Speaker 1: You're listening to Everything Out There with your host, Steve Stockton.
Speaker 2: Hello, friends. And hello again, everybody. Steve Stockton here with you.
Speaker 2: Everything Out There. Joining me tonight on the phone, my friend,
Speaker 2: Eric Freeman Sims. You might know him from the Unseen
Speaker 2: Paranormal podcast. or from one of his new YouTube channels,
Speaker 2: strange chapters. And he told me what the other one was,
Speaker 2: and I've already forgot about it, but we'll bring him
Speaker 2: on here and let him tell us what's going on,
Speaker 2: what he's up to. Eric, come on in. Thanks for
Speaker 2: being here tonight.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: And then what was that third channel that you mentioned
Speaker 2: or the new channel that you mentioned?
Speaker 1: So we're, I'm starting a new channel with my buddy,
Speaker 1: Austin Lawrence. Um, we're doing a new channel called strangely haunted,
Speaker 1: and we're going to do investigations, but in a way
Speaker 1: that people have never seen them before. So it's going
Speaker 1: to be without the drama. It's going to be real investigating,
Speaker 1: no faking, no drama, um, a lot of history thrown
Speaker 1: in there as well. Um, so we promise it'll be
Speaker 1: entertaining without all the drama. Uh, we're not going to
Speaker 1: have all the stupid gadgets and all that stuff. We'll
Speaker 1: have interesting experiments that we're going to do like scientifically
Speaker 1: and stuff, but, um, not the flashy lights necessarily that
Speaker 1: you see on TV that they just use to keep
Speaker 1: your attention. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And that's good. I mean, I'd, I'd rather see the
Speaker 2: real deal than something that's, uh, infotainment, if you will,
Speaker 2: it's been embellished or more or less kind of made up.
Speaker 2: And I, you know, I'm not going to call out
Speaker 2: anybody in particular, but there's some shows that do that, that,
Speaker 2: you know, as I've been on some hunts myself where
Speaker 2: absolutely nothing happened and nobody's going to sit there and
Speaker 2: watch that for an hour. So I get it. It
Speaker 2: makes for good TV, but I'd rather see the real deal.
Speaker 2: So it sounds like you're definitely on the right track there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I don't want to take any way, anything
Speaker 1: away from any of the YouTube channels either. But my
Speaker 1: only thing is just be honest. If you're going to
Speaker 1: be more entertainment than you are like the real deal,
Speaker 1: then just be honest about that and don't come out
Speaker 1: and try to defend yourself and say, we're real paranormal
Speaker 1: investigators when you're not, you know, that's just my big thing.
Speaker 1: Just be transparent about it. But yeah, we're going to
Speaker 1: try to do it in a way that, like I said,
Speaker 1: is entertaining, but yet it's like fishing, you know? So,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll take the opportunity to educate people on
Speaker 1: equipment and things that we're doing and things like that. And,
Speaker 1: kind of from a history education standpoint with the paranormal
Speaker 1: throne in there a bit.
Speaker 2: Well, that's cool. And I, uh, last episode I had
Speaker 2: a Cisco Murdoch on, I'm thinking, you know who she is.
Speaker 1: Uh, yeah.
Speaker 2: I love her show before. Haven't you? I believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I actually go to hang out with her
Speaker 1: in Gettysburg last summer.
Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, that's right. I forgot all about that. She
Speaker 2: keeps trying to get me up there to Gettysburg and, uh,
Speaker 2: in a video I've got coming up, I'm talking about
Speaker 2: a ghostly figure that they see there in Gettysburg, the
Speaker 2: ghostly Sentinel that stands watch there. On Cemetery Ridge. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that's one of her big things. She goes every year
Speaker 2: or has for the last several. And one day we'll
Speaker 2: make it up there. But I'm closer now than I
Speaker 2: used to be now. I was in New Mexico. Now
Speaker 2: I'm in New England. But a lot of stuff in
Speaker 2: this area. But yeah, I got to get down to Gettysburg.
Speaker 2: That whole area just. But anyway, she was talking about
Speaker 2: she calls herself a paranormalist. Now, I'd never heard that word.
Speaker 2: I thought she coined it. But she attributes Harry Price,
Speaker 2: a guy from England that was a paranormalist. That's what
Speaker 2: he called himself that investigated all this stuff years and
Speaker 2: years and years ago. And she kind of detailed, you know,
Speaker 2: how you go about that and what that means to
Speaker 2: be that sort of person. But without knowing her definition
Speaker 2: of it, do you consider yourself a paranormalist or are
Speaker 2: you just a paranormal investigator?
Speaker 1: I would say I'm a paranormalist because I love diving
Speaker 1: into the research and the history and the whole all
Speaker 1: of it surrounding the paranormal. So not just the investigation part,
Speaker 1: but also the history of trying to understand why a
Speaker 1: place is haunted, what type of haunting is there, and
Speaker 1: going down the rabbit holes of actually doing the research.
Speaker 1: And to me, I think that's what a paranormalist is,
Speaker 1: is encompassing all aspects of the paranormal and being open-minded
Speaker 1: enough to at least investigate whether you believe in some
Speaker 1: of the parts of it. I don't believe in all
Speaker 1: of it, but I'm open-minded enough to want to go
Speaker 1: experience it and have people educate me or do the
Speaker 1: research to find out, well, why do people believe in this?
Speaker 1: You know, certain aspects. I'm not big on like the occult,
Speaker 1: but I try to go and educate myself to know
Speaker 1: that part of the paranormal. So yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: about diving into the, the entire package of the paranormal
Speaker 1: instead of just going and investigating.
Speaker 2: And your take on that almost a hundred percent concurs
Speaker 2: with what she was saying that you got to do
Speaker 2: the research you dig in, not what, what, going on there,
Speaker 2: but why what's going on is going on there. And
Speaker 2: she's a side of people like Amy Allen that will
Speaker 2: go into a place and do, I think her husband
Speaker 2: does the research and the history on the thing before
Speaker 2: she even goes in. So I do think that's important
Speaker 2: to help understand why there is activity, if there is
Speaker 2: indeed activity in these places.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think there are some investigators out there
Speaker 1: that don't want to know because they feel like they're
Speaker 1: biased if they know the story is going in. But
Speaker 1: my motto, and I don't remember who said this, but
Speaker 1: somebody smarter than me said this, that we don't go
Speaker 1: investigating to investigate a haunting. We go into investigate stories
Speaker 1: of a haunting, because if you go and investigate a haunting,
Speaker 1: you already have that preconceived notion that the place is haunted.
Speaker 1: And you, I mean, you know, people have different motives.
Speaker 1: People could be making things up. You never know. And
Speaker 1: so that's why we go into investigate stories of a haunting,
Speaker 1: because until I have an experience there or capture some
Speaker 1: sort of evidence, then I can't tell you places has
Speaker 1: any activity or not. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And that makes sense. If you don't know, the history
Speaker 2: or the backstory, then it could be anything.
Speaker 1: Right, right. And there are a lot of things out
Speaker 1: there that people just don't think about when they approach
Speaker 1: the paranormal and things happening because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: emotion wrapped around that because a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 1: it's maybe with family members and things like that have
Speaker 1: passed on. But, you know, you can have different things
Speaker 1: in your house that can cause things that you would
Speaker 1: think is a haunting when it's not. It could be,
Speaker 1: you know, plumbing or electrical issues or, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people get photo anomalies and they just don't,
Speaker 1: you know they want to jump to something's paranormal when
Speaker 1: it's not when it's it's completely explainable uh with uh
Speaker 1: lens flares and back scattering and uh back scattering is
Speaker 1: when you get like it looks like there's a thousand
Speaker 1: orbs in the picture right um photographers call that back
Speaker 1: scattering and it's just a reflection of either water vapor
Speaker 1: or dust or something you know some kind of particles
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere but um but understanding all of that
Speaker 1: and having i think it's healthy to have A skeptical
Speaker 1: mind going in as well so that you can separate
Speaker 1: what is really paranormal and what is not. And I
Speaker 1: would never discredit anybody's experiences because I wasn't there. And
Speaker 1: so I can't tell you you didn't have this experience.
Speaker 1: I can tell you, well, maybe it was this. Let's
Speaker 1: look at it from a scientific standpoint. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: you did have an experience with grandma. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But maybe it wasn't, you know, at the same time.
Speaker 1: So I also call myself a skeptical believer sometimes. going
Speaker 1: in because like I said, we're going to, you have
Speaker 1: to have some sort of skeptical mind to separate. So
Speaker 1: you don't bias yourself into thinking that everything is paranormal. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I agree on that. And like in my book,
Speaker 2: strange things in the woods, there's some things that they
Speaker 2: are strange, but they're not paranormal. They were explained, but
Speaker 2: everything is not something paranormal necessarily, but then a lot
Speaker 2: of things are, and what you were saying there about
Speaker 2: people trying to tell you what you didn't experience. That's
Speaker 2: always bothered me. I was there. I know what I saw.
Speaker 2: I know what I felt. I know what I heard.
Speaker 2: I know what I smelled. And I've likened it to
Speaker 2: putting your hand on a hot stove and burning yourself.
Speaker 2: And then somebody saying, nah, you didn't get burnt. That's
Speaker 2: not hot.
Speaker 1: Right. Okay.
Speaker 2: Tell that to the blisters on my fingers.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. And I get some kind of pushback from
Speaker 1: people sometimes because I am, I do have a skeptical
Speaker 1: mind also, but also when people understand I'm an empath,
Speaker 1: I've been haunted my whole life. I've had experiences my
Speaker 1: whole life. You know, so but also I'm very analytical minded.
Speaker 1: So I have to go into an investigation. I think
Speaker 1: that that's to me, that's what an investigation is, for one,
Speaker 1: because I want the any kind of evidence that I
Speaker 1: capture to be held up to scrutiny. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying? So if I'm going to take a picture
Speaker 1: or video or an audio clip and put it out
Speaker 1: there for people to listen to. And I'm saying, you know,
Speaker 1: this is not normal. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you for sure. It's a spirit, but
Speaker 1: it's definitely paranormal. You know, this voice wasn't there on
Speaker 1: the audio. You know, we got this answer. Then I
Speaker 1: want when people have questions, then I want to say, well,
Speaker 1: we try to debunk it this way. We try to
Speaker 1: explain it this way and we can find the explanation
Speaker 1: for it. And I think that helps the evidence hold
Speaker 1: up a lot more than just throwing it out there
Speaker 1: without doing any kind of critical thinking on what else
Speaker 1: it could be, especially when it comes to photographs and
Speaker 1: video nowadays, because it's so easy to fake that stuff
Speaker 1: with editing programs. And I'm very well versed.
Speaker 2: In editing stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. With the AI as well. I've seen so many
Speaker 1: pictures here lately of AI Bigfoot. that people were trying
Speaker 1: to pass off as, as being real. And luckily people
Speaker 1: were still, you know, looking at it and saying, that's
Speaker 1: just a, come on, you know?
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I remember years and years ago when CGI
Speaker 2: was really getting into the hands of the consumer, a
Speaker 2: lot of people were using that to try to fake evidence.
Speaker 2: It was obvious to me even then, but there were
Speaker 2: people that fell for it. And I think there's always
Speaker 2: going to be people that want to believe so bad
Speaker 2: that there is a certain amount of gullibility in there.
Speaker 2: That's just, As somebody once said, I can't remember who
Speaker 2: it was, but we want to believe in supernatural things
Speaker 2: because we want to believe there's something bigger out there
Speaker 2: in the universe than we are. And I agree with that.
Speaker 2: And I do like the scientific method for looking at things,
Speaker 2: although a lot of these things don't fit in to
Speaker 2: the realm of the scientific. Now, it's a quote from
Speaker 2: a fictional character, Sherlock Holmes. But he said, how often
Speaker 2: have I said to you that when you have eliminated
Speaker 2: the impossible, whatever remains? however improbable, must be the truth.
Speaker 2: And that's Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writing as Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 2: But still, I think there's a nugget of truth in
Speaker 2: there that if you use the scientific method and you
Speaker 2: can explain it away, then it must be supernatural. My
Speaker 2: father was a scientist out at Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
Speaker 2: and he would talk about things that they had under
Speaker 2: controlled laboratory conditions that happened that weren't supposed to happen,
Speaker 2: that they couldn't get to happen again, totally anomalous occurrences
Speaker 2: under controlled conditions like that. And his take on it
Speaker 2: was there's just some things that science can't explain. So
Speaker 2: I think that's true with anything in any type of
Speaker 2: a study and especially in the paranormal and supernatural.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I agree totally. Um, and with being an
Speaker 1: empath my whole life, I can't explain that. I can
Speaker 1: just tell you what I experienced, you know, with dealing
Speaker 1: with other people's energy and things like that and feeling
Speaker 1: that there's no way I can quantify that. And there's
Speaker 1: no way to explain it away sometimes, you know, as,
Speaker 1: as being something that's just normal. Cause it's not, it's
Speaker 1: not normal to go around taking on other people's emotions sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, and being like, no, that's not my end.
Speaker 2: And have been since childhood. Yeah. I walk into a
Speaker 2: room and if there's people fighting or arguing in there,
Speaker 2: I pick up on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's the good and the bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But again, it's not something that we choose. I think
Speaker 2: it chooses us if, if there is a choice in
Speaker 2: there anywhere. But, uh, I started experiencing things from a
Speaker 2: very young age, like three or four years old. And
Speaker 2: I'm betting you did too. A lot of people that,
Speaker 2: that three to four, that seems to be the age
Speaker 2: that the paranormal and supernatural things like that, uh, being
Speaker 2: an empath or whatever. I think it starts revealing itself
Speaker 2: to you when your mind is still forming in the
Speaker 2: very early years there so that you get kind of
Speaker 2: used to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I was very lucky to grow up in
Speaker 1: a family that my mom, my grandmother who raised me,
Speaker 1: I call her my mom, was very much an empath herself.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't taught out of it. If anything, it
Speaker 1: was just kind of it wasn't necessarily talked about either.
Speaker 1: Because I think part of my family that has the
Speaker 1: same abilities, I think it scares them. So they don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about it. My mom, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: would talk about it. But the rest of my family
Speaker 1: are just like, you know, that thing that we do.
Speaker 1: They kind of brush it off like that. But I'm
Speaker 1: the only one that's like outright like putting a label
Speaker 1: on it or trying to figure out. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I call myself an empath. I don't know. There's many
Speaker 1: different abilities there that I've. had over the years but
Speaker 1: yeah as long as i can remember and i had
Speaker 1: this insane connection with my mom telepathically that i would
Speaker 1: come home from school excited about something and she would
Speaker 1: already know what it was without being able to know
Speaker 1: what it was you know and that was long before
Speaker 1: cell phones and stuff so the school hasn't called her
Speaker 1: i haven't called her you know to tell her what
Speaker 1: i was excited about or whatever a play or you
Speaker 1: know whatever i was doing at school and so me
Speaker 1: and her just always had that connection and now it's
Speaker 1: crazy uh me and my husband together almost 19 years
Speaker 1: and me and him have that connection where we, um,
Speaker 1: finish these other sentences, but not just because we know
Speaker 1: each other, we'll be riding down the road, not talk
Speaker 1: for 20 minutes. And then I will say something just
Speaker 1: out of the blue. That's just a random topic or
Speaker 1: he will. And he's in me and we're both looking
Speaker 1: at each other. Like I was just thinking the same thing,
Speaker 1: you know, and it'd just be something completely random that
Speaker 1: we ain't talked about in a month. I never talked about.
Speaker 2: My wife and I do that all the time. We've
Speaker 2: got that soul connection like that, that, Something, like you said,
Speaker 2: just seemingly out of the blue, random will pop into
Speaker 2: my head and I'll say something about it. She's like,
Speaker 2: I was just thinking about that. And I do the
Speaker 2: same thing. So it goes both ways. And that's just
Speaker 2: amazing to have that kind of connection with someone. And
Speaker 2: then you talked about that connection you had with your
Speaker 2: grandmother that you call your mom. My grandmother, my maternal grandmother,
Speaker 2: she and I shared that, but it only seemed to
Speaker 2: work one direction. She would know what I was doing
Speaker 2: or thinking, but I didn't have a clue in June.
Speaker 2: what she had in her bonnet. But she probably realized
Speaker 2: that I could do that and locked it off of me.
Speaker 2: But there's a story that I've told many times where
Speaker 2: there was a spot on the highway on the way
Speaker 2: to her house, an old farmhouse there, kind of set
Speaker 2: up on a little hill. And years prior, before I
Speaker 2: was ever born, some kids were playing ball out there.
Speaker 2: And one of them chased the ball out into the
Speaker 2: road and was struck and killed by an automobile. And, uh,
Speaker 2: I would feel that spot. Like when we went by there,
Speaker 2: you know, I get those goosebumps, those kind of tingly feeling. And, um,
Speaker 2: one night we were on the way to her house.
Speaker 2: I was laying in the back seat, reading a comic book.
Speaker 2: This was years before seatbelts. And I felt that little
Speaker 2: weird tingle. And I just raised up enough that I
Speaker 2: could see out the window. Sure enough, we're passing by
Speaker 2: that old white farmhouse. I didn't say a word to anybody.
Speaker 2: Never had, even though I'd felt that every time I
Speaker 2: drove by there, rode by there. But, um, Went back
Speaker 2: to my comic book. We got there. We're going in.
Speaker 2: My mom and dad, I think we're carrying groceries in
Speaker 2: or something. They're getting ready for some kind of holiday meal.
Speaker 2: And they were helping her get stuff together. And she
Speaker 2: took me off into her quilting room, which she lived
Speaker 2: in this big old Victorian farmhouse. And the quilting room
Speaker 2: had once been a formal dining room, but they ate
Speaker 2: at a table in the kitchen. And she turned that.
Speaker 2: big dining room into her quilting room. And in the wintertime,
Speaker 2: she'd sit in there and piece quilts together. And that,
Speaker 2: that was her bottom. You weren't allowed in the quilting room,
Speaker 2: but unless she took you in there and she would
Speaker 2: take me in there. As far as I know, I
Speaker 2: was the only grandchild that got to go into that
Speaker 2: inner sanctum, but she took me in there, which, which
Speaker 2: she would do often and, uh, tell me some bit
Speaker 2: of folklore or superstition or how to, uh, change bad
Speaker 2: luck or how to draw good luck. She told fortunes
Speaker 2: and red coffee grounds and tea leaves and health seances
Speaker 2: and stuff. But that particular night, she was saying something about,
Speaker 2: and I was scared of her when I was a
Speaker 2: small child. She looked like a Hansel and Gretel style witch.
Speaker 2: She kind of humped over and had arthritis in her hands.
Speaker 2: So she could be quite frightening. She took me back
Speaker 2: there and she was saying something about feelings. And she said,
Speaker 2: you feel things. And I said, well, yeah, I've got
Speaker 2: feelings that you can hurt or if you pinch me,
Speaker 2: I'll feel it. She said, no. I'm talking about you
Speaker 2: feel things like that spot on the highway on the
Speaker 2: way here. And my jaw hit the floor area. I'd
Speaker 2: never said anything about that to anybody. And we were
Speaker 2: miles away from where she lived. But she knew that
Speaker 2: I had experienced something on the way there. Now, according
Speaker 2: to her, she was present at my birth. My mom
Speaker 2: was knocked out. That was back when they still gave
Speaker 2: ladies a twilight sleep when they were in delivery. My
Speaker 2: grams was present at my birth. And she said that
Speaker 2: I was born with a veil over my face or
Speaker 2: in call, the call, the afterbirth was stretched over my
Speaker 2: head and it had to be cut away. And she
Speaker 2: kept it. I don't know what she did with it.
Speaker 2: I hope she didn't make soup or something out of it.
Speaker 2: But according to her, that marked me as a special
Speaker 2: child with abilities. And I still, you know, like you said,
Speaker 2: I don't know that I've got any specific abilities or anything,
Speaker 2: but I do know about things sometimes in advance and
Speaker 2: I do have empathy that the whole empath thing. But
Speaker 2: according to her, that marked me as a special child.
Speaker 2: And she took me under her wing to teach me
Speaker 2: all this out of all the grandkids. And there was
Speaker 2: a bunch. She had 10 kids, nine boys and my mother.
Speaker 2: I couldn't get away with anything. My mom knew all
Speaker 2: the boy tricks, having nine brothers. I was the only
Speaker 2: grandchild that had that condition. So again, she wanted to
Speaker 2: teach me all this stuff. Then the rest of my
Speaker 2: cousins and things didn't have any interest in it anyway.
Speaker 2: So kind of her legacy, but it's, it's, it's frightening,
Speaker 2: especially when you're a little kid and you can feel
Speaker 2: things and know things and then think that your grandma
Speaker 2: can read your mind. I'm like, you know, I gotta
Speaker 2: be careful what I think because granny might hear that.
Speaker 1: Right. Right. Yeah. When I was, uh, I kind of
Speaker 1: felt that way, especially as a teenager, um, which I,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've never been arrested. I've never been in trouble.
Speaker 1: I was not a, never been a troublemaker, uh, at all. Uh,
Speaker 1: not even in school. Like I got good grades and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. But, uh, but even if I went
Speaker 1: and did something wrong, like I felt guilty, because I
Speaker 1: was afraid that my mom would just know, you know,
Speaker 1: because we have that connection. So, yeah, I understand what
Speaker 1: you're saying there, but it, you know, the same.
Speaker 2: I was always, you know, I was the good kid.
Speaker 2: I've never been arrested, never even been suspected of anything.
Speaker 2: I was kind of sneaky about my mischief.
Speaker 1: I was too. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But the same, you know, even as a teenager, I'd
Speaker 2: be like, you know, I'd, I'd have that playboy magazine
Speaker 2: under the bed. You know, does my grandma know that's
Speaker 2: in there? I better go put that in the trash. Right. And, um,
Speaker 2: I mean, she never said anything about anything like that,
Speaker 2: but it, It was kind of a Jiminy Cricket almost,
Speaker 2: you know, that little conscience that sat on your shoulder.
Speaker 2: Maybe you shouldn't be looking at that, you know, that
Speaker 2: sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Bless her for that, though, because I think that kept
Speaker 2: me out of a lot of trouble that I could
Speaker 2: have gotten into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was kind of sneaky. I mean, I've done
Speaker 1: some things I probably should have went to jail for,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't anything crazy. You know, when you're a teenager,
Speaker 1: you do stupid stuff like vandalize places and things like that.
Speaker 1: But my biggest thing was sneaking into places and trespassing
Speaker 1: to ghost hunts. That's probably my biggest thing when I
Speaker 1: was a teenager that I probably could have went to
Speaker 1: jail for. But and that's how I got my start
Speaker 1: investigating when I was a teenager.
Speaker 2: I was the same way, an old house, an old barn,
Speaker 2: a mill, something that was abandoned. And just, you know,
Speaker 2: those places are full of stories and probably full of ghosts.
Speaker 2: And I've done the same thing. In fact, one of
Speaker 2: my encounters that I wrote about in my strange world.
Speaker 2: I'd gone back to my elementary school, a friend and
Speaker 2: I did, and we broke in. It was still a
Speaker 2: functioning school at the time. It's not now. We found
Speaker 2: a window that was unlocked and went in and then
Speaker 2: had some sort of paranormal experience there with a sounded
Speaker 2: like high heels crossing the gym floor, but we could
Speaker 2: see there wasn't anybody in there, but yeah there was
Speaker 2: a teacher that uh she didn't die in the school
Speaker 2: but she had died i think in a car accident
Speaker 2: according to the playground legend and everybody said her ghost
Speaker 2: haunted that school but there was somebody in there walking
Speaker 2: around in high heels that wasn't visible so we we
Speaker 2: got the heck out of there but again yeah that's
Speaker 2: that was.
Speaker 1: My kind of mischief yeah yeah me as well and
Speaker 1: um The place we snuck into was an actual historic
Speaker 1: place that was open for tours. But we would go
Speaker 1: in there, you know, 2, 3 o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: There was nobody there. And we never went in the house.
Speaker 1: It was always locked up. We never even sat on
Speaker 1: the front porch. But we were on this big property.
Speaker 1: It's an old plantation house. We'd walk around the property
Speaker 1: and experience things. And I even saw what I think
Speaker 1: was the lady of the house pull the curtains back
Speaker 1: and poke her head in the window. You know, if
Speaker 1: it would have been a real person, they would have
Speaker 1: called the police on us because we were trespassing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: sneaking into places like that and even abandoned places, going
Speaker 1: to cemeteries in the middle of the night where you
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't have been, especially growing up in the Bible Belt.
Speaker 1: That's definitely frowned upon. Yeah, you took the words out
Speaker 1: of my mouth.
Speaker 2: That was frowned upon when I was a kid, but
Speaker 2: that was one of my favorite places to go. There
Speaker 2: was a cemetery up the road where people had seen
Speaker 2: and heard all kinds of things. There was an old
Speaker 2: building there that was abandoned at that time, but it
Speaker 2: had been everything from a school to a Masonic lodge
Speaker 2: to I don't know what all, and never did go in.
Speaker 2: But we would hear stuff in there. And one kid
Speaker 2: put an old reel-to-reel recorder in there, a portable one,
Speaker 2: and he got some noises and things like that. This
Speaker 2: is back, you know, early 70s. So it had had
Speaker 2: a reputation. But, yeah, there was a caretaker that lived
Speaker 2: down the hill, so we'd always park up the road
Speaker 2: and walk through the field to go in the back way.
Speaker 2: But if they caught you in there, the caretaker would
Speaker 2: at least run you off, if not call the Knox
Speaker 2: County Sheriff's Department to get you out of there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the other thing about my family is I grew
Speaker 1: up hearing ghost stories that they had happened to them.
Speaker 1: And my grandma, I was their 10th kid to raise.
Speaker 1: So they had nine kids. And they had lived in
Speaker 1: this house when they first moved to the Nashville area.
Speaker 1: My family's up from Indiana. And when they first moved
Speaker 1: down here, they lived in this haunted house. And it
Speaker 1: was an older lady spirit who would come and tuck
Speaker 1: them in at night. And they had so many kids that,
Speaker 1: you know, like three of the girls would sleep in
Speaker 1: the same bed together. And, um, I've heard plenty of
Speaker 1: stories of this older lady who would come sit at
Speaker 1: the edge of the bed and she would, uh, pull
Speaker 1: the covers up on them and tuck them in on
Speaker 1: like cold nights. And, uh, and many experiences like that.
Speaker 1: And then one of my aunts, uh, who's passed away
Speaker 1: a few years ago, she had to be some kind
Speaker 1: of like green witch without knowing it because the lady,
Speaker 1: she could take a dead plant and bring it back
Speaker 1: to life. And, uh, she would not wear shoes unless
Speaker 1: she absolutely had to. I don't care what time of
Speaker 1: year it was. She wanted to be in contact with
Speaker 1: the ground barefoot. And there could not be a cloud
Speaker 1: in the sky. It could be a blue sunny day.
Speaker 1: And if she told you it was going to rain,
Speaker 1: you better go roll your windows up. Um, because she
Speaker 1: was just that in tune with nature and those types
Speaker 1: of things. And just an amazing lady to pick her brain,
Speaker 1: but she just loved nature and had to be in
Speaker 1: contact with it all the time and always had all
Speaker 1: these house plants around and, you know, just a green,
Speaker 1: the greenest thumb I've ever seen. And so even though
Speaker 1: my family never wanted to label, you know, what the
Speaker 1: thing we can do, um, they never had any problems
Speaker 1: talking about it. And I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: get taught out of things like that because when their
Speaker 1: kids are just told, Oh, that's your imagination. Or, you know,
Speaker 1: if they have an imaginary friend that maybe not is
Speaker 1: so imaginary, they get told, Oh, that's just your imaginary friend,
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe because the parents don't believe in
Speaker 1: the paranormal or any of that, or they're maybe scared
Speaker 1: of it, you know, or they don't know how to
Speaker 1: explain it to their kids. So they just teach them
Speaker 1: out of it. But I think the empath stuff, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of that people, I think we're inherently
Speaker 1: born with that. Most people are. And like I said,
Speaker 1: they're just taught to ignore it and not listen to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe it's educated out of us to a degree.
Speaker 2: And then also a lot of our diet and the
Speaker 2: things we put in our bodies can have to do
Speaker 2: with that. Like, you know, there was a big push
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, fluoride. That was going to
Speaker 2: save everybody's teeth. So it was in the toothpaste, it
Speaker 2: was in the water. Well, they found out that it
Speaker 2: calcifies the pineal gland, which is the seat of the
Speaker 2: third eye. where a lot of those type powers, if
Speaker 2: you believe in that side of things, that's where it
Speaker 2: comes from. So if you've calcified that and it's coded over,
Speaker 2: then no, you're not going to experience things. So is
Speaker 2: that some kind of conspiracy to keep everybody dumb and
Speaker 2: sheep with their heads in the sand ostrich like? I'll
Speaker 2: get there in a minute. But I don't know. And yeah,
Speaker 2: it was nice having her side of the family because
Speaker 2: but they regularly held seances and they did a table
Speaker 2: tapping or table tipping.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: My granny considered herself, she called herself a gypsy witch,
Speaker 2: but I don't know where the gypsy part came in
Speaker 2: because she was born in the Cades Cove area, the Smokies.
Speaker 2: But I'm thinking somewhere back in there, there was some
Speaker 2: old country that they were from.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like I said, that it was just fun for them.
Speaker 2: That was their normal. They didn't think about it being
Speaker 2: weird or that, Other families didn't do it. You know,
Speaker 2: they grew up isolated out in a rural lot of farm.
Speaker 2: They had a dairy farm and they also a truck farm.
Speaker 2: They raised produce and tobacco and also some livestock, pigs
Speaker 2: and things like that. But, you know, they didn't, it
Speaker 2: wasn't something that you talked about at school or so much,
Speaker 2: but it was an open secret. And my dad talked
Speaker 2: about when he and my mom first got married in
Speaker 2: the forties, one of the first times, uh, He went
Speaker 2: to visit her folks. They were having a seance. And
Speaker 2: he sat in and watched that and then watched the
Speaker 2: table tipping. And he said that they sounded like a
Speaker 2: bunch of heathens, he said, hollering and going on. But
Speaker 2: he said, you know, I was already, I had my
Speaker 2: degrees and stuff from University of Tennessee. So he said,
Speaker 2: I'm looking around, I'm checking the angles. Nobody had the
Speaker 2: toe of their boot under the table leg or nobody
Speaker 2: had a ruler up their sleeve or any of the
Speaker 2: tricks that I've seen. like in magic books and things
Speaker 2: like table magic to create those illusions. He said there
Speaker 2: was nothing like that at all. And he talked about
Speaker 2: they would put stuff up on the table. One time
Speaker 2: they put a couple of the grandkids up there and
Speaker 2: they were still rise, table rise. And he said that
Speaker 2: old wooden farm table was doing everything. He said it
Speaker 2: was creaking and groaning and trying its best to raise
Speaker 2: up off the ground with all that added weight on there.
Speaker 2: But there's something to all that. And I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's a manifestation of some sort of, psychokinetic abilities
Speaker 2: or if it's truly something supernatural, just file that one
Speaker 2: in the, the, I don't know file.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, I was skeptical of table tipping and
Speaker 1: that type of stuff and I'd seen it done, but
Speaker 1: I'd never participated until last summer in Gettysburg. And of
Speaker 1: course you hang out with Cisco Murdoch, you're going to
Speaker 1: do spooky things, which is awesome. I'm not complaining.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And, and I got to take part in a table
Speaker 1: tipping with her and a few other people. And it
Speaker 1: was one of the most amazing paranormal experiences I ever had.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to explain, but you could just feel
Speaker 1: the energy and to have a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: were empathic. And there was even a medium sitting with us.
Speaker 1: And it was, it was incredible. One of the biggest
Speaker 1: things that just, for one, nobody's moving this table. Like
Speaker 1: you could just tell, I mean, you can look at people,
Speaker 1: the people's fingers on there. You can tell they're not
Speaker 1: pressing the table down and things like that. But also the,
Speaker 1: there was kind of some negative energy that came in
Speaker 1: that we all felt. And the lady that was the
Speaker 1: medium that was sitting there, she did something I've never
Speaker 1: seen before. And, but you could feel it. And she said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll take care of this energy. She swirled her hand
Speaker 1: around the table with her eyes closed. And then she
Speaker 1: pulled the energy off the table and you could just,
Speaker 1: I'm getting goosebumps talking about it. Actually, you could just
Speaker 1: feel that energy go.
Speaker 2: Give me goosebumps listening to it. I've never seen anything
Speaker 2: like that either, but that, yeah, Sounds incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And to just be also because with being
Speaker 1: an empath for so many years, I didn't talk to
Speaker 1: about any, I didn't talk about it to anybody. And
Speaker 1: so the past four or five years, especially with the podcast,
Speaker 1: I just become way more honest with it. This is
Speaker 1: who I am. You can think I'm weird, crazy, whatever,
Speaker 1: but this is who I am. And I have these
Speaker 1: experiences all the time. And so to be in a
Speaker 1: circle of people who were completely nonjudgmental and then asking
Speaker 1: me what I felt about, from the spirit and, and
Speaker 1: saying out loud and then having everybody agree, Oh, that's
Speaker 1: what we feel too, you know, was incredible. But to
Speaker 1: have that medium do that and to feel that, that
Speaker 1: negative energy pressure just go away when she did, that
Speaker 1: was incredible. And it was just incredible experience, the whole
Speaker 1: table tipping thing. And then there was another thing that
Speaker 1: we Cisco wanted to cleanse us all. And I believe in,
Speaker 1: in saging and things like that. And I have a
Speaker 1: native American ancestry and, And so we, um, we actually
Speaker 1: went and ate breakfast and Cisco doesn't waste anything. She'll
Speaker 1: take it and feed it to the birds and animals. Right.
Speaker 1: So she had these pancakes and stuff that she took. And, uh,
Speaker 1: I think to the detriment of her son, cause I
Speaker 1: think he wanted to eat the pancakes, but she took
Speaker 1: it from tone. But, uh, anyway, uh, she went out
Speaker 1: back in the parking lot of the hotel that we
Speaker 1: were at. And, uh, they have all these medians with
Speaker 1: these trees, with these maple trees and, This is in
Speaker 1: the middle of summer, and it's in July, and there's
Speaker 1: kind of a drought going on. And so some of
Speaker 1: the trees were looking brown and not so healthy. But
Speaker 1: she let the birds guide her to the strongest tree
Speaker 1: because she said that tree would take all the negative
Speaker 1: energy from us, and that tree would be strong enough. Well,
Speaker 1: what what we didn't notice until after we were done
Speaker 1: with the whole thing and they're about i think there
Speaker 1: are six or seven of us that were standing barefoot
Speaker 1: around this tree and getting cleansed by cisco and and
Speaker 1: when we got done we went back up to the
Speaker 1: hotel there's kind of a back patio area that's kind
Speaker 1: of raised off the ground about 20 feet and we're
Speaker 1: standing up there and my husband roger who's a landscaper
Speaker 1: pointed out to Cisco, he said, look out here and
Speaker 1: look at all these trees. What's different about the one
Speaker 1: that we went to? And it took her a minute
Speaker 1: and she said, it's the greenest one. And he said,
Speaker 1: you picked the healthiest tree in this parking lot. And
Speaker 1: she's like, oh no, it wasn't me. It was the birds.
Speaker 1: And the birds, when they took the food from her
Speaker 1: on the ground, they flew into this particular tree and
Speaker 1: it ended up being the greenest, healthiest tree during this drought.
Speaker 1: All the rest of them were kind of looking brown
Speaker 1: and you know, sad. And I thought that was an
Speaker 1: amazing experience as well.
Speaker 2: And animals have tuition, intuition and things about that. I mean,
Speaker 2: they have to, that's how they survive, but you've got,
Speaker 2: you know, homing pigeons, you've got a migrating fowl and
Speaker 2: things that follow the same migration path generation after generation.
Speaker 2: You've got bats that use sonar. And I think there's
Speaker 2: animals have a lot of intuition and some people, And
Speaker 2: you believe that animals can sense spirits and disturbances in
Speaker 2: the supernatural. What's your take on that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with
Speaker 1: their perception of the world is different than ours. Because
Speaker 1: animals are still in contact with nature and their instinctual side.
Speaker 1: To where I think us humans have gotten away from
Speaker 1: that a lot. And so for like a dog or
Speaker 1: a cat, you know, for the most part, they're listening
Speaker 1: to their instincts for things they do throughout their daily lives.
Speaker 1: They're not necessarily, yeah, we train them and they're domesticated.
Speaker 1: And I also think that they've proven that a lot
Speaker 1: of animals see in a different spectrum than we do.
Speaker 1: So if you believe that, you know, spirits can show
Speaker 1: up in an infrared spectrum or something like that, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of animals that can see in full spectrum.
Speaker 1: So UV, infrared, all that. So they may be seeing things.
Speaker 2: They can see in the dark. They're already ahead of me.
Speaker 2: So there you go. And that makes sense. And I
Speaker 2: believe a lot of these creatures, uh, and, and entities,
Speaker 2: if you will, uh, do either vibrate at a higher
Speaker 2: or lower frequency. And again, if you look at that
Speaker 2: light spectrum, there's just a little bit in the middle
Speaker 2: there that's visible to us. And then you've got everything
Speaker 2: on the other ends. And, uh, Who's to say? Maybe
Speaker 2: those create Bigfoot or cryptids and things like that. Maybe
Speaker 2: they know how to manipulate that, that that's part of
Speaker 2: their genetic makeup that they can cause themselves to vibrate
Speaker 2: at a higher or lower frequency and will. And that's
Speaker 2: sort of a natural cloaking thing. I'm open to anything
Speaker 2: at this point. I don't discount anything. I stopped looking
Speaker 2: for the answers a long, long time ago. Now I'm
Speaker 2: just looking for the next set of questions. There are
Speaker 2: no answers. And if we had the answers... my journey
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been half as interesting as it has been.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And talking about frequencies, I mean, if you look at
Speaker 1: it scientifically, everything's on a frequency. So, I mean, all
Speaker 1: your different, everything's a radio wave, you know, lights on
Speaker 1: a wave, everything is on a vibration frequency or wave.
Speaker 1: And even down to the atomic level, that makes up
Speaker 1: everything that you touch and everything that's physical is Those
Speaker 1: atoms are constantly moving and vibrating. You have electrons constantly
Speaker 1: moving and vibrating. And so everything's on a vibration and
Speaker 1: on a wave.
Speaker 2: The Schumann resonance, the very vibration of the earth is
Speaker 2: a certain frequency. And everything vibrates for every living thing anyway.
Speaker 2: And I think a lot of inanimate stuff does too,
Speaker 2: rocks and things. I mean, look at quartz, for example.
Speaker 2: You can take quartz and make a radio out of it.
Speaker 2: I did that when I was in Cub Scouts. We
Speaker 2: took a chunk of quartz and some copper wire and
Speaker 2: I think like an oatmeal box and some little earphone
Speaker 2: from back in the day. And, you know, you put
Speaker 2: it together, right? You can move that. I think it
Speaker 2: was a thumbtack over a razor blade or something. It
Speaker 2: was very rudimentary. But you could pick up radio signals
Speaker 2: using that quartz. And again, a lot of watches have
Speaker 2: a quartz movement in them. So there's something to all that.
Speaker 2: And then that gets into stone tape theory. as far
Speaker 2: as hauntings and things like that, the ones that seem
Speaker 2: to just repeat. I think it's like a tape loop.
Speaker 2: When you think about tape, like an audio tape or
Speaker 2: a video tape, that's just a piece of mylar with
Speaker 2: ions on there, with iron oxide, I think it is.
Speaker 2: It's some sort of ferrous oxide, which is iron, I believe.
Speaker 2: But again, what's to say that something in nature, under
Speaker 2: the right weather and other conditions, can't capture that? And
Speaker 2: then also under similar conditions, play it back in a
Speaker 2: way that we can see it or hear it or
Speaker 2: experience it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And like you're saying, that's just, it's just magnetically
Speaker 1: recorded onto that tape. And so, you know, when you
Speaker 1: put it in a VCR, it's just reading that different
Speaker 1: magnetic frequencies to make the sound and the, and the picture.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, I'm with you. Why couldn't that, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're surrounded by magnetic energy all the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: everywhere on earth, there's slightly different magnetic fields everywhere. And
Speaker 1: in radio waves and all that, that's all the same there.
Speaker 1: It's electromagnetic field. Radio waves are all the same. It's
Speaker 1: they're just different frequencies of the same wavelengths. And so, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I completely agree that it can be recorded in the environment.
Speaker 1: Like you were saying with quartz movements and watches and things.
Speaker 1: And we know that, that crystals like that can hold
Speaker 1: energy and release it. And so, yeah, if the conditions
Speaker 1: are just right and you've got a lot of quartz
Speaker 1: or any other kind of crystals in the, in the ground,
Speaker 1: or like running water, even as a thing with people
Speaker 1: think that, uh, the ionization of the running water under
Speaker 1: the ground, uh, because it also changes the magnetic field
Speaker 1: of that area with the running water that, uh, that
Speaker 1: is very conducive to stone tape theory as well. And
Speaker 1: then a lot of older houses are built on, uh,
Speaker 1: granite foundations and things like that, that have a lot
Speaker 1: of courts in them. And so, um, just with the,
Speaker 1: you know, that maybe the vibrations and the resonance through
Speaker 1: the wood of that house over the years, uh, you
Speaker 1: get that recording on those crystals and that energy records
Speaker 1: and then it just replays. So it might be something
Speaker 1: as simple as grandpa came in the back door every
Speaker 1: day after work and went up the stairs to change.
Speaker 1: And so he did that for 40 years, you know?
Speaker 1: So then when he's gone, maybe when the conditions are right,
Speaker 1: that sound replays or maybe even the image of him
Speaker 1: doing it replays, but it's not anything intelligent that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's going to do it whether you're there or not
Speaker 1: like a movie. Right.
Speaker 2: And I saw a study in some kind of paranormal magazine.
Speaker 2: I can't remember where it might have been 14 times.
Speaker 2: But it talked about the construction of the old railroad beds,
Speaker 2: the way that they used the crushed gravel, then the
Speaker 2: ties and the rails and everything. It had a breakdown
Speaker 2: of the layers, what goes in there. And this person
Speaker 2: was pontificating that that could be what produces the phantom
Speaker 2: trains that people see where they see the train or
Speaker 2: they hear the train when there is no train. Sometimes
Speaker 2: the rails are gone, but that rail bed is still
Speaker 2: there and crushed granite was a component of a lot
Speaker 2: of it. So there you go. Is that stone type, uh,
Speaker 2: type thing? I think it could be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Um, one of the things that you're talking about, um,
Speaker 1: building a radio, I saw this video not so long
Speaker 1: ago that they were showing how powerful AM radio antennas
Speaker 1: are and, um, why you should never like hop a
Speaker 1: fence into a radio antenna, uh, And the supports, the
Speaker 1: big metal steel cable supports that come down into the ground,
Speaker 1: they have to, when they get the technicians going there
Speaker 1: to work on something, they have to ground themselves to it.
Speaker 1: And all the guy did was he took and put
Speaker 1: the grounding cable that he was going to, it's like
Speaker 1: a clip that he was going to attach to it.
Speaker 1: And a spark of electricity jumped from that wire to
Speaker 1: that grounding cable. And when it did, you could hear
Speaker 1: the radio station through the air. Wow. How crazy is that?
Speaker 2: Well, that's where you hear about people that have had
Speaker 2: dental work done, particularly with fillings and things like that,
Speaker 2: where they can stand in a certain area of their house,
Speaker 2: turn their head a certain way and hear the radio
Speaker 2: in their teeth. I've heard of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And this was just from, and you could see
Speaker 1: a big spark of electricity jumping. And it was just
Speaker 1: from that vibration of that spark in the air, moving
Speaker 1: the air molecules that caused you to hear the radio
Speaker 1: voice clear. And so people, and you know, and I
Speaker 1: say that because people want to, well, how do ghosts,
Speaker 1: How do spirits make sound without vocal cords, right? They
Speaker 1: don't have a physical body. Well, it's just air movement.
Speaker 1: All our vocal cords do is change the air passing
Speaker 1: through and make a certain sound. It's just like whistling.
Speaker 2: And that's the way we hear. Yeah. The air passing
Speaker 2: over the eardrum makes those different frequencies and vibrations. So
Speaker 2: that makes a lot of sense. And then these days
Speaker 2: we're bombarded with so many radio frequencies, you know, with
Speaker 2: the advent of 5G and the cell towers and all that.
Speaker 2: I think it's a detrimental effect to some degree. Because
Speaker 2: I notice, and I try to say this delicately, but
Speaker 2: people aren't getting any smarter, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and there has to be some sort
Speaker 1: of effect, like you're saying, with all these. Because we're
Speaker 1: in Bombardier with so many radio waves. And people have
Speaker 1: to understand that radio waves, when they come out of
Speaker 1: those towers, like for a cell phone and stuff, they
Speaker 1: don't come out in like a linear straight line. They
Speaker 1: go out in 360 degree direction and your, your cell
Speaker 1: phone is a giant antenna that just happens to capture
Speaker 1: that signal. And it's the same thing with your car antenna,
Speaker 1: you know, radio station is putting out this huge bubble
Speaker 1: of 360 degree radio waves and.
Speaker 2: And an AM station, I think they're mandated by the FCC.
Speaker 2: They can broadcast at a maximum, I believe it's 50,000 watts.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of energy that's being just put out
Speaker 2: into the air. And those radio waves, the propagation of them,
Speaker 2: I've studied some of that where they bounce off the
Speaker 2: ionosphere and things. That's how even at night when those
Speaker 2: stations have to turn down. I could listen to WOR
Speaker 2: in New York when I was a kid in East Tennessee.
Speaker 2: It was a cloudy night.
Speaker 1: That's just amazing.
Speaker 2: And supposedly those signals just go on out into the unknown.
Speaker 2: And there's been cases where somehow they've bounced back. I
Speaker 2: remember reading, I think it was in a Frank Edwards
Speaker 2: book where a station that had been off the air
Speaker 2: for years and years in Texas, people were picking up
Speaker 2: the signals from that TV station, like in Kansas or
Speaker 2: somewhere like that, that didn't even exist anymore. Wow. How's
Speaker 2: that possible? Well, there you go. Those waves, Like when
Speaker 2: you throw a rock in the lake or whatever, you
Speaker 2: see that ripple effect. Well, that goes on. It gets
Speaker 2: smaller and smaller, maybe where you can't see it or
Speaker 2: detect it. But, you know, it goes out, it hits something,
Speaker 2: it bounces back, goes all different directions. And I'd never
Speaker 2: thought about it, but I've got a new YouTube channel
Speaker 2: called From Beyond where we're talking about UFOs and things
Speaker 2: for the most part. From Beyond can be anything, but
Speaker 2: our first episode, we talked about the Betty and Barney
Speaker 2: Hill abduction. But Lee G, my co-host over there, talked
Speaker 2: about that that might be a reason why people that
Speaker 2: have experienced the so-called men in black, why those people
Speaker 2: dress out of date and drive old fashioned cars and things.
Speaker 2: They've been picking up those signals from years ago and
Speaker 2: think that's how we still are here. So they wear
Speaker 2: suits and hats and drive old fashioned cars. And then
Speaker 2: when they get here, they're, you know, 20, 30 years
Speaker 2: out of style, they're like, What happened? We thought this
Speaker 2: was how people talked and dressed and acted. I had never,
Speaker 2: ever considered that, but that would kind of make sense if,
Speaker 2: if you believe in stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's an interesting theory for sure. Another, another theory
Speaker 1: that I've heard that I found very interesting and makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense to me is from Mike Rick sucker.
Speaker 1: And he's a big shadow people researcher. And from a
Speaker 1: very early age, he had experiences with shadow people and
Speaker 1: he actually got touched by one, one time when he
Speaker 1: was a kid. And, uh, it's one of the only
Speaker 1: people I've ever heard that said they got touched by,
Speaker 1: got grabbed, grabbed his arm. But, um, so he's dove
Speaker 1: into research over the years or shadow people, uh, shadow figures,
Speaker 1: hat man, things like that. And his theory that he
Speaker 1: came up with is that shadow people are the same
Speaker 1: thing as we call spirits or ghost. It's just you,
Speaker 1: if you're vibrating on a certain frequency yourself, you see
Speaker 1: those entities as shadow figures and not as like full
Speaker 1: body apparitions. And so if you take 10 people and
Speaker 1: put them in a room and you have something manifest,
Speaker 1: a spirit manifest in front of you, all 10 people
Speaker 1: are going to have a different experience and a different description.
Speaker 1: Some of those people may see like a mist. Some
Speaker 1: people might see an actual, you know, in living color,
Speaker 1: full body person. Some people may see a shadow figure.
Speaker 1: Some people may see a glowing orb. But his theory
Speaker 1: is that it depends on what frequency we're vibrating on,
Speaker 1: how we experience the paranormal. And I found that pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Cisco and I were talking about that and we
Speaker 2: likened it to the parable of the blind men and
Speaker 2: the elephant. One guy says, you know, what's got a trunk?
Speaker 2: And the guy on the other side says, no, it's
Speaker 2: flat on the side.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the back says it's got a long tail. You know,
Speaker 2: so again.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Same people experienced the same thing, but perceived it in
Speaker 2: different ways, whether, you know, their ability or just what
Speaker 2: they were perceiving there. And it's neither right or wrong.
Speaker 2: Everybody experienced the same thing, but it affected them differently
Speaker 2: based on their senses and their knowledge of such.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And then going to like the men in
Speaker 1: black or even like black eyed kids, you know, only
Speaker 1: a small percentage of people ever experienced those phenomenons. and
Speaker 1: maybe it's because of their frequency or their openness or,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying? Like that's why not everybody
Speaker 1: has experiences with men in black or black eye kids
Speaker 1: or some of the other phenomena. Like I may go
Speaker 1: through my entire life. I could be out in the
Speaker 1: woods every day, or even all these hunters can be
Speaker 1: out in the woods and you only have one or
Speaker 1: two that ever experienced dog men or Sasquatch out of
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of people. And so I think there
Speaker 1: could be something about that frequency, um, And maybe you're
Speaker 1: vibrating on a frequency where they can see you too.
Speaker 1: I think that's interesting with spirits as well.
Speaker 2: I like to quote Nietzsche who said, when you appear
Speaker 2: into the abyss, the abyss also appears into you. And
Speaker 2: I believe that with the paranormal. And I think somebody's
Speaker 2: asked me, why did you choose all these things to
Speaker 2: talk about and write about and stuff? I'm like, who's
Speaker 2: to say it was a choice? I think it chose me.
Speaker 2: Like every house I've ever lived in was haunted to
Speaker 2: some degree. And I only came to the realization a
Speaker 2: few years ago that it's not the houses, it's me
Speaker 2: that's haunted. Because I could go to a place I
Speaker 2: lived in, Las Vegas, very, very active haunted house. But
Speaker 2: a roommate that I shared that with, they'd been there
Speaker 2: for years, never heard or seen or felt anything. And
Speaker 2: then as soon as I got there, literally all hell
Speaker 2: broke loose. It's something about me being there and able
Speaker 2: to perceive it. And Cisco describes that as part of
Speaker 2: being empathic. That it's like a candle in the darkness
Speaker 2: that these things see you and think, oh, this person
Speaker 2: can notice us or hear us or see us. So
Speaker 2: let's go talk to them or manifest. And getting back
Speaker 2: to the energy and electricity thing. And you've probably had
Speaker 2: this happen in some of your investigations. Whatever these things are,
Speaker 2: the active ones, not the residual hauntings, but the active hauntings,
Speaker 2: they have to have that energy to do what they do,
Speaker 2: whether it's.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Or manifest or whatever, hence batteries. I've had batteries fully
Speaker 2: charged that never gave me a problem anywhere else going
Speaker 2: to a place that has activity, and those batteries are
Speaker 2: just flatlined in no time, and I think it's whatever's
Speaker 2: in there, it needs that energy to put on its show,
Speaker 2: whatever it's going to do. Has that happened in your
Speaker 2: experience as well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, actually, not too long ago, I was at Brushy Mountain. uh, state, uh,
Speaker 1: state penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee. And we have that happen.
Speaker 1: And I actually watched a camera battery that I just
Speaker 1: put in the camera that I knew was full and
Speaker 1: it showed full. It jumped down to half for about
Speaker 1: five minutes. And then it jumped down like it was
Speaker 1: going to die, but then it jumped back up to
Speaker 1: like three quarters. And I'm like, I've never seen it
Speaker 1: jump back up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, that, that is anomalous. It's not supposed to
Speaker 2: do that, but it did.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Um, and we got at that same time, um,
Speaker 1: I was actually got some anomalous pictures and we got
Speaker 1: some EVPs during that same, same time that that was happening.
Speaker 1: And it was, we had battery issues all night and
Speaker 1: there's other places I can go that we don't have
Speaker 1: any battery issues. Um, because I guess they're drawing energy
Speaker 1: from somewhere else or I don't know. Uh, one of
Speaker 1: the experiments that I like to do, um, whenever I
Speaker 1: do public ghost hunts, uh, throughout the year, we do
Speaker 1: something called a round table EVP session. And what we
Speaker 1: do is I'll have, uh, As the investigator, I might
Speaker 1: have 10 people in my group. Depends on how many people,
Speaker 1: you know, buy tickets to the public ghost hunt. But
Speaker 1: we'll sit around a recorder in the middle of us
Speaker 1: and we'll decide on one question to ask. And we
Speaker 1: all ask the same question. So I tell everybody, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to start. I'm going to ask the question first.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give it 20 seconds for them to answer.
Speaker 1: And then I'm going to point to the next person.
Speaker 1: They're going to ask the same question and then 20
Speaker 1: seconds and so on. And so we'll go around the room.
Speaker 1: And I find that it's weird because the spirits, if
Speaker 1: you're going to get an answer to the question, will
Speaker 1: usually only answer one person out of the entire group.
Speaker 1: And I think that is from the vibration because maybe
Speaker 1: that person is on the same vibration as them. And
Speaker 1: maybe the spirit can only hear that one person. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that makes sense. I never thought about that,
Speaker 2: but it does. And that's why. some people don't get
Speaker 2: an answer and some people do, and you're asking the
Speaker 2: same question. That's a fascinating technique there. Did you come
Speaker 2: up with that?
Speaker 1: I did not. That is something that I was taught
Speaker 1: by a paranormal group. Two of them used to work
Speaker 1: at Waverly Hills as paranormal tour guides and as investigators
Speaker 1: at Waverly Hills. And that was something that they used
Speaker 1: to do all the time. And I thought it fit
Speaker 1: perfectly into the scientific method somewhat because Um, but also,
Speaker 1: I also thought maybe it's not even the frequency thing.
Speaker 1: Sometimes maybe it is because a cultural beliefs of the
Speaker 1: time of the spirit, or if it's like a little kid,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm kind of a big dominate personality guy,
Speaker 1: masculine guy. Maybe the kid feels intimidated by me, but
Speaker 1: we'll talk to a female, you know, maybe they, they
Speaker 1: find one of the females in the group that reminds
Speaker 1: them of their mom or something. And so they'll, respond
Speaker 1: to them. And, you know, back in the 1800s, it
Speaker 1: was a little different, the interaction between men and women.
Speaker 1: The culture was different. And so a woman spirit from
Speaker 1: then may not respond to me because I'm not their
Speaker 1: husband or I'm a stranger, but they may respond to
Speaker 1: another female. So I've thought about kind of all these
Speaker 1: different aspects of That makes sense.
Speaker 2: From the societal norms at that time. Women wouldn't speak
Speaker 2: to a strange man, wouldn't think of it. That was
Speaker 2: just unheard of.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And also, I think that's why it's important
Speaker 1: to know the history of a place as well. Because
Speaker 1: if you go into some of these historical houses, men
Speaker 1: and the husbands and wives did not sleep in the
Speaker 1: same room. In a lot of these houses, the women
Speaker 1: had their own room. So me going into that woman's
Speaker 1: room and trying to get her to talk to me,
Speaker 1: that's a no-no. in her eyes, because she would never
Speaker 1: have a strange man in her bedroom. And so she,
Speaker 1: why would she talk to me? You know, she might
Speaker 1: get in trouble by her husband or whatever, because there's
Speaker 1: some strange men in her room and it was just
Speaker 1: not the societal norm. And so you have to be
Speaker 1: conscious of those things throughout history. And even with different
Speaker 1: religions and things, there are different practices. And I learned
Speaker 1: this working in medicine for 20 years, especially on the ambulance,
Speaker 1: like with a lot of Arab people, I would have to,
Speaker 1: as a man, if I had a female patient, I
Speaker 1: would have to ask the husband permission to touch his
Speaker 1: wife because I'm not her husband. And so those are
Speaker 1: things that I had to learn that they actually taught
Speaker 1: us in college when I went to college to be
Speaker 1: a medic was those type of things like be conscious
Speaker 1: of different cultures and how they believe. And so I've
Speaker 1: kind of traded that over into the paranormal investigating.
Speaker 2: That's a good example of, real world application into paranormal investigations.
Speaker 2: Love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I try to, I try to look at
Speaker 1: it from those different standpoints. And I think that it
Speaker 1: takes all of us in our different experiences in life
Speaker 1: with something like just, just, you wouldn't think me working
Speaker 1: on the ambulance as a medic would have any bearing on,
Speaker 1: you know, paranormal investigating, but just little nuances like that
Speaker 1: of experiences in my life. That's why I love like
Speaker 1: on the unseen paranormal, talking to the different paranormal groups
Speaker 1: as well. because everybody kind of has their own approach
Speaker 1: and their own experiences in life. Cause you know, we're
Speaker 1: some of our experiences, our personalities and who we are
Speaker 1: as people are ultimately some of our experiences throughout our lives.
Speaker 1: And so that's going to bleed over into investigating and
Speaker 1: how we investigate and how we approach these things. So
Speaker 1: I find it fascinating to talk to other investigators and
Speaker 1: how they do things maybe just slightly different than me,
Speaker 1: but it makes me think more outside the box and
Speaker 1: how I can do different things like that to, illicit
Speaker 1: responses from spirits and try to make that connection with them.
Speaker 2: And it stands to reason it makes sense. Now I've,
Speaker 2: I've talked to other medical professionals, uh, medics and things
Speaker 2: like that, that have had, uh, experiences in the field, uh,
Speaker 2: particularly doctors and nurses, nurses, especially those that work the
Speaker 2: night shift have, uh, pardon my French, but they've seen
Speaker 2: some shit. Did you ever have anything like that, that
Speaker 2: you considered paranormal or, any type of visitation or anything
Speaker 2: while you were in the ambulance? Did you ever see
Speaker 2: somebody leave their body or see a loved one come
Speaker 2: to take them away or anything like that?
Speaker 1: The biggest thing in emergency medicine, because I also worked
Speaker 1: in the ER as a, as a medic and whenever
Speaker 1: my main job as a medic was, I put IVs
Speaker 1: in everybody and did blood draws and everybody, because that's
Speaker 1: just a forte if you're a medic, but also if
Speaker 1: we ran a code. So if somebody coded, you know,
Speaker 1: their heart stopped, we, we would go in the room
Speaker 1: with the doctors and nurses and we would do CPR and,
Speaker 1: and all these things to try to bring them back.
Speaker 1: And one of the things in the ER that you
Speaker 1: would notice is we would work on a patient for max,
Speaker 1: maybe 20 minutes, right? Shocking them, giving different drugs, CPR,
Speaker 1: constant CPR. And then the doctor would always ask whoever
Speaker 1: the head doctor was running the code would always ask,
Speaker 1: does anybody else have any other ideas? And most of
Speaker 1: us just knew we just have this sense that this
Speaker 1: person is gone and I don't know how to explain it,
Speaker 1: but when they, their spirit left the room, you just
Speaker 1: knew it and everybody. And even like the doctors and
Speaker 1: nurses who didn't really want to talk about the paranormal stuff,
Speaker 1: you all just have this feeling that our, our efforts
Speaker 1: now are just futile. Like we're not bringing this person back. Like,
Speaker 1: and it might not even be 20 minutes. It might
Speaker 1: be five minutes that everybody just in the room would
Speaker 1: get that feeling. All of a sudden that air just changes. And, um,
Speaker 1: in emergency medicine, I didn't have a whole lot of
Speaker 1: paranormal stuff in the emergency medicine part, like on the
Speaker 1: ambulance and the ER, because it's so fast paced that
Speaker 1: your focus is on what you're doing and not really,
Speaker 1: you're not paying attention. You're kind of, I always called
Speaker 1: it medical mode because you're very like tunnel vision on
Speaker 1: your patients and taking care of them to the detriment
Speaker 1: of yourself. Sometimes. I mean, I've gone like two hours
Speaker 1: without peeing, you know, because of, you know, patients, but, Um,
Speaker 1: now when I first started in medicine, I started out
Speaker 1: working in nursing homes as a nurse tech. And there
Speaker 1: was one nurse home in particular that I worked at
Speaker 1: that I had all kinds of experiences at. And, uh,
Speaker 1: this nursing home, the wing that I worked in was
Speaker 1: the Alzheimer's unit. And it was the oldest part of
Speaker 1: the building. This, this wing of the building had, I
Speaker 1: think it was 15 rooms and it was built as
Speaker 1: a nursing home in the 1940s. And then in the eighties,
Speaker 1: early nineties, a company come in and bought the nursing home,
Speaker 1: that nursing home, and then added more onto it. And
Speaker 1: so over the years it had been built on and
Speaker 1: it became this huge facility. And we had all kinds
Speaker 1: of experiences in that part. And it was just kind
Speaker 1: of known by all the staff and I work night
Speaker 1: shift too. And there were only three of us on
Speaker 1: that whole side of the nursing home. And there was
Speaker 1: a huge dining room and physical therapy that separated us
Speaker 1: from the rest of the building and the patients. And
Speaker 1: at night, there's nobody in that dining room or in
Speaker 1: physical therapy. So we were kind of cut off from
Speaker 1: the rest of the facility and all the other patients
Speaker 1: and nurses and stuff. And there were only three of us.
Speaker 1: So it was me, another nurse tech, and a nurse
Speaker 1: and an OPN. And you would hear people walking behind
Speaker 1: you that weren't there. The only light that we would
Speaker 1: keep on would be the light at the nurse station.
Speaker 1: So the hallways were dark. And we would even go
Speaker 1: in the patient's rooms to do our rounds every two
Speaker 1: hours to check on the patient's. cause a lot of
Speaker 1: them were Alzheimer's with incontinence. So they had to have
Speaker 1: diapers changed and things like that. So we'd even go
Speaker 1: in the rooms in the complete darkness cause our eyes
Speaker 1: were adjusted and check on the patients cause we don't
Speaker 1: want to wake them up. And so we experienced all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. I mean, I'd walk in a room
Speaker 1: and you would, it would look like there was somebody
Speaker 1: sitting in a wheelchair. And then when you turn the
Speaker 1: light on, there's nobody there, but you could see the
Speaker 1: perfect outline of head and shoulders. Um, and then probably,
Speaker 1: I think I've told you this story before. Um, But
Speaker 1: I the only thing I call the angel of death story.
Speaker 1: One night, the nurse and the other tech had gone
Speaker 1: to lunch and I was on the hall by myself
Speaker 1: and all the patients are in bed asleep. And I
Speaker 1: walk up to the around the nurse's station and come
Speaker 1: and I'm fixing to turn left down this long the
Speaker 1: long hall where most of the rooms were. And there
Speaker 1: are a set of double doors at the end that
Speaker 1: you could like the parking lot lights shine in because
Speaker 1: that was the outside door was the employee parking. And
Speaker 1: I when I look down there, I see this tall, skinny.
Speaker 1: younger guy in a like solid black suit. And he
Speaker 1: had to be probably six, four, six, five, really tall
Speaker 1: and skinny and younger. And I looked at him, we
Speaker 1: looked at each other for, I don't know, 10 seconds
Speaker 1: at most. And he smiled and he turned left and
Speaker 1: went into one of the patient rooms and everything's going
Speaker 1: through my mind. I didn't go to the paranormal. Cause
Speaker 1: I'm like in that medical mode, I wasn't thinking paranormal.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what the hell? who is in here?
Speaker 1: It's like three o'clock in the morning. Who is in
Speaker 1: the building? There's no visitors. There's no family. We don't
Speaker 1: have a patient. It looks like that. Most of these
Speaker 1: patients were, you know, older ladies. The majority of our
Speaker 1: population were older women. And so I walked straight down
Speaker 1: there and went in that room and turned the light on.
Speaker 1: And it was just the women that the four women,
Speaker 1: there were two beds on each side. They're called ward rooms.
Speaker 1: And it was all four ladies. They were all in
Speaker 1: the bed. There's nobody else in there. And where the
Speaker 1: angel of death comes in, I left the next morning
Speaker 1: at seven o'clock. And when I came back the next night,
Speaker 1: one of those ladies in that room had passed away.
Speaker 1: And she was somebody that we weren't expecting to pass away,
Speaker 1: but she, she did about an hour after I left,
Speaker 1: they went into the room and found that she was deceased. Oh, wow.
Speaker 2: So that, that was sort of an angel of death there,
Speaker 2: I guess. Wasn't what you thought. It wasn't the grim Reaper.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a skeleton in a hooded robe, but a
Speaker 2: young guy in a suit. Interesting.
Speaker 1: And, and, and when he smiled at me, it wasn't
Speaker 1: creepy and it didn't frighten me. I thought it was
Speaker 1: a real person.
Speaker 2: He just, I'm here doing my job. Don't mind me.
Speaker 1: Well, I think he was, I think he was surprised
Speaker 1: that I could see him. I think it was one
Speaker 1: of those things. Like that's why we stared at each
Speaker 1: other for about 10 seconds, because I think he was
Speaker 1: just as surprised to see me as I was to
Speaker 1: see him. Um, another weird thing on that Alzheimer's unit
Speaker 1: is that we had a lady who, um, she was
Speaker 1: in stays Alzheimer's. And so you couldn't really talk to her. Um,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't answer you back. She was verbal and she
Speaker 1: would say things, but they didn't make any sense. And,
Speaker 1: but if she started yelling about the man in the corner,
Speaker 1: everybody knew that somebody was going to die within 24
Speaker 1: hours and never failed. Um, and it was just something
Speaker 1: that was known by all the long-term employees. And the
Speaker 1: first time it ever happened, I was really skeptical. I'm like, whatever.
Speaker 1: When they told me, Oh, somebody's going to die because Ms.
Speaker 1: So-and-so is talking about the man in the corner. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: sure enough, somebody died. And the weird thing is also
Speaker 1: in the nursing home, deaths always come in threes. It's
Speaker 1: really weird.
Speaker 2: Now I've heard that, you know, in pop culture that
Speaker 2: anytime a celebrity or something dies, they say death come
Speaker 2: in threes. So I guess it can be that way
Speaker 2: in a nursing home or a hospital setting as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Um, but like I said, that, those for
Speaker 1: the most part was most of the paranormal experiences that
Speaker 1: I had, uh, in the medical field. Um, there were
Speaker 1: other weird things, um, especially working in like an emergency
Speaker 1: environment as an empath. I think that definitely played as
Speaker 1: a strength of mine because I kind of just knew
Speaker 1: what I should do for my patients sometimes, uh, in
Speaker 1: that emergency setting. And, and that's what they want you
Speaker 1: to do. I mean, you're training. you're trained to just
Speaker 1: act and not think about what you're doing, but just
Speaker 1: know what you need to do. But I think the
Speaker 1: empath thing came in handy of just kind of knowing
Speaker 1: sometimes without having to go into too much of like, okay,
Speaker 1: I need to do all these tests to figure out
Speaker 1: what's going on with this person, but I would already
Speaker 1: have an idea. Okay. It's their blood sugar. So the
Speaker 1: first thing I'm going to do, you know, is test
Speaker 1: their blood sugar or, you know, just having that inherent
Speaker 1: feeling that I already knew what was going on with
Speaker 1: the patient and what I needed to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I could see how being an empath would,
Speaker 2: totally work well in that type setting.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That just, yeah, that little bit of insight that they
Speaker 2: just to, you know, start in the right place. That's amazing, Eric.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The, the, the most times that ever even paid
Speaker 1: attention to the paranormal working on the ambulance is when
Speaker 1: we went into hospice locations and, you know, hospice, everybody is,
Speaker 1: is dying. And to walk in there, you're, physically your
Speaker 1: body just wants to walk right back out is what
Speaker 1: it feels like. Like your legs is trying to lead
Speaker 1: you back out of the building. It's almost like two
Speaker 1: repelling magnets. Like you're just being pushed. Like this is
Speaker 1: not a place for you type deal, especially with the
Speaker 1: empath stuff with all the people, all the people in
Speaker 1: there and all the grief and the emotions. And it
Speaker 1: was just very overwhelming to go in those places. And
Speaker 1: I usually had to go like smoke two or three cigarettes,
Speaker 1: you know, and calm down after we had been in
Speaker 1: one of those places and just kind of shake off
Speaker 1: the energy. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I know that feeling very, very well. Retirement homes,
Speaker 2: rehab facilities, those have always been difficult places for me
Speaker 2: to visit or in a hospice situation. Another place that
Speaker 2: really got under my skin was at a children's hospital
Speaker 2: one time. I could not wait to get out of
Speaker 2: that place just because, you know, all the pain and
Speaker 2: suffering and there are these little innocent children. It's just,
Speaker 2: it was overwhelming.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Anything to do with children, like working in medicine,
Speaker 1: because To me, you always read it, children are always innocent.
Speaker 1: Especially in emergency medicine, if they get hurt or something,
Speaker 1: it's not really their fault ever. And so car wrecks
Speaker 1: and things, they're not in control of any of that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, kids are always innocent. Those are always hard cases,
Speaker 1: no matter what.
Speaker 2: And we were talking about animals in the paranormal. There
Speaker 2: was a rehabilitation facility in Portland, Oregon, They had a dog,
Speaker 2: like a therapy dog, that would wander around, go from
Speaker 2: room to room, and the patients there would pet it
Speaker 2: and things. Now, some of those people were short-term. Others
Speaker 2: were long-term. I mean, that was pretty much the end
Speaker 2: of the road for them until they went to hospice.
Speaker 2: But the same thing. There was a dog. It was
Speaker 2: a black lab female. I think her name was Lady.
Speaker 2: And they said that she would do her rounds. She
Speaker 2: would go out and go into all the rooms and stuff.
Speaker 2: But they said if there was a room that she
Speaker 2: would go in multiple times or room that she would
Speaker 2: go in and just basically refuse to come out of,
Speaker 2: they would keep a closer eye on that patient because
Speaker 2: usually they were going to expire or something bad was
Speaker 2: going to happen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've heard a couple of stories of cats that way too.
Speaker 1: A lot of nursing homes have like their cat, their
Speaker 1: nursing home cat that just kind of wanders around.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've heard a few of those stories. Um, I have
Speaker 1: an interesting story about one of my dogs that I
Speaker 1: had to, had to put down talking about animals. Um, we,
Speaker 1: he had cancer and, uh, he had a tumor the
Speaker 1: size of a softball. And, uh, it finally came time
Speaker 1: when it was time to put him down. And so
Speaker 1: we went to the vet, put him down and me
Speaker 1: and my husband, uh, wanted to go like shopping or
Speaker 1: do something just to get our minds off of it.
Speaker 1: And we didn't have this planned out. We just talked
Speaker 1: about it afterwards because we were both upset. And so
Speaker 1: we went to Nashville and just went into this random store.
Speaker 1: We went in this, you know, strip mall with all
Speaker 1: these different stores. And just went in the store and
Speaker 1: we were looking at, it was, I forget what store
Speaker 1: it was, but it's one of those stores that kind
Speaker 1: of has everything, you know what I'm talking about? And
Speaker 1: then like they have clothes, but then they also have
Speaker 1: a section for like pets.
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, they called them a variety store.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And I think it was Home Goods or
Speaker 1: At Home, one of those places. Anyway, we were looking
Speaker 1: at the dog stuff because we were like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, since we had to put him down, let's
Speaker 1: kind of pamper and spoil our other dogs. And over
Speaker 1: the loudspeaker, we hear a voice that says, Chase, can
Speaker 1: you come to the front? Well, our dog's name was Chase.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So an hour after we put our dog Chase down,
Speaker 1: we're in this random store and randomly somebody named Chase
Speaker 1: just happened to work there and they called them over
Speaker 1: the loudspeaker. And we just looked at each other and
Speaker 1: just nodded. We both just knew. That's a sign.
Speaker 2: I don't believe in coincidences. I believe in synchronicities. And
Speaker 2: that's what it sounds like there. He was letting you
Speaker 2: know that that he'd crossed a rainbow bridge or whatever
Speaker 2: you believe in that he's okay on the other side.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's funny. We have a big Island, a
Speaker 1: big four foot, a three foot Island in our kitchen
Speaker 1: and all the rest of my, I have, we have
Speaker 1: eight dogs. They're all rescues, but yeah, we have eight dogs,
Speaker 1: but there'll be outside in their run. And I will
Speaker 1: hear nails on the floor when I'm in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: send it to the Island and I'll see a little
Speaker 1: white furry, but go around the corner. And then when
Speaker 1: I go around the corner, there's no dog there. And
Speaker 1: we don't have any little white dogs. We have a
Speaker 1: big white dog, weighs 100 pounds. And so it looks
Speaker 1: like Chase. And I think he comes back and visits.
Speaker 1: And I see him every once in a while.
Speaker 2: I think they do that. And I've told the story
Speaker 2: before where I spent the night with a friend in
Speaker 2: college and slept in his spare bedroom. And during the night,
Speaker 2: a cat came, got in the bed, curled up behind
Speaker 2: my knees. I felt it jump on the bed, felt
Speaker 2: it curl up and could feel that purring. And the
Speaker 2: next morning I got up and he's cooking breakfast for us.
Speaker 2: And I said, buddy, if you're looking for your cat
Speaker 2: last night, it came and got in the bed with me.
Speaker 2: He looks at me and kind of grins. He said, Steve,
Speaker 2: that cat's been gone for three years. But he said,
Speaker 2: I feel the same thing. I felt it brush up
Speaker 2: against my leg in the dark. I felt it jump
Speaker 2: on the bed. He said, there's no cat here. I
Speaker 2: don't have any other animals, but I know what I
Speaker 2: felt and what I experienced. It was a cat. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard other stories from people like that, too.
Speaker 1: My friend, Sin Trader Hill, who's a paranormal author investigator,
Speaker 1: I narrated one of her books for my new podcast,
Speaker 1: Strange Chapters. And one of her stories that she has
Speaker 1: in her own book is about a cat doing that.
Speaker 1: And she thought it was the actual cat. And then
Speaker 1: she remembered they had they had moved into a new
Speaker 1: place and her cat was staying at her mom's. And
Speaker 1: she realized my cat's not here. But she knew the
Speaker 1: feeling of it was a cat jumping up and curling
Speaker 1: at the bottom of her legs. You know how they
Speaker 1: kind of walk around in a circle and nest? Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what this cat did and laid down.
Speaker 1: And yeah, she didn't realize it until the next day that, oh,
Speaker 1: my cat is still at my mom's. We don't have
Speaker 1: a cat here. And so it was a ghost cat.
Speaker 2: Amazing. And I think they do survive. They do come back.
Speaker 2: And sometimes for good or bad, but always interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the dog Chase, I think the reason that
Speaker 1: he comes back is he was a rescue and he
Speaker 1: was a difficult rescue. His story is crazy. I read
Speaker 1: the whole story in one of Sin's books about loved
Speaker 1: ones coming back and visiting. But we rescued him. They're
Speaker 1: going to put him down because he had behavioral issues
Speaker 1: because he was rescued from a puppy mill. Anyway, long
Speaker 1: story short, we got the dog. I worked with him
Speaker 1: a lot of working with him to get him to
Speaker 1: be a good dog. He ended up being an amazing dog.
Speaker 1: We had him for eight years. And before we had
Speaker 1: to put him down and that dog taught me more
Speaker 1: than I think I ever taught him. And so I
Speaker 1: think that's why he comes back because me and him
Speaker 1: had such a connection. I love all of my animals.
Speaker 1: I love all my dogs and they're all spoiled rotten,
Speaker 1: but he is just that one animal that I had
Speaker 1: such an insane connection with. And I think that's why
Speaker 1: he still comes around because me and him just had
Speaker 1: such a connection.
Speaker 2: No, I think they can sense emotions and things too.
Speaker 2: I had that experience when I was a child, I'd
Speaker 2: be upset about something and then they would come over,
Speaker 2: you know, and like, like try to come for me
Speaker 2: and things. And there's a certain bond there with, with
Speaker 2: certain animals.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's, it's weird how the, having eight dogs, the
Speaker 1: different dynamic, like I said, they're all spoiled and I
Speaker 1: love them all. And they all get, you know, spoiled
Speaker 1: to death and loving and cuddles and, but different, yeah.
Speaker 1: Different ones based on their different personalities. Um, some of
Speaker 1: them are more loving than others and, um, yeah, we
Speaker 1: have a couple of our dogs that if you're sick
Speaker 1: or not feeling well, they will come and cuddle with
Speaker 1: you more and want more of your attention that way. Um,
Speaker 1: because they can, they just know something's wrong with you. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I had a story and um strange things in the
Speaker 2: woods about a dog that uh passed away and came
Speaker 2: back and a lot of people saw him other than
Speaker 2: the person that he actually belonged to that person never
Speaker 2: did see the dog but his dad would see it
Speaker 2: like going around the corner of the house just out
Speaker 2: of sight you know just vanished and run over there
Speaker 2: and it's not there. His son saw the dog. He was, uh,
Speaker 2: him and his mom had been somewhere coming back and
Speaker 2: he saw the dog like in the edge of the
Speaker 2: woods and say, Oh, the dog came back, but it,
Speaker 2: it not in, uh, in actual form. It was a spirit, but, uh,
Speaker 2: I read a lot of stories to similar accounts like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The one that fascinated me with animals are the
Speaker 1: ones that were, they've, um, the animal spirit has helped people.
Speaker 1: And people will figure out like there, there's one story
Speaker 1: that I heard about. These people are horseback riding and
Speaker 1: they got lost. They were standing at a camp and
Speaker 1: they were horseback riding and they got lost and it
Speaker 1: was going to be a really cold night and they
Speaker 1: didn't have the proper gear to stay out overnight for
Speaker 1: their horses or themselves. Well, this random like yellow, I
Speaker 1: think it was a yellow lab just come up to
Speaker 1: them and started barking at them. And they finally figured
Speaker 1: out he wants us to follow him. Well, he led
Speaker 1: them all the way back to the camp and they, uh,
Speaker 1: the people that own the camp or whatever, they were
Speaker 1: talking and said, you know, this dog led us back
Speaker 1: here and we thought we were going to freeze to
Speaker 1: death out in the cold. And the owner, the guy said, well,
Speaker 1: that sounds like my dog that died like two years ago.
Speaker 1: He used to run around the woods and like, you know, um,
Speaker 1: he was kind of the camp dog and, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this dog had, and they never saw the dog again,
Speaker 1: but it saved them from being out in this really
Speaker 1: cold night. and possibly something happened to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing. And I've done videos about missing people
Speaker 2: where that's happened. Sometimes it'd be their own animal, or
Speaker 2: other times just some random anonymous animal, if you will,
Speaker 2: that showed up. Now, getting back to that, do you
Speaker 2: think it's just domesticated animals that do that, or do
Speaker 2: you think animals in the wild can come back? I mean,
Speaker 2: I've never heard of anybody seeing a ghost of a
Speaker 2: deer or a bear, but not in the sense that
Speaker 2: we were talking about. Now you see the cat gray,
Speaker 2: she's got a story about, uh, I guess what they
Speaker 2: call a not deer. That's a deer, but it's not
Speaker 2: a deer that, uh, it was the shadowy form of
Speaker 2: a deer caught in mid leap, but it was moving without,
Speaker 2: you know, it wasn't moving its legs or running or anything.
Speaker 2: It was just like, if you drew a picture of
Speaker 2: a deer leaping and then that picture moved along, what
Speaker 2: do you think something like that is from a paranormal perspective?
Speaker 1: I think it's definitely possible. Um, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: they have energy the same as humans. So I think
Speaker 1: you get something that's intelligent or, um, or even something
Speaker 1: like stone tape theory. But, um, I, I would say
Speaker 1: that you, if you see a bear in the wild,
Speaker 1: you're not going to go poke it in the ass
Speaker 1: to make sure it's real and not a spirit. So
Speaker 1: it would be, it would be hard to tell if you're,
Speaker 1: what you're looking at is, you know.
Speaker 2: Now, if you were watching an animal in the wilderness
Speaker 2: and then saw it wink out of existence or disappear
Speaker 2: or something, that might be a heads up. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go check anything like that. We've
Speaker 2: talked a lot about hauntings and spirits and ghosts and things.
Speaker 2: That's your forte, your field of study. Do you ever
Speaker 2: delve over into any of the cryptid encounters, Bigfoot, Dogman,
Speaker 2: any interest in any of those things?
Speaker 1: I kind of have an interest in all of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of guests on and talk about
Speaker 1: dogman and bigfoot in particular but all kinds of other
Speaker 1: cryptids as well um i find them fascinating not just
Speaker 1: from a they might be real standpoint but the folklore
Speaker 1: and storytelling standpoint of them and how some of these
Speaker 1: small towns like falc arkansas yeah had this one sighting
Speaker 1: back in 1940 something and they still have a festival
Speaker 1: every year and that's yeah that's a big one yeah
Speaker 1: and that's the center of their but that's the center
Speaker 1: of their like economy.
Speaker 2: The Mothman Festival. What was the other one that's in
Speaker 2: that area? I'll think of it here in a second.
Speaker 2: The thing that looked like some sort of alien creature,
Speaker 2: Flatwoods Monster. They had Flatwood days there and it's celebrated.
Speaker 2: And I've talked to them about that before, how people
Speaker 2: embrace things like that. And it becomes part of the local,
Speaker 2: not only the legend, but part of the economy. They
Speaker 2: celebrate it. They have festivals and gift shops and T-shirts
Speaker 2: and things like that. And I think that's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I think it's cool to keep those stories
Speaker 1: alive like that as well. And I find cryptids very interesting.
Speaker 1: And I think that some of them could be real creatures.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're still discovering creatures every day. Like biologists
Speaker 1: are out there, you know, discovering creatures. real living animals
Speaker 1: every day. And even, even larger animals. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: finding like deer species and things that they never knew existed.
Speaker 1: And like, as far as like Bigfoot, I mean, we
Speaker 1: didn't discover mountain gorillas until the 1930s. Until then, they
Speaker 1: were just a myth, like silverback gorillas.
Speaker 2: You read my mind again. I was just going to
Speaker 2: mention the great apes that that was thought to be
Speaker 2: a myth or just a legend until they discovered them.
Speaker 2: So again, the thing with cryptids for me, Bigfoot and
Speaker 2: things like that, people say, well, It can't exist because
Speaker 2: we've never found a carcass. Well, I know bears exist,
Speaker 2: but I've never came across a bear carcass in the
Speaker 2: woods either. I think you and I talked about that
Speaker 2: before when I was on your show. But I don't
Speaker 2: see not having a carcass as evidence that it doesn't
Speaker 2: exist because there's a lot of smaller predators out there,
Speaker 2: you will, that will pick anything clean. even down to
Speaker 2: insects and blowflies and things like that. Nature makes good
Speaker 2: use of everything. Not a lot goes to waste. So
Speaker 2: I don't think that's an indicator that something doesn't exist
Speaker 2: because we've never found a dead one or the carcass
Speaker 2: of a dead one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was talking to Shane Corse on the other day.
Speaker 1: He's with the Olympic Project, and out in the Olympic
Speaker 1: National Forest, they have a couple of research areas where
Speaker 1: they research mainly Bigfoot, Sasquatch. And he brought up a
Speaker 1: good point when I was talking to him the other day,
Speaker 1: He said, well, if you come across bones in the forest,
Speaker 1: who is adept at telling where that bone came from?
Speaker 1: You don't know if it came from a deer, a raccoon,
Speaker 1: a bear. You're not going to know if that's a
Speaker 1: Bigfoot bone or not, unless you see a skull. You're
Speaker 1: not going to know what animal that bone belonged to.
Speaker 1: And I'm with you on that. Mother Nature is an
Speaker 1: amazing system at dealing with waste and getting rid of stuff.
Speaker 2: And I think we talked about that, didn't we? When
Speaker 2: I was on your show that the period of time
Speaker 2: there that say a deer or something like that in
Speaker 2: the woods goes from the whole body down to nothing.
Speaker 2: It's just a few days.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And it'll be scattered. I mean, scavengers, they
Speaker 1: scatter it. They're not going to leave everything right where
Speaker 1: they found it. I mean, they're going to, you know,
Speaker 1: take parts off and, and even animals that people don't
Speaker 1: really understand, don't really think would scavenge on something like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have, opossums and even raccoons will scavenge.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they're hungry, you know, and so, um,
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily all the time carnivores, but they're omnivores.
Speaker 1: So they, yeah, they eat meat as well. And, but
Speaker 1: you have, I mean, you got a whole thing of
Speaker 1: vultures that come down and you have, I mean, people
Speaker 1: have seen them on the side of the road. There's
Speaker 1: 10 vultures around like a deer carcass. And that thing
Speaker 1: will be gone in a couple of days. And that's a,
Speaker 1: that's your carcass that you can see, you know?
Speaker 2: Well, uh, let's talk about, um, A little bit about
Speaker 2: your podcast. Now, you just celebrated your 150th episode, and
Speaker 2: as luck would have it, you had me on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That looks like that's been a good run for you.
Speaker 2: I know that was rated way up there in Apple
Speaker 2: Podcasts and things, and you had an all-around good reaction
Speaker 2: to it. Where do you see that going in the future?
Speaker 1: I think I've really settled in as an interviewer and
Speaker 1: learned a lot. interviewing people and the conversation style I
Speaker 1: think is what I enjoy the most and I think
Speaker 1: that's what people enjoy because I do my research on
Speaker 1: guests and I know I try to know as much
Speaker 1: as I can about what we're talking about so that
Speaker 1: I can ask the proper questions and things that people
Speaker 1: want to know but I just like to have a
Speaker 1: conversation like we're having now and just see where it
Speaker 1: goes and I think those make the most interesting conversations
Speaker 1: and also for my guests I want my guests to
Speaker 1: not have the same conversation that they've had 8,000 times
Speaker 1: on other podcasts or other media. Exactly.
Speaker 2: I try to ask different questions, not trying to throw
Speaker 2: your curve ball or anything. I like to pull one
Speaker 2: out of the pouch every now and then that maybe
Speaker 2: you haven't been asked before.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's some overlap in the audiences, but this
Speaker 2: will be a lot of people's first introduction to you.
Speaker 1: So yeah.
Speaker 2: Cover a little old ground there that we've already covered
Speaker 2: when I was on your shows. I've been on with
Speaker 2: you a couple of times, I think.
Speaker 1: I think five times.
Speaker 2: Has it been that many?
Speaker 1: Wow. I think so, yeah.
Speaker 2: And I love the conversational stuff too, just people sitting
Speaker 2: around telling stories, storytelling, if you will, talking to legends
Speaker 2: and ghosts and folklore. Always had a love for that.
Speaker 2: And I wanted to ask you, I thought of it
Speaker 2: earlier and I got back around to it finally. Since
Speaker 2: you're there in Tennessee, have you ever been up to
Speaker 2: historic Jonesboro for the International Storytelling Convention?
Speaker 1: I have not. That is something that's on my list
Speaker 1: because like I was talking about earlier, I love the
Speaker 1: storytelling aspect of the paranormal. And I think, and also
Speaker 1: with being a Tennessee native, I think it's just part
Speaker 1: of our DNA. And I think you would agree coming
Speaker 1: from Appalachia because that tradition came over with the Scottish
Speaker 1: and the Irish that settled in that area. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of been handed down And a lot of what
Speaker 1: people don't understand is a lot of terms that we
Speaker 1: use like boogeyman and things come from those storytelling. And
Speaker 1: a lot of the urban legends and myths that we
Speaker 1: know of as part of American culture or Southern culture
Speaker 1: come from those storytellers. And I find it fascinating, but
Speaker 1: I'd love to go to that storytelling because just, yeah,
Speaker 1: just to go hear some of the incredible things that
Speaker 1: people come up with and the creativity of the storytelling.
Speaker 2: I've never spoken at it, but I've, I've been there and, uh, and,
Speaker 2: and listened to it and drew it on. They have some,
Speaker 2: some fabulous, fabulous storytellers and, uh, Jonesboro historic Jonesboro. They,
Speaker 2: they like for you to say it that way, but, uh, uh, that,
Speaker 2: that whole town is haunted. They're on the main street.
Speaker 2: Every one of those little shops and buildings there has
Speaker 2: some kind of story to it. And one time I'd
Speaker 2: gone up there, this has been back in the nineties. And, uh,
Speaker 2: I had the first digital camera I ever owned. It
Speaker 2: was a, Kodak and I think it had like half
Speaker 2: a megapixel or something like that you know which was
Speaker 2: a big deal at the time but uh had that
Speaker 2: same thing that we talked about uh had problems with
Speaker 2: the batteries right from the start and it seemed like
Speaker 2: anytime I took a picture of a building there would
Speaker 2: be some anomaly sometimes it would be a mist or
Speaker 2: almost like a little cloud and it wasn't any aberration
Speaker 2: in the lens or anything like that because I could
Speaker 2: point at other places and it didn't show up But
Speaker 2: just about all the buildings there had some kind of weird,
Speaker 2: almost looked like a smoke or a mist around them
Speaker 2: or near the top or coming out from under the eave.
Speaker 2: And then went back up into, after I'd been there,
Speaker 2: went on into Damascus, Virginia. The Appalachian Trail passes through there.
Speaker 2: Damascus has a thing called Trade Days where they celebrate,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, the Trail Days. Trade Days is another thing
Speaker 2: in that area. But they have Appalachian Trail celebration there.
Speaker 2: And I went there and took some pictures and stuff,
Speaker 2: got back. And I was living at the time in
Speaker 2: extreme northeastern Tennessee. I lived up there for a short
Speaker 2: time in a little place called Mountain City. And it
Speaker 2: was kind of equidistant between if you went one direction,
Speaker 2: you could be in Boone, North Carolina. If you went
Speaker 2: the other direction, you were in Abingdon or Damascus, Virginia.
Speaker 2: or you could go another direction and end up in
Speaker 2: johnson city and the tri-cities up there but by the
Speaker 2: time i got back to where i was living that
Speaker 2: that card was completely blank there was not a single
Speaker 2: picture on there and uh i it was one of
Speaker 2: the big cf cards and i sent it to a
Speaker 2: company to do data recovery because i wanted those pictures
Speaker 2: yeah and uh they got in contact with me they're
Speaker 2: like this is the weirdest thing we've ever seen. They're like,
Speaker 2: are you sure this is the card you use? And
Speaker 2: I'm like, yes, I only had one card at that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it held like, you know, maybe a hundred pictures
Speaker 2: or something. But, uh, they said, this is never even
Speaker 2: been formatted. This is a completely virgin, completely blank card.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, that's impossible. But yet there it was.
Speaker 2: And I lost all those pictures. I was able to
Speaker 2: look at them, you know, in the viewfinder of it
Speaker 2: and saw those anomalies and stuff. But then, got back,
Speaker 2: plugged it into the computer, nothing there. And it couldn't
Speaker 2: be recovered. I have no explanation.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Other than I was in the presence of a lot
Speaker 2: of paranormal activity there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've heard of that. You're not the first person I've
Speaker 1: heard that that's happened to. Um, I've heard that happen
Speaker 1: quite a bit. Um, certain locations tend to be, uh,
Speaker 1: like that. I've heard of people's laptops crashing and all
Speaker 1: kinds of crazy electronic stuff happening in certain locations. But, um,
Speaker 1: There's actually a Haunted Jonesboro book, and I cannot remember
Speaker 1: the gentleman's name.
Speaker 2: It's probably Charles Edwin Price. I know he writes a
Speaker 2: lot about the cities in Tennessee. I don't know that
Speaker 2: that's the one, but I think he did do a
Speaker 2: book about Haunted Jonesboro.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's who it is because he was
Speaker 1: a newspaper reporter in East Tennessee, and he started writing
Speaker 1: all these paranormal books. Yeah, I believe that's who it's by,
Speaker 1: but I think you can still get it on Amazon
Speaker 1: if you're interested. I have a book that you would
Speaker 1: be interested in. It was, and I randomly found this
Speaker 1: at McKay's. And for anybody that doesn't know what McKay's is,
Speaker 1: it's in Nashville. And there's one in Knoxville. It's a
Speaker 1: huge used bookstore, basically. And they do video games.
Speaker 2: I spent a lot of time in McKay's. Back in
Speaker 2: the day, it was, well, yeah, it was McKay's. And
Speaker 2: then the one in Oak Ridge changed to Mr. K's.
Speaker 2: Same layout, same principle. But the one there in Keystapike
Speaker 2: in Knoxville, I don't know. It may still be there.
Speaker 2: But I spent a lot of time in there. So
Speaker 2: what did you find at McKay's?
Speaker 1: So this was probably a once-in-a-lifetime amazing find. And doing
Speaker 1: research on my own book that I'm writing about Tennessee
Speaker 1: called Small Town Haunts and Legends that will be out
Speaker 1: later this year, I was looking for stories that people
Speaker 1: haven't heard before. And so I found this book, and
Speaker 1: it's a monograph. So it's a really small, self-printed book
Speaker 1: from September of 1966. It's called A Collection of Folklore
Speaker 1: by Undergraduate Students of East Tennessee State University. And it
Speaker 1: was printed by them by the Institute of Regional Studies
Speaker 1: at East Tennessee State in Johnson City. And what they
Speaker 1: did was the students, they sent them out to talk
Speaker 1: to their grandparents, to talk to different older folks in the,
Speaker 1: in the community and to tell different folklore stories. And
Speaker 1: some of them are ghost stories. Um, some of them are, uh,
Speaker 1: just incredible stories of people surviving the war and things
Speaker 1: like that. But it is this incredible story of tales
Speaker 1: from all these different people. And it tells you, um,
Speaker 1: you know, where the person lives, like Hawkins County or
Speaker 1: this city or that city. And it's just this little
Speaker 1: like pamphlet that's maybe 50 pages.
Speaker 2: I would love to read that sometime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is awesome. And I'm like, I picked it
Speaker 1: up at McKay's and I was like, are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: Sometimes you can find the strangest things in there. Years
Speaker 2: and years ago at the one in Oak Ridge, they
Speaker 2: had a free book being outside. It was stuff they
Speaker 2: wouldn't buy. If you didn't want to cart it back,
Speaker 2: you could dump it in there. I found a rare
Speaker 2: young adult fiction book that I had heard of and
Speaker 2: never even seen a copy. It was only distributed to
Speaker 2: schools and libraries. I found it in the free books
Speaker 2: and I read it, ended up putting it on eBay
Speaker 2: and I got like $ 420. You never know, but that
Speaker 2: was the way it was in the case. It was
Speaker 2: hit or miss. Sometimes you go in to be the
Speaker 2: same stuff and then other times you'd find a little
Speaker 2: diamond like that. But yeah, I looked up Charles Edwin
Speaker 2: Price real quick, says he was born in 1941 and
Speaker 2: specializes as a freelance writer. in Southern Appalachian folklore, ghost lore,
Speaker 2: local history. He remembers sitting with his grandfather as a
Speaker 2: youngster and listening to tall tales in the past decade.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure when this was written. He's written many
Speaker 2: books of folklore and mystery, including Haunted Tennessee, Ain't's Witches
Speaker 2: and Boogers, The Day They Hung the Elephant. That's, I
Speaker 2: won't say Elizabethan, but it's real close to there. I'd
Speaker 2: Rather Have a Talking Frog, danger train and another thing
Speaker 2: this book and that was a nice segue unintentional to
Speaker 2: something else he wrote a book called the infamous bell
Speaker 2: witch of tennessee yeah you and i talked about that
Speaker 2: when i was on your show uh what's your take
Speaker 2: on the whole bell witch phenomenon i've been down there
Speaker 2: i've been to the bell witch cave there's something there
Speaker 2: i got some strange photographs there too and uh chris
Speaker 2: um can't remember her last name now that her and
Speaker 2: her husband own that farm now she's got books full
Speaker 2: of pictures that she's taken and that people have taken
Speaker 2: and sent to her. Went back decades of strange anomalies there. Kirby,
Speaker 2: Chris Kirby is her lady's name. But go down there
Speaker 2: and see it if you haven't been already. I think
Speaker 2: you said you had been there, right?
Speaker 1: I have. And actually in May, a friend of mine's
Speaker 1: paranormal group, Black Wolf Paranormal, are running the paranormal investigations
Speaker 1: of the cave and the property. So in May, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go be a guest investigator. And they run
Speaker 1: the paranormal investigations as well as the daytime investigations May
Speaker 1: through October. But I've talked a lot about the Bell
Speaker 1: Witch on my show on the Unseen Paranormal. And then
Speaker 1: also I just narrated a story from H.J. Tidy about
Speaker 1: the Bell Witch for the Strange Chapters YouTube channel. And
Speaker 1: talking about the history and the folklore and about the hauntings.
Speaker 1: But I've had Pat Fitzhugh on the show. Pat Fitzhugh,
Speaker 1: he's an expert. on the legend i would say because.
Speaker 2: I've met pat before when i lived in mountain city
Speaker 2: they had something that was going on at uh which
Speaker 2: cave and i went down there to nashville and uh
Speaker 2: met him i think he's written two or three books about.
Speaker 1: It he he has four books now four okay yeah
Speaker 1: and he he's been researching it for 40 years and
Speaker 1: um pat's a great guy the interesting guy he was
Speaker 1: actually a speaker at our expo we had last year
Speaker 1: and the one the year before but um Great guy,
Speaker 1: and he can tell you anything about the legend, the hauntings,
Speaker 1: all of that. I also had the opportunity, the last
Speaker 1: time I had Pat on my show, we actually brought
Speaker 1: on Candy, who's the daughter of the owners of the
Speaker 1: farm and the cave, and she's the head tour guide.
Speaker 2: That's probably the little girl that I saw her picture
Speaker 2: back in the day where she was sitting outside the
Speaker 2: entrance of the cave with a friend of hers and
Speaker 2: had a snake around her neck, looked like a bigger snake,
Speaker 2: like maybe a boa or something. And Chris told me,
Speaker 2: she said, there's no way my daughter would have sat
Speaker 2: there smiling with a snake around her neck. We don't
Speaker 2: know what that was. picture is.
Speaker 1: Yeah. She, uh, she's lived there since she, she was
Speaker 1: 12 is what she told me. And she is in
Speaker 1: her thirties now. And, um, but she told some stories
Speaker 1: about things that happened in the cave. Uh, things happen
Speaker 1: on a regular basis in the cave to people paranormal wise,
Speaker 1: as far as the bell family and the story. I
Speaker 1: think it's just a legend and a story and the
Speaker 1: town of Adams have embraced it. And they have a
Speaker 1: festival every year that brings in lots of people and
Speaker 1: it brings in lots of tourism. And it's a great story.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting, fascinating story. Um, but you can't prove
Speaker 1: any of it.
Speaker 2: So, um, a lot of people, the best legends and
Speaker 2: the best folklore, that's the way it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, the biggest thing that people want to point
Speaker 1: towards is Andrew Jackson was supposedly gone there and spent
Speaker 1: the night. Um, there is no evidence whatsoever that Andrew
Speaker 1: Jackson ever wrote about the Bell Witch situation with the
Speaker 1: actual witch and the Bell family. Now, Andrew Jackson did
Speaker 1: have a law office in Adams, Tennessee, and he more
Speaker 1: than likely knew the Bell family. But there's nothing to
Speaker 1: say that he actually ever went to the farm. Actually,
Speaker 1: when they claimed that he went to the farm and stayed,
Speaker 1: he was in, I believe, New Orleans at the time.
Speaker 1: And he wasn't anywhere around Adams, Tennessee. But I think
Speaker 1: also if there is any truth to what happened with
Speaker 1: the Bell family, with the one daughter being tortured by
Speaker 1: the spirit, you know, back then they didn't know what
Speaker 1: schizophrenia and things like that were. I mean, you're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, early 1800s, late 1700s, early 1800s. And they
Speaker 1: didn't know about that because it only centered around John Bell,
Speaker 1: the father and the older daughter.
Speaker 2: And, um, Betsy, I believe was her name.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Betsy Bell. And, uh, she, there, there's theories that
Speaker 1: there was a curse put on them by Kate Bates
Speaker 1: or Kate Bates, whatever, whichever folklore you want to listen
Speaker 1: to that her name is spelled two different ways. Um,
Speaker 1: Kate Bates or Bates owned an adjacent farm and she
Speaker 1: was married with a husband. She was not a witch.
Speaker 1: She did not live in a cave. her, back then,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't have been dealing with any property disputes. That
Speaker 1: would have been with her husband. Could she have put
Speaker 1: a hex on him? Yeah. But, yeah, she wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had a beef with John Bell. It would have been
Speaker 1: her husband that would have had a beef with him.
Speaker 1: And so there's nothing to prove that, you know, that happened.
Speaker 1: And as far as the cave goes, the cave really
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the actual legend and folklore
Speaker 1: other than that it's on the property. And what they,
Speaker 1: even Candy and all these people have told me, the
Speaker 1: reason that they believe that the cave is haunted is
Speaker 1: because when they built the highway through Adams, they found
Speaker 1: some Native American graves where they were digging to put
Speaker 1: the highway. Well, they relocated some of these into the
Speaker 1: cave at the time because above the cave on the property,
Speaker 1: they actually have Indian mounds, burial mounds.
Speaker 2: There is a Cherokee box grave there in the cave, supposedly.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just a hole with a stone lined
Speaker 2: around in a square shape, but that's the story that's
Speaker 2: told that that's a Cherokee box grave.
Speaker 1: And that was actually, from what I understand, was put
Speaker 1: there when they moved that grave from the highway area.
Speaker 1: That grave was actually put in there the way they
Speaker 1: found it. So they found that box grave where they
Speaker 1: were carving out to the highway, and they just moved
Speaker 1: it and put it in the cave the way they
Speaker 1: found it. The bones have long since been removed, I think,
Speaker 1: by the Tennessee State Archaeologist, removed the bones. But the
Speaker 1: one thing that I've heard, and it's haunted, things happen
Speaker 1: all the time to tour guides and things. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's definitely something to the cave being haunted.
Speaker 1: But they think that it's more towards the Native American
Speaker 1: side of things with the mounds and that type of stuff.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest legends that's come out of the
Speaker 1: cave is that if you take anything out of the cave, arrowhead, stone, anything,
Speaker 1: that you will have bad luck. And I asked Candy
Speaker 1: this straight up, and she said they get lots of
Speaker 1: packages back every year of people sending rocks back.
Speaker 2: Chris Kirby told me that, that sometimes they'd come home,
Speaker 2: they'd block the gate when they're not there, of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: She said sometimes there'd be stuff laying in the driveway
Speaker 2: with a note tied to it. Like, would you please
Speaker 2: put this back in the cave?
Speaker 1: Yeah. And Candy told me that whenever they opened it
Speaker 1: back up after COVID, because they were shut down for
Speaker 1: two years for COVID. She said the first week they
Speaker 1: opened back up, this lady and her family came from
Speaker 1: out of town. They came and did the cave tour
Speaker 1: during the day. They went and ate at a local
Speaker 1: restaurant and the lady fell and broke her leg and
Speaker 1: had to go to the emergency room and have cast
Speaker 1: put on and cast and all. Before they left town,
Speaker 1: they came back to the farm, and her husband got
Speaker 1: out of the car and explained what happened and gave
Speaker 1: them a rock that the lady had taken out of
Speaker 1: the cave. And they believe that she broke her leg
Speaker 1: because she took the rock out of the cave.
Speaker 2: There's probably a lot of stories like that. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you've ever been down to Key West, but
Speaker 2: they have Robert the Doll on display down there. And
Speaker 2: the walls are lined with pictures that people took of
Speaker 2: him without asking his permission and had bad luck or
Speaker 2: some sort of misfortune, and they send them back. And
Speaker 2: the people that curate that museum started putting them on
Speaker 2: the wall. There's, there's hundreds of them there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the petrified forest, um, if you take the,
Speaker 1: the park service actually gets packaged back with pieces of
Speaker 1: petrified wood that people have taken out of the park,
Speaker 1: even though it's illegal to take them. But once people
Speaker 1: have taken them, they attribute their bad luck for them
Speaker 1: taking pieces of petrified wood out of the park. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've heard that story too. So the, the, the, Moral
Speaker 2: of that is don't take anything when you go anywhere.
Speaker 2: Don't take any souvenirs because you might get a souvenir
Speaker 2: that you weren't looking for attached to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But the kind of thing with the Bell family
Speaker 1: and the Bell Witch stuff, it's kind of lost to
Speaker 1: history now. You know, it's like the telephone game. It's
Speaker 1: been passed down from so many years, you know, 200 years.
Speaker 1: Who knows what was true with the Bell family and
Speaker 1: what wasn't. But it's an amazing myth and legend. And
Speaker 1: the cave is awesome just as a cave. But then
Speaker 1: when you throw the hauntings and the paranormal stuff going on,
Speaker 1: it makes it even more interesting. And I'm excited to
Speaker 1: be a guest investigator because I've never investigated the cave.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's going to be fascinating. I'm looking forward to
Speaker 2: hearing about that. But especially growing up in Tennessee, it
Speaker 2: was just such a part of our local heritage. Even
Speaker 2: though I was in East Tennessee, I talked about that
Speaker 2: on your show, how there was a game there that
Speaker 2: the school kids played, maybe still do similar to bloody Mary,
Speaker 2: but it was the bell witch. You go into the
Speaker 2: room with the light off and say, I don't believe
Speaker 2: in the bell witch three times. And she'd come out
Speaker 2: of the mirror and scratch you. So just an interesting
Speaker 2: piece of very Tennessee centric folklore.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And we did the same thing when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, it was the bell witch. It was never
Speaker 1: bloody Mary. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I didn't, didn't hear bloody Mary until I was much older. And, uh,
Speaker 2: heard that from kids that were from other places, but yeah,
Speaker 2: the Bell Witch was our local variant of that, and
Speaker 2: up the road a ways in Powell or Claxton, going
Speaker 2: up Clinton Highway out in Knoxville, there was a place
Speaker 2: up there where there had been an old motor court
Speaker 2: style hotel there, and somebody had been in there after
Speaker 2: it had closed down in the pool and had drowned,
Speaker 2: and they had a similar story about that, that you
Speaker 2: could go and sit across the highway from that, and
Speaker 2: say that you didn't believe in it and you would
Speaker 2: hear them splashing around in the water there even though
Speaker 2: the pool was long gone yeah so i think that's
Speaker 2: another like the telephone game of vanishing hitchhiker and all
Speaker 2: that crybaby bridge and yeah the white lady that walks
Speaker 2: on the side of the highway every little community in
Speaker 2: the south's got a crybaby bridge i think and there's
Speaker 2: just a little variation in the story but it's it's
Speaker 2: the same story and i think somewhere at some point
Speaker 2: it did happen that's just been passed along and redone
Speaker 2: to fit the local area so people know what you're talking.
Speaker 1: About yeah i find this fascinating because you can you
Speaker 1: can even go to stories like the razor blades and
Speaker 1: candy that can be they've traced that back to one
Speaker 1: story that happened actually in the 1970s and unfortunately a
Speaker 1: guy did it to his own kids but now it's
Speaker 1: become this ubiquitous thing that people are out there putting
Speaker 1: razor blades and candy.
Speaker 2: And razor blades in apples pens and candy bars things
Speaker 2: like that and i remember even I don't think they
Speaker 2: did it when I was a kid, but in the
Speaker 2: early to mid 80s, Park West Hospital there in Knoxville
Speaker 2: on Halloween, you could bring your kids candy back there
Speaker 2: and they would x-ray it to make sure there was
Speaker 2: no metallic objects in there. So again, that's one of
Speaker 2: those that was passed around. And yeah, the guy that
Speaker 2: did it to his kids, I think he poisoned a
Speaker 2: pixie stick or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Ended up killing his son and they traced it back
Speaker 2: to him. It was an attempted murder as insurance fraud,
Speaker 2: but again, that's how those urban legends get started. And
Speaker 2: it goes nationwide and probably in other countries too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I just find, I find it fascinating, especially
Speaker 1: when you can trace them back and how they, it
Speaker 1: changes and morphs depending on the culture of where you're
Speaker 1: at in the country as well. And, uh, so I've
Speaker 1: with the paranormal and the reason I love doing the podcast,
Speaker 1: especially strange chapters. Now, uh, it was sharing chapters. I'm
Speaker 1: partnered up with authors and I'm narrating, uh, stories out
Speaker 1: of their books. And, um, And I just find the
Speaker 1: storytelling of the paranormal fascinating as well, from hearing the legends,
Speaker 1: but also hearing individual stories of what's happened to them
Speaker 1: paranormal-wise and their experiences with either hauntings or Bigfoot or
Speaker 1: things like that. I just find the stories all fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was the impetus behind Strange Things in
Speaker 2: the Woods. I had an epiphany at my granny's funeral,
Speaker 2: the one I was talking about. I was 13 years old.
Speaker 2: And I just, you know, was standing there paying my
Speaker 2: respects and observing her in her coffin and thinking about
Speaker 2: all those legends, all those tales, all those stories and
Speaker 2: things she told me. They died right there with her.
Speaker 2: because even within her own family you know my mom
Speaker 2: and some of her brothers and things maybe knew a
Speaker 2: little bit of that but my cousins even less so
Speaker 2: but I got the brunt of it because you know
Speaker 2: I was the special child with a veil over his
Speaker 2: face when I was born and I thought you know
Speaker 2: I'm not going to let that happen So use not
Speaker 2: only some of her stories, but other people's stories that
Speaker 2: I am writing a book about her. And I just,
Speaker 2: I wish now that I hadn't been afraid of her
Speaker 2: when I was little. And I wish I'd had at
Speaker 2: least another 13 years with her because that's the senior
Speaker 2: citizens are such a wealth of knowledge. I've talked about that.
Speaker 2: When I do book readings and things, I go to
Speaker 2: different places. I've gone into like a old folks home
Speaker 2: or senior center and read from one of my books.
Speaker 2: And some people are like, oh, well, there's no bingo tonight.
Speaker 2: You know, they get up and leave or they sit
Speaker 2: there crocheting or whatever. But usually there's one or two
Speaker 2: people that will hang back. And I know what's about
Speaker 2: to happen. They'll wait till the room kind of empties
Speaker 2: out and then they'll sidle up to me and say,
Speaker 2: you know, that reminded me of something that happened to
Speaker 2: me when I was a boy or a story that
Speaker 2: I heard from my dad or my granddad. You know, again,
Speaker 2: these may be stories that they've never told anybody that
Speaker 2: they've never talked about. When they're gone, it's gone. So
Speaker 2: I like helping build a legacy that way. And Strange
Speaker 2: Things Out of the Woods, that was stories from friends
Speaker 2: and family and friends and family and things. But about
Speaker 2: probably 95% of the people in that book have passed on.
Speaker 2: Yet I'm able to let their stories live on through
Speaker 2: my chronicling of it. And, you know, that's a great
Speaker 2: mantle to assume. And I enjoy that. And I do
Speaker 2: 100 volumes of it if I've got time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I look at paranormal investigating in a similar way
Speaker 1: as well, that we're possibly connecting to these people in
Speaker 1: the past that may be forgotten about, if not for
Speaker 1: us investigating and trying to contact them and tell their story.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And making sure that the stories live on. And
Speaker 2: I'm doing that with my YouTube channel, Among the Missing,
Speaker 2: and a lot of these people that have never been
Speaker 2: found and things, they're kind of forgotten about. I mean,
Speaker 2: you'll have a big case. in the media like Gabby
Speaker 2: Petito or somebody like that, that just, it fades away
Speaker 2: after a while and people kind of forget, but you know,
Speaker 2: the families, the loved ones, the friends of those people,
Speaker 2: they don't forget. So I think it's important to keep
Speaker 2: the memory of those people out there because there's a
Speaker 2: family somewhere that are friends that would like to have
Speaker 2: some sort of closure and somewhere. I still think in
Speaker 2: a lot of these cases, somebody knows something, particularly in
Speaker 2: cases where there seems to be foul play involved.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And just because they're not famous or the person
Speaker 1: wasn't famous or the media didn't pick up on it,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that their story is not just as important
Speaker 1: as those ones that make it a big stories. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I've said that to me, one missing person is
Speaker 2: not any more or less important than any other missing person.
Speaker 2: And that's my true criteria. They're missing and they're a
Speaker 2: person and then we'll talk about it, but I don't
Speaker 2: know what it is. There's certain cases like that, that
Speaker 2: just catch the media eye and they run with it.
Speaker 2: And then there's, stories that are just as fascinating. And again,
Speaker 2: just as important to the family and friends of those
Speaker 2: missing people that maybe get local coverage, if that even,
Speaker 2: so it's, it's kind of a catch 22 there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And, uh, you mentioned, uh, strange chapters there. Um, how
Speaker 2: many episodes of that have you done and where's that going,
Speaker 2: going forward?
Speaker 1: Uh, so I, I think this week's episode is 18
Speaker 1: that I've done. Um, if the stories are short from
Speaker 1: that author, if they're the stories that they give me
Speaker 1: are short, then I will do them in one episode.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to keep it between 20 and 30 minutes
Speaker 1: so that it's, you know, short, um, uh, short listen
Speaker 1: or watch on YouTube. Um, if, if the stories are
Speaker 1: longer than that, then I've been doing different parts. So
Speaker 1: I'll have, you know, like with HJ tidy, um, those
Speaker 1: stories were a little bit longer about the bell, which
Speaker 1: about the Sally house and about, uh, myrtle's plantation. Cause
Speaker 1: there's a lot of history and the haunting stuff in there.
Speaker 1: And so I did those as like a three part
Speaker 1: series and put that out over the course of a
Speaker 1: week and a half. And those episodes end up being
Speaker 1: about 15 minutes long. But there is a video element
Speaker 1: that I do on YouTube that I use AI for
Speaker 1: to do images and the pictures are moving. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting there. But it's also put out as
Speaker 1: a podcast where people can just listen anywhere they listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts on Apple or Spotify or any of the
Speaker 1: other places that you get podcasts. But YouTube, it's really
Speaker 1: taken off. and uh i have uh i think there's
Speaker 1: 5 000 views already and like over 500 watch hours
Speaker 1: and so it's actually doing really well uh to be
Speaker 1: that young of a podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah sounds like it's doing great out of the gate
Speaker 2: and i'm looking forward to to see where you go
Speaker 2: over there with that and uh hopefully getting introduced to
Speaker 2: a lot of authors that i haven't heard of i
Speaker 2: think that's important too because again i've been fortunate on
Speaker 2: amazon i've had several best sellers but Sometimes it's hard
Speaker 2: to separate the wheat from the chaff or the signal
Speaker 2: from the noise. I mean, there's millions of books over
Speaker 2: there and there's some great diamonds in the rough, some
Speaker 2: great authors that people have never heard of and stuff.
Speaker 2: So shows like yours, you know, you can bring those
Speaker 2: to the fore and help them get a little bit
Speaker 2: of discovery and help them find their audience, especially people
Speaker 2: that are struggling. I hate to see that people that
Speaker 2: are doing well and decide, you know, I'm never going
Speaker 2: to be able to do anything with this and just
Speaker 2: give up. When there's still stories to be told and
Speaker 2: that goes for, for fiction and even poetry as well.
Speaker 2: And you know, young adult fiction, any genre can be
Speaker 2: great if you find the right audience for it. And that's,
Speaker 2: I think that's the thing with the paranormal and missing
Speaker 2: people and things like that. The audience is there and
Speaker 2: they're hungry for it. But again, you've got to do
Speaker 2: something to be able to shine a light on it.
Speaker 2: And I'm not that good at self-promotion. It's just, I'm
Speaker 2: the way I, took care of it was to go
Speaker 2: on shows like yours or to go basically anywhere they'd
Speaker 2: have me. I've been on coast to coast and been
Speaker 2: on Clyde Lewis several times as a guest. And that's
Speaker 2: how I ended up with this show on his ground
Speaker 2: zero radio network. Uh, apparently people enjoy listening to me talk.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I, I'm like you, I hear a lot
Speaker 1: about my voice cause it's deep and, and I don't
Speaker 1: have much of an accent and, you know, so, um,
Speaker 1: that's part of, that was part of my motivation to
Speaker 1: get into narrating, uh, Because people are asking me, when
Speaker 1: are you going to do something like that? And also,
Speaker 1: like you were talking about, I read so many books
Speaker 1: doing research and reading ghost stories. And even having guests
Speaker 1: on my show, I have a lot of paranormal authors
Speaker 1: on my show. And we can't tell all the stories
Speaker 1: in the hour on the Unseen Paranormal. But I read
Speaker 1: all these amazing stories and these amazing firsthand encounters in
Speaker 1: their books. And this just gives me another way to
Speaker 1: share them. And at first, I thought, am I going
Speaker 1: to enjoy narrating? And actually, I really, really do enjoy it.
Speaker 2: I had no idea that I could do it until
Speaker 2: I did it and people wanted more.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's crazy. Like even through 18 episodes that
Speaker 1: I've recorded of strange chapters from the very first one,
Speaker 1: that was a little bit of a struggle getting the
Speaker 1: timing right. And you know, all these other, the cadence
Speaker 1: and all this other stuff. I feel like now the
Speaker 1: episode I just put out, I've kind of found my
Speaker 1: groove and got in the groove and in the niche,
Speaker 1: but I love it because I get to learn more
Speaker 1: about the paranormal while entertaining other people. but also, like
Speaker 1: you were talking about, shine a light on some of
Speaker 1: these authors' books, and hopefully the show will help them
Speaker 1: sell at least a few copies and gain a different
Speaker 1: audience that never would have known about them to begin with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's a great thing. I've inspired other people
Speaker 2: to write. Cisco Murdoch, for one, the book that she
Speaker 2: and I did together, We're All Children in the Wilderness
Speaker 2: of the Afterlife, a guided tour through a haunted life.
Speaker 2: It took me two years to learn to say that
Speaker 2: title without Tripping over my tongue. But it was. It
Speaker 2: was a great experience. I mean, she did all the
Speaker 2: heavy lifting. It's her stories. But I did like a
Speaker 2: color commentary. I'd come along behind her and have an
Speaker 2: anecdote or something. But, you know, I encourage you to
Speaker 2: do that. And I think that if I hadn't, she
Speaker 2: wouldn't have done it. She even said I kept after her.
Speaker 2: She's had all these stories that I'd heard from being
Speaker 2: on her show. And so I said, you've got to
Speaker 2: write a book. You've got to write a book.
Speaker 1: You've got to write a book.
Speaker 2: And finally, after years of that, she's like, okay, I'll
Speaker 2: do it. But you're coming with me. And there you go.
Speaker 2: And Mark Anthony Wyatt, another guy I know, a friend
Speaker 2: of mine from Cornwall, UK, I encouraged him to write
Speaker 2: a book. And I think he's got three or so
Speaker 2: out there now. And a lot of it was having
Speaker 2: to do with that area of England specifically. But again,
Speaker 2: that's a book that wouldn't have existed necessarily without some
Speaker 2: prodding from people like me. Like, these are great stories.
Speaker 2: You got to write them. You got to write them.
Speaker 1: You got to write them. Yeah. And I would say,
Speaker 1: I would credit you. with being one of the people
Speaker 1: that influenced me to, to, to work on strain, to
Speaker 1: work on the small town haunted legends book that it's
Speaker 1: been like a year and a half, two years in
Speaker 1: the making, but you know, I have a lot of
Speaker 1: other stuff going on too, but it will be finished
Speaker 1: and out this year. And you and a couple of other, um,
Speaker 1: paranormal author friends have been really supportive and like, you
Speaker 1: need to go do this. Like you're well-spoken. So you'll
Speaker 1: be well-written. Cause my whole thing is like, I'm not
Speaker 1: a writer. And, um, but then my friend sends straighter Hill,
Speaker 1: She just asked me to write the forward to her
Speaker 1: newest book. And I was just honored and she was
Speaker 1: blown away by it. And I was honored to be
Speaker 1: asked to write the forward. You know, the first thing
Speaker 1: that people are going to see in this book is
Speaker 1: what I wrote. Like, and I didn't even know how
Speaker 1: to approach it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then i thought well it's mine to do who says
Speaker 1: that a forward has to be this format like who
Speaker 1: cares you know and so i just wrote from the
Speaker 1: heart and and wrote um and that's the best writing
Speaker 1: yeah and and she loved it and it's like i
Speaker 1: said it's in her newest book and and i just
Speaker 1: felt so honored and after that that kind of gave
Speaker 1: me a boost of confidence is what i was getting
Speaker 1: at with that to finish my book. Cause I kind
Speaker 1: of lost confidence. I'm like, am I really a good writer?
Speaker 1: You know, is this really worth it? And that kind
Speaker 1: of gave me the boost to finish the book. And
Speaker 1: now I have an idea for another one to work
Speaker 1: on later on this year. So that's the thing.
Speaker 2: Anytime you write a book, you're already onto the next
Speaker 2: one or that's been my experience. And I'm an Aspie.
Speaker 2: So I tend to work on five or six projects
Speaker 2: at a time. And I've got that many books going on.
Speaker 2: I've got film scripts that I'm working on. I've got
Speaker 2: other YouTube channels planned. You know, just I can't focus
Speaker 2: on one particular thing. So I focus on a bunch
Speaker 2: of different things. And that's the unwieldy part of it
Speaker 2: sometimes is, okay, I need to stay on this and
Speaker 2: get that done. But it means having writer's block. That
Speaker 2: way I've always got a project that I can, a
Speaker 2: writing project that I can go to. But if I
Speaker 2: can do it, anybody can do it. And I've always said,
Speaker 2: if you can talk, you can write. Or even if
Speaker 2: you can't talk, if you're mute, you can still write
Speaker 2: a book. And just start putting words on paper and
Speaker 2: it'll take off. It'll get a mind of its own.
Speaker 2: And although I've started ones and I thought, man, this
Speaker 2: wasn't what I thought it was going to be. And
Speaker 2: I've got several projects like that that are not necessarily
Speaker 2: permanently shelved, but that are shelved nonetheless. And yeah, the
Speaker 2: more you write, the more you want to write. And
Speaker 2: it's like anything, the easier, the more you do it,
Speaker 2: the easier it gets. And there's a Stephen King quote
Speaker 2: that I like to use. He once called himself the
Speaker 2: literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries, meaning it's
Speaker 2: accessible to everybody. He said the high school kid can
Speaker 2: read it. The plumber with his butt crack hanging out
Speaker 2: can read it. Or the guy that's been to college
Speaker 2: or the doctor can read it. So I like hitting
Speaker 2: that middle ground. And I've seen a lot of authors
Speaker 2: fall that way where they go in thinking, I have
Speaker 2: to show everybody how intelligent I am and what a
Speaker 2: good writer I am. it's going to be hard to
Speaker 2: find an audience that way when people have to look
Speaker 2: up the words in the title, nobody's going to buy
Speaker 2: that book. Right.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. And that's, yeah. And I just try to,
Speaker 1: like I said, I, I write the way I talk
Speaker 1: because I don't, I'm not a writer. I don't know
Speaker 1: how else to write it. And so, you know, I
Speaker 1: do my research on the history and collect the information
Speaker 1: and just write it in, you know, my understanding of
Speaker 1: my own words and try to make it where people
Speaker 1: understand it and will enjoy it. Hopefully.
Speaker 2: And there you go. And that's the hardest part for
Speaker 2: me sometimes is just ass in seat and write.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's easy to get distracted. I've thought about getting just
Speaker 2: a regular typewriter, but that's a huge pain in the
Speaker 2: ass because I started out writing that way. If I
Speaker 2: could have just like, I don't know, maybe a Chromebook
Speaker 2: or something that I didn't even have to connect to
Speaker 2: the Internet until I wanted to.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Where there was I could keep my focus and just
Speaker 2: sit and write. And I like to listen to music
Speaker 2: when I write. But yeah, I was writing in your
Speaker 2: own voice. That's who else you're going to write in.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can mimic somebody or try different styles
Speaker 2: and things, but once you start doing it, you find
Speaker 2: your own voice and your own cadence and things. And that's,
Speaker 2: but thanks. I consider that an honor to think that
Speaker 2: I've inspired you even in some small way to.
Speaker 1: Write a book. Oh no, you and Cisco have been
Speaker 1: a huge influence on me the past few years since
Speaker 1: I started the paranormal podcast journey and kind of getting
Speaker 1: out in the public with, with my investigating and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you and Cisco have definitely been hugely influential.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate that. And speaking on behalf of her,
Speaker 2: I'm sure she does too. And I'd like to have
Speaker 2: the both of you on sometime. Yeah, yeah. And see
Speaker 2: what can shake loose. And I want to hear both
Speaker 2: of your experiences at Gettysburg and things. Because I know
Speaker 2: she talks about that all the time. She lives in Gettysburg.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an amazing place like no other.
Speaker 2: And just to have that many like-minded people in one
Speaker 2: place for that purpose of investigating the paranormal, for being
Speaker 2: a paranormalist, if you will, when you've done your homework
Speaker 2: and you've done your research and you kind of know
Speaker 2: what to expect, not only, but why it's there. That's
Speaker 2: the fascinating part to me about the whole paranormalist thing.
Speaker 2: And it's helping me to look at things in a
Speaker 2: different light, you know, and in a different way that
Speaker 2: I've always done that in the first place. I mean,
Speaker 2: a lot of these places, even in Strange Things in
Speaker 2: the Woods, there were other people's stories. Once I heard
Speaker 2: those stories, I had to go there. There's one about
Speaker 2: Sequoia Museum there in Von Orr, where I read about
Speaker 2: there's an Indian mound there on the edge of the
Speaker 2: parking lot to one side. But back behind there, there's
Speaker 2: this tree that looks like a Disney tree that's out
Speaker 2: in the woods. And that's somebody's power spot. Well, somebody
Speaker 2: told me that story. I got to go. So next
Speaker 2: time I was working a regular job then. Since I
Speaker 2: had a day off, I was headed down to Von Orr.
Speaker 2: I went back there in the woods behind the Indian Mount.
Speaker 2: I stopped and paid my respects there. I'm part Cherokee
Speaker 2: on my dad's side. And then went in the woods there.
Speaker 2: It is, that's one of the most amazing trees I've
Speaker 2: ever seen. You can feel the energy. That is a very,
Speaker 2: very different spot. And there are places like that. I've
Speaker 2: encountered that in the Smokies and other places, but that
Speaker 2: one in particular. Another one here, there's a story about
Speaker 2: a barn where they found cow manure in this barn
Speaker 2: that hadn't been used in decades. They found cow manure
Speaker 2: up in the second loft and it was fresh. They
Speaker 2: poked a stick in it to see that the barn
Speaker 2: and silos gone now, but I had to go there
Speaker 2: because a lot of these were regional. And when I could,
Speaker 2: I'd go and check it out. That one I have
Speaker 2: no answer for, but I told that story recently on
Speaker 2: a live stream and somebody commented that it was Wendigo
Speaker 2: crap up in the barn. I hadn't even thought about that,
Speaker 2: but maybe they do take a dump. Who knows? But
Speaker 2: it was, you know, it was amazing story. And the
Speaker 2: fact that several of these kids witnessed it together, you know,
Speaker 2: somebody telling tales that they all saw it and experienced it.
Speaker 2: I love stuff like that where it's a one-off, but
Speaker 2: there may be several witnesses to it. Like, you know,
Speaker 2: the Dover demon or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, the, some of those stories fascinate me.
Speaker 1: And I've, that's another thing about the paranormal that I
Speaker 1: absolutely love is that get to go places that other
Speaker 1: people normally don't go or get to go. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we have to rent out places, but, uh, like at
Speaker 1: brushy mountain, uh, we're going, I'm going back again in
Speaker 1: April and it costs a lot of money to rent
Speaker 1: the place out for the night, but there are so
Speaker 1: many other places that we get to go. The general
Speaker 1: public during the day tour doesn't get to go to
Speaker 1: experience and we get to experience the history of in
Speaker 1: a different way and all these amazing places that we
Speaker 1: get into that otherwise without the paranormal, we would not. And,
Speaker 1: and so I think my view on the paranormal ultimately
Speaker 1: is that it's, for me, it's more about the journey
Speaker 1: than it is necessarily the destination. So yes, I love investigating.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love investigating and getting evidence is amazing, but the
Speaker 1: fun in it is doing it with your friends and
Speaker 1: people that you enjoy and the journey of getting the
Speaker 1: to that investigation and the things that happen and just
Speaker 1: spending time with people and the experiences that you get
Speaker 1: to do that nobody else gets to. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I, and I love that. I'm, I'm more of
Speaker 2: a legend tripper. I like to go someplace where something's
Speaker 2: happened like that and just say, yo, here I am.
Speaker 2: I'm in this place where this happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there's a certain thrill for me there that, and
Speaker 2: I don't go anywhere really expecting anything to happen because
Speaker 2: that's usually a guarantee that it won't any of my
Speaker 2: real paranormal encounters was when i was least expecting it
Speaker 2: i don't think i never went into anywhere expecting anything
Speaker 2: to happen and had it happen but again this is
Speaker 2: it's it's an amazing field to study or as a
Speaker 2: hobby and uh like you talked about uh for the
Speaker 2: more adventurous of us it's a you know a travelogue
Speaker 2: a tour book um there was a book that came
Speaker 2: out in 78 by an author named jim brandon called
Speaker 2: weird america and he chronicled chronicled all these weird places
Speaker 2: and had showed where it was on the map and stuff.
Speaker 2: And that was almost my Bible there for a while.
Speaker 2: I went to as many of those places as I could.
Speaker 2: And still to this day, if I'm somewhere near one
Speaker 2: of those places that I read about back in the
Speaker 2: late seventies, I'll go pay it a visit just from
Speaker 2: that one book. I would love to do some sort
Speaker 2: of paranormal guidebook like that because nowadays you can give, um,
Speaker 2: not just a general location like he did, but you
Speaker 2: can give GPS coordinates. You can lead somebody right there,
Speaker 2: of course, trespassing and things like that. But that never
Speaker 2: stopped me much before. But that's, that's another thing that
Speaker 2: the way you're doing it, you're doing it the right way,
Speaker 2: you know, and they don't have to sneak into places
Speaker 2: and risk trespassing or arrest or anything like that. But it's,
Speaker 2: it's being embraced now and they're opening more places up
Speaker 2: and being respectful and and respectful to the environment and
Speaker 2: the place itself, I think that'll open it up for
Speaker 2: future generations to do what you're doing.
Speaker 1: Well, and also a lot of these historical locations we
Speaker 1: go to, you know, if we rent it out for
Speaker 1: $ 500 a night, that probably pays their bills for that month. And,
Speaker 1: you know, you got to think $ 5, $ 10 a historical
Speaker 1: tour is not bringing a lot of people in the doors.
Speaker 1: And so it's a huge influx of money for these
Speaker 1: historical locations. And it's expensive to keep up $ 1, 700, $ 1, 800,
Speaker 1: 1800s house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the heating and cooling and the paint and the
Speaker 2: roof and all that. A lot of stuff that people
Speaker 2: don't think about. Well, Eric, unfortunately, we've run out of
Speaker 2: time tonight. This two hours has just flown by.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've loved having you on the show. You're a fascinating person.
Speaker 2: One more time. Tell everybody the different places they can
Speaker 2: find you.
Speaker 1: The Unseen Paranormal Podcast is available anywhere you find music
Speaker 1: or podcast. So is Strange Chapters. The Unseen Paranormal Podcast
Speaker 1: is on YouTube, but it's audio only. Strange Chapters, like
Speaker 1: I said, on YouTube has a video element to it.
Speaker 1: And the new channel, we don't have anything up yet.
Speaker 1: We're filming this weekend called Strangely Haunted. And you can
Speaker 1: find me and all of those brands all over social media.
Speaker 1: The Unseen Paranormal Podcast is on every social media you
Speaker 1: can think of. I'm building up a TikTok following now,
Speaker 1: but doing short videos on there. But yeah, you can
Speaker 1: follow me on Facebook, Instagram, on TikTok and LinkedIn, everywhere,
Speaker 1: Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I just started on TikTok. That short form, that's
Speaker 2: a whole different animal for me, but I'm getting some
Speaker 2: good results with it. And I like being able to
Speaker 2: tell those short stories. Again, Eric, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: And I'll leave links in the show notes. to all
Speaker 2: those things you mentioned there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having me, and thanks, everybody, for listening.
Speaker 2: My pleasure. Well, that's going to do it for tonight, everybody.
Speaker 2: I'm Steve Stockton. You've been listening to everything out there
Speaker 2: on the Clyde Lewis Ground Zero Radio Network. I'll see
Speaker 2: you a little further on down the trail. Tell your
Speaker 2: animals I said hi. Good night, everybody.