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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, Mark Hartsman, back with us. Mark's passion for

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Speaker 1: the unusual started with Ripley's Believe It or Not as

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Speaker 1: a Lot of us did in the annual Guinness World

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Speaker 1: Record Books during his youth. In addition to his own

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Speaker 1: books about Ghost Mars, Oliver Cromwell's Embombed Head, Weird Things

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Speaker 1: on eBay and the sideshow Performers, and Unorthodox Messages from God,

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Speaker 1: Mark has written for Mental Floss, The Huffington Post, aol,

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Speaker 1: Weird News, All That's Interesting dot Com, The Morbid Anatomy

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Speaker 1: Online journal, and Bizarre Magazine. He has discussed oddities on CNN, MSNBC,

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Speaker 1: has been on our program, Ripley's Radio, and the Travel

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Speaker 1: Channel's Mysteries at the Museum. You're all over the place, Mark,

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Speaker 1: welcome back. Thanks George. It's good to be back. How

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Speaker 1: are you doing everything? Good? Yeah? To him? Well, keep

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Speaker 1: him busy great in Chasing Ghost. Just came out today,

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Speaker 1: didn't it? Yes? Today with the launch day, very exciting.

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Speaker 1: How about that for timing perfect? Well? You will get

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Speaker 1: into this and some of the other things. So let's

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Speaker 1: go back to the moment you were a youth. I

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Speaker 1: was like you Ripley's believe it or not, that I

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Speaker 1: would see in the newspaper and in the comic sections

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Speaker 1: would just always capture my attention. Guinness World Records, I

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Speaker 1: loved all of that. It captured you two, didn't it absolutely.

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Speaker 1: I mean I used to love watching the show when

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Speaker 1: when Jack Palace was the host and just seeing you

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Speaker 1: this video of just amazing, remarkable people. And with the

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Speaker 1: Guinness Book, I mean I really loved the Guinness Books.

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Speaker 1: They were those little short, black and white, thick books

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Speaker 1: back then, and I just loved that first section, like

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Speaker 1: the first usually like the first twenty pages I think

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Speaker 1: it was called a Human Body was chapter one, and

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Speaker 1: that's where you just had all these anomalies in My

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Speaker 1: favorite of the anomalies was the World's Tallest Man, which

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Speaker 1: was Robert Wadlow. That's right, Alton, Illinois, Yes exactly. He

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Speaker 1: was just I mean every year they'd have different images,

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Speaker 1: like a different photo in different stats, you know, so

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Speaker 1: I get, you know, pre internet, so you get a

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Speaker 1: little bit of extra information, and I just couldn't believe

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Speaker 1: how huge this man was. I mean just towering above

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Speaker 1: everyone else. I mean when he was like five, he

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Speaker 1: was bigger than his dad. And when he died, didn't

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Speaker 1: they bury him in a piano? Yeah, he had a

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Speaker 1: massive coffin casey. And the crazy thing is when he

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Speaker 1: died he was only twenty two years old. He was

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Speaker 1: still growing. So it's it's one thing I find just

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's upsetting because the man would have been

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Speaker 1: nine feet tall. I mean up saying because he was

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Speaker 1: twenty two. But it's someone who's just fascinated by the

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Speaker 1: numbers around it. I mean, to reach nine feet tall,

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Speaker 1: they have just been extraordinary. And he was taken down

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Speaker 1: by a blister on his toe and he got infected

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Speaker 1: under a leg brace and by the time he was

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Speaker 1: treated he had one hundred and six degree fever and

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Speaker 1: that ended his life. So once you got into all

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Speaker 1: these stories as a youth, you never forgot them, did you. No,

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Speaker 1: these things really stay with me. I also watched The

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Speaker 1: Elephant Man. It's probably the too Young of an Age

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Speaker 1: in the David Lynch film, and that really stayed with me.

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Speaker 1: I was a classic. Oh yeah, I mean, just what

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Speaker 1: an amazing story. Joseph Merrick is, so, yeah, these things

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Speaker 1: stayed with me, and then um, I just pursued, you know,

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Speaker 1: writing about different unusual people and started meaning different people

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Speaker 1: within the sideshow world, and that really got me going.

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Speaker 1: Did you ever think you would do this as a career.

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Speaker 1: I always want to be just, you know, a full

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Speaker 1: time writer. I mean, my day job is an advertising

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Speaker 1: so I do write for advertising. Butt in terms of

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Speaker 1: just writing books and about things I'm more passionate about, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's the goal. I mean, but this

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Speaker 1: is your notoriety, this is what you're known for these Yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm thrilled that I'm still still doing it and enjoying it.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna knock out a few of the titles of

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Speaker 1: Your Boy, just so folks will get an idea of

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Speaker 1: what you've done. Found on eBay one hundred and one

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Speaker 1: genuinely bizarre items from the world's online yard sale. American

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Speaker 1: Sideshow in a encyclopedia of history's most wondrous and curiously

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Speaker 1: strange performers. The embombed head of Oliver Cromwell, A memoir,

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Speaker 1: The Big Book of Mars from ancient Egypt to the

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Speaker 1: Martian A deep dive into our obsession with the Red Planet,

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Speaker 1: and the one that just came out today Chasing Ghosts,

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Speaker 1: which we're going to get into two. But all of

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Speaker 1: these works that you've done are all incredibly interesting and bizarre,

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Speaker 1: aren't they. Yeah, that's that's my theme, trying to find

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Speaker 1: that's the consistent thread. Different, different, in bizarre, you know,

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Speaker 1: in all different kinds of ways. And we've got a

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Speaker 1: couple of websites for you, a Weird Historian and Mark

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Speaker 1: Heartsman books dot com as well, yes, linked up at

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast am dot com. Well, let's spend a

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Speaker 1: little time. You're talking about Chasing Ghosts, so maybe if

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Speaker 1: we have some time tonight, we'll talk about some of

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Speaker 1: your other works, and we'll take calls next hour from

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Speaker 1: our group of incredible folks who are very interested in

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Speaker 1: what you do. Tell me about the title Chasing Ghosts. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: the subtitle to it is a tour of our fascination

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Speaker 1: with spirits and the supernatural. So the thought of chasing

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Speaker 1: ghosts is just about how we've you know, since humanity

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Speaker 1: has been around, we've been looking and wondering about what

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Speaker 1: there is, you know, the afterlife? Is there an afterlife.

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Speaker 1: It's consciousness survive. Can we communicate with the dead if

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Speaker 1: the dead do survive? Can we use technology to capture ghosts?

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Speaker 1: So chasing ghosts kind of captured the different ways that

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Speaker 1: we have either thought about death, try to communicate or

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Speaker 1: capture evidence of an afterlife. Would you call the ghost

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Speaker 1: world the spirit world supernatural or natural? You know, it's

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Speaker 1: a good question. I feel like the terms supernatural is

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Speaker 1: a pretty broad term. You know, it can be kind

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Speaker 1: to find in different ways. I guess I would call

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Speaker 1: it supernatural, maybe only because you know, there's no there's

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Speaker 1: no particular proof or evidence. You know, people believe different things,

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Speaker 1: and there's certainly evidence to compoint one way or the other.

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Speaker 1: It's definitely a subjective thing. One thing I like about

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Speaker 1: the book is I present different cases in different ways

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Speaker 1: that you could maybe explain things away or certain cases

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Speaker 1: that are really difficult to explain, and leave it up

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Speaker 1: to the reader to kind of take the evidence presented

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Speaker 1: on both sides and decide what they want to believe. Mark.

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Speaker 1: I don't think I've seen a poll where people have

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Speaker 1: been pulled about their belief about the supernatural spirit world,

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Speaker 1: whether they think it exists or not. But if you

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Speaker 1: pulled one hundred people, what do you think the percent

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Speaker 1: would be those who believe in an afterlife? Well, I

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Speaker 1: did actually cite a poll in the book from twenty

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Speaker 1: nineteen from a site called yugov and it says about

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Speaker 1: forty five percent of people believe in ghosts. That's all.

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Speaker 1: I would have thought it would have been higher. I

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Speaker 1: thought that was a pretty good person. I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: almost half of people believe in it. Now, if you

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Speaker 1: pulled this audience, it would be eighty five percent. Yes,

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Speaker 1: it would skew higher. Yeah, much much higher. Indeed, indeed,

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Speaker 1: in your opinion, what are ghosts? So that's that's also

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Speaker 1: a good question. And you know, going into this book,

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Speaker 1: and I talked about this in my introduction, I would

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Speaker 1: have said I've never seen a ghost. And then as

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Speaker 1: I talked to different parapsychologists and paranormal investigators, you start

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Speaker 1: to kind of rethink certain experiences and redefine what a

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Speaker 1: ghost is. I think a lot of people think that

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Speaker 1: a ghost is something that you will see in front

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Speaker 1: of you, some sort of apparition, uh, you know, like

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Speaker 1: you'd see it in a movie. I mean we're all

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Speaker 1: kind of you know, our imaginations are sort of to

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Speaker 1: some degree created by what we've seen in pop culture,

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Speaker 1: whether it's representations in movies and you know, television and books,

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Speaker 1: whatever it might be. So you think of it it's

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Speaker 1: a thing that you see in front of you, but

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Speaker 1: it could also just be something that's in your mind's

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Speaker 1: eye or received through different senses. For example, he might have,

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Speaker 1: say five people in a particular place where a spirit

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Speaker 1: might be coming through when trying to make contact with

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Speaker 1: the people, and everyone might receive that spirit in a

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Speaker 1: different way. Someone might see something through their mind's eye

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Speaker 1: a representation of that person. Someone might smell something. It

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Speaker 1: could be a completely old factory sensation. Someone might hear something.

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Speaker 1: Someone might feel nothing at all. I think that the

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Speaker 1: rest of the people are just completely nuts, So it

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Speaker 1: can be different experiences. I think what it is is

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Speaker 1: some kind of connection from the dead to the living

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Speaker 1: in one way or the other. Interesting, tank, what do

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Speaker 1: you think of mediums? We know what Harry Hudini thought. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: And I definitely get into some of the Houdini stories.

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Speaker 1: And one thing that I'll say about Hudini is, yes,

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Speaker 1: he was very much into exposing the odds, but he

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Speaker 1: was open to the idea of this being possible. He

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Speaker 1: just hadn't found anyone he believed was legitimate. Well, he

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Speaker 1: was obsessed with finding the spirit of his mother, wasn't he. Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: And of course, when you know, he famously had a

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Speaker 1: friendship that was kind of strained with with Arthur Conan

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Speaker 1: Doyle when when Doyle's wife, Lady Doyle, who was a medium,

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Speaker 1: said to have made a connection with Houdini's mother and

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Speaker 1: wrote like fifteen pages of messaging from his mother and

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Speaker 1: as seance and Houdini's so that's not my mom. You

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Speaker 1: know she first of all, she didn't speak English. You know,

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Speaker 1: the whole thing was in English. He's like, there's no way.

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Speaker 1: And Doyle wasn't too too fond of that reaction. But

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Speaker 1: I think that, you know, I have a lot of

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Speaker 1: stories about different mediums in the book, and for the

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Speaker 1: most part, there are there were ways that people would

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Speaker 1: explain what they were doing. Um, but there are some

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Speaker 1: cases where it still really makes you wonder, like, okay, well,

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Speaker 1: how is that possible? So the question remains, I mean,

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Speaker 1: are some of these mediums genuine and it seems like

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Speaker 1: they're very well could be. Some who have legitimate powers. Sure,

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Speaker 1: some of the things just seem too hard to explain.

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Speaker 1: I mean, yes, there are ways that things could be done,

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Speaker 1: but in some cases it's just a little bit it's

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Speaker 1: hard to imagine how something like that could have been faked.

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Speaker 1: Were most mediums in the earlier days women or men? Most?

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Speaker 1: I mean, there were definitely men, but there was a

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Speaker 1: majority of women. And it's an interesting question you why

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Speaker 1: was that the case? And you know, going back to

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Speaker 1: the origins of at least some modern spiritualism movement, which

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Speaker 1: kicked off in eighteen forty eight with the Fox sisters

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Speaker 1: in Hydfield, New York. And these were two young girls,

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Speaker 1: roughly eleven and thirteen, Maggie and Kate Fox, and they

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Speaker 1: just created this whole sensation. And their older sister, Leia,

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Speaker 1: who lived nearby in Rochester, heard what these girls were doing.

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Speaker 1: And they were basically hearing these knockings and wrappings and

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Speaker 1: saying they were communicating with the spirit of a man

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Speaker 1: who'd been murdering in their basements or buried in their basement.

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Speaker 1: His name was mister Splitfoot. And in the whole they

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Speaker 1: were literally like overnight sensations. The whole neighborhood was like

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Speaker 1: flocking to their house to you know, hear these communications

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Speaker 1: with the dead. So Leia about twenty years older, she

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Speaker 1: caught when to this, she had been divorced, and being

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Speaker 1: divorced as a woman at that time was not a

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Speaker 1: good position to be in in society. So she thought, wow,

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Speaker 1: this is this is like a new job opportunity. You know,

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Speaker 1: we're suddenly kind of running a movement here. We're like,

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Speaker 1: we're communicators with the dead. That's a job that didn't

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Speaker 1: really exist before. And she really ran with that and they,

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Speaker 1: you know, they began touring across Rochester and made a

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Speaker 1: lot of money, went down to New York City, went

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Speaker 1: across America and overseas to Europe, performed before royalty. So

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Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you have this new new opening

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Speaker 1: that women can can take part in, and they have

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Speaker 1: a powerful position in as people who are communicating with

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Speaker 1: the dead. And if that's what the dead are saying,

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Speaker 1: you listen to these what these women are saying, And

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Speaker 1: what's amazing is how good if they weren't this whether

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Speaker 1: if they were genuine, then that's one thing, but if

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Speaker 1: they weren't genuine, it's almost just as impressive that they

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Speaker 1: could do these incredible manfestaans, you know, papable levitation, furniture

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Speaker 1: moving things appearing from nowhere, of voices being heard, all

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Speaker 1: these things. They were somehow learning on their own. They

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Speaker 1: weren't like magicians who would have an apprenticeship and could

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Speaker 1: learn from each other. They were figuring these things out

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Speaker 1: and fooling a lot of scientific men, which is I

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Speaker 1: think just the fascinating part of this whole history. Yet

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Speaker 1: nowadays we've got like James Van Prague, John Edward, a

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Speaker 1: lot of men are mediums and good ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think now it's maybe a bit more balanced. But

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Speaker 1: I think in terms of some of these earlier mediums,

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Speaker 1: you know, Victorian era, it did seem to kind of

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Speaker 1: skew more female. Well, were there any mediums that stand

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Speaker 1: out from the past that you would say were amazing? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there were a few. I mean I think someone like

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Speaker 1: like Leonora Piper, who again this was around Turing the century,

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Speaker 1: and she would go into these trances. She just kind of,

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Speaker 1: you know, put her head down and start delivering messages.

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Speaker 1: You know that she's hearing from somewhere and she WHOOPI Goldberg, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like that. Yeah, But she would say that.

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Speaker 1: She wouldn't exactly say that she was a spiritualist or

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Speaker 1: that they were coming the voices were coming from the dead.

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Speaker 1: She just said, you just hear these things, and then

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Speaker 1: I'm not saying where they're coming from because she didn't know.

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Speaker 1: But she would give some some fairly accurate information oftentimes,

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Speaker 1: you know, it might be in certain cases, news about

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Speaker 1: a relative who was several states away. And keep in

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Speaker 1: mind several states away at that time, was that was

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Speaker 1: a huge gap. You know, you should get messages until

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Speaker 1: it could be a week till you can hear from

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Speaker 1: someone through the mail or whatever. So so she would

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Speaker 1: give messages maybe about someone who passed away or had

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Speaker 1: fallen ill, and the person who was getting that message

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Speaker 1: at the seance would have no idea about this and

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Speaker 1: would find out a week or two or whatever later

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Speaker 1: that that was in fact true. So that makes you wonder, Okay, well,

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Speaker 1: how was she getting this information? I mean, how would

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Speaker 1: she have dug these things up on her own or

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Speaker 1: in advance. It's pretty remarkable. On the other hand, she

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Speaker 1: had some kind of you know, weird wacky things that

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Speaker 1: she said also, but who knows. I mean, if there's spirits.

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Speaker 1: Maybe they're maybe some of them are a bit mischievous,

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Speaker 1: but but I thought she was an interesting case. Well,

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Speaker 1: Mark Hartzman is a new book is called Chasing Ghosts,

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Speaker 1: which is available right now, isn't it right now? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: wherever you buy books online or a bookstores. I noticed

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Speaker 1: Amazon started taking orders a few weeks ago, so that's

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Speaker 1: pretty good too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let's talk a little

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Speaker 1: bit about Hrry Houdini, the great mentalist and illusionist, an

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Speaker 1: escape artist. His mother passed and he was obsessed with

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Speaker 1: trying to find a proper medium to communicate with her

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Speaker 1: and ended up really debunking most of them, didn't he Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean he was really dead setting against debunking them.

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Speaker 1: And you know, part of it was, yes, he would

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Speaker 1: have loved to have contacted his mother, but he also

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Speaker 1: in his in his early years as a magician, he

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Speaker 1: was holding seances and doing this as an act, basically

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Speaker 1: conjuring yes exactly. And then you know, at some point

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Speaker 1: he realized that he didn't like that. He didn't he

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Speaker 1: didn't like the idea of it, you know, taking money

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Speaker 1: from from those who were grieving and making them think

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Speaker 1: that they were having a genuine connection to someone on

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Speaker 1: the other side when he knew, like, nope, I'm just

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Speaker 1: doing a trick. So he thought that that was just,

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Speaker 1: you know, kind of despicable. Um, it was very different

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Speaker 1: to him than a magic show, Like if he was

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Speaker 1: putting on his own show in a stage. People who

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Speaker 1: pay to see that show, they know what they're getting into.

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Speaker 1: They know they're paying for an act to the magician

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Speaker 1: is putting on and to be amazed by that versus

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Speaker 1: truly believing that they're being they're communicating with a lost

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Speaker 1: loved one. So that was another thing that kind of

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Speaker 1: drove him to expose these frauds was just I think

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Speaker 1: his his own morals. So what was he out to

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Speaker 1: convince himself or the world about these mediums. I think

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Speaker 1: a little bit of both. I mean, I think that

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Speaker 1: he definitely wanted to prevent people from from being duped.

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Speaker 1: Do you think he wanted to really find a real medium.

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Speaker 1: I think he would have loved to have found a

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Speaker 1: real medium, only because I think he I think, like

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Speaker 1: I said earlier, he was open to the idea of

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Speaker 1: this being possible. He just hand seen evidence of it.

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Speaker 1: And you know, he famously had made a pact with

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Speaker 1: his wife that when he passed away, if he could

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Speaker 1: come back, he would and get given her, you know,

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Speaker 1: a particular code word, which of course many mediums tried

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Speaker 1: to reach him afterwards. They did, but but they did

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Speaker 1: not they no one had that particular code word. I

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Speaker 1: ran a clip a couple of years ago of a

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Speaker 1: seance with them trying to reach Houdini and he They

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Speaker 1: gave it their best effort, but it didn't work. But

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Speaker 1: you know, the medium was, you know, just Whodini. Contact

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Speaker 1: us Whodini and they tried. Yeah, it's one of those things.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you wish, you wish it worked because it

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Speaker 1: seemed like if someone was going to come back or

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Speaker 1: find a way, you know, Whodini would have been a

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Speaker 1: good candidate for that. Listen to more Coast to Coast

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Speaker 1: AM every weeknight at one am Eastern, and go to

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast am dot com for more