Guardian Angels, Ghosts, And A Cigar

A rebellious aunt lights a cigar, tunes a fiddle, and refuses the script her town wrote for her. Years later, she keeps one last promise: she wakes a boy in the night, tells him what’s coming, and says she’ll be his guardian angel—hours before the family learns she died in a crash. That single moment becomes the hinge of a life steeped in magic, memory, and the mysteries that refuse to stay quiet.

We open with the evolution from Your Ghost Story Bus to Spirit Tales and Magic, retiring the legend of “Blood Money” but keeping its spirit on the road. Then we step into the life of Agnes Arbitus Wagner, a woman who launched the valley’s first female taxi service, backed country stars at the Jamboree, and never blinked at a bully. Her story isn’t folklore wallpaper; it’s the backbone of why belief endures. When she appears after death with precise details—who died at impact, who lingered, who would pass by morning—the kitchen fills with shock, pushback, and the uneasy dance between faith and fear. That tension shapes everything: the host’s “ethereal voice,” the survival mode of keeping quiet, and the eventual decision to study the mind, the paranormal, and stage magic for six decades.

We explore how family narratives police the edges of experience, and how those edges push back. A late-life confession from Pap—seeing “the girls,” Agnes and her sister—becomes a pivot from denial to awe. Along the way, we invite your testimony and community: half of people say they believe in ghosts, a third report encounters, and the rest hold their breath in the dark. Share your story and help us build an honest archive of encounters that don’t fit tidy boxes but won’t leave us alone either.

If this journey moved you, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who still wonders what happens after the room goes quiet. Then tell us your story—your voice might be the proof someone else is waiting to hear.

Chapters

• 0:00 Doctoberfest And Listener Mail
• 0:55 Booking Shows And The Rebrand
• 1:36 The Ghost Bus Legend
• 3:05 Who Believes And Why Stories Matter
• 4:02 Introducing Aunt Aggie
• 6:42 A Rebel Woman Ahead Of Her Time
• 9:10 The Night Aunt Aggie Returned
• 12:45 Family Shock And Denial
• 16:20 A Life Launched Into The Paranormal
• 19:20 Voice, Upbringing, And Forgiveness
• 22:20 Pap’s Deathbed Vision
• 24:10 Final Calls For Stories And Support

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Hey everybody, Dr. G, Spirit Tales, and Magic, and we are in what we lovingly refer to as the Doctoberfest. In Phoenix, where I'm broadcasting at this moment, it's almost 11 o'clock. It's about 20, 25 minutes to 11. Several emails came in from across the pond today, and actually two from Phoenix as well, talking about the podcast and some of the first episodes. And one of our avid listeners, I don't think he's missed an episode since day one. He says, Hey Doc, why don't you on every podcast tell them that you are available for the storytelling show and corporate gigs and you know as a judge for contests? All the things that you do for your private, private special clients that you can't mention, you also do for the public. How come you never mention that? Well, I just did. So, but you can book Cassandra and I for shows or other things. Nobody under 16. I generally do not do birthdays, and I generally don't do outside shows, but nothing is outside the realm of possibilities. A lot of the other stories were talking about my aunt, Agnes Arbitus with an A. Wagner. Way back when the podcast first started, we were not Spirit Tales and Magic. We were your ghost storybus.com. The bus is retired, and your your ghost story bus does not exist. We've become spirit tales and magic. Um now we will do some episodes soon about the legend of the ghost bus. Um, the ghost bus's name was Blood Money, and and these are episodes from 2021 or 2022, and I'm not um I'm doing this from memory. So your ghost story bus was uh kind of a legend for a little while. Um, there was a pretty big ruckus in New York involving um the people that were on the bus who I can neither confirm or deny was Cassandra and myself. But so that's how that podcast would have started out. It would have said something like, hi, I'm Dr. G, you're listening to your ghost story bus. And I think back then I said something like, you know, your podcast home for storage of the um storage, your podcast home for stories of the paranormal. So fast forward, here we are. You know, pretty much everybody has a paranormal story. There's people who have paranormal stories and don't mind telling you about them, and people who lie and say they never had one or don't know anybody that's had one. So one out of three people. Um I'm sorry, one out of two people believe in ghosts. That's 50%. And one out of three will tell you that they've had an interaction with one. And back then, in every single episode, same as now, I'd we'd love to hear your ghost story, send it to us. You could end up here as a guest on our show. Or perhaps we would just read your story and share it with everyone. Give us a like, give us a share, download the episodes, and help us to move forward. I say that all the time. We said it then, saying it now. So we're gonna jump ahead and I'm going to redo my Aunt Aggie. So Agnes Arbitris, A-R-B-A-T-U-S, pronounced Arbitus Wagner. My Aunt Aggie. So I grew up in a small town in Northeast Ohio. Most of you know that. My life, well, let's just say it was complicated at the least. In my young lifetime, I would live in three houses on the same street. Now keep in mind, each one of these was a little more haunted than the next. So you'll soon be able to order the first book about my life. I don't know how soon. Hopefully, it will be by mid-next year. You'll be able to grab that. It's called Rooftop Chats, The Making of Invisible. The story of my life is is I want to pee quote people saying interesting, you're the most interesting guy. I always say anything I've ever done, and and five bucks will get you an extremely small coffee at Starbucks. But there are some interesting parts to my life. And the next question that everybody always asks is what was your first paranormal experience? Wow, my first paranormal experience. Well, it was Agnes Arbitus Wagner, my aunt. Now, Agnes wasn't your normal woman of the time. So Aggie was a cigar smoker, and both her and her sister, Bernice, who was my grandmother, played what they referred to as the fiddle. Both did some singing for the Jamboree, backing up some very famous country music stars. As I was young, I was the kid sitting on the back porch while Flat and Scrugs and several other famous people were you know back there talking to Bernus and Agnes, and you know, this is where you sing this, this is where you sing that. It was all just like a group of people, and I never really thought much about who they were or what they did until I was much older. But Agnes grew up in a time when women were supposed to be quiet little housewives. Now, my Aunt Agnes would look at you and say, you know what, my answer is to all that bunk. And she'd usually say something I'll be seeing and bite down on her cigar and laugh. But her answer to that, she started the first female taxi company in town. That was at a time when you you wouldn't be a woman and do something like that. But she did it. She hired only women, she I mean, it was great. So she quickly became the talk not only of the town, but of the entire valley where I lived. She got calls from newspapers and TV stations. She was a topic of discussion for several years. Some people loved her, some people hated her. But one thing you could always count on, everybody knew who she was, and they didn't screw with her. And her service was in great demand, so it grew very, very quickly. Anta Eggie and I were very close. In fact, so close that my grandparents would often try and keep me from seeing her. She wasn't afraid to stand up to them, and they didn't like it very much. Today we would say, hey, I'm gonna have to call bullshit on that. Don't get on me about the swear word. And Agnes was the original, I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to call bullshit on that. And she didn't care who you were. If you were trying to pull the wool over her eyes, she'd call you out on it. And it didn't matter if it was publicly or privately. She was not going to stand for it. We got, like I said, very, very close. And she always would rescue me from bullies of all kinds, family or not. Now I can't remember what it was that I did. I do remember that it was Tuesday, and it was in 1968 in May. I want to say it was the 28th. Don't have the access to that calendar in front of me right at this moment. But it was some eight-year-old fuss that I caused that earned me to walk out to the backyard to the tree to bring back a switch. If that never happened to you, you don't know what I'm talking about, and we're not going to explain it. We'll go over it later. But go get me a switch and bring it back in here. So we, you know, we did that. And that after that incident, I had uh earned a trip to the closet in my bedroom for what seemed to be an overly long time. Then it was some cold dinner and back to my room to quote think about whatever it was that I did wrong. But I assure you guys I had already forgotten about it long before that. I remember after my bath, I had a little bit of trouble sleeping. And it just it was hard. I couldn't seem to, I couldn't turn off my brain. Imagine that, I still have that problem. But I remember in the middle of the night, Aunt Aggie woke me up. She held her finger up to her lap, lips, and whispered, shh. And I whispered back, do they know you're in here? They're really gonna be mad if they don't. She smiled and hugged me and she said, Baby boy, I need you to listen to me and promise me that you'll be quiet and that you won't cry. Can you do that for me? I shook my head, yes. She puts her hand on my leg and she says, I want you to know that you have kind of a rough road ahead of you, but you're going to be fine. You'll go into one of the most interesting men who will ever walk the earth. You will have lived adventures that normal men will only dream of. And when you recount them to people, most will laugh and think you're making it up. But you will find some kind of special solace in the fact that you and a select few of your very closest friends know that it's all true. And I'll be right there watching over you. I'm going to be one of your guardian angels, you know. There is another one that you won't meet until later in life, but we will both be with you always. So promise me, don't fear or hate these people. They can be misguided, but they are family, and even though it doesn't seem like it now, they love you. They just don't know any other way to be than tough. You uh you outlive them all, and sadly I won't be there to see it. But I also have to tell you that next week I'm not gonna be there to see your first paid magic show. I remember looking at her and saying, why? You promised me you were gonna be there. This is the tough part. I was killed in an auto accident on my way back from Florida. But I had to come and see you one last time. A drunk driver across the median, struck us head on. She said, I was going 70 miles an hour, and I'm sure he was going just as fast. She's I and the other passenger in the front seat were killed instantly. The person behind me was also killed, but not for a day. She said, and the person in the passenger rear is in the hospital in critical condition, but will die today. She kissed my forehead. She said, I'll be right here. She put her finger on my heart. That was all I remember till I woke up in the morning. There were loud voices in the kitchen, and that was not an unusual occurrence in my house, but my grandmother was crying. And I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I picked up a wiffle ball bat that was in my bedroom, and I go running into the kitchen with the bat, because I'm gonna just let somebody have it. Grandpa spoke up. He's boy, where are you going with that bat? What are you doing? I just kind of looked around. I was going outside before I had my morning breakfast and go to school. I was gonna hit the ball around a couple times with the beagle. He had a hunting dog that he kept out back. He used to call Bernice his wife my grandmother. He would always refer to her as your mom. Well, go back to your room for a few minutes. Your mother come back and tell you what's going on. Uh you're not gonna go to school today. Uh we'll deal with the whole bat thing later when I come back. We're having a little discussion for a minute or two, and she'll come let you know when we're all done. She'll go over your missing school today with you and what she needs you to do. I'm gonna be late for work and I have to go. You got that? I said yes, sir. Did you know that Ann Aggie is dead? She was killed last night in an automobile accident. Now I can tell you that there were few times in life when Thomas, John, and Bernice did not have anything to say. More grandpap than grandma. But the room was still. Grandma looked up through teary eyes and wanted to know how I possibly could have dreamed about such an awful thing. Well, this was no dream, and Aggie was in my room. Now I should have just agreed that it was a dream. Have you ever tried to explain something to how am I gonna say this and not sound awful, to an overly religious non-believer, but you know exactly what you saw and what you heard. Well, welcome to my world. I never saw Ian Aggie again. But the incident was talked about for decades, and Cassandra will tell you I have the right to remain silent, but I never have the capability. So as we're talking throughout the day, way back then, grandma came into my room and she said, You you must promise me that you'll stop talking about that devil stuff in front of your grandpap. In front of Pap. She never called it grandpap. What do you mean? She goes, Well, you know there are no such things as ghosts, and when you die, you go to heaven and you you don't come back and talk to people. She said, but you know, I I'll tell him when he comes home for work that, you know, from work that you just heard us talking about it, and you weren't quite awake yet, so you had this dream that she told you. It wasn't a dream. Aunt Aggie, she could go outside right now and get me a switch. And I didn't even realize I said it, I said it so fast. Get it yourself. She stopped and looked at me and said, you know what, if Aunt Aggie really did come to my room, and if Aunt Aggie is really in heaven right now, looking down, watching you, she's gonna want to see you get that switch on your own. I said, She was killed instantly, so was the other passenger in the front seat, and the person behind her in the back seat. The other guy lingered for a while, but he died this morning. Now she had gotten that phone call prior to me running out to the kitchen. I've never seen a blank look like that on anybody's face that taught the one I saw on hers to this day. And Andy said that she would watch over me, that she got to be one of my guardian angels, and that there was another one that I wouldn't meet for a long time. Decades this was talked about. I was already a magician, I loved ghost stories, but this would begin what is now a six-decade study of the mind, the paranormal, and magic. And when times were the worst that they could ever be in the house, if I said the name Aunt Aggie or Agnes Wagner, they downed their head and the chaos stopped. That was the start of my paranormal journey. I never saw my Aunt Agnes again. But I do believe that if there are guardian angels, she is certainly one of them. Years later in my life, I would meet a lady by the name of Elizabeth Daly, and you're gonna hear a lot about Elizabeth in episodes to come. How did you become introduced to anything above the normal? Was it a ghost story? Did somebody tell you about things that go bump in the night? I get complimented a lot on my voice, and I do some voiceover things occasionally. I was born with an ethereal voice. That's this one. That occurs in not so many people in the world. But you're also going to hear me talk like this, and the reason for that is because every single time I talked in my normal voice, Pap would say, You talk in that demon voice one more time, you're going outside and getting a switch. Make no mistake about it, I loved my grandpa. And by the time of his death, he and I had patched up any conceivable thing that could have ever gone wrong. And he was doing the best he could for what he had. And he was raised by a man who was an equal opportunity butt whipper in the girls and the boys, and everybody got their butt beat when they wouldn't be like he expected them to be. On and on and on. He became a councilman in the town that he lived in and turned down running for mayor because of the current mayor was a friend of his. He was not a bad guy. And when we were having the last chat we would ever have, of course, no, of course, nobody knew that at the time. One of the things he said to me was, You want to hear something crazy? I'm like, sure, Pap. What is it? Denise's um, I saw your mother last night, and she was with her sister. Now, her sister is Agnes Wagner. And she said, The girls tell me it's lonely where they are, and it's not gonna be too long from now that I get to go be with them. Wow, Papas. You know, your mind uh does do some things to you when you're dying. Nope, they were here. He goes, and I guess I owe you an apology. You owe me nothing about what was your paranormal story? And we'll keep everybody happy that emailed. We are available for events. You can get in touch with us from the website, but I want to hear your stories. Give us a like, give us a share, help us push this thing along. We cannot do it without you. Support the podcast if you can. Spread the word and hey, tell a ghost story. It's good for ya. Good night from Phoenix.