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Welcome to this edition of The High
Strangest Factor, copyrighted on the Paranormal UK

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Radio Network. I'm your host,
Steve Ward. On The High Strangest Factor.

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Andy Mercer and I, for the
past five years have covered all aspects

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of the unexplained and paranormal by talking
to fascinating guests involved in many different areas

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of investigation and research. Andy,
welcome back. It's good to be back.

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It's nice to do two shows in
a row, for me to do

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more than the occasion show when I
moved on the part of the country.

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But other things have got in the
way and I'm not being as regular as

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I've planned to be. But this
is two in a row, so I'm

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doing pretty well. I think.
I think so. And the thing is

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that people have to understand that that
well, I did not have a real

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job. You did. So have
been retired a few years now. So

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I do work at the Mothmam.
You see him occasionally, which is hardly

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you can hardly call it work when
you're just having too much fun. Just

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don't tell Jeff Walmsley that I would
pay him to do that. But so

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so far he's still paying me,
and very quickly we should let people know

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the status of your publishing company.
Yes, it's all going very well.

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The second book is now with the
printers, which is written by a good

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friend of mine about ICs switchcraft.
I mentioned that last time as well,

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and that's just sorting out the fun
of details that to cove through print.

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It takes about a month, so
I should have it by mid late May,

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and then I'm moving on to the
next book I'm working on, which

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is a transcription of a medieval grimoire
into modern English, readable English. And

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one of the plans of the public
company is to produce these fact similes of

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original documents and then a modern transcription
is often written in very bad or a

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strange English, or in Latin,
Latin or even Greek, so good translation

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work a bit of modernization. So
you have the idea would be you'd have

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on one page you've got the original
fact simile, and the other page you

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have the transcription into modern English.
So that's the next project I'm working on.

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And are you suggesting that even I
could understand this at the translation,

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that would be the idea? Absolutely, yes, very good. You realize

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I'm I'm in West Virginia now,
just so you know full disclosure, okay,

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And and anything else coming up?
Are you going to be reviving any

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of your projects or do you have
anything else on the back burner? Well,

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I think at the moment we've got
a few. We've got a few

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plans, the three of us.
Of course, you mean Susie for something

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sorting fairy soon, so that's going
to keep us busy, which I'm looking

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forward to do. Very good.
And Susie, welcome back as always.

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And I hope you got your uh, your check was in the mail for

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the last show. Yeah, my
big bucks are rolling in now. It

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should have included the profit sharing,
so I think it'll work out pretty well.

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And uh, and you've got well
you started a paranormal book club which

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Andy and I are involved in,
and that's going to involve a coming up

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a podcast, right, yes,
absolutely. And our first book just so

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happens to be the Mothman prophecies I've
got killed And that was not rigged voting

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at all. That happened. Then
well we should say what came second on

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that list, which was the book
is going to right eventually. So if

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I had one movie, I've actually
written part of it and I'm thinking about

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you know, we haven't introduced our
guest James Willis yet officially, but I

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figured he's got so many books out
there. If I were to take one

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of his old books he's probably forgotten
about, you know, change the chapters

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around a bit, change the title. I could probably just use one of

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his old books. Sure, it's
sure, it's unethical, but you know,

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I can use the money now.
Also, Susie, you're planning on

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a YouTube show. Yeah, I
actually I haven't told you this yet.

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I actually just posted a short video
today. But then I have some interviews

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planned coming up that we'll be going
there. And you know, of course

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I'm always interested in talking about little
people, but it will be a more

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diverse subject matter on there, because
unfortunately I can't find people to talk about

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little men with me. Every Well, I think it'll be a lot of

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fun. And I heard a rumor
that some people that we know might eventually

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be on there as being interviewed.
They just might be Okay, well,

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of course we'll have to behave I
guess. Okay, Well, let's introduce

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our guest, not since the Headless
Horseman. And by the way, this

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is the short version Not Since the
Headless Horseman went charging through Sleepy Hollow?

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Has something come out of the Hudson
Highlands of upstate New York as thrilling and

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chilling? As author and paranormal researcher
James A. Willis, fueled by a

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steady childhood diet of Booberry, Cereal, Creepy Magazine, and late night Vincent

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Price movies weird, Willis soon developed
a taste for the unexplained and quickly began

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seeking out all things strange and spooky. When he wasn't trying to coax the

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Boogeyman out from under his bed for
a photo shoot, Willis pondered such eternal

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questions as what happens to us when
we die? Is their life and other

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planets? And what possesses someone to
decorate their house with one thousand and one

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milk jugs? Willis moved to Ohio
and founded the Ghost of Ohio Ghost of

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Ohio dot Org, a nationally recognized
paranormal research organization. Willis has grown the

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organization in three divisions throughout the state, Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.

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In two thousand and four, and
what seemed to be Destiny, Mark and

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Mark, the brainchilds of the weird
Us series of books approached Willis and asked

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him to contribute to their latest volume, weird Us. To date, Willis

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has been involved with six books in
the weird Us series. He is the

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co author of Weird Ohio two thousand
and five, Weird Indiana two thousand and

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eight, and was also a contributing
author to weird Us two thousand and four,

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Weird Hauntings two thousand and six,
weird Us two, The Odyssey Continues

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two thousand and eight, and Weird
Encounters twenty ten. Twenty seventeen, Central

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Ohio Legends and Lore had Willis chasing
down some of the Buckeye State's most legendary

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characters, including Johnny Appleseed, Annie
Oakley, and Chief leather Lips. I

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didn't make that up. Along the
way, Willis took the time to explore

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some of Central Ohio's stranger legends,
such as the Ohio Grassman and even UFOs.

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Late twenty twenty two saw the release
of the new book in Willis's Legend

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and Low series, Southern Ohio Legends
and Lore. Willis currently resides in Galina,

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Ohio, with his wife and daughter
and two narcoleptic cats. James welcome

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to the high strangeness factor. Thank
you. I can't believe that. I

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don't think that was the short version, to be honest with you, But

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my goodness, I owe you something. I think I need to hire you

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Steve as my hype man. Now. I swear I cut out huge,

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huge paragram. What pompous writer wrote
that? I don't know. All writers

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are supposed to have a little bit
of that endime, I think, I

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think so. I think you're right. So from now, of course you

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we'll get into kind of the You've
written many many books. I was familiar

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with Weird Ohio back in about I
think two thousand and seven. I think

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it was when I met you and
your wife at the Mothman Festival. Yes,

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yeah, yeah, yeah, I
did do that for a couple of

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years. Yeah, I think has
it been that long? Oh yeah,

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wow? Yeah, I know.
But now, can I get from your

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introduction where you are you more of
someone that was intrigued by the creepy rather

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than somebody who was an experiencer as
a young young child or have you had

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experiences when you were younger? That's
a great question. I mean, originally,

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going back to that very very lengthy
bio that you read about me.

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I was obsessed with the Headless Horseman
and the legend of Sleepy Hollow, and

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I was led to believe that that
was a true story. And this is

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where I was maybe eight years old, and what they did to try to

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convince me it was real was Terrytown
is actually the setting for the legend of

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Sleepy Hollow. And we had a
class field trip and the teacher kind of

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showed us the settings, so showed
us the bridge that the horseman couldn't cross

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over in the old Dutch church,
and then we ended up in the cemetery

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and she started pointing out the characters
from the book, so the Van Tassels

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where they were buried, and I
was hooked. I was like, this

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is a true ghost story. And
then I found out that that was a

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lie. That Washington Irving actually loved
Terrytown, and so I guess we could

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say he borrowed the things that he
saw and wrote them all down and made

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them part of the legend of Sleepy
Hollow, including the characters' names that he

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borrowed off of the tombstones. But
that was at a very early age.

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Led me to think, okay,
well, if that's not a true ghost

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story. What are the real ones? And so I started going out trying

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to have experiences and along the way, since the Hudson Valley of upstate New

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York is just a weird, weird
place, so they've had UFO flaps,

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they've got their own version of Bigfoot
running around up there. They've even got

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the Lake Champlain Monster. You're not
too far away from New Jersey with the

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Jersey Devil. So I was just
roaming around, just trying to track these

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things down and to have experiences and
to finally get around answering your question.

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I did have experiences, but I
even to this day, when I have

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what I would say is a true
experience, I don't know what it is,

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and I tend to get in a
lot of trouble with these ghost groups

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and ghost professionals that actually, when
I say that I believe in ghosts,

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I absolutely do. I believe there's
a lot of things out there we can't

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really explain. But I don't know
what a ghost is. I don't think

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anybody does, because I think if
somebody knew exactly what it was, the

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rest of us couldn't doubt it existed. So the experience that I've had.

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I tend to see them as real
people. I've yet to see a headless

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horseman or anybody headless, but yet
I will be doing an investigation and sort

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of look over and see someone standing
there. They're dressed in normal clothes and

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you know, they're not floating,
or and I'll turn around about like wait,

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wait, who is that? And
I look back and they're gone.

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I've had experiences where people have actually
seen my doppelganger in places, which totally

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freaks me out because I'm like,
is that my experience or is that their

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experience. I've heard recordings of my
own voice taken in a building where I

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was actually outside of the building and
nowhere near the studio microphone that picked it

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up. What were some of the
things that you that you heard that voice

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that sounded like you're a say?
Well, probably the most famous or infamous

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one was we were doing an investigation
and we don't ever I'm always I should

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back up and say that when I'm
doing a ghost investigation, my goal is

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to try to come up with empirical
data and hopefully it's repeatable. But I

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want something, you know, so
I don't I work with a lot of

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psychics, but I also have equipment
that I'm looking for to get readings from,

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not the standard, very expensive and
it doesn't really work the way it's

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supposed to. Gos to equipment,
but you know, actual scientific if you

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want to call it, that equipment
to use. And so when it comes

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to audio recorders, we don't we
use as backup digital voice recorders, but

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we also use very expensive, highly
sensitive studio microphones that we wire directly into

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a mixing board so we can track
everything. The strangest thing that was heard

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and we were able to get a
recording of, was me saying, no,

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what's it said on right up against
a studio microphone, and then right

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after that, the entire microphone as
well as the mixing board shut down,

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as if it just got like zapp
by a big thing of energy. The

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odd thing is when we got the
recording of that, and I even initially

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thought it was me. The joke
was it was sort of whispering, and

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I have a rule that is you
don't ever whisper on an investigation because you

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don't use your vocal chords and it
can't really tell who it is. So

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I thought it was me whispering and
I'm like, you know, oh gosh,

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you know, I'm going to get
a whooping from the rest of the

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group. But Mark, another investigator, actually heard it, and when we

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had it analyzed. We keep voice
patterns and voice files of everybody that goes

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on an investigation, and when we
had it reviewed, it came back that

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said this sound because we don't have
to say is this a ghost, because

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again I don't know what it is, but they said, this sound that

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is is clearly saying no, what's
it set on? It falls within the

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range of a human voice, but
it does not match anybody's voice pattern who

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was in the room at the time. It was close to me, but

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when you put it up against my
actual voice pattern, there's marked differences where

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you when you look at the sort
of the print out of it, you're

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like, yeah, that's not the
same, it's similar. So yeah,

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that was probably one of the most
unnerving one. When I sat back,

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I mean, when it was happening, I didn't think it was anything.

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I was like, that's kind of
weird. But when you sit back and

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you're like, why was it,
Of all people, you're gonna pick me

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to try to talk like, I
mean, that's just silly. They kind

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of need to up there their levels
here, I would think. But well,

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you know, I did actually see
the headless horsemen. It was at

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the Greenfield Village at the that's where
the Edison Laboratories are in the Detroit area.

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They have a great Halloween night and
one of the things you walk by,

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they've got this guy and a horse
dressed up, and of course he's

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got his His body is a little
taller so his head can hide underneath the

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neck part, and he must be. It's not a parent where you can

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see out of but it's very creepy
to see this guy with no head riding

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back and forth on a black horse. So it's pretty well done. Oh

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wow, that's cool. Now you
mentioned late night movies and so forth,

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kind of winning your appetite as a
kid. I think all of us had

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some of that. Did you have
to ask did you have a like a

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local horror host in your area where
you grew up. We did not,

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because we were far enough out of
New York City where we didn't kind of

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get the official kind of person.
A lot of times we would get creature

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feature that would come in, but
we didn't really have a set one that

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came in. It's just that they
came on wwor like Late Night. Oh

204
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and then we I also lucked out
in that they used to run Monday to

205
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Friday. They would do movies and
I forget it might have been ABC,

206
00:17:11,839 --> 00:17:15,400
I'm not really sure, but they
ran from four thirty to six, and

207
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they would do a week where it
would have like a theme. And I

208
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still remember, you know, really
dating myself now, but you know,

209
00:17:25,400 --> 00:17:30,000
getting the TV Guide, you know, and you'd be like, oh man,

210
00:17:30,039 --> 00:17:33,480
it's Planet of the Apes week,
you know, and you circle all

211
00:17:33,480 --> 00:17:37,440
this stuff in there. But they
used to do they varied it. It

212
00:17:37,480 --> 00:17:41,519
was the same movies, but they
would do a week of Edgar Allan Poe

213
00:17:42,079 --> 00:17:45,279
or they would do a week of
Vincent Price. It were the same movies,

214
00:17:45,319 --> 00:17:51,160
they just called it a different week. But I remember just being petrified

215
00:17:51,920 --> 00:17:56,960
but having to watch all of those. So it was the fact that they

216
00:17:56,960 --> 00:17:59,559
were on, you know, from
four thirty to six was kind of strange.

217
00:17:59,559 --> 00:18:03,359
And they came after Dark Shadows.
So I mean again, I was

218
00:18:03,400 --> 00:18:06,960
born to be twisted, just based
on sitting in front of my television.

219
00:18:07,440 --> 00:18:11,000
Well, you mentioned TV Guide,
and you know they used to have in

220
00:18:11,039 --> 00:18:15,440
the TV Guide. They used to
have the uh, the movies listed in

221
00:18:15,480 --> 00:18:18,480
the beginning for the whole week.
And you know, I was the guy

222
00:18:18,960 --> 00:18:22,480
that wrote down all that, whether
it was a science fiction flick or The

223
00:18:22,559 --> 00:18:25,799
Mummy or whatever, and I take
them into school. I was known as

224
00:18:25,799 --> 00:18:29,200
the weird kid for a long time. And you can still be known that

225
00:18:29,279 --> 00:18:33,920
way and uh and just a kind
of a reminiscing thing. I used to

226
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love the fall preview TV Guide with
your shows coming out that have the big

227
00:18:37,400 --> 00:18:41,880
blurb anyway, But I don't know, Susie, if you can, if

228
00:18:41,920 --> 00:18:45,599
you remember TV Guide, you're such
a young kid. I do remember TV

229
00:18:45,680 --> 00:18:51,839
Guide. I'm not that young.
I'm actually since the not since the last

230
00:18:51,839 --> 00:18:55,400
time we talked, but fairly recently. I'm now a grown up. I'm

231
00:18:55,440 --> 00:19:00,680
forty years old. Well, very
good. Now did you have did you

232
00:19:00,720 --> 00:19:03,559
grow up with a I know you
grew up in kind of a desolate area,

233
00:19:04,160 --> 00:19:07,440
that's what I keep hearing. But
did you have any kind of a

234
00:19:07,480 --> 00:19:15,279
horror host? So we had one
of those huge satellite dishes, Oh,

235
00:19:15,359 --> 00:19:18,759
there you go, and feet across. We had one of those because you

236
00:19:18,799 --> 00:19:22,960
could not get cable where I grew
up. Ah, So did you go

237
00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:30,599
ahead search of That was one of
my favorites growing up. Yeah, did

238
00:19:30,640 --> 00:19:37,920
you have any any like late night
horror? We had Morgas Morgas Presents on

239
00:19:37,039 --> 00:19:41,960
Channel two in the Detroit area and
he was always his real name was Sid

240
00:19:41,960 --> 00:19:47,079
Noel and George Norri grew up with
him too, and George Norrie actually tracked

241
00:19:47,119 --> 00:19:49,000
him down on his show that Sid
Noel. He was living down in the

242
00:19:49,039 --> 00:19:52,880
South and he would come on and
do some of the same silly bits that

243
00:19:52,039 --> 00:19:56,880
he would do on the movies.
But what about you, Andy, did

244
00:19:56,920 --> 00:20:00,480
you grow up with any kind of
a horror host in England? Well?

245
00:20:00,599 --> 00:20:03,000
No, nothing like Unfortunate when I
was a killer any other three channels,

246
00:20:03,119 --> 00:20:08,079
So you get your eyes out for
the radio times. As our TV guide,

247
00:20:08,079 --> 00:20:11,640
you always kept me out for the
very sort of ghosts of horror films

248
00:20:11,960 --> 00:20:14,759
that whatever popped up. And I've
always liked the old fashioned ones, the

249
00:20:14,759 --> 00:20:17,359
old black and white film So,
oh yeah, so your quick story,

250
00:20:17,359 --> 00:20:19,279
I'll probably twas before step, but
just tell the story again. The first

251
00:20:19,279 --> 00:20:22,559
time I saw The Haunting, which
is based on the Shelly Jackson, Yeah,

252
00:20:23,160 --> 00:20:27,039
nineteen sixty three, I was about
fourteen years old. I had a

253
00:20:27,039 --> 00:20:30,880
school friend staying over for the night, and we thought we watched the quote

254
00:20:30,920 --> 00:20:37,559
crappy old ghost film on the TV. We didn't sleep at all. What

255
00:20:37,720 --> 00:20:41,960
made it worse If you know the
film, there's a scene in which there's

256
00:20:41,960 --> 00:20:47,960
a voice coming from behind a wall, and Elana's lying in eventually shouts to

257
00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:51,400
shut up because the boys seems to
be talking to a child and the child

258
00:20:51,640 --> 00:20:55,960
crying. There's art texting on the
wall that looks like a face. Well,

259
00:20:55,960 --> 00:21:00,079
why walls had artexts on them?
So that was bloody terrifying. Yeah,

260
00:21:00,119 --> 00:21:06,599
that was such a well done atmospheric
film. And even now if I

261
00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:08,920
watch it late at night alone,
it creeps you the heck out. But

262
00:21:10,720 --> 00:21:12,720
I have lost count a number of
times I watched. I actually loved the

263
00:21:12,759 --> 00:21:18,400
movie. He is my all time
favorite or ghost horror film. And even

264
00:21:18,759 --> 00:21:22,200
I know I'm digressing here, but
there's even a scene in there with a

265
00:21:22,200 --> 00:21:27,680
guy that plays the parapsychologist. He's
I think he's quoting Lethbridge, the famous

266
00:21:27,720 --> 00:21:33,640
dowser, but he talks about the
difference between a ghost and an apparition and

267
00:21:33,759 --> 00:21:37,400
a ghoul or a feeling of dread. Remember that part in there? I

268
00:21:37,480 --> 00:21:42,000
thought and that was about the time, maybe a year or two after Lethbridge

269
00:21:42,039 --> 00:21:47,759
had would have written that. Okay, well anyway, very good. Uh

270
00:21:48,039 --> 00:21:51,440
yeah, we all kind of grew
up with that stuff. And for me,

271
00:21:52,279 --> 00:21:56,359
James, I really haven't had much
of anything in the way of experiences,

272
00:21:56,359 --> 00:21:59,519
but I've always been fascinated by this
stuff. I guess I'm going to

273
00:21:59,599 --> 00:22:03,799
have to ask what led Mark and
Mark, the guys who started the Weird

274
00:22:06,359 --> 00:22:11,960
series, what led them to contact
you to be part of their books.

275
00:22:11,359 --> 00:22:17,319
You know, I've known them for
a long time and I don't recall ever

276
00:22:17,559 --> 00:22:21,759
asking them point blank how it all
came to be, but I do know

277
00:22:21,799 --> 00:22:27,200
that they so they for many years
prior, so we're going back into like

278
00:22:27,240 --> 00:22:32,599
the I don't know how long they've
had their magazine, but they had still

279
00:22:32,640 --> 00:22:36,359
do Weird New Jersey, which is
how it all started. They're from New

280
00:22:36,440 --> 00:22:40,920
Jersey, so they would post all
of these stories and people would go out,

281
00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:45,000
So it pretty much had the same
sort of format as all of the

282
00:22:45,039 --> 00:22:48,599
Weird books ended up taking. But
it was just a magazine at that point.

283
00:22:48,680 --> 00:22:53,240
And they're gonna probably get the year
wrong, but I want to say

284
00:22:53,240 --> 00:22:59,079
around two thousand and three, maybe
they decided to put out a book,

285
00:22:59,119 --> 00:23:03,880
Weird New Jersey, same sort of
format as their magazine, except it was

286
00:23:03,920 --> 00:23:08,160
full colors, a coffee table type
book, and it took off. And

287
00:23:08,240 --> 00:23:12,319
then the story that I like to
tell is I think the two marks put

288
00:23:12,319 --> 00:23:17,440
their weird heads together and said,
you know, there's forty nine other weird

289
00:23:17,440 --> 00:23:25,319
states out there, and so they
decided they were going to do Weird Us,

290
00:23:25,839 --> 00:23:29,079
which same format as Weird New Jersey. It was ghosts, it was

291
00:23:29,160 --> 00:23:36,519
monsters, it was weird roadside things, and they were looking for other authors

292
00:23:37,039 --> 00:23:41,359
from the different states to contribute stories. Now I had heard that they typed

293
00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:47,319
in Weird and Ohio and they got
me and that's what led to it.

294
00:23:48,480 --> 00:23:56,480
But over many late night adult beverages
with them, they did say that when

295
00:23:56,799 --> 00:24:04,240
they kept hearing about a place called
hell Town in Ohio and that everybody was

296
00:24:04,240 --> 00:24:10,119
saying that is the weirdest place in
Ohio, and that when they went looking

297
00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:17,160
for that, I had actually just
finished doing about six months of research on

298
00:24:17,319 --> 00:24:21,880
Helltown and I published it and it
was in all the newspapers, and they

299
00:24:21,880 --> 00:24:26,240
had contacted me and they said we'd
like to use that story in Weird Us,

300
00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:30,480
and I was like, sure,
whatever, and they read it and

301
00:24:30,519 --> 00:24:33,680
they said to me, you have
a weird eye, which I now take

302
00:24:33,720 --> 00:24:37,039
as a compliment. And then they
said, we'd like to pay you to

303
00:24:37,079 --> 00:24:41,839
go travel around Ohio and take pictures
of these places and write about it.

304
00:24:41,839 --> 00:24:44,680
And I was like, wait,
excuse me, you're gonna pay me to

305
00:24:44,759 --> 00:24:52,119
do that? And they did.
And I'm still shocked because that led to

306
00:24:52,240 --> 00:25:00,599
all the other books and Weird Indiana
because they couldn't find people that where you

307
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:06,039
know, writers or photographers. They
couldn't find enough that were willing to travel

308
00:25:06,119 --> 00:25:10,000
to do this, which I still
find shocking. But again, this was

309
00:25:10,119 --> 00:25:18,680
kind of in the early two thousands
where when I was doing Weird Ohio Weird,

310
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:26,559
the word weird kind of had a
bad connotation where it meant not right

311
00:25:26,599 --> 00:25:30,839
in the head, shall we say, And so there was a bit of

312
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:34,240
a stigma. But the books hit
it just the right time because there was

313
00:25:34,279 --> 00:25:41,039
a lot of urban exploration that was
taking place and that sort of thing that,

314
00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:45,759
oddly enough, twenty somewhat years later, it's all coming back again.

315
00:25:47,839 --> 00:25:52,519
But when I did first meet Mark
and Mark they were you know, I

316
00:25:52,559 --> 00:25:56,359
said, well, you know,
I grew up in the Hudson Valley,

317
00:25:56,359 --> 00:26:00,839
but I was only probably about forty
five minutes to an hour away from New

318
00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:03,920
Jersey, and I started telling them
that I went looking for the Jersey Devil.

319
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:12,279
And then there is an infamous and
I'm a survivor of this loosely termed

320
00:26:12,359 --> 00:26:21,759
amusement park known as Action Park that
has since been the nickname we used to

321
00:26:21,839 --> 00:26:26,240
call it was Traction Park because it
was the stories that you might have heard

322
00:26:26,279 --> 00:26:33,640
were all true. It was run
by teenagers, there were no rules,

323
00:26:33,839 --> 00:26:40,680
it was just mayhem. People did
die there, people did get broken arms

324
00:26:40,720 --> 00:26:44,519
and all sorts of broken things.
But it was a badge of courage.

325
00:26:44,640 --> 00:26:47,359
And so when I told them,
yeah, I went to Action Park and

326
00:26:47,400 --> 00:26:52,039
I survived it, we started talking
about that and we just kind of fell

327
00:26:52,079 --> 00:26:56,359
into just sort of love for odd
things. I recently found out too of

328
00:26:56,759 --> 00:27:00,599
Johnny Knoxville did like a fake movie
about it, but he called it Action

329
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:06,599
Point. But it's the same sort
of thing. It was a an amusement

330
00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:11,920
park that was just it was mayhem. It was just it was it was

331
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:18,680
beautiful and it's for its time.
I guess you could say Susie did ring

332
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:23,880
a bell with you. Yeah,
as someone who was not alive in the

333
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:30,920
seventies. Action Park is one of
the things that make that time period seem

334
00:27:30,039 --> 00:27:36,359
so unreal to me. It is
just amazing to me that that place ever

335
00:27:36,599 --> 00:27:40,799
existed. Well, this might even
scare you more than because I went there

336
00:27:40,839 --> 00:27:45,920
through the eighties. It was still
open up through the eighties. That's enough

337
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:52,759
thing. That's interesting. People died
it's open. Yeah, yeah, it

338
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:57,640
was. It was a it's very
hard to explain, but I mean at

339
00:27:57,680 --> 00:28:03,960
the root of it was that the
employees were all teenagers and they sold alcohol

340
00:28:04,039 --> 00:28:14,319
there and nobody was checking IDs nope, And so the rides themselves were created

341
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:19,680
by kind of like the people who
did Jackass the movie and stuff like.

342
00:28:19,759 --> 00:28:25,119
One of this was that you would
they would you'd climb up to the side

343
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:29,519
of this man made cliff looking thing. They'd hand you a rope and you

344
00:28:29,559 --> 00:28:36,559
would tarzan swing and drop several stories
into a natural spring of ice cold water,

345
00:28:37,039 --> 00:28:41,240
and you had to swim across there
and get out of the way because

346
00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:44,279
they weren't waiting for you. They
were sending more and more people down,

347
00:28:45,119 --> 00:28:48,480
and the people who did drown,
a lot of them were because they were

348
00:28:48,519 --> 00:28:52,480
shocked when they hit the water,
and they just never came up. There

349
00:28:52,519 --> 00:28:57,480
was electrocutions there. I don't mean
like contricutions, but yeah, it's yeah,

350
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:08,640
that is the There is a urban
legend about a water slide that was

351
00:29:08,839 --> 00:29:14,279
enclosed. That was a tube that
was supposed to take you into a three

352
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:21,640
hundred and sixty degree loop, and
the story was that they sent a dummy

353
00:29:21,759 --> 00:29:26,039
down for practice and it came back
out in pieces, and there were wagers

354
00:29:26,079 --> 00:29:30,400
of fifty dollars that the owners would
give any kid that would go down there

355
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:33,440
to test it. I don't know
if any of that is true, but

356
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:37,319
I can tell you every time that
I went there, that slide was there.

357
00:29:37,799 --> 00:29:42,359
It was never open, but it
did exist. It was a big

358
00:29:42,400 --> 00:29:47,240
green slide that went down the side
of a hill, fully enclosed, went

359
00:29:47,279 --> 00:29:51,039
into a three hundred and sixty loop, and then came out on like a

360
00:29:51,079 --> 00:29:55,079
crash pad. So it did exist. I've never didn't write it, and

361
00:29:55,200 --> 00:30:00,559
I've never met anybody that actually did
that. I believe actually wrote it.

362
00:30:00,640 --> 00:30:04,480
But yeah, it's a crazy place. So the one with the rope and

363
00:30:04,519 --> 00:30:08,480
the ice cold water, did you
actually pay for a ticket to do that?

364
00:30:10,519 --> 00:30:12,359
Yeah? Well yeah, And what
you would do is you would just

365
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:17,160
show up and it was kind of
like you paid like an entrance fee and

366
00:30:17,279 --> 00:30:21,680
you would just run around, so
you got one ticket. It was everything

367
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:26,200
that you wanted to do. Okay, they took a used to take a

368
00:30:27,079 --> 00:30:33,799
ski lift, and they would give
you these sled looking things that you would

369
00:30:33,799 --> 00:30:40,599
sit in and it had just like
a there were wheels underneath it. It

370
00:30:40,640 --> 00:30:45,720
had kind of like a joystick on
the front, and they'd take you up

371
00:30:45,759 --> 00:30:49,359
to the top of this hill that
had like a bob sled run, except

372
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:56,200
the bob sled run was solid concrete, and they would and they would shove

373
00:30:56,279 --> 00:31:00,640
you down the hill and if you
could dodge the people that were intoxicated that

374
00:31:00,720 --> 00:31:07,000
were throwing their cards off the ski
lift to try to hit you. You

375
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:11,799
could not slow down. You could
move that joystick all you wanted, but

376
00:31:11,839 --> 00:31:15,039
you were not slowing down. So
it used to be kind of to pass

377
00:31:15,079 --> 00:31:18,640
your time going up to ski lift. You would look out and just watch

378
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:22,799
people just fly over the embankments,
you know, going way too fast,

379
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:27,440
and just you would see people just
laying out in the grass like a Civil

380
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:33,119
War battlefield sort of. Now,
Susie, you weren't involved in any of

381
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:40,400
the planning sessions for this were it
sounds like something that the eyes down the

382
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:45,319
street would have done in their backyard
if they had a budget exactly. Yeah.

383
00:31:45,359 --> 00:31:48,599
How how was it it took so
long to shut this place down?

384
00:31:51,359 --> 00:31:56,160
That's a great question. I think
part of it had to do with I

385
00:31:56,160 --> 00:31:59,599
think it was just the time,
because you went there and I got banged.

386
00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:04,200
I didn't break anything, but I
got banged up, and it was

387
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:07,319
sort of like a badge of courage, you know that you like survived it.

388
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:14,400
And I think I think as people
grew older, we got more common

389
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:20,720
sense, but I think also we
got more litigious because they made no bones

390
00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:22,720
about the fact that when you pulled
up you had to walk past there were

391
00:32:22,759 --> 00:32:30,519
ambulances parked outside. But he just
kind of sucked it up and you moved

392
00:32:30,519 --> 00:32:38,200
on. Wow, so much farosia. Yeah, so lord, there's so

393
00:32:38,279 --> 00:32:43,000
much to talk about. What now? I I didn't now I was at

394
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:47,359
the Frogman conference this last time.
I confess I did not see your talk

395
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:52,720
last time. But the year before
you did a fantastic talk on the Frogman.

396
00:32:53,640 --> 00:32:58,759
When when when did you first just
now, of course that the frogman

397
00:32:58,839 --> 00:33:01,680
comes out of the what the Miami
River in Ohio, Loveland, Ohio.

398
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:07,519
Why did you first stumble on to
the Frogman being a weird Ohio guy?

399
00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:17,319
I actually he predates me being I
moved to Ohio in late nineteen ninety nine,

400
00:33:19,279 --> 00:33:27,440
and by early two thousand I had
known about the Frogman, and that's

401
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:32,160
I've been obsessed with this story ever
since, because the basic story is that

402
00:33:32,279 --> 00:33:37,680
it is. They will tell you
it is a four to six foot tall,

403
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:44,960
half man, half frog creature with
a magic wand, and from the

404
00:33:45,079 --> 00:33:49,400
get go, I'm like, I
need this thing to exist. I need

405
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:52,160
it to be I'm pretty sure it
doesn't, but I need it in my

406
00:33:52,279 --> 00:33:55,640
life. You know, he has
to have a wizard hat, he's got

407
00:33:55,640 --> 00:34:02,200
to be whole nine yards. But
from the beginning I didn't. I'm like,

408
00:34:02,240 --> 00:34:06,519
this can't be real. And there
were all of these stories where they

409
00:34:06,559 --> 00:34:09,719
would say, like, you know, policemen almost captured it and they shot

410
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:15,360
at it, but it got away, and the FBI was involved, and

411
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:20,679
they closed down bridges because they thought
that he came from a UFO, and

412
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:24,519
all of these just crazed these stories
that I'm like, I want to know

413
00:34:24,559 --> 00:34:29,079
what they're smoking down in Loveland,
because this is some good stuff. Here,

414
00:34:29,679 --> 00:34:30,800
or they could be looking frogs,
you know, I saw that X

415
00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:38,000
Files episode. I don't know,
but when I started digging into the research,

416
00:34:38,039 --> 00:34:45,400
and over the years, I just
love digging into research because every urban

417
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:53,800
legend has got that kernel of truth. And I found probably about twenty different

418
00:34:53,920 --> 00:35:00,920
kernels of truths within the Loveland frog
Man's story. And I paused there because

419
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:08,800
basically because we like to just make
everything come together and be nice and tidy.

420
00:35:10,840 --> 00:35:15,960
There were multiple sightings beginning in the
nineteen fifties going up through the nineteen

421
00:35:16,119 --> 00:35:23,440
seventies of totally different creatures in and
around the Loveland area, one of which

422
00:35:23,519 --> 00:35:29,679
had a metal rod that sparks came
out of. But he's the one that

423
00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:34,159
wasn't about fifty five fifty five,
yes, but he did not. There

424
00:35:34,159 --> 00:35:37,039
were three of them, and they
did not look like a frog at all.

425
00:35:37,559 --> 00:35:43,199
There were sightings in nineteen seventy two
of an iguana looking thing, but

426
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:46,239
we just shoved all those stories together, and that for me, I just

427
00:35:46,519 --> 00:35:53,119
ate that up because I have spent
several decades now trying to pull apart these

428
00:35:53,159 --> 00:35:58,920
things because to tell people, you
know what, there was a creature that

429
00:35:59,000 --> 00:36:01,599
had a magic wand it wasn't a
frog. But to me, I'm like,

430
00:36:01,639 --> 00:36:05,559
but where did what does that wand
even mean? You know, why

431
00:36:05,559 --> 00:36:08,519
did he have that? So yeah, I could go back in and start

432
00:36:08,559 --> 00:36:15,440
finding all these little bits of this
amalgam sort of story and pull it all

433
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:17,760
apart and go okay, this goes
with the fifty five sightings. This was

434
00:36:17,800 --> 00:36:22,960
actually from the sixties. These are
the police officers from the seventies. So

435
00:36:22,079 --> 00:36:27,400
I've just been obsessed with it and
spend way too much time on it.

436
00:36:27,440 --> 00:36:34,840
But sleep's overrated, so well the
wand aspect, Andy and Susie isn't.

437
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:39,360
Don't We find a lot of humanoid
encounters where they have some kind of a

438
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:45,320
wand or something, and sometimes it's
associated with paralysis in the literature. Well,

439
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:51,679
certainly the idea of about paralysis to
talk about the witch old Hag syndrome,

440
00:36:52,039 --> 00:36:53,960
and you can associate a witch with
a wand and yes, when the

441
00:36:54,039 --> 00:37:00,599
reports of magical energy animating from fingers
that sort of thing, certainly in that

442
00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:04,599
sense, Yes to uh, as
soon as he did, puck, what

443
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:09,719
he's ever deal with ones any lore
about that? I have not heard of

444
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:15,880
any with WANs. But I actually
did take an I went citing that was

445
00:37:15,039 --> 00:37:22,119
I believe just north of Loveland,
well, I say Puquaji, but little

446
00:37:22,159 --> 00:37:31,239
person sighting. Somebody saw a group
of little people kind of almost playing on

447
00:37:32,119 --> 00:37:38,599
like a rocky outcrop near there,
and they were kind of making chattering noises,

448
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:44,039
and they were running just along the
tree lines and along these rocks there.

449
00:37:45,800 --> 00:37:50,559
My complaint is, you know,
the Loveland frog Man. I think

450
00:37:50,559 --> 00:37:53,360
there's some lore that goes back to
Native Americans that the French talked about.

451
00:37:53,559 --> 00:37:57,639
But you know, basically, this
guy shows up in fifty five a couple

452
00:37:57,679 --> 00:38:00,280
times. In seventy two, he
gets his own fest. How many years

453
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:04,760
did it take from mothman to get
his own festival? It just it just

454
00:38:04,800 --> 00:38:13,360
doesn't seem to be fair. Now, you've also talked to another researcher,

455
00:38:14,119 --> 00:38:20,199
James Renner, who wrote it came
from Ohio. I believe, is that

456
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:24,679
right? James? No, I
have met him. Okay, okay,

457
00:38:24,920 --> 00:38:30,679
but he wrote I don't know if
you've read his book. He actually tracked

458
00:38:30,679 --> 00:38:36,119
down Ray Shockley, who was one
of the police officers that supposedly saw this

459
00:38:36,159 --> 00:38:39,559
thing in seventy two. Yes,
and and and Shockley got so tired of

460
00:38:39,599 --> 00:38:45,199
it being being kidded about it that
he finally said, oh, it was

461
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:50,320
probably just some kids iguana. So
Renner tells the story about he he tracks

462
00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:53,480
on the guy's mother, that he
finds this guy's house, and and Shockley's

463
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:59,840
very reluctant to talk to him,
and uh and and finally, as as

464
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:04,239
Renner is about to go out the
door, Shockley says, it wasn't an

465
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:07,159
iguana, and it wasn't this and
that, And Renner says, well,

466
00:39:07,199 --> 00:39:13,039
what was it? And he said
it was bigger? So he saw something

467
00:39:13,519 --> 00:39:15,920
very bizarre. I don't know what
Shockley saw, but you know, it's

468
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:20,639
one of these I call him the
one or two off cryptids that like the

469
00:39:20,679 --> 00:39:23,280
you know, the Dover Demon and
the Enfield Horror. These guys show up

470
00:39:23,320 --> 00:39:29,079
once or twice and then they melt
back into the fandom an agerie, not

471
00:39:29,199 --> 00:39:32,400
like you know, some of the
winged creatures and Bigfoot, which kind of

472
00:39:32,400 --> 00:39:37,760
stick around. But it just it
is. It's a very intriguing story.

473
00:39:38,039 --> 00:39:43,480
The Loveland fraugmen. Yeah, you're
exactly right too in that I think the

474
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:49,000
well, I'm pretty much convinced that
the fifty five sightings and the seventy two

475
00:39:49,039 --> 00:39:53,840
there's no way it was the same
creature. And I think with Ray Shockey

476
00:39:53,880 --> 00:39:59,760
because he was he sort of witnessed
zero. He when it comes to the

477
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:06,119
seven twenty two sidings, because he
saw it first right, and then about

478
00:40:06,199 --> 00:40:12,599
a week or so later his another
and he was we worked for the Loveland

479
00:40:12,679 --> 00:40:22,400
Police Office. Another Loveland police officer, Matthews, said he saw it as

480
00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:27,440
well. And when that hit the
newspaper, I think that's the first time

481
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:30,880
when Shocky was kind of like,
yeah, I don't really like where this

482
00:40:30,039 --> 00:40:37,960
is going. And he has not
spoken publicly or on the record since then.

483
00:40:38,840 --> 00:40:46,280
Where it gets really strange is that
Matthews has changed his story over the

484
00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:51,960
years. He recently passed, but
he up until he passed away, he

485
00:40:52,079 --> 00:40:58,760
changed what it was up until maybe
three or four years ago. He was

486
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:02,639
still changing what it was all the
way up to the point where he was

487
00:41:02,679 --> 00:41:08,760
saying that because Matthews was the one
who shot at it allegedly, okay,

488
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:15,960
and in the last version of the
story Matthew said, I shot it,

489
00:41:15,119 --> 00:41:19,480
I hit it, I killed it. It was an iguana. I threw

490
00:41:19,519 --> 00:41:22,360
it in the trunk of the patrol
car, brought it back to the police

491
00:41:22,360 --> 00:41:25,119
station and Shaki looked at it.
And said, yep, that's what I

492
00:41:28,159 --> 00:41:34,320
That's what I got. But what's
strange about that is I have the original

493
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:39,800
newspaper articles from when the story of
both of their encounters hit the newspaper,

494
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:45,320
and it was roughly about three weeks
after the Matthews citing Matthews is interviewed.

495
00:41:46,119 --> 00:41:51,000
They also say that they don't know
what it was it got away, which

496
00:41:51,039 --> 00:41:52,559
is, if it's in the trunk
of your car, why are you saying

497
00:41:52,559 --> 00:41:59,840
that? And then Matthews proceeds to
say that since they didn't know what it

498
00:41:59,960 --> 00:42:04,960
was and it was a police station, they had somebody do with police sketch

499
00:42:05,639 --> 00:42:10,280
and it was sent to the Cincinnati
Zoo and the article named the zoo curator,

500
00:42:12,320 --> 00:42:15,400
and they interviewed the curator in that
article who said, yeah, it's

501
00:42:15,440 --> 00:42:21,719
I don't think that this could be
any sort of frog or lizard because it's

502
00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:28,840
just too big. That curator has
since passed away, but he did exist.

503
00:42:29,320 --> 00:42:34,159
He's interviewed in that article, which
again brings up, Okay, Matthews,

504
00:42:34,199 --> 00:42:36,599
well, if you really did shoot
it and throw it in the trunk

505
00:42:36,599 --> 00:42:43,199
of your car, why are you
still making sketches and having it sent to

506
00:42:43,239 --> 00:42:47,280
the zoo And having them look at
it. So I think kind of what

507
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:51,679
you said, Steve, I think
that Shocky was to the point where he

508
00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:58,239
was I'm one hundred percent convinced that
SHOCKI saw something unexplainable. I think he

509
00:42:58,519 --> 00:43:02,239
just got fed up with Matthew.
My personal opinion, I think he got

510
00:43:02,239 --> 00:43:08,760
fed up with Matthews continually bringing it
up and changing the story because again personal

511
00:43:08,840 --> 00:43:15,480
opinion, I think that he started
feeling like his story was being kind of

512
00:43:15,519 --> 00:43:21,920
made fun out of right. Let
me do our station identification. You are

513
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:27,400
listening to the High Strangeness Factor copyright
on the Paranormal UK Radio Network. Today,

514
00:43:27,519 --> 00:43:30,880
Andy, Susie and I are talking
to James Willis about his research and

515
00:43:30,920 --> 00:43:37,800
his books. Off air, James
and Susie started to talk a little bit

516
00:43:37,800 --> 00:43:40,679
about pug wedgies, and of course, Susie is the pug wedgie whisper It

517
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:46,039
actually has done a great deal of
research into the folklore of these little creatures

518
00:43:46,119 --> 00:43:50,639
or elementals or whatever you want to
call them. And you started to talk

519
00:43:50,679 --> 00:43:55,119
about not really being aware of them
being in Ohio but in Indiana. I'd

520
00:43:55,199 --> 00:44:01,559
like you guys to continue your pug
wedgie conversation. Sure, I'm actually really

521
00:44:01,559 --> 00:44:07,719
intrigued with the term of puckwog whisperer. I mean, do you I mean,

522
00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:09,119
is that on your business card?
Because if it is, I need

523
00:44:09,159 --> 00:44:13,800
one from you. I mean,
that's just this is the coolest term ever.

524
00:44:15,119 --> 00:44:20,639
Susie has a bumper sticker with it
on there. Oh my goodness.

525
00:44:20,679 --> 00:44:23,320
Okay, and it's on my bumper. I'm not bragging. I'm not bragging.

526
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:28,400
I'm I'm just explaining. I just
need somebody's Etsy account. I mean,

527
00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:32,039
I need one of those in my
life. I can't. Yeah,

528
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:36,960
I was not really familiar with them. And then it was when I was

529
00:44:37,039 --> 00:44:46,079
working on Weird Indiana, so that
would have been two thousand and seven maybe.

530
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:52,880
And again, how how both all
of the weird books, but we'll

531
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:58,119
talk specifically about how Weird Indiana and
Weird Ohio came around. Was that I

532
00:44:58,199 --> 00:45:02,039
had set lists of things to investigate
or to visit, you know, and

533
00:45:02,639 --> 00:45:07,800
I would go to one and when
I was there, I would either pass

534
00:45:07,840 --> 00:45:08,920
by something and I would say,
Hey, that's weird, and I would

535
00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:13,760
turn around and that would suddenly make
its way into the book. Or I

536
00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:17,840
would be taking pictures of a location
and tell somebody what I was doing and

537
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:20,840
they would say, well, if
you think that's weird, you need to

538
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:28,360
check out this place. So I
was over in Indiana and I don't I

539
00:45:28,400 --> 00:45:31,280
think I was going to the Wolf
Park or some I was going somewhere,

540
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:37,559
but I was over in just sort
of northeast of Indianapolis. It was in

541
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:45,519
like near Anderson, Indiana, and
somebody it just came up in a casual

542
00:45:45,559 --> 00:45:47,719
conversation, the ones that I love
because I love weird stuff. But they

543
00:45:49,199 --> 00:45:52,760
said, well, are you going
to cover the puck Wodgies? And I'm

544
00:45:52,800 --> 00:45:55,880
like, the whatdies? You know, I didn't know what they were talking

545
00:45:55,960 --> 00:46:00,880
about. And they started telling me
this story worry about the puck Quoadgies,

546
00:46:00,920 --> 00:46:05,679
and I was like, I have
never heard such a thing. And they

547
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:07,800
were like, oh yeah, they're
over there in the Mound State Park.

548
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:16,360
And I had been intrigued from because
Ohio is lousy with mounds. They've got

549
00:46:16,840 --> 00:46:21,280
They've got effigy mounds, They've got
all sorts of mounds there. So I

550
00:46:21,480 --> 00:46:25,800
was thinking, Okay, well what
are these mounds and is there you know,

551
00:46:27,199 --> 00:46:31,719
a connection between the Ohio and the
Indiana mounds. But no, they

552
00:46:32,119 --> 00:46:38,679
were obviously totally separate things. But
for lack of a better term, they

553
00:46:38,679 --> 00:46:43,039
were described to me as being like
goblin like and that they hung around in

554
00:46:43,079 --> 00:46:52,400
the forest right around the mounds.
And then I don't remember the the author

555
00:46:52,559 --> 00:46:54,800
of the book, but I do
know I got the book from Chris Woodard

556
00:46:54,840 --> 00:47:01,199
from the Haunted Ohio series. She
writes among us things, and I got

557
00:47:01,199 --> 00:47:05,079
a book from her that I want
to say it was just called The puck

558
00:47:05,159 --> 00:47:10,239
Wodgies of Indiana or the puck Wodgies
of Anderson, I don't know, but

559
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:19,440
it was a gentleman who I believe
was an archaeologist who was I guess literally

560
00:47:19,480 --> 00:47:24,000
digging into the mounds and doing research
on that. And again, I'm so

561
00:47:24,119 --> 00:47:28,960
unprepared for this, but I want
to put it back like in the early

562
00:47:29,119 --> 00:47:36,239
thirties or the late twenties or something, that he was a child and went

563
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:39,239
by there because he was already into
doing this whole archaeology thing, and there

564
00:47:39,239 --> 00:47:46,320
were these little men that had blonde
here maybe and a helmet, I mean,

565
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:51,480
the whole nine yards and that they
were, but there were a bunch

566
00:47:51,519 --> 00:47:57,519
of them out in the woods.
Susie, doesn't that fit with the uh,

567
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:04,320
the bowl haircuts and the Susie.
Yes, and I believe we're talking

568
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:10,039
about Paul Starsmith. Maybe. Yeah. Like I said, I apologize,

569
00:48:10,079 --> 00:48:15,440
I don't he he was the author
of the book that I had. I

570
00:48:15,559 --> 00:48:19,440
just don't. It's downstairs and I
don't recall his name. But I mean,

571
00:48:19,480 --> 00:48:24,519
if that if he was a kind
of like a archaeologist or in training

572
00:48:24,639 --> 00:48:28,440
or something and saw them as a
child, And yeah, that's that's how

573
00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:31,719
I remember this story from the book. He was all by himself on a

574
00:48:31,840 --> 00:48:37,639
trail near the mounds and that's when
he saw this one and he the book

575
00:48:37,679 --> 00:48:44,960
was made up of all interviews that
he did from people who had encountered these

576
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:47,800
sort of little people. Susie,
is that one of the books you got

577
00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:54,440
to hold over? In one of
the books that was cost prohibitive. That

578
00:48:54,480 --> 00:49:00,440
one is out of print and very
hard to find a copy. That is

579
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:07,360
not a small fortune. Okay,
but does this sound like the bold haircut

580
00:49:07,400 --> 00:49:15,159
guys with the smocks. Oh?
Yeah, absolutely, Those are in Mound

581
00:49:15,159 --> 00:49:20,880
State Park, for sure. It's
they're one and the same. And those

582
00:49:21,079 --> 00:49:30,320
also have tend to come along with
fireflies. And I actually actually recently spoke

583
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:37,599
to a night witness from the Bridgewater
Triangle area who had fireflies with his Pagwadgie

584
00:49:37,760 --> 00:49:45,599
sighting here when I had almost been
convinced they were like completely separate entities with

585
00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:47,599
just the same name up and until
then. Now I'm not so sure.

586
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:58,400
Wow wow, uh so let's see. Uh. By the way, Andy,

587
00:49:58,440 --> 00:50:01,360
you've been very quiet there any questions
you're just bursting to ask right now

588
00:50:02,039 --> 00:50:06,079
now. It's absolutely fascinating for me. Obviously I don't know these areas which

589
00:50:06,079 --> 00:50:07,320
if you have been over in the
UK, so I'm really just listening in.

590
00:50:07,519 --> 00:50:10,639
It's all very fascinating. The one
thing that James mentioned early on,

591
00:50:10,679 --> 00:50:15,199
which I don't think he's done much
about that I've been perci fascinated by,

592
00:50:15,599 --> 00:50:21,360
is the Jersey Devil. You've been
not that very much? Yes, yeah,

593
00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:27,559
it was a growing up that that
was one of the things to do

594
00:50:28,360 --> 00:50:35,360
is to go down into the pine
barrens of New Jersey, which is a

595
00:50:35,519 --> 00:50:39,559
very very scary area. It's I
was telling my wife the other day that,

596
00:50:39,639 --> 00:50:43,760
you know, the New Jersey is
nicknamed the Garden State, but people

597
00:50:43,840 --> 00:50:50,920
normally just think of Jersey mall Hare
and the Sopranos and the city, but

598
00:50:51,440 --> 00:50:58,519
there are just millions of acres of
forests and nothing, and that this is

599
00:50:58,599 --> 00:51:05,679
an area the pine barrens, which
is you could go for hours back in

600
00:51:05,719 --> 00:51:15,480
there and not find anybody. It
was. It is steeped in legends all

601
00:51:15,519 --> 00:51:21,239
the way back from because it's close
to there's pirate lore, there's bootleggers.

602
00:51:21,800 --> 00:51:30,559
It is true that what was his
name, It was a very the iceman,

603
00:51:30,119 --> 00:51:37,400
the mobster who actually did dump a
bunch of bodies out into the pine

604
00:51:37,440 --> 00:51:42,800
barrens. I actually think there is
an episode of the Sopranos that they go

605
00:51:42,880 --> 00:51:46,239
into the pine barrens. It is
a place that you don't go into certain

606
00:51:46,239 --> 00:51:52,280
areas at night. So of course
it's ripe for having the legend of the

607
00:51:52,400 --> 00:51:57,960
Jersey Devil and the Jersey Devil story, and it's basic for him. There's

608
00:51:58,039 --> 00:52:06,360
all sorts of offshoots. Was that
mother leads the story goes that she had

609
00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:12,000
had lived out there, and that
she had had twelve children, and that

610
00:52:13,239 --> 00:52:16,719
for whatever reason, became pregnant again
with the thirteen and said something to the

611
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:22,159
effect of that she wishes it were
a devil, and that this giant when

612
00:52:22,199 --> 00:52:29,599
she had the child, it turned
into this devil like creature and flew up

613
00:52:29,639 --> 00:52:36,000
the chimney and is still lurking out
in the woods. Oddly enough, there

614
00:52:36,079 --> 00:52:44,840
have been mass sightings of this creature
going back into the nineteen hundreds. I

615
00:52:44,880 --> 00:52:52,159
mean that at one point it was
cited in this one Week of Terror is

616
00:52:52,199 --> 00:52:54,719
what it became known as, that
it was coming out of New Jersey,

617
00:52:54,800 --> 00:53:02,679
going up into chasing after people in
Pennsylvania, it went into New York.

618
00:53:04,320 --> 00:53:08,760
So whether or not those stories are
true, what I find the most fascinating

619
00:53:08,920 --> 00:53:15,280
is that if you google the Jersey
Devil, the image that you're going to

620
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:23,519
get is again this amalgam looking thing
which has got cloven hoofs, bat wings

621
00:53:23,639 --> 00:53:29,159
and a horsehead. It's it's a
very strange thing. But yeah, I

622
00:53:29,599 --> 00:53:37,519
went roaming back in there many many
times. It's it's a very scary area

623
00:53:38,079 --> 00:53:43,960
even without the Jersey Devil. I
to my knowledge, there have not been

624
00:53:44,039 --> 00:53:52,000
any verified sightings. People will,
you know, thanks to AI and even

625
00:53:52,039 --> 00:53:54,559
before that, you know, we'll
post things claiming it's the Jersey Devil.

626
00:53:55,119 --> 00:54:01,280
I've never actually come across any sort
of quote unquote evidence, but it is

627
00:54:01,320 --> 00:54:08,800
a very long standing legend and I
actually did. We took part in seth

628
00:54:08,840 --> 00:54:13,639
Breedlove. They did a thing on
the Jersey Devil with small town Monsters,

629
00:54:13,639 --> 00:54:19,039
and I kind of was in that
and gave some information on that for that

630
00:54:19,159 --> 00:54:22,039
documentary. So yeah, it's it's
I also think it's kind of cool because

631
00:54:22,079 --> 00:54:35,679
the Jersey Devil is one of only
two professional North American sports teams that are

632
00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:38,480
are named after it, you know, the New Jersey Devils, the hockey

633
00:54:38,519 --> 00:54:45,400
team is that named after the urban
legend. And then they even have the

634
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:50,559
the Lake Erie Monsters, which is
a minor league hockey team up in Cleveland

635
00:54:51,679 --> 00:54:54,679
that were named after the Lake Erie
Monster. They've since renamed the team the

636
00:54:54,800 --> 00:55:01,760
Cleveland Monsters, which I think takes
on a different connotation. I think there

637
00:55:01,760 --> 00:55:06,440
was an episode, it may have
been Monster Quest, I'm not sure where

638
00:55:06,440 --> 00:55:10,199
they they put a couple people under
hypnosis that claimed that they saw the Jersey

639
00:55:10,239 --> 00:55:15,880
Devil, and they described kind of
the basic uh you know, horsehead winged

640
00:55:15,880 --> 00:55:20,119
creature or whatever, uh, suggesting
that they actually saw something. Uh.

641
00:55:20,360 --> 00:55:23,639
The other thing was was weird was
uh the uh the Bucks County guys that

642
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:29,320
went to uh Lee Hample's farm.
He's uh right off, right right off,

643
00:55:29,440 --> 00:55:32,280
you know about that right off the
Spray Road, and the I've seen

644
00:55:32,320 --> 00:55:37,599
his photographs and they're just they're mind
blowing. Well, uh, Dominics,

645
00:55:37,599 --> 00:55:43,280
they tell who was their sensitive was
was just really freaking out. There were

646
00:55:43,320 --> 00:55:45,519
there was howling going on out there, there was a mist forming, there

647
00:55:45,519 --> 00:55:50,280
were lights moving around. It was
it was he was just really freaked out.

648
00:55:50,559 --> 00:55:53,599
The next week, these guys went
into the pine barrens with some seasoned

649
00:55:53,920 --> 00:56:00,079
bigfoot researchers waved miles into the pine
barrens and they were actually here ring thumps

650
00:56:00,079 --> 00:56:02,760
and whoops and that kind of thing, you know, which which may have

651
00:56:02,800 --> 00:56:07,840
been a real bigfoot encounter unless some
homeless guy was back there making all the

652
00:56:07,880 --> 00:56:13,920
noise, you know. And and
Dominic said he felt like he was he

653
00:56:13,960 --> 00:56:16,920
was extremely calm. He felt like
he was on a sandy beach, relaxing

654
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:21,800
compared to the week before when they
were on LEEH. Hample's property and all

655
00:56:21,840 --> 00:56:27,199
that bizarre stuff was going on.
But yeah, it's and then one other

656
00:56:27,239 --> 00:56:30,239
thing there was at the end of
one of the mothmand festivals. Of course,

657
00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:36,039
we lost Rosemary Ellen Guiley a few
years ago. She was approached and

658
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:40,159
John and Tim Frick were approached by
a woman who lived in the Cross Village,

659
00:56:40,199 --> 00:56:45,280
which is right near Charleston, and
they were talking about all kinds of

660
00:56:45,280 --> 00:56:49,280
bizarre stuff going on in their property. And the thing that triggered us was

661
00:56:49,679 --> 00:56:53,760
she saw something and what she described
it looked very much like a Jersey devil

662
00:56:54,079 --> 00:56:58,320
just sitting there on the property.
It didn't do anything. I don't know

663
00:56:58,519 --> 00:57:02,480
how it faded away or how it
but that was that was interesting that another

664
00:57:02,760 --> 00:57:07,000
sort of a Jersey Devil type creature
showed up. But this is a this

665
00:57:07,119 --> 00:57:09,679
was kind of a high strangest area. We went out there to talk to

666
00:57:09,719 --> 00:57:14,519
the people and they couldn't have been
making this stuff up. They were finishing

667
00:57:14,559 --> 00:57:20,119
each other's sentences. They saw classic
UFOs, they saw a shadow, people

668
00:57:21,119 --> 00:57:25,039
typical hauntings in their house. And
it was just a a three ring circus

669
00:57:25,039 --> 00:57:29,679
of the paranormal. It was completely
bizarre, but it all seemed to center

670
00:57:29,719 --> 00:57:34,480
around this apparition or whatever it was, of a Jersey devil. Wow.

671
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:38,360
Yeah, I mean the Pine Barrens, if you go back into that area,

672
00:57:38,519 --> 00:57:44,599
it just feels off. And a
lot of that is because there's there's

673
00:57:44,639 --> 00:57:47,800
not many roads that go back in
there. It's the roads are what they

674
00:57:47,840 --> 00:57:52,719
call sugar sand, which is that
very you know, soft, fluffy white

675
00:57:52,760 --> 00:57:59,360
sand, So you do feel like
you were in another world and it it

676
00:57:59,679 --> 00:58:01,679
I think I think you could term
it that it would be an area of

677
00:58:02,239 --> 00:58:10,039
high stranges simply because there are so
many ghost stories and there's stories about witches,

678
00:58:10,159 --> 00:58:14,199
and I mean, if you name
it, it's back there in the

679
00:58:14,239 --> 00:58:17,239
pine barrens somewhere everything you know from
the serial Killer is on. It's out

680
00:58:17,280 --> 00:58:22,360
there, and you get far enough
back in there, you do feel like

681
00:58:22,800 --> 00:58:28,320
you are in a Blair Witch type
of setting where things just feel off that

682
00:58:28,400 --> 00:58:32,159
you're not supposed to be back there. And it's one of the places that

683
00:58:32,239 --> 00:58:36,280
I tell people where they're like that
Jersey devil can't exist. I'm like,

684
00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:38,239
okay, well I'm going to take
you down in the barons. Okay,

685
00:58:38,239 --> 00:58:40,360
we'll go down the shore and I'm
going to take you down into the pine

686
00:58:40,360 --> 00:58:44,360
barons. We'll go back there a
couple of hours, and then I'm going

687
00:58:44,400 --> 00:58:46,800
to leave you and I'll come back
in a couple of hours. And then

688
00:58:46,840 --> 00:58:51,559
you tell me that it couldn't be
living out here. It's just it just

689
00:58:51,639 --> 00:58:57,519
feels like a totally different world when
you're out there. Susie, any vibe

690
00:58:57,559 --> 00:59:05,679
like that from the Freetown State Forest. I mean being paranormal repellent, my

691
00:59:05,920 --> 00:59:15,079
bad vibely from the people in that
area, but it is common for normal

692
00:59:15,119 --> 00:59:20,679
people that go there to experience that
type of thing. Yes, very interesting.

693
00:59:20,840 --> 00:59:22,679
It sounds like they were also,
you know, when I heard about

694
00:59:22,679 --> 00:59:28,519
the mob connections and bodies turning up, it sounds like there was a few

695
00:59:28,559 --> 00:59:35,639
things in common with the Freetown State
Forest and the Pine Bearings. I also

696
00:59:35,840 --> 00:59:40,559
believe I may have heard black dog
stories from the Pine Bearns. Yes,

697
00:59:42,039 --> 00:59:45,960
yes, yep. Yeah. Like
I said, if there's anything kind of

698
00:59:45,000 --> 00:59:50,440
spooky going on, it's been reported
back in there. You've got the woman

699
00:59:50,480 --> 00:59:55,119
in white that's supposedly back there.
Yes, but there have been reports of

700
00:59:57,400 --> 01:00:05,679
black dogs, bigfoot, you name
it. Actually all happened to speak to

701
01:00:05,960 --> 01:00:10,239
someone who had a dog band siting
in Ohio last night. Really, yes,

702
01:00:10,800 --> 01:00:16,679
matt amsh Em And this was when
he was what fourteen years old in

703
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:22,599
Youngstown, Ohio. He was with
other witnesses. Very credible. That show

704
01:00:22,639 --> 01:00:28,159
will be out on Tuesday, and
I have to say we were all pretty

705
01:00:28,199 --> 01:00:34,239
riveted. Wow. Absolutely it was. I think the entire time was pretty

706
01:00:34,280 --> 01:00:37,320
much the guests doing this story and
it was just so detailed it will be

707
01:00:37,440 --> 01:00:40,400
it would have been out already by
the time if this show goes out,

708
01:00:40,400 --> 01:00:45,280
but it will be out very soon
as we're recording. So it's definitely worth

709
01:00:45,360 --> 01:00:51,719
listening to. Oh very cool.
Before I want to ask you about we

710
01:00:52,000 --> 01:00:54,280
didn't meant You've got a lot of
books out there that we need to cover

711
01:00:54,400 --> 01:00:58,960
a little bit on. I wanted
to say that I saw Sherry break today

712
01:01:00,159 --> 01:01:04,480
too. She said to say hi, and Jeff Walmsley called me and there

713
01:01:04,480 --> 01:01:07,480
was a gentleman that wanted to talk
about John Keel and you know, you

714
01:01:07,519 --> 01:01:13,880
know how much I hate to talk
about and John Keel. And so we

715
01:01:13,920 --> 01:01:16,440
went to the next door to the
coffee grinder, had some coffee, and

716
01:01:16,920 --> 01:01:22,159
Charles Humphreys was there. He's the
guy that commissioned the Mothman statue and a

717
01:01:22,159 --> 01:01:25,280
lot of stuff on the river front. I mean, he was instrumental and

718
01:01:25,360 --> 01:01:30,360
kind of transforming that area, getting
the funding and so forth. And then

719
01:01:30,800 --> 01:01:34,360
Sherry Brake was there. She apparently
tonight she's going to run one of her

720
01:01:34,400 --> 01:01:37,519
tours, which is a combination of, of course, the weird history and

721
01:01:37,599 --> 01:01:44,119
the actual American history. I know
the weird history pretty well don't quiz me

722
01:01:44,119 --> 01:01:46,480
on the American history. I'm still
learning that. But yeah, she just

723
01:01:46,480 --> 01:01:52,440
said to say, Hi, I
know you guys were buddies at the next

724
01:01:52,480 --> 01:01:54,960
door to each other at the Freudmann
conference. I think yes, And that

725
01:01:55,400 --> 01:01:59,800
was one of the things where we
had we did. We had tables next

726
01:01:59,840 --> 01:02:04,679
to each other, and she and
I and even like John Katcuba was there

727
01:02:04,760 --> 01:02:10,320
and we have exchanged emails over the
decades. And then I was like,

728
01:02:10,400 --> 01:02:14,559
you know, sir, I don't
remember the last time we actually saw each

729
01:02:14,559 --> 01:02:16,559
other in person, and we both
agreed we were going to try to change

730
01:02:16,599 --> 01:02:20,039
that. But yeah, if you
see your teller, I said, hi

731
01:02:20,320 --> 01:02:22,239
too. Yeah, and she will
be on this show at some point.

732
01:02:22,760 --> 01:02:28,519
I just pointed out from last night
she has occurred to me. I think

733
01:02:28,599 --> 01:02:31,559
last night's show we've recorded to in
earlier. I should say it was the

734
01:02:31,559 --> 01:02:37,239
first time Steve did not mention the
name John Keel in the entire show.

735
01:02:37,960 --> 01:02:40,880
I made. I really made an
effort, Andy, I really tried,

736
01:02:40,960 --> 01:02:45,360
really try to restraint myself. I
shouldnt tell you, James, there are

737
01:02:45,360 --> 01:02:50,000
certain people who listened to ASHO who
have a drinking competition, drink every time

738
01:02:51,159 --> 01:02:53,760
every time Steve mentions John Keel,
a drink is taken and people get quite

739
01:02:53,800 --> 01:03:00,199
drunk. Apparently, so I could
see that happening. I go is to

740
01:03:00,239 --> 01:03:07,199
get them under the table within five
minutes. Wow. So anyway, give

741
01:03:07,280 --> 01:03:09,719
us a give us kind of an
overview. I mean, you started out

742
01:03:09,760 --> 01:03:15,480
with uh, I guess the Weird
USA, Weird Ohio books back way back

743
01:03:15,519 --> 01:03:19,760
in the old days. But you've
written so much since then, so kind

744
01:03:19,760 --> 01:03:23,679
of give us an idea of what
if we if we type in James Willis

745
01:03:23,840 --> 01:03:30,199
on Amazon, what kind of goodies
will we see? I have no idea,

746
01:03:30,239 --> 01:03:31,760
but the secret is you need to
type. You need to type in

747
01:03:31,880 --> 01:03:37,360
weird Willis ah okay, and if
you type that into Google, you will

748
01:03:37,400 --> 01:03:40,000
get everything of me. I'm very
proud of that because I tell people,

749
01:03:40,039 --> 01:03:44,880
when I was, you know,
the little kid chasing after the headless horseman,

750
01:03:45,360 --> 01:03:47,400
my so called friends used to tease
me and call me weird Willis.

751
01:03:49,239 --> 01:03:52,760
So so now I'm like, yeah, go ahead, you google that now

752
01:03:52,800 --> 01:03:55,000
and I'm at the top there.
So I made being weird of careers.

753
01:03:55,159 --> 01:04:00,280
How do you like me? Now? Some of the some of the more

754
01:04:00,280 --> 01:04:05,840
recent books that people can find.
I so I did a I'm working on

755
01:04:06,159 --> 01:04:12,320
the third book in my Legends and
Lord trilogy, just because I wanted to

756
01:04:12,320 --> 01:04:18,280
sign Pampus and Arrogant and say that
I wrote a trilogy. But it's that'll

757
01:04:18,280 --> 01:04:23,960
be coming out beginning of next year, which is Northern Ohio Legends and Low.

758
01:04:24,920 --> 01:04:30,039
The previous two were Central Ohio Legends
and Law, and then the most

759
01:04:30,079 --> 01:04:34,880
recent one Southern Ohio Legends and Law. Those came about in that a publisher

760
01:04:35,199 --> 01:04:40,360
reached out to me and they said, we'd like to do a book on

761
01:04:40,840 --> 01:04:44,960
legends and law of Ohio. And
I said that's not going to fit in

762
01:04:45,039 --> 01:04:47,159
one book, and they said,
could you do it in three? And

763
01:04:47,199 --> 01:04:51,800
so I said, I think I
could. And then kind of funny in

764
01:04:51,840 --> 01:04:57,320
that I get more guff. People
still get guff. I don't know I

765
01:04:57,400 --> 01:05:00,800
get it though, but from people
who on Amazon they complained because they say,

766
01:05:01,760 --> 01:05:05,639
I read your book Southern Ohio Legends
and Lore, and one of those

767
01:05:05,679 --> 01:05:11,320
places isn't really considered southern Ohio.
And I'm like, well, that's the

768
01:05:11,360 --> 01:05:15,480
only thing you didn't like about the
book. Cool, But what they did

769
01:05:15,679 --> 01:05:23,360
was the publisher took a map of
Ohio and just drew two horizontal lines through

770
01:05:23,400 --> 01:05:26,800
it and anything above the top.
One was norther in the middle was central,

771
01:05:26,920 --> 01:05:30,480
so I had no control over that, but that both all three of

772
01:05:30,519 --> 01:05:36,239
those books were just a fun romp
for me because it let me there's certainly

773
01:05:36,280 --> 01:05:41,840
ghost stories in there, and you
know, cryptids and UFO sightings, but

774
01:05:43,760 --> 01:05:45,840
I was able to just look into
stories that I'm like, this is just

775
01:05:45,920 --> 01:05:50,000
weird. People need to know about
this. There's no according to legend,

776
01:05:50,039 --> 01:05:56,239
as I like to say, it's
all true. So there's the there's a

777
01:05:56,360 --> 01:06:00,559
mind fire that's been burning for over
one hundred years, longer than sent Tralia

778
01:06:00,079 --> 01:06:09,079
in New Straitsville, Ohio that they
can't put out. And I loved how

779
01:06:09,159 --> 01:06:13,639
when I found out about that.
My favorite part of the story was that

780
01:06:13,920 --> 01:06:23,639
during Prohibition, Straitsville moonshine was the
purest moonshine and everybody wanted it because how

781
01:06:23,679 --> 01:06:27,719
the fire started as they hit a
coal a vein in the mountain and it

782
01:06:27,800 --> 01:06:30,519
went up through there and they couldn't
put it out, and the ground up

783
01:06:30,599 --> 01:06:35,480
along the mountains would just open up
and smoke, and sometimes open flame would

784
01:06:35,480 --> 01:06:42,000
come out. And what would happen
is during prohibition they'd go up and cook

785
01:06:42,039 --> 01:06:46,199
the moonshine up there because if any
of the agents were driving around and they

786
01:06:46,239 --> 01:06:50,480
saw the smoke, they were like, it's that mind fire. So they

787
01:06:50,480 --> 01:06:58,119
were able to go cook there.
And to this day they do make legal

788
01:07:00,079 --> 01:07:06,360
New Straitsville moonshine and they have a
distillery down in that area and every year

789
01:07:06,440 --> 01:07:14,280
they have a New Straitsville Moonshine Festival. But if you want to buy and

790
01:07:14,559 --> 01:07:20,039
or consume the moonshine, you can't
do it in New Straitsville because it's dry.

791
01:07:20,440 --> 01:07:24,400
So you actually have to go over
to the down the street a little

792
01:07:24,400 --> 01:07:28,400
bit to the local Kroger to actually
buy their moonshine. So I'm like,

793
01:07:28,440 --> 01:07:31,679
that is just a really weird Ohio
kind of story. So things like that,

794
01:07:31,880 --> 01:07:36,159
and it made it into the book. I spent a lot of time

795
01:07:36,239 --> 01:07:43,840
hanging around Right Patterson, which is
home to Project Blue Book before it went

796
01:07:44,239 --> 01:07:49,360
under, and basically, if anything
fell out of the sky and they didn't

797
01:07:49,400 --> 01:07:53,440
know what it was, it was
quote unquote alien. It did make its

798
01:07:53,480 --> 01:07:58,400
way to Right Patterson, you know. And again it's like when I moved

799
01:07:58,400 --> 01:08:02,239
to Ohio, you know, people
always said the same thing to me.

800
01:08:02,280 --> 01:08:06,039
It was so much so that it
ended up being the intro to Weird Ohio.

801
01:08:06,119 --> 01:08:09,199
I was like, I'm moving to
Ohio, what can you tell me

802
01:08:09,199 --> 01:08:14,199
about Ohio? And they would get
really quiet and then they would go I

803
01:08:14,239 --> 01:08:17,039
think a lot of people drive through
Ohio, and I'm like, okay,

804
01:08:17,079 --> 01:08:20,159
yeah, great man. But to
then go in here and just go no,

805
01:08:20,279 --> 01:08:26,239
this is a weird state. I
mean to find out that supposedly,

806
01:08:26,279 --> 01:08:31,800
what if something really did crash in
Roswell, it made its way to the

807
01:08:31,840 --> 01:08:39,119
infamous Hangar eighteen at right Pat,
you know what fell in Kesburg supposedly made

808
01:08:39,119 --> 01:08:45,560
it there. So finding those things
is what was really exciting about the Legends

809
01:08:45,560 --> 01:08:49,479
and Lore series, So it wasn't
necessarily just things with a weird tinge.

810
01:08:49,760 --> 01:08:55,920
And then along the way, I
did which I like to refer to as

811
01:08:55,960 --> 01:09:02,399
my Sergeant Pepper book, which was
Ohio's Historic Haunts, which I did with

812
01:09:03,119 --> 01:09:10,359
Kent State University, which marked the
first time that a prominent US university quote

813
01:09:10,439 --> 01:09:15,520
unquote backed a ghost book. And
what they did is they came to me

814
01:09:15,560 --> 01:09:17,840
and they said, you know,
you seem to know a lot about ghosts

815
01:09:17,880 --> 01:09:24,319
in Ohio. We're trying to do
sort of like a textbook sort of thing.

816
01:09:24,520 --> 01:09:26,560
Do you have any ideas, and
I was like, oh, I

817
01:09:26,680 --> 01:09:30,600
do, because it's kind of been
my mantra in that not just in Ohio,

818
01:09:30,680 --> 01:09:38,720
but for the book. It was
the idea that some historic, historically

819
01:09:38,720 --> 01:09:45,319
significant buildings over time gain a reputation
is being haunted, and that even if

820
01:09:45,319 --> 01:09:50,439
you can't confirm that that ghost or
that ghost story is real, you know,

821
01:09:50,479 --> 01:09:53,720
in other words, you can't say, yep, there's a ghost,

822
01:09:54,119 --> 01:09:59,560
the ghost story can still work to
keep actual history alive. So it involved

823
01:09:59,600 --> 01:10:06,399
me visit zitting twenty one historically significant
locations in Ohio, and each chapter was

824
01:10:06,439 --> 01:10:12,199
divided into thirds. The first third
was just straight history, who built it,

825
01:10:12,239 --> 01:10:15,159
why did they build it, who
lived there? The second third of

826
01:10:15,239 --> 01:10:20,520
each chapter were the ghost stories.
But I didn't go on the internet.

827
01:10:20,840 --> 01:10:29,039
I didn't look to other ghost groups. I wanted to speak with individuals who

828
01:10:29,079 --> 01:10:32,720
worked there, lived there, who
believed they had a ghost encounter, and

829
01:10:32,760 --> 01:10:36,680
I wanted to interview them one on
one so that I could look them in

830
01:10:36,680 --> 01:10:41,119
the eye and see if I was
going to call bs and I never did,

831
01:10:41,279 --> 01:10:44,960
And I think that's the power of
the ghost story. Those people believe

832
01:10:45,000 --> 01:10:47,119
they had a ghost encounter, So
what you know, I can't say whether

833
01:10:47,199 --> 01:10:51,359
or not they did because I wasn't
there, but I think that's the power

834
01:10:51,399 --> 01:10:56,479
of the ghost story. And then
the last third of each chapter, I

835
01:10:56,520 --> 01:11:00,159
got locked in the building overnight with
all of these fans ghost hunting equipment.

836
01:11:00,239 --> 01:11:05,960
So that was that took. The
interviews alone were two hundred and twenty hours,

837
01:11:06,119 --> 01:11:11,560
and I think it almost took me
three years from start to finish because

838
01:11:11,560 --> 01:11:15,800
I had to visit them all.
But I'm really excited because I recently signed

839
01:11:15,479 --> 01:11:21,159
the contract for Ohiosastoric Haunts too,
so we've identified the locations, the twenty

840
01:11:21,199 --> 01:11:27,600
one locations we're going to be going
to over the next two years and putting

841
01:11:27,640 --> 01:11:30,159
out that again. So it's the
first one almost killed me, so it'd

842
01:11:30,199 --> 01:11:34,439
be interesting to see what happens with
this one. But it was an amazing

843
01:11:34,520 --> 01:11:40,960
journey. Did you ever come up
with anything that we may not know about

844
01:11:41,359 --> 01:11:51,199
the Ohio Serpent Mound? I don't
think so. I mean that, to

845
01:11:51,239 --> 01:11:59,439
me is one of the most fascinating
locations, all the way down to what's

846
01:11:59,479 --> 01:12:02,239
its purpose? You know, I
mean, there's nothing about the Serpent Mound

847
01:12:02,279 --> 01:12:06,640
that people all agree on other than
it's a weird thing. Why is it

848
01:12:06,680 --> 01:12:11,640
only really fully visible from the sky. It's you know, what is is

849
01:12:11,680 --> 01:12:15,800
that. Some people have said it's
the earth that it's swallowing. Other people

850
01:12:15,840 --> 01:12:17,600
say, no, it's more of
a fertility thing. It's an egg.

851
01:12:19,760 --> 01:12:24,880
I have never been able to come
up with any definitive answers, or really

852
01:12:24,880 --> 01:12:30,520
any newth answers. It's just more
questions as to what that place really represents.

853
01:12:30,840 --> 01:12:35,119
It's fascinating though. It seems to
me about two thousand and four there

854
01:12:35,199 --> 01:12:41,920
was a crop circle that formed there
and we a group of us, talked

855
01:12:41,960 --> 01:12:46,159
to one of the proprietors. They
have this great little gift shop, if

856
01:12:46,199 --> 01:12:50,920
you want to call that, with
great books and all kinds of rocks and

857
01:12:50,960 --> 01:12:56,520
so forth. But the only thing
I've ever heard of I think. I

858
01:12:56,520 --> 01:13:00,880
don't know. If you're familiar with
doctor greg Little's books, yes, yeah,

859
01:13:00,000 --> 01:13:03,680
I can't remember the It's one of
his really early books, and he

860
01:13:03,800 --> 01:13:09,560
talks about a it was a November
when it was closed, and there was

861
01:13:09,800 --> 01:13:13,800
a gentleman again I can't remember his
name, but he somehow he felt compelled

862
01:13:13,840 --> 01:13:16,640
to go to the Serpent mount and
so he got in there and it was

863
01:13:16,720 --> 01:13:20,880
deserted, and he felt this bizarre
energy going on, and he said the

864
01:13:21,439 --> 01:13:28,520
leaves were kind of gathering together and
moving up on the mound, and then

865
01:13:29,279 --> 01:13:31,680
he realized that he had a camera
in the car. He ran back,

866
01:13:31,720 --> 01:13:34,920
and of course when he got back
to the mound and all this weird stuff

867
01:13:34,960 --> 01:13:40,479
going on, it had stopped.
So that's that's the only interesting thing I've

868
01:13:40,520 --> 01:13:43,640
ever heard. And of course it's
it's not you can't really verify it,

869
01:13:44,199 --> 01:13:48,119
but yeah, it's it's pretty spectacular
when you go there and you walk around

870
01:13:48,159 --> 01:13:50,720
it. Susie, did you have
ever had a chance to go to the

871
01:13:50,800 --> 01:13:55,279
Ohio Serpent Mount. It's actually not
that far from here, maybe an hour

872
01:13:55,319 --> 01:13:59,840
and a half in people's Ohio.
I'll have to add it to my road.

873
01:14:00,520 --> 01:14:02,479
I have not been there yet.
Okay, sounds good. Yeah,

874
01:14:02,560 --> 01:14:05,760
you need to go. It's it's
amazing because again, going back to the

875
01:14:05,760 --> 01:14:14,319
hole, there's nothing in Ohio.
The the Serpent Mount is actually the largest

876
01:14:14,960 --> 01:14:20,119
serpent effigy in the world are known
in the world, and it's just it's

877
01:14:20,199 --> 01:14:25,680
in the middle of nowhere, you
know, it's and when you're looking at

878
01:14:25,680 --> 01:14:29,439
it on the ground, you kind
of almost feel like like you're looking at

879
01:14:30,199 --> 01:14:32,520
like a golf course. You know, and that you've got these hills with

880
01:14:32,600 --> 01:14:36,399
like little bunkers and stuff. But
even when you go back, when you

881
01:14:36,520 --> 01:14:44,000
try to answer, well who built
it, and they they they they like

882
01:14:44,079 --> 01:14:47,039
to do this. They say,
well, the Adena culture built it,

883
01:14:47,119 --> 01:14:51,640
and you're like, well who were
they? Nobody really knows, but yeah,

884
01:14:51,680 --> 01:14:57,119
they put that back to around like
three hundred BC. So this is

885
01:14:57,239 --> 01:15:01,119
not this has been around a while. So it's it's it's fascinating and it's

886
01:15:02,279 --> 01:15:06,119
unfortunately in recent times they've kind of
cut back on that. They used to

887
01:15:06,199 --> 01:15:11,560
do things for the solstice and the
equinox where people could come out there,

888
01:15:11,680 --> 01:15:16,159
and I've heard they're starting to not
let as many people go out there anymore.

889
01:15:16,439 --> 01:15:20,760
I know they were trying to do
something for the eclipse. But yeah,

890
01:15:20,840 --> 01:15:24,399
you need to go. It's it's
fascinating to just go out there and

891
01:15:24,399 --> 01:15:27,439
you're like, it doesn't look like
anything. And then when you go up

892
01:15:27,479 --> 01:15:30,039
they have a tower there you can
go and look at and just even looking

893
01:15:30,119 --> 01:15:35,079
at it online to see it from
above, it's just it's breathtaking. Yeah,

894
01:15:35,239 --> 01:15:40,119
it's pretty spectacular to go up that
tower and look over the land there.

895
01:15:41,600 --> 01:15:45,279
So if if somebody, if somebody
said James, we want we want

896
01:15:45,279 --> 01:15:48,359
to read some of your books.
Uh, what two or three books would

897
01:15:48,399 --> 01:15:54,479
you suggest they start with? I
I would I would say to them,

898
01:15:54,479 --> 01:16:01,439
well, what are you into if
that? Because if they are into specifically

899
01:16:01,680 --> 01:16:13,079
ghost research and how to do like
real research and use actual equipment for ghost

900
01:16:13,159 --> 01:16:16,119
hunting as opposed to ghost hunting equipment, which when I hear that, I

901
01:16:16,159 --> 01:16:27,439
think apps and phone things and radios
and things you know that would be Ohio's

902
01:16:27,520 --> 01:16:31,520
historic haunts. Because that's where I
really get into the I list all of

903
01:16:31,520 --> 01:16:38,279
the pieces of equipment that we use
on it the investigations, and that's where

904
01:16:38,279 --> 01:16:45,399
I kind of get into what I
suggest people should let drive how they do

905
01:16:45,479 --> 01:16:50,720
investigations. And I call them my
two bottle conversations, because I say,

906
01:16:50,760 --> 01:16:55,680
you need two bottles of your favorite
adult beverage is to really unpack it.

907
01:16:55,760 --> 01:17:03,079
But I always say, put yourself
in the ghost use and why are that

908
01:17:03,199 --> 01:17:09,439
you're doing the things that you're doing, And then listen to what the activity

909
01:17:09,520 --> 01:17:13,520
is being reported as and if somebody
tells you, For example, the example

910
01:17:13,560 --> 01:17:15,880
I like to give is you hear
it all the time they see they say,

911
01:17:16,399 --> 01:17:21,039
I hear the ghost walking up the
stairs at night, we'll tell the

912
01:17:21,399 --> 01:17:29,000
people will count the stairs, because
is it actually going up those stairs or

913
01:17:29,039 --> 01:17:31,079
is it a residual thing that you're
hearing? And if it ends up that

914
01:17:31,119 --> 01:17:35,479
they are walking on the stairs,
then in my two bottle mind, I'm

915
01:17:35,479 --> 01:17:40,720
thinking, well, that means to
me that if that if we'll just say

916
01:17:40,720 --> 01:17:44,239
it is a ghost, but that
means that that ghost has to have enough

917
01:17:45,319 --> 01:17:51,079
mass or density or force or stuff
to exert pressure on those steps to make

918
01:17:51,119 --> 01:17:58,239
them creak. So we went and
got really cheap pressure plates and runner rugs

919
01:17:58,279 --> 01:18:00,640
and embedded them in there and just
ran it up the stairs. And it

920
01:18:00,720 --> 01:18:04,000
is amazing when you see this thing
and all of a sudden you hear things

921
01:18:04,079 --> 01:18:10,399
walking on the stairs, and those
things trigger one by one and you look

922
01:18:10,439 --> 01:18:14,319
out there and you're like, but
wait, I can't see anything. I

923
01:18:14,359 --> 01:18:17,600
hear them, I'm looking at those
stairs, but there's nothing there, which

924
01:18:17,640 --> 01:18:23,039
then leads to the other two bottle
conversation, which is, how does with

925
01:18:23,119 --> 01:18:28,399
something that's got enough mass to exert
force on that step to make it creep

926
01:18:28,439 --> 01:18:33,239
but you still can't see it.
So anyway, that would be Ohio's historic

927
01:18:33,359 --> 01:18:39,720
haunts. If you just like scary
ghost stories, and you know the ones

928
01:18:39,720 --> 01:18:44,319
that kind of get into urban legends
and folklore. That would be the big

929
01:18:44,359 --> 01:18:48,600
book of Ohio ghost stories. That
is, I think there's close to one

930
01:18:48,720 --> 01:18:55,159
hundred stories that are in there.
Less concerned about the validity as to whether

931
01:18:55,279 --> 01:18:59,560
or not that's a true ghost story, but I hear from people that they

932
01:18:59,600 --> 01:19:02,920
love slipping through it and being like, oh wow, I went there.

933
01:19:03,239 --> 01:19:05,960
I went there, you know,
and the use did anything happen? No,

934
01:19:06,000 --> 01:19:09,279
but it was fun, you know. So there's a lot of legend

935
01:19:09,279 --> 01:19:14,039
tripping things you will get. It's
sort of like Ohio's most popular ghost stories

936
01:19:14,079 --> 01:19:20,399
and urban legends. If they're into
just weird things, then that would be

937
01:19:20,479 --> 01:19:24,680
any of the books that are in
the Weird Us series. So you would

938
01:19:24,720 --> 01:19:28,640
be specific to the state, you
know. So if you're in Ohio,

939
01:19:28,680 --> 01:19:30,920
it's Ohio Indiana. If you just
want it from all there, that would

940
01:19:30,960 --> 01:19:34,479
be weird Us. I did not
work on it, but I do know

941
01:19:34,600 --> 01:19:40,399
there is a Weird England floating around
out there too. There'd be many of

942
01:19:40,439 --> 01:19:46,920
those county. I can promise you
that. There you go. Now,

943
01:19:47,000 --> 01:19:49,720
I have another question for James,
But Andy, Susie, you want to

944
01:19:49,720 --> 01:19:54,399
get in here and get any any
other questions before I do that. No,

945
01:19:54,520 --> 01:19:58,600
you carry on, I'm so enjoin
us. Okay, Susie, not

946
01:19:58,680 --> 01:20:02,880
a question. But James, I
realized that I have somewhere in my stack

947
01:20:02,920 --> 01:20:08,239
of spooky New England books a story
of I'm not sure if it's a headless

948
01:20:08,279 --> 01:20:12,880
horseman or just a phantom horseman.
I'm going to dig that out for you

949
01:20:12,960 --> 01:20:16,720
to try to help with your childhood
dream that was ripped away. Oh my

950
01:20:16,760 --> 01:20:23,600
goodness, I'll buy two bumper stickers
from me for that. No, thank

951
01:20:23,640 --> 01:20:26,800
you. I appreciate that. It's
in a weird twist of fate. I

952
01:20:26,840 --> 01:20:30,960
have ended up in Ohio. And
one of the things when I'm not chasing

953
01:20:30,000 --> 01:20:39,520
after the frogs that I have been
investigating almost as long is headless motorcycle ghosts.

954
01:20:41,560 --> 01:20:45,960
And so I've kind of yeah,
and again, why Ohio, I

955
01:20:45,000 --> 01:20:53,560
don't know, but I can confidently
say that Ohio has more headless motorcycle goes

956
01:20:53,640 --> 01:21:01,720
per capita than any other state,
and probably the strangest one is in Oxford,

957
01:21:01,720 --> 01:21:11,199
Ohio, called the Oxford the Oxford
Light, the Oxford Motorcycle Ghost,

958
01:21:11,560 --> 01:21:15,720
and I have it's gonna sound weird. I've seen the light. I've seen

959
01:21:15,720 --> 01:21:19,840
the motorcycle light. I've chased it
and I don't know what causes it.

960
01:21:20,399 --> 01:21:24,840
We've even gone so far as to
think, is this a UFO, Is

961
01:21:24,880 --> 01:21:29,159
this a Will of the Wisp kind
of thing. No, it's always in

962
01:21:29,319 --> 01:21:34,840
dead center of the road coming towards
you. No sound, absolutely nothing,

963
01:21:36,000 --> 01:21:41,720
including the fact that there's no backs. There is a backstory, but I've

964
01:21:41,760 --> 01:21:45,800
never been able to verify anything.
There's never been Supposedly the guy lost his

965
01:21:45,840 --> 01:21:49,680
head when he crashed through a barbed
wire fence. Nobody died on that road.

966
01:21:50,239 --> 01:21:56,600
But yet you see it, and
I've got it's it's the most asked

967
01:21:56,640 --> 01:22:00,399
for thing. And my presentations that
I give is they're like, you're gonna

968
01:22:00,399 --> 01:22:03,039
have the motorcycle ghost in there because
people just go nuts. And I'm like,

969
01:22:03,439 --> 01:22:06,720
I don't know what this is,
but and it's not one of the

970
01:22:06,760 --> 01:22:11,520
If you close one eye and squint
the other, it looks like Abe Lincoln

971
01:22:11,600 --> 01:22:14,640
riding a tricycle or something. You
know, It's like, you see this

972
01:22:14,800 --> 01:22:18,319
light that is on camera in the
middle of the road, casting its own

973
01:22:18,399 --> 01:22:23,479
light so much so that it's casting
the light onto the road. It's on

974
01:22:23,600 --> 01:22:30,560
camera for about twenty twenty five seconds
before it just disappears. Wow. I

975
01:22:30,600 --> 01:22:32,800
wonder if he looks like Nicholas Cage
from the neck down. See, And

976
01:22:33,640 --> 01:22:36,359
this is the odd thing. Like
I said, I've chased this thing.

977
01:22:38,960 --> 01:22:46,640
You never see anything. There is
no shape behind this light. There's nothing,

978
01:22:46,720 --> 01:22:54,520
and it always blinks out. It
doesn't you can't see because it's just

979
01:22:54,560 --> 01:22:58,520
audio only, but it's it doesn't
like turn out, you know, as

980
01:22:58,560 --> 01:23:00,119
if a car was turning, you
can see the lights kind of go to

981
01:23:00,159 --> 01:23:06,039
the side and then does it just
blinks out. It's always traveling in the

982
01:23:06,079 --> 01:23:12,239
same direction. If you're traveling in
that same direction, the light does come

983
01:23:12,319 --> 01:23:15,960
up behind you and I've tried to
pace it, you know, slow down,

984
01:23:16,119 --> 01:23:20,279
and it does gain on you,
but then it just blinks out.

985
01:23:20,479 --> 01:23:26,800
So it's sort of a ghost light
with a specific reputation. Correct, And

986
01:23:27,039 --> 01:23:35,800
I mean my research is the story
is very similar to the first headless motorcycle

987
01:23:35,880 --> 01:23:43,439
ghost sightings in Ohio, which is
on the other and Oxford is kind of

988
01:23:43,479 --> 01:23:46,680
in the southern part of the state. Elmore, Ohio has a very similar

989
01:23:46,720 --> 01:23:51,960
story and it's older and that's further
up towards the northern end of the state.

990
01:23:53,840 --> 01:24:00,920
The big difference is that you don't. I've never seen the Elmore ghost

991
01:24:01,000 --> 01:24:05,720
light. I've gone up there numerous
times. I've never People have said they've

992
01:24:05,720 --> 01:24:10,600
seen it, but I've never seen
it myself, and I've been up there

993
01:24:10,640 --> 01:24:18,560
a lot. I've probably seen the
Oxford light in twenty years, probably about

994
01:24:19,199 --> 01:24:29,680
fifteen twenty times. So I think
what happened is that the story made its

995
01:24:29,720 --> 01:24:35,560
way to it did appear in folklore
journals, and I think the story very

996
01:24:35,560 --> 01:24:42,159
close to the Elmore is Bowling Green
University. I think that story made its

997
01:24:42,159 --> 01:24:47,279
way down to Oxford, which has
Miami University, and I think when somebody

998
01:24:47,359 --> 01:24:51,640
was telling the Elmore version, they
said, Oh, that's kind of like

999
01:24:51,720 --> 01:24:58,039
that light that's out on that other
road. And I think that headless motorcycle

1000
01:24:58,159 --> 01:25:02,479
ghost story just got added to the
idea that if you go to this Oxford

1001
01:25:02,560 --> 01:25:12,439
road, you will see a light
will probably wind down pretty soon such a

1002
01:25:12,479 --> 01:25:16,359
by hole will It's right, No, No, I'm just concerned. I

1003
01:25:16,399 --> 01:25:23,680
want Andy to get the bed before
five in the month. But you know

1004
01:25:23,720 --> 01:25:30,520
you mentioned the grassman and UFOs and
your intro. There's a great article in

1005
01:25:30,560 --> 01:25:35,079
an old issue of Pursuit Magazine now
Pursuit Magazine was Ivan Sanderson's publication for the

1006
01:25:35,159 --> 01:25:40,520
Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, and in there this guy did the

1007
01:25:40,560 --> 01:25:44,720
research. This was back in eighteen
ninety seven in Ohio. It's one of

1008
01:25:44,720 --> 01:25:48,279
the airship waves that was coming across
the US and it ended up in Ohio.

1009
01:25:48,680 --> 01:25:55,239
And in mid April to mid May, this thing or things was seeing

1010
01:25:55,359 --> 01:26:01,079
kind of circumbending Ohio clockwise, even
lapsed over to West Virginia into Sistersville,

1011
01:26:01,119 --> 01:26:04,520
I think. And so, you
know, sometimes people would just see a

1012
01:26:04,600 --> 01:26:09,560
light, other times people would see
something more like you'd describe out of a

1013
01:26:09,600 --> 01:26:14,720
Jules Verne novel. Well, it's
interesting because I'm sure you're familiar with Stan

1014
01:26:14,840 --> 01:26:19,720
Gordon and his silent invasion and the
big Foot and the strange lights occurring at

1015
01:26:19,760 --> 01:26:25,279
the same time. Well, this
guy, he's got about fifty five different

1016
01:26:26,880 --> 01:26:30,119
footnotes to different newspapers at the time. And while this thing was being seen

1017
01:26:30,159 --> 01:26:34,600
going around Ohio, there were cryptids
on the ground. They were in Kenton,

1018
01:26:34,640 --> 01:26:41,079
Ohio, and in Chillicothe there was
people were seeing these black panthers,

1019
01:26:41,079 --> 01:26:45,079
these large black cats. And this
one was odd looking. It had like

1020
01:26:45,119 --> 01:26:47,760
an oversized head and short legs,
a little bit like some of the dog

1021
01:26:47,960 --> 01:26:53,319
like creatures that were described at the
Skinwalker Ranch, but the dogs would go

1022
01:26:53,359 --> 01:26:58,079
after it, they'd be ripped up
and come back bleeding. They never shot

1023
01:26:58,119 --> 01:27:01,439
it or trapped it. But also
at the same time period about the third

1024
01:27:01,439 --> 01:27:06,159
week in uh in uh April or
maybe it was I'm not sure, third

1025
01:27:06,159 --> 01:27:11,840
week in April uh in the in
Adams County where the Serpent mount is,

1026
01:27:12,199 --> 01:27:15,039
they were seeing what they were describing
as a wild man. What does that

1027
01:27:15,119 --> 01:27:18,920
sound like? This this guy,
this guy could run as fast as a

1028
01:27:18,960 --> 01:27:24,319
deer. So I found it very
interesting that here you have the again,

1029
01:27:24,399 --> 01:27:28,720
you have the strange technology or whatever
it is in the sky that's ahead of

1030
01:27:28,760 --> 01:27:32,199
what we can do, and on
the ground you're seeing these sort of temporary

1031
01:27:32,319 --> 01:27:39,560
cryptids. Uh what uh you know, you you've you've looked into the Ohio

1032
01:27:39,640 --> 01:27:44,680
Grassman and uh and and UFOs and
so forth. What what can you tell

1033
01:27:44,720 --> 01:27:48,000
you is some of that in some
of your books some of that research.

1034
01:27:48,319 --> 01:27:53,119
Yes, oh yeah, it definitely
is. Again it's it all comes back

1035
01:27:53,119 --> 01:27:59,039
to Weird Ohio. So yeah,
there is so there. The grassman and

1036
01:28:00,239 --> 01:28:04,840
everything that you just said is with
the is in Weird Ohio and I think

1037
01:28:05,000 --> 01:28:15,960
the The Grassman is and Hangar eighteen
or in Central Ohio Legends and lore.

1038
01:28:15,560 --> 01:28:20,039
Okay. And this is the thing
that if you do go to Amazon,

1039
01:28:21,439 --> 01:28:28,239
they do have the table of content's
tense for all of my books on there,

1040
01:28:28,520 --> 01:28:31,600
kind of like that look inside and
I use it all the time because

1041
01:28:31,600 --> 01:28:33,760
I forget, I'm like, what
book did I put that in? But

1042
01:28:33,880 --> 01:28:36,720
those books all do have it and
they are in there, so you can

1043
01:28:36,760 --> 01:28:43,479
actually then look and see what book
gets put in. And I guarantee James

1044
01:28:43,520 --> 01:28:45,880
that none of us are going to
write your publisher and complain about the boundary

1045
01:28:45,880 --> 01:28:49,760
lines for your books and all.
Like I said, if that's the only

1046
01:28:49,800 --> 01:28:54,880
thing people didn't like, you know, I'm golden. You know, well,

1047
01:28:54,880 --> 01:29:00,359
what tell us how people can contact
you, find your books and again

1048
01:29:00,399 --> 01:29:04,560
tell us what's coming up next?
Again, the easiest way to find me

1049
01:29:04,600 --> 01:29:09,760
and all my stuff is just type
in weird Willis and you'll find all my

1050
01:29:11,079 --> 01:29:14,920
social medias and websites and things.
I do have. The two websites is

1051
01:29:14,920 --> 01:29:18,800
Strange and Spooky World, which is
all of my weird stuff. And then

1052
01:29:18,840 --> 01:29:25,000
if it's specifically you were interested in
the ghosts, that's ghost of ohio dot

1053
01:29:25,119 --> 01:29:30,880
org coming up for me. I'm
getting ready to kick off. Every spring

1054
01:29:31,159 --> 01:29:36,760
through the end of the year,
I kind of travel around Ohio and every

1055
01:29:36,760 --> 01:29:42,960
once in a while they let me
cross state lines for presentations. I don't

1056
01:29:43,000 --> 01:29:45,039
know where I'm going to be,
but all that's on your website I have

1057
01:29:45,119 --> 01:29:47,720
to ask to do you have to
have a special pass for to go across

1058
01:29:47,760 --> 01:29:53,640
state lines. There is and there's
also a fake mustache that is involved as

1059
01:29:53,640 --> 01:29:57,920
well. Yes, yes, that
comes into play. But I do know

1060
01:29:58,039 --> 01:30:04,159
that in June, I'm going out
to Illinois for Troy Taylor's Haunted America Conference.

1061
01:30:04,399 --> 01:30:09,199
Okay, but again, if you
go to any of my websites or

1062
01:30:09,199 --> 01:30:13,399
social media, it's got all of
where I'm going to be and the and

1063
01:30:13,439 --> 01:30:18,000
the bulk of the presentations and appearances
that I do are not at conventions.

1064
01:30:18,039 --> 01:30:24,439
They're at libraries and little conference centers
And the reason I try to do that

1065
01:30:24,800 --> 01:30:30,199
as much as possible because they're free
and so it tends to bring more people

1066
01:30:30,239 --> 01:30:34,760
out and I get I just get
really excited when people come out and there

1067
01:30:35,159 --> 01:30:39,039
they want to hear me tell stories. I'm like, really, this is

1068
01:30:39,079 --> 01:30:42,960
the coolest gig ever. But yeah, that's how you can find all of

1069
01:30:43,000 --> 01:30:46,239
my stuff. And like I said, it's just go to We'd just type

1070
01:30:46,239 --> 01:30:49,720
in weird Willis and you will find
me all over the place. Well,

1071
01:30:49,920 --> 01:30:54,840
I've had the pleasure of saying you
speak several times, and you are great

1072
01:30:54,920 --> 01:30:58,439
on stage. You've got all kinds
of energy. Uh, you're not one

1073
01:30:58,479 --> 01:31:01,800
of these people that stand still by
the podium. No, I do not.

1074
01:31:02,439 --> 01:31:06,880
I actually have an old eight millimeters
video of the two thousand and seven

1075
01:31:06,920 --> 01:31:11,960
Mothman Festival back when they used to
have it done at the Amphitheater before Yes

1076
01:31:12,359 --> 01:31:15,960
Theater, and there, man,
you're going back and forth across that stage,

1077
01:31:15,039 --> 01:31:19,359
like you know, there's no tomorrow. Yeah, I I would love

1078
01:31:19,399 --> 01:31:23,720
to say, I would love to
see that. That's yeah. I've always

1079
01:31:23,720 --> 01:31:28,520
been a firm believer in that if
if I'm not excited about this stuff,

1080
01:31:28,560 --> 01:31:30,720
how would I expect an audience to
be. And it's good that I just

1081
01:31:30,960 --> 01:31:35,520
love all of these things. And
I tell everyone that will listen to me.

1082
01:31:35,560 --> 01:31:39,560
I don't know if I'm a good
writer, but I'm a damn good

1083
01:31:39,600 --> 01:31:43,279
storyteller. And the fact that people
take time out of their day to be

1084
01:31:43,399 --> 01:31:45,960
like, let me go hear this
guy see what he has to say.

1085
01:31:45,000 --> 01:31:48,439
I don't take that lightly. So, I mean they always used to say

1086
01:31:48,439 --> 01:31:51,319
I think it was David Lee Roth
that said that that. He said that,

1087
01:31:51,399 --> 01:31:54,920
like, you know, some people
say you're supposed to wait for the

1088
01:31:54,920 --> 01:31:57,520
audience to give you a spark,
and he was like, no, I

1089
01:31:57,560 --> 01:32:00,600
don't do that. I go on
stage with a flamethrower, you know,

1090
01:32:00,640 --> 01:32:03,800
because it's like I think that we
I also think the field takes itself a

1091
01:32:03,800 --> 01:32:09,560
bit too seriously, and so I
just like to I go in there and

1092
01:32:09,600 --> 01:32:11,960
I'm like, I don't have all
the answers. That's what you guys are

1093
01:32:12,000 --> 01:32:15,119
here to help me with. I
mean, let's just enjoy the weirdness.

1094
01:32:15,560 --> 01:32:20,840
And Andy and Susie any any closing
remarks or comments for James. I wish

1095
01:32:20,920 --> 01:32:24,600
I could get to these conferences.
It's such a shame being over here.

1096
01:32:24,600 --> 01:32:28,520
It's expensive to go to. We
didn't have so many of them, and

1097
01:32:28,560 --> 01:32:32,119
yet we are very little over here, which is a real shame. Yeah,

1098
01:32:32,119 --> 01:32:40,319
that's not cool. Well, I
don't want even if you hang out

1099
01:32:40,399 --> 01:32:43,880
in Ohio so we can finally see
something weird, maybe that sounds like the

1100
01:32:43,880 --> 01:32:46,079
place to do it there, you
get me. Yeah, very good.

1101
01:32:46,560 --> 01:32:50,600
And I have to tell I have
to give the secret of my cat's name

1102
01:32:50,680 --> 01:32:56,079
is Willis. It's not named after
the Willis family, the Willis clan.

1103
01:32:57,760 --> 01:33:01,119
Willis was a stray wandering point pleasant
and he came to live here with the

1104
01:33:01,119 --> 01:33:05,000
other cats, which took a while
to accept him. But he Willis is

1105
01:33:05,079 --> 01:33:11,359
named after a character out of a
Robert Heinlein novel, a Martian in fact.

1106
01:33:11,960 --> 01:33:15,239
I don't know if you've ever read
Red Planet, but in Red Planet

1107
01:33:15,439 --> 01:33:19,039
is a great time. It's one
of his more young adult books. I

1108
01:33:19,039 --> 01:33:23,479
guess they call it, but he
doesn't, didn't never wrote down to anybody.

1109
01:33:23,520 --> 01:33:26,920
So very entertaining. One of my
favorite books as a kid and still

1110
01:33:26,920 --> 01:33:30,000
as an adult. And Willis was
what they call a Martian bouncer. He

1111
01:33:30,199 --> 01:33:34,600
was a literally a fur ball about
the size of a basketball, with three

1112
01:33:34,760 --> 01:33:42,000
eyestalks and three legstocks that he could
extend or pull back. And he actually

1113
01:33:42,039 --> 01:33:45,039
you could carry on a conversation with
him. He spoke in the voice of

1114
01:33:45,079 --> 01:33:47,880
his his owner. I guess who
kept him as sort of a pet,

1115
01:33:48,640 --> 01:33:54,640
Jim. Actually. So anyway,
a very entertaining book. And that's uh,

1116
01:33:54,800 --> 01:34:00,920
that's where Willis comes from. That's
very cool, So I guess,

1117
01:34:00,039 --> 01:34:04,479
uh, Andy, please uh.
But by the way, James, this

1118
01:34:04,560 --> 01:34:10,439
has been a absolutely fantastic show.
I knew it was going to be good,

1119
01:34:10,479 --> 01:34:13,880
but I really appreciate you being here. Oh this is my pleasure.

1120
01:34:13,920 --> 01:34:15,840
I mean, how long have we
been talking about this? So glad we

1121
01:34:15,880 --> 01:34:18,600
actually made it happen. Well,
we'll have to have you come back.

1122
01:34:18,720 --> 01:34:23,079
I'm sure there's a few other things
we can talk about. You know where

1123
01:34:23,079 --> 01:34:28,199
to find me? Yes, I
do. And Andy, would you like

1124
01:34:28,279 --> 01:34:33,119
to give people information on your h
your publishing company again? I can.

1125
01:34:33,279 --> 01:34:35,680
It's always nice to do it a
free promotion. My company is called the

1126
01:34:35,760 --> 01:34:40,840
Ninth Circle Press and you can find
a Ninth Circle Press dot com or dot

1127
01:34:40,920 --> 01:34:43,880
co dot uk own them both,
I said. The next book coming out

1128
01:34:43,960 --> 01:34:46,399
is on Essex Witchcraft, which is
an excell book written my good friend of

1129
01:34:46,399 --> 01:34:50,840
mine, which I'm very looking forward
to getting you out there and Susie your

1130
01:34:50,880 --> 01:35:00,119
information. My blog is Puckwages dot
blogspot dot com. YouTube is the Puklagy

1131
01:35:00,239 --> 01:35:09,039
Whisperer and everyone needs to come find
our paranormal book club Facebook groups so we

1132
01:35:09,119 --> 01:35:13,800
can go on the book for next
month. Very good and make sure it's

1133
01:35:13,800 --> 01:35:17,359
not the book that I haven't completed. Yes, I don't want any pressure.

1134
01:35:17,479 --> 01:35:21,279
No pressure. The High Strangeress Factor
was created by Steve Ward and Andy

1135
01:35:21,359 --> 01:35:26,600
Mercer and has copyrighted on the Paranormal
UK Radio Network. I want to thank

1136
01:35:26,640 --> 01:35:30,319
our fearless leaders here at the network, Irene Alan Block, Mark Johnson and

1137
01:35:30,319 --> 01:35:36,319
Andy Mercer, and also Andy as
producer and Andy and Brian Zeller as composers

1138
01:35:36,479 --> 01:35:41,000
for the themes for The High Strangers
Factor. I could also be heard on

1139
01:35:41,079 --> 01:35:45,359
Mac Maloney's Military X Files as a
correspondent on this same network. By the

1140
01:35:45,399 --> 01:35:50,000
time this show is available, I
believe there will have been an episode with

1141
01:35:50,319 --> 01:35:56,520
Andy and Susie on board, but
we'll see. And I am Steve Ward,

1142
01:35:56,560 --> 01:36:01,520
your humble host here on The High
Strangers Factor, displaced Michigander, deep

1143
01:36:01,520 --> 01:36:06,520
in the Ohio Valley and west by
God, Virginia, inches from downtown Point

1144
01:36:06,520 --> 01:36:13,279
Pleasant and on the same road that
Mothman chased cars in November of nineteen sixty

1145
01:36:13,279 --> 01:36:16,279
six. Thank you all for listening, Addie Mercer and I will see you

1146
01:36:16,319 --> 01:36:19,000
all again in a fortnight. Take
care,