Ghosted! by Roz HernandezAuthor/paranormal investigator Richard Estep is on the show to talk to Roz about haunted hospitals and a variety of spooky topics! Richard has written books like the “Haunted Healthcare” series, “The World’s Most Haunted Hospitals” and many more. To check out his books (a great holiday gift!) visit www.richardestep.net.
Want to share YOUR paranormal experience on the podcast? Email your *short* stories to GhostedByRoz@gmail.com and maybe Roz will read it outloud on the show... or even call you!
Be sure to follow the show @GhostedByRoz on Instagram.
What's that at the foot of my bed. It's spooky and JOOKI, I'm pretty sure it's dead. It's coming this way. Wait a minute, he I'm go, said tyro Jeens. Hey boo, it's me Raz. Now I'm just gonna give you a heads up right off the bat. I am recording this on Monday of this week, November second, the day before election day. So as I'm recording this, I don't know what's going on by the time you're listening to this. Hopefully good news, who knows, But today we're gonna talk about ghosts, so hopefully you know, you'll enjoy this conversation that I had because I hit up somebody really cool. His name is Richard Estep, and he is a writer of tons of different paranormal books, but he definitely has like an expertise when it comes to haunted hospitals. And a couple of months back, I was talking about haunted hospitals and how you know, I didn't know a ton of stories or you know, just stuff about haunted hospitals, and then a wonderful listener of the show, Patrick hit me up and was like, Hey, you got to talk to Richard. Richard knows what's up, and so I'm so happy, Thank you Patrick for the recommendation. And I'd like to dedicate this episode to the healthcare workers and you know, all that they've been through this year, and the hard work and the all the scariness and the risks that they put themselves through. I know it's kind of a weird thing to dedicate or we're talking about your work being haunted possibly, but you know, we do weird things here, and healthcare workers, I see you and I appreciate you. Speaking of I thought it would be fitting to read this listener story. This comes from Kevin, who posted in the Facebook group called Ghosted by rasdres Fales. Kevin writes, I knew I had to finally write in when something strange happened at work this week. I work at a skilled nursing facility, a nursing home in the rehab department. I'm an occupational therapist assistant. Sometimes, when working with a patient, I'll use a video game system with a motion capture camera similar to Connect that shows the patient's joint movements with a stick figure and body outline in a box in the lower left corner of the screen. This is to evaluate range of motion. The camera will also show this kind of figure for anyone else standing close by, such as myself. One day earlier this week, I was using this with a patient and there were only a few other people in the gym at the time. I noticed the bottom of the screen showed my patient on the left, myself and someone else standing next to me on my right. Between me and the cabinet, there was nobody there, only a stick figure on the screen with no body outline, just a very tall stick figure standing there as if watching us play the game. I thought that was strange, and I knew this kind of camera has been used in ghost hunting. Yes, I believe that is an SLS camera that you were talking about. Very popular on you know, those ghost hunting shows like Ghost Adventures, which ps I watched. I don't know if you guys saw. I'll get back to the story in a moment, but Ghost Adventures did a ghost hunt at the former Joe Exotic Zoo and I watched it. It was it was pretty good. I enjoyed it. I mean, I just like my favorite thing about ghost shows like that is I like to just see people go into different places and interacting with the people that live and work there, and it was it was very interesting to see the Joe exotic place because I certainly like everyone else to watch that documentary, So yeah, check it out. Anyway, back to the story, Sorry about that. I couldn't freak out because I had my patient with me. I had to maintain my professionalism, so I calmly tried to debunk this quote ghost while seated next to my patient, who was obviously enjoying the game. I looked behind and around me for other people that the camera may be capturing. Now, I checked for reflections no. I reached out into the area. I felt nothing, and the figure moved. I opened the cabinet door. This obscured the camera's vision of the figure, but I closed the door and the ghost was still there. I did it again, same thing. I had to tell someone because the few coworkers present were busy and I didn't want to interrupt them. Fast forward to later in the week. I was with another patient using the same video system, but this time I was co treating the patient with a colleague. No strange figures were present. This time. I decided to tell my coworker what happened and what I saw. Given the reputation of hospitals and nursing homes. No one is really surprised by this sort of thing. But then I to treat my next patient in her room. She was seated on the side of her bed and I was explaining the standardized test I was about to use to assess her dynamic sitting balance when she and I heard a voice to my left. We were the only ones in the room. When we looked over, we saw a roll of clear plastic trash bags had fallen from its place on the wall and proceeded to roll across a desk and fall to the floor. We both looked at each other strangely, as if to say, eh, that was weird, because nothing could have knocked it off. All of a sudden, I got really cold in goosebumps sprang up all over my body. My patient did not seem to be having the same sensation. Well, I couldn't freak out. I had to maintain my professionalism, so I smiled and said, actually, I'm going to need that for the test we're doing, because I always use the role of trash bags as a prop during this particular assessment. I walked over, I picked it up, and proceeded with the treatment session. There were no further incidents during this session. But how strange is that right after I talked about the ghost I saw earlier in the week, I have another experience. And what a coincidence that the item I need is the item that seemed to move on its own.
Wow.
Well, Kevin, thank you so much for sharing, and if anything else happens, please let me know. So, guys, I'm about to throw it on over to my conversation with Richard as step. Now, this is somebody that has been paranormal investigating for a minute, and so he has had all kinds of experiences all over the worlds And I actually asked him, can you tell me an experience that really like shook you? And he tells me on Patreon you guessed it, patreon dot com, slash Rozdressflees you can hear that bonus clip on my second tier called on with the show. So we talk about this experience he had, which involved a spirit associated with an infamous serial killer, and then we started talking about some other serial killer. You may have heard of them, John Wayne Gacy, whose ghost is present at a theater and Richard wrote a book about it. So Richard knew all about the John Wayne Gacy thing as well. So we talk about murder ghosts on Patreon this week and on Patreon this week, I have got for you a video of me driving around Hollywood and going to some spooky Hollywood destinations. We go to the Knickerbocker Hotel, we go to the Wax Museum of Hollywood Boulevard, the Hollywood Tower, the Nightmare on Elm Street House, all kinds of places from the comfort of my car, you know, kind of like going on one of those ghost tours or the movie Star house tours of Hollywood. You can find that video on Patreon on my first tier and my video last week. I have gotten a number of messages from people, and I've sent it to some friends that kind of know this paranormal world, and I'm like, did I or did I not catch a ghost at the Colorado Street Bridge, because I'm pretty sure I captured a ghost on camera. And everyone I've showed the video to They're like, yeah, that's like it looks like something. So make sure you go check that out on Patreon. Anyway, let's talk to Richard step On with the show. Hello, Richard, how are are you? Today.
Hello Ross, I'm doing very well, and thank you for inviting me onto your show.
Oh my god, of course I'm so excited to have you on because we've talked a little bit on this show, weirdly not enough about haunted hospitals, and I've been told that you're the guy, and then I start like really digging into what you do, and oh my god, you've written like three books about haunted hospitals. You've been on TV shows about haunted hospitals. I'm sorry I haven't reached out sooner, So thank you for coming on my I think my first question, I'm always so curious because you're a researcher, you're an author. How did you get into it? I guess it's a pretty simple question. But where did this all start for you?
Well, when I was a young boy growing up in England, my grandparents lived in a haunted house. And the story there is that it was one of those big World War two generation families, you know, because there wasn't there was no such thing as TV, so you just had a lot of kids instead that was entertainment. My grandfather was away fighting in Burma during the Second World War, and my aunts and uncles all had the same experience. An old lady would come into their bedroom at night and would took them into bed a very protective, very kind of friendly maternal spirit, which turned out to be a former owner of the house who had died there, keeping a watchful eye on the children. And so I heard this story, and I was just fascinated. And I used to have to sleep in that bedroom all alone when I would visit my grandparents. So I was a mix of about fifty percent terrified fifty percent fascinated, hoping that this apparition would show up, And unfortunately she never did. When when my stepdad and my aunts and uncles grew up and had kids of their own, they moved on, and she moved on too, to where knows. But that starts me down this road of being fascinated with haunted houses and led me to the library, which is where I think all good paranormal enthusiasts should go, long before they go near a TV screen. And I would just get every book on the paranormal I could find and devoured them over and over again.
And then so you got into being you're a paramedic, right, Yes.
I'm a paramedic. Here in Colorado.
Oh amazing. So is that what led you into this haunted hospital world?
It is I've been doing. I've been a paramedic, an EMT initially, and then a paramedic since two thousand and two. I changed careers after nine to eleven because I wanted to contribute in some way, and I got a reputation as being that kind of ghost guy. So when somebody had a ghost story, they would say, oh, you know, Richard will bring a patient by later on. You should tell him your scary story. He's into all that stuff. And I realized that so many nurses, quite a few doctors, and a lot of patients have strange things happen to them when they're in hospital, and so I decided I ought to start collecting those and sharing them.
Had you had stories of your own, not.
One, it would be great if I did. Would But yeah, and people ask me that all the time, Well, have you experienced anything all at work? And the truth of it is that I'm usually focused so much on my scene, on my patient, and on what's going on that you could have a parade of headless horseman walk by and I probably wouldn't know this.
Well, I can only imagine. I mean, it's so it's so intense, there's so much going on. Who knows what could be happening around you. I was talking to my dad, who is now he's retired, I think like thirty five years or so. He was a fireman and an EMT, and I asked him if he ever had any experiences and he said, not that he ever noticed, but he certainly believes in that stuff. But so have you talked to people that were EMTs that noticed these things?
On many of them? In fact, one of the shows that I appear on, Paranormal nine one one is almost entirely composed of stories told by cops, firefighters, and EMS providers of their strange experiences on the job. And this is how I got a positioned as a talking head on that show.
So I guess another question that I'm sure you've been asked them many times, and I kind of posted that you're going to be on the show, and I had had some of our listeners ask some questions, and if you wanted to know, basically, you know, doctors and nurses are educated scientifically, he minded a lot of the time, how do they rationalize these experiences? Do you find that they're believers.
Usually find that there's a very different mindset ross between doctors and nurses. It interests me, and I have respect for both, of course, but nurses really run hospitals in the same way that sergeants run the army, you know. So doctors are the ones that will say, with no sense of irony at all, they'll say, oh, ghosts, yeah, ghosts and goblins. I don't believe in the stuff, you know. I have a scientific education, as nurses do also, you know, but I'm very well trained. I don't believe in this. It's garbage. And they'll take a breath and then say, but this one time, and they'll go on and tell me the story, you know, about how they pronounced the patient dead and then they started noticing that the doors would open and close themselves, the lights would switch on and off, the phone would ring, nobody would be there. And I will say, so, how do you explain that? And they'll just write it off and say, just one of those things.
I work with comedians a lot, and I'm in venues all the time, and I'm always asking comedians if they have goat stories, and they're very I mean, they're not science minded people. Necessarily and they always do the same thing. Now, I don't believe that stuff, not not at all, but there was this one time and then they start going into it, and I love that. That's my favorite kind because how do you explain it?
And right? And nurses, on the other hand, are pragmatists, in no disrespect to doctors, but nurses are the ones that will say, oh, yeah, yeah, we have that guy die and then you know, we three of us saw him in the whole way. He's just haven't moved on yet anyway. And now to them, it's it's almost, you know, the very polar opposite. They just seem to accept this stuff. That's been my experience with doctors and nurses anyway.
Has there ever been a hospital that's abandoned that isn't haunted. I feel like they're they're always anytime there's like a jail, a hospital, an asylum, there aren't they always haunted once they're a.
And it's it's yeah, I've yet to run into one. And I mean, to be fair, from a skeptical point of view, how predisposed are we to just think that those creepy old buildings are haunted? You know, I've walked in. I've walked into places so many times. I'm sure you have too, us where you say to yourself, if this place isn't haunted, it really should be. Oh yeah, but I mean I think hospitals are generally haunted because all of human life plays out on this fairly small stage. You know, you go to any given hospital on any given day, you have new lives entering the world. You know, babies are being born, new families are being made, which is a very joyful thing. And then you have people that are passing away, that are breathing their last and so you have grief and bereavement and intense sorrow. And it's been my experience that where one finds strong emotion of a positive or a negative nature, one also tends to find ghosts.
Well in electricity, right, wouldn't you? I would think that the so much electricity in the.
Air, well, that's true. And some interesting chemical compounds too, especially when you start looking at X ray departments and things of that nature.
Are there, certain like is the word sections wards? What do we say are certain parts of the hospital that tend to have more activity?
That's a great question. I would love to do some formal research into that, but I don't know to tell you the truth. I know that I've run into a haunted labor and delivery in a former hospital which was said to be haunted by the ghost of a tragic young lady that died in childbirth, and in that same labor and delivery they would hear the sound of babies crying and things of that nature. So I would go with emergency departments, though, simply because emergency departments see a lot of crisis by their very nature.
Yeah, I can only imagine all that trauma. So do you tend to be on the skeptical of this stuff?
I think I do. But skeptic is a word that gets a bad rap. I mean, thanks to the X Files, you know, which I love, everyone associates skeptic with I refuse to believe no matter what when true. Skepticism really is just an attitude that says, these are some pretty wild and crazy claims, So what evidence supports them? And to how many decimal places? You know? Yes, So I think that's the only rational attitude to have to anything in life, not just the paranormal, but anything you see on your social media feed or on TV or anything you're told on any subject, I mean, within reason, right, But.
Are there paranormal investigators that are kind of more close minded and just want to be proved wrong?
I think there are some. That we all have our personal biases, every single one of us, and frankly, there are some that have their own personal agendas. You know, It's amazing what you'll be willing to believe if there's if there's a TV contract in it for you. I mean, I think that's sadly true, and we always have to guard against that, you know. But there are those that I think are a little too open minded or too credulous, I should say, and those who are a little too closed off. And I'll also say I've been guilty of both of those things during my career. So it's not like I'm a saint, but having the intellectual integrity to ask yourself, you know, am I not asking enough questions? Here? Am I? Am I being too accepting or too narrow minded? That's the key. You know, You're trying to walk that fine line between excessive belief and excessive disbelief.
Yeah, do you get scared of stuff on occasion?
Yeah? I think that As much as people might like to puff up their chest and say they don't. There is a p of all of us, a deeply primal part of all of us, that is scared of the dark, you know. I mean, we are wired that way. So I'm usually pretty good with it, but every once in a while, for no apparent reason, I will just get overcome with a sense of fear. And I usually can't explain it. It's not when something's happening. It's just a sense of being massively creeped out. And I suspect that psychics, medium sensitives call them what they will, call them what you will would say, you know that my body is picking up on something that I'm not consciously able to detect, And I certainly wouldn't disagree with that. It's entirely possible. But yeah, it does happen, but the feeling always passes, you know.
Do you believe in like dark forces, demons, all that kind of stuff that we love to talk about, at least.
Well we are in the United States. Isn't it mandatory that you believe in demons?
Yeah? As well, And that's and that's another question I have for you, is is the difference between the British belief of the paranormal and America. You know broadly strokes what you found.
Well, I'm not I'm not gonna throw shade, but you know I'll be shade.
We do that here. You're talking to a drag queen. Don't tell me like a throw shade. We invented shade. Honey.
I'm not gonna throw shade, but I will, I will, I will be as respectful as I can. So I truly believe that we have to. You know that old saying that you you have to respect everybody's beliefs no matter what. I think it's garbage. I think what we have to do is we have to respect everybody's right to hold their beliefs. Yes, okay, And there's a real difference there. You know, if you want to believe the earth is flat, that's your constitutional right, knock yourself out. But I don't have to respect that belief itself, you know, Yes. And so in the same way, if you are a person of faith and you are a big believer in demonic forces and things of that nature, I absolutely respect your right to that. And I won't even say it's not the case that such things don't exist. I think that would be quite arrogant of me, but I will say that I think they are massively, massively overblown and the media is to blame. I began in nineteen ninety five ross first as a paranorl investigator in the UK, and there was no Ghost Adventures, there was no Most Haunted, Ghost Hunters, nothing on TV until I want to say, nineteen ninety nine, two thousand, so.
But the earth was still flat back then, right.
Right, You mean it isn't. But what that meant was that I ran on very very few cases which were considered dark or negative. You know, most of them were actually very pleasant hauntings. Even the poltergeist cases were more playful than malign. And without naming names. Things changed sometime between two thousand and five and two thousand and when some TV personalities began to encounter demons on a weekly basis. Everything was a possession, everything was dark, everything was demonic, because that's great for ratings, right.
The devil got a good publicist, absolutely.
And so I've been reading and looking at the literature of the paranormal for all this time as well. You look at the greats, you look at the Society for Psychical Research, you look at the Harry Prices of this World, for example, they did not report demon after demon after demon, and yet some media personalities have done that, and that has led to a landslide because demons are good for ratings, and they're good for book sales, you know. And I think it's once the history of this period of paranormal research comes to be written, we're going to look very a scance at this cavalcade of darkness and evil and forth and demonology. You know. Do I think that there are negative entities out there? Absolutely? I do. Do I think that every time somebody is scratched or growl that that they're dealing with the Alzebub or whatever demon you want to name, Absolutely not. Does that does that make sense?
Yeah? Definitely.
Now what do you think I like to hear your opinion?
Well, I'm still trying to figure that one out. I I believe, well, first of all, most of the knowledge that I have, or or any opinions I have on the paranormal is mainly it's from uh limited experiences of my own, but from just gathering, you know, hearing people's stories, and from what I am starting to think more and more, it's it's it's kind of person to person. I think that there's there's forces in this world that are specifically negative, and I think that they can manifest in different ways for different people. I think that maybe fear is what motivates them, and so if you are afraid of the devil from the Bible, maybe it will manifest. Is the devil from the Bible? Oh yeah, That's just where I'm at right now. But I'm constantly very open to hearing more and more different things.
Well, and that seems very reasonable to me as well. But I think we love to label as a species. We are labelers, you know. So if you're a person of a Christian faith based system, then the negative is demonic, right, Yeah, And I'm more credulous of that specific label than i am the concept behind it. And I also think there's a real tendency for us to want to or to be tempted to misinterpret these things. So, for example, if we have an aggressive or a frightened individual who passes away, and that person tries to communicate with the living as best they can, you know, they will maybe throw things, scratch people, yell, scream, angry in life, angry and death. Thanks to Hollywood and a hundred good paranormal stories. We are tempted to write this off as being an aggressive, malevolent, maybe demonic spirit when it could be nothing more than a confused, frustrated, terrified spirit of a human being.
Mm well, I also always think about I mean, I've talked about this on the show before, but you know, I know some people that are goth or cosplayers or whatever it is that they might look like, and I think that someone could see them with the devil horned headband that they wear sometimes as a ghost and be like, oh my God, the Devil's here. I know some people that were crazy color contacts. I know people that were fangs, so their goes in the future could very well make people think that they're doing.
You never know. But and again, you know, no disrespect to those that believe have a certain belief system. If you're a Christian, I respect your rights that if you're a Muslim, I respect that. I'm an agnostic personally, you know. I used to say atheist, and then my grandmother said go with agnostic, Richard, because God's got lightning and Darwin doesn't. So you know, always head your bets right. But I am also I do believe in some kind of other realm highest state of being. I don't know what to call it, and that's why I'm still poking around dulk buildings after all these years trying to answer those questions. But I certainly don't want to disrespect those that have a specific belief system.
Right well, I want to take it back to hospitals for for a few more moments. Have you found while still talking about like dark stuff, have you have you heard that people you know, find those kinds of forces in hospitals.
I've suddenly heard a number of negative experiences coming from hospitals, and we featured a lot of them on the show Haunted Hospitals. But you are just as likely to experience something positive too. So I think that people are very vulnerable when they're in the hospital. Sometimes you're dealing with altered states of being. People are on medications that are that sedate them, you know that that drop their barriers. And on the one hand, as a as a medical professional, I think if you're on a cocktail of medications, you know that can be inducing all kinds of hallucinations, and hallucinations can affect all of the senses. It doesn't just mean you're seeing things. There are medications out there which will give you very vivid paranormal encounters as a side effect. But on the flip side, I also think it's possible that when you are medicated in a certain way, it may open the doors doors that are normally close to us as part of our everyday mental states. It may open doors and allow us to experience something that is that is actually genuine, but beyond the grasp of everyday life.
Yes, I'm a big believer in that too.
Have you.
I have like, let me just fire off like a bunch of hospital questions, have you encountered? And again, I know that these are like so like broad questions, But have you heard of machinery in hospitals ever? You know, being having an attachment or something like that.
I don't know about having an attachment, but certainly machinery or equipment malfunctioning is common. One that I hear a lot is when you have a room in which your patient is passed away. Nurses will often report that they get the call light from that room will start blinking as if there's somebody in there calling for help and yet the room is completely empty. That happens very frequently.
Oh, Wow. When it comes to goos in hospitals, do you hear more stories of like a temporary ghost or are there mainstays that have been there for decades? What does it tend to be in a hospital, Because there's so much traffic going in now, so I'm not sure what it would be like both.
Really, I'm saying the majority of cases that I've looked at have been more of the temporary kind, somebody that is perhaps deceased and hasn't moved on. But there are some long term ghosts as well. I mean, one of the larger, more historic hospitals in Britain has the ghost of a nurse that has been there now for more than a century. And the reason she's believe to haunt the place she accidentally overdosed her own fiance on morphine and killed him, and she was so racked with remorse she took her own life, or so the story goes. And she's seen whenever opioid's, morphine, fent and all those kind of medications are being used, and it's believed that she appears just to offer a reminder of Hey, these drugs can be dangerous. Take it from me, check your dosin carefully.
Oh wow, So.
That's that's almost a spirit that's providing a service. Yeah, Or it feels honest, as if she's she's paying off some self imposed penance.
Yeah, I'm sure that's oh, that's that's sad, but it's you know, it seems like she's probably almost a guardian angel. Some people would say, yes, would you. Uh, this is a question I wonder about all hauntings, but I'm curious about hospitals as well. Do you find that go like when someone dies, do they go back to how they want to look or do they go back to you how they looked when they died? Like, how does that happen?
Having talked to quite a few mediums, I mean when we talk about intelligent hauntings versus residual a residual haunting is the equivalent I think of a movie or a snapshot. You know, it's an imprint of how something looks at the time it was imprinted. But with intelligent haunts, a number of mediums I've spoken to have said that we get to pick our own form in spirit, which thank goodness, because I would much rather be twenty one year old me in appearance anyway than forty seven year old me.
Do you get to change your outfits all the time? What do they tell you? Because I have.
Those is important to you? Yes? Yeah, Well there's that whole thing about be careful what you wear today because that's your ghost outfit for it forever, of course, And let's hope that's not the case. I do.
I definitely think about that. I mean, I've got wigs, I got. I just need to I need a warning before I die. What about astral projection during surgery? That's something I was just stick crossed my mind. Have you ever heard of that happening?
You know, I've heard of it more frequently. Yes, I've heard of it happening during surgery, but I've heard of it happening most frequently during a resuscitation, So someone is being given emergent surgery after sustaining, say a very severe severe car crash. But quite often you hear of that happening when somebody is being resuscitated. And there are many, many accounts of patients floating out of their body and watching what's happening in the room, and then coming back being saved and being able to accurately recount things that the physicians and nurses have said, you know, and at the time that brain was in a state a very low blood flow. They may well have been given hard core sedatives, and yet they're able to accurately recall things that they should never have been able to perceive. And they can talk about where a certain doctor was standing, what he or she said when they reach for a specific piece of equipment, and I find those very impressive. Indeed.
Yeah, God, I'm so fascinated by that. That's something that I've really not heard much about. I mean, I started really getting to the paranormal all the past few years, but it's something that blows my mind. This whole idea of like ghosts of the living and I guess astro projection. I'm fascinated by it. Have you experienced that outside of hospitals.
Yeah, I mean, there was a landmark study done at the turn of the nineteenth twentieth century the year escapes me, but a huge study done by the Society of psycho Research, and Apparitions of the Living proved to be extremely common, which blows away the whole theory of ghost just being dead people, doesn't it. So Yeah, I do think that probably happens more often than we realize. What fascinates me is that we now live in a world where we are on camera more times each day than at any other point in human history. You know, you go to the store, you're on camera, you're driving, you're on camera. It makes me wonder how many people that are recorded on those cameras are actually apparitions. And you know that there's a big contentious debate at the moment about facial recognition software. You know what I would love to see. I would love to see someday facial recognition software that's capable of recognizing the faces of the deceased, and how many of them are wandering around their old neighborhoods.
Oh God, I hate the Do you want to hear some ghost voices?
Boys?
Okay, it's time for EVP or ev plice. So I go to YouTube and I find EVPs and I'm gonna give people the benefit of the doubt because it's it's hard to do this because I'm you know, when I'm in a studio, it's a little bit easy there to hear them. But I looked for some hospital ones on the internet. I thought they were pretty good. But I'm wondering what you hear, So either let me know what you hear, or you know. I'll give you some options and you could guess what the researcher believes.
That they heard.
Okay, this first one is from touring History on YouTube and it is at the Yorktown Memorial Hospital the Great Yorktown, Texas. Have you heard stories of this place?
I wrote about it in my book The World's Most Haunted Hospitals, and it has a an incredible reputation for being haunted. I've yet to make it out there, but it's on my bucket list.
Is it still like operational?
No, it's been for quite some time.
Okay, well, here is the EVP. Tell me what you hear? Richard? Do you hear anything?
Can I get that again? Yeah?
Of course. So there's a little bit of background noise, but there's a like on top of it, so it's kind of a whispery. I'll play it one more time.
It does sound like a whisper. I would call that a class C though, and I wouldn't presume to guess what it says.
Okay, Well, here's some options. Is it a nosy? Is it B no say? Which is Spanish for I don't know? Is it C honestly or D ghost me.
I'm gonna go with a nose.
Okay, let me play it.
I think that's what spirits thinking.
That's what I would assume too. I think about that all the time, like, okay, nosey. Let me just like enjoy my abandoned hospital.
Yeah wait, let me play.
Yeah it's nosy, that's what they thought it was. Okay, let me play you one more. And this one is from Planet Paranormal Investigations on YouTube. I love this one.
Now.
This one is from a place that I'm sure you've heard of. It's here in LA. It's the Linda Vista Hospital.
Oh again, on my bucket list apartments.
I heard that they turned it into yeah, like senior senior living, but I have not heard. I mean, I don't know how I would, but I haven't really heard anybody reporting of any activity nowadays. But I'm sure it has to be happening. That place is like an iconic haunted hospital. Okay, what does this one say? It's real quick, I'll play it again. You hear anything, I.
Hear a noise. I don't know that I would call it a word.
Okay, let me play it one more time.
Here.
Let me give you some options. Is it a Bye Girl, B, why not C Spider or D my nuts?
You know, I'm gonna go with my nuts because it's a subject that did near and did to my aunt.
It is actually what they thought it said. They thought it said my nuts. Let me play it.
Again, Okay, alrighty.
That's what they said. Okay, Richard, I'm just reporting.
And who am I to gainsay them?
Well, Richard, I want to I want to hear about a couple more of your books before we wrap this baby up. Can you tell me a little bit about the Black Monk of Punk Diffract, which is I know a little bit about that, and I find it very fascinating, But you've recently written a book about it, so can you tell us a little bit about it?
I have. I co wrote that book with my friend Bill Bungy, and so essentially this was one of those cases where I've been really fortunate ras the more books I've written, the more TV work I've done, it it opens doors every so often for me, opportunities that are on my bucket list. And growing up as a kid, one of the books that fasten me was called Poltergeist, a study in Destructive Haunting by Colin Wilson, which I highly recommend to your readers. It's still in print even though Colin died a few years ago, and that the main case in that book was the Black Monk of Pontefract, which was a poltergeist outbreak in an ordinary, very small house in the UK in England, and this outbreak basically afflicted this family for many years. They started to as most pot gust cases are. It began playfully, you know, there was a strange reign of powder came down from the air in the kitchen. Keys began to fall down the chimney, old keys like brass keys, you know, that didn't belong in the house. Footsteps started being heard in the house, all these strange things. And then finally this tall, dark hooded figure appeared and terrified the members of this family and they named him the Black Monk of Pontefract because the area around which the house is located, monks were known to work that land hundreds of years ago, and there was an urban legend, and it is an urban legend. There's no truth behind the story that we know that this monk had sexually assaulted a young girl murdered her and thrown her body down a well on the site of this house, which makes for a great horror story, but there's not a shred of evidence to support it whatsoever. But this Polsygeist case was so violent and it made national news back in the sixties. You would have reporters camping out outside the house trying to take photographs of the Black Monk, and then the case kind of died away over the years. It was one of those classic cases. I'd always wondered what happened, and then they made a horror movie about it back in twenty eleven twenty twelve called When the Lights Went Out. Great, great movie, and that brought this new slew of interest in the house. People started getting started wondering what actually happened to the Black Monk. And it turned out that the house was still active and the family that had suffered at the hands of the polticu I sold it to the guy that produced the movie, No Less. He wanted to have the movie premiere in the house. What the movie was about, I mean, that's brilliant, isn't it. Yeah, And so you know, people that came to the house started to report strange goings on, and so I reached out to the movie producer and said, would it be possible for me to come spend some time there? And he didn't ask me for a dime, He said absolutely, I'll give you the keys to the house. You can move in for a week. All I ask is that you write the truth about what you experience. And so I took three of my fellow investigators from the US, we flew over and a couple of my fellow British friends and we moved in and we lived with the Black Monk of Pontefract for a week and it was just a crazy location.
And you know, it's a very pictures from there. Yeah, there's people have caught, you know, images of the Black Monk.
Right well, they believe that they have. I mean, what fascinates me about it is it's such a controversial case. Many people today say that, you know, the house is not haunted at all, This whole thing is a money making scam, which all I can say to that is we definitely experienced paranormal activity inside the house. We had a mirror smash itself. We had one of my colleagues, Charlie, was scratched three long scratches across his back, which happened right in front of our eyes. Crazy crazy things going on, and several vps. So, but the house freaks me out unlike any other place I've investigated, not because of the Black Monk believed or not, but because the way that it has been left. It's like a time capsule from the nineteen seventies and eighties. So I instantly like regressed in age thirty five years when I stepped into that house, and not in a good way. It creeps you out so bad. There's an old Beta Max video recorder there with a bunch of tapes and things like that, you know, and it's like being back in time. So very very creepy house. One of my fellow investigators, she came in, she'd been in the house maybe ten minutes, and she's projectile vomiting for no obvious reason. Has a very strange atmosphere. But yeah, so it's an ordinary house. If you didn't know its history, you would walk by it and not give it a second glance. It looks absolutely nothing like the archetypal haunted house that we see on TV or in the movies.
That producer he just owns it I mean, does he like rent it out to other investigators or what's going on?
He does, he rents it out to investigators and allows people to do their own research there. Some people will just spend the night there because they've always wanted to, and the experiences they have ranged from absolutely crazy to not a thing happened, which is the paranormal all over. Yeah, you know, you never know what you're going to get.
Well, that's how I also always feel let terms with like like TV investigations and stuff like that, Like if you're gonna spend like two days there, it's kind of hard to determine, right.
Yeah, absolutely, But he the producer, is very very rational about it. He became convinced the house was haunted when an object materialized in front of his face in thin air. He became an instant convert and he will not spend the night in that house anymore. He just won't. In fact, you should have him on your show. He'd be a great guest.
Okay, you've written like so many books. Are you working on any right now?
I'm always working on something new. I'm walking on a book now about the Monroe House in Indiana. Have you heard of it?
You know I have because I've looked up I was actually just recently looking up EVPs and I kept getting I was looking for EVPs in the Roosevelt Hotel, which is here in LA and people say Marilyn Monroe haunts it. And then it just started leading meeting this Monroe House, and I was like, oh, what's this. So that's my limited knowledge, but what's going on with that?
I know you just had Katrina on your show right twice.
I love Katrina.
I do too. She's a friend of mine. And I asked her, actually when you reached out to me and I said, hey, is this a good show? And she said, oh, you have to do it. You have a great time. And she was right. But Katrina and Nick had investigated them in her row house on Paranormal Lockdown, and it's it's again a fairly ordinary house, except for the fact that there are human remains buried beneath it and nobody knows whose they are. So I did the same thing. I was invited to go spend a few days and nights living at the Monroe House investigating. And so that was last year, which shows you how long it takes me to write a book and I'm just finishing that manuscript now. I hope to have it out by November, by Thanksgiving.
Great, how do you pick these places? I mean, are you just you know, just keeping your ears open for great, great stuff, or I mean it's it's pretty incredible when I look at on your website, like, there's just so many different topics that you focus on. Yeah, what do you look like?
I'm like a kid in a candy store, which would explain my waistline. Really, I just I hear from other investigators, and it's a fairly small community, right, And when a place has good word of mouth, it has a good reputation from people that have been there. If it's somebody that I respect, I will start to put out feelers and see how many people have experienced strange things. And if I hear from four or five reputable investigators that are place is legit, I will reach out to the owner and ask, you know what it would take for me to be allowed to tell its stories best I can?
Great, Well, can you just tell people where they can find you and find your books and all that good stuff you want to plug away?
Yeah? Absolutely, Well, if you're in Colorado, you can down name on one and you'll find me. But let's not meet like that. Come see me online at www dot Richard S. Step dot net. That's Richard E. S t ep dot net. Or come look me up on Facebook Richard Step author. If you're the kind of person that listens to the show, you're my kind of people. So I love chatting about the paranormal.
Wait, that just reminded me when you said Colorado. I'm so obsessed with the Stanley Hotel. Have you had experiences there?
Well? To be fair, I did ghost tours there for three years. I gave the tours there, Oh you did? I did, and I loved the hotel. It was a great place to work. I worked with some amazing people there as well, and it absolutely does deserve its reputation. In my experience, it is haunted as all get out.
Cool. Oh wait, can I get like a short story from what happened there? Like just one?
Yeah? I mean probably my favorite was that we did tours for twenty people. Because this was pre COVID, So in the concert hall we have a concert hall at the hotel. We would sit up on the balcony and I would talk about the ghosts of the concert hole and one summer's night. This would be about six o'clock, so, you know, still bright daylight, and below us, below the balcony, on the floor of the concert hall, we heard this pounding of heavy footsteps, as if some big guy in boots was walking across the floor. And so I look over. I don't see anybody. Twenty other people look over the balcony. We don't see anybody. And this is one of the documented phenomena of the concert hall. But I thought we were being played, because people, especially when they've had a few drinks, love to mess with the ghost tours. So I thought somebody had gone down to the basement, had gotten a broom handle and was banging it on the ceiling, you know, faking these footsteps. So I grabbed two people from my tour. We went downstairs. We split up, and we searched every inch of that basement. And I know where all the hiding places are, and of course, not a living soul to be found.
Ooh, that's good. Now, did you ride a tricycle through the hallway when you would have tours? That's what I wanted.
I would have I would have loved the opportunity. I really really would well I.
Am so so grateful that you came on the show. I'm so happy to chat with you. I hope you come on again. If you have another book, when your next books come out or whatever, please come by and let's talk about them.
I would be delighted. Thank you so much for inviting me on Ross.
Special. Thank you to Richard. And if you want to hear that bonus clip of me with Richard and the ghost of John Wayne Gacy, go to pay dot com slash roz dress Fales and you'll see that video of me driving around Hollywood's spooky locations. Please join the Facebook group called Ghosted by rozdres Fales. It's a great place to share your story if you'd like me to read it on the show, or you can write it in a five star review on Apple Podcasts and give the show five stars. And if you don't have a ghost story, you can just write like a nice thing about me. That'd be great. It really helps the show out. I'm on cameo at Rozdresfales again. The patreon is Patreon dot com, slash rozdres Fales, venmo Queen Roz Instagram, rozdres Fales I'm all over the place. And if you have a ghost story that you want me to, like, talk to you on the phone and we'll talk about it and we'll record it and we'll put it on a listener episode. Please send those to me. Email me at ghosted by Roz at gmail dot com with the subject line listener episode. I want to record one of those real soon, so make sure you get them to me. All right, I love you all, both living and dead. But if I didn't ask you to haunt me, don't haunt me. Hey By Stars, a podcast network
