What happens to someone after they see something they can't explain, and no one believes them? Tonight's guest spends his days helping people work through trauma, and he's starting to notice that paranormal experiences leave marks that look a lot like the ones he treats in his office every day. Lalo is a therapist, podcast host, and founder of Realms Commune, a platform built on the idea that unexplained experiences deserve the same dignity as any other human story. Raised between two countries and two cultures, he brings a cross-cultural lens to questions that mainstream mental health tends to avoid entirely. Topics Discussed:
Why paranormal experiences are a taboo subject inside the mental health profession
The parallel between PTSD symptoms and the aftermath of a paranormal encounter
How cultural background shapes whether an experience is honored or dismissed
The overlap between symptoms of depression, demonic oppression, and parasitic illness
A psychiatrist who consulted for the Vatican and the 2% of cases he couldn't explain away
Why demons in possession lore consistently target people with unresolved trauma
Why haunted dolls are the most commonly reported possessed object across unconnected cultures
A client whose years-long sense of a presence resolved after one visit to a church
The question of how much of reality our human senses are actually built to perceive
The case for rebuilding the relationship between science and spirituality
Stories Discussed:
Lalo recounts using a spirit box at a Virginia plantation tied to Haitian history and hearing responses in French, confirmed by six other people in the room, on a device with no accessible French-language radio signals nearby.
He describes a client who had carried the sense of a presence for years; after Lalo suggested reconnecting with their church, they returned two weeks later saying a small boy had stayed behind there.
He shares a family story about a skeptic who agreed to an egg cleansing as a joke and reported feeling a genuine internal shift over the following month, still unable to explain it.
He and Rye discuss the octopus as a case study in abilities we never expected to find in nature, and what that implies about what might exist unseen in forests and wilderness.
He reflects on watching space documentaries and realizing that most of the universe is only visible through infrared and X-ray imaging and asking himself how much he is missing in the room he is sitting in right now.
Memorable Quote: "How much am I missing that's just outside of my actual peripheral, my ability as a human to sense it?"
Disclaimer: Neither The Host (Rye Voss) nor the podcast (Codega's Codex of Curiosities) are responsible for the views and opinions of any of the guests. * All claims made by individual guests are at their own discretion and may not reflect on the overall views of Codega's Codex of Curiosities or Rye Voss
