Welcome to this edition of The High Strangest Factor, copyrighted on the Paranormal UK
Radio Network. I'm your host, Steve Ward. On The High Strangest Factor.
Andy Mercer and I, for the past five years have covered all aspects
of the unexplained and paranormal by talking to fascinating guests involved in many different areas
of investigation and research. Andy, welcome back. It's good to be back.
It's nice to do two shows in a row, for me to do
more than the occasion show when I moved on the part of the country.
But other things have got in the way and I'm not being as regular as
I've planned to be. But this is two in a row, so I'm
doing pretty well. I think. I think so. And the thing is
that people have to understand that that well, I did not have a real
job. You did. So have been retired a few years now. So
I do work at the Mothmam. You see him occasionally, which is hardly
you can hardly call it work when you're just having too much fun. Just
don't tell Jeff Walmsley that I would pay him to do that. But so
so far he's still paying me, and very quickly we should let people know
the status of your publishing company. Yes, it's all going very well.
The second book is now with the printers, which is written by a good
friend of mine about ICs switchcraft. I mentioned that last time as well,
and that's just sorting out the fun of details that to cove through print.
It takes about a month, so I should have it by mid late May,
and then I'm moving on to the next book I'm working on, which
is a transcription of a medieval grimoire into modern English, readable English. And
one of the plans of the public company is to produce these fact similes of
original documents and then a modern transcription is often written in very bad or a
strange English, or in Latin, Latin or even Greek, so good translation
work a bit of modernization. So you have the idea would be you'd have
on one page you've got the original fact simile, and the other page you
have the transcription into modern English. So that's the next project I'm working on.
And are you suggesting that even I could understand this at the translation,
that would be the idea? Absolutely, yes, very good. You realize
I'm I'm in West Virginia now, just so you know full disclosure, okay,
And and anything else coming up? Are you going to be reviving any
of your projects or do you have anything else on the back burner? Well,
I think at the moment we've got a few. We've got a few
plans, the three of us. Of course, you mean Susie for something
sorting fairy soon, so that's going to keep us busy, which I'm looking
forward to do. Very good. And Susie, welcome back as always.
And I hope you got your uh, your check was in the mail for
the last show. Yeah, my big bucks are rolling in now. It
should have included the profit sharing, so I think it'll work out pretty well.
And uh, and you've got well you started a paranormal book club which
Andy and I are involved in, and that's going to involve a coming up
a podcast, right, yes, absolutely. And our first book just so
happens to be the Mothman prophecies I've got killed And that was not rigged voting
at all. That happened. Then well we should say what came second on
that list, which was the book is going to right eventually. So if
I had one movie, I've actually written part of it and I'm thinking about
you know, we haven't introduced our guest James Willis yet officially, but I
figured he's got so many books out there. If I were to take one
of his old books he's probably forgotten about, you know, change the chapters
around a bit, change the title. I could probably just use one of
his old books. Sure, it's sure, it's unethical, but you know,
I can use the money now. Also, Susie, you're planning on
a YouTube show. Yeah, I actually I haven't told you this yet.
I actually just posted a short video today. But then I have some interviews
planned coming up that we'll be going there. And you know, of course
I'm always interested in talking about little people, but it will be a more
diverse subject matter on there, because unfortunately I can't find people to talk about
little men with me. Every Well, I think it'll be a lot of
fun. And I heard a rumor that some people that we know might eventually
be on there as being interviewed. They just might be Okay, well,
of course we'll have to behave I guess. Okay, Well, let's introduce
our guest, not since the Headless Horseman. And by the way, this
is the short version Not Since the Headless Horseman went charging through Sleepy Hollow?
Has something come out of the Hudson Highlands of upstate New York as thrilling and
chilling? As author and paranormal researcher James A. Willis, fueled by a
steady childhood diet of Booberry, Cereal, Creepy Magazine, and late night Vincent
Price movies weird, Willis soon developed a taste for the unexplained and quickly began
seeking out all things strange and spooky. When he wasn't trying to coax the
Boogeyman out from under his bed for a photo shoot, Willis pondered such eternal
questions as what happens to us when we die? Is their life and other
planets? And what possesses someone to decorate their house with one thousand and one
milk jugs? Willis moved to Ohio and founded the Ghost of Ohio Ghost of
Ohio dot Org, a nationally recognized paranormal research organization. Willis has grown the
organization in three divisions throughout the state, Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.
In two thousand and four, and what seemed to be Destiny, Mark and
Mark, the brainchilds of the weird Us series of books approached Willis and asked
him to contribute to their latest volume, weird Us. To date, Willis
has been involved with six books in the weird Us series. He is the
co author of Weird Ohio two thousand and five, Weird Indiana two thousand and
eight, and was also a contributing author to weird Us two thousand and four,
Weird Hauntings two thousand and six, weird Us two, The Odyssey Continues
two thousand and eight, and Weird Encounters twenty ten. Twenty seventeen, Central
Ohio Legends and Lore had Willis chasing down some of the Buckeye State's most legendary
characters, including Johnny Appleseed, Annie Oakley, and Chief leather Lips. I
didn't make that up. Along the way, Willis took the time to explore
some of Central Ohio's stranger legends, such as the Ohio Grassman and even UFOs.
Late twenty twenty two saw the release of the new book in Willis's Legend
and Low series, Southern Ohio Legends and Lore. Willis currently resides in Galina,
Ohio, with his wife and daughter and two narcoleptic cats. James welcome
to the high strangeness factor. Thank you. I can't believe that. I
don't think that was the short version, to be honest with you, But
my goodness, I owe you something. I think I need to hire you
Steve as my hype man. Now. I swear I cut out huge,
huge paragram. What pompous writer wrote that? I don't know. All writers
are supposed to have a little bit of that endime, I think, I
think so. I think you're right. So from now, of course you
we'll get into kind of the You've written many many books. I was familiar
with Weird Ohio back in about I think two thousand and seven. I think
it was when I met you and your wife at the Mothman Festival. Yes,
yeah, yeah, yeah, I did do that for a couple of
years. Yeah, I think has it been that long? Oh yeah,
wow? Yeah, I know. But now, can I get from your
introduction where you are you more of someone that was intrigued by the creepy rather
than somebody who was an experiencer as a young young child or have you had
experiences when you were younger? That's a great question. I mean, originally,
going back to that very very lengthy bio that you read about me.
I was obsessed with the Headless Horseman and the legend of Sleepy Hollow, and
I was led to believe that that was a true story. And this is
where I was maybe eight years old, and what they did to try to
convince me it was real was Terrytown is actually the setting for the legend of
Sleepy Hollow. And we had a class field trip and the teacher kind of
showed us the settings, so showed us the bridge that the horseman couldn't cross
over in the old Dutch church, and then we ended up in the cemetery
and she started pointing out the characters from the book, so the Van Tassels
where they were buried, and I was hooked. I was like, this
is a true ghost story. And then I found out that that was a
lie. That Washington Irving actually loved Terrytown, and so I guess we could
say he borrowed the things that he saw and wrote them all down and made
them part of the legend of Sleepy Hollow, including the characters' names that he
borrowed off of the tombstones. But that was at a very early age.
Led me to think, okay, well, if that's not a true ghost
story. What are the real ones? And so I started going out trying
to have experiences and along the way, since the Hudson Valley of upstate New
York is just a weird, weird place, so they've had UFO flaps,
they've got their own version of Bigfoot running around up there. They've even got
the Lake Champlain Monster. You're not too far away from New Jersey with the
Jersey Devil. So I was just roaming around, just trying to track these
things down and to have experiences and to finally get around answering your question.
I did have experiences, but I even to this day, when I have
what I would say is a true experience, I don't know what it is,
and I tend to get in a lot of trouble with these ghost groups
and ghost professionals that actually, when I say that I believe in ghosts,
I absolutely do. I believe there's a lot of things out there we can't
really explain. But I don't know what a ghost is. I don't think
anybody does, because I think if somebody knew exactly what it was, the
rest of us couldn't doubt it existed. So the experience that I've had.
I tend to see them as real people. I've yet to see a headless
horseman or anybody headless, but yet I will be doing an investigation and sort
of look over and see someone standing there. They're dressed in normal clothes and
you know, they're not floating, or and I'll turn around about like wait,
wait, who is that? And I look back and they're gone.
I've had experiences where people have actually seen my doppelganger in places, which totally
freaks me out because I'm like, is that my experience or is that their
experience. I've heard recordings of my own voice taken in a building where I
was actually outside of the building and nowhere near the studio microphone that picked it
up. What were some of the things that you that you heard that voice
that sounded like you're a say? Well, probably the most famous or infamous
one was we were doing an investigation and we don't ever I'm always I should
back up and say that when I'm doing a ghost investigation, my goal is
to try to come up with empirical data and hopefully it's repeatable. But I
want something, you know, so I don't I work with a lot of
psychics, but I also have equipment that I'm looking for to get readings from,
not the standard, very expensive and it doesn't really work the way it's
supposed to. Gos to equipment, but you know, actual scientific if you
want to call it, that equipment to use. And so when it comes
to audio recorders, we don't we use as backup digital voice recorders, but
we also use very expensive, highly sensitive studio microphones that we wire directly into
a mixing board so we can track everything. The strangest thing that was heard
and we were able to get a recording of, was me saying, no,
what's it said on right up against a studio microphone, and then right
after that, the entire microphone as well as the mixing board shut down,
as if it just got like zapp by a big thing of energy. The
odd thing is when we got the recording of that, and I even initially
thought it was me. The joke was it was sort of whispering, and
I have a rule that is you don't ever whisper on an investigation because you
don't use your vocal chords and it can't really tell who it is. So
I thought it was me whispering and I'm like, you know, oh gosh,
you know, I'm going to get a whooping from the rest of the
group. But Mark, another investigator, actually heard it, and when we
had it analyzed. We keep voice patterns and voice files of everybody that goes
on an investigation, and when we had it reviewed, it came back that
said this sound because we don't have to say is this a ghost, because
again I don't know what it is, but they said, this sound that
is is clearly saying no, what's it set on? It falls within the
range of a human voice, but it does not match anybody's voice pattern who
was in the room at the time. It was close to me, but
when you put it up against my actual voice pattern, there's marked differences where
you when you look at the sort of the print out of it, you're
like, yeah, that's not the same, it's similar. So yeah,
that was probably one of the most unnerving one. When I sat back,
I mean, when it was happening, I didn't think it was anything.
I was like, that's kind of weird. But when you sit back and
you're like, why was it, Of all people, you're gonna pick me
to try to talk like, I mean, that's just silly. They kind
of need to up there their levels here, I would think. But well,
you know, I did actually see the headless horsemen. It was at
the Greenfield Village at the that's where the Edison Laboratories are in the Detroit area.
They have a great Halloween night and one of the things you walk by,
they've got this guy and a horse dressed up, and of course he's
got his His body is a little taller so his head can hide underneath the
neck part, and he must be. It's not a parent where you can
see out of but it's very creepy to see this guy with no head riding
back and forth on a black horse. So it's pretty well done. Oh
wow, that's cool. Now you mentioned late night movies and so forth,
kind of winning your appetite as a kid. I think all of us had
some of that. Did you have to ask did you have a like a
local horror host in your area where you grew up. We did not,
because we were far enough out of New York City where we didn't kind of
get the official kind of person. A lot of times we would get creature
feature that would come in, but we didn't really have a set one that
came in. It's just that they came on wwor like Late Night. Oh
and then we I also lucked out in that they used to run Monday to
Friday. They would do movies and I forget it might have been ABC,
I'm not really sure, but they ran from four thirty to six, and
they would do a week where it would have like a theme. And I
still remember, you know, really dating myself now, but you know,
getting the TV Guide, you know, and you'd be like, oh man,
it's Planet of the Apes week, you know, and you circle all
this stuff in there. But they used to do they varied it. It
was the same movies, but they would do a week of Edgar Allan Poe
or they would do a week of Vincent Price. It were the same movies,
they just called it a different week. But I remember just being petrified
but having to watch all of those. So it was the fact that they
were on, you know, from four thirty to six was kind of strange.
And they came after Dark Shadows. So I mean again, I was
born to be twisted, just based on sitting in front of my television.
Well, you mentioned TV Guide, and you know they used to have in
the TV Guide. They used to have the uh, the movies listed in
the beginning for the whole week. And you know, I was the guy
that wrote down all that, whether it was a science fiction flick or The
Mummy or whatever, and I take them into school. I was known as
the weird kid for a long time. And you can still be known that
way and uh and just a kind of a reminiscing thing. I used to
love the fall preview TV Guide with your shows coming out that have the big
blurb anyway, But I don't know, Susie, if you can, if
you remember TV Guide, you're such a young kid. I do remember TV
Guide. I'm not that young. I'm actually since the not since the last
time we talked, but fairly recently. I'm now a grown up. I'm
forty years old. Well, very good. Now did you have did you
grow up with a I know you grew up in kind of a desolate area,
that's what I keep hearing. But did you have any kind of a
horror host? So we had one of those huge satellite dishes, Oh,
there you go, and feet across. We had one of those because you
could not get cable where I grew up. Ah, So did you go
ahead search of That was one of my favorites growing up. Yeah, did
you have any any like late night horror? We had Morgas Morgas Presents on
Channel two in the Detroit area and he was always his real name was Sid
Noel and George Norri grew up with him too, and George Norrie actually tracked
him down on his show that Sid Noel. He was living down in the
South and he would come on and do some of the same silly bits that
he would do on the movies. But what about you, Andy, did
you grow up with any kind of a horror host in England? Well?
No, nothing like Unfortunate when I was a killer any other three channels,
So you get your eyes out for the radio times. As our TV guide,
you always kept me out for the very sort of ghosts of horror films
that whatever popped up. And I've always liked the old fashioned ones, the
old black and white film So, oh yeah, so your quick story,
I'll probably twas before step, but just tell the story again. The first
time I saw The Haunting, which is based on the Shelly Jackson, Yeah,
nineteen sixty three, I was about fourteen years old. I had a
school friend staying over for the night, and we thought we watched the quote
crappy old ghost film on the TV. We didn't sleep at all. What
made it worse If you know the film, there's a scene in which there's
a voice coming from behind a wall, and Elana's lying in eventually shouts to
shut up because the boys seems to be talking to a child and the child
crying. There's art texting on the wall that looks like a face. Well,
why walls had artexts on them? So that was bloody terrifying. Yeah,
that was such a well done atmospheric film. And even now if I
watch it late at night alone, it creeps you the heck out. But
I have lost count a number of times I watched. I actually loved the
movie. He is my all time favorite or ghost horror film. And even
I know I'm digressing here, but there's even a scene in there with a
guy that plays the parapsychologist. He's I think he's quoting Lethbridge, the famous
dowser, but he talks about the difference between a ghost and an apparition and
a ghoul or a feeling of dread. Remember that part in there? I
thought and that was about the time, maybe a year or two after Lethbridge
had would have written that. Okay, well anyway, very good. Uh
yeah, we all kind of grew up with that stuff. And for me,
James, I really haven't had much of anything in the way of experiences,
but I've always been fascinated by this stuff. I guess I'm going to
have to ask what led Mark and Mark, the guys who started the Weird
series, what led them to contact you to be part of their books.
You know, I've known them for a long time and I don't recall ever
asking them point blank how it all came to be, but I do know
that they so they for many years prior, so we're going back into like
the I don't know how long they've had their magazine, but they had still
do Weird New Jersey, which is how it all started. They're from New
Jersey, so they would post all of these stories and people would go out,
So it pretty much had the same sort of format as all of the
Weird books ended up taking. But it was just a magazine at that point.
And they're gonna probably get the year wrong, but I want to say
around two thousand and three, maybe they decided to put out a book,
Weird New Jersey, same sort of format as their magazine, except it was
full colors, a coffee table type book, and it took off. And
then the story that I like to tell is I think the two marks put
their weird heads together and said, you know, there's forty nine other weird
states out there, and so they decided they were going to do Weird Us,
which same format as Weird New Jersey. It was ghosts, it was
monsters, it was weird roadside things, and they were looking for other authors
from the different states to contribute stories. Now I had heard that they typed
in Weird and Ohio and they got me and that's what led to it.
But over many late night adult beverages with them, they did say that when
they kept hearing about a place called hell Town in Ohio and that everybody was
saying that is the weirdest place in Ohio, and that when they went looking
for that, I had actually just finished doing about six months of research on
Helltown and I published it and it was in all the newspapers, and they
had contacted me and they said we'd like to use that story in Weird Us,
and I was like, sure, whatever, and they read it and
they said to me, you have a weird eye, which I now take
as a compliment. And then they said, we'd like to pay you to
go travel around Ohio and take pictures of these places and write about it.
And I was like, wait, excuse me, you're gonna pay me to
do that? And they did. And I'm still shocked because that led to
all the other books and Weird Indiana because they couldn't find people that where you
know, writers or photographers. They couldn't find enough that were willing to travel
to do this, which I still find shocking. But again, this was
kind of in the early two thousands where when I was doing Weird Ohio Weird,
the word weird kind of had a bad connotation where it meant not right
in the head, shall we say, And so there was a bit of
a stigma. But the books hit it just the right time because there was
a lot of urban exploration that was taking place and that sort of thing that,
oddly enough, twenty somewhat years later, it's all coming back again.
But when I did first meet Mark and Mark they were you know, I
said, well, you know, I grew up in the Hudson Valley,
but I was only probably about forty five minutes to an hour away from New
Jersey, and I started telling them that I went looking for the Jersey Devil.
And then there is an infamous and I'm a survivor of this loosely termed
amusement park known as Action Park that has since been the nickname we used to
call it was Traction Park because it was the stories that you might have heard
were all true. It was run by teenagers, there were no rules,
it was just mayhem. People did die there, people did get broken arms
and all sorts of broken things. But it was a badge of courage.
And so when I told them, yeah, I went to Action Park and
I survived it, we started talking about that and we just kind of fell
into just sort of love for odd things. I recently found out too of
Johnny Knoxville did like a fake movie about it, but he called it Action
Point. But it's the same sort of thing. It was a an amusement
park that was just it was mayhem. It was just it was it was
beautiful and it's for its time. I guess you could say Susie did ring
a bell with you. Yeah, as someone who was not alive in the
seventies. Action Park is one of the things that make that time period seem
so unreal to me. It is just amazing to me that that place ever
existed. Well, this might even scare you more than because I went there
through the eighties. It was still open up through the eighties. That's enough
thing. That's interesting. People died it's open. Yeah, yeah, it
was. It was a it's very hard to explain, but I mean at
the root of it was that the employees were all teenagers and they sold alcohol
there and nobody was checking IDs nope, And so the rides themselves were created
by kind of like the people who did Jackass the movie and stuff like.
One of this was that you would they would you'd climb up to the side
of this man made cliff looking thing. They'd hand you a rope and you
would tarzan swing and drop several stories into a natural spring of ice cold water,
and you had to swim across there and get out of the way because
they weren't waiting for you. They were sending more and more people down,
and the people who did drown, a lot of them were because they were
shocked when they hit the water, and they just never came up. There
was electrocutions there. I don't mean like contricutions, but yeah, it's yeah,
that is the There is a urban legend about a water slide that was
enclosed. That was a tube that was supposed to take you into a three
hundred and sixty degree loop, and the story was that they sent a dummy
down for practice and it came back out in pieces, and there were wagers
of fifty dollars that the owners would give any kid that would go down there
to test it. I don't know if any of that is true, but
I can tell you every time that I went there, that slide was there.
It was never open, but it did exist. It was a big
green slide that went down the side of a hill, fully enclosed, went
into a three hundred and sixty loop, and then came out on like a
crash pad. So it did exist. I've never didn't write it, and
I've never met anybody that actually did that. I believe actually wrote it.
But yeah, it's a crazy place. So the one with the rope and
the ice cold water, did you actually pay for a ticket to do that?
Yeah? Well yeah, And what you would do is you would just
show up and it was kind of like you paid like an entrance fee and
you would just run around, so you got one ticket. It was everything
that you wanted to do. Okay, they took a used to take a
ski lift, and they would give you these sled looking things that you would
sit in and it had just like a there were wheels underneath it. It
had kind of like a joystick on the front, and they'd take you up
to the top of this hill that had like a bob sled run, except
the bob sled run was solid concrete, and they would and they would shove
you down the hill and if you could dodge the people that were intoxicated that
were throwing their cards off the ski lift to try to hit you. You
could not slow down. You could move that joystick all you wanted, but
you were not slowing down. So it used to be kind of to pass
your time going up to ski lift. You would look out and just watch
people just fly over the embankments, you know, going way too fast,
and just you would see people just laying out in the grass like a Civil
War battlefield sort of. Now, Susie, you weren't involved in any of
the planning sessions for this were it sounds like something that the eyes down the
street would have done in their backyard if they had a budget exactly. Yeah.
How how was it it took so long to shut this place down?
That's a great question. I think part of it had to do with I
think it was just the time, because you went there and I got banged.
I didn't break anything, but I got banged up, and it was
sort of like a badge of courage, you know that you like survived it.
And I think I think as people grew older, we got more common
sense, but I think also we got more litigious because they made no bones
about the fact that when you pulled up you had to walk past there were
ambulances parked outside. But he just kind of sucked it up and you moved
on. Wow, so much farosia. Yeah, so lord, there's so
much to talk about. What now? I I didn't now I was at
the Frogman conference this last time. I confess I did not see your talk
last time. But the year before you did a fantastic talk on the Frogman.
When when when did you first just now, of course that the frogman
comes out of the what the Miami River in Ohio, Loveland, Ohio.
Why did you first stumble on to the Frogman being a weird Ohio guy?
I actually he predates me being I moved to Ohio in late nineteen ninety nine,
and by early two thousand I had known about the Frogman, and that's
I've been obsessed with this story ever since, because the basic story is that
it is. They will tell you it is a four to six foot tall,
half man, half frog creature with a magic wand, and from the
get go, I'm like, I need this thing to exist. I need
it to be I'm pretty sure it doesn't, but I need it in my
life. You know, he has to have a wizard hat, he's got
to be whole nine yards. But from the beginning I didn't. I'm like,
this can't be real. And there were all of these stories where they
would say, like, you know, policemen almost captured it and they shot
at it, but it got away, and the FBI was involved, and
they closed down bridges because they thought that he came from a UFO, and
all of these just crazed these stories that I'm like, I want to know
what they're smoking down in Loveland, because this is some good stuff. Here,
or they could be looking frogs, you know, I saw that X
Files episode. I don't know, but when I started digging into the research,
and over the years, I just love digging into research because every urban
legend has got that kernel of truth. And I found probably about twenty different
kernels of truths within the Loveland frog Man's story. And I paused there because
basically because we like to just make everything come together and be nice and tidy.
There were multiple sightings beginning in the nineteen fifties going up through the nineteen
seventies of totally different creatures in and around the Loveland area, one of which
had a metal rod that sparks came out of. But he's the one that
wasn't about fifty five fifty five, yes, but he did not. There
were three of them, and they did not look like a frog at all.
There were sightings in nineteen seventy two of an iguana looking thing, but
we just shoved all those stories together, and that for me, I just
ate that up because I have spent several decades now trying to pull apart these
things because to tell people, you know what, there was a creature that
had a magic wand it wasn't a frog. But to me, I'm like,
but where did what does that wand even mean? You know, why
did he have that? So yeah, I could go back in and start
finding all these little bits of this amalgam sort of story and pull it all
apart and go okay, this goes with the fifty five sightings. This was
actually from the sixties. These are the police officers from the seventies. So
I've just been obsessed with it and spend way too much time on it.
But sleep's overrated, so well the wand aspect, Andy and Susie isn't.
Don't We find a lot of humanoid encounters where they have some kind of a
wand or something, and sometimes it's associated with paralysis in the literature. Well,
certainly the idea of about paralysis to talk about the witch old Hag syndrome,
and you can associate a witch with a wand and yes, when the
reports of magical energy animating from fingers that sort of thing, certainly in that
sense, Yes to uh, as soon as he did, puck, what
he's ever deal with ones any lore about that? I have not heard of
any with WANs. But I actually did take an I went citing that was
I believe just north of Loveland, well, I say Puquaji, but little
person sighting. Somebody saw a group of little people kind of almost playing on
like a rocky outcrop near there, and they were kind of making chattering noises,
and they were running just along the tree lines and along these rocks there.
My complaint is, you know, the Loveland frog Man. I think
there's some lore that goes back to Native Americans that the French talked about.
But you know, basically, this guy shows up in fifty five a couple
times. In seventy two, he gets his own fest. How many years
did it take from mothman to get his own festival? It just it just
doesn't seem to be fair. Now, you've also talked to another researcher,
James Renner, who wrote it came from Ohio. I believe, is that
right? James? No, I have met him. Okay, okay,
but he wrote I don't know if you've read his book. He actually tracked
down Ray Shockley, who was one of the police officers that supposedly saw this
thing in seventy two. Yes, and and and Shockley got so tired of
it being being kidded about it that he finally said, oh, it was
probably just some kids iguana. So Renner tells the story about he he tracks
on the guy's mother, that he finds this guy's house, and and Shockley's
very reluctant to talk to him, and uh and and finally, as as
Renner is about to go out the door, Shockley says, it wasn't an
iguana, and it wasn't this and that, And Renner says, well,
what was it? And he said it was bigger? So he saw something
very bizarre. I don't know what Shockley saw, but you know, it's
one of these I call him the one or two off cryptids that like the
you know, the Dover Demon and the Enfield Horror. These guys show up
once or twice and then they melt back into the fandom an agerie, not
like you know, some of the winged creatures and Bigfoot, which kind of
stick around. But it just it is. It's a very intriguing story.
The Loveland fraugmen. Yeah, you're exactly right too in that I think the
well, I'm pretty much convinced that the fifty five sightings and the seventy two
there's no way it was the same creature. And I think with Ray Shockey
because he was he sort of witnessed zero. He when it comes to the
seven twenty two sidings, because he saw it first right, and then about
a week or so later his another and he was we worked for the Loveland
Police Office. Another Loveland police officer, Matthews, said he saw it as
well. And when that hit the newspaper, I think that's the first time
when Shocky was kind of like, yeah, I don't really like where this
is going. And he has not spoken publicly or on the record since then.
Where it gets really strange is that Matthews has changed his story over the
years. He recently passed, but he up until he passed away, he
changed what it was up until maybe three or four years ago. He was
still changing what it was all the way up to the point where he was
saying that because Matthews was the one who shot at it allegedly, okay,
and in the last version of the story Matthew said, I shot it,
I hit it, I killed it. It was an iguana. I threw
it in the trunk of the patrol car, brought it back to the police
station and Shaki looked at it. And said, yep, that's what I
That's what I got. But what's strange about that is I have the original
newspaper articles from when the story of both of their encounters hit the newspaper,
and it was roughly about three weeks after the Matthews citing Matthews is interviewed.
They also say that they don't know what it was it got away, which
is, if it's in the trunk of your car, why are you saying
that? And then Matthews proceeds to say that since they didn't know what it
was and it was a police station, they had somebody do with police sketch
and it was sent to the Cincinnati Zoo and the article named the zoo curator,
and they interviewed the curator in that article who said, yeah, it's
I don't think that this could be any sort of frog or lizard because it's
just too big. That curator has since passed away, but he did exist.
He's interviewed in that article, which again brings up, Okay, Matthews,
well, if you really did shoot it and throw it in the trunk
of your car, why are you still making sketches and having it sent to
the zoo And having them look at it. So I think kind of what
you said, Steve, I think that Shocky was to the point where he
was I'm one hundred percent convinced that SHOCKI saw something unexplainable. I think he
just got fed up with Matthew. My personal opinion, I think he got
fed up with Matthews continually bringing it up and changing the story because again personal
opinion, I think that he started feeling like his story was being kind of
made fun out of right. Let me do our station identification. You are
listening to the High Strangeness Factor copyright on the Paranormal UK Radio Network. Today,
Andy, Susie and I are talking to James Willis about his research and
his books. Off air, James and Susie started to talk a little bit
about pug wedgies, and of course, Susie is the pug wedgie whisper It
actually has done a great deal of research into the folklore of these little creatures
or elementals or whatever you want to call them. And you started to talk
about not really being aware of them being in Ohio but in Indiana. I'd
like you guys to continue your pug wedgie conversation. Sure, I'm actually really
intrigued with the term of puckwog whisperer. I mean, do you I mean,
is that on your business card? Because if it is, I need
one from you. I mean, that's just this is the coolest term ever.
Susie has a bumper sticker with it on there. Oh my goodness.
Okay, and it's on my bumper. I'm not bragging. I'm not bragging.
I'm I'm just explaining. I just need somebody's Etsy account. I mean,
I need one of those in my life. I can't. Yeah,
I was not really familiar with them. And then it was when I was
working on Weird Indiana, so that would have been two thousand and seven maybe.
And again, how how both all of the weird books, but we'll
talk specifically about how Weird Indiana and Weird Ohio came around. Was that I
had set lists of things to investigate or to visit, you know, and
I would go to one and when I was there, I would either pass
by something and I would say, Hey, that's weird, and I would
turn around and that would suddenly make its way into the book. Or I
would be taking pictures of a location and tell somebody what I was doing and
they would say, well, if you think that's weird, you need to
check out this place. So I was over in Indiana and I don't I
think I was going to the Wolf Park or some I was going somewhere,
but I was over in just sort of northeast of Indianapolis. It was in
like near Anderson, Indiana, and somebody it just came up in a casual
conversation, the ones that I love because I love weird stuff. But they
said, well, are you going to cover the puck Wodgies? And I'm
like, the whatdies? You know, I didn't know what they were talking
about. And they started telling me this story worry about the puck Quoadgies,
and I was like, I have never heard such a thing. And they
were like, oh yeah, they're over there in the Mound State Park.
And I had been intrigued from because Ohio is lousy with mounds. They've got
They've got effigy mounds, They've got all sorts of mounds there. So I
was thinking, Okay, well what are these mounds and is there you know,
a connection between the Ohio and the Indiana mounds. But no, they
were obviously totally separate things. But for lack of a better term, they
were described to me as being like goblin like and that they hung around in
the forest right around the mounds. And then I don't remember the the author
of the book, but I do know I got the book from Chris Woodard
from the Haunted Ohio series. She writes among us things, and I got
a book from her that I want to say it was just called The puck
Wodgies of Indiana or the puck Wodgies of Anderson, I don't know, but
it was a gentleman who I believe was an archaeologist who was I guess literally
digging into the mounds and doing research on that. And again, I'm so
unprepared for this, but I want to put it back like in the early
thirties or the late twenties or something, that he was a child and went
by there because he was already into doing this whole archaeology thing, and there
were these little men that had blonde here maybe and a helmet, I mean,
the whole nine yards and that they were, but there were a bunch
of them out in the woods. Susie, doesn't that fit with the uh,
the bowl haircuts and the Susie. Yes, and I believe we're talking
about Paul Starsmith. Maybe. Yeah. Like I said, I apologize,
I don't he he was the author of the book that I had. I
just don't. It's downstairs and I don't recall his name. But I mean,
if that if he was a kind of like a archaeologist or in training
or something and saw them as a child, And yeah, that's that's how
I remember this story from the book. He was all by himself on a
trail near the mounds and that's when he saw this one and he the book
was made up of all interviews that he did from people who had encountered these
sort of little people. Susie, is that one of the books you got
to hold over? In one of the books that was cost prohibitive. That
one is out of print and very hard to find a copy. That is
not a small fortune. Okay, but does this sound like the bold haircut
guys with the smocks. Oh? Yeah, absolutely, Those are in Mound
State Park, for sure. It's they're one and the same. And those
also have tend to come along with fireflies. And I actually actually recently spoke
to a night witness from the Bridgewater Triangle area who had fireflies with his Pagwadgie
sighting here when I had almost been convinced they were like completely separate entities with
just the same name up and until then. Now I'm not so sure.
Wow wow, uh so let's see. Uh. By the way, Andy,
you've been very quiet there any questions you're just bursting to ask right now
now. It's absolutely fascinating for me. Obviously I don't know these areas which
if you have been over in the UK, so I'm really just listening in.
It's all very fascinating. The one thing that James mentioned early on,
which I don't think he's done much about that I've been perci fascinated by,
is the Jersey Devil. You've been not that very much? Yes, yeah,
it was a growing up that that was one of the things to do
is to go down into the pine barrens of New Jersey, which is a
very very scary area. It's I was telling my wife the other day that,
you know, the New Jersey is nicknamed the Garden State, but people
normally just think of Jersey mall Hare and the Sopranos and the city, but
there are just millions of acres of forests and nothing, and that this is
an area the pine barrens, which is you could go for hours back in
there and not find anybody. It was. It is steeped in legends all
the way back from because it's close to there's pirate lore, there's bootleggers.
It is true that what was his name, It was a very the iceman,
the mobster who actually did dump a bunch of bodies out into the pine
barrens. I actually think there is an episode of the Sopranos that they go
into the pine barrens. It is a place that you don't go into certain
areas at night. So of course it's ripe for having the legend of the
Jersey Devil and the Jersey Devil story, and it's basic for him. There's
all sorts of offshoots. Was that mother leads the story goes that she had
had lived out there, and that she had had twelve children, and that
for whatever reason, became pregnant again with the thirteen and said something to the
effect of that she wishes it were a devil, and that this giant when
she had the child, it turned into this devil like creature and flew up
the chimney and is still lurking out in the woods. Oddly enough, there
have been mass sightings of this creature going back into the nineteen hundreds. I
mean that at one point it was cited in this one Week of Terror is
what it became known as, that it was coming out of New Jersey,
going up into chasing after people in Pennsylvania, it went into New York.
So whether or not those stories are true, what I find the most fascinating
is that if you google the Jersey Devil, the image that you're going to
get is again this amalgam looking thing which has got cloven hoofs, bat wings
and a horsehead. It's it's a very strange thing. But yeah, I
went roaming back in there many many times. It's it's a very scary area
even without the Jersey Devil. I to my knowledge, there have not been
any verified sightings. People will, you know, thanks to AI and even
before that, you know, we'll post things claiming it's the Jersey Devil.
I've never actually come across any sort of quote unquote evidence, but it is
a very long standing legend and I actually did. We took part in seth
Breedlove. They did a thing on the Jersey Devil with small town Monsters,
and I kind of was in that and gave some information on that for that
documentary. So yeah, it's it's I also think it's kind of cool because
the Jersey Devil is one of only two professional North American sports teams that are
are named after it, you know, the New Jersey Devils, the hockey
team is that named after the urban legend. And then they even have the
the Lake Erie Monsters, which is a minor league hockey team up in Cleveland
that were named after the Lake Erie Monster. They've since renamed the team the
Cleveland Monsters, which I think takes on a different connotation. I think there
was an episode, it may have been Monster Quest, I'm not sure where
they they put a couple people under hypnosis that claimed that they saw the Jersey
Devil, and they described kind of the basic uh you know, horsehead winged
creature or whatever, uh, suggesting that they actually saw something. Uh.
The other thing was was weird was uh the uh the Bucks County guys that
went to uh Lee Hample's farm. He's uh right off, right right off,
you know about that right off the Spray Road, and the I've seen
his photographs and they're just they're mind blowing. Well, uh, Dominics,
they tell who was their sensitive was was just really freaking out. There were
there was howling going on out there, there was a mist forming, there
were lights moving around. It was it was he was just really freaked out.
The next week, these guys went into the pine barrens with some seasoned
bigfoot researchers waved miles into the pine barrens and they were actually here ring thumps
and whoops and that kind of thing, you know, which which may have
been a real bigfoot encounter unless some homeless guy was back there making all the
noise, you know. And and Dominic said he felt like he was he
was extremely calm. He felt like he was on a sandy beach, relaxing
compared to the week before when they were on LEEH. Hample's property and all
that bizarre stuff was going on. But yeah, it's and then one other
thing there was at the end of one of the mothmand festivals. Of course,
we lost Rosemary Ellen Guiley a few years ago. She was approached and
John and Tim Frick were approached by a woman who lived in the Cross Village,
which is right near Charleston, and they were talking about all kinds of
bizarre stuff going on in their property. And the thing that triggered us was
she saw something and what she described it looked very much like a Jersey devil
just sitting there on the property. It didn't do anything. I don't know
how it faded away or how it but that was that was interesting that another
sort of a Jersey Devil type creature showed up. But this is a this
was kind of a high strangest area. We went out there to talk to
the people and they couldn't have been making this stuff up. They were finishing
each other's sentences. They saw classic UFOs, they saw a shadow, people
typical hauntings in their house. And it was just a a three ring circus
of the paranormal. It was completely bizarre, but it all seemed to center
around this apparition or whatever it was, of a Jersey devil. Wow.
Yeah, I mean the Pine Barrens, if you go back into that area,
it just feels off. And a lot of that is because there's there's
not many roads that go back in there. It's the roads are what they
call sugar sand, which is that very you know, soft, fluffy white
sand, So you do feel like you were in another world and it it
I think I think you could term it that it would be an area of
high stranges simply because there are so many ghost stories and there's stories about witches,
and I mean, if you name it, it's back there in the
pine barrens somewhere everything you know from the serial Killer is on. It's out
there, and you get far enough back in there, you do feel like
you are in a Blair Witch type of setting where things just feel off that
you're not supposed to be back there. And it's one of the places that
I tell people where they're like that Jersey devil can't exist. I'm like,
okay, well I'm going to take you down in the barons. Okay,
we'll go down the shore and I'm going to take you down into the pine
barons. We'll go back there a couple of hours, and then I'm going
to leave you and I'll come back in a couple of hours. And then
you tell me that it couldn't be living out here. It's just it just
feels like a totally different world when you're out there. Susie, any vibe
like that from the Freetown State Forest. I mean being paranormal repellent, my
bad vibely from the people in that area, but it is common for normal
people that go there to experience that type of thing. Yes, very interesting.
It sounds like they were also, you know, when I heard about
the mob connections and bodies turning up, it sounds like there was a few
things in common with the Freetown State Forest and the Pine Bearings. I also
believe I may have heard black dog stories from the Pine Bearns. Yes,
yes, yep. Yeah. Like I said, if there's anything kind of
spooky going on, it's been reported back in there. You've got the woman
in white that's supposedly back there. Yes, but there have been reports of
black dogs, bigfoot, you name it. Actually all happened to speak to
someone who had a dog band siting in Ohio last night. Really, yes,
matt amsh Em And this was when he was what fourteen years old in
Youngstown, Ohio. He was with other witnesses. Very credible. That show
will be out on Tuesday, and I have to say we were all pretty
riveted. Wow. Absolutely it was. I think the entire time was pretty
much the guests doing this story and it was just so detailed it will be
it would have been out already by the time if this show goes out,
but it will be out very soon as we're recording. So it's definitely worth
listening to. Oh very cool. Before I want to ask you about we
didn't meant You've got a lot of books out there that we need to cover
a little bit on. I wanted to say that I saw Sherry break today
too. She said to say hi, and Jeff Walmsley called me and there
was a gentleman that wanted to talk about John Keel and you know, you
know how much I hate to talk about and John Keel. And so we
went to the next door to the coffee grinder, had some coffee, and
Charles Humphreys was there. He's the guy that commissioned the Mothman statue and a
lot of stuff on the river front. I mean, he was instrumental and
kind of transforming that area, getting the funding and so forth. And then
Sherry Brake was there. She apparently tonight she's going to run one of her
tours, which is a combination of, of course, the weird history and
the actual American history. I know the weird history pretty well don't quiz me
on the American history. I'm still learning that. But yeah, she just
said to say, Hi, I know you guys were buddies at the next
door to each other at the Freudmann conference. I think yes, And that
was one of the things where we had we did. We had tables next
to each other, and she and I and even like John Katcuba was there
and we have exchanged emails over the decades. And then I was like,
you know, sir, I don't remember the last time we actually saw each
other in person, and we both agreed we were going to try to change
that. But yeah, if you see your teller, I said, hi
too. Yeah, and she will be on this show at some point.
I just pointed out from last night she has occurred to me. I think
last night's show we've recorded to in earlier. I should say it was the
first time Steve did not mention the name John Keel in the entire show.
I made. I really made an effort, Andy, I really tried,
really try to restraint myself. I shouldnt tell you, James, there are
certain people who listened to ASHO who have a drinking competition, drink every time
every time Steve mentions John Keel, a drink is taken and people get quite
drunk. Apparently, so I could see that happening. I go is to
get them under the table within five minutes. Wow. So anyway, give
us a give us kind of an overview. I mean, you started out
with uh, I guess the Weird USA, Weird Ohio books back way back
in the old days. But you've written so much since then, so kind
of give us an idea of what if we if we type in James Willis
on Amazon, what kind of goodies will we see? I have no idea,
but the secret is you need to type. You need to type in
weird Willis ah okay, and if you type that into Google, you will
get everything of me. I'm very proud of that because I tell people,
when I was, you know, the little kid chasing after the headless horseman,
my so called friends used to tease me and call me weird Willis.
So so now I'm like, yeah, go ahead, you google that now
and I'm at the top there. So I made being weird of careers.
How do you like me? Now? Some of the some of the more
recent books that people can find. I so I did a I'm working on
the third book in my Legends and Lord trilogy, just because I wanted to
sign Pampus and Arrogant and say that I wrote a trilogy. But it's that'll
be coming out beginning of next year, which is Northern Ohio Legends and Low.
The previous two were Central Ohio Legends and Law, and then the most
recent one Southern Ohio Legends and Law. Those came about in that a publisher
reached out to me and they said, we'd like to do a book on
legends and law of Ohio. And I said that's not going to fit in
one book, and they said, could you do it in three? And
so I said, I think I could. And then kind of funny in
that I get more guff. People still get guff. I don't know I
get it though, but from people who on Amazon they complained because they say,
I read your book Southern Ohio Legends and Lore, and one of those
places isn't really considered southern Ohio. And I'm like, well, that's the
only thing you didn't like about the book. Cool, But what they did
was the publisher took a map of Ohio and just drew two horizontal lines through
it and anything above the top. One was norther in the middle was central,
so I had no control over that, but that both all three of
those books were just a fun romp for me because it let me there's certainly
ghost stories in there, and you know, cryptids and UFO sightings, but
I was able to just look into stories that I'm like, this is just
weird. People need to know about this. There's no according to legend,
as I like to say, it's all true. So there's the there's a
mind fire that's been burning for over one hundred years, longer than sent Tralia
in New Straitsville, Ohio that they can't put out. And I loved how
when I found out about that. My favorite part of the story was that
during Prohibition, Straitsville moonshine was the purest moonshine and everybody wanted it because how
the fire started as they hit a coal a vein in the mountain and it
went up through there and they couldn't put it out, and the ground up
along the mountains would just open up and smoke, and sometimes open flame would
come out. And what would happen is during prohibition they'd go up and cook
the moonshine up there because if any of the agents were driving around and they
saw the smoke, they were like, it's that mind fire. So they
were able to go cook there. And to this day they do make legal
New Straitsville moonshine and they have a distillery down in that area and every year
they have a New Straitsville Moonshine Festival. But if you want to buy and
or consume the moonshine, you can't do it in New Straitsville because it's dry.
So you actually have to go over to the down the street a little
bit to the local Kroger to actually buy their moonshine. So I'm like,
that is just a really weird Ohio kind of story. So things like that,
and it made it into the book. I spent a lot of time
hanging around Right Patterson, which is home to Project Blue Book before it went
under, and basically, if anything fell out of the sky and they didn't
know what it was, it was quote unquote alien. It did make its
way to Right Patterson, you know. And again it's like when I moved
to Ohio, you know, people always said the same thing to me.
It was so much so that it ended up being the intro to Weird Ohio.
I was like, I'm moving to Ohio, what can you tell me
about Ohio? And they would get really quiet and then they would go I
think a lot of people drive through Ohio, and I'm like, okay,
yeah, great man. But to then go in here and just go no,
this is a weird state. I mean to find out that supposedly,
what if something really did crash in Roswell, it made its way to the
infamous Hangar eighteen at right Pat, you know what fell in Kesburg supposedly made
it there. So finding those things is what was really exciting about the Legends
and Lore series, So it wasn't necessarily just things with a weird tinge.
And then along the way, I did which I like to refer to as
my Sergeant Pepper book, which was Ohio's Historic Haunts, which I did with
Kent State University, which marked the first time that a prominent US university quote
unquote backed a ghost book. And what they did is they came to me
and they said, you know, you seem to know a lot about ghosts
in Ohio. We're trying to do sort of like a textbook sort of thing.
Do you have any ideas, and I was like, oh, I
do, because it's kind of been my mantra in that not just in Ohio,
but for the book. It was the idea that some historic, historically
significant buildings over time gain a reputation is being haunted, and that even if
you can't confirm that that ghost or that ghost story is real, you know,
in other words, you can't say, yep, there's a ghost,
the ghost story can still work to keep actual history alive. So it involved
me visit zitting twenty one historically significant locations in Ohio, and each chapter was
divided into thirds. The first third was just straight history, who built it,
why did they build it, who lived there? The second third of
each chapter were the ghost stories. But I didn't go on the internet.
I didn't look to other ghost groups. I wanted to speak with individuals who
worked there, lived there, who believed they had a ghost encounter, and
I wanted to interview them one on one so that I could look them in
the eye and see if I was going to call bs and I never did,
And I think that's the power of the ghost story. Those people believe
they had a ghost encounter, So what you know, I can't say whether
or not they did because I wasn't there, but I think that's the power
of the ghost story. And then the last third of each chapter, I
got locked in the building overnight with all of these fans ghost hunting equipment.
So that was that took. The interviews alone were two hundred and twenty hours,
and I think it almost took me three years from start to finish because
I had to visit them all. But I'm really excited because I recently signed
the contract for Ohiosastoric Haunts too, so we've identified the locations, the twenty
one locations we're going to be going to over the next two years and putting
out that again. So it's the first one almost killed me, so it'd
be interesting to see what happens with this one. But it was an amazing
journey. Did you ever come up with anything that we may not know about
the Ohio Serpent Mound? I don't think so. I mean that, to
me is one of the most fascinating locations, all the way down to what's
its purpose? You know, I mean, there's nothing about the Serpent Mound
that people all agree on other than it's a weird thing. Why is it
only really fully visible from the sky. It's you know, what is is
that. Some people have said it's the earth that it's swallowing. Other people
say, no, it's more of a fertility thing. It's an egg.
I have never been able to come up with any definitive answers, or really
any newth answers. It's just more questions as to what that place really represents.
It's fascinating though. It seems to me about two thousand and four there
was a crop circle that formed there and we a group of us, talked
to one of the proprietors. They have this great little gift shop, if
you want to call that, with great books and all kinds of rocks and
so forth. But the only thing I've ever heard of I think. I
don't know. If you're familiar with doctor greg Little's books, yes, yeah,
I can't remember the It's one of his really early books, and he
talks about a it was a November when it was closed, and there was
a gentleman again I can't remember his name, but he somehow he felt compelled
to go to the Serpent mount and so he got in there and it was
deserted, and he felt this bizarre energy going on, and he said the
leaves were kind of gathering together and moving up on the mound, and then
he realized that he had a camera in the car. He ran back,
and of course when he got back to the mound and all this weird stuff
going on, it had stopped. So that's that's the only interesting thing I've
ever heard. And of course it's it's not you can't really verify it,
but yeah, it's it's pretty spectacular when you go there and you walk around
it. Susie, did you have ever had a chance to go to the
Ohio Serpent Mount. It's actually not that far from here, maybe an hour
and a half in people's Ohio. I'll have to add it to my road.
I have not been there yet. Okay, sounds good. Yeah,
you need to go. It's it's amazing because again, going back to the
hole, there's nothing in Ohio. The the Serpent Mount is actually the largest
serpent effigy in the world are known in the world, and it's just it's
in the middle of nowhere, you know, it's and when you're looking at
it on the ground, you kind of almost feel like like you're looking at
like a golf course. You know, and that you've got these hills with
like little bunkers and stuff. But even when you go back, when you
try to answer, well who built it, and they they they they like
to do this. They say, well, the Adena culture built it,
and you're like, well who were they? Nobody really knows, but yeah,
they put that back to around like three hundred BC. So this is
not this has been around a while. So it's it's it's fascinating and it's
unfortunately in recent times they've kind of cut back on that. They used to
do things for the solstice and the equinox where people could come out there,
and I've heard they're starting to not let as many people go out there anymore.
I know they were trying to do something for the eclipse. But yeah,
you need to go. It's it's fascinating to just go out there and
you're like, it doesn't look like anything. And then when you go up
they have a tower there you can go and look at and just even looking
at it online to see it from above, it's just it's breathtaking. Yeah,
it's pretty spectacular to go up that tower and look over the land there.
So if if somebody, if somebody said James, we want we want
to read some of your books. Uh, what two or three books would
you suggest they start with? I I would I would say to them,
well, what are you into if that? Because if they are into specifically
ghost research and how to do like real research and use actual equipment for ghost
hunting as opposed to ghost hunting equipment, which when I hear that, I
think apps and phone things and radios and things you know that would be Ohio's
historic haunts. Because that's where I really get into the I list all of
the pieces of equipment that we use on it the investigations, and that's where
I kind of get into what I suggest people should let drive how they do
investigations. And I call them my two bottle conversations, because I say,
you need two bottles of your favorite adult beverage is to really unpack it.
But I always say, put yourself in the ghost use and why are that
you're doing the things that you're doing, And then listen to what the activity
is being reported as and if somebody tells you, For example, the example
I like to give is you hear it all the time they see they say,
I hear the ghost walking up the stairs at night, we'll tell the
people will count the stairs, because is it actually going up those stairs or
is it a residual thing that you're hearing? And if it ends up that
they are walking on the stairs, then in my two bottle mind, I'm
thinking, well, that means to me that if that if we'll just say
it is a ghost, but that means that that ghost has to have enough
mass or density or force or stuff to exert pressure on those steps to make
them creak. So we went and got really cheap pressure plates and runner rugs
and embedded them in there and just ran it up the stairs. And it
is amazing when you see this thing and all of a sudden you hear things
walking on the stairs, and those things trigger one by one and you look
out there and you're like, but wait, I can't see anything. I
hear them, I'm looking at those stairs, but there's nothing there, which
then leads to the other two bottle conversation, which is, how does with
something that's got enough mass to exert force on that step to make it creep
but you still can't see it. So anyway, that would be Ohio's historic
haunts. If you just like scary ghost stories, and you know the ones
that kind of get into urban legends and folklore. That would be the big
book of Ohio ghost stories. That is, I think there's close to one
hundred stories that are in there. Less concerned about the validity as to whether
or not that's a true ghost story, but I hear from people that they
love slipping through it and being like, oh wow, I went there.
I went there, you know, and the use did anything happen? No,
but it was fun, you know. So there's a lot of legend
tripping things you will get. It's sort of like Ohio's most popular ghost stories
and urban legends. If they're into just weird things, then that would be
any of the books that are in the Weird Us series. So you would
be specific to the state, you know. So if you're in Ohio,
it's Ohio Indiana. If you just want it from all there, that would
be weird Us. I did not work on it, but I do know
there is a Weird England floating around out there too. There'd be many of
those county. I can promise you that. There you go. Now,
I have another question for James, But Andy, Susie, you want to
get in here and get any any other questions before I do that. No,
you carry on, I'm so enjoin us. Okay, Susie, not
a question. But James, I realized that I have somewhere in my stack
of spooky New England books a story of I'm not sure if it's a headless
horseman or just a phantom horseman. I'm going to dig that out for you
to try to help with your childhood dream that was ripped away. Oh my
goodness, I'll buy two bumper stickers from me for that. No, thank
you. I appreciate that. It's in a weird twist of fate. I
have ended up in Ohio. And one of the things when I'm not chasing
after the frogs that I have been investigating almost as long is headless motorcycle ghosts.
And so I've kind of yeah, and again, why Ohio, I
don't know, but I can confidently say that Ohio has more headless motorcycle goes
per capita than any other state, and probably the strangest one is in Oxford,
Ohio, called the Oxford the Oxford Light, the Oxford Motorcycle Ghost,
and I have it's gonna sound weird. I've seen the light. I've seen
the motorcycle light. I've chased it and I don't know what causes it.
We've even gone so far as to think, is this a UFO, Is
this a Will of the Wisp kind of thing. No, it's always in
dead center of the road coming towards you. No sound, absolutely nothing,
including the fact that there's no backs. There is a backstory, but I've
never been able to verify anything. There's never been Supposedly the guy lost his
head when he crashed through a barbed wire fence. Nobody died on that road.
But yet you see it, and I've got it's it's the most asked
for thing. And my presentations that I give is they're like, you're gonna
have the motorcycle ghost in there because people just go nuts. And I'm like,
I don't know what this is, but and it's not one of the
If you close one eye and squint the other, it looks like Abe Lincoln
riding a tricycle or something. You know, It's like, you see this
light that is on camera in the middle of the road, casting its own
light so much so that it's casting the light onto the road. It's on
camera for about twenty twenty five seconds before it just disappears. Wow. I
wonder if he looks like Nicholas Cage from the neck down. See, And
this is the odd thing. Like I said, I've chased this thing.
You never see anything. There is no shape behind this light. There's nothing,
and it always blinks out. It doesn't you can't see because it's just
audio only, but it's it doesn't like turn out, you know, as
if a car was turning, you can see the lights kind of go to
the side and then does it just blinks out. It's always traveling in the
same direction. If you're traveling in that same direction, the light does come
up behind you and I've tried to pace it, you know, slow down,
and it does gain on you, but then it just blinks out.
So it's sort of a ghost light with a specific reputation. Correct, And
I mean my research is the story is very similar to the first headless motorcycle
ghost sightings in Ohio, which is on the other and Oxford is kind of
in the southern part of the state. Elmore, Ohio has a very similar
story and it's older and that's further up towards the northern end of the state.
The big difference is that you don't. I've never seen the Elmore ghost
light. I've gone up there numerous times. I've never People have said they've
seen it, but I've never seen it myself, and I've been up there
a lot. I've probably seen the Oxford light in twenty years, probably about
fifteen twenty times. So I think what happened is that the story made its
way to it did appear in folklore journals, and I think the story very
close to the Elmore is Bowling Green University. I think that story made its
way down to Oxford, which has Miami University, and I think when somebody
was telling the Elmore version, they said, Oh, that's kind of like
that light that's out on that other road. And I think that headless motorcycle
ghost story just got added to the idea that if you go to this Oxford
road, you will see a light will probably wind down pretty soon such a
by hole will It's right, No, No, I'm just concerned. I
want Andy to get the bed before five in the month. But you know
you mentioned the grassman and UFOs and your intro. There's a great article in
an old issue of Pursuit Magazine now Pursuit Magazine was Ivan Sanderson's publication for the
Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, and in there this guy did the
research. This was back in eighteen ninety seven in Ohio. It's one of
the airship waves that was coming across the US and it ended up in Ohio.
And in mid April to mid May, this thing or things was seeing
kind of circumbending Ohio clockwise, even lapsed over to West Virginia into Sistersville,
I think. And so, you know, sometimes people would just see a
light, other times people would see something more like you'd describe out of a
Jules Verne novel. Well, it's interesting because I'm sure you're familiar with Stan
Gordon and his silent invasion and the big Foot and the strange lights occurring at
the same time. Well, this guy, he's got about fifty five different
footnotes to different newspapers at the time. And while this thing was being seen
going around Ohio, there were cryptids on the ground. They were in Kenton,
Ohio, and in Chillicothe there was people were seeing these black panthers,
these large black cats. And this one was odd looking. It had like
an oversized head and short legs, a little bit like some of the dog
like creatures that were described at the Skinwalker Ranch, but the dogs would go
after it, they'd be ripped up and come back bleeding. They never shot
it or trapped it. But also at the same time period about the third
week in uh in uh April or maybe it was I'm not sure, third
week in April uh in the in Adams County where the Serpent mount is,
they were seeing what they were describing as a wild man. What does that
sound like? This this guy, this guy could run as fast as a
deer. So I found it very interesting that here you have the again,
you have the strange technology or whatever it is in the sky that's ahead of
what we can do, and on the ground you're seeing these sort of temporary
cryptids. Uh what uh you know, you you've you've looked into the Ohio
Grassman and uh and and UFOs and so forth. What what can you tell
you is some of that in some of your books some of that research.
Yes, oh yeah, it definitely is. Again it's it all comes back
to Weird Ohio. So yeah, there is so there. The grassman and
everything that you just said is with the is in Weird Ohio and I think
the The Grassman is and Hangar eighteen or in Central Ohio Legends and lore.
Okay. And this is the thing that if you do go to Amazon,
they do have the table of content's tense for all of my books on there,
kind of like that look inside and I use it all the time because
I forget, I'm like, what book did I put that in? But
those books all do have it and they are in there, so you can
actually then look and see what book gets put in. And I guarantee James
that none of us are going to write your publisher and complain about the boundary
lines for your books and all. Like I said, if that's the only
thing people didn't like, you know, I'm golden. You know, well,
what tell us how people can contact you, find your books and again
tell us what's coming up next? Again, the easiest way to find me
and all my stuff is just type in weird Willis and you'll find all my
social medias and websites and things. I do have. The two websites is
Strange and Spooky World, which is all of my weird stuff. And then
if it's specifically you were interested in the ghosts, that's ghost of ohio dot
org coming up for me. I'm getting ready to kick off. Every spring
through the end of the year, I kind of travel around Ohio and every
once in a while they let me cross state lines for presentations. I don't
know where I'm going to be, but all that's on your website I have
to ask to do you have to have a special pass for to go across
state lines. There is and there's also a fake mustache that is involved as
well. Yes, yes, that comes into play. But I do know
that in June, I'm going out to Illinois for Troy Taylor's Haunted America Conference.
Okay, but again, if you go to any of my websites or
social media, it's got all of where I'm going to be and the and
the bulk of the presentations and appearances that I do are not at conventions.
They're at libraries and little conference centers And the reason I try to do that
as much as possible because they're free and so it tends to bring more people
out and I get I just get really excited when people come out and there
they want to hear me tell stories. I'm like, really, this is
the coolest gig ever. But yeah, that's how you can find all of
my stuff. And like I said, it's just go to We'd just type
in weird Willis and you will find me all over the place. Well,
I've had the pleasure of saying you speak several times, and you are great
on stage. You've got all kinds of energy. Uh, you're not one
of these people that stand still by the podium. No, I do not.
I actually have an old eight millimeters video of the two thousand and seven
Mothman Festival back when they used to have it done at the Amphitheater before Yes
Theater, and there, man, you're going back and forth across that stage,
like you know, there's no tomorrow. Yeah, I I would love
to say, I would love to see that. That's yeah. I've always
been a firm believer in that if if I'm not excited about this stuff,
how would I expect an audience to be. And it's good that I just
love all of these things. And I tell everyone that will listen to me.
I don't know if I'm a good writer, but I'm a damn good
storyteller. And the fact that people take time out of their day to be
like, let me go hear this guy see what he has to say.
I don't take that lightly. So, I mean they always used to say
I think it was David Lee Roth that said that that. He said that,
like, you know, some people say you're supposed to wait for the
audience to give you a spark, and he was like, no, I
don't do that. I go on stage with a flamethrower, you know,
because it's like I think that we I also think the field takes itself a
bit too seriously, and so I just like to I go in there and
I'm like, I don't have all the answers. That's what you guys are
here to help me with. I mean, let's just enjoy the weirdness.
And Andy and Susie any any closing remarks or comments for James. I wish
I could get to these conferences. It's such a shame being over here.
It's expensive to go to. We didn't have so many of them, and
yet we are very little over here, which is a real shame. Yeah,
that's not cool. Well, I don't want even if you hang out
in Ohio so we can finally see something weird, maybe that sounds like the
place to do it there, you get me. Yeah, very good.
And I have to tell I have to give the secret of my cat's name
is Willis. It's not named after the Willis family, the Willis clan.
Willis was a stray wandering point pleasant and he came to live here with the
other cats, which took a while to accept him. But he Willis is
named after a character out of a Robert Heinlein novel, a Martian in fact.
I don't know if you've ever read Red Planet, but in Red Planet
is a great time. It's one of his more young adult books. I
guess they call it, but he doesn't, didn't never wrote down to anybody.
So very entertaining. One of my favorite books as a kid and still
as an adult. And Willis was what they call a Martian bouncer. He
was a literally a fur ball about the size of a basketball, with three
eyestalks and three legstocks that he could extend or pull back. And he actually
you could carry on a conversation with him. He spoke in the voice of
his his owner. I guess who kept him as sort of a pet,
Jim. Actually. So anyway, a very entertaining book. And that's uh,
that's where Willis comes from. That's very cool, So I guess,
uh, Andy, please uh. But by the way, James, this
has been a absolutely fantastic show. I knew it was going to be good,
but I really appreciate you being here. Oh this is my pleasure.
I mean, how long have we been talking about this? So glad we
actually made it happen. Well, we'll have to have you come back.
I'm sure there's a few other things we can talk about. You know where
to find me? Yes, I do. And Andy, would you like
to give people information on your h your publishing company again? I can.
It's always nice to do it a free promotion. My company is called the
Ninth Circle Press and you can find a Ninth Circle Press dot com or dot
co dot uk own them both, I said. The next book coming out
is on Essex Witchcraft, which is an excell book written my good friend of
mine, which I'm very looking forward to getting you out there and Susie your
information. My blog is Puckwages dot blogspot dot com. YouTube is the Puklagy
Whisperer and everyone needs to come find our paranormal book club Facebook groups so we
can go on the book for next month. Very good and make sure it's
not the book that I haven't completed. Yes, I don't want any pressure.
No pressure. The High Strangeress Factor was created by Steve Ward and Andy
Mercer and has copyrighted on the Paranormal UK Radio Network. I want to thank
our fearless leaders here at the network, Irene Alan Block, Mark Johnson and
Andy Mercer, and also Andy as producer and Andy and Brian Zeller as composers
for the themes for The High Strangers Factor. I could also be heard on
Mac Maloney's Military X Files as a correspondent on this same network. By the
time this show is available, I believe there will have been an episode with
Andy and Susie on board, but we'll see. And I am Steve Ward,
your humble host here on The High Strangers Factor, displaced Michigander, deep
in the Ohio Valley and west by God, Virginia, inches from downtown Point
Pleasant and on the same road that Mothman chased cars in November of nineteen sixty
six. Thank you all for listening, Addie Mercer and I will see you
all again in a fortnight. Take care,