All language subtitles for The.Unbinding.2023.

[leaves rustle]

[Greg] We get a lot of stuff in the mail.

We have a post office box
that’s dedicated just to the museum.

We'll get a dozen packages there a week.

It's a lot of stuff that you might think

is typically haunted.

There's a lot of dolls.

There's a lot of porcelain clowns.

Nine times out of ten,
the things that people send us

don't ever do anything strange for us.

That's not to say that I don't believe

someone when they say
they think something's haunted.

I think that our interaction with
these things is a big part

of why they're haunted.

So when we sever that connection
between the person who has the claim,

they just don't do the same thing.

At least not for us.

Nine times out of ten,

we don’t experience anything.

But that last 10% is
where things get really interesting,

and occasionally there's 1%

that changes the way that we think

about haunted objects.

[Eerie Piano Music]

[Tent poles clanking]

[Dana] A majority of the
objects in the museum

have been donated,

and a lot of them come to us

from clients or people
that we've worked with

or people who really
want to stay anonymous

and they just have something
that they want to get rid of

and they feel as if there's
something attached to them

that they're frightened of.

[Gentle Piano Music]

[Dana] I really think that

when we talk about
haunted objects,

a lot of the time what we're talking
about is maybe someone's trauma,

someone's trauma that they're associating
very strongly with an object itself.

And so oftentimes what
happens is when we become

caretakers of that object, when
it's not in their possession anymore,

it severs that connection,
that trauma connection,

they're able to compartmentalize
that fear into the object itself.

And the second it's
not in their presence,

the second that it's not in their
home or they're seeing it every day,

it gives them almost
emotional space to start to let go

of whatever it is that is either
creating the fear or whatever it is

that’s coming from their... even if
it's just their subconscious mind.

It gives them space to
start letting some of that go.

[Greg] Doing this
professionally was not something

that I planned on ever
doing, really fell into it.

Everything that I know about ghosts,
I learned by accident, trial and error.

My friends and I, we went ghost
hunting for fun when we were kids.

I think we formed our first ghost
hunting team when we were 12 years old,

and it was really just a way of
going into abandoned houses

in the middle of the night, sneaking
out, and trying to get scared.

[Dana] Greg's initial
experiences with

the paranormal were really from a
place of wanting to have adventures

and wanting to go out and
get scared and have fun.

Initially, we ran rival
ghost hunting teams

and he and his friends
were out investigating creepy

cemeteries and me and my friends
were out investigating creepy cemeteries.

And we found each other and we
found that we had some synergy

and that we were some of the only people
at the time investigating the paranormal

that way.

And it became something that
we bonded over, was this sense

that like what we were doing was
fun, but also scary, but also interesting.

And we were willing to do the work
and we were willing to do the research,

but we also weren't really willing
to take ourselves too seriously.

And so that was what
initially bonded us together.

[Greg] I always had
a crush on Dana,

even when I was a kid,

but she kind of
scared me a little bit

because she was a witch.

[Dana] I've been a
practicing witch since I was 16,

and so a majority of my life
has really been as someone

who utilizes energies and works
with with different types of magics.

So it feels like it lends itself perfectly
to what we do with the museum.

And it's really become an asset
to a lot of the things that we do

with these
objects, specifically.

[Greg] I was raised in a
very religious household.

I was supposed to
be a Baptist minister.

So a 14, 15 year old kid

who has this crush on
this dangerous witch...

Yeah, she was a little
scary to me, to be honest.

When you're a kid, the idea

of what a witch is very scary,
particularly if you're religious.

Most paranormal media, whether it's
television, film, books, they typically

depict witches in the paranormal
space as a negative thing.

[Dana] For centuries,
there has been a campaign

to make witchcraft seem evil.

There’s ulterior motives
to make witchcraft seem

as if it’s an evil thing.

Even in the world
that we live in today,

considering that
witchcraft is so popular,

And is something that is on
the rise as a spiritual practice,

there are still
loads of people who

make it their job to

change the way that
people think about it,

to see it as
something that’s evil,

when it really isn’t.

It’s really a beautiful,

in most cases, private
spiritual practice

of magical people who
connect with the earth,

and connect with the energies,

connect with their ancestry,

and connect with the magic
that is around us all the time.

So because what
we’re going to be doing

is drawing this
energy towards us,

what I will do is...

I’m going to take a little dab

of my solar oil...

And I’m going to be
using my dominant hand...

[Greg] Dana is also a teacher.

She does workshops on
witchcraft all across the country

all year long.

Our receptive hand is the
energy that we’re taking into us,

so I’m going to be
using my dominant hand.

And if you’re curious about
this, we’ve talked about this

in many previous classes

so maybe go back and
check the master list.

[Greg] She also has a
digital coven, essentially,

of hundreds of different
witches of all proficiency levels.

And Dana teaches them
practical magic, hands on magic.

And in that way, a lot of
her knowledge filters out

into the paranormal community.

So between her and I, we
cover a lot of ground that I think

is often missing in a
lot of paranormal cases.

[trunk latching]

[soft wind sounds]

[Greg] Back in January of 2016,

there was a post to the
paranormal subreddit by a user who

used a throwaway account to tell the
story of how he and one of his friends

found a strange
effigy in the forest

in the Catskill Mountains.

They did what you're never supposed to do,
and they took the effigy home with them.

[Reddit user] My friend
showed up here at like 11:30.

He's out-of-his-mind-scared.

I've never seen
him like this before.

Long story short, he's sleeping over
because something is in his house.

We found the statue
on Sunday, and I told him

not to take it because
it gave me bad vibes.

But he took it anyway.

He's been an atheist for
as long as I've known him.

So when he told me that
something was going on,

I thought he was just fucking
with me because he knows

I like to watch paranormal shows
and he's always made fun of me for it.

Now he says he
can't sleep at night

because banging
keeps waking him up.

[distant thuds]

By Wednesday, he started
waking up in the middle of the night

feeling like something or
someone was watching him.

This kept happening.

Every time I'd wake up, he would smell
a really strong scent like pond water.

He doesn't believe in any of this stuff,
so he just ignored it until a few days ago

when the statue moved from
his desk into his living room.

He says that every night since
Thursday, it's moved into a different room

than where he left it.

He thought it was his dog moving
it around because it smelled funny,

but his dog won’t
go anywhere near it.

He says that she's actually peed

in the house three nights in a row
and she's never done that before.

Then last night,

someone knocked on his
door at three in the morning.

[slow, deliberate knocking]

When he went to open it

there was no one there.

He said that as he opened
up the door to look outside,

he knew that he
made a big mistake.

Like he just felt like he
shouldn't have opened his door.

At that point,

I didn't have any
reason not to believe him

because it had gone way beyond a
joke, and he actually sounded really,

really fucking
scared on the phone.

He stayed up all night

and then decided to go to the
movies to take his mind off it.

When he got home, he said
it felt like everything was fine

and he decided
to finally go to bed.

This is where it
gets super fucked up.

He says that when he woke
up, which wasn't until like ten,

it was because his dog
was barking like crazy.

[dog barking]

[eerie music rises]

And when he went out into his hallway,
he saw all these muddy footprints.

Not like shoe prints,
but like, barefoot.

Sitting in the living room

was the fucking statue

which had moved again.

And he says that when
he started to go near it,

he heard someone breathing
that sounded like his grandpa

with a tracheotomy.

[raspy breathing]

He peaced the fuck out

and now he and his dog are
sleeping in my guest room.

I've never seen him this scared.

He even started crying.

I have no fucking
idea what to do.

I believe him because he has
no reason to lie to me about this

because it's gone way
too far to be a joke now.

I know that everyone says
not to burn it or whatever.

So what the fuck do we do?

[mouse clicks]

[Greg] They posted
to the subreddit

and said, “listen,
this is what we did.

We're really freaked out.

We don't want to go back to the
place where we found this thing.

We're afraid of
meeting who put it there.

What do we do?”

Eventually I got called to the thread
because someone that we had just shot

a television show with had
listened to Dana and my stories

for like two weeks on the road and
told them, You should get in touch

with Greg and Dana. They
deal with these types of objects.

They could help you.

I tried to give a really
detailed response.

Hey, I get it.

Here's what I would do
if I was in your situation.

It's really important for Dana
and I to never come across

as the people who will
solve your problem for you.

It's very important
for us to give

someone the tools to
solve their own problems.

That said, sometimes

people just seem like they're
incapable of dealing with it.

And in those
situations, we're happy.

We're happy to help.

After responding to the initial thread,
we private message back and forth

a few times and I gave
him some advice on

what I would do
in his situation.

Mainly just: take it back,
talk to it, just address

that you made a mistake and say
you're going to take it back to the cave.

It wasn't too long after that
that he messaged saying

that everything had really
escalated pretty badly.

[door creaks open]

[Reddit user] Hey, Greg.

Thanks for the advice.

Today we went back to my friend's
house to get the statue and return it.

When we got there,

his dog wouldn't even
come in the house.

[drums pulse]

I saw the muddy footprints

and the whole place smelled like a dog
that had just rolled around in the dirt.

He went to show me where the
statue was when he left last night,

but it was gone.

When he found it,
it was in his hallway

and there was a big crack in the
wall like it had been thrown there.

He swears that he
never touched the thing

and left it in its living room.

We told it that we were
sorry about taking it

and that we wanted to take it back to
the cave and asked it what we should do.

I don't know if it was the
feeling you were talking about,

but we both just felt like we should
never go back to that cave again.

He said he felt like we
needed to send it to you.

When we were standing in
the hallway talking this thing,

his dog started barking
like crazy outside.

[dog barking and water dripping]

We both thought we saw a woman
in the dark corner of his living room.

She was totally naked,

really old, and dripping water.

And her...

Her eyes sort of
glowed in the dark.

We both freaked the
fuck out and ran outside.

Whoever it was wasn't
there when we went back in.

We grabbed the
statue, apologized again,

wrapped it in a pillowcase
and put it in a box.

He's just going
to send it to you.

Give me your address and

we’ll mail it to you tomorrow.

[eerie music plays]

[door hinges creak]

[Greg] It was maybe
a week or two later.

A box showed up,
and in it was this effigy

wrapped in an old pillowcase.

And when we rolled it out,
we could see that it was this...

I mean, it was obviously
a handmade item

and it had nails
nailed into the eyes

and a noose strung
around its neck.

And my first instinct
when I looked at her

was that it felt obviously,
it felt very symbolic.

There were very symbolic and intentional
symbolism attached to the object itself.

So the nails in the eyes, my first
thought was, is this to blind someone?

Or to cause someone not to see something
specifically? The noose around the neck,

my first thought was, is
this the silence someone?

Is it to keep someone
from speaking?

Is it to actually kill someone?

Is it to control their energy?

And those two things
were as far as magic goes,

they were so obviously symbolic.

[Greg] One of the things that
always baffled us about the Crone

is that her hands
are to her sides.

And it looks as if the
wood has been split away

between her hands.

Like something
had been torn away.

And we always wondered
what that might have been.

We named it after
the crone archetype.

The two hikers had seen

an old woman
standing in their home.

And the Crone is an old woman,

sometimes seen as a witch.

So we thought that
would be the perfect name

for something that
people were seeing.

That sort of archeytpal spirit.

We did with it what we do
with every object that arrives.

We sit it down and we take
photos of it from every angle.

Then that's really it.

We just sort of go on about
our day because like I said,

nine times out of ten, the stuff that
people send us never acts up for us.

We just make room for it in the collection
and if it does something strange,

that's when we'll
start to study it.

Later that night we
were in the living room.

We were watching television
and we heard a loud bang

in the office.

I didn't think it was
anything paranormal.

I thought it was our cats.

So I get up and I walk in,
realize the office door is closed.

Cats couldn't be in there.

So I went in the bedroom.

The cats are hiding under our
bed, scared out of their minds.

Another thing about having
pets is they're typically

a really great early
warning sign that something

ghostly is happening.

I walked into the office, didn't
see anything out of the ordinary

until I almost stepped on Jesus.

[unsettling music rises]

I look up and there's a
crucifix hanging on the wall

and Jesus has been cracked

right off of the crucifix.

This crucifix only hung on
the wall with a single nail.

So whatever did that
had to have held it on

and pulled it off.

Both of the nails were
missing off the crucifix,

except for the one
that held the hand.

And I looked right beneath it.

And there was the Crone.

That was the first indication
that maybe there was

something strange happening.

[camera shutter beeps]

[Dana] I mean, finding a
desecrated crucifix is definitely

a frightening thing, I think, regardless
of whether you're religious or not.

There's obviously
an intention there.

Religious iconography of
any kind being desecrated

is not really a thing that
you want to see at all.

It almost made
me feel like I had

to be 100% business
with this object.

[Greg] A lot of people want to

jump to that
being a sign of evil,

but I think more importantly,
it's a sign of anger.

And for some reason
that symbol made it angry.

When we thought that something
stranger than usual was happening.

I said to Dana,

“Well, we've got this trail cam
we usually use for Bigfoot hunting.

Let's put it in the room.

And if something is moving
in there, we'll catch it.”

Nothing happened right away.

But one night between the hours
of three and four in the morning,

the trail camera
triggered three times.

One of them had
something up in the corner.

We could easily
write that off as a bug.

There was another one
that had a weird globule in it.

We are not orb people.
Those things never excite us.

They're typically some
kind of a lens artifact.

But when you look closer at
the image, whatever this thing is,

is actually giving off
some kind of a light source.

You look at one of the frames
in the corner of the shots

and you can actually see
it lit up only in that image.

So whatever that thing is

that's floating through the
frame is actually giving off light.

But my initial response was, I
think maybe looking to see where

that light anomaly
was moving from,

because if it was a bug
or something like that,

we might be able to follow the
motion in which it was moving.

When she did that, we noticed
something we hadn't noticed before.

If you look down in the
corner where the carving is,

it moves ever so slightly.

[music intensifies]

Nothing else in the frame moves.

There were things that
were sitting on the table

that were much lighter than it.

Things that would
move much easier than it.

We tried to rationalize how
maybe a truck had driven by

or something, but that
would have moved everything.

That was big.

That's something that is so rarely
captured by paranormal investigators

that we knew this might require

a lot more investigation.

[rain drops on the window]

One night, things
got really unnerving.

[thunder booms]

It was very early
in the morning.

I'd been asleep.

Dana shakes me
awake pretty violently.

And...

I turn and I look at her,
and I'm really groggy.

And I can tell that
she's really scared.

It takes her a second
to actually tell me

what had happened.

[closet door creaking]

The way that it moved,
the way that it felt.

It was like a living nightmare.

Like it felt.

I felt like I was literally
looking at a living nightmare.

I didn't see it,
but I believe her

because I’ve very rarely
seen her this scared.

That's when she

really started to believe
that there was something

that...

had come into the house.

[eerie droning]

[Greg] I'm sitting in the
office doing some work,

and Dana calls me and
I can already hear that

she sounds very unsure.

She says,

Were you standing
on the couch tonight?

I said, No.

She goes, You didn't
like get out of the shower

and stand on the couch and change
one of the light bulbs or something?

And I just laughed because
it just sounded ridiculous.

And she said,
Come here right now.

[camera beeps]

[Dana] And we both kind of
stood there in the living room

staring at these two footprints on the
back of the couch, staring at the wall.

And there was nothing
leading up to them.

They were just...

It was as if they had just manifested
there on the back of the couch.

[Greg] At this point, there were
way too many things to ignore.

So many things were lining up with
the story that had been posted on Reddit.

We realized that we needed
to take our own advice

and address this thing.

So I went into the office
and I grabbed the carving

and I brought it into the
living room and I set it down

on the coffee table.

And we had a talk with it.

And we just say, Listen,

we're happy to share
our space with you.

This is something
that we like to do.

If there's help that you need,
we're happy to try and help you get it.

But you need to understand
this is a coexistence.

We have to live with each other.

And as we're having
this conversation,

we both

hear the sound of rushing water
coming from the opposite side

of the house.

[water trickling]

The last apartment that we
lived in, we'd had a burst pipe.

It's not fun to go through.

I thought, Oh, no, not again.

We get up, we run to the
other side of the house,

hoping to stop whatever
it is that's happening.

But nothing’s there.

And as we're standing there, confused,
trying to figure out what's going on,

we hear a series of loud thumps

in the living room.

We walk back in the living room

and the Crone is gone.

It was sitting right on the coffee
table and now has vanished.

We're looking all over for it.

And eventually I see it
underneath the television stand.

I get down on my hands
and knees and I reach under

the television stand and I
hear Dana absolutely shriek

because the television has
started to tip down on to my head.

If it wasn't for Dana, it would
have smashed right into my head.

This was so upsetting to me that I
said something I never like to say.

I said, if this is how it's going to
be, I'm going to put you in a box.

I'm going to put a lock on it, and
I'm going to stick you on a shelf.

After I'd said this,

we heard three loud
bangs on the kitchen wall.

And I just took that as...
okay, this is how it's going to be.

So I pulled the box out.

I put it back in the pillowcase,
wrapped it up, put it in the box,

slammed the lid shut,

put the lock on it,

and stuck it on a shelf.

And that's where it stayed until
we would go out on the road.

The final straw with the Crone

happened at Michigan Paracon.

[News Reporter] This is the 8th
annual Michigan Paranormal Convention.

It’s being held at the Kewadin
Casinos in Sault Ste. Marie this weekend,

and it’s brought some of the biggest
names in the industry to the U.P.

There’s also the Traveling Museum
of the Paranormal and the Occult.

We travel from coast to coast
and bring haunted objects to people.

We let them hold them, touch
them, experience them for themselves.

The idea is to just give people
a paranormal experience.

Michigan Paracon is an event we
always look forward to every year.

It's one of the biggest paranormal
conferences in the country.

[Dana] And at this event specifically,
a man had come to the event

and he really, really
wanted to see the Crone.

He came back multiple
times throughout the day

and asked if he could see her.

[Greg] And we himmed
and hawed about it

And finally we said, okay,
we'll pull it out just for a second.

And, seconds...

after I pulled it out
of the pillowcase,

all hell broke loose.

The minute that the Crone
came out, it was like a force

shot down the aisle.

The presenter that
was across from us,

her bottle of soda

just popped and sprayed
all over her books.

Just destroyed hundreds
of dollars worth of books.

She was screaming.

[Dana] We then
noticed that the lights

that are going down the
vendor hall are swinging,

The lights are literally swinging
directly over top of everyone.

[Greg] There's
people all the way up,

all the different
presenters down the row

are looking all over the place because
they know something's going on.

And then all of a sudden I
see further down the aisle

on the right hand
side, there's a man

who has his head

slunk back in his chair

and I see blood start
to drip down his neck.

And he has a really
violent seizure.

All of this happened
in the matter

of 15, 20 seconds.

I'm taking it all in,

standing there
holding this thing.

And the guy who
had asked us to see it

basically starts to weep,

and says, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Put it away.

I slammed it back in the box.

And I looked at Dana and I
said, We can never do this again.

This cannot come
with us anymore.

We need to do
something about this.

[Dana] And it was
when the plan first started

and we started talking about the idea
of figuring out a way to bring her back

potentially to the place
where she came from.

[eerie sounds fade]

[machinery screeches]

[Greg] We're a museum.

We are all about
preserving these things.

We're living in a time where it's much
easier to preserve stuff than ever before.

You can even preserve
something by 3D scanning it.

And then the original can cease
to exist, but people can still study it.

They can see every detail of it.

We’re going to take
a haunted object.

We’re going to 3D scan it.

And then we’re
going to 3D print it.

This is a first. This
has never been done.

[Gowin] I’ve never
heard of this being done.

This is a completely uncharted
territory. It’s a new horizon.

And I’m really excited
about the possibilities.

[Greg] Our friend Jason Gowin
was our 3D scanning technician.

He had all the equipment
that we needed.

He had a powerful enough
computer to run the software

and he'd already scanned
dozens of our different artifacts.

So he was the perfect
person for this project.

My name is Jason Gowin.

I have been a paranormal
adventurer slash investigator since

forever? Like 1998

I guess was when I officially
started doing all of this.

Jason is one of
my oldest friends.

We were on the same ghost hunting
team when I was like, 13 years old.

If there’s something
here, tell us your name.

If you’d like us to leave,
give us some sort of a sign.

[Greg] He was the wheel man,
because he was a little older than us.

[Friend] You know, I’ll
give you credit, Greg.

You were the first...
You were the first of us.

[Gowin] When Greg decided to
play a prank on one of our friends,

he asked me to
go full “Blair Witch”

and hide in a cemetery and scare
the living bejesus out of the kid

with as much “Blair-Witchy”
stuff as I could possibly muster

and we did it.

[Greg] Yeah! Because
we were trying to terrify you!

Yeah. And you fuckin’ did.

And we had so much fun that we
started checking out legends for real.

[Greg] Get down! Get down!

[scrambling and scraping]

I happened to notice that
Greg had put out a thing

that he was looking for
someone with a 3D scanner.

And so he kind of told me a little
bit about what he wanted to do

with scanning the objects and
making recreations of all of them.

Is it a responsible
thing to do? Who knows!

Because I have no idea
what’s going to happen.

And I was really interested

I’d been looking for a new
paranormal adventure to have and...

I got what I asked for.

They have their own little
souls and personalities

and we’re about to
make them digital.

And then tangible again.

Obviously,

we have some big news
to share, but we'll wait until

we’ve gotten this thing
spread out on all the channels.

[Greg] Before we started our
museum membership program,

we used to host pretty
regular public live streams

and during these live streams we would talk
about different items in the collection.

Sometimes we'd do
experiments with them,

but we held a special
live stream in 2017

where we were announcing the launch
of our museum membership program.

During this live stream, we
were discussing the Crone

and Jason is in the comments.

And we’ve made a lot of
breakthroughs with the box

since we last chatted, I think
we’re really onto something...

Dana and I saw it

and we were horrified because
that's not the kind of joke

that you make to something
as scary as the Crone was.

It seems that ghosts don't
have a great sense of humor.

They seem to be very literal.

And I continued to
watch your live feed.

And all of a sudden I heard this
boom-boom-boom-boom-boom

walking around in our upstairs.

[creaking footsteps]

And I looked and could see
Lyla, our cat, was laying down.

And so I was like, okay, I'm going
to have to investigate what that is.

I got up, I started to walk across
the kitchen floor and I stepped in wet.

And that's when the light
caught one of the shapes.

And I'm like,
That's a footprint.

I followed the
water to the door.

The door was open.

And we had shut and locked it.

The porch light was on,
it shouldn’t have been.

But there were no
tracks in the snow.

But then I noticed
it went back and

back towards our bedroom.

And then I called
you immediately.

And you guys were like,

The Crone!

I know it was Dana that
said, Did you go upstairs?

And I hadn't even thought of
that because Jace wasn't home.

So I had no reason
to even check.

And we followed the footprints,

which then went up our
stairs, which are carpeted,

up around the hallway,

and they went right towards
his door, which had been shut,

and...

it was open.

So we went in,

turned on the lights,

and the footprint stopped
and left a giant puddle

directly in front of his crib.

“Tille Boom”

[Greg] Fortunately for him,

his baby was at his
mother-in-law’s house that night.

But it was enough
to freak him out,

and he realized
he'd done something

he shouldn't have done.

And he asked Dana,

give me whatever you
can to help me with this.

What do I do? What do I do?

So Dana sent him a package
full of all kinds of different stuff,

some things that he could burn,
some rituals that he could do

in order to seal
his house back up.

And from that point on,
he was absolutely terrified

of the Crone.

[Greg] We knew that we were
going to take the Crone back

to where it had been taken from.

And so it was important for us to
get a 3D scan of her before we did.

So we planned a live
stream on Halloween night.

And Jason, of course,

refused to do it at his house.

Happy Halloween, everybody.

We are in a secure
location, in a hotel room,

here in Sayre, Pennsylvania.

I don't think any of us
could have anticipated that

that would be the night that
everything came together with the Crone.

We made every decision about

what we were going to do with her
and how we were going to return her

based on what happened
during that live stream.

What are you going to be doing
tonight? What are you going to be trying?

The Estes Method.

I like to describe
the Estes Method

as a form of
technologically-assisted mediumship.

It is a really interesting

technique that makes
use of an SB-7 spirit box,

a really traditional tool in
a Ghost Hunter’s toolkit.

It's really nothing more than

a radio that has a sweep
function, so it just scans through

AM or FM radio stations
at a fast rate of speed

and a lot of paranormal
investigators like to believe

that the ghosts can
manipulate that sweep

and then when you hear a word, it
means that a ghost has somehow said it.

[white noise crackling]

Can you say the name of
somebody that you want to talk to?

- Uh, did it just say my name?
- Yeah.

I never liked that very much.

So when I saw what our friends Karl
Pfeiffer and Connor Randall came up with,

I was blown away.

What Karl and
Connor started to do

is they would use a blindfold
and a pair of headphones,

and the headphones would
plug directly into the spirit box,

meaning that the only person who
could hear the feed was the medium.

That person,

their world was just the audio.

They couldn't see anything,

and the only thing that they could
hear were those sweeping radio stations.

So when whoever was acting as the
questioner would speak to the ghosts,

occasionally, they would start to
get an answer from the medium,

who didn’t see
them or hear them.

When I watched Connor become a mouthpiece
for something that we couldn't see,

I knew there was something
special about the Estes Method.

I was really fascinated with it.

- That was Dana talking
- Now that Dana is “in”,

we’ll pull the Crone out.

Since the last
live-stream that we did.

There is motion, yes.

We’re going to take you home,
we’re going to take you back.

But before we do that, we
want to take your picture.

That camera is going to
send out little beams of light

that are gonna bounce off
the artifact that you inhabit.

It’s not going to hurt you.
It’s not going to choke you.

It’s going to bounce...

It’s not going to
hurt you, I promise.

It hasn’t hurt
any of the other...

It, it... I promise,
it’s not going to.

Oh, it’s getting a
really smooth, fast scan.

I keep getting weird, sharp
pains in random places.

I’ve got one in my upper thigh.

[Greg] Dana spent most of the
live stream under the Estes Method,

so she was unaware of anything
that was going on in the room.

The first scan, there were two
moments that Dana complained

about feeling sharp pains
at different points in her body.

At both of those moments

we were actually
performing one of the scans.

What?

Well, I’m going to.

I have to.

”Don’t make that”.

You don’t want us to print you?

It’s almost done, sweetheart.

There’s like two people talking.

Two voices.
- Two?

”More names”. It just
said “more names”.

- Oh man, oh man.
- There’s two voices.

There’s a very deep,
growly, scary-sounding voice

that just keeps
trying to scare me.

- Okay. Whoever’s calling
names, - But there’s another,

there’s another voice, that’s
a woman’s voice underneath.

If you are attached to the Crone,
can you tell us what your name is?

She said that as
soon as I saved it.

Alright.
- This is so weird.

- Oh yes.
- It’s flawless.

Oh my god, thank you.

The only thing it didn’t
scan, there’s no nails.

- It didn’t even pick them up.
- Wow.

Okay. Good -
Here, let me save it.

The first scan that we did,

it went very smoothly.

In fact, it still stands
as the number one

fastest, smoothest,
best scan we ever got.

The only thing that was weird
about it is that when we did the scan,

there were no nails in the eyes
and there were not even divots

where the nails should have
been. And there should have been...

Because it scans the surface,
it bounces light off an object.

So the light hit those and it should
have bounced off the nails, but never did.

And to me that to this day, it's
a still very bizarre phenomenon

that should have
happened but didn't.

I keep hearing this thing, it’s
not a word but I keep hearing it

over and over again,
and it says, “Biddum.”

- Biddum.
- And it’s a man’s voice.

And he just keeps saying
“Biddum” and I don’t like him.

Is it his name?

Are you Biddum?

We’re doing another
scan just to be safe.

Well, you’re not the
first to call me that.

- If... if...
- Ah! Pain in my back now.

If you guys have questions...

Three times throughout that hour and
a half long session, I felt physical pain.

And I remember thinking that it was
very interesting because I had never felt

anything physical in connection
to doing the Estes Method before.

So I felt pain in my thigh, in
my upper back and in my throat,

and it felt as if it was
happening at random.

And I remember it was strong
enough that I felt it was important

to vocalize it, even though I didn't
know if it really had anything to do

with what was happening
around me at the time.

Is there somebody...

Are you being held
prisoner by something else?

That was so sad.

It’s frozen.

There’s two voices!

Who is talking to me right now?

And what’s your name?

Biddum,

You were alive?

What the fuck did I tell you?

I wasn't terribly familiar...

I knew of the Estes Method.

But here I am
watching it happen,

you know, in person and happened
very intensely and build very quickly.

So I was... to say I was
hooked is an understatement

because it was truly mind-blowing
what I was watching happen.

Something is...

There’s a woman
crying. A crying voice.

Under all of it.

As it goes, duh-duh-duh-duh,
I can hear a woman crying.

Male voice number
two, are you Biddum?

What does that mean?

Don’t ignore the question.

I’m too loud?

I think that the
woman’s being too loud.

And this guy Biddum,

Is telling her to shut up.
- He’s telling her to shup up.

So he wasn’t addressing me.

So they’re not talking to us,

they’re talking to eachother?

I think that we’re watching
a conversation happening

between two entities.

[Dana] When you
do the Estes Mehod,

one of the things that I
don't think is necessarily

as important is the idea of
listening for the same sounding voice.

I think because you're
listening to random radio stations

and lots of white noise,

it's easy to sort of think that
you're hearing the same person

talking to you if it sounds
like the same voice.

And that's kind of something
that I really don't agree with.

I think it's not really
necessarily as important,

but what was really interesting
was this night specifically,

I felt as if I was hearing the
same two voices distinctly,

a male voice and a female voice.

And that felt important.
It felt different.

I had never experienced
anything like that before.

I was hearing two people
have a conversation.

What I don’t understand is

who did this to this?

Biddum?

Who are... who is in the
room with us right now?

That’s how he said it.

Shhh!

I’m trying to figure out
who I’m talking to right now.

That was loud.

- Oh, fuck.
- I made it.

Brother Biddum?

The nice thing about doing these live
streams is there's sometimes 100 people

or more watching them and
they're all sitting at their computer.

So plenty of people
were Googling this

and they had all kinds of different
ideas about what this could mean.

Some of them found translations
of the word that related to prayer.

It seemed that whatever it
was, the root word of Biddum

had something to do with prayer.

Okay. Where’s the cave?

It’s high. Is it in
the mountains?

It’s in the mountains?

What mountains?
New York mountains?

The Catskills?

Okay.

Is it in a park?

Something just put like a big...

a sharp pain in my throat.

Between the second and third
scanning, there were 40 minutes.

So within that 40 minute time
period, I did not experience

another physical sensation

until they literally fired up the
the scanner for the third time.

And that's when I
experienced the pain again.

I like to think that that night
and that Estes Method Session,

that I really did
connect with her,

with the energy of her, with what
had been happening around her.

I really feel like I tapped into
something and I think that it was that

trance state that doing the
Estes Method can bring you to,

I think that that was what
really allowed me to tap into her.

And I feel very strongly
as if there was a connection

that really happened that night.

If you understand
this, tell her...

Tell her to not...

Tell her that he has no power...

He does not have power over
you. He has no power over you.

We were saying this earlier.

You can leave. You
don’t need to stay there.

Whoever is keeping you
there, you don’t need to listen.

He has no power over you
other than what you percieve.

I know. You need to ignore him.

Ignore him. He
can’t do anything.

He can’t do anything.

No.

We are.

You have permission.

She said permission so loud.

You have permission.

You do not need to
listen to this person.

Whatever or whoever it
is, you are your own person.

You can leave. You can go.

It seemed that the larger
picture was coming into view.

Biddum, or Brother Biddum
implies some kind of man of religion.

Even the name Biddum seems
to relate somehow to religion.

The Crone itself was very obviously
an act of witchcraft, of some kind,

and one of our first interactions
with whatever entity was attached to

the Crone had to do with the
desecration of a Christian symbol.

To me, it seemed like what
we were finally realizing was

there was a visceral reaction by
this entity to Christian iconography.

And it could be because there
was some form of persecution

that had happened
to this person or thing

at some point in the past.

We’re going to help.

We are.

You’re in control.

You’re not tethered.

She’s so loud right now.

If it’s him, we
will get rid of him.

We’ll get rid of him.

[Greg] I think in that moment
it's very easy to wonder

if we were being
manipulated or not.

But if you hear someone
screaming down a dark alley for help,

are you going to go help them

or are you going to stand
there and go, No, that's a trick.

And I think we felt

very strongly
that at that point,

the right thing
to do was to help.

[Dana] A few days after
the Halloween livestream,

Jason contacted us with some
progress in his 3D scanning.

[Greg] There was no way to 3D
print it with the nails and the noose.

They were too thin.

The nails were definitely too thin,
so they had to be digitally removed.

And we thought it would be interesting
to put an actual noose on the 3D print.

In order to do that, he had to actually
separate the Crone’s head from its body.

I mean, I had manipulated

probably a hundred different
things from children's toys

to accessories for, you
know, our Amazon equipment.

I had, you know, I had
started to build a drone.

I was 3D printing a drone.

I had done post-production
on dozens of these objects.

Never,

not before, not after,

did I ever anything happen

like it did with the Crone.

I have no idea what’s going to happen
because I’ve never had it just openly,

defiantly change the
design of what I’ve built.

When I started editing the file, I was
able to get the noose off, no problem.

But I was left with two
pieces: a head and a body.

But when I did that,

it looked like these
fingers or tendrils

were coming out of the bottom.

[Greg] They were twisted,
they were in the wrong position,

and you could tell what they were
because they had fingernails on them.

We would have known if somebody

had scanned their fingers into this thing,
we would have seen it on the 3D scan.

We were able to
look at both of them

immediately as it scanned.

[Gowin] And I had
taken my hand away from

the mouse, so the file
was manipulating itself.

At no point did I... I have no
explanation for what I saw.

[Greg] It just seemed like
a really obvious indication

that something was trying
to escape from this piece.

It was a visual reminder

of what we were trying to do.

[traffic driving on a highway]

[Greg] We'd had enough problems
with the 3D scanning project at that point.

The Crone was
sort of the last straw.

But the preservation of these things
was still very, very important to us.

And knowing that our time with
the Crone was coming to an end,

it was more important to us than
ever to somehow preserve her.

It's very serendipitous
that we met Tyler Strand

around the same time.

- There he is!
- What’s up!

Hey buddy.

- C’mon in!
- We’re like half an hour early...

My name is Tyler Strand.

I am a special makeup and effects
artist, so I'm involved in everything from

molding objects, creating custom
prosthetics, dental wear, prosthetic eyes,

the whole gamut of
works, creating monsters

on top of being a
paranormal investigator.

So I live a life of monsters.

He's a really great artist

and he's someone who
can help us preserve

objects in the museum
at a museum-quality level.

And he felt like someone that
was really going to be a big help

when it came to the act of
actually preserving the Crone.

[Tyler] I'm passionate about the
paranormal because it's a pursuit

of everything that I view as

higher or thought-provoking
in our reality.

You're tackling
age-old mysteries

that have always been at the
forefront of the human experience,

and I can't think
of anything else

that invokes that in me or
has so much substance to it.

The study of the
supernatural, to me,

is the study of the self.

[A gentle wind blowing]

[Greg] We made a promise to the
Crone that we were going to return her.

We were coming up on almost a
year since we made that promise,

And we were having a really busy
year, and we had one short window

where we could still take her back
in that year before it got too cold

and there was just no way we were
going to make it up the mountain.

So we made plans and picked
up Tyler and drove to Ellenville.

Ellenville is the town at
the base of the mountain

that the crown came from.

We get to Ellenville
and we start to notice

that there's Ukrainian
text on signs,

on businesses, on churches.

What... is... is it. an old...

Church! It was a church.

It says “Ukrainian
Native Faith Church.”

[Greg] What we didn't anticipate

was the massive Ukrainian
community that was in this town

and that started to spin our
wheels and we wondered,

could there be
some kind of Slavic or

Ukrainian connection
to this item?

We're on the road so
we don't have access

to a lot of research
materials except for Google.

What we did is, we texted
our friend John Tenney.

John’s a font of knowledge
on the paranormal

and he keeps lots of
files on all kinds of stuff.

He's a really great resource to have
when we’re stumped on something.

John knew what we were doing.

He knew where we were.

He knew that we were
out to return the Crone.

So when I texted
him, I said, Listen,

can you think of any connection
that that might have to this item?

And he texted me back and said,

Well, Baba Yaga.

Baba Yaga is arguably

the most famous witch
in Ukrainian folklore.

She has existed,

I mean, basically since the
beginning of Ukrainian folklore.

She's sort of that
Crone archetype.

She exists in the forest,

in a house with chicken legs.

People are kind of scared of her,
but she does good even though

people are scared of her.

And it seemed
really interesting.

After Tenney came back with Baba
Yaga, I started to do some Googling.

As I'm scrolling through the
search results for Baba Yaga,

looking at pictures, I
see a carved statue.

I click on it, it takes
me to an Etsy shop,

and this is an Etsy shop based out
of Russia that creates custom, carved,

altar dolls meant
for religious worship.

Traditional Slavic paganism.

The Baba Yaga doll
didn't quite look right,

but as I scrolled,

there was another altar
doll named MoKosh,

and it looked pretty darn close.

I googled Mokosh,

which led me to the story

of really the only
female goddess

in the Slavic pantheon.

The name Mokosh

comes from the root word mokry,

which is the
Russian word for wet.

Mokosh was the
goddess of moisture

and fate and witchcraft.

My name is Jeanmarie
Rouhier-Willoughby

I am a professor of Russian
folklore and linguistics

at the University of Kentucky.

We have no actual evidence

about the Slavic pantheon
or the Slavic gods.

Well, particularly East Slavic,
which is what you're interested in.

Unlike in Greece and Rome,
these were not literate people.

There were no ethnographers

who were coming in to write down what
these people believed or what they did

or what the rituals look like,
or what the practices were.

So everything that has
been written on this topic,

well, 95% of it, is
based on speculation

and parallels to what they know
about other European cultures,

which may or may
not be what was there.

So there's almost nothing.

But the Russian specialists

felt that Russia suffered

from not having the same
type of heritage documented

that were in other great nations,
and so pretty much out of whole cloth

they determined what
it was on the basis

of little scraps of
very little information.

We know that to some extent,

obviously, there
was a belief system

and we know that those gods
were worshiped by somebody.

But what the organization was
and how they were worshiped

and really what they mean
is... a lot of it is extrapolated.

So that brings us
to Neopagans, right?

Because what the Neopagans are
arguing is very much like the Soviets:

Christianity is not our faith.

We had an older faith.

And so what they've done
is they've seized on these

beautiful pictures of
constructed pantheons

written by these 19th century
and Soviet era scholars to create

a belief system.

[Greg] How popular are Neopagan,
Slavic beliefs in the United States?

There's very small groups,
but they are really small.

So one of the groups that...
There are some in Canada,

there are some in
the northeastern U.S.

There's one in New
York that's pretty small.

Again, not much going
on, and that's about it.

I mean, except maybe emmigrates
who've come and brought

their religion with them.

But the image you have,
well, that statue does not...

What's weird about that statue to
me, that makes it an anachronism...

If it's a Neopagan group, I
don't think there'd be any reason

to have a noose or nails.

It would be different

because the model is
so powerful for them,

that is this established model

in the literary tradition.

So if you go to their pages, again, all
in Russian or Ukrainian, but if you go

and look you see that they
keep using these same old images

and when they create contemporary
versions, they're models of those.

And that statue does
not, to me, look like that.

Is it mostly the nails and
the noose that causes...

Yeah.

Plus her hand would
almost inevitably

be holding something.

[Greg] Looking at
images of Mokosh,

there are statues that show her

standing with her
arms at her side,

holding a bucket of water.

Sometimes she was depicted
holding a ball of twine because she was

also the goddess of fate.

For the first time, we realized

what went between
the Crone’s arms.

What we found out when we
were trying to make that replica,

trying to make it as
accurate as possible.

The carving itself
seemed fairly old.

The nails and the
noose were pretty new.

They were added.

We were able to find... the closest
we could find... we went to every

hardware store we could find.

We found the nails and the
noose material both at Wal-Mart.

Which is the only big store
at the base of that mountain.

So it seems like somebody
had taken an existing carving,

and potentially had... you know,
who knows the purpose of it...

Had done something to
it, they’d added those to it.

[Jeanmarie] She is
strongly associated

because of this
connection with Paraskeva,

with weaving, spinning,
obviously fertility,

particularly of cows and women.

[Greg] People sought her for help, but
then she also sometimes scared people.

One of the things that she did
was she quite often stole children.

Yes, there is definitely...
definitely the potential for...

for conflict

between Neopagan
groups and Christian groups,

particularly because the Neopagans
are saying that Christianity is false

and not ours or
especially orthodoxy.

And the Orthodox groups

have done very well

in the post-Soviet period,
you know, the first ten...

the first decade was
tricky, getting reestablished,

but they have really
established themselves

as powerful social forces

and they do not want

any potential competition.

Yes, definitely the potential

for a great deal of conflict.

[Greg] Mokosh was considered

a Chthonic deity,

not good and not evil,
a complete gray area.

Basically live and let live.

And this entire time we were
struggling with whether or not

the Crone was good or bad.

And really the answer is

neither.

The night before we were
set to go up the mountain,

we stopped about an hour
outside of our destination

and got a hotel so
that we could prepare.

One of the most important
things to get a replica of the Crone

was to create a box mold.

[Dana] So that was the first
time that Tyler had the opportunity

to actually hold the Crone and
see her even just in closer detail.

And it was a big moment for him.

I knew that there was going to be
a lot of manhandling of this object

that for a very long time
had not even been touched.

And so I was very nervous about
the idea of Tyler coming at her

with implements and measuring
her and having her out of the box

and really kind of putting her through
what felt like a very sterile exploration.

It felt frightening to me because I
wasn't sure what was going to happen.

This object had not been handled very
much, let alone in the past few months

at that point.

[Tyler] The atmosphere inside of
this room significantly changed, rapidly,

almost like there was
an electricity in the air.

[Dana] After a few minutes,
Tyler went and he grabbed

his Gauss meter.

This thing’s really sensitive.

[meter begins to buzz]

Are you serious?

[buzzing rises in pitch]

I've never seen anything like
that before, especially not with

an inanimate object,
seemingly, made out of wood.

I've never experienced
those kinds of spikes

that were so
apparent in something.

[buzzing]

It really set the tone for how whatever
it was seemed to be ramping up.

And that put us on edge because
you could... you could hear it.

And it it felt a lot like
handling a live grenade.

[Dana] I feel as if it was
tolerated because of the just

her physical proximity to the location
that she was going to be returned to.

It felt like there was
some sort of an intelligent

energy there that
was aware of that

and that's why it
was being tolerated.

[lock clicks]

[music intensifies]

[Greg] So we knew that we
were going to return the Crone.

We knew we were going to unbind
whatever was attached to the Crone,

and we knew we were
going to make a mold of it.

This presented a
really big problem.

We couldn't make a mold of
the Crone until we had removed

the nails and the noose, which
were part of the unbinding ritual.

But we couldn't do the
unbinding ritual anywhere except

her place of origin.

- Are you ready?
- I think so.

It was very, very important,

Dana stressed how important it
was, that we did it on the mountain,

which meant we had to do
the molding on the mountain

because we were not
going to leave that location

with the carving.

This is going to
be a hell of a hike.

This is gonna feel
fuckin’ horrible.

[Dana] I honestly think that the
ritual to unbind the Crone began

the second that we
got to the trailhead.

The second we started that walk, I
was very aware of the fact that we were

already moving into
that ritual headspace.

[♪ Byssan Lull by Myrkur ♪]

[Greg] One of the oldest
stories about Mokosh

is about how she was
kidnapped by the God Veles,

who was the God of serpents,

God of the underworld.

And Mokosh's husband, Perun,

had to chase him up a mountain

and cut Veles’ belly
open to release her

from his grasp.

Which was pretty much
exactly what we were doing,

and we didn't even realize it.

We were taking an item

that seemed to have
something trapped in it

to the top of a mountain

to release it.

[Greg] We're
absolutely exhausted.

We finally get to the
top of the mountain

and Dana felt like
this was the right place.

This was the place that
we were supposed to be.

Look at that view...

[Greg] And then as the sun went down,
Dana reiterated how important it was

that we stayed inside
the circle no matter what.

Then she cast it.

Do we have everything
that we need?

- We have wood.
- Yeah.

- We have food. We have water.
- Yeah.

- Yeah.
- Okay. Let’s start.

Because we’re doing things
that are a little bit scary,

it’s just going to
protect our space,

so that whatever potentially could
be drawn to it can’t enter the space.

And that’s what
the black salt is for.

Extra on all our doorways.

I didn't know how we were going
to finish everything we had to finish.

We had so much to do.

And as we’re sitting there,
our phones start buzzing.

And it was because
at that moment,

all of Dana's witches

were doing a ritual at the same
exact time and they had just started.

[Dana] These are magic practitioners, people
that I've been teaching for years and years

and we knew they would be able
to lend us just as much energy.

So in one of the months
we included an optional ritual

that they could do alongside
us as we were doing our ritual.

So we had this huge group of people
who were able to lend their energy

and lend their magic to us as
we were up on this mountain,

exhausted and tired and
ready to give up at certain points,

we could feel them pushing
us through the final mile of this

exhausting journey that had taken
us three... three years to get to.

[Witches chanting] With twine,
nail, and wood times three...

No longer shall
her binding be...

- There?
- This way.

[Witches chanting] With twine,
nail, and wood times three...

No longer shall
her binding be...

[Witches chanting] With twine,
nail, and wood times three...

No longer shall
her binding be...

[Witches chanting] With twine,
nail, and wood times three...

No longer shall
her binding be...

[Witches chanting] With twine,
nail, and wood times three...

No longer shall
her binding be...

Hail and welcome to
the earth, air, fire, water.

[Witches chanting] With twine,
nail, and wood times three...

No longer shall
her binding be...

[Dana] We prepared our space

and I started to cleanse and consecrate
the mundane tools that we would be using.

So literally pliers, things that
would be used to pull the nails out

or a pair of scissors or whatever
it was that we were going to need.

We were prepping

that space and I was cleansing them
so that we were removing any energy

that potentially was attached to it by
people who had touched them previously.

Anyone who had used
them without a ritual intention.

You want to clear
that energy away.

We consecrate you.

And unbind you.

[Greg] Dana's job was to consecrate the
area and consecrate the tools and the Crone.

My job was to
pull the nails out.

That was really the first
time that it set in on me

what we were about to do,
what was going to happen.

We release the negativity
bound to this object,

And we bind them to the
nails and we release them.

And we release them.

It really struck a chord with me

because it felt less like something
that we were fearing at that point,

and it felt a lot like he was
holding somebody down

and he was doing
something painful.

To the nails. And
we release them.

[Greg] It was overwhelming.

Every one of the nails

was so hard to pull out.

With every one,

I reminded whoever
or whatever it was

that what we were doing
was we were unbinding

any source of
negativity from this piece.

What we were doing was to help.

We release any negativity
associated with this object.

We bind it to the nails.

And we release it.

[everyone exhales]

[sniffling]

And that left Tyler
to pull the noose off.

You’re not bound
by this anymore.

You don’t have to
suffocate anymore.

And it felt like there
was just a pop in the air.

And all of a sudden this
thing was just a chunk of wood.

Whatever it was was gone.

[coyotes howling
in the distance]

That felt right.

- Listen, do you hear those coyotes?
- Uh-huh.

- Listen, listen!
- Listen!

[coyotes howling
in the distance]

[Greg] And as soon as that
realization set in, we could hear

all the coyotes on the mountain
start howling at the same time,

we hadn't heard a single
one up until that point.

The mountain literally

lit up with the
sounds of coyotes,

coyotes singing this song

as if there was a
rejoice of some kind.

And it didn't feel like we had
this heavy burden anymore.

It was light.

[Greg] After the unbinding ritual,
we took the Crone into a tent.

And Tyler and I tried our best
to make a mold of this item.

We weren’t very confident
in how it turned out.

But we’d already done
what we were there to do.

And that was good enough.

[Greg] The next morning, we
wake up from what little sleep we got

and we knew we
needed to have a burial.

We wrapped the
Crone in a black sheet

and we found a
nice, quiet, shady spot

where we didn't think
anyone would ever find it

and dug a hole

and we buried her. And just
kind of had a moment of silence.

We just sat there and thought
about what we'd been through

and said a few words.

And then started our descent.

It’s very easy to put your own
fears and thoughts onto an item

to kind of force it
to fit a narrative.

But to us this thing
was just a scary statue.

That was exhibiting scary stuff

and it felt like we
have to make it stop.

All these years later, seeing that
entire journey, having that perspective,

and going, oh my god, all of
these details about Mokosh

line up so perfectly with everything
that we and others were experiencing,

with this item,

leads me to believe that there’s
objectively something happening

outside of us.

That it wasn’t us
haunting this object.

That this object either
already was or became

a conduit for something old.

We were engaging with this
ancient archetype of the Crone,

of Mokosh.

And we didn’t even know.

This whole time we had no idea
that that is what was coming through.

That’s what we
were experiencing.

The things that we
found out about Mokosh

years after we thought we
were done with this story,

are so compelling.

It doesn’t feel like this was just
something that we impressed upon it.

It feels like...

something was subtly
guiding us to an end.

[Greg] It’s three years
later. We're finishing up all

the last pieces of
this documentary,

and the one thing
that’s bothering us

is the fact that we can't
put a bow on Biddum.

We don't know what Biddum means.

So we're sitting in the living
room, we're going through Google.

And while we couldn't find a
meaning for the word Biddum,

we found a few things
that really startled us.

Actually chilling. Like
that is the stuff that...

Like, that’s magic at work.

The problem with
Slavic paganism is that

there's only like bits
and pieces of it that exist.

So there are lots of different
entities that share traits

with Mokosh or sometimes
accompany Mokosh.

One of them is an
entity called the Kikimora.

There are two different
kinds of Kikimora.

The other one comes
from the swamp.

It is said that she can be
identified by her wet footprints.

When the home builders wanted
to harm someone buying a house,

they would bring in Kikimora.

Once she is inside, it's
difficult to get her to leave.

Swamp Kikimora was described
as small, ugly, hunchbacked,

thin and scruffy old woman with a
pointed nose and disheveled hair.

I'm fucking getting goose bumps.

She was said to use moss
and grass as her clothes.

It was believed that she frightens
people, knocked travelers off the road

and also kidnaps children!

Yeah, that's fucking creepy.

As happens with a
lot of pagan religions,

Christianity has a habit

of incorporating pagan gods
and turning them into saints.

And they converted Mokos,
or Mokosh, to Saint Petka.

Saint Petka has a very
specific holiday that is celebrated

the final weekend of October,
usually between October 25th

and November 1st, depending on
where that weekend falls in the year.

The festival dedicated
to this goddess

was celebrated sometime
between the 25th of October

and the 1st of November,

depending on which date
happened to be a Friday.

Unbelievable.

What day were you
guys on the mountain?

We were on the
mountain on October 26th,

is when midnight struck,

when we were making
the mold for the Crone.

My birthday, October 26th.

It's horrible out here.

What?

Thanks.

27 years old,

sleeping on rocks.

“Historian and religious
scholar Max Dashu

informs us that the old
goddess of the pagans

was known by many avatars across
Europe, and that Friday was observed

as her holy day, beginning
with its eve on Thursday night.”

You said it was
between, what? The 20...

The 25th of October
and the 1st of November.

Whichever day was a Friday?

Yeah.

The 26th of October 2018

was a Friday.

- Haha! Get out of here!
- Get out!

What we didn’t
realize at the time

is we were actually
climbing that mountain

on Thursday, October 25th

and performing that
ritual as the clock

turned over to
midnight on Friday.

Her feast day is celebrated
on Friday, but traditionally

begins on Thursday evening.

[Tyler] That is insane

[Greg] How’s that...
How’s that happen?

How funny is it that we were so
adamant we had to do this now?

- Yeah - We had to do this now!

[Greg] Of all the other
days we could have gone,

of all the other windows we
could have even had to go there,

things had to line up so specifically
for us to be there at that exact time.

It should even exist.
It shouldn’t be real!

It’s so specific.
It’s so specific.

And it’s that type of strange...

Here’s the thing, we can
call it a coincidence if we want,

but there’s too many
coincidences in this entire case.

It’s direct. It feels...

I mean, I can’t talk about it without having
full-body chills because it feels like

something else was in control.

I am not the same person
now than I was before

the Crone’s investigation.
And the realization

that we were communicating
with or interacting with

a beloved goddess, it’s...

I don't think you can be the same person
after having that kind of an experience.

It’s made me change my mind about
how we approach a lot of these things.

It’s made me change my
mind about what is behind

the activity with a
lot of these things.

It feels incredibly narcissistic

to think, oh, we were doing this
on behalf of an ancient goddess.

But I do think we brushed
up against something

bigger

than a ghost.

If you go back and you look at
the stories of most of our ancestors,

a lot of those
stories are scary.

And that doesn’t make them evil.

It makes them
complex. It makes them

human.

And that’s the irony.

The irony is that it’s that complexity
that often gets looked at as evil

when it is something that should
actually touch us on such a deep

human level that we recognize
that these stories are us.

They are a part of us.

And my hope is that
people will walk away

and recognize that sometimes
things are scary because they’re real.

And sometimes things are scary
because that’s part of the growth process.

And that sometimes things are
scary because they have to be scary.

Shit has to be scary
sometimes for us to change.

It has to be scary for us to
have an initiatory experience.

It has to be scary for
us to grow spiritually.

We can’t always sit in
this place of love and light,

we have to recognize

that the scary things are just
the complexities of us as people.

And the complexities of
a spiritual growth process.

[Tyler] ...Right
up to the base...

Just right there.

- Do you want me to hold this?
- Okay, wait, here’s the thing,

I want you to hold
this open like this.

Keep it open.

Hold it just like that.

It’s still toasty, but...

I don’t want to rip any
more of that silicone...

It’s coming out!

Oh my fucking god.

Oh my god, dude, it’s perfect!

Oh my god.

Holy shit.

- Look at that.
- Wow.

Dude, that’s not nearly as
bad as you made it out to be.

No...

Sometimes I think
about the goddesses

and the gods that
have been lost.

And I think about how they are

still here and still alive.

And I feel like the gods and the
goddesses are coming back to us

to remind us of who we are.

And that history
is... it's not history.

It's like an organism.

It's like a living,
breathing thing.

It's finding its way back into
the collective consciousness,

and it's allowing people
to reconnect with who

they used to be.

And I think that that's
a really beautiful thing

and that it is

a living thing and will
continue to be a living thing.

[Greg] Most of the
objects that we encounter

I think are because
someone has put so much

intention, emotion, fear,
love, happiness, whatever

into a piece,

that that piece begins to
exhibit those types of traits.

But I see it all the time that
someone is so scared of something

that maybe never
was haunted before,

they give it to somebody else,

and that person
actually feels that fear.

And sometimes, it moves.

Or they see a strange shadow
that they’ve never seen before.

If people can do
that with an item,

what happens when
there’s millions of people

doing that with
the idea of a god?

That’s the type of thing we experience
first-hand with haunted objects all the time.

These stories that people
have imbued into these objects.

It’s the belief and the telling of
the story that gives them power.

And to us, that’s
why it’s so important

to tell the right kind of story,

because if it’s told enough times

it becomes real.