It Could Happen Here - Ghost in the Machine, Part 1: Spooky Week #2

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

Garrison travels to the Oregon Ghost Conference to uncover the truth of how spectral phenomenon permeates our culture.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Call zone media. Welcome to It Could Happen Here's Spooky Week special presentation. I'm Garrison Davis, and earlier this year, I, along with my friend Elaine, attended the 2023 Oregon Ghost Conference in Seaside, Oregon. The past few years, I've had a growing interest in the occult, both for testing the limits of manufacturing my own weird experiences, as well as looking at it as a vector of political extremism. Sometimes it's useful to not just look on from the outside, but actually hop into other people's reality tunnels to gain a more intimate understanding of how they interact with our world. This was my primary motivation in attending the Ghost Conference, to learn what metaphysical beliefs drive the attendees and how said beliefs intersect with politics and our broader culture. My experiences at the conference ranged from ghost hunting to being hypnotized to learning of the Galactic Federation of Angels and abortion-hungry demons. So with that in mind, I hope you enjoy my report back on the 2023 Oregon Ghost Conference. The first challenge we faced was simply getting to the

town of Seaside. The first day of the conference, Friday, March 24th, coincided with a massive snowstorm along Highway 26 from Portland to Seaside. As we were driving on the treacherous mountain roads, a whiteout completely engulfed our view. When we emerged from the snowstorm, it was as if we'd gone through a portal transporting us from the mountainous forest to the small coastal town of Seaside, Oregon, into a world of ghosts, spirits, specters, and overpriced convention food. Seaside, as the name suggests, is a beachfront town situated in northern Oregon. It was founded in the late 1800s after railroad baron Ben Holliday built his summer vacation quote-unquote seaside house on the plot of land which is now Seaside's golf course. It's always

been a sort of tourist resort town that people from Portland travel to for beachfront entertainment. The conference is put on by a friendly high school art teacher and Oregon City Commissioner Rocky Smith. Smith has been doing ghost tours in Oregon since the mid-90s and has been putting on the Oregon Ghost Conference since 2012. Ghost Conference since 2012. Originally, it was held in Smith's hometown of Oregon City, an extremely haunted town often cited as the end of the Oregon Trail. In 2016, the conference outgrew its Oregon City venue and relocated to Seaside. It's now the largest paranormal convention in the Pacific Northwest. The conference features ghost tours, paranormal convention in the Pacific Northwest. The conference features ghost tours, classes, guest speakers, vendors, tarot readings, seances, ghost hunting, and paranormal investigations.

The first big event I marked on my schedule was a ghost tour to get acquainted with Seaside's most haunted places. The tour began right outside the convention center. Conference director Rocky Smith led this one himself. He filled us in on some old ghost conference lore. The Seaside Convention Center went through some extensive renovations right before the pandemic, but the first year the conference took place in the convention center, they had a class for kids where a group of children explored around the old building to find what they thought were the most haunted places. There was one hallway on the west side of the building where people routinely reported strange experiences. Back in 2016, a child at the conference claimed they saw a ghost down this hallway when exiting the bathroom. First, they just saw

something out of the corner of their eye, and then when they turned to the left, they saw a woman in an old dress staring at them. At first, they weren't sure if the dress was long or short because they were too scared to look down, but then they noticed that the woman didn't have any legs and was just floating in the air. Because of the new renovations, that hallway is no longer accessible. Rocky Smith remarked that he didn't know if that was intentional or not, but said that a lot of times when they redo buildings, they'll change the part of a building that used to be kind of scary and uncomfortable. So that hallway is now used for storage.

Although one of the convention staff members claimed that a vacuum cleaner now held in the hallway is possessed. So there's that. The convention center was originally built in the 70s and doesn't really have a lot of notable history. But when looking into hauntings or reports of ghosts, typically people try to learn the history of the building or plot of land in question.

For Seaside, that's kind of hard because in 1912, four blocks of downtown Seaside burned to the ground, destroying most of the town's early history. The first stop on the ghost tour after we left the convention center was one of the reportedly most active sites of ghostly activity in Seaside, the Bridge Tender Tavern. It was built in 1914, so just a couple years after the big fire. It used to be called the Pastime Bar, and then suffered its own fire, and was later renamed the Bridge Tender. The previous owners of the bar claimed that in the early 20th century, it was a brothel. This is unconfirmed, but it relates to the tavern's most frequent ghost, the Madam. Staff and patrons of the Bridge Tender regularly

address the Madam. If customers are being rude, it's said that the Madam will spill drinks on them, you know, stuff like that. The story I like the most about the madam has to do with the tavern's old CD jukebox. If a specific song played on the jukebox, something would go haywire. CDs would shoot out of it or other weird things would reportedly happen in the bar. Patrons would put the song on repeat just to see what would happen. Eventually, the owners took the CD with the song in question out of the jukebox so that people would just stop playing the song. But people are persistent bastards, so now people just play the song on their phones or the new digital jukebox in the bridge tender. Now, the theory is that the madam just really hates this song, so she gets mad when it plays and then causes some commotion. The song is Dancing Queen by ABBA. So if you want to go test this yourself,

you can travel to the Bridge Tender and play Dancing Queen and see what happens. Another highlight from the ghost tour was learning about the old Seasider Hotel at the end of the promenade. It was purportedly haunted by multiple spirits, and it was believed that when the hotel was torn down in the 80s, the ghosts followed the hotel staff who got new jobs at a restaurant in downtown called Girdles. New employees are said to have recognized apparitions from the hotel. And the restaurant gained a haunted coffee pot that would either move on its own or even fly across the room, depending on who you would ask.

I think it's nice that the ghosts seem to have a pretty good job relocation program. Something that most of us do not. So, good for them. As the ghost tour approached the beachfront promenade, that snowstorm from the nearby mountains seemed to have caught up with us. And a dreary mix of

rain and snow began to descend upon Seaside. As if some otherworldly force was trying to keep us from further exploring the hauntings of the town. So, as even my trench coat began soaking through, we took refuge back indoors. The very first class my friend Elaine and I took at the conference was titled Ghost Detectives. Now, despite the silly-sounding name, it was probably the most grounded class

throughout the entire weekend, certainly the one with the least amount of spiritual dogma. The class was focused on best practices for conducting paranormal investigations, specifically to ensure that the process and findings mirror the evidentiary standards set by the justice system for law enforcement investigations. The instructor, Dr. Nelson, is a supervisor for a crisis hotline with degrees in mental health, metaphysics, and fine arts. He described his methodology for investigating paranormal activity as quote-unquote applied science. He was definitely the most meticulous investigator of the whole weekend, and the least ghost hunter-esque in terms of advocating for strict investigative procedures, and not just assuming that every spooky noise was evidence of a ghost. Most of his class was

spent explaining very basic police investigative procedure, proper ways to collect evidence, having a chain of evidence, and not simply jumping to conclusions. It's a little foolhardy to assume every single spike on an electromagnetic field or EMF meter is actually a ghost trying to communicate. The other unique thing about his class was the emphasis on, you know, before pulling out your special ghost detecting tools, perhaps one should conduct thorough interviews and collect witness statements of the people reporting the phenomenon. Try to figure out what's going on in their life, maybe even look into their own mental health background as much as you're able to, if they've had any sudden losses, past trauma, or history of paranormal experiences. Asking thorough questions can give a much fuller look at what someone might be going through. Some examples of things to ask or look into were if the phenomenon is related to a house, who owns the house? Who lives there? Who has experienced the event? What led to a paranormal

investigator being called? What precip to a paranormal investigator being called? What precipitated the phenomenon when it occurred? How often has it occurred? When was it first noticed? Was there just one random strange experience? Or is someone going through an event in their life that has made an experience suddenly stick out as strange? Has the person sought help? And has the phenomenon been verified by more than one person? In terms of haunted houses, figuring out if there's any issues in the house is a great first step because if there's a carbon monoxide leak, that could explain a great many things. Or if someone claims ghost ectoplasm is leaking through the ceiling and walls, perhaps the roof and water pipes should

be inspected. Elaine and I did a little debrief after the conference, and they reminded me of another good tip gleaned from the ghost detective class. Well, I mean, my favorite was when he was talking about, like, if you're using an EMF detector and one wall just keeps setting the EMF detector off you might actually just need to call an electrician yes yeah no he definitely was one of the more reasonable people we we we spoke with in terms of yeah he seems he seems pretty close to like consensus reality like he also he also is like a part of like the portland like ghostbusters cosplay group like like he's he's someone who like makes stuff with his hands he's's very, like, he feels very grounded in, like,

in, like, conceptual reality in a lot of aspects. And this is, like, a very fun hobby that combines his two favorite things. Well, two of his favorite things, which was, like, Ghostbusters cosplay and then also, like, paranormal investigation stuff. I'm not actually sure if the instructor for the paranormal investigation class really believed in ghosts, or if he just had an interest in researching paranormal experiences. I don't think I believe in ghosts the same way literally everyone else at the conference did, but almost half of Americans do believe in ghosts, and around one-fifth are unsure if they're believers or not. The rate of belief in ghosts is about the same as belief in demons. But the interesting thing

about that is, although Americans' belief in organized religion has been decreasing, especially Christianity, belief in ghosts has been, and still is, on the rise. In fact, it's gone up by nearly 400% since the 1970s. These last three years, for really the first time ever, Gallup polls show that less than 50% of Americans say they belong to a religious congregation. Alan Downey is a computer scientist and professor at the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts. His research suggests that the internet is a major cause,

not just a correlating factor in the decrease of religious affiliation. And with the rise of the internet and reality TV, ghost hunting has become a relatively popular niche hobby. But as religious belief has declined, belief in the afterlife has remained the same, about 70% according to the General Social Survey. Gallup's polling suggests that currently about three in four Americans have some sort of paranormal belief. Thomas Moen, a sociologist who's been conducting a study on religion and paranormal belief at Bowling Green State University, said that he's finding that,

quote, atheists tend to report higher belief in the paranormal than religious folk, unquote. As to why so many Americans believe in ghosts, Moen says, quote, people are looking to other things or non-traditional things to answer life's big questions that don't necessarily include religion. Unquote. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. with supernatural creatures. I know it. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows

as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse

and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand

what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRad Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Throughout the conference, the word ghost, spirit, and entity were often used interchangeably. and entity were often used interchangeably. Each of those words kind of act as an umbrella term for a broad swath of ontological concepts. Ontology is the branch of metaphysics that relates to the nature of being. Depending who you ask, a ghost or a spirit can be anything from a wayward soul of a deceased human, some otherworldly energy, an evil presence, or even some sort of

temporal loop. Historically, these terms have never been very clear either. They've evolved with the times. So Elaine and I prepared a brief history of ghosts to help give context for the rest of this episode and the next. The idea of contacting spirits or interacting with some sort of spirit world obviously isn't new. Worldwide, people have traditions of interacting with ancestors, the deceased, and a variety of non-material beings. Ancestor veneration in China goes back at least 6,000 years, while the word shaman, relating to someone who works with spirits and in the spirit realm for healing and divination, comes from the Tungusic language of Siberia and has practices that are at least two millennia old. The term necromancy stems from a Greek word meaning divination of the dead.

In the Odyssey, Homer writes of Odysseus learning necromantic rituals to summon the shade or underworld ghost of Tiresias. While clerical necromantic traditions through the medieval period made a clear distinction between the souls of dead humans from other random spirits, that separation was not as ubiquitous among folk beliefs of people who claimed to interact with the spirit world. among folk beliefs of people who claimed to interact with the spirit world. Emma Wilby describes in her book Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits how into the early modern period, many cunning folk, basically low-level magicians and conjurers, had ghosts, fairies, and animal spirit companions,

all of which seemed to interact very similarly. The European concept of ghosts being linked to evil or demonic forces is a relatively new idea. It came to be as a byproduct of the Reformation and rejection of the Catholic Church. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory and limbo was rejected by the new Protestants, which caused some cosmological problems when it came to people's own experiences with ghosts and spirits. Catholics held that ghosts were basically spirits of dead humans on vacation from purgatory. But with Protestants rejecting purgatory for its lack of biblical basis, they defined some other way to explain the apparently fairly common phenomenon of ghostly encounters.

A Swiss theologian named Ludwig Lavater attempted to solve this cosmological problem in his 1569 book, Despectris. I just picked up my copy a few weeks ago and have been going through it, and it's a lot of fun. copy a few weeks ago and have been going through it and it's a lot of fun. The full English title was, quote, of ghosts and spirits walking by night and of strange noises, cracks, and sundry forewarnings, which commonly happened before the death of men, great slaughters, and the alteration of kingdoms. Pretty, pretty cool stuff. Two of my favorite consecutive chapter titles are, quote, What hath followed this doctrine of the Papists concerning the appearing of men's souls? Followed by, Testimonies that are the word of God, that neither the souls of the faithful nor infidels do walketh upon the earth after they are once parted from their bodies. So that kind of gives you a look at the writing style of this entire book.

Despectris became massively influential. It was widely translated. Shakespeare was reading this as he was writing Hamlet. More importantly, the text took off across many Protestant circles and became the backbone of the cultural conception of ghosts in the soon-to-be United States through such Protestant sects. Instead of ghosts being wayward specters of dead humans who escaped from purgatory, Lavater proposed a great many explanations for spectral experiences, including many non-mystical causes.

He lists illness, insomnia, psychoactive substances, sleep paralysis, and grief as being common causes of ghostly hallucinations, an opinion now shared by many psychologists and doctors. Definitely the closest thing I've ever seen to a ghost was during a sleep paralysis episode. Lavater writes, quote, melancholic persons and madmen imagine things which in very deed are not. Fearful men imagine that they see and hearth strange things. Men which are dull of seeing and hearing imagine many things

which in very deed are not so, unquote. He also cites pranksters as another common cause of perceived spectral activity. But most interestingly, in an attempt to bash the Catholics, the Protestant Lavater also lists low-level clergy trained in exorcistic magic to summon demonic spirits in a necromantic fashion as possibly producing some supernatural phenomenon

interpreted as ghosts. Now, Lavater does believe in spirits, but his thesis is that genuine ghosts, spirits, bumps in the night, those strange cracks and noises, which we now might refer to as poltergeists, are almost always demons that are torturing people. He wrote that devils can, quote, appear in different shapes, not only of those which are alive, but also of dead men, as well LaViteur did admit that in the rarest of cases, God may send angels or the spirit of a dead person to Earth for a very specific task. But due to demons' innate trickery, there's really no way to trust that a ghostly presence may be from God, so he recommends that one should always assume that a specter is demonic.

God may even allow demonic spirits to appear as a form of punishment and a sign that one should repent for wrongdoing. Lavater's theologic work on ghosts were part of a larger Protestant Christian campaign to literally demonize all spirits, right? The only thing you can really talk to is Jesus or God. Anything else is probably just a demon. This is the version of ghosts that I grew up with as a kid. The idea that basically if a ghost appears,

it's probably a demon trying to scare or trick you. This concept that spirits and spirit contact were predominantly demonic changed the nature of many witch trials, since when cunning folk listed their familiar ghosts or fairies, they were basically admitting to trafficking with demons. ghosts, or fairies. They were basically admitting to trafficking with demons. The next evolution in ghost lore came in the form of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish theologian and scientist. In fact, he was one of the first to postulate the existence of the neuron. As Christians in Europe were dealing with this messy assortment of spirits that you really shouldn't try and interact with, but if you do, you better make sure they're angels, Swedenborg was about to shake up

this whole entire cosmology. In the 1740s, he started having, quote, intense mystical experiences, dreams, and visions, unquote, which led him to believe he was in contact with a spirit world and entities that he described as angels, demons, as well as other spirits, including ones from extraterrestrial planets. This is like one of the first guys to do the spirits I'm talking to are actually aliens,

which is pretty cool. In 1785, he published a book titled Heaven and Hell, based on his experiences of the afterlife. According to Swedenberg, once humans on Earth pass on to the spiritual world, they enter a intermediate realm in between heaven and hell, and eventually either become beautified into angels or twisted into demons, and then respectively pass on into either heaven or hell proper. While his depiction of spirits were obviously influenced by his Christian beliefs, the variety and breadth of his spirit world was broader than just the undead.

Swedenborg's writing was one of the early influences on spiritualism, core tenets of which are there being multiple levels of the afterlife, and that an individual's awareness persists after death and may be contacted by the living. Which is pretty similar to what most people now would probably describe as ghosts

if you were to ask them what a ghost is. While Swedenborg actually recommended against attempting to contact spirits, he had a lasting influence on American spiritualism for creating an explicitly Christian-based system where spiritual entities worked as mediators between humans and God. Coming out of upstate New York in the decade before the Civil War, spiritualism brought together aspects of the radical Quakers with Swedenborg's idea of spirit intermediaries who could bring messages to the living. The spiritualist movement formally began on March 31st, 1848, when the Fox sisters made their fraudulent claim of contacting a spirit who could communicate through knocking noises. of contacting a spirit who could communicate through knocking noises.

Starting initially in Quaker communities, mediumship and seances immediately took off across the United States, including the White House, as the Lincolns were grieving the loss of their son. Showing that interest in ghosts and seances were not just a parlor trick for commoners, they were also a parlor trick for the president. The fact that the rise of spiritualism coincided with Civil War deaths and gruesome battlefield photography certainly helped fuel the drive to communicate and receive messages from the recently deceased. Due to its Quaker roots, the spiritualist movement was abolitionist, and its belief in an egalitarian afterlife

prompted its members to advocate for social change here on Earth. Even the messages that mediums claimed to relay from the dead were often progressive. In 1852, the medium Isaac Post published a collection of messages he supposedly channeled from such people as Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, and other famous figures who urged the living to push for radical social change. The book entitled Voices from the Spirit World included a passage claiming that the ghost of George Washington became an abolitionist after death. And I don't know, the idea that the ghost of Jefferson and Washington suddenly became abolitionists after death, although I understand its utility at the time for trying to push people

towards becoming an abolitionist, it does kind of read as a little bit gross considering how that was very much not their opinions when they were actually living humans. not their opinions, when they were actually living humans? New to the spiritualist development of ghosts was not just the idea of regular spiritual contact, but evidence that the spirit world could be shown to the physical, scientific world. Basically, the precursor to modern ghost hunting emerged between the Civil War and World War I. In London, multiple ghost clubs and psychic or paranormal research groups were founded in the mid to late 1800s, aimed at scientifically investigating ghosts, hauntings, and the claims of spiritualists. Similar groups for investigation

opened up in the United States. And around this time is also when we start to see the use of technology to assist in capturing alleged evidence of ghosts. In 1861, amateur photographer William Mumler was developing a self-portrait when a shattery apparition of a young girl appeared on his developing plate. Mumler knew this to be a simple mistake of reusing an improperly scrubbed photography plate, what we now would call a double exposure. But upon showing this photo to a very excited spiritualist friend of his, he realized the lucrative opportunity that lay before him. Thus was born the business of spirit photography.

that lay before him. Thus was born the business of spirit photography. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame was a fan of spirit photography. He became a member of London's Society for Psychical Research and eventually became a spiritualist himself. The recent inventions of the phonograph and telephone were hoped to be utilized to create evidence of spirit contact. According to Ghosts of Future's Past, Spiritualism and Cultural Politics of 19th Century America, by Molly McGarry, Thomas Watson, famed assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, experimented with the telephone as an aid to spiritual communication. Decades later, Thomas Edison sought to develop a quote-unquote spirit phone, telling American Magazine in 1920, quote,

I've been at work for some time building an apparatus to see if it is possible for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us, not by occult, mystifying, mysterious, or weird means, but by scientific methods, unquote. Edison's spirit phone never really turned out, and we have very little information about it. It seems Edison thought that elements of our personality or memories existed in a form of like almost particles that could be measured and amplified by vibrational sensing equipment,

but not much is recorded of his actual attempts to build this spirit phone. By the end of the 19th century, newspapers reported on ghosts and hauntings along with other regular news. A 2018 New York Times article on the paper's own history of reporting on ghosts said, quote, Paulette D. Kilmer, a cultural historian

and professor at the University of Toledo, scoured the paper's archives. While news coverage of hauntings dropped off during the 20th century, the ways in which people attempted to understand ghosts only got more complex. The mediumship of the spiritualists has combined with the ever-growing field of paranormal research, new age beliefs, and pop culture fascination with poltergeist spirits and UFOs, along with the resurgence of evangelical Protestantism into an overlap of conflicting ghost cosmologies and what it means to contact the spirit world. Welcome, I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. As part of my Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every

week to understand what's happening in the tech industry, and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died

trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To cap off our first night at the conference, we signed up for our very own ghost investigation at the Starry Night Inn, a quaint little house just a short walk from the convention center. We got to the inn right before midnight on Friday evening. Before we ventured out on our hunt for ghosts, we were split into two groups of five, with one starting in the inn and the other in the outdoor bathhouse.

We got acquainted with the ghost hunting tools we were going to be using. First, we were given a popular EMF meter, routinely used for ghost detection, called a K2 meter. It's supposed to measure electromagnetic fields and features colorful light-up LEDs. I'm going to read a quote from the lead investigator we were paired with. Quote, if a K2 meter spikes without reason, if it's not put next to anything powerfully electrical, then we can consider that paranormal. Consider that a spirit. When our body dies, we leave behind our energies. Our energies is EMF, and this starts to pick it up, unquote. Among the paranormal skeptic community, the K2 meter is notorious for giving off false positives, with its unshielded sensors able to be set off by cell phones, radio waves, and even nearby batteries.

The other device we were using is something called a REM pod. Essentially, it's a small, horrible-sounding junior theremin with some LEDs attached. An antenna creates an electromagnetic field. If something conductive gets close to the antenna, it forms a capacitor between the object and the antenna, and the pod will light up and make some noise. Or, if its electromagnetic field gets disrupted by something like, say, cellular or radio frequencies, it will also make a horrible beeping noise and light up. I'm going to read another quote from our lead investigator. Quote, when our energies are around, the pod will react to any energy field that comes close to its antenna.

So as we invite spirits in, we can tell them how they can interact. And we can tell them, hey, if you walk over to that light over there and touch it, it'll light up. Unquote. There is something funny to me about telling a ghost to walk over somewhere. Just a little. It's just a little amusing. My group of five intrepid investigators were sent out to the bathhouse, which we were told used to be a carriage house and horse stables that got damaged in the 1912 seaside fire. The lead investigator started by informing any possible spirits that we do not mean them, quote, harm or intrusion, and that we would just, quote, like to talk.

He then informed any ghosts in the vicinity that if they, quote-unquote, walk up to any of the devices with LED lights and, quote-unquote, touch it, it will light up. Quote, go ahead, use your energy, and touch all those lights for me. That way, we know you're here, unquote. Potential specters were also informed that if they speak into an electronic recording device, us corporeal humans could hear their voice when we play back the audio. This is called EVP or electronic voice phenomenon. More on that on the next episode. The lead investigator then asked any nearby ghosts what their favorite food is,

which seems like a cruel question to ask a ghost because they can't eat anymore. Anyway, a barrage of questions then flooded out. Can you tell us your name? What are you wearing? Who is the president? Not exactly all things I would ask a spectral anomaly if I was given the opportunity. But after a few minutes of silence, the REM pod started to light up very faintly. The lead investigator starts talking to the presumed ghost and suggests that they play a game to find out what the ghost's name is. This is how it works. Someone recites the alphabet, and if the REM pod lights up on any of the letters, that means the letter is in the ghost's name.

We first got the letter N, and then the letters O and D. Then I started going through the alphabet, and it lit up on the letter I. Then it lit up on the letter I again, and then the letter R. At this point, the lead investigator decided that the ghost's name was Ronnie. As we were about to leave the bathhouse, someone who worked at the inn came in and told us that there was a stable man with the last name Norris who died in the fire. So now the ghost's name became Norris. Next, we moved to the basement. One person in our group was a little spooked and elected to stay outside.

None of the REM pods or anything lit up in the basement, but the person from the inn, the one who told us about Norris, joined us in the basement. the person from the inn, the one who told us about Norris, joined us in the basement. When down there, they said they saw a ghost that they were familiar with named Cassandra. They then turned to me and said that Cassandra likes me. Cassandra was reportedly trying to give me a hug and said that she wishes me, quote, all the well-beings in the world, unquote. quote, all the well-beings in the world, unquote. Now, Cassandra was also apparently trying to tell me about a Grandpa John, which I don't have. So if any of you have a Grandpa John who needs to tell me something, just let me know. All right, back inside the house part of the inn, and we're about to go tour upstairs. We just went down into the basement, and just got out of there. Once back inside the inn, we went into the upstairs bedrooms.

People set up their EMF detectors. But there was also some new equipment. One of the rooms had a security camera and a grid projector to record any irregular shadows. And I was given a spirit box. A spirit box is a handheld radio tuner that sweeps through AM or FM frequencies at a high rate. You mostly hear a sort of grating, staticky white noise, with small bits of words or music slipping through from radio stations. I guess it's sort of the modern incarnation of the spirit phone. The idea is that ghosts can somehow manipulate the radio waves to speak complete words or sentences as the box is cycling between frequencies.

sentences as the box is cycling between frequencies. Basically, spirit boxes are supposed to act as an electronic radio medium for spirits to communicate. The lead investigator thought that the spirit box was telling us to leave, but words weren't really clear in my opinion. For example, here is a clip in question. For example, here is a clip in question. In the room, there was also some flickering lights and high EMF ratings, which mostly just got me concerned for this bedroom's electrical wiring. The second half of the investigation was pretty uneventful, and around 2am, we called it a night, and I recorded a little debrief on our way back to the hotel.

No, I do find it super interesting how people try to, like, the way they interpret electoral readings as you would a conversation, and they assert their reality on it, being like, if this happens, this means you say yes, right? So then the absence of the thing also becomes an answer. you say yes right so then so then the absence of the thing also becomes an answer it's it's it is a very interesting process of people like crafting their own reality as things are happening no it was definitely them crafting their own reality but also i'm like like do i think that there's entities probably some of it's like interesting but there's still a whole bunch of points where you like make a decision to be like, this is the thing that I heard. Right?

Because, like, even when they were doing the name game thing, a lot of times the light would light up and they would, like, still kind of keep moving on sometimes. Like, also, yeah, like, there was an F and an I that it totally went off for that I kept being like, what about the F and the I? What about the F and the I? Yeah, absolutely. So there's a whole bunch of very, very peculiar things that go into crafting what the idea of reality is going to be. Stop making a thing, then making a thing, and then it starts again. You're like, no, you're not supposed to do that. And it's a very, very bizarre process to watch. When putting together these two episodes this last October, Elaine and I once again conversed to share our thoughts on our first ghost hunting experience. Okay, now that it has been over six months since you and I were at the Orc and Ghost Conference, I'm curious to see how our debrief now may kind of differ or be expanded upon from our debrief literally minutes after we left this

investigation at the Starry Night Inn. And this day was interesting because we had the ghost detective class right before this investigation. We were able to have these two these two kind of ideas of of what a ghost investigation looks like kind of play off each other which i think led to a a a pretty fun holistic experience in terms of the many kind of diversity of investigators that were at this event i think just the most notable thing was they didn't do a single thing that the forensic ghost hunting class suggested just like literally yeah we could have gone down the list of every single thing that the forensic ghost hunting class suggested to do and not one of those was done like completely the opposite record keeping of what phenomenon occurred did not happen logging any data yeah did not happen

investigation of the structures yeah did not happen um doing a history of the structure didn't occur uh the only interviews we had with someone was the person who said they were a medium who lived there yeah even just like questions like how long have you seen things here didn't occur no it was super interesting just in terms of how like the ghost hunt at the end was was literally just the exact opposite of all of the sorts of uh like procedures that the ghost detective class was trying to lay out which we attended just like literally hours prior well i think one thing that you can really see between the how to do a ghost investigation class and then the ghost investigation itself is the how to do a paranormal investigation class doesn't assume you know what you're

investigating. And so it really is a lot about doing, you know, background talks with people, like talking to sources, what phenomena, it's not assuming that there was anything paranormal in the first place. And it's an investigation of whether or not something paranormal has occurred. And when you go to the ghost hunt, specifically the ghost hunt that we went to, everyone there was assuming that paranormal things were occurring, just as a baseline. They were interpreting readings from their specialized ghost hunting equipment as proof of communication with some kind of paranormal force. There's a lot of implicit assumptions made. First off, if you start talking to phenomenon,

you're assuming that there's phenomenon you're assuming the phenomenon can hear you you're assuming the phenomenon wants to interact with you and if you say if you can hear me touch the light all of those are very implicit assumptions it's not investigating what phenomenon there is you've already framed what you expect the encounter to be and how whatever you're encountering will interact with a whole mess of like ideas. Yeah, my favorite thing about that from the experience at the at the Star Knight Inn is like, we were basically with this like middle aged man who just kept yelling at any like prospective ghosts that were around the vicinity and like why would a ghost want to follow the commands of like a middle-aged

man i mean i didn't want to follow the commands when he would say everyone needs to be quiet i wanted to like start yelling or muttering just out of sheer obstinance because of the way that he was instructing things. I can't imagine a spiritual entity, if it was a ghost, even the way he's conceiving of it would somehow not. Yeah, I have this little exchange laid out here where he was addressing what I guess he assumed was a ghost saying, quote, make the lights stop. Back away. Back away. Good. Good. Now get closer. Thank you. Thank you. One more time. Get closer. All right. Now make the lights stop. I didn't tell you to get closer. Back away. Back away. Back away. Okay. Okay. Now, now get closer.

Good. Good. The only thing that was changing throughout that back and forth was that good good the only thing that was changing throughout that back and forth was that occasionally a little light would kind of go on and that was it right like but he's able to weave this whole story in between this light going on by saying back up and then the light turns off and then saying okay now come closer you wait like 10-15 seconds the light turns on he's able it's it's crafting this whole like of this ghost doing this thing when really this is just a flickering light. But through the way that he has this commanding voice, it's making it as if the ghost is following these instructions

and then being rewarded for following these instructions by saying like, good, good, good, good. Or if they don't follow instructions, then the ghost is like scolded. So it's just a lot of interactions like that. I mean, I've gone through the same narration when I stare at a candle flame, like a little bit high. But it doesn't mean that the candle is necessarily responding to me. Both activity on the REM pod and the lack of activity are taken as a sign of spirit communication. Questions will be framed as, if you want us to leave you alone, light up. So if nothing happens, that itself is taken as an actionable answer. Whoever is leading the quote-unquote investigation gets to either intentionally or even unintentionally craft the meaning of the experience based on how the questions are framed, when questions are asked, and how the group responds based on the activity, or lack thereof, of the EMF devices.

The REM pods often go off erratically or in seemingly random intervals. But when their activity happens after someone just asked 20 questions, it's assumed to be related to whatever the most recent line of inquiry was. It all operates on correlation versus causation, with people mostly jumping on the latter. No matter when the pods light up, the result can be turned into a meaningful sign if the investigator is talking frequently enough. These sorts of ghost hunts are primarily a form of entertainment. It's a novel experience you can have with your friends and family to have a fun time together over the course of a few hours and maybe get a little spooked. I wasn't expecting a rigorous scientific investigation at midnight in Seaside, Oregon.

Nor do I think that's even a useful way of getting at the heart of the phenomenon. Rather than viewing ghost hunts as objective inquiries into paranormal activity, I think for most people they operate more as a way of inducing paranormal experiences. The same way occultism seeks to induce mystical experiences and religion strives for a connection with God. All of these are practices of constructing meaning and finding patterns, and that's not to discount them. They only are a problem when they become exploitative

and harmful to yourself and others, which is what we'll be talking about in the next episode. So stay tuned to hear about warrior angels tasked with vanquishing demons, how mental illness is a sure sign you're possessed by an evil spirit and how abortions and the internet are opening up portals in our world to demonic forces. See you on the other side. forces. See you on the other side. sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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