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Content Note: This episode includes discussion of suicide and historical mental health struggles. Listener discretion is advised.

A seventh grader bends over a blank page and starts to write about a crow. Minutes later, the handwriting shifts, the words turn sharp, and a quiet classroom erupts into chaos. We follow Lorancy Vennum through a chilling school-day spiral—eyes closed, voice altered, teachers and students stunned—as a rural town grapples with language for the unexplainable: possession, illness, misbehavior. The fallout exposes more than fear; it reveals how class and silence shape who gets compassion and who gets expelled. 

We step onto Emily’s Bridge in Stowe, Vermont, where folklore holds grief the way wood holds weather. Locals whisper about a pale figure in white and fresh scratches on passing cars. Our friend and fellow podcaster Heather Holt brings a rare lens: after losing her brother Michael to suicide, she created a “candle of hope” and turned loss into a mission to help others. Michael once saw a girl hanging in the moonlit beams, a moment no one else in his group witnessed yet he never forgot. Then there’s Michaela, who visited in broad daylight with her five-year-old; driving away, her son saw a girl in black only in the backup camera. No one stood on the road. The camera did not blink.

Together, these stories ask urgent questions. How do we respond when a child’s pain shows up as a scene? What do we owe people who carry experiences that do not fit our categories? Is a haunting proof of the paranormal, or a collective way to speak grief aloud? We don’t force answers. We light a path—through care, context, and the voices brave enough to share. Listen for the echoes between a 19th-century classroom and a 21st-century bridge. Stay for the human thread that binds them: the need to be seen, held, and believed.

If you or someone you love feels alone, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Then share this episode with a friend, leave a review, and tell us your story—your whisper might be the light someone else needs.

Check out Heather's story and podcast at changehappenedpodcast.com.

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