Speaker 1: Welcome to Haunted Road, a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minky listener. Discretion is advised. Hey, gang,
Speaker 1: this is just a quick reminder that I have a
Speaker 1: massive fall tour coming up starting in September, and so
Speaker 1: if you want to head to my website Amy dash
Speaker 1: Brunei dot net and click on the appearances page, you
Speaker 1: can see if I will be anywhere near you. A
Speaker 1: lot of these do have meet and greed options too,
Speaker 1: so if you want to get a photo of me
Speaker 1: or ask me a question personally, this is your chance,
Speaker 1: so please check it out and hopefully we will get
Speaker 1: to meet in person and talk about spooky things. My
Speaker 1: favorite one Chili autumn night, a man and his wife
Speaker 1: stayed alone at a lonely hotel nearly abandoned as the
Speaker 1: staff prepared to close. Was the warm weather destination for
Speaker 1: the winter. After she had gone to bed for the night,
Speaker 1: he couldn't sleep, so he went exploring the hotel's long,
Speaker 1: dark corridors. Eventually he found the hotel bar, where a
Speaker 1: bartender named Grady served him a drinker too. When the
Speaker 1: man returned back to his room later that night. Inspired
Speaker 1: by the remote location of the hotel and the eerie
Speaker 1: air of desolation in its empty rooms. He went into
Speaker 1: the bathroom and pulled back the curtain on the cloth
Speaker 1: foot tub. What if someone died here, he thought to himself.
Speaker 1: At that moment, Stephen King knew he had a book
Speaker 1: to write. I'm Amy Bruney, and this is haunted Road.
Speaker 1: There may be no hotel more deeply embedded in horror
Speaker 1: lore than the Stanley, the hotel in Estes Park, Colorado
Speaker 1: that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining, the book
Speaker 1: that has become one of the most famous and most
Speaker 1: frightening stories of all time, and its sequel, Doctor Sleep.
Speaker 1: But Stephen King never saw any ghosts in the Stanley Hotel.
Speaker 1: His experience was totally normal, not paranormal, even if it
Speaker 1: was extremely spooky. I mean, who wouldn't be creeped out
Speaker 1: spending the night in a nearly abandoned hotel. The answer
Speaker 1: is me. I once spent the night as the only
Speaker 1: guest in the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire, and
Speaker 1: it was one of my most favorite experiences ever. But
Speaker 1: I digress. The Shining undoubtedly put the hotel in a
Speaker 1: different stratosphere of fame, though I just want to be clear,
Speaker 1: the movie wasn't filmed there at all. Stanley Kubrick's version
Speaker 1: was filmed in Pinewood Studios in London, and the exterior
Speaker 1: shots of the building are of the Timberline Lodge in Oregon.
Speaker 1: Long before a certain horror writer passed through its doors,
Speaker 1: the Stanley had a reputation for strange noises in the night,
Speaker 1: for ghastly apparitions in hotel rooms, and unexplainable things happening
Speaker 1: all around. In fact, the Stanley more than a century
Speaker 1: of curious history, and it all started with the tuberculosis epidemic.
Speaker 1: In nineteen oh three, freelan Oscar Stanley went to the
Speaker 1: mountains of Colorado with his wife Flora. Stanley, with his
Speaker 1: twin brother Francis, invented a photographic process they sold to
Speaker 1: Kodak and the Stanley Steamer train car. But despite his
Speaker 1: riches and his success, Stanley was suffering from a case
Speaker 1: of tuberculosis that was quickly killing him. By the time
Speaker 1: he and Flora departed for the Mountains of Colorado, doctors
Speaker 1: had told Stanley he only had three months to live.
Speaker 1: Upon arriving in Estes Park, about an hour and a
Speaker 1: half from Denver, He almost immediately began to feel better.
Speaker 1: Stanley made a full recovery, due in part to the
Speaker 1: crisp mountain air of the Rocky Mountains. You might remember
Speaker 1: from our Waverley Hills episode that not everyone who went
Speaker 1: away for a tuberculosis rescue, especially at that Kentucky sanatorium,
Speaker 1: had such a fortunate fate. Despite his prognosis of having
Speaker 1: three months to live, Stanley lived another thirty seven. In
Speaker 1: years before Western settlers arrived, the Estes Park area was
Speaker 1: a summer destination for the Ute and Arapaho tribes and
Speaker 1: became a gold rush town in eighteen fifty nine when
Speaker 1: prospector Joel Estes arrived in the area. When Stanley visited,
Speaker 1: the town was a tourist destination, but only offering simple accommodations,
Speaker 1: not the kind the wealthy inventor was used to. Stanley
Speaker 1: started building what would become the Stanley Hotel in nineteen
Speaker 1: o seven, building on land that had originally belonged to
Speaker 1: an Irish earl, Lord Dunraven. The earl had illegally homesteaded
Speaker 1: six thousand acres to create a private hunting reserve and
Speaker 1: built a hunting lodge, cabin and hotel for guests. As
Speaker 1: Kathy Wiser Alexander wrote in Legends of America, Dunraven was
Speaker 1: finally run out of the area after trying to swindle
Speaker 1: folks out of their land and money. Stanley had originally
Speaker 1: planned on naming the hotel after Lord Dunraven, but locals
Speaker 1: had other ideas. In September, ses Park residents approached Stanley
Speaker 1: with a deer skin petition and asking him to name
Speaker 1: the hotel after himself instead. The Stanley Hotel opened on
Speaker 1: June twenty second, n o nine and makes a grand
Speaker 1: first impression. The main hotel building is built in the
Speaker 1: Colonial Georgian Revival style, four stories tall and painted mustard
Speaker 1: yellow with a vibrant red roof. The design was particularly
Speaker 1: striking for its contrast with the rugged, rocky mountain landscape.
Speaker 1: The style was a departure from the rustic accommodations otherwise
Speaker 1: offered in Estes Park. It was also one of the
Speaker 1: first hotels west of the Mississippi to have electricity. The
Speaker 1: property is sixty eight acres. In addition to the one
Speaker 1: forty room hotel, there are the manor House, Stanley Hall,
Speaker 1: the carriage House, the north and south dormitories, the laundry building,
Speaker 1: the boiler house, the manager's cottage, the gatekeeper's house, the
Speaker 1: maintenance building, and the swimming pool cabana, some of which
Speaker 1: are connected by underground tunnels. The Stanley cost over five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars to build, over fifteen million dollars in
Speaker 1: today's money. According to the hotel's history, the first guests
Speaker 1: who pulled up and stylish Stanley design steam cars were
Speaker 1: astonished at what they saw. Here in this mountain wilderness,
Speaker 1: surrounded by the rustic haunts of the hunter and homesteader,
Speaker 1: was an edifice that withstood comparison to the posh hotels
Speaker 1: back east. Electric lights, telephones, and suite bathrooms. A staff
Speaker 1: of uniformed servants and a fleet of automobiles were at
Speaker 1: their disposal. If the outside was impressive, the interior was
Speaker 1: even more grand. Guests walking in would see a lobby
Speaker 1: with carved wooden walls in several fireplaces, and a grand
Speaker 1: staircase leading up to the guest floors. The original Otis
Speaker 1: elevator from nineteen o nine is still in use today,
Speaker 1: and there's an original Stanley steamer on display in the lobby.
Speaker 1: The hotel has a bar, dining room, music room, and
Speaker 1: billiard room, as well as lounges and meeting rooms. As
Speaker 1: Steve Winston wrote in Western Art and Architecture, the public
Speaker 1: rooms are filled with dark woods, brass, old West shandel years,
Speaker 1: bronzes of wild animals, old books and photos, and authentic
Speaker 1: period furniture and accessories. Bedrooms are reminiscent of the West's
Speaker 1: Golden Age, with large headboards and angled ceilings with round lights.
Speaker 1: One thing the hotel didn't have when it opened was heat.
Speaker 1: Stanley designed the resort as a summer only destination for
Speaker 1: the wealthy set who traveled seasonally, not as a hotel
Speaker 1: that would stay open throughout the year. The first guest
Speaker 1: to the Stanley were members of the Colorado pharmacall Association,
Speaker 1: who met there for their twentieth annual meeting. According to
Speaker 1: a newspaper article of the day in the Weekly Courier,
Speaker 1: the Druggists were loud in their praise of the magnificent establishment.
Speaker 1: In those early days, many well to do visitors stayed
Speaker 1: the entire summer season. Adults stayed on the lower levels,
Speaker 1: while children and nannies stayed on the fourth floor, where
Speaker 1: kids could play freely and stay out of sight of
Speaker 1: their parents and not disturb other guests. It wasn't long
Speaker 1: before made your accident shook the hotel. On June nineteen eleven,
Speaker 1: a thunderstorm cut the power to the resort, and gas
Speaker 1: lamps were lit as a backup. When chambermaid Elizabeth Warren
Speaker 1: entered Room two one seven with a lip candle, she
Speaker 1: had no idea there was a gas leak. The explosion
Speaker 1: destroyed the west wing of the hotel, about ten percent
Speaker 1: of the building. The explosion plummeted Wilson down one floor
Speaker 1: into the Wilson dining room. She was badly injured with
Speaker 1: two broken ankles, but she recovered. The Stanley paid all
Speaker 1: of her medical bills and promoted Wilson to head chambermaid
Speaker 1: when she returned to work. She stayed at the Stanley
Speaker 1: until her death in the nineteen fifties. At the time,
Speaker 1: Room to seventeen, which you might want to remember for later,
Speaker 1: was the lavish Presidential Suite, also encompassing modern day Room
Speaker 1: to fifteen. Pieces of carpet and drywall from Room to
Speaker 1: seventeen were found in the tunnels under the hotel during renovations.
Speaker 1: As barboyer Buck wrote, in the Estes Park Trail Gazette.
Speaker 1: The discovered pieces of drywall are paid papered with a
Speaker 1: brightly colored floral pattern in reds, pinks, and greens, and
Speaker 1: the carpet fragment is a grass green with red and
Speaker 1: blue details. The success of the hotel helped Estes Park
Speaker 1: improve as well as the hotel describes. By nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: the town had waterworks, a power plant, and civic organizations
Speaker 1: that were all in some way thanks to Stanley. The
Speaker 1: hotel also transported elk from Montana to repopulate the depleted
Speaker 1: local population. Because of his contributions to the area, F O.
Speaker 1: Stanley is sometimes called the grandfather of Estes Park. Stanley
Speaker 1: sold the hotel in nineteen six, but the new owners
Speaker 1: went into debt, and he repurchased the hotel in nineteen
Speaker 1: nine before reselling it. In the coming decades, the hotel
Speaker 1: stayed largely the same, with a few improvements. In ninety five,
Speaker 1: the facade was changed from its original yellow to the
Speaker 1: white it is today. In the early nineteen fifties, the
Speaker 1: owners installed a swimming pool. Beginning in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: the hotel began to fall into disrepair. In nineteen eight
Speaker 1: to a devastating flood hit Estes Park, and the Stanley
Speaker 1: was used as a National Guard command center. The main
Speaker 1: hotel got a heating system about this same time. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until the nineteen nineties that the hotel was restored
Speaker 1: to its current state. Over the years, the Stanley hosted
Speaker 1: everyone from Theodor Roosevelt, John Philips, Sosa and the unsingable
Speaker 1: Molly Brown, to Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and a variety
Speaker 1: of foreign dignitaries in Hollywood stars. When Stephen and Tabitha
Speaker 1: King stayed there in nineteen seventy four, they stayed in
Speaker 1: Room to seventeen, the same room from the explosion more
Speaker 1: than six decades earlier. At the time, he was working
Speaker 1: on a novel called Dark Shine, set in an amusement park,
Speaker 1: but King wasn't happy with the setting of the book.
Speaker 1: As King describes it, while we were living in Boulder,
Speaker 1: we heard about this terrific old mountain resort hotel and
Speaker 1: decided to give it a try. But when we arrived,
Speaker 1: they were just getting ready to close for the season,
Speaker 1: and we found ourselves the only guests in the place
Speaker 1: with all those long empty core doors. King and his
Speaker 1: wife were served dinner in an empty dining room. He said,
Speaker 1: except for our table, all the chairs were up on
Speaker 1: the tables. So the music is echoing down the hall,
Speaker 1: and I mean it. It was like God had put
Speaker 1: me there to hear that and see those things. And
Speaker 1: by the time I went to bed that night, I
Speaker 1: had the whole book in my mind. In another retelling,
Speaker 1: King said, I dreamed of my three year old son
Speaker 1: running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulders, eyes wide,
Speaker 1: screaming he was being chased by a fire hose. I
Speaker 1: woke up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over. Within
Speaker 1: an inch of falling out of bed, I got up,
Speaker 1: lit a cigarette, sat in a chair, looking out the
Speaker 1: window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette
Speaker 1: was done, I had the bones of the shining firmly
Speaker 1: set in my mind. Kubrick's film plays NonStop on a
Speaker 1: channel on every hotel room television. Stephen King isn't the
Speaker 1: only notable person to have stayed in Room two seventeen.
Speaker 1: When Jim Carrey was in Esta's Park filming classic film
Speaker 1: Dumb and Dumber, he stayed in that same room. He
Speaker 1: was allegedly so spooked that he didn't even last a
Speaker 1: full night. Today, four hundred thousand people visit the Stanley
Speaker 1: Hotel every year, about one d twenty thousand of them
Speaker 1: stay overnight. Visitors today can explore a hedge maze similar
Speaker 1: to the one in the Shining, but on a much
Speaker 1: much smaller scale, which the hotel built in well, four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand living people visit the Stanley every year. If
Speaker 1: we were counting dead people, that number might be a
Speaker 1: lot higher. The thing is, aside from the explosion in
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, the Stanley hasn't been the site of any
Speaker 1: major accidents or tragic deaths on the property that would
Speaker 1: account for the hotel being one of the most haunted
Speaker 1: in America. Some believe that the hauntings at the hotel
Speaker 1: are attributable to the geology of the minerals found in
Speaker 1: the mountain the hotel is built on, which has significant
Speaker 1: amounts of limestone and courts said to amplify paranormal activity.
Speaker 1: My friend John Tenney has another theory. If people can
Speaker 1: go anywhere they want after they die, why wouldn't they
Speaker 1: want to visit places as they loved during their life?
Speaker 1: And his view, ghosts are going on vacation to the
Speaker 1: Stanley the same way living people do. Room to seventeen
Speaker 1: lives up to its spooky reputation. The ghost of Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Wilson is said to appear in the room, often cleaning
Speaker 1: up after guests, much as she would have done in life.
Speaker 1: Some guests report that she unpacks their suitcases and tucks
Speaker 1: them into bed. Stephanie Earles, writing in Out There Colorado,
Speaker 1: writes that unmarried couples sharing a bed complained of an
Speaker 1: invisible force wedging them apart as they slept, and single
Speaker 1: men woke to find their bags have been packed and
Speaker 1: left outside the door. Guests have reported the door opening
Speaker 1: and closing by itself, and bathroom faucets operating on their own.
Speaker 1: Some say they've seen a woman in old fashioned clothing
Speaker 1: around the area, just like Princess Caroline Stickney stays around
Speaker 1: the Mount Washington Hotel, overseeing the place. The Stanleys are
Speaker 1: also said to haunt their hotel. Fo died in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty and his wife, Flora, died in nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 1: His presence is often sensed at the hotel bar and
Speaker 1: in the billiard room, and his reflection has been seen
Speaker 1: in an antique mirror in the hotel. Guests who are
Speaker 1: checking in sometimes say they see him at the reception desk.
Speaker 1: As Nancy Williams wrote in Haunted Hotels of Northern Colorado,
Speaker 1: clerks at the front desk have seen the chairs quietly
Speaker 1: rocking on the front porch when there's no breeze and
Speaker 1: no one is sitting in them. Mr Stanley's large wooden
Speaker 1: rocker his favorite, often moves slowly back and forth. Flora,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, smells of roses wherever she goes,
Speaker 1: and likes to play the piano in the concert hall.
Speaker 1: Kathy Wiser Alexander wrote in Legends of America that employees
Speaker 1: and guests have reported hearing music coming from the room,
Speaker 1: and when they take a peek in there, they can
Speaker 1: see the piano keys moving. However, as soon as someone
Speaker 1: walks across the threshold to investigate further, the music stops
Speaker 1: and no more movement can be seen upon the keys.
Speaker 1: Haunted Hotels of Northern Colorado reported that a man wrote
Speaker 1: to the hotel about his experience of seeing a young
Speaker 1: woman playing the piano. He said when he approached, she
Speaker 1: was suddenly transformed into an elderly woman, and then she disappeared.
Speaker 1: The Stanleys, though, aren't the only owners of the property
Speaker 1: who are said to haunt the Stanley. Lord Dunraven himself
Speaker 1: is said to haunt rooms four oh one and four
Speaker 1: oh seven. There's a male ghost in room four a
Speaker 1: one who said to inappropriately touch female guests. He's also
Speaker 1: said to steal and hide women's jewelry. Closet door in
Speaker 1: this room also opens and closes on its own. Uncover
Speaker 1: Colorado reports that one man claims he witnessed his wedding
Speaker 1: ring inexplicably moved from the bathroom counter and fall down
Speaker 1: the drain of the sink in the bathroom. Lord Dunraven
Speaker 1: is known to turn lights on and off in room
Speaker 1: four oh seven, and a ghostly face is sometimes seen
Speaker 1: peering out the window of the room. According to Uncover Colorado,
Speaker 1: multiple guests have reported the odd experience of being tucked
Speaker 1: into bed by some invisible force, and others have felt
Speaker 1: someone sit on the foot of the bed, only to
Speaker 1: find nothing but an indentation on the covers when they
Speaker 1: switched on the light. But those are only of the
Speaker 1: many many ghosts of the Stanley. Other ghostly reports on
Speaker 1: the property include the ghosts of a pastry chef who
Speaker 1: makes the employee tunnels under the hotel smell like baked goods.
Speaker 1: Some claim this to be the ghost of a French
Speaker 1: chef named Pierre who died in a tunnel collapse, but
Speaker 1: this appears to be a myth. Charles Stansfield wrote in
Speaker 1: Haunted Colorado that guests whose rooms are near the elevators
Speaker 1: sometimes complain about the elevators moving noisily up and down
Speaker 1: the shafts continuously very late at night. Those bold enough
Speaker 1: to open their room doors and look down the corridor
Speaker 1: report that people dressed in nineteen twenties style tuxedos and
Speaker 1: evening gowns can be seen entering or leaving the elevators,
Speaker 1: but the elevator doors remain closed. There are many reports
Speaker 1: of ghosts of children on the fourth floor, where kids
Speaker 1: and nanny's once stayed. They are especially heard running in
Speaker 1: the hallways or on the roof where kids were once
Speaker 1: allowed to play. Legends of America said that one couple
Speaker 1: reportedly checked out of the hotel very early in the morning,
Speaker 1: complaining that the children in the hallway kept them up
Speaker 1: all night. However, there were no children booked in the
Speaker 1: hotel at the time. The ghost of a little boy
Speaker 1: sometimes tries to wake up sleeping children because he wants
Speaker 1: to play another polls pranks like turning on the television
Speaker 1: as loudly as possible and flicking the light switch so
Speaker 1: people will notice him. A little girl is often seen
Speaker 1: on the central staircase. A cowboy ghost in room four
Speaker 1: is reported to loom over you while you sleep, but
Speaker 1: the good news is that he's said to be friendly
Speaker 1: and even once politely left the room when requested to
Speaker 1: by startled guests. Locals believe he's the spirit of James
Speaker 1: Nugent known as Rocky Mountain Jim, a local explorer who
Speaker 1: helped found the town. Others believe that he's the ghost
Speaker 1: of a frontiersman who was hanged for murder. The concert
Speaker 1: hall is said to be haunted by a ghost named Lucy.
Speaker 1: Brittany Annas writes for Trips Savvy that she was a
Speaker 1: runaway or homeless woman who found refuge in the hall,
Speaker 1: but no evidence of this exists. Some say that this
Speaker 1: happened in the nineteen seventies and that she was a
Speaker 1: young teen had been squatting in the basement before being
Speaker 1: kicked out by maintenance staff and freezing to death in
Speaker 1: A woman on a ghost tour took a photograph that
Speaker 1: some claim shows Lucy, a young girl in a pink dress.
Speaker 1: Others claim that there is an additional ghost in the
Speaker 1: concert hall named Paul, said to be the spirit of
Speaker 1: a former employee. Nightly Spirits writes that, among other duties,
Speaker 1: Paul used to enforce the eleven PM curfew. In the
Speaker 1: hotel's early days, guests and employees report hearing someone telling
Speaker 1: them to get out late at night. A construction worker
Speaker 1: was doing some work on the floors in the concert
Speaker 1: hall when he felt someone nudge him several times until
Speaker 1: he left. The hotel's main stairway has been nicknamed the Vortex,
Speaker 1: believed to be a center of energy that functions as
Speaker 1: a paranormal portal, allowing ghosts to appear and disappear it will.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that I buy that, but apparitions often
Speaker 1: thought to be the Stanleys, have been reported on the staircase.
Speaker 1: In a tourists took a photograph that some claim shows
Speaker 1: a ghostly figure in period us at the top of
Speaker 1: the stairs, another Stephen King Tidbitt. The hotel also has
Speaker 1: a pet cemetery on site. Uncover Colorado writes that Cassie,
Speaker 1: a friendly golden retriever, is said to still deliver newspapers
Speaker 1: and scratch at the doors to be let in from outside,
Speaker 1: despite being buried at the grounds. Up next, I have
Speaker 1: my dear friend Carl Peiffer joining us. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about his time as one of the resident paranormal
Speaker 1: investigators at the Stanley Hotel and will also chat the
Speaker 1: Estes method or the spirit Box experiment as you may
Speaker 1: know it if you're a kindred Spirits fan. That's right,
Speaker 1: that technique was born at the Stanley Hotel. That's up
Speaker 1: after the break. I am joined now by Mr Carl Pheiffer,
Speaker 1: who we go way back. Carl. We're just kind of
Speaker 1: decide what to call you as far as like what
Speaker 1: your position in life is these days. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I knew you as paranormal researcher. I know you as director,
Speaker 1: brilliant photographer and artists like there, you are jack of
Speaker 1: all trades, it seems, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: creativity and I've kind of been exploring all different facets
Speaker 1: of it. And I mean creativity and the paranormal are
Speaker 1: my two big passions. So anywhere that I can blend
Speaker 1: those two and have fun and make a couple of
Speaker 1: bucks from it is really the light goal at this point, right.
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of us who are kind
Speaker 1: of in the paranormal field, it's it is trying to
Speaker 1: make a living out of something that we love, which
Speaker 1: I think is the case for a lot of people
Speaker 1: who have a passion about something. And so I think
Speaker 1: it's great to be able to meld those two things
Speaker 1: in your world. And you're brilliant at it, So I
Speaker 1: love it. I've been privileged enough to have you photographed
Speaker 1: me a few times and they always turn out lovely,
Speaker 1: So I have on some of those shots. They're fantastic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. So I met you years ago.
Speaker 1: I might have met you before the Stanley, but in
Speaker 1: my brain, I feel like Carl is just always at
Speaker 1: the Stanley Hotel. You know, it were kind of a
Speaker 1: staple there. I have spent so much time at that
Speaker 1: hotel and I have just such phenomenal memories of it,
Speaker 1: and just to kind of take it back for one
Speaker 1: moment before we get into the hauntings and things and theories,
Speaker 1: So years and years ago, I attended a what was
Speaker 1: a Darkness event hosted by Dave Schrader Back I want
Speaker 1: to say, probably two thousands, six or seven with Chris Williams,
Speaker 1: and she had just started on ghost Hunters. I wasn't
Speaker 1: even involved in ghost Hunters. She and I were just
Speaker 1: really good friends, and at the last minute we decided
Speaker 1: to go there because we heard they were fun, and
Speaker 1: there wasn't even rooms at the hotel, so I think
Speaker 1: we stayed at like a holiday inn or something. But
Speaker 1: you know, I got to this event with a few
Speaker 1: hundred paranormal people and I was like, Oh, I have
Speaker 1: found my people. I have found my tribe of weirdos, like,
Speaker 1: you know, because I kind of had been going through
Speaker 1: my paranormal interest for so long, you know, feeling like
Speaker 1: it was kind of an unusual thing. But here I
Speaker 1: was in this place, surrounded by people from all walks
Speaker 1: of life who were super interested in the same thing
Speaker 1: I was, and it was this like serious awakening for me.
Speaker 1: So years would go by and I would go up
Speaker 1: to the Stanley every year, usually in April. And so
Speaker 1: it started with Darkness events, and then I had a
Speaker 1: company called Beyond Reality Events, and we had a big
Speaker 1: paranormal event every year, and then Strange Escapes went there,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I go at multiple times a year, and
Speaker 1: so like, I have pictures of my daughter Charlotte from
Speaker 1: the time when she was like a little tiny nugget
Speaker 1: until she was four or five on the same spot
Speaker 1: every year because I wanted to get pictures of her growing.
Speaker 1: And then one year the Stanley decided they didn't want
Speaker 1: to do paranormal events anymore. And it just kind of like,
Speaker 1: which is completely their prerogative, and you know, we should
Speaker 1: never feel as though we are owed any you know,
Speaker 1: spot at that table at a place. I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: just some sort of internal business decision that made sense
Speaker 1: to them. So I don't fault them at all, and
Speaker 1: I highly encourage everyone to go visit there because it
Speaker 1: is gorgeous and beautiful ghosts aside, But it was this
Speaker 1: moment of like, oh, this tradition is gone, and I
Speaker 1: just never expected it to happen like that. It was
Speaker 1: just so strange, and so now I never take that
Speaker 1: for granted. When a location lets us come in and
Speaker 1: and look and talk to their ghosts, you to look
Speaker 1: at and talk to their ghosts, So it's just kind
Speaker 1: of a life lesson. But I have nothing but fond
Speaker 1: memories of the place, and I would go back in
Speaker 1: a heartbeat. It's just now it's you know, across the
Speaker 1: country for me. So yeah, it's it's a wonderful place
Speaker 1: that has presence. It has this excellent kind of magic
Speaker 1: to it and this prestige the way it's situated and
Speaker 1: laid out in the history. Yeah, I think the ghosts
Speaker 1: just weren't really on brand anymore for kind of business facing,
Speaker 1: wedding facing event facing have a drink on the porch
Speaker 1: kind of a kind of a brand. So I think
Speaker 1: I just kind of moved on from that, which is
Speaker 1: a bummer because I love the way the ghosts in
Speaker 1: history mesh. But you know, I can definitely understand, and
Speaker 1: it's still an absolutely magical place to visit, absolutely, and
Speaker 1: so you know, I do hope to get back there
Speaker 1: at some point, you know, I just us I think
Speaker 1: sometimes it would just tug at my heart strings a
Speaker 1: little bit. So, but you know, it's also they're not
Speaker 1: the first place to do that. So like I said,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't blame them at all, you know,
Speaker 1: I do kind of send them an email once every
Speaker 1: year or two, just kind of letting them know that
Speaker 1: I'm still here. If they ever decided to take that
Speaker 1: up again, I'd be happy to assist. So but that
Speaker 1: being said, I've had a number of experiences there over
Speaker 1: the years, as I'm sure you have to, which it
Speaker 1: doesn't always make a ton of sense because there hasn't
Speaker 1: been some major tragedy at the Stanley, Like I have
Speaker 1: found a number of deaths over the years of guests
Speaker 1: and things, but you know, it's kind of mostly from
Speaker 1: natural causes. But what do you think is going on
Speaker 1: there exactly? And what are some of the experiences you
Speaker 1: think people could expect to have there? It was, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was very much. One of the most common questions
Speaker 1: that was asked to us was like, why is this
Speaker 1: place as haunted is or even haunted at all? And
Speaker 1: back in the time we sort of kind of attributed
Speaker 1: it to the fact that a lot of people had
Speaker 1: so many happy memories there. I know that my friend
Speaker 1: Aidan Sinclair, who's a magician in residents up there at
Speaker 1: the hotel, he attributes it to like, if there is
Speaker 1: an afterlife, maybe the afterlife is us spending the time
Speaker 1: where we were happy at the most and for a
Speaker 1: lot of people that was to Stanley, especially historically speaking,
Speaker 1: when the hotel was seasonal and it was only open
Speaker 1: in the warmer months. A lot of people would go
Speaker 1: and stay four months at a time back in those days,
Speaker 1: rather than just the occasional weekend or weekday like we
Speaker 1: do now, and so a lot of people I think
Speaker 1: that their Stanley experience was much more embedded than the
Speaker 1: way that we typically look at at resort hotels now
Speaker 1: as being a lot more of a brief stay. So
Speaker 1: I think that there could be some longevity in that regarden,
Speaker 1: just people spending their summers in such a beautiful place
Speaker 1: up there. But more of my kind of current research
Speaker 1: now points towards the liminality of the hotels and how
Speaker 1: people come and go constantly, and there's this kind of
Speaker 1: like movement of this energy, and it's this in between
Speaker 1: space where it feels like a homer residents, but nobody
Speaker 1: stays there for very long, and that seeming to facilitate
Speaker 1: paranormal activity and high strangeness I think could absolutely be
Speaker 1: a factor, and not just the Stanley, but many of
Speaker 1: the hotels out there. It doesn't have to be a
Speaker 1: creepy or unsettling aspect, but just sort of the nature
Speaker 1: of the place contributes to the paroral activity. A lot
Speaker 1: of people used to associate like courts and limestone with
Speaker 1: the hotel, but when we were up there, we found
Speaker 1: that there was not really too much of that going
Speaker 1: on under the hotel. So as far as the mineral explanation,
Speaker 1: that doesn't hold up quite as well. But I think
Speaker 1: that the liminality and the historical presence of the place
Speaker 1: and the experience for a lot of people probably contributes
Speaker 1: the most to that. Yeah, and I I agree. And
Speaker 1: then I've sometimes wondered because you have this idea that
Speaker 1: you know, Stephen King stayed there and came up with
Speaker 1: the shining, and there's so many rumors around that. We
Speaker 1: covered that in the first half of the podcast kind
Speaker 1: of what the reality is with that, but people, I
Speaker 1: think associated it so heavily with the shining and that
Speaker 1: sort of a haunting that it makes me wonder if
Speaker 1: people with that expectation in mind arrived and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of brought that energy with them and almost infused
Speaker 1: a haunting into that hotel, especially when it was being
Speaker 1: so actively investigated. You know, it kind of just became
Speaker 1: this giant thought form or something, because the hauntings were
Speaker 1: so fluid there. I felt like over my years of
Speaker 1: investigating it, it wasn't a lot of really like they
Speaker 1: did get to know us, like I know they knew
Speaker 1: my name over time, but the activity wasn't completely It
Speaker 1: wasn't something you could easily replicate. It changed constantly. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's another angle that I think about all
Speaker 1: the time too. It is that sort of thought form
Speaker 1: idea and how much of of hauntings that we're experiencing
Speaker 1: or just from us, the stuff that we're kind of
Speaker 1: psychically or spiritually projecting outwards, and whether that's giving them
Speaker 1: life or giving them form, like actually manifesting that. You
Speaker 1: look at how many people have read the Shining and
Speaker 1: project out of the hotel. How many people even visit
Speaker 1: the hotel and think that the Kubrick movie was filmed
Speaker 1: there totally wasn't Like it doesn't really look the same
Speaker 1: once you compare them side by side. I mean, I
Speaker 1: wonder sometimes maybe this wasn't the platform to to make it.
Speaker 1: But sometimes I wonder if the Stanley is going to
Speaker 1: burn down one day because so many people book spoilers.
Speaker 1: I suppose here like so many people, I read that
Speaker 1: book and like, look at that hotel and are projecting
Speaker 1: that onto it. That you kind of wonder how much
Speaker 1: of that was a factor. I mean, it's certainly put
Speaker 1: it on the map historically, but from a spiritual standpoint,
Speaker 1: it's definitely a big question mark that I think is fascinating, right,
Speaker 1: I mean I never even thought of that, but you
Speaker 1: never know. It is so interesting what I think we
Speaker 1: can manifest just with our mind and expectations. So that
Speaker 1: being said, as far as the activity goes there, I
Speaker 1: have had some of the craziest experiences there. I think
Speaker 1: probably the one that stands out in my mind the most,
Speaker 1: and I still have the video of this. I don't
Speaker 1: know what has become of the carriage house. I feel
Speaker 1: like it has since been has it been renovated or Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that was also on the Historical Buildings What do
Speaker 1: you call that? That slips my mind here, Oh, the
Speaker 1: Historical Hotels of America the Register of Historic Places. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that the secondary buildings were included on that,
Speaker 1: so they wound up tearing it down, but I think
Speaker 1: that the rebuild had to keep to the certain foundational
Speaker 1: specifications of the original, so that's now a restaurant, and
Speaker 1: that's actually where Aiden's Underground Theater is is underneath where
Speaker 1: the carriage house used to be built. It's very strange
Speaker 1: to see a bit flourishing now after driving by it
Speaker 1: all condemned for so many years. Yeah, and so we
Speaker 1: had I had Aidan on the podcast. He talked about
Speaker 1: the Queen Mary for me, so listeners are definitely familiar
Speaker 1: with him. I mean, that's really interesting. Now I really
Speaker 1: do have to get back and see all of these
Speaker 1: kind of changes. But before that happened, it was that,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, this kind of rundown building that
Speaker 1: it was not open to the public. But we were
Speaker 1: able to investigate it over the years just because I
Speaker 1: became friends with so many people there, and I had
Speaker 1: this experience out there one night multiple but there was
Speaker 1: one night I was out there, I want to say
Speaker 1: it was with Grant Wilson and his wife Rihanna, and
Speaker 1: I think Britt Griffith and we were and maybe Raven actually,
Speaker 1: I think Raven might have been there too, and so
Speaker 1: we were just kind of standing we were all watching
Speaker 1: this shadow move in the back corner like oh, most
Speaker 1: like it was kind of avoiding us, but we could
Speaker 1: see it moving very clearly against kind of the moonlight
Speaker 1: coming through the boards in the wall, and then also
Speaker 1: there was light coming in from underneath the doors. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I have this on video, have the sound
Speaker 1: of it. We're standing there and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you hear feet in the dirt because the floor was dirt,
Speaker 1: just running like rushing me so fast. You just hear
Speaker 1: dunt dunes like straight like I if that was a
Speaker 1: live person, I would have thought they were going to
Speaker 1: just barrel me over, like tackle me. And you hear
Speaker 1: it just runs straight up to me and just stop.
Speaker 1: And it was very threatening and I stood my ground.
Speaker 1: But I've never experienced anything like that. Since it still
Speaker 1: stands as one of the craziest experiences I've had. And
Speaker 1: the fact that you can hear it, I'll have to
Speaker 1: dig up the recording. I think it's on my MySpace page,
Speaker 1: which tells you how long ago this happened, but it
Speaker 1: is it was wild. I mean, I don't know, did
Speaker 1: you have you had anything like that happened there or
Speaker 1: do you have any ideas of what that could be
Speaker 1: to some And yeah, I investigate the carriage house probably
Speaker 1: two or three times during that time period, and it's
Speaker 1: got a weird vibe in their weird energy. The couple
Speaker 1: of times I was in there, we didn't have too
Speaker 1: much like objectively happen, but there was a sense in
Speaker 1: there that would kind of come and go and creep
Speaker 1: over you and kind of surround you in a way
Speaker 1: that I always attributed to feeling very animalistic and not
Speaker 1: exactly like your typical kind of like a human haunt
Speaker 1: or residual haunt. And maybe this has a lot of
Speaker 1: me projecting an interpretation into it, but it felt kind
Speaker 1: of like that's where certain things that weren't very social
Speaker 1: went to go hang out on the Stanley grounds, you know,
Speaker 1: everywhere else is so busy, like the continent or the
Speaker 1: carriage house. Felt like that was where they were just
Speaker 1: kind of hanging out where nobody went. And that could
Speaker 1: be the animalistic, almost elemental type of energy to that
Speaker 1: could be similar, or I could be relating it to
Speaker 1: another story I had a couple of months after I
Speaker 1: first got to the hotel, myself, the parental investigator at
Speaker 1: the time, Callie and my friend Connor were investigating in
Speaker 1: room two in the manor house. It was one of
Speaker 1: the rare instances that I ashamedly say that I dozed
Speaker 1: off on a ghost hunt right laying had a comfy
Speaker 1: bed at two in the morning. It happens to the
Speaker 1: best of us. Yeah, But I saw the like most vivid,
Speaker 1: clear image pop into my head in this like ten
Speaker 1: seconds that I like kind of gotten into that, you know,
Speaker 1: in between him the gagic state, and it was this weird,
Speaker 1: scary face of like a man's face crossed the pig's
Speaker 1: face with instead of eyes only these two like hollow
Speaker 1: eye sockets. It was very unsettling, but it didn't freak
Speaker 1: me out, Like I didn't feel weird about it. But
Speaker 1: he was standing there almost like I was wearing a
Speaker 1: suit or something, Like I was looking at it like
Speaker 1: through a people on a door or something, and I
Speaker 1: thought it was really weird. Didn't bother me too much.
Speaker 1: But the weird aspect about it was that I think
Speaker 1: a couple of days later, Cali was telling that story
Speaker 1: to the resident psychic at the time at the hotel,
Speaker 1: Madame Vera. She she's great, and I think she said
Speaker 1: that she had experienced the exact same thing in that
Speaker 1: exact same room about a year beforehand, and she attributed
Speaker 1: it to being an elemental spirit of the land that
Speaker 1: was there for much longer than the hotel itself, and
Speaker 1: so I thought that was like really interesting in the
Speaker 1: way that it's sort of validated the experience that I
Speaker 1: had had. Was her talking about that as well, and
Speaker 1: so maybe it flavored my perception of it. But I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of that towards the edges of
Speaker 1: the property, so to speak, when it comes to the
Speaker 1: carriage house, makes me wonder how much more is kind
Speaker 1: of going on in that area that could be a
Speaker 1: less human, more elemental, more nature spirit type of energy
Speaker 1: there rather than just kind of the typical hauntings. You know,
Speaker 1: it's funny to me because the Stanley actually draws a
Speaker 1: lot of parallels for me to the Mount Washington Hotel,
Speaker 1: and the Mount Washington has something very similar in their
Speaker 1: Presidential wing that kind of runs around like you can
Speaker 1: hear its footsteps out there at night, and some people
Speaker 1: and this is the new wing, you know, it's not,
Speaker 1: you know, this is a recently built addition, and we've
Speaker 1: always kind of had that same vibe, and it's often
Speaker 1: the mountains, you know, the White Mountains of New hamp
Speaker 1: Sure it just makes you wonder, like what comes from
Speaker 1: these places and starts to inhabit these hotels. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just so interesting to think about. But yeah, that
Speaker 1: actually really jives with the activity with that running kind
Speaker 1: of like threatening, like in your face kind of activity,
Speaker 1: for sure. I would say also probably high on the
Speaker 1: list of I mean, gosh, I've had some experiences there,
Speaker 1: but high on the list would be I've seen many
Speaker 1: shadow figures in the hallways. The other thing that's happened
Speaker 1: to me many times there is I've had like phantom
Speaker 1: knocks on my room in the middle of the night,
Speaker 1: which is really jarring. Or I've had my furniture but
Speaker 1: I've actually had drawers open on my furniture in my
Speaker 1: room before there too. But the knocks can be a
Speaker 1: lot because you're trying to sleep and it's not people,
Speaker 1: because you're not live ones anyway, because you know you do.
Speaker 1: It's it's like a dun dun dune and you'll run
Speaker 1: up you think there's an emergency and you open the
Speaker 1: door and there's no one there. And I've had it
Speaker 1: happened at least three times there. Yeah, Yeah, and usually
Speaker 1: it's pretty telling when you know, like if it's another guest,
Speaker 1: like messing with you, because people certainly like to do that,
Speaker 1: but like it's a very creaky hotel. As paroral investigators,
Speaker 1: you kind of get the sense of when it's a
Speaker 1: living human being and when it's not just in the
Speaker 1: pure sense of like hearing footsteps running away or hearing
Speaker 1: the laughter, and when it's just kind of the knock
Speaker 1: on its own and europe quick enough to see if
Speaker 1: there's anyone in the hall like it, you know, it's
Speaker 1: something different. Absolutely, I can definitely see why Stephen King
Speaker 1: was inspired to write The Shining after spending a night
Speaker 1: there in the winter. What would you think is maybe
Speaker 1: the most kind of interesting, compelling or even frightening experience
Speaker 1: that you've had there? Yeah, I think that the two
Speaker 1: kind of pigman experience that's always been my most memorable one.
Speaker 1: The Stanley was interesting because we had such a unique opportunity,
Speaker 1: as there is in paroral investigators, to repeat, visit, repeat,
Speaker 1: investigate the same location for five years at a time.
Speaker 1: And while there's plenty of hindsight on that, for like
Speaker 1: wishing I did more analysis of whether in time of
Speaker 1: year and all that sort of thing, it was kind
Speaker 1: of more about the collection of the spirits at their
Speaker 1: activity at the end of the day for me, because
Speaker 1: a lot of it wound up being very subtle and
Speaker 1: it's weird. The paramoun experiences, Yeah, they're sticking your brain forever,
Speaker 1: or they start to fade in a weird way. And
Speaker 1: so as as you know, a lot of the craziest
Speaker 1: paramorn experiences are the relatively subtle ones, like not that
Speaker 1: it's subtle, but like hearing the footsteps running up at you,
Speaker 1: like footsteps in general. When you hear them and you
Speaker 1: know exactly what they are and you know that there's
Speaker 1: nobody else in the building, that's like an incredible experience.
Speaker 1: But I think that the Stanley had a lot of
Speaker 1: those kind of things, a lot of objects being rolled
Speaker 1: off of the table. We had. One of those actually
Speaker 1: had a strange escapes. There was a flashlight that was
Speaker 1: rolled off of the ledge of the balcony in the
Speaker 1: concert hall and we're investigating there. A lot of it.
Speaker 1: You know, if you get a good communication through whatever
Speaker 1: device you're using, or a lot of knocks, those can
Speaker 1: be fantastic. And so it was a lot of the
Speaker 1: smaller stuff. I'm not want to like see things you know,
Speaker 1: like shadows or apparitions at the end of hallways whatnot.
Speaker 1: From me, it's about trying to like develop the best
Speaker 1: kind of like communication or interaction with the spirits via
Speaker 1: the devices or Viet Knox or communication in that regard
Speaker 1: is usually what was a little bit more common for me. Well,
Speaker 1: and that kind of leads me to the Estes method,
Speaker 1: which was developed at the Stanley Hotel, hence the name
Speaker 1: the Estes Method, and so to kind of rewind on
Speaker 1: that for us. So when you guys first did that,
Speaker 1: I remember you put out a video Adam and I
Speaker 1: were first shooting. This is like a clarification moment for
Speaker 1: all of you. So Adam and I, Adam and I
Speaker 1: were shooting Season one of Kindred, I believe when you
Speaker 1: first kind of developed that method, and so at the
Speaker 1: time it did not have a name. What we were
Speaker 1: fascinated by it. And I remember I wrote you and
Speaker 1: I said, we're going to try this on this show
Speaker 1: that we're making. But I promised when it comes out,
Speaker 1: I will give you guys all this credit for coming
Speaker 1: up with this amazing idea, which I did. Like you know,
Speaker 1: I I've always championed you guys. Is developing it, but
Speaker 1: it did not have a name at the time, and
Speaker 1: so on the show we started just calling it the
Speaker 1: spirit Box Experiment. Then you guys eventually named it the
Speaker 1: s His Method, which is incredibly fitting. But I think
Speaker 1: by them, we were like in season three, and there's
Speaker 1: never a moment for us to just stop down. You know,
Speaker 1: you work in production. You can't just like interject suddenly
Speaker 1: in the middle of the show and be like, we're
Speaker 1: changing the name of this. So so for everyone, I
Speaker 1: want everyone to know that I'm fully aware that they
Speaker 1: we have dubbed that the st His Method, and that
Speaker 1: is what we call it. But we also have, you know,
Speaker 1: millions of viewers who aren't as tuned into the paranormal
Speaker 1: world as the rest of us, and so I think
Speaker 1: if we started it that way from the beginning. But
Speaker 1: just know, like I give full props. I love these guys,
Speaker 1: and so tell me that maybe people don't even know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. So tell me what is the
Speaker 1: s His Method and what gave you this idea to
Speaker 1: kind of develop it. Yeah, So essentially the method is
Speaker 1: taking the spirit Box, which is getting through different radio
Speaker 1: stations at varying rate speed where you hear little bits
Speaker 1: of commercials, their music, radio and possibly spirits. It's typically
Speaker 1: like very full of white noise, and it can be
Speaker 1: garbled and it's hard here, so it's very easy to
Speaker 1: sort of hear what you want to hear out of it,
Speaker 1: and we were kind of always on the fence about that.
Speaker 1: I'd heard some pretty crazy stuff out of it in
Speaker 1: the past. At the same time, though, like you do
Speaker 1: it enough, especially with with groups of people that are
Speaker 1: just kind of paying for a ghost on every week,
Speaker 1: there's once in a while that the group gets very
Speaker 1: excited about hearing something that clearly was not what the
Speaker 1: what was actually coming out, and so we started thinking
Speaker 1: at some point it was one of those late night
Speaker 1: conversations years before we even gave it the first try,
Speaker 1: where I think I don't even recall whose idea it was,
Speaker 1: so much as just developing in a conversation one night,
Speaker 1: the idea of like just plugging headphones into it and
Speaker 1: having that person who's listening to those headphones say what
Speaker 1: they hear through it. But because of the headphones, they
Speaker 1: can't hear the questions that are being asked, and so
Speaker 1: if one of the things that they say that they
Speaker 1: heard through the spirit box matches up as an answer
Speaker 1: to one of those questions, and that's a lot more
Speaker 1: compelling because it takes out the sort of like forcing
Speaker 1: it to have said what you thought it should say.
Speaker 1: Element it's either gonna fit or it's not going to fit.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, eventually we gave it a try. We
Speaker 1: were filming a little fun web series that we were
Speaker 1: making at the time called Spirits of the Stanley, and
Speaker 1: so we were doing an investigation one night and we
Speaker 1: wanted to try something different, so we finally grabbed a
Speaker 1: pair of headphones. It was now what it was now.
Speaker 1: They were the only like you know, I think everyone
Speaker 1: used to get the old Apple headphones with their phone
Speaker 1: and then I would cram them in my bag just
Speaker 1: in case the headphones broker died when I was traveling.
Speaker 1: So I crabbed these like really crappy headphones and plugged
Speaker 1: it in. And it was kind of hit and missed
Speaker 1: for a little while. But when my friend Connor Randall
Speaker 1: jumped on, he started getting some pretty interesting stuff and
Speaker 1: that got us kind of excited about it. So eventually
Speaker 1: he is a drummer, and so he had some really
Speaker 1: solid kind of sound isolating headphones that he eventually brought up,
Speaker 1: and then we were getting some kind of funny interactions
Speaker 1: that you know, told us like everybody stand up, you know,
Speaker 1: and so we stood up, and I think that sort
Speaker 1: of prompted the idea it's natural to sort of close
Speaker 1: your eyes while you're doing it to concentrate. But that
Speaker 1: sort of gave us the idea that visual cues could
Speaker 1: be happening in the group. And then if we wanted
Speaker 1: to really isolate the person to try to make their
Speaker 1: responses as objective as possible, we should probably blindfold them too.
Speaker 1: So fustly we kind of got the big drummer headphones
Speaker 1: to blindfold and really just dial in to listen to
Speaker 1: the device. Now, what's happening there, Whether it's spirits actually
Speaker 1: coming through on a radio channel, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: there's definitely seems to be an almost meditational element of
Speaker 1: doing it, where it seems that some people do it
Speaker 1: better than others and it can be hard to listen to.
Speaker 1: So perhaps those results are a bit skewed, but Connor
Speaker 1: and Danta new Kirk get a lot better results than
Speaker 1: I do, and I've been doing it since the inception
Speaker 1: as well. So whether that's a psychical aspect. I don't
Speaker 1: know we found that as well, Like, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: depends on what we find because we do this all
Speaker 1: the time now, and sometimes I feel like it depends
Speaker 1: on who's talking. Like most of the time I seem
Speaker 1: to be the one that does it, and like sometimes
Speaker 1: there's that kind of sensory deprivation moment. It actually can
Speaker 1: make me sick sometimes if I am under for too long.
Speaker 1: But then sometimes if I'm not getting responses, Adam will
Speaker 1: put on the headphones and suddenly we're having a conversation.
Speaker 1: You know, just depends sometimes, I think on the comfort
Speaker 1: level of the energy or spirit and who they're more
Speaker 1: comfortable talking through. But it really, I think just opened
Speaker 1: up this whole new element to investigations because it went
Speaker 1: from you know, doing like real time e v P
Speaker 1: to having full conversations and it is absolutely mind blowing
Speaker 1: sometimes the results that we get. And I know, for
Speaker 1: us on the show, people always want to hear and
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've gotten this too. They want to hear
Speaker 1: what you're hearing and you're in the headphones and we've
Speaker 1: tried it and it's literally just white noise, you know,
Speaker 1: to the viewer at home. You know, they're naturally skeptical,
Speaker 1: as they should be, But I always just tell them,
Speaker 1: like try it yourself, you know, like go go try it.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting gray area with it, because I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting for us to the investigators. But whether
Speaker 1: or not that voicing that answer is on the feet
Speaker 1: or not. I think a lot of people look at
Speaker 1: that skeptically. But if you're truly isolated in the headphones
Speaker 1: from the questions being asked and you're not cheating, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really affect the legitimacy of it, if there's a
Speaker 1: voice there or not, because that speaks towards that, like
Speaker 1: is the subconscious feeding you these words and these answers
Speaker 1: in a psychic fashion that allows your conscious mind to
Speaker 1: like believe that you're hearing them, like it it lets
Speaker 1: the conscious mind relax and maybe lets you be more psychic.
Speaker 1: I don't know. And so I think that it's telling
Speaker 1: in an interesting fashion of like how it might be
Speaker 1: working in that regard. But I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people want to hear it because they're skeptical, and I'm
Speaker 1: kind of like, I'm not sure if that's actually going
Speaker 1: to answer your question, because there's a lot of possibilities
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah, we definitely have kind of decided there
Speaker 1: is some sort of psychic element to it. We have listened,
Speaker 1: you know, we have synked up the audio and listened,
Speaker 1: and I have said an entire sentence that you definitely
Speaker 1: do not hear. I don't know where it comes from,
Speaker 1: because when I'm hearing it, it literally sounds like a
Speaker 1: voice coming through. You know. It always goes kind of
Speaker 1: past just the quick blips of it changing stations, and
Speaker 1: the voices go through that, if that makes sense, they
Speaker 1: extend beyond just the quick changes. What I love is
Speaker 1: like it eliminated a lot of confirmation bias as well,
Speaker 1: because I think we do kind of especially if you
Speaker 1: have any background information on the haunting that you're investigating,
Speaker 1: you kind of start to expect to hear certain words,
Speaker 1: and so if everyone's listening together, it's easy to kind
Speaker 1: of make it have the conversation you want versus isolating yourself.
Speaker 1: But you know, we've done all kinds of experiments with
Speaker 1: it now where you know, I'll pull a ton of
Speaker 1: historical information that Adam doesn't know, and you know, he'll
Speaker 1: go under and I'll ask about him we'll get answers,
Speaker 1: just things that he had no idea occurred, or we've
Speaker 1: even both gone under at once and had like entire
Speaker 1: conversations between two spirits that had no idea the other
Speaker 1: existed there. It was this really crazy episode of Kindred
Speaker 1: at the fee House where it was like a mother
Speaker 1: and daughter who were both haunting the same house but
Speaker 1: literally had no idea the other was there. So I
Speaker 1: don't know how that happens, but they had a conversation
Speaker 1: and it was, you know, you don't know how it goes.
Speaker 1: You take off your blindfold. Really how was that? And
Speaker 1: we looked at our crew and they were like Jaws drops,
Speaker 1: you know, We're like, well we got It was always
Speaker 1: the best barometer of those moments exactly you look at
Speaker 1: them and you're like, is this good? Like what happened?
Speaker 1: So it's just fascinating to me, And I think it's
Speaker 1: also really pushed people to kind of think outside the
Speaker 1: box with their investigative styles, like what else can we
Speaker 1: think of to kind of push the envelope? And so
Speaker 1: I love that that was born of the Stanley Hotel
Speaker 1: and it just makes perfect sense that it would come
Speaker 1: from there. Yeah, it always blows my mind when I
Speaker 1: see the hashtag pop up or whatnot and just see
Speaker 1: kind of like how far this thing has spread um
Speaker 1: and how many people are using it. And I think
Speaker 1: it's a very fun experiment for thinking creatively too, because
Speaker 1: you talk about doing two people under at the same time,
Speaker 1: or recording the feed and thinking them up later. You know,
Speaker 1: experiments that we've tried that I'd love to try more
Speaker 1: if I had more opportunity for it of recording a
Speaker 1: session in advance and then having somebody plug into either
Speaker 1: that or the spirit box and seeing as almost sort
Speaker 1: of a debunking experiment, you know, seeing if it's just chance,
Speaker 1: or having a speaker playing the feed while somebody's under
Speaker 1: so you can hear what they're hearing in real time.
Speaker 1: There's so many variations on it that I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't pretend to be a scientist. They're call myself
Speaker 1: scientific because I'm not. But it's fun to inspire sort
Speaker 1: of amateur scientific thinking where you can think about the
Speaker 1: variations on it. You can think about the variables like
Speaker 1: what do you want to control, what do you want
Speaker 1: to change, what do you want to answer? And that's
Speaker 1: always fun to sort of encourage that and see where
Speaker 1: people take it next. Yeah, it raises so many questions
Speaker 1: about what it is that we're even so it's wild.
Speaker 1: But and you know, I will say, years and years
Speaker 1: ago at the Stanley Hotel, I met Frank Sumption. Frank
Speaker 1: Sumption is the person who invented the spirit box. He
Speaker 1: invented it to talk to aliens originally, and there are
Speaker 1: a number of his boxes out there. Frank's Box is
Speaker 1: what they're called, and they're very highly sought after in
Speaker 1: the paranormal community. But he was a lovely man. He
Speaker 1: was very, very interesting, very interesting. You know, I'll never
Speaker 1: forget me eating him in I want to say, the
Speaker 1: music room and he was there with Bill Murphy, i believe,
Speaker 1: and he had a bunch of his boxes out and
Speaker 1: he was using one of them and it said my
Speaker 1: name like three times. And I was sitting there and
Speaker 1: there are a few of us, and he was like, Amy,
Speaker 1: is there an Amy in here? And I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm right here, maybe you know, but it literally said
Speaker 1: Amy and it kept saying Amy over and over again.
Speaker 1: You know, Amy's a pretty common name. But it's wild
Speaker 1: to like that. My first moment of seeing a Frank's Box,
Speaker 1: a spirit box in action was at the Stanley Hotel
Speaker 1: and now here we are just really furthering what they
Speaker 1: can do. That's perfect, that's awesome. The Frank's Box is
Speaker 1: very strange. If if anyone out there thinks spirit boxes,
Speaker 1: it's like, give him a weird vibe, Like check out
Speaker 1: a Frank's Box sometime. Yeah, so he puts like or
Speaker 1: put like crystals and things in there, and he's got
Speaker 1: this distortion on it. We have one that we use
Speaker 1: on Kindred sometimes and that one actually does make me
Speaker 1: sick a lot because we use it for the s
Speaker 1: to his method a lot, and it does make me
Speaker 1: feel ill for some reason, so we don't use it
Speaker 1: too often. Yeah, they've got a weird tempo, weird sound like.
Speaker 1: It's just it's a it's a strange thing to listen
Speaker 1: to on loud volume for a long time. Yes, definitely.
Speaker 1: So well, tell me what are you up to? I
Speaker 1: know people have hell your questions, like what is Carl
Speaker 1: up to right now? Where can we find you? How
Speaker 1: can people support you? You can find me on the
Speaker 1: old millennial social media's of Twitter and Instagram just under
Speaker 1: my name Carl Feiffer. But right now, we've got two
Speaker 1: seasons of our show Hellier out. We are slowly working
Speaker 1: away at at season three. Don't expect that anytime soon,
Speaker 1: but it is developing for for those that are excited
Speaker 1: about that. But in the meantime, we definitely do have
Speaker 1: some other exciting projects working. We're in the final, barely
Speaker 1: at the end zone of new documentary project about one
Speaker 1: of Greg and Dana new Kirk's haunted objects, the Krone,
Speaker 1: and that one has been sort of a logistical mess
Speaker 1: with with COVID and with life scheduling and whatnot. But
Speaker 1: that one's almost done and we're hoping to get it
Speaker 1: out in the next couple of months, maybe early next year,
Speaker 1: hopefully at the latest. So that's gonna be the next
Speaker 1: big project that you can't miss. We'll be blowing up
Speaker 1: the internet about it. But otherwise, yeah, for me, it's
Speaker 1: just been a busy summer of just getting client work
Speaker 1: and kind of making up for a couple of quiet
Speaker 1: years from COVID. Really well, hopefully we will catch up soon.
Speaker 1: It's always great to see you in person, but I
Speaker 1: think that people are going to love this conversation. There's
Speaker 1: just so many revelations here It's the perfect season finale
Speaker 1: for season three of Haunted Roads, so I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: It was a great chat. Thank you for having me
Speaker 1: on and let me talk about all this fun stuff again. Clearly,
Speaker 1: the Stanley Hotel holds a special place in the hearts
Speaker 1: of many a paranormal researcher, including me. It's iconic. It's
Speaker 1: where many of us felt those first moments of curiosity
Speaker 1: about the paranormal. I think and dream of it often,
Speaker 1: and I mean it when I say I hope I'm
Speaker 1: able to get back there soon. This was the season
Speaker 1: three finale of Haunted Road. I want to thank all
Speaker 1: of you for joining us on yet another amazing twelve
Speaker 1: episode as a special treat. Come back next week as
Speaker 1: we drop a bonus live episode recorded at Michigan Para
Speaker 1: Con a couple of weeks ago. And also, fear not,
Speaker 1: looks like you've got a lot more Haunted Road in
Speaker 1: your future. So until next time, I'm Amy Bruney and
Speaker 1: this was Haunted Road. Haunted Road is hosted and written
Speaker 1: by me Amy Bruney, with additional research by Taylor Haggerdorn
Speaker 1: and Cassandra day Alba. This show is edited and produced
Speaker 1: by rema El Kali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and
Speaker 1: executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. Haunted
Speaker 1: Road is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Learn more about this show
Speaker 1: over at Grim and Mild dot com, and for more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.