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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori

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Speaker 1: with you. Let me tell you a little bit about

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Speaker 1: doctor Melvin Willin. Born in England, educated at Francis Bacon

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Speaker 1: Grammar School. Took degrees at several British universities, including doctorates

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Speaker 1: and para music at the Sheffield and History at Bristol.

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Speaker 1: Melvin devotes a large amount of his life and study

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Speaker 1: to lecturing of the psychical research. He's an honorary Archive

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Speaker 1: officer for the Society for Psychical Research, a consultant to

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Speaker 1: the Ghost Club. His viewpoint on the investigations of alleged

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Speaker 1: paranormal activity is skeptical, but with a considerable degree of

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Speaker 1: open mindedness. He did not close the door. He frequently

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Speaker 1: speaks at conferences, publishes articles and academic journals. Recently completed

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Speaker 1: a project administered by Cambridge University to digitize hundreds of

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Speaker 1: videos of alleged paranormal phenomena and related material. Melvin, welcome

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Speaker 1: to the program, doctor, Good to have you with us. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: good to be here. Thank you. How did you get

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Speaker 1: involved in what I will call the paranormal end of

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Speaker 1: your career. Yes, it's It's a bit strange really because

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Speaker 1: I was a music teacher for the first half of

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Speaker 1: my life, but I've always been intrigued with paranormal things,

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Speaker 1: so many questions where I'm answered, and slowly but surely

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Speaker 1: I've started putting music in the paranormal together, and then

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Speaker 1: the sort of paranormal stuff virtually took over. You know,

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Speaker 1: you're skeptic, and I think that's very healthy because to

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Speaker 1: look at things with a skeptical eye is important and

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Speaker 1: you're open minded though, and that's what's so important, isn't it. Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: I think so. I mean skepticism has got a bad

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Speaker 1: name for it because there's a few people around who

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Speaker 1: I won't name, who sort of have closed up to everything.

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Speaker 1: They think it's all rubbish, Whereas I like there to

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Speaker 1: be good evidence, and if there is, then I'm willing

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Speaker 1: to take it on board. I want to talk about

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Speaker 1: a lot of issues that you've been working on, but

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Speaker 1: the little clip I just played of the endfield puanormal

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Speaker 1: Poulter Geys, you have a book on that tell us

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Speaker 1: about this nineteen seventy seven case and how did you

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Speaker 1: come upon it? Okay, Well, this took place between nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy seven and seventy eight. I mean there was activity

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Speaker 1: for about eighteen months, and it was investigated by two

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Speaker 1: members of the Society of a Psychical Research, namely Maurice

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Speaker 1: Gross and Guy Lyon Playfair. Now, about ten years ago

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Speaker 1: Maurice Gross, unfortunately was close to death, and he contacted

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Speaker 1: me and said, would I take on board all of

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Speaker 1: his cassette tapes that he'd made, of all of the

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Speaker 1: recordings that they'd done in situ at this Endfield haunted place,

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Speaker 1: not as the owner of them, but as the custodian.

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Speaker 1: Now I did that, listen to them all, transcribed them all,

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Speaker 1: digitalized them all, and I thought, wow, there's so much

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Speaker 1: information here that ought to be brought to other people's

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Speaker 1: ears and eyes. And then lo and behold, two or

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Speaker 1: three years ago, Guy Playfair, who was the other investigator,

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Speaker 1: he died in the same sort of circumstances again, and

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Speaker 1: I got hold of the tapes, transcribed them again, and thought, well,

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Speaker 1: now we've got enough for a fairly reasonable book. Are

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Speaker 1: you sure doing now this case? What happened, Well, initially

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Speaker 1: it started in a sort of a very low key,

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Speaker 1: little place in Enfield, near London in England, where a

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Speaker 1: family a single parent mother with four children, nothing special,

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Speaker 1: not much money, nothing going on out of the usual.

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Speaker 1: And then one night in November I think it was,

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Speaker 1: there was all these bangings going on and they thought,

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Speaker 1: what on earth is going on there? And investigation they

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Speaker 1: couldn't find anything, and they called the police, and the

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Speaker 1: police turned up and said, you know what's going on?

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Speaker 1: And then in front of the police a chair moved

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Speaker 1: across the room and then they thought, right, that's it,

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Speaker 1: we're getting out. And did things get more and more violent?

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Speaker 1: There a lot more. Yes, nobody ever got really hurt,

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Speaker 1: but things got thrown around. A photographer got hit with

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Speaker 1: a piece of lego, a sort of cardboard box was

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Speaker 1: old of its own accord at one of the investigators.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's hundreds of things that went flying

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Speaker 1: around that that occurred in this establishment with any without

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Speaker 1: any any known sort of source, if you like, without

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Speaker 1: the kids throwing things or anything like that. Did anybody

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Speaker 1: Melvin get hurt with this episode? Not seriously know? A few,

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Speaker 1: a few bumps and things and people got thrown off chairs.

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Speaker 1: You can argue, well, perhaps they threw themselves off. But

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Speaker 1: I mean, I'm blowed if i'd want to throw myself

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Speaker 1: on the floor repeatedly at this point in your career,

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Speaker 1: what would you say about this episode that it was real,

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Speaker 1: that it was a fake? What do you think? Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: I think that some of it was fake. I think

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Speaker 1: when you've got four children, three of which were there

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Speaker 1: most of the time playing on each other's sort of

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Speaker 1: you know, dairs and not dairs, I think some of

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Speaker 1: it was faked by them. They got caught faking things

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Speaker 1: at times, and they admitted to faking things at times.

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Speaker 1: But the thing is, I don't think it was all fake.

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Speaker 1: And you only need one crow if you like to

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Speaker 1: be white, that's right to say. Not crows are not

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Speaker 1: all black. Well, you know, it's like I say about

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Speaker 1: the field of upology. All you need is one real

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Speaker 1: ufol case. You don't need one hundred thousand exactly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I agree with you. Do you think anybody may have

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Speaker 1: died in that little house or anything like that? Is

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Speaker 1: that what happened? Indeed? Well, according to the voice that

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Speaker 1: came out of Janets, Janet was one of the two

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Speaker 1: girls there, and she and the other ones for that matter,

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Speaker 1: but she in particular, spoke in a funny voice like

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Speaker 1: that and said that she was the spirit, if you like,

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Speaker 1: of a chap who had actually died there about forty

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Speaker 1: fifty years before, who was called Bill and was coming

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Speaker 1: back because it was his house and all the rest

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Speaker 1: of it. So, yes, somebody did die there, but not

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Speaker 1: whilst they were there were any of the people possessed

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Speaker 1: like you would see in the Exorcist movie. Yes, I

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Speaker 1: worry when people make sort of connections between the extor

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Speaker 1: system and endfield. Oh yeah, they weren't possessed, you know.

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Speaker 1: They weren't possessed like stirring green slime at people or

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Speaker 1: any heads turning, etc. But there was a degree of

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Speaker 1: possession that you might say going on. There was the

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Speaker 1: funny voice, There was a lot of hysterical behavior and

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Speaker 1: seeming great strength, and obviously all the Poltargis stuff, all

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Speaker 1: the things moving around, and how did it end? Did

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Speaker 1: it end in a good way or a bad way?

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Speaker 1: In a good way? I would say things just viseraled

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Speaker 1: out slowly but surely. After about eighteen months, as I said,

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Speaker 1: the girls went through puberty, and it seemed that slowly

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Speaker 1: but surely after that, things settled down, and now one

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Speaker 1: of them is married and got children et Eta. The

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Speaker 1: other one we've lost touch with. I don't know what

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Speaker 1: the other one's doing. I think she got married as well,

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Speaker 1: and they lead relative to fully normal lives. What would

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Speaker 1: people see on these tapes that were recorded back in

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Speaker 1: seventy seven? Okay, these were audio tapes. They weren't video. Okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we didn't have video then, I don't believe did we. No, No,

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Speaker 1: not really. There was a little bit done by a

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Speaker 1: big company called Pie and they said that nothing was

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Speaker 1: captured on film, on video film, that is, and those

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Speaker 1: tapes have gone missing. Anyway, Those on the audio tapes,

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Speaker 1: of which there's several hundred, I hastened to add, you

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Speaker 1: get everything from utter boredom with nothing happening, people just

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Speaker 1: chatting about the weather and the television blaring, with the

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Speaker 1: local soap opera going on. And then in addition to that,

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Speaker 1: of course, you get the sounds of things flying around.

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Speaker 1: You get a lot of screaming and hysterical behavior. You

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Speaker 1: get various crashes, you get a lot of knocking and

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Speaker 1: banging when allegedly nobody was producing that. Loads of interviews

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Speaker 1: from people, I mean dozens dozens of people went there, mediums,

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Speaker 1: the police, researchers, neighbors, you name it. Basically. Is the

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Speaker 1: house still there today, Melbourne? Yes, yes, it's still there.

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Speaker 1: The people that moved in after the Hodgsons, that was

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Speaker 1: the name of the family. After they moved out, some

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Speaker 1: people moved in. They didn't like the atmosphere there. They

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Speaker 1: left fairly quickly, but that could have been because they

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Speaker 1: knew of what had been going on there. The next

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Speaker 1: people that moved in, I believe are still there and

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Speaker 1: they have had no phenomena at all, and they don't

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Speaker 1: want anything to do with the case. There's children there.

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Speaker 1: They don't want them upset, so they don't want the

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Speaker 1: neighbors to start being funny and so on and so forth.

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Speaker 1: I bet if somebody comes to the door they want

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Speaker 1: nothing to do with them, do they absolutely probably call

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Speaker 1: the police go away people? Right? Yep? Indeed that's something else.

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Speaker 1: And have you now you've been doing this for how

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Speaker 1: many years involved in this kind of research, increasingly about

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Speaker 1: thirty so I'm patively new to it. What would you

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Speaker 1: say you have gone through in these thirty years that

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Speaker 1: continues to battle you. Well, there's nothing particular, there's not

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Speaker 1: a lot of things. I haven't seen a ghost or

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Speaker 1: anything like that. But I think I have witnessed poltergeist

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Speaker 1: on one occasion, which completely baffled me, and I wasn't

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Speaker 1: expecting it. I was with somebody else. It was daytime.

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Speaker 1: We looked at each other and said, oh my god,

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Speaker 1: how on earth did that happen? Now, for somebody who's skeptical,

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Speaker 1: and again, please understand, I think this is very healthy.

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Speaker 1: But for someone who's skeptical, what keeps you in a

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Speaker 1: field for thirty years like this, Well, what keeps me

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Speaker 1: going is that I don't think we know it all.

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Speaker 1: Some people seem to think they know it all, but

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Speaker 1: I certainly don't. And I think there are still some

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Speaker 1: things out there that we just don't understand, and if

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Speaker 1: we can get to grips with them, we can convert them,

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Speaker 1: if you like, from the paranormal into the normal. I mean,

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Speaker 1: a hundred two hundred years ago, hypnotism was paranormal. Now

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Speaker 1: we understand it to some extent. Things falling out the

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Speaker 1: sky was paranormal. Now we kind of understand it. Mental

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Speaker 1: disease was possessioned by demons, Now we understand it. So

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Speaker 1: the list goes on because of research. Your PhDs, of course,

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Speaker 1: are in music basically right in a history, and it's

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Speaker 1: a big jump to get into the paranormal world. But

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Speaker 1: have you been able to tap into those doctorate degrees

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Speaker 1: to help do what you're doing now in the paranormal field. Absolutely? Yes.

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Speaker 1: I mean the first one involved experimentation with telepathy as well.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't just sort of historically based at all, meeting

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Speaker 1: up with musical mediums that believed they were in touch

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Speaker 1: with dead composers producing music performers who believed they were

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Speaker 1: taken over by the spirit of dead performers. It was

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Speaker 1: fascinating investigating all of them, seeing what they could do musically,

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Speaker 1: talking to them, blah blah blah. And then the second

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Speaker 1: PhD was involved with witchcraft, so going to Cove and

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Speaker 1: seeing what they were getting up to, fascinating. Nothing like

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Speaker 1: what the media sometimes shows them to be, you know,

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Speaker 1: dancing around naked, none of that in my experience. How

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Speaker 1: do the people Melvin in the United Kingdom react to

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Speaker 1: pure normal activity? Unfortunately, in some ways there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of sort of stupidity attached to it, shall we say.

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Speaker 1: There's an awful lot of programs where people are jumping

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Speaker 1: at the first sound of a creaking door or something.

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Speaker 1: A lot of sort of screaming going on, and that

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Speaker 1: sort of thing. So that side of it I disapprove

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Speaker 1: of strongly, and that that does go on. But then

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Speaker 1: there's an undercurrent of people who I think are genuinely

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Speaker 1: interested and want to find out more and are willing

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Speaker 1: to sort of either research directly or listen to what

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Speaker 1: people that have got sort of decent things to say

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Speaker 1: about it. What would you say might be some of

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Speaker 1: the strangest things you've encountered, or to have researched and

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Speaker 1: studied the strangest things. Well, crumbs, where does one begin?

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Speaker 1: Have you looked at witchcraft and stuff like that? Yes? That, Well,

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Speaker 1: the witchcraft was a lot more normal than you might think.

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Speaker 1: It was a nature based religion in indulging in rituals

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Speaker 1: for the good of mankind, especially needed perhaps at the momentum,

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Speaker 1: sort of a lot of healing going on. I did

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Speaker 1: a study comparing witchcraft spells with prayer from the Christian Church,

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Speaker 1: and I contacted a lot of Christian vicars and the like,

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Speaker 1: and a lot of witchcraft high priestesses and priests. Sounds

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Speaker 1: very dramatic but it wasn't. It was an awful lot

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Speaker 1: of agreement between the two actually the purposes of what

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Speaker 1: they were doing, So it wasn't sort of anything like

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Speaker 1: as dramatic as one might think. Some of the results

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Speaker 1: seemed to work, and that that was extremely interesting. Now

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Speaker 1: back to some of the strange things that have occurred

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Speaker 1: for you. I mean, have you dabbled with a Weigi

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Speaker 1: board and seen strange things happen or anything like that. Yeah, Well,

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Speaker 1: in my relative youth, when I was only ninety years old,

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Speaker 1: I yes, I had to go with the Wigia board.

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Speaker 1: But I was very naughty with the Weigia board because

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Speaker 1: when I was in charge of it, I always insisted

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Speaker 1: that everybody that had their finger on the glass or

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Speaker 1: whatever was blindfolded so that they couldn't actually push the

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Speaker 1: glass to where the letters were. The glass is going

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Speaker 1: to move anyway, because your arms were collectively you've got

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Speaker 1: ideomotor syndromes going on, so that the arms are going

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Speaker 1: to move, the finger is going to push the glass

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Speaker 1: because your arm starts to ache, and whether it's intentional

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Speaker 1: or not, it's neither here nor there. But if you're blindfolded,

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Speaker 1: and then I've moved the order of the letters around,

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Speaker 1: so they don't know that B is over there and

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Speaker 1: yes is over there, and I'm not touching the glass.

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Speaker 1: I'm just making notes saying, you know, is there anybody there?

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Speaker 1: And then if it goes to yes, then I think

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Speaker 1: when that's interesting. If it goes to x JP, I

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Speaker 1: think that's not very interesting. So yeah, but on one

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Speaker 1: occasion I did get a pretty good result from that,

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Speaker 1: which I don't think was coincidence. Now, as a skeptic,

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Speaker 1: let's say, thirty years ago, as you were getting into this,

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Speaker 1: how high on a scale of one to ten, with

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Speaker 1: the high skepticism being ten, where do you think you

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Speaker 1: would have been thirty years ago? Thirty years ago, I'd

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Speaker 1: have probably been about five, okay, and today you would

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Speaker 1: be what today, I'm probably slightly more skeptical. I'm probably

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Speaker 1: on six or seven. Really, So you've it's gone up,

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Speaker 1: not down. It's gone up because I've discovered that an

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Speaker 1: awful lot of things are not what they appear to be.

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Speaker 1: That's probably the case. But as you said from the

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Speaker 1: out said, you just need one real case. Absolutely, you

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Speaker 1: don't need ten. I think there have been some real

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Speaker 1: cases past and present, and hopefully future which need more investigation,

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Speaker 1: which is why I'm not saying I'm ten out of

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Speaker 1: ten a believer or ten out of ten a skeptic,

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Speaker 1: because I'm sort of skeptical but still more than willing

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Speaker 1: to see if there's things going on, and hopefully there

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Speaker 1: will be. Oh, would you say that you are beginning

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Speaker 1: to become a believer, even if it's just that one case,

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Speaker 1: whatever it may be. I certainly think that there are

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Speaker 1: things of an anomalous nature that are going on that

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Speaker 1: we don't understand without a doubt. I don't like being

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Speaker 1: a believer. I'd rather have evidence, and I don't use

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Speaker 1: the word proof, but certainly evidence that will suggest that

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Speaker 1: there are very strange, paranormal if you will things going on.

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Speaker 1: Now you're an officer for the Society of Psychical Research,

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Speaker 1: What does that entail? Okay, well, they are an educational

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Speaker 1: charity that's been going since eighteen eighty two, so it's

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Speaker 1: quite sort of verified if you like to investigate in

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Speaker 1: a scientific manner things which are beyond the normal, shall

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Speaker 1: we say, My role there is the archive or the

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Speaker 1: archive liaison officer. So when there's archive material to be

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Speaker 1: sorted out, research looked at, etc. Then that's that's where

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Speaker 1: my job comes in. I keep the audio visual archive house, okay,

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Speaker 1: and a consultant to the Ghost Club. Well what do

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Speaker 1: you do there? Yep? With the Ghost Club. If they

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Speaker 1: have any queries that they want to put past me,

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Speaker 1: then they contact me and say what do you think's

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Speaker 1: going on here? And then I research it or I

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Speaker 1: give them an answer if I am to know the answer,

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Speaker 1: And that's sort of just a little bit of a help.

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Speaker 1: They don't need too much help from me. Are most

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Speaker 1: explanations done by trickery or by natural causes? I think

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Speaker 1: a lot of them are done by natural causes. I

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Speaker 1: think a small amount of done by trickery, and probably

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Speaker 1: the vast majority are unknown sources, unknown reasons for things

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Speaker 1: going on. Are you convinced that there is an afterlife? No,

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Speaker 1: I'm not convinced as an afterlife, I don't know because

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Speaker 1: I'm not there yet. So you can't say beyond a

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Speaker 1: shadow of a doubt that it does not exist. You're

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Speaker 1: not saying that yet, are you? Oh? No, I wouldn't

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Speaker 1: do beyond a shadow of a doubt for anything, to

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Speaker 1: be honest with you, because I mean, that's that's too

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Speaker 1: I don't do one hundred percent. I think that there's

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Speaker 1: always room for a bit of maneuver there, and of

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Speaker 1: course I don't know. Perhaps I will do one day.

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Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at

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Speaker 1: one am Eastern, and go to Coast to Coast am

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Speaker 1: dot com for more