The West Grand Haunting with Michael J. Oka

On this episode we welcome author and paranormal investigator, Michael J. Oka, to chat about his new book "The West Grand Haunting". We also chat about how growing up experiencing the paranormal in his haunted house influenced him to help other families dealing with spirits in their home. Michael is one of the founding members of Northern Nevada Paranormal Research and Developement Society.

Check out all of Michael J. Oka's links below

https://www.amazon.com/West-Grand-Haunting-Michael-Oka-ebook/dp/B0CW188WF2/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?crid=2OY06WRL8EPSH&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Rz7EMa--kiTQYFc36Ws2xVeGa_zmt_S2VZVMv4c0m5Rz1rSyYq1kVyG7hc-fcYtZI3mI37X9Cz2MG4ocqNECufpAl4iaRTiubM6gReqt5uOmAWQno-vF3ojqdYRlkEDg.QVCZL1--ceGTjhbAw52YcQj8EmrkWEDrjhYh2edbnr4&dib_tag=se&keywords=michael+j.+oka+book&qid=1719949885&sprefix=michael+j.+oka+book%2Caps%2C84&sr=8-2-fkmr1

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorMichaelOka
https://twitter.com/NNevadaPRDS
https://www.instagram.com/northern.nevada.prds
https://www.facebook.com/ParanormalResearchandDevelopmentSociety/

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Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Join us as we dive into thehistory, hauntings, and high strangers of
the world to try to better understandthe paranormal. I will be your God.
I am paranormal researcher and investigator EricFreeman Simms. Welcome to the Unseen
Paranormal Podcast. Hey everybody, welcomeback to the Unseen Paranormal. Eric here

(00:29):
as usual and today I want toget back into the mental health stuff and
talk about your self esteem and selfworth and you know how that all of
us we all struggle, me included. I'm not excluding myself from this and
I don't claim to know everything.This is just my opinion on it and
the things that I try to workon every day to make sure that I'm

(00:50):
not using what other people think ofme to boost my self worth. Just
make sure that I know that Iam worthy and that because I strive to
a day to be a good person. And one of my motto is I
always tell all my friends and allI try to subscribe to every day is
the only person gonna make you happyas you. It's the decisions that you
make in your life and make foryourself, and those there can be little,

(01:11):
tiny decisions they don't have to bebig decisions, but even like the
little small decisions, you can makethe decision when you wake up in the
morning that I'm going to be happytoday and I don't have a good day
and nothing's gonna bother me. Andif you keep that mindset, you'll have
a pretty good day. You know, shit's gonna happen that you don't like.
Shit's gonna happen that none of usyou know, plan for, But

(01:36):
at the end of the day,you still got to deal with it and
move on with your life. Andso trying not to. I try not
to let those little things bring medown, because there's always gonna be adversity,
and there's always gonna be things inyour way. And you can either
be pissed off at all the littlethings in life and miserable, and choose
to be miserable. And that's yourchoice, because you are the master of
your own brain. And if youwant to change your thinking, you will.

(02:00):
And so if you're down all thetime, and down on everybody and
down on yourself, then that's whatyour life's gonna be. You're gonna be
fucking miserable. And I just realizeda long time ago that I'm gonna get
up every day in a good mood, and I'm going to not let anybody
fuck that mood up, because ifyou let another person do that, you're
giving them the power to do thatover you. You're giving them power over
you to fuck up your day andyour mood. And if you just let

(02:21):
shit roll off, especially in consequentialshit just roll off your back and just
going about your day. And there'sthere's also things that happen in life that
we have no control over. Andit's frustrating sometimes to get other people to
do what the fuck you want themto do, and you just can't in
relationships, friendships, you know,anything like that, your kids, you
know, it's just fucking frustrating.But and that that's where, like we

(02:45):
were talking about before, where takinga break comes in, like you need
time for yourself as well to decompressfrom all that. But I firmly believe,
and I'm not trying to be likecoomb Bay y'all that sit around the
fire bullshit, but I firmly believethat what you what you believe in your
head is what you know, whatyou tell yourself every day, what you
believe in your mind is what yourlife will be, and stop letting other

(03:07):
people choose your happiness, and stoplooking at people on fucking Facebook and on
Instagram and their lives look perfect becausethey put up all these perfect pictures of
their perfect family and their perfect fautsand perfect children, and their lines aren't
perfect. I promise you that isjust a fucking front they put up because
they're miserable and they want everybody elseto think that they just have this perfect

(03:28):
life and they're rich and they're takingthese beach trips all the time. That's
not normally how it is. Imean, we should have learned this from
these fucking celebrities who've you know,taken pictures in front of private jets and
then find out they're flying commercial Imean the show like that. People are
always trying to put on a frontto show up other people. And that's
why I think one of the biggestthings in this world we need to get
rid of is fucking ego. Youknow, I love performing in front of

(03:52):
people and stuff, and back whenI was younger, I had an ego
and the more that people clap forme when I sang in front of them,
you know, the peer I was. But I let that define myself
self worth, and now that I'vegotten older, that doesn't work for me.
I don't need to put on afucking dog and pony show every day
for me to feel good about me. And I have my issues like everybody

(04:14):
else. I have weight issues havemy entire life. I've been honest about
them on social media. I've goneup, I've gone down, you know.
But hey, I'm fucking healthy andI'm happy that I get to do
this for y'all. And I havenothing to fucking complain about. I really
don't. At the end of theday, I had to tell myself to
shut the fuck up if I startcomplaining, because I have nothing complaining about.

(04:35):
I have a good life and notsaying I don't have my own problems.
I have my own fucking issues.That's why I come in here and
talk to you all about my issues. I'm not a perfect person. I'm
a fucking weirdo because I do theparanormal. But you know, we're all
weird in our own way, andthat's why we all come together on stuff
like the paranormal to celebrate our weirdnessand and all that, and so you

(04:57):
know, stop being so hard onyourself and stop comparing yourself to other people
and what their lives appear to be, because they have just as many problems
as you do. They just don'twant you to see that they're struggling when
they really are. And then alsocomes back to what we've talked about before,
Be careful what you say to somebodybecause you never know how it's gonna
affect them. And so if youalways lead your life with good intentions and

(05:20):
doing good things, no matter whatother people do, you may affect somebody's
life in a very positive way justbecause you were nice to them, or
that you said something, or youhave the door open for them at a
grocery store or some you know,a gas station or something that may mean
the world to them, you know. And so you know, I always
just try to have a positive attitude. I don't like I said, it

(05:42):
sounds like kumbay y'all bullshit, youknow, hippie dippy bullshit. But I
promise you if you if you changeyour thinking, it'll you change that attitude
in the way that you think yourbrain will follow. It might take a
little while, but your brain willfollow. But just remember, the only
person ever gonna make you happy isyou and if what you're doing now is
not making you happy, then finda way to change it. But that's

(06:03):
my opinion, my advice for theday. I struggle every day with everything
that I just told you, andsome days it's easier than others, some
days it's harder than others. Andlike I said, I don't know everything.
I'm just trying to share with theall the things that I've learned,
the things I struggle with. Anyway, that's enough of the mental health talk

(06:26):
for this week, and please goand subscribe to Strangely Haunted on YouTube.
We've got a new documentary film comingout. This one's gonna be a full
length one on Brushing Mountain. Wehave the trailer for Brushing Mountain up now,
Brushing Mountain State Prison. It's aprison here in Tennessee that we went
investigated and has a really long historyand crazy, weird, interesting history.

(06:48):
But that will be out and thisprobably come in this fall. Fulling documentary.
Will have more on that when itcomes out. But anyway, so
on to show we have an authorfor you and a paranorm investigator. His
name is Michael j. Oka.That is Oka, and he is the
author of the new book The WestGrand Haunting, and we're talking to him

(07:11):
about his new book and where hegrows up in a haunted house and how
it affected his life and it influencedhim to become a paranorm investigator and now
him and his team do private investigationsonly and help families just like his when
he was grown up the eighties andwhen they didn't have any help. And
he's a really smart, articulate guy, and we had a great conversation.

(07:31):
Really enjoyed the conversation about the bookand him growing up in this haunted house,
but also his thoughts on investigations inthe paranormal. So sit back and
relax and enjoy this episode with Michaelj Oka. And you can find his
books and all his links in theshow notes as usual. All Right,
we'll talk to'all next time.Have a good day. Hey, Michael,
thanks for joining the show and comingon and talking about your book today.

(07:54):
Hey, pleasure to be here.Yeah. I come across your book
on Amazon and it just came outin April, so not that long ago.
And this is the book is calledThe West Grand Haunting, and this
is basically kind of an autobiographical story, nonfiction about you. And your family's
experiences moving into a haunted house.Yeah. Yeah, that's right over in

(08:16):
our house in Corona. So afterall these years, you're about my age,
we're both in our forties, andso what kind of spurred you to
write the book now as opposed tobefore or not write the book at all.
I'd attempted to write this book atleast four or five times prior to
getting what I think is the correctversion done, and each and every time

(08:41):
I had failed. I can figureout what it was that the book was
missing. A couple of summers back, a partner of mine men from work
and we got into doing some paranormalinvestigation. And one of the things we
were doing when we were talking tothe other people in our group is going
over why we believe, and wewere sharing our stories, and this one

(09:01):
popped up. And after the summerwas done, the group kind of went
dormant again. And I was sittingthere one day and I just thought,
you know, I can write this, and then I started getting to it.
So did this kind of spur youinto doing more paranormal stuff or become
an investigator or anything with that?It's a bit cyclical. It's because of
the events that happened on the WestGrand Haunting, that the real life,

(09:26):
not just the story, but thethings I experienced, kind of set me
in that direction, I guess forever. It was indelible mark put on my
life. And you know, whenyou're a kid, there's not much you
can really do other than the readingbooks on it and kind of being a
fan of the idea of the paranormal. And then after after the events of

(09:48):
the West Grand Haunting, the bookillustrates at one point, you know that
a friend of mine and I wentback there and we had an experience and
met up with a couple other peopleand we kind of formed paranormal group and
that went on for a while,and then it went dormant, and and
more recently, you know, afterhaving written the story, I started getting

(10:09):
back into the paranormal again. Yeah. I'm always fascinated because we all,
all of us in the paranormal worldkind of have similar reasoning for getting into
it. A lot of us have, you know, experiences from our childhood,
and we're trying to explain them toourselves or rationalize them. We're not
crazy for having them, you know, absolutely right, it's it's it's rationality,

(10:30):
trying to rationalize them. Sorry,it's trying to justify the experiences,
trying to trying to prove yourself.Number one, you know, hey,
that did happen. But as itgoes so often with the paranormal, you
know, it's it's a lot ofanecdotal evidence, but very little in the
in the realm of heart evidence.You know, I can see something and
say something and everyone thinks it's acool ghost story, but did it really

(10:52):
happen? You know, even withmy book, I commented on that,
you know, I'm telling you astory here, I'm telling you this happened,
but I can't prove it. Noone else was there to see it
with us, So you know,it's just it becomes a lifelong pursuit.
Yeah. Yeah, And that's that'skind of how it's been for me as
well, with growing up paranormal ina paranormal household and things like that as

(11:15):
well, not to the extent thatyou experienced it, or even as young
as you started experiencing it, andalso you know, saying that we we
both grew up in an era whereyou know, you had in search of
and like unsolved mysteries. You eventalking about unsolved mysteries in the book kind
of putting its mark. Yeah,that's one episode going to putting this mark
on you. But those are theonly things that we had. We didn't

(11:37):
have Ghost Hunters and things like that. Like a lot of the kids now
here are grown, you know,grew up watching that in the early early
two thousands, and so you know, we didn't. I think even me
looking at the book in the wayyou describe everything, I kind of felt
a connection with you as a youngerkid of being aware of these things,
but not as aware I think associety is now when the kids are growing

(12:00):
with ghost a Ventures and ghost Huntersand all these TV shows and how predominant
is in our society. When wewere growing up, it wasn't that predominant.
It really wasn't. And you know, and as a kid, you
know, everybody had the ghost story, but it was I don't want to
say it was tongue in cheek,but it was one of those things you
know, someone says and you acceptit. You don't discuss it in detail.
I certainly didn't until you know,until i'd written The West Grand Haunting.

(12:24):
These were not things I would tellsomeone in detail because it's it's fun
around the campfire, it's fun atsleepovers. But when you talk about it
seriously, people start sideyeing, likeall right, man, that's a little
kookie that you believe that. Yeah, and probably in the you know,
if we were born ten years earlierinstead of the eighties, back in the
seventies, I mean, they putyou in a nuthouse for seeing things,

(12:48):
you know, you'd be yeah,yeah, thank you. And that was
something I had noted as well.You know, they would look at that
as something crazy. And not todivert too far off topic, but in
some of my career history, oneof them, I had to take the
m mp I two tests, andthe questions and there include things like have
you ever seen ghosts? Do yousee closes? And this is psychological evaluation

(13:11):
tests, you know, and obviouslyyou know, if you want the job,
you're like, no, there's nosuch thing. But because you want
the job and in order to getit, you know, you can't be
someone who sees ghosts or who hashad experiences that you believe really happened,
because you know, like you said, if it had come these experiences,
you know, a lot a lotearlier on in our lives that there were

(13:33):
institutions and psychologists and psychiatrists for thingslike this. Yeah, so let's let's
get into the book and kind ofstarting the beginning with how y'all came to
move into this house. To beginwith, Oh, man, I was
a kid. I grew up arelatively normal lifestyle. My dad worked for
McDonald douglas. My mom was awaitress in Lowndale, California's place called the

(13:56):
Seafair. And then, oh,gosh, I don't know, probably about
nineteen eighty seven, you know,we get the news, the horrible news.
You know, hey, you knowwe're going to take some time apart,
and that's never good, and itstruck me pretty hard. We moved
out of Lawndell and into Orange Countyand it was a place called Lehabre and
I there. I spent my lifethere with my mom and my sister from

(14:20):
eighty seven to eighty nine. Andaround eighty nine my dad started popping up
again and we ended up taking afamily trip to this city called Norco,
California. My aunt Deniece lived thereat the time. She was a Ramcher
and Norco's just north of Corona,and we liked it and we liked Corona,
so within a few months, really, it happened pretty quickly. Within

(14:43):
a few months, you know,I've got my family back, and we're
moving into this gorgeous American craftsman houseon West Grand And I mean it was
it was big, had an enormousbackyard, orange trees, pomegranates, big
big garage, and this root cellar, and we were just thrilled to be
there and be a family. Butit was almost immediate that the things there

(15:05):
started happening. It didn't wait toolong. Yeah. Yeah, And you
kind of describe in the book asthe house waking up. When you're a
kid, you can't describe these feelings, or at least you can't put them
in the words so well or articulateit so much. But looking back on
the memories, it's exactly what thehouse felt like. It's like this place,
you know, was we walked in, there was nothing. It felt
very dormant, you know, lookingback on it, and then one day

(15:30):
it was like being in a crowdedcafeteria. You know, it's it's a
lot of background noise, and itsaid, there's a lot of energy in
there, and you don't really knowwhat it is. But it was it
was loud, for lack of abetter word, the house was very loud.
Yeah, yeah, And so howdid how did it start? Because
you said at first it was kindof dormant and kind of quiet, and

(15:52):
then all of a sudden it justyou know, woke up. So what
was kind of the first beginnings ofyou, at least you and your sister
noticing it as kids. Well,when we first moved in there, a
lot of our packed belongings ended upin the root cellar beneath the house.
And the root cellar wasn't like therewas no concrete. This wasn't something that
someone had put a lot of carein the building. It was more like

(16:14):
somebody had dug out a hole beneaththe house and there was the cellar,
and it was about the length andwidth of the house almost beneath and it
was very deep. And we usedto be allowed to play there. And
then one day, for no goodreason that I can imagine other than maybe,
you know, safety concerns of aparent, my mom tells us that
we can't go down there anymore,not without an adult, not ever.

(16:37):
And you know, there was alatch, a slide latch and lock but
they never locked it. So mysister and I got home from school one
day, Mom was getting ready togo to work. Dad was going to
be home soon, and while Momstepped out for a moment, we decided
we were going to go into theroot Seller. We were going to go
down there play with some of ourold toys from our wife back in Lawndell,

(17:00):
you know, prior to their firstsplit. And while we were down
there, we heard a sound thathonestly couldn't be mistaken for anything else than
footsteps. And we had our dog, Stormy. He was this beautiful,
just energetic black lab. He wasvery playful, very protective. We had
him down there with us because werationalized, well, he's older than us

(17:22):
kind of and he'll protect this.So we brought him down there and we
start hearing these footsteps and I knowit's not my mom, and I know
it's not my dad, but Istart rationalizing myself, Oh shoot, Dad's
home, you know, Oh no, you know, but Stormy's whimpering,
and Stormy's wrapping around up into alittle ball on the floor of the root

(17:42):
Feller. And I don't think thatI put that in there. There was
a lot of stuff that I hadto take out, mostly because it kind
of detracted from the story. Buthe was a good indicator, you know,
when these things started happening. Therewas something that made him uncomfortable,
and there was something that should haveif we weren't, made us uncomfortable as
well. And so we come rushingout of the root cellar, you know,

(18:04):
hell or high water, up thebackstairs and into the kitchen, into
the house and no one, youknow. And these were deliberate footsteps,
they weren't. They weren't like,oh, the house is settling, or
you know, something filled down upstairs. It was you can hear it walking
from one location of the house intothe hall and where the bathroom would be.
And when we got up there,there was no one there, no
one at all. That was whenthe house woke up. Yeah, and

(18:27):
then the kind of snowball from thereinto a lot more things happening. It
did, it really did. Thingswould go by kind of peaceably for a
little bit in between. It wasn'tlike, you know, we lived in
a in a horror movie where nomatter where we turned there was something horrific
awaiting us next. But it wasnever comfortable for me again after that,

(18:51):
and my sister as well. Itplayed off of anxiety, and it scared
us. You know, we wentfrom from being able to sleep, you
know, with a door shut,to having our door open and the hall
light on and inexplicably there was noreason. There were spots of the house
sometimes they were uncomfortable to be andfor no good reason at all. But

(19:11):
you know, we had just movedin there. Mom and Dad had just
gotten back together. Things were goodfor a little while, so it wasn't
like we were waiting for something badto happen. It was just something.
There was something in the background,noise, that proverbial cafeteria that was building
that we couldn't explain. Yeah.Yeah, and you had a really crazy
experience waking up with somebody sitting behindthe door, the woman behind the door.

(19:37):
I didn't wake up because I hadn'tgone to sleep. I have a
very active imagination, for sure,you know. I write and my mind
goes to some dark places sometimes.And as a kid, you know,
Mom had a rule that I can'twatch anything scary before bed because that's just
where my mind will take it.And it was that one fateful episode of

(20:00):
Unsolved Mysteries. For the episode ofthe Queen Mary. You know, my
dad and I watched it. Wepal around a bit, and when it
was time for me to go tobed, I was settling in the bed.
He closed the door halfway. Awhole light was on and we would
have this radio on. It wasa little dial radio. He turned itob
and the needle goes left or right, and they always kept it on something
like baseball or boring talk radio becauseit was just I needed background noise to

(20:23):
fall asleep. And as I'm gettingready to, you know, kind of
shuffle off into slumber, I heardthe radio's station get kind of staticky,
and we kind of disregarded it atfirst. But then I heard the station
change and it was it wasn't onbaseball anymore. It was on something something

(20:44):
else. I can't tell you exactlywhat it was, but and then it
was static again, and then itwas something else, and I, uh,
I'm a little bit unnerved, youknow, if I'm being honest,
the unsolved mysteries and everything. ButI leaned out of bed, I put
my left hand on the floor andreached over to the bottom shelf of this
bookshelf where this little radio was,and I was turning it back to the

(21:07):
center dial so to go to thebaseball station. And as I was about
to get back in the bed,I half saw, half sensed movement out
of my peripheral vision, and whenI looked up in the corner, sitting
not standing, sitting on the floorkind of bumbled up into itself. There
was a woman. And I immediatelywent into a survival mode. I started

(21:30):
lying to myself, say, youknow, trying to convince myself, Okay,
this is my sister playing a trickon me. And it's not that
it was ever beyond her to dosomething like that. It's just that I
had to convince myself that this washer. So I'm telling her stop it.
I'm going to tell Dad, you'rebeing stupid. You know, you're
being stupid. Stop it. Andit looked up, you know, it

(21:52):
was kind of cradled there, lookingat the floor, and when it looked
up, it was this kind ofemaciated, wrought looking person. And I've
never really seen one before, butI did include an illustration in the book
hollow cavernous eyes, or were orbitalsockets where the eyes should have been.
And my reaction was to scream asloud and shrill as possible. And about

(22:18):
that time, my mom was comingin through the front door and my dad
was already in bed, but allthe lights are on in the house.
Mom and Dad are running into myroom. There's the woman behind the door.
The woman behind the door. I'mcrying my eyes out. I ain't
never seen nothing like that, youknow, the woman behind the door.
And you know, they calmed medown, They get me back in a

(22:40):
state where I can talk, andwe discuss what had happened. And then
the next thing I know, Momand dad are arguing in the room.
John. You know, you're notsupposed to let them his mind take some
of the dark places, and youknow, my mom was always my mom
and dad. You know, itwas just a bad dream. It was
just a bad dream. But Ihadn't gone this sleep yet, So that
was that experience. The woman behindthe door. Yeah, yeah, that's

(23:00):
pretty crazy, and the illustration isis pretty scary looking for especially a kid,
to see something like that definitely leavea mark on you for the rest
of your life, because that's likehorror movie stuff. Well you see horror
movies, right and you're like,oh, that's scary, but like it's
so much more frightening when in person, because it's nothing that I've ever seen

(23:21):
special effects capable of accurately, accuratelyproducing. And I wasn't And I drew
it like I drew the picture,but I and I was true to the
images I could have been. Butit's not as scary as it was actually
in person. I can't. Icould never capture something like that even in
an illustration. But that's about asclose to the reality of it as it
was. Yeah, what kind ofwhat kind of experience did your sister have

(23:45):
in the house, because she wasa little bit younger than you, right,
m oh gosh. Some time wentby, and as it always does
in elementary school, you know,especially especially around that that time of the
season. I want to say itwas October. I think it talked we're
in the book. But a littlebit of time went by, and you
know, the topic of bloody Marycomes up, and everybody and their mother's

(24:06):
mother's mother's grandmother is all heard ofbloody Mary. It's supposed to be a
fun urban legend. The causes you'rechicken out when you're having a sleepover with
your friends, you go in themirror with the candle and say it or
whatever. But you know, she'dcome on. I'd never heard of it,
ironically, but she came home andshe was talking about it, and
her friends all insisted they had everseen it, but we didn't. We
didn't actually play Bloody Mary. Wejust discussed it in the house and she

(24:30):
was describing some creature or some entity. I guess Bloody Mary is supposed to
have blood coming out of her eyesor be this bloody mess of a of
an entity. And then nothing,you know, for a little while.
And then one night, you know, I'm in bed, I'm asleep,
and I'm woken up because I canhear howling, screaming coming from her room,

(24:52):
which is a it's just adjacent tomine, right next door over really
we share a wall. Now Ican hear her screaming, and then the
lights are on and mom and dadare rushed to her room and she's screaming,
and I'm just I kind of wantto come and see what's going on,
and is go back to bed.She's fine. And one thing I
can tell you, being as vigilantas we were about being afraid of the
things to go from the night,is every night before bed, you know,

(25:17):
we check under the beds. Wemake sure the closet door is closed,
you know. And my sister,unlike me, was not as afraid
of the dark as I was.But I had less reason to be afraid,
you know, with me having seenthe woman behind the door. And
at one point and then the other, she was woken up by sound.

(25:38):
And the sound she woke up towas her closet door opening up. And
I illustrated in the book, orrather my talented wife did, she's an
architect, what the bedroom lay out, the house layout was in the bedrooms,
and so you know, you haveher bed on one wall, a
guest bed on the other wall,and then you have the closet at the

(26:00):
into the room and the door opensup and something she was unable to describe
it other than that the door openeditself up. She woke up as the
door was opening, and something steppedout into the room and started, I
don't know if stepped is a goodword, but started advancing or aggressing toward
her when she screamed, and parentsmoving with the speed of light that they
do when a child's screaming. Theywere in there and the lights were on.

(26:22):
And the only real evidence, youknow that that actually shook my mom
more than my dad was, infact, that her closet door was open,
and she knew we all know thatwe don't leave them open at night,
not not any of us. Sothat that was her experience with what
she referred to as the Bloody Mary, And what I've come to at least
hypothesizes a child's attempt to give nameto something that they can't comprehend. Yeah,

(26:48):
did you did your parents ever confessto have anything happen to them in
the house later on? You know, the way it's written in the stories.
You hear about my story, andthen you hear about my sister's story,
and then the story progresses on withsome other things, you know,
because there are different ways of beinghaunted, and then we go back and
revisit it later. Because I'm inmy adult life, in my twenties,

(27:11):
in this restaurant where my mom's adiner and we're having lunch, and the
topics of the house came up,and then she just kind of unloads on
me everything that we missed as childrenthat you know, responsible grown adults aren't
going to tell their kids. Yeah, and I guess my mom had worked
a swing shift at a diner,and I'd come home late, and she

(27:33):
came home from work, went intothe living room from the kitchen. It
was the side we used. Wenever used the front of the house,
you know, plopped down on thecouch, turned on the TV. And
we lived near probably one of themost treacherous intersections on Grand Boulevard. There's
a highway on ramp, so there'salways trucks coming on and off, and

(27:53):
sometimes even accidents within like a stone'sthrow of the house. But no cars
online away when she got home,no cars on the street. And she's
sitting there watching Nick at Night orone of the other late night cable programs
of that era, and she sawthe blinds kind of shift a little and
she's like, no, whatever,that's not that's not real. And then

(28:15):
they did it again and she said, no, no, it's and they
did it again, and she mymom one of her favorite words, I'm
I'm sure she'll kill me for this, but she likes the word bullshit,
and that was basically she She waslike, bullshitt, prove it. And
the blind started shaking violently, likesomeone grabbed them and shaking him, and

(28:36):
something akin to a finger from thetop of the blinds, running down these
horizontal blinds to the bottom. Andabout that time, she's freaking out,
John, Wake up, John,wake up, running in there, turning
the lights of the outcome and uh, you know when when the trucks came
by, Yeah, you know,all the all the blinds, they were
all horizontal blinds. They'd all shakenthe windows like more like an earthquake,

(28:57):
though not like some but he hadgrabbed the bottom of them and was shaking
them to show you, hey outhere. I had it in the story
originally, I don't remember, notjust off the top of my head,
if I kept it in that Andlike I said, there's stuff I hadn't
set out. But from that momentforward, when she came in off any
swing shift at night, house wasquiet at start, she would have Stormy

(29:19):
run through the house first. Shewould have him come through. And I
know I did cut this from thestory, and I wish I hadn't,
But there were a couple of timeswhere he would he would come into the
house and she'd get to the livingroom, lights around, and he would
stop in the hallway. And therewas two different occasions. One time he

(29:41):
stopped in the hallway and started whiny, and then kind of laid down,
staring up at something she couldn't see, and he was pawing at the air
like he was trying to He was, you know, had been given that
bad dog feeling and he was justtrying to trying to be cute or something.
But there was something that he wasinteracting with that she couldn't see that
scared her, and you her immediatereaction much like you know, me me

(30:03):
telling you know, stop it.I'm going to tell Dad, she's like
Stormy, bad dog, bad dog. Stop that, you know, just
sharing her. He doesn't have arational explanation or a rational response. The
next time that that happened, itwas a very similar circumstance. Stormy came
in. By the time he reachedthat hallway, he'd rolled over onto his
back and was whimpering and whining,and, as I accounted for earlier,

(30:26):
the same thing he had done whenwe were in the root cellar. He
just laid down, put his eyesup and started whimpering and whining. He
was he was a good detector forspooky things that you don't really want to
deal with. But at least,you know, he gave you some idea
that there was something that he waslooking at. I guess, yeah.
And did did she ever explain whyall of a sudden y'a couldn't go into

(30:47):
the cellar anymore? That explanation nevercame up. It was always you know,
well, you were kids and itwas dangerous down there. As a
child, I could see no particulardanger in there. But when I did
return to the house in my inmy early twenties, early meetings with one
of my close friends, we referto each other as brothers, but there

(31:10):
were still no dangers that I couldsee, even as a young adult.
No low hanging beings, no lowraptors. There wasn't any shells for anything
to fall out, nothing was goingto cave in. It was just one
day. No one wanted to godown there, and if they didn't have
to, Mom and dad didn't godown there at all. Yeah, And
so you've mentioned couple of times thatyou went back as an adult. Were

(31:34):
there people living there when you wentback to the house, see, I
want to say it was two thousandand one. September twenty seventh, two
thousand and one, No, Octobertwenty seventh, sorry, October twenty seventh,
two thousand and one it was whenI went back with my brother Mike.
Were there people in the house currentlywhen you at that time when you
went back living there? Yeah,it was absolutely occupied. Is it just

(31:57):
so happened? I just, youknow, we were talking about we were
the highway and we were recounting.Topic came up that when he was a
kid, he had grown up inthis house. It was kind of spooky.
Said, oh, me too,I'll show it to you. And
we went there and we just parkedoutside in the alleyway and the current occupant
was this Hispanic woman. She wasout there and you know, just can

(32:20):
I help you? I was like, oh, I used to live here.
I was just showing a buddy ofmine where I where I kind of
grew up the first couple of yearshere. And she asks, you know,
I'm solicited. You know, didanything weird ever happen when you lived
here? And I said that ifyou want that warrant of conversation, and
she actually, you know, weparked, she invited us in, and
man, it was like stepping backin the time. And and and when

(32:44):
I got there, I got likethis impression, you know, like the
house was aware that I was there, and I, and and and staying
out, saying that out loud orwriting it down in a story. I'm
aware of how insane it sounds,but you know, an unmovable, immobile
object that is somehow aware of somebodybeing there. But that was the sensation
I got the moment I set foot. And I don't remember if it was

(33:07):
when I first walked back into thehouse or when we went down in the
root cellar, but I had thisdeep impression on me, like you know,
oh, I remember you kind ofthing going on, and it was
very unsettling. Their experiences were notsimilar to my experiences. They had never
seen a entity manifest per se,but they definitely had footsteps, including the

(33:31):
woman's father, who slept on thecouch in the living room. He was
older than the rest of them.I assumed a grandpa or something, but
he had described that he would hearchildren laughing and running back and forth between
the living room and our den,which is by the front door, the
entrance we didn't use. And shehad a son and a daughter. The

(33:53):
daughter had to be somewhere between seventeenand nineteen, and she had told us
that like when she's shouting, shefeels like she's being watched and had on
a number of occasions heard something breathingin her ear, both in the in
the restroom where she would shower andalso in her bedroom. And her bedroom

(34:14):
was my sister's old bedroom where shehad seen the bloody Mary. Yeah,
that's interesting that they would she wouldjust offer the information up. But I
would be curious too, you knowif I lived in this house. Yeah,
somebody who lived there previously, like, hey, we're these experiences,
but you know a lot of peoplealso want to ignore it, like it
doesn't exist either. You know.That was kind of our family's mantra,

(34:37):
like nope, that's not happening.That was the wind, those kind of
stuff that my grandparents would say intheir house and Redondo. It was the
stuff we would say, you know, nope, nope, didn't see that,
that's not that's and they'd say itout, well, that's not real,
you know, just absolutely absolute denial. But I think, you know,
we we had touched earlier on howlike we we get involved in these

(34:58):
because we want to prove or justifyor nationalized that these things did happen.
And I think when you're in aplace like the house on West Grand so
I was like, oh, yeah, I used to live here. You
know, the first words out ofmy mouth would probably have been in her
shoes? Did anything ever happen whileyou were here? Yeah, you know,
and not hoping for yeah, absolutely, actually hoping for no. No,

(35:20):
Then it's all in your imagination.You're good, yeah, you know,
you want the opposite of confirmation ofsomething's terrifying you or scaring you.
But all of them, with theexception of the son who claimed that he
had never experienced anything, all ofthem had just an uncomfortable sensation just being
in the house. Some of themhad direct experiences, like the daughter with

(35:40):
something that she couldn't see breathing inher ear, but overall just they weren't
particularly happy there, and within acouple of years they had already moved out.
By the time I went back tothe house again. Yeah, do
you think that the house? BecauseI know a lot of people in these
situations they talk about the people havingdifferent foods in the house and the house
affecting them that way, and I'mgonna leave. The mood completely changes where

(36:04):
it changes a person. Do youthink that had an effect on your family?
Well, I mean I do.I think that, you know,
when I was growing up, becausebecause you know, all the events in
this house are all related to howthey affected my life, both the haunting
itself and the familial turmoil. AndI think that, you know, my
folks were inevitably going to just gotheir separate ways eventually, but there was

(36:27):
a lot of negativity just trapped inthat place. Man, those walls,
that whatever that place had seen,whatever whatever had gone on in that that
old place, just seemed to collectthere. And you know, people were
quicker to anger, the tempers werequicker to rise. You know, I'd
spill milk and my dad would disproportionatelyscream about a glass of spilled milk,

(36:49):
literally crying over spilled milk. Andhe and he, out of all of
us, you know, I alwaysrecollect uh and and think that it seemed
to be affected the most by it. You know, it got pretty dark
living there, and it became,you know, something that went from a

(37:13):
hopeful place for new beginnings to ahopeless place where you just wanted it to
stop. And even as a kid, you know, the silver lining in
that cloud became fewer, lesser andfar between that you know, we were
actually happy being there. We hada pretty stable life, you know,
financially speaking. We like I said, he was working in the aerospace engineer.

(37:34):
He was, he was himself anaerospace industry. He was himself an
aerospace engineer. It's not like wewere hurting for the amenities. It was
just that everything was beginning to collapsedown around us. And you know,
I want to say, yeah,that's the house. I don't know.
I believe that it had something todo with it, that it just kind
of sped along the inevitable. Yeah. Yeah, And in those situations,

(37:57):
I wonder if it's the actual paranormalself that's affecting the people, or it's
the fact that, like, asparents, because we always and you talk
about this in the book a littlebit, and it made a lot of
sense to me. We always thinkabout our parents as being older and have
their shit together and that type ofstuff. But when we're kids, our
parents are essentially kids too, andthey're kind of figuring things out, you

(38:21):
know, in their twenties, andso it makes me think, Okay,
well, was it because they didn'tknow how to deal with the situation,
so it caused them to have theanxiety of I have to deal with this
shit on top of the normal lifestuff going on, oh for sure,
and the denial of like I don'twant to believe in this, but also
the the I don't know the fearof not knowing how to protect your family

(38:43):
either. Well, right, becausethis isn't something that you know, like,
this is not an intruder that youcan you know, beat up or
shoot or arrest or put down.This is something this is this is something
immaterial. And you know, you'reyou've already gone through you know, those
parents, you've gone through marital I'mjust trying to put things back together.
And like you said, oh shit, now we've got this too. Yeah,

(39:05):
yeah, now, And this issomething that we can't control. It
cannot be reasoned with or it cannotit has no rational desire to behave itself.
And we have two frightened children withus on top of that, on
top of our marital woes, ontop of everything else that's already going around
in our lives. And I thinkthat you know that I think that it
was both paranormal and also you know, just the very human nature, the

(39:29):
human reaction to all of these thingsbuilding up at one time and culminating in
something that was going to be catastrophicfor that for our family. Yeah,
yeah, And I know for theaudience, we're going to jumping around all
the timeline here. But so youalso, even after going in two thousand
and one and talking to that family, you had some more dealings with with

(39:52):
other people who live there afterwards.So I told you about going back there
in two thousand and one, andthen after that I had gone out and
gotten this tattoo. My mom hadtaken me to the parlor, actually,
which shocked me because she's she washistorically vehemently anti tattoo, but went and

(40:15):
got this tattoo, and afterward Iasked her if she could drop by there,
and that was that was when Idiscovered, you know, because it
was too long after the first timethat no one was living there, no
one at all. The house hadgone up for sale and then to escrow
at some point or another, andso did something I probably shouldn't have done,
but I just said I was goingto go look inside the garage,

(40:36):
and there were these blue angels bumperstickers on the wall that my dad had
put on there back in eighty ninewhen we first moved in. He as
a former sailor himself and a hugefan of the Blue Angels. And there
was a big crack running through thewall, and the stickers had been cracked
in half. And I had moreof a metaphoric thing for me that,

(40:58):
you know that that the past.I kind of like, Okay, cool,
the past is dead, this isdone. Time to move on.
But you know, these experiences,especially the one in two thousand and one,
we had formed the Paranormal Research Development. We didn't have a society Moniker
attacked yet. So later down theline, we were doing a bunch of
things and there were two hot spotsin my hometown in Corona that came up,

(41:22):
and one happened to be the house. And there was a kind of
acting acting by proxy. There wasthis lady named Margie May I think I
call her in the book. Thatwasn't her real name, but she was
vehemently against me attempting to contact theowner. She was adavant that she had

(41:43):
taken care of the problem. Shesaid, you know that the new owners
were turning this into a business.And while the owner's wife was very upset
by whatever was going on in thehouse, this lady has assured me.
You know, I walked through withsage, and I cleansed the house and
no more could come of it,leave them alone. I never got to

(42:06):
directly interact with the new owners ofthe property, who are currently the owners
of the property itself as well.And sometime, oh gosh, that was
in the mid two thousand and too, sometime way down the road, around
two thousand and eight, almost goinginto two thousand and nine, I had
actually gotten an email from her,and I mean, like all caps kind

(42:28):
of panicking, you know, islike, hey, you know, it
started up again. The doctor hasbecome inexplicably ill. His wife is afraid.
Does this place usually act up,you know, in the autumn?
One of the first people to tellpeople that I don't know that there's such
thing as like seasonal haunting. It'slike there's seasonal allergies. The concept of

(42:49):
that is so absurd to me.I just didn't really bother to write her
back other than I don't know,you know, good luck. I didn't
really communicate with her after that becauseshe was living in another city now and
in central California. It was nolonger my problem, right, And that
was really the last interaction with anybodyI had regarding the house. Did you
ever find out any because as aninvestigator, for me, I go to

(43:10):
the history of the property or thehouse. Did you ever dig into that
and find out why the place maybe haunted or why some of these entities
are there? Oh? For sure. I attempted on a number of occasions,
you know, like in the earlytwo thousands. We had you know,
when I first went back in twothousand and one, you had to
consider like we had just gotten awayfrom dial up and it was still out

(43:34):
there, right, the Internet hadgone from being AOL to just being like
the self contained thing that it is, and we hadn't gotten remotely any of
the databases that we have now.So I spent a lot of time in
the historic district of the library attemptingto hit up the county recorder for anything,
anything at all on the property.And there was nothing at that time

(43:57):
other than that it was an Americancraftsman home architecture style built in the early
nineteen hundreds. I want to say, it was like nineteen ten, I
think it was, And that wasthe only information. I have no blueprints
anything like that. And then Itried again, just while I was writing
this book. I didn't want tospend the money. But I went ahead
and bought something, you know,for allegedly that could give you the complete

(44:21):
history of the property, would haveall the information on it that you could
need because it gives you access dueto freedom of information that the you know,
we didn't really have back then.And again, American craftsman home built
in nineteen I think nineteen ten,and that was it. That's all that
there is in the house. Youcan go on Zillow and it'll give you

(44:43):
a complete list of like anyone who'sever lived there. But that's about I
mean. And when I say anyonewho's ever lived there, I mean up
to the point where like my familymoved in. Yeah, you know,
it doesn't show the owners prior toour occupation of the property. It doesn't
show so who first lived in thehouse. You know, it's something built

(45:04):
in nineteen ten or or whatever yearit was. I want, I still
want to say ninety ten. Somebodywould have lived there. You know,
it didn't just sit there until nineteeneighty nine. You know, they were
occupants, right and did come tofind out though the house had a have
had a weird reputation in the neighborhood. Yeah, I would imagine where we'll
get around, Oh for sure.I mean, well, just in the

(45:24):
nineteen fifties, it was it hadapparently, which by the way, at
the time must have been really difficultfor them. They had a mixed race
couple there, and they apparently weren'tparticularly happy there either. According to one
of my friends from the old neighborhood. And I guess that house it was

(45:44):
known as as the bad house atthe time. Nobody nobody goes to that
house. Well, we don't,we don't. We don't visit the house.
If if we're going to hang outwith neighbors, we're not hanging out
there. They can come over here, that type of thing. They didn't
want to be near the house.Yeah, you know. And and in
recounting it, I have a friendin the book I named him. He

(46:04):
signed a waiver on his named RobertVargas. I owe great deal of thanks
to him, specifically because he helpedfill in some blanks about the history of
the house because his family had beenin that neighborhood since before the fifties,
you know, and you know aboutfinding out that that was the bad house.
Nobody goes there. They don't know, they don't know the history of

(46:25):
the house. They don't know reallywho lived there before the fifties. They
don't have any information any more thananyone else did. It was you know,
as far as the historical context goesfor the house on West Grand you
know, it wasn't there then itwas there, then some people lived there,
and then people were aware of itsuddenly around the fifties. Yeah.
Yeah, that's interesting. It's weird, right, yeah, yeah, especially

(46:51):
not to you. I mean,with you gotta think if they're I would
just think with horrible things going onand seeing horrible things like that that y'all
have seen and experienced, if itwas just little old granny who died in
there, I don't think little grannyin my experience of the des game,
little granny who died in the houseis not going to haunt you like that.
You know. It tends to belike more trauma, traumatic murders or

(47:15):
suicides or you know, horrific thingslike that in the environment, not like
I said, not somebody who livedthere. Yeah, like extreme violence,
you know, and well one ofthe things that I uh, you know,
it took me growing up into youknow, a functioning adult, like
being able to think rationally to realize, you know, how much I don't

(47:37):
know about the paranormal, how muchI don't know about hauntings, how much
I thought, you know, mywhole life, I thought, well,
I experienced this, so therefore Iam an expert on the matter, and
that was not the case. Butmy my understanding is, you know,
at least accorded according to the acceptedlaw. Is you know, if a
ghost is the spirit or soul orenergy of a person who died. You

(48:00):
know, if that is the case, then they if they're going to look
like anything at all, they're goingto look like they did as that person.
What they're not going to look likeis somebody with cavernous eyes and erotic
face, because that's not how theylook when they died, right, right,
you know that that almost shows,uh, you know, and being

(48:21):
somebody in the paranormal. I'm sureyou're familiar with the concept of intelligent hauntings
versus non intelligent haunting, the differencebetween an intelligent entity and any poulter geist.
Right, you know, something thatspecifically appears as as something else to
frighten you would denote to me atleast an incredible amount of intelligence and malicious,
you know, a malicious will toto inflict that horror upon another person,

(48:45):
right, definitely not little old Granny. Yeah, And one of the
things I subscribe to as well,especially when I when people ask me about
demons and malicious things, I tellthem, and this has been my motto
for a long time. If you'rean asshole, life progmant assole on death.
And so it very well could bean asshole spirit that was just somebody
that doesn't want you in the housebecause they think it's still theirs and they're

(49:07):
playing on your fears to get youand your family out, you know,
oh, very potentially. I meanI I comment in the house repeatedly,
and this is you know, thehouse hated us. And I refer to
the house only because whatever is inthere can't I don't know what it is.
I don't know its name, andI have to presume that anything that

(49:28):
we can't see that's the material,you know, like the first lesson we
learned when a little kids don't talkto strangers. Yeah, you know,
I don't. I don't necessarily wantto attempt to communicate with this thing.
But also even if I did,I can't be sure it's not lying.
So I just I'm looking at itexternally now very well could be I,
myself and my entire family. We'reChristians, and I subscribe more to the

(49:49):
demonside. But when I approach paranormalinvestigation, I do it with a one
hundred percent like objective stance where Idon't allow my views on my faith to
interact with what I'm investigating at thetime. So I'm not like some of
those ghosts hunting reality shows where he'scoming in with a Bible and a priest
and everything's a demon and everything's hauntedand we're going to exercise it. Now,

(50:13):
I come in looking analytically at this, and I'm not one of the
I am, you know, statingfor the record, I am, in
fact, a very ardent and strongbeliever of hauntings. I am not a
blind believer of hauntings. You know. I'm not quick to jump on board
and say, oh, look someone, you know, someone showed me a
picture on Facebook and a paranormal group. What do you guys see in this

(50:36):
picture? And you know, well, the wood grain looks like a face.
Well you know well, or youknow I took a big rip off
of my hookah and look I tooka picture and I could see ghosts of
the smoke. Yeah, you know, And only in the last decade have
I heard people actually using the wordparadolia, apathenia, things like that.

(50:57):
I've come to believe, you know, and I don't I'm trying not to
get off topic, but I've justcome to believe that when it comes to
the afterlife, including myself and mostpeople that I know, I had never
met an expert, even though it'sa moniker, you know, you said,
you know, Joe Shmoe expert onthe afterlife. I don't know how
because to be an expert you needlike ten thousand hours and you have to
have gone there and come back tolet us know exactly how these things are

(51:22):
working. And as my understanding is, it's a one way trip. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, And I'm withyou on that, and I yeah,
I think it's ridiculous when they dothat on TV and people. It
gives a misnomer to people that thereare experts. Yeah, and you get
into that in the book as well, about you know, it's not something
that scientific, it's not something thatwe can recreate on demand, and so

(51:45):
therefore you can't be an expert ifyou can't recreate it and have it happen
when you want and call this phenomenaup and even prove that it exists,
because we can't even prove you know, that it exist. It's it's more
of a conjecture and a belief andvery subjective. But uh, but also

(52:05):
as a as an investigator for twentyyears and and as somebody who's experienced lots
and lots of things that I can'texplain, and I tend to be I
tend to be a skeptical believers whomI call myself because I will, I
will throw out evidence before I everput it out there if I can explain
it in any way. And uh, and I think that's how you have
to be as well, when you'rewhen you're investigating and even looking back at
like things that happened to me whenI was a kid, kind of looking

(52:29):
at it through those that skeptical lensto say, Okay, well, was
it just because I was a kidand I was naive that I think this
was paranormal or was this actually unexplainable? You know? Well? And absolutely
right, and uh, and Ihave a very similar approach. We were
never like we never shut our doors. My paranormal group, which we call

(52:52):
ourselves the currently the Northern Nevada ParanormalResearch and Development Society, and we've actually
come away from doing things like,you know, overnight at the Washo Club
in Virginia City because it it doesn'tlend to anything really other than kind of
I don't know if you're familiar withthe term legend tripping. Yeah, it
just kind of lends to that.You know, I'm going out for a

(53:13):
thrill. I'm going to spend thenight in a haunted hotel, and I'm
going to bring my audio recorder andmy camera and see what I can see,
and we'll get some EVP and unfortunately, you know, none of that
is reliable evidence. We as agroup have come away from that, you
know, saying okay, you know, yeah, we'll go. We get
calls from private parties, Yeah,we'll come investigate your home, we'll tell

(53:34):
you what we think. We don'tdo exorcisms. We don't know what it
is, and we're not going toattempt to talk to it, but we'll
let you know if we think someone'sthere. And that's about the extent of
it, because because we don't know, and because of the damage that the
early American spiritualism did when it cameto America with the sciences, and it
caused this uproar of pseudoscience. Isee too many people clinging onto that,

(53:58):
even though it's history is marred bydisreputable behavior, right, you know,
the ideas that we're practiced themselves orwhat was under trial, not the concept
of spiritualism itself. Just it bogglesmy mind because I can't apply that to
anything, because it seems to giveyou that confirmation, that cognitive and confirmation
by it. All right, ifI use these techniques, it'll prove that

(54:19):
something's there. If you go lookingfor something and you're intent on finding it,
you will find it exactly. Yeah. Yeah. In my motto over
the years has become we don't investigatehauntings. We investigate stories of haunting and
yes because wow, yes, yeah, because until I experienced it or find
some sort of evidence that's irrefutable,then I don't. You know. It
could be mental health, or itcould be people not understanding you know,

(54:45):
banging in the walls as their pipes, or you know, it could be
something that's explainable. And even thoughI don't ever throw anybody's stories out because
that really happened to them, hadyou know, some sort of emotional effect
on them. I can't sit thereand tell you, oh, yeah that
was a spirit, your how ishaunted because I wasn't there. I don't
know the conditions and all that.But like I said, the same sure,
yeah. At the same time wego investigating stories of haunting in and

(55:07):
when you go into like a privatehome, I think your approach is amazing
is you're going in so basically letthese people know you're not crazy. And
that's what a lot of people justwant, you know, is to know
that they're not making shit up andthey're not crazy. And sometimes there are
normal explanations. I've gone and doneresidential cases where there are normal explanations for
things, and once you explain tothem people, you know, they understand

(55:30):
it, and it kind of calmstheir fears that their kids aren't in danger
and they're not in danger. Youknow, it helps kind of get them
a rational explanation for some things.And then there are some things that you
know, we can't explain, butwe can offer and say, you know,
maybe this was this or that oryou know, things like that,
And I think that's all it takeswith a lot of people is just calming
those fears. And well, that'sa huge part of it. And I

(55:52):
think some of it because you know, everybody who researches or invests their time
into paranormal investigation, this is arough industry because I mean, we don't
have a canonical text on how tooperate, but we all do have our
separate reasons. You can have twelvebelievers in one room and all of them
have a different reason why they're doingwhat they're doing. And you know you

(56:13):
brought it up, you know,when you're going into a private resident and
you know, parents just want tobe sure their kids are okay. I
can relate to that because I wishsomebody would come in and told us,
hey, you're not crazy. Yeah, you know. And we have gone
a lot deeper into the R andD, and I won't go too into
it because I know that's not thetopic of this podcast right now, but

(56:34):
we've gone into a lot of Rand D into finding alter alternate means of
explanation that are still potential possibility,like infrasonic sound. I think it's like
nineteen herd things like that that cancause the human eye to vibrate and hallucinate,
and it also creates intense emotions offear and panic. And you know,
we go in looking for things likethat. First, where are their

(56:59):
copper pipes in your house? Dothey being around? How's your plumbing?
Which the geological survey look like outhere? You know, we could pull
it up. Just there's weird thingsthat can cause mimic a haunted behavior,
things that like pressurized salt rock underground. It can produce false emf readings,
all of the things that we're lookingfor. My group was always about,

(57:22):
you know, your peace of mind. You know, that's what we're here
for. We're here for your peaceof mind. We can't necessarily confirm something,
but we're gonna let you know.We don't think you're crazy, right,
Yeah. And I think it's greatthat you come from a as horrific
as you know it was for yougrowing up in that environment. I think
it makes you better at what youdo now because you understand these people and

(57:43):
these families and what they're going throughbecause you came from a similar experience.
And I think that helps a lotwith families too, just to have somebody
to commiserate with and say hey,I had something, you know, similar
when I was growing up, WhenI was a kid, my parents didn't
know how to deal with it,you know. And and I think that
helps families a lot. And weneed teams like yours out there. I
don't do private investigations anymore, justit's just a lot to do. But

(58:07):
we need teams like yours out therehere doing it in a way that is
doesn't hurt the families, because thereare plenty of teams out there unfortunately who
go in and they make a messof what it is, and then teams
like yours and other teams I know, like my buddy John Curly's y'all have
to go in and clean it up. Oh for sure. There's so much
responsibility on our shoulders. Right.We're coming in here to reassure someone.

(58:30):
And you know, if I thoughtfor a minute, you know, that
something was haunted, I would tellthem I can't prove this, but I
think I think you might have somethinghere. The first question I always ask,
do you want your home to behaunted? And so far the answer
has always been, well know,yeah, you know, you'd have to
be crazy to want that. AndI am a firm firm agreement with them
on that you would have to becrazy to want it. But the problem

(58:52):
is is that I have is there'sa lot of these groups who come in
at the first words out of theirmouth are your house is haunted, it's
the demon, get a priest ormoved. They create this horror for these
people who are already afraid and whoare already questioning things. And it's irresponsible.
And I don't want to call itan industry because it's not, but
it's, for lack of a betterword, in paranormal investigation. In that

(59:15):
industry, the responsibility is on theinvestigator not to create panic and not to
make definitive statements that we don't haveproof, you know, yeah, yeah,
And I think there needs to beresources like your team out there and
other teams across the country to helpthese people, you know, private investigations.
Then you need to go to ateam who does them and doesn't properly
and learn how to do them andhow to handle them instead of just jumping

(59:37):
in after your team's been together fora year and you don't know what you're
doing. And I agree with that. One of the things that I saw,
I mean, you see the realityTV shows. Man, it is
literally a circus side show. It'sfor entertainment value more than anything. And
unfortunately these private parties they think,well, that's what this is. And

(59:59):
if I I asked someone to comeand investigate, I'm going to bring in
their equipment. I'm going to endup on YouTube. And we came up
with the perspective of these people areprivate residents. Is they're private, Let's
let's not make this into a spectacle. Let's not turn it into a side
show. This is this is somethingthat bothers someone else. Let's not make
it their their their life's pain andfear, you know, entertainment for the

(01:00:21):
masses who are going to turn aroundand say that was fun, but it's
fake anyone, right, and andthen completely disregard and dismiss these people's plight,
whether it's real or imagined. It'sscaring them, and it's a good
place to start. It's just totry to bring that peace of mind.
Yeah, that's just my sense.I didn't want to get too far off
topics. But I didn't want toaddress that because you know, you asked,
you know, how did how didyou get wrapped up into it?

(01:00:43):
Well, it was West Grand andit ended up being you know, the
pr D and then the pr DS and uh it started with the West
Grand and it kind of ends theretoo. It all comes back to that
for me. Yeah, yeah,no, I just like I told you
in the beginning, I'd love tohave a conversations see where goes, especially
other investigators, and and because Ialways learned something. I've been doing this
for a long time, but Ican always learn from other investigators, and

(01:01:07):
and also like to you know,talk to like minded people like yourself that
were on the same page with thewith how we investigate and you know,
and things like that. And Ithink there's more and more of us.
I think a lot of the bullshitis going away. I think people are
finally starting to see the circus showside show with you know, ghosts of
ventures and ghost hunters and things likethat as as being just entertainment. I

(01:01:28):
think in the past few years i'vekind of seen doing the podcast here,
I've kind of seen a swing,especially in social media with like you mentioned
earlier, people posting, you know, a piece of wood and they're seeing
a face in it. I've seena lot more people comment now that no,
that's just paradolia. Or people puttingup orbs and people are like,
no, that's just a lens flair. And I've seen a huge swing in

(01:01:49):
that instead of people just agreeing withthem, of people not being nasty but
being more educational and saying, no, that's not that's not paranormal. I'm
sorry that you want it to be, but it's not. You know,
well, and I see the reactionwith that, Like one of the big
I we have an operations manual forthe PRDs all the ways we handle things.
We have prescribed answers to questions sothat people aren't getting upset when we're

(01:02:13):
saying, well, no, that'snot what it is. We don't just
say no, which is a bigthere's a lot of people out there here
just like to be a nope,you know, on the social media.
It's not enough just to say no. You know, paranormal investigation is kind
of a jack of all trade.Thing is you've got orbs, all those
No, that's silica dust or moisturein the air. And here's why it's
silica dust or moisture. Moisture orbstend to be colorful. Silica dust looks

(01:02:37):
like a little gray ball. Inboth cases, you've got backscatter. It's
a common term used in photography whenthere's too much dust or moisture in the
air. You get those orbs that'sbackscattered. There's not ghosts, you know,
gathering in the hundreds, hundreds ofmillions. You know. Other questions,
you know, like they come upon social media. You know,
you see a picture come up andit's in the middle of a cornfield,

(01:02:58):
and the first question I asked beforeanything else, is well, why did
you take that picture? Yeah,you know, especially like why did it
see anything until after I developed itor after I went home? But we
have but why did you take thepicture? What? What problem did you
just snap that shot of that?You know that that dank dark room in
that in that house. If youif you going in there for an investigation,
that's great, But why that picturespecifically? And uh, they become

(01:03:22):
it's the rule of challenged belief.It's something we deal with in the p
r d as. When you challengea person's belief, they become hostile.
Yeah, immediately hostile. And youknow they they they ask it in the
you know, why are you inthis group? Why are you in our
social media group? If you're nota believer, but it's not about disbelief.
But if everything is paranormal, nothing'sparanormal. It's all just normal,

(01:03:45):
right, and we're not there yet. Yeah yeah, well, Michael,
thank you so much for going on. I really enjoyed the conversation. I
enjoyed the book. I love howyou wrote the book. Uh with the
because it's not just a haunting.It's not just about a haunt. It's
about your life and kind of akind of a what's the time I'm looking
for, like a person of intereststory about how it affected your life,

(01:04:10):
but also how your life affected itat the same time. Well. Absolutely,
I appreciate you for having me onthe show. I'd like to think
of it as a autobiographical horror butcoming of age. But you know,
hauntings, like I said earlier onwhen we first began, hauntings are more
than just ghosts. There are hauntedpeople. I do have to thank mad
House Books for publishing me. Ididn't get a chance to go in that

(01:04:31):
with you. If you got asecond yeah, yeah. I have a
good friend named Ashley. She hasher own little indie publishing house called mad
House Book and I asked her thisstory was originally only eleven thousand words long,
and I asked her to proof readit, and then she proof reads
it and comes back to me says, this is gold. You know,
this is awesome. Can you makeit? You know, sixty thousand words,

(01:04:54):
sixty five thousand words. I wantto publish this. And I want
to point out she had told meprior to the West Brand Haunting. Mad
How's books only did anthologies. Wekind of did a groundbreaking thing with just
publishing a full length novel. Onmy part, I'm extremely grateful to her,
grateful to again, I know,Robert Vargas for his help with the

(01:05:15):
West Grand Hunting, my wife fordoing the architectural diagram in the story,
and my mom and my sister forproviding some information to fill the holes in
those gaps in the story that Ididn't know about. Yeah, and I
tell Maudie's definitely go out and pickup a copy. I know it's available
on Amazon and Kindle. Is itavailable anywhere else? Amazon? Amazon,

(01:05:41):
Amazon, Kindle, Walmart, Barnesand Noble. Most major online retailers would
have it. There's also a numberof smaller websites and book sites that I'm
not I can't remember the names,but they hold it to. A Google
search of the West Brand Haunting byMichael Oka would let you know all the
sellers. I highly recommend Amazon,the most reliable and speedy way for it

(01:06:04):
to get there. I am notan affiliate of Amazon. I'm just stating
a fact. Yeah, yeah,I'm a big fan of Kendall, So
that's usually i'll read my books.It's just easy and quick and and uh
oh for sure. But yeah,everybody, go check out with West Grend
Haunting by Michael Oka. And it'sbeen my pleasure today to chat with you.

(01:06:24):
Oh, an absolute honor too.It was a lot of fun.
I had a lot of fun talkingto you on your show and look forward
to hearing it. Yeah, andwe'll have to. I'll have to have
you on again to talk about casesand things like that, since we got
into the weeds there off the topicof the book. But all right,
everybody, y'all stay safe out there, have a good day. We'll see

(01:06:45):
you next time. Thank you forlistening to the Unseen Paranormal. Join me
next Wednesday with a brand new guest, and please please rate, review,
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(01:07:08):
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comes fell side. Do