Just Ask with Sapphire Sandalo | The Signal

0:00And I do come see it tune into another kind of reality it comes like on a TV in your mind. Each species has a kind of collective memory tune into it tunes it tunes it. The ideas are probably in the air tune into it the signal. The spark that ignites us sometimes fades away. The magic we once felt becomes a memory. The big fish returns to the deep. The act of creation exposes this loss. Shines a light on it and reminds us why we're scared of the dark.

1:04So how do we return to that place? The one where passion hides. Maybe you just have to ask. Hello, my name is Sapphire Sndalo. I am in Los Angeles, California. I have a podcast called Stories of Sapphire where I share people's real paranormal experiences and that came to be because I come from a family that had so many and I did not when I was younger and that made me really I don't actually kind of felt a little bit left out. I was like, oh, is everyone else in my family experiencing really weird, cool things? And I'm not like I believe them. I believe what they're telling me. And so that sort of launched this lifelong obsession with learning about the paranormal

2:07and how ghosts function, what they are, what are spirits, everything like that. And then it wasn't until maybe, well, let's just say like when I got older, that is when I did start experiencing things. I actually had my very first, would I consider a supernatural experience before I went on like a quote unquote spiritual journey or like spiritual awakening, whatever. I had a psychic moment involving when I met my husband. In 2011, I was hired at a startup company and by my friend at the time and he was introducing me to everyone in the office and he gets to this man in a chair and he's like, hey,

3:07this is Elliott, this is you're going to be working with. And then Elliott turns around and the second I see his face, I hear a voice clear his day in my ear and it's like, this man's going to be really important in your life. Was so real that I turned because I thought someone was talking to me and I was like, that was weird. And then we got married in 2018. That's why I met my husband. It sounded like my voice, like it almost sounded like it was as if I was thinking it, but it sounded like I was saying it to myself. So that happened in 2011 and then I want to say 2013, 2014 is when I first started learning tarot. It was something that I always was interested in but never actually sat down and started learning and that sort of launched me into learning about other occult practices and developing

4:13my psychic abilities and things like that. That was when I started actively attempting to have paranormal experiences in a way that I had it before and even then I started working in the paranormal. I had a ghost story web series that I was doing and even during that time I wasn't having anything paranormal happened to me. I mean, I have like skeptical moments but I wouldn't say that I ever truly was a skeptic. Like I always knew that the paranormal and supernatural was very real. And that definitely has to do with the way that I was brought up and the culture that I was brought up in. It really wasn't until 2020 when my grandpa passed away from COVID and he was the reason

5:18why I became so obsessed with the paranormal is because when I was a kid he had the coolest and craziest stories from when he was in the Philippines. And so when he died, it had been maybe over a decade since I actually had a real conversation with him because he had been fading from dementia for like a while. And I just remember like after he passed there was something that changed in me where I was like I don't think I'm afraid of having communication with the dead anymore. I was like I think I'm ready because I want to talk to my grandpa. Because I felt like I would be able to communicate with him in a way that I couldn't for so long because he had been so sick. And I did have weird little things happen. Like this was like maybe a couple months after he had passed and I was just like in my office

6:20and I don't know I just got really sad and I was like grandpa like I'm like really missing you right now if you could like send me a sign something just I don't know anything. And then this moss landed on the wall in front of me and I was like grandpa. I held my finger out over my desk and then the moss flew over and landed on my finger and I just remember thinking thanks grandpa. And then it flew away and in Filipino culture modest or thought to be the spirits of our ancestors. So I thought that was pretty cool. So it was like little things like that started happening. Ever since that moment I feel like I've had a lot of similar types of synchronicity sign stories,

7:28that sort of thing. Like that was primarily the type of supernatural experience I was having where I would like mask for a sign and then the sign would come and like in pretty like undeniable ways. But then there were also some things that like scared me a lot. So in the dream I was walking through my grandpa's house and I looked exactly like their house and then I remember walking to the bathroom door and I opened it and then that's when everything changed. So I'm looking around there's like sand there's palm trees like it looks so off and then I walk into the room and then I see this woman lying face down naked on the ground and

8:29her hair is sort of like she's long black hair that's sort of spilling out all over the floor. And when I see her I immediately know that she's dead and then I remember in the dream thinking, oh no, no, no, don't tell me what happened, don't tell me what happened because I just like wasn't. I was just scared. I was like, wait, wait, wait, because I just had this feeling she was going to like stand up and like walk towards here's something I got really scared and then I and then I went out of the bathroom and then I woke up and then that's when I heard the humming above me. I was laying there in bed and I obviously like could not go back to sleep because I was so scared. I was just like, ah, she's here in this room. What do I do? And I just laid there like with my eyes closed and throughout the night I heard like tapping on the window, tapping in the walls and like distant drumming sounds and just sounds that like,

9:38I don't think I usually hear like in the middle of the night when I'm sleeping. There was a moment where my husband next to me, he kind of let out this sigh but it sounded like musical and I don't know to explain it. It was like, it almost felt like he was humming like the same melody and it freaked me out because I was like, what's happening? It's happening. But yeah, I didn't go back to sleep that night. I do have a theory of why she came to me like that night. Like at the time I was, I was going about spiritual development in a very, very terrible way. As in like, I just want to like, pry my third eye open. Like I was just so desperate to have like an experience.

10:39Doing no protection, no grounding, no nothing like that. I was doing a bunch of stuff and I'm pretty sure that's why that night is when I had that experience and it did freak me out enough to stop doing the stuff that I was doing. But then, you know, after that faded, I was like, all right, let me, yeah, let me be smarter about this. It was a reminder to, a reminder that like as I'm opening myself up to these experiences and the spirit world, I also need to learn how to have better boundaries, spiritual boundaries. And ever since then, I like, I definitely, I definitely do. And I feel like I truly believe that in a way I don't think I ever, I did before. So the dream took place in my grandparents' house. I went to my grandma's house at night when she wasn't there with my cousins and then my two

11:45medium friends and I didn't tell them like, well, exactly, we were looking forward. They just knew that I had a dream. One of my friends, he kept saying, I've since like a whirlwind, I sense like water and like, like a natural disaster and like that kind of vibe. And it like got me thinking so then later, after the investigation, I was searching like, were there any disasters in this area? I was literally just searching like natural disasters and Ventura. So this was not a natural disaster. This is very much man-made. One of California's worst disasters came from an effort to fortify against disaster. In August 1924, construction began on the St. Francis Dam. Los Angeles was booming and William Mollhullin, the city's water chief, had a big concern. The city's water supply depended on the 233 mile Owens Valley aqueduct.

12:48This lifeline crossed the San Andreas fault and Mollhullin knew that a single rupture could leave LA high and dry. To make the system more resilient, Mollhullin built the St. Francis Dam just north of the city on the safer side of the fault. Its reservoir was designed to hold enough water to supply LA for two years in case disaster struck. It was a bold plan to secure LA's future. But in a tragic twist, the dam meant to protect the city instead unleashed a catastrophe. No one saw coming. William Mollhullin had kind of conned his way up to the top and convinced somehow, convinced people's amount to give him money to build the St. Francis Dam, even though he actually did not know anything about engineering. And so what happened was they built the St. Francis Dam and then they kept building it higher without compensating for the new height. So what happened was midnight at night and the dam just broke.

13:54This wall of water was barreling down the canyon and it went all the way out to the Pacific Ocean. And I was like reading about this and I was like, look, this is so sad. Because so many people died, but a lot of them were like undocumented workers who lived in that area because they were like working the farms. And I was like, okay, well, what areas did this affect? And my grandparents' house is in that area. And I was reading a bunch of newspaper articles and I found a couple that were like a lot of bodies were found unclothed. They were unclothed and unidentified because the water was so powerful, they just tore their clothes off. And then I don't know, reading those articles made me think about the woman and how I saw her, like face down and naked. And I was like, wait, was she like one of the unidentified victims?

14:56And it feels like such a stretch. But the thing that makes me feel like it very well could have been that she's connected to this event is because the St. Francis Dam disaster is the reason why we have the board of engineers. I'm not sure the official title, but basically if you want to practice, be a practicing civil engineer, you need to become licensed by taking this test. That disaster's reason why we have that. And my grandpa was a civil engineer for the city. His job was to make sure that public properties, public things were safe for people. And he's the one that found that house. He was drawn to that house. My current theory is like, I wonder if who I saw was like one of these victims of the St. Francis Dam.

16:04I am working with the idea of whether the focused, passionate wish is enough. That doesn't mean that I have discontinued ceremony, right, ritual prayer and petition. I have not. But I am deeply interested in whether holding that wish very well defined is in itself enough. And that's what we're all kind of going for. And of course, that doesn't compete with metaphysical narratives or efforts. It's just a question of whether all of those narratives and efforts are trafficking towards that point. And so I open, I'm working on a new book right now. And I open with an exercise in wishing a very seriously felt exercise in wishing. I love and believe in simplicity. And I am trying to strip away liturgy and ceremony and share what I find.

17:11I over the last two years, I feel like I've been called to withdraw, like turn it in, like especially when it comes to paranormal stuff. Which was weird because my podcast was all about me sharing all of the stuff that's been happening to me. Because I treated it almost like a living journal. A live journal for all you millennials. I'm sharing these things because I'm also learning at the same time and hoping that other people can hear stuff and we can exchange information. But ever. But then I had something happen like the started two years ago maybe where

18:12and I still haven't, I won't talk about it publicly. Where I'm like, oh, okay, so maybe now is the time where I keep this to myself. So that's sort of where I've been for the last two years. And I do think that I'm sort of just, I guess, re-examining like what does it mean to be a person who does a person who has a spiritual practice but is also very public about it. That was something that I've really been trying to figure out the last two years. Also, people's opinions of like the stuff and the practices that you do can also impact you as well. There's a lot of things that are too sacred to talk about. But then there's also information that's being spread. So you also want to have a wish. I don't know. So these are the things I was thinking about starting with over the last two years and it sort of made it really hard for me to

19:14work on my podcast because I was like, okay, well, I built this on sharing everything and now I feel like sharing nothing. So like, who am I? And also, yeah, just figure out like, what does it mean for me to be like a magical person? And that is where I was at. That's where I was at. Where when this, when this thing happened. So me and my husband were in our car. He's driving and we come upon a four-way stop and immediately as we pull it to the stop, I see across the street on the corner that's diagonal to us, there's a woman standing there. She immediately catches my eye because she's wearing

20:20all bright red. And when I look at her head, there's just something weird about it as in like, I don't understand what's going on. Does she have like a weird hairstyle? Does she have like a hat? Like, I just, I didn't know what I was looking. So I kept staring at her, I kept looking at her. And then she's standing at the very corner of the street facing the crosswalk to our left. I'm thinking that she's waiting for us to stop so that she can cross, but she doesn't cross. There's a car across from us that we kind of have this like little moment, you know that it's like awkward at an intersection where two people go once. We had this like weird little thing happen. And I look back at the woman, she doesn't move. She's perfectly still, she doesn't even look at our cars, nothing. We continue turning left and so we're going to pass right by here. So I get a closer look at her. So I'm like, okay, let me look at this lady like what is going on

21:24with her head? And so I look at her. The best way I can describe it is it kind of looks like she has really big curly textured hair, but her entire head is covered with a panty hose. You know, like a panty hose bag and it's sort of like tight around her neck, but it's containing her hair and her face. And I'm looking at her face and I can't make out any of her features clearly, but her eyes are glowing. And then I'm like, okay, let me ask my husband what he thinks this lady's business is because like maybe I don't know, maybe he saw something like I did it and I turned to him and I was like, did you see that lady? And he's like, what lady? The woman who was on the corner and he's like, I didn't see anybody.

22:24And so I'm like, okay, I understand that like when you're driving, you're very focused on certain things. There is a thing called selective memory. I feel like that's fully a possibility. However, it does not make any sense that he didn't see her because she was literally in our line of sight. As we're turning left, she was at she wasn't standing against the building wearing white where she could have blended into nothing. She was bright, as red, like so unbelievably bright, standing at the very corner as if she was waiting across the crosswalk. Like you would see a person there or he would have at least said like, you know, I saw like a flash of red. I thought it was something else. And so we're arguing the entire car wreck because I refused. I refused to believe that he did not see this woman. We were on our way to music lessons or singing class and I went into my lesson like cut it out of the way to my teacher. I was like, I think I might have seen a ghost. She was like,

23:29do you need a sit down? It was really funny. I was literally so shaken and I couldn't stop thinking about this woman. So the thing is like whenever something potentially paranormal happens, I always reach out to my psychic friends, magical friends just to see what their opinion is. I messaged my medium friend Stephanie Wang. I messaged her what happened. I was like, what do you think? And she didn't respond right away, but when she did, she said, sorry I didn't respond earlier, but you know what's so funny is that when you were texting me, I was listening to a podcast about a woman who saw a woman thought she was a real person, but she actually ended up being a ghost.

24:32And it was like at the exact same time that I was texting her. So she's like, I just thought that sinker that was like kind of a weird little coincidence. And I was like, okay. What I like to do now is draw anything weird that I see. So I've drawn, I drew the woman that I saw on my dream, I drew like things that I've seen in visions. So I sent that picture to my cousin who she's also very spiritual and very psychic and we always share like our weird experiences and stuff. And I sent her that drawing. I was like, hey, this is, I was like, this is what the woman looked like to me. And the second that I texted that, she wrote back and she was like, wait, that's so weird that you sent that to me just now because I right now for whatever reason was called to like pull some cards from my Oracle deck. And this is the one that came out. So it's like a woman wearing red and then she's got like these really glowing eyes. To me, it feels like that was confirmation

25:40that what I saw like wasn't just a woman like it was something. And then I had also message to my friend Ranny who's a priestess. I told her the story and she was like, oh yeah, those definitely a ghost. And she was like, she's like, that happens to me all the time where I'll see someone and she described it the same way. She was like, it will like for whatever reason, I can't register their face. Their face is just like not clear. And then she says that she always like nudges her partner like, hey, do you see that person? And then they never do. Pulled some cards of my own, you know, just to see like, okay, what comes up if I ask the cards, like, what, who was this woman? And I, I remember asking, you know, was she living or dead? And then the card that I got was the hermit. And the, the deck I was using, the hermit has like an image of

26:40a man in a robe and then an image of a skeleton in a robe behind. So it was almost like, is both and also the hermit could also stand for like a mentor, a spirit guide, something like that. So my impression is she's, yeah, she's something in between. The night before I had my experience, it was a full moon and I was at a bonfire by the beach with a bunch of other witches and magical people. It was for my friend, she's a witch and she is making a documentary about witchcraft. And so she just wanted to do like a little hang. And so I met a bunch of people I didn't know before. And we all brought, you know, things that we wanted

27:43to burn. And every time I go to the beach, I like to talk to the ocean. I was standing looking at over the water and I asked the ocean for inspiration. Because I've been feeling a little bit I don't know. I was in like a bit of a weird little fog, a weird little red. And I asked the ocean for creativity or something to get me feeling inspired and fired up again. And I do remember asking like, I want to feel magic again. I want to believe in magic again. Any person who even like religious people, spiritual people, like I think it's pretty common to have periods where you kind of feel like there's no magic. You know, and I think a huge part of

28:48that is just the state of the world and the state of things. It's easy to feel like really hopeless. And I think I was kind of sinking into that. And I just remember after seeing this woman kind of having this like resurgence of like, oh wow, like the world is so crazy and like magical and mystical. And it sort of, you know, reignited that kind of excitement again in me. So maybe that was, maybe that's why she was there. So something that I, for the last couple of years, have been trying to implement in my life, not just spirituality, but like in just everyday life. I tell myself, let me just ask and see what happens.

29:55Ever since I started doing that, I do feel like things have opened up for me. Like I'm no longer afraid because I feel like old sapphire would be like, oh no, I'm not going to ask because I'm going to look stupid if the answer is no. And now I'm like, okay, I'm afraid of them saying no. I'm like, also, I don't care what they think about me. Like why would they think I'm stupid for asking a question? And I do think that there's all of these anxieties and fears that we like put on ourselves that stop us from just asking and then accepting whatever the answer may be. And so I also apply this to spiritual matters and magical matters. Like just ask, like what's the worst that can happen? The universe says no or like it doesn't. But what's crazy is that usually when I ask, it happens. We're co-creators with the universe. Like the universe doesn't happen to us. Like we

31:00are part of the creation. And I think like understanding that and feeling like really believing that I think has also opened me up to more things too because I'm not just like a passenger in a car along for the ride. Like I'm giving directions. I'm driving sometimes. I really do think that when we let go of like all of those like really silly fears of like, oh I'm going to look stupid or oh what if it doesn't happen. But what if it does? Then it, then how cool was that? Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The Signal. Thank you to our guest, Sapphire Sandalo. For more of Sapphire's work, go to storieswithsapphire.com. The Signal is a production of Ufamette for And If Studio. Edit an original music by John McEdward.

32:08For ad free episodes of the show and episodes exclusive to Patreon, join Ufamette's society of the strange. Find the society and more information about the show, including ways to share your own experience with the unknown at ufamette.com. Until next time, keep looking God.