Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Monster Talk is
Speaker 1: supported by listeners like you. Find out how you can
Speaker 1: contribute via Patreon or with reviews at monster talk dot org,
Speaker 1: forge slash support. Your contributions, large or small, make a
Speaker 1: huge difference. Thanks.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot of equipment that we use.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of equipment that you guys never see
Speaker 3: on the show.
Speaker 2: But some of the things is.
Speaker 3: That they do see on the show a lot of times.
Speaker 3: The thermal imaging camera and also the key two meter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now this just manages magnetic fields and certain frequencies.
Speaker 3: None of our equipment is really intended to be used
Speaker 3: for general investigation. You don't really make that stuff, so.
Speaker 4: We have to kind of cannibalize them all around us.
Speaker 2: And this is a lot of our tools come through
Speaker 2: blex issues. All right, as you've seen, you've got the thermal,
Speaker 2: you've got the wall here by walk over and equipment
Speaker 2: heard of the wall one, two, three, four or five.
Speaker 3: You still see that we've.
Speaker 2: Got the handprint.
Speaker 5: We get some of our most compelling evidence using this.
Speaker 5: Basically all it is is recorder.
Speaker 2: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 4: A giant hairy creature, Part eight, Part mass in Luckness,
Speaker 4: a twenty four a mile long bottomless lake in the
Speaker 4: Highlands of Scotland. It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 2: Monster.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 1: Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner. This is part one
Speaker 1: of a multi part conversation about ghost hunting gadgets. We'll
Speaker 1: continue this discussion in near future episodes because I'd like
Speaker 1: to dig deeper into the physics described by amateur go
Speaker 1: hunters as compared to how physics is actually used in science.
Speaker 1: But for this episode, we're going to focus on the
Speaker 1: equipment and technology used in amateur ghost hunting. Joining us
Speaker 1: for this discussion is Matthew Baxter. Matthew spent many years
Speaker 1: investigating ghosts, performing stage magic, doing tours of haunted sites,
Speaker 1: and if you didn't know it, he's also Karen's husband.
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed this conversation about a topic all
Speaker 1: three of us really like. Morenstertle, Welcome to Karen, who's
Speaker 1: always here, and Matt bater bachter Bus is pronouncing yeah, yeah, buster,
Speaker 1: buster Buster.
Speaker 5: He has had that before too.
Speaker 1: Ghost is my middle name, but seriously so, Yeah, Matt Baxter,
Speaker 1: I've known you guys for a long time, but.
Speaker 5: I can't it's I know we've.
Speaker 1: Have we ever done a monster talk with all three
Speaker 1: of us. It seems like we have, but I can't remember.
Speaker 5: You can end Ray Garden too, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, five or.
Speaker 5: Six years ago while wanting to reprise that too, and
Speaker 5: to I think, just with everything that's been going on,
Speaker 5: he was wanting to come back on the show and
Speaker 5: talk again.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like Ray, He's fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was our Uh. I can't remember what I called it,
Speaker 1: something about Connecticut Yankee, but it was like it was
Speaker 1: like a take off of the Connecticut Yankee and King
Speaker 1: Arthur's Court, what keen Author's Court, That's what it was. Yeah, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it.
Speaker 5: Yeah gold punt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm terrible. Anyway, Well, Matt, we're having you
Speaker 1: back to talk about ghost hunting gadgets. But before we
Speaker 1: just like dive in on that topic, I thought it
Speaker 1: might be useful to sort of back up and explain
Speaker 1: who you are and what your experience has been in
Speaker 1: this this field and how you if you want to
Speaker 1: talk about a little bit, how you came to your
Speaker 1: current position on this matter.
Speaker 2: For sure. Sure, I've been, I guess, in the realm
Speaker 2: of ghost hunting, paranormal investigator, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2: I've been doing this kind of thing for probably twenty
Speaker 2: seven or twenty eight years and have worked with a
Speaker 2: number of groups. And it got to a point to
Speaker 2: where I realized that with every investigation I was doing,
Speaker 2: with every interview with you know, claimants that I was doing,
Speaker 2: that I was actually not learning anything new. And that's
Speaker 2: kind of the whole point of investigation or research is
Speaker 2: to try to learn something, to get some new information
Speaker 2: to go in some sort of direction. And unfortunately, after
Speaker 2: all that time, it had kind of started grinding to
Speaker 2: a halt and made me realize that maybe I should
Speaker 2: shift my gears a little bit more to how people
Speaker 2: pull off fraud when it comes to ghosts and hauntings
Speaker 2: and demons and all that kind of stuff, and actually
Speaker 2: aliens it's another good ripe area for fraud. And started
Speaker 2: learning a lot, a lot more, and then after a
Speaker 2: while you just get psychologically overloaded and you got to
Speaker 2: step back and take a look at the big picture
Speaker 2: and and be prepared for podcast interviews.
Speaker 5: You can never be prepared for this podcast.
Speaker 2: Not this one. Nobody expects the monster talk.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, you never know. So we've got you know,
Speaker 1: for people who are to it's gonna say, look what
Speaker 1: I was just to say, For people who want a
Speaker 1: little peak behind the screen for how we do this show.
Speaker 1: We've been early adopters to Google Docs, and we we
Speaker 1: kind of share information via Google Docs and you know,
Speaker 1: do you know behind the scenes at some notes, We've
Speaker 1: got a cool list of ghost hunting gadgets here. Uh.
Speaker 5: There some expected and known ones and some rather unexpected
Speaker 5: ones too, I think so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I thought, Matthew, with your extensive experience, uh
Speaker 1: doing uh and correct me if I'm wrong, But you've
Speaker 1: you've done these uh as you would you? Would you
Speaker 1: say that your position on hauntings has shifted over time?
Speaker 1: I mean, did you start out as more of a
Speaker 1: believer and shift to skepticism or did you all were
Speaker 1: always skeptical or or have you always been secretly a believer?
Speaker 1: And I'm about to be really surprised what you're going
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 5: But you as a skeptic and now is a believer.
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 2: Can you blame me? The the It's really interesting because
Speaker 2: you kind of get put in those two camps of
Speaker 2: either being a believer, which you know, they all have
Speaker 2: their own uh you know, paranormal conferences and everything else,
Speaker 2: or you're a skeptic and they have their own conferences
Speaker 2: and everything, and both groups are kind of real pain
Speaker 2: in the ass. To be honest, it's it's good to
Speaker 2: keep an open mind. Yes, when you go walking into
Speaker 2: this stuff. It's good to just say, I'm going to
Speaker 2: see where the chips fall. But I started off being
Speaker 2: more of a believer. But I did my best to keep,
Speaker 2: you know, a critical mind. But when you have the
Speaker 2: mindset of being a believer, a critical mind isn't exactly
Speaker 2: a natural state of beings. So it took a while
Speaker 2: of me discovering on my own. I mean, I can
Speaker 2: tell you my first real Scooby Doo type experience. And
Speaker 2: I was walking up to this old house. Now, this
Speaker 2: this house was in a neighborhood that I grew up in,
Speaker 2: and we all knew it was haunted. So when I
Speaker 2: had decided I was going to be a paranormal investigator,
Speaker 2: I went back to this house. I drove back to
Speaker 2: this town that I hadn't been in for a while,
Speaker 2: and I went to this house, and I took another
Speaker 2: investigator with me, and we waited until midnight as you're
Speaker 2: supposed to, and walked down the driveway, walked up to
Speaker 2: the house, and the house had been abandoned for years.
Speaker 2: So I walk up and I grabbed the front door
Speaker 2: the doorknob, and I turned the knob and it's unlocked.
Speaker 2: So of course that gives me a really uneasy sense,
Speaker 2: and it also tells me you're screwed. You got to
Speaker 2: go through with this. So I pushed the door open.
Speaker 2: And when I pushed the door open, I looked back
Speaker 2: to see where the if my partner was with me.
Speaker 2: And when I did that, I turned my head back
Speaker 2: around and the door slammed in my face really hard.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: So this scared the crap out of me. I ran
Speaker 2: over the top of the other guy down the driveway
Speaker 2: and I got to the end of the driveway and
Speaker 2: I said, wait a minute, I am not going to
Speaker 2: be a good paranormal investigator if this is how I
Speaker 2: approach things. So I walked back to the house. I
Speaker 2: opened up the door, pushed it open, and the door closed.
Speaker 2: I pushed it open and the door closed, and then
Speaker 2: I noticed that the top hinge was loose on the door,
Speaker 2: so every time I pushed it open, it was going
Speaker 2: to naturally just close. And that was my first real
Speaker 2: good lesson in don't run away from everything and use
Speaker 2: a critical mind. And that's been my most valuable piece
Speaker 2: of equipment since.
Speaker 1: You you described that as a Scooby Doo moment. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of my first Scooby Doo moment. If you
Speaker 1: don't mind me sharing.
Speaker 2: I need to hear this. Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: I was going to watch horror movies. Excuse me, I
Speaker 1: was gonna watch horror movies over my mom's house and
Speaker 1: hold on, I'm gonna cough. Apparently I'm breathing liquid, which
Speaker 1: is not right, so I U But this was like
Speaker 1: they were out of town or something, doing doing some work,
Speaker 1: and I decided to go to Little Caesar's and they
Speaker 1: have that thing where you scary Well, yeah, so you
Speaker 1: can get like two pizzas for like nine ninety nine
Speaker 1: or something crazy like that.
Speaker 5: And still it was.
Speaker 1: A good deal.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I was in college, And I got both pizzas and
Speaker 1: put them in my car and started driving home. And
Speaker 1: I sort of started eating pizza as I was driving,
Speaker 1: which is probably not a great idea anyway.
Speaker 2: That's more of a shaggy moment.
Speaker 1: Well maybe it is a shaggy moment because by the
Speaker 1: time I got home, one of the pizzas was completely gone.
Speaker 1: How can you explain this?
Speaker 2: You should have gone back and said, it's supposed to
Speaker 2: be pizza, pizza, and I only have pizza.
Speaker 1: I only have pizza exactly now. It literally did remind
Speaker 1: me that though, because I used to love to eat
Speaker 1: pizza and watch scary stuff. Wait, I still do that.
Speaker 1: Never mind, I've had one of those Scooby moments where
Speaker 1: like you get to unmask in it's old man Peterson
Speaker 1: wearing a rubber mask. But I do love it when
Speaker 1: when you can sort of velma slash thread moments where
Speaker 1: you really uncover what's really going on. I love it.
Speaker 5: So Yes, yes, a huge list to get through here,
Speaker 5: so let's get into these. I'm sorry fun ahead. So
Speaker 5: to begin with, I think probably the most popular tool
Speaker 5: used by tools are the email readers. Yes, if you
Speaker 5: can tell us a little bit about those and how
Speaker 5: you've used them and how other people use them.
Speaker 2: Well, the way other people use them. It's an electromagnetic
Speaker 2: field detector, and what they do is you've got basically
Speaker 2: two different kinds. You've got the kind that basically, uh
Speaker 2: looks for a c fields and that's man made, so
Speaker 2: your microwator human made. Those are human made, so your microwave,
Speaker 2: your refrigerator, things like that. It's it's that that that
Speaker 2: human made elect tricity kind of situation. Appliances are big
Speaker 2: for that. And then you've got the DC ones, the
Speaker 2: natural fields. Those are more like electrical storms or the
Speaker 2: Earth's natural electrical field, or a human being or you know,
Speaker 2: an elk whatever. I mean, it's it's going to be
Speaker 2: more of a natural field. Now, a lot of a
Speaker 2: lot of the paranormal investigators or ghost unders really rely
Speaker 2: on these and they think that if they find a
Speaker 2: field that it's a ghost. But the truth is the
Speaker 2: fields are everywhere, and it's hard to not run into
Speaker 2: an electrical field. Now.
Speaker 5: Sorry, I was just going to say, I've seen a
Speaker 5: lot of ghost hunting TV shows where you've got someone
Speaker 5: who will run an emath reader over themselves or over
Speaker 5: someone else in the room. What's that actually and then
Speaker 5: it's goingpp, what's it actually picking up?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, it depends on the kind that it is,
Speaker 2: because if it's an AC reader, it's still picking up say,
Speaker 2: wiring in the wall, and they just think it's picking
Speaker 2: up themselves or a spirit nearby, because you can actually
Speaker 2: have someone standing near a wall and run one of
Speaker 2: those up and down their back and it'll pick something
Speaker 2: up that's something is strange as standing behind them, when
Speaker 2: really what it is is their big body, which is
Speaker 2: a slab of meat, is reflecting that field back off
Speaker 2: of it, so it'll read that field. So the AC
Speaker 2: meters are not good for picking up ghosts now the
Speaker 2: DC meters. In a former group I was in, the
Speaker 2: leader had this strong belief that if you're going to
Speaker 2: find a ghost with an E MF detector, it's going
Speaker 2: to be one of these natural field detectors. I don't
Speaker 2: necessarily just agree. I don't agree with that personally, but
Speaker 2: I think it's good to be able to measure both
Speaker 2: kinds of fields. The problem is is you see that
Speaker 2: theory floating around the paranormal community quite a bit, and
Speaker 2: people walk around with these meters trying to find a field.
Speaker 2: And the problem is is as they're walking around, they're
Speaker 2: carrying their own field with them, and that's what the
Speaker 2: reader will often read is their own field and they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's a ghost here and it's following me. Not really.
Speaker 1: It seems like it's really challenging because everybody these days,
Speaker 1: at least here in the first world country typically well
Speaker 1: even in third world countries. There's a lot of places.
Speaker 1: They carry mobile phones, they carry watches, they're walking around
Speaker 1: with flashlights. They've got all these different pieces of equipment
Speaker 1: which can generate fields. And you're going through a house
Speaker 1: and even if the if you go and turn off
Speaker 1: the lights, which seems to be a popular thing to
Speaker 1: do on a ghost hunt, you still got eletrousity flowing
Speaker 1: through the walls. I don't understand. I mean, theories about
Speaker 1: what ghosts are aside, the idea that EMF spikes represents
Speaker 1: an entity or a sign of ghosts seems really problematic.
Speaker 2: It is really problematic. But here's here's kind of the
Speaker 2: problem with ghost hunting. You have it the the the
Speaker 2: romanticness of it being spurred on by reality TV. And
Speaker 2: the real flaw here is people think that they can
Speaker 2: watch this ohso educated professional such as Zach Begonds, uh
Speaker 2: you know on the screen, Yeah, you knows.
Speaker 1: I was just watching he's vegans. I was just watching
Speaker 1: Demon House. Uh again, I'm sorry, Yeah, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: the things I do for this show.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: You know Daniel Tosh used to call him no no,
Speaker 1: no no sorry. Joel McHale on The Soup used to
Speaker 1: call him Scooby Douche, which sorry but yes it sounds
Speaker 1: very push Sorry, sorry, sorry, Matthew.
Speaker 2: Well, the thing is is, you know he's up there
Speaker 2: acting like he knows everything. There's no about this. You've
Speaker 2: got Jason and Grant from Ghost Hunders doing the same
Speaker 2: thing that they're so experienced, they know so much, and
Speaker 2: the problem is is they don't know what they're doing,
Speaker 2: and by the time that they discover that what they're
Speaker 2: doing is wrong, they're already making so much money at
Speaker 2: it that they only really now know how to push
Speaker 2: it further to make more money. So you get these
Speaker 2: people that watch these shows and go, hey, if this
Speaker 2: guy can do it, I'm learning all this great information
Speaker 2: from them him, I can go out and I can
Speaker 2: do this. And it's weird because you don't get someone
Speaker 2: that watches an episode of say House and then thinks
Speaker 2: they can go perform surgery.
Speaker 1: But let's hope not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, good point. But the problem is is that
Speaker 2: with this people think that they can watch a few
Speaker 2: episodes and read some articles on the web and they're
Speaker 2: good to go. They don't need to learn about the
Speaker 2: equipment what it was originally designed for, because detectors were
Speaker 2: not designed for paranormal investigation. And since they don't know
Speaker 2: what they're actually designed for, they're using them in the
Speaker 2: complete incorrect way, and so it's all problematic from the
Speaker 2: moment they turn on that TV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's move on to another piece of equipment. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the Spirit box or Frank's box, which
Speaker 1: is kind of ties into EVPs. And I don't want
Speaker 1: to go too deep into VPS because I think that's
Speaker 1: worthy of an entire episode.
Speaker 5: We've treated it on a few episodes. Yeah, you will
Speaker 5: have to do a full episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very interesting. But but the spirit boxes specifically
Speaker 1: seemed designed to to help pick up audio noise, which
Speaker 1: you can then search for patterns. But that's my skeptical interpretation.
Speaker 1: How do you how do you see them being used?
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's basically a broken radio. Now. Myself, Absolutely Lovely,
Speaker 2: an investigative column writer at the time, interviewed Frank Sumption,
Speaker 2: and I can't remember her name.
Speaker 5: I think I mentioned it up to this point that
Speaker 5: you and I are married.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I froze for a momentary. I apologize, And
Speaker 2: we got to interview Frank Assumption, and you know, he
Speaker 2: fully admits that he takes a radio and he breaks
Speaker 2: it so it no longer works. So it's a lot
Speaker 2: like when you would sit in your your dad's pickup
Speaker 2: truck and twist the knob back and forth on the
Speaker 2: on the radio, and you know, you know, as it
Speaker 2: goes across the bands and lots of fun. But we
Speaker 2: didn't know that we were communicating with both aliens and
Speaker 2: ghosts and other entities when we did that. And that's
Speaker 2: what it is is he just uses random voltage to
Speaker 2: jump across the bands.
Speaker 5: And I think the listeners know that you have worked
Speaker 5: as a magician of sorts and that you've led theatrical
Speaker 5: salances and you've used the Frank's Box because we have
Speaker 5: it Frank's Box, a real Frank's Box from Frank enough
Speaker 5: to give us one yes to test, and that you've
Speaker 5: used those in your salances and had some fun results
Speaker 5: in the past.
Speaker 2: You know, it was fun because what we thought we
Speaker 2: were going to have to do. Originally with this Franks
Speaker 2: Box was put an additional speaker inside of it to
Speaker 2: play some pre programmed scary things that the ghost could
Speaker 2: actually say to the participants, But we realized very quickly
Speaker 2: we didn't need to do that. People are so ready
Speaker 2: to hear whatever they want out of all this garble,
Speaker 2: these bits of speech and music and everything else coming
Speaker 2: out of this thing, that we can just prime them
Speaker 2: on what they're going to hear, and they will. So
Speaker 2: we'll start off and say, can someone in this crowd
Speaker 2: choose a word that we can have the frames box
Speaker 2: say back to us, and then if we can get
Speaker 2: at least three or four people that heard that word
Speaker 2: come through, then we can feel comfortable that we've established
Speaker 2: a connection with the other side. Is that reasonable? And
Speaker 2: they'll all say yes, and then someone will say, how
Speaker 2: about calliflower? Okay, so we'll just turn it on and
Speaker 2: wait until somebody thinks they heard cauliflower. One person raises
Speaker 2: their hand, and then automatically several more will raise their
Speaker 2: hand because they heard it too, and we're good to go.
Speaker 2: We can have that box say anything we prime them
Speaker 2: to hear. Wow, that's it was. It was so much fun. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a lot of fun too.
Speaker 1: It always reminds me of two things. Number one is
Speaker 1: Bumblebee from the Transformers.
Speaker 2: Exactly, that's he is the coolest Franks Box ever.
Speaker 1: And the other is, uh, I used to do a
Speaker 1: lot of road trips back before I had kids and
Speaker 1: can't get out of my damn house. And yeah, and
Speaker 1: I would, you know, late at night, especially crossing the desert,
Speaker 1: listening to Coast to coast AM. You'd go from one
Speaker 1: you know, radio station zone to another, and in between
Speaker 1: you could like set your radio to search and try
Speaker 1: to find signals, you know, to pick up anything to
Speaker 1: listen to and hopping between like crazy, you know, bounced
Speaker 1: off signals from Chicago or Mariachi stations and all these
Speaker 1: different things. You never know what you're gonna hear, and
Speaker 1: and it just little pieces and snippets. But you know,
Speaker 1: obviously this is a little bit more well weirdly, it's
Speaker 1: less directed, but it has more i think propensity to
Speaker 1: pick up your own signals or you know, interprets your
Speaker 1: own way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm really sorry, Blake, but in my head, I'm
Speaker 2: imagining you in the role of Tom Cruise and Jerry
Speaker 2: Maguire when he's trying to find something good to sing.
Speaker 1: To show me the Mummy, Show me the Mummy. That's
Speaker 1: all I'm saying.
Speaker 2: But as soon as free falling comes on, man, you're
Speaker 2: you're ready to go.
Speaker 5: Yep, let's not do a rendition.
Speaker 1: Now, No, we'll skip that.
Speaker 5: Well, moving on. What about cameras. I mean, you've used
Speaker 5: cameras in your own investigations and research in different specific
Speaker 5: tops of cameras.
Speaker 2: A lot of different kinds of cameras. I mean, the
Speaker 2: best one that we've you know, had luck with just
Speaker 2: a plane camera, a digital camera. And it's interesting because
Speaker 2: people seem to think that infrared cameras are going to
Speaker 2: pick up things, or thermal cameras, which is something we
Speaker 2: should we should talk about probably separately in a minute.
Speaker 2: But they think that just taking pictures in the dark
Speaker 2: is going to yield results, and it does. They get orbs,
Speaker 2: and they get vortexes, and they get all kinds of
Speaker 2: stuff because they're using a camera in a way it
Speaker 2: wasn't designed to be used. So the way we would
Speaker 2: use them is we would walk into a place and
Speaker 2: document how the place looks, you know, we would know
Speaker 2: exactly I mean it wasn't long ago that Blake had
Speaker 2: sent a photo of a castle? Was it in Scotland?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I you mean the one like from
Speaker 1: like a week ago or a.
Speaker 5: Few days Yeah, oh yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: That was mid England. Yeah, mid England. Okay.
Speaker 2: Well, See, the thing is is, what would have made
Speaker 2: that really great is if we could have got another
Speaker 2: picture of that same place from the same angle during
Speaker 2: the day or you know, five minutes before, five minutes
Speaker 2: after whatever, to see what has changed. And that's how
Speaker 2: you solved it, basically is by finding similar photos and
Speaker 2: being able to compare. So when we would go into
Speaker 2: a location, we would take photos of everything we could.
Speaker 2: That way, at the end of the night, we would
Speaker 2: go through and take photos again. If anything had changed,
Speaker 2: hopefully we would be able to figure out exactly why
Speaker 2: it changed, such as hoax, fraud or an actual ghost
Speaker 2: pushing something off a countertop, you know. But the thing
Speaker 2: is is we would use it more as documentation rather
Speaker 2: than hoping we were going to catch an ORB.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should take a moment because I don't know
Speaker 1: what percentage of our audience knows about orbs, But maybe
Speaker 1: maybe we should explain with Bizar and what they the
Speaker 1: skeptical interpretation.
Speaker 2: Is sure sure now orbs when if you just go
Speaker 2: online and do a quick google for ghost photos or
Speaker 2: orb photos, you're going to come up with a ton
Speaker 2: of these. But we've all seen these in pictures where
Speaker 2: you see this little white Sometimes there's other lighter colors,
Speaker 2: light colors in there as well, but usually they're white.
Speaker 2: It's just a circle seemingly floating in the middle of
Speaker 2: the picture. And these came about pretty much when digital
Speaker 2: cameras came about, So something changed when we went from
Speaker 2: film to digital that suddenly made ghosts which used to
Speaker 2: have a peer, you know, as these spooky spectors on
Speaker 2: staircases and things like that, they just turned now into
Speaker 2: round balls of light. But if you know anything about
Speaker 2: how a camera works, we have particulates in the air constantly.
Speaker 2: And if you've got a little particulate, a little piece
Speaker 2: of dust that floats in front of your lens, say
Speaker 2: three to four inches away from your lens, and then
Speaker 2: your flash goes off, the flash is going to light
Speaker 2: up that piece of dust. And a lot of people
Speaker 2: don't really know that a piece of dust is not
Speaker 2: this perfectly round little thing, but it's got a lot
Speaker 2: of different facets on it. You know, it's almost like
Speaker 2: a floating diamond. That might be a little too flowery,
Speaker 2: but its visual. It's not a round thing, but it's
Speaker 2: not these facets on it. So if that flash, when
Speaker 2: it goes off, it's one of those facets just right,
Speaker 2: it's going to flash back into the camera lens. Now
Speaker 2: the camera is trying to focus on something in the distance.
Speaker 2: That means that something that close will be out of focus.
Speaker 2: And what happens when something's out of focus, all the
Speaker 2: edges are blurry depending on how out of focus it is.
Speaker 2: So something that could be you know, quite I have
Speaker 2: quite a lot of texture on it becomes just round.
Speaker 2: And that's how orbs, you know, come to be. It's
Speaker 2: just dust. It's always in the air, no matter how
Speaker 2: much we think that it isn't you know, I don't
Speaker 2: see any dust. Well, that's because it's small, and that's
Speaker 2: that's the whole reason. I mean, sometimes you can take
Speaker 2: several pictures in a row and you won't get any
Speaker 2: orbs in one, and then suddenly you'll get three in
Speaker 2: the next one. And that's because they're always turning and
Speaker 2: everything else in the air, and suddenly one of those
Speaker 2: facets will connect with that flash and you've got a big,
Speaker 2: beautiful ORB. A great way to really see how the
Speaker 2: air moves, though, because you know, we think that the
Speaker 2: air is pretty stagnant. But if you like, take a
Speaker 2: fog machine and fill a room with fog, you can
Speaker 2: just sit there and watch how the air is moving
Speaker 2: in that room. It's never stagnant. YEP.
Speaker 1: I did the same thing with a match, a Winden match.
Speaker 1: It makes a nice smoke. You can sort of watch
Speaker 1: the things move around. It also clears up the odor
Speaker 1: if your kids are particularly stinky.
Speaker 5: Many Kids's got two comments at some point anyway, and
Speaker 5: this is something else you wanted to add.
Speaker 1: Like I do, But go ahead, because I want to
Speaker 1: talk about cameras a little bit more.
Speaker 5: Oh so did I? Yeah, I just wanted to get
Speaker 5: Mat to recount a story. But first of all, I
Speaker 5: remember going to a paranormal conference years ago, and this
Speaker 5: woman was giving a talk on orbs, and she started
Speaker 5: by saying that she was really skeptical about orbs, and
Speaker 5: she said, you know, I need believe that I'm stuffing
Speaker 5: this story up now so I could hear I could
Speaker 5: hear Bade Blade, and I.
Speaker 1: Think good, but I cannot hear it, so yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Think you're fine anyway. So she said, I'm really skeptical
Speaker 5: about orbs, and I only believe that nine out of
Speaker 5: ten or a not all. But I think the story,
Speaker 5: Oh my god, how you recount it, Matt, because you
Speaker 5: actually know this story too, And I don't worry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I've heard this, you know a ton
Speaker 2: of times that that a lot of people say that, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, ninety percent of orbs are all just dust,
Speaker 2: but it's that other ten percent, or or they'll say
Speaker 2: ninety nine percent, but it's that other one percent that
Speaker 2: you have to be careful, you know, it's whatever.
Speaker 5: You know, how do you differentiate between what's a ghost
Speaker 5: and what's an orbit?
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me throw out that. One of the interesting
Speaker 1: things is most orbs are fake, but the ones that
Speaker 1: have smiley faces in particular, you know, that's one that
Speaker 1: like really because they do look a lot like emojis.
Speaker 1: But that that seems like a weird criteria for saying
Speaker 1: these are the real.
Speaker 2: Well, well, that's the thing is if they if they
Speaker 2: have texture, then they're more than likely a ghost. If
Speaker 2: they're just completely smooth, then it's just dust. But if
Speaker 2: they have a little bit of an orange tinge to them,
Speaker 2: that also means that they're demonic, so you have to
Speaker 2: be careful of that.
Speaker 5: That makes it sound more plausible anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I do want to mention speaking of cameras.
Speaker 1: You know, listeners will know that ghost photos is one
Speaker 1: of my absolute passions in this field, going back to
Speaker 1: like the Watertown ghost investigation, bigfoot photos. You know, that's
Speaker 1: not particularly paranormal, but you know, interpreting photos and trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what's really going on is I would
Speaker 1: almost say i'm OCD about it. I really enjoy trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what's really going on. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: know this one pattern that I see over and over
Speaker 1: again is that we didn't notice anything when we took
Speaker 1: the photo, but later when we went back and looked
Speaker 1: at the pictures that were developed, we saw this weirdness,
Speaker 1: you know. And one of the main things is is
Speaker 1: we didn't see this. There was nobody there, you know,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, there's an image of
Speaker 1: a person there. And I think it's worth mentioning how
Speaker 1: poor human memory is for what was actually going on
Speaker 1: at the time a photo was taken.
Speaker 5: This totally leads me to ask Mat to recount a
Speaker 5: story about the brook Forest Lodge in Evergreen. I'm sure
Speaker 5: you know what I'm talking about now.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I was. I was thinking that I could
Speaker 2: also supply the images for this to even have some
Speaker 2: Patreon content.
Speaker 1: We love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people wanted to see some of these actual things.
Speaker 2: But the brookfest In is this beautiful mountain.
Speaker 5: Bok first In. I always say to lodge, that's the
Speaker 5: one in California I went to right right.
Speaker 2: Well, if you happen to pick up Karen's great book,
Speaker 2: would you believe it? The photo on the cover is
Speaker 2: actually of the brook forest In, and the story that
Speaker 2: I tell in the book is actually of the brook
Speaker 2: Forest In as well. And it's a great place. I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people think of the Stanley Hotel
Speaker 2: as being the scary hotel in Colorado. No, go to
Speaker 2: the Brookforest In. It's a beautiful, scary place with some
Speaker 2: great stories behind it. And we kind of became the
Speaker 2: paranormal Oh what's the phrase I'm looking for poster children.
Speaker 2: I would almost say mascots. We were the paranormal mascots
Speaker 2: of the place. So no other groups were allowed to
Speaker 2: come in and that's a good thing because previous groups
Speaker 2: had done some vandalism and stuff like that and taken
Speaker 2: some liberties that they shouldn't have. But that does happen
Speaker 2: a lot on investigations. So we were the only ones
Speaker 2: allowed in there because we were expected the place. So
Speaker 2: anytime somebody else called up and asked to come do
Speaker 2: an investigation, the owners would say, you have to call
Speaker 2: these guys first, so they would call us, and our
Speaker 2: stipulation would be, you can come to an investigation if
Speaker 2: you allow us to give you a class on how
Speaker 2: to do it. So that's a pretty bold thing to
Speaker 2: say to someone else who they also think they're experts.
Speaker 2: But we actually had several groups that were like, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: you know, because they know we've been around a while,
Speaker 2: so they wanted to find out how we did things.
Speaker 2: So we give these nice long lectures to them and say, okay,
Speaker 2: you're free to go off and do your investigation now.
Speaker 2: One of the things we try to teach them is
Speaker 2: when you take a picture, pay attention to what you're
Speaker 2: taking a picture of. Don't just kind of casually point
Speaker 2: your camera around to click, click, click without having some intention.
Speaker 5: A lot of people do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they certainly do so, pay attention to what you're
Speaker 2: taking pictures of, and take more than one picture of,
Speaker 2: you know, every thing you do so, of course, and
Speaker 2: leave the lights on. Don't turn the lights off, you know,
Speaker 2: just a hint. It's not more haunted if the lights
Speaker 2: are off. So they get in contact with us about
Speaker 2: three weeks later and they send us this picture and
Speaker 2: they say, we can't figure this out. This picture has
Speaker 2: us really freaked out. So and it was just kind
Speaker 2: of a weird blob. They took it in the dark,
Speaker 2: like we told them not to, and it was kind
Speaker 2: of this weird blob. So we put it into photoshop
Speaker 2: and brought the lightness up and everything, and it started
Speaker 2: to look like some kind of demon dog or something.
Speaker 2: But it was kind of a terrifying looking picture. So
Speaker 2: we said, well, can you send us the pictures before
Speaker 2: and after this that you took And they said, oh no,
Speaker 2: we threw all the rest away. This was the only
Speaker 2: one that was interesting. Wow, And it was like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, did you hear nothing that we tried to
Speaker 2: teach you. You keep every photo. You don't throw things
Speaker 2: away because they're not interesting, because they can be educational.
Speaker 2: But luckily we had taken tons of pictures up there,
Speaker 2: so we went in and we started matching up the
Speaker 2: shapes with clear pictures we took with lights on, and
Speaker 2: oddly enough we found it. We figured out what it
Speaker 2: was and what it was was it was it was
Speaker 2: it was a demon dog. It actually was. No. There's
Speaker 2: photos hanging on the wall, the walls of this place
Speaker 2: in different areas, and one of the photos had some
Speaker 2: some scenes like maybe from Italy or something, and there
Speaker 2: was this statue of this lion and they took a
Speaker 2: picture of this picture in the dark. Wow, and that
Speaker 2: was their demon dog. Yeah, yeah, and it was. I
Speaker 2: mean they got to spend less time trying to scare
Speaker 2: themselves and more time try and more time try to
Speaker 2: actually do an investigation. Uh, you know, because I mean
Speaker 2: in the Brook Forest in we've had some great experiences.
Speaker 2: You know, we've seen some strange things happen that actually
Speaker 2: make us go we're skeptical, we don't necessarily believe in ghosts,
Speaker 2: but this place makes us realize we don't know everything.
Speaker 2: And that's okay, you know, it's okay to say I
Speaker 2: don't know just makes you want to do it more.
Speaker 2: And uh, and that's that's one of the great things
Speaker 2: about the whole idea of paranormal investigation. But those moments,
Speaker 2: unfortunately can get rare.
Speaker 5: So you experience there that you recount in my book
Speaker 5: is interesting. I don't know if you've got time to
Speaker 5: tell it.
Speaker 2: Do we like?
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 5: I mean, I wasn't there, But.
Speaker 2: We can make this like a three or four part show.
Speaker 5: For Patreon people.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, for Karen's book, would you believe it?
Speaker 2: And Blake, you have a story in this book too.
Speaker 2: I would say that Monster Tuck fans would definitely pick
Speaker 2: us up because I love your story. You got a
Speaker 2: great one. But uh, you know, we're up there at
Speaker 2: the Brook forest in and it's a blizzard and the
Speaker 2: snow is just coming down. It's it's definitely a scene
Speaker 2: out of the Shining Now. The caretaker of the place,
Speaker 2: the place is completely empty except for us and the caretaker,
Speaker 2: and the caretakers like, great, you guys are here. I'm
Speaker 2: going to go to the bar because he never gets
Speaker 2: to leave otherwise. So he leaves us there at the
Speaker 2: place and he goes to the bar. So we're not
Speaker 2: the bar in the hotel, yeah, down down in Evergreen.
Speaker 2: He goes down to every otherwise he'd be drinking alone.
Speaker 1: So he's always the caretaker, has always been there.
Speaker 2: He's gonna go hang out with Jack, gotta go hang
Speaker 2: out with Jack, Torrance and everything. But so he goes
Speaker 2: down into Evergreen and we're left there alone. So we're
Speaker 2: investing in and all of a sudden, we're upstairs and
Speaker 2: we hear the front doors blast open downstairs and people
Speaker 2: coming in and stomping off their boots and laughing and talking,
Speaker 2: and we're like, oh, Greaty brought the bar home with him,
Speaker 2: and we think this is just perfect. How are we
Speaker 2: going to do an investigation under these conditions? So and
Speaker 2: we're starting to hear, you know, glasses tinking and stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, as people are filling up their glasses and
Speaker 2: drinking and at the bar down there downstairs, and it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: well let's go down and see if we can kick
Speaker 2: them out. And we at the top of the stairs
Speaker 2: where we can see down into the bottom floor there,
Speaker 2: and the sound stopped immediately, just like someone had lifted
Speaker 2: the needle off her record, and that was really strange.
Speaker 2: We walked down, nobody was there, The doors were closed
Speaker 2: and locked, there was no snow, on the floor. We
Speaker 2: looked out there were no tracks in the snow. Hearing
Speaker 2: this the place, Yeah, we were all hearing it, and
Speaker 2: the place was silent, and we thought somebody's gonna jump out.
Speaker 2: But that doesn't explain why, you know, there's no snow
Speaker 2: on the floor, why nothing's disturbed, there's no tracks in
Speaker 2: the snow. We just couldn't figure this out. So we
Speaker 2: went back upstairs and found out that even after we
Speaker 2: had gone downstairs, they were still hearing it going on upstairs.
Speaker 2: And it was after we had been downstairs for a
Speaker 2: moment or so that it just shut off for them.
Speaker 2: And I I don't really understand what happened. I can
Speaker 2: say that when a snow plow went down the highway
Speaker 2: out in front of the place, the plow, the sound
Speaker 2: of the plow would almost sing off of the pavement
Speaker 2: as it's pushing the snow out of the way. That
Speaker 2: metal bit against the asphalt. And it makes me wonder
Speaker 2: with all the sort of you know, white noise if
Speaker 2: you will, of the snow, uh just there that I
Speaker 2: don't know, that drastic silence kind of has a noise
Speaker 2: of its own in a sense. But then they have
Speaker 2: that like a snowploud going down or a truck going
Speaker 2: up that maybe it's somehow created some sort of echo
Speaker 2: or audio illusion or something. Because you know, that's another
Speaker 2: thing that you know, we should also talk about as
Speaker 2: the whole you know.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, that's actually a perfect segue. I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about audio equipment. I know personally from my experience
Speaker 1: that a lot of ghost owners really highly value digital
Speaker 1: recorders with low fi recording capabilities because and this is
Speaker 1: my interpretation is that the less accurate the audio recording,
Speaker 1: the more one can interpret things in the audio resulting file. Adjectively, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but but yeah, what kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: you know, recording equipment that detects sound and then turns
Speaker 1: on automatically, that sort of thing. What kind of things
Speaker 1: are you seeing being used by GHO centers?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean we see all kinds of things.
Speaker 2: I mean still from the handheld mini cassette recorders to
Speaker 2: it really depends a lot of people aren't just using
Speaker 2: the equipment on their camcorders. We actually brought in you know,
Speaker 2: decent recording equipment that was you know computerized on the end,
Speaker 2: you know, the video digital you know, audio hardware and everything.
Speaker 2: But we really strive to get the highest quality recordings
Speaker 2: we could, and again they were for documentation. They weren't
Speaker 2: for you know, we wanted to find out what the
Speaker 2: normal sounds were in the place and if there was
Speaker 2: any pattern to them. You know, in the brookforest in
Speaker 2: for example, they would keep hearing these footsteps walking around,
Speaker 2: and we found out from our recordings that it was
Speaker 2: actually the furnace. Every time the furnace would shut down
Speaker 2: after it had run to a cycle of heating, it
Speaker 2: would thump several times. And using a combination of our
Speaker 2: audio recordings to kind of, you know, measure when this
Speaker 2: sound would happen. We also used a seismometer to see
Speaker 2: the direction of the sound and that told us a
Speaker 2: lot as well, because you know, if you're going to
Speaker 2: have someone that's taking footsteps, the vibrations are going to
Speaker 2: give a very up and down sort of vibration. But
Speaker 2: if it's something more that's equipment that's causing the whole
Speaker 2: place to shake, you get it going in all directions. Well,
Speaker 2: look at the seismometer.
Speaker 1: One of the most to me still creepy, even though
Speaker 1: I know what's going on. Common illusions is when you
Speaker 1: go up a stairwell and the echo of your own
Speaker 1: footsteps bounces off the ceiling behind you if the age
Speaker 1: and then bounces back. So like if you have one
Speaker 1: of those stairwells where the ceilings, uh, it's really really creepy,
Speaker 1: uh behind you. Yeah, it sounds exactly like someone's behind you,
Speaker 1: running up right behind you. And it's like, I can
Speaker 1: reproduce this in my house every time, from the basement
Speaker 1: going back upstairs.
Speaker 2: Now, have you considered having a paranormal investigation group come
Speaker 2: over and check out your.
Speaker 1: My daughter Maddie wants me to. Yeah. No, Maddie's pretty
Speaker 1: pretty sure there's a demon down here, but I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure it's me, So.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would agree. So we've got Geiger calenders, you
Speaker 5: might say Giger calendas here. I don't know much about
Speaker 5: how these are used, and I've never worked with any
Speaker 5: uh any groups that have used them, have you?
Speaker 1: We?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: My opinion on Geiger counters is, if you take one
Speaker 2: into a place and you're getting a lot of readings,
Speaker 2: get it out. Yeah, but not in the ab sense.
Speaker 1: No, No, that's pretty funny. Yeah, it's a different kind
Speaker 1: of get out, isn't it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, you've now got cancer. So yeah, not a
Speaker 2: good not a good thing.
Speaker 1: I've worked in a nuclear reactor, you know, with the Navy,
Speaker 1: and we had to carry those badges that said, you know,
Speaker 1: if if you've got a certain amount of exposure of
Speaker 1: the badge would change color, that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: I don't personally know of any cases where you know,
Speaker 1: a radioactive ghost sounds really scooby doo, doesn't it. I mean, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just knew, I knew.
Speaker 5: I knew of one group and they said we have
Speaker 5: a million dollars worth of ghost hunting equipment, and they
Speaker 5: had one, but they couldn't quite tell me what it
Speaker 5: was for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just the The bottom line is these ghost
Speaker 2: hunters that go out and they do it as a
Speaker 2: as a more of a social type activity, and to
Speaker 2: be perfectly honest, there's nothing wrong with that because going
Speaker 2: out and scaring yourself like this is a lot of fun,
Speaker 2: and it is very social, and it's very exciting, and
Speaker 2: it's a real bonding experience. It's great. So I don't
Speaker 2: really want to diss anyone that does this as a
Speaker 2: fun activity as long as they're not breaking into properties
Speaker 2: and putting themselves at risk by going places they shouldn't be.
Speaker 2: But when it comes to equipment, they only want equipment
Speaker 2: that's going to give a reading. It doesn't matter what
Speaker 2: kind of reading. They just want a reading, and then
Speaker 2: they can interpret it how they choose.
Speaker 1: Sure, I was going to mention flashlights because that seems
Speaker 1: to be a particularly hot item among ghost huners because
Speaker 1: they're using them to it's almost like a magic gate
Speaker 1: ball or a way to answer questions because the flashlights
Speaker 1: will go on and go off based on the questions
Speaker 1: that they ask. Now, I know what the skeptical explanation is,
Speaker 1: but do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 2: Sure? Sure? I mean basically, what it is is they
Speaker 2: intentionally unscrew sort of the top of the flashlight just
Speaker 2: to where the flashlight, you know, they'll turn it on
Speaker 2: and they'll unscrew it it gets right to the point
Speaker 2: to where it goes off, and then they'll screw it
Speaker 2: back just a little bit, and then they'll set it
Speaker 2: on the floor and ask questions of it. And often
Speaker 2: when the right question has been asked and the ghost
Speaker 2: has an answer, or if enough time has passed and
Speaker 2: the flashlight is heated up sufficiently to expand the metal
Speaker 2: the flashlight will turn off, and that's their answer. They've
Speaker 2: received an answer for the ghost now and they can
Speaker 2: continue to ask more questions and again. When the ghost
Speaker 2: knows the answer to one of these questions, or sufficient
Speaker 2: time has passed that the metal is cooled back down,
Speaker 2: the flashlight will turn back on, and it's it's it
Speaker 2: could be either explanation, and I'll leave it, leave it
Speaker 2: up to the listener.
Speaker 1: But basically, it's it's either the ghost is turning it
Speaker 1: on and off or the physics of Earth is turning it.
Speaker 5: On basically, and they're interpreting it subjective subjectively anyway.
Speaker 1: A matter you know, should I take all my ghost
Speaker 1: hunting clothes off? That really is important what questions you ask?
Speaker 1: Because being social?
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, I think a lot of people have used
Speaker 5: it for dating over the years too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, you know those little badges that Blake was just
Speaker 2: talking about about the radioactive kind of sensitivity up. A
Speaker 2: lot of ghost unders wear a badge that can tell
Speaker 2: when they've got herpes. So what that's a very handy.
Speaker 1: Hey, I did mention that I was working with the
Speaker 1: Navy when I said I was in a nuclear reactor, right,
Speaker 1: because if I left that piece. I was like, why
Speaker 1: was he working in? Yeah, plenty of people work in
Speaker 1: and around nuclear reactors in the Navy. It's it's fairly common.
Speaker 1: If you're going to go out to see it.
Speaker 5: Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. So we've still
Speaker 5: got quite a list to go. What about thermal cameras well.
Speaker 2: The thermal cameras are are a blast. They only only
Speaker 2: read surface temperature, but they are so misleading that it's
Speaker 2: a really a good idea if you're going to use
Speaker 2: a thermal camera, and they're very expensive, although the price
Speaker 2: has come down considerably over the last few years. They
Speaker 2: will reflect off of just about any any surface that
Speaker 2: has enough shininess to it. Now even a wall painted
Speaker 2: with flat paint is a shiny enough surface to reflect
Speaker 2: images or temperatures off of these cameras, and so's they
Speaker 2: could be really hard to interpret what you're seeing. We
Speaker 2: had had a picture of, you know, that we would
Speaker 2: show groups when we were educating. We were to show
Speaker 2: this picture and say, what is this a picture of
Speaker 2: from a thermal camera? And it looked like a bathtub
Speaker 2: full of skulls, But actually what it was is it
Speaker 2: was a picture from a grocery store of the frozen chickens.
Speaker 2: And the problem is is when ghost Hunters use these,
Speaker 2: they always tend to see, you know, a bathtub full
Speaker 2: of skulls, when they should have realized it was just
Speaker 2: a bunch of frozen chickens. So it is very hard
Speaker 2: to interpret, and in fact, Jason and Grant even kind
Speaker 2: of stole a bit of an education from us. I
Speaker 2: guess you could say we were on an episode of
Speaker 2: ghost Hunters that's on the season two bonus DVD. They're
Speaker 2: the bonus episode rather, and it's at the Elkhorn Lodge,
Speaker 2: and they of course had to bust out the thermal
Speaker 2: camera and there, against walla walls, clear as day was
Speaker 2: this ghost, this figure standing and so you know, we're like,
Speaker 2: whoa wait a minute, And we went over and looked
Speaker 2: and figured out that it was actually a reflection of
Speaker 2: some other things hanging on another wall that made it
Speaker 2: look like there was a person standing there when clearly
Speaker 2: wasn't a person standing there. And so we broke it
Speaker 2: all down for him, and they made sure that that
Speaker 2: was off camera, and then Jason got back on camera goes, oh,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, I know what this is, and he
Speaker 2: explains the whole thing, and it's like, uh huh, we're.
Speaker 5: Just the skepticism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they were really good that they
Speaker 2: thrown a little bit of skepticism. It made them seem
Speaker 2: that much more real in everything they were doing.
Speaker 5: The Elkhorn Lodge and this time it's the lodge and
Speaker 5: not the Inn. There's a little interesting sideline story to
Speaker 5: that in connection to the Stanley Hotel. Can you just
Speaker 5: mention that in passing?
Speaker 2: Sure? Now? The Stanley Hotel is known for all of
Speaker 2: its scary stories, and a lot of these scary stories
Speaker 2: originated with a book that was written about the scary stories,
Speaker 2: and it came out, oh at this point, probably fifteen
Speaker 2: twenty years ago, and it's the Ghosts of the Stanley Hotel,
Speaker 2: I believe. Now. The problem is, when the author started
Speaker 2: writing the book, she was having a hard time finding
Speaker 2: enough ghost stories because there really weren't very many, not
Speaker 2: certainly not enough to write a book about. So down
Speaker 2: the road the Elkhorn Lodge had a ton of ghost
Speaker 2: stories and they were really rich, beautiful stories, and she
Speaker 2: went down there to talk to them, and lo and behold,
Speaker 2: the owner was selling the book or the Elkhorn Lodge,
Speaker 2: and she says, can we have your ghost stories? And
Speaker 2: the guys like you, I don't care. I'm selling the place.
Speaker 2: She's gonna have all of them. So a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of the ghost stories for the Stanley Hotel actually were
Speaker 2: transported from the Elkhorn Lodge.
Speaker 1: Wow. Interesting they checked out of the Elkhorn into the Stanley.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, by the way, and it's still there.
Speaker 1: I've never stayed at the Elcorn. I have been at
Speaker 1: the Stanley and it's pricey.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 5: Oh what is it about four a night or something?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's going up. Yeah, yeah, you remind me also
Speaker 1: of that. There's I've watched a lot of documentaries where
Speaker 1: they use these things inappropriately, where they're like, well, how
Speaker 1: can you explain this? They walk into a room and
Speaker 1: there's an image on the wall. Yet if you watch
Speaker 1: the way they cut the episodes, clearly someone was leaning
Speaker 1: up against the wall previously, you know, and like you
Speaker 1: can literally sort of see that that those are really tricky.
Speaker 1: They use them in ghost hunting videos. They also use
Speaker 1: some you know, bigfoot hunting videos and we don't know
Speaker 1: what this animal is. And I think it's important to
Speaker 1: understand that unless you've been trained in how to interpret
Speaker 1: thermal imagery. It's probably not safe to assume that just
Speaker 1: because you recognize the shape that you know what's actually there.
Speaker 2: It well, exactly exactly, and that's that's really a difficult thing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, they'll have someone you know, sitting in a
Speaker 2: chair and then you know they'll miss it. You know,
Speaker 2: they'll walk into the room and ooh, the chairs. You know,
Speaker 2: a ghost was obviously sitting there. And that's a confusing
Speaker 2: thing because ghosts are supposed to leave cold spots, so
Speaker 2: why would it be leaving a hotspot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a little bit of inconsistency there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we didn't speaking of cold spots. We found
Speaker 2: that would be a very interesting sort of phenomena because
Speaker 2: you know, the theory is that the ghost comes into
Speaker 2: the environment and tries to draw the heat out of
Speaker 2: the room to use as energy to be able to manifest.
Speaker 2: And you know, the thing is is, so many of
Speaker 2: us that look back on our high school science class
Speaker 2: know that anytime there's a transfer of energy, the byproduct
Speaker 2: is heat, not cold. So it would be like putting
Speaker 2: your hand on the back of the refrigerator. It takes
Speaker 2: a lot of energy to make the inside of that
Speaker 2: refrigerator cold, So it doesn't make sense that it's going
Speaker 2: to be able to draw the heat out of the
Speaker 2: air and create cold like that.
Speaker 1: Part of my training in the Navy was in air conditioning,
Speaker 1: so the principle we always learned was you can't add cold,
Speaker 1: you can only remove heat, right, Like, Yeah, that's basically
Speaker 1: what you can do because heats. If you think about
Speaker 1: heat's motion and the cold is the lack of motion.
Speaker 1: Although I think it's such a common theory, there's probably
Speaker 1: some physics there you could do the math on where
Speaker 1: you would say, what you're trying to say is you're
Speaker 1: going to turn the ambient heat of the room into
Speaker 1: work to make something happen, right, And how much ambient
Speaker 1: heat would you have to burn through to get enough
Speaker 1: work to move say a button being pressed. You know,
Speaker 1: that's a force measurement. There's a lot of things going
Speaker 1: on there. I think there's it would probably be a
Speaker 1: really fun thing to put together some of the math
Speaker 1: on that and say, here's how much the temperature would
Speaker 1: need to drop to turn this much heat into energy
Speaker 1: to make or into work to make these things. You know,
Speaker 1: these phenomena happen. I don't think that's enough. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's enough.
Speaker 2: No, no, no. And that's the thing is, if there's
Speaker 2: that much transference going on, you know, it's it's not
Speaker 2: like the ghost is a refrigeration unit. So I just
Speaker 2: don't know how well any of that would work. But hey,
Speaker 2: we're talking about other worldly physics here. It doesn't have
Speaker 2: to follow our suppose.
Speaker 1: Although you measure it with our worldly measuring tools like
Speaker 1: the digital thermometers to you know, or I feel a
Speaker 1: cold spot, you.
Speaker 2: Know, what are the theory works well, right, And with
Speaker 2: those thermal cameras, that's one of the big things is
Speaker 2: they try to measure a ghost in the middle of
Speaker 2: the room, and we're looking at something that doesn't measure
Speaker 2: It only measures surface temperature. And if ghost doesn't have
Speaker 2: a surface, it can't measure it. It can only measure
Speaker 2: what's behind it. Same thing with those those non contact thermometers.
Speaker 2: You know, we tried all kinds of experiments to see
Speaker 2: if we could get it to read something in the
Speaker 2: middle of the room like a mist or even like
Speaker 2: dry ice, smoke, you know, or you know, mister or
Speaker 2: fog or whatever, and could not get it to read
Speaker 2: anything but the wall behind it.
Speaker 1: So there's no way that those How can science explain this?
Speaker 2: There is another word for a cold spot that might
Speaker 2: make it more clear. It's called a draft, like a
Speaker 2: like a beer. Well, if you're like any other good,
Speaker 2: red blooded American and you like them cold.
Speaker 5: Then yes, that doesn't drink by the way.
Speaker 1: Temperature British lagger. Crap.
Speaker 5: We've still got some more devices to go. And the
Speaker 5: the ovulous or ovolous, which you always joke sounds like
Speaker 5: the name of a birth control device.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it totally does. That was created by Bill
Speaker 2: Chapman or Chapel, Chapmin Chapel, and uh, well we'll correct
Speaker 2: that in post.
Speaker 1: He Uh it's Bill Chapel exactly.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Uh and uh, I'm trying to remember because
Speaker 2: he made a whole bunch of little devices that are
Speaker 2: absurd and and it's interesting because you know he will
Speaker 2: even say these are for entertainment purposes only, but only
Speaker 2: listens to that. Well, he's careful, he's careful about who
Speaker 2: he says it to. And also, but uh, the theous,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember. I believe that was the one
Speaker 2: that would spit out random words and uh, and and
Speaker 2: it's interesting because I was at the at the Robert
Speaker 2: Merch Talking Board Society Museum and there was a woman
Speaker 2: there walking around with her birth control ovulus, and I
Speaker 2: have to say, I was working, nobody was hitting on her.
Speaker 2: She was just astonished every time that thing would spit
Speaker 2: out a word, and it has a small dictionary of
Speaker 2: words in it, and it just randomly will choose a
Speaker 2: word and spit it out at a random time.
Speaker 5: And see her and you didn't point her out to me.
Speaker 2: Oh, well, she wasn't around anytime that I was with you,
Speaker 2: because she was downstairs when I was trying to interview Robert,
Speaker 2: and that was the only time I saw her.
Speaker 1: So the device, you walk around with it and it
Speaker 1: randomly spits out words, so it's like it's like a
Speaker 1: digital Tourette's device exactly.
Speaker 2: That's a great description of it. So it's why was
Speaker 2: she assuming.
Speaker 5: That his place was haunted? I guess because in all
Speaker 5: the talking.
Speaker 2: Boards, all the talking boards, I mean, how could it
Speaker 2: not be haunted. Those things are scary.
Speaker 5: So yeah, the Bobby one in particular.
Speaker 2: The Barbie one in particular, definitely. But the thing is
Speaker 2: is that we give so much meaning to all of
Speaker 2: these devices that it's almost impossible to remove that that meaning.
Speaker 2: You know, if you're a believer, you can't you can't
Speaker 2: back up from that. You've already given it that meaning,
Speaker 2: and no one can talk you out of it either.
Speaker 2: So it's it's not to say that you're wrong if
Speaker 2: you believe it, but I will say that if you
Speaker 2: do believe that the words coming out of this device,
Speaker 2: you know, just for an example, if you believe that
Speaker 2: these are these words have meaning meaning, me telling you
Speaker 2: that they don't have meaning is you know, who the
Speaker 2: hell am I to say that? So it's not a
Speaker 2: very good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be demeaning exactly.
Speaker 5: So I guess that's a lot like people who you know,
Speaker 5: make meaning from from things that they encounter. For example,
Speaker 5: they've just broken up with someone and they switch on
Speaker 5: the radio and there's some kind of ballad or song
Speaker 5: that just has special meaning for them at that time, or.
Speaker 1: Specifically talking about when a man loves a woman has
Speaker 1: played in the waffle house that I think Kathleen broke
Speaker 1: up with me. Yeah, maybe Karen.
Speaker 5: All those times were a person's looking for an answer
Speaker 5: to a question that they have and they just switch
Speaker 5: on the radio or you know, basically somehow words or
Speaker 5: a song or a thought come to them and they
Speaker 5: construe that as having a psychic significance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, absolutely, absolutely. And the thing is is, and
Speaker 2: a lot of times that's great if you feel a significance,
Speaker 2: you know, and a connection with that that it gave
Speaker 2: that moment meaning to you. Often that can be a
Speaker 2: very wonderful thing that no one should ever take away
Speaker 2: from you. But someone should take that away from Blake.
Speaker 1: I will. Yeah, today's is my nineteenth wedding anniversary. And
Speaker 1: I still remember being dumped by this lady upstairs. But no, I.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Can't count her taste, but it all worked out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Well, the thing is is
Speaker 2: you've got meaning being given to so much like this
Speaker 2: woman believing that because all these talking boards were in
Speaker 2: this one location, the place was going to be haunted.
Speaker 2: We have Cheeseman Park here in Denver, and because of
Speaker 2: the fact that there are still bodies from when it
Speaker 2: used to be a cemetery there in the park, that
Speaker 2: park must be haunted. Now, we got to actually be
Speaker 2: part of the forensics team to exam and several bodies
Speaker 2: that were exhumed from Cheeseman Park. And it was a
Speaker 2: very interesting thing because when they talked about the Evil
Speaker 2: Undertaker who dismembered so many of the bodies as he
Speaker 2: was removing them, and a lot of the you know,
Speaker 2: the parts are still there. We actually got to put
Speaker 2: these skeletons back together, uh you know, and they hadn't
Speaker 2: been complete in you know, well over a century. So
Speaker 2: it was kind of an interesting thing. So if this
Speaker 2: evil Undertaker was going throughout this trouble of dismembering them,
Speaker 2: I guess we got to remember them.
Speaker 1: Hey, nice, would you say that that place was flushed
Speaker 1: with ghosts because so many were interred?
Speaker 2: No, I would not say that, absolutely would not. But the.
Speaker 5: We could do an entire episode on park and we.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 2: It was an amazing experience. And I have to say
Speaker 2: that the the City Corner did not like my remembering joke.
Speaker 2: I can say that for sure, but I thought it
Speaker 2: was funny. But no, we should talk about this again
Speaker 2: because then I can tell the horrible horror movie moment
Speaker 2: that I had there where I turned as white as
Speaker 2: a sheet when I saw something that I was not
Speaker 2: expecting to see. But we can say that for another time.
Speaker 1: Cheeseman's also relevant to the Changeley movie, right, Yes, so
Speaker 1: very much. I would love to talk about that in more.
Speaker 5: I think doing an episode on that and one on
Speaker 5: the Stanley Hotel would be great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we've all been to the Stanley that
Speaker 1: that would be a really fun one, and I'm always
Speaker 1: willing to go back. I really like that place, not
Speaker 1: because the ghosts, I just I just like it. Any
Speaker 1: place where the parking lot's full of elk I think
Speaker 1: I'm in, so.
Speaker 2: It's pretty cool. It is pretty cool.
Speaker 5: But yeah, there's a mini pit cemetery.
Speaker 2: There, Yeah, the mini pet cemetery. But Karen and I
Speaker 2: had a great time as there were all kinds of
Speaker 2: amateur ghost hunters running around in their pajamas and pink
Speaker 2: bunny slippers all the.
Speaker 5: Like groupies following ghost hunting groups around.
Speaker 1: Anybody dresses dogs maybe giving never mind time when we're
Speaker 1: talking about technology, I want to I'm gonna hop over
Speaker 1: to when that. I don't think people will expect to hear.
Speaker 1: But it's just I love this idea that the clocks
Speaker 1: are frequently a ghost hunting tool that most people don't
Speaker 1: really think about. Which people think that certain hours of
Speaker 1: the night are are particularly prone to ghosts. Some people
Speaker 1: think midnight, some people creat yeah, yep. But the crazy
Speaker 1: thing to me is, and I say crazy, that's not
Speaker 1: really nice, But it's how did ghosts know what time
Speaker 1: zone they're in? And you know, the idea of like
Speaker 1: that a clock or just the whole idea of like
Speaker 1: this sort of artificially created structure around time has any
Speaker 1: bearing on what a ghost might experience or feels.
Speaker 5: Is it meant to be? Because I'm thinking that you
Speaker 5: can tell us about Reed's haunted clock, but I'm wondering
Speaker 5: if it is at the time of day that the
Speaker 5: individual died.
Speaker 2: Well, and that that's that like with the Amityville horror
Speaker 2: that was the story, three three fifteen was the time.
Speaker 2: But they also say that three three am is very
Speaker 2: significant significant. So if you know, you suddenly get this message,
Speaker 2: you know, from your dead aunt or something at three o'clock,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's because three am is mocking the Trinity.
Speaker 2: So you know, your aunt Martha is my the Trinity.
Speaker 2: It's it's a very strange theory, and I don't I
Speaker 2: don't quite get it. I mean, it's it's obviously saying
Speaker 2: that there's a demonic entity if you're having activity at
Speaker 2: three am. But then you, like I said, you've got
Speaker 2: the other things where it's the time of death. Uh,
Speaker 2: and then depending on it's all depending on interpretation and
Speaker 2: depending on what's happening. If nothing happens at three am
Speaker 2: and nothing happens at three fifteen or time of death,
Speaker 2: then that's because when you're dead, time is not linear.
Speaker 2: So suddenly you can use that excuse. So it's whatever
Speaker 2: suits your bias.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I just how to the ghost deal
Speaker 1: with daylight saving time? Yeah?
Speaker 2: It really protests. Yeah, a lot of them really protests,
Speaker 2: especially like the ranch the ranch hands and stuff. Those
Speaker 2: guys they do not follow daylight savings. Know how much
Speaker 2: how much you push it on them, they won't.
Speaker 5: We get that in Queensland in Australia too because it
Speaker 5: fades the curtains and monstertle.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 1: I'm Blake Smith.
Speaker 5: And I'm Karen Stolsner.
Speaker 1: You just heard an interview with Matthew Baxter, ghost hunter, magician, entertainer,
Speaker 1: lecturer and husband whom my co host Karen. Thanks to
Speaker 1: both of them for making time to talk about ghost
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Speaker 2: You know, it's just occurred to me, we really haven't
Speaker 2: had a completely successful test of this equipment. I blamed myself,
Speaker 2: so do I I have no sense worrying about it now?
Speaker 2: Why worry Each of us is wearing an unlicensed nuclear
Speaker 2: accelerator on his back yep, let's get ready, switch me
Speaker 2: on