320: What if your mom believed she was the good witch?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. Being bullied by her so long, being scared of disappointing her or saying no. Maybe if I fight back, maybe I would die. Maybe I would lose an eye. Maybe I'd lose a tooth.

From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 320. What if your mom believed she was the good witch?

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. My father was a very hardworking man. He worked for a vending company. He worked there 22 years in Flint, Michigan. That was where I was born and raised in Flint, Michigan.

When we'd get ready to start to go to school, my mother would buy us school clothes. And it was always the cheapest stuff, the hardest tennis shoes, the most uncomfortable shoes. So we used to complain about that all the time. And I remember my father saying, if you don't want to complain about the clothes your mom buys you, then you need to save so you can buy your own clothes. So save your money, make your money, and use your money wisely. So that was the type of person my father was.

I don't know anything about my mother before she was born. The only thing I do remember her mentioning that her mother was very abusive. She said one day she was 16 years old and her mother, my grandmother, her mother threw a brick and hit her in her back. And I remember she said that she was in so much pain that she could not walk for maybe like a week. My mother, she didn't work. And my father, I don't really remember him being home a lot.

But my father had a blue pickup truck with a camper on the back. We would go to Canada to go fishing to Mississippi, where he was born and raised. In Mississippi, a lot of cotton fields, and every time my father seen somebody in a cotton field, whatever they were doing, he would always blow the horn, blow the horn, like, you know, this is where I'm from. I'm in Mississippi. This is where I'm from. You know, letting people know he's back visiting. That is what I remember of the good times.

When I was six or seven, we went on a vacation to Baxley, Georgia, to visit my mom's mother, my grandmother. And this one incident, my mom left me with my cousin, Don, to babysit. I would say he's between 16 and 18 at the time. And we were watching TV in the front room and

My cousin Don pointed at me and told me to come here. He was standing in the hallway while we were sitting there. If you go down the hallway, there were bedrooms down in there. I didn't know what he wanted. I go follow him back there and he told me to lay over the bed. So I don't understand what's going on. Told me to bend over on the bed. I bend over on the bed. My feet are touching the floor.

And he takes his penis and he rubs it in between like me. I did not understand what was going on, but I knew that I did not feel right. It did not feel right. This is different. This is strange. Then he tells me, OK, you can get up now and go back in the living room, go back in the front room. And he follows me out. And then he tells my little brother to come with him. I really felt at that moment sad, sad, sad.

Maybe five minutes later, my brother comes back out and he's looking at me and I see tears in his eyes. So then he calls me back again and he does it again, repeating the same thing. It wasn't so much that he hurt me. It was more that he hurt my little brother. I know that I was not going to tell my mother, but it never left me. It never left my brother.

This one time, my mother was begging my father for a new car. And she begged and begged him. That was the first argument I've seen them have. She was arguing, you know, my dad was frugal. You know, the car's still good. I can fix it. I can work on it, you know. And she just begged and begged and begged. And I think he finally gave in. I remember him going to the bank, coming back and giving her $1,000. The next thing I know, I remember her begging my auntie to use the car.

I remember her arguing that she wanted to go to Pontiac. I remember as a child, I'm like, why would she want to go to Pontiac? What happened to the car she was supposed to buy? So my auntie said, fine, take it, put gas in it. And right at that moment, I realized that my mom was on a mission to do something. So we drive to Pontiac. I remember pulling into this driveway and she got us out of the car and we walk inside the house. And I remember walking into the kitchen.

She told us to sit there at the table. And I remember this man coming out of the basement. The guy walks up the stairs and sees my mom. And all I remember is this guy had a real dark face. I don't remember smiles or nothing. He just looked at her and then she just got up off of the chair, didn't say anything to us, and walked down the stairs with this guy. Maybe 15, 20, 30 minutes later, she comes back up.

And she had this look on her face. I can't even explain it. As a kid, it was like she was there, but she wasn't there. And it was very weird to me. Later that night, my father came home from work. We had no new car and she was supposed to be buying a new car with this thousand dollars. And my father said, well, where's the car? And she told my dad a lie. She said she lost the money.

And I remember my dad yelling and screaming, and that was it. It was traumatic for me. But I remember thinking about that even as a child, seven, six, seven years old, wondering why did she lie to my dad? I never understood that until I got older. When I talked to my Aunt Esther about this, and I told her about this, she said, yeah, I know the guy you're talking about. He's a voodoo guy.

People went to him for lottery numbers, love life. They paid him money. And that's what your mother did. She was really deep into this stuff. She used the money paying this voodoo guy to do this voodoo stuff. That's really where my mother and my father started to go apart. At that moment, I believe my father knew that my mother was into some stuff. And maybe he was just anticipating that one of these days this was going to happen.

After that, my father started to change. He started drinking really heavily. He would be drunk. He would be home late. He started arguing with my mom about little things. He would eat the food. Then I remember him throwing his plates into the sink. As a kid, I'm thinking, where is this coming from? He was this guy before. Now, he's this guy now. Something was different. Something wasn't right. Then it started escalating, calling her a bitch and

And he started abusing her. He would hit her. And I remember we used to be in the basement. The garage door opened and we were here. My father and we would get nervous and scared. And he'd walk in and yell her name, Verdell. And what the hell have you been doing all day? And what is this? You cooked and all of a sudden you hear the pots crashing and everything. But I never understood why he started doing that. As I'm getting older...

As a kid growing up, I started to understand why my father was acting. It was not an excuse for what he did to my mom, but I started realizing why he was doing this with my mom and what I was going through as a kid. My mom, she had quarters that she put in every window in the house. It was always the left bottom corner of every windshield. And I remember jars, mayonnaise jars. She filled them up with water and she put them at the entrance of every bedroom door and

I remember my mom burning sulfur in the house. It would burn your nose and it would burn your lungs. And it would just, as soon as you suck it in through your nose, you just feel it just burning your nose. The first time she did that, I was like, mom, what is that? She said, it's sulfur. She said, why? I said, because it's burning my throat and my nose and my lungs. And she said, that means you have evil spirits in you. If you didn't have evil spirits in you, it wouldn't burn you. Really? So, okay.

Maybe I got evil spirit in me. So I'm accepting of that now. I believe that my grandmother was into it so deeply that it went off into my mom. And then my mom got into it. And then she's trying to get us to get involved with it. So as a kid, I accepted it. It was normal. It was a way of life. It was part life for us. As a kid, I was very inquisitive. I always had questions and answers. But I never asked my mom about this because I didn't know if it was going to get hit or not. I always internalized my questions.

So, when she said that to me, I have evil spirits, but what made my mom think that I had evil spirits in me? What did I do? What did my brother do to make you feel we had evil spirits? We're kids. I wanted to ask her, but I was scared to ask her. My mom used to make us take baths in spiritual turpentine. This spiritual turpentine that my mother used on me and my brother was in a brown bottle

And what she would do is she would run warm water and she would sprinkle the spiritual turpentine in the bathtub. It was turpentine oil. So this oil was floating at the top of the water. It's clear. And I'm about maybe 10 at the first time I think I'm exposed to this. So I get in the water and I'm sitting there. And all of a sudden, she's taking this water and she pointed on my back, my front. And all of a sudden, my skin starts burning.

It's not to the point to where you got to jump out of the tub. It's just an irritation type of burning. And she would say, so you feel a burning sensation on your skin? I said, yeah. She said, that means it's getting rid of your inner spirits. That's the burning sensation is that this evil spirit is coming out of you now. Again, with the evil spirits. She was introducing more and more and more and more and more.

My mom began having me look at one of the jars of water that she had at the bedroom. She says, I just want you to look at the jar. Don't move your eyes. Try not to blink and just stare at it and tell me what you see. And maybe I'm 13, 14 years at this time. I don't say anything to her again.

You say anything to her, it's a possibility that she might hit you because my mom was very abusive. So I'm looking at the jar. I said, I don't see anything. I see water. And she looks at me with this look on her face. And I've seen the same look that she had. It's like she was in a trance. The same look she had when she came out of the basement of that guy's house. Her eyes were dark circle.

With this yellow tint. She looked at me with this blank, scary look. Like she just was not there. And she said, keep looking. I think I looked at that bottle for maybe 30 minutes. It got to the point to where I lied. And I said, I see a red shirt with a white stripe. And that's all I see, Mama.

I don't see anything else. And she said, you don't see a face. You don't see arms. I said, no, all I see is a red shirt. I'm lying to her. Just to get away from this, I was never relaxed around my mom. She was never wrong. She was always right. When she whooped us, she was right about the whoopings. And her mind changed.

Voodoo was her way of escaping. I don't know if it empowered her, if it protected her, but she knew that was the only way. Her narcissism says, I don't need God's help. This is empowerment for me. My mom, another time, me and my brother was downstairs. She calls upstairs, and I see this pot. It's got a little steam to it. And I look at it. I'm thinking it's food. I'm looking at it. I'm like, what is this?

I see chewing tobacco in the pack on the counter. I see some wood. Now I realize it was roots. I see the spiritual turpentine, red pepper, and iodized salt sitting on the counter. I also noticed that there is a halfway broomstick sitting up against the table. She says, I ran you some bath water. I'm going to pour this in the bath water. You're going to take a bath in it. I said, I'm not getting into the bathtub. I'm not going to do that.

You're going to do is get into the bathtub. And I said, no, I'm not doing that. I'm not getting in there. I'm not going to do that, Ma. And I remember she grabbed a stick and she just started wailing on my head, my back, my arms, my butt, my legs, my feet, everything. And follow me. I mean, she chased me into the bathroom. I remember being so scared, but more scared of her than I was of what she's getting ready to pour in his bathwater.

My experience was the spiritual turpentine burned me. I can't imagine what this is going to do to my skin. I have no idea, but I know I'm scared of my mom. I remember crying. She's looking at me. She told me, sit there. She don't want me to move. I'm not moving. I'm just pretty much marinating in this stuff, whatever it is. Five, 10 minutes later, she told me, okay, get up. And I get up. Then her kindness came out there.

She had the towel in her hand. She said, OK, baby, come on out. And then she would dry me off and dry my face and dry my whole body. I mean, OK, baby, you're all done now. She used to rub her feet in red pepper and salt and olive oil. She never made my brother that I'm aware of do that. But she did this to herself. She drank her own urine. She washed her face in her own urine.

She would bully me into doing things that I was not comfortable with by a stick or a belt or a stinching cord. Being bullied by her so long, being scared of disappointing her or saying no. Maybe if I fight back, maybe I would die. Maybe I would lose an eye. Maybe I'd lose a tooth. I couldn't run from my mom because I got to go back home. This is where I live. But if I go back home,

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We were very secluded, too. We didn't go over to a lot of people's houses. So I didn't know if any of my friends was exposed to what I was exposed to. So I never knew if it was right or wrong. I just accepted as it being right. Bob knows best.

Maybe every parent is doing these things. Maybe every house has jars of water at the base of each bedroom door. Maybe every house had quarters in every windshield. I accepted it as normal. She wanted us to be a part of this with her beliefs. She wanted to carry it on generation after generation. And the more that she did things, the more normal I felt. It never felt weird to me. It never felt strange to me.

My dad is always at work. He never said anything about get out the house or don't do this. He never said anything like that. Right now, I'm realizing he knew what she was doing. And maybe that's why he got into more drinking and staying away from home because he couldn't stop her. I am 14, 15. Me and my brother are not quite big enough to where we could take our dad yet. So we're still in fear of our dad, but we always wish we could protect our mom. I remember hearing my father hit my mom.

And I remember my dad yelling really loud. And me and my brother ran upstairs then. And I remember going to the bathroom and my father had his head bent into the tub and he was running water. And I remember blood running from the back of his head, pulling glass out.

and there was a thick pink ashtray that used to sit on the kitchen table. So when I seen the glass shards that was in his head, I walked back into the kitchen and I noticed that the ashtray was gone and I looked under the table and it was broken after that. And I remember hearing rumbling going on upstairs, hearing stuff knocking down and knocking over and then me and my brother run upstairs.

My brother ran up behind me and jumped in between my father and my mother. And I remember my brother saying, "Stop hitting my mom. Don't hit her. Hit me. Hit me." And hit my dad hard in his chin and knocked him into the wall. My brother started crying. My brother and my father had a causal relationship. When he hit my dad, it really hurt him to do that to him. Maybe the same age or a little bit older, I remember my father coming into the door

and started arguing at my mom. And we ran up the stairs. You know, we get courageous. Now, my brother had hit my father. We're thinking, okay, we can do this. We're going to protect him. We ran up the stairs and my dad slammed the door and put a chair behind it. And I remember putting my shoulder into that door and knocked it off the hinges. It was three hinges. I don't even know how I did it, but I did it. My brother jumped over my back, over the door, into the kitchen. Bam! Just like that, right into his chin. He knocked him out this time.

Knocked him out. He laid over there. My mom had hurt her back. I think my dad pushed her up against the corner of the counter. I remember my brother leaving. I don't know if he thought he killed my dad or hurt. I don't know. But he walked past me, walked out the door and left. I think it really hurt him to do what he did to my father. And he couldn't handle that emotionally, so he left.

After that, my father started to realize that he can't do to my mom anymore because we're big and we're strong. We can pretend to be a mom. And he'd taken the spare bedroom and he set up the TV and set up everything in there. He's sleeping in there for a while. And then I remember him walking out the door with the TV. He never said anything to me. I just looked at the back of his head and he just walked out the door. And I remember feeling hurt. And he never came back.

As I got older, I started not fearing my mom so much anymore. I started questioning her more. I started asking her questions. What is this whole thing about? Tell me this belief that you have. And she told me, well, God put me on earth to weed out witches. She can look at a human face. And if they're a witch, she can look through their mask and see the ugly, evil person behind that mask.

I'm like, really? But she looked at me like I'm not on this world's mission. I'm on God's mission. This is God's mission. The look on her face was like, OK, you can talk all you want to. I'm going to keep doing it. And that's when I had no fear. I didn't fear it anymore. This was what she believes. Give us some type of validation. But I never did believe it as a kid. I never believed it as a teen. At the age of 21, 22 years old, I told her no more.

I had to be 21, 22. And I remember getting my first check from my job. And I went and I bought a radio, little boom box. I was so proud, so happy. I had my first check. I bought something for myself. And I bring this box home. And I was so scared that she was going to say something because I spent this money. My mom was the type of person that she wanted you to be scared of her. And she would let you be scared until the moment when she attacks.

I get the radio and she said, well, where's the rest of the money? You're going to give me your check. You're going to help pay bills around here. I said, well, I got no problem doing that, but I'm not going to give you my whole check doing it. She grabs a stick, the same stick she used on me before. And she comes at me. She's getting ready to hit me with it. And I took and I took the money out of my pocket and I threw it at her. I said, here, you take my money, but you're never going to see me again. And I walked out the door.

I hadn't seen my father in maybe three or four years. I didn't even know my father was going to accept me moving in or allow me to live with him. But I was positive I was never going back to my mom. I'm not going back there. All the physical abuse, the mental abuse, all her voodoo, white witch stuff, no more. And I went to my father. I walked all the way, maybe 10 miles to his house.

He opened the door. He was glad to see me. I said, Dad, I know I haven't seen you in a while, but can I come stay with you? Mom is trying to take my money. She's trying to beat me with it and everything. I said, I don't even want to live there anymore. I said, can I come stay with you? He says, well, you can't stay in the house. My girlfriend's daughter's here. He said, but you can stay in that camper. Nobody's been out there for a while, so you stay there as long as you want to. And that's what I did. I'm free from my mom now. She has no more control over me.

She cannot tell me to give me her check. She cannot make me take any more baths. She don't make me feed me turpentine, all this crystal ball stuff. No more of that. I don't have to deal with that woman anymore. I hate that woman. I can't stand my mom. And I'm happy to sleep in that camper. Now, I'm thinking this in my mind. When my father gave me that camper, it felt liberating.

I'm 21 years old. I left my mom's house. I'm feeling liberated. I'm feeling fresh. I'm feeling a new start. I'm feeling an adult now. I'm more mature. And I think the closer I got to my dad, the less I felt like a child. I think I lived there for three months. A lot of just working, being on the street, a lot of smoking marijuana and drinking and developing a relationship with my dad.

When he left, I didn't understand why he left. But by the time I was 21 years old, by the time I left my mom, I understood why he left. I understood why he was fed up. I was still mad at him for leaving. I was still mad at him for hitting my mom. No man has a right to touch a woman. But I sympathized with him. I understood why he did what he did.

When it got so cold, he finally let me live inside the house. And Peggy is his girlfriend. She's sharing a home with her two kids. Peg does allow me to live in the house with them. I stay there two or three months. And then I remember Peggy accusing me of trying to sleep with her daughter. So my dad says, you can't live here anymore.

So then I went to go rent a per-night hotel. A lot of drugs and alcoholics and everybody lived there, but it was the only place that I could afford at that time. I was working at Bob Evans Restaurant at that point, and I met a girl there. We dated for a couple, three months, and she dropped me off one day, and she realized where I was living. She said, you know what? You can come live with me. She was Caucasian.

And one time I come home from work. She was already there. And I went to the closet and I seen all my stuff was taken off the hangers and put on the floor and covered with a sheet. Like, what is this? What's going on? She said, well, my parents are coming to visit. Can you leave and come back in maybe about three hours? I'm like, wait a minute. Your parents don't know you're dating me. And I guess they don't know I'm African-American. And she says, no, they don't know. And they wouldn't approve of it.

I said, is this going to happen every time they want to come over? Is I got to hide my stuff? And she explained to me, yes, possible that could happen because they don't know anything about you. I said, are they ever going to know anything about me? She says, possibly not, because they would never accept you and your race. I said, so why are you with me? Why are we together? She said, I like you. I've always had a fantasy of being with a black man. So I'm living with this woman now. I think she can sense this little boy that I was when I was with my mother.

I think she picked that up and sensed that. And I'm realizing I'm back in my mom's. Not the voodoo stuff, not the spiritual stuff, but just the fear of disappointing her. It was just this fear of asking for anything. I still had the fear of my mom. So what this has done to me is a fear of disappointing others. Something bad is going to happen if I say something wrong or I do something wrong.

So I told her, I'm out of here. I'm leaving. Your parents don't even know about me. What kind of life am I going to have here? I'm not going to deal with that. But in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, I don't want to deal with what I had to deal with in my childhood. And I feel that I'm going to be dealing like that with you. It may not be the spiritual stuff, but something's going on here and I'm not liking it. As time goes on, I move in with my new girlfriend, Lori. She's got a five-year-old son. Everything's great in the beginning.

I got a job working in a factory as a temp, the same factory that she worked in full-time. Lori gets pregnant. Oh my God, I'm so excited. We're excited. We get married. We find out it's a girl. Wow. I got my wife. I got a house. I got two cars and things are working out for me now. Rihanna's born. Corey is my son. Everything's going good.

And then Lori decides she wants to be a stay-at-home mom. She don't want to work anymore. I said, okay, now I'm the sole provider of this home. Time goes on and I'm getting ready for work. And she comes down the stairs and she hands me the phone crying. I get on the phone and it's a lawyer. He said, Mr. Taylor? I said, yes. We're calling about Lori. Before you got married...

She used to work for a bank and she took in deposits from armored cars. So she sits in a safe. The armored guys car come and they check in the money.

She decides one day that she's going to pocket $25,000 out of a bag. And the lawyer said she got caught. She went to court and instead of going to federal prison for stealing this money over $25,000, she made an agreement with the bank that she turned in, I think, $10,000 in the rest. She's going to pay back in restitution per week out of her check.

She never made one payment and they lost track of her. So the lawyer tells me on the phone that she's got to go to court now. We got to go to court. And now that you're married and if you have assets, we're going after those assets. She's crying. I'm pissed. I said, why did you tell me about this? So now I'm starting to think every woman in my life, I'm cursed. Now it's gotten to the point to where now I'm ready to leave.

Now I realize my solution to every problem with every woman is running, leaving. When I left, I became a player. I felt this freedom. I didn't care what women felt. I didn't care if I hurt their feelings.

Because no woman cared about if they hurt my feelings. My mom didn't care about my feelings. My father's girlfriend didn't care about my feelings of where I was going to live. My ex-girlfriend, she didn't care how I felt about her hiding my clothes. So now my mind is like, I don't care about what women feel.

I didn't abuse them. I never, ever touched a woman in my life. But mentally, I didn't care what that woman was going through because that's what I had to deal with my whole life. My mom caused me problems, mental, insecurity, stress, so insecure. Instead of dealing with the relationship and dealing with the anxiety from my relationship, dealing with the issues of the relationship, just run. I ran from my mom. I ran from anxiety. I ran from all the stress and anxiety from all the other relationships.

My brother, to me, he was my brother I grew up with. But his personality and my personality was totally different. I was a homebody. I wanted to do better for myself. He didn't care. I remember he came with shirts one day. He had a whole box of shirts that he stole out of his van. He would just come home with them. I didn't have the heart to do anything like that.

I'm not going to steal. I don't want anything to come back on me. What comes around goes around. I always had that philosophy, but he just didn't care. So we were close. He was my brother. But there was parts where when we got older, I didn't see him as much. He was more on the streets and I was always at work. But I seen him. I loved him. We were blood. We were brothers. He was a year and eight months younger than I was. He always in the streets, always staying in trouble. I worked at Chi Chi's Mexican restaurant.

And I told my brother, man, look, you're always doing something wrong. You're always trying to steal or, you know, he seen I had a car. So I talked to my brother and I said, look, I can get you a job. It's going to be a dishwasher. That's where I started. And I worked my way up. I said, you know, just please give it a try. So I actually got him a job working at Chi Chi's. He was a dishwasher. He showed up and he worked for those two weeks.

That Friday come, he gets to check. He don't show up on Friday. December 18, 1987. I was working. It was late night, maybe 10. We closed at 11. And Owen was the kitchen manager. Owen comes walking through the door. He says, your mom is on the phone.

I walked to the phone. I said, Ma, yeah, what's going on? And she said, promise me you won't get mad. You won't upset. And I said, I can't promise you that. What's going on? She said, Eric got shot. I said, what? She said, Eric got shot. She said, we're on our way up to McLaren Hospital right now. That's where he's at. I said, I'm on my way. So I remember walking into the door and as I'm walking down the hall,

The waiting room is on the right. And I see my brother, best friend, Daryl Urquhart, Chilani, a couple other people. And they're looking at me. And so I walk into the waiting room. And I said, what's going on? Why are y'all here? They said, man, we all were together. We were driving around, drinking and everything like that. And your brother looks over. He sees Maurice.

My brother was dating a girl named Rashonda Thompson. Maurice was in love with Rashonda Thompson. Maurice wanted to be with her, but she wanted to be with my brother. And every time they'd seen each other, they would fight. So he seen Maurice coming out of the store. Soon as he seen my brother, he drops his stuff and he runs to the car. And my brother chases him to the car. Maurice pulls a gun up, shoots him point blank range in the chest.

All of a sudden, the doctor walks in, he closed the door, and then he said, we did everything we could. He said the bullet went in, grazed his heart, bounced off of his spinal cord, and hit an artery next to his spinal cord. And he said, we did everything we could. He was already passed away before he even got to the hospital. It was not real. It was untrue. This is a dream. This is not real. He's going to come out of that room okay. Then they told me, well, you have to identify the body.

I kind of realized then, but I still needed to see him. I was the only one willing to see him. My mom didn't want to see him. But I had to see him. I needed to see him. I guess I'm just thinking, you know, this is a mistake. Maybe he's going to be up. And I'm really actually thinking this. But I walked in the room and his eyes were like kind of crossed. There was no life in there. There was no life in his eyes. I knew at that moment he was gone. I still have that vision today in my head. That pain is always there. Always.

His death affected me. He was my brother. When I lost him, I lost a part of me.

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So at that moment, I'm the lowest low. I wanted to kill him. I remember going to my brother's best friend and I told him, I said, I'm going to go kill him. I need a gun. And he gave me a double barrel shotgun. And I remember riding through Flint looking for my, I went to his house. I sat in front of his house for maybe like an hour.

I couldn't find him. I left four o'clock in the morning. I'm still looking for him. Can't find him. I go back to Goody. I give Goody back the gun. I'm thinking, I don't want to spend the rest of my life in prison. How is that being revenge for my brother? My brother was killed in 1987. That year that he was killed, it was pure hell for me. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I didn't want to do anything. I didn't know how to deal with my emotion of death. He was my only brother.

I remember the wake and family coming over for dinner. I didn't want to be a part of that. There was no joy in this. There was no happiness. So I jumped in my car. I was going to the local market to get a beer. And Goody was standing there in the parking lot. When I seen Goody, I seen my brother. When Goody seen me, he seen his best friend. So we talked and we got a couple beers and we started drinking. And I just wanted to be around Goody.

Ever since that day, we started hanging out. Now, he was a crack dealer and he was a drug user. That's how I got into drugs was just being best friends with him, hanging around him, trying to ease my pain. And now I realize he's selling crack. I asked him one day, can I try? So that's how it started. That drug addiction numbed the loss. And this was a way for me to stay away from home too. My pain wasn't lessening. It wasn't getting smaller. It was staying the same or maybe climbing.

For a couple of years, I got really into it. And then I woke up one day. I said, man, you got to stop doing this. You got to give this up. You got to leave this alone in Flint, Michigan. I couldn't stay clean there. I prayed one day, God, you got to get me out of this atmosphere. I need to get out of Flint. I can't stay clean here. He sent me to Kalamazoo Gospel Mission. On my way down to the mission in Kalamazoo, the devil was telling me, you're not going to do this. You're not going to make it.

I remember praying to God and saying to God, Lord, I need you to be with me. I know I can do this. And I remember God speaking to me and saying, go through everything you need to go through. Don't walk away from it. Face it. There's going to be trials. There's going to be tribulations. There's going to be cloudy days. But there's going to be good days. Appreciate the good days. Deal with the hard days. I need you to be stronger. And don't give up. Don't run.

stay. And that's what I did to change my life. His name is Reverend Kenneth Goodenough. I'll never forget him. He was a great man of God. He had this program called Freedoms of Steps in Christ. One day, I was talking about my mom and talking about everything that my mom had put me through. And my friend looked at me and said, man, you got some unforgiveness for your mom that you really need to tackle. That's where your drug use is coming from. That's where everything is coming from is your unforgiveness for your mom.

I hate hate and anger from all the stuff that my mama did. That's why we were talking about it. It was like my body was waiting for a way to get rid of the pain I was going through. When I heard those words, something clicked in me and I got excited. This is the reason why I'm like who I am.

This is why I'm so miserable. This is why I'm trying to find comfort in drugs and alcohol. This is why I'm trying to find comfort in women and relationships. This is why I'm trying to find comfort in life. Because I'm trying to extinguish that pain of having anger and unforgiveness. And I have now found that way to get rid of that. Now I got the answer. At least I'm hoping this is the answer. This is what I've been looking for. And it was.

Who in your life have you found that you could not find forgiveness for? And I described and I wrote down everything. Everything that was on that list pertained to me when I was a child. Physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, exposure to different things that a kid shouldn't have seen at that age. When Reverend Goodenough seen that, he was like, you cannot enter heaven with unforgiveness in your heart.

So we prayed over each step. I think I went through about three boxes of Kleenexes there. And when it came to my mom, we prayed and he said, you need to forgive your mom. Forgive the person who sexually abused you. Forgiving your father for leaving you and allowing your mom to mentally and physically abuse you. You have to forgive. And I sincerely at that moment forgave. The session took five, six hours. When it was over,

I felt like the weight of the world was off of my shoulders. I felt like when I walked outside, everything was brighter. The birds were chirping. The smells of nature. I loved everything. I'll never forget that. I loved everybody. I loved my mom. I loved my cousin who did what he did to me when I was eight years old. I forgave him. And ever since then, it changed everything.

My growth in the program and my growth after the program all stemmed from forgiveness. I made it a point once I got out of the program that I needed to go see her, my mom. I needed to go see my dad. And I was hoping, now that I've forgiven everybody, I hope that people can find forgiveness for me. I went to go visit my mom. I hadn't seen my mom in a long time.

She started getting sick. I started learning that she's getting sicker and sicker. She's not taking her medications. I found out she's spraying kids down with some type of spiritual water, people pulling guns out on her. Neighbors are telling me everything's going on. Her boyfriend tells me, we've got a problem. She can't take her medicines. She's by herself. I'm not going to stay here with her. She started getting dementia and Alzheimer's. So I decide she needs to go into a nursing home.

So she goes into a nursing home. She's on dialysis at this time. She doesn't want to be there. I'm starting to show up more because I'm realizing my mom needs me. I got power of attorney over at Bill's, over the house. She was pretty comfortable. She didn't like being there at first, but, you know, she got used to it and she started getting healthier and started looking better.

I was living in Kalamazoo, Michigan at that time, but I would travel when I could to go visit with her. Towards the end of 2015 is when she passed. I was able to be up there with her. The doctors told me, you have to get up here real quick. She's not going to be here much longer. So I got there. I sat by her bed. I was there for about an hour and a half, two hours. She got to the point where she was becoming incoherent, but I could talk to her.

And I just looked at her. Something in my mind told me to tell your mom that you forgive her. I told her, I said, Mom, I love you. And she kind of mumbled, I do. And then I said, Mom, I forgive you. I forgive you. And I love you. And I meant it. I meant it from the bottom of my heart that I forgive her. And she took her last breath.

My father, it got to the point where he got very sick. He had COPD. He smoked. So he had to be on oxygen. He's on the brink of passing away. So I was there with him. And for both cases, they were at peace now. No more struggling. I didn't have any problems with my dad. I didn't have to tell my dad I forgive him.

Through my walk with Christ, through my addiction and finding forgiveness and having forgiveness in my heart, I actually forgive the guy that took my brother's life. And if I ever see him today, I will hug him. I will walk up to him and I will ask him the same question I would ask him when I was going to kill him. Do you know who I am? And do you remember me? I hear he's married now. If I ever get that chance to do it, I'm going to just let him know. I forgive you. I forgive you.

I forgive you for me. I forgive you for my brother, for what you've done to us. What I learned from forgiveness is we're not all perfect. We all make mistakes. I still make mistakes. Forgiveness has matured me. It gave me a sense of integrity. Being a man is having forgiveness and saying, it's okay, that was a mistake.

Right now, at this moment in my life, I'm in a relationship right now. And at this moment in time, I am working on myself to know not to run, to stay. When things get rough, when things get tough, when problems arise, don't run. You deal with it. We've been in a relationship two years. I love her deeply.

But it's still inside of me to say, I don't have to deal with this. I fight that almost every day. And I don't want to be that type of man that runs. I'm 58 years old now. I need to be a 58-year-old, loving, caring, responsible man. I'm changing. I can see changes happening.

I've had to learn these things, and it's really helped me to open my eyes to how my mind thinks. And the first thing I learned is when you recognize what the issue is, now you can tackle it. Now you can focus on it, and now you can defeat it. I'm healthier. I'm stronger. I'm clearer-minded. I'm more positive. Forgiveness has taught me to learn, to grow, to mature. And I'm still forgiving, and I'm still growing. And I'm looking forward to getting even better.

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. Yeah.

Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical.

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