Somewhere in the Skies - Engaging the Strange

Episode Date: July 9, 2018

On episode 64 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, Ryan and Shannon LeGro of INTO THE FRAY, speak with the "Real Life Mulder and Scully", Dana and Greg Newkirk. Originally broadcast on INTO THE FRAY, this interview reintroduces listeners to the incredible work by the dynamic paranormal couple and their many adventures investigating the unknown. What happens when you own the world's only traveling paranormal and occult museum? And even stranger, what happens when the items are all in your home and constantly try to communicate with you? From a pitch-black mirror where witnesses claim to have seen pure evil, to a small statue with nails in its eyes and noose around its neck that moves on its own and causes poltergeist-like activity in their home on a consistent basis. These are just a few of the objects that Greg and Dana own. And this is only a sliver of the experiences they've had. So join Shannon and Ryan on their journey with the professional weirdos as they engage the strange like never before! Guest Bios: Greg Newkirk is a paranormal investigator, travel writer, and real-life monster hunter. In other words, he’s a professional weirdo. As if Greg’s eerie adventures and odd experiments weren’t enough to qualify him as one today’s foremost authorities on the subject of the unexplained, he’s also the director of the world’s only Traveling Museum of the Paranormal and the Occult, a roving display filled with terrifying relics from real hauntings, occult crimes, and startling evidence collected during his nearly twenty years of anomalous research. In addition to researching, investigating, and writing about the anomalous, Greg has appeared on numerous hit television series including Animal Planet’s Finding Bigfoot, TLC’s Paranormal Lockdown, and Travel Channel’s Mysteries at the Museum, has served as a paranormal consultant on projects that have aired on A&E, Destination America, and the Discovery Channel, and is a regular guest on highly-rated radio programs like Coast to Coast AM. He enjoys collecting vintage paranormal ephemera, a strong cup of coffee, and driving long stretches of dirt road. He once scored 19 out of 25 correct choices in a Zener card test. He doesn’t like it when people yell at ghosts. Dana Matthews is a supernatural sleuth, occult museum curator, and magic practitioner, and she’s been actively investigating the strange and the anomalous for well over 15 years. Founder of the world’s first all-female paranormal investigation team, Dana formally began her adventures into the world of the unexplained in the late 90’s, though she chalks her interest in the subject of the strange to way too many episodes of The X-Files as a kid. With nearly two decades of research into everything from residual hauntings, to Bigfoot hotspots, to bizarre Fortean events, Dana is one of the paranormal field’s most seasoned veterans when it comes to investigating and documenting strange claims. Dana’s paranormal expertise has been featured in appearances on hit television series like TLC’s Paranormal Lockdown, Kindred Spirits, and Animal Planet’s Finding Bigfoot, and if you’re Canadian, you might even recognize Dana as the lead investigator on SPACE’s internationally syndicated series The Girly Ghosthunters. Premiering in 2004, The Girly Ghosthunters stands as one the first North American ghost hunting series to feature a real paranormal investigation team each week, launching alongside SyFy’s Ghost...Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I'm your host, Ryan Sprague. Honesty Time. Life gets in the way of podcasting. That's the simplest way of saying it. I've strived since the show began to bring you something new each and every week.

But I've recently had to fly home to the East Coast to be with family for personal matters. How steady the show will be in the coming weeks has yet to be determined. But please know, I always have and will continue to try my best to bring you new shows. Thank you for understanding. That being said, this week I've pulled perhaps one of my favorite interviews ever conducted

over at the hit podcast, Into the Fray. For those who may not know, this multi-topic show, hosted by cryptid investigator and researcher, Shannon Legrow, is one of my all-time favorite shows. From time to time, I come on to co-host with Shannon, if she was covering UFOs or aliens and give my thoughts and pose questions to the guests. But when I heard she was interviewing the people you're going to hear from today, I had to be involved.

UFOs or not. For nearly two decades, Greg and Dana Newkirk have transverse North America on hundreds of paranormal adventures in search of everything from legendary monsters to mind-bending psychic phenomena, covering everything in between. They've come face-up. face with Bigfoot deep in the hills of West Virginia, successfully orchestrated an alien

abduction on North Carolina's mysterious Brown Mountain, and grappled with angry ghosts in a violently cursed town in Pennsylvania, to name just a few expeditions. They are also the proprietors of the world's only traveling museum of the paranormal and the occult. Today we talk about some of their adventures and the haunted items they have and the their possession, what they believed be behind the activity connected to the items, and their personal experiences with the unknown. This episode is not about UFOs. And for those who may be bummed, I'm going to say right now that you will not be disappointed.

Somewhere in the skies is about more than UFOs or aliens. It's about peering into the vast unknown and hoping something will peer back. And when it comes to Greg and Dana Newkirk, something else. always finds a way to do exactly that. So, I hope you keep an open mind today and join us on a journey of engaging the strange with real-life Mulder and Scully, Greg, and Dana Newkirk. Enjoy.

Oh, I miss Ohio, guys. How's Ohio? You miss Ohio? I do. I know it's so crazy, right? Until you leave, when you're there, though, you're like, what the hell am I doing in Ohio? We're in the shitty part of Ohio. We're in Cincinnati, and it is muggy, muggy, muggy, It's horrible.

It's worse than when I lived in Florida. That's actually insane because Florida has some serious humidity. No point in taking a shower. It's all the worst parts of Florida without beaches and Disneyland. Right. Yeah, Ohio is a special place. Have you guys went up to Salt Fork to camp and ran into any big feats up there? We've been up there a couple times, but not to camp.

No, we didn't camp. You've just been for like the convention. Right. The old OBC. Yeah. No big big feet's though. No, it's too hard during that conference too because at night when you go out to do anything, all you hear is just big foot hunters.

It's nothing but, yeah. A lot of people in overalls just hollering in the woods, you know. Yep, that pretty much is. You can never tell if it's a big foot. Everyone from Ohio can email me now. Yeah, right? Oh, boy. So many Timberland boots and overalls.

Okay. Anyway, I'll stop insulting. Everyone. I miss Ohio. Love Ohio. You're in Nevada now, though, right? Yeah, I'm back in. Oh, come on. Like it's, like it's that bad. I mean, I do miss the woods. I miss camping, but I tell you what, those winters up there will kick your ass. And when I wake up here and it's like, you know, it's, I mean, it gets cold. We get below freezing, but it's a completely different kind of cold and I don't need my Sorrell snowboots anymore. So that's a plus.

That is a plus. I'm like, well, the pug needs to take a whiz. And I don't have to spend five minutes getting dressed just to take him outside to do that on a walk. So that's nice, too. We tried to buy snow boots for the pug. That didn't go so well. He's like stomping around like Hitler. I'm like, well, we'll just take those off you. I love when you put boots on animals. They can't take it. They've got steps. They're like little panic attacks. What are you done to me? Like you humans are such assholes, man. So Greg and Dana, I wasn't, I wasn't trying to do the interview probably like you've done a hundred times. I'm going to try to skip.

a lot of maybe the history stuff. And I think that for the most part, if they're listening to this right now, they know who you are. But I will say this. On our Halloween episode, which you guys were kind enough to call into, I compared you guys to the modern day

Ed and Lorraine Warren. As far as you collect these items and your boots on the ground, you go out and you investigate, you do your work. I said on that episode too, I was like, I don't know how they're going to take that, but that's how I see them.

I see it as a really good compliment, but I don't know how you guys label yourselves or how you take what I labeled you as with Ed and Marie Warren. So take it away. I'm going to let Greg take this one. It's a delicate subject because it's equal parts like flattering and equal parts kind of nerve-wracking because, you know, I would like, I always answer, hopefully, ah, God, it's so hard to put it delicately, hopefully with a better reputation.

Yeah. I totally understand. Yeah. But I think that's, I mean, that's fair. I can see why people would say that. I mean, you know, don't know too many husband-wife teams who go out and chase monsters. Right. Have a museum of haunted objects.

And we're a little less religious, though. Yes. Right. And you guys aren't actually going out and exercising folks and whatnot. Oh, not yet anyway. Yeah, I was going to say, are you guys working up to that? No, we haven't run into that situation yet, thankfully. We're going to be the ones who need the exorcisms.

Yeah, because, you know, when you watch the movies, The Conjuring, Conjuring 2, those parts are very dramatic. And from what it looked like, what Lorraine went through, you're going, well, God, I don't want any part of that ever. I mean, there's a lot of people, I mean, who've been around a long time where it was advantageous for them to make things a little more scary than they might have actually been or to have the people, the family a little more freaked out than they might have been, because that would have resulted in a really great book or a really great movie eventually.

So I don't know. I don't think jumping to the conclusion where all of the hauntings are super scary things is really the best place to take it. You know, one of the things that Dana and I are always talking about is how most hauntings, you know, if they're not something that's residual, they're trying to get people to realize something. They're trying to talk to us in a way. And it's scary because the only way they can communicate with us is in way. ways that are unnatural, that shouldn't be happening. And so we get scared. But most of the time, I think there's a story to be told.

And a lot of these things, they're not out to steal your mortal soul. They're just trying to find some peace. Right. And they're probably just as scared as you are as the witness. Exactly. Absolutely. I don't know what's going to look either. Our friend John Tenney always will tell this story during one of his lectures.

And it's sort of an interesting piece of advice that I think everybody should really bring with them. when doing any kind of paranormal research. And he often talks about how people sometimes in haunted buildings, they'll experience scratches or they'll experience having their hair tugged or they're, you know, being pulled on or pushed. And sort of from his perspective, he'll often say, like, could you imagine if you were dead and you've spent X amount of time building up energy to reach out to the living and try to make some kind of contact with them.

And in the process, you accidentally scratch them or push. them or tug on their hair or do something that could potentially be kind of misconstrued as evil or violent when really it was sort of accidental it wasn't necessarily meant to be this violent act it was meant to be your your way of being able to kind of reach out and make contact that's kind of i mean it's one of the things that everyone screams demons but i mean Greg and i have always felt exactly the same way is really constantly been part of our rule book when doing any kind of paranormal investigation. How often do you guys think as far as when you're on location, have you ever got the feeling that in fact you weren't dealing with a human spirit that is around

you and it is something else like a demon? I mean, it's hard to classify it as a demon just because of the religious connotations. But I think that, you know, there have been several times where I've been somewhere where I can say whatever was there was malevolent. It was not nice and it was doing things that weren't nice. Whether or not that's because it's an agent of Satan or not, I'll leave that up to the clergy. I have been in situations where I was pretty sure that what was there did not have the best intentions. But I think that's exceedingly rare. Yeah, they were saying I've listened to plenty of podcasts, but they're like the actual instances of where someone needs an exorcism, because there's some kind of demonic entity in them, is so few and far between. And I don't know how often

the church actually goes out on these things or what kind of, you know, you watch the movies, they have to get permission, right, from the Vatican to get exorcisms performed or whatever. But, boy, it'd be nice to be a flying a wall and see what the, what the bullet points are for stuff like that until they go, okay, we might have a problem here. Well, I mean, it all depends, too, on, you know, what religious sect it is. I mean, you know, because Catholics are only one of many who do exorcisms. You know, there's, you know, Buddhists do exorcisms. there's all kinds of ways to cleanse people of an evil spirit or cleanse buildings of an evil spirit, so-called evil spirit.

And it just really depends on, I mean, it's all the same, it all comes down to the same thing. It's just people that are focusing their intentions on ridding this place of a specific feeling or entity. And I don't even think you have to be religious to do that. I think you can do that just by feeling it strongly enough or calling in a group of people who will feel that intention strongly. enough to drive this thing out. I mean, it's really, I think it all just comes down to your intentions is all it is. And I want to get back to your hon and items, but I have one last question kind of in the same vein that we're talking about. When we're talking about poltergeist activity, you always will hear someone say, well, it's a teenage girl and she's going through puberty,

and she's the one causing the activity. What's the thinking behind that? What do you guys feel on that. I think that's really just another one of those, you know, it's the heightened hormones. And I don't think it always is just a young girl. I think that a lot of people who are haunted are haunting themselves. And again, I think it comes down to how much intention and willpower you're putting into the idea of it. And I think with kids, they don't, they don't always understand what's happening. They don't always understand that it's going on. But, you know, we've, we've dealt with cases before where I'm positive that the only reason that that a certain house is haunted is because the people really wanted it to be haunted and they were just feeding it.

I mean, it can even, I think that it could even be connected to kind of the emotional state of a family or a group of people. Like if they're in sort of, you know, a bad place and there is a lot of kind of negative emotions or just heightened emotions kind of being pumped out into an environment a lot of the times that will often kind of be associated with poltergeist like activity as well. Well, and that's where the 13-year-old girl thing comes in, you know, they're going through puberty. They've got heightened emotions. They're really, really emotional, and it's just oozing off of them. And because of that, it just, you know, it just amps up the energy

in the place. And that can result in, depending on how you want to look at it, that can result in maybe you manifesting a ghost or maybe you're drawing them in. That's what kind of gets strange with these kind of weird manifestations is you don't know if you're the one creating them or if there's something is something's drawn to this energy that you're putting out oh interesting i actually have a question to sort of tie into that guys have you have you ever interviewed kids i mean like uh prepubescent or even teenagers when you've been out on investigations and if you have have you seen like sort of if the parents were of any sort of influence on them answering your questions?

Has that ever come up? Like, maybe they see it completely different, you know? They're supposed to be innocent, and they might have a completely different perception of what's going on in the house other than the parent. It's actually interesting that you mentioned that, because there was a time where my previous ghost hunting team and I were at an old farmhouse that was in Ontario, Canada, and the house itself was really haunted. And a similar sort of situation like that happened where we had spent a lot of time with the mother and the father. And they sort of told us their version of the story, which was

very frightening. And then when their son, when I actually sat down and kind of interviewed their son, he sort of explained the same story, but it seemed a little bit less frightening, almost as if the adults sort of were looking at it with that in mind. They thought, okay, this stuff is happening in our house, that's terrifying. And it has to be something negative. And the child was sort of like, this stuff's happening in our house, but I don't necessarily feel like it's something that's bad. So yeah, I mean, that was an interesting thing where it was sort of like, it was interesting to separate them and be able to kind of see the two different age groups, what each of them were experiencing, even though they were all experiencing the same kind of phenomena. Gotcha.

All right. So taking it back to the haunted items. How many haunted items do you guys have in your possession. I think last count was, I want to say, like, 130. Yeah, I think something like that. 137 maybe. Wow. Yeah. I just got shippers.

It wasn't always this much, but we started officially doing the traveling museum of the paranormal and the occult three years ago. And since then, every time we do an event, there's people just come and they give us stuff. Or we'll have, we have a post office box. and it's just always getting stuff. So before that, there was far less. I mean, we had a lot of stuff more than, I wanted to say more than most normal people might have,

but I don't think most normal people have that I think things. But it's, the number is growing exponentially every year. So I'm curious on when you take possession of an item and you walk it into your house, is there a certain process? Is there a blessing you do over it? Do you, I don't put salt around? around it, you know, some of these techniques that we've seen or heard about. What do you guys do with them?

Usually, I mean, we kind of stick to the same sort of checklist that we'll go through when we first receive an object. And it's a lot of just documenting what it physically looks like because we've actually had objects that have sort of changed shape and color as we've had them. So that's a process that we kind of go through where we'll take, we'll photograph it. We will kind of obsessively video it. We'll make sure that we know exactly what it was like when it came to the museum. And the only real, a quote-unquote ritual that we go through, it sounds super silly, but most of the time it works.

We sit down with the object and we plainly and calmly say, we're giving you a place to live. If somebody else found you, you might end up in a bonfire or they would bury you or throw you in the ocean. We're going to give you some of our space, respect our space, we'll respect. you and we'll have a good relationship. And most of the time, that's enough to take care of it. There are a few cases, rare cases where things will require some more precautions or we'll have to put something in its own box. Occasionally there's kosher salt involved. Certain things respond to certain iconography differently. But most of the time, we try our best not to not to make enemies with something that might not really care for what we have to say to it.

We try and keep things as peaceful as possible. You don't curse at it or throw things out. Like some of the other folks like to do, get things really riled up. Generally, they do that at us. That's how you know it's a really good item, right? I just, I don't like the idea of making enemies with something that could possibly be timeless and, you know, come back at the worst possible moment to remind me of the time I decided to pretend I was more important or powerful than it. Right.

Yeah. I always go back to the poor guy in Poultergeist when he's standing in the mirror and he's ripping his own face off, you know, and you're like, we don't need visions like that. Nothing quite that bad yet. Yeah. That's good to hear. I was just going to play off of that. Have you guys ever had someone ask for an item? back? No, not yet. I don't think we ever have.

No. Most people, they want to get rid of it, I assume. Some of the objects that we have, I mean, everything in the museum is donated, and some of the objects we have are sort of on, they're not permanent. So someone will send us something for a couple years or for a period of time to kind of study it. And then eventually they'll ask for it back. But I don't think we've ever had anyone kind of say, okay, I need to have this thing back. Yeah, one of the qualifiers is always, because people ask us, you know, where, where have you bought your stuff? And we said, we don't buy it.

That's one of our rules because, you know, people are always saying, I saw this haunted doll on eBay. Generally, most people who have a real haunted object are more than happy to get rid of it for free. If you're being charged for it, it is probably a scam, as well as the fact that buying and selling things in exchanging money for something is one of the oldest cleansing rituals in the world. It's meant to cleanse ownership. So actually paying for something that has an entity attached to it is probably the quickest way to exercise that entity.

And I think that's a lot of the time why people will buy a haunted house and all of a sudden it's not haunted anymore. And there's different reasons for that. I mean, it could be a lot of hauntings again. It comes back to the idea of intent and connection. A lot of haunted objects that have been given to us with these really big stories, but they've never acted up because I think that the trigger for those is the household it would. in, the area it was in, the people that owned it. Or even the, again, like we were saying before, even the emotional state that was happening, you know, with those people at the time, that can even be a trigger in and of itself.

Anyway, long story short, don't buy haunted objects because you're getting scam. Have you guys, and this is a question for each one of you, is there an object that really bothers you, Greg, or really bothers you, Dana, that you just, you will not mess with no matter what, or maybe the second you took a look at it, you're like, nope, this one this one of me are not good friends. Probably the same one for both of us. I think, yeah, I think we probably have the same. It's the crone.

If you ask me, it'd be the crone. It's the only one of the only, it's like we have three objects in the museum that we don't let people touch or handle. And this is one of them. And immediately, the day that it showed up, we started having really strange things happen. And it was one of those ones that wouldn't cooperate even after we had the conversation with it. And I know, I know that it won't end until. we've been able to stop a lot of the weird activity, and it was at one point looking like it was going to be dangerous, and I know it's not going to end until we take it back to wherever it was

taken from. It's a hand-carved statue that was found in the Catskill Mountains by a couple hikers, and they decided to take it home, and it looks terrifying. Like, when you look at it and you go, I would never take this thing home. It's got rusty nails driven into the eyes. It has, has a noose around its neck. And they said, the one guy said, we're not taking this. The other guy's like,

no way, this thing's awesome. We're taking it home. It was moving from where they put it. They were starting to get this overwhelming smell of pond water. I mean, full, full body apparitions of like an old nude woman in their living room.

Oh, no. Oh, yeah. Wet footprints, muddy footprints that walked through the house. They couldn't figure out where they were coming from. The dogs were acting strange. And it got to the point. where they just couldn't handle it anymore. And weirdly serendipitously, one of the PAs from Finding Bigfoot was reading this Reddit thread while he was on break. And he just spent a week

in a van with us listening to all of our stories. And he said, you've got to get a hold of these guys. And they asked for advice. I said, you need to take it back. You need to apologize. They said, apologize to who? I said, it doesn't matter. Apologize to the cave. apologize to the object, to the entity, back out of the cave and hope that that was enough. They wouldn't do it. They were afraid to go back. And so I said, fine, here's my post office box, sent it in. The day that it arrived, we left it alone in the office.

And we heard a crash in the office a few hours later, walked in. And I couldn't figure out what was wrong because everything looked the same until I almost stepped on Jesus, which had been pulled off of a crucifix that was hanging right above. the crone and the chair we left it in. And it was just his single arm swinging. And so I said, okay, we have to capture this thing doing this. And we set up a trail camera. And it took us about three weeks.

But eventually between the hours of three and four in the morning, the camera triggered three times. The photos were very strange. There were some weird light anomalies that were actually giving off their own light. You can see them giving off light as they float around the room. And that was as strange as it was until we stitched the, pictures together. And when you stitched them together, you can actually see the crone moves by itself. It's not very far, but it's enough to notice that it did move by itself, nothing else

moves. And then after that was when things started to get really scary because we started to smell the strong scent of pod water. There was a constant feeling of this oppressive energy. and one night Dana calls me from the living room and says, why were you standing on the back of the couch? Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity,

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It was the strangest thing. There were two perfectly formed human footprints that were wet, literally standing right on the back of the couch. And I thought, at first I thought, did he like take a shower and then change a light bulb? Or like, what is the one here? My brain was just trying to rationalize everything. Because if it had been in the living or in the kitchen, I would have been like, okay, It's water from a sink or if it had been in the bathroom, same thing.

But it was two perfect footprint shapes standing right on the back of our couch. And it was just the weirdest thing that I mean I could have found at that point in time. Yeah. Kat started acting weird. And eventually it just got to the point where I said, okay, all right, well, let's have the talk again. And as we were having the discussion, we heard the sound of rushing water coming from the other side of the house. and we just dealt with a burst pipe. And anyone who's ever dealt with a burst pipe

knows that it is an absolute nightmare. It's horrible. And I thought, oh, no, not again. And we both jumped up and we rushed to the other side of the house. But there's nothing there. There's no sound of brushing water. Instead, we hear in the living room, we hear this thump.

And then thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, and we walk back into the living room. The crone is gone. It's not on the coffee table where we left it. I'm looking all over to see where this thing is. It had rolled off of the coffee table under the television stand. And so I walk over and I get down on my hands and knees and I'm reaching under the coffee table or under the television stand. And I hear Dana scream and I look up and the television is tipping over onto my head. Oh my God. And Dana runs over and she grabs the TV

and luckily it didn't land on him. Yeah. Just just keeps it landing on my head and that's when I said, all right, if this is how it's going to be, then we're going to lock you up and you're going to stay locked up. And immediately, as soon as I'd finished saying it, there were three just loud booms that sounded like they were coming from inside the wall. Just boom, boom, boom. I said, fine, that's it. And so now it stays locked up. No one touches it. You know, occasionally we'll still get that strong smell. And I know that it won't end until we take it back because it wants to be back where it was taken from. And it won't stop until then, I'm sure. And when you say locked up, it's in a glass case like in a closet or?

Oh, no. It's, it's in a wooden, we have a wooden case with a big padlock on it. It gets wrapped up in a cloth. Wow. Yeah. Occasionally, we'll throw a little, a little salt or holy water in there if it starts to get nasty, but it tried to drop your TV on your head. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's. Oh, my God. God. So after that, we thought, yeah, this thing's not going to cooperate. And, you know, like I said, I really don't take doing things like that very lightly because, again, I don't think making supernatural enemies is probably the wisest thing. So now that it's locked up, though, you said occasionally you smell pond water, do you still hear booms and things like that in your house? It has never been that pronounced since then. Wow.

You know, occasionally. And it gets, I mean, it gets hard to figure out what's what around here sometimes. Most of it's pretty, pretty benign. You know, we see some of the lot of the same things. And usually you can kind of tell what it is to blame. But it's the pond water is generally, when it gets really, really strong, we know that it just, it's reminding us you need to take me, take me home. Yeah, I was watching your live feed today. And I know that the idol and nightmares is on there right now live. And if anyone hasn't checked that out, you guys have that running 24-7.

And how often do you switch those guys out? And my next question is, I'm assuming it would be a stupid question, but has the Crone ever been live on camera before? We actually did. We gave her, I think we did like four or five days. Yeah. And it was crazy. I mean, some of the evidence that at one point we were, we thought, okay, well, let's introduce some trigger objects just to see if, you know, we'll capture anything different. And we set, we have a coffin nail that has been used in.

and loads of voodoo rituals. So we set this coffin nail next to the crone. We actually propped it right up against the chrome. And I think it was like three or four o'clock in the morning. The camera, if the camera senses any kind of like heat or any sort of movement, it instantly will send us a notification to our phones, letting us know that something is moving. And it's not just like airing.

It's recording the whole time as well. So we can go back and look at all that footage. And it was this rustiness. leaning up against the crown and it looks like it gets kind of flicked off of it because it sort of has like a moment where it flies up into the air and and not like it doesn't just tumble over and kind of roll so it was I mean that was a really interesting thing that happened and people were writing in to report that as they were watching the chrome they were getting strange activity in their own homes and that hasn't really happened with any of the other objects we've

had on display. It was mostly that one. And it was like half a dozen people were saying, you know, I'm seeing things. Is this going to last forever? How long is it's going to last? What did I do? I think someone even wrote in to tell us that they did smell like dusty water. Yep. Wow. Yeah. So we try and change them up like once a week. But we've had the idol. We call him Billy because he's an idol for like three weeks now, because we've just been super busy and we haven't had time to figure out what's next. But we normally have them changed like once a week and we try and do new stuff all the time. You know, guys, there's times where like I'll try to remember my masculinity and I will look at the photo, Greg, of the black mirror. And, you know, I might be one whiskey in or so, but I'll always stare into the photo of the black mirror just to see if anything happens.

Does that work the same? Yeah. We had people when it was. Absolutely. When it was on the live feed. They were people who were reporting different things, all of them, seeing different things in the mirror. And they were also experiencing like headaches and kind of like nausea. Yeah.

But even if you look at a picture of you holding it? People have reported strange things with it. I don't know. I mean, in the question is how much of that is the power of suggestion. Exactly. Because I heard you guys say to Jim. on Euphimette that you, neither one of you have looked into the black mirror, right? No.

Never done it. No. Again, it's kind of that like, you know, we don't want to create any kind of emotional connection with many of the things that we have because that's sort of how we. Except Billy. Except me. Yeah, of course not Billy. Yeah.

So we both of us haven't looked in the mirror at all. And, you know, I mean, it lives in our house. Yes. Like you're close enough, right? You're like, that's enough. You know, one of the reasons I don't want. want to look into it is because I can never shake the feeling that it wants me to look into it, which is why I don't want to do it.

But your cats won't even look into it, right? That's what you had mentioned as well. No, the cats refused. We thought because it used to be on display. When we're not on the road, it's just on display in our house. The mirror was always on display, but we always kept it covered. It was given to us with this like handkerchief that was kept over it. And I would notice that it started to uncover itself at night.

And I thought it's got to be the cats. They're just messing with it. The cats would go nowhere near it. I'd try to show it to them, and they would run and hide for like an hour because they wanted nothing to do with this thing. So it wasn't the cats that was uncovering it. And I'd even catch myself sitting on the couch, and I would just kind of be staring in this general direction.

And I'd realize, oh, my God, what am I doing? And the cover would be off. It's like calling to you. So that's why I don't want to look into it. I don't know. I don't think I need to see anything it wants to show me. I don't know. It's like the old quote, guys.

I mean, if you stare into the voivon. You know, if something's going to stare back. You know, it's really funny. We were just maybe like half an hour before we jumped on the call. We were going through EVPs that we'd collected over the last, like, half a dozen events we've done. And one of them that must have just missed us, somebody in the crowd asks, they ask the entity in the mirror. They say, you know, where are you from? And it says, clears the bell, it says, from hell.

Oh, my goodness gracious. All righty then. Yeah, you're like, yep, that'll do it for that. That kind of... Yeah. That's why we don't look into that mirror. Well, I know Ryan's got some questions for you guys. Take it away, Ryan.

Well, I kind of... I love reading the articles that you guys do. They're so insightful, extensive. It's clear you've done your research. And I wanted to talk about a couple of them that really stood out to me. I think the most recent one was this guy, Mike in Kentucky, who's... He's offering special effects services to haunt houses.

Am I reading this correctly? What is this guy doing? Like, is he, he seems to be enemy number one now for paranormal investigators. Could you sort of run this through for us? What exactly this guy Mike is doing? This guy is a professional special effects artist. He's from the Louisville area. And he normally works with haunted houses.

Like the fake kind. The fake kind. Yes. And he's, he's also a magician. Um, he's, he's, uh, clearly, he clearly knows his stuff when it comes to special effects. And I noticed on his website the other day that he was offering haunt services where he would go to allegedly haunted locations and he and his team would covertly sneak into ghost hunting groups, uh, as guests, as like they were paying guests. They'd arrive in unmarked vans. And they claim that they could do

everything from showing apparitions, making apparitions appear that would appear and disappear in front of guests' eyes. They could manipulate ghost hunting devices. I think they even said at one point they could make people feel ill. Yeah, it could make a whole group of people feel ill at the same time. So a lot of things that are commonly associated with hauntings and that he was offering this service tailored to whatever haunted locations wanted to hire him to do it. private and public. And he also claims that he has many clients already. He told me he's done at least two dozen successfully so far for both big and small clients.

I have to ask why, like what's his intention? I mean, obviously money being the number of thing. But what does he think to gain from this? It seems like, I don't know. I don't know. What is his motivation? You said you talked to him. Yeah, I mean, when I saw that he was offering the service, I had to reach out and see if he'd do an interview with me. And I thought he would shirk me. But no, he was, he was all too happy to talk. And he said, you know, his reasoning for doing it is, again, you know, one, money. But two, he sees it as a challenge. And it's hard to disagree with him when he says, if ghost hunters are worth their salt, they will know that something's not right. And they'll know that someone's behind it.

The problem is, you know, newer ghost hunters who have no idea that this can happen probably aren't very good at what they're doing so far, you know, if they go in and they experience all this stuff and they start to try and pass that off as real evidence, you know, it's not exactly the best thing for the paranormal community. Yeah. And also, I think, well, really, the bottom line is once sort of a light was put on the fact that he's actually doing this, it's made a lot of people really paranoid about the locations that they're. they're already investigating. Like, are, is it in a place that I've been? Is it, you know, could it be, could it be some of the big ones, like, those sorts of things, so. So it's, it's kind of a weird, it's a weird situation because I think Mike is probably

one of the only people who's just talking about the fact that he's doing it. And I, I've heard a lot, I mean, as soon as I published the article, I was getting inboxed by people who say, oh, I know that this location does it. And I know that this location does it. and I can prove it by doing this. And so, you know, people are dropping big names, names of really big places. It's going to be something that I think we're going to have to worry about, especially in the ghost hunting community, a lot more in the coming years

because I think we're getting ready to have another. There's kind of these weird ebbs and flows in paranormal entertainment. And I think we're about ready to go into another one where there's going to be a lot of new ghost hunting shows. And there's going to be a lot of new interesting. interest in the paranormal and a lot of unscrupulous businesses will probably try and profit off of it. I mean, yeah, all you would really have to do at that point would be to buy a building that you could kind of attach a story to. Right. Have this guy come in and basically, you know, have all of your fake paranormal activity going on and you could be making a lot of money from it.

Exactly. Mike better hope that nobody posts his address on Reddit or something, huh? Yeah, his phone number is listed. I mean, I mean, you can, he actually told me, I was like, you know, do you have any any photos? And I was like, you know, I'll blur your face. He's like, you don't have to do that. Oh, wow. He's like, I don't care.

Like, really? No, he doesn't care at all. He's, didn't he say something about that he would only give up the list if police sort of like. Oh, yeah, that's the other thing. Yeah, yeah. He said, I will only, you know, I will never reveal who I work with unless the police come knocking with a warrant. So, oh, man, you kind of have to respect the guy. I'm not going to lie.

But at the same time, it's extremely disheartening for the paranormal community. Well, he compares himself to Houdini, but I think his motives are far less altruistic than Houdini's were. I would say so, yeah. Well, Dana, I wanted to bring up another article that I read of yours. You actually researched a modern witch trial in the early 80s with Carol Compton. Could you tell us a little about this story? this really intrigued me that even today there was a trial about someone who was supposedly practicing witchcraft. Yeah, Carol Compton was a young woman.

I think she was Scottish and she met an Italian man and fell in love with him. And he decided to bring her to Italy. And she got a job as a nanny. And it was a very religious family. And some of the family members claimed that every time she would walk past a religious object, it would sort of fall off the wall or would tumble over onto the ground. And this continued happening. And it coupled with her going on vacation with them and a small fire starting while they were on vacation. And so the family eventually, they didn't want to deal with it and they fired her and she got another job as a nanny. And the same

types of things started happening with the second family. Unfortunately, the fire that started with the second family was a lot bigger than the first one. And it was actually in one of the I think it was the daughter's bedroom, and it nearly burned the entire house down. And the police that showed up and the firemen that showed up recognized her from the first fire. And she was instantly arrested. And they kept her in jail for, I think about a year and a half waiting for the trial. And it became this massive media story about this woman who the media sort of dubbed as a witch. And she never accepted or, you know, admitted.

to the fact that she was a witch. She wouldn't even say that she was the one starting the fires. What was the, who was the paranormal investigator that tried to get involved in the case? Was Maurice Gross? It wasn't gross. Oh, no, was Guy Lyon Playfair from Enfield? He really, really, yeah, he desperately tried to kind of get involved because he sort of, you know, felt bad for her that she had been painted, you know, in this really evil light that she had the ability to do it. He thought it was just some, like, latent psychokinetic kind of thing.

But she was really adamant about not having him involved because she sort of really just wanted to say 100%, I don't want to have any attachments to the paranormal because I don't want this to change the way that people are looking at me. So, yeah, the entire trial went on and it was just madness. Like they kept her in an iron cage in the courtroom because everyone in the courtroom was so terrified of her ability or psychic and, you know, paranormal abilities that they thought, you know, we'll keep her in this iron cage. in the courtroom because everyone in the courtroom was so terrified of her ability or psychic and you know paranormal abilities that they thought you know

we'll keep her in this iron cage so she can't do anything crazy and she I think that she was charged with they found her guilty of arson even though there was no evidence yeah and the interesting thing is like the forensics people even said that the fires started

in a unnatural way that it you know that it wasn't that someone had like a book of matches and they were like starting a fire that way they couldn't really explain why these fires were starting yeah so she she she she released her because she basically yeah she had done yes she had served her time and she was released and obviously like anyone would she instantly booked it back to scotland yeah yeah i think she moved to america she did eventually yeah i think she just put a book out she did she long ago yeah she uh she you know sort of saying it was basically her perspective on the entire thing and about how for a short period of time the country

kind of in the early 80s, which is crazy, became obsessed with the idea that this poor woman was a witch that was trying to kill children and torment families. But yeah, it's crazy. It's absolutely insane when you think that it was like 1983, I think. Yeah, it's nuts. Yeah, you don't ever think of modern stuff like that. You always just think of mass. But I mean, at the same time, you know, there's that kind of stuff going on in Africa. Like to this day, you know, there's people being hacked apart because they're, you know, albino people are being killed because their parts are, our magic ritual pieces. Right. So, you know, it's happening.

It's just crazy to imagine it happening in a place, you know, that's supposed to be civilized. Yeah, right. Something tells me she's not going to be babysitting again. I was surprised she got the second nanny job, to be honest. Yeah. I was like, oh, really? Okay. Yeah, that's a tainted resume.

Yeah. Hobbies. Oh, witchcraft, you know. You know, the normal special skills. Yeah. Oh, one of the other articles, guys, that really caught my attention was the black head, black hen, excuse me, planchette from the Ouija board. So this thing burst into flames, if I'm correct. Allegedly.

Allegedly. And an exorcist was called in? What, what is this? This is an object you have in your possession. correct? This is one that we got about a year and a half, maybe two years ago. We had, we were, I forget where we were, but we were talking about the museum and some of the items that we had. And a woman gets a hold of us after this interview and says, I have something that you guys might like and it might be a good addition. I can go and dig it up if you'd like. And so, of course, you know, we had to know what this thing was. And this woman told us the story about how when she was a lot younger, This was back in the 90s. Her and her brother went out to Bachelor's Grove Cemetery, which is a legendary haunted location. There's a really famous photograph of the Madonna of Bachelor's Grove.

It's this ghostly woman sitting on a tombstone. And this was a place where there were all these rumors that the mob from Chicago used to dump their bodies in this pond nearby. And so her and her brother went out. there to speak to the dead monsters. And as they were out there, her and her brother and a friend, they'd snuck out, they're in the cemetery, it was in a bad area, and they start to notice strange things. There's shadow people walking around, and the planchette would only spell out black hen, black hen over and over and over.

And then the board started to smoke and caught on fire, and they freaked out, and they freaked out, And they ran away as you do and came back the next day to collect the board because they couldn't believe what happened. And when they found the board, the board is half burned. The planchette is melted and twisted. And they said, holy crap, we need to show our parents. And they took it home and they showed their parents. Their parents got furious because not only had they snuck out, but they went to a really bad part of town. And they were sick of these kids playing with the Ouija board.

It was something they did all the time. And so they threw it in the trash, grounded the kids, and that was that. Except the next morning, they woke up, and the board and the planchette are in the middle of the living room. Ashes everywhere. They blamed it on the dog, threw it in the trash, and took the trash out to the garage. Of course, the next day, it's back in the living room. After this happened, they started to experience, you know, strange knocks on the wall. The brother started to get strange nosebleeds.

All of their fire alarms would start to go off in sequence. A lot of really, really strange things, and it got so bad that I think it was less than a month, they decided to seek some religious intervention. And they weren't really church-going people. They didn't know who to get in to do something like this. So their mother called their grandmother, and she suggested her priest or her bishop at a Roman Orthodox church, or Greek Orthodox Church. And he came by and did an exorcism on this place that ended with him taking this planchette, wrapping it up, blessing it, and bearing it in their backyard. And it sat there for 25 years. And then she dug it up and sent it to us.

Wow. So far, nothing too crazy. It's, you know, the only time we've ever really heard anything was we have a little glass case and a case. Occasionally, it sounds like maybe it's moving around in the case, but it's never been anything more than that. I would love to be in you guys' home and just, you know, have nothing on, no TV, no radio, and just sit on the couch and just listen for things. Well, we'd see how long it would take before everybody's huddled in one room together. Yeah. I mean, do you guys feel like, you know, I mean, if you're home, do you ever feel strange where you're like, oh, I really would like to have the TV on or have some music or?

on or something, do you ever feel like that? Or is that, I mean, you're just used to it by now. Yes, that's, I mean, we sleep with the television on every night. Do you really? Oh, yeah, oh yeah, we have to. We would never get any sleep. Oh, my gosh. It's always something.

I mean, and again, you know, like I said earlier, it's mostly benign. It's never anything that really is bothersome. And I think that because we've set this precedent where we said, we're going to share our space. We want to understand you. We want to help you. Because of that, I think a lot of these things take it easy on us. Yeah. And, you know, there are other things.

Again, like the crone where it has to be locked up. And it's not something that will play nice with other things. And we are going to have to take it back. We're going to have to try and take it home. Is there a trip scheduled for that? The problem is, so the guys who found it, I only spoke to them on Reddit and they had made a throwaway account. It was the one guy.

He'd made a throwaway account. And I've tried to contact him at least a dozen times since then. And I get absolutely no response. So my hope is that eventually he'll log into that someday. And I'm sure he's going to be just overwhelmed with the responses. And will get back to me because while I know the general area it was found, without their help, it's going to take a lot of footwork to figure out exactly where it is. want to like accidentally bring it to the wrong place and sort of right yeah yeah the other problem too is

if we if we like you know the idea is we can leave it where it is but the problem is i i can't i don't want to put too many details about where we think this thing's from online because i know it'll happen if we take it back someone else will just go looking for it right yes of course and and then who knows maybe that maybe it'll still continue to happen to us because we didn't do anything correctly we didn't Yeah, exactly. Or the people who took it will go back and... They'll be the ones who have to deal with it. Right.

Just perpetuate everything. Because isn't the Catskills just covered with caves and holes and little... Yeah, that would be a tall order to find the right place. Yeah. I mean, the place where it was found, you know, and Dana and I have different opinions on what this thing was created for. I mean, it's clear looking at it. It probably wasn't very nice, whatever it was. Yeah.

But the location was found. I mean, it has some ties to old school witchcraft. A lot of the buildings in that area are, you know, colonial buildings that still have spikes in the chimneys to keep the witches from crawling down at night. Okay. I didn't know that that was like sort of the, you know, the symbology of the spikes. That's interesting. I think my impression is I really do think that whoever created this thing, I think it's been used multiple times for multiple purposes, probably by multiple people who use the cave as a ritual space.

And I think that they were probably calling upon the spirit of a witch or who they believe was a witch to do their bidding some way or some form. I think that it was possibly made sort of the same way that we would kind of put gargoyles on the outside of buildings. You're wrong. Like, I think there's, the cave was probably definitely being used by some kind of magical practitioner. And maybe the, the statue itself was sort of put there to ward off other people or evil spirits or anything, really. And sort of, and these guys wandered in and took this thing, which is kind of like the equivalent of sort of desecrating a church or something like that. Just trying to imagine what was going on in that cave. Is witchcraft that might create the crone for whatever reason?

Is that usually tied to some kind of a blood sacrifice, like killing a chicken or a whatever in that cave at the same time? I mean, it absolutely could be. I mean, that's part of the problem is we don't know exactly what the purpose was or who put it there. You know, we don't know what exactly they were practicing. A lot of people look at it and they think, well, that's probably some kind of a voodoo. But I really don't think that's the case because, you know, I don't think that, you know, the Catskill Mountains have a deep voodoo history. Right. I think it's probably more some kind of Appalachian folk magic going on.

And, you know, that does occasionally call for, you know, some kind of a blood sacrifice. You know, we've sprayed it with luminal and it hasn't lit up, so there's probably no blood on it. Thank God. At least there's that. Yeah, really. Not that this may even be applicable for any reason, but have you guys maybe thought about dating it or seeing what the age of it is. I don't, like I said, I don't know if that even really matters, but...

That's something that we've tried to do. And what's interesting is the carving itself is clearly the oldest piece of it. It's pretty weathered. It's been out there for a while. But the nails are a little bit newer. So they're not quite as old as the wood. And the noose is even newer than the nails, which kind of is why it leads me to believe that this piece, for whatever reason,

has been used numerous times, probably for different purposes. Yeah, it could be something through generations. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like being built upon each time. Exactly, exactly. Interesting. Wow. Greg, while you didn't have a TV fall on your head, thank God.

You did have a pretty interesting experience at the Ohio State Reformatory, and I thought this would be a good way to end the conversation. You've got to tell us about this, man. It's rare to find evidence of paranormal activity in real time, but you had a very visceral experience. So could you tell us a little about what that experience was and how it changed your beliefs? We were at Ohio State Reformatory about, what was it, a year ago? A little over a year ago. And, you know, to set this up, I need to say, I've been ghost hunting for nearly 20 years.

And in that time, I've seen some very strange things. I've heard some strange things, but I've never been, what I would say is harmed, okay? I've never had these, you know, one of the big things that happens to people is, you know, somebody gets scratched in a building and it's, you know, oh, my God, I've got scratched, it's a demon, et cetera, et cetera. Nothing like that has ever happened to me until Ohio State Reformatory. Ohio State Reformatory, I mean, a lot of people recognize it from, you know, Shawshank Redemption, It's a place that I can say I really do truly believe is haunted.

I think there's stuff going on there. I think it's really active. But this night, we had this special guest that was there, and his name was Michael, and he was a former inmate when the place was still running. And he said, I want to take you guys to a place that most people don't go. I'm going to take you to the chairroom. And he said, there's something in the chairroom. It's an entity. And we know, we know each other.

And so we're like, okay, yeah, absolutely. We're not going to pass this up. So we followed this guy upstairs to this windowless room that they think might have been used for like almost was a Masonic rituals at one point. It's shaped like an octagon. Yeah. There's no windows in it. It's a very, and it's also the very center point of the entire building. Building.

Okay. And right in the middle of the room was this big old wooden chair. And as we walked into the room, it was me and there was almost half a dozen people in the room with us. He walks up to this chair and he kicks it with his foot and he slides it across the room and he starts to yell at this entity. And I'm definitely not a guy who likes to go into places to provoke these things. Like I said, I don't like to make enemies, particularly paranormal ones. And he walks in, he starts yelling at this stuff. And I'm just watching it happen.

and then all of a sudden, I feel somebody pushed me. And this is going on at a ghost hunting event. There were 200 people, if not more. And I thought, oh, it's just another ghost hunter trying to get by me. I turned around. There's just a wall behind me. So I have no idea what just happened, but somebody definitely pushed me. They pushed me as if they were trying to get by in a hurry.

And so I told everybody, I noted what happened. And about five minutes later, I start to feel this intense burning, sensation on my back, right where I was pushed. Again, I just as calmly as I can, I say, my back feels like it's on fire. I don't know what's happening here. And Mike turns and he looks at me and he says, you got tagged. I said, what do you mean? He said, it happens all the time. He's like, you got scratched. He's like, lift up your shirt. And at the time, I was wearing a leather jacket. I tried to figure out, did I rub against something? And you have to remember to also, I was filming the entire thing. Oh, yeah. This whole thing.

things on film. So literally, okay, beginning to, I think from the moment we enter the room to the moment, we leave the room.

There's a full cut of the whole thing. And the moment that Greg gets sort of pushed is actually on film. Yeah, it's full view.

Like, you can tell there's no shenanigans. And again, there's half a dozen people in here watching all this happen. And I pull up

my jacket, my shirt, and there are these three long red marks that go all the way down my back. And everybody starts freaking out.

And I'm trying to figure out what in the world happened. Did I scratch myself on something? The weirdest part about these scratches, though, which I've come to find is pretty common. And a lot of people whose cases I truly do think are genuine, they weren't actually scratches. These were raised marks, almost as if someone had come up and slapped you across the back really hard. Almost like a welt. Yeah, like a welt. It felt almost like a burn.

So the skin wasn't broken. There was no blood. And within an hour, hour and a half after I'd left the building, they were gone. Completely gone. No trace. I mean, I roll this over in my head over and over and over to try and figure out what this could have been, how this could have happened. And we've been back since then and nothing. I don't even get it.

I don't even get it. And the weird thing was like I wasn't even getting a weird feeling when I was in there before. When all of it was going down, I was mostly. wigged out because of how upset this guy was getting and how aggressive he was getting while he was riling this thing up. I didn't feel anything supernatural happening. I'm psychic as a rock. But I, you know, everybody knows when you're in a weird situation, you know, the hair stands up on your neck and you feel a little strange. I didn't feel any of that. It just came out of nowhere. And I've not felt it. I've not felt it there since. So I don't know exactly what happened, but it was one of the strangest things that's ever happened. me. Dana, have you had an experience anywhere close to that where something physically attacked you?

I don't, I mean, I've felt like tugs on my clothing and maybe my hair. And I mean, a few of those times they've been in a kind of really terrifying situations where I've been by myself. But I've never, I've never been scratched or pushed or what I felt, you know, would be like harmed. I've never experienced anything like that. So even for me, like, watching this thing kind of unfold, I think I'm the most hysterical person in the video because I was like, I'm like trying to film everything. And then I'm worried about him. Like, I'm like, oh, he just got like literally this huge scratch down his back.

So yeah, no, it was, it was very over. It was an incredibly overwhelming experience because it came out of nowhere and none of us could explain what happened. But no, luckily, I mean, I've never had anything like that. It happened to me personally. And I hate to keep circling back to your home, but it's fascinating what you guys go through at your house and the whole TV on at night thing. That's fascinating. I hadn't heard that before. So do you guys get your, Dana, do you get your hair touched at home? Do you get little tabs? Or is there anything like that going on at your house? Yeah. I mean, we do experience. We just recently, I think it was like two nights ago, both of us thought we saw something. And it was at different times. And we kind of, we kind of, like, you know, came together and said, what did it look like? And we sort of were able to say something

very similar. Oh, my God. And we had, we recently had some friends of ours give us some nails from the Washoe Club. Yeah. And so we, we were like, okay, well, this is the newest thing that we've introduced. So let's see. And these were nails that had been thrown. They had been, yeah, picked up and thrown. By, by an invisible force. So we thought maybe we, as we, as we tried to deduce what was going on. Yeah. We think it was the nails. We did lock them up and they're locked away and we have not experienced anything like that since then. So you both thought it was the nails that were flying around.

Something about the nails because we hadn't had them out and on display before we started to both see the same thing. And so after that we put them back. But I mean, there's always something. We just got a drum that was used to conjure Loa in voodoo ceremonies. And this was given to our book to us by our friend John Teddy. He literally handed it to me and said, don't ever play this. Yeah. And I was like, I like just stood there holding it in my hand.

Like I don't even want to be holding this. Right. You're like, John, don't worry. I will not play this ever. Yeah. We have a special box for this thing. Yes. Where we keep it locked up.

And yet we will be sitting in the living room and we will hear it play right between us. Yeah. It was like two weeks ago. I literally heard a drum play about a foot in front of my face and there was nothing. I mean, and it's not it was, it was, there was no way to mistake what it was. And it was just, it was like, do do do do. Yeah. And it always does the same thing like do do do do.

And tried some experiments with it two weeks ago where we played like drum. Traditional voodoo like drum beats. And it was actually heating up like it was the temperature was rising. Oh my God. On the actual drum itself. Yeah. So there's. There's something with that drum.

I mean, the story behind it was it actually belonged to a family that was deeply into voodoo, and they would use it to conjure up the Loa. But they started to get an entity that they called Criminal, the arm twister, and he would come in uninvited quite often. So the first drum, they actually sank to the bottom of the Detroit River. And this was the second drum they'd used. And it started to happen the same exact way. and they just abandoned it at one of Detroit's biggest, like, magic ritual shops where you get ritual ingredients. And that's actually, she was a friend of our friend Tenney.

And he'd been in the magic shop recently, and they said, you know, your friend left this thing here. And she has not come back to get it in years. You want to take it. And he was actually even telling us that the spot where he was storing the drum was starting to act up. Come on. And it's the reason he gave it to us. Oh my God. And it reacts to when you play like something from YouTube, a voodoo drumming or something.

Traditional voodoo drum beats. And we started to play it. And I mean, you could watch it. We were watching it on a fleer heat up while this while this drumming was going on. Oh yeah. You could feel. You could feel it. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Wow. It was like a physical reaction. It wasn't just from a meeting. Now we just have to like not play it because it's. Because it's so tempting. Have you ever, have you ever once just thumped it?

Just once? Greg, you know what he did? Oh, cannot even believe he did this. This is probably why it was playing too. He was talking about it and he took his finger and like gesture to it and he went and he tapped the top of the drum. And I was like, like, like, accidentally. I couldn't even believe it. I was like, you just played the drum.

Like, what are you doing? You're like, damn it, Greg. It doesn't count. It doesn't count. I didn't touch me to play it. He touched it. I don't know if it works that way, though. In a rhythm, rhythm kind of way.

I don't know. I hazard to say you guys have, yeah, right? Touch the drums. Don't touch the items. I was just going to say, every time you get an item, you must get used to hearing, don't ever dot, dot, dot, dot. Oh, yeah, no, the one we hear the most is, this is my favorite is, it's your problem now. Oh, God, you're like, thanks, bro.

It's your problem now. Is there, like, one item out there that you've, you just want so bad. You know, the way that I look at it is, I try not to have any expectations about that kind of thing because I feel like the longer we do this, the more things just kind of find their way to us in strange ways. So we get what we're supposed to have.

And so I try not to put out, again, I really do think that most everything that we experience in the paranormal, and I think that a lot of this has to do with all facets of anything that could be considered paranormal, you know, Bigfoot, even, You know, things like alien abduction. I think a lot of this stuff depends on your will and your intent. And you draw things to you.

I really do believe that you draw things to you. And I try to be very careful about my intentions. So when it comes to things like haunted objects, I try not to think too much about what I wish I had. It doesn't really work that way. You know, it's we get what is supposed to find us. And we consider ourselves more as caretakers of these objects, not owners. We're just the caretakers. And if we can help whatever's attached to them in some way, shape, or form, then, you know, that's what we want to do.

But, yeah, I don't know. We get what we need to have, I guess. Well, I would just like to say you are probably one of the balziest couples in Ohio and probably have one of the coolest houses. So I just have to say that. I didn't know about all the other stuff going on. very, very, very cool. Where is the best place for folks to find you? And please tell everyone about the live feed and the best place to find that as well.

Yeah, if people are interested in the traveling museum or they want to come and see this for themselves, we do events all over the country, every month at least. They can find out dates, more about the items, more about us at paramuseum.com. There's a link there where they can go check out a 24-7 live camera. that we run. It has like a K2 meter that's set up. We switch out the objects. We do live EVP sessions where people can ask their questions and we'll ask them to the objects and we play them back live, little experiments and things like that. And if they want to read some of the articles about some of the adventures we've gone on, they can go to weekin weird.com. And then finally,

if they just are interested in Dana and I, they can go to WeirdHQ.com. Greg and Dana, thank you so much for coming on. Like I said, it's been, it's been long overdue. And as you guys know, if I hear of any interesting haunted items, I will immediately try to send them your way. Oh my gosh. Thank you. We had so much fun. Thank you guys so much for having us. Yeah, you guys have a good night. Tell Ohio, not hell. I said hell somehow. Ohio's not hell. It was. It really was. It really was. Tell hell hello for me. No, all of Ohio. Hello. Yeah, right. Yeah, if the crone has its way, huh? That's it for this week's episode. Again, to learn more about everything that Greg and Dana Newkirk are up to, visit weirdhq.com.

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