Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Man, welcome back to Coast to Coast. George Nori with you.
Speaker 2: We're going to have a fascinating moment with John Olson.
Speaker 2: Born and raised in Cash Valley, at the age of eight,
Speaker 2: he began to realize that the home he lived in
Speaker 2: was very strange. His parents still owned the old farmhouse
Speaker 2: built in the mid eighteen eighties. Strange experiences such as
Speaker 2: phantom Knox, loud boots running across the stairs, missing objects
Speaker 2: becoming commonplace for him as he grew up with each
Speaker 2: run in with what he called the Man in the Hat.
Speaker 2: John's interest in the paranormal grew bigger and bigger. Fueled
Speaker 2: by his own experiences with the unknown, John has spent
Speaker 2: the last thirty plus years interviewing and documenting first hand
Speaker 2: accounts of those who have witnessed all kinds of strange
Speaker 2: and unusual phenomena in the Western part of the United States.
Speaker 2: The Stranger Bridgeland series contains first hand accounts posts monsters, hauntings, glitches,
Speaker 2: and the Matress, sasquatch and even UFOs. John Olson back
Speaker 2: on Coast to Coast, Hey, John, it's been almost three years.
Speaker 2: Good to have you back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks so much for having me George. It's always
Speaker 3: such a pleasure to talk to you. I'm just a
Speaker 3: huge fan of all your work and the opportunity to
Speaker 3: come on here is amazing, So I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: We are fans of your You do a great job
Speaker 2: out there on the Western Side.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. I've been working
Speaker 3: hard getting stories and putting out books, and like you said,
Speaker 3: my newest one, Stranger Utah, is actually booked eight so yeah,
Speaker 3: I've been been going hard at it.
Speaker 2: So eighth books already, that's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's really fun. I mean, like you know,
Speaker 3: you get to meet amazing people and hear extraordinary stories,
Speaker 3: and there's nothing better.
Speaker 2: Let's go back to the man in the hat during
Speaker 2: the farmhouse days and then get into what got you
Speaker 2: collecting these kinds of stories.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the home I grew up in, like you mentioned,
Speaker 3: it was built in eighteen eighty, so it was already
Speaker 3: one hundred years old when I was a kid, and
Speaker 3: it wasn't long before, you know, by the time I
Speaker 3: was eight, I realized that there was something different about
Speaker 3: my house than other people's house. Yeah, and the man
Speaker 3: in the hat is one entity, one ghost that we
Speaker 3: were able to see like full body operation at times,
Speaker 3: and everybody in the family had experiences with him. For example,
Speaker 3: my mother would have an experience quite a bit where
Speaker 3: she would be working in one of the rooms and
Speaker 3: somebody would walk in and she would assume it was
Speaker 3: one of us or my dad and start talking to them,
Speaker 3: and when there was no answer, she would turn and
Speaker 3: it would be him, and then he would disappear. So
Speaker 3: it was it was just really fascinating, you know, that
Speaker 3: he was the one that showed himself, even though I
Speaker 3: do believe there was a lot more than just one
Speaker 3: ghost in the house. But later on, when my grandparents
Speaker 3: passed away, they didn't live very far away. I was
Speaker 3: flipping through an old photo album when we were helping
Speaker 3: clean out my grandma's house, and I flipped the page
Speaker 3: and I bot fell out of my chair, George, because
Speaker 3: there's a picture of my house, a black and white picture,
Speaker 3: and a man standing in front, and it was the
Speaker 3: man in the hat with overalls, white shirt, white brint hat.
Speaker 3: And I did some research and found out it was
Speaker 3: a great great uncle of mine that owned that house
Speaker 3: in the nineteen twenty so I was able to him. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's him. He is one of the ghosts that is
Speaker 3: in the house. So it's it's kind of fascinating to
Speaker 3: be able to put a person to the ghost now as.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a phenomenon going around now John called the
Speaker 2: hat Man. Would you consider your man in the hat
Speaker 2: the hat man?
Speaker 3: You know, I know, they're definitely two different things. The
Speaker 3: hat man that people are seeing, it's more associated with
Speaker 3: shadow people that they're also seeing, where it's a completely
Speaker 3: black image with an obvious man wearing a hat. So
Speaker 3: I don't believe there's any correlation between the two, but
Speaker 3: I do find that fascinating that it's also a man
Speaker 3: in the hat that's showing up as a shadow person.
Speaker 3: So it's that's one that's really kind of strange and
Speaker 3: scary for sure.
Speaker 2: What kind of stories do you collect, John, So.
Speaker 3: I collect pretty much any kind of story that you
Speaker 3: can imagine when it comes to the paranormal ghost stories, cryptids,
Speaker 3: glitches in the matrix, and I've even got some Fay stories,
Speaker 3: which you know, I never thought I would actually get,
Speaker 3: but I've actually collected some of those as well. And
Speaker 3: you know, it just kind of runs the gamba, including
Speaker 3: you know, people who've run into doppelgangers or just you know,
Speaker 3: everything to do with the paranormal. I kind of keep
Speaker 3: it open for for everything and ufo UFOs as well.
Speaker 2: Truly remarkable. And you concise these into the eight books, yep.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I got them all in the eight books,
Speaker 3: and I spread them out so that you know, it's
Speaker 3: not just UFOs and one or whatever. It's it's kind
Speaker 3: of a mixture of all. For those who kind of
Speaker 3: like all different kinds of things, they can find it
Speaker 3: in each one of the books.
Speaker 2: So do you have a couple favorite paranormal stories, John.
Speaker 3: I do you know? As I keep going, I keep
Speaker 3: collecting more and more stories that that fall under my favorite.
Speaker 3: But one that really comes to mind is actually my
Speaker 3: newest book, Stranger Utah. I was contacted by gen who
Speaker 3: said that his father had a story that would like
Speaker 3: to share, and so I was able to get between
Speaker 3: him and his son and interview both of them. The
Speaker 3: father who's retired now. In the seventies, he was an
Speaker 3: archaeologist for a university here in Utah, and in the
Speaker 3: early seventies he was still working on going to school
Speaker 3: and doing his doctor But they were working on a
Speaker 3: Ana Sazi dig near the Four Corners area, and they
Speaker 3: had first that started really strange, where in the evening
Speaker 3: if they stayed too late, there were these huge balls
Speaker 3: of light that would appear, these big orbs, and would
Speaker 3: they would chase basically the archaeologists out of the area
Speaker 3: if they stayed too late. And one evening, he was
Speaker 3: the last one there and he was cleaning up and
Speaker 3: he heard some heavy footsteps that were going around the
Speaker 3: rim and he got really nervous because he was all alone,
Speaker 3: and he got up and headed towards the vehicle and
Speaker 3: had something he could hear following him, you know, through
Speaker 3: the brush. He got to his car and drove off, scared,
Speaker 3: scared to death. The next morning he talked to the
Speaker 3: archaeologist that was in charge of the deg and the
Speaker 3: professor that was in charge, and the two of them
Speaker 3: went back to the dig to try and figure out
Speaker 3: what was going on. And they found these enormous wolf
Speaker 3: tracks that had followed him from the dig site back
Speaker 3: to his car, and when he had left, the wolf
Speaker 3: tracks turned and went out through the desert, and they
Speaker 3: followed it for a little while and they both were
Speaker 3: just amazed because, you know, before their very eyes they
Speaker 3: watched the tracks turn from giant wolf tracks into human
Speaker 3: barefoot tracks in the desert, and they laughed. He taught
Speaker 3: to the professor, and the older professor refused to engage
Speaker 3: with it. He did not want to talk about it.
Speaker 3: He didn't want anything to do with it. But he
Speaker 3: did make a rule from then on, nobody was allowed
Speaker 3: there until an hour after sun up, and everybody had
Speaker 3: to leave the dig site an hour before sundown. And
Speaker 3: so they followed those rules for the rest of the
Speaker 3: Simon didn't have as many problems. But I just thought
Speaker 3: that was such a good story, and it was so
Speaker 3: great to get it from the professor, because you're talking
Speaker 3: about somebody that deals with science. They deal with you know,
Speaker 3: hard proof and everything, and yet he had this paranormal
Speaker 3: experience that has stuck with him all these years later.
Speaker 2: How many of these stories surprise you, John, Wow?
Speaker 3: You know my biggest surprise I think going through all
Speaker 3: of this, George, is I never thought when I first
Speaker 3: started that I would ever get a Fay story. You know,
Speaker 3: something from these are what you know, people would consider,
Speaker 3: you know, goblins or something of that nature or trolls,
Speaker 3: and I always considered that folklore. But it was amazing
Speaker 3: to me the number of people that I've interviewed who
Speaker 3: have had experiences with these creatures. And what's really interesting
Speaker 3: is that these stories are from all over the world,
Speaker 3: and they explain very similar creatures but just have different
Speaker 3: names from different places around the world. And and that's
Speaker 3: really surprised me.
Speaker 2: Pretty dramatic. You've done some work about sasquatch too, don't you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pardon me, that's other than ghosts. I think that's
Speaker 3: some of the stories that I get the most of
Speaker 3: is that well right after UFOs, so I would say
Speaker 3: it would go ghosts to UFOs and sasquatch. But I'd
Speaker 3: collected some very fascinating stories from people dealing with sasquatch.
Speaker 3: I had one of my favorites of those a young well,
Speaker 3: a woman that I interviewed When she was a young girl.
Speaker 3: She lived near Jacksonville, Wyoming, and she would do babysitting
Speaker 3: for different people in the area. And one night she
Speaker 3: was babysitting at this home that was way out near
Speaker 3: the forest, away from everything, and after she'd put the
Speaker 3: kids to bed and fallen asleep, she was wakened to
Speaker 3: something in the back of the house and she thought
Speaker 3: perhaps it was the parents coming home, and so she
Speaker 3: went back and couldn't see anything, and then she heard
Speaker 3: something jump on the front porch, and so she slid
Speaker 3: into the front room where she could see and turn
Speaker 3: off the light. And this enormous sasquatch was on the
Speaker 3: porch and it kept having to bend down to look
Speaker 3: through the window. Pretty bold side, yeah, very and it
Speaker 3: was prying, you know, trying to find a way into
Speaker 3: the home when the lights from the parents coming up
Speaker 3: the driveway finally scared it off. But it's really it's
Speaker 3: really a fun subject.
Speaker 2: How many stories have you collected, do you think over
Speaker 2: the years?
Speaker 3: Oh? Boy, you know, I still have so many stories
Speaker 3: that that I collected that haven't gone in my books.
Speaker 3: Each book has around twenty eight stories in it.
Speaker 2: And you interview the people responsible, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So one of the criteria is it has to
Speaker 3: come from the person. I have to talk to the
Speaker 3: person that happened to in order for me to put
Speaker 3: it in the books. So, you know, I over the
Speaker 3: thirty plus years, I've interviewed a lot of people and
Speaker 3: just met some really fantastic people. And heard some amazing stories.
Speaker 2: What has been your favorite story ever?
Speaker 3: My favorite story ever? Well, I'm one of them, pardon me.
Speaker 3: One that really comes to mind was in I think
Speaker 3: it was not this this Stranger Utah, but the one
Speaker 3: before is actually called a Stranger World, because I had
Speaker 3: stories from all over the world, and I'd gotten contacted
Speaker 3: by this woman and her mother had grown up in
Speaker 3: a rural part of Mexico and she wanted to tell
Speaker 3: a story. She didn't speak English, so she I did
Speaker 3: the interview through her daughter. But when she was a
Speaker 3: little girl, she had several brothers and sisters. She had
Speaker 3: one brother that was close to her age. She was
Speaker 3: a year older than her and the two of them
Speaker 3: fought constantly, and one day when they were at school
Speaker 3: they had to walk quite a ways to and from
Speaker 3: school from their little farm. They had been caught fighting
Speaker 3: at school her and her brother and had to stay
Speaker 3: after school, and so the teacher made them do chores
Speaker 3: at school and then they were left to go home.
Speaker 3: So it was a little bit later and on the
Speaker 3: way home they had another fight and her brother took
Speaker 3: off running ahead, and as she was walking home, all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, from the brush, she got hit in
Speaker 3: the chest with a dirt clod and she thought, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, my brother is in the brush, you know,
Speaker 3: playing games on her playing games. Yeah, exactly, And so
Speaker 3: she grabbed a rock and jumped into the brush to
Speaker 3: confront her brother. And instead of her brother being there,
Speaker 3: there was this little man maybe two feet tall, with
Speaker 3: a brushy beard and a hat and like homemade clothes
Speaker 3: and worn clothes and work a leprechaun, yeah, kind of
Speaker 3: like the Leprecaun. What it ended up being is a duinde,
Speaker 3: which is a little creature just like that in Mexico
Speaker 3: Hispanic in Mexico lore, yes, And the little duinde told
Speaker 3: her that not to fight with her brother. Her brother
Speaker 3: is his person, is how he explained that that's my person.
Speaker 3: And so she ran home crying and talked to her mother,
Speaker 3: and her mother explained to her that it was a
Speaker 3: duinde and these little creatures can become attached to people
Speaker 3: or farms, and it was obvious he was attached to
Speaker 3: her brother. And so they did this little ritual for
Speaker 3: a couple months where she would write a note saying
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, well, I'm not going to fight with my brother.
Speaker 3: We're going to get along and lift it out by
Speaker 3: their their little barn with cookies and trees to kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, subdue them and let him know. And she
Speaker 3: did that for a couple of months and never had
Speaker 3: any more problems, never saw him again. But I just
Speaker 3: thought that was such a scary and yet fascinating story
Speaker 3: about you know, different cultures and again the Fay and
Speaker 3: how they are throughout everybody's culture around the world.
Speaker 2: Have you ever had people just come at you with
Speaker 2: screaming stories they're so scared.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when I interview people, George, it's cool because a
Speaker 3: lot of times when I'm interviewing people, they start telling
Speaker 3: the story and they go right back there, you know,
Speaker 3: almost like somebody who's had a car crash trying to
Speaker 3: explain it. They get very emotional, and especially if it's
Speaker 3: something that's very frightening, that was you know, very impressionable,
Speaker 3: they're they're able to just go right back there. And
Speaker 3: it definitely helps too when that happens, because you know,
Speaker 3: it helps me realize, you know, they really believe in
Speaker 3: what they've seen, They really you know, invested in this,
Speaker 3: and those usually make for really great stories.
Speaker 2: What takes up most of the stories the ghost stories,
Speaker 2: Bigfoot stories, UFOs which which.
Speaker 3: Ones, So most of them are ghost stories, I think
Speaker 3: those are the most prevalent, and then UFO stories after that,
Speaker 3: then cryptids like sasquatch, and then of course you have
Speaker 3: glitches in the matrix stories which are pretty fascinating as well,
Speaker 3: they're not quite as prevalent, and then of course you
Speaker 3: know fay stories, which are a lot more rare but
Speaker 3: amazing when I get so, there's definitely a pattern out
Speaker 3: there when I interview.
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