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Ava: Hello and welcome back to Paranormal Stories, I’m your host Ava–

Julianne: –and I’m your other host Julianne, and today we will be talking about paranormal activity in Ventura County. Believe it or not, there are a lot of famous ghosts all over the county and many “sightings.”

Ava: Ghost sightings have been reported since ancient times, and they are still frequently reported today. So what really are ghosts? Friendly dead people? Dangerous people seeking revenge?

Julianne: Ghosts are defined simply as the soul or spirit of a dead person that can appear to the living. Why would they want to? We have no idea. 

Ava: However, there are many ghost sightings in Ventura of some famous spirits. These encounters are usually nothing more than a short glimpse.

Julianne: For example, the Ghost Monk of Mission San Buenaventura is a famous ghost that has been spotted many times at the mission. He is always said to be wearing a grey robe, and many say he is quite friendly. Others report that they have received good luck after seeing him, like their problems completely vanished.  

Ava: The Lady in Black of Olivias Adobe is another famous spirit located at the Olivias Adobe in Ventura, a very old home that used to house a rich family. The family had 21 children. People sometimes report seeing a lady wearing an old-style black dress through the window of the home. Some claim that this is the spirit of Rebecca, the last sibling to live in the house. Creepy, right?

Julianne: Despite how scary this may sound, surprisingly enough, there have been no negative experiences with these ghosts. Reported, anyway. 

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Ava: Dr. Richard Senate is a famous ghost hunter located in Ventura. He is one of the top ghost hunters in the United States, and he has had countless experiences hunting many ghosts around the southwest. He also saw a Monk ghost in 1978. Since then, he has explored over 900 haunted locations. 

Julianne: Now that we have some background information, we can get straight into the fun part. 

Ava: Ghost stories.

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Julianne: Today on the Podcast we have Tristan Gaudioso, a freshman at Oak Park High School who has some scary ghost stories for us…

Tristan: Hey! Thanks for having me

Ava: So let’s get started, what was your scariest ghost encounter?

Tristan: The scariest goes encounter that has ever happened to me happened when I was pretty young before we had moved to Oak Park and it was just me, my mom, and my brother and we were all alone because my dad was away on a trip and at that time recently my uncle had passed away and he was pretty known for accidentally dropping plates or glasses and he was just known for always shattering things whether it was on purpose or by accident he had mild anger issues so it happens sometimes but there was this one night we were all sleeping peacefully and I remember waking up to glass shattering really violently it sounded like it shattered into millions of pieces and I woke up and out of terror I stayed in bed I didn’t want to move I was scared for my life and my mom comes in and she’s like “Tristan, Tristan did you hear that? did you hear glass shatter.” and I’m like “Yeah, yeah I did” and she’s like “what did it sound like?” and I said “It sounds like someone threw a plate on the floor” she goes and asks my brother The same thing and he says “I also heard it! I also heard it!” like that was just my mom‘s confirmation and mine that we weren’t the only one who heard the same thing hearing glass shattering on the floor inside and she just tells us to go to sleep and she’ll check it out in the morning when the morning comes around and she checks around and nothing is there. And we asked and she’s like “Oh I just cleaned it up.” So years later we’re talking about ghost stories in the house and they were pretty mild nothing like this and the story pops up and she goes, “nothing shattered in the house. there was no glass anywhere, I even checked upstairs and there was nothing.” and nothing had fallen because it’s earthquake proof because California experience is earthquakes quite often. and I even checked outside and there was nothing and no glass.” and she tells us “You remember hearing glass?” and I’m like “Yeah, I do,” and my brother agreed. And so to this day we have no idea what shattered or where it shattered. there was no evidence or proof that anything had actually fallen and to this day we still have no idea what happened

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Ava: Wowza, I’d be really scared if I were you.

Julianne: Wow, that seems kind of terrifying.

Ava: my other question is what was going through your mind during this?

Tristan: I remember being really scared about the whole thing when I was younger looking back at it I was scared for my life because I as a kid hated horror movies and I always had horrible nightmares so like I never really adjusted to not being scared of things like that so my thought process back then was like “Oh my God, I might die, I might die!” but now that I look back on it I had every right to be scared even if nowadays I thought I was psyching myself out it was scary to not know where the source of breaking glass was coming from especially since we were in a neighborhood that wasn’t very safe so I think I had every right to be really terrified

Ava: yeah I’d be terrified.. My last question is more of a reflection, what did you learn from this experience and how do you think you changed?

Tristan: Something I learned from this is that there are so many answers that we can’t comprehend but experiences like this can help you understand a little more of what, you know, what we might not know. My family always made the connection that the breaking glass was connected to my uncle because he always smashed plates and glasses and so its kinda thought process is like those that opens your eyes and it opened my eyes and made me think “You know, maybe there’s more to what we think there is” and yeah that’s kinda how I think I changed is that it just opened a door of more opportunities and more learning experiences.  

Julianne: Thank you so much for being here, it was a pleasure!

Tristan: Thank you for having me.

Ava: Well that’s it for today’s podcast, I think we all have some chills after this one!

Julianne: That’s Paranormal Stories with Ava and Julianne see you for the next one.

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