The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – “The Real Ghost” by Donald L. Vasicek

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

"The Real Ghost" by Donald L. Vasicek https://www.amazon.com/Real-Ghost-Donald-L-Vasicek/dp/1731245904 Donvasicek.com Ichabod Jordan sets out to prove that he saw Babe Ruth after the town in which he lives won’t believe him. It seems he’s told stories like this before to get attention. So, now, he realizes he either proves that he saw Babe Ruth or his parents will make him buy dress oxfords instead of baseball shoes with his hard-earned money from his newspaper delivery business and the town will always think of him as a liar.About the author Don is the founder and owner of Olympus Films+, LLC, a global writing, filmmaking and consulting company, in business since 1993. Don studied producing, directing and line producing at the Hollywood Film Institute and at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. He studied screenwriting at The Complete Screenplay, Inc., with Sally Merlin (”White Squall”, “Short Circuit”), as his mentor. Don has acted in 20th Century Fox’s “Die Hard With a Vengeance”, NBC’s Mystery of “Flight 1501″, ABC’s “Father Dowling”, and Angel Street Films LLC’s “Running Horses.” These activities have resulted in Don’s involvement in over 100 movies during the past 25 years, from major studios to independent films. His documentary film, “The Sand Creek Massacre” won best film at three film festivals. It was awarded the prestigious Golden Drover Award and has been archived in over 300 libraries in the United States. It was recently catalogued into Smithsonian Institute Libraries. Films Media Group, the largest educational video distributor in the world, is distributing the film. Don has also written, directed and produced “Faces”, “Oh, The Places You Can Do….”, acted as a writer consultant for MGM’s “Warriors of Virtue”, American Pictures ”The Lost Heart” and “Born to Kill”, story credit for Incline Productions Inc.’s “Born to Win”, Executive Producer for Pamela Cuming’s film, “The Road Home,” Associate Producer for Angel Street Films LLC's award-winning short film, "The Rose Garden," and actor in Angel Street Films LLC’s “Running Horses.” Don also has written, ghostwritten and published over 500 books, short stories and articles, including his first novel, “The Real Ghost”, which won the Waldorf Best Book Award. It was published by Waldorf Publishing and released on October 15, 2020. His novel, “The Eyes of Death”, has been published on Amazon.

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Today's featured author comes to us from books to lifemarketing.co.uk. With expert publishing to strategic marketing, they help authors reach their audience and maximize their book's success. It's 2022 by Donald L. Visekich. Voscik. Voscik. And we're going to be talking about his book and insights there. Welcome the show.

Donald, how are you? Thank you. I'm doing good. Thank you. Give us your dot-coms. Where can people find out more about you on the interwebs? I'm all over the Internet, but I think the best place to go would be my website.

which is Don Vosacek.com. So there. Okay. So give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside this book? The size? The 30,000 overview of what's inside the book? Inside the book? Yep.

How can I keep this short? It's a story about a boy. Uh-huh. Who is the only honest person in this small town where he lives and one thing he doesn't do that everybody else in the town

does is lie and put on a front he doesn't but yet he sees Babe Ruth's ghost and no one in town will believe him

so he sits out to prove that he saw him and it's it's a story there's a lot of humor in it almost ridiculous in it in it there's suspense but as he sits out

to do it we meet his friends we meet his parents we meet a lot of people in the town the mayor etc and they're all sort of quirky in their own ways

they're putting on a front and that's kind of the thrust of the story is here's a little kid with a paper out in a small town being honest whereas no one else is being honest okay and it it really comes out in the book and uh there's a there's a baseball theme and uh how can i say this he sets out to prove he saw Babe Ruth and he goes through a variety of experiences that are humorous, some are also suspenseful, some are chilling, and it gets to the point where he and his girlfriend get buried in the ground, and they have to figure out a way

to get out buried alive yeah and he's uh he's the one that's trying to work it out but guess who who shows up babe ruth oh wow it's a good friend to have when you're buried alive yeah it is and he he rescues the kids but and and so uh once that happens and the town becomes aware of it everyone in the town changes and become very decent people who do not put on fronts who do not lie who welcome each other

instead of fighting with each other and that's sort of generally it that's the story so the book's got a great lesson in it then I think it does particularly now what's what's going on in the country regarding politics

I've said this quite often in order to be a successful politician, you have to be able to lie. Yeah. The irony is we kind of expect them to lie and we know they're lying. Isn't that kind of silly that we allow people to lie to us? Well, yeah, it is. And if you call them on it, they'll try to lie to get out of it.

Oh, yeah. So they're just one lie after another, really. It boils down to this. I worked in a law firm. for many years. And if I didn't learn anything else while I worked there, I learned this. If you say something, then back it up. Sight your sources. Show your proof. And then what you say will have more meaning and more power, be more powerful. A lot of people don't do that today. They spread out disinformation, misinformation. And all this,

is going on in the real ghost this kind of stuff okay but it's uh you know it's written in a way where kids can get a bang out of the book as well as adults oh it's kind of book it is so what inspired you to write this book i grew up in a small town in nebraska and it meant very much to me growing up there even today we which is many, many moons ago, it's a safe place for kids to grow up. It's a nice place for kids to grow up. It's north of Grand Island.

It's in the sand hills. And based on that experience of growing up there, a lot of things stayed with me as far as meaningful things, people, activities, locations that sort of thing and so I thought I'm going to write a book about my childhood but you know like when I was about 10 11 years old up to about 12 13 years old what what took place in my life during that period of time and I when I started writing it was it was fun it was laugh out loud stuff for me and

I had a good time writing it. So what advice do you give to people who try to put on the front to impress others? The fine point of it is if you want to be believed, then if you say something, back it up with your sources

or your source, your facts. If you can't do that, then don't say it. What bothers you most about people who lie? What gets to you there? Just the fact, you know, like adults, kids are a little bit different,

but adults that lie, I try to be objective in my life, but adults that lie really caused me to be very unhappy, very subjective, and I want to blast them. Tell them. You know, if you're going to say something, prove it.

If you can't prove it, don't say it. It boils down to that. Yeah, very simple. For me. And especially what's going on in the country today. There's so much misinformation out there. There's so many I called broad generalizations that aren't true, that aren't proven, so on. There you go.

Kind of going back to Harkin a better time. And so this book, you targeted towards children, I think. Is that a good, is it marketed towards kids or is it marked towards adults and kids? I think it covers both, but it's primarily for kids 10, 13, 14, 15 years old. Kids that like to laugh out loud and see things that are funny. And this book has things in it. it's funny that causes it will cause them to laugh so it's primarily for i think kids 10 to 15 something like that yeah uh so the let's get into the other book what was the other book called

the eyes of death the eyes of death tell us what that book is about well this this book is about uh it's paranormal and a teen girl sustains a head injury in an accident and once she does that she changes from an all-American high school girl mom queen blah blah blah to someone who is starting to see that people are going to die so she tries to save them and each time she tries to save somebody they still die so it puts her in a position where she's questioning her sanity and she doesn't know

what to do about that. And so that's it's kind of the general premise of the story. So, I'm sorry. Her prom queen world turns from white to black after a head injury.

Yeah. That's a good log line. Yeah. It's well expressed. And she sees a white, gray ghost image around a casket? Tell us a little bit, she's not out a little bit, if you would.

We're not giving too much away. During that accident, her friend Emily are on their morning run. And Emily gets smacked by a car, which hits, knocks Hannah into a tree. Emily is killed. Hannah sustains his head injury. And then Hannah's at Emily's funeral. And that's her first introduction she has to, that she's not quite right. She sees this, this, I guess, a ghost around Emily's casket.

And it goes from there. Then she, you know, she, her mother runs a, what's it called, sort of like an assisted living. facility and there's older people in there and she helps her mother and she does see she sees the outline of ghosts with some of the older people were going to die oh wow and then he try it she tries to prevent that from happening and also uh another part of the story is this uh neuropsychologist man works with her, based on her mother's request, tries to bring her out of her insanity, if that's what can be called, tries to get her back to normalcy. And so he's in the story quite a bit. He shows up at unusual places, surprising places. Oh, maybe I shouldn't note this. This story,

Parallels the movie The Sixth Sense, if you're familiar with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Only that boy was seeing dead people. Yeah. And this girl's seeing people who are going to die. Wow. That's not a good sign if she sees you then. Yeah, right.

I don't want to hear anything from her. Yeah, I'd avoid her, like, the plague. Yeah, right. So she maybe has some special powers. and stuff like that that she's trying to resolve or understand or maybe? Yeah, it's a power. Mm-hmm. And it's based on the head injury and what it did do her brain.

And the neuropsychologist was called in after a psychiatrist and also a medical doctor examined her and said there's nothing wrong with her physically. but mentally her mother called in a neuropsychologist to check her out he finds the problems she's having with her brain and it's not physical

it's all mental well that'll do it that'll do it so what prompted you to want to write that story what was the impetus or the inspiration for that story I think it was the sixth sense that movie. I think it was.

That was a hell of a movie. It was. It was chilling. And it was very well done. I thought. Oh, yeah. Didn't see the end come until almost the end. I got it about,

I figured out about five minutes before they. Oh, you did? Yeah, I figured it out. But I'm pretty good. And most movies, you know, I can figure out early on because they're pretty simple in how they're designed, where it's like, okay, good versus evil.

And, you know, okay, here's, dilemma and it will be overcome and but uh yeah that was one movie i didn't see come until about five minutes before and i was like i was like wow that was really and then it came through and i was like wow that was really powerful um but still chilling i mean because you know even even he only got it five minutes before i was like i was like that was me it caused me to think that it was possible for the boy to see dead people yeah Well, evidently could. I think the spin was, the spin that was Bruce Willis had been dead the whole time.

Yeah, right. That was the wild part that you were just like, wow, okay. All right. So now, you wrote this targeting towards women or young girls. Were you trying to, you know, make them feel like you might have superpowers or you might have good things you can do with yourself if you can, I don't know, kind of figure out who you are and what your skills are. maybe i don't know i think uh what i was showing or trying to show in the story is there are different things in life that we experience one thing's all of us all of us experience is death yeah and it it shows this particular teen girl and how she experienced death and how she

dealt with it and i think it would give other teen girls food for thought you know yeah that can be that can be helpful in your other book what do you hope boys or young people who read the book come away with it well it's i think it's boys and girls and adults simply to come away with this this kid in the story was a is a great kid he's a great kid he's a great kid he's not a good kid he's a great kid and he's positive he's the only one that tells the truth

of all the characters he doesn't put on any fronts everybody likes him in town even though they're calling him a liar because he said he saw Babe Ruth and I think what readers will come away with is

wow I'd like to be like him I'd like to be that honest that open, that forward, you know, and forget about putting on the fronts. I don't know, you know, this is just me. Yeah. But I've always had somewhat a problem dealing with makeup, ideal shoes, stuff like that, that women, girls put on.

I mean, they put all that stuff on, and the question is to me, why? And the answer is to attract men. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of something that they're interested in, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, not lying is important, definitely. That's a big deal.

You know, you don't want to be doing lying and being deceptive in your life. You know, it's really important to, you know, tell the truth. And what got you into writing? What got you started in writing? Did you always write or something else? Yeah, I've always written. Even when I was a kid, I kept a diary every day. Mm-hmm.

But I evolved into life and had sort of what I call a tragedy. in my life. I lost my wife and kids, a cat. And that was like a punch in the mouth, even worse. And based on that, I changed. And I started looking at myself and life differently. And I started looking at the value of life more. And I saw in that that I started writing poetry. got a lot of poems published and went from there. Good for you. It was a way of expression. Probably reconciling some of your loss?

Absolutely. No question about it. I think. Everything I've written, and this isn't a broad generalization, everything I've written, poems, short stories, novels, even my autobiography, the theme is love. and love is my memory of my wife and kids and a kiddie cat it's always there that's a beautiful story and it's a you know writing is a very cathart can be very cathartic in in helping us

deal with our issues and everything else i mean it helps us reflect it helps us keep a journal yada yada yada all that good stuff and so yeah it can it can really make a difference in your life, the quality of your life, et cetera, et cetera. Do you have more books that you're planning on writing? Yeah, I'm working on one right now. This one is I made a film

titled The Sand Creek Massacre. About a massacre that took in the Colorado Territory in 1864, Chey and Rappell people were massacred. And by making that film, I got to know those Cheyenne Rappo people and I learned about some things about

their cultures compared to ours and how they acted and reacted and how they think totally different than us and it's very subtle but it's there and so I thought I want to I want people to get to know the indigenous people in this country. So I'm working on this book where I tell the story about my experiences shooting the film, my experiences with these indigenous people, and how they acted and reacted to the massacre. I mean, you think about it. If you think about it for a minute, it bothers me if I think, wow, somebody wanted to annihilate my ancestors. If they had succeeded I wouldn't be here today

you know so I'm writing sort of like it's chronology of statements they made to me on camera about the massacre about their families about how they feel and juxtaposing

to that I'm also writing this personal history of mine what I experienced how I lost my family compared to how they lost their family and so

that's kind of what it's about and it's won several awards it's been around the country it's been it's in other countries it's YouTube has over 50,000 views, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's very cryptic. And if you go out to the site, it's cryptic out there, scary out there. I was out there one day recording sounds, natural sounds, for the film. And all of a sudden I thought, I got to get out of here. This isn't good.

There were 750 troops that annihilated 500 Cheyenne and Arapnel people on that site so there's a lot to it kind of what the book's about and did you

do you anticipate doing any more books of that nature no really I haven't I haven't thought beyond that book I'm just working on that book well

you've got to work on the book and get her done, as they like to say, as the kids say. So all that good stuff. Yeah. Let's see. What else have we covered that you want to tease out to people about your books and how they work? I think, and please don't misunderstand me. I think I have something to say. And I use this book and film for them. forums to say what i have to say and i i'm i grew up in america i was born in america i love america dearly and i love the people in it most of them and uh i just i want to make uh i want to share my thoughts

about america about people about uh how things are i want to share my thoughts because i think i have something to share and it's come out in the two books it's coming came out in the film the film is amazing it's it was shown at universities organizations of different kinds film festivals, wherever, all over the country. Traveled a lot, showing it, screening it. And people always came away with, especially indigenous people, they come away with tears in their eyes over it. Wow.

My life was even threatened three times. Really? Yeah, because they thought I was making it to make money and become famous. And I was at Oklahoma, Cheyenne and Arapo Indigenous Veterans Center Memorial Day. I was invited there to speak, screen the film. Oklahoma Governor was there. And after I finished my speech, which I talked around some of the people that were in the film, veterans, a lot of indigenous people are veterans.

It's amazing. Yeah. And I sat down and they gave me a box lunch. I was in a crowd of about 200 people, all indigenous. Only one of the white guy I saw there was a camera guy. And they were screening the film and I started digging into my box lunch. And all of a sudden, these six guys came. All indigenous guys, they pulled out chairs and surrounded me.

And they let me have it. as far as trying to exploit them and make money and become famous. So I told them. I said, it's been X number of years since we did this movie, this film, and my wife and I are still paying for it. Wow. And if you can't take that for the truth, then that's your problem, not mine. Yeah.

I'd ask them to help out. Shell out, right? Yeah, I'd ask them. them to help out, you know, with the costs. I'm like, oh, well, go ahead and help pay for it, and then no one's making any more money on it. That's a good point. I never thought about that.

Yeah, see. That's why they pay me $5 a day. So, yeah, very interesting. Any future books that you have that you're working on that you're probably going to be writing? Well, it's like I explained the one book. It's called Lost Families, something to oblivion.

Lost families consigned to oblivion. They will never get over the loss of their ancestors and how their ancestors were murdered. I'm working on that book. And actually, that's where my focus is. So I haven't thought about the future or no other book ideas have come to mind. And actually, I don't even know if I'm going to write

another novel. Writing, you probably know this. writing is hard work and once you start you know your characters want to go in different directions the story wants to go in a different direction on its own you have to rein it in be real careful about what you're doing remember what you've written what you haven't written it's it's it's a tough job it's also enjoyable yeah there's definitely a reward to it especially in good storytelling you mean storytelling is is really everything when it comes down to it. I mean, it's how we educate each other.

It's how we learn stuff, et cetera, et cetera. It all comes down to that, really. Well, yeah, you just told me a story. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So as we go out, any final thoughts? Anything else we want to promote while we're on the show. Thank you very much, Chris.

I think in closing, I'd simply like to say this. Try to love your neighbor. and you know you can get that through reading books get that through watching film and we have to change what's going on in our country or it's going to blow up and be decimated and our beautiful America that we love will be no more so we need we need to learn if we don't know how

how to be nice to people we don't like. Learn more about how to interact with them. And I think the two books really describe that, really show that. That's probably it. Yeah. Well, give us your dot-coms as we go out and tell people where they can pick up your books. Okay. And now, well, will I get a link or something?

I have a mailing list, and I want to send this out. Yeah, yeah. If you want, you can give us the link and we'll put it on the Chris Voschow podcast so people can click on that link. Can you tell us what the link is by chance or is there a dot com? Well, it's it's Donvostechuk.com. Can you give me that slower? It's my first name and last name, Don Vosichik.com. That way people in the audience can grab it. And there'll be a link to that on the Chris Voss show as well.

so you can click on that if you're looking for it as well. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on the show, and I'm glad you're writing books to teach kids, not to lie, how to be better, how to maybe have better ethics and morals and how to explore oneself so that we can all improve ourselves. So I love the theme of your stories that you're telling there. Well, thank you very much, Chris. I really enjoyed talking with you today,

and I'm impressed with your podcast and your delivery, and thanks so much. Thank you. And now you're on it. You're memorialized in 16 years of podcasting, which will hopefully be around for another 16, 20 years. So thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate Donald. Thanks to our audience for tuning in. Order up his book wherever fine books are sold. You can find the real ghost and the eyes of death out there on the marketplace of Amazon, wherever fine books are sold, or on the links to the Chris Foss Show.com. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next. time. And that should have us out.