August 7, 2025 • 18 mins
George Noory and paranormal researcher Courtney McInvale explore hauntings and paranormal events surrounding famous Civil War battlefields, growing up in a haunted house visited by famed investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, and stories of spirits that have appeared during her ghost tours.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back, George Nori with you. Courtney mcin bail back
with us. Founder of the Seaside Shadows Haunted History tours
in Southern Shadows. A published author, She's got several books out,
including Civil War Ghosts of Connecticut Civil War Ghosts of Georgia,
Volumes one and two. She's a former US government investigator
with the background in international relations. Courtney blends her expertise
(00:29):
and historical research and true hauntings to bring authentic stories
to life. Courtney, welcome back to the program. Thanks George,
looking forward to this. What did you investigate for the
government if you could tell us?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Sure, I actually worked for the Department of Justice in
counter terrorism, so I worked closely with human assets.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Are there scary things that we really don't even know
about as public?
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I think so.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
But I also think that we are aware of more
than the government lets us know we're aware of. There's
not as many secrets as we think.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Now, that's true, and I guess now knowledge is even better,
isn't it. Oh?
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
I mean I sometimes think I have more capabilities outside
the government to acquire information than I did when I
was in it.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Now, how did you make that shift to the world
of haunted history and the strange and unusual paranormal.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
So I grew up in a house that was sort
of plagued with a lot of unexplained activity, and when
I was a teenager, the Warrens came to investigate. But
because I lived in a small town, I was kind
of embarrassed by.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
All of that.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
And when I went to college, I did everything I
could to avoid sort of being looked at as the
weird person who had ghosts in our house. So I
studied international relations, I worked for the government, and then
when I was working for the government, I actually found
that I just really wasn't a nine five sort of
office kind of person. I still had all these questions
(02:04):
about there being more to the world. I had a
love for history, and I met someone who was actually
living in Vermont at the time, and I was doing
an assignment there, and it was a woman named Theo Lewis,
and she ran ghost tours and wrote haunted history and
I was so inspired by her and had lunch with her,
and she encouraged me that I could do the same
(02:26):
in my home state, and that's where I started.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Did you ever figure out how the house got so haunted?
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Yeah, there were.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Quite a few things. I tell everyone, it was a
perfect storm. There was definitely Native American burial near the site.
And then also my father was working at the time.
He was a police officer, but he was also self
employed with something called post mortem cleanup where he helped
sort of clean up after homicides and suicides, and there
(02:56):
was some belief that some things also sort of attached
themselves through position and came to the house.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
He had probably one of the worst jobs out there.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
You know that.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yes, Yes, it's so depressing and so difficult, and I
think it was hard on him, and I do think
spiritually there were definitely attachments of some kind.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I knew a guy who did the same thing as
your dad did out of Saint Louis, and he just
hated it. He got paid well, but he just hated.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
The job right right, And it's definitely a niche thing.
And I think, you know, my dad thought he was
someone because of his police work that would be able
to handle it. But it's probably more than anyone could imagine.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Tell me, about Chickamunga, Georgia.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Yeah, so Chickamaugat.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
That's actually where I'm sitting right now. It's in the
northwest corner of Georgia, sort of the foothills of Appalachia,
and it is the site of the second bloodiest battle
in the Civil War, second only to Gettysburg. I'm actually
looking at the battlefield as we speak, over thirty thousand
casualties in a period of two days, and it has
(04:04):
just become a place immersed in legend and lore and
haunted stories. And that's where we're going to be starting
Southern Shadows in the next few weeks.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
A lot of Civil War action that way too, isn't there.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Yes, So Chickamauga.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
The battle was in eighteen sixty three in September, and
that's the second deadliest battle in the Civil War.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
What is it, Courtney about trauma that creates so many
paranormal activities.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
That's a really good question too. I think a lot
of it has to.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Do with our energy. I've spoken with park rangers at
a lot of these battle sites as well, and they
think a lot of the pain and anguish and fear
that comes in a battle is so strong that it
permeates sort of into the energy of the earth and
the air around it, so much so that that area
is never the same. Now, some people think that makes
(04:59):
it a port. Other people think that it's the energy
of what happens that stays with there. But because of
the absolute just all those big emotions and feelings of
pain and fear and anger happening in such a rapid
moment and in such great number, there's something that changes
in the energy of that region when it happens.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
And now where did you start Seaside Shadows.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Seaside Shadows started in Mystic, Connecticut. I'm from Connecticut, my
mom is too. My dad's from Georgia, so that explains
why I'm sort of having tours in both locations for
both sides of my family. Seaside Shadows is on the
shoreline and Mystic, so kind of opposite to the mountains
of northwest Georgia. But shoreline Mystic where we feature the
(05:46):
old sea captain's shipping history, everything that has to do
with pirates and the shipwrecks and the Revolutionary War specifically,
there is what we feature with Seaside Shadows.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
We'll come back to that in a moment, but tell
us a compelling ghost story from the Civil War Ghosts
of Georgia.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
So, there are so many ghost stories when it comes
to Georgia, and it's hard to narrow them down. Where
I am right now, there's a famous legend called green Eye,
so much so that they even have a festival about
it where the story goes that because Chickamauga sits on
a river called the River of Death, that is what
(06:27):
Chickamauga means. They was believed that there was this Native
American sort of spiritual energy that would come and consume
parts of people and the souls of people when they died,
and when there would be big diseases around the Native Americans,
that this creature would surface. When the Battle of Chickamauga happened,
(06:48):
suddenly soldiers reported seeing sort of these green eyes in
the distance and it would be swooping over souls. Now
I found that really interesting because people thought it was green,
but then it started to appear human like. And there's
a road on the battlefield called the Glen Kelly Road,
and people report that a man walks down the road
(07:08):
with scraggly hair.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
He asks for a ride.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
You stop and he says nothing, and when you drive by,
a big grin engulfs his face and he vanishes into
the trees, and they swear they see green eyes as
he vanishes.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
There's a moral to the story. Don't pick up a
guy who doesn't say anything.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Right, that's right, that's right. You just keep driving.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Moving if pete, don't bother me. Now, just keep going,
that's right. Have you heard of a haunted story of
a woman dressed in white? Yes, for truck drivers seeing
him on the side of the road and stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Yes, she's very famous.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
She's kind of known as the hitchhiking ghost or the
Lady in White, and she comes in many different carnations.
Even Chickamauga has a lady in white that is believed
to be a grieving widow of some kind. But most
of the time when the Lady in White appears, she's
on the side of the road. She asks for a ride,
she vanishes from the backseat, and if you speak to
(08:09):
the person who resides where you were dropping her off,
they usually say, oh, that's so and so. She died however,
many years ago, and it's become quite a famous ghost story,
with sightings all across the country, and the Lady in
White has several legends. I know of one in Connecticut
called Midnight Mary, where she was a real woman who
(08:32):
passed away and people swore they.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Gave her a ride.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
An elderly man answered the door and said he didn't
know anything about her, but the people that lived there
before were her family, and supposedly she still pops up
at midnight. People say not to give Midnight Mary a ride.
So the Lady in White, the hitchhiking ghosts. There's whole
books written about that particular phenomena.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
There's a movie that from nineteen eighty eight called The
Lady in White. Does that have anything to do with
the real paranormal issue?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Oh? I haven't seen it? It very well might?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I know?
Speaker 3 (09:03):
There's lots of films in popular media. If there's a
show called Supernatural that ran for years, and I believe
the pilot episode or one of the first episodes is
all about the Lady in White. So it's something that
definitely popular culture has pulled onto and made it even
more well known.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, rented Lady in White. I'd love to get your
views on it.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
I will, I will.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
When you got into any of this, you were an
investigator with as you just said, the Department of Justice.
Did that help your skills?
Speaker 4 (09:40):
I think it did for me.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
When I look at stories ghost stories, I find them,
of course as fun to listen to by campfire as anyone,
and I love getting spooked. But what I always found
made it the most compelling is if it matched actual history.
If it matched actual people and actually li events and
things that would say, hey, maybe this really is something
(10:04):
that's going on, Maybe there really is a ghost of
this person that could pop up out of nowhere.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
And I use sort of all the investigative skills.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I got at the FBI Academy and beyond to make
sure that I was making stories that I wrote and
put into the tours commensurate with history. I didn't want
it just to be a ghost story with no founding,
or a ghost story someone told me.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
I wanted it to match with real events.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
And using that sort of investigative knowledge has made me
really be able to do that and to easily debunk
or not debunk evidence as it were, when it gets presented.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Let's talk about your tours. The first one, of course,
seaside shuttels. What do people get when they go on it?
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Sure, so on all of our tours we try to
give everyone an immersive experience where they step back in
time and they can imagine the current Mystic, Connecticut or
Westerly Rhode Island or Chickamauga as it used to be,
and as they set back in time, they're hopefully getting
those glimpses of the past by way of ghosts. We
(11:09):
bring ghost hunting devices K two meters that people can
try out dowsing rods, teach people how to use them,
especially when we're in an intimate environment like a graveyard
or a haunted location, and we tell people the true
stories of the history of the mystery as we like
to call it, and show people evidence that guests have captured,
(11:31):
and we sort of have this two hour immersive storytelling
experience mixed with ghost hunting.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Do you drive them around?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Ours are all walking tours right now. We are adding
some boat tours actually and an old fireboat in Mystic,
and we're also adding some vehicle tours so that we
can get to areas that not everyone can walk to
because there's some pretty unique stuff, especially up in Mystic.
We found an old speak Easy that will be featuring nearby.
(12:00):
There's also the site where Amelia Earhart got married. That
has some spooky stuff, So we want to start bringing
people out that way, and same in Chickamauga will be
walking through the town. There's a haunted mansion, haunted springs,
a haunted old courthouse location. But we want to be
able to bring people through the battlefield as well and
show them where some of these legends were born.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Have you heard of David Politis. No, David Politis is
an investigator who has written a book called Missing for
One One.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
Well, I've heard of that, that documentary. I think I
watched it on hululeg a Vision.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yes, people in parks just disappear. Yeah, parents with their
little kids, they're walking, the kids behind them, they turn around,
they're not there anymore. They're gone.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Yeah. It's scary.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
And I can tell you, even as someone who frequents
national parks, sometimes I'll be in an area where I
think I am completely alone, it's just me and the deer,
and then suddenly someone you know, comes out from the
woods and it doesn't even look like.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
A trail and they are alive.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
But you're thinking, where on earth did they come from?
How did this connect? It's a little bit spooky.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Do you remember when the Warrens came to your house
in Connecticut?
Speaker 4 (13:14):
I do.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I was fifteen years old, so I remember it very well.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Were they scary They weren't.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
I was probably scary because I was an angry teenager
and I remember them coming. They really wanted to help,
you see. Prior to them their arrival, my mother had
called priests and pastors, and all of them had sort
of given up on helping our family, saying that it
was too spooky, it was beyond their abilities.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
And so when my mom called the Warrens, ed had
been ill.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
So Lorraine really took charge of the case, and she
was very kind to my family. And they came with
their team and they talked with us, and they went
through the house and they were just the most loving
and gentle people and said they really wanted to help
our family, and they did. They spent nights there investigating.
Lorraine was very religious. She definitely involved prayer in it.
(14:10):
I just remember being embarrassed and thinking, oh my gosh,
if people at school find out that these ghost centers
are in my house, it's going to be so you know,
I'm going to be made fun of. So I remember
I kind of had a little bit of a chip
on my shoulder.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
I had an attitude, but they were they were lovely.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
A lot of people ask if they took money from
our family, and they did not. They said that they
don't take from people that are experiencing true hauntings that
need help. So I had a positive experience with them.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And they were from Connecticut originally, weren't they.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Yeah, they're from Monroe, Connecticut, which is I was from
sort of central Connecticut. They were from more southwest in
Fairfield County, so maybe an hour and a half or
two hours.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Away from where I was.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Our home is still there, even though they've both passed away.
But yeah, they were Connecticut natives and Catholic, and I
was raised in an Irish Catholic family, so I think
my mom when she made that call, really connected with that.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Well. Tell us about some of those scary things that
have happened to you when you're on some of these tours.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Sure, so there's no predicting. Some tours just go by
like a normal storytelling event. Other tours go by and
I will be looking at my guests and there's one
time and I remember it really threw me during the tour.
I was standing in the cemetery and I was telling
the story of a Revolutionary War soldier who actually died
(15:43):
in an attack from Benedict Arnold.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
And I was looking at all.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Of my guests as I always do, making eye contact,
engaging with them, and I looked at this one man
and I was sort of smiled at him while I
was talking, and tried to get him to smile back,
and he he had this very stern expression and sort
of these dark eyes, and so I just moved on
to the next person. And then it sort of hit me,
like an epiphany, that the man I had just been
(16:10):
looking at wasn't someone who had been on the tour
prior to that point. He wasn't someone I had checked
in upon arrival. He wasn't someone that was dressed like
everyone else. And I looked back to see him and
he wasn't there. There was an open space as if
the guests had felt him there, but he wasn't there.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
And guests got.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Pictures later of what appeared to be a figure on
that tour.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
And I started, you.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Know, going over my words, like I am now like
over and over thinking, I'm repeating myself. I'm stumbling over everything.
It was because I felt like I had looked at
that man in the face, and then people had gathered
evidence of it on camera, and they had left a
space for him, And that was just in the middle
of me telling his story on a tour.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
How many tours are there around the country.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
I could not tell you exactly how many I know now,
you know, when I was younger, it used to be
major tourist hubs had them. Now almost every major city
in America has them, as well as several small towns.
Many are run by small companies, historical societies, people like
me who just love ghosts in history and love to
(17:23):
write the books. There are some national chains that have
opened up, and they've added a lot of locations to
sort of the ghost tour industry as it were, But
that's also added a lot of controversy to our particular
sect of tourism as well.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Have you ever had anybody on your tour that breaks
down and starts crying?
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yes, Oh my gosh, Yes, I've had people cry. I've
had people leave. We've been on tours where lights have flickered,
We've been on tours where people have sworn something has
touched them. And they start crying and they say, I'm sorry,
I can't do this.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
We had one girl leave the tour.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
She came with the Coastguard Academy cheerleading team. She left
almost as soon as it began, after her group took
a photo.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Left in tears.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
We looked at the photo later, and sure enough, there
was a man looking over her shoulder and the group photo,
peering out from the trees.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
And it had been a.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Tour of entirely girls, and she must have felt something
and she didn't know what it was, but she ran
right out.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
Of that tour.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Was it a ghostly apparition?
Speaker 3 (18:32):
It appeared to be, because there's no one else who
could be, And it just looks sort of like this
strange face looking out of the trees at her.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back, George Nori with you. Courtney mcin bail back
with us. Founder of the Seaside Shadows Haunted History tours
in Southern Shadows. A published author, She's got several books out,
including Civil War Ghosts of Connecticut Civil War Ghosts of Georgia,
Volumes one and two. She's a former US government investigator
with the background in international relations. Courtney blends her expertise
(00:29):
and historical research and true hauntings to bring authentic stories
to life. Courtney, welcome back to the program. Thanks George,
looking forward to this. What did you investigate for the
government if you could tell us?
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Sure, I actually worked for the Department of Justice in
counter terrorism, so I worked closely with human assets.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Are there scary things that we really don't even know
about as public?
Speaker 4 (00:55):
I think so.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
But I also think that we are aware of more
than the government lets us know we're aware of. There's
not as many secrets as we think.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Now, that's true, and I guess now knowledge is even better,
isn't it. Oh?
Speaker 4 (01:12):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
I mean I sometimes think I have more capabilities outside
the government to acquire information than I did when I
was in it.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Now, how did you make that shift to the world
of haunted history and the strange and unusual paranormal.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
So I grew up in a house that was sort
of plagued with a lot of unexplained activity, and when
I was a teenager, the Warrens came to investigate. But
because I lived in a small town, I was kind
of embarrassed by.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
All of that.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
And when I went to college, I did everything I
could to avoid sort of being looked at as the
weird person who had ghosts in our house. So I
studied international relations, I worked for the government, and then
when I was working for the government, I actually found
that I just really wasn't a nine five sort of
office kind of person. I still had all these questions
(02:04):
about there being more to the world. I had a
love for history, and I met someone who was actually
living in Vermont at the time, and I was doing
an assignment there, and it was a woman named Theo Lewis,
and she ran ghost tours and wrote haunted history and
I was so inspired by her and had lunch with her,
and she encouraged me that I could do the same
(02:26):
in my home state, and that's where I started.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Did you ever figure out how the house got so haunted?
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Yeah, there were.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Quite a few things. I tell everyone, it was a
perfect storm. There was definitely Native American burial near the site.
And then also my father was working at the time.
He was a police officer, but he was also self
employed with something called post mortem cleanup where he helped
sort of clean up after homicides and suicides, and there
(02:56):
was some belief that some things also sort of attached
themselves through position and came to the house.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
He had probably one of the worst jobs out there.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
You know that.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yes, Yes, it's so depressing and so difficult, and I
think it was hard on him, and I do think
spiritually there were definitely attachments of some kind.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I knew a guy who did the same thing as
your dad did out of Saint Louis, and he just
hated it. He got paid well, but he just hated.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
The job right right, And it's definitely a niche thing.
And I think, you know, my dad thought he was
someone because of his police work that would be able
to handle it. But it's probably more than anyone could imagine.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Tell me, about Chickamunga, Georgia.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Yeah, so Chickamaugat.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
That's actually where I'm sitting right now. It's in the
northwest corner of Georgia, sort of the foothills of Appalachia,
and it is the site of the second bloodiest battle
in the Civil War, second only to Gettysburg. I'm actually
looking at the battlefield as we speak, over thirty thousand
casualties in a period of two days, and it has
(04:04):
just become a place immersed in legend and lore and
haunted stories. And that's where we're going to be starting
Southern Shadows in the next few weeks.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
A lot of Civil War action that way too, isn't there.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Yes, So Chickamauga.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
The battle was in eighteen sixty three in September, and
that's the second deadliest battle in the Civil War.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
What is it, Courtney about trauma that creates so many
paranormal activities.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
That's a really good question too. I think a lot
of it has to.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Do with our energy. I've spoken with park rangers at
a lot of these battle sites as well, and they
think a lot of the pain and anguish and fear
that comes in a battle is so strong that it
permeates sort of into the energy of the earth and
the air around it, so much so that that area
is never the same. Now, some people think that makes
(04:59):
it a port. Other people think that it's the energy
of what happens that stays with there. But because of
the absolute just all those big emotions and feelings of
pain and fear and anger happening in such a rapid
moment and in such great number, there's something that changes
in the energy of that region when it happens.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
And now where did you start Seaside Shadows.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Seaside Shadows started in Mystic, Connecticut. I'm from Connecticut, my
mom is too. My dad's from Georgia, so that explains
why I'm sort of having tours in both locations for
both sides of my family. Seaside Shadows is on the
shoreline and Mystic, so kind of opposite to the mountains
of northwest Georgia. But shoreline Mystic where we feature the
(05:46):
old sea captain's shipping history, everything that has to do
with pirates and the shipwrecks and the Revolutionary War specifically,
there is what we feature with Seaside Shadows.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
We'll come back to that in a moment, but tell
us a compelling ghost story from the Civil War Ghosts
of Georgia.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
So, there are so many ghost stories when it comes
to Georgia, and it's hard to narrow them down. Where
I am right now, there's a famous legend called green Eye,
so much so that they even have a festival about
it where the story goes that because Chickamauga sits on
a river called the River of Death, that is what
(06:27):
Chickamauga means. They was believed that there was this Native
American sort of spiritual energy that would come and consume
parts of people and the souls of people when they died,
and when there would be big diseases around the Native Americans,
that this creature would surface. When the Battle of Chickamauga happened,
(06:48):
suddenly soldiers reported seeing sort of these green eyes in
the distance and it would be swooping over souls. Now
I found that really interesting because people thought it was green,
but then it started to appear human like. And there's
a road on the battlefield called the Glen Kelly Road,
and people report that a man walks down the road
(07:08):
with scraggly hair.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
He asks for a ride.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
You stop and he says nothing, and when you drive by,
a big grin engulfs his face and he vanishes into
the trees, and they swear they see green eyes as
he vanishes.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
There's a moral to the story. Don't pick up a
guy who doesn't say anything.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Right, that's right, that's right. You just keep driving.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Moving if pete, don't bother me. Now, just keep going,
that's right. Have you heard of a haunted story of
a woman dressed in white? Yes, for truck drivers seeing
him on the side of the road and stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Yes, she's very famous.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
She's kind of known as the hitchhiking ghost or the
Lady in White, and she comes in many different carnations.
Even Chickamauga has a lady in white that is believed
to be a grieving widow of some kind. But most
of the time when the Lady in White appears, she's
on the side of the road. She asks for a ride,
she vanishes from the backseat, and if you speak to
(08:09):
the person who resides where you were dropping her off,
they usually say, oh, that's so and so. She died however,
many years ago, and it's become quite a famous ghost story,
with sightings all across the country, and the Lady in
White has several legends. I know of one in Connecticut
called Midnight Mary, where she was a real woman who
(08:32):
passed away and people swore they.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
Gave her a ride.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
An elderly man answered the door and said he didn't
know anything about her, but the people that lived there
before were her family, and supposedly she still pops up
at midnight. People say not to give Midnight Mary a ride.
So the Lady in White, the hitchhiking ghosts. There's whole
books written about that particular phenomena.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
There's a movie that from nineteen eighty eight called The
Lady in White. Does that have anything to do with
the real paranormal issue?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Oh? I haven't seen it? It very well might?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I know?
Speaker 3 (09:03):
There's lots of films in popular media. If there's a
show called Supernatural that ran for years, and I believe
the pilot episode or one of the first episodes is
all about the Lady in White. So it's something that
definitely popular culture has pulled onto and made it even
more well known.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, rented Lady in White. I'd love to get your
views on it.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
I will, I will.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
When you got into any of this, you were an
investigator with as you just said, the Department of Justice.
Did that help your skills?
Speaker 4 (09:40):
I think it did for me.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
When I look at stories ghost stories, I find them,
of course as fun to listen to by campfire as anyone,
and I love getting spooked. But what I always found
made it the most compelling is if it matched actual history.
If it matched actual people and actually li events and
things that would say, hey, maybe this really is something
(10:04):
that's going on, Maybe there really is a ghost of
this person that could pop up out of nowhere.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
And I use sort of all the investigative skills.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I got at the FBI Academy and beyond to make
sure that I was making stories that I wrote and
put into the tours commensurate with history. I didn't want
it just to be a ghost story with no founding,
or a ghost story someone told me.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
I wanted it to match with real events.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
And using that sort of investigative knowledge has made me
really be able to do that and to easily debunk
or not debunk evidence as it were, when it gets presented.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Let's talk about your tours. The first one, of course,
seaside shuttels. What do people get when they go on it?
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Sure, so on all of our tours we try to
give everyone an immersive experience where they step back in
time and they can imagine the current Mystic, Connecticut or
Westerly Rhode Island or Chickamauga as it used to be,
and as they set back in time, they're hopefully getting
those glimpses of the past by way of ghosts. We
(11:09):
bring ghost hunting devices K two meters that people can
try out dowsing rods, teach people how to use them,
especially when we're in an intimate environment like a graveyard
or a haunted location, and we tell people the true
stories of the history of the mystery as we like
to call it, and show people evidence that guests have captured,
(11:31):
and we sort of have this two hour immersive storytelling
experience mixed with ghost hunting.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Do you drive them around?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Ours are all walking tours right now. We are adding
some boat tours actually and an old fireboat in Mystic,
and we're also adding some vehicle tours so that we
can get to areas that not everyone can walk to
because there's some pretty unique stuff, especially up in Mystic.
We found an old speak Easy that will be featuring nearby.
(12:00):
There's also the site where Amelia Earhart got married. That
has some spooky stuff, So we want to start bringing
people out that way, and same in Chickamauga will be
walking through the town. There's a haunted mansion, haunted springs,
a haunted old courthouse location. But we want to be
able to bring people through the battlefield as well and
show them where some of these legends were born.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Have you heard of David Politis. No, David Politis is
an investigator who has written a book called Missing for
One One.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
Well, I've heard of that, that documentary. I think I
watched it on hululeg a Vision.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Yes, people in parks just disappear. Yeah, parents with their
little kids, they're walking, the kids behind them, they turn around,
they're not there anymore. They're gone.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Yeah. It's scary.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
And I can tell you, even as someone who frequents
national parks, sometimes I'll be in an area where I
think I am completely alone, it's just me and the deer,
and then suddenly someone you know, comes out from the
woods and it doesn't even look like.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
A trail and they are alive.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
But you're thinking, where on earth did they come from?
How did this connect? It's a little bit spooky.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Do you remember when the Warrens came to your house
in Connecticut?
Speaker 4 (13:14):
I do.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
I was fifteen years old, so I remember it very well.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Were they scary They weren't.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
I was probably scary because I was an angry teenager
and I remember them coming. They really wanted to help,
you see. Prior to them their arrival, my mother had
called priests and pastors, and all of them had sort
of given up on helping our family, saying that it
was too spooky, it was beyond their abilities.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
And so when my mom called the Warrens, ed had
been ill.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
So Lorraine really took charge of the case, and she
was very kind to my family. And they came with
their team and they talked with us, and they went
through the house and they were just the most loving
and gentle people and said they really wanted to help
our family, and they did. They spent nights there investigating.
Lorraine was very religious. She definitely involved prayer in it.
(14:10):
I just remember being embarrassed and thinking, oh my gosh,
if people at school find out that these ghost centers
are in my house, it's going to be so you know,
I'm going to be made fun of. So I remember
I kind of had a little bit of a chip
on my shoulder.
Speaker 4 (14:24):
I had an attitude, but they were they were lovely.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
A lot of people ask if they took money from
our family, and they did not. They said that they
don't take from people that are experiencing true hauntings that
need help. So I had a positive experience with them.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And they were from Connecticut originally, weren't they.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Yeah, they're from Monroe, Connecticut, which is I was from
sort of central Connecticut. They were from more southwest in
Fairfield County, so maybe an hour and a half or
two hours.
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Away from where I was.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Our home is still there, even though they've both passed away.
But yeah, they were Connecticut natives and Catholic, and I
was raised in an Irish Catholic family, so I think
my mom when she made that call, really connected with that.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Well. Tell us about some of those scary things that
have happened to you when you're on some of these tours.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Sure, so there's no predicting. Some tours just go by
like a normal storytelling event. Other tours go by and
I will be looking at my guests and there's one
time and I remember it really threw me during the tour.
I was standing in the cemetery and I was telling
the story of a Revolutionary War soldier who actually died
(15:43):
in an attack from Benedict Arnold.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
And I was looking at all.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Of my guests as I always do, making eye contact,
engaging with them, and I looked at this one man
and I was sort of smiled at him while I
was talking, and tried to get him to smile back,
and he he had this very stern expression and sort
of these dark eyes, and so I just moved on
to the next person. And then it sort of hit me,
like an epiphany, that the man I had just been
(16:10):
looking at wasn't someone who had been on the tour
prior to that point. He wasn't someone I had checked
in upon arrival. He wasn't someone that was dressed like
everyone else. And I looked back to see him and
he wasn't there. There was an open space as if
the guests had felt him there, but he wasn't there.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
And guests got.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Pictures later of what appeared to be a figure on
that tour.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
And I started, you.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Know, going over my words, like I am now like
over and over thinking, I'm repeating myself. I'm stumbling over everything.
It was because I felt like I had looked at
that man in the face, and then people had gathered
evidence of it on camera, and they had left a
space for him, And that was just in the middle
of me telling his story on a tour.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
How many tours are there around the country.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
I could not tell you exactly how many I know now,
you know, when I was younger, it used to be
major tourist hubs had them. Now almost every major city
in America has them, as well as several small towns.
Many are run by small companies, historical societies, people like
me who just love ghosts in history and love to
(17:23):
write the books. There are some national chains that have
opened up, and they've added a lot of locations to
sort of the ghost tour industry as it were, But
that's also added a lot of controversy to our particular
sect of tourism as well.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Have you ever had anybody on your tour that breaks
down and starts crying?
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yes, Oh my gosh, Yes, I've had people cry. I've
had people leave. We've been on tours where lights have flickered,
We've been on tours where people have sworn something has
touched them. And they start crying and they say, I'm sorry,
I can't do this.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
We had one girl leave the tour.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
She came with the Coastguard Academy cheerleading team. She left
almost as soon as it began, after her group took
a photo.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
Left in tears.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
We looked at the photo later, and sure enough, there
was a man looking over her shoulder and the group photo,
peering out from the trees.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
And it had been a.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Tour of entirely girls, and she must have felt something
and she didn't know what it was, but she ran
right out.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
Of that tour.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Was it a ghostly apparition?
Speaker 3 (18:32):
It appeared to be, because there's no one else who
could be, And it just looks sort of like this
strange face looking out of the trees at her.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
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