S2 E46 Dave Gibb - C.H.A.P.S.

Lee - Paranormal Prism: Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of the Paranormal Prism. Today I am talking to a guy relatively local but about five hours away. This is Dave Gibb from CHAPS the Canadian Haunting and Paranormal Society. Dave, welcome my friend, how are doing?
Dave Gibb: I I welcome back. I I'm I'm very happy to be here. I'm doing fine. resting at home after work, so where where could I be better?
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah, I actually walked to work and as I left the office building all I could see towards Quebec and Gatineau was like really really black clouds
Dave Gibb: good.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: and I thought I'm gonna get wet, I'm gonna get wet but I just got home, I got changed and then within 10 minutes kind of like the heavens opened so it's like perfect timing.
Dave Gibb: Yeah, I normally get that on my commute. I I fortunately I I'm too far from work to to walk. I got about an hour and a half drive each way, so yeah. Yeah. Gotta commute into the city.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: yeah, days of doing that hopefully are like long gone, but I think the most that I've ever done is like two hours each way.
Dave Gibb: Yeah, yeah. That's it's certainly enough to make you look forward to when you're investigating. Let's do something we enjoy.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: That's it. And that's the reason why you hear us. But before we go into chaps, can we start at the very beginning? if you can remember your first paranormal experience.
Dave Gibb: Okay, so kind of going into like the history of of my life like that, which doesn't really attach on to what I do to investigate, I grew up in in the spiritualist church. you know, my mother was a founder of the local chapter of of the spiritualist church. And so for say up to my teen years, all the psychics and mediums and whatnot were really heavily a part of my life. Going into adulthood, however, and so I you know, you have those experiences younger, but into adulthood, I I gotten into martial arts and I was training with different teachers. One of those teachers who really became my core teacher, was based in in Maryland in the States and was just outside of Gettysburg. So we would go to Gettysburg every night. And he was a Colombian guy, big big huge Colombian and very, very to the mysteries. So we'd just walk around the Gatysburg battlefields at night and go here and go there. So the one night we were driving through this back road, it wasn't part of the big general park. It was just a it was an access road for a museum or something. And we had watched what from what I assume at the time was it looked like a lantern. Coming down the hill, getting closer to us. And then as it came closer to the car, all of a sudden it was like a flintlock pistol had gone off in the car. We had a big flare of spark. And of course, Sensei drove away like a madman, this and that. But it was kind of from that point that I said, look, there's there's something more to this. I mean, there's what I've had in the past, and then and this. Which was really my first hands-on paranormal experience. And you know, started experimenting with things. I I investigated, I went back and forth, I've been back and forth to Gettysburg fourteen or fifteen times, to investigate and minor experiments, hard to experiment on on an outdoor location, but just trying to get the feeling for it and and the place never let down. small investigations of my own. And then in two thousand and four, two thousand and five, after kind of doing my own research, I founded CHAPS, originally in Pembroke, Ontario, near Ottawa. religiously conservative town. Don't want to hear about this kind of stuff. so I pushed back as hard as I could. We formed a team and started investigating the Ottawa Valley. and eventually got busy enough when I moved for work. I moved back to the Toronto area to my hometown of Oshawa. I opened my chap's office here. I kept an office up in Pembroke and had an office down near London, Ontario. For a while, you know, we were handling 75 to 100 investigations a year. Each team would have almost every single weekend weekend night booked. to you know tough because we're not we're not a revenue generating team. I don't really do publics and I don't charge money. Obviously it that's that's against any paramount rule that we would we would set charging people money. got incredibly busy. But really it all stemmed from that one experience and just wanting to like find out really what's there. didn't really go the spiritualistic route that one would think my my childhood would. You know, by then you know, I'd be using tarot cards and all the whatnot. But the one of the things about being a spiritualist and being trained in all the medium ways was that you really had that nose for the shenanigans that get pulled off in those ways. you know, I can go to a psychic fair, I can do a tarot card reading and this and that and listen for key points that people are saying so I could give them the answer they want to hear. So I didn't go that route. I went with a more logical, pragmatic route to investigation. In the beginning, you know, we did, you know, we had a couple toys here and there, but I think we're we're a very low tech more experimental team that kind of just works on logic. I don't I don't allow certain devices on my my investigations. look they have their place in time for certain teams. If you're if you're running tours, I understand you need to have some things that actually show. but those devices are fallible and and I I don't want that to be that way. So therefore my hit my history didn't come into play to my investigation. unfortunately that that led that led to a lot of crossed words with a lot of other teams. But yeah, I mean so so my experiences were luckily like a good a good I really wasn't until really my experience wasn't until my adulthood. You know I was I was in my early twenties before I had an experience. I don't have a long historical study of, you know, my grandmother walking into my room as a ghost when I was nine. it was it really was. It was like most most things in my life started at twenty four. My career, my paranormal investigation and my martial arts career. So I mean everything was seemed to be like twenty four years old. It wasn't like everybody else. It seems to have all these great thunderous stories about when they were young. I I I I'm not I don't have anything interesting like that.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah. And I'm exactly the same. When I was a lot younger and I still living in the UK, I was a skeptic for the longest time. And then it wasn't until, what was this, be about 2005, 2006, when I was in the emergency services that I encountered a paranormal incident. So that kind of got my change of thought, if you like. But I'm also, I kind of agree with what you said about being minimalistic with your equipment, because I'm a firm believer in if somebody calls us to a private house, before you even look at anything along the paranormal line, you have to rule out everything that could be natural. So that's going to be like your faulty wiring with your EMF. And do you have any black mold? And do you have any rodents? And all this kind of stuff. So I believe that you have to rule out everything natural before you start going down the supernatural and paranormal route.
Dave Gibb: A hundred percent. You know, we go into a home and there's been a num numerous amount of occasions you know, like where, you know, we'll test the water pressure just so you can hear the knock of the pipes in the walls to realize something's not secured or there's a glug noise or whatever. There's a logical sense. And when you teach speak about EMF and I think one of the things that people in the paranormal don't don't really comprehend is the fact that EMF is based off Theory. There's nothing proven that you know that detects spiritual life. We don't know what spiritual life is. So what we're doing is throwing casting nets out there to see if we can grab a piece of that. EMF, however, obviously does have a physical rationale. And some things like I don't I I can I was speaking on a a course the other day about there was a gentleman We had we had done an investigation. He was in his nineties. His son had called us in. He lived on his own. his wife, still alive, but in the hospital with dementia. And he was hearing broadcasts at night. He was hearing noise at night, things talking to him. So we we beautiful, beautiful cottage home on the lake. And we'd gone around and we had done our base reads, which is really all EMF is for, frankly, is to see what problems might exist. And you know what? We're in his bedroom and I have my trifield shut off, turned right off. Like it like it bred so high it turned the machine off. And I went over it, we took several EMF detectors and realized it was his alarm clock. So of course people don't realize that that's that's emitting a field that can mess with the synapses in your brain, in in a simpleton's term. You know, you're basically lying in a MRI all night long. And of course that that can you know change like your medication could change what you see and EMF can change what you see and feel. I told the son right off the bat, throw the alarm clock out. And you know what? I called the son back three weeks later, I'm like, How's your dad? 'Cause we didn't get any other results. There's no nothing. And he said, Dad's fine, he's not hearing anything. Okay, so that's what we're there for is to Obviously you're right. Tell them what it could be, what it may be, and even when we do end up with evidence, which is one out of ten, you know, I'll present it to them, but it's up to them to choose. You know, I'm never gonna go into a house and talk about some freaking portal in the basement and freak the whole
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Ha ha.
Dave Gibb: order out. You know, I I will let them know that this noise and if it's an audio hit for me, I don't Just do noises, I don't do or something. It's gotta be a multisyllabic and and graded EVP. I'll give it to them and I won't even tell them what I think it says until they tell me what they think it says. And you know they can take it or leave it. I won't ever say your house is haunted. I've never said your house is haunted. it's it's important to keep the logic of pragmatism involved with everything. And you're not going in there to scare people. Too many, too many teams, and we've done homes where four or five teams have been there, you know, and they're all like, Well, you know, they've told it was in the closet. Well, of course your portal's in the closet or in the basement. That's where they all are. That's where we buy them and then install them, right? It's in
Lee - Paranormal Prism: You
Dave Gibb: the same freaking place. And you probably have the you probably have the tall man with the tall hat in period clothing. I guess everybody only comes from one period of time, you know, eighteen fifties or whatever seems to be the dress code. So I don't I don't do that. And I'm very I'm very real with my clients. you know, so yeah, pragmatism and logic.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah, because when I was part of a team, we went to a location not far from you, but closer to you than what it is to Ottawa. The owner was saying, there's a lot of activity in the dining room. There's a lot of activity in the lounge. And I prefer to use a trifield like yourself rather than a K2 because you can't record anything on the K2. And the owner was going, yeah, sat at the dining room table and there's so much activity and people pick up this and that. And I put the trifield on the table and it's going kind of. quite big scores and I'm like something not right here so after she walked out and left us to it I put it on the floor but before she'd left I asked her what was below us and we was on the third floor at this building she went it's an identical apartment so one of the guys looked at me and go what's up and I went this faulty wiring here somewhere I'm assuming from the light fixture for the apartment below because the trifield was going like, like, yeah. And then she said that the other place of high activity was in the small lounge. You've got two sofas and against one of the sofas, yeah, there's a lot of activity here. So again, got the trifield and again, it's going ridiculously crazy. So I walk around the small wall into the kitchen and there's a big power box on the wall. So it's like, yeah, exhibit A, exhibit B. So we can pretty much rule out both of these as being like dodgy wiring.
Dave Gibb: Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's pretty it's pretty regular occurrence. You know. And and I I mean the trend to I mean Almost look, I mean almost everything can be explained, period. I mean sometimes I see on and and that you're speaking about the K two. look every team has got a handful of K twos. They're cheap, they're easy, and they give immediate satisfaction, you see. That's that's one of the things with the toys of today or it's not today, I mean we've been doing, you know, this it's been around a while, but devices like K two, you know, with its simplistic, you know, receptors or hurts whatever it you know I mean let's just admit it it picks up on s on simple stuff and it you know we we'll use a K2. If if somebody's doing a solo and doesn't want to have to pay attention to things we might throw a K2 down because it might alert you to something and then you gotta go look and see what it is. If anything, if you're bored maybe it'll give you a reason to ask a question. If you're in in if you're in that mode to doing single and asking questions rather than conversation or just leaving devices run. So but but the K two and the REM pod and the the ridiculous connect camera, you know, they're they're for immediate satisfaction. They're so that the team can walk around and know that they're contacting ghosts. Because real investigating, you know, is boring as shit. And it's not it's not satisfying because in the end you're like, look, I went over, you know, we had say three audio recorders going throughout your house. We went over sixteen hours of audio. nothing. Right? Nobody wants to hear that. All you gotta do is take a look at all the influencers and all the people that are are doing this. It they have to have something to sell what they're doing and make it exciting. When we all got into paranormal TV, I mean, for me, I mean it was probably most haunted, actually, was probably the first one that really hooked me up. and I had known the one lad there, his name escapes me now from the martial arts circles before even that show. But you know, you had Derek Accor with his wonderful Scottish brogue. Because every medium is Scottish. You know?
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Ha ha ha ha ha.
Dave Gibb: they're all scoochish, you know, and you know, you had him and and the whole bit, but it was entertainment. It drove you to it. And look, Richard got the greatest locations. Everybody wants to investigate a freaking castle, of course. And then we had ghost hunters. I'm very fortunate. You know, I have a personal relationship with those lads. But you know what? They you if you take a look at really what they were doing, it it's kinda boring. You gotta do something to sell it. And then going beyond that, everything else on T V just turned into, you know, K twos like
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah.
Dave Gibb: I like boring stuff, very low tech stuff. My I still use an actual video camera. You know, we we've got the
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Wow.
Dave Gibb: we've got a public investigation coming up. And I know that sounds silly from for me to say and think, but people don't do like I don't know, like the mostly I see what they're doing nowadays as they're filming in in the first person or whatever, or them themselves doing something in their reactions. we we film in the third person on a wide scope so we can catch our our particular movements so we could debug and what's there. but we're still using handy cams. And I I didn't realize like that's really old technology, right? Like one of my handy cams still has a hard drive in it. Like I
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Wow.
Dave Gibb: mean we just stopped using the ones with the mini DB cassettes like three years ago because it just got more of a pain in the ass to import it.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: you
Dave Gibb: You know, we went all out and bought like this nice Panasonic and and now I realize that's old tech. the cameras that we use are actually still cameras. I think they're like the youngest camera we have is nineteen years old.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Wow.
Dave Gibb: I had to buy a new D VR system because the old one with all the cords and all that nut was just getting too much to carry. It's 'cause I'm getting older. so I went wireless. But even then that sucks because that can be interrupted. But I do I do prefer the old the old tech and I don't I don't really like the sensationalistic. I prefer it if maybe a bit sense of humor and stuff is what actually makes things interesting. But you know, my videos don't get thousands and millions of views. Probably because probably because we're boring.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah, that's right. But yeah, it's I totally agree with what with what you say because, Nine times out of ten, you can be sat in a dark room by yourself, you're talking to yourself and you get nothing. But if we do find something that we can't explain, like I've got a couple of friends that I can send audio to or video to, and they will break it down and go, okay, the audio wasn't added or whatever you saw wasn't tampered with in any way, shape or form. So then you can rule out that there's any kind of... like professional interference, let's call it that. But if we do find something that we can't explain, I'm like you, I don't say, this is a ghost or this is, I just go, this, cannot explain what it is. We know what it isn't, but we can't say what it is. Now, unfortunately,
Dave Gibb: Yes, right.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: when you do get these positive hits, you're unexplained like, examples, you know, that pile just gets bigger and bigger. Yeah. We don't know everything that's going on in the world. Yeah. People, you know, you see the Northern Lights, so people see, you know, like UAPs in the sky, but it could be anything because we don't know exactly what's going on. Yeah. We don't know what's being, what's being tested by, you know, the big government and all this kind of stuff. So for people to, like you say, we see it on TV all the time. yeah, that was a spirit from like say 1850. But you never kind of get the young kid that died 20 years ago that's got the ripped jeans, the baseball cap on backwards and calling everybody like, you know, dude or anything like that. You just don't get that.
Dave Gibb: No, no, that's because that's that's too contemporary of what we do. I am I'm really glad that you you brought up the whole sending off your your your your evidence. Some people are very protective of it, they they put it on their video and and that's what it is. But I can tell you like so you're you're into collaborative investigation, which is super important. And I think that what that speaks to is is like a lack of ego, which is good. 'Cause like we'll go through the hits. My wife is My wife is the one that actually goes over the audio first time. And then I go through the hits with her. And then we share the hits with our team in a private group. And then I take those hits and I'll share them with, say, I've got a friend from CPRI in Virginia, and I'll send him the hits and he'll share it with his group. And then obviously I may share that with the Taps family in the TAPS family group. So I've now got 60 odd teams listening to it. Right. So in the very end, I want to be able to go back to that client and go, this has been peer reviewed by a hundred people at this point in time, you know, and we'll say 71 of them couldn't come up with why that's fair. And again, that's also why we we we film in the third, so that you know, we're gonna be able to my wife will get that that point in the video. Or that point in the audio, we'll track that in the video, find that spot, and probably half of the hits will be debunked right off the bat. Just because you'll see somebody's mouth moving and you realize that though what it sounds like you're saying Satan, you know, you were actually, you know,
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Ha ha.
Dave Gibb: saying, you know what I mean? we we've had ironically, so this brings up another story. we had investigated at the the Cornwall Jail, not Cornwall, England, obviously Cornwall just south of. Ottawa and one of my geez he hasn't been on my team in fifteen years now, but one of the older lads on our team, we used to put him on solo duty because he said silly things. And he was in an isolation jail cell. We put a d D VR camera in there with him and he had an audio. And you know he was just talking about well, how did how did you end up in here? And we got this. Overturned like that. Overturned. I'm like shit, that's that's a court term. Hold on. So we spent weeks, weeks to try to work with this until somebody on my team again, let let's share this with everybody, let everybody's words come in. It's important that you know, because I run the team, I'm definitely not always right. he sh she said, take the video back about five minutes and just watch it. And we started hearing Little gurgles. And we realized he was just digesting his supper. That was his stomach that made a word. Because
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Wow.
Dave Gibb: we were listening for it, right?
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah.
Dave Gibb: So you had the stomach just going sounded like overturned. And there were 20 of us that couldn't figure out what this was. So, like for as much as you think it's easy, it ain't. But this is also why,
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah.
Dave Gibb: you know, when I go back to the client. You know, I y this is what I've got.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah. And it's funny that you mentioned the SDG jail because I got a potential EVP. So, yeah, I spent 13 years as a paramedic. So, yeah, I know how people breathe. I know how people, when they're not breathing, et cetera, et cetera. And I was walking in the Hell's Angel wing at the bottom of the corridor, the SDG jail. And I'm literally saying, yeah. And by myself, my nearest colleague is either in solitary or down the corridor. So you know how far away they are. And I wasn't talking that loud. basically, I just said, if there's anybody here, please make a sign, make a sound. I would very much appreciate that. And I didn't hear it at the time, but straight after when I was doing the review, I heard a double breath, kind of like a, I kind of like, well, it wasn't me because I know how people breathe and I'm not going to go around all night. Otherwise, I'm going to go see a doctor because I've got something wrong with me. I sent it to the two guys. They couldn't figure out what it was. And one of my buddies that lives in Montreal, I sent it to him and he broke it down into voice waves. So he goes, this is you talking. This is me talking. This is me banging on a table. and this is what you heard. And it was a completely different voice way. So, yeah, I'm not going to say, well, it was a spirit. It was a ghost or whatever. It just goes on that unexplained pile because we cannot explain. And it's been evaluated by somebody who knows about media. he broke it down and he couldn't figure out what it was either. So, yeah, I was quite impressed with the fact that we could not explain what it was. So I do kind of go well yeah we've got this and it's been tested and we can't explain it. So yeah I'm a complete like professional in that sense. We went to another place we went to where did we go it was a mill somewhere I can't remember what it's called now off the top of my head and I heard kind of a kind of noise and I actually heard that live as I was walking past this table. So immediate, I got the body cam on and everything, my immediate thought was did I swish past the table or past it. So I did that a couple of times and no it wasn't the same sound. And like I'm kind of walking around trying to figure out what it was. You could hear a smoke alarm chirping in the background so it was a completely different sound. And I sent that to another guy that I know. who's got a video specialist. And like I say, he came back with, you know, that sound, it wasn't added. It wasn't, wasn't, it wasn't you making it. wasn't like something electrical making it. wasn't a vehicle. It wasn't your shoe. And again, we could not figure out what it was. So again, on your next blame pile. And it's so, yeah, and you were, you must have the same thing. Like you said, like you mentioned where you don't know what it is but you certainly know what it isn't.
Dave Gibb: Isn't right. Yeah, I mean and that that's that's for the next step that we take things, right? Which is to do the the audio analysis, you know, to really break it down is like I I want, you know, you got you have a desire and a want for something to be real and true, right? You want to caught that. you know, but you know, to send it off, you know, for spectral analysis or whatever. I I'll say I'll generally again do that with my partner team in the States. They've got the programs. Sandy has the programs, my wife, and we'll all do that. You're right. And they make and you see the fact that like there's there's no there's no decibel exchange on it. There's no, you know, there it's it there you you could see what a voice is like, right? And you know it it it lends credence to it. It's it's nice to have that. but you're right, you know, they it it is really the going through it the analysis of an investigation to decide. what what things aren't and are and then then you've got that void space, which might be what your evidence is. you know, I mean we we just we did an investigation last year and we're this is when that came up quite a bit to the analysis. Smith Smith Falls jail. So hour outside Ottawa closed for I mean we're not talking like this isn't a jail that closed and then they revamped it for the public to come walk around and do tours. This place was a shithole. Like lead paint coming off the walls, dead animals all over the place. Elliot actually hooked me up with
Lee - Paranormal Prism: yeah.
Dave Gibb: place. And the guy's trying to sell it. And I don't know. We gave him a couple hundred bucks. He gave us the code. and I was we didn't get anything there in the sense of when we wanted it. We actually and this building has No wiring, there's no power, there's nothing in it. It was freezing. I was just handing out equipment. You know, we had it in the ready room in the front. Like all of us teams, we have too much crap to carry. I've got a room full of equipment. I'm handing an audio to somebody, and when we were going over the we don't have the video cameras on yet, like we're not even active. But that's when we caught what we caught was then. What we caught now we're in the office area and we caught a I think it said move along. I trying to remember the there's been a few investigations since, but it was move along. But it sounded like it was coming from like a public address system. It wasn't a voice, it wasn't present, it was like that. And I sent that down to the states and you know, absolutely flatlined, no decibels. no under analysis is this isn't a it's a it's a completely foreign voice, yet it was as clear as a belt. so I I really I enjoy that part of it, you know, like because it because you see, most teams nowadays they want to go and you know for shits and giggles, they go around the house, they say whatever, they get all their little toys. I saw somebody hanging up in the tree out there, and there's a dead person on the floor down here. I feel him. His name is Norman. Right. But like I like, you spend the amount of time to really go through that damn case and you get that one piece, and you share that piece with a bunch of other people like us. And all of a sudden, now you got something kind of concrete. It doesn't prove anything. There's no such thing as proof for what we do. But you know what I mean? Like it's compelling. That will drive you to that next investigation. You know, when we have all the drama and BS that we have amongst all the paranormal teams. Sometimes, you know, I'm like, I'm almost 60 years old. I don't want to go through this anymore. but it but you hear something like that and somebody sends you the analysis and and the data backs up the fact that this this isn't what it sounds like. This is there's not there's nothing there, but there is something there. And that that just it gives you it compels you. That that's why I don't like to BS around about it because I'm
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah.
Dave Gibb: much more excited with something that I'm not lying to myself about.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: That's it. you have to be honest, like you said, you have to be honest with yourself. And something that I find fascinating, there was a bunch of us that went to a location in Gatineau a few months ago now. And there was six of us plus the caretaker, if you like. And we're in the, I'm sat in the reception area. We've got the NVR up and we've got cameras. in six different locations around the building. So looking at the MVR, you can see where everybody is. And if you turned your head, you could see where the caretaker was, kind of like in a bar area, but he'd got the door closed and you could see him moving, the shadow of him moving behind the door. So I'm looking at the MVR and I've got, there's five guys and we've got six locations. and I can see where each one is at all times. I've got a headset on so that I can clearly hear what the guys are saying. I'm on a tile floor. And I literally, you know, like if you're in a building that's got like wooden floors, you can feel that pressure of somebody walking. I kind of felt that right behind me. The pressure of somebody walking on wood, but it was a tile floor.
Dave Gibb: Yeah yeah.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: I thought it was the caretaker, but he was still in his office and all the five guys in the five locations were all sat down. at that particular time. So for me to experience what I can only sense was footsteps, they're quite heavy footsteps as well, I've got no answer for that and I can't explain it.
Dave Gibb: Isn't isn't that some of the most it's almost like a a personal gratification, which is awesome because that keeps you going, but it's so frustrating that you can't you can only tell stories about it, right? That's
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah.
Dave Gibb: for me, that's investigating Gettysburg because there's almost no point in taking anything. You you're just walking around and feeling but that's magical too, right? Like if you leave the gear down and just 'cause I'm a I'm a decently skeptical individual. So if I'm feeling something, then it's like, wow. Do you know what I had that? I was investigating in the United States at a at a in the southern states at a hospital. And I was with another team that was hosting me from the Taps family. And we were in this massive hospital. It was absolutely intimidating how big. Closed down. And the hallways I remember were, man, I'm gonna say 40, 40, 50 rooms long on each hallway. And we were sitting on a picnic table in the foyer. I'm not gonna say foyer like they do in the States, foyer. and we were sitting there and just looking, looking down the hallway, and all of a sudden, so I see my friend Bolt run. Okay, so he's going down the hallway, hallway's dark, right? I'm short, I have little legs. Look, I'm a Welsh background, you know.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Ha ha.
Dave Gibb: No. I'm running down the hallway and I'm following the whites of the soles of his shoes. Okay? So here I am, my head's down. That's probably stupid while I'm running, but I'm just following his shoes. Run, run, run, run, run. And then he veers off into a room. I go into the room and he's not in that room. Okay? So then this is and then I go out into the hallway, he's still sitting. On that picnic table, which was about 40 rooms down the hallway. So I'm like, and he's like, what were you running for? I'm like, I was chasing you. He says, I haven't gotten off this table. So that was the only physical ever experience
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah.
Dave Gibb: I've ever had. But you know, you tell I tell that story a lot, and like that really drives me, right? Like just having that motion, but I can't prove what it was, but I know I was chasing something. Because for like 200 feet I was looking at white running shoes. Right? which I guess weren't there.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yes.
Dave Gibb: you're right. That's just the personal experience. It's one of the rare personal experiences I've had. but that that was enough to keep me going for another couple of years. So now I better have another one soon. Because there's too much.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: yeah because yeah because I earlier I was talking to earlier a couple of years ago and he was doing a public event at the the I always say it wrong wrong because I'm from England but the L'Oreal jail at Hawkesbury yeah
Dave Gibb: Like now, yeah. Yeah.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: I don't speak French I say it how I say and He called it, yeah, he asked me to go down because he does not like going into death row. It's like, yeah, we both know Elliot. He's a big guy. So,
Dave Gibb: Big dude. Yeah.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: yeah, so it's like, yeah, okay, I'll come down and give you a set up. So I asked the wife if she wanted to go and she went, yeah, sure. So because we wanted to investigate, in the, just after winter the following year, I've got my little camera with me and there was a couple of instances that like really. kind of threw me a little bit. The first one we went out into the courtyard where the gallows are
Dave Gibb: Yeah, yeah.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: and the wife wanted a picture on the gallows so we took a picture and as she's coming down, Elliot's, you know that little walkway that's got the metal fence. Elliot says to me, the last three people to get hung were buried in this courtyard, can you guess where? And as the wife's walking across the grass she goes... here, here, and here. And I'm like, Elliot looks at me. I look at Elliot and go like WTF. And she went, yeah, it kind of went really cold. Then it warmed up. Then it went really cold again. And it warmed. And it was like, OK. And then later on when we're going around, so where the stairs are, where you go up to Death Row, you've got like a little kind of area. behind it and there was a room that was being redecorated. Decorators boards are on the floor. The smell of paint was in the air and if you touched it you would still get touches of paint. It had been decorated that day and I kind of got this feeling of a sensation of a stroke down my face. Kind of like, okay. I said earlier, I think I've just been stroked. You went, yeah, that happens around here a lot. And I thought, yeah, cheers dude. But my immediate thought was, was it a cobweb, was it a spider, was it a leaf? But you're quite deep into the jail there. So it wasn't a leaf coming down. It definitely wasn't spiders because it had been decorated that day. So unless your spider is on like speed or, you know, on drugs. It's not going to make a web and climb up there in a couple of hours. So I had absolutely no idea about what it was. And then when we went back in the February, we had a medium with us. I'm a bit like you. I refuse to give them any information. So as I'm walking around with her and she's asking me questions, I'm going, I'm not giving you the answer. I know the answer, but I'm not giving you the answer. So you kind of make a work for it a little bit. When we got to that room, she said, I can see a figure stood in there. What's he doing? He went, just looking at us. And I went, OK. So a few months ago, I'd got what felt like a stroke down my face. And now you're telling me that there's a guy stood in there. So your mind starts working like tenfold.
Dave Gibb: yeah.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Sort of like. Was it, is it, all this kind of stuff. But just because you experience something and I don't, and if we're stood next door to each other, just because I didn't experience anything, I can't call you a liar because it's a personal experience. And that's important when you go out and do your investigation. Someone could air an EVP, stood here, but I don't hear it, stood here kind of thing.
Dave Gibb: Yeah, I mean it it it true enough. I mean like one's one's person's evidence could be another person's you know, non starter. And i it's it's important and I think that with personal experience it's gotta be counted as that. As long as you're as long as you're honest about it, you know. I mean that you're not you're not citing that personal experience as a rationale for saying somewhere is haunted or had activities. You know, you could just say, look, I had a personal experience, but whether that's, you know, me or who knows, it could just have been a a nervous feeling or something, you know. maybe I took too much out of it in that night. and I'm just too happy. it's it's hard to know, right?
Lee - Paranormal Prism: That's it. going through some of your some of the locations, like you said, you said that the list hasn't been updated. We've
Dave Gibb: No, I'm
Lee - Paranormal Prism: mentioned the lot. I'm just going to call it the L'Oreal because I can't say it the other way. But did you experience anything there that what you can remember?
Dave Gibb: My daughter did. Fiona and Abby, my two daughters, are actually with the team now that they're adults, they're almost 30. I remember, and my one daughter, Fiona, who is with the team, is is quite a she's quite brazen. I'd say, I'd say she's loud. And we gave her solo duty. I thought, you know what we're gonna do here, Fiona? We're gonna put the camera here, we're gonna put all these devices here. we're gonna shut the the cell door and we actually went as far as to jam something in there so she couldn't get out of it. and we're gonna go outside and have a smoke. Right. Caud we went up and then on the radio, within within second I wouldn't say seconds, I'll say two or three minutes, she was freaking out. You know what I mean? You've gotta get in here, get me out of this thing, get me out of this room, get me out of this room. And she's not a panicker. She's like I I had her on investigations as bait when she was eleven and twelve years old. So she's grown up around this. But she was white as a ghost. I don't know, she just felt something around her. that was that was that wasn't even upstairs in death row, that was just in the the regular cells. But she's she's a very like when she does A VP sessions. she was a tru okay, I'll have to preface this. She was she was a pretty troubled kid. All right, like I had her in a group home. She was she was troubled, you know, setting fires to school bathrooms when she was like 14, all kinds of just bad. So she has a lot of empathetic conversation with spirit, especially being in, you know, incarceration, talking about, you know, her growing up and this and that. So that may have lent to it. I know that Fiona and I do a lot of role play, like behind visitors windows and that kind of stuff. she had the real experience. And I know that the one time when I investigated and I brought Wes Coleman from Cops Paranormal. Wes is a a riot a riot squad captain at one of the prisons. So I brought him and me and him were in opposing death rows, yelling and screaming back and forth at each other. and I know personally just the the we were trying to get at each other, we were role-playing, and we were hearing things dropping off of tables and all kinds of stuff up there. not that it could be proven, we can't see it. We're in a cell. so we kind of had experiences there. Sometimes though you work yourself up, you know, like I
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah.
Dave Gibb: feel like a like like okay, like when I we've done Moundsville Penitentiary in the States a couple times, and you always get yourself all worked up. And when something, you know, I think what's disappointing. so I try not to get too worked up. I try not to get too too emotionally acute to the place. But in the same time, I want to enjoy the place too and feel it if it comes to me. Lorignal was very subtle. It was lots of stuff happening where we weren't. But I think the biggest thing was my daughter, who was as white as a ghost. And you couldn't scare my daughter with a machine gun. So she and she was for the first time I've ever seen absolutely terrified. So
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Wow.
Dave Gibb: that that for me gives me payment for that place. We've gone up to to Lorignal a couple times. said we're very very fortunate a very fortunate ally in elliot in the way that elliot you know because he does his tour groups and that and he's so historical like his his historical knowledge is just it's such a vast knowledge base for even for me because you know for some reason I just don't have the time to look up these places and do the whole knockback history of it. He he knows because it's part of what he does. Like on a daily because he talks to people about what happens. And all these places are very fortunate that Elliot sort of is like, hey, you know, let's get an opportunity. Why don't you come in here? And you know, I I'm very, very lucky to have Elliot in my life. is a great guy. And he's actually I'm a very for such a big guy, he's he's he's a he's a cushy guy. I get very amped up. I'm very high octane about certain things. especially like with the drama in our little world. I can't tell you, I mean if you've been doing this for a while, you probably wanted to quit sixty-five times, collapse the team, forget it. I don't want any of this. He's like the angel on the shoulder. you know, I'm I'm or was quite quite right winged about things. He's quite left wing. So, you know, he'd be like, Dave, you know, calm down. You know, this is really what's going on and And after about two hours, I read what he says again, and I'm like, he's right. He's right.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah.
Dave Gibb: I'm completely overreacting. So I'm I'm very glad. I just want to have a shout out to him. And you know what? I mean, what's funny? My wife and I, we did an East Coast road trip. We drove out to Nova Scotia a couple of years ago. And like, honestly, who do I bump into in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia? Elliot, walking up the street with his kid. I'm like, like we both live thousands of kilometers away from here, and I bump into you. And and the province before that, I so I'm in this little town, Perth something, I don't know. It was like 200 people. And the another guy that runs a team in Ottawa, John, was in that town at his grandmother's house at the same time my wife and I were just staying at a hotel during a road trip. I we end up in the backyard making corn over a fire. so there's a the paranormal is in my life for a reason. There's too many brief you know meetings of people that I shouldn't be bumping into. That's my that's my point and I'm staying by it.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: So, yeah, we could talk about locations all night. But one of the ones that I want to kind of talk to you about right now is the John Johnson Manor House.
Dave Gibb: Love it.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: What if you had happened there?
Dave Gibb: Okay, so preface all this. I mean obviously it's our we're there in three weeks. It's five hour, five hour drive for us. so this is our fifth fifth visit. again, another hookup of Elliot. We the great thing, one of the greatest things you can establish in doing what we do, but we don't get to do it very often because how many places do you go back multiple times with the amount of time to set up your proper cadre of equipment and that and repeat experiments, right? Take an experiment. Okay, so we've got the blue lady up there and really most of the activity happens on the upper. We have received Obtained whatever the same multisyllabic voice, female's voice, same quality of voice, same sound, to the same stimulus. So generally, it's normally like we don't do question and answer there, we just have conversations. And I find that nowadays we get more EVP when we're just kind of shooting shit and they just want to jump in. We'll just talk about related stuff, not like we're asking. And My wife will start talking about children. We've gotten Four times now an audio hit, multisyllabic, same voice, same area, same stimulus, asking about children. Right? so that's one thing. So we've developed a trend. Now, with a trend, you now you can look at, you know, you've got an evidence route, right? You've got you've, you know, you you've got something to go off of here where you know I've got a track record. In that same place, the hallway, the back hallway. obviously you've done the place too, so you know it. my wife and I generally we sleep in the dining room. we set up an air mattress in there. And we heard this like like army boots. And like I I live by the army base up in Pembroke. Boy, I'm very acquainted with, you know, like the Doc Martin boot and the noise it makes thumping down the hallway. I mean it drove me straight up. I'm running down the hallway. Where has this thing gone? Couldn't find it. We've tried to repeat it, hadn't happened. Elliot Shared with us a great audio he got from the library area. I have really ominous noise. We've also got an audio in that area. we've had doors closed. The whole kitchen cupboard popping the opening closed thing upstairs. I don't get much out of that. That's that's ping and pop from the floor creating warping to me. I don't feel intimidated in that place. I feel beautiful in that place. I feel like I f you get the feeling like they want you to have conversation. And and and I and that's important to me because you know, when you're when you're compelled to speak more because you almost feel like somebody wants to hear it. And it's one of the few places I never run out of anything to ask, you know. Or have conversation. I feel so natural there. and I remember even the last time we were there, man, I was I was hospital sick. I was like I I've got some chronic health issues and it was it was it was it was bad. I should have been in an emergency board that night. I put my PJs on, so I'm investigating in my pajamas and I'm lying on the floor in the foyer upstairs, and I'm like thinking to myself. What an awesome opportunity for another experiment. Will me being sick drive the attention to me? Will it will will it be able to we didn't we didn't get anything that night. It was the first time we investigated there that we got nothing. And and I don't know if maybe maybe nothing wanted to talk to me because it wasn't the right time. Maybe it was like I needed rest.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah.
Dave Gibb: I didn't need to be doing this. so But you know, the four times before we got the same thing. We have had, okay, like I'm not into a lot of the toys. I'll chuck a couple cat balls on the floor. Just just for the visual, you know, I'll put a security camera there. And if I see a cat ball whizzing across the floor, well, I know it's not just going off, you know, it's moving. and they've they've moved a couple times, but the floor is kind of wonky.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah.
Dave Gibb: but they shouldn't, you know. But i it's one of the places that I I would honestly say I I I love doing. Like why would I do a five hour drive five times now? There's something that drives me there. I'm not saying it's haunting. I'm saying we've got Reactive, not not not not residual, not intelligent. I have a you know that's that's a very big spectrum, but reactive audio with s the certain stimulus, the same stimulus.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah, and it's interesting that you mentioned about children in that location. I was on the second floor and if you go towards the back of the second floor, know, the floorboards are not kind of level.
Dave Gibb: yeah. Terrible.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: And I was stood in one of the alcoves of the windows and I've got a colleague who is about six feet away. And I'm doing my normal spiel of, If there is anybody here, please make yourself known and all this kind of stuff. And I recall that my left hand, my thumb was in my pocket, but I'd got my, my elbow was like sticking out and I'd got my camera, I'd got my webcam. And then what I thought happened. and I can't explain it, is that when I asked you to make yourself known, I kind of got the sensation of having three fingers wrapped around. And
Dave Gibb: Like a kid.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: it felt like a kid's hand. And I immediately looked down and I immediately went to the defensive to go, well, it's oldy-worldy up there. It's very derelict, if you like. So I'm looking for cobwebs and stuff like that. But then I immediately went, well, If my elbow, my shoulder is sticking out, then that's going to take out any spider webs or any cobwebs. But if it was kind of like a spider web on your hand, you'd kind of get that little bit of a tickle and then it would go away. But this felt like whatever it was had wrapped itself around my three fingers. Yeah. Can I explain that? Can I help? But it happened. it's like, yeah, like you say, it's cool things like that, that happen, that keep us going. Like you said about, yeah, I need something to happen because I've not had something happen to me for a couple of years. But it's those
Dave Gibb: Yeah.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: kind of things that then you can talk about for your next story for a little bit before the next thing happens.
Dave Gibb: Yeah, it's like it's like getting an iron injection, you know, you you just need a need a bit Yeah, no, absolutely.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah. So, so what would you say is some of the better locations that you've been to in the US? I know there's a lot over there, but if there's any, any particular one that sticks in your mind.
Dave Gibb: Hmm. I mean obviously I'm I'm gonna say I'm gonna say Moundsville. J if anything, it's just for the just the magnitude of it, right? You're doing it. there are some that are very promoted that I think are a waste of time. but Ashmore estates in Illinois, Robin Terry, as far as you know, like a site provider, just slays the rest. I mean Man, we've we've gone down to Ashmore a couple times. That's a sixteen hour drive each way. and I'll tell you something. If we rent it for three days and he's got cabins on the property, we have gotten some of the most compelling evidence in that place, you know, and he's got all the actual old old form newspaper backup, you know, of what happens what what happened then and and the evidence that we got directly correlated to it. But the fact that you can investigate twenty-four hours a day and at that point in time, old school, I I had cabled systems. He actually already had all the cables drilled out, put through the walls, so that you could just hook up your camera to one end of it and your DBR monitor to the other end and you didn't have to run cables all night long. Just it is the most wicked place, but it it and it backs up everything. There's so many places in the States. Like we we made road trips down there four or five times a year to do places. And most of the places, like to be honest with you, now we we basically our our life has been theaters, jails, and and like care facilities, hospitals, whatever, orphanages. But they all seem to have the same trend. You know, you got the nurse that kills herself because she was pregnant. The doctor who threw himself out the window. You've got the grumpy guy that works in the boiler room. You've got the tall, thin guy, or you've got the really, really big guy. And all it is is to sell tickets to these places for most for most of it. And I'm not gonna I I well I'm not gonna shit talk to places I don't like. But they're there and you'll have heard about them on my other podcasts. But like places like Ashmore, that was great. I We got good results. Hillview. Hillview in Hillview Manor in Ohio. I really want to go back to. gee is now you're making me think. We've done something like like Bacon's Ca Bacon's Castle is beautiful in Virginia. That's the oldest brick brick building in the United States. Damn. and you know what? It just down in outside of Rochester. damn it, damn it, damn it. There's a little town there there. And they have it's a mansion and then a museum. Palmyra. It's in Palmyra, New York. Probably of the smaller places we've done, probably one of my favorite that I'll say. but I mean if I if I really had to do like a personal favorite, I'm gonna say Ashmore Estates in Illinois. Definitely worth like, you know, the combined 60, 70 hours we've driven to do it. it it it's in it's just incredible. I mean, I it's so nice in the st in the States to do these things. And one of the great things for us, of course, with the Taps family or without the Taps family. We do a lot of collaborative stuff and I love investigating with other investigators. you know, it's unfortunate that there's some commotion going on right now, which is probably gonna keep some people away just because we don't need the drama. I don't really care about the the other stuff, but just I want things to be calm. so you know, we'll probably be out of the out of the states for the next year or so. But the States really is where it's at because of course up here, something's abandoned. well we put a fence around it and we knock it down. Or if if something is still open, we charge three arms and a leg to to get in there. this
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah.
Dave Gibb: you know why luckily through Elliot we've we've we've I think I think we've managed to get some preferential treatment at a few places. Because like I know I think the with the battleship down in Hamilton area, they were wanting like eight hundred bucks for two hours, and then we had to pay a security guard and then we had to pay a filming permit. I'm like, so you're lasting me for a thousand bucks for two hours. Sorry, you know, I can't I can't justify that.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Nope, yeah. That's it. We went to a place in, it was about an hour and a half over the border, in a place called Casanovia and it was a rare lock-in. If you haven't been there, have you been there? I highly recommend going, because we had some really strange activity that we couldn't explain. And you mentioned about how things happen in... when the cameras weren't on, we had a cupboard door creak open, but we couldn't debunk it. We were putting the latch back on and banging it and jumping on the floor and it didn't happen again. But like I say, that could just been a natural movement of the cabinet and the floor, whatever. But in the same room where I was sleeping, there's four poster beds. and they've got their old blankets on them. They don't have duvets, they have their old blankets. And if you move around in a bed that's got their blankets, if you move your leg, you can feel the blanket kind of settle. And I've been, I've literally been in bed two minutes and that this is no, it was literally two minutes. And I moved my leg and felt the blanket settle. And then about a minute later, I got a sensation that something really heavy sat on the bed. It didn't, the bed actually dipped. And so I like, that's weird. Of course, there's no cameras going on. I'd got my eyes closed, opened my eyes and I saw this white apparition, if you like, go pass it, walk, well, float the full length of the bed. And I'm like, yeah, and like I say, there's no cameras, so no evidence again. But yeah, I wasn't tired. Yes, we were driving back to Canada the next morning. and I've literally been settled for, like I say, a few minutes at most. So can I explain that? Nope. But it's another cool story to add to the list.
Dave Gibb: Yeah, it's a cool story to add to the list and it gives you a bit more drive to keep going. We just want to get an answer, right? We just want an answer.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Exactly, Exactly. Yeah. So, Dave, we are coming to the end, unfortunately, so what's next on the agenda for Chaps?
Dave Gibb: Hmm, okay. so the SJJ, Sir John Johnson House. we're doing mid-September. it might be one of the last times we're down there, so we've actually got a good batch of us down there. because everybody wants to get in on it. So that should be fun to try to work on contamination. beyond that, we have an investigation at the Lee House, which is Durham region, our oldest residence. And then after that, actually Elliot got me in this gig with the town of Gravenhurst opera house where I'm going to investigate it. And then for a fundraiser, I'm grouping up with five other teams. Like we're not collaborating, we're each presenting our investigation video for a for a fundraiser for in in a crowd in front of a crowd, which will be fine. I don't know what to say about that one. I mean, obviously I operate a little bit different than most of the teams that are gonna be up on stage. Like I'm the only non-revenue generating team in the world now. and I'm also I mean, probably the least interesting and least good looking one that's gonna be up there. So you know, I I'm gonna try and explain the things on a very pragmatic and logical scale, which will probably put the crowd to sleep. and that's now beyond that, then it gets to around Christmas time. October gets stupid sometimes. I don't make any plans for October because in October generally people are contacting us left and right to go do stuff. And then beyond that, obviously the winter weather changes. December, we don't make any plans. Next year we do have preemptive two hospitals in Tennessee. I'm contemplating. I've you know, I've I've secured myself for that investigation to meet another team down there. I'm gonna see how the next few weeks go. and I think that's it. That's locked up right now. I I you know, I I I by design my team has gotten a lot smaller over the years. You know, like we had twenty eight members at one point in time and I don't wanna corral that
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Wow.
Dave Gibb: anymore. Really, it's me, my wife, my two daughters and about six contributors that might jump in on an investigation or go over evidence with us. It's there there's there's four of us that are doing it full time. but that's okay. It's less to wrangle. And you know, the older I get, the more I wanna come home from work and have a coffee and watch T V. I don't really wanna run out. I have to make plans to do that.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah I totally get what you mean like yeah I've done my my stint of doing shift work and stuff like that and to me to get back here get in the house at two o'clock or three o'clock in the morning yeah like I ain't gonna I'm not doing that on a regular basis
Dave Gibb: I can handle that once a month. One Saturday a
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah.
Dave Gibb: month. We'll go out, you know. I got unfortunately on sleeping medication and I have been for like eight years. So you know, I can make that one night. I have a great I'm I'm durable in the way that I could stay awake for like an easy forty-eight hours. So I do that one time a month. And so you know, I'm not there are a lot of teams right now in my area that are Every weekend they're doing publics and this and that at no interest. I did I've done a few publics in my past and no I'm not I'm not jeering around fifty, sixty people and having them show me orb pictures and me telling them that it's not their uncle. They all get mad at me when I
Lee - Paranormal Prism: You
Dave Gibb: tell it's not their relative.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: Yeah, I could say we're Dave, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you, my friend. If I come down your neck of the wads, I'll definitely be knocking on your door and we'll have a beer together.
Dave Gibb: you know how to get a hold of me. That'll be a pressure.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: absolutely. But for now, my friend, thank you very much for your time. You have a great rest of the evening and no doubt we'll be staying in touch. You take care. Bye
Dave Gibb: All right, have a good night.
Lee - Paranormal Prism: bye.