Latest / Sasquatch & Sourdough / S2 Ep. 4 | Our Hearts Are Haunted | Real Haunted Houses, Ghost Stories & the Peace of Jesus

Transcript

S2 Ep. 4 | Our Hearts Are Haunted | Real Haunted Houses, Ghost Stories & the Peace of Jesus · Sasquatch & Sourdough

0:10
SPEAKER_00: Here's something about an old house after that.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: More board clicks upstairs.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: The story works closed stands open at the end of the hallway.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly the place where you were supposed to feel the safest becomes a place full of questions.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: I love a good haunted house story.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: Especially the ones about ordinary houses.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: The ones that look like somewhere you might have grown up.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: A little porch, a basement full of Christmas decorations, an attic nobody really wants to go into.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: Somebody makes some coffee every morning, somebody's always losing their keys.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: And then one night, somebody hears something they can't explain.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: I've been reading Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, and there's something about Eleanor that has stayed with me.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: She's lonely.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: She's carrying years of disappointment and servitude, and she's desperate to find somewhere that she belongs.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: There's something terribly sad about the possibility that even a haunted house might begin to feel like home to someone who has been longing for one.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's the part of what makes Jackson's story so unsettling.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: It's not simply what might inhabit Hill House, it's what Eleanor has brought into it.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about that world word lately, haunted.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: We use it to describe houses and graveyards and abandoned buildings, but we also use it to describe memories and regrets, grief and pain, and people who can't seem to escape something that happened years ago.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: We talk about being haunted by the past.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I wonder whether the most frightening thing about a haunted house is the possibility that we might recognize something of ourselves inside of it.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Sasquatch and Sourdough.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, guys, welcome back to Sasquatch and Sourdough.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: It is Halloween season, and I am so excited to bring this episode to you.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: I've been working on it and finding some really cool encounters from haunted houses and a couple from Maryland, and actually one that's very close to me.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: So it's been really fun doing some research.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: But I wanted to welcome in anyone that is new here.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys so much for checking out the podcast.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: If you like it, please leave me a comment, like, share, subscribe, all that stuff.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: The best way to get in touch, honestly, really the best way, is Instagram.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: If you send me a DM or if you send me an email at sasquatch and sourdough at gmail.com.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm not really messing around with the website too much.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: I kind of feel bad because I had intern Rob just make a whole website that I never really check the messages on.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: But if you send me an email, I will definitely get back to you.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: And thank you for those that have sent emails.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, I've been really enjoying hearing your encounters.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: So welcome, guys.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: This episode is exciting.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, I kind of have a hard time with Halloween and don't know really where to put it.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: I feel like during this time of year, just because of my work uh in production ministry at church, I am basically already in Christmas.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: So Halloween kind of just, I don't know, I kind of just leave it where it is.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: Um we still do trick-or-treating and we still do parties and stuff like that, but I've just been thinking about the word haunted lately.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: So this is kind of where this episode's gonna land.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: So happy Halloween, guys, for all who celebrate in whatever way you celebrate.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: Let's dive in.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: In 1994, a family moved into an old house in Upperco, Maryland, a rural community in northern Baltimore County.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: Rachel Aveira Child was four years old.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: Her brother Josh was two.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: The house was already more than 80 years old with three levels, a little porch, and a piano that had been left behind.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: That sounds pretty awesome.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: According to Rachel's account, the piano was where the strange activity had begun.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: Her parents were awaken one night by the sound of somebody playing it.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: Like that is classic haunted house.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: That's where it all begins.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: If there's a piano, I just think I just think we just watched Ghostbusters and I think of the scene where Venckman goes into uh her apartment for the first time and he like tickles the ivories of the piano and says, they hate that.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh my gosh, it's my favorite part.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, I digress.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: So her parents were woken up by the sound of somebody playing the piano, and when they went to investigate, nobody was there.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, that's pretty creepy in general.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh basically what happened after that, over the years, Rachel uh she recalled other unusual events happening around the house, televisions reportedly switching on unexpectedly, washing machines starting by itself.
5:08
SPEAKER_00: She remembered waking up as a little girl to the feeling of someone touching her back, then turning to see who it was, uh, and she saw two glowing eyes near the foot of her bed.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: Her mother described feeling something jumping on her bed while she was sick.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: She told it to stop, and according to the account, the sensation did actually stop.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: So that detail actually kind of makes me smile because I can almost hear an exhausted mother saying, Please, whatever this is, like get off of me.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm tired.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: The family didn't always describe the experience as threatening.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: They came to believe that whatever was happening seemed almost childlike.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: And over time, the unusual began, uh became part of their everyday life.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: Years later, during a difficult period when Rachel's parents were divorcing, she recalled the activity becoming more intense.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Her brother heard what sounded like a lullaby being hummed.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: There were reports of the attic door opening unexpectedly, and Rachel also described seeing a figure in a long skirt moving past her room.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: Eventually, the siblings decided to address whatever they believed was there.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: They went to the attic where an old bucket of little green plastic army men had been left on the bed.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: Rachel spoke aloud, explaining that their family was going through a difficult time.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: She asked not to be frightened or touched anymore, and she asked for a sign that she'd been understood.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: Nothing happened.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: But the following day, according to her account, the attic door was open, and balanced above the doorway was one of those little green army men.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: Even her skeptical father was reportedly unsettled.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: He later brought holy water home from church and sprinkled it around the house.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: Now, to the family's recollection, um, they don't really know what it caused the experiences.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: This is basically their account.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: Um, and this it basically the source is like an article in Voldemort magazine called Five Real Life Um Baltimore Haunted House Stories.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but they said that the unexplained activity was part of the background of her childhood alongside all the ordinary things families experience.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: And they don't know what caused it, but that is absolutely eerie.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Like she definitely got some sort of contact and communication, unless somebody was playing a prank with that army man, but that kind of gave me chills.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay, next up we are going to Lauraville.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's a neighborhood that's actually pretty close to mine.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's like northeast Baltimore.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: There is a house on St.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: Helens Avenue that became the subject of an extensive family oral history.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: Writer Sean Paul Murphy grew up there, and years later he began collecting accounts from relatives about the strange things they belonged or they believed belonged to the house and started happening to the house.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: Different family members remembered different experiences.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: Footsteps, strange sounds, certain rooms where people felt deeply uncomfortable.
8:29
SPEAKER_00: One upstairs bedroom developed such an unpleasant reputation that the family gave it a name and they called it the Hellroom.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: That's not exactly the kind of thing that looks good on a real estate listing.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: And actually, I can't remember.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Um, in Maryland, I think that you don't have to disclose whether a house is like haunted or not.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: My mom's a realtor, I'll have to ask her, but it's weird because there is actually like state law where it's like some places you do, some places you don't.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: But it's like in general, terrible for marketing.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: I digress.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the story actually takes a really interesting turn in the winter of 1985 into 86.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: According to Sean's family history, his mother uh had a friend named Ted, and he wanted to communicate with a dead aunt using a Ouija board.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh, they went upstairs to the room that already had a reputation for strange activity.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's not take the Ouija board into the hellroom.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how good this is gonna turn out, but hey, he wanted to talk to his aunt.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: Sean later um Sean later interviewed relatives about what they remembered, although Ted himself reportedly had little recollection of the session.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we can't establish that the board caused any uh harm, but the session became an important turning point in how the family understood the house.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: And since we're in Baltimore, I have to mention something.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I believe we actually mentioned this years ago in one of the episodes, but the Ouija board was invented in Baltimore, which is kind of creepy.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh the Kennard novelty company began commercially producing Ouija boards in Baltimore in the late 19th century.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: And actually, the guy that I think developed it, uh, he had a really, really weird death.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: He ended up like falling off of a roof.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: Creepy.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: One of the details that is really kind of sticking with me after I read Sean's account is that the family members eventually began comparing their experiences and kind of talking it out.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: For years, some of them kept their fears to themselves.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: They worried that other people wouldn't believe them.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: We see that all the time here on this podcast.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: People just don't talk about what they experience because they think people are gonna think they're crazy.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: And when they finally began discussing what happened, they discovered that they weren't the only ones in the family who had been frightened.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: So I love that.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: And we can actually um I'm gonna put the links, if I remember, in the description.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: There is uh an article, the article that I found was from the Smithsonian magazine, uh Ouija board history, and then Sean Paul Murphy, The Haunting of 21 St.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: Helens Avenue.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: And he's done like extensive detail, and it's a beautiful house, like by the way.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of it's kind of sad.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: But he's got tons of um articles and actually like a YouTube channel where I think uh they start talking about like individual family rooms or family members like remembering things from different rooms and stuff like that.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of extensive, it's really cool.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh like footsteps, murmurs, all of that sort of stuff.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: And let me actually find um this is just one excerpt.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: It says, While living in the hell room, Mark reported hearing the voices of his mother and grandmother talking about having him committed.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: These voices fed his paranoia paranoia.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: The conversations he claimed uh to have heard never happened.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: It would be easy to dismiss the story as evidence of mental illness.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: However, there were numerous other examples of people hearing mimicked voices in the house.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: And then he goes on and has like his niece, his aunt.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: It's really extensive of the interviews that he's done.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty cool.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, but that specific like excerpt that just reminds me of what like kind of was going on um in The Haunting of Hill House.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: Like that's what Nell was dealing with.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: She was hearing things in her own mind and kind of supposing she's hearing things and kind of making things up, becoming more paranoid, but it was the house that was actually causing it and not real conversation.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: So that's really creepy.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so when I was thinking about this and doing research into the Ouija board, like I mean, I feel like that's kind of common knowledge these days, but it made me think of Dan Aykroyd getting back to Ghostbusters.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you guys know this, but his family uh has quite an interesting history and backstory.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's really cool.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: So, as you know, like Dan Aykroyd wrote Ghostbusters.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: Uh, his great-grandfather, Samuel Aykroyd, was a dentist in Kingston, Ontario, and he also investigated psychic phenomenon.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: So he was kind of like a parapsychologist, just like we saw on Ghostbusters.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: He held seances at the family farmhouse, including sessions with a medium named Walter Ashurst.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: And those gatherings became part of the family's history.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: His father grew up surrounded by stories of spiritualist investigations, and Dan himself inherited the fascination with the unseen world.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: He read the journals and accounts left behind by earlier generations, studied paranormal research, mediumship, and possibly, or the possibility of life after death.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: And then years later, sitting in the same farmhouse, he began imagining what it would become the script of eventually Ghostbusters.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: Here's a man whose family has spent generations trying to understand the invisible world.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: And out of that inheritance came something that would become part of the imagination of millions of people.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: The seances, journals, conversations around the dinner table, all those questions about what might exist beyond our senses, they didn't simply disappear with the generations that asked them.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: They found their way into a story, into characters and inventions and proton packs and a battered old Cadillac racing through New York City, and underneath all of the comedy is a very old human question.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: What exists beyond the world we can see?
15:05
SPEAKER_00: Aykroyd has spent much of his life exploring that question, and he continues to speak openly about his belief in the paranormal and his family accounts.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: And there's something almost poetic about that.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: A family sitting around a table trying to communicate with the unseen, and generations later, their descendant creates a movie about people who make a living doing exactly that.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: I've been thinking about how the spiritual world, or even our understanding of it, finds expression in the ordinary life, in our stories, in our art, in the things we pursue and the things we leave behind.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: I believe we're living in a very spiritual and supernatural world, and that there's a battle going on for our souls.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: But the ways that battle can manifest in the natural world are endlessly fascinating to me.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we recognize it in the things we're afraid of, sometimes in the things we're drawn to, and sometimes perhaps in the stories we spend our whole lives telling.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: And speaking of people drawn towards the unseen, let's go back to the beginning of the 20th century, to an empty house in Denver, Colorado, where 14 people gathered in the darkness, hoping someone or something would answer them.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is really cool.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Um, I found this account of the Fleming House.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh so in Denver, Colorado, in 19 uh in November of 1904, 14 people gathered inside an abandoned brick house at the corner of 19th and Grant Avenue in Denver, Colorado.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: The house had stood empty and abandoned for years.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: Its rooms were deteriorating, its windows were boarded, and its reputation had become almost as troublesome as its condition.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: People said it was a haunted house.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: And eventually a group of spiritualists decided to find out for themselves.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: They gathered inside the darkened building hoping to communicate with the spirits of people rumored to have died there.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: A medium attempted to make contact.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: Participants reported strange manifestations, and the sands produced dramatic accounts of alleged violence within the house.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: But the Denver police had a rather different perspective.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: They said that they knew of no murders or other crimes having occurred there, and they suspected that the house's reputation might have been encountered or encouraged by somebody hoping to drive down its value.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: So that actually re like leaves us with a rather wonderful old mystery.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: A house that people believed was haunted, a group of spiritualists determined to make contact, and police department wondering whether the entire thing was an elaborate real estate scheme.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: So again, with the real estate.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we go looking for something extraordinary.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we find ourselves somewhere we've never expected to be.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: So I kind of want to take us down a little bit of a darker turn.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know, so I can't really engage with this type of material anymore because it just honestly hurts my soul.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm not encouraging anyone that's ever not read this book to go and read it, like, definitely pray about it beforehand because it is a very crazy book.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: But if you guys are familiar with the movie Hellraiser, that was obviously written by Clive Barker.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: His novel is based on that.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: It's called Hellbound Heart.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: And as I was kind of thinking about and like writing out this episode, I remember reading that.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: And there were moments in that book where I was just like, what happened to Clive Barker?
19:42
SPEAKER_00: Like, what happened to him?
19:44
SPEAKER_00: Because there are just these pieces of beautiful writing that describe absolute torture, absolute torment, um, and what it would actually feel like to be in hell, to be so far from God and his grace and his mercy, and to have that darkness in your heart and your soul.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: So I kind of, I don't know, this whole thing just makes me think that it is kind of our expectancy.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: Now, I was in a different situation and heart posture when I was reading that book.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: Um, but even then, even before Christ, before knowing him and his love, I remember just being like, whoa, what does it feel like?
20:26
SPEAKER_00: What does it take to experience this in your soul that you can actually communicate it in your art and in your writing?
20:33
SPEAKER_00: Because it was just beautifully hauntingly terrifying.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's no other way to describe it.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: Like it just, like I said, I wouldn't ever read it out loud again or even go back to that book.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: But I just remember moments where I was like, oh my gosh, this is terrifying to be this far away from love, I guess.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, ugh.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: It gives me creeps just to even think about it.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: Like, ugh, creepy.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: Like remembering those parts of that book.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not saying go read, like, go read it, but it's wild.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: And the movie is absolutely terrifying.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in our fashion fascination with the supernatural, I think we forget that not everything spiritual is something we should want to experience, something that we should go out of our way to try to experience.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: There are mysteries I'm perfectly content to leave alone.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: And that brings me to, of course, a story in the Bible.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: One that takes place somewhere even more unsettling than an old haunted house.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: In Mark chapter 5, Jesus is encountering a man living among the tombs.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Scripture tells us the man had an unclean spirit.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: He was isolated, suffering terribly, and had reportedly broken the restraints people had used to try to control him.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: With.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: He was literally bound in chains and chained to gravestones.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: Day and night he cried out among the tombs and in the hills, hurting himself.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: It's a disturbing scene.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: Imagine living near that place.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: Imagine knowing there's a man out among the gravestones who cries out all night, whom nobody has been able to restrain or help.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: The community knows about him.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: He's become part of the landscape of fear.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: But when Jesus arrives, he doesn't treat the man as a curiosity.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't stand at a distance and spectate about what might be happening.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: He confronts the unclean spirits and the man is delivered.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: There are extraordinary supernatural details in this account, including the spirits entering a herd of pigs and being driven off of a cliff.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: But what I find most moving is what happens afterwards.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: When the people come to see what has happened, they find the man sitting there, clothed and in his right mind.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: Think about that for a moment.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: This man who had been living among the tombs, separated from ordinary human life, is sitting peacefully in the presence of Jesus.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: And strangely enough, the townspeople are afraid.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: They've witnessed the aftermath of a miraculous deliverance and they asked Jesus to leave.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: I find that remarkable.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes even the work of God can unsettle us when it interrupts the world we've grown so accustomed to.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: But there's one more detail that I love.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: The man wants to go with Jesus.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus tells him to go home to his people and tell them what the Lord has done for him.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: Go home.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: After everything he's experienced, after living among gravestones, being separated from his community, Jesus sends him back into ordinary life with a testimony.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where the heart of this episode really is.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus wasn't interested in turning the man's suffering into an extraordinary event, a story for all the people to marvel at.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: He restored him.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: He gave him his life back, and then he sent him home with a story to tell.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: I still love haunted houses.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: I love the old stories and strange encounters, dusty newspaper clippings, and the mysterious things that linger long after everyone involved has died and gone away.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's more room for curiosity.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: There's room to ask questions.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: There's room to admit that we don't know everything or have all the answers.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: But I also think there's a difference between investigating something strange and allowing it to become the center of our lives.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we carry things with us long after they've happened: fear, grief, regret, memories we wish we could change.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we become so accustomed to carrying them that we forget life could be different.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: There's something Jesus says in John chapter 14 that I find especially beautiful in the light of all these haunted house stories.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking to his disciples about what's coming.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: They're going to face uncertainty and grief and things they don't yet understand.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus tells them that he and the Father will come and make their home with and make their home with the one who loves him and keeps his word.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: Their home.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: After an evening spent talking about what might inhabit an old house, I love that Jesus uses the language of home.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: And a few verses later, he promises his peace.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: Not the kind of peace the world gives.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: Not peace because every question has been answered.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: Not peace because nothing frightening will ever happen again.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: His peace.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: And he tells them not to let their hearts be troubled or afraid.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that means we're supposed to ignore the reality of evil or stop being discerning.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: But I do think it means that fear was never supposed to be the foundation of our spiritual lives.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: We're meant to live in the presence of God, to listen to the Holy Spirit, and to love the people that are around us, to be courageous and faithful in the time that we've been given.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: But I don't think I want to spend my life becoming an expert on darkness.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: I want to know Jesus.
26:50
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's the part of the haunted house story we don't talk about enough.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: Not what happened in the house, but what happens to people who live there and whether they can find peace.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: But I don't think watchfulness is supposed to mean living in fear.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: That's definitely gonna be another episode.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: But for right now, for this Halloween season and this Halloween night, hopefully you guys are listening on Halloween and you're gonna do cool things tonight.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: Definitely be watchful, be discerning, and stay covered.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: Definitely in the blood of Jesus.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: So until next time, guys, remember, the truth is out there, God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.