OVERNIGHT'S Haunted Homies E3: Whitney's Killer Crash
Whitney's Experience:
"I'm not sure if I should put a trigger warning, but this story deals with death and serious injuries. On November 16th 2020, my friends Kobe, Haley, and Dalton, and I went on a little late night trip to the Colville Covered Bridge. As every small town bridge ghost story goes; if you do this little ritual in your car, you'll see a lady appear either standing in front of you, or hanging in front of your car. Well, we had nothing else better to do apparently, so we decided at 2:30am we were going to go. On the way there I took a video on Snapchat and put the caption 'if we die, we die with the real ones', basically joking about going to the bridge. Once we got there, we drive through it slowly looking around at all the graffiti, and then once we drove all the way through we turned around and head back through it. I already had a bad feeling.
Once inside, we stop in the middle of the bridge. My friend Kobe parks the car, we then start the ritual; flash the car lights a few times, honk your horn a few times, then turn your car completely off. We then sat in silence for a good minute. I felt so uneasy while the other three start laughing and joking around because nothing happened. I knew nothing was going to happen. This was so stupid. There's probably nothing even here, just some stupid ghost stories. 'Do something' is what they were saying. Well, Kobe then tries to start the car; nothing. He tries to start it again; nothing. The car would not start. All of us then hear a thud on the back of the car. We all instantly shot our heads back trying to see what the fuck made that noise. I then look forward and see what looks like a lady standing in front of the car. I don't think I have ever screamed so loud in my life. The others shot their heads forwards to see it too. While we all were freaking out, Kobe finally gets the car to start and we zoomed out of there.
The next few days were odd. My friends Haley and Dalton lose their jobs, and were both having a lot of family problems, while Kobe and I, we were two different people. We felt angry. Kobe would lash out, and so would I. We were both filled with rage. That anger actually broke me and my fiancee up. We are now happily back together. I felt crazy. This is the part where things take a horrible turn. The very early morning of November 20th 2020, my friends and I got into a serious car accident. We decided around 12 or 1am we wanted to go driving again. The past few days were hell for us, so we wanted to unwind; and we did.
This part isn't really a big deal, but hey, it's part of it. Before we headed out of town, Kobe took Haley to meet his sister at a nearby gas station. They had been dating for a few weeks now. We then ended up taking a complete stranger home. We then headed out. After about 20 minutes into the drive, I fell asleep. Once I woke up, we were an hour again from town. It was 2am, and we decided to head back. As we were driving, Kobe started to speed. Now, Kobe speeds often, but not like this. As I look forward, I see a turn, and my gut feeling knew we weren't making this turn. I brace myself and threw my arms in front of me. We went straight forward. The car met head-on with a wooden fence, and it went through the car, while the back part of the car hit a tree.
Kobe, the driver, died on impact. Haley, the passenger, had a concussion and a black eye. Dalton was right behind Haley, the part of the car that hit the tree. He was unconscious and bleeding from his nose. He broke his arm, and is blind in one eye now. I got the parts of the fence that missed Kobe. The fence went right through my left wrist and shoulder. My arm was seventy percent off; luckily I still have it. I definitely have the scars, x-rays, and even surgery pictures to prove it. People may think this was a coincidence, but I one hundred percent believe it was because we angered something at the bridge. Between all the problems each of us had, and the span of just a few days, we fucked with something that we shouldn't of. I haven't went back to that bridge since; I never will. I will never mess with the paranormal like that ever again."
Whitney Discussion (No Q&A):
Elton: "Damn"
Corey: "I know"
Elton: "I've never heard a story like that before"
Corey: "I know"
Elton: "Whitney, are you, you are here, right? Is Whitney not here? Wow, okay, so she's not, er, the whole point was every, every story was supposed to be from someone who's here"
Corey: "Woooow"
Corbin: "That's pretty crazy. You know that reminded me a lot of The Warren Museum, actually, when, uh, when they were talking about the Annabelle doll"
Corey: "And the motorcycle accident?"
Corbin: "Mhmm. Because one of the main things that they said about it was that he challenged Annabelle and basically said to do something, you know, because he doesn't believe them, and, you know, since I heard that story it's just been a wierd, wierd thing of mine; just like 'don't challenge, don't be antagonistic, don't insult' "
Corey: "Yeah, you just, you never really know, but I kind of agree with what you just said a minute ago. That might be the most, like, intense, like, haunted ghost story I've ever heard because that kind of ending, like that kind of stuff happening just a, they just, they were, you know, they're just kids. They're just driving to a haunted bridge, trying to have fun, everyone in town does it, and then... you know what ended up happening to them, and their friend passed away"
Elton: "Yeah"
Corey: "Like, if that was because of paranormal and, you know, passing something off... I just, just, it's honestly terrible"
Elton: "And here I am doing that every single night we go out and investigate. Every night I'm like 'what do you wanna do?'
Corey: "Well, maybe, I dunno, maybe there was more stuff that they put, didn't put in the story. Like, maybe they were saying, you know, like, I mean you do say follow us home"
Elton: "Yup"
Corey: "But, and you do mess with demons"
Elton: "Yup"
Corbin: "And you do get possessed"
Corey: "Yeah, you did get possessed"
Corbin: "He did get possessed"
Elton: "Maybe, yup"
Corey: "And you do own like thirty Dybbuk boxes"
Elton: "twenty nine, but who's counting?"
Corey: "But we're okay, you know, we're okay"
Elton: "Yeah"
Corey: " 'Cause we cleanse ourself, you know, we know how to..."
Corbyn: "We do, you and me"
Corey: "Protect ourselves"
Elton: "Although we do have birds flying into every vehicle we're getting into now, so that's new"
Corey: "Stop"
Elton: "Planes, RVs, cars; lots of birds. That's a, that's a new thing that's happening"
Corey: "Yeah..."
Summary of Activity:
1. Summoning ritual
2. Car wouldn't start (Vehicle malfunction)
3. Thud noise (on back of car)
4. Full body apparition (female)
5. Bad luck (job loss, family issues)
6. Emotional manipulation/early possession (anger issues)
7. Further malfunction, or possession (speeding)
My Thoughts:
This is obviously a very serious experience, and is likely to be one of the most intense experiences I write about on this blog due to the severity of injury featured. So, I will try to be as sensitive as possible while maintaining the scientific approach I aim to pursue on this blog. For this reason, I am going to do something I don't usually do when it comes to these experiences, and that is link a few sources down below. My first thought was due to it being such a severe incident, and due to Whitney including the dates, times, and even a location we can assume they could have been local to, then it quite possibly would have featured in some form of news article online. The sources I will feature are to anything close to this incident that occured around the time of November 20th 2020, or shared similarities to the crash. I didn't find anything online matching the crash described on the date it happened, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. It is possible that I just didn't find it, or that the crash occured in a different state to the bridge.
As I noted at the start of the discussion segment of this post, there was no Q&A segment with Whitney as she didn't attend the event. The OVERNIGHT team do say in their video that everyone confirms they'll attend by email the night before the event, so as far as they were concerned she would be there as she confirmed. I have a couple of thoughts on this. Either she didn't attend because it was a fairly recent, and highly traumatic event, and on the day she didn't feel comfortable with discussing such an event in front of a crowd of people, all while on a stage, or, she made it up and so didn't have the scars to prove it as written in her experience. I want to believe that she just didn't want to discuss it on a stage, but the fact I couldn't find anything online regarding what was a very serious crash makes me doubt the validity of the story a little. Either way, she wasn't there, she couldn't elaborate on things, and I don't want to not believe someone I haven't heard speak, and so I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt for this experience and treat it as though it legitimately happened. I just thought it was important to highlight certain issues regarding validity before I continued giving my thoughts.
So, what we have here is an extremely serious incident which occurs following the events of your somewhat typical urban legend. It's interesting and important to highlight for a number of reasons. First, it is a report of someone testing out an urban legend. Second, it follows a structure across a few days of 'trigger event, build up, climax'. Third, it shows the severe potential of the paranormal. Finally, it also shows the great contradiction which is lack of severity through what Elton says in the discussion regarding him always pushing the limits.
The next post I do will be about the Colville Covered Bridge, but from what I've found online about it so far, there isn't any set summoning ritual as described in the experience. There is advice on what not to do, most of which involves 'dont make any noise', but there isn't a set ritual. It is thought a woman haunts the bridge, but I couldn't find anything about a woman hanging. My thoughts here are, judging the experience as true, the ritual was a combination of these things they had heard not to do, and the things described in the experience kind of resemble a car crash. It is thought a car crash did take the lives of people at this bridge. Their ritual also makes as much commotion with the car as possible, so it is possible by doing all of this that they could anger a spirit that doesn't like commotion, especially if that spirit was a car crash victim.
I find the structure to the events of 'trigger event, build up, climax' worth discussing too. This is something I would expect of a typical haunting, but this experience has it drawn out over days. In a typical haunting, the trigger could be asking questions, the build up would be the gradual increase in activity as the night progresses, and the climax would be a loud bang, an object moving, or perhaps an apparition of some kind. Here, the trigger is the commotion with the car, the build up is the string of bad luck, and the climax is the crash. The bad luck is a strange piece of paranormal phenomena which I will keep an eye out for during other experiences, and the crash i have noted as being a result of either malfunction or possession because these are two potential avenues here. It is thought spirits can manipulate emotions, and this is what the anger during the build up could have been. It also could have been a sign of early possession. The speeding could be the spirit controlling the car, but as no one seemed to panic in the experience, it hints more at the possession side of things regarding Kobe. As he didn't survive, we will never know. It was noted though that Kobe and Whitney were different people due to the anger, so perhaps there was something to the possession side.
In my experience of researching the paranormal, it is rare to find an experience with such consequences as there are here. As important as it is to maintain a scientific mindset, and have the belief of 'nothing has been proven, just as nothing has been disproven', you can't ignore when these incidents pop up. It could have been the paranormal, it could have been dodgy brakes. Either way, it happened, they visited the bridge a few days prior, and they had an unfortunate series of events leading up to the crash. This is that strange territory of coincidence I believe the paranormal likes to reside in, and so the story shouldn't be discredited so quickly. True or not, this is an example of how things could go very bad, and Corbin draws a very useful parallel between this experience and the one they heard at the Warren Museum regarding the motorbike incident. This isn't the first story like that to exist, and so should be treated seriously.
Now, to elaborate on my final point: Elton's comments. Just as you have one extreme through the experience, you have another extreme example through the investigator who is Elton Castee. In, I want to say all of, his videos, he pushes the boundaries. Like Corey and Corbin say, he owns many Dybbuk boxes, he tells spirits to follow him home, he underwent a voluntary possession, and he doesn't do anything to protect himself. Looking at Whitney's experience, and looking at Elton's experiences, it doesn't add up. Through the logic of Whitney's experience, Elton should be long dead, and this i find to be the most interesting thing of all. I think, assuming it is all true, it perfectly shows the middle ground which people are reluctant to believe. People seem to think the paranormal will either kill you, or it doesn't exist, or it can't do anything if it does exist. I believe there is a middle ground where the paranormal exists, it can do stuff, but it can't do anything extreme outside of a few rare occasions which probably take a lot of time to build up the energy for. Locaton could be a factor, such as how frequently it is investigated, or how many spirits are there. Spirits themselves could be a factor regarding age, or strength. Even the investigators could be a factor regarding their own experience, reactions, and overall personalities. I think this explains why the paranormal is not, and likely will never be empirical in the data teams gather. This is why I think you need to find the common trends between hauntings, rather than direct causes and effects.
I really hope you've found this post interesting, I would usually say enjoyed, but with such a dark topic I don't think that's quite the right word. If you have any comments whether that be about the blog, experiences of your own, or even places you would like for me to investigate, then you can comment and follow on here, Facebook, Twitter (now X), or Tumblr, and you can email thetrueparanormal1@gmail.com for a quick response to any questions. If you want to watch the full 'Haunted Homies' video, posted on YouTube by the OVERNIGHT channel, you can click the link below:
Sources I have used:
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