Our Numinous Nature

Linda Cassada is a paranormal investigator with VAPI: Virginia Paranormal Investigations out of Hampton, VA on the Chesapeake Bay. With her grounded & unique Christian approach, we get straight to the brass tacks of residential paranormal investigation: fake ghost reality-TV; the equipment; folks reaching out for help; theories for what ghosts are; & how 90% of cases have natural & mundane explanations. It's the remaining 10% that enters the dark waters of infinite mystery, Linda describes cases with ghost communication, activity around mirrors, & most unnerving of all when the haunting is no traditional ghost, but a malevolent entity that wreaks havoc on people & their homes.  For story time, Linda shares a terrifying personal account of just such one investigation around a grisly crime & the parasitic nature of these demonic forces. On a lighter note, she tells her Halloweeny love story about how she got into the calling through a series of events that led straight to her partner & his mutual passion for the paranormal.  We end hearing about local hot spots & accounts of some disturbing, yet comical run-ins with people in deranged states.

Check out Virginia Paranormal Investigators and Linda or the VAPI team on Instagram.



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Les O'Dell is a West Virginia paranormal investigator & curator of all things strange with a focus on Mountain State cryptids: an animal or creature that is claimed to exist, but never proven. We get right into hearing both popular legends & locals' accounts from Les' interviews about the likes of: The Wampus Cat; Snarly Yow the devil dog; Mothman; Ogua the giant-snapping turtle; The Grafton Monster; a truck driver's experience with a pre-historic hyena; Not Deer; & a bloody dog-man. Of course, one can't talk cryptids without talking bigfoot, or as the ol' mountain folks call it, The Old Man in the Woods. We hear multiple reports from West Virginians including an anthropologist's beyond-belief encounter in the Dolly Sods Wilderness. The second half of the episode takes a truly nightmarish turn into what is the podcast's most haunting tale to date: Les’ story of what his father claims is a family curse. Prepare yourself for horripilation!

Get a copy of Les' booklet West Virginia Cryptids: A Visual Field Guide for Traversing the Mountain State & reach out on his Facebook group, West Virginia Cryptids & Strange Encounters.



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Jonathan Kruk is a Hudson River Valley author, folklorist & master storyteller best known for his solo performances of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in the historic, 17th-century church that inspired Washington Irving's Halloween classic.  In his whimsical & hypnotic style, our guest bard recounts a slew of history & regional lore: a Native American Hudson River creation myth; a waterfall's tragic love story between a native maiden & her captive; a paranormal parable to prideful sailors as they pass Thunder Mountain; the Revolutionary War history behind Mother Hulda the witch & the mythic Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. Jonathan then shares an uncanny personal experience tracking down the grave of The Wandering Leatherman, a mysterious cave-dwelling vagabond from the 1800's.  Towards the end I tell my own story about going into a broken open tomb in an abandoned cemetery, adding to the overall haunted mood of the valley & this exceptional episode.

Get tickets to Jonathan's annual "Irving's Legend" solo performance in Tarrytown NY and/or check out his books: Legends and Lore of Sleepy Hollow and the Hudson Valley, and Legends and Lore of the Hudson Highlands.



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Vin Tabone is the New York film producer of a PBS-aired, two-part documentary on The Hudson River School: a genre of dramatic, mid-19th century landscape paintings depicting the grandeur & the divine in America's wildernesses. We learn about: the main artists in the movement starting with founder Thomas Cole; the reception from New York City critics; their adventuresome travels to jungles, icebergs, Europe & the Wild West; their use of reoccurring symbols such as storm clouds & tree stumps; and the moral & religious messages they strived to convey. Vin shares fond memories of his childhood on the Hudson, seeing the paintings for the first time, & trips to the unspoiled locations. For story time, he reads "The Bewilderment" from Thomas Cole's journal: a blind & dizzying account of being lost in a stormy, black forest. The last section takes a mystery-provoking sharp turn into a handful of Vin's uncanny & paranormal experiences, adding ever more wonderment to the Our Numinous Nature canon. 

Aired on PBS & ALL ARTS channel, watch Vin's documentaries The Hudson River School: Part 1: Artistic Pioneers & Part 2: Cultivating a Tradition via Amazon Prime Video.

Reference Images:
*Thomas Cole, Lake with Dead Trees [1825]
*Thomas Cole, Home in the Woods [1847]
*Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire  series [1833-1836]
*Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life series [1842]
*Frederic Church, Heart of the Andes [1859]
*Frederic Church, Niagara [1857]
*Albert Bierstadt, The Rocky Mountains, Landers Peak [1863]
*Albert Bierstadt, The Last of the Buffalo [1888]
*Albert Bierstadt, Mount Corcoran [1876-1887]
*Asher Durand, Kindred Spirits [1849]
*Jasper Cropsey, Autumn - On the Hudson River [1860]
*Martin Johnson Heade, Hummingbird & Passionflowers [1875-1885]
*Sanford Gifford, The Mouth of the Shrewsbury River, [1867]



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Daniel "Firehawk" Abbott of the Eastern Shore's Nanticoke tribe is a prehistoric technologist & the Native American interpreter for Historic Jamestowne. In this extensive & endlessly engaging episode, Daniel paints a picture of what Chesapeake Bay life would have been like, pre-&-early European contact . We hear of: virgin forests; Nanticoke merchants & trade items; agriculture & the migration of crops;  building a traditional longhouse; a muskrat origin story; & the inner workings of the Powhatan chiefdom from taxes to raiding. When story time rolls around, Daniel recounts an incredibly mysterious duck hunt in which his father, uncle & grandfather interacted with sentient marsh lights. Now in the realm of the numinous, Daniel shares his personal experiences including a waking vision & how he got the name, Firehawk. To end this epic episode we learn a few words in Algonquin; how to say: "Welcome," "Outsiders," & "May you farewell." 

Visit Historic Jamestowne to participate in one of Daniel's interpretive presentations on Saturdays and Sundays and to learn more about the Nanticoke, check out the tribe's website.


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Jay Meredith of Maryland's Eastern shore is the owner & tour guide of the historic Bucktown general store, as well as the founder of Blackwater Adventures kayak & bicycle rentals. Living within the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, and with his own American roots dating back to 1668, Jay has become something of an unofficial local historian & folklorist. First we hear about the significance of the general store - bought & restored by Jay - where Harriet Tubman was hit in the head by an irate slave overseer, a fateful injury that opened Tubman to divine guidance. We learn about her early life & her tremendous courage, her husband [a free man] & her possible escape routes through the foreboding swamps. Still feared by the locals today, the Greenbriar Swamp bubbles with legends of treasure & the ghost tale of an enslaved woman, Big Liz. We wrap up this riveting episode on lighter topics: mysterious jewelry found in the fireplace, the critters in the Blackwater Refuge, tasty invasive fish & deer, old guns, the local tribes, & eel pots.

Visit the Bucktown General Store & kayak with Jay's Blackwater Adventures in the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.



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Captain Wade H. Murphy, Jr is a 5th-generation Tilghman Islander who oyster dredges from a national historic landmark, a skipjack named the Rebecca T. Ruark built in 1886. Being America's oldest commercial sailboat in operation & hearing from her ol' time waterman captain, makes this episode a slice of Chesapeake Bay living history.  We begin with family - his grandfather having fallen overboard in 1914 - and hear about the rough bygone crews, skipjacks, the Oyster Wars, and how exactly "arster drudgin'" works. For story time, Capt. Wade recounts his harrowing experience of going down with his ship during an unparalleled November storm. One feels like they're there in the pissing rain & crashing waves as the Captain describes it in vivid detail, culminating on how the historic ship was saved from dying on the bottom of the Choptank River. We end with some question and answer: sailing superstitions, the captain's religiousness, things found in the dredge net, and a short ghost encounter.

If planning a Chesapeake Bay trip, sail onboard Capt. Wade's historic skipjack or join his son's outfit to catch a Maryland crab feast.



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Tom Horton is an environmental columnist, nature writer, documentary filmmaker, and teacher of writing & environmental studies at Salisbury University on Maryland's Eastern Shore. With the soul of an early 20th-century poet & a lifetime spent on the Chesapeake Bay, Tom gets right to covering a handful of its many wonders & predicaments: the primordial horseshoe crab spawn; the beneficial effects of beavers on the watershed; tundra swan migrations; and the plight of drowning islands due to rising sea levels. For story time, Tom reads one of his essays about his observations while kayaking in the midst of the monarch migration. His second reading - of equal wonder for the mysteries of nature - follows the truly epic eel exodus from Appalachian streams to the Sargasso Sea. We culminate with a report on the health of the Bay: humanity's impact; pollution & possible solutions; hope as opposed to optimism; and fond memories of a boyhood spent mucking in the marshes. 

Check out Horton's book of essays, Bay Country, or his memoir of life on Smith Island, An Island Out of Time. Click the links for his documentaries on rising sea levels or Chesapeake blue crabs. And subscribe for free to the Bay Journal.



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The podcast is one year old! In this anniversary bonus episode we go over some highlights from the past year while reflecting on lessons learned and forecast a list of topics to cover in the following year. Then it's reading time, I relate various texts to themes brought up throughout the 24 episodes of the podcast: regarding hunting & pelts, a 17th-century fable about selling a bear skin; regarding my current interest in the Chesapeake Bay, a brief analysis of treasure folklore and a Virginia pirate legend; regarding herbalism, plant-lore, and witchery, historical uses & magical beliefs surrounding the elder tree; and finally, regarding the podcast's continual presence of ghosts, death, & afterlife, Carl Jung's thoughts & personal experiences of the hereafter. Thank you for listening to Our Numinous Nature & riding along for the unfolding journey.

If interested in purchasing the books read in this episode: Fables of La Fontaine, Illustrated by Gustave Doré; Virginia Folk Legends, Edited by Thomas E. Barden; Under the Witching Tree by Corinne Boyer; and Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl G. Jung.


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Danny Doughty is a visionary folk artist in Onancock, Virginia on the Eastern Shore. The son of a waterman & a teenage bride, Danny grew up in abject poverty on Willis Wharf creek where he found himself in a dark, isolated, & brutal world of extreme dysfunction & abuse. We hear about where the imagery of his paintings comes from; the peace he feels when consumed in his art; and how the African American women his father peddled fish to showed him a profound spirituality that freed him from his hellish life. For his story, Danny paints us a harrowing & intensely disturbing picture of just what that childhood hell was like around his father's clam house down at the wharf. And yet, out of the darkness Danny has found light. We hear about his adolescent art made from scavenged materials; an anecdote about women fishing with hand lines; a regional ol' wives' tale about cracked cake; and get an overall feeling of a profound hope that transcends suffering. The guiding light of this episode is the healing power of creativity, art, and self-expression.

Check out Danny's paintings & gallery in Onancock. And watch the PBS short film about him and his work.


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Contact: [email protected]