlier was like that the girl who you've talked about on your ghost tour, and her mom brought her Yeah, and I was young, I used to experience something like shaking me awake every day. Yeah. And then I turn one night, I was like, Okay, I'm gonna see what it is. I turned it looked it looked like a shadow person. Which if you don't know what a shadow person looks like, it's a shadow looking and normally looks like a man with a top hat. I was five. I didn't know what a shadow person was. I saw that thing I can to this day. I'm 30. Now they I remember it vividly, from that night on never bothered me again.

Anne Marie Cannon: 22:09

Interesting, and

Amanda Woods: 22:11

I'm sorry, where are you going to?

Anne Marie Cannon: 22:12

It's like he wanted to be seen.

Amanda Woods: 22:14

Exactly. And that's what a lot of shadow people people who talk about shadow people talk about that. That's when you're in sleep paralysis. You wake up you see that shadow person they're watching you. They're also they don't necessarily interact with you a lot. But sometimes they do just kind of depending. And I work at a historic museum it's called the Loretto Chapel in fun. Oh, yeah. And, um, it's really cool place a great it's a has a great history. It has a spiral staircase. No one knows how, who built it, how it was built. It has no nails, screws in or support. It's really really cool. Yeah. And normally we don't really talk about ghosts there. And my boss might not love this. But there is this piece of evidence we all cannot deny. It happened at like two o'clock in the morning. And you see on our security camera. It looks like a drip. It almost looks like Matt. It's just It's weird. There's drip float down from the staircase. really slowly. Go over to the statue. We have a sacred heart statue. It stops there for a moment. Go over to the Our Lady of Grace statue, and then fly up into the air.

Anne Marie Cannon: 23:29

So it's a drip. When you say drip. What do you mean?

Amanda Woods: 23:32

It looks like an orb? I don't. I don't when it comes to orb kind of evidence. I'm not the biggest fan of it. I think a lot of dust is mistaken for spirits. But this thing was an orb. And it almost looks like it drips from the ceiling. I can't even explain. But it is like an orb looking thing. It's like a glowing orb of light. That just kind of falls from the staircase in a way. I'll have to send you the video I haven't to I'll send it to you. I'll do it. It's It's weird because like I said I don't I don't particularly believe in when it comes to or yeah all the time. I

Anne Marie Cannon: 24:11

questioned it a lot. But this video

Amanda Woods: 24:13

Oh, by the way it moves and the way where it goes it's just so weird. who discovered

Anne Marie Cannon: 24:19

it? How did that get discovered? It set off our sensor. Oh, it's set off your sensor. Dust doesn't set off? Yeah,

Amanda Woods: 24:27

exactly. It's sent off the sensor and it alerted Yeah, it alerted the phone of the person who gets the information and so that's how they knew it. And that's they took they showed us the next day. So yeah, and sometimes you even feel like when I first started working there you feel like something's watching but if you It feels like if you prove yourself if you prove that you have respect for the place. Yeah, it's cool. There's nothing it's not bad. I think it's more like a spirit of protection around this like historic spot. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Because there's a lot of different reasons for things to stay around. It's not always so tragic. It's not always for tragic reasons.

Anne Marie Cannon: 25:08

Yeah, that's true. And I think that the things that I've experienced have been like that. So the town that I live in is called Georgetown, Colorado. It's a National Historic Landmark District, and we have over 240 buildings from the 1800s that are protected. So I always say in the beginning of my tour that you know, spirits paranormal activity, is attracted to what is physical and what is familiar. And I think that's why people are constantly telling me new stories. You know, I have more stories than I can tell during a tour.

Amanda Woods: 25:42

Right? It It's amazing. And another thing I really love about paranormal history is the way you get to share it because it normally is like a verbal history. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely you. I mean, you have books and movies and all this stuff. But even the movies are dramatic size and sometimes even in the, but when someone's telling you about just an experience they had. Is there something different about it?

Anne Marie Cannon: 26:08

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Well, tell us about your podcast. Yeah. First, how did you get interested in this history in this round,

Amanda Woods: 26:22

like I said, from a very young age I, I particularly started experiencing paranormal occurrences so I've always really studied and kept up with it. I watched a lot of like Ghost Hunters. Ghost Adventures. I like that stuff. My favorite part of those shows is when they would tell the story. I mean, the ghost hunting is fun, but it's there to make a show. I liked the stories and then my partner and co host Dakota. He grew up in a place that had some paranormal activity, but he really was into just cryptids aliens and go What are cryptids so cryptids are monsters like something like a Bigfoot? A Loch Ness Monster? Chupacabra. It goes on you're going to get into your like older legends. We do like vampires. We'll cover a vampire stuff like that your monsters, but if you're studying it, it's called cryptozoology. I didn't either actually, until I really started doing encounters with Dakota but Dakota was into all of that stuff. From an early age. And we both really do like history. And we're both theater majors. We met at college at a community college doing theater. I do the more technical side. But Dakota is a musical and theater, a musical

Anne Marie Cannon: 27:43

theater, I noticed that you have music throughout the whole narrative of the podcast. I thought that was interesting. Yeah, does that.

Amanda Woods: 27:51

Yeah, he's a musical. Well, he does more like theater and like musical theater, he does stage. He's really into Shakespeare too. Okay, yeah. And so a couple of years ago, he really wanted to start a podcast and I've always just loved the paranormal and wanted to get into. I just like talking about the paranormal to anyone who will listen to me at that point. And so we decided to start doing encounters we cover not only ghosts, but aliens and cryptids. And even like demonology we even go with can we do conspiracies? So we like to cover like, a lot of different aspects.

Anne Marie Cannon: 28:29

I was gonna ask you specifically about the Amityville, I guess, where do we see this in popular culture? Which I kind of talked about?

Amanda Woods: 28:39

Yes. I didn't even realize how much Amy Ville really impact popular culture. I mentioned with the book. I feel like and I could be wrong, but I feel like this was one of the first you know experience to book two movies. But with the movie franchise, they have now made 15 Amityville sequels, they are still to this day. I think they just released one in 2020 they are still making any film movies.

Anne Marie Cannon: 29:09

Are they all supposed to be true stories? No.

Amanda Woods: 29:12

Okay, so the first one, the original one and 1979 was post is the Lutz's story. And then like I said, no one else really experienced anything else in the house, to the point where they changed the windows, and they've changed the address of the house because tourists were popping up and people were just trying to live their lives there. No one else really talks about anything creepy happening. But when it comes to the movies, I have a friend who has a friend who worked on the movie and said weird things happen during the filming of the movie. Oh, wow. Just like a weird energy weird feelings. And then in 2005, they redid it they made that's the other one that is about the Lutz's where it's Ryan Reynolds, and In that movie I know that Ryan Reynolds in the lead actress I can't remember also talk about having weird experiences. Yeah, they talk about like, 315 every night being waking up. And that's once again, George talked about that, too.

Anne Marie Cannon: 30:16

So they basically remade the movie. I didn't know that. Yeah, in 2005. I saw the original one. Yeah.

Amanda Woods: 30:23

The first one I thought was the one in 2005. I was so excited. I have to watch that one then, though. Yeah, those are the only two that really are about the lessons. The rest of them are just because Amityville has made such a name. And I think that's also when you really start to kind of get introduced to the Warrens. I don't know. We've covered a lot of their cases and I can't remember if they had a case, like a bigger case before Amityville, but they were also involved in Amityville, and they would go on to be involved in so many, so many cases, where people to this day still mention their names. Like when Halloween comes around. You know, you hear about the Warrens, you got four or five conjuring movies like they've really also taken over. That's where I feel like Amityville really affected pop culture because you have movies like The Haunting. In Connecticut, you have all those conjuring movies. These are all based on real stories just like Amityville based on a real story. Those are the Warrens stories. So amedy

Anne Marie Cannon: 31:23

Villa then, goes on to make 15 movies in Amityville. About the Amityville Horror, become now we've become completely fictionalized.

Amanda Woods: 31:35

Exactly. Even the extra cyst was based on a real story, was it? Yes, it was, but it happened to a little boy, we covered it. And I think our second season, there's a lot of a there's another movie called the hunting of Emily Rose, which is based on the Annalise Miguel possession. So there's a lot of them that are kind of even secretly just tucked in there, too. And I think the door was pushed jumping off ultimately by Amityville, in my personal opinion.

Anne Marie Cannon: 32:10

There was a movie I saw years ago it was called I think it's called the entity. Did you ever see that? I didn't know. And that's that's supposed to be a true story. I'll tell you what, that movie scared the crap out of me. Really? Yeah, you'll have to watch it. Um, yeah, I'll make sure I'm looking it up right now, but I'll make sure that T movie is a 1982 American supernatural horror film. And it's based on a true story. That loves scared the crap out of me.

Amanda Woods: 32:48

I love those kinds of things because I like to go back and look up the true story because movies have to have a plotline you know, you got to get you from A to B in 90 minutes generally, but right sometimes you go and look into these things. And I guess my best example, though, it doesn't have a movie or anything. There's a place called Bobby Mackey's and I tried to talk Dakota into the cover and Bobby Mackey's, but it does not seem interesting until you jump into it. And it's it's really the craziest thing to the point where they have a science a bar to the point they have a sign that's like if something happens to you, if a ghost does something to you, you cannot sue us, you know you're taking a risk because someone tried to sue them because of the paranormal activity that was happening there.

Anne Marie Cannon: 33:37

That sounds familiar. Like I saw some kind of paranormal investigation show where they were Yeah,

Amanda Woods: 33:42

they could they a lot of the paranormal shows. Go to Bobby Mackey's because there's so much

Anne Marie Cannon: 33:47

you know what I hate about the paranormal shows? Yeah, it's when they start yelling at the Yes, exactly. Why would you do that? Like, there's no reason to do that. And I think of it I don't know if it's true or not, but if you know, these are spirits that are lingering for whatever reason. I just think you got to treat them with respect, like

Amanda Woods: 34:10

yes, that's and I feel like I get a little preachy about it. But yes, I agree. 1,000% That's why, I mean, they're entertaining. I like Ghost Hunters. I don't think they really i didn't i haven't watched him lately, but they didn't used to do that. But Ghost Adventures and all the ones that kind of came after they're getting to in their in whatever his face is trying to make things happening. They're trying to scare people. So to do that, they have to get things

Anne Marie Cannon: 34:36

done. I don't like that. I don't want either like that. I don't like that.

Amanda Woods: 34:41

Me. Not anymore. I used to but not anymore.

Anne Marie Cannon: 34:44

I don't think it's necessary. It still makes your

Amanda Woods: 34:47

space feel a little negative two because yeah, like Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So I agree. 1,000% I, especially once you hear these stories of the things that happened to some of these spirits, a lot of these are A lot of them are tragic, and why would you go and then start acting? Yeah, like that in somewhere. There's something Right, right. I remember

Anne Marie Cannon: 35:08

in a lot of Ameren to a lot of them. Yeah, exactly. And so like, that's not going to be an effective tool. Yeah, you know, somebody who's just like Lana, that's where I used to live, you know, whatever. Yeah. Like, why would somebody come forth and talk to you if you're being an asshole?

Amanda Woods: 35:28

No, exactly. No, I agree. We were

Anne Marie Cannon: 35:33

talking about your podcast, and what is the name of your podcast?

Amanda Woods: 35:37

It's called encounters a paranormal experience.

Anne Marie Cannon: 35:40

What's it about, like, what happens on your show?

Amanda Woods: 35:43

So we generally start with talking about whatever topic we pick, and we try to switch it up every week. So we'll either do like a ghost one, or cryptids. Versus we really like which we'll both pick a different monster that's kind of in the same realm, and then kind of tell you both the story and see who we think would win in a fight. Okay, I always win. He'll say he wins. He never wins. It's always me. And then we cover alien abduction, or contact or deductions, any kind of alien contact, do we have my friend, her name is Natalie. So come on, and she'll do conspiracies with us. And we'll do some demonology stuff as well. So we tried to like touch, kind of get into every realm of paranormal that we can and we would love and we also do some, like discussions, we'll bring on other guests, we had a guest on who experiences sleep paralysis, and I also experienced sleeppro That's

Anne Marie Cannon: 36:41

horrible. I've had a couple times it's really horrible. And we try

Amanda Woods: 36:45

to present the history from a skeptical and non skeptical side as much as possible. And then we try to give you our opinions at the end what we think about it, what we take away we also like to talk about like, how it affects pop culture kind of like you do it's Yeah, we like just to get a jump into it and get into like, what's going on and tell the story. And we have a YouTube that we're starting up, right? Yeah,

Anne Marie Cannon: 37:10

I heard that and you're doing reactions? Yeah,

Amanda Woods: 37:14

we're gonna do reactions.

Anne Marie Cannon: 37:15

I think that's gonna really fly for you, I think. Thank you. I love watching reaction video.

Amanda Woods: 37:21

Yeah, it's been really fun. We we are even trying to like, we've done a couple of tic toc watching like, scary tic tocs and other scary things and trying to get scared together and seeing if we can find some evidence together. We've done one where we go back to our hometown and talk about our hometown haunts. But we go to different like haunted locations and kind of tell you the history.

Anne Marie Cannon: 37:42

So where are you both from the same place

Amanda Woods: 37:45

we both grew up in the same place, but now we're both in different right now. We're in different locations. I'm in Santa Fe, and he's in Oklahoma. Our next I don't know if I should say this or not. But our next vlog I guess we want to go to Roswell, because it's not too far. It's kind of in between both of us. Okay, and we're gonna go check out Roswell because they have a UFO museum there and some cool stuff out

Anne Marie Cannon: 38:09

there. You said Santa Fe. Is that where you're at?

Amanda Woods: 38:11

Santa Fe, New Mexico? Yeah.

Anne Marie Cannon: 38:15

Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you want to share with my audience?

Amanda Woods: 38:20

No, I don't really think so. I've just, I'm just so grateful to be on here today. I'm really thankful to have that you have me on and that you've listened to it and counters and yeah, when it's a talk, it's really fun. I like Like I said earlier, I like talking about the paranormal. I like talking about history in general.

Anne Marie Cannon: 38:38

Well, I really enjoyed talking to you today. Amanda, thanks for being here.

Amanda Woods: 38:44

Thank you. Thank you. There you have

Anne Marie Cannon: 38:47

it. Amanda woods, co host of encounters. A paranormal experience podcast, talking about the Amityville Horror. To find out more about Amanda and her podcast Be sure to check out our episode notes. Thanks for joining us. Have a great week.