EPISODE 107 | TRUE Stories of Ghosts, Demons, and Ancestor Spirits from Nashville Music Industry Vet, Clif Doyal
Watch Clif Doyal’s paranormal experience intervew on Human Amplified with Brandi Fleck on YouTube.
Listen to Clif Doyal's Paranormal Experience Interview
Get to Know Clif Doyal
Clif Doyal is a publicist, manager, and musician based in Nashville, TN with more than 50 year’s experience in the music industry. He owns CDA Publicity & Marketing, the Clif Doyal Agency, and ClifX Fashions. Several of his clients include these Human Amplified guests:
Intro - Episode 107
Do you ever just sit and listen to someone tell stories from their life? What a gift it is to be able to listen to such intimate memories that helped shape a person into who they are in this exact moment, with wisdom unmatched.
If you love doing that as much as I do, you’re in for a treat today — this is one of our ultimate storytelling episodes from a special person who has a rich tapestry of experience that can touch us all.
We’re talking to Clif Doyal. He’s a Nashville music industry veteran who manages and promotes artists, he’s a musician himself, and he’s a returning guest from season 4.
Last time we met for the show, he talked about using music as a unifier during intense political times. But now, we’re taking an even more personal approach to his life’s experience — you get to see a different side of Clif. I say that, because we’re talking paranormal experiences, but actually, you see that it’s not such a different side. Clif brings his personality, love for entertainment through storytelling, and ability to make meaning and purpose to everything he does, and this is no different.
Today, you get to hear at least three different stories of Clif’s true, verified, and real experiences with ghosts and what we think was a demon, and then several more stories about the gentle spirits of passed on loved ones. We talk about the differences between those various types of entities as well.
You Might Also Like: Life After Death: The Difference Between Spirits and Ghosts and How They’re Tied to Our Humanity
As Clif says, the veil between worlds is thin.
So, grab a cozy blanket, your favorite drink, and settle in while Clif takes us with him to being on the farm with his mom as a kid, a prophetic recurring dream, a Franklin, TN civil war cemetery at the historic Carnton plantation, a creepy cow path in an Ozarks holler, a bedroom in a shotgun house haunted by an old miner, and the moments his mom and late wife came to him in spirit form.
You Might Also Like: True Ghost Stories Around the Fire
Here we go.
Read the Interview Transcript - Episode 107
Clif: Well, being human to me means living the life that is given us, me, to the fullest. And embracing humanity across race, gender, sexual persuasion, doesn't matter. We're all put here to love and take care of each other, I believe.
And so I think being human is be a good steward of your fellow man, I think is very important.
Brandi: Thanks for that. I feel like that's really similar to what you said before. It hasn't changed much.
So I'll read back to you what you said, if that's okay.
Clif: Sure, yeah.
Brandi: Yeah, before you said, being human means having compassion for your fellow man, fellow woman, fellow human being, being love, kind, caring, respectful, and allowing other people to be who they are, not projecting on them what you expect them to be. Being human is above all loving, giving, and caring for every human on this planet. That's what being human means to me.
Clif: That pretty well sums it up. I was a little more articulate then, but...
Brandi: Oh, I think it's great. And the thing that's changed about your answer is that you threw in their living life to the fullest.
Clif: Yeah. Well, as we get older, those things become more and more, you know, relevant, I think, to look at, you know, we never know when our time on this blue marble is over. Mm-hmm.
But for those of us who are lucky to have been on the road for a while, you do begin to try to embrace as much of life as you can, live it to the fullest every day, every minute, every hour, because we never know when that time is up.
Brandi: Clif, welcome back to the show. I'm really excited to get to talk to you today about a different topic.
Clif: That's awesome. I'm excited to be here.
Brandi: Before we dive in to the full interview, for the people who haven't experienced your previous episode, will you tell them a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Clif: I'm a veteran of the entertainment world. I started, well, music really grabbed me, literally just reached out of the television and grabbed me when the Beatles performed on Ed Sullivan. It was just game over.
I looked at the TV and I remember thinking to myself, I want to do that. And my mother, God rest her soul, recognized that and understood that. And she was always very supportive of that.
And as the years went by, more and more of her pots and pans made their way from the kitchen to my bedroom where I used carrom cues. They're like little tiny pool cues to beat on the pots and pans to, well, the album I learned how to have taught myself how to play drums on was Abbey Road by the Beatles. And so I would have, I think that came out in 1968.
So a few years passed from my initial exposure to a live performance by a band on television to actually being a performer. And interesting story around, my mother recognized my love for music and I did love music, not just the Beatles, but music of all kinds. I remember my mother always had music playing in our house.
And so I was exposed to everybody from, you know, Merle Haggard to Willie Nelson. I had a teacher who, eighth grade teacher, who came to me one day and she said, you need to get a drum set so you can play in the spring concert. I said, I don't know how to play drums.
She said, well, yes, you do. You beat on your desk all the time. You're pounding out these rhythms.
And you did play bongos in our Christmas program. So you know how to play drums. I don't have anybody to teach me.
She said, you'll teach yourself. So I went home and I told my mother that story. And in short order, my mother sold a cow.
We lived on a farm. My father worked away on construction. She sold a cow, told my dad the cow died, and bought me my first drum set.
There's a country song there for you somewhere. And so then I was about 10. I began performing professionally when I was 12, playing in churches, and then playing with adult bands in nightclubs for money.
I was getting paid to play music when I was 12, 13. That has literally taken me around the United States and good parts of the world. I was a full-time working musician for the first, approximately 20 years of my career.
And then I, quite by accident, ended up on the business side working as a booking agent because I'd already been doing those things for my band that I played in, and I began to get other people wanting my help. And so I started helping before I know I've got 10 bands, including the late Toby Keith. I was his first agent.
And that turned into a business, really quite by accident. And that was in, I officially launched an agency in 1984 in Oklahoma and moved to Nashville in 1991. So I'm in Nashville 33 years now.
I work as a artist manager. I don't do much booking anymore. I don't tell anybody really I do any, but I work as an artist manager.
I work as a publicist for artists. I've ran independent record labels, independent video companies. I've been a tour manager, a bit of jack of all trades in the music world.
Brandi: Awesome.
Clif: I hope I've answered your question.
Brandi: You have. And it's such an impressive career. And so thank you for sharing all those stories.
I love the fact that your mom sold a cow to get you a drum set. That's awesome.
Clif: Yeah, she was the best. She was my biggest fan, biggest supporter, my best friend, truly. She influenced my life in so many ways.
Brandi: Well, and I know you're here to talk about paranormal experiences that you've had today. Just, you don't have to tell the story yet, but do any of them involve your mother?
Clif: Yes, a very short one, but yes.
Brandi: Well, we'll look forward to that. And so before we get into those stories, can you tell us just how do you define a paranormal experience in general?
Defining What Paranormal Experiences Are
Clif: I began, I remember as far back as I can remember, I was fascinated by events that couldn't be explained by the normal Western society way of looking at life and looking at the world, looking at death, the afterlife. I think the veil between the living world and the afterlife is very thin. I believe that paranormal experiences are something that can't, again, can't be explained by traditional methods.
And I've always been fascinated with sightings and whether it's apparitions, ghosts, spook lights, things that couldn't be explained. I grew up in the Ozarks, so there's a lot of Missouri. So there's a lot of folklore there dating back to the Native American days of lights, moving objects, things that they couldn't explain, but still exist today.
So I was always, always fascinated by that. And always, I don't know, I've always been an old soul. I've always believed that anything is possible.
That if we discount things like this, that we're really not receptive to the whole universe. Because we've been on this planet for thousands, tens of thousands of years. Examples of paranormal activity go back as far as you can trace in all cultures, all around the world.
And so, again, to answer your question, I think paranormal experiences are things that can't be explained by traditional methods. And I've always been open for them and to them, not to will them into being, but to recognize when they're happening.
Brandi: Ooh, I like that, that like difference that you just sort of articulated there.
Clif: Yeah, I think some people get themselves psyched up that they're gonna see a ghost or see a spook or something. And then they think they did, or they think they saw a UFO because they're thinking they're gonna see one. That's not what my experiences are.”
They came completely out of left field by surprise. Was not anticipating any of these experiences that I'm gonna tell you about. It just happened.
And I was receptive enough at the time to understand that it was happening and to try to remember as much as I can about them or as much as I could about them.
Brandi: Where do you think that openness and that receptivity come from?
Clif: I partly think it came again from my mother, but also I was always a curious soul. And again, I always felt like an old soul. I always felt like probably that I had lived before because I began having a recurring, and this is a whole nother story and I won't go into this, but I began to have a recurring dream when I was about six that lasted until I was about 12.
That was a series of vignettes that happened in different places around America, different places around the world. And throughout my adult life, all but one or two of the experiences in that dream have happened in my real life.
Brandi: Oh my goodness.
Clif: And again, I was very curious. And I did well in school, but I would get my work done. And then I'd want to be the class clown.
I got straight A's, but when it came to, my mother called it deportment or just behavior, I always got bad marks there because I would try to entertain the class. And my second grade teacher, she sat me in a corner and gave me three world books and said, I need to report on this, this and this tomorrow. So I'd get my regular work done and then I'd go to the corner where my world books were.
And I traveled the world in those pages. And I think it was because of learning the ways that different people live, believe, live and die. I think all those things made me hungry to stay open to any and all possibilities as being within the realm of possibility.
Brandi: Well, I love that. I love that you were entertaining your class for one and that you like recognize how your mind opened when you were in those books. And something else that you said is that you had dreams that were sort of like premonitions that have come true.
So to me, that says that you've experienced other types of paranormal experiences beyond just like ghosts or spirits. What types, are there other types of paranormal experiences that you've had besides those two?
Clif: Outside of the dreams, I can't think of a lot of other paranormal experiences I've had other than what I'm going to talk about today. But the dream was very significant in that, in each part of the dream, it was like in a play, you would call it an act. Like it's a segment of time that something is taking place.
And in that dream, I'm in various locations that, again, some of them that I would not actually visit for many, many years later. One of them was at the Great Pyramids in Egypt, which I went to later. And another experience was in Hawaii.
I didn't go to the Great Pyramids until about three years after I stopped having these dreams. The other one in Hawaii was around the time of my late wife's death 20 years ago. So I was dreaming about things when I was six that wouldn't take place until I was in my teens or as late as my 40s.
And inside those dreams, there are different things that were paranormal or that I can't really explain, but I know they happen to me. It's hard to articulate those more, I guess, because it's just more of almost like seeing. And I've always had, maybe this is paranormal because it's something that a lot of people can't do.
I've been blessed with the ability or maybe cursed with it, depending on who you might ask, because I can be a pain in the butt sometimes about it. I see things many times before they actually happen. I don't know if that's considered paranormal or if it's another tag you'd want to put on it, but I do see things happening.
And if I know it's going to be negative, I will say, we can't do this, or don't set this there. I see it breaking. And then sometimes maybe the person hasn't listened to what I said, and then exactly what I said was going to happen, happened.
I don't know if that's considered paranormal or not.
Brandi: Maybe it sounds like clairvoyance, sort of like...
Clif: Yeah, I guess that's maybe the word. Yeah, thank you. That's the word I was looking for and couldn't think of.
Brandi: That's awesome. Well, let's just dive into your stories. And I know you mentioned to me before we got on here that you had three that you want to share.
So I'm just going to let you run with it. Share however you see fit.
A Carnton Plantation Ghost Named Hattie McGavock
Clif: Well, the first story that I would like to tell happened in approximately 1994, 95, somewhere right in that range. I could be wrong on the dates, but I won't be wrong on the facts of the event.
Brandi: Sure.
Clif: A childhood friend of mine, who has been consistently my best friend since I was about 13, came to Tennessee to visit me and my late wife, Kathy. His name is Jeff Chapman. And again, we've been friends almost all my life.
Jeff, by the way, is connected to all three of the stories I'm going to tell you today. I don't know why, but he is. He and his wife came to Tennessee.
His youngest son was stationed at Clarksville at the base there, the military base. And his wife came. So it was Jeff, his wife, Ida, Mitch and his wife.
And I can't recall her name right now. And my apologies for that. And myself and my late wife, Kathy.
And they came and I'm like, well, let's do some stuff. What are you all interested in? I mean, we've got all kinds of stuff.
We've got history, there's touristy stuff. There's civil war stuff. And as soon as I said civil war, that everybody was like, ooh, let's do that.
So I took them to a place in Franklin, Tennessee called the Carnton Plantation. And the Carnton Plantation factors heavily into the Battle of Franklin, which was one of the most bloody and decisive battles of the Civil War. And at the Carnton Plantation, in, I think it was 1864, the battle happened there, the Battle of Franklin.
And Carnton was situated about an hour, I mean, about a mile from the main part of the battle. And so they actually took over the house and was using it as a field hospital during the battle. And 1,750 Confederate soldiers lost their life that day in a matter of hours.
And four Confederate generals were laying in state on the porch of the Carnton. So, I mean, it's carnage everywhere. It's 1 of the darkest periods in that part of our history.
The family who lived there, who owned that property, were the McGavicks. And after the battle took place, obviously these bodies had to be buried. Sometimes in the Civil War, they'd just create mass graves for them.
Like if you go to Shiloh, there's literally mass graves where they just dump bodies and we don't know who's there for sure. They did an excellent job of burying these men, even if they're not named and not a lot of them are, but they're in a very large cemetery to the east of the Carnton house. And they're separated, I think, by 14 or 15 feet, and there's rows of them that just go on.
And it's got a fence around it and around the whole cemetery, if you've been there. The front part of the cemetery was and is the McGavick Family Cemetery. That's where this event, I'm gonna tell you about, took place.
So we're there, we've toured the house, we've seen, we've learned as much as we can, and then we go to the cemetery. And you have to go inside a gate to get there. And then again, the front part of the cemetery is a family cemetery.
It's fairly small compared to the rest of the cemetery, which is large. And so we're in the family part of the cemetery, and we're walking and looking at tombstones, and all of a sudden, there we're looking at a small tombstone with the name Hattie on it. And one of the girls, I can't remember, one of the ladies, I can't remember which one, said, Hattie, well, that's a really unusual name.
And strike me dead, this somewhat disembodied voice coming from behind us said, come Hattie, it's time to go. And behind the tombstone, we're looking down at, there's a large tombstone. I think it has the MacGavic name on it.
And out from behind that tombstone jumped this girl. I mean, it looks like a living, breathing person, and she's dressed in a gray, very long ankle length dress, which would be true to the period of the Civil War. And she had long hair, and she jumped out from behind the tombstone and ran to the side of us.
And we're all just like in shock, looking at each other going, what just happened? And I turn around and look back toward the main part of the cemetery, and there's no one there. There's no woman, there's no child, there's nothing there.
We're all stunned. We can't believe what we've just seen, but we all, I literally at that point stopped and said, tell me what you saw. And one by one, everybody described exactly what had just happened.
It was the most vivid, she didn't offer to bother us, or there was nothing frightening about it. It was just startling, in that we had just been commenting on her name and then boom, there was a woman calling out her name, who I didn't see, nobody saw the woman, we just heard her voice. Because right in front of us is this child leaping from behind the grave.
In later research, I thought initially that this child was Hattie McGavick, who was the McGavick's daughter. She was not, Hattie McGavick was nine years old, the day of the battle, the Franklin battle. So from a timeframe standpoint, it fits her.”
However, the child that's buried there, and I just verified this to one of the principal conservators at the Carnton plantation today, the grave that we were looking at, and I've never looked at the back of it. I've been back to the site once, and I've never looked at the back of the stone. On the front, it just says Hattie.
I think it just says Hattie. But on the back, it lists her whole name, and her actual name is Harriet Amelia Morey. And she was born in June of 1849, and she died in June of 1861, about three years before the battle.
She would have been 12. This girl, we all said about the time, how old do we think this image was of this girl? Everybody thought she was probably around 10 to 12.
Well, either one of those fits, either one of these girls named Hattie. One would have been nine at the time of the battle, and she grew up there. The other one would have been 12 at the time of her death before the Civil War.
But she was buried in the, she's not related to the Macabox, but she was buried in the cemetery because her parents were ministers of the church that the Macabox went to. And when she passed, they agreed for her to be buried in their family plot because they were very close with the church and with this young girl.
Brandi: Wow.
Clif: Six people saw this.
Brandi: Yeah.
Clif: It wasn’t a figment of my imagination. Six people saw this happen and heard the voice and all tell the same story.
Brandi: That's really interesting because a lot of times in a group like that, only like one or two people will see it and other people can't. So it's really amazing that everybody in the group saw it.
Clif: Yeah, everybody saw it. I mean, we were literally, I mean, it was almost like the wind just blew us back. It was so shocking to hear, talking about the name of the girl and then hearing the voice and then this apparition or it looked like a real person.
It did not look like a ghost or something you can see through. It was very real. And again, I've researched this before and I asked the lady this morning if they had ever had any, because she said we've had many paranormal related things and sightings over the years, but never anything associated with Hattie.
So it's interesting. She was interested to hear the story and I gave her a little brief synopsis and I said that's interesting. And then she went and looked up because I wanted to have, I want to have factual information as much as possible when I tell these stories because it's important that people know that it's not just something I'm making up out of my head.
It's something that's at least backed up with historical fact that there were two girls named Hattie on that property within a few years of each other during the Civil War era.
Brandi: Okay, and you didn't know that before you were there at that grave, right?
Clif: Oh no, I didn't even know who Hattie McGavick was. I knew the name McGavick because we lived down the street from... We live off of McGavick Street in Donelson“So I was familiar with the McGavick name, but I didn't know who Hattie McGavick... I certainly didn't know who Hattie More was. I had no idea.
At that time, I didn't know any of these names.
Brandi: Yeah, okay. And then one other thing that is really interesting to me, I think that there's a difference between ghosts and spirits. Sort of energetically, I feel like ghosts are replays of energy that are sort of imprinted in time.
Whereas, okay, so you agree with that? Okay, and then the spirits are like loved ones who have actually crossed over, who can come down and actually interact with us. So do you feel like this was a ghost or a spirit encounter?”
Clif: I feel like it was an event that had happened in the past. I felt like this child played in that cemetery and this was something coming back from another era that had happened before.
Brandi: Ooh, so you guys, do you feel like you, I don't wanna sound like too weird saying this, but do you feel like you sort of tapped into like another dimension or how was that accessed?
Clif: You know, that's a good question. And a lot of people may scoff at that thought of what you just said of tapping into another dimension, but I do believe absolutely that that's possible. Again, I've had many years to think about this and have seen Jeff, of course, many times since then, just said, tell me what happened that day.
And he recounts the same story all these years later. So it definitely had an impact on us. But I certainly believe we tapped into a door from another time, another dimension.
And again, like I said earlier, I think the veil between the living and the dead is very thin. A lot of religious people scoff at that and they're free to agree or disagree with me. I just have my own way of believing about what I've experienced in my own life.
Brandi: Yeah, for sure.
Clif: But I think, and again, a lot of, I've read before and since then that sometimes where there are great tragedies, that these moments in time that happen around those areas are where these kinds of sightings happen. And again, the Carnton plantation is the subject of many, many paranormal experiences that people have had over the years. There's a general that shows up in photographs of people dating back many, many, many years.
He shows up in photographs. And the lady I spoke to today at Carnton mentioned that. So I'm not the only person that's had a paranormal experience at the Carnton plantation.
Brandi: For sure, absolutely.
Clif: But apparently I'm the only person or one of six people who saw Hattie, whichever Hattie we saw.
Brandi: That's amazing.
Clif: It was amazing, yes.
Brandi: So Clif, what's your next story?
Beware of Witches Hollow: Ozark’s Demon Feeding on Fear
Clif: Well, this one's a little more involved. And I'll try to give you the Reader's Digest version without chopping it up too much. In 1974, myself, Jeff Chapman, the same man I mentioned in the Carnton sighting, me and Jeff Chapman and a singer, I don't know what you would really call him, outdoorsman, survivalist named Danny Morrow, who was a friend and had, we'd gone to high school and actually, he and I had played in a band together.
And a young lady, I can't remember her first name, her last name was Scott. I've tried this morning to connect with some friends of mine. I didn't know this girl well, so I can't recall her name.
I tried this morning to get her name, so I could have that to, because again, it's important to have the details. We're driving out in the country and in the 70s, it was not unusual to maybe partake of something. We weren't intoxicated or stoned out of our minds, but we'd probably smoked a little weed, but that didn't really have an impact on the event.
We're just driving around in the country, and all of a sudden, we enter this area, and Danny is in the back with me, and he said, oh, wow, we're coming into an area called Witches Hollow. This is south of Aurora, Missouri, where I went to high school, southwest Missouri. We're coming into an area called Witches Hollow, and we're like, Witches Hollow.
Of course, it's night. It's straight out of Central Casting. There's a full moon, so it's not pitch black.
We drive, and the further we go, the narrower the road gets. We leave what would be considered a road maintained by the state or the county. It becomes almost a cow path.
And so we're driving along, and we all of a sudden, we come to the crest of a hill, and we start going down the other side, and it goes from cow pasture look, and weeds growing up in the road to almost a solid rock base. Like it's not gravel. The Ozark Mountains are basically different types of sedimentary rock stacked on top of each other.
So you'll have bluffs, you'll have sheer areas, you'll have bottoms of creeks that are just solid rock. Well, this road becomes solid and broken pieces of rock and some gravel, but mostly rock. And we're in a GTO, we're very low to the ground, and we're dragging as we're going along and making noise.
And we're going down this side of this small hill or mountain, it's fairly steep, and it's about probably, I don't know, maybe 500 yards long. I mean, it's a good ways. And again, we're descending down into this holler, they call them in Missouri, the hollow.
And we're making noise and dragging and wishing we hadn't have done this because of fear we're going to get stranded there. And so we get down, finally we get off of the rock, and we get on to this. Again, it's like a farmer probably uses it, and it's been a road at one time, but it's not maintained, but it looks a little bit more like a road.
And so we're driving down this hollow, and we probably get maybe not a quarter mile, maybe an eighth of a mile. And Danny said stop, told the girl driving the car, he said stop. He said, this is the area where this haunting took place and where these events took place.
And he proceeded to tell the story about these witches that had lived there in that area who had been persecuted. And there's a house, there's a gate, like a cattle gate, and there's a house off in the field, and it's really dark. And Danny said, let's go into the field and go up close to the house and I'll tell you more of the story.
So we're all like, oh wow, we're trespassing here. I don't know. Of course, I grew up in the country, so it wasn't a big deal.
But anyway, we walked out into the field, close to the house, and Danny tells a little bit more about the story, and then he lets out this sound that I can only describe as some kind of guttural primal scream. And I'm like, what are you doing? And he's like, I'm calling them.
And I swear to God, we at that moment that he said those words, we heard the sound of something descending this rock bluff road that we've been coming down. We heard sounds coming from that area. So it's like eighth of a mile, quarter mile away from where we're standing.
And so, I mean, we're like, let's get out of here. We run back to the car, we go, I mean, literally, it's, we're 50 feet from the car. We climb over the gate, we jump in the car, and as soon as we get in the car, start the car up, lights come on behind us.
And we're like, oh my God. And like today, you would need a vehicle with like a truck with a lift kit on it to get as high as these lights were. I mean, in the 70s, you really didn't see those kinds of vehicles.
Brandi: Yeah, that's what I was thinking that sounded like.
Clif: Yeah, you didn't see those kinds of vehicles in the 70s, but for it to, I mean, you could hear, I mean, it's total silence. You could hear if they had already been there or they were coming, because we heard something coming down the hollow, and we ran and got in the car. And as soon as we got in the car, these lights came on behind us that were very bright, and they were about the level of the top of the rear window of the car.
We're in a GTO. Again, we're below the ground. But these lights are coming in straight in the back window, and they're right behind us.
And we're like, start the car up. Let's boogie. Let's get the hell out of here.
And we do that. And she takes off. And I said, Laura, and she's driving along.
And we're like, I mean, we're careening. We're swerving around in this cow path. And we're certainly doing 70 or 80 miles an hour.
And this, whatever it was, stayed right behind us. And I'm talking about as we went along and got faster, it got closer and closer and closer till it was literally, I mean, I remember somebody in the car screaming, it's coming through the back of the car. I mean, it was like, and I said, okay, okay, okay, slow down, slow down, slow down.
Stop, just stop the car, stop the car. Pull over to the side as far as you can without getting over into the ditch, stop the car. And she did, and I said, turn the car off.
Turn the car off. The lights, as we slowed down and stopped, the lights moved back to where now they're maybe 20 feet behind us, 30 feet maybe. And turn the car off, we don't hear a sound.
There's no sound. Not like a vehicle running or there's no sound. And I remember reaching out the window with my arm.
I was sitting in the left, you know, I'm sitting in the driver's back seat. I'm sitting in the back seat on the driver's side, and I'm putting my hand out the window, waving them, going, come around us, come around us. They're not moving.
Whatever this is, is not moving. And we sat there for a minute, and everybody's like, it is so quiet. There's no sound happening.
And so I said, start the car. Just start the car, and just slowly start moving. And she did.
And the lights began moving closer to us again. And at that point, I'm like, Floor, we got to... Everybody was scared.
I mean, we're scared. This is not something that any of us had ever experienced before. I said, Floor, she floored the car, and again, we're careening, and we're just all around, and the lights get so close to us.
She starts like... She's getting emotional. She's starting to cry.
She's like, I'm scared, I'm scared. I feel like they're going to come in the car because they're really right on us. And again, we're flying down this cow path road, and we get to a place in the road where there is a split, and it is a paved road that I could see as it was coming.
I could see that it was not a paved road. It was a graded road. It was a dirt road, but it was graded, unlike the road we were on, but it was a split.
Like you turn left or you could go straight. We went straight, and as soon as we got to the edge of that, whatever it was came right up on to where the lights were so bright. It was like you were in a...
I don't know how to explain it. It was like spotlights coming in. It was as soon as we hit the graded part of the road, the lights went out.
Whatever it was, was chasing us out of that valley. And it was one of the most frightening, what was the most frightening encounter I've ever had with something that I believe to be a paranormal experience.”
Brandi: And it felt, did it feel like it had bad intentions?
Clif: Yes, it felt evil. And it was scaring all of us, because again, we're not hearing any sounds. It's not honking its horn.
It's not going around us. It's dead silent. And again, the speed, which the speed that it got to us, by the time we got in the car and turned the car on, it was directly behind us.
There's no way that it could have gotten there without us hearing it, because we're miles away from any town or city. It's so quiet, you can hear a pin drop. And it did, it felt evil.
And in tandem with the story that Danny had told, about this place, it felt like he had summoned a demon. That's how I kind of would think about it. I felt like he summoned, he called, he told me that he was, he told me that he was doing that.
And I believe that's exactly what happened.
Brandi: Oh my gosh. Did you guys know?
Clif: I didn't know he was summoning an evil demon, but I believe when he let out the screech, the howl, the primal scream, he summoned something on us. And it was very frightening.
Brandi: Yeah. So there's a difference here that you've hit on that there are entities out there that are negative, and then there are entities out there that are more positive. But when you guys went down there, did you know that he had planned on telling you guys that story?
Clif: No. Okay. No, we're literally just driving around in the country, and then he says, we're entering into an area called Witches Hollow.
It's on this road. I'd never been on the road, so I didn't know. Again, it's the 70s.
We didn't have video games. We didn't have all-night bowling alleys and all the stuff we have now. So for fun, you drove around the country at night with your friends and drank sometimes, imbibed in different things.
But again, we're not inebriated or intoxicated or stoned out of our minds, sort of things where we imagined this happening. But no, interesting sidebar, when I was teaching my daughter, who now has two kids of her own, when she was quite young, I was teaching her how to drive. She hadn't turned legal age to drive yet.
And so I'd take her down these back roads. And I didn't realize it at the time that I was driving us into that same area. And we're driving along and my daughter says, wow, this feels really negative.
She's very perceptive to energy that people have and just in general. She's very perceptive. And she said, I'm getting really bad feeling about this.
And she drives along a little bit more. And I'm like, oh, we're coming into Witch's Hollow. I told her the story before.
And she and I said, and she's like, I'm turning around. I'm turning around. But she felt negative energy before I said anything about where we were.
Because I didn't recognize it yet as to where we were. It was when she said that she was feeling this negative energy, that it felt really bad that I realized it. I'm like, I know where we're at.
And I said, we're near where the Witch's Hollow incident happened with me.
Brandi: Yeah.
Clif: And it was, we turned around and didn't go back. But that was many, many, many, many years later. That was probably in the nineties.
So 20 years later.
Brandi: Something interesting that I noticed is the way you told the story, it almost felt like it was feeding on y'all's fear.
Clif: Yes. Absolutely believe it because the more frightened we became, the more aggressive it got.
Brandi: Yeah. That's interesting.
Clif: Yeah, I've never been chased or pursued by something. I mean, you know, I've never experienced anything like that in my life. And that's the only time I've ever had a paranormal experience that was frightening.
To the point where I'm wondering if we're going to get out of there alive because we're, we're risking our lives by driving as fast as we are down this cow pasture, literally. I mean, it's a, it may have been a road at one time, but it wasn't used very often. It was a private, you know, we were on somebody's farm.
Brandi: Yeah.
Clif: Yeah, I did. It felt very, it felt very frightening. And I think the more scared we got, it fed on that.
Brandi: Yeah.
Clif: Whatever it was.
Brandi: After you got out of there, I know you said it stopped after you passed that one point in the road.
Clif: The lights just literally went off. As soon as we hit the graded section of the road, the lights just stopped, went off.
Brandi: So you don't feel like any portion of that energy followed you out of there or needed to be cleared?
Clif: I don't think so. I mean, we were all just relieved. And of course she didn't slow down.
If she did anything, she speeded up when we got to the graded section of the road. But I don't feel like anything went with us. I think it stopped where its boundary was, where it was like, this is my mind, this is my domain.
And as soon as it chased us out, then maybe that satisfied it. I don't know.
Brandi: I feel like that was a crazy experience.
Clif: Absolutely. And again, there were four people that all witnessed the same thing, all experienced the same thing. And again, I revisited with my friend Jeff over the years.
Unfortunately, the two other people, I haven't seen in many, many years, but I have revisited this event with my friend Jeff to say, what do you remember about that night? And it's literally, it's like imprinted on both of our brains. And he'll recount the story identically to what I'm telling you here.
Brandi: Well, Clif, what is your third story?
The Miner in the Missouri Shot Gun House
Clif: Well, my third story also involves Jeff Chapman, interestingly enough. It's very short and it's not frightening at all. As I said earlier, I went to high school in Aurora, Missouri, and it's a town of approximately 5,000 population today.
And in the 19... Let me get this right. This would have been around 1981.
I had moved away, lived overseas, traveled on the road all across America, playing music, got married, moved back there with my bride, my first wife, the mother of my children. And we rented a house from Jeff Chapman's mother-in-law at the time. His wife that was at the Carnton plantation with me years earlier, her mother owned this house.
And it had been what they call a shotgun house where miners lived. And there used to be many of them in that part of the north part of Aurora, because in the 1800s, Aurora was, in that whole part of the country, was lead and zinc mining country. And it was similar to the gold rush.
Once they discovered zinc and lead, or galena, as it's called, Aurora grew to about 20,000 people at that point. Again, the house we lived in had been a miner, because she told me, you know, this had been a miner's shotgun house, and it had a kitchen built onto it. And so it wasn't all to the period of when it was built.
It had been updated. It was comfortable, and we could afford the rent, and I played music full time. It was central to my band members and venues where we played.
So we took the place, and we moved in, and everything was fine. After we lived there for a few weeks, I began to sense that in one of the rooms, it only had two bedrooms, and we used one, and the other one was very small. We used it for storage.
And that room always felt cold to me. I always felt not uneasy, but like I was being watched. I can't really describe it any other way.
I just had a feeling when I would go into that room that something wasn't quite right. And one day, I'm in the room. I think I'm getting some drum gear that I had stored in the little closet.
And all of a sudden, I just felt like this cold just came right up against me, and this voice in my ear said, I am here, just as plain as if someone was speaking directly in my ear. And it kind of took me off guard for a second. It didn't feel frightening.
And I'm looking around. I don't see anybody. I'm like, I'm straight.
Straight as an arrow. I mean, it's early in the day. It's not dark.
I've had nothing to drink, nothing to smoke. I'm sober as a judge. And I thought about it for a little bit, and I thought, well, that's really unusual.
But it did validate for me that I had felt some presence there. And so I, without telling her about what had happened, I asked Ida's mother the next time I saw her, probably when I paid her the rent that month, I asked, I said, Is anything unusual ever happened in that house? And she said, You've met the miner.
And I said, What? And she said, There is something that lives in that house that is, people have described it as an old miner. And I said, So I'm not the first to feel his presence.
And she said, No. And I said, I didn't want to tell you about it because I didn't want to frighten you. He's never harmed anybody.
He's never moved anything around. But he lives here. And he let you know that he's here.
And so after that, I just knew that we had a, you know, a permanent visitor in the bedroom. And, you know, that was his place. So I wasn't afraid of it at all.
And my wife, she was my first wife kind of tend to get a little over the top about this sort of stuff. And even she wasn't frightened by it. So it was a bad thing, but it was definitely a voice from the other side.
Brandi: Gotcha.
Clif: And a presence that I felt a cold, not foreboding, just cold. Like I stepped into, like I opened a freezer.
Brandi: Ooh, okay. Well, that's really interesting. So with this one, you heard him, but you didn't see anything.
Clif: I didn't see a thing.
Brandi: Yeah.
Clif: I heard him very audibly in my right ear. I am here.
Brandi: Yeah. That's really funny. I, yesterday, I was meditating, and I was practicing.
I was like, okay, I would love to be some kind of medium or be able to do stuff like that. And I was like, I want to see if I can talk to my grandma. And the thing that I heard was, I'm here.
Yeah. So it's crazy that you just said that.
Clif: It's a common thing, too. I've heard that from other people who've experienced similar things. I've heard.
And actually, something I'll tell you in a minute was very similar to that.
So again, same best friend, same man, Jeff Chapman, was associated with all three of those paranormal experiences.
Brandi: And you don't have any idea why that is?
Clif: I don't know why. We always joked that we were brothers from a different mother, and we've always been extremely close. And probably one of the closest friends I've had in my life, but I don't know why he's been involved in all these experiences.
Probably because he believes as well. He's perceptive as well to paranormal experiences. He's open for them, and we've had other conversations.
But I'm not sure that he's had any other encounters that didn't include me.
Brandi: So those were your three encounters with your friend Jeff. But did you have any others that you wanted to share?
Clif: Well, now we're going to get into people that we love who are no longer with us. And these are very brief. These are not lengthy at all.
You mentioned earlier the difference between the different types of what's a ghost or a spirit.
Brandi: Yeah.
A Mother Letting Her Son Know She’s Okay and He’s on the Right Track
Clif: I know without a doubt that I was visited by the spirit of my mother the morning that she died. Absolutely certain of it. I was in bed.
It was early in the morning. It may have been a little bit dark. I can't recall exactly.
But I was awake and was laying in bed. It was laying on my side and my mother's voice, again in my ear, my right ear again, I'm laying in bed and my mother's voice said, I'm here. My mother had been ill with a bunch of different issues, health issues, for about three years, really not doing well at all.
She lived in Missouri. I lived in Nashville. And every time I saw her or spent time with my dad, helping him with her, you know, for maybe three or four days at a time, whatever it happened to be, when I would leave, I would always wonder if I would see her again, if she would be alive for me to see her again.
So, you know, that's always kind of top of mind, but her voice was so real. And within five or ten minutes, it seemed like it wasn't very long from that moment till the phone rang. And it was my older brother, Larry, and I answered the phone and he said, Clifford, mother has died.
I didn't want to say, I felt that she had because she just came to me. I didn't say that because I didn't, I don't think my brother really is a believer or receptive to that sort of thing. I didn't want to upset him, but I'm convinced that she was there with me to let me know that she was okay.
Brandi: Yeah. Well, that's a very sweet story, like that you got to experience that.
Clif: Yeah, it was wonderful. And again, people sometimes may scoff at this, but I've always felt like my mother is always around me. Like she never went away.
I grieve the loss of her physical presence, obviously, but I don't miss her or grieve for her in a way that many people might. Because in a lot of ways, I don't feel like she ever left me.
Brandi: Yeah.
Clif: She's still here. She's around me. I could feel her presence when I was at the Lincoln Memorial during the inaugural, because my mother had been with me as a chaperone for our band during Richard Nixon's 73 inaugural.
And I was standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and the sun came out, and I felt my mother. And she didn't talk to me physically, but she just said, You're doing the right thing to let me know that I was having mixed feelings about being there. Yeah.
I was really struggling with it, and I felt her presence come to me and let me know that it was okay. And it wasn't that she said anything, but it was that was the message, is that you're doing the right thing. You're exactly where you need to be.
You should be proud, not ashamed. That was what I was feeling from her.
Brandi: Yeah.
Clif: And again, it wasn't an encounter like the other one. The other one was more like she was there. Her voice was very audible.
This wasn't. It was just more like she was with me. And I've had those kinds of experiences a number of times.
That one stands out just because of where I was at and what was going on at that moment in time.
Brandi: Well, and to give our listeners some context, too, you guys, I'm going to link Clif's past episode in the show notes of this one, but he tells the story there when he was at Trump's, it was Trump's inauguration, wasn't it?
Clif: Right, in 2017.
Brandi: And then after that, in that same trip, you attended the Women's March. And so you had like these conflicting events happening. And that matches your conflicting feelings.
So that's beautiful that she came and sort of told you you're on the right path. You're doing the right thing.
Clif: Yeah, I'm sorry.
Brandi: No, it's okay.
Clif: Yes.
Because again, she was always my biggest supporter.
And both times I was there for the inaugurations, you know, a very divided time in the country. And I'm there to do a job. Music is a uniter and a healer.
And I'm there tour managing two acts that are playing at that time in 2017. I'm there to do a job. You know, I got a call from my country.
That's how my client at the time, Tim Russell, he said, I've gotten a call from my country and that's why I want to do this. And so I put the deal together with the inaugural committee and tour managed all the people and got us there and got us, you know, 40 people cleared through Secret Service. And it was quite a responsibility.
And then not being able to sleep because there's interviews going on from the crack of dawn until nighttime for my client. And so, you know, I was I was fatigued and tired. And you know how when you get fatigued and tired, sometimes you start getting a little down or maybe a little melancholy or whatever just because you're tired.
And that was going on, too. But a lot of it was just like I was really feeling conflicted about where the country was at. Everything was so on edge and just weird feeling.
And there was the calming presence of my mother. And really, as soon as that happened, it's like she just lifted. This is like this great weight was lifted off of me.
And she had a way of doing that in her life as well. She could take the worst circumstance that you were going through, and she'd find the kernel of light, the bright spot. Yeah, he was always a glass half full person.
She always looked at the bright side. Again, that's just how she was in her life. And so she was there to comfort me.
I didn't call her. I didn't ask for her to comfort me, but she did.
Brandi: Yeah. I love it.
Clif: I have one other encounter, if you'd like to hear.
Brandi: That would be great.
A Matchmaking Wife from the Other Side
Clif: This was my late wife, Kathy. Kathy and I were married for, well, we were together as a couple for many, many, many years. We met in the eighties.
She worked at a venue in Oklahoma. And then years later, we got together as a couple. And then we lived together.
And then we eventually married. Cause she always said she'd never marry me. She never married again.
I asked her and she turned me down, I think twice before she finally agreed to marry me. She always said she never would. But Kathy and I were pretty much joined at the hip from the time I was about 30 until I was 45.
So for 15 years as a couple. And she was my business partner. So we were literally with each other 24-7.
And Kathy was a very interesting and unusual person in that she was absolutely clairvoyant. And she's really the one that taught me to embrace my clairvoyance. Because she was also one herself.
That's really where I learned about what it means to be an empath. Because she would say, you have to be careful because you absorb people's energy, good or bad. And you have to guard yourself from some of that.
So she taught me a lot. She just taught me so many things about life. Aside from being a diehard music fan and involved in everything that I did in my music career.
But she is my best friend. But she was part Comanche. And she was not only a clairvoyant, she's the closest thing that I could describe to a shaman.
She could look at the clouds and the trees and be able to predict things with amazing accuracy. Like we're sitting there one day, it's like today, it's sunny outside, it's probably March of the year, we're in Oklahoma. When a man came on and said, we're going to have a, it's like noon, we're going to have a clear day today, clear skies.
And Kathy looked out the window and she said, no, that's not right. It's going to snow today. And I said, no, it's not going to snow today.
She said, yep, it's going to snow. I said, when? She said, soon.
Well, I just laughed and went back to sit at my desk because we all stayed at our house and she stayed on the couch where the TV was. And in a minute she came in and she said, come to the front door. So she's out.
She got the front door open. She opens the door and said, look, it's just snowing. These great big huge wet snowflakes are just coming out of the sky.
And she said, see, I told you it was going to snow today. She could do things like if there was a squirrel on the other side of the fence, 100 yards away, she could mimic the sound of a squirrel and get that squirrel to come to her and eat out of her hand.
Brandi: Oh, my goodness.
Clif: She was just that kind of a person. She was so in touch with the earth and humanity, and she had a very, very rough life. Her childhood was working in farm labor camps when she was a child, literally.
And so she had a very deep knowledge of people and their actions, and she could size somebody up to a tee. And she taught me how to not judge people, but recognize things that would affect our relationship, whether it be a negative or positive. That's a really good person.
Their vibe is really good. Or I had really bad vibes. And I could tell you, I could talk for hours about things that she said about people that turned out to be true.
Sometimes even after her death, people that she had felt like were not good people turned out to be not good people. I'm talking about not good people to the point of hiring hits on people. And she would recognize them and go, that person is not good.
We need to stay away from them. But I go into all of that to say that she always told me that she was a Cardinal and that she would show herself to me. After she was diagnosed with cancer, she told me that she would come to me after her death.
And we never talked about death ever, a couple of times. And that was one of them when she said, look for me in the Cardinals, because you will see me again. But we never talked about death.
She was ill for three years with breast cancer. We were blessed enough to work, and we closed our office on Music Row and moved home, and I took care of her for three years. And that was such an amazing learning experience, and also taught me so much about life and death.
And the one thing is not to be afraid of death. We're all going to go. Death and taxes are the only two things we can absolutely count on.
And so I wasn't afraid of her dying, but I knew that it was imminent. And when she passed, it wasn't long after that, that her best friend, my current wife, Patty, and I got together. We both had lost our best friend.
We had spent time together, our families, you know, our kids. We'd known each other for years and years and years, but never dreamed we would end up together. But after Kathy died, it was just like she...
I remember one of the first conversations we had after that. She said, you know, I don't even know how many brothers and sisters you have. I've known you for 20 years, and I don't really even know you.
And so the more we got to know each other and lean on each other, we slowly fell in love. She's still in Oklahoma, I'm in Nashville, and we talk a lot on the phone. And I mean, when I say we talk a lot, I mean, we talk a lot.
And I went to bed one night, and I'm laying in bed, and I'm not asleep, and I've had nothing to drink, no, nothing to alter my reality. I'm just going to bed, and I'm laying there, and I'm wide awake, and all of a sudden, I feel like my body is like in a... I can't move.
I feel like I can't move, like I'm in a suspended state of... or like I'm... I don't know how to describe it.
I can't move. And I'm not alarmed, but all of a sudden, the room, for lack of better words, began filling with some essence, or fog is not the right word, but something like that. Like the room began filling with this essence, and I knew immediately that it was her.
And we're not speaking. I can't see her. I just feel her presence.
We start speaking without talking. And she said, I'm really sorry. And I said, why, again, without speaking, just thinking, I ask her why she was sorry.
And she said that she was sorry that it had taken so many years for her to trust me and believe that I truly loved her, because she didn't feel like that she had ever really been loved in her life, and so she doubted my love. And she did in her life. There were 15 years between us.
She was 15 years older than me. And she really couldn't believe that I really loved her, because she had been in a couple of really abusive situations. Her father was abusive.
She just didn't let people in. And she said that she was sorry. And I said, you don't need to say this.
I don't want you to feel that way. And she said, without speaking again, she said, I'm just so, I can't remember exactly how it was framed, but it was a gratitude that I was acknowledging that she hadn't, that I wasn't still hurting from that. And then after a few minutes, just as quickly as it started, it seems like the room began, the cloud or whatever it was, began to move away.
And then all of a sudden, it's like I was in like a trance or something. I wasn't asleep, but I like that and moved, and I'm looking around, and there's nothing in the room. And I just had this sense of peace about me, because she told me that she would come to me.
She has other times since then, but that was probably the most dramatic. But the very cool part of this story was the next morning, I called Patty and I said, how did you sleep last night? And she said, you might not believe this, but I'm pretty sure Kathy came to me last night.
And I said, what? I didn't tell her yet that she had come to me. And she said, I was laying there with my granddaughter, and all of a sudden, I felt somebody patting me on top of my head.
And I thought it was Chloe, her granddaughter, who was, she said, and she was sleeping, but somebody was patting me on the top of my head. And I just had the distinct feeling that it was Kathy. And I said, well, let me tell you what happened to me last night.
And I told her and we're both just like, wow. And so she came to both of us the same night.
Brandi: Wow, yeah.
Clif: We both knew that it was her. She didn't speak or have any kind of communication with Patty like she did with me, but Patty just sensed that it was her.
Brandi: Yeah.
Clif: And then she told me before I told her what had happened to me.
Brandi: Yeah. Well, okay, so I have to ask, do you feel like Patty in some way sort of helped you to come together and be together?
Clif: I've had many people over the years that have made the suggestion that Kathy was guiding us together from the afterlife.
Brandi: And that feels true to you?
Clif: I think it does. Well, actually, the second one of the time, and this is directly to your point, after Kathy died, within a few months, I ended up staying at a friend of mine's house, and she has a huge property out on the lake, north of Nashville here, and I was staying in one wing of her house in a bedroom, and I was lying there in bed one morning, and Kathy's voice came to me in my ear and said, be with Pat, because she called her Pat. We didn't call her Patty in those days.
She was Pat. She said, be with Pat, and it was her voice. And we were really struggling at that point.
Is this right? People are going to think, you know, we had some kind of thing going on before. You know, we were both kind of struggling with how we'd ended up at this place where we were, which would have ever put us together.
So yeah, to your point, that was another time that, again, I've got other experiences, but directly to that point, yes. Cathy guided it, encouraged it, and I think is still watching over us, and she literally is, and a lot of people may not know how to process this either, but almost not a day goes by that one of us will go, wow, Cathy's here. Or, oh, look at the time, it's 714.
That was her lucky number. And it's Cathy's here. We can sense her in our lives, and she's been gone for almost 20 years now.
But she was such a powerful force in both of our lives, and she's remained there since she's left the physical flame.
Brandi: Another beautiful gift from a loved one.
Clif: Absolutely. And again, I feel her presence around me a lot, a lot. And sometimes, you know, again, you know, I can only relate my own experiences.
I'll be questioning myself about, is this really what I need to be doing with this particular project or this particular thing or this live decision? And then there will be a Cardinal that will just show up literally almost at the window or right outside the window and just right there, just like, oh, wow, okay. And then all of a sudden I just feel relieved that she's helped me make that decision.
Brandi: Yeah.
Clif: And that may sound weird to some people, but it's a reality for me.
Brandi: I don't think it sounds weird at all.
Clif: Well, good, because it's something that, again, I feel, and I don't grieve her. I grieved, I cried a river of tears in private away from her so she couldn't see me before she passed. But after she passed, I even gave her celebration of life.
I've got up in front of hundreds of people and talked about her life and played music and had her artworks there and talked about her life. And I wanted people to know her. And I've had people go, how did you do that?
And I said, well, the only thing she ever mentioned about death was don't give me a sad funeral. And I didn't. I gave her a celebration of life, and I got up and talked about her.
And one other interesting thing that I'll tell you now, I won’t to keep this up.
Brandi: Sure.
Spirit Giving Strength During a Heartfelt Celebration of Life
Clif: I got up, the service is getting ready to start. Her casket is in another room. Right before the service, about an hour before the service, I got a call from the bank at the funeral home.
And they said, we need for you to come by here and sign some papers on your loan, because they were, I lived in Nashville. I had her flown back to Oklahoma for her burial and her service. I took her back to the little town in Oklahoma where she grew up, where she hunted with her dog when she was a child out in the fields.
I took her back to that place. Well, the next town up is where the funeral home was in Stillwater. And I was already maxed out, broke, you know, battling, being a caretaker for somebody for three years didn't allow me a lot of time to work.
And I wasn't making money. I was going further and further and further in debt. And so I had put my car up as collateral to cover part of her funeral expense.
And they called and they said, we need you to come to the bank. I'm like, we're getting ready to start her service. I can't come right now.
And the guy said, we're going to, the bank's going to close in a little bit. You need to come today. So I left and talked to the funeral director and he said, don't worry about a thing.
We, I've got this. I know we're going to leave her casket here in the room. We're going to take all of her artwork and all the flowers and everything, your easels and pictures of her and portraits and paintings.
We're going to organize it all just beautifully. Go, don't worry. So I went and I got back and I walk in and this cathedral room that we're in is pretty big.
You could see a couple hundred people and it's packed. And I start, I can feel the tension start to rise in my chest. I was starting to get nervous.
And I had spent a number of days at my friend's house scripting out the service. I finding the music for them to play because she had music that she loved from Bill Monroe to Jimi Hendrix. And she met those two people and others in her life.
And so I had music cues. I had everything planned out, and I just thought, you know, I can do this. As soon as I walked in that room, I began to get frightened.
And when I finally did, it was time, and the funeral director came over and he said, it's time. So I walked up to the podium, and I stood and I looked out, and it was kind of dark. The clouds had gone.
The whole roof of this cathedral was glass. So the clouds had gone and covered the sun, and the room turned dark, and I got this foreboding feeling. I could feel it in my chest, like my heart was up in my chest and my throat.
And I remember standing at the podium and looking out and going, oh my God, what am I doing here? Why did I ever think I could do this? And I was literally getting ready to bolt from the stage.
I was that scared. And I reached in my pocket to grab, because all of a sudden, my throat felt like the Mojave Desert. My mouth was so dry.
And I reached in my pocket and I got a cough drop and put it in my mouth, and I turned around so people couldn't see me. I turned away from the audience so people couldn't see me put this cough drop in my mouth and swear to God, directly behind me is a like a nest, a flower arrangement that's made to look like a cardinal nest. And there's a cardinal in the nest, directly behind me, that her ex-husband and his wife at the time had bought.
But I hadn't told anybody. He knew of her relationship with cardinals, but he didn't tell them where to place it. The funeral director didn't know, but as soon as I saw that cardinal, I went, Kathy's here.
I can do this. I turned around. The sun came out and was streaming down through this cathedral, and I just started.
Katherine Elaine Bartel Doyle was born, and I began to tell her story and just lay it out. And again, it was that moment of knowing that she was there with me.
Brandi: Yeah.
Clif: No one else would have had any idea about to put that bird nest directly behind me hanging on the wall, like literally 10 feet behind me, or however far it was. That's the arrangement that's behind.
Brandi: It's a beautiful story. And I think it's important to point out that, you know, lots of people could write off these experiences as just coincidences, but they have meaning, the timing behind it, the placement of things just sort of align so effortlessly. It has to have meaning.
Clif: Yes. It certainly does to me. I mean, all these experiences have not only shaped who I am, but reinforced what I've always known, that there is a greater power.
There is a greater power. You can call it God, you can call it Buddha, you can call it Allah, whatever you want to call it. The universe is governed by and looked over by higher powers that we don't understand, but it's real.
It's very real. And again, I believe the veil between life and death is very thin, and everything that I've told you today just validated what I've always known since I was a child, or believed since I was a child. All these things are real.
They didn't happen because I willed them to happen. They happened. It didn't happen because I went, oh, well, there's a Cardinal, yeah, now I'm okay.
You know, it was like in those moments when my mother or Kathy came to me, it was in a time of need.
Yeah.
Yeah. Uncertainty, fear.
Brandi: Clif, thank you. Thank you for sharing these stories with us and a piece of who you are with us today.
Clif: Thank you very much for allowing me to tell them. I've never told these stories in this kind of setting before. I've had a lot of people encourage me to write a book, and certainly all these things would be in the book, but I've never, and of course, you know, my wife has heard these stories before.
You know, some of my friends have heard these stories before, but I've never told them in a setting like this, you know. And so I really appreciate you having me on and giving me a platform to share my experiences.
Brandi: Yeah. And real quick before we get off, if people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?
Clif: Well, if you Google Clif Doyal, C-L-I-F-D-O-Y-A-L, you'll find a platform that's LinkedIn. If you want to know about my business career, that's probably the best place to go because it talks about all my experiences in my career, in my musical career. And there are some interviews out there that I've done with other podcasters or interviewers where you can learn more about my musical history largely.
I've never really done... The only kind of personal deep dives I've ever done before was with you the last time you interviewed me. So people can go there and that's probably LinkedIn and whatever else you can find on there is probably the best place to learn something about Clif Doyal.
Brandi: Well, again, thank you so much.
Clif: Thank you, Brandi. Awesome. You have a wonderful day.
Links and Resources - Episode 107
Sponsors and Affiliates - Episode 107
Brandi here. Did you know besides hosting this podcast that I’m also a Tennessee-based, original fine artist? You can shop my original paintings and sign up for first dibs at new original art at brandifleck.com. Your support would mean so much!
CREDITS: Original intro and outro music by Ryan Sauls. Episode creation, editing, production, and graphics by Brandi Fleck. Sound effects from zapslat.com. Bio and photos provided by Clif Doyal.
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Hi, I’m your podcast host, Brandi Fleck. I’m a recognized communications and interviewing expert, a writer, an artist, and a private practice, certified trauma-informed life coach and trauma recovery coach. No matter how you interact with me, I help you tell and change your story so you can feel more like yourself. So welcome!
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