Speaker 1: Welcome to this edition of The High Strangers Factor Copywriting
on the Paranormal UK Radio Network. I'm your host, Steve Board,
along with Andy Mercer and Susie Basstiel. Andy Mercer and
I have been doing this for oh god, a little
over half a decade. I keep wanting to say half
a century, but it hasn't been quite that. Loe and
Susie Basstiel is a recent addition to our show. We
have talked to very interesting guests and have over several years.
And we'll just get started here. So Andy and Susie,
welcome back to the show. It's been a little while.
I've been a bit of a slacker, I know, but
nice to have you guys back.
Speaker 2: It is good to be back together the crazy Amathur
of us. It's been not just she's been pretty quiet generally.
I think some of the other shows have a little
bit on the quiet side. So we've all take a
bit of a bit of a break. But it's nice
to get things rolled again. And as you come into
the auto winter and these cold window nights with the
storms are raging inside, we'll wrapped up wall enjoying a
nice good podcast and.
Speaker 1: And and as listeners know that Andy is far far
away across the ocean in a place called the UK England,
and Susie it's not quite so far away, but everything's
far away from West Virginia. She and she lives in Connecticut.
So I'm in the.
Speaker 3: New England instead of the Old England.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm of the old ones.
Speaker 1: So let's let's uh uh. Actually I should start by Andy,
tell us about your your publishing company.
Speaker 2: Oh, can I tell you? It's all going rather well.
The second book has now sold out as well, so
I'm now working on laying out the third book, which
is on a complex topic, to be honest with you,
it's all related to traditional witchcraft and judas. As in Judas,
the of Jesus plays a central role in some early
witchcraft practices and modernized witchcraft practices as well. That one
i'm working at the moment, which is going to be
hopefully out in January. It's rightly delayed because a few
issues have had over here, nothing to do with publishing,
and do with my house, which has delayed things a
little bit. And then that one should be out hopefully
sort of in the spring, say January, fibry time. And
then I'm working on my next book from me, my
own book, which is talking about Essex witchcraft, which is
where I am now. Now, witchcraft a big part in
the formation of things like what's called traditional witchcraft, and
these are very wicked and witchcraft are very different things.
I should emphasize. In fact, Susan and I did the
show a little while ago talking about the difference between
the two forms of witchcraft. They are very different. But
there's two characters that came from Essex in the eighteen
hundreds who played a pivotal role in the formation of
what the witchcraft. One of them is very important and
very real. The other one is probably more than a
myth than a real person, and that's going to cause
a bit of a hooha with a few people who
very much think this person called George specking Gill was
real and had lose magical powers, but there's little evidence.
So that's what I'm working on next. It could be
quite a controversial book in the world of witchcraft and
those sort of things, so can be interest to see
how that one goes. But that's what I've been up to.
And ask them you were.
Speaker 1: And the name of your company if people want to
find it.
Speaker 2: Oh, Yes, Ninth Circle Press. That's Ninth Circle Press, which
comes from Dante and Dante's Inferno, which I am fascinated
by actual written a book about it as well, which
came back a few years ago called under Organosis the
occult currency in Dante's Inferno, and should say I've just
come back, well so just it was back in early October.
Came back from Florence in Italy, where Dante was from,
so I finally got to visit his house in the
muse and our museum and see all the sites, which
was fascinating and my phone is now full a photograph
around the medieval France. Yes, Ninth Circle Press dot com
or dot co dot UK both lead to me and
you can find the books there.
Speaker 1: And the Susi Masstiel also known as the Puck Wedgie
Whisperer tell us where people can find you.
Speaker 4: So you can find me on YouTube at the Puck
Wedgy Whisper Although I will warrn people that I have
been actually out in the fields frolicking through the woods
to try to do some boots on the ground research
this summer. So there has not been much been going
on on my YouTube channel as.
Speaker 3: Of late, but.
Speaker 4: We are now at the time of year where I
am struggling between wanting to be out in the woods
and not wanting to be cold. So it's only a
matter of time before the not wanting to be cold
winds over. So that should pick back that pretty soon, very.
Speaker 1: Good, okay. Sherry Break is a paranormal researcher, podcaster, author,
dowser and paranormal class instructor. With over thirty years in
the field of the paranormal. Sherry has instructed classes at
colleges and community centers on subjects such as dowsing, ghost hunting,
one oh one Spirit photography, and advanced ghost hunting. She
has been a speaker on many conferences and enjoys sharing
dark history. She has been featured on Destination, Fear, Ghost Lab,
ABC's Scariest Places on Earth, Midwest Mysteries, and many other
documentaries and has worked as a researcher for several series.
Her adventures feature international ghost tours to Ireland and Scotland,
and she has published over a dozen books and journals
on harder locations, Samson folklore. While the paranormal is her passion,
her love of history, photography, science, cryptids, cemetery, symbolism and
folklore add to the enlightening mix of her presentations and tours.
Sherry is a past columnist of over a decade with
her Haunted Appalachia and Fireside folklore columns in Graffiti Magazine,
Hashtag West Virginia and Two Lane Living publications. Her best
selling books include The Haunted History of the Ohio State Reformatory,
The Ghost Hunter's Guide to West Virginia Penitentiary, and The
Haunted History of the trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. In the
early two thousand, Sherry began the award winning Haunted Heartland Tours,
which is one of the few female run ghost tour
companies in the nation and received the ranking of number
five best ghost Tours by USA Today in twenty fifteen,
with tours in eight dates in three countries. She lives
in the mountains of Summerville, West Virginia, surrounded by Mothman,
the Flatwoods Green Monster, and the Greenbriar Ghost, Bigfoot, and
other oddities hidden in the dark hills and valleys. Her
website is www dot hanted History dot net. And let's see,
she's not back yet. So okay, we got another message here.
She says I'm waiting for the lights to come on,
so well, we'll see what happens here. But in the meantime, actually, I.
Speaker 4: Have a somewhat relevant question for Andy So in Sherry's bio,
I heard trans Alleghany lunatic asylum, right, and paranormal investigations
at places like that are very common here? Is that
the case in the UK also not very much.
Speaker 2: No, we tend to be I think you said they
got a lot of buildings in the market. Seems to
be just a bud and the left and to die
and fall apart. Here it's not so much. The case
obviously is not less land tend to get reused. Yes,
I mean you often get places get closed down for
a while and opportune to investigate, and then they'll be
torn down or redeveloped. I mean a good example local
to me is Shepton Mallet, which has a huge prison,
or had a huge prison or larger in the country
that closed down and about ten years ago, maybe it
slightly less, but it's now empty and it's going to
be redeveloped. At the moment is it is available for investigations.
But what's happened is there are known to be bodies
buried that executed prisoners in the grounds, and they have
to wait a hundred years after the last execution before
they can redevelop the place, and that is about two
years time. So once that date passes, they will then
be able to redevelop it. But now you don't tend
to get large brains like that left demand, and it
tends to be that you have to hire places and
pay to go in them that are museums or created
more than just somebody who can just roll up to Unfortunately,
so you know, you guys are quite lucky that.
Speaker 1: We have our guest back, excellent Sherry.
Speaker 5: Hello, Hello, I just magically appeared right, Yes, and I
already gave your your stellar introduction, so we're all set
to go.
Speaker 1: And uh, I know you warned me that there was
going to be some some bad weather coming help your way.
Speaker 5: Yes, there are disadvantages to living on a mountain side
in the middle of nowhere and electric with the high
winds and whatnot. Yeah, it can make it can make
it interesting. I apologize. It's it's so nice to meet you,
Susie and Andy.
Speaker 6: It's nice to meet you too, and I have the
the pleasure the constriction that I have actually met Cherry
Brake in person a couple of times.
Speaker 1: I think the first time was at the Fraudman conference
some months ago. Yeah, and uh, which is a a
really good, well attended conference, by the way, believe it
or not. You know, I was always a little little jealous.
I mean, I mean, it took how many decades did
it take for Mothman to get his own conference? Frog Man?
You know, he only showed up a couple times briefly,
and he gets his own bloody conference and T shirts
and everything.
Speaker 5: That's right, that's right. I thought it was a great,
a great turnout. I think they had around four or
five thousand people.
Speaker 1: Oh it was amazing. Yeah, yes, it was great.
Speaker 5: It's good to see the cryptids getting some love.
Speaker 1: And and also I happened to come across Sherry. You
do a lot of tours, different types of tours and
so forth. One of them takes place in Point Pleasant
West by god Virginia, and you talk people to talk
to people about the history and the mystery of the area.
And I've not had and I'm going to have to
take one of your tours one of these days, because well,
I know, the the weird stuff that weird history pretty well.
I actually don't know the real the real history that well,
and I really need to bone up on that. But
what is that like? I mean, you get a really
good crowd and what kind of things do you and
it's a walking tour, right, Yeah, it's a walking tour.
Speaker 5: And when I started my tour company twenty four years ago, Wow,
I wanted to kind of, you know, I wanted to
do something that I was going to really enjoy as
well as a paranormal paranormal researcher and investigator, I kind
of wanted to share my love of dark history because
a lot of history is just boring repetition with the
numbers and the dates and this and that. But when
you throw in a good ghost story or somebody was executed,
you know, or somebody was hung from this tree, or
this happened or you know whatever, people tend to sit
up and take notice. So I found early on that
being able to weave the history into the folklore, the
urban legend, even paranormal investigations whatever. When you can kind
of kind of put it all together, it makes a
really good recipe for a walking tour. And my first
walking tour I did in Point Pleasant was in two
thousand and two. Wow, and that's that's when I first
met Jeff Walmsley. And so that I mean, that's how
that's a couple of decades. If me walk in the
streets of Point Pleasant and I just love it. Average
between forty sixty people on the walking tour, so it's
a pretty good sized group that come, and they have
a really good appreciation for not only the history, but
also you know, the darker side of it. We talk
about architecture of some of the buildings, we talk about
the Ohio River, we talk about the Battle of Point Pleasant,
which just celebrated its two hundred and fiftieth ann first
three this year. So so yeah, I love doing it.
I love featuring Point Pleasant and and Susan, Susie, have
you been there? Have you been to Point Pleasant before?
Speaker 3: I have not. I'm hoping to go this coming spring.
Speaker 5: And Andy, You've got a very far away to travel.
Speaker 2: A couple of years back. But the costs when.
Speaker 5: When I explain to people what I what I feel,
Point Pleasant is like it's as if you would take
the Andy Griffith show, you know, Mayberry and the Twilight
Zone hashed them together and they have a baby. The
baby would be Point Pleasant because the people are wonderful,
they're gracious, they're they're there are town characters. Uh, they're entertaining,
they're very knowledgeable with their history. Uh. But also there's
that quirkiness you know, that you find in any small town.
And I just love being able to feature Point Pleasant.
And again, it's everything from Mothman to the Men in Black,
to Chief Cornstock to matt Anne Bailey, the frontier heroine
who's there far away from Chief Cornstock. And you know
the fact that George Washington walked that very ground, and
Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton and all these big figures
from from our frontier history. Just it's just really an
amazing place. I'm really lucky to be able to do
walking tours there. I really enjoy it.
Speaker 1: You know, even some of the displaced people that have
come from oh places like Michigan are pretty awesome.
Speaker 2: Also Frogman exactly use the Frogman if you didn't know at.
Speaker 5: Frogman was actually this I want to say, maybe nearly
two and a half foot three foot tall entity that
these two policemen saw just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, back
in the nineteen seventies and they saw this this frog
kind of like stand up on its legs and it
crawled over a bridge and then walked down the embankment.
So right off the bat, you have two law enforcement
seeing this unusual creature, and it led to the whole
folklore legend of the Loveland frog Man. So there you
have it. Now he has his own little festival.
Speaker 1: It was what wasn't the little of Miami River It
came out of and I think these policemen saw it
about two weeks apart, if I remember correctly. So yeah,
who was what was the name of the famous the
guy Ray Shockley?
Speaker 2: Is that his name?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but it might be a researcher whose
name I can't recall. He tracked him down. He tracked
this guy down, and for the longest time, this guy
got ridiculed for what he had seen. So he finally said, oh,
it was probably some kids iguana or whatever they got loose.
And so this researcher tracked him down, found his mom,
His mom gave him his address, and so he this
isn't that many years ago, and he the guy was
very reluctant to talk talk about it, but on the
way out the door. The guy said, well, it wasn't
an iguana, and so the researcher said, well what was it?
And he said it was bigger and that's all he
would say. So something bizarre happened there. And even there
was another kind of a sighting back in the mid
fifties of something like that. And actually, if you go back,
this guy found out, if you go back into folklore,
there was there's a French. When the French were there,
there was a tradition of them talking about some kind
of a I don't know, like a frog or lizardman
in that area. So so anyway, it's again, you know,
I listen, I love the frog man, but he shows
up a couple of times, he gets his own festival.
How long did it take for a mothman to get
his his festival?
Speaker 5: I mean, come on, I'm telling you, I love the
whole cryptid thing. I you know, when I do my
Scotland tours, we we take a boat on lock Ness
and yeah, I've done it. This will be let's see.
I think it was my ninth time on lock Ness.
The last time that we were there in April and
we've never seen NeSSI but there's a bar on the
boat that serves hot chalk and scotch, so I figure,
if you have a few of those, you may see.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, if you have enough of it, I was there, Well,
go ahead, go ahead there. In nineteen seventy three, I
did backpacking through Europe, but way back in nineteen said
do you remember nineteen seventy three, right, Susie.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, of course I was negative eleven negative.
Speaker 1: Anyways, I was staying at the youth hostels and so forth.
And I stayed in the uh the youth hostel in Inverness,
and a group of us went down, took a bus down.
We actually we went you know when four years is
about halfway down the loch. We we followed the river
down to the lock and it was you know back
in you know, I was I was what twenty twenty
one or whatever, and dumber than dirt. I mean, we
were following this river and we were actually on like
the edge of a It looked like, I looked like
Indiana Jones. There was like this this narrow pathway along
the cliff, and we're going where I got. I don't
know why we did this, but I mean any one
of us could have fallen and that would have been it.
But we made our way down to the lock after
after following the uh the Foyer's river. But of course
I didn't see anything. I was uh. I had read
uh the book called the Great orm O r M
of Lockness by F. W. Holliday, and he talked about
some of the signings of NeSSI where people saw it
on the on the road crossing the road. So while
I was looking diligently at the lock to see if
this thing was out there, I would look over my
shoulder once in a while to make sure this thing
wasn't bouncing around and creeping up behind me.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, Yeah, I muself studying mother looking out
looking for the water, and we're looking for.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 5: I love Scotland. I love Inverness, the Highlands. When we
do our tours, we spend a couple of nights in
Inverness and a couple of nights in oh, Edinburgh. How
could I forget one of my favorite towns. Yeah, yeah,
I love love Edinburgh. And you know, of course when
we do tours there, we take people into the old
Blackfriars Kirkyard and we go into the catacombs under Edinburgh, and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I used to run. I used to run
my own investignation ghost investigation team back in the only
two thousands. We were the first group to investigate Edube volts,
the first people in there at the time. One of
my one of my team cousins worked for Murkout Tools,
you rant at the time. There were six of us
plus one person from the company. We paid five six
pound each for the night, had it to ourselves the
whole night, and we captured some incredibly good footage of something.
If you know the vaults. She got the main entrance,
you downstairs, you've got those two rooms that go through
to the back. My wife is video.
Speaker 5: I'm just I'm just trying to picture. Is this like
the south the south vault, the.
Speaker 2: Main one under the green, the main ones on the
other one, the aim of it to Mary King's close.
That's the other one that's there. And then you've got
the vaults themselves. My wife is filming down the corridor
one of the vaults, so we were in a different
section to where she was. She had my camera with
infrared lights on and you can see in the back
of the area there's a water back, there's a figure
move across like someone rise up and walk across, and
there's no one there to create the show. There's no
one between my wife's with her camera and that blackwall.
We actually showed it to a professional TV cameraman and
he said, I don't see how this has been made.
You have to have something physical between you and the
camera that shadow. If there's only the in fred lights
it was just infrared that it's pitched black and nothing else,
then he couldn't explain it because you can see a
shadow appear by the wall, which is a doorway, and
then it appears on the black wall moments later, and
it's like, that is pretty good stuff, which I didn't recall.
My wife did. She's got into the ghost so she
came along with the.
Speaker 5: YEA, that is impressive. I'm honored to be in your presence.
I mean that's a big deal. That's a big deal.
I mean, I love whistle Binkies. I don't know if
you've ever been to that pub. It's a mile there,
but they always talk about you know, they've got access
into the vaults and right tough store down there, so
they don't like going down there to get some of
their supplies. Because of just different the energy feels underground there.
Speaker 2: It's cool. They were originally built to be used as
workshops because obviously the bridge is huge. It would take
too much to be a solid bridge. It would literally
be millions of tons. So it was that's what's hollowed out.
I know later on, when conditions were such that people
came very poor, that the people were living in those
little hovels which were pretty awful, and they were sealed
up for a good about hundred years where they we rediscovered,
say back in the early nineties. I think it was
that were first rediscovered. I may develop the public and
the idea of having ghost investigations overnight that lived in
thought of that before until so my friend has put
our team suggested to a cousin and they were like, oh, yes,
they had our official ghost reports on their website for years.
And I have the video footage online. It's on the YouTube.
I keep it hidden because I don't want the whole
world to sort of ridicul it.
Speaker 5: But well I would hide it too. I would hide
it too. But yeah, I love Edinburgh, just the history
and of course you know with the with the witches.
You know, we were talking earlier, before my lights went out,
I was listening about your your upcoming books, and that's
that's pretty fascinating. Scotland and Ireland both have such absolutely
full history with with witchcraft and those those accused of
the craft.
Speaker 2: But when you're here in the UK, do you come
south with border? Do you had them into England?
Speaker 3: What we do?
Speaker 1: We do?
Speaker 5: We do Dublin, we do Belfast, a couple of nights
in Belfast and then we we ferry over and we
do the Inverness in Glasgow, and we don't do England.
Speaker 1: I wish why Well, you.
Speaker 5: Know, I've been doing them since twenty fourteen and I'm
a creature. I habit. I've got my favorite places and
I'm like, I just need to go over and explore England.
I need to do it.
Speaker 3: And you used to give Jack the Ripper tours.
Speaker 2: I do indeed, Yes I have.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you have over London, you know I can come.
I mean eaven some that I've got family over in
London still come over and give the Ripper tour.
Speaker 5: The folks that organize my tours for me, and they,
you know, they do all that, the booking of the
flights and getting of my hotels. They they handle all that.
They're on me constantly to do to do England and
to do the Tower of London and Jack the Ripper,
and I'm like, I'll get there.
Speaker 2: If you're looking for another location in the in England
that would be good for the kind of tours you're
talking about is York, which is very far north as
not that far from the Scottish border. And York is
replete the ghost. There's lots of places you could do
tours around there, and they do tours available, so you
could you range someone like York to go to York's
to fabulous city as well.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, I love all of that history, the Medieval,
the Viking. Even I descend down from Strongbow. He was
a grandfather of mine, so I have that that love
of of not Viking raiders or Normandy raiders or anything
like that, but I just love that whole time frame.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure I do too. One of the books I
written is about rooms as well, so I know a
lot about the Viking stuff too.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I love it. I feel like I need
to go back right now now that I have your
story for Edinburgh, I'm like, ooh, yeah, I really do
love showing people new places and with a tour company.
You know, when I began it, it was merely selfish reasons.
It is because I wanted to go do this with everybody,
and nobody was really organizing these trips. Like what I like?
Speaker 6: What I do?
Speaker 5: I have a haunted Las Vegas and an area fifty
one tour than I do. I have a haunted Gettysburg.
I rent out locations like the Ohio State Reformatory, the
West Virginia Penitentiary, Eastern Straight, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia,
the USS North Carolina Battleship, Waverley Hills Sanatorium, all of
these big, huge, you know, wonderful places to explore. And
you know, I'm selfish because I have fun. I have fun.
I enjoy it just as much as as everybody does.
And I love that side of tourism, you know, the
darker side of it. It's fascinating and I think, you know,
even though I get my sheriff skeptics, people that are
forced to come, you know, they have to drive their
wife or date night, you know, and they show up,
they always end up having a good time. And I'm
just really blessed to be able to have such a
quirky career for twenty four years, and I get to
meet weird people like Steve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll come to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: To get people into history too, because sometimes, you know,
like the history they're teaching in school, it's not always
the most but there there is a lot of fascinating
things historically that I think the paranormal is kind of
the gateway for people learning more about some you know,
local history.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, I agree, Susie. When my kids were in school, uh,
we we did Civil War reenacting as a hobby and
we would all travel, my husband and I and our
two kids, and we would set up a camp and
we were Confederate reenactors for the American Civil War. And
the teachers, my children's teachers always would call me a
couple of times a year to come into the classroom
and dress in the period attire and come in and
talk about the Civil War history, you know, age appropriate.
And I was always you know, permitted to throw in
some ghost stories, so the kids really sat forward and
paid attention because you know, it just wasn't your bland
everyday history. We've had some good battle stories or you know,
stories about ghost horses, and you know, apparitions on the
battlefield and things like that, and they I think they learned,
they learned a little bit more because they were into
into the storytelling part of it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: You know, you may want to team up with Susie.
She's kind of very knowledgeable about the Bridgewater Triangle and
some of the inhabitants of the Bridgewater Triangle like the
puck Wodgies.
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness. Yeah, see, I would love that.
Speaker 4: And you can't understand the current day activity without knowing
the history of the land it's happening on. So that
has been a big focal point of mine and led
me down a huge rabbit hole that you know, I
just wanted to learn about these little fake creatures, but
that's not how it went. So Yeah, if you're ever
up in New England, we can do some dark tourism
tours for you.
Speaker 5: I would. I would love to. My my son was
actually in the Navy and he was stationed up there
for a while, so I would. I would truck up
to Connecticut and I love mystics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 4: Steve was probably stationed at the at the same place
your son was.
Speaker 1: I was. I was stationed in Rotten Grotten, Connecticut at
the New London Service. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was. He
on a submarine.
Speaker 5: He drove, Yes, he drove. I always said, you operate
a submarine. He goes, no, Mom, I drive it the sub.
Speaker 1: I actually drove it once in a while too. Now
I didn't get to decide where it was going or
how deep or anything like that.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: I was told, you know, I was just a uh
the the the Actually, when you're part of the forward crew,
non nuclear crew, you helmes are and plainsman, right, you
they tell you how you know, make my depths whatever,
and you just you just do it. You would say, hey,
I want to go over here.
Speaker 5: Wow, well how cool, Well thank you for your service.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, my pleasure.
Speaker 5: My son was on the USS Alaska.
Speaker 2: That's the oh okay.
Speaker 1: I was on a fast attack sub, the USS Billfish.
We we were a fast attack sub, so we did
not have a missile compartment, but we did have big
green torpedoes. I want to I want to make that clear.
Speaker 5: Oh my, I'll never forget talking to my son the
first the first time we got a chance to talk,
and he'd been out to see and they were out.
He's on a boomer. So he was out for almost
three months right when he came back. When he came back,
I said, well, how how do you do with sleeping?
Is it noisy? Is it you know? Is it quiet?
I mean, do you have a like a bunk bed?
He said, Mom, I sleep and where the missiles are at.
Speaker 1: And I'm all right, yeah.
Speaker 5: What he goes it's really super warm in there. And
I'm like, oh my god, I'm thinking of all the
you know, the radiation and everything that he's going to
live here by the time he's twenty five.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: The navy now. But I do, Susie. I do love
the Connecticut area. It's beautiful because.
Speaker 2: So you don't need radiation to lose your hair. My
mind got on in case obviously can't see you were
on a submarine then there. Yeah, definitely something else. An
interesting coincidence that Susie pointed out where Bridgewater is. There's
a Bridgewater here. Of course, I live in Somerset. I
live in just outside of the town called Taunton, and
Taunton and Bridgewater are the same relationship in terms of
distance to each other and direction to the well in America,
because there's Bridgewater and Taunton where Susie lives, and Port
is to the northeast. I thing it is, and it's
the same with me. The relationship is exactly the same.
Blood too, maps side by side, the relationship between Taunton
to Bridgewater is the same same position.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I went to my maps app and I put in
Taunton and it gives you the suggestion. So the first
one was Math and the second was UK, and I said, huh,
let me. I'm going to push the UK one and
see what's going on over there. And the first thing
that popped up was Bridgewater, and I said, there's no way.
Speaker 5: That's kind of wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, didn't just borrow the town's names. The positions are
the same as well.
Speaker 5: That's interesting.
Speaker 2: I must say that the Bridgewater here is rather dull.
There's nothing specially about that one.
Speaker 3: We have a hunted swab in ours, so you can't speat.
Speaker 2: That both towns are. Thaunton's hundreds of years old, I
think Bridgewaters as well, but Taughton certainly, as you've got
a monastery there in the tenth century, so it's pretty
old around here as quite as you go. A's ghost
tours and that sort of thing. Around here. It's just nice.
Speaker 5: So I have a question, Andy, have you always been
interested in history or is that something that just happened
when you got older?
Speaker 2: Curious, so you had a strongenessuit in both the paranormal
and history. To give you the story, I was originally
going to university when I was twenty one to study history.
We had ports of university, but life change didn't do that,
and ten years later I did philosophy instead. But you know, history,
particularly twentieth century modern history has been more my thing.
World War two, but also ancient history as well fascinates
me too, So history has been an interest in mine
as well as the paranormal as well, side by side.
So yeah, it's kept me. It was almost going to
be my job teaching history, where that life changed in
place at the way that we're going to be in
psychotherapist instead.
Speaker 5: Well, that's interesting, I wondered, because I hated history when
I was younger. I got ds F. I mean, I
was almost failing these history classes and then and then
what happens I start writing books and they're all on history.
I don't know what happened.
Speaker 2: I think when you're not being forced to study things
are more interesting I think tends me. I mean, I've
got three different qualifications. I've got twentieth century history, which
is mainly during the Wars, what's called social economic history,
which is a Victorian agent onwards history from the bottom.
It's the social history about because so much histories taught
from top down to the leader's roles and that kind
of thing. The social history is from the bottom up,
so it's a different approach. And ancient Greek history so
other end of the scale.
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness, that's fascinating. I think we just need
to start our own tour company, the four of us,
just conquer the world.
Speaker 1: That sounds good, especially if I get the province.
Speaker 5: Well, I think we pretty much got the corner on
point pleasant West Virginia.
Speaker 1: I guess so right. But you mentioned I also loved Edinburgh,
and you know that Edinburgh has that four square miles.
I think it is a parkland in the center of
the city, this huge metropolis, and there's that. You know,
your thing is big wooly sheep wandering around out there.
I remember climbing up Arthur's seat and so forth, and
I thought, man and even bought my I still have
my Scottish cap somewhere that I bought on Princess Street
many years ago.
Speaker 2: Things to go.
Speaker 1: Back, Yeah, I do. I actually, I actually did go
back to the UK. In nineteen eighty one. Our submarine
pulled into Portsmouth, England in the southern and I only
had you know, I was. I was so frustrated when
I went over the first time. I had almost four
months just to wander around, you know, yeah, part of
the continent and the UK. And when I came back
via submarine, I had four days and I was lucky
that I got my duty day off, and so I
went back to Stonehenge. I got to see that again,
and you know a few other places. But man, I was,
I was so frustrated. I wanted to And there was
one time when I just, for the hell of it,
I just walked through the English countryside. I mean I
just looked at the map and I and it was
it was so much fun. And I walked by this
house in the middle of nowhere, and this guy came out.
You could see I had my sea bag on my back,
like I like a back back, and so he knew
I was a yank, right, And so he came out
and talked to me. And he talked about how he
was he was in the hospital with a couple of
Yanks sometime back, and what a great time, you know.
I just it was just so much fun being back.
But four days, how you know, it was so frustrating
that I had to leave after that that period of time.
Speaker 5: M Yeah, I love my tours over there. The longest
that we do is ten days, and that is a lot.
That is. It's it's a lot to fit into ten
days landing at Doblin and doing Doblin and Belfast and
Inverness and in Edinburgh and Glasgow. It's a lot to
squeeze into it. And I think the closest I've ever
been to England, Andy, I think the closest was Gretna Green.
So I was like right there, yeah, it's yeah, right right,
you you don't need the passport anything.
Speaker 2: You kind of across the boarder. It's okay.
Speaker 5: I was. I was trapped on a bus with forty
five people, so I culdly would have noticed if I left,
But was It wasn't Grettona Green where everybody would sneak
off to to get married.
Speaker 2: You can do. Yes, It's the Blacksmifth that has been
empowered to marry people, so people will want to go
off illicately. This is a bit off. Not the famies
don't want to get married off the Gretna Green and
get married by yes. I mean, I don't know if
it's still don't but it was real for some considerable time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me do a brief intermission. Here we are
listening to the Highest Strangers Factor copyrighted on the Paranormal
UK Radio Network, and today we are talking to Sherry
Break about all things paranormal and her tourism and so
forth and having one hell of a good time. Sherry,
I have to ask you. You mentioned that you are
a dowser. What what methods do you hy ride? L
Rod pendulum? How do you practice dowsing?
Speaker 5: I learned over thirty years ago, and I use l
Rod Okay, basically I use copper ones. I'd make them
and we make them and we actually sell them. And
I instruct classes in dowsing as well. And the first
time I ever saw dowsing done this is a hilarious story.
I was really big into genealogy. I still am really
really much into my family's history, and I was living
in Ohio at the time. And my parents are from
a very small town in West Virginia called Whoopster Springs,
and I had come back to do some genealogy and
to see some family members, and I stopped at a
very old remote cemetery and this gentleman was walking around
with these sticks. I couldn't tell what they were because
I was sitting in my car kind of eye in
this guy, like I don't know what this guy's up to.
He looks really strange, had a big long beard, kind
of like Rip van Winkle, you know, all slender guy.
And he's holding his arms out and he's using these
sticks to do something. And every couple of feet he
stops and he he takes a notepad out of his
back pocket and he makes a notation, and then he
takes something else out of the other pocket and he
throws it on the ground, and then he takes a
few more steps. The Rod's cross the sticks is what
I called him at the time, and he makes a
notation in the notebook and then he throws something down.
And I sit there in my car with the door
locked because I'm not sure, like what is this guy doing?
And after about fifteen minutes, I hop out and I
walk over to him and I ask him, you know,
can I ask you what you're doing here out in
the middle of nowhere? And you know, I have family
that's buried in the cemetery. And we start to talk
and I find out that he's my third cousin. We're
in West Virginia, my third cousin, and he was dowsing
and he explained to me that dows dw se means
to seek or to find. It's about the power of intention.
Whatever you're looking to find is what you will find,
as long as you're completely concentrating on the item that
you're looking for. And I said, well, I don't understand
what you're trying to find here, because I in my mind,
I'm thinking of those people back in the old days.
They called him water witchers, you know, they would witch
for water. And I'm like, why is he looking for
water in a cemetery. Well, then he explains to me
he's looking for unmarked graves. And now he's got my
attention because I'm thinking, well, this, this is the reason
I'm here today is I'm looking for the graves of
my ancestors. And I know that my great great grandmother
does not have a headstone in this cemetery, and I
wanted to walk around and just you know, visit. So
I said, well, how does it work? And he says, well,
I'm going to show you, he said. When I walk,
I'm thinking about a body, he said, and then they
will cross and they'll make an X, and I know
that I have located a body. And I'm like, okay,
well then what are you doing with the notes? Are
you just writing down where you find a body? He said, well,
I'm hired, you know, from the Cemetery Association to find
all the unmarked graves. So what I'm doing is I've
made a map and I'm putting in details of where
I find the body. And then I take a poker
chip out of my pocket and I throw it on
the ground in that spot. I'm marking it in that manner.
He said. The red is for females and the blue
is for a male. And I'm like, whoa wait a minute.
Not only can you find the body, but you can
determine the sex. You can determine the gender. And he said,
well sure, he said, would you like to learn? And
I've been doing it ever since then, And he showed
me that day how to determine the sex of a body,
and of course you can test yourself, you just don't
have to do the unmarked graves. You can do the
marked graves as well and just not look at the name,
and you're kind of testing yourself that way. Ninety five
percent accuracy with the methods that he showed me. And
you can also determine the length of the body, so
you would know then if you're dealing with a child,
a baby, an infant, a child, or an adult by
the length of the time that the rods stay crossed
as you walk, you walk up and down the body.
Most Christian burials are buried in an east west direction,
so when you're in these old cemeteries, they would orient
the first burial with where the sun was coming up
and going down due to their Christian beliefs of you know,
the body sitting up in the grave and facing towards
towards the east for judgment day. So most Christian cemeteries
will follow that plan of being buried east to west.
So I was really I was really bit by the
bug that day, and I found it so completely fascinating.
And then he explained to me, not only can you
do this for bodies. But you can do this. Say,
for instance, you bury your dog in your backyard, you
can't remember where you buried your dog. You would think
about your dog and the rods would cross over the
area where you've buried your dog. You can find your
septic tank, you can find water lines, underground cables. During
the Vietnam Conflict, I've heard that they've trained some of
the troops to find enemy tunnels by using dousing rods
because they had that intent to find those tunnels and
destroy those tunnels. So that's one of my favorite things
to do. I use dowsing rods. I also use pendulums,
but doalsing rods are my go to. And I've actually
I've worked at a veterans cemetery to find unmarked graves
and then had it backed up by the use of
ground penetrating radar and I was on one correct with
what I did, which really validated me. And that was
back in the nineties. But I've worked on projects where
there's a place in Ohio where they were putting and
then a subdivision, and when the doser operator was in
there grading, he felt that there was a chance that
he had unearthed some headstones, some fieldstones, and so of
course they stopped development, and the Historical Society got a
hold of me and they had me come in and
douast that entire area, and I found eighteen I call
them anomalies, but their bodies, eighteen bodies buried in that
east west direction. And I was so happy to find
out that they would not be building where they found
those bodies at and they decided instead to make it
a green area. And every once in a while I'll
drive through that subdivision when I'm in that area of
Ohio just to make sure they haven't built anything over
top of those bodies. So it's a fascinating I don't
want to call it an art because it's not really
an art because about eighty five percent of people can
do it, so it's just an interesting technique.
Speaker 1: I had a plumber out here a couple of years
ago that used l rods to find the waterline right
here in modern day West by God, Virginia. Yes, are
you familiar with Tom Lethbridge TC Lethbridge. He was a
famous dowser that.
Speaker 5: JARH.
Speaker 1: Wilson wrote about him.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, you know, well we're still learning here in
the United States, but even like in England. I mean,
you know, Andy, you guys have been doing it forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he was.
Speaker 1: It was fascinating. I mean he used a pendulum and
he had a he had had something set up where
he would have a line with about forty inches and
if he adjusted the uh whatever you want to call it,
the pendulum or whatever at a certain length, it would
react to certain types of material. He could tell what
was buried underneath the ground depending on how it reacted.
And it was that, you know, it was one almost
And then I started buying his books. He wrote The
Power of the Pendulum, which was fascinating. I think Colin
Wilson had that published after his death. But then there
are several other other books like Ghost and Ghoul and
uh oh, Ghost and Dowsing Rod or whatever. They get
a little pricey sometimes, but he was, my god, he
was so innovative and so fascinating.
Speaker 5: Yeah. As a matter of fact, one of the books
that I've been working on is called a Dowsing for
Ghosts and Grapes, and it covers everything from map dowsing,
how you're able to do long distance dowsing by the
use by using a map. I mean I've I've found
lost items before, lost my car keys. My kids lose
stuff all the time, and I'm constantly finding their cell
phones or their or their glasses. And it has to
do with intent. Just like your plumber next door. His
intent was to find the water lines. And I had
a lumber that lived next door to me in Ohio,
and he says, a lot of us carry uh these
rods on our trucks. I had a gas leak at
my house in Ohio and the gas company came out
and they were unable to find where my gas line
came from the street. So you know, he had this
high tech tool he was walking around with. A couple
of minutes later, he came to my door. He goes,
I can't this is strange. He said, I can't find
where your gas line is located at This is so odd.
And I said, hold on just a minute, and I
went and I got my dowsing rods and I came
out and we found it within just a couple of minutes.
And he left with my dousing rods. I said, go
forth and dows I said, everybody. He goes, this is amazing,
this is amazing. And my kids actually did some of
their science projects uh in high school. In junior high
they did it on dowsing.
Speaker 3: Well, that's so interesting.
Speaker 4: So I have my grandfather's dowsing rods. He is the
he had a farm. I my mother said he used
them to find water. But how often do you need
to find water when you live in a farm with
four natural springs, I'm not sure exactly.
Speaker 3: So at any.
Speaker 4: Rate, I have them, and I had had them for years,
and it was I never did anything with them until
one day I had lost all three of.
Speaker 3: My headphones, could not find any.
Speaker 4: Of them, and I was, I'm addicted to them. I
have them in all the time while I'm working because
I work from home and I need the background noise,
and I was just I was so frustrated. I needed
my headphones. I got out the dowsing rods. And I
think because I was so intent on finding them, and
where I finally found them was like behind my shoe
rack under the baseboard heater, and I would never have
found them there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's some serious intention. When you lose a
cell phone or your glasses or your headphones or anything
like that, it's it's just amazing. And you know, when
I do these walking tours, I instruct people. I've instructed
thousands of people how to use dousing rods, and so
many times I'll get phone calls and emails and you
know text messages where people have questions. They're like, what
else can I how can I use these? What else
can I use these for? And uh, you know, when
I when I do my my dousing class, one of
the little experiments that we use is I have a
couple of mason jars and inside they're clear mason jars,
and one mason jar has moonshine in it, and one
jar has water, and then the other uh jar has
flat seven up or flat sprite, something that doesn't have
any type of carbonation or bubbles to it. And I'll
spread those apart on the table and then I will
have everybody come up, one at a time, and you know,
they don't know what is in what glass, and I'll say,
I want you to tell me which jar has moonshine
in it. You know, of course they want to drink
They want to drink it after they find it. But
it's just the power of intention. You know, they all
look identical, but you know the rods will cross above
above the correct the correct jar, so and Susie too.
I was going to tell you I had a farmer
friend who would use the dowsing rods to determine the
sex of an animal that was unborn, So for instance,
if he had a cow with a calf or whatever. Uh,
he said, just out of curiosity, he said, I would
test myself that way. And uh, of course you're only
got you got chances of fifty to fifty being right
or wrong.
Speaker 3: Right, right, Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 4: I always thought, you know, he must have been up
to something else with those dowsing rods, because there's, like
I said, there's four natural springs on the farm, so
you know, there's no real need to go look for water, right.
Speaker 5: And a good dowser with water, a good dowser is
able to tell you which way the stream is flowing.
They'll be able to tell you how many gallons, you know,
per minute that you'd be able to get, and if
the water would be drinkable. You know, it all has
to do with the questions. How you pose the questions
to get the answers. And of course nobody really knows
how these rods work. I just like to think it's
just an extension of your own ability anyway, and I
think that you're just tuning in and you know, allegedly
it's it's one of the rare times that the right
brain and the left brain actually work and sync with
each other. And there's nothing magical or mysterious about the rods.
It's just we're we're zoning in there and we're paying
attention and for some reason they work.
Speaker 2: I'd tell you if you're involved in any ritual magic,
you tend to use tools the dagger of one et cetera,
which they are like for they're using ritual magic for
focusing the mind. Well, an intent and what you're describing
fits very much into ceremonial magic. That's exactly you're trying
to do. You use things like that, and it is
all about that whether an intent that drives these things.
The more you use, the more your mind works better
with the more focus you become, the more able to become.
And that's true of magic, witchcraft, et cetera, and things
like downs in There is a line between these things.
They all connect together. It's that focusing of the mind
and using the full more power of the mind that
we really need to tap into more that we don't
really understand as much as we think we do about
what the mind's capable of doing. We limit ourselves very
much now to very kind of modern, mature way of
viewing things. But my years of experience, both as a
therapist and as a ritual magician, if you like that,
the mind is capable of so much more have given
the chance. It really has enormous power.
Speaker 5: And energy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly. You work with natural energy that surround
us all the time. These energies and fields and energy
are there, and that's what you're working with.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And the copper is a good conductory, Yes it is.
Speaker 5: And you know I talk in my in my ghost
hunting classes and in my dowsing classes. When I instruct people,
we cover lay lines, you know, when we talk about
these lines of energy, and it's just fascinating, you know,
the paranormal, the fringe, the craft, you know, everything from
UFOs to cryptids. And every day I learned something new,
you know. I I say every day of school because
I think when you when you sit back and you're
you've got a mindset that this is the way it is,
it's not that way. And the paranormal, it's just shades
of gray. We don't know anything for sure.
Speaker 2: So what would you say was your most unusual experience
that you've had yourself share?
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness, there have been so many. I'll tell you.
Probably the most unsettling experiences for me, and they're still
going on when I'm in these locations, is having somebody
say my name out loud and there's nobody around. And typically,
and I think part of it's the fact that I
go to these locations so many times for so many years,
it's almost as if maybe they recognize me. But it's
still to this day utterly uh, fascinating. And also I
don't want to say upsetting, but startling to hear sherry
and to turn in a cell in a prison and
there's nobody in the cell, nobody outside of the cell,
nobody down that hallway, and to know that there was
an intelligent form or energy there that knew I was
there and said my name. So to me, it makes
me curious. It doesn't, it doesn't frighten me, but it's
that it's that unsettledness of knowing that they know that
I'm there and they know my name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's absolutely true. I mean I used to be
involved in a parallel event company that used to go
to locations overnight, take the public with us and spend
the night. Then there's a few locations I've been to
so many times. Do you know that whatever's there does
know you since you? I mean, it's a place called
ches A Manchon, which I often talk about. I've been
to that I don't know how many times. Amazing old
Neo Gothic building in the middle of nowhere in the UK,
and there's a particular era the cellar, which is quite active.
A lot of people experience very strange things in the cellar,
and you get this weird sense of familiarity that it
knows you, he knows you're there. You can almost work
with that. It's very strange. Yeah, there's definitely the more
you do any of this sort of stuff, the more
you become tuned with it, and the place comes tuned
to you.
Speaker 1: I don't know, exit stage left. You know, if I
were to hear my voice, it's like a cartoon character.
You know, gone.
Speaker 3: Steve heard the story last night.
Speaker 4: But I recently had my name come through multiple times
on a spirit box. So the other people called me
over said hey, keep saying your name, can you come
in here?
Speaker 3: And then when I came in and asked, like, how do.
Speaker 4: You know me, it said it was Snow and Snow
was an investigator on the paranormal team I'm a member
of who just passed away recently.
Speaker 3: Sorry, but we don't think it's actually her though. That's
the thing.
Speaker 4: Right after that, it also gave me my aunt's nickname,
and I think it was throwing out names it knew
I would know.
Speaker 5: Okay, okay, yeah, that takes it to a whole different level. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: I was on the about ten years ago. A bunch
of us went down to where the Silver Bridge collapsed
down in Point Pleasant and a couple of the people
I was with were very good at getting EBPs for
whatever reason, and this one lady we were with set
up a flashlight on the on the shoreline, you know
the way they do on the TV shows where it's
just about ready to come on but it's not right.
So all of a sudden, this thing came on and
we thought, wow, that's weird. We didn't even know it
was there, and so were you know, stamping our feet
to see if the vibrations are doing whatever. Anyway, it
went off again, and so I thought, well, hey, I've
seen enough TV shows. I know how to do this.
So I said, if there's anybody here, would you please
turn the flashlight on on the counter three? And I
did three, and then boom the flashlight came on and
for three beats and went off, and I said, excuse
my language, can I say holy shit now? And later
on I did that. I thought, well, I'm going to
go for brokes, so I said, you know, would you
please turn the flashlight onto the counter three? Three beats? Nothing?
It came on for three beats and then went off. Now,
later on one of the guys I was with, he
he listened to the audio afterwards he said, look, this
is not a class A E v P. But he
thought he heard a voice say after I said, can
I say holy shit now? Little baby? So I was
being dissed by perhaps a disembodied spirit because I was
a being a weenie.
Speaker 4: I don't know, never have had a paranormal experience. And
then he comes out with these stories where he got.
Speaker 1: I've had that, that's that, that's one little one maybe.
And then it was the one where I had I
had a TV set turned on after I came back
from the T and T area one night, I opened
up the door to my uh A motel. It was
across the river, and a TV set turned on by
itself and started flipping through stations. So, uh, anyway, that
that's it. That's that's all I got, you know. That's
that's uh.
Speaker 5: That was a I had. Something really really cool happened
on a walking tour in October in Ohio. I was
leading a tour in Canal Fulton, Ohio, which was built
on the Ohio and Erie Canal, and the town dates
back to about eighteen fourteen and the Tuscarorsa River flows
through the area, and you've got lots of great stories
in this little town and I've been doing tours there
for twenty four years. Well, there was one building that
I loved taking people into back in the old days
when I first started, and unfortunately it has been closed
for twenty two years. So I spent two years six
six times a weekend, because I would do tours on
Friday and Saturday eight o'clock, ten o'clock and midnight. For
two years, I'm going in this building, taking fifty to
sixty people in and telling them the history of this building, well,
I haven't been in it for twenty two years. Last
year it was purchased and they turned it into a
wedding event center and they've got it beautifully decorated, and
they've got the exposed brick walls and the tall ceilings
with the metal tin. And the owner came up to
me on the street that night before my eight o'clock
walk and he said, listen, this is back in October.
He said, listen, I know you haven't been in the
building for a while. Would you like to bring your
group inside the building? And I'm like, oh my god,
I love the building. It's a huge warehouse. I would
love to bring my group in. Do you mind there's
going to be fifty to sixty people, And I know
you know you do weddings, and I don't want to
disturb anything in there, you know, or break anything because
I'm bringing in so many people. He said, don't worry.
The main room is open. We've got it all lit,
We've got the string lights turned on for you. I'll
leave the door unlocked and one of us will be
there to lock the door after you leave if you
want to bring them in for a few minutes. At
eight o'clock, please please do so. I couldn't wait because
this building had been one of the most active buildings
I'd ever been in, which is why it was on
my ghost walk. So I go up to the front
of the building. I've got about fifty five people that night,
and I'm talking to them about the history of this
warehouse building. And I have my hand on the door,
and you know, I'm saying, you know, it's always wonderful
to stand out in front of these old buildings and
tell you the ghost stories. Wouldn't it be great if
we could step inside and everybody's eyes were real big,
and you know, I'm like, please, God, make them remember
that they unlock that door or this is going to
be really embarrassing, right, So I turn them off and
it creaks open. I mean it was like very theatrical,
like squee, you know the door. We all go walking in.
There's this very large empty warehouse room, brick walls, hundreds
and hundreds of the Edison bull lights hanging in this room.
This is where they have their weddings at And I
look over and there's a chair in the corner and
the owner is sitting over in the corner and he's
watching me. So I bring the group in and I
start to tell them about all the times I've been
in this building, that in the basement there used to
be a more ctuary, and that during the nineteen seventeen
nineteen eighteen influenza epidemic there were hundreds of bodies stored
on ice in the basement. And I go on and
I talk about the owner of the building, mister Fennafrock,
and how you know mister Fenafrock had built this building,
and I believe that he still is in this building
because he loved this building so much. And I said,
as a matter of fact, and of course everybody's listening
to me, and the lights are, you know, up above
my head. So as a matter of fact, there was
one night that I was in here with a group
and when I started talking, we smelled cigar smoke, and
then the lights started flickering, and I kid you not,
all of those lights above my head were going on
and off, and we all went and I looked over
at the owner and I'm like, are you doing that?
He goes, the light switch is over there, and he
points and along this wall where nobody's at is the
light switch. And I'm like that's crazy, and everybody's like,
oh my gosh. And it did it for like ten seconds.
So I said, let's try this again. So I want
to tell you a story about mister Fennifrack, you know,
and we believe he's still here in the building. And
you know, years ago, when I would talk to people,
the way that he made his presence knowing is the
lights would flicker, and I'm thinking, there's no way in
the world that's going to happen again. It did it again,
flick flick, flick flick, and I look over at the
owner and he's like, I'm never having you back in
my building again. So it gets better. I say, Okay, goodbye,
mister Finnfrack. We've had a great night. Because I know
I'm not going to try this a third time because
it's not going to work. I'm going to leave on
a high note. So I go walking out the door
with all fifty five people and this girl, she looks
to be about ten or twelve years old. She comes
over to me and she puts her hand on my
arm and she said, can I tell you something? And
I said, sure, sweetie, I'm you know, thinking she's going
to tell me she's freaked out and she wants to
leave with her mom. You know, she's seen enough. She said,
I just want to let you know that there was
an old man standing over in a corner when you
were talking, and he was smiling ear to ear and
as you were speaking, he was nodding his head. She said,
I can see ghosts. And she just walked away from me,
and I went, holy crap. It's such a high note
to start the walking tour on. Nothing else happened the
rest of the night, you know, of course not, but
oh man, I'll tell you what. I can't wait to
get back in that building again if you let you in.
Of course, Yeah, I know, he was. He's like, what
are you doing? And I'm like, are these old lights? What?
He goes, No, everything's been brought up to code. This
is all new. Everything's new. I said, did they blink
like that? He goes, never, Never, so blake. Thank you,
mister Fennerfrock.
Speaker 1: So now you're I think I saw a post on
Facebook where your tours are kind of are winding down
for the year.
Speaker 5: Yeah, just finished up. November the ninth, we did an
overnight at the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville, and I
had fifty people with me for that overnight hunt. And
when I rent those buildings out, we start about ten
o'clock at night and we go till about four o'clock
in the morning, and it seemed to be pretty active.
The most active area was the chapel, which is no
surprise to me. It was a surprising to a lot
of other people. You know, They're like, how can a
church have energy?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 5: Of course. So yeah, So I'm actually done for the year.
I have a couple of local TV spots I'll be
doing in December, and then don't I don't start back
up until February. I'm doing a program in Ohio on UFOs.
Oh okay, so that's going to be fun. So you
cover everything I do I do. You know, when I
did the Haunted Las Vegas and Area fifty one tour
that we do out in Nevada, we put a bunch
of people on a bus, usually about fifty people, and
we traveled about four hundred miles around the entire perimeter
of Area fifty one. And you know, we gamble a
little bit, and we're in casinos and we stayed a
couple of Haunted hotels along the way and we're out
in those old gold and silver mining towns and so yeah.
So I've explored the perimeter of Avery fifty one and
talked to witnesses and it's so fascinating all of it.
Speaker 1: And tell us about your books.
Speaker 5: Well, I've got, uh, what do I have? Thirteen fourteen
books out now? I've got four that I'll hopefully be
getting published here within the next few months. The first
book that I did was on the county that I
lived in. It was by the History Press which is
now Arcadia. It's called Haunted Stark County, Ohio. And then
my second book was the Haunted History of the Ohio
State Refs Formatory. And then I had to do one
on the Haunted History of the trans Alleghany Lunatic Asylum.
I've done the ghost Hunter's Guide to the West Virginia Penitentiary,
and then I have books on on folklore in West
Virginia and hopefully be getting this this Haunted Ireland book done,
and the book on Dowscene as well here pretty soon.
Speaker 1: Very good. And uh, and how can people find you?
Speaker 5: Well, they can find me at my website which is
www dot Haunted history dot net.
Speaker 1: Excellent well, Sherry, we're going to have you back. This
has been I knew it was going to be fun,
but this has been really fun.
Speaker 5: Thank you guys and Susie and Andy. It was great
talk to you. I love I loved hearing your stories
as well.
Speaker 3: I'll be looking forward to your dowsing book first and
tips for.
Speaker 5: Me absolutely, Oh yeah, yeah, I love it. It's a passion.
I mean, I have rods every room in this house.
Speaker 1: They're everywhere, and I'll.
Speaker 2: Be looking forward to you going to do a tour
in England somewhere.
Speaker 5: I love to partner up with you. I would love to.
Speaker 2: Down here in the West Country. There's plenty of things
here in the West Country to visit. You know, it's
like Glastonbury Stone, He's not that far away. It's all
around here, Corn Devon and Tangial boss Cast, the Witchcraft Museum,
it's all down here, you know.
Speaker 5: I know, I got Lancashire. What is that Lancashire Witches.
Speaker 2: Oh that's up there, That's that's up normal. I know
it doesn't seem very far from you American people, but
that's a long way for us English people. The country.
I mean, you can drive to Lancashire and you're like
across the whole country. You could drive the same distance
in the State of Americans still be in the same state.
So you know, there is a different scale of things here.
But we've got a lot of stuff here, and that's
kind of crammed into small space. We've got a lot
of stuff.
Speaker 1: Very good, Thank you. Well, let me do again, Thank you, Sheryan.
Let me do my clothes out here. The High Strangers
Factor was created by Steve Ward and Andy Mercer and
as copyrighted by the Paranormal UK Radio Network. Can't read
my que cards, I wrote him in pencil, so I'm
stumbling here. I want to thank our fearless leaders, Irene Allen, Block,
Mark Johnson and Andy Mercer. Andy as as producer and
he also composed the ending theme for the show. Bryan Zeller,
who composed the opening theme. You can also hear, actually
you can hear all three of us occasionally on mc
maloney's Military ex Files on this same network. And to
close out, I am Steve Ward, your humble host here
on The High Strangers Factor, a displaced Michigander deep in
the Ohio Valley, living on the same road that the
Mothman chased those two couples back on November fifteenth, nineteen
sixty six. Thank you all for listening, and we will
see you all again in about a fortnight unless I
drag my heels again, but we will see you soon.
Thank you all for listening.
Speaker 2: M