April 22, 2024 • 16 mins
Guest Host George Knapp and Paranormal researcher Richard Estep discuss the haunting and history of Ashmore Estates.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Richard Estepp again, I was impressed by the history of
Ashmore Estates that you put together a that it was
so progressive it seems for its time of where you know,
the residents of that part of Illinois pitched in, put
up money, took care of people who couldn't take care
of themselves. Pretty impressive that they did that back then,
because I'm not sure the taxpayers in that area would
(00:27):
be willing to spend that kind of money to do
the same thing now. And secondly, impressed by the historical
research that you did about just the impressive history of
what went on there. It strikes me that a lot
of people who have exploited the supposed history of the
area didn't do the same kind of research that you did.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Thank you very much, Georgin. I'd like to say that,
like any rights, from standing on the shoulders of a
whole bunch of other people when I do this stuff,
so research is like Julie Vasquez and others that have
been to Ashmore and just and have fallen in love
with the place did a lot of the legwork and
they left that research available for any anybody that was
(01:07):
trying to tell the story openly. You know, it's not
like this stuff is a secret, and I really appreciate
the fact that they work to bring that stuff to light.
Now I'm not gonna I'm not going to sugarcoat the
whole location. Bad things happened there. There was trauma and
we can talk about some of that. There were accidents,
you know, illness. I mean, the place survived the Great
(01:29):
Influenza pandemics as well, so there were plenty of depths.
And one of the tragedies I think is there is
a unique cemetery for the Coles County portfil which is
now Ashmore Estates, and it's not accessible because it's on
private land that is about a mile away from Ashmore Estates.
(01:51):
The graves there are kind of overgrown, some of them
are difficult to make out. It's inaccessible to anybody but
the landowner. And so there's a real danger of these
names and these people being forgotten. And that hugged at
my heart strings. Is I think you would at anybody.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Are there unmarked graves. You anticipate that there are places
that aren't.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Mark at all. There are we can almost guarantee this
because there are accounts from one of the superintendent's daughters
who when she was a little girl, had very distinct
and vivid memories of seeing men digging in what is
now a cornfield fairly close to the main building itself,
(02:35):
doing what appeared to be burials, and there are no
markers left, so it's known that there is more than
one cemetery, and only one of them really has Marcus.
You can guarantee that there are bodies out there in
what is now farming fields.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
So for something to qualify as sort of a paranormal hotspot,
do you generally need an underpinning of evil, like, you know,
people murdered there or tortured, or is it enough just
to have a lot of people who died in a
building or location to turn it into sort of a
spiritual gathering spot.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
You know, when you get these sources of great tragedy,
of course you have the possibility of a haunting, but
also there's the fact that there's all that positive, strong,
good family energy as well. When I started investigating the
paranormal in the mid nineties in the UK where I
come from, a lot of the cases I investigated were
these old stately homes where people just loved them a
(03:27):
lot during their lifetime, and that love seemed to keep
a piece of them behind. George, you know, there was
nothing scary, there was nothing dark or negative. You just
had remnants. I think of a human personality that seems
to have survived death or splintered off at the moment
of death. Paranormal enthusiasts love debating exactly how this stuff works,
(03:48):
whether it's a disembodied consciousness or whatever. But I think
at a place like Ashmore State, you have both. You know,
you have a number of terribly deaths, such as the
young girl Elder Skinner, who suffered ultimately life ending burns
when a candle accidentally set fire to her night dress,
(04:12):
you know. And you have Joe Bloxam, who was the handyman,
and he was an older gentleman, especially in each gentleman,
and he was hit by a train with life threatening injuries.
A get Samarad and brought him back to Ashmore Estates
in his truck, and despite the best efforts of doctors
of the time, he died. And those are two of
(04:34):
the better known spirits that are said to haunt Ashmore
Estates to this day.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
So this guy, Joe, his name pops up several times
in your book by different people who think they've encountered
his spirit, right.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Absolutely, you know, and he's known for he's a big,
tall guy, was very much a handyman. He would cut
the grass, he would do the odd jobs that needed doing.
And we don't know the specifics other than from records
of the fact that he was hit by a train,
given serious injuries and brought back to Bashmore Estates. But
you know, whether he was distracted or what how that happened,
(05:08):
We're not sure, but we do know that his injuries
were suppose to bee that he died. And you know,
for many years, Joe Bloxham has been seen and experienced
walking around inside Ashmore Estates, often as a very tall
shadow figure. You know. Elba, on the other hand, is
(05:31):
a little bit more mobile. There was a little girl
that lived just down the street from Ashmore and her
mom came one day to talk to Robin and Norma
and said, you know the little girl you have flaunting here,
I think she has latched onto my daughter. She had
a young daughter herself, about seven years old, I believe,
And when Robin asked for the story. It turned out
(05:52):
that this little girl was visiting the lady's daughter and
she had bandages on her legs and bandages on body,
and warned her that her mother's candle needed to be
put out because that's how she'd got her at ashmal Estates.
And it was one of those cases, George, I think
because imaginary friends are not always imaginary as some parents
(06:15):
think they are.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, I'll have to tell you my story sometime. So
you and your team, you have a team that you
can tell us a little bit about. You get permission
to go ahead and go there. You're going to spend
some time, and you know, you go in with sort
of a jaundiced I about some of the other stories
that have been told somewhat exaggerated. I guess about demonic activity,
(06:38):
people seeing demons all over the place, and evil spirits
and things of that sort. You're going into it with
an open mind, but you recognize the history of the
place doesn't suggest that that would be what you're going
to encounter.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
So you go there.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Tell me about your team and how you set up
shop and how you go about this investigation.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Absolutely, I work with a team of individuals that all
bring something unique to the table in terms of their
skill sets. So, for example, Erin is a works in
the field of psychiatry and counseling. She has master's degrees
that I couldn't possibly name in the mental health field.
(07:21):
Catlin is a professor of religious studies and comparative religions.
She's a PhD and teaches that, so she has kind
of the metaphysical side of things covered, you know. Susan
is an attorney. She's a lawyer and brings that kind
of analytical mindset that the team really benefits from. So
(07:44):
when I work with somebody, what I'm really looking for
is kind of a skill set that helps us delve
into the mysteries of the location, into the historical research,
and into the paranormal experiments we conduct. So we have
a fairly small footprint. Usually when I an investigation, I
have no more than six or seven people ashmore estates.
We were actually down to I think just five, four
(08:06):
or five and we were living on site, you know,
so we didn't leave. We were staying on site throughout
the day, throughout the night and really getting to know
the rhythms of the building. When I was a volunteer firefighter,
I was always taught you know, it's not the fire
that kills you most of the time, it's the building
and the way it reacts. So studying its architecture, the
(08:27):
way the air moved, the way it's constructed, the way
sound travels through the building. And I think too that
to get into the more metaphysical side of things, George,
do you know how when a hunter goes out into
the woods. At first, you know, all of the wildlife
just kind of stops because there's this disturbance. And then
if the hunter just kind of finds a hide, lays
(08:47):
down weight, everything goes back to normal slowly. If the
animals get used to this new presence, it stops being
a disturbance. Well, I think it's the same way when
investigators go to a haunted location. You can't just breathe
in for an hour or two, start demanding that the
spirits show themselves like performing monkeys. And you know, I've
seen too many people that do that, when in reality,
(09:10):
you have to get in, let them get used to you.
You know, I like to behave like a house guest,
because I really am. If we truly do believe we're
dealing with the spirits of dead people, here, they were
at Ashmore Estates or any haunted place long before I was.
You know, how rude would it be if I came
to your home started throwing my weight around and making
(09:31):
demands of you. You show me the door pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Seems like your approaches is to have conversations, is to
converse in a polite terms, not demanding anything, but just
saying there's anybody around that wants to have a chat.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, And I think as a golden rule, you know,
treat the dead like you would treat the living, and
hopefully that's with respect and courtesy. And I also like
to tell them when I'm working on a book project, Hey,
I'm trying to tell your story. If there are elements
that are untrue, please let me figure this out. Do
what you can please to help me, you know, correct
(10:08):
the record. And I'm not claiming that, you know, people
have been lying about Ashmore Estates all this time or
anything like that. I do think some narratives gain traction
more easily than others, especially when those narratives are on
the dark side of things, you know. I think that's
one of the big issues the field of paranormal entertainment has.
(10:29):
In fact, as.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
As it's possible that different people bring out different reactions
in places like that.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Yeah, that's fair as well. I think there's a degree
of you get what you take in with you, you know,
and certainly there are individuals there that have very bad
experiences that have left screaming in the middle of the night.
I talk about some of them in the book. Under
the previous owner, I think he seemed very open minded
about the haunting there, just as Robin is, and I
(11:00):
found newspaper accounts of a lady that had the fright
of her life inside. Ashmore estates when a figure came
out of a wall at her and she felt threatened. Now,
what's interesting is how do you perceive that? Is it
the objective reality of what's going on? You know, you're
in a haunted building, you're told it's haunted, it's dark,
(11:22):
you're already terrified, your heart rates already one hundred and twenty,
and then you see the shadowy figure step out of
a wall. It's really easy to, I think, misconstrue that
as an attack or as a threat, when often I
think it's just them doing what they do.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
So, which parts of this building did you think might
have been the heart of the activity, and did you
check those out first?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
You know, I always ask about hotspots, and there's a
lot of ground to cover. Ashmore, though, is so consistently
weird and active. I almost think I've asked so many
visitors this question, and I've some have told me, oh,
it's the basement. Others have said no, no, no, no, no,
it's the second floor. No it's the stairwell. And there
(12:10):
are no consistent answers because people have had strange things
go on pretty much in all parts of the building.
The minute I walked inside for the first time, I
was with Brad cling and investigated from Texas, who he
and his brother Barry start in the show Ghost Lab.
No sooner have we walked into the building than we
had very clearly the sound of a person whistling. So
(12:32):
we're like, there's somebody in here, There is an intruder
in here already, we need to go sweep the place.
And Robin did not appear to be bothered, not least
because I learned later he has a camera system with
all of the motion sensors and stuff like that. It
had not been tripped, no one could have been in
that building gained access without tripping the camera system. But
we went from room to room, floor to floor, didn't
(12:55):
find anybody there at all, no evidence of an intruder.
I have the recording plain as day. Somebody was whistling
a tune, and numerous investigators have gotten that same jaunty whistling,
the kind of thing that you do when you're going
about your chores or tasks, you know, so.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
You heard a lot of other things. I you know,
we're going to take a break out about three minutes,
but let's start with the equipment that you use and
the kind of recording. If you were able to make
a general description absolutely well.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Like many paranormal investigators, I'm a believer of these radio
frequency helping devices, which they're nicknamed spirit boxes. They're kind
of controversial. Some people believe in them, some don't. But
you add a set of industrial quality noise canceling headphones
to the mix, and you are often able to hear
voices coming out between the frequencies, stating names, dates, answering
(13:54):
your questions directly. So I'm a big fan of using
that particular techniques known as the Esther's methods, because it
was popularized in this part of Colorado up at the
Family Hotel, which of course is the basis for Stephen
Kings to shining. So we liked recording those sessions. I'm
a believer in using both audio tape, analog tape and
(14:17):
digital recorders. I thank an investigator called John Tenny for
pointing that out. We live in the digital age, right, George.
You know you can do EVPs now on your cell phone,
but digital recorders use a series of ones and zeros
on a hard drive to record sound. Magnetic tape work differently,
(14:37):
and I've seen the magnetic tape recorder capture EVPs that
the digital recorders didn't pick up, and vice versa. So
it's important to go old school, you know, nineteen seventies
era tape recorder, cassette recorder alongside the newer high tech
electronic digital solutions.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
And you've got quite a few recordings, I guess quite
a few throughout much of your visit, right, different kinds
of you're encountering, different individuals, what sound like different individuals?
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Absolutely. I mean one thing that I took joy in
myself is a little strange, and the video is out
there on YouTube if anyone wants to suffer this themselves.
But there is a room with children's toys and books,
and I put on a child tiara and sat and
read a bedtime story because we know there are child
(15:30):
spirits there. You know, what could be more natural than
reading a bedtime story to the children and kind of
putting them at ease. That was a good way to
get into activity that didn't involve, you know, yelling and
shouting and that kind of thing, and didn't work. So
you know, we got a lot of shadowy figure activity
after we did that, if you was to be careful,
(15:53):
because there was at least one bat in Ashmore at
that time that we adopted and we called him Lablow.
So when the shadows of movie, sometimes it is as
simple as a flying rodent. But we also got human
shaped figures, at least one of which triggered the motion
centers on the security system in a completely empty stairwell.
(16:14):
We had stones that were thrown as well, not in
a threatening away but more of a hey, I'm here
and I'm going to prove it.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
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 (00:04):
Richard Estepp again, I was impressed by the history of
Ashmore Estates that you put together a that it was
so progressive it seems for its time of where you know,
the residents of that part of Illinois pitched in, put
up money, took care of people who couldn't take care
of themselves. Pretty impressive that they did that back then,
because I'm not sure the taxpayers in that area would
(00:27):
be willing to spend that kind of money to do
the same thing now. And secondly, impressed by the historical
research that you did about just the impressive history of
what went on there. It strikes me that a lot
of people who have exploited the supposed history of the
area didn't do the same kind of research that you did.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Thank you very much, Georgin. I'd like to say that,
like any rights, from standing on the shoulders of a
whole bunch of other people when I do this stuff,
so research is like Julie Vasquez and others that have
been to Ashmore and just and have fallen in love
with the place did a lot of the legwork and
they left that research available for any anybody that was
(01:07):
trying to tell the story openly. You know, it's not
like this stuff is a secret, and I really appreciate
the fact that they work to bring that stuff to light.
Now I'm not gonna I'm not going to sugarcoat the
whole location. Bad things happened there. There was trauma and
we can talk about some of that. There were accidents,
you know, illness. I mean, the place survived the Great
(01:29):
Influenza pandemics as well, so there were plenty of depths.
And one of the tragedies I think is there is
a unique cemetery for the Coles County portfil which is
now Ashmore Estates, and it's not accessible because it's on
private land that is about a mile away from Ashmore Estates.
(01:51):
The graves there are kind of overgrown, some of them
are difficult to make out. It's inaccessible to anybody but
the landowner. And so there's a real danger of these
names and these people being forgotten. And that hugged at
my heart strings. Is I think you would at anybody.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Are there unmarked graves. You anticipate that there are places
that aren't.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Mark at all. There are we can almost guarantee this
because there are accounts from one of the superintendent's daughters
who when she was a little girl, had very distinct
and vivid memories of seeing men digging in what is
now a cornfield fairly close to the main building itself,
(02:35):
doing what appeared to be burials, and there are no
markers left, so it's known that there is more than
one cemetery, and only one of them really has Marcus.
You can guarantee that there are bodies out there in
what is now farming fields.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
So for something to qualify as sort of a paranormal hotspot,
do you generally need an underpinning of evil, like, you know,
people murdered there or tortured, or is it enough just
to have a lot of people who died in a
building or location to turn it into sort of a
spiritual gathering spot.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
You know, when you get these sources of great tragedy,
of course you have the possibility of a haunting, but
also there's the fact that there's all that positive, strong,
good family energy as well. When I started investigating the
paranormal in the mid nineties in the UK where I
come from, a lot of the cases I investigated were
these old stately homes where people just loved them a
(03:27):
lot during their lifetime, and that love seemed to keep
a piece of them behind. George, you know, there was
nothing scary, there was nothing dark or negative. You just
had remnants. I think of a human personality that seems
to have survived death or splintered off at the moment
of death. Paranormal enthusiasts love debating exactly how this stuff works,
(03:48):
whether it's a disembodied consciousness or whatever. But I think
at a place like Ashmore State, you have both. You know,
you have a number of terribly deaths, such as the
young girl Elder Skinner, who suffered ultimately life ending burns
when a candle accidentally set fire to her night dress,
(04:12):
you know. And you have Joe Bloxam, who was the handyman,
and he was an older gentleman, especially in each gentleman,
and he was hit by a train with life threatening injuries.
A get Samarad and brought him back to Ashmore Estates
in his truck, and despite the best efforts of doctors
of the time, he died. And those are two of
(04:34):
the better known spirits that are said to haunt Ashmore
Estates to this day.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
So this guy, Joe, his name pops up several times
in your book by different people who think they've encountered
his spirit, right.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Absolutely, you know, and he's known for he's a big,
tall guy, was very much a handyman. He would cut
the grass, he would do the odd jobs that needed doing.
And we don't know the specifics other than from records
of the fact that he was hit by a train,
given serious injuries and brought back to Bashmore Estates. But
you know, whether he was distracted or what how that happened,
(05:08):
We're not sure, but we do know that his injuries
were suppose to bee that he died. And you know,
for many years, Joe Bloxham has been seen and experienced
walking around inside Ashmore Estates, often as a very tall
shadow figure. You know. Elba, on the other hand, is
(05:31):
a little bit more mobile. There was a little girl
that lived just down the street from Ashmore and her
mom came one day to talk to Robin and Norma
and said, you know the little girl you have flaunting here,
I think she has latched onto my daughter. She had
a young daughter herself, about seven years old, I believe,
And when Robin asked for the story. It turned out
(05:52):
that this little girl was visiting the lady's daughter and
she had bandages on her legs and bandages on body,
and warned her that her mother's candle needed to be
put out because that's how she'd got her at ashmal Estates.
And it was one of those cases, George, I think
because imaginary friends are not always imaginary as some parents
(06:15):
think they are.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, I'll have to tell you my story sometime. So
you and your team, you have a team that you
can tell us a little bit about. You get permission
to go ahead and go there. You're going to spend
some time, and you know, you go in with sort
of a jaundiced I about some of the other stories
that have been told somewhat exaggerated. I guess about demonic activity,
(06:38):
people seeing demons all over the place, and evil spirits
and things of that sort. You're going into it with
an open mind, but you recognize the history of the
place doesn't suggest that that would be what you're going
to encounter.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
So you go there.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Tell me about your team and how you set up
shop and how you go about this investigation.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Absolutely, I work with a team of individuals that all
bring something unique to the table in terms of their
skill sets. So, for example, Erin is a works in
the field of psychiatry and counseling. She has master's degrees
that I couldn't possibly name in the mental health field.
(07:21):
Catlin is a professor of religious studies and comparative religions.
She's a PhD and teaches that, so she has kind
of the metaphysical side of things covered, you know. Susan
is an attorney. She's a lawyer and brings that kind
of analytical mindset that the team really benefits from. So
(07:44):
when I work with somebody, what I'm really looking for
is kind of a skill set that helps us delve
into the mysteries of the location, into the historical research,
and into the paranormal experiments we conduct. So we have
a fairly small footprint. Usually when I an investigation, I
have no more than six or seven people ashmore estates.
We were actually down to I think just five, four
(08:06):
or five and we were living on site, you know,
so we didn't leave. We were staying on site throughout
the day, throughout the night and really getting to know
the rhythms of the building. When I was a volunteer firefighter,
I was always taught you know, it's not the fire
that kills you most of the time, it's the building
and the way it reacts. So studying its architecture, the
(08:27):
way the air moved, the way it's constructed, the way
sound travels through the building. And I think too that
to get into the more metaphysical side of things, George,
do you know how when a hunter goes out into
the woods. At first, you know, all of the wildlife
just kind of stops because there's this disturbance. And then
if the hunter just kind of finds a hide, lays
(08:47):
down weight, everything goes back to normal slowly. If the
animals get used to this new presence, it stops being
a disturbance. Well, I think it's the same way when
investigators go to a haunted location. You can't just breathe
in for an hour or two, start demanding that the
spirits show themselves like performing monkeys. And you know, I've
seen too many people that do that, when in reality,
(09:10):
you have to get in, let them get used to you.
You know, I like to behave like a house guest,
because I really am. If we truly do believe we're
dealing with the spirits of dead people, here, they were
at Ashmore Estates or any haunted place long before I was.
You know, how rude would it be if I came
to your home started throwing my weight around and making
(09:31):
demands of you. You show me the door pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Seems like your approaches is to have conversations, is to
converse in a polite terms, not demanding anything, but just
saying there's anybody around that wants to have a chat.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, And I think as a golden rule, you know,
treat the dead like you would treat the living, and
hopefully that's with respect and courtesy. And I also like
to tell them when I'm working on a book project, Hey,
I'm trying to tell your story. If there are elements
that are untrue, please let me figure this out. Do
what you can please to help me, you know, correct
(10:08):
the record. And I'm not claiming that, you know, people
have been lying about Ashmore Estates all this time or
anything like that. I do think some narratives gain traction
more easily than others, especially when those narratives are on
the dark side of things, you know. I think that's
one of the big issues the field of paranormal entertainment has.
(10:29):
In fact, as.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
As it's possible that different people bring out different reactions
in places like that.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Yeah, that's fair as well. I think there's a degree
of you get what you take in with you, you know,
and certainly there are individuals there that have very bad
experiences that have left screaming in the middle of the night.
I talk about some of them in the book. Under
the previous owner, I think he seemed very open minded
about the haunting there, just as Robin is, and I
(11:00):
found newspaper accounts of a lady that had the fright
of her life inside. Ashmore estates when a figure came
out of a wall at her and she felt threatened. Now,
what's interesting is how do you perceive that? Is it
the objective reality of what's going on? You know, you're
in a haunted building, you're told it's haunted, it's dark,
(11:22):
you're already terrified, your heart rates already one hundred and twenty,
and then you see the shadowy figure step out of
a wall. It's really easy to, I think, misconstrue that
as an attack or as a threat, when often I
think it's just them doing what they do.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
So, which parts of this building did you think might
have been the heart of the activity, and did you
check those out first?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
You know, I always ask about hotspots, and there's a
lot of ground to cover. Ashmore, though, is so consistently
weird and active. I almost think I've asked so many
visitors this question, and I've some have told me, oh,
it's the basement. Others have said no, no, no, no, no,
it's the second floor. No it's the stairwell. And there
(12:10):
are no consistent answers because people have had strange things
go on pretty much in all parts of the building.
The minute I walked inside for the first time, I
was with Brad cling and investigated from Texas, who he
and his brother Barry start in the show Ghost Lab.
No sooner have we walked into the building than we
had very clearly the sound of a person whistling. So
(12:32):
we're like, there's somebody in here, There is an intruder
in here already, we need to go sweep the place.
And Robin did not appear to be bothered, not least
because I learned later he has a camera system with
all of the motion sensors and stuff like that. It
had not been tripped, no one could have been in
that building gained access without tripping the camera system. But
we went from room to room, floor to floor, didn't
(12:55):
find anybody there at all, no evidence of an intruder.
I have the recording plain as day. Somebody was whistling
a tune, and numerous investigators have gotten that same jaunty whistling,
the kind of thing that you do when you're going
about your chores or tasks, you know, so.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
You heard a lot of other things. I you know,
we're going to take a break out about three minutes,
but let's start with the equipment that you use and
the kind of recording. If you were able to make
a general description absolutely well.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Like many paranormal investigators, I'm a believer of these radio
frequency helping devices, which they're nicknamed spirit boxes. They're kind
of controversial. Some people believe in them, some don't. But
you add a set of industrial quality noise canceling headphones
to the mix, and you are often able to hear
voices coming out between the frequencies, stating names, dates, answering
(13:54):
your questions directly. So I'm a big fan of using
that particular techniques known as the Esther's methods, because it
was popularized in this part of Colorado up at the
Family Hotel, which of course is the basis for Stephen
Kings to shining. So we liked recording those sessions. I'm
a believer in using both audio tape, analog tape and
(14:17):
digital recorders. I thank an investigator called John Tenny for
pointing that out. We live in the digital age, right, George.
You know you can do EVPs now on your cell phone,
but digital recorders use a series of ones and zeros
on a hard drive to record sound. Magnetic tape work differently,
(14:37):
and I've seen the magnetic tape recorder capture EVPs that
the digital recorders didn't pick up, and vice versa. So
it's important to go old school, you know, nineteen seventies
era tape recorder, cassette recorder alongside the newer high tech
electronic digital solutions.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
And you've got quite a few recordings, I guess quite
a few throughout much of your visit, right, different kinds
of you're encountering, different individuals, what sound like different individuals?
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Absolutely. I mean one thing that I took joy in
myself is a little strange, and the video is out
there on YouTube if anyone wants to suffer this themselves.
But there is a room with children's toys and books,
and I put on a child tiara and sat and
read a bedtime story because we know there are child
(15:30):
spirits there. You know, what could be more natural than
reading a bedtime story to the children and kind of
putting them at ease. That was a good way to
get into activity that didn't involve, you know, yelling and
shouting and that kind of thing, and didn't work. So
you know, we got a lot of shadowy figure activity
after we did that, if you was to be careful,
(15:53):
because there was at least one bat in Ashmore at
that time that we adopted and we called him Lablow.
So when the shadows of movie, sometimes it is as
simple as a flying rodent. But we also got human
shaped figures, at least one of which triggered the motion
centers on the security system in a completely empty stairwell.
(16:14):
We had stones that were thrown as well, not in
a threatening away but more of a hey, I'm here
and I'm going to prove it.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
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