This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on I Heart Radio. And welcome back to Coast to Coast. George Norrie with you, our special guest, Stephen Parsons is a ghost hunter and a ghost researcher. He has more than 50 years of experience and is an investigator who blends scientific skepticism with an open-minded approach to the unexplained. And unlike many who chase sensationalism, Steve focuses on understanding the human experiences behind these reported hauntings. His, this book is called Ghostology, the Art of the Ghost Hunter. Stephen, welcome back to the show. You were with my colleague, Dave Schrader, 10 years ago. It's been a long time. Heck of a long time and good morning, California, because the sun's up here and it's gonna be a nice day. What got you into ghost hunting? And unlike, I know it's fashionable these days to claim some sort of childhood experience or birth. You know, I'm a natural born, this, that and the other. Actually, I just wanted to see a ghost. I'd read some ghost books and it sounded like a really cool thing. I wanna go and see this, see what a ghost is for myself. And so that's what led me into it. Just a simple plain desire to see and experience a ghost. What was that first experience for you that really kicked it? Well, there wasn't one. I think that was a big problem. There wasn't one for a lot of years, lots of nights. So the sitting in dark, spooky buildings, hoping, waiting and thick and the slow realization that, hey, this isn't like it is in the books. But eventually, I was fortunate to have a perplexing experience. It was when I was on duty as a night supervising registered nurse in an elder home. And I mean, it's, I'll spare you the long details, but as part of the, I'd been off for a couple of days and as part of the normal routine, I did a walk around to make sure everybody was where they should be and look at the building to see what needed to be done for the night. And one of the residents was walking down the corridor. Nothing unusual about that, something that they regularly would do. And we exchanged a few words and I went down to talk to the rest of the staff to give them the sort of briefing, only to discover, we each thought that the other was playing a practical joke because they said, are you being serious? And I said, no, he's walking, the gentleman is walking along the corridor upstairs and we need to take care. And then they informed me that he died two days prior during my days off. Wow. Yeah, wow. So the night was on. It's now, we start at 8 p.m. and it's now getting close to midnight and we used to have to do every hour, a walk around to check on people and make sure everybody was okay. Well, just during the 12 o'clock midnight, witching hour walk around, I was on a different floor and one of the other staff came running down the stairs, making for the entrance door and I'm out of here. Said, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's the matter? And I think, we've got a problem here. I've just seen walking down the corridor. And that was the point when I realized that because there had been nothing untoward about the experience of seeing the gentleman. He had been perfectly solid, perfectly normal. We interacted in a normal way. But he was, he'd gone. He wasn't there with us anymore, physically or figuratively. Were you a believer prior to that episode? I think I was a believer as a child. I think that's what drove my desire to see a ghost and to experience a ghost. I think intrinsically, like a lot of children, we believe in fairy stories, Santa Claus, the two fairy. And so, yeah, I believed in ghosts as a child, but as the years wore on, I became more intrigued by why people see ghosts. Rather than, so my position has changed down the years. What would you say at this point a ghost is, Stephen? Well, that is the million dollar question. And one of the things that I raise several times within other conversations, because it is, we don't actually have an accurate definition for what a ghost is. The Oxford English Dictionary talks about it as being someone or a person who has recently died or has passed away and they appear back to the living as an apparition. But we've got ghostly buses and ghostly smells and ghostly aircraft and indeed ghostly buildings. So that doesn't really fit. And I think we struggle to define a ghost. We can define what an apparition is, the appearance of something, the unexpected sometimes appearance. But I don't think we can accurately define what a ghost is. And I think that's actually a problem for psychical research. No, I think you're right. Without a question. And do you think the ghostly realm came first or the physical realm? I again, it's one of the questions that perplexes us. I think, I would like to imagine and we can certainly look in the literature and discern that ghosts have been reported for as long as man has been documenting. So we have ghosts in ancient Sumeria. We have them in the Bible. The Chinese refer to ghosts, so do the Romans. And I can't help but believe that one of our ancient cave living ancestors saw something unusual at the back of the cave and went to have a look and was intrigued by what it represented. And I think, as long as man has been alive, we've had ghosts. And I think as long as we've had ghosts, we've had the ghost hunter. Have you ever come across anything demonic? In all honesty, no. Unless you refer to media presentations of the paranormal. I've been involved in exorcisms, where the person considered or believed that they were possessed by a demon. And, but I've never encountered one of these portrayed evil visitors. Have you ever been scared, Steve, on any of your ghost hunting tours? Boringly, no. Because it would be kind of like a fisherman running away from a fish. You stand on the end of the pier, dangling your worm into the water and hoping for a bite. Well, that's what a ghost hunter does, effectively. Albeit these days armed with a degree of technology. But I can't imagine the fisherman running away. And I can't imagine why you would be frightened by something. I mean, if it's as ethereal as many descriptions are portrayed, so it can walk through, it floats silently down corridors, the ghost walks through walls, it appears suddenly. I don't perceive it to be much of a threat. So I kind of like, no. I've been in situations where I've been fearful, but they've been due to physical phenomena. The building itself is a little lairy. The weather conditions are not, or have blown up during the time there. I've genuinely felt fear from the living. Including during investigations. I remember one, we did an old public house with a very good reputation. And we'd gone through all the processes of gaining permission from the landlord. And we'd newly arrived and we established, we set up the cameras and all of it. You can imagine, I mean, this was 25 years ago, you can imagine the amount of cabling and wire that we'd seen. I was a very, yeah. And the landlady came back from a night out with her girlfriends, and she was somewhat the worst for were. And took a great exception to us being there. And she got quite violent and quite vocal about us being there. And started throwing things around, including, you know, ashtrays and glasses. And that was a fearful experience, but she was very much, you know, with us. What got her so upset, Steve? I genuinely don't know. I think we'd walked into an argument between her and her husband, the landlord and landlady. And I think we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that she just took exception to us being there. And she wasn't, you know, she wasn't holding back. When people report ghostly or hauntings to you, do you generally accept that as, all right, that's possible, that's real, or are you a little more skeptical? I think as an investigator, I think it's important that you do take initially what the witness says at face value. Because that is the only, at that point in time, the only information that you have to work from. So whilst it's important that you do take it at face value and I guess believe what they're saying, that then becomes, that's the starting, that's the foundation, that's the starting block for a process of trying to discern whether that experience that they are telling you is plausible. And then trying to test the veracity of what they're saying to you. So yeah, initially you absolutely, if you are competent investigator, you should, as a baseline, take what the witness says in total and try not to make a prejudgment on it. Because if you prejudge something, if you go, well, that sounds really incredible to me, that sounds implausible, that sounds fantastic. There is the danger that you start to colour your own perception and judgements and the way in which you begin to approach the process of investigation. So I think you have to be very open-minded and accept what you're being told. What would you say your particular expertise is in this field? Well, I would say, my particular expertise has become looking at the environmental impacts and the environmental causes. So what is it within the location? Because I don't have the skill set and I work with people who are much more competent psychologists than myself. So I leave the people to the psychologists and I focus on the environment. So I measure things that need to be measured but would include the temperature, the ambient sound, the ambient weather, the microclimate inside of the building, the appearance of the building. So what are there any cues and triggers within the location itself visually or that could stimulate the other senses into fooling somebody or making them believe that the experience they're having is in some way paranormal? Have you ever had any experience of Steve with haunted objects like dolls? I've got a ram surrounded by them. As I sit here now, there must be seven or eight haunted objects that people have given me down the years. I don't want this in my house anymore. Take it away. I don't blame them. Get rid of them. And do you know what? They've all sat here very well behaved. I have a haunted doll from Salem, New England. I've got a haunted Irish dagger that's supposed to be cursed, a cursed and haunted Ouija board. And they're all terribly well behaved. What do you think of Ouija boards? I've got mixed feelings. Well, perhaps I can sum it up with a little... I used to help a friend who had a new age store. And we had readers would come in and they would give paid readings to members of the public. And the store started to sell fairly standard Ouija boards. And one of the readers came in one day and she saw the Ouija board stacked up on the shelf. And she immediately turned around and said, if they're not gone, I'm not coming. I'm out of here. Yeah. Yeah, I'm out of here. And she made a big song in dance about, I can sense that they're evil. They're a portal to... So being of an inquisitive but playful nature, we removed them all from the display, put them in the back room, except for one which was taped to the underside of the reading table. And the lady Julie came back the following day and had a session with her clients. And at the end of the session, I said to her, how did today go? She said it went fantastically. It was really positive. And the lady took what I was saying and I went, ah, right. And the Ouija board, don't speak to me about them. I can sense how evil they are. At that point, I lifted up the table and showed her the Ouija board that was beneath. She wasn't very happy. But it's a piece of cardboard, isn't it? The Ouija board is primarily people's fears that they pick up from Hollywood movies, perhaps, or from friends, books. You don't see it, Stephen, as a portal to the dark side? Not really. It's a piece of cardboard and a piece of wood. Or a piece of wood and a piece of wood if you get the more luxurious versions. They're fascinating because they do give you an insight into the way that people want to believe in things and that they develop this fear all of their own. The board just sits there doing nothing very much at all. But people create this aura around the board. We all played with them as kids, didn't we? And if we didn't afford a Ouija board, we made one out of bits of paper in an upside-down glass or cup. And do you know what? They always used to say the same thing, you will die. That's right. I'm coming to get you. We've got a guest named Karen Dahlman who loves the Ouija board and she would agree with you that they do not permeate evil at all. It's the individual. There are a fantastic piece of cultural history and social history. Even art. I know people that have them mounted on their walls in frames. It's fascinating to watch the interaction when I attend an investigation as a guest. One of the highlights for me is to watch the interaction with not just Ouija boards but other divination objects where people gather around and they believe that they're gaining messages. And sometimes the messages are as implausible as the scenario that people find themselves in. One of the best of putting Ouija board just on one side for a moment, I can't remember. I think it was Bolsheva Castle all many years ago now. And I was called over to, you've got to come and see this. This is amazing. We're getting some really good messages here. So I headed over and into a darkened room. I was confronted for the first time with ashtray divination. Now, you imagine that perhaps the spirit figure is drawing or making symbols into the discarded cigarette ash. Now, this was a large glass ashtray on a stand. So it was like a floor mounted thing and they were tipping it backwards and forwards. Wow, it was moving. It was indeed. It's the first time I've ever encountered ashtray divination. Hopefully the last.
