Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it could Happen. Here's Spooky Week special presentation.
Speaker 2: I'm Garrison Davis and earlier this year, I, along with
Speaker 2: my friend Elane, attended the twenty twenty three organ Ghost
Speaker 2: Conference in Seaside, organ the past few years, I've had
Speaker 2: a growing interest in the occult, both for testing the
Speaker 2: limits of manufacturing my own weird experiences as well as
Speaker 2: looking at it as a vector of political extremism. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it's useful to not just to look on from the outside,
Speaker 2: but actually hop into other people's reality tunnels to gain
Speaker 2: a more intimate understanding of how they interact with our world.
Speaker 2: This was my primary motivation in attending the Ghost Conference,
Speaker 2: to learn what metaphysical beliefs drive the attendees and how
Speaker 2: said beliefs intersect with politics and our broader culture. My
Speaker 2: experiences at the conference ranged from ghost hunting to being hypnotized,
Speaker 2: to learning of the galactic Federation of Angels and abortion
Speaker 2: hungry demons. So with that in mind, I hope you
Speaker 2: enjoy my report back on the twenty twenty three Oregon
Speaker 2: Ghost Conference. The first challenge we faced was simply getting
Speaker 2: to the town of Seaside. The first day of the conference, Friday,
Speaker 2: March twenty fourth, coincided with a massive snowstorm along Highway
Speaker 2: twenty six from a Portland to Seaside. As we were
Speaker 2: driving on the treacherous mountain roads, a white out completely
Speaker 2: engulfed our view. When we emerged from the snowstorm, it
Speaker 2: was as if we'd gone through a portal, transporting us
Speaker 2: from the mountainous forest to the small coastal town of Seaside, Oregon,
Speaker 2: into a world of ghosts, spirits, specters, and overpriced convention food. Seaside,
Speaker 2: as the name suggests, is a beachfront town situated in
Speaker 2: northern Oregon. It was founded in the late eighteen hundredths
Speaker 2: after railroad baron Ben Holliday built his summer vacation quote
Speaker 2: unquote Seaside house on the plot of land which is
Speaker 2: now Seaside's golf course. It's always been a sort of
Speaker 2: tourist resort town that people from Portland travel to for
Speaker 2: beachfront entertainment. The conference is put on by a friendly
Speaker 2: high school art teacher and Oregon City commissioner, Rocky Smith.
Speaker 2: Smith has been doing ghost tours in Oregon since the
Speaker 2: mid nineties and has been putting on the Oregon Ghost
Speaker 2: Conference since twenty twelve. Originally, it was held in Smith's
Speaker 2: hometown of Oregon City, an extremely haunted town often cited
Speaker 2: as the end of the Oregon Trail. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: the conference outgrew its Oregon City venue and relocated to Seaside.
Speaker 2: It's now the largest paranormal convention in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 2: The conference features ghost tours, classes, guest speakers, vendors, tarra readings, seances,
Speaker 2: ghost hunting, and paranormal investigations. The first big event I
Speaker 2: marked on my schedule was a ghost tour to get
Speaker 2: acquainted with Seaside's most haunted places. The tour began right
Speaker 2: outside the convention center. Conference director Rocky Smith led this
Speaker 2: one himself. He filled us in on some old ghost
Speaker 2: conference lore. The Seaside Convention Center went through some extensive
Speaker 2: renovations right before the pandemic, but the first year the
Speaker 2: conference took place in the convention center, they had a
Speaker 2: class for kids where a group of children explored around
Speaker 2: the old building to find what they thought were the
Speaker 2: most haunted places. There was one hallway on the west
Speaker 2: side of the building where people routinely reported strange experiences
Speaker 2: back in twenty sixteen, a child at the conference claimed
Speaker 2: they saw a ghost down this hallway when exiting the bathroom. First,
Speaker 2: they just saw something out of the corner of their eye,
Speaker 2: and then when they turned to the left, they saw
Speaker 2: a woman in an old dress staring at them. At first,
Speaker 2: they weren't sure if the dress was long or short
Speaker 2: because they were too scared to look down, but then
Speaker 2: they noticed that the woman didn't have any legs and
Speaker 2: was just floating in the air. Because of the new renovations,
Speaker 2: that hallway is no longer accessible. Rocky Smith remarked that
Speaker 2: he didn't know if that was intentional or not, but
Speaker 2: said that a lot of times when they redo buildings,
Speaker 2: they'll change the part of a building that used to
Speaker 2: be kind of scary and uncomfortable, so that hallway is
Speaker 2: now used for storage, although one of the convention staff
Speaker 2: members claimed that a vacuum cleaner now held in the
Speaker 2: hallway is possessed. So there's that. The convention Center was
Speaker 2: originally built in the seventies and doesn't really have a
Speaker 2: lot of notable hit history, but when looking into hauntings
Speaker 2: or reports of ghosts, typically people try to learn the
Speaker 2: history of the building or plot of land in question.
Speaker 2: For Seaside. That's kind of hard because in nineteen twelve,
Speaker 2: four blocks of downtown Seaside burned to the ground, destroying
Speaker 2: most of the town's early history. The first stop on
Speaker 2: the ghost tour after we left the Convention Center was
Speaker 2: one of the reportedly most active sites of ghostly activity
Speaker 2: in Seaside, the Bridge Tender Tavern. It was built in
Speaker 2: nineteen fourteen, so just a couple of years after the
Speaker 2: Big Fire. I used to be called the Pastime Bar
Speaker 2: and then suffered its own fire and was later renamed
Speaker 2: the Bridge Tender. The previous owners of the bar claimed
Speaker 2: that in the early twentieth century it was a brothel.
Speaker 2: This is unconfirmed, but it relates to the tavern's most
Speaker 2: frequent ghost, the Madam. Staff and patrons of the Bridge
Speaker 2: Tender regularly addressed the Madam. If customers are being rude,
Speaker 2: It's said that the Madam will spill drinks on them,
Speaker 2: you know, stuff like that. The story I like the
Speaker 2: most about the Madam has to do with the taverns
Speaker 2: old CD jute box. If a specific song played on
Speaker 2: the jukebox, something would go haywire, CDs would shoot out
Speaker 2: of it or other weird things would reportedly happen in
Speaker 2: the bar. Patrons would put the song on repeat just
Speaker 2: to see what would happen. Eventually, the owners took the
Speaker 2: CD with the song in question out of the jukebox
Speaker 2: so that people would just stop playing the song. But
Speaker 2: people are persistent bastards, so now people just play the
Speaker 2: song on their phones or the new digital jukebox in
Speaker 2: the Bridge Tender. Now the theory is is that the
Speaker 2: Madam just really hates this song, so she gets mad
Speaker 2: when it plays and then causes some commotion. The song
Speaker 2: is Dancing Queen by Abba, So if you want to
Speaker 2: go test this yourself, you can travel to the Bridge
Speaker 2: Tender and play Dancing Queen and see what happens. Another
Speaker 2: highlight from the ghost tour was learning about the old
Speaker 2: Seasider Hotel at the end of the promenade. It was
Speaker 2: purportedly haunted by multiple spirits, and it was believed that
Speaker 2: when the hotel was torn down in the eighties, the
Speaker 2: ghosts followed the hotel staff who got new jobs at
Speaker 2: a restaurant in downtown called Girdles. New employees are said
Speaker 2: to have recognized apparitions from the hotel and the restaurant
Speaker 2: gained a haunted coffee pot that would either move on
Speaker 2: its own or even fly across the room, depending on
Speaker 2: who you would ask. I think it's nice that the
Speaker 2: ghosts seem to have a pretty good job relocation program,
Speaker 2: something that most of us do not so good for them.
Speaker 2: As the ghost tour approached the beachfront promenade, that snowstorm
Speaker 2: from the nearby mountains seemed to have caught up with us,
Speaker 2: and a dreary mix of rain and snow began to descend.
Speaker 2: Upon ceased, as if some otherworldly force was trying to
Speaker 2: keep us from further exploring the hauntings of the town.
Speaker 2: So as even my trench coat began soaking through, we
Speaker 2: took refuge back indoors. The very first class my friend
Speaker 2: Elaine and I took at the conference was titled Ghost Detectives. Now,
Speaker 2: despite the silly, stounding name, it was probably the most
Speaker 2: grounded class throughout the entire weekend, certainly the one with
Speaker 2: the least amount of spiritual dogma. The class was focused
Speaker 2: on best practices for conducting paranormal investigations, specifically to ensure
Speaker 2: that the process and finding's mirror the evidentiary standards. Set
Speaker 2: by the justice system for law enforcement investigations. The instructor,
Speaker 2: doctor Nelson, is a supervisor for a crisis hotline with
Speaker 2: degrees in mental health, metaphysics, and fine arts. He described
Speaker 2: his methodology for investigating paranormal activity as quote unquote applied science.
Speaker 2: He was definitely the most meticulous investigator of the whole
Speaker 2: weekend and the least ghost hunter esque in terms of
Speaker 2: advocating for strict investigative procedures and not just assuming that
Speaker 2: every spooky noise was evidence of a ghost. Most of
Speaker 2: his class was spent explaining very basic police investigative procedure,
Speaker 2: proper ways to collect evidence, having a chain of evidence,
Speaker 2: and not simply jumping to conclusions. It's a little foolhardy
Speaker 2: to assume every single spike on an electromagnetic field or
Speaker 2: EMF meter is actually a ghost trying to communicate. The
Speaker 2: other unique thing about his class was the emphasis on
Speaker 2: before pulling out your special ghost detecting tools, perhaps one
Speaker 2: should conduct thorough interviews and collect witness statements. If the
Speaker 2: people reporting the phenomenon, try to figure out what's going
Speaker 2: on in their life, maybe even look into their own
Speaker 2: mental health background. As much as you're able to if
Speaker 2: they've had any sudden losses, past trauma, or history of
Speaker 2: paranormal experiences. Asking thorough questions can give a much fuller
Speaker 2: look at what someone might be going through. Some examples
Speaker 2: of things to ask or look into were if the
Speaker 2: phenomenon is related to a house, who owns the house,
Speaker 2: who lives there, who has experienced the event? What led
Speaker 2: to a paranormal investigator being called? What precipitated the phenomenon?
Speaker 2: When it occurred? How often has it occurred? When was
Speaker 2: it first noticed? Was there just one random strange experience?
Speaker 2: Or is someone going through an event in their life
Speaker 2: that has made an experience suddenly stick out as strange?
Speaker 2: Has the person sought help, and has the phenomenon been
Speaker 2: verified by more than one person. In terms of haunted houses,
Speaker 2: figuring out if there's any issues in the house is
Speaker 2: a great first step, because if there's a carbon monoxide leak,
Speaker 2: that could explain a great many things, or if someone
Speaker 2: claims ghost ectoplasm is leaking through the ceiling and walls,
Speaker 2: perhaps the roof and water pipes should be inspected. Elene
Speaker 2: and I did a little debrief after the conference, and
Speaker 2: they reminded me of another good tip gleaned from the
Speaker 2: ghost detective class.
Speaker 3: I mean, my favorite was when he was talking about, like,
Speaker 3: if you're using an EMF detector and one wall just
Speaker 3: keeps setting the EMF detector off, you might actually just
Speaker 3: need to call an electriciity.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, No, he definitely was one of the more
Speaker 4: reasonable people we spoke with in terms of Yeat knows.
Speaker 4: He seems he seems pretty close to like consensus reality.
Speaker 4: Like he also he also is like a part of
Speaker 4: like the Portland Ghostbusters cosplay group, Like like he's he's
Speaker 4: someone who like makes stuff with his hands. He's very
Speaker 4: like he feels very grounded and like and like consent
Speaker 4: this reality a lot in a lot of aspects, and
Speaker 4: this is like a very fun hobby that combines his
Speaker 4: two favorite things, well two of his favorite things, just
Speaker 4: like Ghostbusters cosplays and also like parnimal investigation stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm not actually sure if the instructor for the paranormal
Speaker 2: investigation class really believed in ghosts or if you've just
Speaker 2: had an interest in researching paranormal experiences. I don't think
Speaker 2: I believe in ghosts the same way literally everyone else
Speaker 2: at the conference did, but almost half of Americans do
Speaker 2: believe in ghosts, and around one fifth are unsure if
Speaker 2: their believers or not. The rate of belief in ghosts
Speaker 2: is about the same as belief in demons. But the
Speaker 2: interesting thing about that is although Americans belief in organized
Speaker 2: religion has been decreasing, especially Christianity, belief in ghosts has
Speaker 2: been and still is on the rise. In fact, it's
Speaker 2: gone up by nearly four hundred percent since the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: These last three years, for really the first time ever,
Speaker 2: Gallup polls show that less than fifty percent of Americans
Speaker 2: say they belong to a religious congregation. Alan Downe is
Speaker 2: a computer scientist and professor at the Olin College of
Speaker 2: Engineering in Massachusetts. His research suggests that the Internet is
Speaker 2: a major cause, not just a correlating factor, in the
Speaker 2: decrease of religious affiliation, and with the rise of the
Speaker 2: Internet and reality TV, ghost hunting has become a relatively
Speaker 2: popular niche hobby. But as religious belief has declined, belief
Speaker 2: in the afterlife has remained the same about seventy percent
Speaker 2: according to the General Social Survey. Gallup's polling suggests that
Speaker 2: currently about three and four Americans have some sort of
Speaker 2: paranormal belief Thomas Moen, a sociologist who's been conducting a
Speaker 2: study on religion and paranormal belief at Bowling Green State University,
Speaker 2: said that he's finding that quote atheists tend to report
Speaker 2: higher belief in the paranormal than religious folk unquote. As
Speaker 2: to why so many Americans believe in ghosts, Mohen says, quote,
Speaker 2: people are looking to other things or non traditional things
Speaker 2: to answer life big questions that don't necessarily include religion unquote.
Speaker 2: Throughout the conference, the word ghost, spirit, and entity were
Speaker 2: often used interchangeably. Each of those words kind of act
Speaker 2: as an umbrella term for a broad swath of ontological concepts.
Speaker 2: Ontology is the branch of metaphysics that relates to the
Speaker 2: nature of being. Depending who you ask, a ghost or
Speaker 2: a spirit can be anything from a wayward soul of
Speaker 2: a deceased human, some otherworldly energy, an evil presence, or
Speaker 2: even some sort of temporal loop. Historically, these terms have
Speaker 2: never been very clear either, they've evolved with the times,
Speaker 2: so Elene and I prepared a brief history of ghosts
Speaker 2: to help give context for the rest of this episode
Speaker 2: and the next. The idea of contacting spirits or interacting
Speaker 2: with some sort of spirit world obviously isn't new. Worldwide,
Speaker 2: people have traditions of interacting with ancestors that deceased and
Speaker 2: a variety of non material beings. Ancestor veneration in China
Speaker 2: goes back at least six thousand years, while the word shaman,
Speaker 2: relating to someone who works with spirits and in the
Speaker 2: spirit realm for healing and divination, comes from the Tungusic
Speaker 2: language of Siberia and has practices that are at least
Speaker 2: too millennia old. The term necromancy stems from a Greek
Speaker 2: word meaning divination of the dead. In the Odyssey, Homer
Speaker 2: writes of Odysseus learning necromantic rituals to summon the shade
Speaker 2: or underworld ghost of Tyresius. While clerical necromantic traditions through
Speaker 2: the medieval period made a clear distinction between the souls
Speaker 2: of dead humans from other random spirits, that separation was
Speaker 2: not as ubiqui among folk beliefs of people who claimed
Speaker 2: to interact with the spirit world. Emma Wilby describes in
Speaker 2: her book Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits. How into the
Speaker 2: early modern period, many cunning folk basically low level magicians
Speaker 2: and conjurors had ghosts, fairies, and animal spirit companions, all
Speaker 2: of which seemed to interact very similarly. The European concept
Speaker 2: of ghosts being linked to evil or demonic forces is
Speaker 2: a relatively new idea. It came to be as a
Speaker 2: byproduct of the Reformation and rejection of the Catholic Church.
Speaker 2: The Catholic doctrine of purgatory and limbo was rejected by
Speaker 2: the new Protestants, which caused some cosmological problems when it
Speaker 2: came to people's own experiences with ghosts and spirits. Catholics
Speaker 2: held that ghosts were basically spirits of dead humans on
Speaker 2: vacation from purgatory, But with Protestants rejecting purgatory for its
Speaker 2: lack of biblical basis, they defined some other way to
Speaker 2: explain the apparently fairly common phenomenon of ghostly encounters. A
Speaker 2: Swiss theologian named Ludwig Lavater attempted to solve this cosmological
Speaker 2: problem in his fifteen sixty nine book Despectus. I just
Speaker 2: picked up my copy a few weeks ago and had
Speaker 2: been going through it, and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: The full English title was quote of ghosts and spirits
Speaker 2: walking by night and of strange noises, cracks, and sundry
Speaker 2: fore warnings which commonly happened before the death of men,
Speaker 2: great slaughters, and the alteration of kingdoms. Pretty cool stuff.
Speaker 2: Two of my favorite consecutive chapter titles are quote what
Speaker 2: hath followed this doctrine of the Papists concerning the appearing
Speaker 2: of men's souls, followed by testimonies out of the Word
Speaker 2: of God, that neither the souls of the faithful nor
Speaker 2: infidels do walketh upon the earth after they are once
Speaker 2: parted from their bodies. So that kind of gives you
Speaker 2: a look at the writing style of this entire book.
Speaker 2: Despecters became massively influential. It was widely translated. Shakespeare was
Speaker 2: reading this as he was writing Hamlet. More importantly, the
Speaker 2: text took off across many Protestant circles and became the
Speaker 2: backbone of the cultural conception of ghosts in the soon
Speaker 2: to be United States through such Protestant sects. Instead of
Speaker 2: ghosts being wayward specters of dead humans who escaped from purgatory,
Speaker 2: Lavater proposed a great many explanations for spectral experiences, including
Speaker 2: many non mystical causes. He lists illness, insomnia, psychoactive substances,
Speaker 2: sleep paralysis, and grief as being common causes of ghostly hallucinations,
Speaker 2: an opinion now shared by many psychologists and doctors. Definitely,
Speaker 2: the closest thing I've ever seen to a ghost was
Speaker 2: during a sleep paralysis episode. Lavator writes, quote, Melancholic persons
Speaker 2: and mad men imagine things which in very deed are
Speaker 2: not fearful. Men imagine that they see and hear strange things.
Speaker 2: Men which are dull of seeing and hearing imagine many
Speaker 2: things which in very deed are not so. Unquote. He
Speaker 2: also cites pranksters as another common cause of perceived spectral activity,
Speaker 2: but most interestingly, in an attempt to bash the Catholics,
Speaker 2: the Protestant Lavater also lists low level clergy trained in
Speaker 2: exorcistic magic to summon demonic spirits in an achromatic fashion
Speaker 2: as possibly producing some supernatural phenomenon interpreted as ghosts. Now,
Speaker 2: Lavater does believe in spirits, but his thesis is that
Speaker 2: genuine ghosts spirits bumps in the night, those strange cracks
Speaker 2: and noises which we now might refer to as politgeists
Speaker 2: are almost always demons that are torturing people. He wrote
Speaker 2: that devils can quote appear in different shapes, not only
Speaker 2: of those which are alive, but also of dead men
Speaker 2: as well as a peer in the likeness of a
Speaker 2: black dog, a horse, an owl, and also are able
Speaker 2: to bring incredible things to pass unquote. Levater did admit
Speaker 2: that in the rarest of cases, God may send angels
Speaker 2: or the spirit of a dead person to Earth for
Speaker 2: a very specific task, but due to demons a nature trickery,
Speaker 2: there's really no way to trust that a ghostly presence
Speaker 2: may be from God. So he recommends that one should
Speaker 2: always assume that a specter is demonic. God may even
Speaker 2: allow demonic spirits to appear as a form of punishment
Speaker 2: and a sign that one should repent for wrongdoing. Lavater's
Speaker 2: theologic work on ghosts were part of a larger Protestant
Speaker 2: Christian campaign to literally demonize all spirits. Right, the only
Speaker 2: thing you can really talk to is Jesus or God.
Speaker 2: Anything else is probably just a demon. This is the
Speaker 2: version of ghosts that I grew up with as a kid,
Speaker 2: the idea that basically, if a ghost appears, it's probably
Speaker 2: a demon trying to scare or trick you. This concept
Speaker 2: that spirits and spirit contact were predominantly demonic, changed the
Speaker 2: nature of many witch trials, since when cunning folk listed
Speaker 2: their familiar ghosts or fairies, they were basically admitting to
Speaker 2: trafficking with demons. The next evolution in ghost lore came
Speaker 2: in the form of Emmanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish theologian and scientist.
Speaker 2: In fact, he was one of the first to postulate
Speaker 2: the existence of the neuron. As Christians in Europe were
Speaker 2: dealing with this messy assortment of spirits that you really
Speaker 2: shouldn't try and interact with, but if you do, you
Speaker 2: better make sure they're angels, Swedenborg was about to shake
Speaker 2: up this whole entire cosmology. In the seventeen forties, he
Speaker 2: started having quote intense mystical experiences, dreams, and visions unquote,
Speaker 2: which led him to believe he was in contact with
Speaker 2: a spirit world and entities that he described as angels, demons,
Speaker 2: as well as other spirits, including ones from extraterrestrial planets.
Speaker 2: This is like one of the first guys to do
Speaker 2: the spirits I'm talking to are actually aliens, which is
Speaker 2: pretty cool. In seventeen eighty five, he published a book
Speaker 2: titled Heaven and Hell, based on his experiences of the afterlife.
Speaker 2: According to Swedenburg, once humans on Earth pass on to
Speaker 2: the spiritual world, they enter a intermediate realm in between
Speaker 2: heaven and hell and eventually either become beautified into angels
Speaker 2: or twisted into demons, and then respectively pass on into
Speaker 2: either heaven or Hell proper. While his depiction of spirits
Speaker 2: were obviously influenced by his Christian beliefs, the variety and
Speaker 2: breadth of his spirit world was broader than just the undead.
Speaker 2: Swedenburg's writing was one of the early influences on spiritualism.
Speaker 2: Core tenants of which are there being multiple levels of
Speaker 2: the afterlife and that an individual's awareness persists after death
Speaker 2: and may be contacted by the living, which is pretty
Speaker 2: similar to what most people now would probably describe as
Speaker 2: ghosts if you were to ask them what a ghost is.
Speaker 2: While Swedenborg actually recommended against attempting to contact spirits, he
Speaker 2: had a lasting influence on American spiritualism for creating an
Speaker 2: explicitly Christian based system where spiritual entities worked as mediators
Speaker 2: between humans and God. Coming out of Upstate New York
Speaker 2: in the decade before the Civil War, spiritualism brought to
Speaker 2: the other aspects of the Radical Quakers with Swedenberg's idea
Speaker 2: of spirit intermediaries who could bring messages to the living.
Speaker 2: The spiritualist movement formally began on March thirty first, eighteen
Speaker 2: forty eight, when the Fox Sisters made their fraudulent clases
Speaker 2: of contacting a spirit who could communicate through knocking noises.
Speaker 2: Starting initially in Quaker communities, mediumship and seances immediately took
Speaker 2: off across the United States, including the White House as
Speaker 2: the Lincolns were graving the loss of their son, showing
Speaker 2: that interest in ghosts and seances were not just a
Speaker 2: parlor trick for commoners, they were also a parlor trick
Speaker 2: for the president. The fact that the rise of spiritualism
Speaker 2: coincided with Civil War deaths and gruesome battlefield photography certainly
Speaker 2: helped fuel the drive to communicate and receive messages from
Speaker 2: the recently deceased. Due to its Quaker roots, the spiritualist
Speaker 2: movement was abolitionist, and its belief in an egalitarian afterlife
Speaker 2: prompted its members to advocate for social change here on earth.
Speaker 2: Even the messages that mediums claimed to relay from the
Speaker 2: dead were often progressive. In eighteen fifty two, the medium
Speaker 2: Isaac Post published a collection of messages supposedly channeled from
Speaker 2: such people as Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, and other famous figures
Speaker 2: who urged the living to push for radical social change.
Speaker 2: The book, entitled Voices from the Spirit World, included a
Speaker 2: passage claiming that the ghost of George Washington became an
Speaker 2: abolitionist after death. And I don't know the idea that
Speaker 2: the ghost of Jefferson and Washington suddenly became abolitionists after death.
Speaker 2: Although I understand its utility at the time for trying
Speaker 2: to push people towards becoming an abolitionist, it does kind
Speaker 2: of read as a little bit gross, considering how that
Speaker 2: was very much not their opinions when they were actually
Speaker 2: living humans. New to the spiritualist development of ghosts was
Speaker 2: not just the idea of regular spiritual contact, but evidence
Speaker 2: that the spirit world could be shown to the physical
Speaker 2: scientific world. Basically, the precursor to modern ghosts emerged between
Speaker 2: the Civil War and World War One. In London. Multiple
Speaker 2: ghost clubs and psychic or paranormal research groups were founded
Speaker 2: in the mid to late eighteen hundreds aimed at scientifically
Speaker 2: investigating ghosts, hauntings, and the claims of spiritualists. Similar groups
Speaker 2: for investigation opened up in the United States, and around
Speaker 2: this time is also when we start to see the
Speaker 2: use of technology to assist in capturing alleged evidence of ghosts.
Speaker 2: In eighteen sixty one, amateur photographer William Mumler was developing
Speaker 2: a self portrait when a shattery apparition of a young
Speaker 2: girl appeared on his developing plate. Mummler knew this to
Speaker 2: be a simple mistake of reusing an improperly scrubbed photography plate,
Speaker 2: what we now would call a double exposure, But upon
Speaker 2: showing this photo to a very excited spiritualist friend of his,
Speaker 2: he realized the lucrative opertune tunity that lay before him.
Speaker 2: Thus was born the business of spirit photography. Sir Arthur
Speaker 2: Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes's fame was a fan of
Speaker 2: spirit photography. He became a member of London's Society for
Speaker 2: Psychical Research and eventually became a spiritualist himself. The recent
Speaker 2: inventions of the phonograph and telephone were hoped to be
Speaker 2: utilized to create evidence of spirit contact. According to Ghosts
Speaker 2: of Futures, Past Spiritualism and cultural politics of nineteenth century
Speaker 2: America by Molly McGary. Thomas Watson, famed assistant to Alexander
Speaker 2: Graham Bell, experimented with the telephone as an aid to
Speaker 2: spiritual communication. Decades later, Thomas Edison sought to develop a
Speaker 2: quote unquote spirit phone, telling American Magazine in nineteen twenty quote,
Speaker 2: I've been at work for some time building an apparatus
Speaker 2: to see if it is possible for personalities which have
Speaker 2: left this earth to communicate with us, not by a cult, mystifying,
Speaker 2: mysterious or weird means, but by scientific methods. Quote. Edison's
Speaker 2: spirit phone never really turned out, and we have very
Speaker 2: little information about it. It seems Edison thought that elements
Speaker 2: of our personality or memories existed in a form of
Speaker 2: like almost particles that could be measured and amplified by
Speaker 2: vibrational sensing equipment, but not much is recorded of his
Speaker 2: actual attempts to build this spirit phone. By the end
Speaker 2: of the nineteenth century, newspaper is reported on ghosts and
Speaker 2: hauntings along with other regular news. A twenty eighteen New
Speaker 2: York Times article on the paper's own history of reporting
Speaker 2: on ghosts said, quote Paulette D. Kilmer, a cultural historian
Speaker 2: and professor at the University of Toledo scoured the paper's archives.
Speaker 2: Her research turned up nearly three hundred ghost stories in
Speaker 2: the times between the founding of the paper in eighteen
Speaker 2: fifty one and the early twentieth century. Unquote. While news
Speaker 2: coverage of hauntings dropped off during the twentieth century, the
Speaker 2: ways in which people attempted to understand ghosts only got
Speaker 2: more complex. The mediumship of the spiritualists has combined with
Speaker 2: the ever growing field of paranormal research, New Age beliefs,
Speaker 2: and pop culture fascination with poltergeist, spirits and UFOs, along
Speaker 2: with the resurgence of Evangelical Protestantism into an overlap of
Speaker 2: conflicting ghost cosmologies and what it means to contact the
Speaker 2: spirit world. To cap off our first night at the conference,
Speaker 2: we signed up for our very own ghost investigation at
Speaker 2: the Starry Night Inn, a quaint little house just a
Speaker 2: short walk from the convention center. We got to the
Speaker 2: inn right before midnight on Friday evening before we ventured
Speaker 2: out on our hunt for ghosts. We were split into
Speaker 2: two groups of five, with one starting in the inn
Speaker 2: and the other in the outdoor bathhouse. We got acquainted
Speaker 2: with the ghost hunting tools we were going to be using. First,
Speaker 2: we were given a popular EMF meter routinely used for
Speaker 2: ghost detection, called a K two meter. It's supposed to
Speaker 2: measure electromagnetic fields and features colorful light up LEDs. I'm
Speaker 2: going to read a quote from the lead investigator we
Speaker 2: were paired with. Quote. If a K two meter spikes
Speaker 2: without reason, if it's not put next to anything powerfully electrical,
Speaker 2: then we can consider that paranormal. Consider that a spirit.
Speaker 2: When our body dies, we leave behind our energies. Our
Speaker 2: energies is EMF, and this starts to pick it up. Unquote.
Speaker 2: Among the paranormal skeptic community, the K two meter is
Speaker 2: notorious for giving off false positives. With its unshielded sensor
Speaker 2: is able to be set off by cell phones, radio waves,
Speaker 2: and even nearby batteries. The other device we were using
Speaker 2: is something called a rempod. Essentially, it's a small, horrible
Speaker 2: sounding junior theoremy with some LEDs attached. An antenna creates
Speaker 2: an electromagnetic field. If something conductive gets close to the antenna,
Speaker 2: it forms a capacitor between the object and the antenna,
Speaker 2: and the pod will light up and make some noise,
Speaker 2: or if it's electromaenetic field gets disrupted by something like
Speaker 2: say cellular or radio frequencies, it will also make a
Speaker 2: horrible beeping noise and light up. I'm going to read
Speaker 2: another quote from our lead investigator quote when our energies
Speaker 2: are around, the pod will react to any energy field
Speaker 2: that comes close to its antenna. So as we invite
Speaker 2: spirits in, we can tell them how they can interact,
Speaker 2: and we can tell them, hey, if you walk over
Speaker 2: to that light over there and touch it, it'll light
Speaker 2: up unquote. There is something funny to me about telling
Speaker 2: a ghost to walk over somewhere, just a little it's
Speaker 2: just a little amusing. My group of five intrepid investigators
Speaker 2: were sent out to the bathhouse, which we were told
Speaker 2: used to be a carriage house and horse stables that
Speaker 2: got damaged in the nineteen twelve Seaside fire. The lead
Speaker 2: investigator started by informing any possible spirits that we do
Speaker 2: not mean them quote harm or intrusion, and that we
Speaker 2: would just quote like to talk. He then informed any
Speaker 2: ghosts in the vicinity that if they quote unquote walk
Speaker 2: up to any of the devices with LED lights and
Speaker 2: quote unquote touch it, it will light up. Quote, go ahead,
Speaker 2: use your energy and touch all those lights for me.
Speaker 2: That way we know you're here unquote. Potential specters were
Speaker 2: also informed that if they speak into an electronic recording device,
Speaker 2: us corporeal humans could hear their voice when we play
Speaker 2: back the audio. This is called EVP, or electronic voice phenomenon.
Speaker 2: More on that on the next episode. The lead investigator
Speaker 2: then asked any nearby ghosts what their favorite food is,
Speaker 2: which seems like a cruel question to ask a ghost
Speaker 2: because they can't eat anyway. A barrage of questions then
Speaker 2: flooded out, can you tell us your name? What are
Speaker 2: you wearing? Who is the president? Not exactly all things
Speaker 2: I would ask a spectral anomaly if I was given
Speaker 2: the opportunity. But after a few minutes of silence, the
Speaker 2: rempod is started to light up very faintly. The lead
Speaker 2: investigator starts talking to the presumed ghost and suggests that
Speaker 2: they play a game to find out what the ghost's
Speaker 2: name is. This is how it works. Someone recites the
Speaker 2: alphabet and if the rempod lights up on any of
Speaker 2: the letters, that means the letter is in the ghost's name.
Speaker 2: We first got the letter N and then the letters
Speaker 2: O and D. Then I started going through the alphabet
Speaker 2: and it lit up on the letter I. Then it
Speaker 2: let up on the letter I again, and then the
Speaker 2: letter R. At this point, the lead investigator decided that
Speaker 2: the ghost's name was Ronnie. As we were about to
Speaker 2: leave the bathhouse, someone who worked at the end came
Speaker 2: in and told us that there was a stableman with
Speaker 2: the last name Norris who died in the fire. So
Speaker 2: now the ghost's name became Norris. Next we moved to
Speaker 2: the basement. One person in our group was a little
Speaker 2: spooked and elected to stay outside. None of the rempods
Speaker 2: or anything lit up in the basement, but the person
Speaker 2: from the inn, the one who told us about Norris,
Speaker 2: joined us in the basement. When down there, they said
Speaker 2: they saw a ghost that they were familiar with, named Cassandra.
Speaker 2: They then turned to me and said that Cassandra likes me.
Speaker 2: Cassandra was reportedly trying to give me a hug and
Speaker 2: said that she wishes me quote all the well beings
Speaker 2: in the world unquote. Now, Cassandra was also apparently trying
Speaker 2: to tell me about a Grandpa John, which I don't have,
Speaker 2: So if any of you have a Grandpa John who
Speaker 2: needs to tell me something. Just let me know.
Speaker 1: All right, back inside the house part of the inn,
Speaker 1: and we're about to go tour upstairs. We just went
Speaker 1: down into the basement and just got out of there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Once back inside the inn, we went into the upstairs bedrooms.
Speaker 2: People set up their EMF detectors, but there was also
Speaker 2: some new equipment. One of the rooms had a security
Speaker 2: camera and a grid projector to record any irregular shadows.
Speaker 2: And I was given a spirit box. A spirit box
Speaker 2: is a handheld radio tuner that sweeps through AM or
Speaker 2: FM frequencies at a high rate. You mostly hear a
Speaker 2: sort of grating, staticky white noise with small bits of
Speaker 2: words or music slipping through from radio stations. I guess
Speaker 2: it's sort of the modern incarnation of the spirit phone.
Speaker 2: The idea is that ghosts can somehow manipulate the radio
Speaker 2: waves to speak complete words or sentences as the box
Speaker 2: is cycling between frequencies. Basically, spirit boxes are supposed to
Speaker 2: act as an electronic radio medium for spirits to communicate.
Speaker 2: The lead investigator thought that the spirit box was telling
Speaker 2: us to leave, but words weren't really clear in my opinion.
Speaker 2: For example, here is a clip in question.
Speaker 1: In the room.
Speaker 2: There was also some flickering lights and high EMF ratings,
Speaker 2: which mostly just got me concerned for this bedroom's electrical wiring.
Speaker 2: The second half of the investigation was pretty uneventful, and
Speaker 2: around two am we called it a night and I
Speaker 2: recorded a little debrief on our way back to the hotel. No,
Speaker 2: I do find it super interesting how people try to
Speaker 2: like the way they interpret electual readings as you would
Speaker 2: a conversation, and they they assert their reality on it,
Speaker 2: being like if this happens, this means you say yes, right,
Speaker 2: so then so then the abs of the thing also
Speaker 2: becomes an answer. It's it's it is a very interesting
Speaker 2: process of people like crafting their own reality as things
Speaker 2: are happening.
Speaker 5: No, it was definitely them crafting their own reality.
Speaker 2: But also I'm like, like, probably some of it's like interesting,
Speaker 2: but there's still a whole bunch of points where you
Speaker 2: like make a decision, be like this is the thing
Speaker 2: that I heard, right, Because like even when they were
Speaker 2: doing the name game thing, a lot of times the
Speaker 2: light would light up and they would like still kind
Speaker 2: of keep moving on.
Speaker 3: So yeah, like there was an f and and I
Speaker 3: that it went off for the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's this a whole bunch of very very
Speaker 2: peculiar things that had that like go into crafting what
Speaker 2: the idea of reality is going to be?
Speaker 1: Stop making a thing? Then making a thing, and then
Speaker 1: it starts again.
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, no, you're not supposed to do that,
Speaker 2: and it's like it's a very it's a very very bizarre,
Speaker 2: bizarre process to watch when putting together these two episodes.
Speaker 2: This last October, Elaine and I once again conversed to
Speaker 2: share our thoughts on our first ghost hunting experience. Okay,
Speaker 2: now that it has been over six months since you
Speaker 2: and I were at the organ Ghost Conference, I'm curious
Speaker 2: to see how our debrief now may kind of differ
Speaker 2: or be expanded upon from our debrief literally minutes after
Speaker 2: we left this investigation at the Story night in and
Speaker 2: you know this this day was This day was interesting
Speaker 2: because we had the ghost Detective class like right before
Speaker 2: this investigation. We were able to have these two kind
Speaker 2: of ideas of what a ghost investigation looks like kind
Speaker 2: of play off each other, which I think led to
Speaker 2: a pretty fun holistic experience in terms of the many
Speaker 2: kind of diversity of investigators that were at this event.
Speaker 5: I think just the most notable thing was they didn't
Speaker 5: do a single thing that the forensic ghost Hunting class suggested,
Speaker 5: just like literally, yeah, we could have gone down the
Speaker 5: list of every single thing that the forensic ghost Hunting
Speaker 5: class suggested to do, and not one of those.
Speaker 2: Was done, like completely the opposite.
Speaker 5: Record keeping of what phenomenon occurred did not happen.
Speaker 2: Logging any data yeah.
Speaker 5: Did not happen. Investigation of the structures, yeah, did not happen.
Speaker 5: Doing a history of the structure didn't occur. The only
Speaker 5: interviews we had with someone was the person who said
Speaker 5: they were a medium who lived there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Even just like questions like how long have you seen
Speaker 5: things here? Didn't occur.
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't very interesting just in terms of how
Speaker 2: like the ghost hunt at the end was literally just
Speaker 2: the exact opposite of all of the sorts of procedures
Speaker 2: that the ghost detective class was trying to lay out,
Speaker 2: which we attended just like literally hours prior.
Speaker 5: Well, I think one thing that you can really see
Speaker 5: between the how to do a ghost Investigation class and
Speaker 5: then the ghost investigation itself is the how to do
Speaker 5: a paranormal investigation class doesn't assume you know what you're investigating,
Speaker 5: and so it really is a lot about doing, you know,
Speaker 5: background talks with people, like talking to sources what phenomena.
Speaker 5: It's not assuming that there was anything paranormal in the
Speaker 5: first place, and it's an investigation of whether or not
Speaker 5: something paranormal has occurred. And when you go to the
Speaker 5: ghost hunt, specifically the ghost hunt that we went to,
Speaker 5: everyone there was a assuming that paranormal things were occurring
Speaker 5: just as a baseline.
Speaker 2: They were interpreting readings from their specialized ghost hunting equipment
Speaker 2: as proof of communication with some kind of paranormal force.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of implicit assumptions made. First off, if
Speaker 5: you start talking to phenomenon, you're assuming that there's phenomenon.
Speaker 5: You're assuming the phenomenon can hear you, You're assuming the
Speaker 5: phenomenon wants to interact with you. And if you say,
Speaker 5: if you can hear me, touch the light, all of
Speaker 5: those are very implicit assumptions. It's not investigating what phenomenon
Speaker 5: there is. You've already framed what you expect the encounter
Speaker 5: to be and how whatever you're encountering will interact with
Speaker 5: a whole mess of like ideas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my favorite thing about that from the experience at
Speaker 2: the at the starting night in is like we were
Speaker 2: basically with this like middle aged man who just kept
Speaker 2: yelling at any like prospective ghosts that were around the vicinity,
Speaker 2: And like, why would a ghost want to follow the
Speaker 2: commands of like a middle aged man.
Speaker 5: I mean I didn't want to follow the commands when
Speaker 5: he would say everyone needs to be quiet. I wanted
Speaker 5: to like start yelling or muttering just out of sheer obstinence.
Speaker 5: Because of the way that he was instructing things, I
Speaker 5: can't imagine a spiritual entity, if it was a ghost,
Speaker 5: even the way he's conceiving of it, would somehow not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have this little exchange laid out here where
Speaker 2: he was. He was addressing what I guess he assumed
Speaker 2: was a ghost, saying, quote, make the lights stop, back away,
Speaker 2: back away, good good. Now get closer, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 2: one more time, get closer all right, now make the
Speaker 2: light stop.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: I didn't tell you to get closer, back away, back away,
Speaker 2: back a way good. Okay, now now get closer good good.
Speaker 2: The only thing that was changing throught that back and
Speaker 2: forth was that occasionally a little lightwood kind of go
Speaker 2: on and that was it, right, like, but he's able
Speaker 2: to weave this whole story in between this light going
Speaker 2: on by saying back up and then the light turns off,
Speaker 2: and then saying okay, now come closer. You wait like
Speaker 2: ten fifteen seconds the light turns on. He's able. It's
Speaker 2: it's it's crafting this whole like timeline of this ghost
Speaker 2: like doing this thing when really this is just a
Speaker 2: flickering light like that that, but through the way that
Speaker 2: he has this like uh, this like commanding voice, it's
Speaker 2: making it as if the ghost is like following these
Speaker 2: instructions and then being being like rewarded for following these
Speaker 2: instructions by saying like good, good, good good, or if
Speaker 2: they don't follow instructions, then the ghost is like scolded.
Speaker 2: So it's it's just a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: interactions like that.
Speaker 5: I mean, I've gone through the same narration when I
Speaker 5: stare at a candle flame like a little bit high like,
Speaker 5: but it doesn't mean that the candle is necessarily responding
Speaker 5: to me.
Speaker 2: Both activity on the rempod and the lack of activity
Speaker 2: are taken as a sign of spirit communication. Questions will
Speaker 2: be framed as if you want us to leave you alone,
Speaker 2: light up, so if nothing happens, that itself is taken
Speaker 2: as an actionable answer. Whoever is leading the quote unquote
Speaker 2: investigation gets to either intentionally or even unintentionally, craft the
Speaker 2: meaning of the experience based on how the questions are framed,
Speaker 2: when questions are asked, and how the group responds based
Speaker 2: on the activity or lack thereof, of the EMF devices.
Speaker 2: The rempods often go off erratically or in seemingly random intervals,
Speaker 2: but when their activity happens after someone just asks twenty questions,
Speaker 2: it's assumes to be related to whatever the most recent
Speaker 2: line of inquiry was. It all operates on correlation versus causation,
Speaker 2: with people mostly jumping on the ladder. No matter when
Speaker 2: pods light up, the results can be turned into a
Speaker 2: meaningful sign if the investigator is talking frequently enough. These
Speaker 2: sorts of ghost hunts are primarily a form of entertainment.
Speaker 2: It's a novel experience you can have with your friends
Speaker 2: and family to have a fun time together over the
Speaker 2: course of a few hours and maybe get a little spooked.
Speaker 2: I wasn't expecting a rigorous scientific investigation at midnight and
Speaker 2: seaside Oregon, nor do I think that's even a useful
Speaker 2: way of getting at the heart of the phenomenon. Rather
Speaker 2: than viewing ghost hunts as objective inquiries into paranormal activity,
Speaker 2: I think for most people they operate more as a
Speaker 2: way of inducing paranormal experiences, the same way occultism seeks
Speaker 2: to induce mystical experiences, and religion strives for a connection
Speaker 2: with God. All of these are practices of constructing meaning
Speaker 2: and finding patterns, and that's not to discount them. They
Speaker 2: only are a problem when they become exploitative and harmful
Speaker 2: to yourself and others, which is what we'll be talking
Speaker 2: about in the next episode. So stay tuned to hear
Speaker 2: about warrior angels tasked with vanquishing demons, how mendel illness
Speaker 2: is a sure sign you're possessed by an evil spirit,
Speaker 2: and how abortions and the Internet are opening up portals
Speaker 2: in our world to demonic forces. See you on the
Speaker 2: other side. It could happen here as a production of
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 2: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 2: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or Wherever you listen
Speaker 2: to podcasts, you can find sources for it could happen here.
Speaker 2: Updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 5: Thanks for listening.