July 30, 2025 • 19 mins
George Noory and author Leslie Rule explore her research into ghosts and the tragic events that lead to hauntings, growing up in a haunted house, and shares stories of a ghost at a Christmas party, a haunted roller coaster, and the crying ghost of a little boy who drowned.
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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 Noriy with You.
Author Leslie Rule with Us was born in Seattle grew
up in a haunted house. She has written dozens of
articles for national magazines, including features on ghosts for Readers Digest.
A couple of her books include Ghosts among Us, Coast
to Coast Ghosts, and Haunted in America. Leslie, welcome back
(00:26):
to the program. How have you been?
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I'm good? How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
George Goodsen? What three years since you were on the
show with our late host Ian Punnett It.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Yes, Ian was a friend of ours, so it's a
shock to have him gone.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh that's that was a sad story. Sad story.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I miss him.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
We all miss him. Lesley. Have you been?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I'm good? Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
How'd you get involved in ghost hunting?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Well?
Speaker 4 (00:54):
I've always been interested because I grew up in a
haunted house and so I always had this fascination with it.
But when I grew up, I wanted to prove to
myself that they existed, because we'd had our own experiences.
But I wanted to see proof, so I set out
to try to validate ghost sightings, and I did this.
(01:16):
I started in the nineteen nineties, and my plan was
to go to haunted places where apparitions had been seen
and then do historical research and dive deep into the
archives and find cases of tragedies that occurred in or
near the vicinity with victims who resembled the apparitions being seen.
(01:38):
And I didn't know if it was going to work
out or not, but I found a surprising number of
real stories that matched the haunted scenarios.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
How haunted was your house?
Speaker 4 (01:51):
It was built on a Native American burial ground, It
was a Puget Sound on a hill windy cliff, and
it was not as haunted as some of the places
I go to now, but we had things happen, like
a sobbing ghost that could actually be heard all through
the neighborhood. And my dad had grown up in the
(02:14):
house and he purchased it from his parents when I
was about five years old. So my mom and dad
would go on the weekends to do some remodeling, and
while they were working, they would hear the phone ring persistently,
and they would walk to the wall where the old
fashioned phone had once been mounted, but it was no
longer there. They were just wires sticking out, and wires,
(02:35):
of course don't ring, and as they stood there, they
would continue to ring, and they weren't afraid to go.
They thought it was really interesting. And I grew up
with the same attitude because that's how my parents perceived it.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Leslie. Have you ever been heard on a ghost investigation.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Never.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
I actually don't go to places that I perceived as dangerous.
If I hear a place isn't involved with curses, or
there's animals dying for no reason, or there seems to
be dark energy or really evil stories associated with it,
(03:18):
I don't research it. I'm looking for the benign hauntings,
which I think most of them are.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Are they easier to find?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Sure? I think so.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
I think that Hollywood and a lot of the TV
shows these days, they seek out scary stories and they'll
actually make a story seem scarier than it is, And
I think that's a disservice to people, because I don't
think we should be afraid of ghosts. I think they're
just people who are earth bound and they no longer
(03:53):
have their bodies, and I really don't think there's anything
to be afraid of.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I think of Chucky the doll.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Like that, that would be scary.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I've never come across a Chucky, although I have investigated
cases of haunted dolls. They're out there, lots of haunted possessions.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
What do you think a ghost is, Well.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
I subscribe to the leading theory that a ghost is
the soul of a person who died.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I think there's different kinds of ghosts.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
The people who are able to move on, but they
stop by to check on us. You might see your
grandma standing by your bed, and she may be perfectly
free to go. She's not ruth bound, but she's watching
over you.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
And then there's the.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Cases where the people seem to be stuck and there's
a feeling of unhappiness and discontent, and I think those
tend to be associated with unresolved issues, especially when they're tragic,
especially murders and suicides.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Leslie tell us about how you go about looking for
haunted places and apparitions.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Well, I started researching in the nineteen nineties, and I
found that almost every place, every city you could go to,
has ghosts, and particularly if a city's on the water,
and I think that may be because those cities were
settled earlier, and so they've had more history, more deaths,
(05:31):
and more ghosts. So I would choose cities all around
the country that I found interesting that I wanted to visit,
and I would go without any preconceived notions.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I like to just show up, book a room in.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
A hotel, and just walk around town and talk to
people and find out about what people were experiencing there.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
How did you always? How did you find these places?
Speaker 4 (05:59):
I would go to the older buildings, and I found
that just one of the very first places I went
at Whitefish, Montana, I was I just arrived there. I
was walking across the street in the middle of the crosswalk.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
I saw a guy and.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
I said, Hey, are there any haunted places around here?
And he said, yeah, they're Remington over here. And that
ended up being one of the first stories in my
first ghost book, Coast to Coast Ghosts.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
And that was a very haunted place, and I.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Was actually able to fulfill my goal of finding a
death that matched something that was being seen there. So
that was very exciting because I wasn't sure if that
would pan out, but there had been quite a few
apparitions seen in the place. It was the Remington Bar
restaurant in Casino, and one night they were having their
(06:50):
their Christmas party and the restaurant was closed and the manager,
a woman by the name of Joey, noticed this older
guy standing on the edge of the crowd and she
didn't wreck recognize him. It wasn't related to any of
the employees, and he was just standing there in a
long overcoat, didn't have a drink, just smiling and watching everybody.
(07:10):
And she looked away for a second and when she
looked back, he was gone. And she was so curious
that she actually ran outside looking and there was no
sign of him, and no one else had seen him.
So first thing I did was after I heard her story,
was I went to the Whitefish Pilot, which was the
old newspaper office in town. And in the nineteen nineties
(07:32):
you couldn't find things online. I didn't even have a
computer yet, and the newspaper articles were usually not archived,
and at least they were archived online. And at the
Whitefish Pilot, I asked about going through their newspapers and
they said, sure, go ahead, and you look around, but
(07:52):
they're not in any order. So I walked into the
back room, and there were stacks and stacks and stacks
of these newspapers that had been put into these booklets,
yellowing newspapers that were crumbling, and I managed to walk
right up to.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
The perfect article. I picked up a book and I
opened it, and the first thing I.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Saw was the story about a man who was killed
seventy six years before.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
The old man appeared at the Remington.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
In fact, he had had his birthday dinner at that
place at the Remington, back when it was Horry's Cafe,
and that was the last time he saw his daughter.
It was a good night for him. But he walked
home afterwards, and he walked along the railroad tracks and
the train came chugging into a whitefish and it rounded
(08:44):
the corner and the driver saw this old man on
the track, and he didn't even have time to react.
It just happened so quickly. He saw the guy turn
toward him, confused because he was blind by the light,
and he was gone in an instant. I'm sure he
didn't suffer, he died instantly, But he, or someone who
(09:08):
looked quite a bit like him, showed up at another
party all those years later. It was seventy six years later,
seventy six years after his seventy fifth birthday that he
celebrated at that very place.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
His name was Marcus Prouse, and.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
His son was actually an editor at the Whitefish Pilot.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Probably in the same garb too, I bet.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I think he probably was.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
That was probably what he was wearing on a winter
night in the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Some of the stories that you've come across at apparitions,
you had one of a little boy tell us about that.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
One the Hotel Conniot.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
Actually I put a few of little boys, but is
this the one you're referring to? The little boy ghost
or the little boy who saw? Okay, So there was
a woman who worked at the Hotel Connia in Pennsylvania,
and she had several people tell her within one week
(10:14):
of seeing this little boy in the lobby and he
was crying. And these people didn't know each other. They
all saw the same thing, and they all described the
same thing, and he.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Would disappear before their eyes. And in one case, this
couple noticed him.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
He was he was crying, and he was standing behind
this woman who was sitting on the couch, and they thought, oh,
how cold.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
His mother's just ignoring him.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
And then the woman got up and walked away, and
they realized that wasn't his mother, and they said, can
we help you, and he said, I'm looking for my mommy.
And the man said, we'll help you find will help
you find your mother, and he held his hand out
to him, and the kid vanished. So I got to
(11:01):
researching to see a child who matched the description. A
little boy five or six years old with dark hair
had died there. And I found a case of a
little boy who drowned in the lake and it was
just a couple hundred feet away from the hotel, and
it happened in.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
The nineteen forties.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
And he was playing on the pier with his siblings
and some other kids, and he'd gotten a brand new
hat for his birthday and it fell off his head
into the water and he reached for it and fell
in and drowned.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Oh nobody was able to save him either.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
No.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Yeah, the kids called for the adults and they couldn't
find him, and rescue workers came and it took a
while to get him and they tried to revive him,
but it was too late. And so I can't say
for certain that's the ghost that's being seen.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
But what was kind of interesting was that a psychic
had told Carrie, the.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Lady who worked at the hotel, that the little boy's
name was Michael. So I was looking for the name Michael. Well,
the little boy who drowned the lake, his name wasn't Michael,
but his mother's maiden name was MacMichael. So it was
really close. And she had worked as a housekeeper, and
(12:24):
so I suspect that she was maybe working at that
hotel and he was looking for her there. I wasn't
able to confirm that, but.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
That's my theory.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
That's a great story.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
I thought it was fascinating and it's very exciting when
I can find that one article that validates what's being seen.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And you've got a story of what's in still out
in Pennsylvania about a haunted roller coaster.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
That was the same place.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
It was the Blue Streak roller coaster at the right
next to the hotel Conniac.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
It was.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
A wooden roller coaster that was built in the nineteen thirties.
And when I stayed at the place, I walked around.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I always do this. I just walk around and I
talked to people.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
And there was it was kind of a quiet night,
and I talked to the roller coaster operator and I
asked him if he'd ever seen a ghost or knew
anybody who had there, And he told me about the
night that he was working and when the roller coaster
finished its ride and it was empty and it was
(13:36):
rolling up for him to grab so that he could
put people in it, and malfunctioned and it rolled right
past him and he and went into an area they
called the skunk tunnel, and so he went to retrieve it,
and he stopped short because there in the middle of
the tracks was a little girl glowing standing there, and
(13:57):
she was wearing a dress that fell mid calf, so
it looked like it was from another period of time.
He was terrified, and he never went back in there
after that.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
He refused to.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
But in that case I researched, and the only I
couldn't find a death of a little girl on those tracks.
I found three men who died in the nineteen forties.
A couple of them stood up, they're drunk. One mysteriously
just disappeared from his seat. His companion said that the
(14:33):
seat belt was on and when the guy went flying out,
the seat belt was still snapped together. So that was
their claim was that he was wearing it, but no
one can say it this late date. But I think
that it's possible that this machine was using recycled parts
(14:55):
from other roller coasters, because I know that in right
around two thousand and four, right before I had visited there,
they had done some work on it and they had
gotten a hold of a couple of the old original cars.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
And I don't know that it came.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
From another city, but that's one of my theories that
possibly the little girl was attached to a ride in
another city and possibly died there.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
What makes these places Leslie's so haunted?
Speaker 4 (15:32):
I think that the places where a lot of people
have come and gone, where there have been thousands and
thousands of people, there's always going to be tragedies, There's
always going to be deaths, and.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I think it just goes with life.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
There's going to be things that happened, traumatic deaths, unfortunately,
and that tends to be the most common cause of
paranormal activity. That's the theory, that's what the leading theory
is that murder, suicide, accidents, unresolved issues can result in
(16:12):
earthbound ghosts.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
How many people do you think you've interviewed regarding ghosts.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
A few hundred and I haven't, of course, had room
to put all the stories in my books. But I
find it really interesting and I just love to talk
to people about their experiences. And I'm really curious, so
I ask a lot of questions. I want to know
exactly what they saw, what the ghosts looked like, and
did they speak, and what were their clothes like. And
(16:43):
I have a pretty good idea of the pattern.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Now, what people see, it's pretty dramatic.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
They see a lot of reflections and mirrors.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
I hear, yes, that tends to be one of the
most commonplaces that they appear.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
They see.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
I see this common pattern with that, Like almost everybody
who had a sighting of a ghost in the mirror
told me that. First of all, they'd be looking in
the mirror, walking past the mirror, and they would see
what appeared to be somebody standing behind them, and they
turn around, no one would be there, and then they
would turn back and the apparition would continue to remain
(17:23):
in the mirror.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Are they dangerous?
Speaker 3 (17:29):
I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
I'm you know, I don't I don't explore the dark stuff,
and I know that bad things happen. And you know,
some people are looking for the you know, the demon related.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Stuff, but I steer clear of that stuff.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
And I see a ghost as being more like a
like a trapped animal that needs our caring and our
nurturing and needs to be treated kindly.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
And as you know, it's a cliche, but.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
As the ask, if somebody appears to be stuck, ask
them to go to the light, oh.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Say, I prayer for them.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
I in my experience, it hasn't been frightening.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
And I've stayed in a lot of haunted hotels.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Have you been lucky, because a lot of people, Lesley
get scared to death.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Well, when I started out doing this, I said, I'm
not going to be scared.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
And I have gotten chill sometimes. And I did actually.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Have one time when I felt a fear and I
don't know why, but it was at the Thornwood.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Castle in the Tacoma.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Washington area, and that was the location where they filmed
Stephen King's movie Rose Red and I stayed there a
couple times, and it's it's a pretty haunted place. But
I was taking some photos in the hallway and I
had brought this old doll to pose in the pictures
(19:08):
to just create a little flavor in the pictures, and
she ended up being on the cover of my book,
not a haunted doll, but just an old, creepy looking
doll because I like to do artistic black and white photos.
And while I was photographing her, I had this sensation
that people had described to me a number of times,
and that was I felt like somebody was behind me
(19:29):
and watching me, and I never understood it until I
experienced it myself and I turned around. There was no
one there, but the feeling stayed, and it was really unsettling.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
I wasn't terrified, but I did feel kind of scared.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
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):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Noriy with You.
Author Leslie Rule with Us was born in Seattle grew
up in a haunted house. She has written dozens of
articles for national magazines, including features on ghosts for Readers Digest.
A couple of her books include Ghosts among Us, Coast
to Coast Ghosts, and Haunted in America. Leslie, welcome back
(00:26):
to the program. How have you been?
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I'm good? How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
George Goodsen? What three years since you were on the
show with our late host Ian Punnett It.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Yes, Ian was a friend of ours, so it's a
shock to have him gone.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Oh that's that was a sad story. Sad story.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I miss him.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
We all miss him. Lesley. Have you been?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I'm good? Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
How'd you get involved in ghost hunting?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Well?
Speaker 4 (00:54):
I've always been interested because I grew up in a
haunted house and so I always had this fascination with it.
But when I grew up, I wanted to prove to
myself that they existed, because we'd had our own experiences.
But I wanted to see proof, so I set out
to try to validate ghost sightings, and I did this.
(01:16):
I started in the nineteen nineties, and my plan was
to go to haunted places where apparitions had been seen
and then do historical research and dive deep into the
archives and find cases of tragedies that occurred in or
near the vicinity with victims who resembled the apparitions being seen.
(01:38):
And I didn't know if it was going to work
out or not, but I found a surprising number of
real stories that matched the haunted scenarios.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
How haunted was your house?
Speaker 4 (01:51):
It was built on a Native American burial ground, It
was a Puget Sound on a hill windy cliff, and
it was not as haunted as some of the places
I go to now, but we had things happen, like
a sobbing ghost that could actually be heard all through
the neighborhood. And my dad had grown up in the
(02:14):
house and he purchased it from his parents when I
was about five years old. So my mom and dad
would go on the weekends to do some remodeling, and
while they were working, they would hear the phone ring persistently,
and they would walk to the wall where the old
fashioned phone had once been mounted, but it was no
longer there. They were just wires sticking out, and wires,
(02:35):
of course don't ring, and as they stood there, they
would continue to ring, and they weren't afraid to go.
They thought it was really interesting. And I grew up
with the same attitude because that's how my parents perceived it.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Leslie. Have you ever been heard on a ghost investigation.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Never.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
I actually don't go to places that I perceived as dangerous.
If I hear a place isn't involved with curses, or
there's animals dying for no reason, or there seems to
be dark energy or really evil stories associated with it,
(03:18):
I don't research it. I'm looking for the benign hauntings,
which I think most of them are.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Are they easier to find?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Sure? I think so.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
I think that Hollywood and a lot of the TV
shows these days, they seek out scary stories and they'll
actually make a story seem scarier than it is, And
I think that's a disservice to people, because I don't
think we should be afraid of ghosts. I think they're
just people who are earth bound and they no longer
(03:53):
have their bodies, and I really don't think there's anything
to be afraid of.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I think of Chucky the doll.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Like that, that would be scary.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I've never come across a Chucky, although I have investigated
cases of haunted dolls. They're out there, lots of haunted possessions.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
What do you think a ghost is, Well.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
I subscribe to the leading theory that a ghost is
the soul of a person who died.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I think there's different kinds of ghosts.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
The people who are able to move on, but they
stop by to check on us. You might see your
grandma standing by your bed, and she may be perfectly
free to go. She's not ruth bound, but she's watching
over you.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
And then there's the.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Cases where the people seem to be stuck and there's
a feeling of unhappiness and discontent, and I think those
tend to be associated with unresolved issues, especially when they're tragic,
especially murders and suicides.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Leslie tell us about how you go about looking for
haunted places and apparitions.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Well, I started researching in the nineteen nineties, and I
found that almost every place, every city you could go to,
has ghosts, and particularly if a city's on the water,
and I think that may be because those cities were
settled earlier, and so they've had more history, more deaths,
(05:31):
and more ghosts. So I would choose cities all around
the country that I found interesting that I wanted to visit,
and I would go without any preconceived notions.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
I like to just show up, book a room in.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
A hotel, and just walk around town and talk to
people and find out about what people were experiencing there.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
How did you always? How did you find these places?
Speaker 4 (05:59):
I would go to the older buildings, and I found
that just one of the very first places I went
at Whitefish, Montana, I was I just arrived there. I
was walking across the street in the middle of the crosswalk.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
I saw a guy and.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
I said, Hey, are there any haunted places around here?
And he said, yeah, they're Remington over here. And that
ended up being one of the first stories in my
first ghost book, Coast to Coast Ghosts.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
And that was a very haunted place, and I.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Was actually able to fulfill my goal of finding a
death that matched something that was being seen there. So
that was very exciting because I wasn't sure if that
would pan out, but there had been quite a few
apparitions seen in the place. It was the Remington Bar
restaurant in Casino, and one night they were having their
(06:50):
their Christmas party and the restaurant was closed and the manager,
a woman by the name of Joey, noticed this older
guy standing on the edge of the crowd and she
didn't wreck recognize him. It wasn't related to any of
the employees, and he was just standing there in a
long overcoat, didn't have a drink, just smiling and watching everybody.
(07:10):
And she looked away for a second and when she
looked back, he was gone. And she was so curious
that she actually ran outside looking and there was no
sign of him, and no one else had seen him.
So first thing I did was after I heard her story,
was I went to the Whitefish Pilot, which was the
old newspaper office in town. And in the nineteen nineties
(07:32):
you couldn't find things online. I didn't even have a
computer yet, and the newspaper articles were usually not archived,
and at least they were archived online. And at the
Whitefish Pilot, I asked about going through their newspapers and
they said, sure, go ahead, and you look around, but
(07:52):
they're not in any order. So I walked into the
back room, and there were stacks and stacks and stacks
of these newspapers that had been put into these booklets,
yellowing newspapers that were crumbling, and I managed to walk
right up to.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
The perfect article. I picked up a book and I
opened it, and the first thing I.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Saw was the story about a man who was killed
seventy six years before.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
The old man appeared at the Remington.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
In fact, he had had his birthday dinner at that
place at the Remington, back when it was Horry's Cafe,
and that was the last time he saw his daughter.
It was a good night for him. But he walked
home afterwards, and he walked along the railroad tracks and
the train came chugging into a whitefish and it rounded
(08:44):
the corner and the driver saw this old man on
the track, and he didn't even have time to react.
It just happened so quickly. He saw the guy turn
toward him, confused because he was blind by the light,
and he was gone in an instant. I'm sure he
didn't suffer, he died instantly, But he, or someone who
(09:08):
looked quite a bit like him, showed up at another
party all those years later. It was seventy six years later,
seventy six years after his seventy fifth birthday that he
celebrated at that very place.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
His name was Marcus Prouse, and.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
His son was actually an editor at the Whitefish Pilot.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Probably in the same garb too, I bet.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
I think he probably was.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
That was probably what he was wearing on a winter
night in the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Some of the stories that you've come across at apparitions,
you had one of a little boy tell us about that.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
One the Hotel Conniot.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
Actually I put a few of little boys, but is
this the one you're referring to? The little boy ghost
or the little boy who saw? Okay, So there was
a woman who worked at the Hotel Connia in Pennsylvania,
and she had several people tell her within one week
(10:14):
of seeing this little boy in the lobby and he
was crying. And these people didn't know each other. They
all saw the same thing, and they all described the
same thing, and he.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Would disappear before their eyes. And in one case, this
couple noticed him.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
He was he was crying, and he was standing behind
this woman who was sitting on the couch, and they thought, oh,
how cold.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
His mother's just ignoring him.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
And then the woman got up and walked away, and
they realized that wasn't his mother, and they said, can
we help you, and he said, I'm looking for my mommy.
And the man said, we'll help you find will help
you find your mother, and he held his hand out
to him, and the kid vanished. So I got to
(11:01):
researching to see a child who matched the description. A
little boy five or six years old with dark hair
had died there. And I found a case of a
little boy who drowned in the lake and it was
just a couple hundred feet away from the hotel, and
it happened in.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
The nineteen forties.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
And he was playing on the pier with his siblings
and some other kids, and he'd gotten a brand new
hat for his birthday and it fell off his head
into the water and he reached for it and fell
in and drowned.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Oh nobody was able to save him either.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
No.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Yeah, the kids called for the adults and they couldn't
find him, and rescue workers came and it took a
while to get him and they tried to revive him,
but it was too late. And so I can't say
for certain that's the ghost that's being seen.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
But what was kind of interesting was that a psychic
had told Carrie, the.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Lady who worked at the hotel, that the little boy's
name was Michael. So I was looking for the name Michael. Well,
the little boy who drowned the lake, his name wasn't Michael,
but his mother's maiden name was MacMichael. So it was
really close. And she had worked as a housekeeper, and
(12:24):
so I suspect that she was maybe working at that
hotel and he was looking for her there. I wasn't
able to confirm that, but.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
That's my theory.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
That's a great story.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
I thought it was fascinating and it's very exciting when
I can find that one article that validates what's being seen.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And you've got a story of what's in still out
in Pennsylvania about a haunted roller coaster.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
That was the same place.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
It was the Blue Streak roller coaster at the right
next to the hotel Conniac.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
It was.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
A wooden roller coaster that was built in the nineteen thirties.
And when I stayed at the place, I walked around.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I always do this. I just walk around and I
talked to people.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
And there was it was kind of a quiet night,
and I talked to the roller coaster operator and I
asked him if he'd ever seen a ghost or knew
anybody who had there, And he told me about the
night that he was working and when the roller coaster
finished its ride and it was empty and it was
(13:36):
rolling up for him to grab so that he could
put people in it, and malfunctioned and it rolled right
past him and he and went into an area they
called the skunk tunnel, and so he went to retrieve it,
and he stopped short because there in the middle of
the tracks was a little girl glowing standing there, and
(13:57):
she was wearing a dress that fell mid calf, so
it looked like it was from another period of time.
He was terrified, and he never went back in there
after that.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
He refused to.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
But in that case I researched, and the only I
couldn't find a death of a little girl on those tracks.
I found three men who died in the nineteen forties.
A couple of them stood up, they're drunk. One mysteriously
just disappeared from his seat. His companion said that the
(14:33):
seat belt was on and when the guy went flying out,
the seat belt was still snapped together. So that was
their claim was that he was wearing it, but no
one can say it this late date. But I think
that it's possible that this machine was using recycled parts
(14:55):
from other roller coasters, because I know that in right
around two thousand and four, right before I had visited there,
they had done some work on it and they had
gotten a hold of a couple of the old original cars.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
And I don't know that it came.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
From another city, but that's one of my theories that
possibly the little girl was attached to a ride in
another city and possibly died there.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
What makes these places Leslie's so haunted?
Speaker 4 (15:32):
I think that the places where a lot of people
have come and gone, where there have been thousands and
thousands of people, there's always going to be tragedies, There's
always going to be deaths, and.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I think it just goes with life.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
There's going to be things that happened, traumatic deaths, unfortunately,
and that tends to be the most common cause of
paranormal activity. That's the theory, that's what the leading theory
is that murder, suicide, accidents, unresolved issues can result in
(16:12):
earthbound ghosts.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
How many people do you think you've interviewed regarding ghosts.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
A few hundred and I haven't, of course, had room
to put all the stories in my books. But I
find it really interesting and I just love to talk
to people about their experiences. And I'm really curious, so
I ask a lot of questions. I want to know
exactly what they saw, what the ghosts looked like, and
did they speak, and what were their clothes like. And
(16:43):
I have a pretty good idea of the pattern.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Now, what people see, it's pretty dramatic.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
They see a lot of reflections and mirrors.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
I hear, yes, that tends to be one of the
most commonplaces that they appear.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
They see.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
I see this common pattern with that, Like almost everybody
who had a sighting of a ghost in the mirror
told me that. First of all, they'd be looking in
the mirror, walking past the mirror, and they would see
what appeared to be somebody standing behind them, and they
turn around, no one would be there, and then they
would turn back and the apparition would continue to remain
(17:23):
in the mirror.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Are they dangerous?
Speaker 3 (17:29):
I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
I'm you know, I don't I don't explore the dark stuff,
and I know that bad things happen. And you know,
some people are looking for the you know, the demon related.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Stuff, but I steer clear of that stuff.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
And I see a ghost as being more like a
like a trapped animal that needs our caring and our
nurturing and needs to be treated kindly.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
And as you know, it's a cliche, but.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
As the ask, if somebody appears to be stuck, ask
them to go to the light, oh.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Say, I prayer for them.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
I in my experience, it hasn't been frightening.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
And I've stayed in a lot of haunted hotels.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Have you been lucky, because a lot of people, Lesley
get scared to death.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Well, when I started out doing this, I said, I'm
not going to be scared.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
And I have gotten chill sometimes. And I did actually.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Have one time when I felt a fear and I
don't know why, but it was at the Thornwood.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Castle in the Tacoma.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Washington area, and that was the location where they filmed
Stephen King's movie Rose Red and I stayed there a
couple times, and it's it's a pretty haunted place. But
I was taking some photos in the hallway and I
had brought this old doll to pose in the pictures
(19:08):
to just create a little flavor in the pictures, and
she ended up being on the cover of my book,
not a haunted doll, but just an old, creepy looking
doll because I like to do artistic black and white photos.
And while I was photographing her, I had this sensation
that people had described to me a number of times,
and that was I felt like somebody was behind me
(19:29):
and watching me, and I never understood it until I
experienced it myself and I turned around. There was no
one there, but the feeling stayed, and it was really unsettling.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
I wasn't terrified, but I did feel kind of scared.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
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