A Life Shaped by the Unexplained, Part One | Grave Talks CLASSIC

0:00Today on The Grave Talks, followed by spirits, a conversation with Gwendolyn Guthrie. It all started when she was 12. Gwendolyn Guthrie started having prophetic dreams, seeing shadows, dealing with the fear and confusion caused by spirits. Those early paranormal experiences drove her to seek answers of her own. She began investigating. An paranormal cryptid spoke Lauren, even alien, research, and has been to this day more than 20 years after. An initial childhood experience. Today we hear her story on The Grave Talks. My interest didn't really start on investigating the paranormal until later, but my experiences has started happening around 12 years old. I had what I call a paranormal awakening, and that's where you have this some sort of awakening event.

1:00It kind of jumps starts, your sensitivities, your pre-cognitive abilities, and your ability to see and speak to and hear spirits. It all almost happened overnight for me. I ran from it for a good long period of time, but my interest was always relatively peaked at why I seemed to be targeted and why I seemed to be the one that they were reaching out to. I started when I was about 12 or 13 and investigating, but I didn't get more seriously into it until I was about 18 or 19 years old, because I was just dipping in and running back away from it again as soon as I got freaked out. I became a more serious researcher when I was about 18 or 19. Tell me about that awakening that you had. Did anything in particular bring that on or did it seem to kind of come out of nowhere?

2:00I haven't told the story a lot because it's very packed full and it's a very long story, but I was a very naughty child. I just did a vocal lot of rules. I did a lot of bad things. I wasn't always not running around with friends. I was always breaking whatever rules I could. I was misbehaving as cool. I don't even remember my life prior to 12 years old. I don't remember anything prior to 12 except for a few bits and pieces of scattered memories that could even potentially be missing pieces I was filleting based on stories I was being told about my childhood. We cut this cat and this cat just showed up. I don't remember how it showed up or what happened. Even my mom couldn't remember when I went back and I was talking about it later. We ended up with this cat. This cat was always very affectionate with me.

3:03Me being the bad little kid that I was, I really never wanted to mess with it. I was scratched by its tail just irritated so it would run away and leave me alone. I didn't really want to do it. I was never mean to it. I never took it. I never threw it. I never did anything harmful to it. It aggravated so it would run away so I could do it. I wanted to do it. Then one day I was coming out of my bathroom here. This one was full. The cat was just standing there and it looked different in its eyes. I was like, what is wrong with you? Why aren't you running away from me? I was like, maybe I should try to pet this cat instead of trying to get it to run away because I had time to do so. I went to reach down and pet the cat and the cat reached up and swatted my hand. I went to hiss at it to make it run away. But before I could even do that, it swatted on my hand. I looked into its eyes and its eyes almost morphed. They got from, they became little slits into the really big iris.

4:08It was like the whole world just faded away. Things started going into slow motion. It was just time just paused. It was me and this cat just staring at each other for the longest time. I just felt this wave of all these emotions I was never able to feel before. Compassion and understanding and caring and all this stuff. I went into this cat's head and I understood everything. How my irritation towards the cat affected the cat and its happiness and things like that. It was just this massive awakening. When I came back to the real world, the cat just turned around and ran away. Randolph's steps ran out the door and he never saw the cat again ever. It was that very same night. I went looking for this cat because it was the call of a gosh. I realized everything now and I wanted to find it and I would love on it and I wanted to be everything that I wasn't before with it. I could never find it.

5:10It was that very same night that this happened that I had my first pre-pognizant dream. It was just a snowball effect from there. I think that it's kind of a wild theory but I almost wonder if there wasn't a piece of me missing prior to that. That understanding and compassion almost like a piece of my soul that was missing. In that moment, somehow I got it back and the whole world just opened up and was in lightning to me. It was like I could see the world from a whole different perspective. I've been super empathetic. I won't say psychic but always knowing when something is going to go awry or things like that. I wouldn't consider myself a full-blown psychic but I do have some intuition about what could happen. That was my awakening experience.

6:10I don't know what would ever happen to the cat. Nobody ever really knows if the cat disappeared after that. When my head almost wondered was that cat even like a real cat and I know it sounds crazy but there's things like the millioners and stuff that are known all throughout history. A lot of people have suggested that what if it was a form of a familiar? What do you think it was about that cat or do you think that the cat was just a normal cat and maybe it was you that had this experience when you were looking at it. Maybe the cat, if I was standing across the room, I wouldn't see the cat be transforming but it was your experience that you had. Was it something that came over you and made you perceive the cat that sort of way in order? Almost flip a switch. Your body needed to have something change and that happened to be the moment where it happened and that cat somehow triggered it. Yeah, I think that could absolutely be the case.

7:13I have a hard time believing that the cat wasn't a real cat. I have a hard time believing that the cat performed some sort of witchery on me to open me up to everything. I really wonder if it wasn't just in that opportunity that was the prime moment for something else to kind of awaken me. What was it prior to 12 years old that you felt that you didn't have empathy or feelings or just kind of that emptiness? Was there some sort of trauma there or was it just the way that you were living your life for those years? I don't really know if there was any kind of trauma per se, but it's hard to say because like I said, I don't remember all I remember prior to 12 years old is memories of things that people would tell me. My behavior a lot of times was very strange as a child. I would do things like bang my head off of stuff over and over again on some of my habits.

8:17It was like there was something, some sort of disconnect, something missing. All the time up until I hit 12 years old and I had that awakening and now I'm like the most empathetic person you could ever meet. But prior to that awakening, I was just horrible. I mean, there was just like no compassion, no understanding, no concepts of even life or death to me. It was like that that moment, suddenly those, those emotions and those feelings kicked on. And once you had that moment of, oh my gosh, you're feeling these things you've never felt before before you were just kind of living in this world that you were dropped into and acting out and doing this and that not really feeling right or wrong or good or bad just doing whatever you may do. But somehow that kicked on for you. Did your parents, did your family notice a difference in you at that moment? Obviously, you sure did.

9:19Yeah, my mom did. So it was around that same timeframe. Was it actually exactly that same timeframe? I was diagnosed with a form of seizures when I was younger. But after that awakening incident, I was going to wake completely. And I didn't even know about me being diagnosed with seizures. Once I was a little later in life and I was talking with my mom about the cat trying to figure out my past. And she was like, oh yeah, you used to have seizures around that time. And then they just went away. And I was like, wait, I had seizures? Like I didn't even know. Kind of a big piece. I packed it up. Yeah, that's kind of huge. You'd think you would remember that. But again, I didn't remember anything from that timeframe. I do remember like having a, I guess, a seizure, but I remember seeing giant frogs. But that was again one of those little, one size of memories that was so fleeting, who knows where it came from. Sure. I tracked my, my records through children's hospital and found where I was diagnosed with the treatment that I received and everything.

10:21And then I got the records where I went back and they did several tests on me and they the seizures were gone. And at some point in time, strangely enough, I have medical records for this too. And I don't think that there's an error. I had a, a blood type changed of all things. So it from a positive to positive. So I'm not sure what that's about. I don't know that's even a thing. I didn't know either. And I'd said a lot of research and I found out that it can be a thing if you've received any type of blood transfusion or anything like that. But as far as I'm aware, I never did, but my mom is passed now. So there's no way for me to know for sure if that's what could have caused it. Sure. But I've tracked again my medical records and I can find any kind of blood transfusion that was necessary or conducted on me through the avenues that I've been searching for. Sure. Yeah, I mean, I could understand it that way, but that's, that's interesting.

11:23Like yeah, like you said, there's a piece to the puzzle there that you, you can't ask any more to, to get a full perspective on all that. You said that that when you had that experience with the cat, that was the first day that you had some very specific type of dreams. Talk about that. Yeah, it was that night. I went to bed and I remember waking up and seeing a life squad lights or red blue lights on the ceiling. And I tried to wake my mom up as she wouldn't wake up. And I kept trying to spell her, grandpa's dead, grandpa's dead. And then I woke up and it was exactly the same. There was lights on the ceiling, tried to wake my mom up. She did wake up and real life. And I said, mom, grandpa's dead, grandpa's dead. And she goes, what? No, he's not. I said, yes, he is. Look for lights. He's not here. And she said, there's no lights.

12:26And I said, yeah, it's here. And it was a gentleman that we called grandpa who lives in another apartment complex that was attached to ours, but on the backside. So there would have been no way for the lights to even get over in that area. But I could still see them. I could see them playing this day. And she said, I'll go out and chat so she went outside and she walked around the complex and she went to the other side. And I creeped her behind her and I followed her the whole way. And as we came on the corner, I could see the lights. And they were right underneath the apartment, because his apartment comes the second story. And I started screaming the freaking out. I was like, I told you, I told you. And she said, you gotta go back inside. So the next day I went over there and took a couple days of going over there before his wife finally answered the door. And I said, hey, I wanted to check on grandpa. And she said, he's passed. So that was my first incident of a pre-connistant dream. Now let me ask you, let me ask you about that dream and how that information came to you.

13:32It was knowledge, but was it in the dream? Did you see his death? Did you, how did that information translate into you saying he's dead? Was it an experience in the dream or someone told you in the dream what happened that gave you that? Yeah, no, it was just like I had this immediate knowledge. And that's the way my abilities have always worked. It's like a memory that wasn't there. That's all of a sudden is there. So what is in the memory? His, there was no memory of his other than me waking up in my dream, seeing the lights and the ceiling, waking up, trying to wake her up. Okay, I told her he was dead. Okay. That was the dream itself. And because I woke up and I saw the lights and I had to have that happen in my dream, I knew that I needed to tell her that he's dead. Okay. Okay, that makes more sense than almost like a download of information. Boom, it's there and you're having this experience. Right. Exactly. And that's why it's always good for me. It's never, it's never been.

14:33There's sometimes little subtle signs and symbols that I can stick up on that leads me to an answer that could happen in the future. But most of the time it's just boom, it's there. The knowledge is there. The memories there. All the information I need to know is there. What kind of reaction did you have from your mom when you gave this information and then turned out to be true? My mom was very, she was in denial about a lot of stuff. I grew up in a very religious background. We were a holiness religion. It's very similar to almost midnight. Okay. And so she was in denial, but she had kind of broke away from the church. So she was a little bit more accepting of the fact that I just tore that. First as Mother Russ, my family would have called me evil and satanic and everything else could have had that knowledge. But she was like, oh, that's just weird and ignored it. She didn't want to talk about it. She didn't want to open up about it.

15:35And then one of my experiences started happening. The shadows, the talking, the things getting thrown at me, stuff like that. She denied it for a long time. Also she co-experienced a situation with me. Tell me about that. Tell me about the experiences that you were having that you just referenced. So the things that would kind of go into play would be I would be up in my room. And I would be putting my clothes on the hanger and pushing the hanger to the side. And then I'd turn around and the hanger would be on the floor. And you know, you think this could just be me not hanging up properly. But it would happen over and over again. Then all of a sudden there would be like five or six things on the floor. And I'm how did that happen? I just hung that up. And it was always silent. Like things almost would approach from one place to another. There wasn't really a whole lot of noise involved. And my books would, I had, I always kept my books very organized. And my books would unorganize themselves in a matter of seconds.

16:36Um, my would, I would crochet a lot. And my ball of yarn would just pop out of whatever I had it in. And roll across the room instead of like spores me like you expect with a ball of yarn. Because it kind of holds you. I've had, my favorite place to hang out was the corner, the steps. So the steps had a round corner. And I would, we sit at that corner and do like artwork and things like that. And things would get thrown out of the bathtub down the stairs at me. And what the experience that me and my mom co witnessed together was I was carrying groceries. And I carried something into the house for her. And I told her I was like, Mom, I feel like there's something in this living room. Like I feel like a heavy miss. And she was like, Oh, your being silly just go out there. And she had walked into living room as I was walking out. She saw a reflection in like a TV stand that we had had.

17:38Had a glass window front. She saw a reflection of what she thought was me setting a bag down onto the floor in the living room. And I heard her say from when I was not in the car. I heard her say bring it in here. And I was like, what are you guys talking to? So I bring a new bag in and she's standing in the living room with her face just white. And I'm like, what just happened? And she goes, I just saw it. I saw it. I know what you're talking about. I saw it. And I said, what happened? She said when she came around the corner to tell me to bring it in because I was ignoring her. There was nothing there. And she looks back over and there was still a shadow in the glass cabinet before failing. So yeah, gave her some, yeah, some, was it something she accepted that had happened after that? Or was it still kind of one of those? Well, maybe trying to find logic in something that may not be so logical. She accepted it from then on out. She never tried to find any logic behind it whenever I would come to her within experience.

18:38She never tried to make sense of it. She would only say, yeah, just ignore it. It'll go away. Just ignore it. It'll go away. Sure. Or okay, okay, I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to hear about it. You know, but before it was always trying to find the logical reasoning, you know, it's making me feel like I was making a bigger deal out of it than I what I was. But then after that, she just kind of, you know, she acknowledged my story, my experience, but she didn't want to delve even further into it. Do you still have experiences of that nature to this day? Yeah, actually, I always have something new coming through my house. It's like there's, there's ones that were already here. There's two that experienced that were already here in this house when I moved in. But there seems to be like a, like a circular, like open door of things, different things that will come through to stay for a few days or a week or two weeks. And then it'll be gone. And then a new one will come. And sometimes I'll get a couple of times. It's almost like there's constantly things coming to me.

19:41And so depending on what coming to me depends on the type of experiences I'll have in the home. So, you know, I have like this mimic that'll top into my life periodically about every seven or so years. And it will just create havoc and chaos in my house going around and creating much mimicry. And then just disappear and then come back and disappear and come back. That's one that comes and goes periodically. What's the other ones that come and go? Yeah. When you say mimic, does it, are you meaning like you're hearing it mimic your voice or is it mimicking other people? What is it, what is it doing specifically? Well, it's different than a doppelganger. So a doppelganger tends to be like a mimic of one particular person, their voice, their appearance, things like that. This is a mimic that happens to try to copy whatever it can around it. So it is copied by dogs.

20:42It's copied by me and my kids voices. It's copied of smells. Other random sounds like he's jingling. Just whatever it can mimic, it'll mimic that sound or that smell or that appearance. Is it just you who has those experiences in your house or does your family as well? My family has these experiences as well. But if I start spending a lot of time at another person's house, they'll start having experiences, like I have at my house. So it's almost like it takes a little bit before I tend to wear off on a place before things start to happen in that place. So it usually wants I'm in a place for about a month. Things will start to occur as per norm for me. So if I spend a lot of time at a friend's house, they'll start having stuff happen at their house. So it's not necessarily that other people's homes are haunted.

21:43It's more that maybe you bring them along or maybe you bring them out in certain ways. Maybe these things are always around us, but you may be a beacon for them. Do you ever feel like that? I do feel like a beacon. I think that I tend to be able to amplify the things that are already there because I'm so openly willing to communicate with these things. Then I'm not afraid like I used to be. I'm actually very comfortable and confident with spirits. But as far as like me bringing my spirits that follow me around with me when I go to some investigative place, it doesn't really happen. It usually takes a period of time before I start to wear off on a place before they start to follow me to a particular place. So if I go to a home four times to complete an investigation, that's not really enough time for me to wear off or bring anything with me.

22:47So I know that the things that I'm experiencing at that particular house are what was already there. I do feel like I have something that follows me everywhere I go that tends to help me with these things because I think there's got to be some sort of catalyst that makes it so much easier for me to communicate and get through to them. And I think that maybe some sort of spirit guide or angel guide or whatever people want to call it. I think I have one and they're kind of my goby spoon, you know, like the mediator. Sure. I wonder about things like this, things that mimic real live things that mimic things that are around us. And a lot of things. I wonder about shadow people and things that not necessarily coming at you from a place of consciousness, but from a place of something that's abnormal, something that you can look at and have an experience with, but go, what was that? Do you ever wonder if these experiences are some sort of energy shift or

23:52energy that you're giving off that is now out there into the ether? Essentially, it's the concept of haunting oneself with whatever energy that they're giving off. And that's why these things tend to happen to you more frequently wherever you may be. And especially the mimicking thing, that's very interesting to kind of dive into of, is it's, are these things like natural, but not necessarily a spirit or a ghost, but somehow our energy reflecting back in in odd ways that only certain people can pick up on. No, I think actually, I think that you're really spot on with it. I think that a lot of people tend to want to put things into a box. And with these entities, energies, vibrations, whatever you want to call them, there's, there's multiple, multiple classifications of types. And I think with mimics,

24:53the best way to classify a mimic is to classify as an inhuman, unconscionable being that's not aware of life, death, pain, sorrow or anything like that. So they are capable of some very negative traits, but they're malleable, which means you can teach them. But as far as like a maybe I'm creating this, I do have that theory. That's, I don't settle on one theory on so I'm absolutely sure about it. So my situation, I have multiple theories for one of the theories is that there is a negative piece of me living on the outside of me and maybe that's what's creating some of the chaos that I experienced in my home. And the reason I say that is is after I had my awakening, I always thought maybe my, maybe like my soul was put in me in that moment or maybe some consciousness was put in me in that moment. But then I had a dream years, years, years ago where it started to make me think

25:58maybe it wasn't that maybe it was something removed from me. And this dream I was lighting on the floor in front of two mirrors. And I could see myself half myself in both mirrors. And it said I had to choose. And I was like, well, I don't want to choose. And I knew what it wanted me to do was choose good or evil. I said, I don't want to choose. And I said, you have to choose. And as it said that is started the two images in the mirror, in the two mirrors, start to separate and become two separate images in each mirror. And I'm looking up at them, I'm laying on the floor and they're both leaking down. And one of them is like cream white dress. The other one is in like a beige brown dress. And I knew that the lighter color one was good, the darker color one was evil. And I had to choose. And I said, I don't want to choose. I want the option to have both. And it was in that moment I woke up and I never chose. And then I wonder if I had chosen good, would I be experiencing some of the negative

27:04things that I experienced now? Is that that negative that I was supposed to get rid of in that moment? And so I do wonder that. I do wonder if I am creating some of the phenomena, but I don't realize it because it's a whole other piece of me that's almost separate from me. Yeah, almost like a disconnected piece that you may not be aware of. And that makes me then wonder too, how does that connect to yourself pre 12 years old where you don't have many memories of that point in time? It's almost like a different you that was there. Right, exactly. And that's what I feel like too. Just everything that had changed. I mean, it's just blows my mind how seizures were gone almost every night. And then the blood type changed. That kind of blows my mind almost to the point where I was like, am I even my top it? I'm sorry. But I know it's crazy. But it's like you wonder that it's like your whole you see relied to. It's like I was this and now I'm this. And I mean, I feel like I had it

28:07out of it. I don't remember it. So it's pretty difficult. That wraps up the first part of our conversation with Gwendolyn Guthrie. There's more tomorrow in part two of our conversation. Be sure to press subscribe so you don't miss it here on the Grave Talks. You can get it in advance when you sign up to be and premium subscriber through Apple Podcast. Try it for three days free right now or you can do it through Patreon. Patreon.com slash the Grave Talks. Get access to all of our episodes. Part one, part two. Add free. Until next time, I'm Tony