California's Gold Coast keeps secrets. It's the 1980s, and three people are paying attention—a card reader, a witch, and a clairvoyant professor. Together they'll chase hauntings and unravel folklore along a coastline that's never been what it seems. Welcome to Gold Coast Arcana.
Dea agrees to go looking for the Char Man — not on the road, but in her sleep. Jax asks a simple question and Simon reveals his experiences of being tested as a remote viewer.
Links & Further Exploration
Remote Viewing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_viewing
Remote Viewing: Psychics Among Us | Joe McMoneagle, Tom McNear, Chris Ramsay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1QeGSlHN_U
Summer Night on Suburban Street with Crickets (binaural) by hargissssound -- https://freesound.org/s/319370/ -- License: Creative Commons 0. Downloaded from Free Sound at https://freesound.org/people/hargissssound/sounds/319370/?attribution=javascript%3Avoid%280%29%3B.
15 Sept 2026
WHERE LEGENDS BURN: CHAPTER TWO – EMBERS
Simon takes Jax and Dea to a Theosophist Library of Krotona in Ojai where the energy of place is much in evidence. What they find on the shelves may reframe everything they think they know about what's happening on Creek Road. Jax feeds microfilm onto the reader in the California Room and finds no fatalities reported in the Wheeler Springs Fire of 1948… but he does come up with a person of interest. Dea lays her own risky plan to engage the research.
Links & Further Exploration
Krotona Institute of Theosophy & Library, Ojai (real and open to researchers — https://www.krotonainstitute.org/library/
Krotona history — Theosophy Wiki: https://theosophy.wiki/en/Krotona_Institute_of_Theosophy
The Philip Experiment (Toronto, 1972) — the real artificial-ghost experiment Simon cites; Society for Psychical Research's Psi Encyclopedia: https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/philip-psychokinesis-experiments/
Philip Experiment overview — Wikipedia (names the actual researchers, incl. A.R.G. and Iris Owen): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_experiment
Philip the Imaginary Ghost: Philip Experiment Documentary — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSFkxkrSM9o&t=866s
Iris Owen, Conjuring Up Philip (1976) — the book is difficult to find, however, it is available to read through Internet Archive. It does require a free account: https://archive.org/details/conjuringupphili0000owen/page/n7/mode/2up
Alexandra David-Neel, Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1929) — another text available through Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/magicandmysteryintibetalexandradavidneel_182_L/page/n1/mode/2up
Patricia Garfield, Creative Dreaming —and another book available through Internet Archives: https://archive.org/details/creativedreaming00garf
Stephen LaBerge, PhD, Lucid Dreaming — and yet another book on Internet Archives: https://archive.org/details/luciddreaming00labe
Wheeler Springs, Ojai, California — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler_Springs,_California
The Wheeler Springs fire in 1948 was the largest fire of the year on the national forests of California — https://www.flickr.com/photos/usforestservice/49724211686/in/photostream/
Drew Washburn, Major Ojai Fires, in Ojai History — https://ojaihistory.com/major-ojai-fires/
Volkswagen engine background noise from FreeSound — https://freesound.org/ Attribution Text: Volkswagen Type 2_revving up2.wav by nhaudio -- https://freesound.org/s/332695/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
1 Sept 2026
WHERE LEGENDS BURN -- CHAPTER ONE: SMOKE
WHERE LEGENDS BURN: CHAPTER ONE – SMOKE
A card keeps jumping from Dea's tarot deck — and it's bringing the smell of fire with it. When Simon arrives with a book and a proposition, the twins are pulled toward a local legend they thought they'd outgrown. Everyone in Ventura knows the story of the Char Man. But Simon isn't interested in the story everyone knows.
Links & Further Exploration
USC Digital Folklore Archives — Char-Man entry (a real academic folklore collection, great for the "variations of the story" theme): https://folklore.usc.edu/folk-narrative-legend-char-man/
Char Man at Weird California (locations, sources, bibliography): http://www.weirdca.com/location.php?location=77
Annie Besant & C.W. Leadbeater, Thought-Forms (1901) — the actual book Simon gives Jax; full text free at Project Gutenberg / Internet Archive: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16269
Clairolfaction / "clair" senses explained — a starting point for the psychic-smell phenomenon Dea experiences: https://www.collegeofpsychicstudies.co.uk/enlighten/the-rare-clair-senses-clairolfaction
Dion Fortune, Psychic Self-Defense: https://dn790002.ca.archive.org/0/items/psychicselfdefensedionfortune/Psychic%20Self-Defense%20-%20Dion%20Fortune.pdf
The Ventura County Library / E.P. Foster Library (a real library with a genuine local-history room): https://www.vencolibrary.org/
helpme by vr -- https://freesound.org/s/806074 -- License: Attribution 4.0
15 Aug 2026
CINIS ET BENEDICTIO: CHAPTER FOUR – REQUIESCAT
CINIS ET BENEDICTIO: CHAPTER FOUR – REQUIESCAT
Every haunting has a source. Every disturbance has a buried cause — sometimes more literally than anyone expects. As the investigation reaches its end, the answers surface from the most unlikely place, and a question lingers long after the last candle is snuffed: when something cannot be fixed, only quieted, what happens when the next shovel strikes?
Links for historical locations, books mentioned in the podcast, or other fund things can be found below:
Recognition sought for thousands of Chumash buried under Ventura mission
Planned tribute aims to honor Chumash dead at Ventura mission
1 Aug 2026
CINIS ET BENEDICTIO: CHAPTER THREE – LACRIMOSA
CINIS ET BENEDICTIO: CHAPTER THREE – LACRIMOSABeneath the great fig tree across from the mission, on a perfect morning of blue sky and ocean breeze, Iris Ann closes her eyes and listens to the dead. What comes through is not what anyone expected: images of fever and fire, of a faith breaking under the weight of so much sorrow — and a single message, delivered softly, meant for Dea alone. That night Simon and Jax investigate behind the locked doors of the Mission San Buenaventura. Holy ground, it turns out, is no protection at all.
Links for historical locations, books mentioned in the podcast, or other fund things can be found below:
Spiritualist Church of the Comforter
Haunted Mission 5 San Buenaventura 21 Missions Pilgrimage The Dark Figure burnt alive
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
15 Jul 2026
CINIS ET BENIDICTIO -- PART TWO: VIGILIAE
The fog comes in off the Pacific just before midnight, swallowing the streetlights and the brick facade across from the Mission San Buenaventura. This is the hour the parishioners are gone and the tourists have long since drifted home — the quiet hour, when the mission belongs to something else entirely. Dea and Jax keep their separate posts, pens ready, instructed only to record what they see, hear, and feel. But what do you write in the margins when your own watch betrays you?
Links for historical locations, books mentioned in the podcast, or other fund things can be found below:
Peirano’s Market including archaeological excavation and assessment of the San Buenaventura Mission Lavanderia
Holy Ground, Haunted History: Mission San Buenaventura
Wind Chimes Bird Squirrel.wav – attribution text: wind chimes birds squirrel.wav by nixonvote -- https://freesound.org/s/516561/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
Richard Senate’s Ghosts of Ventura: Southern California’s Haunted Coastal Community
Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines by Walter Evans-Wentz
Lucid Dreams by Celia Green
Creative Dreaming by Patricia Garfield, Ph. D.
1 Jul 2026
CINIS ET BENIDICTIO -- PART ONE: INTROITUS
In Ventura, California, the Mission San Buenaventura has stood for more than two centuries — whitewashed adobe, hand-hewn beams darkened by candle smoke, and a silence that presses against the chest of anyone who lingers too long. It is the last mission Junípero Serra ever founded, and the ground beneath it remembers everything. So, when a phone rings on a quiet spring evening and Dr. Simon Deleon asks a simple favor — come to mass, and afterward I'll explain — a door begins, almost imperceptibly, to open for Dea and Jax.
Links for historical locations, books mentioned in the podcast, or other fund things can be found below:
Mission San Buenaventura Basilica
15 Jun 2026
Lessons in Neighborliness: Chapter Three--Old Woman Datura
Lessons in Neighborliness: Chapter Three--Old Woman Datura
In the darkness behind her eyes, Dea sees centuries collapse into moments. Holy men approaching a sacred spring. A lone vaquero leaving an offering. And then the shovels — scraping across something that was never supposed to be moved. The vision tells her everything: what was taken, where it belongs, and what will happen if it isn't returned. Now the four of them have to act — before the earth finishes collecting what it's owed.
Chumash Traditional Narratives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumash_traditional_narratives
Charm Stones or Plummets: https://www.californiaprehistory.com/publications/proceedings/Proceedings.13Sharp.pdf
The Chumash People: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumash_people
1 Jun 2026
Lessons in Neighborliness: Chapter Two--Blight
Dr. Simon Deleon puts his hand on the ground and what he finds isn't human. It's never been human. It's angry, it's hungry, and it's radiating outward from somewhere around the Olivas Adobe. Now four people with very different gifts — a tarot reader, a dowser, a docent, and a psychic who keeps everyone at arm's length — must find the source before the land consumes everything around it. The pendulum swings. The lines converge. And something is waiting at the intersection.
You can find Gold Coast Arcana on the web at Gold Coast Arcana, contact us via email at GoldCoastArcana@gmail.com.
15 May 2026
Lessons in Neighborliness--Chapter 1: Oppression
A historic adobe. A routine tour. A feeling that won't let go. When Jax visits the Olivas Adobe, he expects old rooms and interesting history — not phantom music, a buzzing that no one else can hear, and crops blackening and dying in an expanding ring around the property. And then there's the woman. The one in the long black dress who watches him from the archway — and vanishes before he can reach her.
If you are interested in the Californios and the Olivas Adobe in Ventura, California, here are some links that might interest you.
Olivas Adobe Historical Park
This 200-Year-Old Adobe Is California's Most Active Haunted House
Who were the Californios
You can find Gold Coast Arcana on the web at Gold Coast Arcana, contact us via email at GoldCoastArcana@gmail.com.
1 May 2026
Episode 1: Exordium
A man walks alone down a dark road in a torrential downpour. He doesn't know his name. When twin siblings Dea and Jax pull over to help, they have no idea they're about to meet someone who will change everything — a university professor who moonlights as a psychic investigator, found wandering miles from his car with no memory of what drove him into the night.
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5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
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