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

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Speaker 2: Then welcome back to Coast to Coast George Noriy with you.

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Speaker 2: Steve Stockton a veteran outdoorsman and author who has been

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Speaker 2: investigating the unexplained for more than thirty five years. Originally

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Speaker 2: from the mountains of East Tennessee, Steve has travel all

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Speaker 2: over the country in many parts of the world, and

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Speaker 2: now makes his home in the very picturesque New England area.

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Speaker 2: Steve cites his influences as his gypsy witch grandmother who

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Speaker 2: told him multitudes of legends and stories as a small child,

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Speaker 2: as well as the authors such as Frank Edwards, John Keel,

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Speaker 2: Charles Fort our friend, Lauren Coleman, I've Been Sanderson, Colin Wilson,

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Speaker 2: our buddy, Nick Redfern. He also owns and narrates the

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Speaker 2: widely popular Missing Person's Mysteries YouTube channel. Steve, Welcome back

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Speaker 2: to the program.

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Speaker 3: How have you been, Hey, George, Good to be back

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Speaker 3: with you again. Life good, Yeah, life's good. Got married,

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Speaker 3: moved to New England. Doesn't get any better.

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Speaker 2: Well, congratulations, Thank you sir, and your work still looks fantastic.

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Speaker 2: Matter of fact, my Strange World, which you wrote last

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Speaker 2: year as a home run hitter.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been more than a year ago, but that's

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Speaker 3: just the little book that keeps on keeping on, stays

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Speaker 3: in the top of the best seller list on Amazon.

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Speaker 2: That's great. You know our buddy David Politis who writes

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Speaker 2: about missing people.

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Speaker 3: I do. I've met the man before. I met him

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Speaker 3: a squatch Best in Longview, Washington, a couple of years ago.

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Speaker 2: With your National Park mysteries and disappearances, much like what

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Speaker 2: he has said, I would guess that there's something really

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Speaker 2: strange behind this, isn't there.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, A lot of the cases do seem to have

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Speaker 3: a supernatural element. And I've reported on and investigated hundreds

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Speaker 3: and hundreds of cases. And I started doing this as

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Speaker 3: a child, so it's not anything new that I've suddenly

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Speaker 3: developed and interested. It's been a lot of long fascination

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Speaker 3: with missing persons cases.

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Speaker 2: Ebsolutely. How did you get started as.

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Speaker 3: A child, Well, it goes back to Father's Day June

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Speaker 3: nineteen sixty nine, Dennis Martin disappeared in the Great Smoky

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Speaker 3: Mountains National Park. I lived in the same town as

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Speaker 3: Dennis Knoxville, Tennessee, and we were about the same age.

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Speaker 3: Dennis was I think six going on seven and I

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Speaker 3: was five going on six, So it was big in

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Speaker 3: the local news. Knoxville had two newspapers at the time.

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Speaker 3: The Knoxville Journal was the morning paper and the Knoxville

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Speaker 3: News Sentinel was the evening paper. And it was just

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Speaker 3: all over that, all over the local news. And it

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Speaker 3: was hard for me to get my little five year

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Speaker 3: old mind around. How can a child almost like me,

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Speaker 3: you know, just a little bit older than me, go

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Speaker 3: missing and no trace of him ever be found? Nothing?

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Speaker 3: And I followed that case from day one, and somewhere

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Speaker 3: I still got a couple of scrap books of clippings

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Speaker 3: and things about that case that I started when I

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Speaker 3: was that small and sort it's just one of those things.

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Speaker 3: There's never been any answers, no closure. I met his

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Speaker 3: father later on in life, and back then, right after

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Speaker 3: it happened in my little five year old mind, we

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Speaker 3: didn't live that far from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,

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Speaker 3: about an hour. That was my car, and I thought,

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Speaker 3: you know, maybe he's lost, maybe he wondered down where

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Speaker 3: we are. I got out on the rural country road

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Speaker 3: that we lived on, my little swin sting right and

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Speaker 3: looked for him. So it's just it's one of those

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Speaker 3: things that got under my skin and stayed there, and

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Speaker 3: the faces and the stories of some of these people

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Speaker 3: haunts me to this day.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely. Do you remember those milk cartons where they put

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Speaker 2: a picture of a little kid up who's been missing.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I've covered some of those cases, some of the

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Speaker 3: very first ones that were on milk cartens.

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Speaker 2: I think what was the first, Johnny Gosh, wasn't it, Yeah,

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Speaker 2: nineteen eighty two. He disappeared. They never never found the kid.

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Speaker 3: No, there was rumors and stories that he came back

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Speaker 3: and visited his mother, that he had been abducted and

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Speaker 3: taken by somebody, and but that was never substantiated.

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Speaker 2: Strange. At what point did you start writing books and

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Speaker 2: stories about your encounters.

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Speaker 3: Well, that was started with Strange Things in the Woods. Actually,

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Speaker 3: I started that book as a child. I would talk

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Speaker 3: to family friends and family friends if you will, and

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Speaker 3: just ask them, have you ever seen anything strange? If

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Speaker 3: you have never had anything happen out of the woods

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Speaker 3: that you couldn't explain, because the woods just tend to

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Speaker 3: be a strange place anyway, I mean strange things can

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Speaker 3: happen anywhere in the air, in the water, in the city.

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Speaker 3: But for the first book, I picked that fame of

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Speaker 3: just in the woods. And the real impetus from that

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Speaker 3: was my grandmother, my maternal g grandmother, the one who

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Speaker 3: described herself as a gypsy witch. Don't know where the

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Speaker 3: gypsy part came in because she was born in the

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Speaker 3: Kates Kobert, the Great Smoky Mountains, but I'm thinking somewhere

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Speaker 3: back in there there was some old country that they

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Speaker 3: were from. But she knew every legend, every superstition of

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Speaker 3: all kinds of things. Appalachian mountains have that great oral tradition. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: and there's she used to say, there's a hate never holler.

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Speaker 3: So just based on that, you know, she told me

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Speaker 3: all these stories and things. And it was at her

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Speaker 3: funeral when I was thirteen years old. I thought, you know,

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Speaker 3: all those stories, all those tales and stuff that dies

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Speaker 3: right there with her. But I decided not to let it.

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Speaker 3: I took that man upon myself to start catalogging these

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Speaker 3: stories and then the book was decades in the making.

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Speaker 3: But that was the impetus for it.

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Speaker 2: Well, that's a great thing for you to do. And

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Speaker 2: I assume grandma was a good witch, right.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, she told fortunes, red tea leaves, coffee grounds, animal

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Speaker 3: and trails, practiced phrenology, which she could tell things about

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Speaker 3: you by the filling the bumps on your head. But yeah,

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Speaker 3: there were especially in the southern Appalachians there these days.

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Speaker 3: She was what they would call a granny witch or

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Speaker 3: a kitchen witch. But yeah, she didn't do anything evil

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Speaker 3: as far as I know. She never put a hacks

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Speaker 3: on anybody or anything like that. But she could help

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Speaker 3: you take bad luck away or take those haxes off

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Speaker 3: of you that other witches had put on you.

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Speaker 2: Was Was she the mother of your mother or your father?

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Speaker 3: So my mother's mother. I've had ten kids my mom

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Speaker 3: and nine boys, so I could never get away with anything.

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Speaker 3: When I was a kid. She knew all the boy tricks.

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Speaker 3: But I was the favorite grandchild. I was born according

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Speaker 3: to her. Now, my mom was knocked out with twilight

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Speaker 3: sleep that they used to give women in labor back then.

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Speaker 3: But my grandmother attended my birth, my maternal grandmother, the

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Speaker 3: Grandma Bessie Man Mom we called her, and according to her,

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Speaker 3: I was born with the veil over my face, and

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Speaker 3: that's a Southern thing that means an en call I have.

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Speaker 3: The amniotic sac was still over my head when I

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Speaker 3: was born. They had to cut it away. In her

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Speaker 3: superstitious mind, that marked me as a special child. And

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Speaker 3: out of all the grandkids, and with ten kids herself,

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Speaker 3: there was a lot of grandkids, but I was the

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Speaker 3: only one with that condition. So she took me under

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Speaker 3: her wing, as it were, and made sure that I

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Speaker 3: understood the superstitious side of that, Steve.

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Speaker 2: Did your mother ever pick up on the paranormal.

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Speaker 3: Just a little bit? And I've heard that things like

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Speaker 3: that tend to skip a generation. So my grandmother had it,

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Speaker 3: my mother maybe just a little bit, and then I

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Speaker 3: got it. So again, I don't claim to have any

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Speaker 3: special powers or anything. I have had some precognitive moments

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Speaker 3: somewhat of an EmPATH, but I got more so of

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Speaker 3: my mother did.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to have you tell us some stories here, Steven.

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Speaker 2: What are some of your favorite paranormal stories?

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Speaker 3: Oh gosh, there's so many different ones, as far as

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Speaker 3: ones that happened to me. There was something that I

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Speaker 3: encountered in the woods in the area where I grew

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Speaker 3: up in Westox County, Tennessee. Now it's in my book,

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Speaker 3: My Strange World, and the way that book came about

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Speaker 3: Strange Things in the Woods was the first book. And

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Speaker 3: after that then I'd be invited on shows such as

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Speaker 3: George Yeah, and either the Whole Store. If it was

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Speaker 3: a call in show, some of the callers invariably would ask, now,

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Speaker 3: these are other people's experiences, have you ever had any experiences?

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Speaker 3: So I'd trot out one or the other, and eventually

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Speaker 3: I thought, you know, there's probably enough here for a book,

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Speaker 3: and there is, and since then there's been enough for

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Speaker 3: a volume two, which I'm currently at work on My

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Speaker 3: Strange World. But the area we lived on we lived

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Speaker 3: out in the country on a small farm, and there

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Speaker 3: was a ditch, a ditchline that ran alongside our property.

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Speaker 3: And later in life I found out that that was

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Speaker 3: the old stagecoach rode through the irrigating back to the

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Speaker 3: revolutionary times. Yeah, way back. I was out in the

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Speaker 3: woods one day, eight years old and just wandering around

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Speaker 3: on our property. I taught myself of woodcraft and when

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Speaker 3: woodlord and things, and I was out in the woods

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Speaker 3: and looked down into this ditch, didn't see anything interesting

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Speaker 3: in it, turned around to start to walk away, and

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Speaker 3: I heard something in the leaves down in the ditch,

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Speaker 3: and I kind of peered back over the edge at

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Speaker 3: the time I looked over the lip of the ditch.

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Speaker 3: Whatever it was came back out of the came up

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Speaker 3: out of the ditch toward me, and I could see

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Speaker 3: the leaves being kicked up in its wake. The tree

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Speaker 3: branches a lot higher than my head were being knocked

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Speaker 3: back and forth. I could feel the ground shake, but

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Speaker 3: I couldn't see anything. So once the initial prousses broke,

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Speaker 3: I ran back down the hill, screaming for the house.

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Speaker 3: And I was making such a commotion. My mom had

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Speaker 3: set down on the back porch to see what I

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Speaker 3: was into. This time ran past her one side, hid

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Speaker 3: under the furniture. When she finally got me calmed down up,

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Speaker 3: I'm trying to tell her there was something that I

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Speaker 3: couldn't see that chased me. My dad my brother got

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Speaker 3: home from work. They went up there and looked, and

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Speaker 3: sure enough they could see where the groundcover was disturbed,

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Speaker 3: where the tree limbs were broken, the things, and they

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Speaker 3: asked me a lot of questions. It wasn't a bear, No,

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Speaker 3: was it a deer? No, those are all things that

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Speaker 3: I knew what looked like because of the area where

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Speaker 3: we lived in, but it wasn't anything that I could see. Well,

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Speaker 3: flash forward, I didn't go back up there. Flash forward

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Speaker 3: seven years later, fifteen years old, were getting ready to

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Speaker 3: move from there. I was just kind of out walking

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Speaker 3: the property and we had twenty six acres and revisited

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Speaker 3: some of my haunts and things, knowing that I'd probably

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Speaker 3: never get to see them again, at least not under

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Speaker 3: the circumstances where we owned the property. Walked back up

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Speaker 3: there to the ditch, kind of looked down in and thought,

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Speaker 3: wonder what that was that scared me when I was

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Speaker 3: a kid. Turned to walk away pure a familiar noise,

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Speaker 3: something in the leaves. I look around. Sure enough, same

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Speaker 3: exact circumstances. Whatever it was came back up over the

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Speaker 3: lip of the ditch right toward me. I didn't run

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Speaker 3: screaming this time, but I didn't waste any time getting

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Speaker 3: out of there. Right, Yeah, exactly, Well, and then there's

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Speaker 3: more of this story. Six years later, I was working

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Speaker 3: in West Knoxville and I'd been invited to a party

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Speaker 3: after work by guy that I worked with and didn't

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Speaker 3: really know him. Didn't know anybody else at this party.

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Speaker 3: It was at a clubhouse for some condominiums down the road,

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Speaker 3: and some people there had either brought or found a

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Speaker 3: week to board, and they were going around the room

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Speaker 3: asking people questions. And when they got to me, I thought,

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Speaker 3: I've got a good one for you. What scared me

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Speaker 3: when I was a child, And that's all I said.

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Speaker 3: I'd never told this story to the guy that I

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Speaker 3: worked with, and certainly none of people at this party.

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Speaker 3: I hadn't told it outside of my family at that time.

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Speaker 3: But the girls work on the board and the plant

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Speaker 3: chat starts moving and it spells out w A t

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Speaker 3: R S P R I E waters practic. They look

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Speaker 3: at me. I just frugged my shoulders and then they

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Speaker 3: were joking like, oh, the board's thirsty and once the

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Speaker 3: water drinka sprite. But that stuck in my head. The

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Speaker 3: next day that I had off, which I think was

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Speaker 3: the next day, I went to the big library in

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Speaker 3: downtown Knoxville, and I asked the reference to library and

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Speaker 3: I said, what can you tell me about a water

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Speaker 3: sprite or a water spirit? But she goes off into

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Speaker 3: the stacks, comes back a few minutes later with some

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Speaker 3: books and shows me these are elemental type creatures. There's

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Speaker 3: a niad which is a guardian of the waters, and

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Speaker 3: a dryad, which is the spirit of the woods or

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Speaker 3: guardian of the woods. So according to the weedgeboard, what

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Speaker 3: I experienced was a niad, a guardian of the water,

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Speaker 3: and that particular property, just a few yards from where

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Speaker 3: I was, there were seven natural springs, six that flew

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Speaker 3: out of hillsides or flowed out of hillsides rather and

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Speaker 3: on artesian. But what better for a guardian spirit of

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Speaker 3: the water to hang out to where there's seven natural

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Speaker 3: springs that flowed into a big creek which went to

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Speaker 3: the river at the lake at that point.

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Speaker 2: And that's spirit New New.

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Speaker 3: According to the weaksboard. But they never seemed to bother

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Speaker 3: anybody else. I said, my dad, my brother went up

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Speaker 3: there occasionally. I'd have people come over, kids from school.

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Speaker 3: I'd send them up there to see if anything had

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Speaker 3: chased them out of there with nothing. For whatever reason,

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Speaker 3: it just didn't want me around there.

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Speaker 2: Our guest is Steven Stockton. We are going to take

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Speaker 2: calls with Steve next hour. If you want to share

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Speaker 2: your own stories with us, go ahead. What is this

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Speaker 2: story of ghost kittens or cats? What are they about?

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Speaker 3: Well, that was the same property there where we lived.

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Speaker 3: It was a house. It was built when I was

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Speaker 3: a child. They started building when I was six months old,

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Speaker 3: custom built home, brick rancher and it didn't have a basement,

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Speaker 3: that just had a cross base. It was on the

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Speaker 3: what we call the high end of the house. The

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Speaker 3: way I was sitting there, I could not even stand

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Speaker 3: up under there as a child, who was literally a

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Speaker 3: cross space. Well, my bedroom was just above that cross space,

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Speaker 3: had hardwood floors. Well, one day I was coloring or

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Speaker 3: reading a comic book or something laying on my bedroom

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Speaker 3: floor and I started hearing kittens and I could tell

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Speaker 3: they were coming from under the house. And I got

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Speaker 3: my dad to come in listen. He couldn't hear them,

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Speaker 3: but he took the flashlight, went down there and unlocked

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Speaker 3: the cross space door with the little tiny door, went

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Speaker 3: in there, looked around with a flashlight. Nothing. Well, I

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Speaker 3: kept hearing kittens. But this went on for years, and

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Speaker 3: there was lots would years. I went under there with

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Speaker 3: a flashlight myself, crawled through every inch of it. George,

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Speaker 3: there was no kittens in there. Any place a kitten

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Speaker 3: could beIN. I have friends come over from school. My

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Speaker 3: friend John was with me one night and uh, he's like,

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Speaker 3: there's kittens under your house. I can hear them. Wow,

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Speaker 3: but they they weren't there. So again I don't know

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Speaker 3: what that was the last night, and I heard that

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Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier that we moved away from there when

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Speaker 3: I was fifteen. A part of the furniture had already

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Speaker 3: been moved, and I was the last one to spend

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Speaker 3: the night in the house. I slept in my whole

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Speaker 3: bedroom on the floor in a sleeping bag, and all

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Speaker 3: night long I heard the muling of kittens under the

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Speaker 3: house that weren't there.

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Speaker 2: What do you think happened? What might the significance of

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Speaker 2: that have been?

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Speaker 3: I don't really know. There had been an old house

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Speaker 3: there close to where back then you had to either

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Speaker 3: haul your garbage to the dump or it was legal

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Speaker 3: to burn it where we lived and where our garbage

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Speaker 3: pile where we burned it at. There had been an

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Speaker 3: old house there at one time, and the lady that

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Speaker 3: lived there was a purported witch, so thinking maybe it

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Speaker 3: had something. Maybe she'd witch the property or the cats

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Speaker 3: were her familiars or something like that. I don't know

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Speaker 3: never could.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes sometimes farmers in the old days would have to

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Speaker 2: catch the mice and the rats and things like that,

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Speaker 2: and they would have litters that they didn't want to keep,

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Speaker 2: that the farmer didn't want to keep, and so what

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Speaker 2: they would do sometimes sadly, it's a horrible story, but

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Speaker 2: they would put all the kittens in a bag or

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Speaker 2: in a satch and toss it in the water or

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Speaker 2: burn them or something like that. I wonder if something

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Speaker 2: like that happened on that land.

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Speaker 3: That's a possibility, and I've considered that, but again, no

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Speaker 3: way to prove it. But I did absolutely hear kittens

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Speaker 3: under that house for years.

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Speaker 2: And where's the house these days?

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Speaker 3: It still stands there in the sollway of the community

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Speaker 3: in East Tennessee, but that I haven't been there since

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Speaker 3: I was fifteen years old, so that that turned sixty

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Speaker 3: this year, so it's been a while. And I wonder

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Speaker 3: if the people that live there now don't still hear

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Speaker 3: those kittens in the.

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Speaker 2: Crossby exactly and drive them crazy. Probably doesn't it. Yuh

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Speaker 2: have you visited many places investigating?

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Speaker 3: I have. I'm more of a legend tripper than an

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Speaker 3: actual investigator, but I do like to go places and

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Speaker 3: particularly places where things could have happened that are kind

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Speaker 3: of a one off. Dover, Massachusetts is a good example,

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Speaker 3: the Dover Demon. Some of them was just seen by

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Speaker 3: a few people over a couple of different nights and

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Speaker 3: then never seen or heard from again. I like to

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Speaker 3: go places where there's one offs like that, just asking

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Speaker 3: the paranormal ambiance if you will think you know, this

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Speaker 3: is where it happened. So yeah, I've traveled all over

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Speaker 3: the country and in many parts of the world, and

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Speaker 3: anywhere I'm at, if there's anything strange for paranormal that

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Speaker 3: has happened nearby, I've got to go check it out.

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

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00:18:51,200 --> 00:18:54,480
Speaker 1: one am Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot

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