Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

The Heart-Shaped Leaf and it’s Healing Properties

Nationality: American
Age: 86
Residence: Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Primary Language: English

The Heart-shaped Leaf and it’s Healing Properties:

ME: Could you describe this leaf, being an example of folk medicine?

M.H.: Yes. ME: So what can you tell me about the leaf?

M.H. Well, we were very poor, and of course then, we didn’t have a doctor that would come to our house very often, but one of my brothers got burned very bad playing by the fireplace. He burned his shin on his legs really bad, he was wearing denim jeans, we called them overalls at the time, and it was an injury the size of about four inches up his shin. And so, it would never heal, it kept burning him all the time, and of course as a little boy, he would cry all the time. Well, one day, this woman, who was a Cherokee Indian stopped by, and she told us about this plant. Well actually she went down to the woods, and got it growing by the moss, and brought it up. It was shaped like a heart, and you would just put it into the skillet, and heat it, and it would melt into a wax. She put it on his leg, it quit burning and it healed, and years later, one of his children skinned his knee with a tricycle, and he went to Nashville, Louisville, Lexington, Knoxville, and even St. Louis, and he was trying to go to different hospitals to get it healed, and they would take all these biopsies. So, my father and I, we went back to the old home place, and we got this plant, and we went to him. We put it in the skillet, melted it, and in one week it healed. It was a heart-shaped leaf, and something the Indians had done.

ME: I remember you telling me that story before, and it always amazed me.

M.H.: Well, the Indians had a lot of remedies. Even in the medical places today, now that was about thirty years ago that happened, well let’s see. It was the year 1950, or into the 1950s.

ME: So, how was your brother’s health, after the wax from the leaf was administered?

M.H.: It healed immediately, and we took the plants to him, and he set them in the north side of his house. This was in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and the last I heard, there were still these plants growing around his house, and he has kept them all these years in case he needed to use them again on the knee, and he had several kids he raised, and four grandchildren. Uh, he would get that, and melt the plant, and that was it. Put the ointment on the knee, and it would heal in a week’s time, completely.

ME: That’s an amazing recovery. Just in one week.

M.H.: Yeah, considering no one else could do anything. The medical profession couldn’t do anything.

ME: Then instead of an advanced medical procedure, a natural remedy took it’s place, and everything worked. Thank you.

 

M.H. describes an extraordinary natural, folk remedy that she attributes to the Cherokee Native Americans, or at least the particular woman who had introduced her treatments to her family. I am astounded at how quickly the natural recovery rate had been, but I have no reason to regard her account in a state of disbelief. Natural medicine can work to powerful effect, in ways that may seem baffling in terms of understanding modern medicinal practices. Much of it comes down to making do with regional resources, and that heart-shaped plant is supposed to be native to that region, although not described by any particular name.

Possible Bigfoot/Sasquatch Sounds in Colorado

Nationality: American
Age: 45
Residence: Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Primary Language: English

Possible Bigfoot/Sasquatch Sounds in Colorado:

A.B.: Well, this was approximately five years ago, I, we, well two sons went, and after the incident, we haven’t been since. It’s not because of the incident we didn’t go back, but it was because of my injury, I hurt my arm.

ME: Tell me about that incident, where you might have heard a Sasquatch or Bigfoot?

A.B. OK, all right. Well, I’ve been hunting for a long time, and heard different things out in the woods and wilderness. This was so different from anything I have ever heard. Probably, the closest I could simulate this to, is for example, up at Frasier Park, I once heard caged lions. They feed them, and they roar, you could hear them and you could feel the power of their roars. But early that morning, it didn’t compare to the actual, it wasn’t similar to a lion, but what’s comparable is the depth, and the velocity of the power. The power of whatever it is we heard, basically I’ll lay out what happened. It’s the first season of elk season, which is only five days long. It’s probably been October 15, 2011 or 2010. And we actually, this was the second year in a row we had been there, and everyone in the camps left because it was the last day of the season. Oh, and by the way, this is a very remote area near Craig, Colorado, and the only way to get to this area is horseback, or driving through private property on a truck, and my friend knew him and we were able to go through. There were eight other campus, and on the very last night, most others were gone. On that night, I was woken up, and I catch the tail end of this, crazy screams. My hair is standing up, and I’m listening to the tail end of this thing. I’m thinking, “Oh my God,” I was afraid, I was, I went from being dead asleep to ultra alert, just frozen trying to listen to any sound again. I was afraid to lay my head down again, and we had a big canvass Montana style tent, wood burning canvass tent. There’s probably eight of us in this tent, and my head’s against this thing, we had game bags, meat hanging on trees, elk antlers, and my son woke up, and this thing yells again. A yell isn’t really a correct description, it was a really girthy scream. It may have lasted about thirty seconds long, but I didn’t time it, and I was dumbfounded, I could not believe I heard it again. I didn’t know what it was, but I know it wasn’t a mountain lion, or a coyote, coyotes are different, cackling away like that. It was freaky, the impression that it left me was this thing is pissed. One thing that went through my mind is that hunters were leaving this area, leaving carcasses around, and I was wondering if this thing was angry because all these hunters left gut sacks and all this stuff. But, I don’t know what it was. I watched all this stuff, like Finding Sasquatch on TV, and listening to recordings of screams, and yells, but it was nothing like what I’ve heard. This thing was shocking, gut-wrenching. One son heard it for sure, and another got up to use the bathroom, and he went outside. I looked outside, and I half expected other lights to be on, and as I looked around, it was a dead silence. We were close enough to other tents that I could hear others if they were talking, but it wasn’t that. It was pitch black outside, didn’t hear anything else after that, except for those two, crazy screams. I shut, shut the tent, and started walking back to my cot, and my son D. went up to use the restroom. I walked him out, as I didn’t want him to be alone for darn sure. I walked out, and he said, “Oh, I gotta take a dump.” I said no, take a leak, and get back in. You have no idea what I just heard. So he’s kinda, he did it, and I guess he really went or whatever. But he got back in after using the restroom, you know, and uh, I guess we all kinda settled down and went back asleep. It turned out being, I think it was three o’clock, 2:45 to 3:00, when this happened. And uh, for four days before that, you get pretty much a lot of hunters on this hill, and uh, we would wake up at 4:00, or 4:15 in the camp. We made breakfast for ourselves, and had a really good camp. But the only way to really get to this area also, it’s real remote, you gotta have four-wheel drive trucks, raised, and you had chains on all four tires. And you’re in four-wheel drive low, going up all these roads. And it’s pretty, it’s pretty nasty stuff. Um, the first year we did it, I could not believe we were driving up these roads. Your tires are sitting on all these ruts, otherwise you’d slide off the hills, you know, down little mountains and stuff. So it was crazy, and I still think of that.

ME: Thank you, it must have been the most intense thing you’ve ever heard.

A.B.: You’re welcome. You know, I was thinking of those owls, some of those owls make crazy sounds. But um, uh, this, those lack the, like I was telling you about those lions, when those lions roar there is a certain depth and guttural presence, and hairs stand up on your body. You’re just like, holy, what the heck was that. You know, you start rationalizing, I know it wasn’t this, it couldn’t have been that, and so on. I’ve never heard anything of the power of what we’ve heard, but you hear some of these things, like screams and stuff, and well maybe it’s close, but nothing like that.

ME: All right, thank you for those details.

A.B.: You’re welcome. This testimony recalls a possible near-encounter of a Bigfoot or Sasquatch type of beast, which was only heard, but the sounds were indeed felt that night by two or three witnesses. The sounds happened twice, and sounded completely unlike anything he had ever heard before.

 

A.B. goes on to describe the screams in painstaking detail, right down to the location of the hunting trip and all it’s context before that night, at some point between 2:45 to 3:00 AM. I think this experience is one of the most terrifying things that could happen to somebody. There is a genuine sense of doom, and dread that results from that. I have never heard what he described, but I believe that he heard something. Whether it was a Bigfoot type of wild animal, is unknown. The memories of the screams survive the trip, and even long after that, around four or five years later, the hunting trip is still mentioned along with the horrific sounds in the dark, Colorado mountains.

Ghost Sighting in Cambridge, England

Nationality: American
Residence: Newport Beach, California
Primary Language: English

Ghost Sighting in Cambridge, England:

G.H.: Uh, in 1972, I went uh, surfing in Europe, Spain and France, and travelled around Europe, then I ran out of money. And I had friends living in Cambridge, they said I could look for work, because these people said they could help me get a job. One guy was a professor at the University of Cambridge, and it was his girlfriend, a Greek lady. And so I stayed with the Greek lady for a while. And her house backed up along a place called Jesus Green, and Jesus Green Park is kind of oval in shape, and uh, I learned a lot about Cambridge area. The significance of Jesus Green in that area, was that it was very old, and people walked along that area like a promenade. I don’t know, that area is super ancient. And one day, I was standing at the sink washing dishes, and it’s not dark, but dusk. I’m washing dishes, and out the back, the window looks out the backyard. There’s an opening where a gate should be, and the other side, the continuance of the brick wall. So the house backs up against Jesus Green, and as I look up, this translucent grey figure walks left to right, and when he gets almost abreast of me, he turns and looks at me, then turns his head away and continues to walk. The guy is dressed in 15th century, I could see the buttons on his coat, long hair, you know, real fancy jacket kind of thing you would imagine from Rembrandt portraits from that era. I could see his face to this day, but he was a translucent kind of grey. Very distinctive. As if that didn’t blow my mind, he walks ahead, he turns and looks at me, and all of a sudden where the gate should be, he walks a ghost dog, a little Pekingese kind of thing.

ME: Very interesting. Could you describe the translucence a little more?

G.H.: It was like a half tone of grey, if you, you were to take an image on your computer and ask for grey tones. It was different shades of grey.

ME: Thank you.

 

Ghost sightings are common, and in G.H.’s case, he visited Cambridge, England, and at the area of Jesus Green, where he stayed with his friend, he believes he saw a ghost. The apparition appeared to be a figure of the 15th century, as evidenced by his very antiquated clothing, and appearance, down to the hairstyle and the coat of many buttons. I am not sure about what others experience. They may let me know something they have seen or heard, yet I have to make a judgement about it for myself. It is often difficult to fully believe such stories, and there are always attempts to try to rationalize it. For example, this experience could have had to do with G.H.’s state of mind, and the dress of the man he believes to be a ghost, may be explained as that of a re-enactor, or an eccentric fellow walking in that area. What is striking about G.H.’s account is how utterly unnerving the experience must have been. He was startled by the sudden appearance of what appeared to be spectral figure in his midst, being very close to his position. It is completely understandable why such a sighting may become a personal memory that endures decades later.

Moorea Island, Tahiti

Nationality: American
Residence: Newport Beach, California
Primary Language: English

Moorea Island, Tahiti:

G.H.: OK, in Tahiti. I went to Tahiti, and then an outer island called Moorea. I went on this tour that was privately arranged, uh, by some locals living there. It wasn’t a normal tourist thing, it was, uh, a special thing I got taken to. And they took me to this ancient ceremonial site.

ME: In what year, do you remember?

G.H.: It was probably, uh, 1982.

ME: Thank you.

G.H.: They took me to this ancient ceremonial site. And uh, it was oh, probably 40 by 50 feet rectangle, and it had big stones outlining the perimeter, and on the ground there were slabs of big, smooth rocks, and they told me in ancient times, a priest, or shaman or something like that, would stand on certain rocks and conjure up certain things. It was a beautiful place, on the top of the mountain on the island of Moorea. And I walked in that place, and the hair stood up, I got goosebumps on top of my goosebumps, my hair stood up, and I’d never experience anything like that. And you know, talk about chemistry or vibes, a lot of that may be baloney. But this place rocked me. And I looked around I was shocked, everyone was kind of looking at each other, and they’re all feeling the same as I am. And basically that was it, but there were probably seven other people who had never been there with me. And, uh, we all experienced the same thing, and it was real heavy, very different. And that’s what, what made it a kind of surreal place where it was that feeling, that vibe was so out of place with the beauty in that place. It’s a very remote area.

ME: But it was eerie because you knew what the local traditions were of the place.

G.H.: Yeah.

ME: Were there any human sacrifices done there that you heard of, traditionally?

G.H.: I don’t think so. I don’t think the Tahitians did that.

 

There are beautiful places in the world, and G.H. visited one of them, on the island of Moorea, in Tahiti. He was absolutely floored, being overwhelmed by what must have taken place years ago, according to what he knew, on the part of the Tahitian natives. This incident represents a sort of supernatural association with the area. In his position, I think I would have been in awe of the site’s beauty and history, and although I may have been frightened by the associations the area may have had, I do not believe that I would have been nearly as frightful. It is difficult to say, however, without having been there myself. A mysterious, eerie place could evoke certain feelings, which may imply a haunting or not.

Life After Drowning

Nationality: American
Residence: Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Primary Language: English
Language: Some French proficiency

Life After Drowning:

D.S.: It was 1976. A friend and I had, uh, gone over to Catalina, and we were scuba diving. We were on a dive boat, and we went over to the kelp beds, because you know, where the kelp are the fish are. We were in the kelp beds, and all of a sudden, he came up, and he grabbed the snorkel out of my mouth, and started breathing on it, and he had run out of air on his tank. And he came over to rip the snorkel out of my mouth so he could breath, right? And I was surprised because I still had a quarter tank left of air, OK, so uh, he was panicked, and instead of buddy-breathing, and calmly going up to the surface, he had panicked. And so, he starts to, uh, swim up, and basically, I’m at the end of the snorkel, left behind, and he crashes into all the kelp. The surging kelp. And so then, I got hung up in that kelp bed, and I’m biting through seaweed in the kelp trying to set myself free. And in the meantime, I look up to the clear blue sky and think, “God this can’t be happening to me!” And uh, I took a pure breath of water, and unlike you think drowning in the water and chocking, it’s not like that. You take a total breath of water, and it does not hurt. I’m trying to make my way, departing from the kelp bed, so I could make my, part the kelp bed, so I can make my way to the top. In the mean time, he made it up to the top, and he signaled the dive boat. And so they were getting an Avon out and coming. I didn’t know this, I’m still down below. I didn’t know that. Then he went up and signaled again, then he did that three times. I’m down there the whole time. I took a second breath of pure water, I got dizzy. After my third breath, I started to go to sleep. And so, I had already taken my weight belt off, and my body came up through the kelp bed, and the Avon got there, and threw me up in the dingy. All of a sudden water came out of my mouth, like a pop. Then after a while I could breath again, and became conscious. And so, all the way home from Catalina, I was in the bathroom, because I had diarrhea from all the saltwater in my body, so when I got home, I started to feel really dizzy and drunk. I knew something was wrong, so I went down to the emergency room in San Pedro Hospital. And so, they had, they admitted me because I had all this salt water in my bloodstream. And all night long, I had nurses come in and ask me because under the old definition of death at that time, I had died. I had aspirated, I had stopped breathing, and my lungs and my blood were full of salt water. And so, the thing, the one thing I got out of that is the fact that I’m not afraid to drown, because it wasn’t painful. I believe that was a miracle, because at the time my body popped up, uh, R. my friend, he was up on the top signaling the dive boat. I was uh, biting the kelp trying to get through, and it was all wrapped around the back of the tank. I didn’t date him anymore, by the way.

 

D.S. describes her brush with death. She was traveling to Catalina Island by boat, and her friend R. at the time nearly killed her, likely without thinking much in the way of possible consequences. With that mentality in mind, he was in a struggle for his survival, but D.S. was worse off, and even questioned later by doctors and nurses, who believed that she should have been dead due to the salt water intake. D.S. attributes her survival to being a miraculous recovery, despite the overwhelming odds against that.