Hosts Paul and Michelle explore the "devil made me do it" defense across three true crime cases, then share a listener-submitted paranormal story. They open with the 1981 Arne Cheyenne Johnson case in Connecticut — the first U.S. case where a "demonic possession" defense was formally argued in court. Johnson allegedly invited a demon to leave 11-year-old David Glatzel and enter him during an exorcism; weeks later he fatally stabbed his landlord, Alan Bono, during a bar fight. The judge rejected the possession defense as unprovable, and Johnson was convicted (though released early on good behavior). Next is Jason Dalton, a Michigan Uber driver and insurance adjuster who in February 2016 killed six people and injured two others in a random shooting spree. Dalton claimed a "devil head" appeared on his Uber app and took control of his mind and body — bizarrely continuing to give normal Uber rides between shootings. He maintained the possession story for three years before pleading guilty and receiving life without parole. The third case covers Nikolai Dzhumagaliev ("Metal Fang"), a Soviet-era serial killer and cannibal who murdered at least ten women, believing Satan possessed him and drove his hatred of women after he contracted STDs during military service. He famously served human flesh to unsuspecting friends at a cookout, escaped custody once, and eventually turned himself in when he ran out of food. The episode closes with a listener story from "Elena," whose teenage son befriended a boy named "Julian." Every time Julian visited, swarms of large black flies would appear and vanish the moment he left. The infestations stopped entirely once the friendship ended. The hosts frame it as a lesson in trusting instincts about people's energy, rather than a possession story per se.
Episode #: 57
Hosts: Paul, Michelle
Theme: "The Devil Made Me Do It" — real cases where perpetrators claimed demonic possession as a defense or explanation
Segment 1 — Arne Cheyenne Johnson (Connecticut, 1981) [01:30–09:00]
Segment 2 — Jason Dalton (Kalamazoo, MI, Feb. 20, 2016) [09:00–15:00]
Segment 3 — Nikolai Dzhumagaliev, a.k.a. "Metal Fang" (Soviet Union, starting 1979) [15:00–25:30]
Listener Story — "Elena" and "Julian" [26:00–37:30]
Recurring motif: Each case features a real, documented crime paired with a supernatural "possession" narrative offered by the perpetrator (or, in Elena's story, an ambient/parapsychological phenomenon tied to a specific person).
Spooky Coop Verbatim Transcript
Speaker1 : Paul
Speaker2 : Michelle
[00:00]
speaker1: This week on Spooky Coop, episode number 57, Paul and Michelle bring you three true crime, The Devil Made Me Do It, stories, followed by a listener story submission we like to call When Flies Attack.
speaker1: Hi everyone. I'm Paul.
speaker2: And I'm Michelle.
speaker1: And you're in the spooky coupoop. Welcome to the spooky.
speaker1: Hope you're not shaking. Three, two, one. Hello, Michelle.
speaker2: Hello, Paul.
speaker1: How are you tonight?
speaker2: Better than average.
speaker1: Better than average.
speaker1: Tonight, we're going to talk about people who do terrible things. Murder, murder, arson, violent crimes. And their defense, their explanation was chillingly simple. The devil made me do it. We're not talking about Gerald Dean, Flip Wilson's alternative personality, who used to say, "The devil made me do it." No, we're talking about people who claim they were possessed.
speaker2: How many people do you really think remember Flip Wilson?
speaker1: Only you and I this evening, and maybe one other listener who is like over 75 or—anyway, don't expect a lot of legalese, you know. Um, we're only going to use the psychology and the legalese where we have to. Um, we're going to really approach this from the dark side, from the side where the paranormal is, where people who really really believe or have some sort of truth that the devil did make them do it. So, dim your lights, get comfortable, and hang on for the spooky part of the Spooky Coop.
[01:30]
speaker2: And you may want to get comfy, too.
speaker1: Yeah.
speaker2: We'll start with the case that many people know about. One that reached the courts, made it into the press, and later was part of a movie. Then we'll move to two just as creepy but lesser-known accounts.
speaker1: So, what are we waiting for? Let's get going.
speaker2: Let's begin our first The Devil Made Me Do It case, which began in 1981 in Connecticut.
speaker1: That's not far from here. Thought that New Jersey was probably the place where, you know, nobody dies and goes. No, it's okay. So, this is the one that actually made the phrase famous in a legal sense. A young man, Arne Cheyenne Johnson, was involved in a brawl that left a neighbor dead. What turned the town on its head wasn't just the killing. It was the defense. Johnson's lawyer argued he was possessed, that he was possessed by a demon that entered him during the exorcism of an 11-year-old boy named David Glatzel.
speaker2: Yeah, most of you probably are like, "Oh, yeah, I know that case." 'Cuz several people who were there, including the famous ghost hunters, Ed and Lorraine Warren—who doesn't know the Warrens, right?
speaker1: Teenagers, teenagers don't know.
speaker2: Oh, yeah, they do. Anyone who's in the paranormal knows the Warrens. They've probably even been to their museum, even though they've passed on now. Anyway, Arne, is that how you say his name? Arne?
speaker1: I would. Let's go with Arne. Arne. Good enough.
speaker2: Because the name is spelled differently. It's spelled A-R-N-E.
[03:00]
speaker1: Yeah, that's like the French spelling, isn't it? Ara. Arne. Um.
speaker2: Yeah. Anyway, he historically, heroically or foolishly, you know, demanded that the demon leave the little boy. I don't know, you could see it—it was actually a part of the movie that he was like, "Come out of him and come into me." By the way, don't ever do that, you know. Just dumb move.
speaker1: Yeah. 'Cuz the demon will, if it's done right, eventually leave the person who's possessed. Don't say, you know, "Come into me." 'Cuz I mean, the next thing you know, you'll be setting chicken bones down on your desk at work, lighting little fires with matches, and you wake up going, "What? How did this happen?"
speaker2: Yeah. How did... yeah. And by the way, the demon was like, "Yeah, sure. I'll do that." And it immediately transferred out of the kid into him.
speaker1: Right. That appeared to be the endpoint of weeks of bizarre occurrences centered on David and his household. Yet to truly appreciate what happened next, you need to look at the whole story.
[04:30]
speaker2: Yeah, you really do. And after that transfer of the demon, weeks before the killing, our little hero there, Arne, started to act frustrated and fearful, and he acted aggravated in public. His girlfriend, who was the little boy's sister—she didn't live with him, and Arne lived with her—was starting to say, "This isn't right. He's not acting right." But you know, it didn't seem to click. People started getting a little bit weird. Anyway, she started saying there's something wrong with him. And then one day, when he was out drinking, he got into a bar fight with this guy named Alan Bono. Alan Bono was actually his landlord, and he stabbed him to death. He insisted that he didn't do it, that he was compelled and his hands couldn't stop him. He was pushed into it, and something took over him, and he was sure it was the demon that had been in her little brother.
speaker1: Right. He fell into this incredible rage, you said.
speaker2: Yeah, it just overtook him.
speaker1: In court, the defense put before Judge Robert Callahan—
speaker2: And I'm sure he loved that—
speaker1: Their plea of not guilty by reason of demon possession.
speaker2: Do you know, back in the day, way back in the time of witch trials, they actually put a horse on trial because they said the horse was—
speaker1: I recall something like this.
speaker2: Anyway, let's go on with it.
speaker1: Wasn't Mr. Ed, was it? No.
speaker2: No. Okay. Anyway, they were ready to have the Warrens and several family members, as well as the priest who performed the exorcism, testify to that end. But the judge threw out the defense, saying it was a radical idea that a supernatural force could overtake a person's volition.
[06:00]
speaker1: That was word for word.
speaker2: Mhm. Quote-unquote from the judge. Yeah. "The law in Connecticut was not designed for metaphysics."
speaker1: Yeah. He said that—
speaker2: He couldn't accept demonic compulsion as a formal defense. It was admissible and speculative—
speaker1: Inadmissible.
speaker2: Oh yeah. If I could read English three paragraphs, mouth blew up. It was you first.
speaker1: It was inadmissible and speculative and unprovable and needlessly confusing to a jury to let the defense use the theory in court. He also admitted he was not sure if demon possession was even possible.
speaker2: You know, that would have been really hard on a jury because juries who did not and would not believe in the supernatural, even if the evidence was overwhelming—
speaker1: It wouldn't have fit their paradigm and they couldn't have accepted it.
speaker2: Yeah.
speaker1: Anyway, the defense had to go with a not guilty by reason of insanity, which didn't work. And it caused a cultural war, a wildfire thing. The priests, the journalists, believers in it, even skeptics all flocked to the case. Witnesses in court never testified about the supernatural. They couldn't—like the little boy's sister and everything. She just had to testify about the violence and that he was provoked and stuff.
[07:30]
speaker2: And you know, it was awful. The exorcism transcripts could not be used. It was terrible. He was found guilty.
speaker1: Yeah. And these voice transcripts, they had voices alternating inside a single throat.
speaker2: One person's throat, these alternating different voices back and forth.
speaker1: Yeah. He was found guilty.
speaker2: Mhm.
speaker1: Yep.
speaker2: So, anyway, what lingers on is not the guilty verdict, but what happened to the man and how it caused a catastrophe in his life that the judge wouldn't believe. "The devil made me do it" is not just an excuse when it points to possession with actual evil that drives one to commit violent harm.
speaker2: Luckily, he didn't stay in prison for the whole term that they gave him. He got out on good behavior early, but still, it should have never happened. The poor guy got possessed by devils and then he had to be thrown into—
speaker1: To be fair, he was driven by the moment when he yelled out, "Come into me." He saw this little boy going through torture.
speaker2: He just saw the boy going through torture and he probably thought he could take it.
speaker1: Yeah.
speaker2: Yeah.
speaker1: Little did he know.
speaker2: Poor guy.
[09:00]
speaker2: Yeah. Poor guy. Anyway, our second story is another event that may be familiar to you. And you probably don't really know about the demon-possessed side of it because that didn't actually make the media. It was one of those things where it was held back because people thought it was just too much, and his family in particular really kind of cut it out. They thought it was no nonsense and they didn't want to know about it. But this nondescript family man actually did the unthinkable. Go ahead.
speaker1: Jason Dalton was a normal guy with two children and a loving wife. There was nothing about him that would even hint at the idea that one day he would go rogue, and in a strange night of terror, he would without forethought or reason randomly kill six innocent people and injure two others. Jason's defense: the Uber app told him to do it.
speaker2: Now, like seriously, I wouldn't drive for Uber. Not that it's a bad thing to do—my daughter did it—but I don't drive.
speaker1: Not for long.
speaker2: Anyway, does the devil come in? We're not going to say, "Oh my god, Uber Uber." No, we promise you "the devil made me do it," and you're getting "the devil made me do it." So we're not going to cop out and say Uber made me do it. Jason's defense did say that it was the Uber app, not the devil. And we'll get to how it was the devil.
[10:30]
speaker1: Right.
speaker2: Okay, go ahead.
speaker1: So, we found an article that mentioned that several people heard him talking to himself, sometimes arguing even loudly in his private times, and they became concerned. When they asked about it, he always said it was the TV or his computer. He was also not sleeping a lot through this time. Sleep deprivation can do wonderful things to the human body.
speaker2: And this started about two weeks before February 20th. I don't think we pointed that out, but it started weeks before.
speaker1: Mhm.
speaker2: So Saturday, February 20th, that's the day that he went on his rampage...
speaker1: This was in 2016, right?
speaker2: 2016. Yeah.
speaker1: 10 years ago.
speaker2: Oh, yeah.
speaker1: And change.
speaker2: 10 years and change, yeah. That's when the evil that was chasing him caught up with him. He was a full-time insurance adjuster. He didn't have to work for Uber.
speaker1: That in and of itself is an evil.
speaker2: Well, no, seriously, he is—
speaker1: I'm sorry.
speaker2: No, no, no. But seriously, there's a lot of negative energy involved in going to places that have burned down or where people have been killed and stuff—
[12:00]
speaker1: Car accidents, awful stuff.
speaker2: Yeah.
speaker1: Yeah, and also adjusting money for people who sometimes aren't going to be happy about it—
speaker2: You know, and they're going to be cursing you, "Damn you, my car was worth ten times that," you know. And he didn't really have to drive for Uber, but he wanted to take his family, his two kids, and his wife out for a special vacation at Disney. And he wanted to make it like the vacation of a lifetime. So he was trying to build up a good nest egg for that. And so he started driving. It was about two weeks before this happened. And incidentally, it was about two weeks before this happened that people started hearing him talking to himself and arguing with himself.
speaker1: Yeah, he appeared like he was entering into a dark depression.
speaker2: Right.
speaker1: The night when he was caught and questioned by police, he said in a calm and confidential voice... and we have a clip.
speaker2: We have a clip
speaker1: That we're going to play right here.
speaker2: Yep.
speaker1: "I know that you guys are going to have a hard time believing this, but it literally took over mind and body."
speaker1: "The Uber app?"
speaker1: "Yes. I really didn't even see what the... I just tapped it and then it was like a devil head that popped up. It was some sort of like horned head, like a cow head or something. Okay."
[13:30]
speaker1: "And I pressed that button, and that's where all the problems went after that."
speaker1: And as you can hear in the clip, it was really strange that he took time to give real Uber rides in between these shootings.
speaker2: And as he just admitted in the clip—
speaker1: So insane to me.
speaker2: Yeah, as he also admitted, that the Uber app was being controlled by Satan.
speaker1: He finally said that the devil made him do it, that it wasn't necessarily the Uber app, it was the fact that Satan was working the Uber app.
speaker2: Right. So, what's really strange is he took the time to give real Uber rides.
speaker1: Yeah, that was really bizarre.
speaker2: And that makes no sense to me. He would flip on, flip off, kill someone, get in the car: "Oh hi, yes, please, come in. Yeah, I'll get you safely to your next place."
speaker1: You know, so he was actually doing his job. Yeah.
speaker2: And you know what was really weird is that—that's what you call overkill, excuse me. When this first came out—sorry.
speaker1: When this first came out—
speaker2: I'm going to hell. Shame on me.
speaker1: The devil made you do it. When this first came out, the news actually talked about that. But now when you go back and read it, it looks like he only gave one Uber ride. It's very, very strange.
[15:00]
speaker2: Okay. Yeah, anyway, Jason Dalton stuck to the story of possession for three years until the family money started to run out. I guess they had some cash. Well, yeah.
speaker1: Then he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life without parole. To this day, he still believes the devil made him do it.
speaker2: Yeah. Well, what happened is that when his family started losing money, when he didn't have any more money for his family to pay lawyers—
speaker1: You know, I can understand that. Anyway, our last story for your consideration is a lesser-known story. I would be hard-pressed to see how many of you really know this story.
speaker2: I love how you always give me the paragraphs that have these 15-letter last names or names of towns. You expect me to know it? The man's name is Nikolai Dzhumagaliev. Hey, I did it! If you can see how it's spelled, it's D-Z-H-U-M-A-G-A-L-I-E-V. We're going to call him Dzhumagaliev.
speaker1: Okay.
speaker2: People called him—
speaker1: Fang, because of that name.
speaker2: Because... no, because his front teeth were made of white silver metal replacements after he lost them in a fight. He was a serial killer and a cannibal in what was then the Soviet Union. He had no problem picking up his chosen victims as he was always well-dressed and clean-shaven. In other words, he looked like a good citizen and a normal man, not crazy like he was. Yeah, he was really shit crazy.
[16:30]
speaker1: Yeah. Okay. You know, after Metal Fang—
speaker2: If you want to call him that, that's what I would call him. After he was diagnosed with two sexual diseases he caught over the time he was in the war, he blamed women for what happened to him, and he just decided to call all women hateful. Originally he just hated sex workers, but then he decided it was all women. But then he believed that Satan had entered him and made him have super hatred for women. It made his hatred for women go into overdrive and it was really, really, really overwhelming him and giving him passion to kill.
speaker1: I bet you the night that he got diagnosed, he had on the radio there, they were playing a song: "I once knew a gal named Maria, she had gonorrhea."
speaker2: Don't—we have a kid-friendly podcast. Not a kid-friendly—
speaker1: No, I can't be anymore. In 1979—
speaker2: Cheesy. Go ahead.
speaker1: He committed his first brutal killing.
speaker2: Was it as bad as that song? No.
speaker1: It was worse. Within six months, he took the lives of four more women.
speaker2: Yeah, that's five in six months.
[18:00]
speaker2: And because of the... we have to say SA, which everybody knows, he would SA his victims before and after the murders, dismember them, take parts of their bodies home, and eat them.
speaker1: Yeah.
speaker2: This first part of his horrible spree wouldn't end until he was caught for an unrelated murder.
speaker1: Yeah, that was funny—I mean, not funny haha.
speaker2: The unrelated murder was far less ghastly, but was still awful enough.
speaker1: Yeah, he was actually caught for shooting and killing a friend of a well-known fireman in a bar.
speaker2: You know, people knew the fireman, so they were able to find him pretty quickly. His excuse was "the devil made me do it," and it was so absurd that he stuck to the story. They decided that he had schizophrenia, found him guilty by reason of insanity, and put him under psychiatric hospital care.
speaker1: Mhm.
speaker2: After one year though, they declared him sane and safe for release.
speaker1: Oh god.
speaker2: Which in the United States is funny because they would have declared him sane and safe for trial.
speaker1: Yeah.
speaker2: But over there they said, "Oh yeah, he's sane, let him go."
[19:30]
speaker1: Anyway, little did they know that this fellow was actually his sixth victim.
speaker2: There would be more.
speaker1: Yep, there sure would.
speaker2: Over the next year, he returned into the social scene, got a job, and he made friends. His friends were blissfully unaware when one summer they invited him to a cookout and he provided some wonderful steaks he said were from a hunting trip.
speaker1: Maybe because they tasted—
speaker2: This is going in a terrible place.
speaker1: I think they could figure out—
speaker2: He didn't mention they were from human hunting, as the whole group at the cookout happily munched down their people steaks, smiling.
speaker1: "Have a piece of Susan." Fried Frank, smiling, and all women.
speaker2: Oh, they're all women, that's right.
speaker1: Anyway, smiling, enjoying, uncomfortable, and thanking him for the treat. So, they were very grateful for these steaks, needless to say.
speaker2: I wonder how much meat they had in the Soviet Union. This was probably a nice treat for them. Anyway, he said to the doctors after he was hospitalized again that he was so excited by watching these people eat their steaks—their people meat—that the strength of his excitement actually summoned the devil out of hell and entered him, and it made him frenzy to kill again.
[21:00]
speaker1: So he watched the people until he picked out one of his victims. He picked out one of the women there and he convinced her to come up to a bedroom in the house with him on the idea that they were going to do some hanky-panky. And when he got her up there, he tricked her and he did his usual.
speaker2: Now, this is wild. He did this at the party.
speaker1: At the party, in the house.
speaker2: In the house.
speaker1: And what's really wild is that there were people in the next room—
speaker2: Right?
speaker1: Very next room, one thin wall.
speaker2: Yeah, in a room right next door, two of his friends were hanging out, right?
speaker1: The fact that they didn't hear her cry or the hacking of her body by the—
speaker2: An axe.
speaker1: By the axe. Yeah, he used an axe—
speaker2: Which was not very quiet. And that he was able to walk by all the other people at the cookout, covered in bloody clothing without being questioned—
speaker1: And carrying chunks of her body to bring home and put in the cooler.
speaker2: It was proof to Metal Fang that the devil was with him and was protecting him as he did the evil one's bidding.
[22:30]
speaker1: Yeah, that is wild. But the next day—
speaker2: I don't know, did nobody say anything because he was walking along, "Hey Metal, where'd you get the third hand there?"
speaker1: Anyway—
speaker2: Covered in blood, "I'm not going to ask you." Oh, get out.
speaker1: Anyway, the next day the devil must have left Russia. You know, the devil went down to Georgia or something.
speaker2: Because the next day, unfortunately for him, but good for all of them I guess, the woman's body or what was left of it was found, and people gave statements that the last person they saw her go into the house with was good old Metal Fang.
speaker1: Yeah. Nikolai told doctors that many times he helplessly watched while Satan took over his body and committed the horrible deeds. He insisted that the devil drove him to do it. This included "the devil made him do it," the necrophilia, and the consuming of the corpses. But once again he was found insane and sent to a hospital, but this time he actually jumped out of the moving vehicle when they were transporting him between hospitals and escaped.
speaker2: And he was on the run again.
speaker1: Uh-huh.
speaker2: And he killed again—
[24:00]
speaker1: For two years.
speaker2: Mhm.
speaker1: Yeah. Then after some time, he actually made a plan to turn himself in.
speaker2: You know why?
speaker1: Why?
speaker2: He was running out of food.
speaker1: He was like, "I'm so hungry." After a lot of back and forth over totally non-paranormal details, he did turn himself in. He was again hospitalized.
speaker2: Yeah.
speaker1: He was charged with the brutal slaughter of another woman, making the total ten that they know of.
speaker2: That they know of.
speaker1: Nikolai admitted to many more, but couldn't provide names. Police suspect more murders as well, but he denied them. As for the person he assaulted, that was one of his first victims.
speaker2: Yeah, and that person was just sort of beat up by him just after getting out of school. Anyway, the strange part of all of these cases and the reason why he ended up in the hospital is that he kept saying the devil made him do it.
speaker1: The devil made—
speaker2: And that's something all these cases have in common. Now, did the devil make them do it or were they all crazy?
speaker1: Now, I say both.
speaker2: Well, if the devil's talking to you, it's going to drive you crazy. But you know, the idea of the devil getting into people's heads and making them do things goes way back in history.
[25:30]
speaker1: Yeah, it's a form of possession.
speaker2: Yeah.
speaker1: Yeah, suggestion, strong suggestion to do bad things.
speaker2: That's true.
speaker1: So don't do bad things.
speaker2: Yeah, if a voice in your head says go hit that person, don't do it.
speaker2: Talking about possession, we have another story. Paul and I think it's leaning on possession. Now, this came in after our last show when we talked about the woman who had the flies in her house. This person sent us this right away and you might find it interesting. You want to start?
speaker1: Okay, yeah. This is from Elena. She asked us to use the name Elena.
speaker2: She said it's okay.
speaker1: Okay. She's a mother who for a few years felt like she was losing her sanity inside her own home, and it was all centered around one specific person... and flies. Elena's son was 15 at the time this happened. She described him as a normal, happy kid until he started hanging around with a new boy from school. She said, "Let me call him Julian," which is okay.
[27:00]
speaker2: Elena said the moment her son met Julian, or when she met Julian, her skin started to crawl. She said she couldn't put her finger on it, but she started to feel heavy, like he was putting the lights out in a room. It was like all of a sudden everything was kind of...
speaker1: All right. So, this is her son's friend Julian from school, okay. And there was—
speaker2: After a bit.
speaker1: Yeah, okay, yeah. So, here's when the infestation starts. Elena noticed that every time Julian came over, the house would suddenly be swarmed by these massive, oily-looking black house flies.
speaker2: Yeah. She said, "Not just one or two." She said it was like—excuse me, I made a sentence—horse flies.
speaker1: Oh, okay.
speaker2: Horse flies are big.
speaker1: Yeah. She said not just one or two. She said that—
speaker2: You know, in Canada you can put saddles on them and ride them.
speaker1: Yeah.
speaker2: Yeah, people do that, and across the prairie they have races.
speaker1: Yeah, and that's why if you go to certain amusement parks, on the carousels they have flies.
speaker2: Yeah. Okay, so that's why she said it felt like a black cloud of flies would be there every time he came in. They'd appear out of nowhere, buzzing against the windows, hitting the glass. They'd land on the furniture, even land on food, and she'd check everything. She didn't seem to see where they were coming in, but they seemed thickest when Julian was there. And she said several times they darted close to him, and she walked up close to him and kind of sniffed to see—
[28:30]
speaker1: That's what I would suspect, a hygiene issue.
speaker2: Yeah, to see if it was a hygiene issue, but she didn't notice anything except for the overwhelming smell of Axe.
speaker1: Kids still wear that?
speaker2: Covering up the hygiene issue, maybe.
speaker1: I guess, you know. Anyway, the storms of flies were manifesting the minute he stepped through the door.
speaker2: She said the sound was the worst part. It wasn't just a buzz, it was like a rhythmic, angry sound. That's kind of horrifying, you know. Why am I laughing? It's kind of horrifying.
speaker1: She said they seemed to follow him out, and—
speaker2: Yeah, and the moment Julian left, the flies would vanish. Just gone, like they had never been there before.
speaker1: Yeah, she said they kind of followed him out, and they would just be gone.
speaker2: When she said vanished, I wrote her back, by the way. And she said they didn't disappear like in the story we told; it was more like a bunch of them would just go out the door, or she would open a window, or they'd stick on the fly traps. But all of a sudden, they weren't a problem anymore.
[30:00]
speaker1: Mhm.
speaker2: You know?
speaker1: Right?
speaker2: And then she tried to be a cool mom, but she couldn't take it. She sat her son down and told him, "I don't want you hanging around with this boy anymore, there's something wrong with him." But she held her tongue 'cuz she figured if she did that, he'd just say she was being dramatic and next thing you know, this kid would be there ten times. Anyone raising teenagers knows if you want them to do one thing, tell them the opposite. So the cycle continued for months. It was like clockwork. Julian would arrive, the black flies would descend, and the house would feel cold, oppressive, and chaotic. Elena said she found herself cleaning up dead flies by the hundreds.
speaker1: Yeah.
speaker2: Every time Julian left, but she couldn't find where they were coming from.
speaker1: Yeah, then she said she felt like a tether was around her. The flies were an extension of that boy. It was like he was bringing a piece of a darker thing with him every time he came over. She started calling it his fly fan club.
speaker2: Mhm, yeah.
speaker1: Right. The impact on the house was real. She said the atmosphere became this toxic feeling. Her son started acting differently—moody, withdrawn, and he was even a bit hostile. It was like he was being drained.
[31:30]
speaker2: Yeah, she said that she was waiting for him to buy emo clothes.
speaker1: Yeah, and she said one day when the kid left, she went in there and there were flies all over his bed.
speaker2: Was that her breaking point?
speaker1: No, not quite yet.
speaker2: Okay.
speaker1: I think her breaking point wasn't the flies on the bed, it was the flies all over dinner.
speaker2: Oh!
speaker1: Yeah, her husband said, "We really got to get... maybe if we get to know this kid." He didn't believe the fly thing, he thought maybe the flies were because the kid was dirty or something.
speaker2: Unless you've experienced something like it, it's a hard one to follow. Now, you and I had an experience with flies coming out of nowhere years ago at a cemetery. The Ting Cemetery down in Tyngsboro—
speaker1: Ting Cemetery down in Tyngsboro.
speaker2: Was the guy's name Colonel Ting's house?
speaker1: Alfred, right?
speaker2: So anyway, we were standing there, there were all these beautiful flowers around the graveside, it was getting to be around dusk, and I picked up one of the flowers and then we felt this horrible presence around us, and I felt something in my hand, like the flower was moving, and I looked down and it was just completely covered in flies. They came buzzing, hundreds of flies just flew out of it, and I just threw it on the ground.
[33:00]
speaker1: Time to go, yeah. But her husband had said, "Invite him over, we'll have a nice dinner." And then they invited him over, and he actually said, "Oh, I don't like this," and the next thing you know, flies were all over the kitchen. That was the breaking point.
speaker2: Yeah.
speaker1: Finally, when she reached that breaking point, she told her son that if he continued to see him, there would be serious consequences.
speaker2: Didn't they do something? They even transferred him to another... okay.
speaker1: Not yet, not yet.
speaker2: But before she had to force those issues, right? That's when that happened, okay.
speaker1: In hopes of getting her son away from Julian, she requested the school system transfer him to a different school. And after she told them that he wasn't a good fit, you know, he wasn't a good influence—
speaker2: So they granted that to him anyway.
speaker1: Yeah, 'cuz her son was an A/B student and all of a sudden he was being a punk and everything.
speaker2: And I guess she hoped that he would meet other friends and lose interest.
[34:30]
speaker1: Yeah, he did, and he lost interest in Julian.
speaker2: Yeah. So, the moment that friendship ended, the flies never came back, she says. Not a single one.
speaker1: Maybe except for like, you know—
speaker2: You don't have to be that precise. Of course there's going to be a fly or something.
speaker1: Only normal—
speaker2: Not the swarms.
speaker1: Yeah. Anyway, she said that after Julian stopped coming over, the house felt like it could breathe again, and that heaviness lifted and what she called the static in the air disappeared.
speaker2: Mhm.
speaker1: Yeah, it was all normal again.
speaker2: Right. So it's a powerful story. It challenges the idea that we're not just talking about bad vibes—this was a physical manifestation of a person's influence.
speaker1: Yeah, and it makes you think who we let into our space is important.
speaker2: We have to be so careful about our physical security. We're always so careful about who's knocking on our door, who might be coming—
speaker1: Who doesn't have a Ring camera of some kind?
[36:00]
speaker2: Yeah, who doesn't have a Ring camera these days? But we're not always watching out for who might be coming into our energy field. You know, if somebody comes in and gives us the heebie-jeebies or makes us feel uncomfortable, we say to ourselves, "Oh, we're being stupid, that's a nice person." And they might even be a nice person, but they're not nice for us, they're not good for us.
speaker1: At least not right at that moment. They may have come from a very uncomfortable situation you don't know about.
speaker2: Or they may be somebody who's not nice. They may be a person who has—
speaker1: A wolf in sheep's clothing.
speaker2: Yeah, they may have intentions that are not good for us. We have to also listen to our inner self. Maybe this Julian kid didn't have any bad intentions, but maybe he had a demon on his shoulder or something.
speaker1: He carried fly food.
speaker2: He was a fly cat.
speaker1: He hid it in his coat.
speaker2: Well, thank you, Elena, for sharing such a personal and creepy story like this. If there's any place to do it, it's here.
[37:30]
speaker1: I'm glad her house is peaceful again, I really am.
speaker2: She had a very practical solution to something that could have been very complicated.
speaker1: Yeah, yeah, and it worked out. That's a good thing.
speaker2: It was very elegant and she did a great job.
speaker1: Yeah, well—
speaker2: Very proud of her.
speaker1: Yes. So I guess that does it for this episode of Spooky Coop.
speaker2: Yeah, I think so.
speaker1: So thank you everyone for joining us, both here in the United States and around the world. We're grateful that you dropped by.
speaker2: Oh, I got to cut you off for a minute.
speaker1: Remember, we're going to be on YouTube real soon.
speaker2: Yep, God help us, but you're going to see us.
speaker1: We're going to do—
speaker2: That's what makes the Coop real spooky.
speaker1: But we do have a really awesome intro. I used some AI to create a really wonderful intro that I think is going to work out well.
speaker2: Yeah.
speaker1: So until next time—
speaker2: AI, alien intelligence.
speaker1: Yeah. Thank you again for joining us, folks. Be good to each other, take care of one another, love one another. Until next time when we see you in the spook coop.
speaker2: Okay.