So do you find that these areas, uh, are particularly prone to having those kinds of haunting experiences?

Any area where you have strong extremes of emotion, one tends to find ghosts.

And so we look at our nation's history, the United States was born in blood and struggle, uh, you know.

And so that, that struggle really began in the purest sense of the term.

It was building for many years.

But we teach our history, and we talk about the shot that was heard around the world, you know, which really did happen, um, in the battles of Lexington and Concord.

Uh, men died on both sides.

Now, in your research, was there any particular story that, as you delved into it, that there were some surprises that you maybe didn't anticipate?

Geez.

Right? I mean, a disaster that's just unimaginable.

Uh, and so she was escorted by destroyers and, uh, cruisers, and hit one of them, broke her in half.

The HMS Curacoa, sent her to the bottom.

Um, many of the Curacoa's crew died or went under the Queen Mary, and it's believed were chopped up by her propellers.

Uh, and the after echoes of that tragedy still resonate on the ship.

Um, uh, the hold that you're referring to, the forward rope hold, um, supposedly people hear screams.

... tell me a little bit about Virginia City and, uh, and, and how it relates to this book.

[laughs]

...

when I did that research.

But it's still a, it's still a thing that, you know, I'd wanted to write about, and I was, I was really passionate about delving into it.

So you hear, you hear these great stories ab- or hypotheses about, you know, water spouts sucking down ships and things of that nature, um, the classic case of the Navy flight, the, the aircraft that were lost, you know, and, uh, the, the final radio transmissions were things like, "The sea doesn't look right," you know.

Um, how do all these, these pilots get... you know, skilled pilots get lost.

Um, and unfortunately, just statistically, the Bermuda Triangle isn't a compelling thing.

I've heard through my travels and the different guests that I've had, but tell us a little bit about what you write about skin walkers.

Do you mind kind of giving like a short thumbnail of the squirrel cage jail and its kind of like local significance?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I love the squirrel.

So the squirrel cage, it's a type of jail called the rotary jail.

And I always think of it either as A vending machine for prisoners or a carvana, you know, carvana or caravana as Americans would say.

The idea that it's, imagine a drum, like a rotisserie made up of multiple floors, three floors in the case of the squirrel cage.

And this style of jail was immensely popular for a very short period of time in the late 19th century into the early twenties.

And he's like, I just find that it's one, more pleasurable when everyone's not taking it so deadly serious, but two, that results are a little better.

We don't believe in the play-ins, tragically.

But I do love that they don't tell you what to believe.

Like, they use a lot of... which I've made a career out of doing.

I try not to tell people what to believe either.

I'll tell them what I believe, but I love that they give you the choice.

They're like, here's what we've got.

Here are some pictures.

bias and

Could you tell us about that?

Yeah, it was...

It, it may have been poor form, actually, for me to do, but, um, it seemed like an excellent way to, to generate a response.

Essentially, we were investigating an old former community hospital in Utah, one of my favorite locations.

In fact, I'm due back there next weekend, um, to do, uh, some investigation.

And, uh, I, I'd heard stories that the emergency department was haunted by supposedly the spirit of a physician had, uh, worked there during his lifetime, and this man by all accounts had a very low tolerance for fools, did not suffer fools gladly, so it was either his way or the highway.

You know, there are many physicians that are like that.

Have you got any, uh, good stories from there?

Yeah.

Um, which was done as a training exercise.

You know, nobody seriously in the US Military said, "You know, maybe the dead are gonna rise from the grave and we should have a plan for that." They used it as a, I think, very imaginative teaching tool, uh, for their, for their junior officers.

Um, but I, I do feel that zombies provide a safe target.

You can watch a zombie show, uh, and enjoy seeing human-ish, you know, um, figures getting skewered and decapitated and, and headshot and stuff like that, and it's, it's fine, right? 'Cause they're zombies.

They're, they're not real people, but they look kinda like people.

So it kind of satisfies that, that violent urge a lot of people have.

What is your, do you, do you find that? Do you find that experience, that it's really, there's different mindsets among different people when it comes to Chupacabra?

just saying Mothman, even though it might be technically a little bit different.

Uh, absolutely, and the reason I make that distinction is simply because Mothman is a kind of 1966, you know...

That's, that's where we- the term originates.

But then you go back to another case we investigated for the book, the Van Meter Visitor, which took place in Iowa in 1903.

Um, you have this small town in rural Iowa, not that far from Des Moines now, but it was pretty rural back then.

Um, and this is one of those towns where one day, this winged creature, like a pterodactyl, kinda, comes into town, starts shooting a laser beam from the, the horn, um, on top of its head, uh, into various buildings.

The entire town does exactly what you would expect them to do.

M- what's, I guess, the stronger evidence? If you just, I know you're still working on Bigfoot, but do you think there's stronger evidence one or the other? Do you think it's about equal when it comes to things like Mothman and Bigfoot?