You're listening to the Paranormal UK Radio Network, the best in paranormal talk radio
in the UK and around the world. Hey everybody, we're here, Alive
and Thrive in Toronto, home of Blue Jays, Raptors, Made Beliefs and
Canadian psychic Robert nncy Melon. Welcome to My Side of the Crystal Ball.
This is episode number twenty five, and incidentally, episode number one was launched
on August the twenty fifth, two thousand and twenty one. Yes, indeed,
we're celebrating our first anniversary. Thank you for your support, Thank you
for watching. It's been a special experience. We're not stopping here and we
have some ideas and goals already set for what My Side of the Crystal Ball
will be like over the coming year. My guest tonight, and we're going
to be continuing having our fascinating guests as always. My guest tonight is Rebecca
F. Pitman, and Rebecca is one of the most fascinating people that I've
met, and I meet lots and lots of fascinating people these days. She
has been involved in so many things and successful at almost all of them.
I could spend the whole show talking about that, but what we're going to
focus on is her success as a mystery writer, a researcher and a studier
of crimes, murders and all that type of thing. This is just a
small part of her work, but this is what we're going to be concentrating
about tonight, and we're going to be specifically focusing on the history and UH
haunting series of books that she's written. And in that series there are seven
uh total books, including Lizzie Borden as well as The Salem which massacres and
we'll be discussing that soon. But before we go on to w w RS,
I have a couple of requests. If you're watching us on YouTube,
please like comment. I'm going to say something and about about the show.
If you like it or what you would like to hear, or you know
how we could improve it, you know, make a comment and subscribe to
the chain and if you do, what that does is it helps us get
ready for another year down the road as well. You can find us as
well on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, and pretty much anywhere else that you
get your podcasts. If you would like to get in touch with me personally,
you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. You
can find my website www dot Robert Lindseymilne dot com. And now let's hear
another version of ww RS. Somewhere in the nineteen mid nineteen seventies, there
was an organization in Toronto called the New Wage Center, and we have centers
across the country as well, but Toronto was the you know, the head
office. In those very very early days. There was a fellow there,
a man. His name was Michael Blake Read. Michael was just a bit
older than I am, or I was at the time, and he was
a trance psychic. I was what they called him the cold side. I
used to not use a medium, et cetera, et cetera. Michael would
go into trance with the help of his assistant, he would go down into
a very very deep trance. And a group of perfect entities, about sixty
five hundred and seven thousand formed a collective group called the Evergreens, and this
group spoke through Michael. That group, the Evergreens, had a huge impact
on a whole generation of people. I indeed was one of them. One
of the things, one of the tens of thousands of things that the Evergreens
did is they created what was called the living philosophy of the Evergreants. And
I'd like to share that philosophy with you now today on this podcast. And
it starts off with I am the result of me. I am more,
I am nevertheless. I discover newness about me each and every day. I
act because in action is decay. I speak because the words need to be
said. I am the right person. I have no enemies, only friends
I have yet to meet. I have no master but myself. I surround
myself in eternity. Eternity I command. I exist in the now, the
past, the present, and the future. I have no limits, no
bounds, no ends. Rebecca F. Heitman is a best selling author in
several genres. Her popular history and haunting series of books have been spotlighted on
various TV, radio and podcast forms, and I happen to know some of
those shows and appearances are on the biggest and the best ones around. She's
a former TV talk show host herself, a muralist, an escape an escape
room owner will have to talk about that. I think a game creator and
a runway model who found who finds mysteries irresistible. Rebecca welcome to my side
of the Crystal Ball. I am so happy that you have agreed to join
me on our show today. By the way, it's our first year anniversary,
so welcome to the celebrations. Thank you. I'm very honored to be
celebrating one year with you, Robert. That's awesome. It's fascinating what you've
studied throughout your life. When you were a girl, did you think about
psychic things and spirits and goblins and witches and narcissists and did you think about
those things when you were a kid. Yeah, because my mother had some
psychic ability that I was was jealous of. It wasn't in your face,
but it was pretty impression she needed when she needed it. It was there,
well, it wasn't an on demand thing. Just a quick example.
My sister and I are year apart. I think I was seven, Marlena
was six. We were riding in a car with our mom in California and
she suddenly swerved off the road, burst out crying and said, my mom
just died. Wow. And that's way before cell phones. And I thought
she I thought she'd hit an animal. She's swerved over and burst out crying,
and we were only five minutes from her brother's house, my uncle,
and when we pulled up, he came out the door crying, saying,
Sis, mom just died. So those things stay with you. And there
were other things that she did. So I learned early on there's more out
there than I knew. Do you have any of those senses? I don't
think I do. But because every one of the historic counted landmarks I write
about the quite a bit of stuff happens to me. People have wondered if
I'm sensitive to it. They find me a kindred spirit because I'm so sentimental
Robert, if I'm around the ghost, I'm going come tell me what happened
to you. So I don't know if that's what's happening. I've never thought
I had any special ability really, other than I care a lot about people.
You have had a really fascinating life doing so many things, and writing
seems to be one of your big interests. When did you decide you could
be a writer. Oh, I've been writing since I was eight, just
a little short stories and stuff. But I was also drawing since I was
eight, and my first career was painting wall murals. I've painted over four
thousand wall murals across really wow. I have a few in celebrities homes and
it was really good to me. So my first book was how to start
a faux painting or mural business. So there wasn't a book out there.
I couldn't figure out what the correlation was to where I come from, and
I am psychic, so that that took off. I landed a publisher.
I was Simon and Schuster. I was shocked that there was no other book
on how to do it, and murals and faux painting were really taking off.
And then they came back and said what else you got, And I
said, well, scrap booking's going through the roof. So they had me
write that. And then I lived thirty five minutes from the Stanley Hotel,
and every time I was up there, I marveled that there wasn't a comprehensive
book about this incredible place. That not only was it Epos Stanley that invented
the Stanley Steamer motor car, but then it inspired Stephen King to write The
Shining. So I asked the owner, can I write a book? He
went sure. So while I'm writing that, somebody said, have you heard
of the Myrtle's Plantation. And while I'm writing that, my sister said,
have you heard of went Mansion? And it just it just went from there.
And how did you hear about Lizzie Borden? That's fascinating me since junior
high and so I started looking into that fairly quickly after you were just a
kid. How did you hear of Rizall? That she was still pretty well
known then? In fact, it shocks me today that some of the younger
people go who So I, yeah, yeah, who is she? But
when you're going through and you're looking for more haunted places to write about,
and I always pick historic landmarks that are fascinating in their own right, not
just because they're haunted. And the Lizzyboard and Bed and Breakfast kept popping up,
and I thought, I have always been interested in that story, and
I got permission from the owners and just five years on it what sorry,
you got permission from the owners of the Lizzieboard and Bed and Breakfast where the
murders happened. It is a place you can spend the night, really,
and people do that. They do that a lot. Wow, They're very
popular. In fact, the most requested room is the room where the stepmother
was hatcheted. Today you found out some new information. Now maybe maybe not.
So you know, we do have a younger crowd watching this this podcast.
Do you want to tell us who Lizzie Borden is or was? Sure?
In eighteen ninety two, Andrew and Abby Borden were found hatcheted to death.
That means in the home, I'm sorry, that means chopped up right,
chopped up with a hatchet. And it was in the middle of the
day. It was eleven thirty in the afternoon on a very busy street.
Their house was part part residential, part commercial, lot of noise. This
is eighteen ninety two, sure, picture clip clopping horses and all of that.
And the only two people that were home when they were murdered was Lizzie
Borden, who was a thirty two year old spinster at that point, and
the maid Bridget, who had been cleaning windows outside during the time Abby was
murdered. And Abby was she received eleven blows to the head and back in
the upstairs guest room, and then an hour and a half later. That's
what's so interesting. When Andrew that Lizzie's dad came home for lunch, he
got murdered, and so the whole thing was so implausible. How would a
killer come in to that small house nobody seem and kill Abby? Would he
really wait around an hour and a half and wait for Andrew to come home
and kill Andrew? And there were no real places to hide in that house.
All of the rooms connected to each other, there were no hallways,
there were locks everywhere on the doors. And so Lizzie went to trial for
the murders because she was also very conflicting in her report. Do you think
that she was deliberately waiting for her dad to come home or was it a
spur of the moment, like, oh my god, what did I do
to my mother? Oh? I got to do that, or I'm going
to get caught or well? Or did she say that? Omar? What
was going to happen that morning at ten o'clock as Andrew was sending someone to
pick Abby up the stepmother to take her to the bank to sign over a
land deed that would have disinherited Lizzie and her sister of over two hundred and
fifty acres of prime real estate. Okay, and she needed to kill Abby
before the guy came to pick her up. And so once Abby's dead,
the obstacles out of the way, Lizzie's still in the will and she was
trying to get the maid out of the house before her dad came home.
And the maid wasn't feeling well and wouldn't go. And Andrew came home early.
He normally came home at eleven. He came home at twenty to eleven.
And now she's stuck. She got a dead Abby upstairs, and I
don't think she really wanted to kill him, and at that point she was
there was no way out. He would have known her. Yeah, she
hated her step mom and it was well known she hated her step mom.
So and then and then she just killed her father. Yeah, he got
I got that backwards. Abby got eighteen blows to the head, Andrew got
eleven. What she must have been a angry Do you think she was angry
or was it just like a machine? I think with Abby, I think
it was the rage that came out and just literally overkilled if you pardoned the
punt. But she also needed to look like a maniac had done this right.
And so now if you've got Abby up there with eighteen blows, that
practically obliterated the right side of her head. You can't just give your dad
a couple or it's going to look su It's going to look like the same
maniac did both of them. And I'm sure that was really hard for her.
She loved her dad at one point, and I think that the emotions
that she probably went through had to be horrendous. And you studied this book
or wrote this book. It took five years. Well, there's there were
four trials, so there's really I read over five thousand pages of trial transcripts
the Corner Repards. Lizzie Borden had twelve, sorry, four trials. Is
that because there were mistrials or or no? It was the proceedings. The
first one was a request, which they always do, right, Okay.
They found her probably guilty, put her in jail, held her over for
the preliminary hearing. After the preliminary hearing, they took it before grand jury,
and the grand jury decided it can go to the Superior court for trial.
So she spent ten months altogether in jail waiting for all of these things
to go through. I see, okay, wow, though, what was
it like having her in your head all that time? Did it affect your
life or did it affect your behavior or your moods? No? The last
book I wrote on Pam Huff, the serial killer in Saint Louis did did
that? Yeah? Getting inside Pam Huff's Head's not where you want to be.
I haven't heard of this one. Pam Huff, pup Hupp. Renes
Elwiger just played her this year in an NBC mini series called The Thing About
Pam. I was co produced with Dateline and Blue House and Renees Elwigger heard
about Pam Hupp and said, I've got to do this movie. So what
is? What did she do? Oh? Do you really want to know
this part? Oh? Okay, well, no, it's okay. We
can talk about the Salem Witches. Well, basically, she knifed her best
friend fifty six times to get one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of her wife
insurance money. Male or female, it was her best friend was female,
Betsy. Not only did she kill her in that manner to get the one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, she set the stage so it would look like
Betsy's husband and did it so she framed that poor man dipped his slippers in
his wife's blood, planted those in the closet, did all this other stuff,
and he went to prison for three and a half years for something he
didn't do. Then when they found out they got him a second trial that
they let him go. They acquitted him, and his lawyer made it clear,
I'm coming after Pam. She not only benefited from the life insurance money,
she was the last person to see Betsy alive. And so Pam went
out and trolled the trailer park and started trying to find somebody to lure them
to her house to shoot them. And basically she was posing as a dateline
producer and said, if you'll come with me in the car and do a
sound bite for a fake nine one one call, I'll give you a thousand
dollars. Two people turned her down, and she finally found this poor guy,
Lewis S. Gumpenberger, who had been in a car wreck and had
the mentality of a twelve year old. He was disabled, barely, he
limped, he couldn't drive, and he bought it. He got in her
car. She took him to her house and told him what to do for
a nine one one call, But she actually called nine one one so they
could hear it as that was her alibi, was the nine one one dispatch,
help help, someone's broken in my house. And then you hear her
shoot him five times dead and in his pocket was a note that she wrote
that was supposed to look like Russ, the man who'd been in prison,
Betsy's husband, that Russ had sent him to kill her. That was her
plan, was to get Russ put back in prison so they wouldn't come after
her anymore. So she just found a perfect stranger and moding down. And
then in the meantime, she pushed her mother off the third floor balcony to
get her insurance money and killed her. That's that. That one kept me
up a lot. It's three or four innocent people for their insurance. There's
three, but I'm thinking there may be a victim in Florida and I've been
working on that trying to find that. So in the story, that's incredible.
It's just incredible the coldness of it. And two of the deaths were
for money. So the killing Lewis Gumpenberger was just to get the heat off
of herself and put rust back in prison. Total stranger. That's kind of
that diabolical. Yeah, wow, are you so you're still working on that
crime? Well, I am, because the she's in prison for Lewis Gumpenberger,
but they're now taking her to trial for killing Betsy Feria finally her friends,
and so that trial is still coming up, and there'll be a sequel
to the book. So the books call countdown to murder, Pam hub Will
you go to the trial? Oh yes, Oh yeah, you get You'll
get in and and and be there. Yeah. I've been lucky enough to
work with the prosecutors and the detectives and they've become very, very dear to
me. They've they've been so amazingly kind and yeah, they've they've told me
I'm welcome to come. So that's really fascinating, and congratulations on gaining that
trust. Thank you. I actually did a TV show with all of them
in Saint Louis, and I was so tickled that they all came. It
was time that all of them that have worked on these different cases were in
one room and that we could talk about all of it, and it was
that'll be one of the highlights of my life. They're amazing men, and
they have worked so hard on all of this and that's going to be the
sequel to the book that you've already written. Yes, so when the trial's
over, there'll be a sequel. So what what's that book called that we're
just talking about again? You want to say it? Sure? Count down
to Murder, Pam hub It's on Amazon, is it? And your book
about Lizzie bordon on Amazon too. Yes, that's in the History and Haunting
series. I read. I wrote six books in the History and Haunting series,
so it's the History and Haunting of Lizzie Borden and those are all historic
places like the Stanley Hotel that happened to be in the top ten most haunted
place is in America. So three quarters of the book is either the case,
the person, the event, the building, and then the last portion
of it is the paranormal activity that goes on there today in the buildings where
those events occurred. And with all of the books or well, I don't
know if you have you been to Verse I to do that research physically,
yeah, covid hit Oh no, really, ye had the passport, had
the contacts, so I had to and it's a big book. I had
to go ahead and write it with interviews from home and put it all together.
I am going next year and I can't wait. It'll be amazing to
see it. Another one you wrote in that series was about the Salem massacres.
Yes, not that many people really know what went on. Most know
that witches got hung or killed, and a lot of people thought or sink
which has got burned at the stake. And not that many people really know
what happened in Salem. And that was in the late sixteen hundreds, yes,
sixteen ninety two. What happened. You have to look at it in
context of the perfect storm of events. Okay, if you had taken away
one element that happened, it may not have happened. Okay, But you
have to understand that these were these the Puritans or the Pilgrims coming over from
England, and in England they were burning witches by the hundreds, so it
was normal there. You accepted that there are witches, and so these people
had come from I mean, this was real. So now they're in Massachusetts
and they're forming this perfect community. But that perfect community was also so constricted
with its religious beliefs. All you've heard at church was the devil is real,
and you're all going to help, right, Well, there was this,
and especially for the girls who were a lot of them were coming into
puberty and their hormones are raging, and yet there's no release for it.
You're not supposed to sing, you're not supposed to dance. The days were
just yeah, the days were complete drudgery. All they did was work.
You made the bread, then you did it again at noon, then you
did it, I mean, and so for girl. And at that time,
children were to be seen and not heard. They were at the bottom
of the totem pole. If you mauthed off, your parents would say you're
going to hell. You're Satan's child. So there was no release for all
of this. So what happened was Reverend Paris was the new reverend and from
England, and he's the new pastor coming to Yes, he's a new reverend.
And they'd already gone through too that they'd basically just run out of town.
This was not a happy village. These were backbiting, These were neighbors
fighting. There was a lot of tension. So what happened was Reverend Paris
had brought Titchiba with him when he lived in the Honduras. She was a
lot of people go back and forth whether she was black. I believe she
was of Indian descent Native American, and she basically took care of the kids
because Reverend Paris's wife, Elizabeth, was sickly and was in bed a lot,
and it was Titchiba who sang them songs at night and cared for them.
And little Betty Paris, the reverend's daughter, who is not was very
very close to her. The other daughter, the other young woman in the
house, was Abigail Williams, who was eleven. And so anyway, what
happened was the Titchuba was just every once in a while she'd tell them about
magic, and they said, show us something, show us something. So
it was called the Venus glass. So what it was was a glass of
water and you would break an egg white into it and stir it just a
little and whatever that, you know, the albumen or what the white from
the egg would show. It would form a shape of what your husband's occupation
was going to be. Because to those girls, that was everything. You
needed a rich husband, You needed a good husband to get out of the
drudgery that you've experienced your whole life. I'd like to tell you about the
Venus glass. When I was a child, I was homeless, and I
got off the streets by working. I had a tea room doing psychic readings
and card readings. And at the Cozy t I was fifteen and a half.
And at the cozy tea room where I was, they had this thing
called an egg white reading. And what they would do is they'd get a
glass of water, warm water, and put an egg white in and stir
it up a little bit and give it to the clients and the customer and
they and they would do a reading from it. And that's the only other
time I've ever heard of what you're just talking too. Yeah, but I've
heard that's exactly it. But it took the when they stirred it, when
Titcha was stirred it, it took the shape of a coffin. And because
these girls, their dad was the reverend, if he found out they were
dealing with this stuff, or it was a perceived coffin, right, Okay,
So anyway, Betty, the nine year old, was very high strung
and a very sensitive little girl, and when she saw the coffin shape,
she thought it was satan, it was the devil because they've been conjuring,
so to speak. And she started going into little fits and when the adults
started noticing, I mean she was she tied under the table and she was
shaking, or she just sticks. She's one of those personalities that took on
the oh my gosh, you know, Satan's in me kind of thing.
Well, when Abigail, who is eleven, she's two years older than her
little cousin, sees all the attention Betty's getting because suddenly these girls who have
always been invisible have adults listening to them. What's wrong? What's going on?
Are you? You know? So Abigail starts acting in fits, starts
barking like a dog, and at one point grabs the fire sticks out of
the fire they're on fire. She's throwing them around the room, but one
time she rushes for the fireplace like she's going to actually leap into it.
And that's how it started. But Robert, here's the main thing. I
can understand that, I can really understand how that happened. Can you?
Oh? Absolutely, the kids seen and not heard, and all of a
sudden they get something they can do that gets them to be the star attraction
exactly. I can see how it happens. Well, you've also got to
add in the fact that these villages have been decimated by Indian attacks and a
lot of the older girls, by older, I mean fifteenish, they lost
their families. They witnessed their parents hacked to death, their little brothers hacked
to death, their homes burned down, and they are now almost like in
didn't entered servants living in some of these other Salem village homes that all they
do is work. So suddenly everybody wants in on this. Yeah, I
can understand that too. And so here's the turning point. When Betty keeps
acting out. They say they were saying what afflicts thee? And then all
of a sudden it switched to who afflicts thee? It was that one word,
and she was frightened and looked over at Titchuburah held out her hands and
went Tituba and they went Tituba. And she was an easy one because she
was colored. She was not you know, people didn't quite understand her way.
She had like a foreign accent kind of thing. And then was like
no, no, no no. And then they're saying, well, how
about Sarah Good, because Sarah Good was kind of this. She was she
just was kind of the pimple on society. She would roam around bed food
was dirty. Nobody wanted her around, and they said, and how about
Sarah Osborne who also had a reputation, And there you go. It started
with those three. They haul them off, they put them up on a
on a trial to ask them, you know, is it satan? Is
that? Why are you doing this? Why are you hurting these girls?
And in the meantime, the other girls have now come on board and they're
acting out and they're getting out of chores. Robert, not only are they
stars, they don't they're not being asked to do any of the stuff anymore.
And I think in the beginning they didn't quite realize what was going to
happen because but it's snowballed right, well, nobody would have understood that then.
So then what happened at this point was, and this is the insidious
part, was the adults started whispering in their ears names to call out as
witches. It was people they wanted to get rid of, a neighbor they
didn't like, a boundary dispute, say her name, she's a witch,
And it just it's it just snowballs, because they were on those children saying
she's a witch. Yeah, they called it calling out and so yeah,
they started just naming names of people that mainly the adults were wanting to get
rid of. And they went to trial. They found it guilty. In
the end, they hung nineteen people and those girls watched. Did anybody get
judged innocent in those trials or was everybody guilty? They most of them were
found guilty. The one that broke my heart is Rebecca Nurse because she was
in her seventies, very pious, wonderful woman. She was very hard of
hearing. She was sick when they drug her in and her bedclothes and she
couldn't hear everything they said, so she got it wrong or if they asked
her something and she didn't answer, they turned it against her. But then
finally the judge said, you know what, I don't think she did it.
And this is one of them that the girls had cried out against,
and it was someone who was a wealthy landowner and that the parents, a
lot of the parents were coveting this woman's property. And they let the judges
let her go. When the girls threw a fit and that night swore that
the ghost of Rebecca Nurse came in their room and pinched them and tormented them,
And so they drug her back, put her in jail and shackles.
They believed if you could shackle the person, their spirit couldn't go out and
afflict these girls, because a lot of them were saying their spirits were coming
in through the walls and pinching them and hurting them. And so they hung
Rebecca Nurse and her sister Mary Esti and it I actually cried during that part
of the book that that poor woman got to finally go home after being in
those filthy jail conditions, and four days later they drug her back and hung
her. Wow, how did it stop? It got happened? And four
people got put in jail, one hundred and fifty four. And how many
of those one fifty four or ballpark number were women or most of them?
Most of them? The men were called warlocks. I would say the majority
of by far, the majority of them were women. But you talked about
superstars. They actually put these girls in a cart and drove them from town
to town to point out which is they saw there. They took them into
Topsfield and Beverly, and they said, who else do you see? Oh?
Her, her. So they ended up with one hundred and fifty four
people. And when I say that the conditions and these jails were awful,
it was beyond belief. And in the winter's no heat, they sat in
straw in their own exceriment. It was just horrible. So, to answer
your question, it kept going until finally they cried out against the governor's wife
and he went, okay, we're done. Okay, it's over now.
Yeah, that's it. It's good. You know. That's kind of similar
to the guy, the American senator McCarthy. Yeah, and all of a
sudden it was over just how do you know, shame sir, And it
was over all those people blacklisted in Hollywood communists. Yeah. In fact,
Arthur Miller when he wrote The Crucible about Salem, it wasn't really it was
a tongue in cheeks stab at McCarthyism. So that was it that parallel,
Because that's exactly right. Yeah, I'm really blown away by what you're saying.
I've known the stories, I'm just shocked by them. Well, again,
you've got the elements. They also didn't have a charter. They didn't
have any government, it hadn't come over from England yet, and someone was
over all that. I understand. It's just I'm shocked by the barberism of
it and people kind doing to other people the things that we've done and do
that. That's what that's what's catching up to me right now. That's that's
what I've been listening to. And I'm thinking, well, and the main
question is could it happen again today? Yes, and in the right amount
of circumstances, I think you could. In the right place, at the
right time, it will will notice how quickly I answered, Yes, it
can happen, and I'm sure there's been times where it has happened after we
just haven't known or heard about it, or but it's happened. Well.
Hysteria can spread so fast, especially if it's benefiting you, and that's the
sad thing. These hangings were benefiting these adults and the sheriff, Sheriff Corwin,
once you were found guilty, he could write out and take all of
your stuff, and he did. He would write out with carts, take
your cattle, your food, your house. And this guy is making out
like a bandit with everybody's belongings. I mean, it's just this most incredible
story. So what happened to these people? Well, the nineteen were hung.
Giles Corey was crushed to death with stones because he wouldn't say guilty or
not guilty. He wasn't going to play their game. And then five died
in CRUs including a baby. So the rest of them were finally let go
when they cried out against the governor's wife. And I was asking what happened
to those people that committed those crimes or did all things. That's what I
was what was there any kind of retribution? No. But then at the
end, which was really sad, two of the older girls, their conscience
got hold of and admitted they did it for sport. And the one girl
said, hey, we have to have sport, I mean we had to
have a little fun. But one of them did come back and stand before
the courtroom and admit to what she had done and apologized. Now they were
not formally brought to any charges, but their lives went down the toilet.
A lot of them ended up in poverty, very very few of them got
happily married. A lot of them just ended up in obscurity or prostitution.
They just kind of fell apart, and the adults that did these things got
not They got away with it. Yep. Nobody else was ever persecuted for
any of this. It was just like whoops. It was one of those
things that's astonishing, isn't that it is? And how do you bounce back
from that? This is a small village. After you've looked at what you've
done? How do you trust a neighbor again? How do you go back
to church and read your Bible? And I wondered about that that happened?
Yeah, how did they go back to church again? And the minister or
the guy that what was in the man's name Paris? No, they ran
him out of town too. Finally did he pay any penance other than losing
his job? No? No, no, that's the thing. I don't
recall reading anything. Finally, years years, years, years later they did.
The government did give some money to the victims' families. I don't know
how you put a price on a life. But in fact, even today
there's still repaying a few of the descent and they have now put up a
memorial for them and sale. But that's about it. They got a few
gold sovereigns and it was like, oop, sorry, that's really profound it.
I think that's why people still talk about it. It's hard to look
away from that and think, could we really do that again today? Would
we be capable of that? Yes? So long ago? Hasn't been since
lynching stopped? Yeah? Or have that? Well, we're still dealing with
racism. We're still dealing with outbreaks, and I mean how, I don't
know, Robert. It is scary. I think under the right set of
circumstances, anything can happen. Yeah, And there's the voyeuristic part of all
of us that you know, whether you're reading a book, you know,
whether you read a book about Lizzie or Pam Hup or whatever, you want
to look behind the curtain and see how can a mentality do this? What
happened to this person that they can take life like that with so little thought?
You know what I mean? Yes, I do. We're shocked,
but we can't look away. What do you think we're doing when we do
that, When we're seeing something like that happen and then start studying it or
oh, I didn't mean to be so personal. What happens to you when
you start get really drawn into something like Salem or Lizzie Borden or the other
woman you're speaking about. What does that affect your life? Yeah? Or
can you just shut it off? I don't shut it off. It will
make me look at people differently, it doesn't, you know. I love
research, So for me, I mean, I'm on to two other stories
now in the countdown to murder theories. But of course it affects you.
If it didn't, you've got something wrong with you. But it's like even
with celebrities, we want to see how look inside their mansions. We want
to see how the other the other half lives that's different from us. And
when there's an aberration of consciousness, I think we just want to figure it
out. We want to see what in the world caused this person, you
know, how did they get to hear there is There was a short TV
series. It never made The series never made it into mainstream, but or
like the program didn't make it regularly in mainstream but on a couple of different
occasions, the whole the first year's episodes were all played one right after the
other, and the name of that is called the Booth at the end,
and it takes place inside a restaurant at the end booth, and there is
a guy that sits there and people come to him and they tell him what
they want and what they would like if they wanted to get something. They
need money, somebody needs help, whatever it is. They come to this
guy and they tell him what they want. The guy looks inside a book,
old fashioned leather bound book, and he looks in it, oh,
by the way, and he negotiates with them exactly what it is that they
want to get. Like this one woman in that she wants her husband had
had developed Alzheimer's and she wanted to get her husband back. That's what she
wanted from him, and he gave and she explained it to him. He
negotiated with it, put it in very clear black and white, what exactly
it is that she wants. Then he opens the book and says, and
he looks at because he doesn't know what's written. It's always a surprise to
him. He looks what's written and he gives them a task that they have
to perform. Everything happens inside that restaurant. But the other rule is and
when they complete their task, they get what they negotiated. The other part
of it is they have to come back and tell him the process that they're
going through and why they're doing it. And some of the tasks that people
get are horrible, and they do them to get what they want. And
then there are some tasks where there was one task where a woman was a
a nun and she had lost her she couldn't hear God anymore. And her
task was she had to go out meet a man and get pregnant how to
have a baby, and she would and she would hear God again and and
she and it happened. So there were several and there was this one,
Now these are software. There was this one young girl, young woman,
she wanted to be prettier, and and he negotiated, what does prettier?
What does that mean? He negotiates it and says, okay, then for
you you have to, you know, to be prettier, you you have
to rob from the bank one hundred and three thousand and twenty five dollars.
And you know, the girl says, you want me to give you one
hundred thousand, three hundred and twenty five dollars, And he said, no,
you you have to rob that much. And when you get that much,
you will be as pretty as you want. And she kept coming back
in the process and she would describe to him what she was going through,
how she was going to rob the bank. And as that process went along,
she got prettier and prettier and prettier and prettier. Oh my words,
okay, and then and then you know there so there are some of the
lighthearted ones and and like the nerve or the nun the process that she was
going through because she had been she felt that she had been born to be
a nun, and she was a child when she entered into the convent,
and all of a sudden she lost her faith. And this has been going
on for years. And you watched how she was what she was doing to,
you know, to to complete the task, and watched how it happened.
It was it was that was pretty pretty special. No violence occurs,
You don't see anything happen. You just hear the person talk about their experience.
And what they talk about is how far they will go to get what
they want. So it's called the booth at the end, and if you
google it you might find it really fascinating. What a fascinating concept. I'm
surprised at John and the way the guy negotiated it was absolutely brilliant, and
and he didn't know what was you know, the tasks were going to be.
But he'd been doing it a long time, and many times he was
detached, you know, and and sometimes he had no idea how they were
going to handle something, and it wasn't his job to tell them how to
do it. And he would always say, you can stop anytime you want.
You don't have to do this. And so it's it's really fascinating the
booth at the end, and then I'll look it up the second The second
season got really dark, but the first season was was riveting, and I
learned so much about negotiating and giving information without making a commitment. It was
brilliant, it was. I learned so much from that. Yeah, there's
a lot of psychology in that concept, absolutely, and being on the other
side. Yeah, So it's all these remind me of, which is one
of the reasons I understood very quickly what happened with in Salem. That's how
come I understood it, just you know, I understood the concept. Well,
if they had had the law, it might not have gone that far,
but they didn't have the charter. Which meant they were the judges that
were sitting these cases were ordinary men. Yeah, they just grabbed whoever they
could. Some of them had lawyer, you know, lawyer lawyer backgrounds.
But back then Harvard, which was right there in Boston, was not turning
out lawyers. It was turning out clergymen and medical people. So there weren't
really a lot of lawyers. And so if that charter had been in place,
that they've had a governing body that knew what they were doing, they
may have stopped those trials before they went as far as they did. So
that's what I mean. It was a perfect storm. Everything went wrong.
What I was talking about is the conscious behavior and decisions that people make when
they get when they want to get something, how far they'll go. That
was what I was responding to. Well, and if you don't have breaks,
if you don't have the mental breaks that hopefully most of us do.
Yeah, everyone's expendable. It's very scary. Yeah, it's really amazing how
that happens. What's your next fascinating book or interest that you're going to be
sharing with the world or is there one yet? Yeah, there's I'm actually
working on three books at once because I'm pill trying. I'm trying to find
if Pam Hubb had another victim in Florida, and her trial's coming out.
I'm working on another Countdown to Murder, which is Alec, the Alec Murdach
case going on right now in South Carolina. And I'm also working on Harold
Henthorne, who pushed his wife off the cliff and Rocky Mountain National Forest and
they now believe he dropped a jeep on his first wife. So those two
books are coming out in the Countdown to Murder series, and then I'm going
to get back to another haunted historic landmark. But that's what's on the books
right now. So if someone wanted to start off reading your books, which
one would you recommend for them to begin with or is there one? Which
one would you say here's a good starter? I think Salem. I think
yeah, because you not only get a very comprehensive overview of the well it's
not an overview. It even includes some of the original trial transcripts. You
can see how they wrote back then. But at the end of the book
goes into the hauntings that are going on in Salem, and I have a
nod to Hocus Focus and the filming locations that they did, and the sequel
to that movie's coming out this year. So I think Salem would be a
great introduction. You get a sense of my style, and I love to
do in depth interviews with people that are experts on the subjects. So,
and how do people find your books? They're all on Amazon. If you
just type in Rebecca F. As in Frank Pittman P I T T M
A N on Amazon, all my books come up. This will be my
sixteenth book coming out, so that's just easier than listing them all. Congratulations
on all your thank youths, and what a delightful conversation. Thanks for joining
me. Well, you're very articulate and smart, and that's always fun to
talk to somebody on these podcasts that has the background and your knowledge, So
thank you. I really enjoyed it. Robert, Wow, what another exciting,
interesting conversation that I've had tonight. My special thank you so much to
Rebecca F. Pittman for sharing all her knowledge, well just a small bit
of her fascinating knowledge. It was really great. We have to have you
back on the show again soon for sure. Before I say goodbye, just
got a couple of those of old requests again. If you're watching us on
YouTube, please like, comment, and subscribe to our channel. Subscriptions are
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say goodbye, as always these words do good, stay safe above all,
just because good night everybody,