Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norrie with
your paranormal investigator and author Ross Allison has been giving
lectures to thousands of students at hundreds of colleges and
universities across the country about his ghost hunting adventures for
all over twenty years. His lectures have taken him to London, Canada, Scotland,
and through his travels, he has investigated some of the darnedest, scariest,
(00:29):
most haunted sites known to man. Ross, Welcome back.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Have you been. I've been good. How you been? I'm
doing okay? You still hitting these haunted hotels? Huh? Oh
my gosh. All every year I'm traveling all over the world.
So yes, with all your travels, have you ever been
scared yourself? You know, I've been startled.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
There is a video out there where they got me.
They caught me scream, you know, because I was startled
by something. This was actually a situation where I was
investigating a house and it's actually pretty.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Well known the Ohio. It's out in Ohio.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
It's been featured in a bunch of locations and they
had set me up alone in a in one of
the rooms where physical phenomena has been reported. And it
was interesting because I don't usually investigate alone. I'll always
have a team with me or at least one other individual,
(01:35):
but they like to investigate by themselves. So I was like, okay,
as long as there's a camera on me, that can
you know, at least witness if I have any experiences.
And I was in this room and I was like
trying to communicate with whatever was there, and I said,
you know, could you give me a sign? And right
when I asked that the thermal camera flew off the
(01:57):
tripod and yes, I but it was a very manly scream.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I will point that out. I love that. How did
you get involved in paranormal investigating? I blame my mother.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
My mom was somebody who loved ghost stories, and so
as I grew up, I just listened to all these
stories that she would tell me as a little kid,
and I just was fascinating with these stories. I wanted
to know do people really experience this stuff? And so
I just continue to follow through with a lot of
(02:36):
these stories and reading every book I could find. You know,
in haunted locations, and it was just a situation where
I ended up finding myself one of the first paranormal
investigators in Washington. This is before you know, ghost hunting
even became as popular as it is today.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
I'm going to have you beat your chest for a moment. Ross.
You're one of the best paranormal investigators out there. Oh oh, well,
thank you. What makes you that? I know you don't
go around bulbshting about it, but you are. What makes
you that?
Speaker 4 (03:09):
I think, for one, it's the honesty. I really want
to be honest in my approach and be as transparent
as possible. Is if anytime I have something or an
experience that I want to put out there to the public,
I have to be willing to take the criticism because
(03:31):
most people, well everybody else wasn't there when I had
this experience. So I have to understand that unless people
experience these things for themselves, they probably won't believe what
I have to share. So I really try to come
up with better ways to share those experiences and bring
(03:54):
more science into the field because a lot of people,
you know, just because you're run around with the EMF
detector does not make you scientific in your approach and
ghost hunting. There's more to it than that, and I
really am not afraid to reach out to those who
are more knowledgeable in the scientific field to help myself
(04:17):
and others to get ourselves to a higher level and
even challenge ourselves as ghost hunters to figure out what's
going on out there.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
In your opinion, Ross, what is going on out there?
Speaker 4 (04:34):
There's something going on out there. I don't have all
the answers. And I've been doing this, you know, for
going on over thirty years now, and you have those
amazing experiences, things that you know, just make you question yourself,
make you question the experience as well, and you know,
(04:55):
after you've gone through everything and done all your best
to even debunk the experience, there's something to this, you know.
When I was filming my documentary, we were the first
to track phenomena by using a spectro system that we
had developed, me and my partner, you know, Chad Goodwin,
(05:18):
who was a real scientist, and we were able to
find that there is this phenomena that came up to
subjects and then left, And that for me was groundbreaking
and even emotional for me because you hear about these
(05:40):
experiences and sometimes you even have these experiences, but you
never have enough data to validate those experiences, and so
we are really trying to get to that point of
validating those experiences.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Well, you're doing a great job getting there. Now, how
would you define the paranormal world? What is it?
Speaker 4 (06:07):
Well, it depends on what elements of the paranormal you're
looking at. You know, we've got all kinds of different
chapters when it comes to the paranormal, from you know, UFOs,
cryptic psychic phenomena, and then you have ghosts. And my
passion has always been ghosts. I dabble a little bit
(06:29):
in psychic phenomena as well, but I really do want
to stay focused on trying to come up with answers
to ghosts. And when it comes to identifying that phenomena,
there's so many elements to it, you know, It's not
just you know, when you walk into a haunted house
(06:49):
and the cover doors fly open, Oh, it's a ghost,
And that's the only phenomena we have to focus on.
If we had just one phenomena to focus on, we
would probably have the answers by now. But there's so
much more to this, you know, when it comes to ghosts.
There's you know, audio, there's visual, there's physical you know,
(07:09):
nightmares and you know issues with the home or the business.
And so that's one of the things that makes it
so challenged gene as to what really defines a ghost
or even the phenomena that we claim to be tied
to ghosts. So, you know, when it comes to a haunting,
(07:31):
I really focus on what can we actually document and
and prove rather outside of just some of these you know,
personal experiences, what can be documented, and so you have
to go with you know, visual and audio, those are
to the best things that you could you know, try
(07:51):
and document. So EVPs are a great thing. And for
those out there that aren't familiar with EVPs, you know
electronic voice phenomen i'm and those are the sounds, the
voices that are on our recorders that we can't explain
why they're there when you know that there was something
there wasn't anything in the room when you were talking.
(08:14):
So I think audio visual are two of the biggest
elements that we are going to have to rely on,
you know, as we start to hopefully develop new tools
to point us in the right directions as to what
is a ghost Because I've always said, you can't even
develop a ghost meter or ghost trap until you know
(08:35):
what a ghost is made of to be able to
capture that phenomenon.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
When you go on an investigation ross, what is your goal?
What is your mission?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Again?
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Trying to document as much as I can, trying to
get that information that will keep everybody else from second
guessing what we're doing. You know that that data that
tracking the phenomena, coming up with better ways to communicate
with the other side so that we can get more
(09:11):
direct responses when we ask those questions into the air,
and you hope that you will get an answer.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
And in many cases do you get that answer.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
I found that throughout the years that I've been investigating
the paranormal, that EVP is one of the simplest things
that you can capture, and you know, the phenomena that
seems to be one of the ways that they can
communicate to us, because in a lot of cases, when
we go out and we investigate a location, you're not
(09:50):
always guaranteed to have, you know, something thrown at you,
or doors opening closing by themselves, or little lights turning
on and off by themselves, or even the toilet flushing
by itself.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
You have.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Most of the cases, it's kind of quiet. As we've
learned with ghost hunting, it's all about being at the
right place at the right time. But throughout a majority
of our investigations, we do find that one of the
most easiest ways that they can communicate, even though you
don't have the physical experience on the property at that time,
(10:29):
you can walk away with EVPs. So I do find
that that is a pretty common phenomena when you were
out there investigating, and one of the easiest things to capture.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
You find ross that most people who go on a
ghost hunt are looking for them the demons, the strange,
as opposed to a friendly.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Ghost Sadly, demons have become more popular in mainstream media
and it's it really has altered people's perspective of ghosts.
I have found in a lot of cases now that
(11:13):
most clients are terrified living in their homes thinking that
it's a demon. And I always ask them, what gives
you this idea that it's a demon? Well, you know,
most shows say that if you, you know, have this experience,
it must be a demon, and that's not always the case.
I'm finding myself in a lot of situations where I'm
(11:36):
talking clients off, you know, the ledge, because they're ready
to you know, burn their house down just to get
rid of whatever is inside their home.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
And it's not like that.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
I most shows are focused on demons because it's more entertainment.
You know, we all love the drama. You know, there's
a car yeah, you know, you see a car accident
inside the road, we all want to slow down and look.
And then it's it's very unfortunate that that has been
(12:11):
the main draw into the paranormal field because now in
a lot of cases, we find that ghost hunting groups
that aren't well trained are going into homes convincing clients
that they may be dealing with a demon, and don't
(12:31):
help the client. And so now the client, like I said,
is terrified. They don't know what to do. This group
didn't help them. They just made it worse, and now
they want us to come in and get rid of
this demon. And I have to you know, tell them,
you know, let's let's let's back up here. Let's you know,
see what it is that you're actually experiencing what you claim.
(12:54):
Let's forget what they said, and let's you know, start
from back at you know, point A before we get
to point B, and and it's one of those things
that's it's been very frustrating because then you're also in
a situation where if they are so convinced that it
is a demon and you tell them that it's not,
(13:18):
then you may not be the right ghost hunting team
for them. You know, they may want somebody out there
that's going to help them get rid of their demon.
I was gonna say it, just it's made things a
lot more challenging, definitely in the field of paranormal research.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
When we were kids, there was a television show called
Casper the Friendly Ghost.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Remember that, I remember Casper, good old Casper.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Yes, Why aren't most ghosts friendly? They seem to be demonic?
Speaker 4 (13:51):
Well, I think a lot of it is people tend
to it. Whenever you have a paranormal experience, a lot
of time tis a trigger sphere, and so a lot
of times when you have a situation where maybe you
were touched on the shoulder, you're gonna panic and think,
(14:11):
oh my god, you know what was that when it
could have been to somebody friendly tapping you on the shoulder,
just trying to get your attention, you know, or maybe
a lot of times. Here's a good explanation. I have
an amazing EVP. It was featured on you know, Nuke's
Top twenty. It was also one Travel Channels Paranormal con
(14:36):
on camera. And in this experience, we were in what
we were dealing with a situation where one of our
investigators had gone on investigation. And when she was on
this investigation, it was not with our team. She was
at some public event, public investigation, and I think it
(14:59):
was that and a Saint asylum, and so it was
a big public event and she went there and when
she was there, you know, she was one of those
investigators that left herself very open and you know, expressed
to whatever was there. You know, feel free to hang
out with me, and I will comfort you. That type
(15:20):
of investigating style a lot of empathy. Empathy is what
she was offering to the spirit. And so when she
came home and started to do investigations with us, every
time she would do an EVP session with us, in
playbacker recordings, she would get this screen and it was
(15:45):
a very dark and primal scream that that she would
get on her recordings, and I was thinking, gosh, you
know that's interesting. Let's let's do some experiments to see
if we can try to recreate this in a more
controlled environment. So we set up this experiment. I had
(16:08):
her holder recorder in her hand, open palm uh, so
we can improve that she's not you know, tampering with
the device. We had a bunch of you know, video
recorders on her, and so she went through her EVP session,
asking questions, talking to whatever it was that she felt
was with her, and then stopped the recording and played
(16:29):
it back, and sure enough, there was this you know
scream again that we heard. And so I got to thinking,
and I realize and everybody wanted to say, oh, this
is demonic. You know, you got to get rid of
this attachment that she has. And I started thinking, as like,
why do we want to assume that it's demonic just
because it's screaming. Maybe it's screaming because that's the only
(16:51):
way it knows how to communicate. It needs to use
all of its force just to try and get that
imprint onto her recorder. Nothing physical, you know, harming has
happened to her. And it really got me thinking. You know,
a lot of times people think, oh, if they see
a dark you know, apparition that oh, it must be
(17:13):
a demon, you know, just because it's dark in appearance.
And I started to you know, I realized that a
lot of times people don't understand that when you're dealing
with energy, you know, the more amount of energy you
add to things, the more you can that energy can
express itself. So you know, maybe a dark apparition is
(17:35):
just a lower level. It doesn't have enough energy to
produce light. And if you can produce light, obviously you
can produce color. So I tend to think that a
lot of times you just because you see this dark substance, don't,
you know, jump the gun and say, oh, this has
got to be a demon, because I just think it's
(17:56):
just doesn't have enough energy to you know, to produce
the light and give you color and better details as
to who it is. It just wants to let you
know I'm here.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
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