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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from coast to coast am on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio or several months away from Halloween, Lisa, But

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Speaker 1: why is it that people love ghost stories? Oh, people

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Speaker 1: have always loved ghost stories. I was amazed when I

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Speaker 1: was doing my book Ghost to Haunted History. You can

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Speaker 1: find ghost stories going back two thousand years. I mean,

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Speaker 1: there are scenes with ghosts in gilgamashion, in Egyptian myths

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Speaker 1: and so forth. And one of my questions was why

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Speaker 1: are they so scary? You know? I mean, if you

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Speaker 1: could be confronted with proof that we would survive after death,

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Speaker 1: wouldn't that be like this great happy thing? But they

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Speaker 1: are always scary, and I think we just love that

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Speaker 1: being scared by that notion that there is something that

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Speaker 1: we just can't understand after we die. Do you think

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Speaker 1: that ghost stories, Lisa, are proof of the existence of

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Speaker 1: the other side? Well, there's certainly something to that. I mean,

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Speaker 1: they wouldn't continue to be so popular for so many

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Speaker 1: centuries if a lot of us didn't believe that. I think.

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Speaker 1: Let's tell us about the book ghost Stories, because that's

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Speaker 1: a series of collected stories, right, Yes, Well, we tried

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Speaker 1: to do was put together a combination of well known

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Speaker 1: writers who wrote stories that people don't remember, and really

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Speaker 1: good stories by some authors that people probably never heard of,

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Speaker 1: and tried to weave it into a short chronological survey

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Speaker 1: of the field from about eighteen fifty two, about nineteen fifteen,

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Speaker 1: something like that, which was really the prime older era

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Speaker 1: of ghost stories. They're back again now, but this was

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Speaker 1: when they really there was a great peak in popularity

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Speaker 1: over that time period because of the rise of the

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Speaker 1: spiritualist movement as well. How did these stories come to you? Oh,

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Speaker 1: lots of research and lots of reading. We both loved

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Speaker 1: to read these kinds of books and collections, and we

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Speaker 1: went through them and argued and debated which ones were suitable,

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Speaker 1: which ones were too anthologized already, which ones really needed

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Speaker 1: to be exposed to the public. And I'm really proud

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Speaker 1: of the selections. There's some gems in there. One of

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Speaker 1: my favorites is the story that's the very first one

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Speaker 1: in the collection, called the Family Portrait, because it's a

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Speaker 1: ghost story that Mary Shelley herself knew and recognized in

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Speaker 1: the introduction to Frankenstein as being one of the inspirations

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Speaker 1: for Frankenstein. How about that? What's your favorite story, Lisa,

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Speaker 1: let's start with you. In the book, I have a

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Speaker 1: couple of favorites. The one that I think is the

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Speaker 1: scariest is actually one of the oldest. It's a Sir

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Speaker 1: Walter Scott piece called the Tapestry Chamber, and I actually

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Speaker 1: wrote down a little piece of it just to give

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Speaker 1: like modern readers might not think something published almost two

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Speaker 1: hundred years ago could still be scary. But here's a

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Speaker 1: scene where a guy is staying in his friend's old

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Speaker 1: countryside mansion out in the middle of nowhere, and he's

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Speaker 1: in the bed at night, and he has seen this

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Speaker 1: horrible old woman going through his room, and he suddenly says,

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Speaker 1: I started up in bed and set upright, supporting myself

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Speaker 1: on my palms as I gazed at this horrible specter.

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Speaker 1: The hag made, as it seemed, a single and swift

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Speaker 1: stride to the bed where I lay, and squatted herself

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Speaker 1: down upon it. Okay, I'm ready to run, screaming now. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and for the hills on that one exactly? How about you?

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Speaker 1: How about you? Less? So I've cheated George and selected

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Speaker 1: two stories because they were not written by the same author.

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Speaker 1: They were written almost fifty years apart. One is called

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Speaker 1: Since I Died by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and the other

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Speaker 1: is called The Shell of Sense by Olivia Howard dunbar At.

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Speaker 1: What gets me about those two stories is that they

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Speaker 1: are genuine, sincere efforts to imagine the perspective of the ghost,

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Speaker 1: what the person in the afterlife is feeling, experiencing the

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Speaker 1: shock and the horror of watching mortal life go on

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Speaker 1: in front of these people and see their loved ones suffering,

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Speaker 1: living their lives after their own deaths, And they're just

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Speaker 1: really powerful stories. Who generally writes the scariest ghost story?

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Speaker 1: Let's start with you, Lisa, A man or a woman? Oh,

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Speaker 1: I think it's pretty equal, and there might be a

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Speaker 1: slightly different take, as Less was just noting, it seems

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Speaker 1: like the women sometimes will put themselves almost more on

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Speaker 1: the side of the ghost. And those two stories he

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Speaker 1: mentioned in particular, one of them actually deals with a

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Speaker 1: woman watching her husband take up with another woman after

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Speaker 1: she's dead, And I think that sometimes the women, especially

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Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, brought their own early feminist perspective

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Speaker 1: to it. But all of the stories are pretty great

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Speaker 1: regardless of gender. What do you say last, I don't

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Speaker 1: think that there's a significant gender difference. I mean, the

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Speaker 1: one thing that we should note, of course, is that

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Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century, writing was one of the few

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Speaker 1: acceptable intellectual outlets for women. Women were not being allowed

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Speaker 1: to go into professions, but they could write, and it

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Speaker 1: was a great breakthrough for a lot of women to

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Speaker 1: actually get recognition publish their stories. Many of them, of course,

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Speaker 1: published them under either just initials or masculine sounding names

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Speaker 1: because that made it more salable. It was still not

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Speaker 1: a great time to be a woman of intellect, but

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Speaker 1: it was the opening. It was the blossoming of women writers.

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Speaker 1: Now with the sensitivities that are out there about different

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Speaker 1: kinds of ghosts and ghost stories, on one hand, we

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Speaker 1: have some that are friendly ghosts, funny ghosts, Casper, and

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Speaker 1: then we've got these really suspenseful horror stories. Where do

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Speaker 1: you guys fit on this one? I think it's really

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Speaker 1: the spectrum of human beings, and that's what we've tried

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Speaker 1: to do in the book, is to show that spectrum.

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Speaker 1: Mark Twain's story, for example, it is very funny. It's

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Speaker 1: called a ghost story, and it's quite funny, and I

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Speaker 1: think ghosts probably come in the same variety of humorous, dramatic, evil, nasty,

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Speaker 1: nice as humans do, and the stories reflect those. Are

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Speaker 1: the stories true? Are they just great tales? A couple

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Speaker 1: of them actually had a bit of bases in fact.

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Speaker 1: For example, The Signalman, which is our Charles Dickens selection,

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Speaker 1: may have been based on some actual train crashes that

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Speaker 1: were happening around the time, and Dickens was involved with

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Speaker 1: one of them, so he certainly had plenty of reason

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Speaker 1: to be scared by the idea of train crashes and

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Speaker 1: possibly to imagine specters coming out of that. And certainly

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Speaker 1: some of the stories are drawn from personal experiences of

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Speaker 1: the authors or folklore, folklore meaning tales that have been

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Speaker 1: told by people that the authors knew or heard them from.

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Speaker 1: And they're not all sort of creaky old castle kind

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Speaker 1: of stories either. I mean, for example, Arthur Machen's The

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Speaker 1: Bowman is based on genuine legends of ghosts appearing in

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Speaker 1: the middle of battles in World War One, and it's

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Speaker 1: really very striking story. But so they are. Some are

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Speaker 1: based on real experiences, some are based on stories of

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Speaker 1: real experiences, and certainly I think the authors thought that

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Speaker 1: this was a topic well worth exploring, that there might

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Speaker 1: be ghosts out there. Where would you fit Edgar Allan

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Speaker 1: Poe in terms of a good horror writer, kind of

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Speaker 1: the king on that name? Uh yeah, I mean Poe.

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Speaker 1: He's kind of an outlier in the sense that in

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Speaker 1: America he was just sort of an exception. He peered

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Speaker 1: out of almost nowhere, and for many many years nobody

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Speaker 1: wrote anything like what he was doing. In England, it

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Speaker 1: was quite different. And of course in England he was

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Speaker 1: very he was embraced by the English reading public, but

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Speaker 1: very few post stories are ghost stories. We have one

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Speaker 1: in the collection here called Legiah, which is really a

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Speaker 1: haunting story about a man tortured by the ghost of

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Speaker 1: his lost love, and it's very poetic and very poe esque.

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Speaker 1: But Poe was not a great purveyor of the ghost

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Speaker 1: story he had. He had other horrors in mind. Psychological

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Speaker 1: thrillers is probably the modern description for the kind of

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Speaker 1: material that I think Poe really did best. Tell Tale, Hard,

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Speaker 1: the Black Cat, those kinds of stories. Do you find

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Speaker 1: that most of these ghost stories in your book have

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Speaker 1: a happy ending or not? I think we got a mix.

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Speaker 1: I was noting. One of my favorite lines in the

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Speaker 1: entire book is at the end of the Olivia Howard

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Speaker 1: Dunbar book, at the end the ghost sales offen and

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Speaker 1: our final line is minus the transcendent joy of the

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Speaker 1: unseen spaces, which is pretty amazing. But a lot of

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Speaker 1: them don't have quite that happy in ending. I think

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Speaker 1: the common theme to a lot of the stories is

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Speaker 1: almost relief or satisfaction that either the ghost or the

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Speaker 1: observers of the ghosts have finally sort of come to

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Speaker 1: grips with what's going on here? What was the problem?

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Speaker 1: That in many of the stories there is some awful

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Speaker 1: incident that the ghosts and the humans are trying to

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Speaker 1: resolve and understand, And the stories are cathartic in that respect.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we do end up at the end of

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Speaker 1: most of the stories with an understanding of sort of

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Speaker 1: what happened and why there was so much emotion shed here. Lisa,

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Speaker 1: what's easier to write a ghost story that's fictional or nonfictional?

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Speaker 1: The true real deal? Boy? I have written both, and

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Speaker 1: I love doing both. To me, the approach to them

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Speaker 1: is not even that different. I mean, in one of

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Speaker 1: my things about nonfiction is I love to entertain people,

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Speaker 1: whether it's real or imagined. So I kind of follow

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Speaker 1: the same rules for both. And how about you, less Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I've only written a little tiny bit of fiction,

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Speaker 1: and it's really hard. I think of myself more as

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Speaker 1: an appreciator of great fiction and a critic. I think

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Speaker 1: I'd rather read well constructed fiction than nonfiction, because frankly,

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Speaker 1: most nonfiction, you know, you don't sort of find out

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Speaker 1: the whole story, because that's the way life is. It's messy.

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Speaker 1: In fiction, a well done story is going to round

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Speaker 1: it out for you. How did you Less, as an

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Speaker 1: expert on Sherlock Holmes, get involved in ghost stories thing? Yes,

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Speaker 1: I was waiting for that question, since Holmes himself famously

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Speaker 1: said no ghosts need apply. But Conan Doyle was himself

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Speaker 1: deeply involved in the spiritualism movement, this great scientific religion

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Speaker 1: that swept Europe and America from the sort of the

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Speaker 1: middle of the nineteenth century through the nineteen twenties. It

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Speaker 1: was a fervent belief that there was an afterlife and

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Speaker 1: that it ought to be possible to communicate with people

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Speaker 1: in the afterlife through mediums. Conan Doyle devoutly believed in that.

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Speaker 1: He had denounced his own Catholicism and turned his back

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Speaker 1: on the church and was looking for something spiritual and

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Speaker 1: found this and became really the international spokesperson. And it's

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Speaker 1: always been difficult for Sherlockeans like me to reconcile. How

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Speaker 1: some you know, the greatest figure of rationality ever created,

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Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes, could be the product of Conan Doyle, who

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Speaker 1: himself probably was a bit gullible. But as Conan Doyle

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Speaker 1: himself said, the puppet is not the master. He was

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Speaker 1: able to create the brilliant at your homes and make

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Speaker 1: him very different from his own personality who sought something

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Speaker 1: more spiritual. Do you think that most people nowadays are

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Speaker 1: believers of ghosts as opposed to back in the eighteen hundreds.

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Speaker 1: I think it's a lot harder to believe in ghosts

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Speaker 1: now because we feel like we know so much about

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Speaker 1: science and reality, you know, in scientific instrumentation and all

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Speaker 1: that sort of thing. So I think it's harder to

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Speaker 1: say I'm willing to take that belief without real evidence.

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Speaker 1: But I think there's still just as many unexplained phenomenon

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Speaker 1: and I think there's still a widespread belief in ghosts

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Speaker 1: very much. So ever, see a ghost less not me?

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Speaker 1: How about you, Lisa. Now, I've done a number of

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Speaker 1: paranormal investigations and I have yet to get that thing

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Speaker 1: I really want. Do you ever look forward to the

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Speaker 1: day that you do. I would love that. I would

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Speaker 1: be absolutely amazed, and I mean it would be a

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Speaker 1: life changing experience. Obviously, you wouldn't be scared. I don't.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, that's a really good question,

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Speaker 1: and I truthfully don't know. What do you think last

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Speaker 1: would you be scared? No, I don't think so. I

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Speaker 1: would think it's it would be like just finding out

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Speaker 1: something about physics or chemistry or whatever. It just be

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Speaker 1: sort of one more thing and be like, oh, I

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Speaker 1: didn't know that. It would be wonderful. But I don't

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Speaker 1: think it would be scary. It would just be sort

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Speaker 1: of like discovering something else that I didn't know about

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Speaker 1: it and I'd do that every day. And I should

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Speaker 1: ask you less. I mean, do you believe in ghosts? Well,

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Speaker 1: believe I certainly believe in the possibility of ghosts. Yes,

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Speaker 1: I believe that there is something we just don't understand.

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Speaker 1: What is the mind? What where is the person? Is

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Speaker 1: it just electrical impulses brain? And where does all that go?

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Speaker 1: I mean, this was a question that troubled Mary Shelley

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Speaker 1: two hundred years ago when she wrote Frankenstein. What is life?

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Speaker 1: What's the difference between a living being and a non

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Speaker 1: living being? And two hundred years later, we still don't

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Speaker 1: have the answer, George, we still don't know. And I

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Speaker 1: have to think that energy has to go somewhere, that's true,

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Speaker 1: and it really never dissipates, doesn't That's what I think, Lisa,

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Speaker 1: the demons of life and then these ghost stories. Do

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Speaker 1: you see a difference between you know, demons the demonic

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Speaker 1: world and then just general ghost stories. Oh, there's a yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a pretty big and distinct difference in that. Even

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Speaker 1: in folklore, there's usually a pretty clear difference between a demon,

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Speaker 1: although there are some beliefs where a ghost actually would

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Speaker 1: become a demon. There were some Norse legends and so

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Speaker 1: forth of people who had led such bad lives that

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Speaker 1: they actually came back as demons. That wasn't universal, but

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Speaker 1: that was always a real possibility. So there's definitely some

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Speaker 1: crossover in those beliefs. To me, a ghost is the

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Speaker 1: residue of a human or an animal, I suppose, but

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Speaker 1: the residue sort of what's left over after mortal life.

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Speaker 1: Maybe what came before mortal life too, that's another possibility.

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Speaker 1: But demons in those, that's really almost like those are

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Speaker 1: different species. Yeah, I think that's the way I feel

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Speaker 1: about it. And it seems that, at least in the

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Speaker 1: older days, there seem to be more ghost stories revolving

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Speaker 1: around Christmas than like Halloween. Why the Victorians loved to

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Speaker 1: tell ghost stories on Christmas. That was one of their

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Speaker 1: chief things to do on that night. Hit us with

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Speaker 1: your best ghost story, Mary, Christmas right, well, Carroll, the

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Speaker 1: famous ghost story of all time? Is it Christmas? Carol?

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Speaker 1: That's true, a great the classic, not necessarily scary, I

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Speaker 1: don't think. I don't know. I saw a television production

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Speaker 1: of it once. It was sort of a modern version

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Speaker 1: of it. And the Ghost of Christmas Past was a

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Speaker 1: concentration camp, and the Ghost of the Future was a

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Speaker 1: very bleak, sort of fascist kind of world. And I

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Speaker 1: don't know. I found Dickens pretty scary. Listen to more

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern

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Speaker 1: and go to Coast to Coast am dot com for

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Speaker 1: more