Dallas Paranormal Podcasters Crowdsource Local Ghost Stories

Former Dallas radio personalities Rebekah Black and Julie Fisk have found a new medium (of storytelling, not the psychic kind). The duo debuted their paranormal podcast, Haunted AF, in 2019 and have since released more than 200 episodes. Now the show has almost two million downloads and was even featured on The Kelly Clarkson Show.

“There are a lot of other women just like us who are into all the spooky stuff, not just during Halloween, but year-round,” says Black. “I think that's really been cool. We've created this group of people that can come in and out whenever they want, and talk scary, ghosty stuff all the time.”

If you enjoy real-life accounts of glitches in the Matrix, aliens, Bigfoot and haunted hotels, this show is for you. The hosts share crowdsourced stories about paranormal experiences that happen mostly in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Some of their favorite types of stories have you praying for a ghost, because the alternative is at least as scary.

“We get a lot of these stories where it's like, am I being haunted, or is there somebody frogging in my house?” says Fisk. “Is there somebody hiding in the crawl space that I'm unaware of? Why is my stuff being moved around? Why did somebody eat my cheese? Why was something written on the mirror when I got out of the shower? It's like, sometimes this isn't a ghost. This is somebody who's living in your house and you don't know about it.”

Even though the material they discuss can be pretty terrifying, the show is still somehow fun and upbeat. One of their segments is called “Dead Pet of the Week.”

“At surface level, that sounds kind of awful, right?” says Black. “Yes, we made up a funny intro for it. We have funny theme songs. But the story itself could be like the sweetest, most wonderful pet story. I think Julie and I have done a really good job of figuring out that balance of happy, sad and funny that make it work.”

Both agree that the show is intended to be entertaining. They are not in the business of proving or disproving people’s claims. But the podcasters have heard some crazy stuff and are not always so quick to believe everything they hear.

“Sometimes the stories are so completely over the top,” says Fisk. “They kind of play into a typical narrative. The second that somebody says ancient Native American burial ground, I have doubts. We do our best to try to cull the stuff that doesn't sound legit. But at the same time, it's a story for the sake of a story. They're fun to listen to.”

The hosts generally avoid discussing urban legends, psychics, demons and anything that starts with, “He had a hook at the end of his arm,” says Fisk. Religious or satanic stories are generally off the table too.

“That's one of the things that's so cool about ghosts or ghost stories,” says Fisk. “People can come at it from different angles. You don't have to be secular in any way to appreciate those stories. And if you are, people will take it as kind of like it's a message from my grandma or it's an angel. It's not our job to define exactly what's going on here or if there's a God involved in any way.”

They are, however, looking for personal accounts that include specific details and differ from the “same dead grandma stories over and over again,” says Fisk. Of course, it’s always exciting to hear when two people experience something paranormal together because it feels even more plausible for listeners. One example of this comes from a story they heard a few years ago.

“A guy and a girl are sitting on the floor watching TV and they saw their grandmother's legs walk down the hall,” says Fisk. “But just her legs. You could even see the bottom of the little moo-moo that she was wearing, because it was her favorite one. It's always stuff like that that stands out to me.”

Once, a listener named Chris invited the podcasting pair to witness something strange that had been happening in his home just south of Fort Worth.

“He started noticing at 3 o'clock every morning this Ring doorbell camera would trigger and he would look at it, and there would be something kind of floating around out there,” said Fisk.

When Chris turned on the doorbell’s audio feature, there were whispers. The first night he heard, “Open the door” and a few days later the voice said, “I’ll kill you.” You can hear it for yourself on the Haunted AF YouTube channel in a video that has since gone viral.
With an arsenal of items to ward off evil spirits (holy water, salt, sage, the rosary and a crucifix), the podcasters went out to see it for themselves. As they were setting up a camera in front of Chris’ house, a static sound shot out of the doorbell. Black says she and Fisk were so frozen in disbelief that she couldn’t hit record on her camera. Luckily, the doorbell captured it all and Chris retrieved the footage after explaining that no such thing had ever happened before.

“We start to watch it, and the image of the actual Ring doorbell is frozen for that amount of time,” says Black. “It's all frozen, but you could hear the static going. The audio was all normal, but Julie and I, our image is frozen. So that was pretty freaking wild.”

Haunted AF is not Black and Fisk’s first time collaborating. They began working together producing videos of movie reviews for CBS Radio’s website. But after Fisk left her role there, the two film fans decided to branch out on their own and created a podcast called Boozy Movies.

“We would go out with other media personalities in Dallas and go to a movie screening and then get drunk and try to review the movie afterwards,” says Fisk.

Unfortunately, Boozy Movies never really took off, so they had to brainstorm ideas for a new show.

“Rebecca and I both have genuinely always been into ghost stories and paranormal stuff,” says Fisk. “As soon as you mention ghost stories, everyone has a story to tell. So we started collecting them and that's how the show came about.”

To listen for yourself, visit hauntedaf.com or find the show on Patreon for even more exclusive content. You can also see Marmot Animation bring their stories to life in Lego form on YouTube.