Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori
Speaker 1: with You've got a great couple hours here for you. Lloyd.
Speaker 1: Our back back with US world recognized paranormal expert parapsychologist.
Speaker 1: Lloyd holds a master's degree in parapsychology. He has forty
Speaker 1: three years of investigating the paranormal experience in more than
Speaker 1: forty years teaching courses on the subject. He's the Director
Speaker 1: of the Office of Paranormal Investigations, President of the Forever
Speaker 1: Family Foundation, and adjunct professor at Atlantic University, and is
Speaker 1: on the board of directors of the Rhine Research Center,
Speaker 1: where he teaches online parapsychology courses through their educational center. Currently,
Speaker 1: you can see him also in episodes of The Unexplained
Speaker 1: or Surviving Death on Netflix. His most recent book, that
Speaker 1: he wrote with the Rich Husseck and Arnold Rudnick, is
Speaker 1: called Afterlife. Lloyd, Welcome back. I can't believe it's been
Speaker 1: four years. It hasn't been along. George. Yeah, January of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. You were last on Wow before the pandemic.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Been good, been good, been very busy. You
Speaker 1: would look like you have been my god. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who wanted online classes, and
Speaker 1: it's been really great for the Ryan Center to be
Speaker 1: able to offer the classes we have. Boy, how did
Speaker 1: you get involved in all of this in Paris psychology
Speaker 1: in general? Yeah, well, it's an interest that I had
Speaker 1: since I was a little kid. My dad worked for NBC,
Speaker 1: so I had a TV set in my room when
Speaker 1: I was about two years old and unrestricted watching. I
Speaker 1: watched shows like Topper and One Step Beyond, you know,
Speaker 1: both of which really dealt with psychic stuff in the paranormal.
Speaker 1: And when I was probably about twelve or thirteen, thanks
Speaker 1: to the TV show Dark Shadows, I was going to
Speaker 1: the library picking up books on psychic and occult things,
Speaker 1: and lo and behold, there's science books on Paris psychology
Speaker 1: right there. So that really put me on the track,
Speaker 1: and a great track, indeed, because you're one of the
Speaker 1: best life friend. Ryan Institute's still doing some work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Ryan Center is doing a bit of work. You
Speaker 1: know that it was kind of closed down a little bit.
Speaker 1: They're doing bio energy research looking at how healers and
Speaker 1: even martial artists might give off bio photons and an
Speaker 1: increasing amount of energy during the times that they're actually
Speaker 1: doing things. And then, of course we're doing a lot
Speaker 1: more of the educational center and working on a few
Speaker 1: other projects right now, and this work here, this book
Speaker 1: called Afterlife, tell us a little bit about this. So
Speaker 1: Afterlife is the second in a series of novels. They're
Speaker 1: paranormal mystery novels. We Arnold Rudnick and Rich Hoosek, who
Speaker 1: both of whom were involved in television when I met
Speaker 1: met them, actually met Arnold first. We actually came up
Speaker 1: with the TV series concept which our frankly, our timing
Speaker 1: was not great. We were right before the X Files,
Speaker 1: and people didn't want a paranormal show, and then the
Speaker 1: X Files came along, then they didn't want a paranormal show,
Speaker 1: another paranormal show. So eventually we decided to resurrect the
Speaker 1: characters and Rich as the main writer on the novels,
Speaker 1: and we based one of the main characters on me.
Speaker 1: Jennifer Day is loosely based on me. She's a parapsychologist, anthropologist,
Speaker 1: college professor, and investigator and also a magician. So those
Speaker 1: are all things that I do, and then the cases
Speaker 1: that are underlying the second book not so much the
Speaker 1: first book. For the second book are actually based on
Speaker 1: my actual a couple of my actual cases. It's been
Speaker 1: a really great ride, and I'm making sure that Jennifer's
Speaker 1: commentary is all legit parapsychology. Our other character, Nate Rainey,
Speaker 1: is a cop, was a near death experience in the
Speaker 1: first book, but he's a skeptic doesn't even buy it,
Speaker 1: even though his near death experience helps him solve his
Speaker 1: own shooting. So it's gotten to be a lot of
Speaker 1: fun and we're in the process of putting a third
Speaker 1: book together. For you, do you find that the world
Speaker 1: of parapsychology seems to be growing even more than the
Speaker 1: forty years ago that you got into this. Well, it
Speaker 1: is growing in the general public. You know, you have
Speaker 1: the whole ghost hunting community that has arisen because of
Speaker 1: the popularity of the TV shows. People have come out
Speaker 1: of the woodwork where they're interest in that they can
Speaker 1: talk about it now, which is different than before, even
Speaker 1: though many of the investigators were out there really following
Speaker 1: TV show protocol and not science. It's been very interesting
Speaker 1: in that way as far as the field of parasychology,
Speaker 1: it's grown a little bit because we've gotten even more international,
Speaker 1: with more folks in Brazil and a few other countries
Speaker 1: coming into the Parapsychological Association. Unfortunately, the funding has shrunk
Speaker 1: in the last forty years, and that's very difficult for
Speaker 1: the field who pulls out. There are a couple foundations
Speaker 1: that we're putting out money. At that point in the
Speaker 1: early eighties it was McDonald Foundation, Jim McDonald's organization, and
Speaker 1: then the Fetzer Foundation was giving funds out too, and
Speaker 1: that seems to have dried up right now. The Bill
Speaker 1: Foundation is the main giver of brants, of bigger grants
Speaker 1: that are out There. Was this a Fetcher Foundation out
Speaker 1: of Michigan, Yeah, it was. Yeah. He used on some
Speaker 1: television stations and at one time on the Detroit Tiger's
Speaker 1: baseball team. Yeah, and there's a book about his life
Speaker 1: that covers his interest in in psychic phenomena. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: the foundation has gone into a different direction, which is
Speaker 1: which does happen to funders? Fetzer remember, yeah, John Fetzer's right, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: What does parapsychology mean to you? Well, the term is
Speaker 1: about about the study of psychic phenomena, which covers extrasensory
Speaker 1: or I like to call it nonsense rey perception because
Speaker 1: it really doesn't involve the sense at all. It's not
Speaker 1: a sixth sense, so it's esp We also look at
Speaker 1: how the mind, how consciousness directly affects the world around us.
Speaker 1: We call that psychokinesis or mind over matter. And of
Speaker 1: course one area that I'm mostly interested in is survival
Speaker 1: of consciousness beyond the death of body. So those are
Speaker 1: the areas that are covered. The field to me means
Speaker 1: it really is a field that studies things that happen
Speaker 1: with consciousness and things that make us more human or
Speaker 1: increase our human potential in many respects. Now, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things people can do that we're told we're
Speaker 1: not supposed to do or we can't do. We're told
Speaker 1: quite often that it's impossible for an athlete to do X,
Speaker 1: Y and z, and then until somebody breaks that record
Speaker 1: and then they have an example. Well, this is the
Speaker 1: same kind of thing. These are all abilities or perceptional
Speaker 1: processes that we have as human beings, but too much
Speaker 1: of mainstream science, partly because the organized skeptics organizations are
Speaker 1: afraid to even touch at least in the United States.
Speaker 1: Is science doing anything like this in different approaches? You know,
Speaker 1: there is a movement in many fields of science to
Speaker 1: try to figure out what consciousness is. Some of those
Speaker 1: consciousness researchers working everywhere from neuroscience to biology, to philosophy
Speaker 1: to physics. Some of those folks are looking at our
Speaker 1: research in our field. Many of them again, because it's
Speaker 1: academically in the United States, it's taboo to even look
Speaker 1: at anything to do with parapsychology. So they're coming around,
Speaker 1: but it's taken a while. Well, there seems to be
Speaker 1: an explosion of paranormal research groups and yeah, programs like that.
Speaker 1: Has it grown. The number of investigative groups has definitely
Speaker 1: been growing again because of the TV shows. There are
Speaker 1: some that are very serious, which is really great. And
Speaker 1: the support for organizations like the Society for Cyclical Research,
Speaker 1: which is the oldest organization in the world that really
Speaker 1: takes a scientific approach, has been has been growing. It's
Speaker 1: still not phenomenal, but it's been growing. What we see
Speaker 1: is that we have a lot of people who claim
Speaker 1: to be doing research or scientific investigations, and when you
Speaker 1: really look at what they're doing. They are following methods
Speaker 1: they see on TV which are created by producers more
Speaker 1: than they are by people. And they need a dramatic
Speaker 1: ending to the program. Yeah, they need drama in the
Speaker 1: program in general. You know, some of the first seasons
Speaker 1: of ghost Hunters in Paratable State was more about the
Speaker 1: investigators than it was about the actual process of investigation
Speaker 1: or or anything like that. And the fact that they
Speaker 1: actually had it started doing things in the dark because
Speaker 1: they had Nichide camera is truly an invention of television
Speaker 1: more than anything else. And in most cases, nothing happens
Speaker 1: for a long long time, but I seem to condense
Speaker 1: it into that thirty minute or hour show. And you
Speaker 1: kind of have to do that because we have certainly
Speaker 1: had to wait to do a stakeout to see if
Speaker 1: anything's going to happen. But most of the time, when
Speaker 1: you do an investigation from a more scientific approach, and
Speaker 1: not every investigation really is a scientific method investigation, sometimes
Speaker 1: of applying the science we learn in parapsychology, there are
Speaker 1: things that we do with the witnesses, which who are
Speaker 1: often ignored in these shows, focusing on them because they
Speaker 1: are the ones who are having the experience, So we're
Speaker 1: in some respects setting their experience is more than the phenomena.
Speaker 1: And in doing that, what I've certainly found in many
Speaker 1: of my coologues have found is the phenomena does kind
Speaker 1: of follow by working with the people who are first
Speaker 1: reporting it. And in the ghost investigations, what are they
Speaker 1: looking for, Lloyd, what are the investigators really trying to find? Well,
Speaker 1: we versus them, I'll tell you that we're trying to
Speaker 1: There's two things that's going on. We have most of
Speaker 1: the folks on our fields have an ethical I guess
Speaker 1: you can say an edict. We follow what is requested
Speaker 1: of us. So the majority of people in a residence
Speaker 1: call for help or explanation, and that's what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do. The first thing we're trying to do is
Speaker 1: find for each event that is reported, we're trying to
Speaker 1: look for an explanation that is not paranormal. Try to
Speaker 1: eliminate all of that. So we have a core of
Speaker 1: what's real, what might really be psychic, And we're trying
Speaker 1: to see if what people are experiencing, what is coming
Speaker 1: up in these cases matches the patterns, or fits the patterns,
Speaker 1: or adds to the evidence that we actually have from
Speaker 1: previous cases going back over one hundred and forty years.
Speaker 1: The TV ghost hunter following groups, the folks who follow
Speaker 1: those shows are more about getting either an experience, which
Speaker 1: kind of makes them thrill seekers, or they're going to
Speaker 1: try to get their so called evidence. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if you say that, you know, the devices don't
Speaker 1: detect ghosts. If somebody on TV says this device detect
Speaker 1: a ghost, that's what they accept. That's what it is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have a friend of mine who sold the house,
Speaker 1: but he used to own Forrest Ackerman's place. Oh that's great.
Speaker 1: And Ackerman, of course is the guy who termed the
Speaker 1: phrase sci fi. But the place was haunted and they've
Speaker 1: they've had sessions there, they've had seances, they've had all
Speaker 1: kinds of things with investigators. And then then he sold
Speaker 1: it to an artist who loves it. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: a documentary made. I think it's Paul Davis. Paul David, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Paul David. Yeah, I've got his book also, An Atheists
Speaker 1: in Heaven about what he believes is communication was from
Speaker 1: Forest Ackerman. Really interesting situation. Where does your work go next? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I have been both an investigator and an
Speaker 1: educator for a very very long time, and I'd like
Speaker 1: to think that I'm helping to produce the next generation
Speaker 1: of field of good field investigators. We have a couple
Speaker 1: of certificate programs we're doing at the Rhyan Center, and
Speaker 1: you know, I'm still they may not be doing as
Speaker 1: many investigations of the pandemic kind of shut things down,
Speaker 1: Although I did have a case that we handled virtually
Speaker 1: myself and a few of my colleagues during the initial
Speaker 1: stage of the pandemic. We really don't get a lot
Speaker 1: of cases anymore. Most of the ghost hunting groups do
Speaker 1: much better job with social media and advertising, even though
Speaker 1: their claims are kind of way out there, but because
Speaker 1: they are kind of making big claims, they get a
Speaker 1: lot of seeming cases. We end up getting sometimes the
Speaker 1: second level where the people have had the local ghost
Speaker 1: hunting groups come in and now they're freaked out because
Speaker 1: the ghost hunters freaked them out and didn't help them.
Speaker 1: That we're coming in to go to do the opposite,
Speaker 1: to kind of figure out what's going on and help
Speaker 1: them as much as possible. I'd like to see myself
Speaker 1: and my students do a lot more my former students
Speaker 1: do a lot more investigations to pull them away from
Speaker 1: the big claiming. I guess posers in many respects. I
Speaker 1: hate to use that term, yeah, but it is true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'd like to see more of them get interested.
Speaker 1: It's just really a shame that the vast majority of
Speaker 1: people who call them those ghost centers are paranormal investigators
Speaker 1: are more about either putting out content on the web.
Speaker 1: A lot of them used to say that they were
Speaker 1: making TV pilots, and I think some of them still
Speaker 1: are claiming that, although now they're going onto YouTube. You know,
Speaker 1: they want to be famous, like the TV ghost hunters. Sure,
Speaker 1: and that's not what we care about. Generally, when people
Speaker 1: go on a ghost hunt, what are they looking for?
Speaker 1: What do they want to find? Well, when people the
Speaker 1: folks who are going on on ghost hunts typically are
Speaker 1: going to public locations where they again are hoping to
Speaker 1: get to have an experience or get some so called evidence,
Speaker 1: which could be anything from an electronic voice phenomena type
Speaker 1: thing that they think they're getting, to unusual readings on
Speaker 1: various devices, some of which are actually legit scientific devices,
Speaker 1: although they're not always being used properly. And then they're
Speaker 1: also trying to get other communication through things like the
Speaker 1: so called ghostbox or spirit boxes and some of these
Speaker 1: other devices. They're trying to get pictures of orbs, and
Speaker 1: all of that is I guess say evidence under their belt,
Speaker 1: although it's not good evidence. Do you believe that the
Speaker 1: ghost world is part of the dead as opposed to
Speaker 1: something else? Well, we have two different kinds of categories
Speaker 1: of phenomena that we that sometimes get called ghosts. One
Speaker 1: are the ghost true true spirits or ghosts or what
Speaker 1: we use term as apparition, which seems to be indications
Speaker 1: that people's consciousness can survive the death of the body,
Speaker 1: and some instances they seem to stick around here besides
Speaker 1: moving on to wherever it is you go next. And
Speaker 1: there are some very good cases, certainly cases I've had
Speaker 1: are very very good that don't have another explanation at
Speaker 1: least as far as we've been able to figure out,
Speaker 1: and that indicates that consciousness that survived death. It's one
Speaker 1: of many types of evidence that we have for that
Speaker 1: phenomena that survival exists. Hauntings are the imprints we leave
Speaker 1: impressions behind, we leave emotions behind. It seems like the
Speaker 1: environment seem records our activity, our emotions, and that's the
Speaker 1: majority of the kinds of things that people report when
Speaker 1: they say their houses are haunted, that they're picking up
Speaker 1: something themselves. They know, everybody's a little psychic, so some
Speaker 1: people are picking up things that happen in their homes
Speaker 1: or people that were in their homes, including possibly even
Speaker 1: impressions of their own activity in the past, and that
Speaker 1: often gets mistaken as spirits, as ghosts, that's much more common.
Speaker 1: What about things like hell those kinds of things do
Speaker 1: they exist well, Heaven and hell are religious concepts or,
Speaker 1: depending on the part of the world or culture, might
Speaker 1: be a mythological concept, and there's variations of what those
Speaker 1: things are. We in the field of parapsychology, we don't
Speaker 1: use those terms. There doesn't seem to be really good
Speaker 1: evidence from the perspective of the people who seem to
Speaker 1: be communicating with spirits on the other side, whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call that other side, it's not a hellish landscape.
Speaker 1: It's not that. In fact, I remember one medium telling
Speaker 1: me that she when communicating with spirits, she was told
Speaker 1: that the hell that they run into is they are
Speaker 1: confronted where they're kind of a life review and all
Speaker 1: the good and bad things that they had in their lives.
Speaker 1: And for some people that might be helped if you
Speaker 1: remembered everything you ever did, especially the bad things you did.
Speaker 1: But there's not like a place that seems to come through.
Speaker 1: And we don't really have any good evidence in the
Speaker 1: cases that have come up in the experiences people have
Speaker 1: had unless you put a religious spin on them. And
Speaker 1: then it depends on the religion that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: because the same experience could be interpreted completely differently by
Speaker 1: people coming from different religious traditions. Listen to more Coast
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