December 6, 2025 • 10 mins
George Noory and Hollywood stuntman Rick McCallum discuss his career as an investigator with the Hollywood Ghost Hunters, his childhood experience in a haunted hotel room with his mother, and why some places are more haunted than others.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Man, welcome back to Coast to Coast, George Nori with you.
We've got the Hollywood ghost Hunters with us up first.
As stuntman, Rick McCallum began his career back in nineteen
eighty two performing a fight scene with Chuck Norris on
the film b Lone Wolf kwayd. Rick has performed in
numerous action and horror movies and has more than seventy
five credits to his name. He has doubled for the
(00:25):
likes of Daniel Baldwin, Oliver Platt, and many horror icons,
including Kane Hodter and Ra Mulhaloff, whom you'll hear from shortly.
Rick is a founding member of the Hollywood Ghost Hunters
and has been on our program several times. Rick, welcome back.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
How have you been been doing good? George? How about
you great?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Did you ever get hurt doing stunts?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Well, I was doubling Barry Bostwick on a movie and
Kane was a stunt word eder Kain Hutter and they
wanted this metal beast. It was a giant metal where
Wolf smacked me, and I was supposed to go fly
in and I ended up running off, going off a
mini trap, going up and hitting a steel door upside
down backwards, and it didn't kick me back like it
(01:11):
had earlier, and I went straight down on my head
and spun around, so that one stung a bit.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Do they have to hospitalize you or anything like that?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Now? Fortunately I landed on something hard my head y.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, how'd you get involved in stunts in the first place?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
You know, it's funny. When I was getting out of college,
I had a degree in criminal justice and I had
to take a internship where they put me on the
h with the investigators at Maywood. And after about a
month of that, I realized I was meeting really rotten people,
not making very much money and doing a lot of paperwork.
(01:51):
So I thought, you know, there's got to be some
place where it's better than this. And I went, wait
a minute, I know a place where they have beautiful people,
they pay a lot more money, and they shoot fake
bullets at you. I'm going over there, So that's how
I started.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Then you're still doing your thing.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Well, I think right now I'm a little too beat
up to even go to the kitchen, so still do
the ghost hunting though.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Good for you. How did you end up with Ray
starting the ghost hunters?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Well, I actually started it with Kane Hodder, the guy
who plays Jason Baby, and we're working in Mansfield Reformatory,
and then Ra came in and I knew Ra because
he went to the same gym as me, and we
decided we might as well get Ra in with us,
so it was the three of us, and not long
after that we were on Ghost Adventures and then we're
(02:42):
starting to get more footage. And then this one nice
guy named George Noruri brought us in on Queen Mary
and that helped quite a bit too.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
That was a fun time, Meghatt. So long ago, wasn't.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
It, Rick, Yeah, it was twenty ten?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Where did the time go?
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Up? To my hair? I thank you?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
What have you learned about ghosts by this time?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
That they are absolutely one hundred percent true, that they
will treat you the way you treat them. And you know,
I don't like the term ghost hunting. I like to
go investigate and then see if I can't make friends
with Some of the ghosts get a lot more answers
(03:30):
from them when they like.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
You were you always a believer. Prior to getting involved
in the ghost hunting, when I.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Was thirteen, I had a pretty memorable experience that kind
of launched me. My grandfather had died and we took
him by train to Paducah, Kentucky to bury him, and
my mother and I. Because it happened so fast, she
didn't have much money. We didn't have a hotel, so
we just started walking down the street and we saw
this old place, you know, brownstone, with flickering lights. It
(04:03):
looked like they should film every murder mystery movie in
that place. And we went in. She says, do you
have a room and she got He goes, I've only
got one left, and she said, well, how much is it?
And it was cheap. So the guy goes, I have
to tell you about it's haunted. Now. I was thirteen
at the time, and I was like, whoa golden ticket
to Disneyland?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Right?
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Well, when we got up there, it was like a
volleyball court. It was rectangular wood and there was a
rolling bed on each side. It was probably twenty feet across,
and we'd been traveling, we were tired. We went to
bed and I heard a scream and I sat up
and I looked over. My mother's bed is just zipping
all across the floor towards me, and I realized my
(04:45):
bed is flying along towards her, and we smashed together
in the middle of the room, and my mother just
looked at me, and then she went, I think the
guy downstairs is right. So we did everything we could
do to debunk it. Nobody even heard the word debunked
back then, and I tried pushing it from the side
and it went about three feet, you know. We put
rolled things down to see if the floor was warped
(05:07):
and none of that. So after that I was pretty hooked.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Fantastic. Now you're still doing some movies when you're not sore.
What have been some of the monster roles you played
that you enjoyed?
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Oh? Well, I played the monster in Deep Star six,
which was an underwater monster that was pretty challenging. Played
the monster in Love and Time of the Monsters that
was up in the Redwood Forest. That was fun. Matter
of fact, I saw a UFO there while I was there.
And what other wores have been? Oh, Dark Wolf. I
(05:40):
played the lead character in that. My favorite movie, Ra
was in It also was called Hatchet Too, and that
was one of Adam Green's movies. He was a director,
and we both got killed in spectacular fashion by Kane.
So you buddy, Yeah, we known him for forty four years.
(06:01):
I don't know why you talked to me.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
How long does how long does makeup take? Sometimes?
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Rick, Well, it depends on what you're doing. I doubled
sid Hagen Devil's Rejects, and I had to get the
bald wig on and the tattoos on the forearms and
the beard and the whole thing. And I've had in
some places when we were in when we did Fallen Angels,
I had it was like four hours to put it on,
(06:28):
about three hours to take it off. So it can
be harder than the doing the stunts. It's sitting in
the makeup chair.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Has Hollywood changed over the years based on horror flex
I mean we remember the old ones with Bors Karloff
and Lon Cheney and Vincent Price. What are they like nowadays?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Oh, they're much more brutal. I mean back then there
was more of a story, more of a build up.
Now it's how many people can you put in the
pile before the end of the movie. So it has changed,
but they're still good. I like watching them, so I
like being in them. You know.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
You still going to Scotland every year?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Oh you bet, I do. I don't know if you remember,
but I actually sent you a birthday wish from Rosland
Chapel while I was there.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I remember that. Oh yeah, that was cool. Why do
you go so often?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Something about that place draws me to it. The people
there are fantastic and this is a small country that
had three thousand castles, So if you're a ghost hunting guy,
that's like, you know, going to heaven. And I've actually
met up with a group called Scottish Paranormal which I
think is probably the best group that there is, and
(07:47):
they made me an honorary member and they put me
in their Hall of Fame. So I go ghost hunting
with them a lot when I get back there. So
Scotland is really something if you could for the people
out there. If you want to go ghost hunting, head
to Scotland.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
How long do you normally stay out there once you
go out there?
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Roughly three weeks.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Well that's a pretty long poke.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Oh yeah. Well I like to go to a lot
of different towns. I mean I go to Glasgow, Inverness, Edinburgh,
Roslind You know, so I jump around and get to
go to a whole bunch of other places. We go
up to the northern you know, the northern part, the
southern part. I mean, we're all over the place and
ghost on pretty much every night. So that's my shangri law.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
What do you think makes some areas more prevalent for
ghosts rick than other spots?
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well, and not to be flip, but anybody who's seen
Brave Heart.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
That's Mel Gibson.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
The yeah, yeah, that these people fought face to face
with swords and knives and to the point where you
could smell the guy's breath. That you and that kind
of energy sticks around for a while, you know. There's
there's you know, thousands and thousands of people that died
(09:11):
in the battles.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
What's your latest book? The Spirits are out.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
There, Spirits are out there. I'm working on another one.
I was lucky enough the first one ghost Believe in
Me won the Paranormal Book of the Year awards, so
that that made me pretty happy.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Good for you. You enjoyed doing what you're doing, don't you?
So do the others?
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I actually love meeting new people,
you know, going to new places. You know that for me,
that's that's a good life.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Where do people get your books?
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Rick? On Amazon? If you go on to Rick McCollum,
mcc a L l U N you know, you can
find it there. You could find it by the title
Ghosts Believe in Me. And the other one is the
spirits are out there and they're waiting for you.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Ever been scared to death by a ghost?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I've been scared to death by something that happened. I
got something that attached to me and just about and
I hate to say this because it sounds so melodramatic,
but there are plenty of witnesses who were there. They
were getting ready to call ambulances and everything else because
they thought I was dying. Yeah, it was. It was.
It was pretty rough.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. 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):
Man, welcome back to Coast to Coast, George Nori with you.
We've got the Hollywood ghost Hunters with us up first.
As stuntman, Rick McCallum began his career back in nineteen
eighty two performing a fight scene with Chuck Norris on
the film b Lone Wolf kwayd. Rick has performed in
numerous action and horror movies and has more than seventy
five credits to his name. He has doubled for the
(00:25):
likes of Daniel Baldwin, Oliver Platt, and many horror icons,
including Kane Hodter and Ra Mulhaloff, whom you'll hear from shortly.
Rick is a founding member of the Hollywood Ghost Hunters
and has been on our program several times. Rick, welcome back.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
How have you been been doing good? George? How about
you great?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Did you ever get hurt doing stunts?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
What happened?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Well, I was doubling Barry Bostwick on a movie and
Kane was a stunt word eder Kain Hutter and they
wanted this metal beast. It was a giant metal where
Wolf smacked me, and I was supposed to go fly
in and I ended up running off, going off a
mini trap, going up and hitting a steel door upside
down backwards, and it didn't kick me back like it
(01:11):
had earlier, and I went straight down on my head
and spun around, so that one stung a bit.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Do they have to hospitalize you or anything like that?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Now? Fortunately I landed on something hard my head y.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, how'd you get involved in stunts in the first place?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
You know, it's funny. When I was getting out of college,
I had a degree in criminal justice and I had
to take a internship where they put me on the
h with the investigators at Maywood. And after about a
month of that, I realized I was meeting really rotten people,
not making very much money and doing a lot of paperwork.
(01:51):
So I thought, you know, there's got to be some
place where it's better than this. And I went, wait
a minute, I know a place where they have beautiful people,
they pay a lot more money, and they shoot fake
bullets at you. I'm going over there, So that's how
I started.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Then you're still doing your thing.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Well, I think right now I'm a little too beat
up to even go to the kitchen, so still do
the ghost hunting though.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Good for you. How did you end up with Ray
starting the ghost hunters?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Well, I actually started it with Kane Hodder, the guy
who plays Jason Baby, and we're working in Mansfield Reformatory,
and then Ra came in and I knew Ra because
he went to the same gym as me, and we
decided we might as well get Ra in with us,
so it was the three of us, and not long
after that we were on Ghost Adventures and then we're
(02:42):
starting to get more footage. And then this one nice
guy named George Noruri brought us in on Queen Mary
and that helped quite a bit too.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
That was a fun time, Meghatt. So long ago, wasn't.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
It, Rick, Yeah, it was twenty ten?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Where did the time go?
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Up? To my hair? I thank you?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
What have you learned about ghosts by this time?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
That they are absolutely one hundred percent true, that they
will treat you the way you treat them. And you know,
I don't like the term ghost hunting. I like to
go investigate and then see if I can't make friends
with Some of the ghosts get a lot more answers
(03:30):
from them when they like.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
You were you always a believer. Prior to getting involved
in the ghost hunting, when I.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Was thirteen, I had a pretty memorable experience that kind
of launched me. My grandfather had died and we took
him by train to Paducah, Kentucky to bury him, and
my mother and I. Because it happened so fast, she
didn't have much money. We didn't have a hotel, so
we just started walking down the street and we saw
this old place, you know, brownstone, with flickering lights. It
(04:03):
looked like they should film every murder mystery movie in
that place. And we went in. She says, do you
have a room and she got He goes, I've only
got one left, and she said, well, how much is it?
And it was cheap. So the guy goes, I have
to tell you about it's haunted. Now. I was thirteen
at the time, and I was like, whoa golden ticket
to Disneyland?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Right?
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Well, when we got up there, it was like a
volleyball court. It was rectangular wood and there was a
rolling bed on each side. It was probably twenty feet across,
and we'd been traveling, we were tired. We went to
bed and I heard a scream and I sat up
and I looked over. My mother's bed is just zipping
all across the floor towards me, and I realized my
(04:45):
bed is flying along towards her, and we smashed together
in the middle of the room, and my mother just
looked at me, and then she went, I think the
guy downstairs is right. So we did everything we could
do to debunk it. Nobody even heard the word debunked
back then, and I tried pushing it from the side
and it went about three feet, you know. We put
rolled things down to see if the floor was warped
(05:07):
and none of that. So after that I was pretty hooked.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Fantastic. Now you're still doing some movies when you're not sore.
What have been some of the monster roles you played
that you enjoyed?
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Oh? Well, I played the monster in Deep Star six,
which was an underwater monster that was pretty challenging. Played
the monster in Love and Time of the Monsters that
was up in the Redwood Forest. That was fun. Matter
of fact, I saw a UFO there while I was there.
And what other wores have been? Oh, Dark Wolf. I
(05:40):
played the lead character in that. My favorite movie, Ra
was in It also was called Hatchet Too, and that
was one of Adam Green's movies. He was a director,
and we both got killed in spectacular fashion by Kane.
So you buddy, Yeah, we known him for forty four years.
(06:01):
I don't know why you talked to me.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
How long does how long does makeup take? Sometimes?
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Rick, Well, it depends on what you're doing. I doubled
sid Hagen Devil's Rejects, and I had to get the
bald wig on and the tattoos on the forearms and
the beard and the whole thing. And I've had in
some places when we were in when we did Fallen Angels,
I had it was like four hours to put it on,
(06:28):
about three hours to take it off. So it can
be harder than the doing the stunts. It's sitting in
the makeup chair.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Has Hollywood changed over the years based on horror flex
I mean we remember the old ones with Bors Karloff
and Lon Cheney and Vincent Price. What are they like nowadays?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Oh, they're much more brutal. I mean back then there
was more of a story, more of a build up.
Now it's how many people can you put in the
pile before the end of the movie. So it has changed,
but they're still good. I like watching them, so I
like being in them. You know.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
You still going to Scotland every year?
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Oh you bet, I do. I don't know if you remember,
but I actually sent you a birthday wish from Rosland
Chapel while I was there.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I remember that. Oh yeah, that was cool. Why do
you go so often?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Something about that place draws me to it. The people
there are fantastic and this is a small country that
had three thousand castles, So if you're a ghost hunting guy,
that's like, you know, going to heaven. And I've actually
met up with a group called Scottish Paranormal which I
think is probably the best group that there is, and
(07:47):
they made me an honorary member and they put me
in their Hall of Fame. So I go ghost hunting
with them a lot when I get back there. So
Scotland is really something if you could for the people
out there. If you want to go ghost hunting, head
to Scotland.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
How long do you normally stay out there once you
go out there?
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Roughly three weeks.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Well that's a pretty long poke.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Oh yeah. Well I like to go to a lot
of different towns. I mean I go to Glasgow, Inverness, Edinburgh,
Roslind You know, so I jump around and get to
go to a whole bunch of other places. We go
up to the northern you know, the northern part, the
southern part. I mean, we're all over the place and
ghost on pretty much every night. So that's my shangri law.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
What do you think makes some areas more prevalent for
ghosts rick than other spots?
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Well, and not to be flip, but anybody who's seen
Brave Heart.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
That's Mel Gibson.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
The yeah, yeah, that these people fought face to face
with swords and knives and to the point where you
could smell the guy's breath. That you and that kind
of energy sticks around for a while, you know. There's
there's you know, thousands and thousands of people that died
(09:11):
in the battles.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
What's your latest book? The Spirits are out.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
There, Spirits are out there. I'm working on another one.
I was lucky enough the first one ghost Believe in
Me won the Paranormal Book of the Year awards, so
that that made me pretty happy.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Good for you. You enjoyed doing what you're doing, don't you?
So do the others?
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I actually love meeting new people,
you know, going to new places. You know that for me,
that's that's a good life.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Where do people get your books?
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Rick? On Amazon? If you go on to Rick McCollum,
mcc a L l U N you know, you can
find it there. You could find it by the title
Ghosts Believe in Me. And the other one is the
spirits are out there and they're waiting for you.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Ever been scared to death by a ghost?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I've been scared to death by something that happened. I
got something that attached to me and just about and
I hate to say this because it sounds so melodramatic,
but there are plenty of witnesses who were there. They
were getting ready to call ambulances and everything else because
they thought I was dying. Yeah, it was. It was.
It was pretty rough.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one a m. Eastern and go to Coast to coastam
dot com for more
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