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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.

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Speaker 2: Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you.

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Speaker 2: Matthew hungolds hetling with us freelance journalists specializing in narrative

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Speaker 2: features and investigative reporting. He's been named a finalist for

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Speaker 2: the Pulitzer Prize, won a George Polk Award, and has

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Speaker 2: been voted Journalist of the Year by the Main Press Association.

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Speaker 2: Congratulations there, Matt, among other numerous honors. The night on

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Speaker 2: Coast to Coast, we're going to talk about his work

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Speaker 2: the Ghost Lab, the belief in ghosts, aliens, bigfoot, spirits,

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Speaker 2: and other paranormal phenomena, and how it is impacting society

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Speaker 2: as a whole.

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Speaker 3: Matt, Welcome to the program.

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Speaker 4: George, so excited to talk to you. I've been a

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Speaker 4: long time listener and so this is quite a thrill

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Speaker 4: for me. Thanks for having me on.

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Speaker 2: Looking forward to this. I know our producer Tom is

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Speaker 2: really excited about your work. Tell us how did you

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Speaker 2: get started into the paranormal arena.

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Speaker 4: You know, when I was a kid, this was a

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Speaker 4: real passion of mine. You know, I grew up sort

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Speaker 4: of like you know, reading the books of Daniel Cohen.

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Speaker 4: I don't know if you remember. He had these fantastic

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Speaker 4: evocative stories about Bigfoot and the Luckness Monster and so

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Speaker 4: on on Lyle Watson's SuperNature, which build itself as sort

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Speaker 4: of like a bridge between science and the occult. And

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Speaker 4: so I was one of these kids who was out there,

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Speaker 4: you trying to hypnotize myself and trying to read poems

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Speaker 4: and uh, sort of testing to see if I could

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Speaker 4: manifest effects of telepathy and telekinesis.

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Speaker 3: And so.

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Speaker 4: When I had an opportunity as an adult to sort

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Speaker 4: of touch base back with that world and to sort

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Speaker 4: of delve into the paranormal and various facets of the paranormal,

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Speaker 4: that was really exciting to me. I'm sure a lot

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Speaker 4: of your listeners would would understand, sort of like it's

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Speaker 4: just sort of neat to take a look at these

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Speaker 4: things and say, are these phenomenal or is there something

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Speaker 4: going on inside our minds that's sort of making them

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Speaker 4: appear to be real? And so I thought that was

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Speaker 4: just a really interesting thing.

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Speaker 3: Good for you.

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Speaker 2: What was your finalist work to get you to the

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Speaker 2: Pulitzer Prize.

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Speaker 4: I did a series on housing. I was working in

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Speaker 4: Maine as a local reporter and found some really horrendous

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Speaker 4: living situations that were being paid for by the federal

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Speaker 4: government via the Section eight program. And I sort of

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Speaker 4: like established that there had been a falling down of

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Speaker 4: responsibility on the part of not just the federal government,

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Speaker 4: but sort of like the state administrators and the contracted

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Speaker 4: investigators and the landlords and the residents themselves. So it

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Speaker 4: was a sort of a big cluster and we were

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Speaker 4: happy to see that our reporting brought a little bit

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Speaker 4: of light to that situation.

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Speaker 3: Tell us about the title the Ghost Lab how'd you

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Speaker 3: come up with that?

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Speaker 4: Well, ye know, I focused on this group of really

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Speaker 4: dressing folks who came together to try to found a

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Speaker 4: ghost laboratory. They represented a bunch of different facets of

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Speaker 4: the paranormal enthusiast community, and they wanted to sort of

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Speaker 4: come together to explore this idea of whether or not

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Speaker 4: these phenomena were real, and so they undertook this really

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Speaker 4: concerted focus effort to devise experiments that would help them

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Speaker 4: get closer to the truth. And they were a really

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Speaker 4: colorful bunch. We had Andy kitt who was a ghost

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Speaker 4: hunter and a very science minded individual, He was driven

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Speaker 4: to it because in the wake of the death of

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Speaker 4: his father, he'd had a series of experiences that he

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Speaker 4: couldn't explain. There was a woman named Val who was

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Speaker 4: an EmPATH sense the feelings of others. There was a

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Speaker 4: bigfoot hunter named Mike Stevens who also happened to be

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Speaker 4: an alien abductee. There was a pairalegal who heard voices

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Speaker 4: in her head and was sort of looking for explanations

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Speaker 4: for that. And there was a really talented psychic medium

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Speaker 4: named bo Esbi and so they sort of represented They

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Speaker 4: had their fingers in a lot of different pots, and

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Speaker 4: so when they came together in this sort of like

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Speaker 4: noble joint effort, ghost Lab is sort of the shorthand

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Speaker 4: for what that effort was.

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Speaker 3: So these warn't skeptics, were they?

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Speaker 4: No?

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Speaker 3: No yo.

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Speaker 4: And I talked to Andy about this in depth and

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Speaker 4: he yeah. When I first called him, I said, hey,

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Speaker 4: you know, Andy, I just want to let you know

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Speaker 4: I'm going to be sort of reporting on what you're

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Speaker 4: doing in here. And I sort of tend to come

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Speaker 4: at this from a skeptical frame of mind, and Andy said,

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Speaker 4: so do I. And so he sort of distinguishes between

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Speaker 4: somebody who comes at things with a critical mindset that

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Speaker 4: doesn't believe everything that that is, you know, exercising some

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Speaker 4: judgment about whether or not what they're looking at as

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Speaker 4: a real thing. And the sort of hardcore skeptic community,

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Speaker 4: which he says, is just as in the bag for

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Speaker 4: the opposite point of view as the paranormal enthusiasts are

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Speaker 4: for the believer point of view. And so, you know,

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Speaker 4: when I told him that I came at things skeptically,

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Speaker 4: he welcomed that. But he himself, you know, he did

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Speaker 4: exercise critical thought. He rejected a lot of the things

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Speaker 4: that he looked at, but he was ultimately a believer.

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Speaker 4: He would sort of frame up like this. He would say, look,

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Speaker 4: you know, when you are coming up with an explanation

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Speaker 4: for something that's happening in front of you, your natural

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Speaker 4: bias is probably going to tell you to not consider

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Speaker 4: the possibility of a ghost, because you know, science has

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Speaker 4: not come up with a great explanation for ghosts. But

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Speaker 4: when I look at things, I'm going to accept that

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Speaker 4: as one of many possible rational explanations for what I'm seeing.

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Speaker 3: Is the group still together.

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Speaker 4: They're not they came together. Excuse me, they came together

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Speaker 4: in two thousand and eight or two thousand and nine,

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Speaker 4: they started performing experiments and going out into the field

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Speaker 4: and experiencing phenomena, and they did this for more than

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Speaker 4: nine years. They eventually were forced to close up shop

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Speaker 4: in the late twenty tens, and they all sort of

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Speaker 4: went their separate ways, and they're doing their own interesting

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Speaker 4: things now.

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Speaker 2: They had what was called the Kit Research Initiative I

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Speaker 2: assume named after Andy.

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Speaker 4: That's exactly right.

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Speaker 3: What was your goal?

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Speaker 4: Yes, So they their goal was to you know, inject

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Speaker 4: signs into these fields. They had a cracker Jack mission

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Speaker 4: statement to bring science to the paranormal. They wanted to

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Speaker 4: sort of platform the best ideas. They thought, you know,

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Speaker 4: we could come up with sort of like a Snopes

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Speaker 4: like brand where we can measure whether something is truthful

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Speaker 4: or not, and if we endorse an idea, folks will

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Speaker 4: be able to have more confidence in that idea. They

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Speaker 4: wanted to conduct experiments on that that they felt could

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Speaker 4: tease out the reality of these things. And they also

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Speaker 4: developed a bunch of protocols and standards that would help

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Speaker 4: other sort of less polished ghost hunting groups and other

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Speaker 4: less polished mediums and sort of help them to attain

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Speaker 4: a higher standard for the work that they do.

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Speaker 3: What is called a solid phantom.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a term that I actually came up with

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Speaker 4: in the writing of the book. It's a sort of shorthand.

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Speaker 4: If you don't mind, Georgia, I'll read you about one

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Speaker 4: minute's worth of a excerpt from the book that describes that.

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Speaker 3: With that, all right, sure, absolutely, I agree.

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Speaker 4: So a solid phantom is a key piece of evidence

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Speaker 4: that turns a myth into a fact and simultaneously applies

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Speaker 4: a wrecking ball to conventional thought. And solid phantoms do

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Speaker 4: turn up from time to time. In sixteen seventy five,

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Speaker 4: a Dutch clothing merchant named Anthony van Lumenholk peered through

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Speaker 4: a self made microscope and ended years of speculation about

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Speaker 4: the causes of disease by making the first observation of

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Speaker 4: what he called animal fuels. And these were germs and

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Speaker 4: other micro organisms. And there was another one in eighteen

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Speaker 4: sixty one, when an explorer strode into the hallowed halls

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Speaker 4: of London's Royal Geographical Society with a stuffed guerrilla in tow,

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Speaker 4: thereby proving the existence of a mythical man ape. And

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Speaker 4: then they found one in nineteen seventy one, astronomers at

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Speaker 4: Netherlands Leiden Observatory captured signals from Signus X one, a

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Speaker 4: celestial object that was smaller than Oklahoma but twenty one

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Speaker 4: times more massive than the Sun, and that was the

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Speaker 4: first observed black hole, once considered a flaw in the

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Speaker 4: theoretical models underpinning acids for physics, rather than an actual thing.

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Speaker 4: So George, a solid phantom is not an anecdote about

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Speaker 4: a serious glimpse, shadow or a personal experience. It's something

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Speaker 4: tangible that you can either stuff and put on display

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Speaker 4: in a museum, or that can be consistently observed under

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Speaker 4: controlled conditions by various independent parties. So it's an explanation.

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Speaker 4: It's sort of that hardcore evidence that can sometimes be

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Speaker 4: so elusive.

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Speaker 2: When you went looking for more information on the paranormal aliens,

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Speaker 2: Bigfoot spirits, what did you conclude.

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Speaker 3: Matt.

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Speaker 4: Well? I looked at a lot of different things, primarily

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Speaker 4: evidence that KRII, the Kit Research Initiative, had uncovered over

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Speaker 4: the course of their efforts, and I will say there

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Speaker 4: are things that I found that I could not explain,

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Speaker 4: things that were downright eerie. I'm thinking in particular of

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Speaker 4: one example where the group had just done a sort

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Speaker 4: of like a training session for some incoming ghost hunters,

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Speaker 4: and they did this at their own facility in New Hampshire,

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Speaker 4: and the night was over, they were all sort of

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Speaker 4: winding down. They were relaxing around a couch and they

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Speaker 4: started playing with a Wigi board and while they were there,

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Speaker 4: they weren't getting a lot of great response from the

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Speaker 4: Ouiji board, but they all sort of felt this thing

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Speaker 4: that started setting their hair on end. And just as

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Speaker 4: they're sort of trying to understand why they suddenly feel

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Speaker 4: so strange, a heavy ceramic figurine of a raccoon just

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Speaker 4: tumbles off of the shelf of a desk that's sitting

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Speaker 4: about three feet away. And I've watched video of this, George,

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Speaker 4: and I've seen it. Yeah, I've watched it one hundred times,

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Speaker 4: and it is very, very difficult to explain why that

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Speaker 4: raccoon tumbled off of that shell. And when I think

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Speaker 4: about it with my sort of knee jerk skeptical mind,

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Speaker 4: I'm prying to say, well, you know, there must be

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Speaker 4: some explanation that we can explain that that is consistent

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Speaker 4: with the laws of physics, right, so you know, maybe

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Speaker 4: there was a computer or a printer on that desk

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Speaker 4: that generated a subtle vibration that caused that raccoon to

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Speaker 4: tumble down at just a sort of like coincidental time.

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Speaker 4: Or maybe there was a prankster among them who had,

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Speaker 4: you know, a fishing line tied to that raccoon or

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Speaker 4: something like that. But those explanations are not wholly satisfying

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Speaker 4: to me, and they made me respect the fact that

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Speaker 4: even though I might not, in my heart of hearts,

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Speaker 4: believe that I've seen evidence of the paranormal, I can

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Speaker 4: really respect and understand those who do hold that worldview,

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Speaker 4: who do look at something like that and yeah, I

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Speaker 4: know they're not they're not lying, they're not crazy, and

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Speaker 4: they're not stupid. They're just simply somebody uh believing it

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Speaker 4: in the very clear evidence in front of them.

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Speaker 2: Well, with paranormal author Matt Houngold's headline, by the way,

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Speaker 2: you have the longest last name I've ever seen on a.

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Speaker 4: Program, Well that win me a George Norri Prize.

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Speaker 3: Yes, it just might.

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Speaker 4: Just excellent. Excellent?

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Speaker 3: Is that Eastern European?

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Speaker 1: Yeah?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I actually I hyphenated with my wife. She was

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Speaker 4: a Hongoltz I was a happling. She was the last Hangoldts.

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Speaker 4: I did this in two thousand, felt very progressive, although

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Speaker 4: now it's much more common bush name that I went

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Speaker 4: through the name transformation of Ellis Island and my wife's

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Speaker 4: Hongoldts was just sort of generalized Eastern European.

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Speaker 3: Now, what happened to Andy Kidd is He still around.

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Speaker 4: Andy is still around, And one of the really interesting

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Speaker 4: things about him is that he has throughout the decade

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Speaker 4: that he was studying this through the KIT Research Initiative,

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Speaker 4: he has remained dedicated to science and he has pursued

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Speaker 4: a more formal scientific education that's been sort of enabled

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Speaker 4: by the protocols that he put together as a ghost

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Speaker 4: hunter and that he hopes will inform his future efforts

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Speaker 4: to tease out evidence of the paranormal. And so he

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Speaker 4: has gone through a psychophysics program at a local university.

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Speaker 4: He's at the cusp of attaining a PhD, and he's

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Speaker 4: teaching classes. He's a university instructor and lecturer in the

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Speaker 4: field of statistics. So he is still out there, still

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Speaker 4: sort of looking for with ways to sort of make

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Speaker 4: the mainstream scientific community see what he sees when he's

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Speaker 4: out there looking at ghosts.

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Speaker 3: So he's open minded.

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Speaker 4: He's open minded, absolutely, and he's encountered. You know what

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Speaker 4: a a lot of folks who are more open minded

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Speaker 4: do when they go into scientific circles. You know, he encounters,

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Speaker 4: he encounters a lot of pushback, a lot of blowback.

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Speaker 4: He told his advisor on his PhD project what his

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Speaker 4: beliefs and his intentions were, and he said his advisor

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Speaker 4: looked at him like he had grown a second head.

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Speaker 4: You know, he's uh uh, He's been all the laughed

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Speaker 4: out of the room. And I think that that's a

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Speaker 4: problem in the scientific community. You know, I even though

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Speaker 4: I'm sort of more science minded and I'm out there

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Speaker 4: telling folks, yeah, I don't ultimately believe some of the

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Speaker 4: things that the KIT Research Initiative members believe. I see

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Speaker 4: a real problem in the scientific community sort of attitudinally

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Speaker 4: and in their sort of knee jerk reaction to dismiss

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Speaker 4: and debunk and in some cases ridicule. I think that

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Speaker 4: the heart of science is to be open to evidence,

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Speaker 4: and the best scientists are open to evidence. But the

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Speaker 4: sort of dismissal with prejudice is not to me in

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Speaker 4: keeping with the scientific process.

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Speaker 2: Man, I'm going to ask you about various aspects of

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Speaker 2: the paranormal world and reality and get your take on it,

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Speaker 2: your thoughts on ghosts.

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Speaker 4: First of all, Yeah, well, Ay and his people they

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Speaker 4: came up with a theory of ghosts that may or

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Speaker 4: may not be familiar to your listeners. They believe that

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Speaker 4: ghosts exists in a sort of timeless place where they

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Speaker 4: are experiencing all of time and existence simultaneously. That this

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Speaker 4: is what the afterlife is. Spirits who are eternal, who

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Speaker 4: are sitting there and who are occasionally coming to Earth

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Speaker 4: not to find meaning, but to do it as a

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Speaker 4: sort of a joy ride, you know, to give themselves

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Speaker 4: some variety to the experience of their existence. So they

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Speaker 4: they are born into a human by some mechanism that

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Speaker 4: we don't understand, they live a human life and sort

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Speaker 4: of forget about their spirit world, and then when they

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Speaker 4: get out of their body, they go back to their

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Speaker 4: you know, spirit couches and kick off their spirit shoes

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Speaker 4: and say, who that was? That was something I'm glad

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Speaker 4: I did that, you know, as you or I might

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Speaker 4: do after a strenuous workout or vacation or something, you know,

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Speaker 4: and when I look at what ghosts are. I am

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Speaker 4: seeing a lot of sort of like the processes that

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Speaker 4: the psychological processes is that science has come up with

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Speaker 4: to explain a lot of these phenomenon, you know, persistent

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Speaker 4: feelings of unease or disease. I have felt those myself,

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Speaker 4: but I have come to accept that these this is

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Speaker 4: more of a trick of the mind than an external phenomenon,

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Speaker 4: even when that trick of the mind can send me

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Speaker 4: a sort of running in the opposite direction. And there

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Speaker 4: have been a lot of efforts to sort of explain

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Speaker 4: what it is that triggers these beliefs in a particular setting.

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Speaker 4: And sometimes it's you know, that there's a physical feature

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Speaker 4: of a house that sort of screams haunted house at us,

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Speaker 4: and that can sort of lead us down a path

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Speaker 4: of thought that arrives there. But then you know, and also, Georgie,

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Speaker 4: I'll say too, I've talked to some people who are

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Speaker 4: very good friends of mine, who are very close to me,

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Speaker 4: and they will tell me stories that they've experienced that

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Speaker 4: do not conform to any of those explanations. And so

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Speaker 4: I think it is important to keep an open mind

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Speaker 4: about ghosts and their nature and what they.

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