Small Town Monsters - A Paranormal Life

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You're listening to everything out there with your host Steve Stockton.
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Hello friends, Hello, hello once again, and welcome to everything
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out there on the Clyde Lewis Grounds. He wrote Radio Network,
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I'm your host, Steve Stalktor. Welcome in tonight, joining me
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on the phone. Friend of mine for many years. You
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might know her from her work on Caravan of Lore
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or some of the scripts she wrote and narrated for
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me over on my thirteen Past Midnight YouTube channel. Or
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you might know her from her work with Seth Breedlove's
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Small Town Monsters. And she's also a classics professor at
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Kent State University. Welcome Heather Moser, Heather, come on in.
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Hi, Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
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Yeah. Nice to have you here on the phone with
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us tonight. So what's going on in your world? I
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haven't seen you in I've probably been over a year.
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You and Seth showed up in New Mexico in the
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Four Corners area and filmed me for documentary. We're working
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on what's happened since that transpired? Yeah?
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Yeah, we showed up and we kidnapped you for a
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little bit so that you could tell us some stories. Well,
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let's see, that does seem like a long time ago.
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We have been filming other films, filming other movies and
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the one that you're in American Werewolves too, which it
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was kind of it should have been out by now,
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but then we had an issue with our distributor, so
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it's kind of been put on the back burner. It
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should be coming out, though very soon. I don't think
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I'm allowed to say yet, but we have an official
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date now, so it'll be within it'll be within the month.
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I'm looking forward to that. I've been expecting my copy
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in the mail just any time. I'm anxious to see
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how it turned out. But it was great meeting Seth
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and the crew and then getting to meet you in
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person finally.
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Yes, yes, it was great to finally meet you. Let's see,
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we went to British Columbia and we filmed there for
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on the trail of Bigfoot the Origin, So we've done that.
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Right now, we're in the midst of and this is
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about the only thing that has my brain occupied at
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the moment. We're in the midst of our Kickstarter and
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that takes up all of February for us, So that's
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the biggest thing right now, trying to get our kickstarter
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funded as much as possible and that'll help get us
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through the year.
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Yeah, and I saw the notification on Facebook. I'll put
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a link to that in the show notes for the
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kickstarter there and everybody go pledge or support to that.
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It's a great franchise they've got going there out How
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many are they up to now with a small town
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Monsters series? Uh?
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How many movies? You mean?
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Yeah?
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Oh my goodness, Well, I don't know, it's got to
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be close to twenty at this point, if not more.
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I don't have the number off the top of my head,
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but it's a lot.
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Yeah, I know it's out there. And then there's a
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great great cannon have worked there. I've only seen a
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few of them, but they are all just incredible movies
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and really looking forward to see the one that I'm
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in now. Is that going to be premiering like at
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some film festivals and things like that, or some conferences,
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paranormal conferences or are you allowed to say so?
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American Werewolves two did actually premiere last ball in Kentucky
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to an audience and it was very well received, But
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as of right now, it's not scheduled for any premieres.
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Now, Okay, that's still good to hear though. At least
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it's out there, and it did get good reception and
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hopefully nobody laughed at my part too hard.
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Absolutely not. And our Kickstarter backers they've had access to
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it so and it's gotten good reviews from them as well.
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So that's the other bonus of kickstarter backing is that
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you get access to films, even if we have issues
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with the distributor, you get access to the films early.
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So yeah, and I've worked some in film and getting
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that coverage right away to see how it plays, that's
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just invaluable. Think of those people as your test audience
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if you will.
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Yep, definitely.
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So let's just start at the beginning here. Like I said,
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you wrote and narrated some things for me over on
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my thirteen Past Midnight channel, which is still on hiatus.
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I'm going to be bringing it back, but I'm back
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on Missing Persons and Mysteries. I now own that channel,
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so that's getting a lot of my time and attention.
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Just under two hundred and seventy five thousand subscribers over there,
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and then in the interim, I started among the missing,
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and I've gotten I think one hundred and four k,
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hundred and five k over there now. So I've been
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a busy guy that just published my twentieth book this
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last year, if you count one that Cisco and I
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co wrote, and had a couple other co You're just
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in there on some of these recent ones. But yeah,
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uh no, moss growing under this rolling.
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Stone and that's good. That's good.
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Well, thank you. But what garnered your interest in the paranormal?
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Did it start like so many of us in early
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childhood or were you a light blimmer when it came
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to all things dark and scary or what's your personal story.
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Oh, it definitely started wheneber I was young. It's very
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very much tied to what was on TV at a
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very young age, unsolved mysteries with something that was on
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the TV every week, and that garnered my attention, almost
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like a morbid curiosity to a certain extent. I remember
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very vividly an episode about the Yeti and being afraid
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of the Yeti as a result of that. Also, spontaneous
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human combustion was one of the episodes, and I had
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this unrealistic fear that that was going to be how
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I'd meet my demise at some point in my life, hope.
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Yeah, that one always scared me too. I remember reading
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about that when I was a kid, probably in the
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of those readers digest tales of the Paranormal books, or
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maybe even the Time Life Library had the picture of
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the lady there that I think I legged was all
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that was left a burnmark on the chair, and that
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used to to scare the daylights out of me. I'm like,
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what if I spontaneously combussed that and quicksand? Now I'm
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a little bit older than you are, maybe a lot
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older than you are. But if you watch TV in
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the late sixties in the early seventies, particularly westerns, quicksand
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was the thing, and it got a lot of people
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and almost got you know, some of my heroes, Daniel
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Boone and his son Israel and Davy Crockett and gun Smoke.
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People are always getting in quicksand. But yeah, shc spontaneous
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human combustion. Bigfoot. I used to actually go out looking
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for bigfoot when I was a kid. I don't know
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what I've done if I'd found one.
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But that's a great question.
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What would you Yeah, I've wondered about that. These people
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that go out looking for it and they play the
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mating calls and stuff. Well, what if that works and
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all of a sudden an amorous bigfoot comes charging out
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of the woods. Do you run? Do you stay in
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teck one for the team or in that situation? I
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often wondered about that.
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Yeah, things to think about, for sure. Yeah, another thing
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you mentioned Quicksand I do remember also being extremely afraid
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of the Bermuda Triangle. Even though I have yet to
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go over the Bermutera Triangle, I was positive that if
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I did, I would disappear. That was another thing that
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was very common when I was younger.
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Yeah, Charles Burlitt's book about that was out in that
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era anyway, And yeah, that one frightened me. I've yet
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to fly over it as well. I've been in the
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edge of it, but that's about as close as I
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want to get. But and some of my research and
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things that I've done, there are a lot of triangles
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out there. They are all over the place. Here in
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New England where I'm at. You've got the Bennington Triangle,
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then you've got the Nevada Triangle. There's an Alaskan triangle,
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there's a one in northern California. What is it with triangles?
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Maybe you can enlighten us from your work as a
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professor there and then look back into history or maybe
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even prehistory. Is there something mystical about the triangle?
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Well, it's one of the strongest shapes. Right. We've got
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pyramids and we're always fascinated by those and how they
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were even built. But with these triangle areas, it seems
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to be that you've got the a conglomeration of sightings
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in one area, and I think, just human nature, we're like, okay,
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we're the outer limits of this. Let's make three points
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and oh, it's a triangle. It also sounds a lot
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better than like the Bridgewater Rahmas or some.
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Yeah, or the Alaska do decahedron or something like that. Right,
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there's something about those being able to find three points.
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And I know it's always easy to connect the dots
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in reverse, but it does appear to be within a boundary.
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And again there there's a mysticism with the triangle. You know,
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from a mathematical perspective and then from an alchemical and
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metaphysical perspective. But a lot of those pesky triangles out there,
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and I hope I don't get caught in any of them.
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Well, and that's the one of the things of small
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town monsters that we've started in the last At this point,
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it's been a couple of years now, we started a
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publishing company and one of our early books was The
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Texas dog Man Triangle by Aarondese, and that the whole
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idea of the dog Man Triangle came about after Aaron
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had accumulated all of these stories through historical and modern
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day times and realized, oh wait, they're pretty concentrated in
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an area, and look, lo and behold, there's three points.
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Let's make that the Texas dog Man Triangle.
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I'm saying, I find that fascinating. I haven't I heard
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anything about this. I'll definitely have to read that book.
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Can you elaborate on that a little bit without giving
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too much of the book away?
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So the Texas dog Man Triangle, the points are roughly
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around Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Houston, So it's
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a pretty decent size triangle. But then again, Texas is massive,
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so it really isn't that big on the general scale
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of things. But yeah, there are stories back from even
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the eighteen hundreds of these creatures that are bipedal canine,
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half human half canine creatures that have been aggressive. They're
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very rarely. I mean, you just don't hear stories necessarily
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about them being something that you want to encounter. They're not,
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I don't know. They don't seem as friendly as maybe
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your local bigfoot, but they're sightings that are accumulated in
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that area between those three points that are historical and
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modern day. And even after Aaron put the book out,
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which I'm sure you can attest to this from being
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an author as well. Once you get the book out there,
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then you get more sightings. You get more people coming
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in that have read the book and they're like, actually,
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I live in that area as well, and I had
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an encounter.
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So his.
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Database of sightings has grown since the book has come
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out as well, just kind of adding to yes, this
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is a definitive area where there seems to be a
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concentration of dog maned sightings.
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Yeah, that's been my experience too. People read the book
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and then they want to add something to it. Every
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single one of my books, and a couple of them
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have been updated to new editions. But like Strange Things
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in the Woods, that's actually two volumes combined. That was
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originally Strange Things in the woods and more Strange Things
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in the wood my publisher combined. But I've got enough
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for a second volume of those, and that's just things
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in the woods. I mean, there's strange things in the water,
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strange things in the sky, strange things on the farm,
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strange things in the city. It's just strange as a
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relative term there. But people seem to be more aware
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of it. I don't know. Maybe it's just me since
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I've published those books and gone on a lot of
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shows and have my own shows and stuff now, but
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there seems to be just a higher interest in it.
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There was a lot in the seventies, particular nineteen seventy
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three that was a big UFO year. There was a
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huge UFO flap in seventy three, and even my family
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jumped on that bandwagon. My brother lived on the highest
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point around where we lived, and a lot of like
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a Friday night or Saturday night, we would go over there,
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get lawn chairs set out in his yard and watch
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the skies and we saw anomal of stuff, stuff that
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made no sense, stuff that wasn't airplanes or jets or
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anything like that. But then it all just kind of
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died down. Those things tend to come in waves like that,
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flaps they call them, and I think that's true of
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anything cryptid or paranormal. There seems to be certain times
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when it's more active or more prevalent. And I hear
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from people now that the study that side of it,
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that the veil is thin and that's why. I mean,
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it's always it's thin around a certain time of year
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in the Pagan and Celtic beliefs, but now I've heard
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people say that it's getting thinner all the time, all
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the time, year round, and that's why all this is
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ramping up. Maybe that's so, or maybe it's just with
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the advent of the Internet and being able to communicate
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worldwide with somebody. I mean, you're sitting in Ohio, I'm
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sitting in New England, but we're talking like we're right
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here next to each other. I think that's just It
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has indeed made the world a smaller place and more
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people are willing to share. Because back like one of
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the strange things in the woods, a lot of those
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stories were from friends of my family and people that
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my it's new and things like that. The ninety nine
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percent of the people in that book had passed on
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now and they were read some to tell those stories.
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But the tea I'm kind of going me sometimes it
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was like they had to get a log chain and
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drag it out of them. And one old gentleman, Auto Daro,
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He's been passed for several years, but he would tell
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me things when he found out I wasn't going to
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laugh at him or make fun of him that he
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hadn't even shared with his wife. She'd be sitting there
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while we were talking. She's like, you never told me that,
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and they'd, you know, have some lib responsible you'd never ask,
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or something like that. But I think people are more
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open to talking about it now. And has that been
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your experience with the small Town Monsters? Is it easier
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the longer you do it, Is it easier to find
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witnesses to come forward and talk about what they see
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or in some cases didn't see.
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Yeah, I think it definitely has helped that we've I mean,
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small Time Monsters has been around since Minerva Monster came
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out in twenty fifteen, and just the fact that we've
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been around for a while and people can actually look
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at our body of work and see that we're not
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going to make fun of them has been a boon
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for us as far as getting people to feel comfortable
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talking to us. As a researcher for small town monsters,
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what I've noticed is there are certain cryptids where it's
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a lot easier to get people to talk because it
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is more accepted. Bigfoot, it's a lot easier to get
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people to come forward and tell you that they had
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an encounter with Bigfoot because it just seems to be
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more socially accepted. Right now, dog Man is a little iffy,
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But when you get into other things like sometimes UFOs
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can be a little trickier. Although that is starting to
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shift as well with everything that's happening in our culture
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on the news, you know, the government's coming forward and
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saying yes, there's been UFOs or UAPs rather, that's making
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it a little easier. But I have stories from people
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that had odd encounters of things that don't necessarily fall
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into the pop culture look at the at the strange
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if that makes sense, and they're more reticent to come
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forward with anything. So and then as far as the
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movies that we've done, it was difficult to get people
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to American werewolves too. That you're in that's titled the
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skin Walkers. It was very difficult to get people to
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come forward and talk about any type of skin walker encounter,
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which is not surprising. But I don't think that that
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stigma is necessarily going away, even if we have shows
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out there like Skinwalker Ranch. That is just a cultural
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thing that isn't going to change.
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Yeah, I agree, And just because they put it on
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TV and put it where it can be consumed by
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a mass audience, I think that raises the awareness and
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gets more people interested in people. I spoke to a
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guy not too long ago that he thinks finding Bigfoot
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or something like that that he'd caught an episode of
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and had no interest in it prior to that, and
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then suddenly he's hooked and devouring everything he can find
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about the subject, reading books, watching other shows, actually going
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out in the field and doing some research. So I
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think sometimes it's just that little little spark that Genny
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ciqua if you will, that excites these people like, Hey,
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I didn't know this was out here, and there's all
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this work and media that you can consume. And I
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don't know if people like that will stay in it,
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but at least it's nice to have an interest in
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it for a while, even if you go on to
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something that I'm on. My personal taste and interest even
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in the paranormal change. While I was big into UFOs
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as a child, I kind of grew out of that
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went more into Bigfoot and then from that into other cryptids,
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and that's kind of what got me into the missing
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people stuff too. And now I'm kind of circled back
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around and coming another interest in UFOs, but I like
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the classic cases. I've got a new YouTube channel. It's
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not very big, about thirty five hundred subscribers, called from Beyond,
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and we're looking at some of the classic UFO cases recently.
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First episode we covered the Betty and Barney Hill alleged
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abduction from here in New England. The week prior to
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that we looked at Rendalstrom Forrest, which has been called
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the UK's Roswell, and there's some some good stuff out
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there back during that era, you know, before all the
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abduction tom foolery and not discounting anybody's beliefs or theories
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or anything there. I spoken to UFO conference and met
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a lot of abductees that they believe what they say,
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and that gives me, you know, the belief in their testimony,
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I think, but I like it when it was, you know,
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everybody that was men from Mars or moon men or
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the Little Green Men and their flying saucers and things
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before it got beyond that. And so you mentioned UFO
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or UAP. What do you think the reason is for
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the name change this far into the game. Why would
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they suddenly just start calling it a UAP when we've
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been used to UFOs for decades?
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Well, that is that is a great question. I I'm
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not sure other than they're trying to make a broader term,
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perhaps to cover more things, and maybe UFOs just seemed
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outdated for them, or maybe we're actually behind the times
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and they don't actually use that anymore. Maybe they're just
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throwing us a bone and saying, yeah, we called it
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UAPs while you guys are busy calling it UFOs. Could
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be that now we have another term.
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Yeah. And I had a comment or on one of
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my live streams this week on from Beyond he said,
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it's to make it harder to search for things in
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a four you request a Freedom of Information Act? Thought
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about that if you're I hadn't either. If they're calling
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it a UAP now, but you're looking for UFO information.
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People that just come along and get into it now
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maybe not even realize that UFO was the preferred nomenclature
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before it went to UAP, So it could be that's
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a good point, classic mixed direction there.
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Yeah, I would not put it past anybody.
367
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And full disclosure. Do you think that it's coming or
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do you think we'll ever find out for sure? Or
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is it just too immerse, too hidden from view that
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to ever be revealed, because that would destroy a lot
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of paradigms, if you will, if we did get full
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disclosure in the way that people expect. What's your thoughts
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on that.
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I think that that is definitely a concern that it
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would cause issues, especially in the religious community. But I
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feel like at some point it'll just be I think,
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on down the line, not anytime, probably not in my lifetime,
378
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but I think that it'll just it'll be something that
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they can't deny anymore and we will all know. We
380
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may not know the extent of anything or but I
381
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don't think that we're going to be able to live
382
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forever with this with blinders on that there's nothing else
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in the universe except us, So I think it'll come
384
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out eventually. I think it's kind of it'll probably be
385
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a situation where the government's hand is forced, so to speak.
386
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That would be my guess.
387
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Yeah, and I agree with that. And I don't know
388
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at this point what it would take to convince everybody.
389
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I mean, there's been people that have been with people,
390
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have had these first hand experiences and they didn't believe
391
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what they saw. So again, I don't know if if
392
00:22:02.119 --> 00:22:04.759
one landed on the White House lawn and came out
393
00:22:04.799 --> 00:22:08.640
and shook hands with people, people, Oh, that's that's AI
394
00:22:08.839 --> 00:22:13.640
generated at CGI. It's a deep fake or Project Bluebeam?
395
00:22:13.680 --> 00:22:17.759
Are you familiar with that? I am not. It's supposedly
396
00:22:18.680 --> 00:22:23.160
Project Bluebeam one word. It's a type of I don't
397
00:22:23.200 --> 00:22:25.160
know if it's an apparatus or how it works, but
398
00:22:25.200 --> 00:22:28.799
it's a militarized thing where they can project a hologram
399
00:22:28.839 --> 00:22:30.720
that you can't tell the difference from the real thing,
400
00:22:31.279 --> 00:22:35.000
and according to which conspiracy theory you subscribe to, they
401
00:22:35.039 --> 00:22:37.599
can beam it straight into your head. It doesn't even
402
00:22:37.640 --> 00:22:40.519
have to be a physical manifestation. They can cause you
403
00:22:40.559 --> 00:22:43.599
to see it in your brain. I guess I'm not
404
00:22:43.640 --> 00:22:47.200
sure all the ins and outs of it. But you know,
405
00:22:47.359 --> 00:22:50.680
used to they say to believe what was it a
406
00:22:50.799 --> 00:22:52.680
quarter of what you read and half of what you
407
00:22:52.680 --> 00:22:55.000
see or something. Now we can't believe anything that we
408
00:22:55.039 --> 00:22:59.480
see or hear with all the AI. I know a
409
00:22:59.519 --> 00:23:02.160
lot of people they're scared of it, and it can
410
00:23:02.240 --> 00:23:04.559
cause some problems and things, but I see it as
411
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a tool. It can be beneficial. It's like anything like that.
412
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Like when my dad was small, people were scared of electricity.
413
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He said, he's heard creatures in the pulpit talk about electricity.
414
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You know, you're fooling with something you shouldn't fool with it.
415
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It's going to destroy the world. But yet it didn't,
416
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and it change everything. And I heard the same about
417
00:23:26.759 --> 00:23:29.720
nuclear power and things like that, and then that came
418
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to you know what's next, and somebody's going to be
419
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afraid of everything. And there are people that are averse
420
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to any kind of change, and I get that. I
421
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don't like especially swift and sudden change. But I'm open
422
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to new ideas. But what do you think about CERN
423
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and what's going on over there? Do you think they're
424
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tampering with something they shouldn't add to as the saying
425
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goes or what's your belief on that? Is it changing
426
00:23:54.720 --> 00:23:58.640
things like the Mandela effect? I've heard people attribute that
427
00:23:58.680 --> 00:23:59.880
to CERN. What's your thoughts on that?
428
00:24:00.039 --> 00:24:03.920
Yeah, that's funny. I didn't realize that people were attributing
429
00:24:03.960 --> 00:24:08.279
that to CERN. No, I think that they're I don't
430
00:24:08.279 --> 00:24:10.240
think that they're messing with something that they shouldn't mess
431
00:24:10.279 --> 00:24:17.279
with over at CERN. I there's I don't know. This
432
00:24:17.359 --> 00:24:20.799
also comes from more of a personal perspective as well,
433
00:24:20.839 --> 00:24:23.039
because there was someone that went through my school that
434
00:24:23.079 --> 00:24:26.519
worked over at CERN for a while, and like I
435
00:24:26.599 --> 00:24:29.319
knew him, and he was super nice and kind, and
436
00:24:29.359 --> 00:24:33.640
I would like to think that he would have the
437
00:24:33.680 --> 00:24:36.000
sense to not mess with something that he shouldn't mess
438
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with and that this is absolutely all in the name
439
00:24:38.720 --> 00:24:43.039
of science and furthering our understanding of the universe. So
440
00:24:44.799 --> 00:24:49.920
that would be my thought on it. I don't how
441
00:24:49.960 --> 00:24:53.359
horrible if they started to mess with something, yeah, and then.
442
00:24:54.200 --> 00:24:58.920
Advocate here though, what if it's compartmentalized and people that
443
00:24:58.960 --> 00:25:01.839
are good and just are working on this project and
444
00:25:01.960 --> 00:25:04.400
don't exactly know what they're working on now. I draw
445
00:25:04.480 --> 00:25:09.000
from personal experience. Both my parents were a part of
446
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the Manhattan Project and they had an idea of what
447
00:25:12.720 --> 00:25:16.559
they were working on the whole of it. But still,
448
00:25:16.720 --> 00:25:18.559
you know, you had this person doing this and that
449
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person doing that, and the people up above who were
450
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coordinating everything. They knew what they were doing. That's why
451
00:25:24.319 --> 00:25:25.720
part of it was an oak Ridge and part of
452
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it was in Los Almos. They wanted to keep those
453
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visionable materials separate until they got ready to arm everything.
454
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But there was a lot of people there was prior.
455
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There was Clinton Engineer Works prior to O R n
456
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L and the AEC and other agencies that worked out there.
457
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But again they knew they were doing something for the
458
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greater good, but they didn't know exactly what they were doing.
459
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So if that many people, No. Coridge at that time
460
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didn't even exist. It wasn't on any maps. It was
461
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a behind the fence and you had guard shacks at
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every entrance into town and you had to show a
463
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badger you didn't get in there. So but nobody talked.
464
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I mean, it was again part of the war effort,
465
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and your silence was necessary and people got called on that.
466
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I've heard about people that attended dances inside the fence
467
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and maybe whispered to their date about something they were
468
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working on and then it was found out that they
469
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had again talked a little more than they should have,
470
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and they were chid for that. If not fired or
471
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you could be arrested. My dad he talked about some
472
00:26:36.920 --> 00:26:39.079
of the documents and things that he had signed. Even
473
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far into retirement. He said there were certain things that
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are classified and that are still classified that he wouldn't
475
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be able to talk about ever unless he could lose
476
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his pension and his insurance and all that stuff. So
477
00:26:52.000 --> 00:26:54.519
those people, but again they understood they were doing it
478
00:26:54.519 --> 00:26:59.759
for the greater good. But sure people can they told Yeah,
479
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:05.599
that's what they were told, And I know, it's just astounding.
480
00:27:05.680 --> 00:27:09.000
And then another conspiracy theory that that gave me particular
481
00:27:09.039 --> 00:27:12.559
insight into was Project paper Clip. And I've heard people
482
00:27:12.599 --> 00:27:15.039
debunk that and say, oh, that didn't happen, it doesn't exist.
483
00:27:15.119 --> 00:27:18.319
But yet my dad, who was a scientist at Olkridge
484
00:27:18.400 --> 00:27:22.519
National Laboratory, he worked right alongside some of those German
485
00:27:22.559 --> 00:27:27.319
scientists that were brought over after the war. And personal story.
486
00:27:27.680 --> 00:27:31.400
I went to school, elementary school with a kid who
487
00:27:31.519 --> 00:27:35.359
was from Germany, and I went home with him after
488
00:27:35.400 --> 00:27:39.799
school one day and his dad was a scientist out
489
00:27:39.799 --> 00:27:43.079
there as well, I spoke fluent German and the kid
490
00:27:43.119 --> 00:27:46.160
my age spoke English. His dad had a heavy accent.
491
00:27:46.839 --> 00:27:49.480
But we were down in the basement. They had like
492
00:27:49.519 --> 00:27:51.720
a wreck room. That was the big thing to have
493
00:27:51.839 --> 00:27:55.519
downstairs in the seventies was a family room or rec room.
494
00:27:55.880 --> 00:27:57.400
And he's like, come here, I want to show you
495
00:27:57.440 --> 00:28:00.880
something and I'm like okay. He push us on the
496
00:28:01.599 --> 00:28:05.200
paneled wall back there and it swings open, and I thought, okay,
497
00:28:05.200 --> 00:28:07.039
he's going to show me a bomb shelter. A lot
498
00:28:07.079 --> 00:28:11.039
of houses built after the war had a bomb shelter,
499
00:28:11.119 --> 00:28:13.200
and because of the Cold War and all that going on,
500
00:28:14.279 --> 00:28:15.799
and I thought, okay, he's going to show me his
501
00:28:15.799 --> 00:28:18.400
bomb shehulter. We didn't have one, but I knew other
502
00:28:18.480 --> 00:28:20.799
kids that had a bomb shelter in their basement. So
503
00:28:20.880 --> 00:28:22.680
he opens it up and he flicks on the light
504
00:28:23.480 --> 00:28:28.119
and here is the biggest display of German war memorabilia
505
00:28:28.160 --> 00:28:32.559
that I have ever seen before since. And what I
506
00:28:32.559 --> 00:28:35.039
don't know if his glass or plexiglass case. There was
507
00:28:35.119 --> 00:28:39.680
a uniform, a very high ranking uniform. And I said, wow,
508
00:28:39.720 --> 00:28:44.119
your dad really loves his war memorabilia. And he said, Steve,
509
00:28:44.160 --> 00:28:48.000
you don't understand. He said that was his uniform. So
510
00:28:48.039 --> 00:28:52.640
he had this little shrine to the fatherland in his basement,
511
00:28:52.720 --> 00:28:57.160
yet he was out working at There's No laboratory right
512
00:28:57.160 --> 00:29:00.200
alongside my dad. So that project vapor clip is not
513
00:29:00.279 --> 00:29:04.079
a myth. So again, you never know. There's a lot
514
00:29:04.079 --> 00:29:06.359
of people that keep a lot of secrets out there.
515
00:29:06.559 --> 00:29:10.279
Yeah, the compartmentalizing thing, I mean, I understand it, but
516
00:29:10.440 --> 00:29:13.720
it's also scary to think that way, to think about
517
00:29:13.759 --> 00:29:15.680
all the things that people may be working on and
518
00:29:16.200 --> 00:29:17.839
not knowing the full extent of it, and then what
519
00:29:19.319 --> 00:29:22.599
the actual purpose is behind it on a larger scale,
520
00:29:24.079 --> 00:29:24.599
and then you.
521
00:29:24.680 --> 00:29:27.319
Have places like Area fifty one, you know where there's
522
00:29:27.359 --> 00:29:30.119
things going on that again, everybody there doesn't know what
523
00:29:30.160 --> 00:29:32.200
they're working on. But then you have a whistleblower like
524
00:29:32.279 --> 00:29:35.000
Bob Blazaar. What do you think of his testimony? Do
525
00:29:35.039 --> 00:29:37.440
you think that he's on the up and up ors
526
00:29:37.440 --> 00:29:40.880
he just found a way to opportunize all this.
527
00:29:42.559 --> 00:29:47.759
I was actually just watching Bob Lazar last night, watching
528
00:29:47.799 --> 00:29:51.599
his interview with Oh what is that? Oh? Joe Rogan,
529
00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:57.799
and I would say that if he's not being truthful,
530
00:29:57.799 --> 00:29:59.720
he's come up with a lot of a lot of
531
00:29:59.759 --> 00:30:06.000
de tales that make it extremely believable. Like I, this
532
00:30:06.119 --> 00:30:10.519
is just first first glance at these things. I did
533
00:30:10.599 --> 00:30:15.960
not detect him lying about anything from from that interview anyway,
534
00:30:18.319 --> 00:30:20.119
because there were just too many, like I said, too
535
00:30:20.160 --> 00:30:22.119
many nuances that he had in there that he's either
536
00:30:22.160 --> 00:30:27.000
a fantastic storyteller or a great a great liar, or
537
00:30:27.000 --> 00:30:27.839
he's telling the truth.
538
00:30:29.079 --> 00:30:31.680
That was my takeaway from that too. He believes what
539
00:30:31.720 --> 00:30:35.359
he's saying, or seems to me, Yeah, I can say
540
00:30:35.359 --> 00:30:38.720
that of a lot of in the in the UFO
541
00:30:38.920 --> 00:30:44.079
culture things. I've heard Travis Walton speak and you know,
542
00:30:44.200 --> 00:30:46.480
saw him at a conference and listen to him speak.
543
00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:49.240
He believes what he says. He believes that that's what's
544
00:30:49.240 --> 00:30:52.039
happened to Either that or he's the greatest actor that
545
00:30:52.119 --> 00:30:55.039
we've ever seen or the most accomplished liar ever. And
546
00:30:55.079 --> 00:30:57.720
there's a lot of people like that. Even Whitley Strieber,
547
00:30:57.759 --> 00:31:00.160
I've heard him speak before. I don't think he as
548
00:31:00.160 --> 00:31:03.319
the conferences anymore, at least he doesn't do them in
549
00:31:03.400 --> 00:31:06.599
Las Vegas because the casinos don't in force of no
550
00:31:06.720 --> 00:31:08.880
smoking policy. He or they didn't when I was there.
551
00:31:09.519 --> 00:31:12.039
But I believe that he believes what he saw, and yeah,
552
00:31:12.079 --> 00:31:14.319
he made a fortune off books and movies and things.
553
00:31:14.359 --> 00:31:17.119
But I think he is telling the truth as he
554
00:31:17.200 --> 00:31:20.079
knows it about those experience he has been starting with
555
00:31:20.160 --> 00:31:23.839
Communion and beyond m.
556
00:31:23.079 --> 00:31:25.920
I think that's a good way to put it, that
557
00:31:26.000 --> 00:31:28.200
they it's the truth, is they believe it.
558
00:31:29.680 --> 00:31:32.319
Yeah, And that's like with my own experiences. I've had
559
00:31:32.359 --> 00:31:35.880
people try to debunk stuff that I've seen, like you know,
560
00:31:35.960 --> 00:31:38.279
you didn't see that, or that didn't happen, or how
561
00:31:38.319 --> 00:31:40.839
could you remember it in that much detail. Well, that's
562
00:31:40.960 --> 00:31:43.480
just the way my brain operates. I can remember things
563
00:31:43.640 --> 00:31:46.640
just an infinite detail. I've got a near photographic memory,
564
00:31:46.960 --> 00:31:49.440
so that's one way I can remember all these details. Plus,
565
00:31:50.039 --> 00:31:52.839
when you have one of those encounters or experiences, it just,
566
00:31:53.359 --> 00:31:55.400
I don't know, it crystallizes in the mind. I can
567
00:31:55.480 --> 00:32:00.440
go back to any of my several especially the really
568
00:32:00.519 --> 00:32:02.839
really scary ones and things that I can remember every
569
00:32:02.839 --> 00:32:05.920
little detail of everything around me, what I had for
570
00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:08.839
breakfast that day, what was going on, what I did afterwards.
571
00:32:09.400 --> 00:32:11.440
I don't know how I could not remember all that,
572
00:32:11.519 --> 00:32:13.839
And just the fact to me that I can recall
573
00:32:13.880 --> 00:32:16.799
it in that grade of detail just shows to me
574
00:32:16.880 --> 00:32:20.119
that that's it's real. You know, in my mind, I
575
00:32:20.200 --> 00:32:22.039
was there, I know what happened. I know what I
576
00:32:22.079 --> 00:32:25.759
saw or didn't see or felt or heard, and nobody's
577
00:32:25.799 --> 00:32:27.759
ever going to convince me otherwise.
578
00:32:28.200 --> 00:32:31.200
Right, Yeah, exactly. I mean you were there, you had
579
00:32:31.200 --> 00:32:31.920
the experience.
580
00:32:32.640 --> 00:32:36.079
Yeah, so especially, I don't care if anybody believes it
581
00:32:36.160 --> 00:32:38.079
or not, you know, like Ripley's believe it or not,
582
00:32:38.119 --> 00:32:40.440
this is Stockton's believe it or don't. I don't. I
583
00:32:40.440 --> 00:32:45.279
don't care. That might be a name for a podcast.
584
00:32:47.240 --> 00:32:51.680
I like it, but again, you know, I'm not here
585
00:32:51.720 --> 00:32:54.839
to win any friends or influence any people. I'm just
586
00:32:54.880 --> 00:32:57.920
sharing what's happened to me and hopefully make it a
587
00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:01.799
little easier for other people to share what's happened with them.
588
00:33:01.960 --> 00:33:03.559
And that was one thing I wanted to ask you
589
00:33:04.160 --> 00:33:06.359
with small town monsters, have you ever had a showing
590
00:33:06.400 --> 00:33:09.559
of those, like in a retirement home or an old
591
00:33:09.559 --> 00:33:14.920
folks home or anything like that. No, but that's the
592
00:33:14.960 --> 00:33:16.920
things I do with my books. I like to go
593
00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:20.279
and do a reading, and especially with strange Things in
594
00:33:20.279 --> 00:33:22.920
the woods or even my strange world, and a lot
595
00:33:22.960 --> 00:33:25.000
of times they'll just be like somebody like, ah, what's
596
00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:27.759
this scrap? There's no beingo tonight, And they'll sit there
597
00:33:27.799 --> 00:33:30.000
and they'll do their knitting or their crochet or whatever,
598
00:33:30.079 --> 00:33:32.640
and then they just get up and leave. But usually
599
00:33:33.119 --> 00:33:35.720
there'll be a couple of people hang around after the
600
00:33:35.839 --> 00:33:38.160
reading is over, and I know what's coming up, And
601
00:33:38.319 --> 00:33:41.200
usually it'll be an older gentleman and he'll sidle up
602
00:33:41.200 --> 00:33:44.000
to me and say that story you had about the bar,
603
00:33:44.079 --> 00:33:46.200
and he said, let me tell you what happened to you,
604
00:33:46.759 --> 00:33:49.240
what happened, sorry, let me tell you what happened to
605
00:33:49.319 --> 00:33:51.960
me when I was a kid. And then the story
606
00:33:52.039 --> 00:33:53.839
just comes out, and maybe you know, this guy's been
607
00:33:53.880 --> 00:33:57.880
sitting on it for decades, and yet by hearing me
608
00:33:57.920 --> 00:34:00.319
tell my stories or tell other people's story in the
609
00:34:00.319 --> 00:34:02.960
cases chrange things in the woods, it frees him up.
610
00:34:03.279 --> 00:34:06.240
And otherwise that story might not have ever seen the
611
00:34:06.319 --> 00:34:08.199
light of day. Maybe he didn't tell to anybody could
612
00:34:08.239 --> 00:34:10.960
have taken it to the grave with him. And that's
613
00:34:11.239 --> 00:34:13.920
part of the commission that I'm doing here. I'm getting
614
00:34:13.960 --> 00:34:17.000
these stories out there so that they'll live on longer
615
00:34:17.039 --> 00:34:19.719
than the people that told them, like instoring things in
616
00:34:19.760 --> 00:34:22.280
the woods, or longer than me I'm hoping, you know,
617
00:34:22.320 --> 00:34:25.440
I'm building a legacy here, and I've encouraged other people
618
00:34:25.440 --> 00:34:29.800
to write Cisco Murdock, Mark, Anthony Wyatt. There's a lot
619
00:34:29.840 --> 00:34:31.840
of stuff here that you know, I've kind of been
620
00:34:31.920 --> 00:34:34.000
like a Johnny apple Seed to some of this. But
621
00:34:35.239 --> 00:34:37.159
I wonder what kind of response you would get if
622
00:34:37.159 --> 00:34:39.920
you showed those in that type of setting. If it
623
00:34:39.920 --> 00:34:43.039
would scare the pants off those old people, or if
624
00:34:43.039 --> 00:34:45.760
there would be some that would stick around and share
625
00:34:45.760 --> 00:34:48.159
their stories. You might might want to give that a thought.
626
00:34:48.440 --> 00:34:50.440
Mentioned that the sentence about any things.
627
00:34:50.960 --> 00:34:54.199
Yeah, that would be really interesting, especially because we are
628
00:34:54.239 --> 00:34:57.599
so close to where like Minerva Monster. I mean, I
629
00:34:57.639 --> 00:35:01.239
live in Minerva, so we're not far at all from
630
00:35:01.239 --> 00:35:03.400
where that happens. So to show that and then see
631
00:35:03.400 --> 00:35:04.559
what their reaction would be.
632
00:35:04.760 --> 00:35:06.400
Yeah, And you could do it, you know, in the library,
633
00:35:06.400 --> 00:35:09.679
you could do it in schools. That's another thing. Another
634
00:35:10.920 --> 00:35:15.199
undermined segment. I said, old people or senior citizens are
635
00:35:15.320 --> 00:35:17.639
one of our greatest wealths as far as folklore and
636
00:35:17.719 --> 00:35:21.760
stories and things. But another audience that I found is
637
00:35:21.960 --> 00:35:25.519
the teenagers. I go to a skateboard park or anywhere
638
00:35:25.559 --> 00:35:28.960
where teenagers congregate and say Hey, if you were going
639
00:35:29.000 --> 00:35:31.000
out on a date and you wanted to go parking
640
00:35:31.039 --> 00:35:35.280
someplace spooky, where's the Craybaby Bridge, where's the white Lady
641
00:35:35.320 --> 00:35:38.320
walk or the lady in white or whatever? And those
642
00:35:38.519 --> 00:35:40.719
they know all those places too. I did when I
643
00:35:40.800 --> 00:35:45.079
was a kid, right, The adults didn't pass it around
644
00:35:45.760 --> 00:35:47.719
like kids did. And I think that's the way a
645
00:35:47.760 --> 00:35:51.599
lot of these urban legends. And in the South, particularly
646
00:35:51.639 --> 00:35:54.360
in the Appalachians, there's there's a cry Baby bridge in
647
00:35:54.360 --> 00:35:57.480
every little community. And I don't know if it's like
648
00:35:58.119 --> 00:36:00.519
a version of the telephone game, or somebody heard it
649
00:36:00.880 --> 00:36:02.719
and then just retold it, but they added in a
650
00:36:02.760 --> 00:36:06.039
location that their audience would know, or if there's really
651
00:36:06.119 --> 00:36:10.079
I mean Texas, there's cry Baby bridge there. And then
652
00:36:10.119 --> 00:36:14.039
the same with the tunnel where the or the there
653
00:36:14.079 --> 00:36:16.000
it's a railroad track, I think where the kids put
654
00:36:16.039 --> 00:36:17.559
their hands on the car and push you over.
655
00:36:17.679 --> 00:36:19.199
Oh right, yes, there's a.
656
00:36:19.239 --> 00:36:22.480
Railroad tunnel in the Kingsport, Tennessee. It's like that since
657
00:36:22.519 --> 00:36:26.480
about tunnel. There's just the same stories in different locations.
658
00:36:26.480 --> 00:36:29.800
So it makes me think somewhere sometimes that really happened
659
00:36:29.840 --> 00:36:33.599
and it just got passed around. Another example, my mom's
660
00:36:33.599 --> 00:36:36.280
from East Tennessee. She grew up, was born in the
661
00:36:36.320 --> 00:36:39.440
CAD's Cove area or the Smoky's like my grandmother. And
662
00:36:39.480 --> 00:36:42.239
then my dad's from Middle Tennessee over on the Cumberland Plateau.
663
00:36:42.880 --> 00:36:44.760
But a lot of the stories that she would tell
664
00:36:44.800 --> 00:36:46.440
that she heard as a child, he had heard them
665
00:36:46.440 --> 00:36:49.199
as a child as well, even though they were six
666
00:36:49.239 --> 00:36:53.360
years apart, but in a local setting, you know, hours
667
00:36:53.400 --> 00:36:56.960
apart by car so again, and this was before the
668
00:36:57.079 --> 00:36:59.239
days of you know, and I guess they could have
669
00:36:59.280 --> 00:37:00.840
heard it on the Red You or something, but this
670
00:37:00.960 --> 00:37:04.079
was stories that they told around the woodstove in the
671
00:37:04.079 --> 00:37:07.760
wintertimer in front of the fireplace. But to me, that's
672
00:37:07.760 --> 00:37:10.280
fascinating the way these stories get passed around and they change.
673
00:37:10.280 --> 00:37:12.639
It is it's like a version of telephone game. Did
674
00:37:12.639 --> 00:37:13.960
you ever play that when you're in school?
675
00:37:14.599 --> 00:37:19.920
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, things are vastly different sometimes by the
676
00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:20.559
end of the game.
677
00:37:21.360 --> 00:37:24.920
Yeah, well you mentioned being there enter near Minerva. Now
678
00:37:25.679 --> 00:37:29.480
there's something about you can agree or choose to disagree
679
00:37:29.519 --> 00:37:32.800
with me here. There's something about Ohio in general that
680
00:37:32.920 --> 00:37:36.280
has the strangeness to it that there's the little pockets
681
00:37:36.320 --> 00:37:38.599
of weirdness there. And I mean that in the kindest
682
00:37:38.639 --> 00:37:46.039
and best possible way, that's good. But yeah, I don't
683
00:37:46.079 --> 00:37:51.320
know if you know the brothers from the belief Ale podcast, Chris,
684
00:37:51.400 --> 00:37:55.559
Jeremy and John. They're out of Ohio and they are
685
00:37:55.599 --> 00:37:59.840
among my three favorite Ohioans, and they've investigated a lot
686
00:37:59.880 --> 00:38:03.920
of stuff there and realize that there's just something strange there. Yeah.
687
00:38:04.679 --> 00:38:06.960
Yeah, I agree. I think we've got something here between
688
00:38:07.000 --> 00:38:10.960
the we're in the foothills of the Appalachians and then
689
00:38:10.960 --> 00:38:14.000
we've got the rivers all around here. I think when
690
00:38:14.000 --> 00:38:16.400
you get the confluence of all of those things together,
691
00:38:17.840 --> 00:38:21.320
plus the history, just the history in the area, the
692
00:38:21.559 --> 00:38:25.880
tribes that were once here, the mountain builders that were here. Yeah,
693
00:38:25.920 --> 00:38:28.679
we've got We've got a lot going on in this area,
694
00:38:28.760 --> 00:38:29.400
that's for sure.
695
00:38:29.559 --> 00:38:33.119
Yeah. And then of course you have stuff around the
696
00:38:33.159 --> 00:38:36.000
West Virginia area and the Kentucky areas that goes over
697
00:38:36.119 --> 00:38:41.039
into Ohio. Moss Man and the point pleasant things and
698
00:38:43.079 --> 00:38:45.000
how that all connects. But yeah, what I was on
699
00:38:45.199 --> 00:38:47.400
their show, they interview me. That's one of my favorite
700
00:38:47.440 --> 00:38:49.960
interviews that I've ever done, if not they favorite. I
701
00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:52.840
said to them that I was sharing some my Ohio
702
00:38:52.920 --> 00:38:55.559
experiences as a child, and I said, you know, any
703
00:38:55.599 --> 00:38:59.280
state they gave us Dean Martin Larry Flint and the
704
00:38:59.360 --> 00:39:02.320
Cramps is a great state. And they laughed at that.
705
00:39:02.400 --> 00:39:05.760
You know, we've had astronauts and presidents and stuff.
706
00:39:05.440 --> 00:39:10.599
But yep, excuse me, how to.
707
00:39:10.559 --> 00:39:13.880
Clear my throat? But again, that's just divergent things that
708
00:39:13.920 --> 00:39:17.320
I could think of that make it strange. It's not
709
00:39:17.480 --> 00:39:21.039
like it's not your normal state, if there is a normal,
710
00:39:21.079 --> 00:39:24.159
but there's just there's an extra weirdness there that I
711
00:39:24.199 --> 00:39:26.199
can appreciate, and it sounds like you can too.
712
00:39:26.880 --> 00:39:28.920
Absolutely, Yeah, I'm glad to be here.
713
00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.800
Now. Minerva Monster, you mentioned that for those of listening
714
00:39:34.840 --> 00:39:36.480
that might not have heard of that. Can you give
715
00:39:36.559 --> 00:39:39.159
us a little background on what the Minerva Monster is?
716
00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:43.000
Yeah, so it's a bigfoot creature. That was a bigfoot
717
00:39:43.000 --> 00:39:46.519
creature that was seen in nineteen seventy eight in Minerva, Ohio.
718
00:39:48.559 --> 00:39:53.599
And he made his appearance with the and why did
719
00:39:53.599 --> 00:40:00.519
their name just escape my escape my brain? Oh, for
720
00:40:00.559 --> 00:40:04.480
goodness sakes, he made his appearance in Mi Nerva with
721
00:40:04.559 --> 00:40:09.679
a family and they called the local sheriff's department, and
722
00:40:09.719 --> 00:40:11.920
of course people came out and looked and pretty soon
723
00:40:11.920 --> 00:40:15.079
it got in the newspapers and then without fail, people
724
00:40:15.119 --> 00:40:16.800
were showing up from all over the place to try
725
00:40:16.840 --> 00:40:22.760
to hunt this monster. And yeah, that was I mean,
726
00:40:22.800 --> 00:40:26.320
the family faced a decent amount of ridicule and it
727
00:40:26.400 --> 00:40:29.800
wasn't until we had the documentary come out that some
728
00:40:29.880 --> 00:40:35.239
of them actually got a little more let's see, how
729
00:40:35.239 --> 00:40:38.719
do you say, like a little more acknowledgment. I guess
730
00:40:38.800 --> 00:40:42.719
things were put the peace a little bit better when
731
00:40:42.719 --> 00:40:46.119
the documentary came out, Like, oh, okay, I guess maybe
732
00:40:46.159 --> 00:40:48.519
that did happen. You guys weren't just making stuff up
733
00:40:49.039 --> 00:40:51.239
at the time, which why anybody would make that up.
734
00:40:51.559 --> 00:40:54.480
I don't know why anybody would want that kind of attention,
735
00:40:54.639 --> 00:40:58.400
especially then, but that was what happened. It was in
736
00:40:58.440 --> 00:41:02.800
the seventies and there were a rash of sightings. So
737
00:41:04.480 --> 00:41:07.000
it was the Caton family, that's right, the Caton family.
738
00:41:07.639 --> 00:41:09.039
I knew it'd come to me eventually.
739
00:41:09.800 --> 00:41:13.519
Yeah, and I enjoy those stories like that kind of
740
00:41:13.519 --> 00:41:16.119
a one off. I mean, I don't know necessarily that
741
00:41:16.119 --> 00:41:18.719
that is or not, but the things where it just
742
00:41:18.800 --> 00:41:21.599
happened over a short period of time and maybe a
743
00:41:21.639 --> 00:41:25.000
handful of people were like here in New England and Massachusetts.
744
00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:28.519
You have the Dover Demon, which was basically spotted over
745
00:41:28.639 --> 00:41:32.800
two nights, and I think it was nineteen seventy seven,
746
00:41:32.920 --> 00:41:36.599
seventy eight, and then it was just gone and nobody
747
00:41:36.599 --> 00:41:40.119
ever saw anything again, although now looking back, there's people
748
00:41:40.159 --> 00:41:42.719
that claimed that something similar to that had been seen
749
00:41:43.320 --> 00:41:46.679
before and since. But the story that I'm familiar with,
750
00:41:47.119 --> 00:41:49.400
it just happened. And I love that sort of thing.
751
00:41:49.599 --> 00:41:51.360
I love to go to those places. I'm more of
752
00:41:51.360 --> 00:41:54.880
a legendarypper than I am an investigator. I like to
753
00:41:54.960 --> 00:41:57.360
just go and if you will, basking the ambiance and say,
754
00:41:57.400 --> 00:41:59.679
you know, I'm in Dover, this is where this happened.
755
00:41:59.719 --> 00:42:02.559
I have interesting story about that. Back in the eighties,
756
00:42:04.360 --> 00:42:06.400
I'd going to visit a friend that was going to
757
00:42:06.559 --> 00:42:09.840
NYU and one weekend they said, hey, we're going to
758
00:42:09.840 --> 00:42:11.840
go to this house party. Go with us, and it
759
00:42:11.960 --> 00:42:15.159
was in Massachusetts. It was a good drive and ended
760
00:42:15.239 --> 00:42:18.079
up we were in Dover. We went to these people's
761
00:42:18.079 --> 00:42:22.639
house out in the suburbs and they're like, so, Steve,
762
00:42:22.679 --> 00:42:24.840
what do you think of Dover? And I'm like, well,
763
00:42:24.880 --> 00:42:27.559
it's it's different, you know, I'm Tennessee. And then it
764
00:42:27.679 --> 00:42:29.760
was kind of lost ball in highways in New York
765
00:42:29.760 --> 00:42:32.480
and even more so at that time in New England.
766
00:42:32.880 --> 00:42:34.880
And I said, oh, I think it's great. I said,
767
00:42:35.480 --> 00:42:38.239
I've heard about the Dover Demon. They're like the Dover Demon,
768
00:42:38.519 --> 00:42:40.760
and they start yelling for this guy. They're like Bill, Bill,
769
00:42:40.840 --> 00:42:43.360
come here, come here, and this guy. And then there
770
00:42:43.400 --> 00:42:46.360
was two guys named Bill, one William and the other
771
00:42:46.559 --> 00:42:49.000
was named Bill. I don't remember which one exactly that
772
00:42:49.039 --> 00:42:51.360
I met, but he was at this house party in
773
00:42:51.440 --> 00:42:54.440
Dover and he came out and he just he seemed
774
00:42:54.519 --> 00:42:56.639
kind of embarrassed or kind of humbled because his friends
775
00:42:56.639 --> 00:42:59.079
are making a big deal. But I spoke with one
776
00:42:59.079 --> 00:43:02.079
of the witnesses about it a year or two after
777
00:43:02.159 --> 00:43:06.679
it happened, and again he believed what he saw, sure,
778
00:43:06.760 --> 00:43:08.880
And I believe it was the one that drew the
779
00:43:09.760 --> 00:43:11.599
initial pictures of it. So if again, there was a
780
00:43:11.599 --> 00:43:15.039
Bill and a William that were eyewitnesses, but I don't know,
781
00:43:15.639 --> 00:43:17.480
you know, lost in the mists of time. I was
782
00:43:17.519 --> 00:43:20.159
in college at the time, and a lot of that
783
00:43:20.480 --> 00:43:21.679
is in a haze.
784
00:43:23.239 --> 00:43:28.119
I understand the years after the fact. If you were
785
00:43:28.119 --> 00:43:30.840
to come to Minerva now and you would go past
786
00:43:30.840 --> 00:43:32.760
the Caton's house, they still live in the same house.
787
00:43:32.840 --> 00:43:35.079
They've embraced it. Now they have a big foot statue
788
00:43:35.119 --> 00:43:38.800
outside of their home. Yeah, they'll talk to you about
789
00:43:38.800 --> 00:43:39.119
it now.
790
00:43:40.039 --> 00:43:43.480
And I talked about that it was on this show,
791
00:43:43.599 --> 00:43:47.159
or I do a blog called Around the Campfire. I
792
00:43:47.239 --> 00:43:49.000
might have talked about it over there. How a lot
793
00:43:49.039 --> 00:43:53.159
of times communities have learned to embrace these cryptids or
794
00:43:53.199 --> 00:43:58.000
these strange occurrences and they turn it into something that's
795
00:43:58.039 --> 00:44:00.599
good for the local economy. They saw soupers. They have
796
00:44:00.639 --> 00:44:03.679
a festival and they get people talking about it, like
797
00:44:04.239 --> 00:44:08.599
they have the Mothman Festival and then right the flat
798
00:44:08.599 --> 00:44:11.400
Woods Monster. You know, that's a big deal. And I think,
799
00:44:11.440 --> 00:44:13.760
what better way to share this than to make it
800
00:44:14.280 --> 00:44:16.559
a community wide thing. And yeah, it's kind of kitchen
801
00:44:16.679 --> 00:44:19.440
with the souvenirs and some of that, but it's fun
802
00:44:19.480 --> 00:44:22.039
and it gets an interest up. I mean, kids will
803
00:44:22.079 --> 00:44:24.519
always remember, you know, when I was a kid, they
804
00:44:24.519 --> 00:44:26.599
took me to the Mothman Festival, you know, and we
805
00:44:26.639 --> 00:44:29.679
saw this and we saw that, And I think that's
806
00:44:29.679 --> 00:44:34.000
a great way to continue interest in all things weird
807
00:44:34.039 --> 00:44:34.599
and spooky.
808
00:44:35.360 --> 00:44:37.119
Oh, I agree. I think it's one of the smartest
809
00:44:37.119 --> 00:44:41.280
things that community could do right, especially right now, it
810
00:44:41.360 --> 00:44:46.360
seems that pop culture is wanting more of these stories.
811
00:44:46.360 --> 00:44:51.880
There were wanting to hear about more monsters, and these
812
00:44:51.920 --> 00:44:55.719
festivals are just they're doing well. So you're not only
813
00:44:55.760 --> 00:44:58.079
preserving the story, you're helping, like you said, helping the
814
00:44:58.079 --> 00:45:01.639
local economy. I don't know what a town like Point
815
00:45:01.639 --> 00:45:03.639
Pleasant would be like without the Mothman Festival.
816
00:45:05.159 --> 00:45:08.920
It'd be a new age mill town without the mill
817
00:45:09.159 --> 00:45:10.039
I agree.
818
00:45:11.159 --> 00:45:14.159
Yeah, so that's one of the best things that they
819
00:45:14.159 --> 00:45:16.119
could have done for their for their town was to
820
00:45:16.159 --> 00:45:18.920
have that Mothman festival and have the museum and really
821
00:45:18.960 --> 00:45:22.159
embrace it and not shun it so much. Now there
822
00:45:22.159 --> 00:45:28.800
are places where we've been uh Louisiana, Missouri, I believe
823
00:45:28.880 --> 00:45:31.400
is the name of the town where Momo was the
824
00:45:31.480 --> 00:45:34.559
which was another Bigfoot creature in the seventies nineteen seventy two.
825
00:45:34.559 --> 00:45:40.199
I believe they embraced the story of Momo, the whole
826
00:45:40.239 --> 00:45:43.480
craze of it early on after the initial sightings, but
827
00:45:43.519 --> 00:45:46.199
then have shunned it. So when small town Monsters went
828
00:45:46.199 --> 00:45:50.079
over to do the Momo documentary, they were actually told
829
00:45:50.239 --> 00:45:52.440
by some locals, you might as well just leave because
830
00:45:52.480 --> 00:45:56.239
you're not wanted here. But that's another river town that
831
00:45:56.320 --> 00:45:58.440
I think would greatly benefit if they were to embrace
832
00:45:58.480 --> 00:46:02.920
Momo and start to have a festival or something, draw
833
00:46:02.960 --> 00:46:07.320
people in, bring bring tourists, and there's there is something
834
00:46:07.440 --> 00:46:12.119
encrypted tourism, you know that and scared tourism. Good ways
835
00:46:12.119 --> 00:46:14.679
to bring bring in money to the local economy and
836
00:46:14.719 --> 00:46:16.360
then to keep the story alive as well.
837
00:46:16.760 --> 00:46:19.440
Yeah, and especially with some of the places now that
838
00:46:19.440 --> 00:46:23.000
they're doing excuse me, like the the overnight ghost hunts
839
00:46:23.039 --> 00:46:25.079
and things. Those things would have been demolished or just
840
00:46:25.239 --> 00:46:30.079
left to collapse back into the earth, like Brushing Mountain
841
00:46:30.440 --> 00:46:34.840
Penitentiary in Pittross, Tennessee. You know, now you can go.
842
00:46:34.920 --> 00:46:38.519
They've they've getten some wonderful EVPs and experiences and stories
843
00:46:38.519 --> 00:46:42.480
out of there. Some of the true crime locations of
844
00:46:42.480 --> 00:46:47.039
Aliska Axe murder house, you know, the Lizzie Borden House
845
00:46:47.079 --> 00:46:49.000
that's a bed and breakfast. Now, you know, it's just
846
00:46:49.840 --> 00:46:53.239
and it's kind of morbid, but there's I think just
847
00:46:53.320 --> 00:46:57.239
that's one of our characteristics as humans. We haven't innate
848
00:46:57.320 --> 00:47:01.800
curiosity about the darker side of things. Said, I'm thankful
849
00:47:01.840 --> 00:47:04.679
for that. It's provided me the opportunity to go to
850
00:47:04.719 --> 00:47:06.320
a lot of places and talk to a lot of
851
00:47:06.320 --> 00:47:08.679
people in front of a lot of people, and and
852
00:47:08.880 --> 00:47:11.480
you know, write a lot of books and things and mh.
853
00:47:12.840 --> 00:47:14.719
But yeah, embrace the strange.
854
00:47:15.559 --> 00:47:19.800
Yeah, exactly. And having these places open to the public
855
00:47:20.039 --> 00:47:23.480
allows for the folklore to continue, right, We get to
856
00:47:23.599 --> 00:47:27.480
actually be a part of it, morphing and changing, like
857
00:47:27.559 --> 00:47:31.440
in real time, something like Lizzie Borden House or like
858
00:47:31.480 --> 00:47:34.639
you mentioned Brushy Mountain when we're when we're now, it's
859
00:47:34.679 --> 00:47:38.559
focused on ghost hunting in the paranormal. Now that gets
860
00:47:38.559 --> 00:47:41.599
to take on a whole other chapter in the story
861
00:47:41.639 --> 00:47:46.639
of those areas, and that's pretty awesome. We have a
862
00:47:46.679 --> 00:47:49.400
place not far from here, Mansfield Reformatory, which is where
863
00:47:49.400 --> 00:47:50.800
Shoshank Redemption was filmed.
864
00:47:51.320 --> 00:47:53.199
I heard a lot about it. Have you been there?
865
00:47:53.880 --> 00:47:55.480
Oh, I've been there multiple times.
866
00:47:55.760 --> 00:47:58.079
And do you share with our audience a little bit
867
00:47:58.079 --> 00:48:00.679
of your experiences there? I've only seen it on but.
868
00:48:00.960 --> 00:48:05.360
Wow, sure, sure. Yeah. It's it's a gorgeous a gorgeous
869
00:48:05.480 --> 00:48:08.079
piece of architecture. It just looks like a castle when
870
00:48:08.119 --> 00:48:10.440
you drive up up to it. It's one of my
871
00:48:10.480 --> 00:48:15.000
favorite buildings. But the Mansield Reformatory is where I had
872
00:48:15.039 --> 00:48:19.599
probably the most terrifying encounter that I've that I've had
873
00:48:19.599 --> 00:48:24.000
to that I've witnessed. And it's weird. It's weird to
874
00:48:24.039 --> 00:48:29.559
stay terrifying because I wasn't It's not like a bigfoot
875
00:48:29.599 --> 00:48:31.719
running out of the woods, you know, and trying to
876
00:48:31.760 --> 00:48:33.119
eat you or something. I didn't think that I was
877
00:48:33.159 --> 00:48:37.159
going to die or anything like that. But up in
878
00:48:37.199 --> 00:48:40.760
one area of the Reformatory, it's called the West Attic,
879
00:48:41.760 --> 00:48:45.960
it is where once upon a time, okay, when the
880
00:48:45.960 --> 00:48:49.280
Reformatory was built. It was built literally as a reformatory,
881
00:48:49.360 --> 00:48:51.559
meaning that they wanted to reform the people that came
882
00:48:51.559 --> 00:48:53.960
in there, they had some issues. They would come in,
883
00:48:54.039 --> 00:48:55.920
they'd stay for a while and then hopefully be able
884
00:48:55.960 --> 00:48:58.280
to go back out to society and join the rest
885
00:48:58.280 --> 00:49:00.760
of the world without an issue. It was never meant
886
00:49:00.760 --> 00:49:04.920
to be a place for murderers and those who could
887
00:49:04.920 --> 00:49:09.920
never go back to society. But in the early nineteen hundreds,
888
00:49:09.960 --> 00:49:13.079
the Ohio State Penitentiary, which is where they had death row,
889
00:49:14.239 --> 00:49:16.360
there was a horrible fire. This was around Columbus, a
890
00:49:16.360 --> 00:49:19.719
horrible fire and the place burned down. Lots of people died,
891
00:49:20.239 --> 00:49:24.079
but they had inmates then that needed to be rehomed
892
00:49:24.079 --> 00:49:26.480
for a little while until they could rebuild the penitentiary.
893
00:49:26.960 --> 00:49:28.800
So what they did was they shipped some of these
894
00:49:28.920 --> 00:49:32.400
hardened criminals up to Mansfield and they put them in
895
00:49:32.440 --> 00:49:37.320
the West Attic, which is just one massive room that
896
00:49:37.559 --> 00:49:42.079
is about half the size of the prison itself because
897
00:49:42.119 --> 00:49:44.199
it's all in one wing, the size of one whole wing,
898
00:49:44.800 --> 00:49:46.679
just one big open room, and they shoved all the
899
00:49:46.679 --> 00:49:48.920
guys in there and just kind of left them be
900
00:49:49.679 --> 00:49:54.280
to their own devices. So today, as you can imagine,
901
00:49:54.440 --> 00:49:56.440
from what I understand, the guards didn't even go into
902
00:49:56.440 --> 00:49:58.880
that room. They just kind of let them do their
903
00:49:58.880 --> 00:50:00.880
own thing, but the them up in the West Attic
904
00:50:00.960 --> 00:50:04.719
so that they would be away from the other criminals
905
00:50:04.760 --> 00:50:07.239
that were in the regular cells. They didn't want the
906
00:50:07.239 --> 00:50:12.559
bad influence to infiltrate. So anyway, today, when you go
907
00:50:12.599 --> 00:50:15.639
to mansoord or Formatory and you're going on a paranormal investigation,
908
00:50:15.719 --> 00:50:17.320
if you go up to the West Attic, what it's
909
00:50:17.360 --> 00:50:21.920
most famously known for is you go and sit. There
910
00:50:21.920 --> 00:50:26.199
are no windows at all in this room, there's just
911
00:50:26.320 --> 00:50:30.199
one door in and out, and you go to the
912
00:50:30.239 --> 00:50:32.159
far end of the room. You sit down and you
913
00:50:32.239 --> 00:50:35.960
just watch, and as you're watching, you'll start to see
914
00:50:36.639 --> 00:50:39.960
like ghost lights start to fly around the room different colors,
915
00:50:40.679 --> 00:50:44.280
So that in itself is pretty neat. That's one of
916
00:50:44.320 --> 00:50:46.599
my favorite things to see or like the ghost lights
917
00:50:46.599 --> 00:50:51.519
like that. But what happened when we were there, and
918
00:50:51.599 --> 00:50:53.599
this has happened multiple times now that I've been there,
919
00:50:53.599 --> 00:50:55.039
but the first time that it happened, it was the
920
00:50:55.039 --> 00:50:59.320
most stunning. Of course, we were sitting there and these
921
00:50:59.400 --> 00:51:01.239
lights showed up and then all of a sudden, on
922
00:51:01.320 --> 00:51:04.840
the floor at the far end of the room, this
923
00:51:05.480 --> 00:51:10.039
light being it's like the opposite of a shadow person,
924
00:51:10.079 --> 00:51:13.280
Like a shadow person that you see, it has the
925
00:51:13.320 --> 00:51:16.360
defining characteristics of a human, but it's in shadow. Except
926
00:51:16.599 --> 00:51:18.519
that was this, except it was in light. Because the
927
00:51:18.559 --> 00:51:20.280
room was completely dark. We were sitting there in the
928
00:51:20.320 --> 00:51:26.159
pitch black, and this was illuminated being that was walking
929
00:51:27.199 --> 00:51:29.559
back and forth, and it would walk closer to us,
930
00:51:29.880 --> 00:51:31.760
and it would get within I have no idea how
931
00:51:31.760 --> 00:51:33.519
many feet because it was dark, so it was very
932
00:51:33.519 --> 00:51:38.079
difficult to gauge distance. But when it would get fairly close,
933
00:51:38.119 --> 00:51:40.159
then it would drop down on all fours and crawl
934
00:51:40.199 --> 00:51:44.079
at you, and then it would back up, but it
935
00:51:44.119 --> 00:51:47.960
would pace in the room, and it was illuminated. It
936
00:51:48.000 --> 00:51:52.639
wasn't like I mean, it was a self contained light
937
00:51:52.679 --> 00:51:55.880
system light source, but it illuminated enough that when it
938
00:51:55.880 --> 00:51:57.960
would go by the wall, you could see the walls
939
00:51:58.000 --> 00:52:00.159
start to light up, so we could tell when it
940
00:52:00.159 --> 00:52:01.679
was by the wall. We could tell when it was
941
00:52:01.719 --> 00:52:03.199
by the cross beams that were in the middle of
942
00:52:03.199 --> 00:52:08.360
the room, because those would light up with it. That
943
00:52:08.519 --> 00:52:14.760
was terrifying to me, just because that shouldn't exist, or
944
00:52:14.800 --> 00:52:17.519
at least in my mind, shouldn't exist. And so that
945
00:52:17.679 --> 00:52:20.559
is the probably the most terrified I've ever been on
946
00:52:20.599 --> 00:52:25.880
an investigation. But after I had that experience, I was
947
00:52:25.920 --> 00:52:28.360
not alone. There were other people with me, so at
948
00:52:28.440 --> 00:52:30.559
least I had other people to verify what we had
949
00:52:30.559 --> 00:52:34.039
all seen. But after I had that experience, I would
950
00:52:34.079 --> 00:52:37.440
go on different podcasts or talk to other friends that
951
00:52:37.480 --> 00:52:39.960
are in the paranormal community, and I would try to
952
00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.079
explain this, and no one seemed to have a similar story.
953
00:52:43.880 --> 00:52:46.559
They didn't know, like, I don't know what to call this.
954
00:52:46.639 --> 00:52:51.880
I still have no name for it, And people would
955
00:52:51.880 --> 00:52:54.440
talk about it and want to know if they could
956
00:52:54.440 --> 00:52:57.079
see it, if they went as well, and Luckily, I
957
00:52:57.119 --> 00:52:59.559
was fortunate enough to go back to Mansfield just a
958
00:52:59.559 --> 00:53:02.599
few months ago with some friends who had known the story,
959
00:53:02.599 --> 00:53:04.320
and I told them, let's go up to West Attic
960
00:53:04.400 --> 00:53:07.480
and just see if anything happens. You know, I can't
961
00:53:07.480 --> 00:53:09.719
guarantee that you're gonna have the same experience as I did.
962
00:53:10.119 --> 00:53:13.840
I don't know, but the night that I saw it,
963
00:53:13.880 --> 00:53:16.239
we were able to see it multiple times throughout the evening.
964
00:53:16.320 --> 00:53:17.960
We would leave and go to other areas of the
965
00:53:17.960 --> 00:53:21.360
prison and then come back and that figure would show
966
00:53:21.400 --> 00:53:24.280
up again. Well, sure enough, a couple months ago, when
967
00:53:24.320 --> 00:53:25.960
I was there with a whole new group of people,
968
00:53:26.679 --> 00:53:31.000
they all saw it as well. It manifested again. They
969
00:53:31.039 --> 00:53:34.280
all saw it. They were all equally as nervous as
970
00:53:34.320 --> 00:53:37.719
I was, and they it would get close and then
971
00:53:37.800 --> 00:53:39.599
a couple of the women would say, turn the lights on,
972
00:53:39.639 --> 00:53:42.760
turn the flashlight on, flashlight on, and then of course
973
00:53:42.760 --> 00:53:46.920
when the lights on, then you don't see anything. But
974
00:53:46.960 --> 00:53:51.920
that's my scary, scariest story from ghost hunting in general,
975
00:53:51.960 --> 00:53:54.599
but also my story from Mansfield. Yeah.
976
00:53:54.639 --> 00:53:56.679
Wow, that's amazing And if I'm ever in the area,
977
00:53:56.880 --> 00:53:59.480
I definitely want to check it out. Now, did the
978
00:53:59.480 --> 00:54:03.400
people you were with either time or both times. Did
979
00:54:03.400 --> 00:54:05.639
they see pretty much what you saw or was it
980
00:54:05.960 --> 00:54:09.840
different experiences for different people maybe based on their cognition,
981
00:54:10.039 --> 00:54:12.199
or was it a shared experience.
982
00:54:13.000 --> 00:54:15.079
So it's interesting that you asked that. The first time
983
00:54:15.079 --> 00:54:19.079
that I was there, the first time I had that experience,
984
00:54:19.159 --> 00:54:21.159
we all seem to see the same thing because we
985
00:54:21.159 --> 00:54:23.599
would sit there and as we're seeing it, we're like,
986
00:54:23.639 --> 00:54:25.519
what are you seeing? What are you seeing? And asking
987
00:54:25.519 --> 00:54:29.360
each other consistently, and everybody's repeating the same things that
988
00:54:29.360 --> 00:54:33.760
they're seeing the same colored same colored lights, same action
989
00:54:33.920 --> 00:54:37.159
of the figure, and so on. So we were all
990
00:54:37.159 --> 00:54:40.239
seeing the same thing this last time that we were there.
991
00:54:41.800 --> 00:54:45.639
Everybody was seeing it, but it seemed to be and
992
00:54:45.679 --> 00:54:48.119
this was odd as well. It seemed to be doing
993
00:54:48.199 --> 00:54:51.599
different things depending on who was seeing it. Like I
994
00:54:51.639 --> 00:54:54.280
could see it walk along the wall, because I could
995
00:54:54.280 --> 00:54:57.239
see the wall illuminate. But as I'm saying that, someone
996
00:54:57.239 --> 00:54:59.000
else is saying, it's coming right down the middle of
997
00:54:59.000 --> 00:55:02.960
the floor, or you know, it's coming to the other
998
00:55:03.039 --> 00:55:07.079
side of the room like they seem to be. Or
999
00:55:07.280 --> 00:55:09.639
the one person said they saw it walk up the wall,
1000
00:55:09.719 --> 00:55:14.000
which I didn't see that at all, but they were
1001
00:55:14.039 --> 00:55:18.880
seeing different things and sometimes different colors than what I
1002
00:55:18.920 --> 00:55:23.960
was seeing, which was odd, and.
1003
00:55:23.960 --> 00:55:26.280
I've always found that interesting. But I liken it to
1004
00:55:26.360 --> 00:55:29.480
the parable, if you will, or the Blind Men and
1005
00:55:29.519 --> 00:55:31.559
the elephant. You know. Once, oh, it's got a trunk,
1006
00:55:31.719 --> 00:55:33.880
I said, No, it's flat and wide. The other No,
1007
00:55:33.920 --> 00:55:36.159
it doesn't have a trunk, it has a tail, you know.
1008
00:55:36.280 --> 00:55:38.960
So even though they're doing the same thing, there's a
1009
00:55:39.000 --> 00:55:41.920
different takeaway, but yet they all experienced the same thing.
1010
00:55:42.320 --> 00:55:43.880
I think it's kind of like that, and again, just
1011
00:55:44.199 --> 00:55:50.239
a different perception. Maybe it presents itself to different people
1012
00:55:50.239 --> 00:55:53.880
in different ways. Some of the things that I've experienced,
1013
00:55:53.880 --> 00:55:56.440
I had people right along with me that had either
1014
00:55:56.559 --> 00:56:01.760
a lesser experience or no experience at all. And I
1015
00:56:01.800 --> 00:56:04.559
came to conclusion a few years ago because every house
1016
00:56:04.599 --> 00:56:07.519
I've ever lived in was haunted to some degree, and
1017
00:56:07.800 --> 00:56:10.320
I finally decided, it's not the houses that are haunted,
1018
00:56:10.360 --> 00:56:13.519
it's me. These things choose to reveal themselves to me
1019
00:56:13.719 --> 00:56:17.360
for whatever reason. I lived in a very very active
1020
00:56:17.400 --> 00:56:19.760
house in Las Vegas, probably one of the most active
1021
00:56:19.760 --> 00:56:23.000
places I've ever lived. Yet the person I shared the
1022
00:56:23.039 --> 00:56:26.239
house with that lived there before I did, they'd never
1023
00:56:26.280 --> 00:56:28.840
experienced anything. And it's like when I got there, then
1024
00:56:28.920 --> 00:56:32.119
all hell broke loose, and then they eventually began to
1025
00:56:32.880 --> 00:56:34.920
experience things, or at least that they'd admit to. I
1026
00:56:34.920 --> 00:56:37.599
think before maybe they were just in denial of what
1027
00:56:37.800 --> 00:56:42.000
was going on there. But again, I don't know what
1028
00:56:42.039 --> 00:56:45.400
it is about me. Something imbued to me. Is that
1029
00:56:46.880 --> 00:56:50.159
the negative rh factor and the green eyes? Is it
1030
00:56:50.239 --> 00:56:54.599
all that? Am I an alien? Or you know? I
1031
00:56:54.639 --> 00:56:57.000
subscribe to that theory. I don't think I'm from this planet.
1032
00:56:57.039 --> 00:57:01.639
I'm just visiting here, got stranded here or something. Take
1033
00:57:01.719 --> 00:57:03.320
me home. As long as I can take my wife
1034
00:57:03.360 --> 00:57:08.360
with me, let's go. And she's like me, She's always
1035
00:57:08.440 --> 00:57:12.360
been an outsider, even among the outsiders. Is I'm not
1036
00:57:12.440 --> 00:57:15.559
from this planet? I would go to family reunions and
1037
00:57:15.559 --> 00:57:18.599
things and things. I can't really be related to these people,
1038
00:57:18.679 --> 00:57:21.719
can I? And I had had proof, you know, had
1039
00:57:21.760 --> 00:57:24.519
pictures of me right after I was born and all
1040
00:57:24.559 --> 00:57:26.440
that I used to take. You know, am I adopted
1041
00:57:26.559 --> 00:57:29.119
or something? What happened to me? And you know my
1042
00:57:31.519 --> 00:57:33.760
father and mother are on a spaceship somewhere. They're gonna
1043
00:57:33.800 --> 00:57:35.840
come back for me one day if I get abducted.
1044
00:57:35.960 --> 00:57:38.880
They took me home, but no, I was. I was
1045
00:57:38.960 --> 00:57:42.039
born there. My grandmother witnessed the birth and according to her,
1046
00:57:42.159 --> 00:57:43.880
my mom was knocked out. That was back when they
1047
00:57:43.920 --> 00:57:47.239
gave women in labor twilight sleep. But I was born
1048
00:57:47.280 --> 00:57:49.599
with a veil over my face what they call it
1049
00:57:49.639 --> 00:57:53.039
in southern Appalachina the call just the amniotic sac was
1050
00:57:53.039 --> 00:57:54.920
still stretched over my head and had to have it
1051
00:57:55.000 --> 00:57:58.519
cut away. But in my superstitious granny's eyes, that was
1052
00:57:58.920 --> 00:58:01.760
that marked me as a space child. Out of all
1053
00:58:01.800 --> 00:58:04.320
the grandchildren, and there was a lot. My mom came
1054
00:58:04.320 --> 00:58:07.440
from a big family, her and nine brothers. I was
1055
00:58:07.480 --> 00:58:11.800
the only grandchild born with that condition, and that put
1056
00:58:11.960 --> 00:58:14.280
a bullseye on me as far as Granny was concerned,
1057
00:58:14.280 --> 00:58:16.639
and I was the one she had to pass her
1058
00:58:16.800 --> 00:58:20.440
legacy onto. And a lot of stuff like that that
1059
00:58:20.440 --> 00:58:22.920
I've read about, it does tend to skip a generation. Now.
1060
00:58:22.920 --> 00:58:26.480
My mom had some precognition and things that I don't
1061
00:58:26.519 --> 00:58:29.440
claim to have any special abilities or anything. It just
1062
00:58:29.719 --> 00:58:32.199
is what it is. But I know things sometimes that
1063
00:58:32.239 --> 00:58:35.039
I have no way of knowing, not as strongly as
1064
00:58:35.079 --> 00:58:40.320
my grandmother did. But I think to some degree you
1065
00:58:40.360 --> 00:58:43.400
have that and script you wrote for me on thirteen
1066
00:58:43.400 --> 00:58:47.480
past midnight. You talked about your children shame things and
1067
00:58:47.559 --> 00:58:50.679
experiencing things that leg you believe that maybe they were
1068
00:58:50.960 --> 00:58:54.239
reincarnated or had had experiences. You want to expound on
1069
00:58:54.280 --> 00:58:55.599
that a little bit for our audience.
1070
00:58:56.440 --> 00:58:59.000
Yeah, so this happened. I have three children, and this
1071
00:58:59.039 --> 00:59:03.159
happened with two of them, my two oldest. I remember.
1072
00:59:04.400 --> 00:59:10.119
My oldest daughter was probably three at the time, two
1073
00:59:10.199 --> 00:59:12.599
or three maybe, well probably three because of how much
1074
00:59:12.639 --> 00:59:16.400
she was talking, I guess. But we were on our
1075
00:59:16.440 --> 00:59:20.760
way home from my parents. It was Christmas, I do believe,
1076
00:59:20.960 --> 00:59:24.559
and we were stopped at a stop light and she
1077
00:59:24.639 --> 00:59:28.559
looked out the window and she looked at the pedestrian
1078
00:59:28.840 --> 00:59:32.199
signal and she asked what that was and I said, well,
1079
00:59:32.199 --> 00:59:33.920
that's to let you know whether you should walk or not,
1080
00:59:34.000 --> 00:59:36.320
you know whether it's safe to cross the street. And
1081
00:59:36.360 --> 00:59:40.320
she was like, oh, okay, yeah, I remember, but I
1082
00:59:40.320 --> 00:59:43.480
didn't know. I didn't know what that was like or
1083
00:59:43.519 --> 00:59:46.440
how'd she say? I forgot it? I know that now,
1084
00:59:46.480 --> 00:59:48.079
but I had forgotten it then. And I'm like, what
1085
00:59:48.119 --> 00:59:51.639
do you mean? And she said, well, back before, when
1086
00:59:51.679 --> 00:59:55.599
I was really old, I was coming home from getting
1087
00:59:55.679 --> 00:59:59.840
groceries and I could see my house across the street.
1088
01:00:00.159 --> 01:00:03.199
So I was almost home and I saw that sign
1089
01:00:03.519 --> 01:00:05.239
and it was lit up, so it was lit up
1090
01:00:05.239 --> 01:00:08.400
to say that she shouldn't cross. She's like, but I
1091
01:00:08.400 --> 01:00:10.559
forgot what it said or what that meant. So I
1092
01:00:10.599 --> 01:00:12.559
crossed the street anyway, and I got hit by a
1093
01:00:12.599 --> 01:00:16.199
car and then an ambulance came and picked me up
1094
01:00:17.159 --> 01:00:20.880
and took me to the hospital. And she was like,
1095
01:00:20.920 --> 01:00:24.519
nobody was at the hospital. I was alone and it
1096
01:00:24.599 --> 01:00:30.079
was cold and it was dark. But she and she's like,
1097
01:00:30.159 --> 01:00:34.400
I was so scared, and I'm like, what do you
1098
01:00:34.519 --> 01:00:38.280
And as she's explaining this, she's sobbing, she's just crying,
1099
01:00:38.480 --> 01:00:41.960
like hysterically, and we're trying to calm her down because
1100
01:00:42.000 --> 01:00:43.679
we're driving and you know, a kid in the back
1101
01:00:43.760 --> 01:00:46.639
seat that's freaking out is no fun whenever you're you're
1102
01:00:46.639 --> 01:00:48.559
trying to drive home in the middle of the night.
1103
01:00:50.639 --> 01:00:54.360
But uh, she was. She just kept going on. She
1104
01:00:54.440 --> 01:00:56.639
was very hung up on the being cold and dark
1105
01:00:56.639 --> 01:00:59.960
and alone part of it. So we eventually got her
1106
01:01:00.000 --> 01:01:02.039
calm down, and we'd asked her some questions after that,
1107
01:01:02.159 --> 01:01:08.199
and essentially she just had this memory of her death.
1108
01:01:08.599 --> 01:01:11.519
Her everything was cold and dark until all of a
1109
01:01:11.519 --> 01:01:13.880
sudden there was a light and then she was here
1110
01:01:13.920 --> 01:01:19.320
with this family, is what she said. So she just
1111
01:01:19.400 --> 01:01:22.119
had this story. She said she was very old when
1112
01:01:22.119 --> 01:01:26.280
it had occurred. And I think she gave me a
1113
01:01:26.360 --> 01:01:27.960
name at one point in time, but it was just
1114
01:01:28.000 --> 01:01:31.000
the first name. And that's not enough for me to
1115
01:01:31.039 --> 01:01:33.480
go on to find any records or anything like that.
1116
01:01:33.639 --> 01:01:39.079
But that was her story. And then it was two
1117
01:01:39.159 --> 01:01:44.559
years later my son, who was then three as well,
1118
01:01:44.599 --> 01:01:48.079
he's the middle child. We were sitting in the car
1119
01:01:48.519 --> 01:01:50.960
waiting for his older sister to get out of school actually,
1120
01:01:52.239 --> 01:01:55.639
and he said he saw me on my phone. I
1121
01:01:55.719 --> 01:01:58.519
was playing a game of some sort, like I don't
1122
01:01:58.519 --> 01:02:00.320
know if it was candy Crush or something like that.
1123
01:02:01.320 --> 01:02:05.400
And he's like, oh, my, my grandma used to play
1124
01:02:05.400 --> 01:02:08.519
that or my I think he used the word that
1125
01:02:08.639 --> 01:02:11.000
I we never use like I think he might have
1126
01:02:11.039 --> 01:02:13.960
said mema or something like that that we don't use
1127
01:02:14.000 --> 01:02:19.519
that word. We've never he's never said that before, you know,
1128
01:02:19.639 --> 01:02:22.880
she used to play games like that. And I'm like,
1129
01:02:22.920 --> 01:02:25.039
what are you talking about, thinking about my mom or
1130
01:02:25.880 --> 01:02:28.800
my husband's mom, and like they don't play games like this.
1131
01:02:29.079 --> 01:02:33.239
He's like, no, no, no, my mema from before used
1132
01:02:33.239 --> 01:02:36.199
to play those games. I'm like, okay, well tell me
1133
01:02:36.239 --> 01:02:39.239
about her. And he's like, well, she was really she
1134
01:02:39.400 --> 01:02:42.079
was really nice and I lived with her and she
1135
01:02:42.239 --> 01:02:44.719
was she was just really great and I loved her
1136
01:02:44.840 --> 01:02:48.519
very much. He's like, it's really sad what happened. And
1137
01:02:48.519 --> 01:02:53.199
I'm like, what happened? And he started to get emotional
1138
01:02:53.239 --> 01:02:58.920
as well, and he described living with his grandmother, that
1139
01:02:59.000 --> 01:03:02.800
they had been a wonderful family and one night or day,
1140
01:03:02.920 --> 01:03:04.199
I'm not sure if it was a night or day,
1141
01:03:04.239 --> 01:03:07.719
but somebody came into the house and had attacked his grandmother,
1142
01:03:08.920 --> 01:03:11.360
and he tried to intervene to save her, but wasn't
1143
01:03:11.400 --> 01:03:16.360
able to do so in time. Therefore, he then spiraled
1144
01:03:17.159 --> 01:03:19.239
and he said he was so upset that he wasn't
1145
01:03:19.280 --> 01:03:22.199
able to save his grandma that he got into a
1146
01:03:22.239 --> 01:03:27.400
car and he started driving really really fast, and he said,
1147
01:03:27.440 --> 01:03:30.480
I drove really fast, and then I lost control and
1148
01:03:30.519 --> 01:03:34.320
I hit a tree. And he said, I even remember
1149
01:03:35.440 --> 01:03:37.159
what it was like when I hit the tree, and
1150
01:03:37.199 --> 01:03:41.599
he's like describing in gory detail how he hit the
1151
01:03:41.719 --> 01:03:46.320
dashboard and so on. It was horrible. He's like, but
1152
01:03:46.400 --> 01:03:50.159
then it's like I flew out of there, and I
1153
01:03:50.239 --> 01:03:54.280
flew right into your belly. And I'm like, what do
1154
01:03:54.320 --> 01:03:56.039
you mean you flew into my belly. He's like, well,
1155
01:03:56.079 --> 01:03:58.280
you were sitting in the living room. He's like, you
1156
01:03:58.280 --> 01:03:59.800
were sitting here, or you were sitting there in the
1157
01:03:59.800 --> 01:04:04.079
lit room and you were watching TV and eating, and
1158
01:04:04.119 --> 01:04:05.960
I flew into your belly. And then I was ready
1159
01:04:06.000 --> 01:04:09.159
to come into this new family. And what was really
1160
01:04:09.159 --> 01:04:15.679
odd is that, in real like an actual time, whenever
1161
01:04:15.800 --> 01:04:17.840
I went into labor with him, I was sitting in
1162
01:04:17.840 --> 01:04:20.039
the living room and I was I had just gotten food,
1163
01:04:20.079 --> 01:04:23.920
sat down, started eating, and I was watching wrestling when
1164
01:04:23.960 --> 01:04:25.920
the first contraction hit and we had to get to
1165
01:04:25.920 --> 01:04:29.320
the hospital right away. He was a very quick labor.
1166
01:04:30.559 --> 01:04:33.800
But yeah, both of them had those stories. Now, my
1167
01:04:33.880 --> 01:04:38.599
third child, she's she almost seems new to the world
1168
01:04:38.920 --> 01:04:42.679
in a lot of ways. She doesn't I don't know.
1169
01:04:42.719 --> 01:04:46.079
Everything seems new to her, at least from watching her grow.
1170
01:04:46.280 --> 01:04:50.000
Everything seems new and exciting. And she's not the old
1171
01:04:50.039 --> 01:04:53.920
soul kind of thing that you hear about. But yeah,
1172
01:04:53.920 --> 01:04:57.280
both children had that story of what had occurred to
1173
01:04:57.320 --> 01:05:00.599
them in their previous life and that they both their
1174
01:05:00.639 --> 01:05:05.559
their families before so, and they both had a horrible
1175
01:05:05.639 --> 01:05:08.119
ending too. It wasn't like they had this nice story like, yeah,
1176
01:05:08.119 --> 01:05:10.280
I grew old and I just passed away with my family.
1177
01:05:10.360 --> 01:05:14.599
No traumatic there, But that's still amazing. And to hear
1178
01:05:14.639 --> 01:05:16.599
that come out of the mouth of a three year
1179
01:05:16.639 --> 01:05:19.480
old that doesn't have any concept of any of this
1180
01:05:19.599 --> 01:05:24.320
and just so matter of factly, and you know that's no.
1181
01:05:24.440 --> 01:05:27.360
Kids have great imaginations and stuff. But I have a
1182
01:05:27.360 --> 01:05:31.199
whole narrative like that, your entire previous story that would
1183
01:05:31.320 --> 01:05:34.519
that would take some doing there. I believe there's something
1184
01:05:34.559 --> 01:05:36.840
to all that. I've had other friends that where their
1185
01:05:36.920 --> 01:05:40.400
child would wake up in the night crying for one
1186
01:05:40.440 --> 01:05:43.599
parent or another or grandparents. Well they're right here, No,
1187
01:05:43.679 --> 01:05:46.039
I mean the ones from before my other mommy, my
1188
01:05:46.079 --> 01:05:50.639
other daddy, when I lived, you know, for and again
1189
01:05:51.079 --> 01:05:54.280
small children that had no concept of anything like that.
1190
01:05:54.400 --> 01:05:57.639
It's it models the mind and it gives you something
1191
01:05:57.679 --> 01:05:59.199
to ponder, something to think about.
1192
01:06:00.199 --> 01:06:03.280
Absolutely, and they grew out of those memories as well,
1193
01:06:03.280 --> 01:06:05.199
if you were to ask them now. I'm glad that
1194
01:06:05.239 --> 01:06:08.079
I wrote them down when I did and shared them
1195
01:06:08.079 --> 01:06:10.599
with you, and they've been recorded because when they got
1196
01:06:10.639 --> 01:06:12.719
to a certain age, they lost those memories.
1197
01:06:13.599 --> 01:06:18.559
So and on hearing that now of what's their response
1198
01:06:18.599 --> 01:06:20.440
to that anything?
1199
01:06:20.599 --> 01:06:23.840
Yes, Well, my oldest just rolls her eyes. She rolls
1200
01:06:23.840 --> 01:06:28.239
her eyes at anything that's weird or strange. So she's like, yeah, okay,
1201
01:06:28.280 --> 01:06:34.239
mom my son. He just he's like, yeah, I think
1202
01:06:34.280 --> 01:06:38.159
I remember saying that maybe, but he doesn't. It just
1203
01:06:38.199 --> 01:06:40.159
doesn't phaze him.
1204
01:06:41.320 --> 01:06:43.199
Yeah, and it's strange. A lot of away. A lot
1205
01:06:43.239 --> 01:06:46.960
of those memories, early early childhood memories like that lead people.
1206
01:06:46.960 --> 01:06:50.119
I've known people that couldn't remember anything before they were
1207
01:06:50.119 --> 01:06:52.239
four or five years old. But I can remember a
1208
01:06:52.280 --> 01:06:54.360
bit of detail, like when I was still in diapers
1209
01:06:54.360 --> 01:06:57.679
and stuff, and just again I've been blessed with a
1210
01:06:57.719 --> 01:07:00.840
near photographic memory and it goes way back. Youngest memory
1211
01:07:01.039 --> 01:07:02.440
that's when I was six months old.
1212
01:07:03.519 --> 01:07:03.880
Wow.
1213
01:07:04.280 --> 01:07:06.639
I remember going to a place with my dad where
1214
01:07:06.679 --> 01:07:09.239
a house was being built and they just had the
1215
01:07:09.320 --> 01:07:12.519
foundation and I had a roof on it, and they
1216
01:07:12.559 --> 01:07:15.480
had part of the interior wall started. It was basically
1217
01:07:15.519 --> 01:07:18.920
just a big open space. I remember him to pick
1218
01:07:19.039 --> 01:07:20.760
me up and put me up in there and I
1219
01:07:20.840 --> 01:07:23.920
ran around on the sub flooring. And I mentioned that
1220
01:07:23.960 --> 01:07:25.840
to my dad when I was like probably in my
1221
01:07:25.920 --> 01:07:28.599
thirties or something. When I was little. Where do we
1222
01:07:28.639 --> 01:07:31.159
go to one time? And I described that scenario and
1223
01:07:31.199 --> 01:07:33.239
he looked at me and he said, well, that was
1224
01:07:33.280 --> 01:07:34.800
the house you grew up in. But he said you
1225
01:07:34.800 --> 01:07:36.679
were only six months old. He said, there's no way
1226
01:07:36.679 --> 01:07:40.199
you can remember that, but yet I did. So I
1227
01:07:40.239 --> 01:07:41.719
didn't know where it was. I didn't know it was
1228
01:07:41.760 --> 01:07:43.760
the house I grew up in. I didn't remember that part,
1229
01:07:44.159 --> 01:07:47.880
but I remembered being there and describing that situation exactly
1230
01:07:47.920 --> 01:07:51.199
as it happened. So starring ch house some things like
1231
01:07:51.239 --> 01:07:53.840
that will sticking it and other things maybe have no
1232
01:07:53.960 --> 01:07:56.880
memory of, or something that I did in elementary school
1233
01:07:56.920 --> 01:07:58.880
or even high school, I'll come back to me like,
1234
01:07:58.880 --> 01:08:02.960
oh yeah, I remember when that happened. But I've had
1235
01:08:02.960 --> 01:08:05.400
that happened too, where I would mention something that happened
1236
01:08:05.920 --> 01:08:08.280
in school years and people that was there with them
1237
01:08:08.320 --> 01:08:10.400
and I don't remember that, like yay, you were right
1238
01:08:10.400 --> 01:08:14.239
there with me. We talked about maybe it was just
1239
01:08:14.320 --> 01:08:17.159
so traumatic for them they blotted it out. I don't know.
1240
01:08:18.119 --> 01:08:21.760
But getting back into the school part of this now,
1241
01:08:21.920 --> 01:08:25.239
I mentioned in the introduction there that you're a classics professor,
1242
01:08:26.119 --> 01:08:29.199
How do your students feel about your other fields of
1243
01:08:29.199 --> 01:08:31.239
interest in fields of devort? Is that something you ever
1244
01:08:31.279 --> 01:08:33.640
discussed with them or do you keep your lives separate?
1245
01:08:34.520 --> 01:08:36.800
Yeah, they're pretty separate. They're not aware of it unless
1246
01:08:36.840 --> 01:08:41.920
they were to look into my name, I guess, so
1247
01:08:42.199 --> 01:08:45.119
that isn't something that comes up now. I did actually
1248
01:08:45.399 --> 01:08:49.319
last fall speak with a college class that was not mine.
1249
01:08:50.399 --> 01:08:53.000
It was an English class, I believe, just talking to
1250
01:08:53.079 --> 01:08:59.680
them about kind of following, following what you enjoy whenever
1251
01:08:59.720 --> 01:09:01.960
you go out into the professional world, and then hoping that,
1252
01:09:02.760 --> 01:09:08.199
hoping that that becomes something that's fruitful later. So they
1253
01:09:08.199 --> 01:09:10.079
were asking me all kinds of questions about the world
1254
01:09:10.079 --> 01:09:12.000
of the weird and how I got to be in
1255
01:09:12.000 --> 01:09:15.960
there and how that actually became a job, because that's
1256
01:09:15.960 --> 01:09:16.960
always the hope, right.
1257
01:09:17.800 --> 01:09:20.600
Yeah, I love that and it is. It's such a
1258
01:09:20.600 --> 01:09:24.119
blessing to get to do what I do and make
1259
01:09:24.159 --> 01:09:27.000
a living doing it, you know, Otherwise I'd be working
1260
01:09:27.039 --> 01:09:30.159
in a bookstore or a record store or pumping gas
1261
01:09:30.319 --> 01:09:33.159
or something, because I'm not fit for any kind of
1262
01:09:33.239 --> 01:09:36.600
normal employment, which I've proven over time, and I've worn
1263
01:09:36.640 --> 01:09:39.840
a lot of hats. I've been a network administrator, have
1264
01:09:39.880 --> 01:09:45.640
been technical support for a large medical group. I've worked construction, demolition,
1265
01:09:45.880 --> 01:09:50.000
done a little bit of everything, but writing and talking
1266
01:09:50.479 --> 01:09:54.399
seems to be my forte. My dad gave me that
1267
01:09:54.439 --> 01:09:57.399
when I was little, because I talked a lot and
1268
01:09:57.439 --> 01:09:59.560
he said, boy, he said, if you can ever find
1269
01:09:59.560 --> 01:10:01.880
a way to get paid for talking, you'll be set.
1270
01:10:02.039 --> 01:10:04.159
And here I am so thanks that.
1271
01:10:05.439 --> 01:10:08.520
Yeah. He called it.
1272
01:10:08.960 --> 01:10:11.680
Same one that used to accuse me of having the
1273
01:10:11.680 --> 01:10:14.279
ability to talk until I knew what I wanted to say.
1274
01:10:14.279 --> 01:10:16.800
And that's true. I've always been very good, had the
1275
01:10:16.840 --> 01:10:20.399
gift of gab. And one of my favorite classes that
1276
01:10:20.439 --> 01:10:23.840
I ever took in college was extraneous speaking. I'm sorry,
1277
01:10:23.880 --> 01:10:28.760
extemporaneous speaking. And people were panicking. You know, you had
1278
01:10:28.960 --> 01:10:31.680
they gave you your topic on an index card and you
1279
01:10:31.720 --> 01:10:34.560
had five minutes to prepare. And I said to the prophet,
1280
01:10:34.560 --> 01:10:37.560
I said, that's not extemporaneous. You're giving me five minutes.
1281
01:10:37.720 --> 01:10:39.399
I said, I want you to hand me my card
1282
01:10:39.760 --> 01:10:41.840
when I get on the podium, and he said, you're
1283
01:10:41.840 --> 01:10:44.600
sure you want to do this, Yes, sir, I did it,
1284
01:10:44.680 --> 01:10:47.760
and I gave a wonderful talk. It was about the
1285
01:10:47.840 --> 01:10:50.960
recite peace treaty or something, but I knew enough about
1286
01:10:50.960 --> 01:10:54.279
it to compare and contrast and get through it. And
1287
01:10:54.359 --> 01:10:56.800
he was impressed, and he said, I bet you can't
1288
01:10:56.800 --> 01:10:58.520
do it again, and I said, I bet I can.
1289
01:11:00.119 --> 01:11:03.439
I could do that every time. And it's just I've
1290
01:11:03.560 --> 01:11:05.880
always read a lot and just have a broad base
1291
01:11:05.920 --> 01:11:08.560
of knowledge, and it has provided me with ability to
1292
01:11:09.640 --> 01:11:12.960
jack of all trades, if you will, polymath. I know
1293
01:11:13.079 --> 01:11:14.840
a little bit about a lot of different things, but
1294
01:11:14.880 --> 01:11:18.399
I'm really not an expert in any area. And in fact,
1295
01:11:18.640 --> 01:11:21.880
nothing scares me away any faster than to be described
1296
01:11:21.920 --> 01:11:24.720
as an expert in the paranormal or cryptis or anything,
1297
01:11:25.119 --> 01:11:27.039
or for somebody to be introduced to me there, well,
1298
01:11:27.079 --> 01:11:30.079
this is Joe Smith. He's an expert in the paranormal. Okay.
1299
01:11:31.000 --> 01:11:33.000
I don't think there are any experts. I think we're
1300
01:11:33.039 --> 01:11:37.319
all on a quest for more knowledge. And I gave
1301
01:11:37.439 --> 01:11:39.800
up looking for the answers a long time ago, Heather,
1302
01:11:39.920 --> 01:11:42.399
I've often said that now I'm just looking for the
1303
01:11:42.399 --> 01:11:45.960
next set of questions. If we had all the answers,
1304
01:11:46.359 --> 01:11:48.560
my journey, my personal journey, wouldn't have been near as
1305
01:11:48.640 --> 01:11:52.640
much fun and enjoyable as it has been, and soriah
1306
01:11:52.640 --> 01:11:55.640
Askath from where the road go. He once quipped it,
1307
01:11:55.640 --> 01:11:58.640
it's like this big jigsaw puzzle that we're trying to
1308
01:11:58.640 --> 01:12:02.680
put together. We don't have the box to even see
1309
01:12:02.680 --> 01:12:05.439
what the picture is that we're trying to make. And
1310
01:12:05.520 --> 01:12:08.079
yet the farther we get into it, we discovered that
1311
01:12:08.119 --> 01:12:12.159
some cosmic joker has mixed maybe a dozen puzzles together.
1312
01:12:12.560 --> 01:12:15.119
So maybe the one that we're working on there are
1313
01:12:15.119 --> 01:12:17.760
pieces that don't fit anywhere. And I thought that was
1314
01:12:17.960 --> 01:12:20.119
very good description.
1315
01:12:21.079 --> 01:12:23.560
Yeah, I agree with that. That seems to be definitely
1316
01:12:23.600 --> 01:12:26.039
the way it is. Always coming away with more questions
1317
01:12:26.039 --> 01:12:29.119
and answers, that's for sure, And that's the.
1318
01:12:29.079 --> 01:12:31.760
Way it's supposed to be. And when I've talked about
1319
01:12:31.840 --> 01:12:37.399
my first full body apparition, long story short of the
1320
01:12:37.439 --> 01:12:39.399
little boy ran out from behind a car that was
1321
01:12:39.399 --> 01:12:44.159
stopped at an intersection. The driver didn't act like he
1322
01:12:44.239 --> 01:12:46.680
saw it or whatever at all, didn't acknowledge it in
1323
01:12:46.720 --> 01:12:50.039
the least ran kund of candy corner down into our yard,
1324
01:12:50.439 --> 01:12:53.680
fell down and disappeared a small child. I didn't take
1325
01:12:53.680 --> 01:12:55.760
my eyes off the spot, went straight to the spot.
1326
01:12:55.920 --> 01:12:59.359
Nothing there, Nothing I could have mistaken for a child. Nothing,
1327
01:13:00.439 --> 01:13:02.800
no hole or anything that somebody could have followed into.
1328
01:13:02.800 --> 01:13:05.880
I knew every inch of that yard, and we lived
1329
01:13:05.960 --> 01:13:08.199
quite a way back off the road, two hundred and
1330
01:13:08.199 --> 01:13:12.800
thirteen feet from the edge of our garage to the
1331
01:13:13.079 --> 01:13:15.000
edge of the road. I measured it later in life
1332
01:13:15.000 --> 01:13:17.800
when I was doing BMX prints, but I was about
1333
01:13:17.840 --> 01:13:19.600
one hundred feet out in the yard. So this happened,
1334
01:13:19.600 --> 01:13:21.800
went right to the spot and nothing there. I even
1335
01:13:21.800 --> 01:13:23.680
went and got a shovel out of my dad's tool
1336
01:13:23.680 --> 01:13:26.199
shed and dug in that spot to see if there
1337
01:13:26.239 --> 01:13:28.720
was something buried there or something. And I told that
1338
01:13:28.840 --> 01:13:32.079
story Transisco Murdock and she said, you know, stay, you've
1339
01:13:32.119 --> 01:13:35.159
never put down that shovel. You're still digging that. I am.
1340
01:13:35.279 --> 01:13:38.399
I'm still looking for the disappearing child. That was what
1341
01:13:38.560 --> 01:13:42.159
started me on my journey. And I asked Mike Granny
1342
01:13:42.199 --> 01:13:47.079
about that. She was very intuitive, self described gypsy witch.
1343
01:13:47.119 --> 01:13:49.600
I don't know where the gypsy part came in, but
1344
01:13:49.920 --> 01:13:53.600
tot fortunes, red tea leaves and coffee grounds, animal and trails,
1345
01:13:53.640 --> 01:13:56.119
things like that. And I asked her about that and
1346
01:13:56.159 --> 01:14:00.000
she said, well, very cryptic answer. Sometimes you see things
1347
01:14:00.079 --> 01:14:02.560
that are meant for you to see. Other times you
1348
01:14:02.600 --> 01:14:04.640
see things that are meant for other people to see
1349
01:14:04.640 --> 01:14:07.479
and you just happen to see it. Sometimes you'll just
1350
01:14:07.520 --> 01:14:10.760
see things that there's no rhyme or reason, no explanation,
1351
01:14:11.000 --> 01:14:15.239
that you'll never know, even in retrospect. So there you go.
1352
01:14:15.359 --> 01:14:18.439
I don't know, and I still don't. But it started
1353
01:14:18.479 --> 01:14:21.079
me on this journey. What was that? It didn't scare me.
1354
01:14:21.479 --> 01:14:23.840
It's just like, what was that? You know, what just happened?
1355
01:14:23.880 --> 01:14:26.760
What did I just witness? And off I went.
1356
01:14:27.640 --> 01:14:29.000
How old were you when that happened?
1357
01:14:29.560 --> 01:14:30.439
I was four?
1358
01:14:31.520 --> 01:14:32.920
Wow? Wow?
1359
01:14:33.680 --> 01:14:35.800
And that's I see. I've talked to a lot of
1360
01:14:35.800 --> 01:14:38.600
people that between the ages of three and five that
1361
01:14:38.720 --> 01:14:42.399
seems to be the prime optimal time to have these
1362
01:14:42.439 --> 01:14:46.359
experiences that either shut you down where you don't care,
1363
01:14:46.600 --> 01:14:48.800
or make you curious for the rest of your life.
1364
01:14:49.359 --> 01:14:50.560
Right, Yeah, but.
1365
01:14:51.119 --> 01:14:55.560
More so it makes you curious. And said that it
1366
01:14:55.640 --> 01:14:58.279
started me on a lifelong quest. And I haven't got
1367
01:14:58.439 --> 01:15:00.920
na for I'm still in that yard, digging with a shovel.
1368
01:15:00.920 --> 01:15:03.399
It's just somebody else's yard in a different shovel now,
1369
01:15:03.479 --> 01:15:06.199
but still looking for your answers.
1370
01:15:06.560 --> 01:15:07.920
I like that. I like that a lot.
1371
01:15:08.920 --> 01:15:11.840
Now the you talked about some of your early experiences.
1372
01:15:11.920 --> 01:15:14.520
Was that the one that kind of sets you on
1373
01:15:14.560 --> 01:15:17.479
this path or where there are several because I had
1374
01:15:17.520 --> 01:15:22.319
other experiences. I had more around the age of between
1375
01:15:22.359 --> 01:15:24.840
five and six, and then again around seven and eight.
1376
01:15:25.159 --> 01:15:27.720
That just it continued on. It just was non stop
1377
01:15:27.840 --> 01:15:30.479
at that point and still that way to a degree.
1378
01:15:31.600 --> 01:15:34.680
But it was you was that your impetus. Was that
1379
01:15:34.840 --> 01:15:37.479
your aha moment when you thought, you know, there's something
1380
01:15:37.479 --> 01:15:39.520
else out here and I got to find out what
1381
01:15:39.560 --> 01:15:39.920
it is?
1382
01:15:40.840 --> 01:15:44.479
Well, I mean I was always intrigued by, like I said,
1383
01:15:44.520 --> 01:15:48.000
watching unsolved mysteries, but beyond that, just in a more
1384
01:15:48.039 --> 01:15:52.479
personal vein. My mom would tell me since I was
1385
01:15:52.520 --> 01:15:54.880
young that she grew up in a haunted house, and
1386
01:15:54.880 --> 01:15:56.680
I would ask her questions about that, like how did
1387
01:15:56.680 --> 01:15:58.720
you know it was haunted? And she told me this
1388
01:15:58.800 --> 01:16:03.800
story about when she was younger that my grandmother had
1389
01:16:03.800 --> 01:16:07.600
bought them a Ouiji board for Christmas, and she technically
1390
01:16:07.600 --> 01:16:10.800
bought it for my aunt, but it was of course,
1391
01:16:10.880 --> 01:16:13.840
you know, that's a group effort for to play a
1392
01:16:13.880 --> 01:16:17.119
wigi board, but or it should be, I guess anyway,
1393
01:16:17.720 --> 01:16:21.520
So they were sitting and playing with the wigi board
1394
01:16:21.560 --> 01:16:24.239
my aunt's freaked out about it, but it started to
1395
01:16:24.560 --> 01:16:26.520
spell out that there was a spirit in the house.
1396
01:16:27.560 --> 01:16:30.039
It said that her name was Elizabeth and that she
1397
01:16:30.159 --> 01:16:34.520
lived in my mother's room. So Mom would tell me
1398
01:16:34.560 --> 01:16:37.239
this story, and she also then ended it with my
1399
01:16:37.319 --> 01:16:39.479
aunt got too freaked out and then had my grandmother
1400
01:16:39.560 --> 01:16:43.399
burn the board, which whatever she had her burn the board.
1401
01:16:44.399 --> 01:16:48.319
So as I would grow up, we would always drive
1402
01:16:48.479 --> 01:16:51.560
past that my mother's childhood home on the way to
1403
01:16:51.680 --> 01:16:53.840
visit my grandparents because they had moved just down the
1404
01:16:53.920 --> 01:16:56.640
road into a different house when they got older, and
1405
01:16:56.640 --> 01:16:58.199
she would always point to the house and she would
1406
01:16:58.239 --> 01:16:59.960
point to the window that was hers, and she'd be like,
1407
01:17:00.039 --> 01:17:03.880
that's Elizabeth's room. And I still know because I live
1408
01:17:03.960 --> 01:17:07.600
not far from that place now which room was Elizabeth's room.
1409
01:17:07.880 --> 01:17:11.640
But I grew up hearing that story, and I was
1410
01:17:11.720 --> 01:17:17.039
in third grade, I believe whenever Mom bought me my
1411
01:17:17.119 --> 01:17:21.000
first Ouiji board, and I would play on that thing
1412
01:17:21.359 --> 01:17:24.319
with my dad, with Mom and my mom's friend that
1413
01:17:24.359 --> 01:17:26.399
would come over and do her hair. She was really
1414
01:17:26.439 --> 01:17:30.760
gifted with tarot cards and Ouiji boards and things like that.
1415
01:17:31.760 --> 01:17:34.640
We would play on it all the time, and it
1416
01:17:35.760 --> 01:17:38.399
just was I guess. There was a Oigi board in
1417
01:17:38.439 --> 01:17:42.199
the house, and it was something that we would get
1418
01:17:42.239 --> 01:17:43.840
on and talk to every once in a while. It's
1419
01:17:43.880 --> 01:17:45.600
not something that I was like addicted to by any
1420
01:17:45.600 --> 01:17:48.079
means or anything like that, but it was something that
1421
01:17:48.159 --> 01:17:49.960
was there. It existed, and it was what it was.
1422
01:17:50.720 --> 01:17:52.640
Mom grew up in a haunted house. She just grew
1423
01:17:52.720 --> 01:17:54.720
up in a haunted house. There wasn't a question about it.
1424
01:17:55.560 --> 01:18:00.039
And I think just growing up in that in that
1425
01:18:00.199 --> 01:18:04.640
realm helped precipitate me being in this world that I'm
1426
01:18:04.640 --> 01:18:07.319
in now. It just was. It just existed. And then
1427
01:18:08.319 --> 01:18:12.279
as far as where Mom grew up, many years later,
1428
01:18:13.239 --> 01:18:16.079
it was after I had started working with small town
1429
01:18:16.119 --> 01:18:19.720
monsters and I started writing for Shannon Legroux for the
1430
01:18:20.119 --> 01:18:23.960
Weird Writer Blog. I decided, let me take some of
1431
01:18:24.000 --> 01:18:25.880
my skills that I've learned as an adult and see
1432
01:18:25.920 --> 01:18:28.560
if I can find any truth to this Elizabeth story.
1433
01:18:29.119 --> 01:18:32.319
So I went to the county courthouse and started looking
1434
01:18:32.399 --> 01:18:36.600
up land records and I found actually there was an
1435
01:18:36.600 --> 01:18:40.239
Elizabeth Lighty that lived in that house. She was on
1436
01:18:40.359 --> 01:18:44.880
the deeds, which in itself was rare because this was
1437
01:18:44.920 --> 01:18:47.319
in the eighteen hundreds to have a female on the deeds,
1438
01:18:47.319 --> 01:18:50.520
but she was there. So there was an Elizabeth that
1439
01:18:50.560 --> 01:18:57.439
lived in that house for real, And it was like
1440
01:18:57.479 --> 01:18:59.600
a full circle moment to have that come back around
1441
01:18:59.800 --> 01:19:01.760
and see that that was something that I could actually
1442
01:19:01.840 --> 01:19:05.520
verify from this childhood story because I just always knew
1443
01:19:05.880 --> 01:19:09.560
the name was Elizabeth and she supposedly lived in that house.
1444
01:19:09.600 --> 01:19:13.079
And sure enough, there she is on paper. If you
1445
01:19:13.159 --> 01:19:16.039
go to the county courthouse, you can find her. But
1446
01:19:16.079 --> 01:19:17.399
that's how I kind of grew up with all of
1447
01:19:17.399 --> 01:19:21.960
this stuff. It just existed. It was there, and without question.
1448
01:19:25.039 --> 01:19:28.880
I had a moment whenever I was younger, I was
1449
01:19:28.960 --> 01:19:34.640
probably in probably in middle school, I would say, when
1450
01:19:35.079 --> 01:19:38.239
my parents had left to go to the store or something.
1451
01:19:39.199 --> 01:19:42.479
They weren't home either way, and I was sitting in
1452
01:19:42.520 --> 01:19:45.159
the living room, playing with the dogs and the cats
1453
01:19:45.199 --> 01:19:47.600
and just watching TV, and all of a sudden, all
1454
01:19:47.600 --> 01:19:53.520
the animals froze and they looked behind me, and it
1455
01:19:53.680 --> 01:19:56.640
threw me off, obviously that they just suddenly stopped and
1456
01:19:56.680 --> 01:19:58.439
they're all staring in the same place. So I turned
1457
01:19:58.439 --> 01:20:01.279
around and looked in the doorway leading to the dining room.
1458
01:20:02.439 --> 01:20:05.720
Right behind me, there was a man standing in the doorway.
1459
01:20:07.840 --> 01:20:11.640
Now he was in like Native American garb. But when
1460
01:20:11.640 --> 01:20:14.960
I first saw him, I just had this calming feeling
1461
01:20:15.119 --> 01:20:19.119
of oh, that's just Dad, you know, like it was
1462
01:20:19.159 --> 01:20:22.880
just a fatherly type feeling. I wasn't concerned, I wasn't scared.
1463
01:20:22.880 --> 01:20:23.920
I just saw him and I was like, oh, And
1464
01:20:23.960 --> 01:20:26.399
I turned back around, and then it caught up to me,
1465
01:20:26.479 --> 01:20:29.760
Wait a second, that's not Dad. When I turned back
1466
01:20:29.800 --> 01:20:31.800
to look a second time, it was gone and the
1467
01:20:31.840 --> 01:20:36.239
animals had resumed back what they were doing. So we
1468
01:20:36.279 --> 01:20:38.359
of course asked the Ouiji Bord about that later, and
1469
01:20:38.520 --> 01:20:40.520
I was told that it was a guardian that was there.
1470
01:20:41.079 --> 01:20:44.199
But I don't know things like that would happen. I
1471
01:20:44.199 --> 01:20:48.720
would hear footsteps go up and down the hallway, because
1472
01:20:48.720 --> 01:20:50.920
there's definitely a way to tell the difference between Mom
1473
01:20:50.920 --> 01:20:53.319
and Dad's footsteps. They sounded differently if they'd get up
1474
01:20:53.319 --> 01:20:54.560
in the middle of the night and walk out to
1475
01:20:54.600 --> 01:20:57.199
get a glass of water or something, and it always
1476
01:20:57.199 --> 01:20:59.479
sounded like Dad getting up and walking. But when I
1477
01:20:59.520 --> 01:21:02.079
would get up to check it wasn't Dad, there would
1478
01:21:02.079 --> 01:21:05.399
be nobody there. So I would think in my head, Oh,
1479
01:21:05.439 --> 01:21:09.359
that's just that guardian walking down the Hallway again. So
1480
01:21:09.399 --> 01:21:11.760
stuff like that is kind of what I grew up
1481
01:21:11.800 --> 01:21:16.199
with and I think helped helped me be the person
1482
01:21:16.239 --> 01:21:16.760
I am now.
1483
01:21:17.199 --> 01:21:20.079
And I agree if you're around it and you're exposed
1484
01:21:20.079 --> 01:21:24.520
to it, especially in the case of my mom, I mean,
1485
01:21:24.680 --> 01:21:29.600
their natural was a supernatural. You know. They had regular seances,
1486
01:21:30.239 --> 01:21:33.920
table tapping or table tapping, Wuiji boards, card readings and stuff.
1487
01:21:34.119 --> 01:21:36.119
They grew up with it and they just didn't know
1488
01:21:36.159 --> 01:21:39.600
any different. And her family were a part of the
1489
01:21:39.600 --> 01:21:42.560
spiritualism movement from around the turn of the last century.
1490
01:21:42.920 --> 01:21:46.319
And the way they got into it initially, they had
1491
01:21:46.640 --> 01:21:50.439
a relative that never came back from World War One
1492
01:21:50.520 --> 01:21:52.279
and they could never find out what happened to and
1493
01:21:52.279 --> 01:21:54.800
I think that ended what nineteen eighteen something like that.
1494
01:21:55.119 --> 01:21:59.079
I'm a little rusty with my figures here, but that
1495
01:21:59.159 --> 01:22:02.520
was how they got into it. And just as a
1496
01:22:02.560 --> 01:22:05.439
little girl, you know, my mom participated in those things.
1497
01:22:05.439 --> 01:22:08.119
He knew about those things and even up till the
1498
01:22:08.159 --> 01:22:10.640
time she married my dad. Prior to them getting married,
1499
01:22:10.640 --> 01:22:12.560
the first time she ever took him to meet her family,
1500
01:22:12.880 --> 01:22:16.680
they were doing a table tapping session. And now my dad,
1501
01:22:17.000 --> 01:22:19.720
he grew up hearts gravel, apple Achia, but he got out,
1502
01:22:19.760 --> 01:22:23.920
went the University of Tennessee, my alma mater, and it
1503
01:22:24.039 --> 01:22:26.720
was already on his path to civil engineering and later
1504
01:22:26.800 --> 01:22:30.640
a scientist. But he said, I, you know, it just
1505
01:22:30.640 --> 01:22:33.560
did mystified him. He said, they sounded like a bunch
1506
01:22:33.600 --> 01:22:37.119
of heathens. They were all sitting around the rise table, Rise, Rise, Rise.
1507
01:22:37.760 --> 01:22:40.359
But he said he looked around at every angle. He
1508
01:22:40.520 --> 01:22:43.119
made sure, you know, nobody had their toe under one
1509
01:22:43.119 --> 01:22:47.680
of the table legs making it rise. Nobody had ruler
1510
01:22:47.760 --> 01:22:50.039
up their sleeve under the table edge, you know, and
1511
01:22:50.039 --> 01:22:52.560
making it lift up. An old parlor magic trick or
1512
01:22:52.600 --> 01:22:56.520
anything like that. He said, there was something unseen force
1513
01:22:56.760 --> 01:22:59.840
raising that table. And he talked about they would even
1514
01:22:59.840 --> 01:23:02.439
take some of the grandkids, or maybe even some of
1515
01:23:02.439 --> 01:23:04.640
the smaller kids at that time because my mom had
1516
01:23:04.760 --> 01:23:07.560
younger siblings, put them on the table and tried to
1517
01:23:07.560 --> 01:23:09.119
get it to rise. And he said that old farm
1518
01:23:09.159 --> 01:23:12.199
table was creaked and groaned and tried every way in
1519
01:23:12.239 --> 01:23:14.239
the world to rise up with that added weight on there,
1520
01:23:14.239 --> 01:23:16.600
and it just couldn't do it. But he said, I
1521
01:23:16.600 --> 01:23:19.359
had no explanation for it. And later in life he
1522
01:23:19.359 --> 01:23:24.000
would talk about things that happened in the laboratory setting.
1523
01:23:24.039 --> 01:23:26.239
He said that there'd be times when they were doing
1524
01:23:26.279 --> 01:23:31.479
an experiment under extremely controlled conditions when things would just
1525
01:23:31.520 --> 01:23:34.359
happen that weren't supposed to happen. They could never get
1526
01:23:34.359 --> 01:23:36.439
it to happen again. They don't know how it happened,
1527
01:23:36.760 --> 01:23:40.039
yet it happened. Some anomalous result, he called it. And
1528
01:23:40.319 --> 01:23:42.960
there used to be a zine that I read back
1529
01:23:42.960 --> 01:23:45.800
in the eighties called the Journal of every Reproducible Results,
1530
01:23:46.119 --> 01:23:49.760
and didn't mention things like that. How sometimes despite everything
1531
01:23:49.880 --> 01:23:54.439
we do, the natural laws that we've made come up with,
1532
01:23:54.560 --> 01:23:59.079
they don't always correspond with supernatural laws and things. And
1533
01:23:59.119 --> 01:24:02.520
to me, that's just fast that. You know, here's a scientist,
1534
01:24:02.560 --> 01:24:05.880
but yet he has a belief in the supernatural, and
1535
01:24:06.720 --> 01:24:09.479
I get it. And he experienced things, you know, when
1536
01:24:09.479 --> 01:24:12.039
he was growing up. Now, they weren't as steeped in
1537
01:24:12.119 --> 01:24:16.760
it as my maternal grandmother and her family, but they
1538
01:24:16.800 --> 01:24:19.640
had their share of it, and tales passed around and
1539
01:24:20.119 --> 01:24:24.600
hauntings and inexplicable things in the woods and stuff. So
1540
01:24:25.039 --> 01:24:27.840
it was there. But I said, on the belief whole
1541
01:24:27.880 --> 01:24:30.960
thing that I was born out of the union of
1542
01:24:31.039 --> 01:24:34.520
science and superstition and I sprang forth with the best
1543
01:24:34.520 --> 01:24:37.319
of both and bewildered, and here I still am.
1544
01:24:37.479 --> 01:24:41.479
So that's work.
1545
01:24:42.319 --> 01:24:44.720
It does. It sticks with you. And I had wage
1546
01:24:44.720 --> 01:24:48.319
board experiences too. I got my first one. I don't
1547
01:24:48.319 --> 01:24:50.239
think I was quite six years old yet. It was
1548
01:24:50.279 --> 01:24:53.520
between kindergarten and first grade, probably that summer. It might
1549
01:24:53.520 --> 01:24:58.199
have been the fall that I started first grade I
1550
01:24:58.239 --> 01:25:01.720
talk about in one of my videos. But I was
1551
01:25:01.760 --> 01:25:04.319
sick that day and been to the doctor. Had ear
1552
01:25:04.359 --> 01:25:07.640
nosen throat problems my entire life, had to have tomsels
1553
01:25:07.640 --> 01:25:10.079
and adenoids out when I was five. That was traumatic.
1554
01:25:10.920 --> 01:25:12.840
Don't catch coals or the flu. The only time I've
1555
01:25:12.840 --> 01:25:14.479
ever had the flu. I took a flu shot in
1556
01:25:14.520 --> 01:25:17.199
nineteen eighty five and got the flu and thought I
1557
01:25:17.239 --> 01:25:19.119
was going to die. I haven't had the flu sense,
1558
01:25:19.159 --> 01:25:20.680
I haven't had a flu shot since, so either that
1559
01:25:20.720 --> 01:25:23.920
one worked really, really good or it gave me the flu.
1560
01:25:24.159 --> 01:25:27.840
But I'd been for some ent malady and we had
1561
01:25:27.840 --> 01:25:31.359
to stop by the drug store to get my prescription filled.
1562
01:25:32.479 --> 01:25:34.920
And I'd wandered back to the toy I my mom
1563
01:25:35.000 --> 01:25:37.159
was going to let me get something, and I saw
1564
01:25:37.199 --> 01:25:38.920
the Weiji board and it was the old box with
1565
01:25:38.960 --> 01:25:41.920
the dark background and the stars and like a blue
1566
01:25:41.920 --> 01:25:45.960
hooded figure on the front of it, like a robed figure.
1567
01:25:46.239 --> 01:25:50.319
What is this? And she kind of explained it to me, like, oh,
1568
01:25:50.359 --> 01:25:52.199
I want one, Can I have it? So she got
1569
01:25:52.239 --> 01:25:56.520
me one, and I still remember sitting in that I
1570
01:25:56.560 --> 01:25:59.439
think it was a sixty two Chevy two, sitting in
1571
01:25:59.439 --> 01:26:02.399
the back seat that with my wage aboard in my lap.
1572
01:26:02.800 --> 01:26:05.239
And then when we got home, opened it up and
1573
01:26:05.279 --> 01:26:07.680
she gave me, you know, some caveats. Don't ask anything
1574
01:26:07.720 --> 01:26:10.680
you don't want it to know, don't do it by yourself,
1575
01:26:10.720 --> 01:26:13.479
don't ask it about your death or somebody's close to
1576
01:26:13.600 --> 01:26:16.880
you death, things like that. Don't invite anything in that
1577
01:26:16.920 --> 01:26:19.960
you meet on the board, you know, just some general
1578
01:26:20.039 --> 01:26:22.920
warnings about it. And then that day we used it,
1579
01:26:23.000 --> 01:26:26.600
and school must have been in session, because I remember
1580
01:26:26.600 --> 01:26:28.680
the first thing I ever asked it was when will
1581
01:26:28.680 --> 01:26:31.760
it snow this year? And it gave a date and
1582
01:26:31.800 --> 01:26:34.840
I marked it on the calendar and I looked forward
1583
01:26:34.920 --> 01:26:37.479
to that date as I love snow, still do. Loved
1584
01:26:37.479 --> 01:26:42.560
a snow day though, who didn't, Yeah, sure enough? A
1585
01:26:42.560 --> 01:26:44.720
couple of days prior to that, No, not going to snow,
1586
01:26:44.760 --> 01:26:49.560
No snow in the forecast, but then overnight where we
1587
01:26:49.640 --> 01:26:51.479
lived there in East Tennessee, there was a load that
1588
01:26:51.640 --> 01:26:54.079
moved south of us. And when that happened and the
1589
01:26:54.079 --> 01:26:56.600
conditions were right with the barometric pressure in the wintertime,
1590
01:26:56.840 --> 01:26:58.920
we get a snow snow dumped ons had a snow
1591
01:26:58.960 --> 01:27:00.159
day on the day it said.
1592
01:27:01.720 --> 01:27:04.640
John Pryor, that's awesome.
1593
01:27:05.760 --> 01:27:08.960
And then the next thing, there was a record of
1594
01:27:09.000 --> 01:27:14.439
circus music that I coveted from kindergarten and wasn't able
1595
01:27:14.479 --> 01:27:16.680
to find it at any of the places I bought records.
1596
01:27:16.720 --> 01:27:19.319
I was a huge, vital connoisseur even as a child,
1597
01:27:19.399 --> 01:27:23.119
even though mostly children's records. But there was this record
1598
01:27:23.159 --> 01:27:25.000
that they'd played for us in kindergarten that I just
1599
01:27:25.119 --> 01:27:32.640
had to have. So we got the wageboard out, we
1600
01:27:32.720 --> 01:27:36.479
consulted it, and it gave us the name of a
1601
01:27:36.520 --> 01:27:40.319
fairly obscure used record store on a market square in
1602
01:27:40.359 --> 01:27:46.279
downtown Knoxville, and sure enough, my mom looked it up
1603
01:27:46.319 --> 01:27:47.960
in the phone book, back when there used to be
1604
01:27:48.000 --> 01:27:50.279
such a thing as a phone book, And back then,
1605
01:27:50.479 --> 01:27:52.199
even though they were just a few miles apart, it
1606
01:27:52.239 --> 01:27:54.960
was long distance to call Knoxville from where we lived
1607
01:27:54.960 --> 01:28:00.159
in Westtox County. We had an Oak Courage number, and
1608
01:28:00.399 --> 01:28:05.560
she called the record store and I gave the title
1609
01:28:05.640 --> 01:28:07.279
of the record to the guy and he said, I
1610
01:28:07.279 --> 01:28:09.199
don't know, I'll look and see. He's like, I've got
1611
01:28:09.279 --> 01:28:11.920
thousands of records in here. He used records, he said,
1612
01:28:11.920 --> 01:28:15.000
but if I run across it, I'll call you. And
1613
01:28:15.039 --> 01:28:17.880
I thought, okay, great, you know I'm not even six yet.
1614
01:28:18.479 --> 01:28:20.840
That's the end of that. I'll just keep looking. But
1615
01:28:20.960 --> 01:28:23.000
sure enough, But if it was later that day or
1616
01:28:23.000 --> 01:28:25.880
maybe the next day, we got a call. It was
1617
01:28:25.920 --> 01:28:27.479
the guy calling back and he said, I was in
1618
01:28:27.520 --> 01:28:29.600
the back. I was looking for something else and I
1619
01:28:29.760 --> 01:28:32.479
just happened to spot that because I'd given a detailed
1620
01:28:32.520 --> 01:28:36.279
description of what the cover looked like. He said that
1621
01:28:36.760 --> 01:28:39.439
just it fell open, and there it was in the stacks,
1622
01:28:39.479 --> 01:28:43.000
back there in my albums, and I've got it here.
1623
01:28:43.039 --> 01:28:44.640
I'll hold it for you if you want me to.
1624
01:28:44.720 --> 01:28:47.399
And of course I begged my mom, and a few
1625
01:28:47.479 --> 01:28:49.720
days later we took the trip downtown. And this was
1626
01:28:49.800 --> 01:28:53.720
back when you shopped downtown. This was before the real
1627
01:28:53.800 --> 01:28:57.199
advent of strip malls or any malls you went downtown
1628
01:28:57.239 --> 01:28:59.199
to went shopping. He had to get dressed up. You know,
1629
01:28:59.279 --> 01:29:02.800
my mom would wear he and pearls and everything. But
1630
01:29:02.880 --> 01:29:04.960
we went downtown. We went some other places. I think
1631
01:29:04.960 --> 01:29:07.600
we went to J. C. Pennies, and we had lunch
1632
01:29:07.640 --> 01:29:12.319
at Crestchi's and things like that, just things that you
1633
01:29:12.359 --> 01:29:15.359
did downtown. We had a certain lot where Weed Park,
1634
01:29:15.399 --> 01:29:18.840
and my mom knew the parking attendant there. Her family
1635
01:29:18.960 --> 01:29:22.279
had sold produce there. At there was a produce market
1636
01:29:22.479 --> 01:29:26.279
not too far from there, a huge one. And sure
1637
01:29:26.359 --> 01:29:28.920
enough we got to the record store, the guy had
1638
01:29:28.960 --> 01:29:30.960
it and I rode home with it in my lap.
1639
01:29:31.199 --> 01:29:35.680
Thank you with you. But again, you know, not everybody
1640
01:29:35.720 --> 01:29:38.439
has a good experience or a positive experience. But Cisco
1641
01:29:38.439 --> 01:29:40.960
and I've talked about that. It's a tool, and a
1642
01:29:41.000 --> 01:29:43.640
lot of it goes on the intent what you're going
1643
01:29:43.720 --> 01:29:46.079
to do with it. These days, I wouldn't touch one.
1644
01:29:46.119 --> 01:29:49.319
I'm not afraid of them. I've had some experiences. Later,
1645
01:29:49.960 --> 01:29:54.600
I'll go ahead and tell that story. I was in college,
1646
01:29:54.640 --> 01:29:58.000
I was working at a little restaurant part time, and
1647
01:29:58.600 --> 01:30:01.520
the guy invited me to party after work. It was
1648
01:30:01.560 --> 01:30:03.640
at an apartment complex just down the road from before
1649
01:30:03.680 --> 01:30:06.000
we were working there in the Cecar Bluff area. Of
1650
01:30:06.000 --> 01:30:09.840
West Knoxville. I thought, sure, I'll go. I didn't really
1651
01:30:09.880 --> 01:30:13.399
want to go study or anything anyway that night and
1652
01:30:13.680 --> 01:30:15.560
I get there. It's in the clubhouse of this big
1653
01:30:15.600 --> 01:30:18.760
apartment complex. I didn't know anybody there besides the guy
1654
01:30:18.760 --> 01:30:21.479
that invited me from working. I didn't really know him
1655
01:30:21.520 --> 01:30:25.279
other than just from work. So they I don't know
1656
01:30:25.279 --> 01:30:26.840
if they had it with him, or if they found
1657
01:30:26.880 --> 01:30:28.880
it or something. But anyway, some girls came up with
1658
01:30:28.880 --> 01:30:32.319
a WIGI board and they decided that they would get
1659
01:30:32.319 --> 01:30:33.520
three or four of them to do it, and they
1660
01:30:33.520 --> 01:30:38.479
would go around this room in the clubhouse and ask questions.
1661
01:30:39.279 --> 01:30:42.840
And they got to me, and the only thing I
1662
01:30:42.880 --> 01:30:46.039
said was what scared me when I was a child,
1663
01:30:46.039 --> 01:30:48.600
and I had a specific, very specific incident in mind.
1664
01:30:48.640 --> 01:30:50.920
It was the thing in the woods that chased me
1665
01:30:50.960 --> 01:30:53.199
out of the woods that I couldn't see. I never
1666
01:30:53.239 --> 01:30:56.000
told that story outside the family at that point. My
1667
01:30:56.079 --> 01:30:59.319
immediate family knew it, but certainly I never told it
1668
01:30:59.359 --> 01:31:01.119
to the guy that I worked with, and none of
1669
01:31:01.159 --> 01:31:03.880
the people at the party knew it. But the girls
1670
01:31:03.880 --> 01:31:05.720
who are working the board. It starts doing the figure
1671
01:31:05.720 --> 01:31:10.760
eight and it spells out W A T E R S.
1672
01:31:10.960 --> 01:31:14.319
P R I t e and they look at me.
1673
01:31:14.439 --> 01:31:17.520
I just kind of shrugged in their water sprite. It's thirsty,
1674
01:31:17.560 --> 01:31:19.680
it wants a drink. Ha ha ha ha. And then
1675
01:31:19.720 --> 01:31:24.199
they went on to somebody else. But my next day off,
1676
01:31:24.239 --> 01:31:25.760
which might have been the next day, I went to
1677
01:31:25.800 --> 01:31:28.640
the big library downtown and I went up to the
1678
01:31:28.680 --> 01:31:30.600
reference desk and I said, what can you tell me
1679
01:31:30.720 --> 01:31:34.199
about a water sprite or a water spirit? The reference
1680
01:31:34.279 --> 01:31:37.439
library and goes off into the stacks. A few months later,
1681
01:31:37.479 --> 01:31:40.399
she comes back. She's got some books there, and she
1682
01:31:40.560 --> 01:31:44.520
showed me a bookie you probably know about this kind
1683
01:31:44.560 --> 01:31:46.880
of stuff. There was two of them. There was a
1684
01:31:46.960 --> 01:31:49.560
naiad and a dryad. One was a spirit of the
1685
01:31:49.600 --> 01:31:51.479
water and the other was the spirit of the woods.
1686
01:31:51.479 --> 01:31:54.239
They're very similar, but there are elementals, a type of
1687
01:31:54.239 --> 01:31:58.039
the fae, if you will. And according to the Luigia Board,
1688
01:31:58.359 --> 01:32:00.359
that's what chased me out of the woods was a
1689
01:32:00.399 --> 01:32:04.039
water spirit. And it wasn't some little gossamer tinker building.
1690
01:32:04.119 --> 01:32:07.760
This thing shook the ground and knocked branches out of
1691
01:32:07.800 --> 01:32:09.960
the way higher than my head. I could see the
1692
01:32:10.039 --> 01:32:12.439
leaves being kicked up in its way. I couldn't see it,
1693
01:32:12.520 --> 01:32:14.319
but I could see the effects it was having on
1694
01:32:14.960 --> 01:32:17.119
the natural environment. Ran me out of the woods, not once,
1695
01:32:17.159 --> 01:32:19.680
but twice, once at eight years old, again at fifteen
1696
01:32:19.760 --> 01:32:23.039
years old. But according to Ouija board, it was a
1697
01:32:23.119 --> 01:32:23.840
faithfolk at all.
1698
01:32:23.960 --> 01:32:29.520
Mental any had Yeah, yep there for some reason.
1699
01:32:30.399 --> 01:32:32.840
Why only me, my dad my brother both went up
1700
01:32:32.840 --> 01:32:35.439
there and looked around. I haven't took I brought a
1701
01:32:35.479 --> 01:32:37.119
kid home with me from school one time. I sent
1702
01:32:37.199 --> 01:32:39.239
him up there to go and stand with the edge
1703
01:32:39.279 --> 01:32:40.960
of the ditch and see if you see anything. And
1704
01:32:41.000 --> 01:32:43.439
I stood way down the hill from behind a tree,
1705
01:32:43.439 --> 01:32:46.159
and he just looked at it, you know, looking around.
1706
01:32:46.199 --> 01:32:48.399
No nothing but nothing came out of the woods and
1707
01:32:48.479 --> 01:32:51.960
chased him around the ditch rather and then I even
1708
01:32:52.000 --> 01:32:54.000
got brave. I went up closer to the edge of
1709
01:32:54.039 --> 01:32:56.079
the ditch and had him stand down the hill didn't
1710
01:32:56.119 --> 01:32:58.920
chase me. But the two times that I went up
1711
01:32:58.920 --> 01:33:00.880
there alone, one a eight and want to get a
1712
01:33:00.960 --> 01:33:03.880
fifteen chase me right out in there. What was that?
1713
01:33:04.119 --> 01:33:06.560
I mean, what do you know anything about a nyad?
1714
01:33:08.640 --> 01:33:11.800
Just basically what you said. Their water spirits than the
1715
01:33:11.880 --> 01:33:18.600
dryads or the wood spirits. They're in classical mythology and
1716
01:33:18.800 --> 01:33:24.039
normally when they're talked about, they're not I mean, any
1717
01:33:24.039 --> 01:33:26.800
spirits from classical mythology don't tend to be like tinkerbellt
1718
01:33:26.840 --> 01:33:29.079
type spirits either, as far as that goes.
1719
01:33:29.199 --> 01:33:31.399
And that's the thing you dig into the faith folk,
1720
01:33:31.520 --> 01:33:35.479
and particularly in Celtic countries where that was almost religion,
1721
01:33:35.600 --> 01:33:39.560
may still be. They're evil creatures. You had to appease them,
1722
01:33:39.560 --> 01:33:42.239
and they would trick you, and they would. There's only
1723
01:33:42.319 --> 01:33:44.880
like one and there's different clans and different types. There's
1724
01:33:44.920 --> 01:33:46.880
one type of them that's kind of nice. I think
1725
01:33:46.920 --> 01:33:50.840
those are pixies or something, but I don't I can't
1726
01:33:50.920 --> 01:33:54.000
articulate all I know about it. But they're not nice things.
1727
01:33:54.039 --> 01:33:59.239
But they describe things like in Ireland, the story I
1728
01:33:59.279 --> 01:34:03.159
wrote from read from the uh these like seventeen hundreds
1729
01:34:03.199 --> 01:34:06.159
maybe early eighteen hundreds about some little men and a
1730
01:34:06.159 --> 01:34:08.560
horseless carriage that came down from the sky. Well there's
1731
01:34:08.560 --> 01:34:11.359
a Ufo experience. Or there were types of them that
1732
01:34:11.399 --> 01:34:13.640
were big hairy men that lived in the woods. There's
1733
01:34:13.720 --> 01:34:17.479
Bigfoot or Sasquatch or Yowie or whatever. It's kind of
1734
01:34:17.479 --> 01:34:20.800
an umbrella that everything else fits under. But you can
1735
01:34:20.840 --> 01:34:24.399
talk to a bigfoot enthusiast or a UFO experiencer and
1736
01:34:24.479 --> 01:34:26.520
mentioned the fae, they'll snicker at you. They're like, oh,
1737
01:34:26.640 --> 01:34:29.600
that doesn't I think it does. I think it all
1738
01:34:29.640 --> 01:34:31.880
ties together. Do you have any thoughts on that. I'm
1739
01:34:32.000 --> 01:34:33.359
sorry to put you on spar here.
1740
01:34:34.279 --> 01:34:37.479
No, it's fine. No. I think that it all ties together,
1741
01:34:37.520 --> 01:34:39.439
and I think that we'd get more. I mean, we
1742
01:34:39.479 --> 01:34:41.720
talked about earlier how you end up with more questions
1743
01:34:41.720 --> 01:34:43.359
than answers, but I think that we'd end up with
1744
01:34:43.439 --> 01:34:45.880
some more answers if we would all kind of work
1745
01:34:45.880 --> 01:34:48.399
together and get over this. Well, you know, this is real,
1746
01:34:48.479 --> 01:34:52.199
but that's not kind of situation. It's all weird, it's
1747
01:34:52.239 --> 01:34:59.439
all strange. So there's definitely corresponding things about UFOs between ghosts,
1748
01:34:59.479 --> 01:35:02.520
between is that just overlap one another. That if we
1749
01:35:02.520 --> 01:35:04.800
were to take the time and actually communicate with one another,
1750
01:35:04.880 --> 01:35:08.119
I think we might have more answers. I'm not saying
1751
01:35:08.119 --> 01:35:10.359
that we would have answers to everything, but we would
1752
01:35:10.399 --> 01:35:12.399
have more than what we have now. At least that's
1753
01:35:12.399 --> 01:35:12.920
my belief.
1754
01:35:13.720 --> 01:35:15.960
I agree, and it would fit it within a broader
1755
01:35:16.039 --> 01:35:19.920
scope from which to to do those studies and things from.
1756
01:35:19.920 --> 01:35:23.840
But yeah, people will fight you over their individual beliefs.
1757
01:35:23.840 --> 01:35:27.159
I've seen that happen at Bigfoot conferences and then when
1758
01:35:27.239 --> 01:35:30.039
I was spoke at to UFO conference in San Francisco
1759
01:35:30.680 --> 01:35:33.680
a couple of years ago. Now, obviously people almost get
1760
01:35:33.720 --> 01:35:35.760
into fist fights over stuff, and you know, like, that's
1761
01:35:35.760 --> 01:35:37.840
not why we're here to argue. We're here to present
1762
01:35:37.880 --> 01:35:41.239
our opinion, not necessarily to defend it, and a lot
1763
01:35:41.279 --> 01:35:43.720
of people don't get that. On this show, I've had
1764
01:35:43.920 --> 01:35:47.199
a couple of pastors on from sialment so far Messianic
1765
01:35:47.239 --> 01:35:51.359
ministries and look at the paranormal and UFOs and things
1766
01:35:51.399 --> 01:35:54.960
like that from not only a biblical perspective, but from
1767
01:35:55.000 --> 01:35:59.560
the perspective of the Tora being Messianic Jews, they follow
1768
01:35:59.600 --> 01:36:03.159
both thea and the Bible, and they have some interesting
1769
01:36:03.199 --> 01:36:06.960
things to say. Again, you know, people, it's it's controversial
1770
01:36:07.000 --> 01:36:09.479
and not everybody's going to agree with it. But I
1771
01:36:09.600 --> 01:36:11.479
like to keep an open mind. You know. I don't think,
1772
01:36:11.640 --> 01:36:15.640
especially when you have something like this, that there are
1773
01:36:15.680 --> 01:36:17.640
no experts in their own, no answers, there is no
1774
01:36:17.880 --> 01:36:20.079
right or wrong opinion. But I like to hear other
1775
01:36:20.119 --> 01:36:23.079
people's opinion. I didn't invite them here, any of the
1776
01:36:23.079 --> 01:36:24.960
times that they've been on to beat them up about
1777
01:36:24.960 --> 01:36:26.600
it or get them to defend it. I just want
1778
01:36:26.640 --> 01:36:28.319
to know what that opinion is.
1779
01:36:29.239 --> 01:36:33.079
Yeah, yeah, exactly, And it's it's weird, like, not only
1780
01:36:33.079 --> 01:36:37.319
do you see the fighting between the different groups between
1781
01:36:37.359 --> 01:36:39.560
like UFOs and ghosts and Bigfoot and things like that,
1782
01:36:39.600 --> 01:36:42.840
but we also as humans apparently like to fight about
1783
01:36:42.840 --> 01:36:45.560
anything we can fight about, and there's infighting even within
1784
01:36:45.680 --> 01:36:52.399
those particular communities. In the Bigfoot community, people take a
1785
01:36:52.479 --> 01:36:54.600
side as to what they think Bigfoot is and then
1786
01:36:54.640 --> 01:36:57.600
that's the only way they don't want to hear any
1787
01:36:57.600 --> 01:36:59.840
other arguments to it. And the same thing with dog.
1788
01:37:00.239 --> 01:37:03.680
I mean, it gets it gets pretty vicious sometimes and
1789
01:37:03.760 --> 01:37:07.159
I just don't understand it. I don't get why why
1790
01:37:07.159 --> 01:37:10.279
we're so drawn to wanting to fight and have all
1791
01:37:10.319 --> 01:37:12.640
of this drama instead of trying to figure things out.
1792
01:37:12.680 --> 01:37:14.720
Like you said, we don't have experts in this field,
1793
01:37:15.840 --> 01:37:19.239
We don't have the answers like that, so what are
1794
01:37:19.239 --> 01:37:20.199
we doing well?
1795
01:37:20.279 --> 01:37:23.079
It reminds me of the movie from the seventies, The Warriors.
1796
01:37:23.079 --> 01:37:25.079
Did you ever see that about the gangs in New
1797
01:37:25.159 --> 01:37:30.239
York City? Cyrus, the leader of all the gangs, was
1798
01:37:30.279 --> 01:37:32.119
trying to tell them that. You know, they said, we're
1799
01:37:32.119 --> 01:37:35.119
here between us. We're fighting over a few square feet
1800
01:37:35.159 --> 01:37:38.199
of sidewalk, our turf. He said, but if we banned together,
1801
01:37:38.560 --> 01:37:41.039
we outnumber everybody or the police and everything, and we
1802
01:37:41.119 --> 01:37:43.560
could run New York City. And then they killed him,
1803
01:37:44.880 --> 01:37:47.800
and that was the whole movie was the warriors got
1804
01:37:47.920 --> 01:37:49.720
blamed for it, and they were trying to make their
1805
01:37:49.720 --> 01:37:52.000
way back to their turf, which was at Cody Island.
1806
01:37:52.840 --> 01:37:56.479
A great movie. It's very dated, but that's always stuck
1807
01:37:56.520 --> 01:37:58.399
with me. You know, we're here fighting over a few
1808
01:37:58.399 --> 01:38:04.520
feet of sidewalk. Band together, we're bigger than everything out there. Yeah, exactly,
1809
01:38:05.000 --> 01:38:06.720
A nice way I worked the name of the show
1810
01:38:06.720 --> 01:38:08.760
and there unintentionally everything out there.
1811
01:38:09.560 --> 01:38:11.359
There you go, perfect.
1812
01:38:11.600 --> 01:38:17.520
Unintended plug there for my own show. Heather, What have
1813
01:38:17.560 --> 01:38:20.119
you got coming up? You mentioned some of the small
1814
01:38:20.119 --> 01:38:22.119
town monster stuff. What else is going on for you?
1815
01:38:23.399 --> 01:38:27.359
Oh? Well, I recently had a short story printed in
1816
01:38:27.560 --> 01:38:31.920
something called The Dark Village. It's an anthology of different
1817
01:38:31.920 --> 01:38:37.079
short stories. Congratulacens, thank you, thank you. That short story
1818
01:38:37.119 --> 01:38:39.880
is called The Wind to Go. That one was a
1819
01:38:39.920 --> 01:38:42.720
lot of fun to write, a different kind of playing
1820
01:38:42.720 --> 01:38:45.640
with perspective a little bit on that. So I've got that,
1821
01:38:47.199 --> 01:38:50.880
and then I have articles in the Feminine Macabre series
1822
01:38:51.159 --> 01:38:56.920
in journals one, three, and five. So I talk about
1823
01:38:57.520 --> 01:39:01.760
cursed objects, particularly the rocks from the bell Witch Cave
1824
01:39:02.199 --> 01:39:05.279
in the first journal, in the third one I talk
1825
01:39:05.359 --> 01:39:09.119
about headless ghosts, and then in the fifth one I
1826
01:39:09.199 --> 01:39:13.479
talk about goat man, which reminds me. I wanted to
1827
01:39:13.520 --> 01:39:15.640
ask you, Steve, if you've heard of any goat man
1828
01:39:15.680 --> 01:39:17.279
stories from Tennessee.
1829
01:39:18.840 --> 01:39:21.680
Not from Tennessee in particular. But let me look into
1830
01:39:21.760 --> 01:39:24.039
my research and I'll get back with you on that.
1831
01:39:24.119 --> 01:39:29.079
I did something about the goat man or goat men recently.
1832
01:39:29.680 --> 01:39:32.359
Martin Nunley wrote a thing for me and I narrated
1833
01:39:32.399 --> 01:39:35.359
it for a project I had called Weird World. But
1834
01:39:35.640 --> 01:39:38.079
I've got some other stuff. Let me look and see. Yes,
1835
01:39:38.640 --> 01:39:42.279
But it's just everything you mentioned there is something that
1836
01:39:42.319 --> 01:39:45.319
I've looked into at one time or another. You mentioned
1837
01:39:45.319 --> 01:39:47.520
the Belle Witch. Now growing up in East Tennessee, that
1838
01:39:47.640 --> 01:39:49.800
was a big deal for me, not as much as
1839
01:39:49.800 --> 01:39:53.319
it was for kids in Middle Tennessee. But I told
1840
01:39:53.399 --> 01:39:56.199
you the story that you'd never heard about, a Bloody
1841
01:39:56.239 --> 01:39:58.840
Mary type game that we played in grade school that
1842
01:39:59.000 --> 01:40:02.640
was based on the bell and we're the same. You
1843
01:40:02.680 --> 01:40:05.560
went into a darkened bathroom and you peered into the mirror,
1844
01:40:06.159 --> 01:40:08.319
and instead of saying bloody Mary three times, you said
1845
01:40:08.359 --> 01:40:11.159
I don't believe in the bell Witch. Three times. She
1846
01:40:11.159 --> 01:40:12.960
would supposed to come out of the mirror and scratch
1847
01:40:13.039 --> 01:40:15.119
you on the face. And I was at a kid
1848
01:40:15.159 --> 01:40:17.960
party one time, on somebody's birthday party. I was maybe
1849
01:40:18.159 --> 01:40:21.079
eight nine years old. The little girl went in the bathroom,
1850
01:40:21.119 --> 01:40:23.239
did that. Sure enough, she came running out screaming, had
1851
01:40:23.359 --> 01:40:26.920
three scratches on her face. Now probably self inflicted, but
1852
01:40:27.039 --> 01:40:30.359
it scared to pants off all the little kids at
1853
01:40:30.359 --> 01:40:31.359
that party. Anyway.
1854
01:40:32.039 --> 01:40:34.680
Well, sure, yeah, you definitely don't want to mess with
1855
01:40:34.720 --> 01:40:36.159
the bell Witch, that's for sure.
1856
01:40:37.399 --> 01:40:39.640
And I also told you the story about how the
1857
01:40:40.000 --> 01:40:42.720
library book at the Big Library in Knoxville was perpetually
1858
01:40:42.800 --> 01:40:45.960
checked out you couldn't find I can't remember the name
1859
01:40:46.000 --> 01:40:48.239
of the book. It was one of the pre eminent
1860
01:40:48.560 --> 01:40:53.359
bell Witch books. And the story that was told when
1861
01:40:53.359 --> 01:40:56.359
it finally did come back after a couple of years,
1862
01:40:56.960 --> 01:41:00.680
it was just said that then it was in the collections.
1863
01:41:00.680 --> 01:41:02.640
You could only look at it there at the library,
1864
01:41:02.880 --> 01:41:05.840
probably because it was a rare book. But the story
1865
01:41:05.880 --> 01:41:08.560
that was told on the playground was that when they
1866
01:41:08.600 --> 01:41:10.840
finally found it, the guy that had checked it out
1867
01:41:11.119 --> 01:41:13.520
for a couple of years was found dead in his
1868
01:41:13.600 --> 01:41:15.279
bed and that was what he was reading, and he
1869
01:41:15.319 --> 01:41:17.800
had been there for some time. Nothing but a skeleton left.
1870
01:41:18.279 --> 01:41:20.399
But they returned the book to the library, and that's
1871
01:41:20.399 --> 01:41:22.680
why nobody could check it out because it was cursed.
1872
01:41:23.840 --> 01:41:25.279
That's quite a story.
1873
01:41:25.560 --> 01:41:30.119
For interesting playground fodder. That would be a book right there.
1874
01:41:30.399 --> 01:41:36.760
The strange things on the playground and people recount their stuff.
1875
01:41:36.800 --> 01:41:39.359
They heard his kids. I've done stuff about urban legends
1876
01:41:39.399 --> 01:41:42.000
and stories, you know, from a friend of a friend,
1877
01:41:42.319 --> 01:41:45.279
the gospel truth. Oh no, that really happened. It happened
1878
01:41:45.279 --> 01:41:47.920
to our neighbors, cousins, uncle's nephew.
1879
01:41:48.479 --> 01:41:51.399
But right, but.
1880
01:41:52.479 --> 01:41:55.800
Nothing shattered my world. As John or Jan Harold Brunvan,
1881
01:41:55.960 --> 01:41:59.760
he's a think he's a professor of folklore and mythology,
1882
01:41:59.840 --> 01:42:02.479
and somewhere in Utah. He put out a book in
1883
01:42:02.520 --> 01:42:04.760
the seventies called The Vashing Hitchhiker was the fast on
1884
01:42:04.840 --> 01:42:07.479
he did the first one. He did a series of books,
1885
01:42:08.199 --> 01:42:10.279
and a lot of those stories I'd heard those as
1886
01:42:10.359 --> 01:42:13.640
gospel truth growing up. No, No, that happened to my cousin. No,
1887
01:42:13.840 --> 01:42:15.840
that one happened to a friend of a lady that
1888
01:42:15.920 --> 01:42:19.680
does my mom's hair. These stories happened, but they didn't.
1889
01:42:19.920 --> 01:42:25.319
And you know, they served as cautionary tales and kept
1890
01:42:25.319 --> 01:42:27.119
me out of some trouble. Probably you know, kept me
1891
01:42:27.159 --> 01:42:29.199
out of the lake because of the water moccasins, or
1892
01:42:29.760 --> 01:42:31.800
kept me from going to the bathroom at all Mart
1893
01:42:31.840 --> 01:42:34.000
because some kid was mutilated and there as part of
1894
01:42:34.239 --> 01:42:37.880
a gang initiation, a runner to Walmart. We had a
1895
01:42:37.920 --> 01:42:40.079
local store there in Knoxville, I think it was local
1896
01:42:40.119 --> 01:42:42.800
called all Mart A L M A R T. And
1897
01:42:42.880 --> 01:42:46.600
the story was that the kid was around his eighth birthday.
1898
01:42:47.319 --> 01:42:49.000
He had gone to the want to go to the
1899
01:42:49.000 --> 01:42:51.079
bathroom by himself, like, Mom, I'm too big to go
1900
01:42:51.079 --> 01:42:52.960
to the lady's room with you. I'll go by myself.
1901
01:42:53.479 --> 01:42:55.279
So she stands there and waits on him. He goes
1902
01:42:55.279 --> 01:42:59.159
to the bathroom, he's gone, gone, gone, gone, never comes out.
1903
01:42:59.239 --> 01:43:01.680
Instead of going in looking for him, next person, the
1904
01:43:01.720 --> 01:43:03.680
next mail that starts and she said, sir, would you
1905
01:43:03.680 --> 01:43:05.880
tell me if there's a little boy in there, and
1906
01:43:05.920 --> 01:43:08.479
describes it guy goes in, he comes running back out.
1907
01:43:08.479 --> 01:43:11.520
He said, lady, you better get in there with him.
1908
01:43:11.520 --> 01:43:12.960
I'm going to go up front and ask him to
1909
01:43:13.000 --> 01:43:16.520
call an ambulance. And as part of a gang initiation,
1910
01:43:16.600 --> 01:43:19.000
and she had mentioned earlier in the story that she
1911
01:43:19.039 --> 01:43:21.760
saw three dirty looking boys come out of there, three
1912
01:43:22.600 --> 01:43:25.279
trashy looking boys come out. Well, they've been part of
1913
01:43:25.319 --> 01:43:29.239
a gang. And as part of initiation, they castrated this
1914
01:43:29.279 --> 01:43:33.359
little boy, Oh my godness, through his member in the
1915
01:43:33.399 --> 01:43:35.279
parking lot where it was run over by a car
1916
01:43:35.319 --> 01:43:38.039
and couldn't be saved. He had to have a sexual
1917
01:43:38.039 --> 01:43:42.359
reassignment surgery and change schools. But wow, as a kid
1918
01:43:42.399 --> 01:43:44.880
and believed every single word of it. I was just
1919
01:43:44.960 --> 01:43:47.119
there with by parents. One time I had to go
1920
01:43:47.119 --> 01:43:49.760
to the bathroom. I couldn't even find my mom and dad.
1921
01:43:50.119 --> 01:43:53.640
So instead of raving this was the almart on Clinton Highway,
1922
01:43:54.079 --> 01:43:56.640
instead of going in there by myself, I went outside
1923
01:43:56.760 --> 01:43:59.359
around the building, around in the back in the dark
1924
01:43:59.800 --> 01:44:02.720
and eat on the wall. It was a much more
1925
01:44:02.840 --> 01:44:07.800
danger back there. But yeah, that was so ingrained in
1926
01:44:07.800 --> 01:44:09.239
my head that I'm not going to go to the
1927
01:44:09.239 --> 01:44:11.159
bathroom in there. I know what happens, and there I'll
1928
01:44:11.159 --> 01:44:16.680
go outside be by the dumpster. But again that story
1929
01:44:16.800 --> 01:44:18.760
was in there that I think the ever Penis was
1930
01:44:18.760 --> 01:44:21.279
the name of it. But again I heard that as
1931
01:44:21.359 --> 01:44:24.119
gospel truth and believed it. And the one about the
1932
01:44:24.159 --> 01:44:26.840
Avon lady that wasn't an Avon lady, that was a
1933
01:44:27.880 --> 01:44:30.079
man in a dress, and in his Avon sample bag
1934
01:44:30.119 --> 01:44:31.760
he had a hatchet and a hank of rope and
1935
01:44:31.800 --> 01:44:34.520
some handcuffs, you know, and all that, Oh my goodness.
1936
01:44:34.680 --> 01:44:38.159
And the beauty shop, the beauty parlor, and back in
1937
01:44:38.479 --> 01:44:41.439
by day in the late sixties early seventies, a lot
1938
01:44:41.479 --> 01:44:43.680
of women, particularly in our community in East Tennessee, they
1939
01:44:43.720 --> 01:44:46.880
would have those shops in their basement. Not only did
1940
01:44:46.880 --> 01:44:48.960
they make a few extra bucks doing hair, but they
1941
01:44:48.960 --> 01:44:53.520
got all the neighborhood gossip. I heard similar stories from both.
1942
01:44:53.800 --> 01:44:56.239
My mom got her hair done two different ladies because
1943
01:44:56.279 --> 01:44:59.800
they were both friends her friends, so she alternated. But
1944
01:45:00.840 --> 01:45:04.159
heard those stories at both beauty shops. When I would
1945
01:45:04.199 --> 01:45:06.399
tell you along and sitting with the dryer chairs, well,
1946
01:45:06.479 --> 01:45:09.600
my mom was getting a permanent But again I grow up.
1947
01:45:09.640 --> 01:45:11.479
And some of the others are the one about the
1948
01:45:12.239 --> 01:45:15.079
kid water skiing and running into a nest of water,
1949
01:45:15.159 --> 01:45:17.359
moccasins and dying before they could get them out of
1950
01:45:17.359 --> 01:45:20.880
the water. My aunt from Alabama told that that it
1951
01:45:20.960 --> 01:45:23.119
happened to a friend that her or kid that her
1952
01:45:23.159 --> 01:45:26.399
son went to school with in Scottsboro, Alabama. Never happened,
1953
01:45:26.880 --> 01:45:30.720
but again, there was just such a part of childhood
1954
01:45:31.199 --> 01:45:32.159
and things.
1955
01:45:32.520 --> 01:45:35.000
Yeah, that's what you were talking about, the book always
1956
01:45:35.039 --> 01:45:37.119
being checked out or reminds me of the book that
1957
01:45:37.199 --> 01:45:39.680
was always checked out when I was in elementary school
1958
01:45:39.720 --> 01:45:45.319
with scary stories to tell in the dark, and that
1959
01:45:45.319 --> 01:45:48.079
that one had very similar things. It had well all
1960
01:45:48.159 --> 01:45:51.359
kinds of scary stories, so to speak, but mostly urban legends.
1961
01:45:51.399 --> 01:45:54.479
And so there were stories of like the spot, you know,
1962
01:45:54.479 --> 01:45:56.760
where somebody had what looked like a pimple on their face,
1963
01:45:56.800 --> 01:46:01.239
but it was actually spider eggs had been nested on
1964
01:46:01.279 --> 01:46:02.880
their face and then it would just explode, and there
1965
01:46:03.079 --> 01:46:03.920
spiders everywhere.
1966
01:46:05.000 --> 01:46:07.640
Urban legend too, and yep, the deal that I heard
1967
01:46:07.680 --> 01:46:10.520
from the sixties was it was a boufont hair. The
1968
01:46:11.000 --> 01:46:13.520
girl had her hair piled up and rather than take
1969
01:46:13.520 --> 01:46:16.119
it down, she just kept lacquering it with hairspray until
1970
01:46:16.119 --> 01:46:19.479
it was just a solid, massive hair and spiders got
1971
01:46:19.479 --> 01:46:22.880
in there and laid eggs and hatched out and they
1972
01:46:22.880 --> 01:46:25.239
were like eating into her brain or something. I don't know.
1973
01:46:25.279 --> 01:46:28.600
It was frightening, but yeah, that's another one of those.
1974
01:46:28.640 --> 01:46:30.680
Oh it had happened, but it didn't, you know.
1975
01:46:31.079 --> 01:46:35.680
Yeah, but learning tools, trying to scare the kids.
1976
01:46:35.840 --> 01:46:38.359
Yeah, and I'm just getting into the stories told in
1977
01:46:38.399 --> 01:46:40.680
the dark. My wife's from that era. She was born
1978
01:46:40.680 --> 01:46:44.079
in eighty five, and I've come to appreciate those in
1979
01:46:44.119 --> 01:46:47.520
the Goosebumps series. I never really paid much attention to those,
1980
01:46:47.600 --> 01:46:50.319
but she was big into that. So we've got a
1981
01:46:50.319 --> 01:46:55.159
collection of R. L. Steinbooks going here. And I loved
1982
01:46:55.199 --> 01:46:59.000
the Scholastic stuff when I was a kid, Missus Coverlets,
1983
01:46:59.039 --> 01:47:02.520
Magicians and what was the other one that I absolutely
1984
01:47:02.600 --> 01:47:06.760
adored The Mad Scientists Club by Burton Brindley. And it's
1985
01:47:06.840 --> 01:47:12.680
just those books just spurred me on. And there was
1986
01:47:12.680 --> 01:47:16.640
a lot of spooky stuff back then too, and Frank
1987
01:47:16.760 --> 01:47:21.079
Edwards books Strange World, Stranger than science, Stranger than fiction.
1988
01:47:22.239 --> 01:47:25.279
I read a lot of that was introduction to a
1989
01:47:25.319 --> 01:47:28.760
lot of stuff within the paranormal realm and supernatural for me,
1990
01:47:28.840 --> 01:47:31.640
and everything in there wasn't supernatural, so it was just strange.
1991
01:47:31.720 --> 01:47:36.119
But had away the David Lang disappearance with the guy
1992
01:47:36.159 --> 01:47:39.319
I was walking across the field and disappeared in full
1993
01:47:39.399 --> 01:47:41.760
view of his wife and children and the two guys
1994
01:47:41.760 --> 01:47:44.000
and a bugy coming up the road. That was the
1995
01:47:44.039 --> 01:47:45.600
first place I ever heard that was in a Frank
1996
01:47:45.720 --> 01:47:50.920
Edwards book. So books of the Key, yeah, were always
1997
01:47:50.960 --> 01:47:52.920
an escape for me. I didn't have any friends, but
1998
01:47:52.960 --> 01:47:54.079
I had a lot of books.
1999
01:47:54.720 --> 01:47:59.000
Yeah. We used to have this, We used to have
2000
01:47:59.039 --> 01:48:04.720
this program called riff Reading is Fundamentals. Yeah, And that's
2001
01:48:05.039 --> 01:48:08.479
where I got introduced to a series called The Bailey
2002
01:48:08.560 --> 01:48:11.640
school Kids. And the first the first book that I
2003
01:48:11.640 --> 01:48:13.199
picked up from that series happened to be the first
2004
01:48:13.239 --> 01:48:15.600
book from the series, luckily, but it was called Vampires
2005
01:48:15.640 --> 01:48:19.640
Don't Wear Polka Dots. And it follows these kids that
2006
01:48:20.640 --> 01:48:23.800
every time there's like a new teacher, a new janitor something,
2007
01:48:23.880 --> 01:48:27.520
they have this theory that they're a vampire. Another one's
2008
01:48:27.560 --> 01:48:29.560
like ghostone eat potato chips or whatever.
2009
01:48:30.279 --> 01:48:34.319
And she's a fan of those. I need to read those.
2010
01:48:34.840 --> 01:48:37.720
They are so good. I have like the first twenty
2011
01:48:37.760 --> 01:48:40.039
sum still from whenever I was a child. I've got
2012
01:48:40.079 --> 01:48:44.079
them on the shelf over here. But that also brought
2013
01:48:44.079 --> 01:48:45.760
me into that world because there was a big foot one,
2014
01:48:45.800 --> 01:48:47.880
there was a werewolf one, there was a vampire one,
2015
01:48:47.920 --> 01:48:51.199
there was a goblin. I think there was even like well,
2016
01:48:51.239 --> 01:48:54.840
I know there was a leprechaun one. But yeah, they
2017
01:48:54.960 --> 01:48:56.800
they covered all kinds of things like that, and so
2018
01:48:57.479 --> 01:48:59.640
I read more of those than I did the Goosebump series.
2019
01:48:59.680 --> 01:49:02.119
I did read Goosebumps, but I was into the Bailey
2020
01:49:02.159 --> 01:49:03.359
school kids a little bit more.
2021
01:49:04.960 --> 01:49:09.239
And this was another touchstone for her. Are you Afraid
2022
01:49:09.239 --> 01:49:10.920
of the Dark? Did you watch those?
2023
01:49:11.520 --> 01:49:12.760
Yes? Yes I did.
2024
01:49:14.079 --> 01:49:16.800
And in fact, that's one of the names she uses
2025
01:49:16.840 --> 01:49:23.000
on YouTube is Midnight Society, and that's that's how I
2026
01:49:23.039 --> 01:49:26.199
first noticed her when she was coming and listening to me.
2027
01:49:26.680 --> 01:49:29.000
That name stood out to me in the chat and
2028
01:49:29.039 --> 01:49:31.640
it just kind of went from there. But we watched
2029
01:49:31.680 --> 01:49:33.760
those and I'm a big fan. I watch them as
2030
01:49:33.800 --> 01:49:38.319
an adult. I was in college, but I love those shows.
2031
01:49:38.319 --> 01:49:41.479
And DJ McHale, who wrote a lot of those and
2032
01:49:41.520 --> 01:49:43.479
a lot of them under a pen name because he
2033
01:49:43.479 --> 01:49:45.920
didn't want his name all over everything. He's a friend
2034
01:49:45.920 --> 01:49:47.800
of mine. I'm going to have him on the show sometimes.
2035
01:49:48.439 --> 01:49:51.560
He influenced the whole generation the kids there, and for
2036
01:49:51.600 --> 01:49:54.479
a kids show, and you'll see if you agree here
2037
01:49:54.520 --> 01:49:58.319
that was some of the scariest stuff ever on television. Yeah.
2038
01:49:58.560 --> 01:50:00.800
Yeah, they did a good job with that, that's for sure.
2039
01:50:03.600 --> 01:50:05.920
And I'd like to talk to ri al Stein too.
2040
01:50:06.199 --> 01:50:10.439
I've got some juvenile fiction of that turn in the works,
2041
01:50:10.479 --> 01:50:14.039
and my wife's working on a book too, that in
2042
01:50:14.079 --> 01:50:18.319
that same vein, and it's gonna be a lot of fun.
2043
01:50:18.439 --> 01:50:20.960
And I love the idea of writing for kids, but
2044
01:50:21.039 --> 01:50:23.560
I just I don't know. I'll turned sixty last year.
2045
01:50:23.560 --> 01:50:25.159
I don't know if I'm so far out of touch
2046
01:50:25.199 --> 01:50:28.319
that I couldn't write for this generation of kids. But
2047
01:50:28.479 --> 01:50:29.800
I'd like to give it a try.
2048
01:50:30.520 --> 01:50:34.439
Right, I think you should do it. I support this wholeheartedly.
2049
01:50:34.920 --> 01:50:39.560
Okay, well, thank you. But now you mentioned the Weird
2050
01:50:39.560 --> 01:50:42.439
Writer Blog. There was some of your articles over there
2051
01:50:42.479 --> 01:50:44.640
that I wanted you to do for thirteen Past Midnight,
2052
01:50:44.680 --> 01:50:48.600
and you did, thankfully. Do you still write for that?
2053
01:50:48.640 --> 01:50:50.199
Does Heather still do that? I've been out of the
2054
01:50:50.199 --> 01:50:52.479
loop on a lot of this peripheral stuff for a while.
2055
01:50:52.479 --> 01:50:53.600
I'm not sure what's going on.
2056
01:50:54.920 --> 01:50:56.880
No, I haven't written for Shannon in a while.
2057
01:50:57.800 --> 01:50:59.319
Did I say, Heather? I meant Shannon.
2058
01:50:59.399 --> 01:51:04.279
Yeah, yeah, it's okay. She She basically got to a
2059
01:51:04.279 --> 01:51:06.760
point where she was like, listen, you need to start
2060
01:51:06.760 --> 01:51:09.640
writing for yourself and get get more things out there.
2061
01:51:10.680 --> 01:51:11.880
Quit quit writing for me.
2062
01:51:13.560 --> 01:51:18.880
Uh good. One that particularly stands out is Witches and
2063
01:51:18.960 --> 01:51:20.279
silver Bullets.
2064
01:51:20.800 --> 01:51:22.760
Yes, you remember that one.
2065
01:51:23.000 --> 01:51:25.159
And I think you narrated that one as well, and
2066
01:51:25.199 --> 01:51:29.000
that I you know, always heard about the silver bullet
2067
01:51:29.079 --> 01:51:31.560
as you know, the way to fend off the wolf man,
2068
01:51:32.159 --> 01:51:34.800
but I'd never heard of it being used against witches.
2069
01:51:34.840 --> 01:51:36.560
So that was educational for me.
2070
01:51:37.880 --> 01:51:41.199
Yeah, yeah, that's I had found a lot of that
2071
01:51:41.359 --> 01:51:45.239
in uh Patrick Gainor's Witches, Ghosts and Signs. There are
2072
01:51:45.640 --> 01:51:48.319
stories in there about the silver bullet. And even in
2073
01:51:48.359 --> 01:51:51.159
the Bell Witch story there was a guy who claimed
2074
01:51:51.199 --> 01:51:52.880
to be a witch hunter came in with a silver
2075
01:51:52.920 --> 01:51:56.720
bullet waving it around, saying that he could handle the witch,
2076
01:51:57.000 --> 01:51:58.920
and of course she put him to shame and had
2077
01:51:59.000 --> 01:52:03.920
him running out crying by the end of it. But yeah,
2078
01:52:04.000 --> 01:52:06.039
it is something like you said, most people think about
2079
01:52:06.159 --> 01:52:10.319
it's keeping the werewolves away, but witches are known to
2080
01:52:10.359 --> 01:52:13.039
be that's one of their weaknesses. Of silver bullets.
2081
01:52:13.520 --> 01:52:16.039
Now, my granny used garlic and even though she was
2082
01:52:16.039 --> 01:52:18.840
a self proclaimed witch, there were other witches that she
2083
01:52:18.880 --> 01:52:22.439
didn't want anything to do with. And the old farmhouse
2084
01:52:22.520 --> 01:52:25.920
she lived in, old Victorian farmhouse had the old keyholes
2085
01:52:26.039 --> 01:52:28.159
in the doors, and she would put a cloak of
2086
01:52:28.199 --> 01:52:31.039
garlic in there to keep witches from coming through the keyhole.
2087
01:52:31.039 --> 01:52:32.399
Have you ever heard anything like that?
2088
01:52:33.199 --> 01:52:36.000
Yeah, well, not putting garlic in there, but definitely heard
2089
01:52:36.039 --> 01:52:38.520
about them coming through the keyhole and shape shifting into
2090
01:52:38.560 --> 01:52:41.159
like black cats and things like that to get into They.
2091
01:52:41.039 --> 01:52:45.039
Could come down the fireplace too. And what was the
2092
01:52:45.079 --> 01:52:47.520
other thing she used to do now, of course, when
2093
01:52:47.520 --> 01:52:49.960
anybody died, they hung cloth over the mirror, but that
2094
01:52:50.039 --> 01:52:51.880
was to keep the spirit from getting trapped in the house.
2095
01:52:52.680 --> 01:52:55.680
Their porches, the feeling of the porch, the roof of
2096
01:52:55.720 --> 01:52:58.520
the porch, the underneath of it, anyway, was always painted
2097
01:52:58.560 --> 01:53:00.279
haint and blue. Have you ever heard of this story
2098
01:53:00.319 --> 01:53:04.840
behind that? Yes, that a spirit coming up to enter
2099
01:53:04.880 --> 01:53:06.960
the house up to no good would look up and
2100
01:53:07.000 --> 01:53:08.680
see that and think it was the sky and fly
2101
01:53:08.840 --> 01:53:12.880
up through the porch roof and be gone. Must have worked,
2102
01:53:12.920 --> 01:53:19.079
because I don't think our house was hatted. But I
2103
01:53:19.239 --> 01:53:23.000
really enjoy a lot of the folklore and stuff, particularly
2104
01:53:23.079 --> 01:53:25.479
from the Southern Appleatches. I mean, that's where I grew up,
2105
01:53:25.520 --> 01:53:28.800
but sounds like there's parts of that in the Appleatches
2106
01:53:28.840 --> 01:53:31.720
that are close to you there too than the northern part.
2107
01:53:32.159 --> 01:53:36.239
Oh yeah, yeah, It's definitely been interesting to look at
2108
01:53:36.239 --> 01:53:38.159
some of the overlap between the Northern and the Southern
2109
01:53:38.199 --> 01:53:42.399
Appalaches and our stories. It's just that it seems like
2110
01:53:42.560 --> 01:53:46.720
there was a higher degree of storytelling in general in
2111
01:53:46.720 --> 01:53:50.960
the Southern Appleaches, if that makes sense, and that seems
2112
01:53:51.000 --> 01:53:54.640
to be written down more, at least officially written down
2113
01:53:54.680 --> 01:53:57.319
more in books than there were in the Northern Appalachians.
2114
01:53:57.359 --> 01:54:00.520
And I find that kind of sad, and.
2115
01:54:00.520 --> 01:54:02.960
I attribute to that to people like, uh, you may
2116
01:54:03.000 --> 01:54:04.319
have never heard of them. But there was a guy
2117
01:54:04.319 --> 01:54:07.640
in Knoxville that wrote in the paper named Bert Vincent
2118
01:54:07.760 --> 01:54:10.000
and he had to call Umn on Sundays. I think
2119
01:54:10.000 --> 01:54:12.359
it was like just walking about or something like that.
2120
01:54:13.039 --> 01:54:15.640
He had two volumes out of there was a little
2121
01:54:15.640 --> 01:54:17.119
bit of everything in there, but there was a lot
2122
01:54:17.159 --> 01:54:20.399
of hate and booger and witch tales from the Smokies
2123
01:54:20.439 --> 01:54:23.600
in that area. And had both those books growing up,
2124
01:54:23.640 --> 01:54:26.720
had them around the house. An autograph copy of one
2125
01:54:26.760 --> 01:54:29.319
of them that my mom had picked up somewhere. But
2126
01:54:30.039 --> 01:54:32.239
it was just a part of that, the oral tradition
2127
01:54:32.279 --> 01:54:35.319
and the written tradition. You had people like him look
2128
01:54:35.399 --> 01:54:38.119
for him on Amazon. Hey by this interesting Burt Vincent
2129
01:54:39.239 --> 01:54:44.079
columns for the Knoxville News Sentinel and another person that
2130
01:54:44.199 --> 01:54:47.880
kind of carried that on wash And I can't remember
2131
01:54:47.880 --> 01:54:52.319
the guy's name now, Sam Sam Somebody had Full of
2132
01:54:52.359 --> 01:54:54.399
Thumbs and two left Feet is the name of his book,
2133
01:54:55.199 --> 01:54:59.439
But yeah, wrote I call him later in the kind
2134
01:54:59.439 --> 01:55:01.239
of the same and bird had picked it up, and
2135
01:55:01.279 --> 01:55:03.840
I think Carson Burg or somebody like that. But that
2136
01:55:04.279 --> 01:55:06.319
opened a lot of tales. Of course, the Foxfire books.
2137
01:55:06.359 --> 01:55:09.439
I think it's Foxfire Volume two that has the hains
2138
01:55:09.439 --> 01:55:10.680
and witches and stuff in it.
2139
01:55:11.279 --> 01:55:13.159
That was also on my shelf right now, I'm looking
2140
01:55:13.239 --> 01:55:13.560
right back.
2141
01:55:14.239 --> 01:55:18.359
I love that one. And of course Charles own Price
2142
01:55:19.399 --> 01:55:21.399
was from the South and he wrote a lot about
2143
01:55:21.600 --> 01:55:26.119
little towns, in particular Haunted Jonesborough, Haunted Knoxville, Haunted Nashville,
2144
01:55:26.760 --> 01:55:29.960
and his Canada works. I think he's passed on now,
2145
01:55:30.520 --> 01:55:35.439
but anybody that's interested in Southern hauntings things are his books. Well.
2146
01:55:35.439 --> 01:55:40.239
Srry Well then, of course was it thirteen Alabama Ghosts
2147
01:55:40.239 --> 01:55:43.399
and Jeffrey. I can't remember the lady's name, but she
2148
01:55:43.439 --> 01:55:48.640
did Alabama, Georgia, I think Tennessee too, and Jeffrey was
2149
01:55:48.680 --> 01:55:50.960
her resident ghost. But she wrote a lot of those
2150
01:55:51.000 --> 01:55:54.720
tales out and then of course in historic Jonesboro, Tennessee.
2151
01:55:54.760 --> 01:55:57.039
You have to say that historic part. They're proud of that.
2152
01:55:57.640 --> 01:56:01.800
They have the International Storytelling Convention October. I've been there
2153
01:56:01.960 --> 01:56:05.560
as in the audience, but I've never been there as
2154
01:56:05.560 --> 01:56:09.000
a participant. But that is some fun to hear those
2155
01:56:09.039 --> 01:56:11.960
stories come to life from good storytellers.
2156
01:56:12.319 --> 01:56:15.439
I bet that sounds like a great place to go.
2157
01:56:16.359 --> 01:56:19.119
Now we talked about the bell Witch Cave. We're almost
2158
01:56:19.119 --> 01:56:21.920
out of time here, but have you ever visited the
2159
01:56:21.960 --> 01:56:23.840
Belwitch Cave for the grounds there?
2160
01:56:24.479 --> 01:56:26.800
Yes, yes, I've been down to Adams, Tennessee a couple
2161
01:56:26.760 --> 01:56:28.680
of times. The first time that I went down, I
2162
01:56:28.680 --> 01:56:30.960
actually wasn't able to go to the cave because there
2163
01:56:30.960 --> 01:56:33.960
had been torrential downpours in the cave flood.
2164
01:56:33.800 --> 01:56:37.600
Red River floods like you wouldn't believe right there. But yeah, Christo,
2165
01:56:38.079 --> 01:56:40.199
the owner or her husband own that. She's a friend
2166
01:56:40.199 --> 01:56:44.920
of mine and the first time that I went, there
2167
01:56:44.960 --> 01:56:49.039
was nobody there who got like a personal tour. She's
2168
01:56:49.079 --> 01:56:52.479
got photographs coming back then. This was in the early nineties.
2169
01:56:52.760 --> 01:56:55.039
She had a couple of photo albums full of pictures
2170
01:56:55.079 --> 01:56:57.359
that she had taken, a full of pictures that people
2171
01:56:57.399 --> 01:57:00.399
had sent back of anominal of stuff down there. I
2172
01:57:00.399 --> 01:57:03.199
had my first digital camera and no Kodak had like
2173
01:57:03.279 --> 01:57:06.039
half a megapixel I think. But I got some weird
2174
01:57:06.119 --> 01:57:10.279
pictures there too. But if anybody has an interest in
2175
01:57:10.319 --> 01:57:12.960
that at all, it's worth checking out. Certainly.
2176
01:57:13.159 --> 01:57:13.800
Absolutely.
2177
01:57:14.079 --> 01:57:14.279
Yeah.
2178
01:57:14.760 --> 01:57:17.159
When I was there and actually got to go to
2179
01:57:17.199 --> 01:57:19.479
the cave, it was a similar situation. I had to
2180
01:57:19.520 --> 01:57:21.720
wait for more people to show up for them to
2181
01:57:21.760 --> 01:57:24.399
do a tour. So I sat with Chris and talked
2182
01:57:24.399 --> 01:57:26.800
with her for probably an hour or two hours before
2183
01:57:27.119 --> 01:57:28.920
enough people showed up and they're like, Okay, now we
2184
01:57:28.960 --> 01:57:29.800
can go into the cave.
2185
01:57:30.199 --> 01:57:32.439
Yeah. I think she had a couple of little books
2186
01:57:32.439 --> 01:57:35.119
that she sold. I bought those, and then it's before
2187
01:57:35.119 --> 01:57:37.439
she had the gift shop, and we sat out there.
2188
01:57:37.479 --> 01:57:39.479
There was like a gazebo or a picnic table or
2189
01:57:39.479 --> 01:57:42.000
something up there, and she showed me all these pictures
2190
01:57:42.319 --> 01:57:44.439
and then talked about all the stuff that people have
2191
01:57:44.560 --> 01:57:45.800
taken that's come back.
2192
01:57:46.600 --> 01:57:49.520
Yeah, yep, exactly. That's where you get into the cursed objects,
2193
01:57:49.600 --> 01:57:52.439
the rocks and things. And even now now, what she
2194
01:57:52.520 --> 01:57:55.560
does is she'll get porcelain dolls and paint them up
2195
01:57:55.560 --> 01:57:58.880
to look like zombies or something grotesque and sell them.
2196
01:57:59.359 --> 01:58:01.880
And they're getting sent back now as well.
2197
01:58:03.680 --> 01:58:05.000
That way, should just sell them again.
2198
01:58:05.680 --> 01:58:07.119
Yeah, that's exactly what she does.
2199
01:58:07.279 --> 01:58:08.680
A lot of times when they're not there and they
2200
01:58:08.720 --> 01:58:10.439
locked the gate, she said come back, and there would
2201
01:58:10.439 --> 01:58:12.760
be a rock or something with a note tied to it.
2202
01:58:12.800 --> 01:58:14.560
So I took this out of the cave. I'm sorry,
2203
01:58:14.560 --> 01:58:16.479
please put it back. It was near this place or
2204
01:58:16.479 --> 01:58:18.960
that place, and I get it. There's a lot of
2205
01:58:18.960 --> 01:58:22.720
places like that, petrified forest, other caves, Mammoth Cave. There's
2206
01:58:22.760 --> 01:58:25.159
places where you just don't take stuff because you might
2207
01:58:25.520 --> 01:58:28.159
take home more than you bargained with. The troll bridge
2208
01:58:28.199 --> 01:58:32.319
outside of Portland, Oregon, I've heard weird stories about people
2209
01:58:32.319 --> 01:58:34.279
that took troll dolls from there. You're supposed to leave them,
2210
01:58:34.359 --> 01:58:38.199
not take them. But anyway, we're almost out of time
2211
01:58:38.239 --> 01:58:40.399
for this episode. Thank you for joining us here on
2212
01:58:40.479 --> 01:58:43.880
everything out there. Any parting words for the audience.
2213
01:58:44.920 --> 01:58:50.159
Well, thanks for having me. I've loved being here. Parting words, man,
2214
01:58:50.279 --> 01:58:52.359
just stay weird, stay.
2215
01:58:52.159 --> 01:58:55.920
Weird, better weird than plastic. I love it all right.
2216
01:58:55.960 --> 01:58:57.880
And I'll leave links to the show notes where you
2217
01:58:57.920 --> 01:59:01.359
can find small Town Monsters. And again, Heather, thank you
2218
01:59:01.399 --> 01:59:05.039
for joining us. Go ahead and sign off here once again,
2219
01:59:05.079 --> 01:59:07.319
you've been listening to everything out there on the Clyde
2220
01:59:07.399 --> 01:59:11.000
Lewis Ground zero Radio Network. I'm Steve Stockton. I'll see
2221
01:59:11.000 --> 01:59:13.319
you a little further on down the trail. Tell your animals,
2222
01:59:13.319 --> 01:59:16.199
I said, Hi. Good night everybody,