Tag Archives: apparitions

285 – Listening To The Gut Punch: Sallyanne Monti and the Power of Intuition

Sallyanne Monti always thought that her story was already told. Growing up in the same Italian-American Brooklyn neighborhood as the characters in Saturday Night Fever, getting married to her high school sweetheart and having four kids, she was on the path that was always expected of her. That’s until a typo in an email address would change her life forever.

In her memoir, Light at the End of the Tunnel, Sallyanne details her journey from New York to California, from a married mother of four to editor and author in the Golden Crown Literary Society, a non-profit dedicated to promoting lesbian-themed literature. Light at the End of the Tunnel won the non-fiction award at the 2019 Imaginarium Convention and Sallyanne’s personal journey is littered with paranormal events that seemed to be leading her towards her destination.

Sallyanne looking sharp in some of the world’s finest fashions…

From apparitions of her mother to psychics who knew things they couldn’t have, to the “gut punch” that Sallyanne has repeatedly felt on days when her life would change forever, her story is how listening to your intuition, and following the signs can lead you to your destiny.

In this episode, we talk to Sallyanne Monti about the paranormal signs in her life that eventually led her down the path to discovering her true self and that would change the course of her destiny and how we all can keep an eye and an ear out for those signs in our own lives.

For more on Sallyanne’s life and writing, please check out her website at www.sallyannemonti.com and if you’d like to learn more about the Golden Crown Literary Society, you can find them at www.goldencrown.org.

And here’s Sallyanne playing some guitar! She’s a musician as well as an author and paranormal experiencer…

The feeling of the gut punches that changed Sallyanne’s life are a testament to the power of intuition and how your body seems to know the right place you should be even when your mind is far behind. It took Sallyanne Monti decades to find out where she was supposed to be, and hopefully we can all find our places a lot faster than that. That’s the inspiration behind this week’s song, “The Closer You Get”.

I didn’t go looking,
but you showed up anyway.
I didn’t go looking
but I guess I’ll share the blame.

Even before I knew what
it hit me like a punch to the gut
Beautiful, wonderful, and strange.

the closer you get
the closer you get
the closer you get to the truth, the less you hide.
the closer you get
the closer you get
the closer you get to me,
the more it’s right.

You don’t have to go looking
to find your perfect lane
you don’t have to go looking
you’ll know when it’s your day

Even before I knew what
it hit me like a punch to the gut
And until it hurts you know it ain’t gonna change.

the closer you get
the closer you get
the closer you get to the truth, the less you hide.
the closer you get
the closer you get
the closer you get to me,
the more it’s right.

30 – Live from Alton, IL: An Interview with Luke Naliborski of Alton Hauntings

This episode is a See You On The Other Side first… a recording of a live event we did on location in Alton, Illinois, “one of the most haunted small towns in America”!

As an added bonus, it was a special day for us because our band Sunspot released our newest EP, El Chupacabra. The three songs in the EP were all inspired by episodes of “See You On The Other Side” and you can listen to them right here.

Our live event took place at Maeva’s Coffee, a delightful venue with some of the nicest baristas we have ever met (thank you Meredith and Tia!), delicious coffee, a warm atmosphere, and beautiful eclectic decor. If we lived in Alton, Maeva’s would surely be a place we’d hang out at regularly because it just had a good and welcoming vibe. Interestingly, the building in which the coffee shop resides is an old school house that was built in 1904. As such, it has its own folklore and tales of interest, which we discuss with our special guest, Luke Naliborski.

Luke is a tour guide for Alton Hauntings ghost tours and an author. He tells us about how he got into the whole paranormal investigation scene, and shares some fun stories about his encounters with the unknown during his tours and investigations in historically rich Alton:

  • Strange things he saw during his childhood at a neighborhood house
  • An apparition of a woman he and his friends saw at Mausalium Row at Greenwood Cemetery
  • Stories of apparitions seen in a local parking lot in town, located where the courtyard of a confederate prison had been
  • A haunted island in the river where duels were once faught, known as Bloody Island / Sunflower Island / Small Pox Island, and the story of James Shields challenging Abraham Lincoln to a duel there
  • On the same island, a reporter found two skulls and took one home for a souvenir
    Legends of the Milton School House, the very building hosting in which our interview takes place
  • One of Luke’s favorite tour stops, the First Unitarian Church in Alton, where he has seen many curious things
  • How Luke began his career as an author
  • His experience on the television reality show “Mysterious Worlds: America’s Ghost Hunters” and the investigation of a secret passageway and storeroom beneath the First Unitarian Church
  • An experience he had with an apparition at a farmhouse where several deaths were known to have occurred

Mike and Wendy with Luke after the interview

We truly enjoyed meeting and talking with Luke, and hope to return to Alton soon so we can actually take his Alton Hauntings tour!

Links

Music

The live performance we did featured the following Sunspot songs. Here are links to the recordings online for each of the songs: