Welcome to this edition of The High Strangeness Factor, copyrighted on the Paranormal UK
Radio Network. I am your host, Steve Ward. On the High Strangeness
Factor Andy Mercer and I explore all aspects of the paranormal with an emphasis on
the patterns, connections and parallels that exist there. Well, Andy, it's
good to be back after a little bit of a hiatus I had. My
excuse was I had a really busy September. The first part of September over
our labor day here, I drove to Exeter, New Hampshire for the Exeter
UFO Festival and spoke there with the mac maloney gang. At the end of
the month, I drove to the Van Meter Visitor Festival, which is just
west of Des Moines, and in the middle I could walk to the Mothband
Festival, but I spent about three days in the T and T area setting
up giants, spiderwebs and big furry spiders and lighting up their eyes and cobbling
together all kinds of creatures. So anyway, by the end of September,
this old boy was really really pooped. Sounds of it. The first way
I recovered was I just kind of a sag in my chair and I was
watching British Murder Mysteries. Oh dear, because anyway, oh go ahead,
I can say one of your favorites, of course, is set in the
area I now live. So that's some quite interesting because midsummer. Yeah,
and set away where I now, as I having escaped from the horrors of
Essex a few months. Well, you better keep looking over your shoulder because
they just keep dropping like flies over there. There's a little wirrying after say,
people seemed to have died in the midsummer areas. There's small villages,
so it's quite quite ridiculous. But yes, now you also have some news
with uh, with your project? Oh good? Where do I start?
Yes, my long planned publishing company has finally come to life as we speak.
My first publication is actually at the printer's being physically printed up now.
It's my first book, which will be coming out towards the end of this
month. Actual should get delivery of the books to purchase it then. And
I have three others that are in the various stages of being prepared to be
published next year. So it's all looking forward. And I see my publishing
company night the circle press publishing occult and esoteric titles. So that's kept me
busy for a couple of months now, just working how to do things in
design the software used to lay out a book for publication. I went from
totally knowing nothing to actually be able to use it reasonably well in a couple
of weeks thanks to a friend of mine who's also a publisher. She taught
me through what to do and it's all going well. So just waiting for
the book to arrive. I've got the sort of proof copies and called the
the run sheets. They're called it's basically the unbound version of the book came
through the look fantastic. So just waiting now to actually have the book in
my hand physically. So yeah, it's been a good time. That's very
cool. Soon you'll be publishing my books. Well it depends what actually if
you make making a bit joke there, but it's interesting important. It's kind
of immerged. The books I'm publishing are all esoteric, occult, witchcraft,
magic, that kind of stuff, which is my other big interest. But
I quite a few people message me so they've got books on goes to UFOs
wanted. We're just in publishing those now and didn't really occur to me that
people kind of think of me both as sort of and the cult guy they
like and and the panel book. So I'm not doing panelal publications. But
it's funny how many people have sent them and then they've looked at Night Circle
press dot com the website to see what kind of book I'm publishing and think
that's not quite the same thing. But yeah, I never really thought that
that would be something I had to consider that people were thinking more of the
panel and stuff, which is not really what I'm going to be publishing.
Well, very cool, a dream is coming true. Indeed, yes,
at last, taking about ten years, but finally, well we have a
really great guest coming on. Heather Monitor is a producer and researcher for the
documentary film company Small Town Monsters. She's also an author and a junct professor.
You can read some of her work in the first, third, and
fifth volume of The Feminine Macabre, and you can also catch her podcast,
The Law You Know on your favorite podcatcher. Heather, Welcome to The High
Strangest Factor. Hi, thank you so much for having me. So,
you know, I almost don't know where to begin, how did How did
you get involved with small town monsters? I harassed Seth is always my answer
for that. Now, I was looking into cursed objects, specifically those the
rocks that people take from the bell Witch Cave, and specifically looking at letters
that people write when they returned cursed objects to locations, and that's something that
is represented pretty well with the bell Witch Cave. Actually, when you go
in to buy your ticket to go to the cave, they have the letters
just covering the walls of the gift shop. So anyway, I was looking
at cursed objects and the letters that come with them. And I had been
aware of small town monsters because I grew up not far from Minerva. In
the first small town Monsters documentary was Minerva Monster Sodately, they were on my
radar. Of course, it's a small town. Everybody talks, you know,
all there's a Bigfoot movie coming out about us. So I was aware
of them, and I had been doing some Belwich research and cursed object research
and followed along with them enough that whenever they got to want me en a
point. Pleasant Steth had an aspect of the movie that dove more into research
and folklore more so than the previous films that I really enjoyed. So that
was my first contact with him, was to tell him, hey, I
appreciate the research aspect of things, because I had just finished up my master's
degree and getting like finishing up my thesis. So I had been deep in
research for a few years and I was missing that element of just passing time,
you know, going through first hand accounts and things like that and primary
sources. But nevertheless, as I was doing my my other work and following
small town monsters on the periphery, they announced that they were going to eventually
do The bell Witch, and so I contacted Seth again and I said,
hey, this is something that I've been looking into for quite a while.
If you need any help on the research aspect of things, I think that
I could lend some expertise here. And Seth said, actually that that would
be great, and he asked me to step in. Actually a couple a
couple of films before bell Witch. Momo was the first one that I was
on, and then Mockman Legacy and then which you know about, yes,
and then the bell Witch came out. But that's how it all happened.
I just kept kept let Seth know that I appreciated his work, and then
I kept saying, hey, you know I could help you. I really
missed doing research and I got in that way and that just grown from there.
You might remember Andy, you watched atmand Legacy right, Oh, yes,
yes, yes, and of course you saw my handsome countenance in there.
Yes and Heather, yes, absolutely, Yeah, that was I was
very happy to be part of that seth And small Town Monsters always does a
really good job. Well, before we move on, uh, you know,
I, uh, can you tell us something about the Bell Witch,
because I think most people think it's merely uh you know, with this disembodied
voice and maybe some Poultergeist phenomena and that sort of thing. But it seems
like it had a lot of tentacles. A lot of really strange stuff happened
during that period. Yeah, it arguably the most famous ghost story coming out
of the US. In the Bell Witch is more of a Poultergeist tale than
what its name would imply as a witch. But she ended up killing John
Bell Sr. Or taking credit for killing John Bell Senior. Her voice said
that she fixed them up real good, in her words, and he died
on December twentieth, eighteen twenty. But she tortured this family for quite some
time. She started like it started off with just the noises and a little
bit of whispering, and then it became the disembodied voice. Then it became
at one point a which family is what they called it, a family of
voices. It would bick her back and forth. But it became quite well
known, and everybody came around from the area. They even had some people
come from overseas to sit in and get a glimpse of the poultergeist activity.
But there was the slapping and pin pricks and hair pulling, typical typical things
that you would think when stuff gets out of hand with poltergeist activity that she
did. But ultimately she said that she was going to kill John Bell and
that's why she was there, and that's indeed what she did, and then
she disappeared shortly after, came back about seven years later and gave some prophecies
of what was to come and supposedly more of a nostrodomas type thing, predicted
the future, and then disappeared, said she'd come back in one hundred and
seven years, and really nothing came of that, but they still have odd
things happen in Adam's, Tennessee and around the Beout which caves specifically. Like
I said, people take rocks from the cave and then their lives fall apart,
akin to going to visit Robert the Doll and taking his picture without his
permission and then they mail it back and ask for forgiveness. So and who
knows if that works. See that's the thing about these letters. You never
get the follow up letter that says, oh, thank you so much for
putting the rock back. My life is back together now. Who knows if
it works. But yeah, she had a lot of stuff going for Do
you have any idea what it was? I mean, it was what it
seems to be just some kind of a demonic spirit or do you have any
ideas about that? Yeah, I don't know. It would be more like
a Poultergeist type situation. But she herself would not even admit to who she
was. And I say she just because eventually she adopts the name of Kate,
claiming to be the Witch of Kate Batts, meaning some sort of ghost
or spirit that Kate bats employed, but she also claimed to be a Native
American spirit. She also claimed to be the spirit of an immigrant who had
buried some riches that she wanted them to find. And every time that the
family would believe her an attempt to prove this, she would laugh at them
for even considering that she was being truthful. So I have no idea either.
One of you read a book called Hungry Ghosts by Joe Fisher. No,
it's fascinating. He was working with through mediums over a period of time
and supposedly contacting the dead, dead officers from World War two and so forth,
and also supposedly a woman that he was supposed to have been connected to
through various incarnations. And he finds himself really kind of falling in love with
this whatever, and so he finds that he goes on a quest. He
goes to England, he goes to Greece. He wants to to prove,
you know, and goes to all these different records. He wants to,
you know, prove that these messages are correct. Well, as in so
many of these things, some turn out to be absolutely true, but then
there are huge gaps where the spirit or whatever is just lying or making up
stuff. It's like sort of like John Keele's Silent Contact Ease, where they
were getting all kinds of predictions and some of them would come true and some
were just bogus. So anyway, it's uh, I'm almost done with it.
And he came very very disillusioned afterwards. But that trickster element, that
deceiving like like the Bell Witch did, kept kept saying she was different people,
was prevalent. It's interesting you should mention that in the Bell which being
a polter guys, because I'm a bit of researcher at the moment. On
our most famous pod geist case, the Enfield Haunting in Enfield, obviously in
the nineteen seventies, there's been a on. It's like a docu drama's been
on recently which covers the events of the Anfield polter guyst in which I've actually
got the original audio recordings and they've used actors to lip sync the audio recording,
so you're seeing like live action if you like, or with real actors,
but they actually it's actually using the voices of the people talking. And
the similar kind of thing with the whole you know, what is the polter
geist? Is it in disembodied spirities? It's some other kind of manifestation.
And of course I don't know how well you know the case of the Anfiel
polter geist. But the poly guist itself a name of someone who did actually
genuinely live in the house at one point in the past, so that was
in a single identity. But that you know, that kind of thing is
not a polydigleis, so it's more of a haunting. But it's just fascinating
these things will come up at the same time almost of talking about them.
Yeah, And along with the trickster element, she also had a knack for
doing the mimicry of different voices. So she would come through and you would
have Kate or the spirit speaking, but then and then the witch family of
course when they came about, they all had distinct voices. But she also
had the ability to mimic voices of people that were either in the room with
her or sometimes. There was a story about a man that had come from
overseas to investigate because somehow this had reached overseas news. He came over to
investigate and while he was there he heard the voice of his mother talking to
him or calling out for him. And what had happened, which she learns
later when he returns home, is that his mother had also heard him because
the witch had gone over and mimicked his voice as well. But he she
it whatever could also cite sermons that had been given word for word in the
voice of the preachers that had given them. So yeah, she was.
She was a trickster for sure. Could they determine where the woices were coming
from? Was it like from just the air or for the walls, or
from other people in the room. I believe that it sounded like it was
just coming. I don't know if it's from the walls, so to speak,
or just the air. But there were people that tried to blame the
children and say that they were ventriloquists that could do the job of throwing the
voices. You know, it's always going to blame the kids, right,
yeah, Well I didn't realize the parallels between that and the infield haunting,
very simil kind of things going on. The famous voice there initially appeared to
becoming according to Morris Gross, the main investigators was coming from thin airs,
is coming out of the air literally or the building. And then so I
come out one of the children, which again they as you say, now,
people claimed there was mimicry of his ventualrism that they were just putting the
voices on and faking it. But I mean, I don't know myself.
I don't really have a beIN on the voices. I'll find them a bit
strange and they could well have been faked. But the physical act movement and
objects being moved, et cetera that happened in the end for the haunting,
I find it really fascinating. But that's a lot of parallels. There was,
I don't know the bell which case that well to go to you,
so I should look into it more. Yeah, well it's a it's a
good documentary. I haven't haven't watched it for a long time. This sounds
a little bit like you guys are familiar with Jeff the Talking Mongoose. Oh
god, Yes, that was another that was more of a poltergeist case as
well. Don't you think it's a very strange one. I must admit,
I think Harry Price kind of got something that something that wasn't what would it
appeared to it? I think I'm not convinced at all by it. But
and then some people do find it fascinating. Yeah. Tim Schwartz for the
pretty good book on that now, Heather, you were recently doing some work
for small town Monsters. Yes, yes, Is it something you can talk
about or is it under double secret probation? Well, we released some behind
the scenes photos which would kind of give away I think a little bit of
what we were doing. We were in We were in Land between the Lakes,
which is famous for its dog man activity, and some of the people
that we work with are very well known for their their investigation into the dog
man phenomena. So yeah, we were looking for dog man okay, so
to speak, or at least talking to the people that have dedicated parts of
their lives looking for dog man. And also bigfoot activity falls into that as
well as far as things that we were looking into. But yeah, we
were between the Lakes and it's a beautiful but eerie place. We did not
run into any dogmen, thankfully, I would never want to run into such
thing. So I did not feel like we were slighted at all in that.
Were you involved at all in the Brave Road Beast documentary. No,
I wasn't a part of STM yet. Okay. That's Lee Hample, Lee
Hample's Farm and Elkhorn right down near Bray Road. I've had I spoke at
the Beast Bray Road conference a couple of times, and Lee has everybody over
to his barn that wants to come over, and for two hours he shows
you these amazing photographs. And I know you've you've seen the documentary, so
you know what I'm talking about. But and Andy, I think we've talked
about this before. You see the dog man footprints in the snow. They
start in the middle of nowhere, split off in two as if he was
carrying his buddy on his back, and then let him down, and then
they both disappear. Five toed footprints. There's some kind of technology or something
flying around. You see things that look like drones and just some really bizarre
objects. He has thousands of photographs over the last ten years, and he
even has has all kinds of cameras set up where he once in a while
he'll get like a glimpse or part of one of these things. But what
he was doing is he has had several roadkilled deer near his property. He
would drag it on the property, leave it, aim a camera on it.
You can see the timestamp. The mist would show up after a while,
and then the mist is gone, and then the carcass is gone with
no drag marks and no footprints. This has happened about a dozen times,
so I'll be curious once this new production is done. I'm wondering if there'll
be any peril to some of these other spots, Like Lee Hample. I
don't expect you to answer that, Heather. I'm sure that's under double secret
probation. Yes, yes, that kind of thing is for sure very good.
Oh, your podcast The Lord, you know, what kind of things
do you do on that? What kind of people do you interview? And
your subject you talk about? So that the basic premise of that podcast is
to talk about people who make an effort to collect and preserve stories. So
I talked to storytellers and folkloris about the importance of keeping these stories alive,
retelling them, preserving them, just keeping them for the next generations to come.
So I recently spoke with Michael David Strayer, who's been doing a great
job of preserving stories. He just put out a Gray Barkine. Oh,
yes, he sent me a copy. Yes, yes, he's been doing
a great job in the White, the White Creatures of New York, just
preserving stories like that that kind of that kind of thing really gets my interests,
and so I talk to people who who have similar interests like that and
are putting in the work to keep things going for everybody else. Yeah,
that was a great publication. He put together Andy with some classic Gray Barker
stuff. And the title of the magazine is the same title that Barker used
for a poem he wrote. And it's going to be a little I'm going
to go just go ahead and say it. The title is UFO is a
Bucket of Shit, And I will not recite the poem. However, it
even heather, it even has the Vegetable Man story in it. And I
got to tell you a little story here. Back at nineteen seventy six,
I went to the Newfound Symposium in ann Arbor, Michigan, ten years after
the swamp Gass fiasco. Doctor j Ellen Heinek was there. He had become
one of the good guys and had started the Center for UFO Studies. But
Gray Barker was there, not speaking. Of course, they would never let
him speak. But here this guy just you know, he must have been
six and a half feet tall. His hair was kind of longish. I'd
only seen him with shorter hair in his photographs, really thick glasses, and
in his arm was his latest publication with a picture of vegetable man on the
cover. So that was very cool and I kind of cornered them and I
asked him a bunch of questions. I thought, this is going to be
my only chance to talk to Grey Parker, and so since then I've been
to the Gray Marker Archives a couple of times, which are right here in
West Virginia. So, yeah, that's very cool. And what are some
of the other guests you had on? Well, I've had Lesso dell On,
He's a great storyteller. I have had on various people from STM that
have been willing to talk, because, oddly enough, not everybody at STM
is willing to be interviewed. Despite what we do, not everybody likes to
be on camera. I interviewed Andrew Smith from the Flatwood Monster Museum. Oh
yeah, I just saw him the other day. Yeah. And beyond that,
my mind now is drawing a blank because you asked me. Oh,
that's quite right. Listen, I have almost every show when I'm on,
I'll have I'll get this great question for him to my mind, and then
just before I can ask it, it just kind of evaporates, and I
have to tell I have to admit, gee, I can't remember what I
was going to say. Yeah, I've had Well. Also, we had
the first season of The Lord you Know well over a year ago. We
had a handful of episodes, and then we took a break. We lost
our producer for podcasts, and so we took a break from all podcasts for
well over a year, and we just now started The Lord you Know back
up again. So I'm just getting back into the swing of things. Good
deal, And you know, I had another question. I think I just
forgot. Just take take a breath, take a break. Oh yes,
the uh now the what the what are the the the feminine macabre books that
you've contributed to? What I'm not I've not seen one? So what what
will I experience if I were to open one? Oh my goodness, you
haven't seen one? Well, well, well I saw it on Amazon.
I did look at the covers, so that yes, yeah, yeah.
So the idea behind a Feminine Macob was to create a journal that showcases female
voices from the paranormal and cryptid community. Even though it's more heavily paranormal than
Crypted is for right now. So that that was kind of the goal because
a lot of times in the mainstream media there's more male dominated conversations. So
the whole point was to get a journal out there that is all female or
female identifying authors. So that's what it is. You're going to find a
range of all kinds of weird stuff the the it's an open, open call.
And basically what Amanda Woomer, who is the person who curated the entire
thing, what she says is if it would make your family uncomfortable at Thanksgiving
in the weird, then that's what I want you to write about. So
you have tarot spreads, you have ghost stories, you have cryptid stories,
past life experiences, all just the whole gamut of things and dabbling in the
accult and so on, and it's just quite a quite a spread of things
in each journal. Are they partly fiction or is it all it is not
to be fiction. Yeah, no, it's supposed to be true true stories
or like with the Taro there's been examples of people just giving Tarot spreads to
try, but no, it is not fiction. It is nonfiction. A
non fiction journal so have you written about some of maybe your personal experiences and
these books. So in the first journal, the first Feminine macab what my
contribution is is about the letters that accompanyed cursed objects, specifically the rocks from
the Beltwitch Cave. So that was the first journal. The third one I
wrote about headless ghosts and specifically how to or how I found the like the
name of some of these people that were headless ghosts. There was one case
in particular where when you look through old newspaper archives, there's a headless ghost
that appears, but the community has somewhat of an eye idea of who that
ghost may be based on the time that the ghost appeared and a tragic accident
that had occurred just shortly before the ghost had started to appear. So the
whole point of what I was wanting to do was to give this person their
story back as a person and not just this headless specter. So I started
to do some genealogical research. I contacted some of the descendants of this person
that had passed away to find out more behind who they were, who the
family is, and that was what the story is in volume three. In
volume five, I wrote about goat Man because there hadn't been much cryptid content,
and goat Man keeps showing up in my life somehow. Even whenever I
was in classical studies, the god pan kept showing up in myth and of
course there's no way to get around him when you're in classical studies, but
just kept showing up in different things that I would research. And so from
going from one world to another, goat Man is here still. And now
we're getting ready to do a documentary on goat Man next year. So it
was just an acknowledgment of and I have come to not I'm trying to embrace
the term again, but I've come to dislike the term synchronicities because people use
it so much. But the synchronicities behind Goatman showing up in my life over
the past several years. What is there a particular area or region where these
most of these reports come from? Which reports for Goatman? Oh no,
he's all over the place. There's Maryland, of course, there's Texas,
there's Kentucky. You have the public Monster. But I've been talking with someone
recently who's had sightings for decades and as completely different part of Kentucky in Tennessee.
It seems to me that because it's one of those things that whenever we
start looking into something for STM, I will look at whatever I'm supposed to
look for, whether that's dog man stories or Bigfoot stories or UFO stories.
But then while I'm there, I kind of look in the periphery to see
one other monsters are in this area, and goat Man is one of those
that he's around a lot of places. You're almost guaranteed to find him.
I would say, just about anywhere if you look hard enough. There are
stories about goat Man. So and I wonder sometimes if that doesn't tie into
an the urban legend, part of like the Lover's Lane urban legend, the
boyfriend things like that that help keep that story alive. And goat Man has
kind of taken on that that place as a placeholder. But yeah, he's
all over the place. Do my station identification? You are listening to The
High Strangest Factor copyrighted on the Paranormal UK Radio Network. Today, Andy and
I are talking to Heather Moser, producer and researcher for the documentary film company
Small Town Monsters. And I know you must have given some thought to some
of these things, like where did they come from, why are they here?
How do they exist or manifest? Are there any authors or researchers that
you tend to gravitate toward that maybe have put some of this together or might
possibly have some of the answers to these things? Oh boy? So primarily
what I do for small town monsters is heavily looking well, one of the
main focuses is looking into witnesses themselves. And what I'm finding is not only
are there researchers out there that have, of course their own views, and
that runs the gamut from these you know, certain creatures are physical and there's
nothing supernatural about them, to their interdimensional creatures altogether, and then there's the
mix that's in between, which is kind of where I'm falling into things.
But what I've noticed is when you talk to witnesses, there is a whole
narrative that gets brought up anyway, regardless of what the researchers have said the
witnesses. When you start to look at patterns and what people have seen,
there are specific things that are kind of, I don't want to say undeniable,
because scientists could deny things all they wanted, or skeptists could deny things
all they wanted, but there are certain patterns that emerge that are kind of
hard to ignore across witnesses that have not known one another or we're not aware
of each other. And that's kind of where I that's where I tend to
put some of my thoughts behind, are what the witnesses themselves have said,
and then the researchers can kind of refine maybe why that's happening. But it
sounds a little bit like John Keel who he found that when he talked to
an experiencer whether they had seen a strange light in the sky or some kind
of a creature, if he asked enough questions, he found that all throughout
their life they have experienced strange phenomena, everything from poltergeist to strange phone calls
to you both seeing cryptids and UFOs at different times. Is that kind of
what you're talking about, where some of these people have had many experiences over
a period of time. That's definitely been something that I've seen. Now,
there are people I want to say, of course, working with small town
monsters, a lot of the people that I've talked to have been bigfoot experiencers.
So there have been a handful of people that have had a Bigfoot sighting
that have had nothing else odd in their life, or at least nothing that
they have acknowledged is odd. But then there are the people that absolutely have
noticed that, yes, there's there's odd things happening, more like supernatural things
that have happened in their lives. They've seen the odd lights, they've had
sometimes more like poltergeist activity happening in their homes since they were young, and
then bigfoot is just one of the odd things that they've like, It's not
a stretch. I guess I should say there are a few that it's just
bigfoot and nothing else, But a lot of the people that I end up
talking to more in depth, bigfoot is never where it's starts and ends.
There are definitely other things that occur in their life that are odd. And
I don't know why that is. If they're just more more open to these
things, if they're more sensitive, if there's just something about them that makes
it easier for this stuff to manifest around them, I do not know,
but yeah, it is very similar to that. I'm the kind of guy
where virtually nothing happens, so I don't know if there's my aura or maybe
they just don't like me. I don't know. Maybe you want it too
much? Do you want it to happen? Well, you know, I
did have one weird experience, and I won't belabor it, but I was
out in the T and T area one night and I drove back to my
motel across the river, and I opened the door of the motel and the
TV set turned on by itself and started flipping steadily through stations, and I
thought. The first thing I thought was, no, this doesn't happen to
me. This happens to other people. And then I decided to be very
scientific about it, and I wanted to make sure that would turn off if
I unplugged it, and it did, and I went to bed. So
there you go. There's my big paranormal experience. And actually the TVs and
that part of that uh motel acted up a few years later. I won't
I won't go into that, but UH, something I might. I may
have brought something back with me from the T and T area, but I've
always said that he's still there flipping channels. Fortunately, and he never came
home with me, so I don't know and I I even uh when when
I walked in the motel and that they did that. I looked at the
clock to try and check if I had any missing time and uh. I
At first I thought, oh, no, everything's fine, And then thinking
back, I think, gee, did I did I lose some time?
So I I did everything wrong. I didn't write anything down. I wasn't
uh. Uh. I may have had a dozen paranormal experiences and I just
wasn't aware of it. So well, but but but but this, but
this, that whole area. That's just fascinating to me that people have these
other experiences in these patterns. And again, the people that don't know each
other, they're not comparing notes. Uh. Do you think you'll ever write
about this in one of your books. I would love to write about this.
I would love to be Like I know that I'm an author as far
as that goes, I've written things that have been published, but as far
as having an actual book out there, that's one of my goals in life.
So I would love to write about this stuff. Someday. I tell
people my book will be done by the end of the decade. Which decade,
Well, you're the person, you're the first person to ask that,
So I'm not going to answer. Well, this kind of you know,
brings us to how did your your initial interest in all this developed? Were
you as a child or as a teenager. Did you have any kind of
strange experiences or you just somebody like me that's just fascinated and very curious about
all this stuff. So I've always been curious about this kind of thing.
I think when I was little, the show Unsolved Mysteries was on TV,
and that had my attention. Aside from terrifying me, it was a morbid
curiosity, and so that was something that caught my attention since I was young.
But then about I don't know, second grade, ish first or second
grade, my mom started to tell me stories about the farmhouse that she grew
up in and how it was supposedly haunted. She told me a story about
one Christmas, my grandmother had gifted them a Ouiji board, and my mom
thought it was great. My one aunt thought it was horrible and evil and
demanded that it be burned, which ultimately it was, But before it was
burned, they had had a session or two on it, and it revealed
that there was a spirit in the house. Named Elizabeth, and my mom
swore like she said that it was supposedly in my mom's room, and Mom
swore that when they went to sell that farmhouse many decades later, they found
in some of the records and Elizabeth Lighty that had owned the home or been
one of the owners of the home. So I grew up with that story.
And when I was in third grade, Mom bought me my first Buigi
board. So this was something that we had been pretty open about and talked
about. Now, when I became an adult and learned how to research,
I looked into this house and found that there was an Elizabeth Lightdy who lived
there and had been on the records. She had been on the deeds,
So Mom was true, like that was a true recollection that Mom had about
that. But anyway, it was just something that's always been there. And
then my first time at a location that's famous for being haunted would have been
Mansfield Reformatory, which is the Ohio State Reformatory, or where Shashank Redemption was
filmed. Oh yeah, they I think I believe it was the first year
that they had turned it into a haunted house. During the month of October,
my brother took me. I was about sixteen at the time, and
my brother asked me if I would want to go, and I've said yeah,
And that was the first time that I saw that building and instantly fell
in love with it. It's gorgeous piece of architecture. I was terrified.
They did a great job with the Haunted house. But that was the beginning
of this idea of oh, you could maybe go to these places that are
haunted and go in the buildings themselves. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So
it's just always been there, but you've never seen anything like a UFO or
a cryptid. I have not seen a UFO now. I haven't seen a
cryptid either. But Seth was over here filming what is It's on YouTube under
the Bigfoot Project. He was over here at the farm that I live on
right now filming the Bigfoot Project because of act that we were having here at
the house well, I don't want to say at the house itself, but
in the woods. This is like a three hundred acre farm. We were
having activity here that piqued Seth's interest. He came over and we had like
the very first episode of the Bigfoot Project on YouTube. You can watch it
and you get a glimpse of how intense the activity was at times. And
I know that while Seth and I were out at night, there were things
running around us. There were things throwing rocks at us. We heard the
whistles and the howls and so on. And the next day Seth saw a
bigfoot running on the property, but at this clear cut area between two sections
of woods. I was not with him at the time, unfortunately, but
he saw one running and will tell you that story himself. But I never
saw anything, but I've heard them. I felt them around like there was
something. I didn't see it, So I don't know if it was a
bigfoot, but I don't know what else it would have been. It was
still enough to make me uncomfortable at times. So that's that's my cryptid story.
Very cool. Well, you know, I brave television sets to turn
on by themselves and go through channels, so I've been very well tested.
Linda Siegmundt has just published a book called In the Pale Moonlight. She was
a head on my show recently. She saw essentially the Mothman in April of
sixty seven, when she was about sixteen, about twelve miles north of point
pleasant with her boyfriend, and they also saw a strange light orb or whatever.
They had missing time. The whole thing. Well, now she lives
in the Parkersburg area, in a in a rural area, and they have
much the same kind of activity. It's just you know, they're they're hearing
things walking around, throwing rocks and so forth, even pounding on the side
of the house sometimes, but they don't just don't show themselves. I remember
Ron Morehead, who of course captured the Serra sounds out in the Cinera Nevadas.
There was a time when they were in their little uh whatever you want
to call it, lean to or bungalow that they created, and there was
all kinds of racket going on out there, like things being thrown and everything,
and they thought it was just going to be absolute chaos with with the
branches and rocks all over the place, and the next morning nothing was out
of place. It's almost like it was a just just noise, you know,
it's something, And that's kind of what happened to Linda too. Uh,
But you guys had actually had rocks thrown at you. Yeah, we
had a rock thrown at us that hit the ground near us enough that we
could feel it, and so I don't know, I didn't see what rock
it was because it bounced, but yeah, we felt it hit the ground
near us. It wasn't that night, but a few weeks later he had
Mark Matski out and a rock flew by Mark's head while they were sitting around
the campfire, which I would like to think was just, you know,
just a warning, like a hello, because I would think that if they
wanted to hit him, they would have, but you know, just a
warning like hey, we're here. But yeah, it was the times that
we had any interaction, it was almost like it wasn't like we saw a
bunch of stuff disorganized the next day either, it was more so that they
were It was almost like a gang, like they were playing with us or
something. The night before it seemed like it was more entertaining for them than
it was for us. Have you ever seen anything some people call it the
uh, the shimmer or the quicksilver curtain. Uh. People in Bigfoot areas
have seen this sort of a haze or or whatever. Not a missed exactly.
Uh. Jan mccabee saw something like that near here property in or Lima,
Ohio, and she could actually took photographs and actually there was some like
hair coming out the side of this. But the there's a Native American tradition
in the valley of the Skukum by Sally Shepherd Wolford. They would call it
the shimmer. Tom Paul calls it the quicksilver curtain. Have you ever seen
any strange atmospheric phenomena like that? I have not seen that. I have
seen odd lights in the woods, so we have had like spoof lights around,
but I have see the shimmer. No. So and this is this
is happening on your property? Yeah, well it hasn't been in a while
because they I mean, I'm assuming this is why. But there was a
pipeline that recently came in within the last year and tore down decent swaths of
forest to clear for the pipeline, and a lot of activity had ceased around
them. But it also when we were filming, we noticed there was a
natural dip in activity anyway around hunting season when or gun season, I should
say, yeah, when gun season started up, the activity had dropped down
significantly. But then the next summer is when they had started looking digging for
the pipeline, and we really haven't had a lot of activity since then.
So how's it feel. It's almost like you've got a virtual laboratory there to
experiment to the paranormal. And so is that kind of cool or is it
creepy? It's cool? What had started the whole I mean, not started
the whole thing, but part of the beginning of even having steth out here
with various things that would happen on the property. One of them included when
we first moved here, because this had all occurred shortly after we moved here.
We first moved here, we have all of these woods, and it
came across like it just came into my mind that it would be cool to
hide things around the woods for my kids to find someday, like a treasure
hunt. So I had taken different rocks and crystals because I collect them,
I have since I was young, and hid them around the woods. And
one day it was this was after some odd things had happened. I went
to go check locations just to see if anything had been moved. It just
I didn't know why. I just thought, well, maybe something has been
disturbed. And one of the crystals that I had put out was gone,
but in its place was a deer vertebrae, and that was exciting. I
immediately picked it up and called Seth and Seth said, you didn't pick it
up, did you? You didn't touch it, and I said I did.
He's like, well, if there was anything on it now now that's
probably ruined. And I'm like, well, I don't care if they're gonna
do this, but you know, they'll bring me another one someday, maybe,
you know whatever. And no, there hasn't been another one. But
that crystal did come back about a month later in the same place. It
was just much dirtier. It was like covered in mud and put back.
But I don't know that that kind of stuff was fun to test. I
still put crystals out. I actually had put things out. It was a
few weeks ago. Now I haven't gone back into to check since then,
so I don't know. If maybe they're slowly moving in. The pipeline is
done and grass is starting to grow over the dirt that had been disturbed,
so maybe they'll slowly inch their way in. But gun seasons also going to
start in about two and a half three weeks, so if they're around,
I don't know how much they'll be around. Lee Hample has a I mean,
I forget how many acres he's got, but he does. He has
this all this stuff going on all the time. He's had missing time a
couple of times himself. It's funny to hear him tell the story because when
he first he retired, he's a mathematician and degrees in chemistry, and you
know, there's no nonsense guy that wouldn't He said that if he had read
Linda Godfrey's books, you know, earlier, he would have thrown him in
the trash because he just wouldn't buy it. But he was. He's he's
working out there. He's a hay farmer, and he some of his neighbors
said, hey, you know there's a there's a werewolf that lives in those
woods back there, and he's looking at him like, what are you crazy?
And then some of his other neighbors that had actually seen this thing credible
people started telling about it. And then he saw it one night and that
same night, it was later on he realized he was missing about an hour
in time. So this is it's one of these areas that fascinate me.
I don't know if I'd want to live there or not. I know the
the Bucks County guys, the Bucks County paranormal guys were out there and had
a night vigil and they've got a YouTube video and they saw a UFO streak
across the sky. They heard howls. You can hear the howels going back
and forth in this in this video, and I'm not an expert on howels,
but they were creepy. They were also seeing eyeshine about six feet off
the ground. Dominic, who is the sensitive I asked him, well,
what were you feeling out there? And he said, I felt like I
was underwater in a shark tank and I was holding the bait. So they
were really and also a myst was starting to form. And these mysts they
get captured on camera. Sometimes there's one where Lee Apple was surrounded by this
myst in broad daylight, but he didn't see it, but it was captured
on film and so it could have been natural atmospheric conditions. But they they
normally don't get spooked their team, but they decided it was time to leave,
so I and uh I don't know if I uh I would have left
as well. But again again you know, UH TV sets to turn on
are probably one of the scariest things you're ever going to encounter. So,
yes, how about now you were you were involved with the Mothman Legacy,
the Belwitch documentary and what else. So as far as the documentaries that I've
like actually been in, I have been in Mothman Legacy, the Mark of
the Bell Witch, UFOs on the Trail of UFO's Dark Sky. I think
that may be it of ones that I have been in. But as far
as ones that I've had a hand in assisting with research or just outright doing
the research that started with Momo and everything since then, as far as the
films go, which heavily heavily involved in Ruguru uh Skinwalker how Ruburu? That
one I actually got writing credit on as well. So a good deal.
Yeah, So can you kind of maybe just take us behind the scenes a
little bit what it's like to be involved in one of these projects when when
you're you know, you're you're actually there at the site and how those things,
I mean, there must be a lot of uh, sort of shooting
from the hip and and creativity. I mean, you can't plan everything out,
but can you just kind of give us a little bit of an idea
how that runs well. So, for example, on days that were like
when we're actually to the point, which a lot of a lot of steps
have to be taken to get to the place where we're actually there Filming's say
we've gotten to the point that we're filming, we have a schedule of witnesses
or interviews, or just a schedule that lays out like, Okay, from
eight to noon, we're going to shoot b roll and then at one pm
we're interviewing someone for an hour, and then at two pm we're interviewing someone.
And that schedule's fine and it helps it keeps us on track, but
every once in a while, like you said, it does have to be
fluid because you might have a back out. We've had instances where when we
were filming in New Mexico, the weather was not kind in the early stages
of filming, so we lost two interviews immediately just because they simply couldn't get
to us due to the weather. So then we have to rearrange the schedule
in hopes that we can get them back into the schedule and not lose them
entirely from the film. So it is a lot of needing to be flexible
depending on the you, it depends on how many people we have there.
When we were in LBL, we were fortunate enough that we had a pretty
large group with us, pretty like all of us unless yeah, like all
of us except our COO were there with us, so we had a lot
of hands on deck to help when things started to go sideways or if they
started to go sideways. But that also meant that there were a lot of
people that we had things going without interfering with one another, because like we
had Alexander Ptakov with us, and we had Eli Watson with us, and
that was helpful for certain things, but also they were doing their own filming
while we were there, so we had to make sure that our stuff didn't
overlap, or if it did overlap, that it wasn't interfering with each other.
Right, So, and then somewhere in there, you try to work
in at least one meal a day, so it's usually you wake up in
the morning and everybody's getting coffee and we might have donuts, or Stephan might
order some sort of breakfast for us that gets gets delivered to the house,
like McDonald's breakfast or something, and then it really is go, go,
go up until who knows what time in the evening usually because we have a
very short window to get these things filmed. With LBL, it was just
a little over forty eight hours to get everything filmed that we needed, and
so it was literally wake up, start filming, and we're filming all day
until until it's dark and even after dark, and then we get to eat.
I'm gonna have to prevail up on seth to hire a caterer. Yeah,
well that would be that would be tough because who knows where we are
around lunchtime? You know. That's why we always get snacks and we keep
maas with us and water, lots of water. Are there any any books
or authors that you recommend or you gravitate toward. I mean, I have
a whole list of favorites, but so my one of my favorites to go
to is Ruth and music that goes into the folklore folk tales type thing.
But really what I do is I look at any authors right now because of
the documentary aspect of things, I try to find modern authors in whatever area
that we are researching, so that because if you can talk to the author,
that's even better than just citing them. Right. So when we were
example, when we were in Texas, it seemed amiss to not talk directly
to Lyle Blackburn if we could get him, or Ken Gearhart or Nick Redfern,
because they're all there, right, So those are my authors for that.
They're the ones that I would cite more because when you look at their
work, then you can formulate the questions that will help frame the story altogether.
So a a lot of my research it is dictated by what we're doing
and where we're going, because I try to get regional authors involved as much
as possible. This has got to be a fun job. It is.
It is a lot of fun. It can be very stressful at times.
I'm always extremely stressed the week leading up to a shoot, especially because I'm
trying to make sure that all the pieces are falling in line for this schedule
that we put out there, and then once we're there on the shoot,
it's like switch flips where Okay, this has to get down and it's going
to get done no matter what, and it's just I have to figure out
how this works. So if somebody backs out, like we did have somebody
back out on us at LBL, you know, it is what it is.
We have to make it, okay, we have to make it work.
There's nothing we can do about it if somebody backs out. So how
are we going to fix this? And I don't have time to panic while
on a shoot. I panic before a shoot, and then I'm focused while
on a shoot, and then as soon as we get home, then I
sleep for a couple of days. Very good, Andy, Any any other
questions you want to pursue? Really, you know, it's the part fact
is what I'm listening to. Bowens carry on. Well, Heather, uh
is there anything else you would like to say before we get a part.
I do not have anything that I can think of. Now, you don't
have any any gems of wisdom to carry us off into the night. Gem's
a wisdom? Now, No, I don't, No, I got nothing
for you. Okay. Well, honestly, it's been a real pleasure having
you on the show. I've had a great time. Thanks for having me
and Andy. It's nice to be back at it. And uh uh back
on the again. Well, I've watched enough British murder mysteries now that I
think I've recovered, and uh uh, you know, we'll try and get
back on a regular schedule. Yeah. Absolutely, well again, Heather,
thanks so much and uh Andy. Occasionally Heather and I get to cross paths
at various venues, so I'm looking forward to seeing you again in the near
future. Yes, yes, absolutely all right, I will do my clothes
out. Oh, by the way, before we go, what uh how
can people contact you? What are your uh? Your contact information? So
if you would like to email me, you can email me Heather at small
Town Monsters dot com. If you want to follow me on social media,
I am on Facebook, but I am on Instagram more. My handle on
Instagram is at Pagan Historian, so follow me on there. Very good.
The High Strangeness Factor was created by Steve Hord and Andy Mercer and is copyrighted
on the Paranormal UK Radio Network. I want to thank our fearless leaders,
Irene Alan Block, Mark Johnson and Andy Mercer here at the network again,
Andy, who are producing the show and composing the closing theme, and Brian
Zeller for the opening theme. Graphic artist Mark randlin I co wrote Mothman Highest
Strangeness. It covers the year of the Garuda the Mothman between sixty six and
sixty seven in Point Pleasant and the Ohio Valley It with all the bizarre high
strangeness, the Mothman, the men in black, inured cold, and so
forth. Mark Randall is a great, great artist, and he and I
wrote the pieces for the book. I can also be heard weekly on Macloney's
Military X Files as a correspondent on this same network and many more platforms.
And I am Steve Lord, your humble host here on the High Strangeness Factor
a displaced Michigan or deep in the Ohio Valley in West by God, Virginia.
Thank you all for listening, and I will see you all again in
a fortnight. Take care,