UFOs, Ghosts, and Whiskey - OH MY! Authors Linda Zimmermann and William R. Hincy - Writers Drinking Whiskey

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello, everybody.
Welcometo another edition of Writers
Drinking Whiskey,your Literary Happy Hour,
the showwhere every close encounter is
of the third (orfourth or fifth) round kind.
I am your hostwho always calls home despite
what my mother tells you.
William R.
Hincy.
And today, I'm really honoredand thrilled to have award
winning authorLinda Zimmermann with me.
And welcome to the bar.

(00:21):
thank you very much.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I'msuper excited about this.
So I'll give you the brief bioand then you can, you know,
add anythingthat I might have missed
if you've had over 30 books.
So I'm trying to getthe overview here, but,
science history,paranormal, fiction.
your ghost of the GhostInvestigator series was adapted

(00:42):
into the comic books.
the novel.
We were just talking aboutthis kind of show.
The novels.
is is youjust say the letters HVZA
or is HudsonValley zombie apocalypse?
But HVZA is a lot easier.
I get it, I get it now.
The the hamster wheels moving.

(01:02):
did you remember that thatwas adapted into a graphic novel
and then other works,just to mention a few.
You had that science was,I think, your review from today,
which I'm really excited about.
It sounds like a really funnybook.
yes.
Hudson Valley UFO's,American historic
and mysterious stone sites.
and then amongst many,many others.
part of that life was like,I know you started off

(01:23):
as a research chemist.
I think it was medicaldiagnostics.
yes. Right.
And I was kind of priorto becoming a full time
author here.
So anything you like to add tothat illustrious list here or.
no. I'm just tired outlistening to all the things
I've done.
So, so, you've been busy.
You know, I have stuff.

(01:44):
Yeah, but it's all been fun,so it's not work
when you're having fun.
There you go. That's important.
That's what I alwaystell people about the show.
Like it's a labor of fun.
Like there is labor.
It ends upbeing a lot of work with us.
But it's not like, right.
Yeah, you go to itand that's that's
the best type of labor. So.
Absolutely.
So I always like to start offwith, you know,

(02:05):
where are you in the worldand where is the best place
to get a drink.
There.
Yeah.
So I am in Chester, New York,which is I can be in midtown
Manhattan in less than an hourdepending on the traffic.
the best placeto get a drink around here.
We have some old time bars.
I don't know, that was the onethat was the best.

(02:29):
Just closed during Covid.
So, Yeah,we lost a lot of those.
It's rural.
It's suburban suburbs, butthere's still a lot of rural
areas.
And, you know, that old,that old charm, the bar that's
been there for 90 years.

(02:50):
but, we've lost a lot of them.
So, I don't want to namesomething.
And then it's been closed.
But, you know,go down some rural road,
and when you see the blinkingneon sign, that's where to go.
The page is to go.
Yeah, that's the sad partabout it, rabbit.
When you lose,that's my wife jokes.

(03:11):
Because I always love these.
I love, small businesses.
So I'll find like, oh,this little coffee shop.
And then they close on me.
And so we've been marriedfor 14 years,
and I can't even think ofhow many different places
are close now in fact, therea Vietnamese noodle place,
a florist we loved.
And I was having lunch thereone day

(03:33):
and made a joke to my coworkerwho was sitting with me like,
if they ever close this place,I'll just never even him.
You know, I just doneand, the owner in my lab
hears me saying that,and she didn't
hear the whole comment.
She just heard metalk about closing,
and she goes, she came over,put her arm.
I'm on my my, shoulders.
Like, yeah, that was really sadwhen we had,
you know, make the decisionto sell the place.

(03:54):
And I was like,oh, no, no, no, no, no.
But she actually cameto the house
to show me and my wifehow to make fudge.
We went mad causeI was so distraught, like,
okay, isn't that sweet?
That's great.
And can you make it?
No, no, no,a lot of, I love Thai food,
but you need the Thaiingredients.

(04:16):
You can only substituteso many things right?
so I don't have aThai grocer near me,
so for sure.
but, yeah, I can.
I can manage Indian foodfairly well,
but the Thai still eludes mebecause of the ingredients.

(04:37):
All right. Sure.
Well, we have all kinds.
I guess we're,it's kind of the same thing.
We're about 25 minutes from LAtraffic.
but LA is sprawl, right?
I mean, it'sjust the sprawls. Endless.
Now. You barely like,you go 60 miles
now before you really hitanything,
we start hitting the desert.

(04:57):
We're going to slow rural,and but the the nice part is
anything you ever want to do,you can go find.
There'sa Japanese grocery over here.
There's the city. Oh,that's great.
So my problemis more incompetence.
Yeah. So.
So show us.
All right videothat that you just didn't take
a little harder to overcome.

(05:18):
Then.
Just a little bit.
Just a little bit. So awesome.
So then my favoritequestion of the show.
What are we drinking today?
Well, unfortunatelyit's not whiskey.
I hope not to disappoint people.
I am drinking a herbal teacalled varsity
in my new York Giants mug.

(05:39):
yeah.
Show my my team pride there.
But, yes, it's a night.
I've had a very busy day.
It's one of those dayswhere as soon as you get
home, you're leaving againfor the next appointment.
So I thought a nice calmingfire to tea it.
it's an I.
Your Vedic tea, which suits me.

(05:59):
so it's, I,I never have a problem
gearing up for something.
It's the winding down.
it's shutting off your brainso you can
actually get some sleep.
that, So this sometimes helps.
Yeah. Yeah,I believe it completely.

(06:19):
Yeah, I noticed thatjust yesterday,
actually, you see, Imake sure to get a workout in,
because if I don't,I just have too much excess
and energy throughout the night,and I'm just like,
nah, I'm good at last night.
I'm like, oh,you know, this Sunday,
maybe I'll just take the day offfor this stuff around the house.
And I did all of thatand around 11:00 I go to bed
and then I'm just awake.
I don't I don't know what timeI went to bed, and I'm

(06:41):
just, like, such a wide awakeand like I say, so, so, so,
so am I doing my job.
Okay, I'm gonna work on this.
so. So I hear you.
And that's the secretof the show, you know?
Anyways,it's very restrictive whiskey.
But then,depending on recording time,
I think I'm the last episodeI recorded was with, Ken Liu,
you know, a fantasy author.

and, we recorded at 9 (07:01):
00 our our my time
on the West Coast.
So 12 for a hand.
So both ofus are like, might be a or.
give us a coffee andlet's chat here for a minute.
So, Awesome.
So then I wonder then,if we could
maybe we can start then.

(07:22):
So, I had mentioned in the,in the introduction there,
if I can find my wordsthat you had been
a research chemist, you know,kind of medical diagnostics
and things.
and then you have come outwith a book and let me see.
I wrote it down here becauseI love the title so much.
It was bad science,but then the subtitles,
A Brief history.
But those are misconceptions,totally wrong conclusions, and

(07:44):
incredibly stupid theories.
so let's a hilarious time.
I was really happy to see that.
So maybe you could kind oftake us from.
So I'm guessingmaybe they're interconnected
a little,you know, the, the schooling
for being a research chemist,the things leading to that.
But maybe you kind of take uson that journey,

(08:05):
of your life. Sure.
so I worked for a medicaldiagnostics company.
Basically,we made the test kits.
When you goto get your blood tests,
we made the test kits to,you know, determine,
all of that.
And I love laboratories.
I love lab glasswareand instruments and, you know,

(08:29):
it's just, I loveexperimenting and things.
and, you know, there were quitea few PhDs
there who had an attitudeand, would, you know,
try to lorded over everybody.
And when they made a mistake,of course it was your fault.

(08:49):
And, so I was making a jokeat one point that, you know,
I should just start collectingall these stupid things
these kids do.
And then I realizedI love history.
So I was like, well, you know,there's a history of this.
So I just started researchingand went way back
to the ancient Greeks.

(09:11):
And it is all the crazy thingspeople believed,
you know, that the universe,all the planets were on
these crystalline spheres,and they moved
because the spheres moved.
And the more scientific data,you know, we started
collecting in the 15 1600s,that theory was not working.

(09:33):
So let's not get rid ofthe spheres.
Let's add more spheres.
And then what?
You know,that doesn't work anymore.
Well, now we need even more,you know, and they'd have dozens
and dozens and dozens of sphere.
And finally somebody saidenough.
It's you know, it's right,but it takes so much.

(09:54):
And, you know,people like Galileo, well,
let's torture himbecause he thinks the sun
is in the center of the,the solar system.
And so there's just beenand the fraud people commit
and it just went on and on.
PeopleI think the general public

(10:14):
sees scientists in a way, assome a
semi revered group of people,you know, there's like almost
this arbiter of truthabout it, right?
They're like, oh, well,you you follow the science
because that's the truth.
Right?
And I'm not necessarily like,oh no, no, no, no.

(10:36):
So, and you know, myI look at it
in the humorous light,you know, as, as the title,
you know, this was nota scholarly review of,
of scientists little mistakes.
It was, you know,let's have fun with this. So,

(10:59):
that's funny.
Is there any of your.
It was thatyour favorite examples are the,
the cylindrical spheresgoing around,
or was there any one that kindof always stuck out to you?
Oh, you name it,they used to think
there were tooth worms.
That's what,that's why you got decayed.
Yeah, but,you know, at the time,

(11:19):
you think people's food,you know, they had maggots in it
and everything, and.
Yeah, of courseyou have a worm in your mouth.
You just put it there and youand your bread.
And that theway to get rid of them was.
There was some really bad.
I don't know howmuch you want it here,
but one of the things was to,let's say remove the sphincters

(11:43):
of certain animalsand put them on
a string around your neck.
And that would protect youfrom from tooth worms.
Maybe we're going to needa drink at the end of this.
Mammary gland.
I'm thinking about this.
Let's be right now as you, But.
But you namethe science, medicine.

(12:06):
I was going to reada short thing about,
you know, some of themedical discoveries.
that it just seems thatyou get these
older, entrenched scientistswho don't want to hear
from the upstartyounger ones who are
completely overturning.
I mean, look at Pasteur and and,you know,

(12:28):
all these famous peoplewho had to fight tooth
and nail to.
Yes. There'sthings called germs.
You know, there are bacteria.
There's, so it reallyyou name the science, and then
even some of the modernthings, there was,
I believe it was at Harvard,this, brilliant

(12:53):
young cardiologist was,receiving all kinds of grants
to study certainheart medications in dogs.
And somebody noticedthat he initiated
this experimenton, say, June 3rd.
And heleft the lab, and somebody

(13:13):
looked at his paperwork.
He put in the initial June3rd results,
and then he put in the resultsfor two days, one week,
two weeks, one month.
He was just making it upcompletely like day one.
And he's putting day, youknow, month one results in.

(13:37):
And this was a hugea huge scandal
because he was the golden boy.
And then they had the universityhad to return hundreds
of thousands of dollarsin phony, you know, grants
for phony experiments.
And then then everyonewho was associated with him
is now tainted.

(13:59):
Sure.
So, yeah.
So it's not just peoplemaking mistakes
and clinging to it.
There's peopledoing out and out fraud and.
Sure, is there anythat are still going on?
Like,I know, I think of some like,
I don't know that there'sstill commercials,
but there used to bethe bracelet you put that,

(14:20):
that bracelet would just,like, seal everything.
Oh, absolutely.
You name it, the snake oilsalesman are alive and well.
You know, socksyou put on, the herbs that
you never heard of before,and you have no idea
where they're coming from.
But, yeah, the bracelets,the pendants, the,
people still are pushingpyramid power.

(14:42):
And I'm probably goingto get hate mail from that.
What do you mean,what isn't real? I mean,
up, up, up.
But, Yeah, it's.
It it's still,unfortunately, very much alive
and well, and,so someday in my future,
there may be a bad science toor at least

(15:03):
an updated version. Yes.
probably.
so, what?
So was it just kind of beingin the lab and witnessing,
you know, not that they werefraudulent, did they?
There anythingwhen you were there, but was it
just kind of the witnessing,like the behavior,
the PhDs that inspired you to,I mean, maybe write that book,
but did that inspire youto kind of go into writing
full time or.

(15:25):
Oh, no, writing was somethingI did as a little kid.
I kept a diary every single dayfor like 20 years.
I started as a, you know, knewwhat I, I don't know
what was maybe tenor something when I started
and I was always writingand it was something I thought

(15:48):
I would do when I retired.
but then the laboratory was,our company was bought
by some big corporationwho decided to just
close the researchand development, division,
which is I was in researchand development,
and so all my other friendswere scrambling

(16:11):
for other jobs and in science.
And I said, you know, I'm,I'm young, I,
I have some savings.
Let me try writingnow, and I can always
go back to the lab.
And there was some very leantime.
Starving artist.
Yes, but I never I never hadto go back to the lab.

(16:32):
So, it was itwas a scary decision to make,
but it's somethingI loved so much.
I it when you lovesomething like that,
you really put yourself into it.
Heart and soul.
unlike a regular job.
Oh, my God,you're looking at your watch.
Is it time to go home yet?

(16:54):
And yet with writing.
Oh, only 12 hours have gone by.
You know, it's it's differentwhen you put your
all of your energyinto something, and you can
hopefully you'll find a wayto make it work.
Whatever it is.
Music, art.
writing.

(17:15):
Sure.
Yeah.
You know, it'sfunny, it's, synchronicities
of the, of the show here.
It's just in life. Right.
But my so I workedfor a medical device company.
I was on a fact.
I was just, this was a lastweek or two weeks now.
we opened a new plant.
We moved a, manufacturingplant from China

(17:35):
over to Taiwan to,where we had another plant,
and I had to go,okay, one of my last things
with the company,I needed to go up the plant,
go in the clean roomand everything.
Right. Go in there.
I fouled that up completely.
But, you know, by the way, I,I was like,
what's your guys's processfor when people
really mess this up?
Because I've just destroyedthis, you know, it turns out
they had a process.

(17:57):
I'm like, well,that's not a finding,
but I'm sorrythat I gave this to you here,
but there we are.
but I was on this show,recording device that had been
maybe three months ago.
and at that point,you know, I'm a director,
my titles director of qualityregulatory, with SJ Rozan.
And she used to be an architect,and we're talking about that,

(18:18):
and she's like, you know,it's just hit a point where
I just can't focus anymore.
You know? I love my job.
I love my I love the people,but I can't focus anymore.
I just wanted to write.
And then I was like, yeah.
I was like,I feel exactly that way.
It's the kind of likeI can't focus, like,
everything is so hard,but used to be so easy to do.

(18:38):
and then they gave me the wordthat when this project's over,
you know,they had already shut down
my division.
You know,I already got through giving,
boughtand shut down the division.
And they kept doingfor all these projects
while they wrapped mecompletely into this project.
And they said, okay, thisproject goes in and goes away.
And the same thing.
I was like, you know what?
I've been doing this like,we have two older kids.

(18:58):
They're grown up there,we have grandkids now.
They have their kids.
Wow. You do not lookold enough to have grandkids.
Oh, well, it's all the drinking.
It keeps you young.
I also, that's what I find,contrary to what people think.
but then that happens to meand my wife.
Talk to me about it.
She's like, you know,why don't you just, like,
just go pursue it?
We're doing fine.

(19:19):
Go like,go full go full time into it.
So, I, I'm kind ofright at that moment
you just described, I'm like,okay, I think June 28th
is my last day, and I'm like,oh, my, I have one real thing
I need to do before them.
So like, I do thatand I'm like, okay, well it's
time to you, manto go out and brave the brave.
The Wild series.
So congratulations.

(19:40):
It's, it's it's time, right.
You know when it's time.
Right.
And it's I get what you mean.
It's exciting and there's,it's scary but you know.
Oh yeah I felt the samelike I can go back I mean
if we can't feed the kids.
Yeah. Good job.
You knowmaybe that's enough for each
of them to feed themselves.

(20:01):
You knowit's thing for everyone.
That's right.
Yeah.
Life is too short tonot do what you enjoy
if you can.
Right.
You have to at leastgive it a shot. Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
And there's no shame inthat not working out
because so much is luckand everything else.
But you got to just give ityour shot at some point.

(20:22):
So absolutely, I applaud that.
So good for you.
I also soI think that movie cool.
Maybe we can transition to,you know, Hudson Valley UFOs
and I know,you had a couple experiences
yourself,so maybe you could tell us
about the book.
And if I remember right,and I should, I always pull back
the curtain.
I need a tour effectfor the show

(20:43):
because I always tell everyonewhat I do.
Is that the way I had,was introduced to
your work was throughthe Unsolved Mysteries podcast.
and there was an episodethat talked
about the Hudson Valley,you know, UFOs.
And I think some other thereare some other things, too.
It's been a few weekssince I listened to it, but,
so maybe you can tell usabout the book.
Maybe your encounters,and we can just go from there?

(21:05):
Sure.
it wasn'tanything I planned on doing
writing about UFOs, but I.
I grew up in the HudsonValley of New York, which is,
it runs from New York Cityup to Albany.
So about 120 miles.
I don't know,something like that. and

(21:26):
growing up, there werealways UFO stories in the news
or, you know, peoplewho saw something.
And actually, as a little kid,I thought UFOs were normal
because there wereso many stories like, okay,
we don't know what they are,but they're all around.
And, yeah.
So when I was writingabout different things,

(21:49):
I did a lot of lecturesin local libraries.
You know,there's a million libraries.
So I would,you know, do different,
whether it was historyor the paranormal.
And people would come up to meafterwards and start
telling me their UFO story.
And I'm like, I just spokeabout the Civil War.

(22:10):
Why are you telling me this?
Like you, you know,you live here.
We like the wayyou tell a story.
You should do a book.
And and I just kepthearing this for decades,
and I was interestedbecause I did have,
a couple of sightings.
And I said, you know, I shouldreally look into this.

(22:30):
And, you know, theI don't know what
you have out in California,but there used to be
these little newspaperscalled, like the Penny saver
or something.
They were free.
Little localpeople could put ads in
and they'dhave a couple of articles.
And so I contacted one of themand they said,
yeah, we'll put an articlein author

(22:51):
looking for UFO stories.
Well, it's the dam burst.
I would I could not believeI was afraid to open my email
and handwritten lettersand just people who hadn't
told their storyfor like 30, 40 years because of

(23:13):
the ridicule factor.
They wanted somebodywho wouldn't make fun of them
just to listen.
So I very rapidlyhad enough for one book.
The first book was Inthe Night Sky,
and we actually made a filmabout it,
which which won an award.
And then came the second book,the third book.

(23:36):
And I'm like,this is ridiculous.
So I put them alla year or two ago,
combined all of these storiesinto a massive
eight and a half by 11.
I think it's a 4 pound book.
and so it's a comprehensiveif if you're interested
in UFOs, you, you know,in this area, this is the

(24:00):
this is the book to go to.
In fact, there was just,there's one hot spot
in this area called PineBush, and Saturday
was the Pine Bush UFO fair.
And, I think it was somewherearound 7 to 10,000
people showed up in thistiny little town.

(24:23):
And, I have anotherstack of people,
you know, of witness formsand things.
It's, it's self propagating.
and, and soit's been fascinating
because I'd say,90% of the people are genuine.

(24:45):
They've seen something.
They don't know what it is.
They just want to telltheir story.
I had just on Saturday,he's a retired police officer.
Works security now, very,you know, straightforward
straight shooter guy.
He had a sighting back in 1973.

(25:08):
He and his sister,when they were kids,
and it incredible sighting,a massive craft.
He said if I had a baseball,I could have hit it.
It was so low, and it just.
He said it.
Yeah.
Of course it madean impression on his life.
These are lifealtering experiences
lasted about 40sand he remembers it
like it's it's yesterday.

(25:30):
So it's reallyit's kind of an honor
and a privilegethat these people feel
comfortable telling me,you know, these stories they
they haven't shared beforeor with very few people.
And it makes the peoplewhen I tell the stories
or they read the book,they say, oh, I'm not alone.

(25:52):
You know, I'm not crazy.
Well, someof them are still crazy, but,
you know, I'm not alone.
And and I remember this oneelderly woman
who had an amazing sightingand she said, you know, I didn't
ask for this to happen.
And I don't appreciatewhen people make fun of me.
And I'm like, I'm on your side.

(26:14):
I'm on your side.
so, yeah,it's just been a wild ride.
And, every time I thinkI'm going to back away
from the UFO topicand concentrate
on something else,it keeps pulling me back. So.
Well, I'm sure once you onceyou get your foot in
and people knowbecause you're almost

(26:36):
like a therapist,it agree, right?
It's like I have this storythat that touched me,
but I'm afraid to tell anyone.
I can tell you because I knowanyone who stands and.
Yeah, that's.
Yeah, I that's it. Exactly.
You do have to playthe role of therapist.
And, I mean, I've hadsome peeps of grown
men break down in tearstelling me their story

(26:57):
because was frighteningor just so intense and,
nobody would listen to them.
And, you know, you're like,okay, I,
yeah, you just, I didn't.
Yeah.
Again,I worked in a lab, you know,
this was not somethingI learned in school

(27:17):
how to interview UFO witnesses.
So I've been learningover the years as well.
And you just, you know,you give them an ear
and you try to share with themwhat you've learned,
you know, from other cases.
And, so it's really it'sreally been amazing.

(27:39):
And but it's funny when,I, I run across somebody
on Facebook who I used to workin the lab with.
They're like, you're doing what?
You know.
You know,because they knew me as,
you know, R&D chemist.
And, here I am on,some podcast or TV

(28:00):
show talking about UFOs and.
That's terrifying.
it's funny, you know,mentioning the witnesses
because I wonder how much morewith any kind of,
I don't know, that's alwaysthe greatest term or not,
but but, you know, paranormal,to kind of lump a bunch of,
yeah, things together,is that I wonder

(28:20):
how many more witnesses therereally are, you know?
Oh, if there's reallya Sasquatch,
why aren't more peopleseeing it? It's like,
well, lots of people are,but I wonder if this.
How much more than just,you know, how much you sightings
you get, like, one of the ten,you know, like
how many people just or, like,don't want to tell anyone or
they just don't wantany publicity, right?

(28:42):
Maybe they tell their familyand friends, but they're not.
They don't want to, like,bother coming on a podcast.
Yeah.
And then the ones who dotalk to people,
how many of them report it?
It's less than 1 in 10.
There were incidentsin the Hudson Valley
during the 1980s.
There was a huge wavefor about six years,
and these massivetriangular craft

(29:04):
would hover at treetop level over major highways,
and all the traffic would stopand people would
get out of there,you know, roads
you should not pull over on.
All the traffic just stoppedand everybody
got out of their cars andthere are many, many nights

(29:24):
where there were easily5000 witnesses. Wow.
And yet you have like 2or 3 reports from that not,
you know, not to saythey didn't tell friends and,
but they never came out with it.
So yeah, it's it's probablya staggering number.

(29:49):
yeah.
That that remainsthat's probably
what happens in California.
I just our freewaysare always stopped
where they shouldn't be stopped.
So people look up.
Look up.
Come on.
You're missing it.
What was that?
The, the UFO flap.
Was that, like,Close Encounters?
So they take some of that?
I think there was.

(30:09):
I don't rememberif it was Hudson Valley,
but I rememberthere was a UFO flap that,
when they made CloseEncounters of the,
the third and fourth kind,whatever the movie style was.
Yeah. What year was that film?
I know Hynek was in it,and he certainly jail.
And Hynek, who was, you know,the Project Blue Book
and then went out on his own.

(30:29):
but, yeah, he certainly knewabout the Hudson Valley wave,
and I'm sureand I hear Spielberg
is coming out with a new UFO.
Oh, film he's working on.
Yeah, it'll probably betwo years from now,
but it's all very hush hush.
But he's working on somethingso I don't know.

(30:51):
I'm only speculating.
You know,with all these Navy pilots
and Tic Tacs they're seeingand all this government,
I'm sure, it's going to bea very interesting film.
There's a lot of truth in his.
He he took a,for Close Encounters.
He took a lot of actual,you know,

(31:12):
cases and sightings and andput that into his, his films.
So I'm sure he'll do a good job.
And, you know,I'll give you my number.
Spielberg,if you want to consult me,
I'll be sureI'll be happy to do a cameo.
this yearfor your comic book character.

(31:34):
yeah. Let's be a bird movie.
Like, these are bucketlist items you're taking.
Oh, yeah.
I was telling youbefore the show, I just need
that action figure now. So.
I recover.
did you feel vindicatedat all with, Because now it's.
I remember growing up like UFOs.
It was like, oh, you know,you're silly or whatever,

(31:57):
and I've always,I've always been very curious.
Right?
So, like, I naturally like,oh, what are UFOs like?
You know, ghosts, whatever.
I'm curious about whatever'shappening there.
Physics, everything. Right?
I'm just like, oh, you know,what are these people thinking?
So did.
But it was not mainstream,right?
Most people like a year.
You're two.

(32:18):
There's no aliens.
and then after,it's like the Nimitz.
I think that was the one ofSan Diego coast here.
and the different, Navypilots and things coming up.
Did that kind ofgive you some vindication
for for all of it, or did it notwith you.
It absolutely changed the field.
knock on wood,I never personally

(32:41):
got ridiculed to my face.
At least I think maybeI intimidate people.
I, oh, I that might be that.
I think they might beafraid of me.
but certainly the in tirefield change, especially when
the New York Times came outwith the article in 2017 and
people who would, you know,just kind of brush it off,

(33:02):
they'd say you were right.
You you wereyou were ahead of the curve
and you know, and you're like,yeah, where have you been?
You know, if you justthe problem is critics
and real skeptics,they don't study the history
and the cases.
there wasI don't remember who it was.

(33:26):
was just running down all thesethese, witnesses.
And somebody asked, well,how many witnesses
have you personally,you know, and interviewed?
And the guy's like, well, none.
But, you know, I've readthings and I've seen that
when you sitdown across from somebody
who had a UFO hoveringover their head for 20 minutes

(33:50):
at treetop level,and you look into their eyes,
you know the truth of it.
You don't know what it isthey saw, but,
you know, they saw somethingthat was on a plane.
It wasn't a helicopter.
They saw somethingand not an enormous

(34:11):
and just unexplainable.
And you have to talkto the people,
the people who havewitnessed it.
Well, that's what I was of, ofthought with it,
you know too, is thatwhen you actually like,
you discount so many peoplewhen you just out of hand
say this isn't real.
Like I thinkone of the Hudson Valley ones,

(34:31):
they tried tosay it was like ultra lights.
my dad used to fly ultra lights.
My dad was a pilot,you know, before he bought
with a little Cessna.
I think it is,if you find these ultra lights
and I've been a.
It's like a go kartwith wings, right?
That's exactly what I say.
That's it? Yep.
Go kart with, with agiant weed whacker engine.

(34:54):
Right. And they soundlike that too, right?
But rightnow, no one thinks that's
a giant silent UFO hovering.
You know, no treelike you would just see,
ultra, like they're like,yes, yes.
And unfortunately,storm ville airport,
which is in the HudsonValley, had a group of Cessna
pilots and ultralight pilots.

(35:16):
They called themselvesthe Martians.
And once the UFOs werehappening, they
would actually get tipped off.
I've spoken tosome of the people involved.
They would get calls that,a UFO was just seen over

(35:37):
route 84 in Yorktown Heights.
They would jump in their planes,and then they'd turn
on their lightsand fly in a V formation.
So it would it was great.
It was great disinformation.
It was great cover.
No, that was us. That was us.
And, yeah, they did thisfor quite a while

(35:59):
until a pregnant womanwas driving along the road
and they were doing their lowflyby, and she thought it was
a UFO and like,went off the road and almost,
you know,she could have gotten killed.
And then when they realized,oh, wait,
there's liability here.
they findthey were getting threatening
phone callsbecause people knew who

(36:20):
they were.
But, you know, ultra Nightlights are not supposed
to fly, at night in the dark.
And these idiots were riskingtheir lives
and the lives of the peopleon the ground.
And most of themwere also professional pilots.
So their riskingtheir livelihoods
as well for a stupid joke.

(36:42):
so, yes, that that still rearsits ugly head
on a, on a regular basis.
But no, you are correct.
There is noyou know, I always say
it's like mistakinga flock of lawnmowers,
you know, for a giantsilent craft, right?

(37:03):
Right. Yeah.
Also the lights or anything,they are not silent.
No, no. Yeah.
I went up in one as partof the research for this.
Because if you're goingto discredit something,
you need to experience it.
And it was a littleintimidating at first,
but as soon as we took off.
Oh my God,you feel like Superman.
You know, they feel likeyou're floating.

(37:24):
You realize.
Yes. Bird up there, it's right.
Right. I absolute loved it.
but no, I wasnot mistaken for a UFO. You,
That's where you.
Yeah. You also. Right?
It's ait's a it's a cool experience.
My dad, I mentionedhe flew them.
He also crashed them, so. Oh.
His last crash, he slippedfrom be laughing about it.

(37:47):
Work.
he hurt himself pretty good.
I think he broke his ankle.
luckily, his back was okay,but he did hurt it.
I don't thinkanything was broken.
he got airliftedto the hospital,
you know, and things.
So that was his endof ultra life.
So then he got a real planeof things, so.
Yeah. Right.
And the actual airplane.
But the actual aliens names,I get. Why.

(38:09):
Yes, I would.
I would be terrified at darktrying to run around.
Oh it's, it's crazyto, to do that in the dark.
but but yeah.
So unfortunately there was avery effective disinformation
campaign at the heightof the sightings. So.
Right. Yeah.
That's happened with,I think, crop circles

(38:31):
and things too,where they're like, they'll have
these crop circlesand then someone will come
out, oh, I made it this way.
And then they show youand it looks nothing like it.
And just like, right.
Oh, that guy makes this otherthing over here, you know?
But he stopped. I'm sorry.
It's an it looks. That's right.
Yeah.
He took a board and some ropeand stomped down the weeds and.
Yeah.
What?

(38:51):
Whatever is happening,there are people who try
to fake itand and now with, with,
AI and all the thingspeople can do,
faking videos, it's it'sit from this point forward,
forward, it'sgoing to be almost impossible
to authenticateany photograph or video.

(39:14):
Yeah. Yeah.
There's it's unfortunate.
It's, it's interestingwith AI and things just
I wonder iflike you know, things like
going to the actual theatersand things like actual
seeing humans again like we,it's like we've gotten very
into these screens, you know.
And then I wonder though,if it's going to be like,
you start to distrust themso much because of all the AI

(39:36):
and these things.
I was like, well, I'm notI don't trust anything
I see I'm here.
Why don't we just go over hereand see human?
And no, they'reactually they're, you know.
Yeah, but but I do have to sayI am a lover of old movies,
particularly from the 30s.
And I would love to seemore Cary Grant, Clark Gable,
Clark Gable movies, you know,making making new movies

(40:00):
with these,with these characters.
so there's, there'sgoing to be great benefits,
but there's going to be a lotof nonsense to sift through.
There is.
Yeah, it's going to be hardto find the, with the signal
through through the, noise.
And so I wonder then with your,your background in the sciences,

(40:22):
how do you approachwhen you, you know,
UFOs or ghoststhan any subject like that?
You approach itas kind of a, as a scientist
is more of like a journalistjust collecting the stories
both like howhow do you go about that?
Yeah.
You you can takethe girl out of the lab,
but you can't take the lawout of the girl.
You know, I was a sciencenerd as a little kid.

(40:42):
You know, my brother andI would always do experiments.
And every summer we'd havea different science project
for the summer.
And so, yeah, it's.
I think it's that,you know, going
moderately skeptical,but open minded, you know,
there's a balance there, butis there any science

(41:03):
you can do to proveor disprove and always
look for the rationale.
So I think people know I,I will give you a fair shake.
obviously you know what I do.
I know this exists.
And, you know,you better know I'm coming
to test your credibility.

(41:24):
And I want to I want to standin the location
if I can, at the same timeof night or day.
And is there a flashingcell tower over there?
You in the past?
airplanes is,you know, is there anything,

(41:44):
you know, it's tough.
because some of these usually,when something happens
in the UFOs,you can stand on the same spot
for the next 50 yearsand never see it again.
so you're just trying to judgewhat in the area
might have caused itand then talk to the person

(42:05):
and other witnesses.
And when they seem credibleand you can't describe it to
anything mundane, I'll put itin the plausible category.
but like there was one backto Pine Bush,
about ten years ago.

(42:27):
eight years ago, a whole familysaw this circular craft.
it didn't land in a fieldat hovered about three feet
above.
And you.
There were these circles of.
It wasn't a crop circle, butall the tall grass was bent
and broken at a certain heightof about three feet.

(42:48):
And you take a Geiger counterinto the circle, and it's
seven times normal radiation.
You go ten feet away.
It's fine.
You go back, you know,and there were three different
circles of crushed grass,you know.
How do you explain that?
Otherwise?
You know, somethinga Geiger counter.

(43:12):
What does it measure again?
Radiation. Radiation.
Okay.
So, so the guy with the stick,that stick had a lot of
radiation as he went through.
That.
Was it?
you have to have stick.
Yeah, yeah. It's radio. Yeah.
Little your rangestick of uranium.
He was using, So.

(43:33):
Yeah.
You can absolutelybring science hard science to,
you know,ufology is not a science yet,
but that doesn't meanyou can't apply
scientific techniquesto everything you do in the this
and and the paranormal.
Right. Yeah, absolutely.

(43:54):
I you know, it's interesting.
I don't knowif you've ever seen this show.
the truth is out there,I think it's the name.
It's the guys, that host it.
He's like an oldhe's a journalist,
I guess, for a long time.
And what they do isI'll take videos and things,
that people have seen.
So like, oh, yes,it's that History channel
or this History Channel.
I go, okay, dothey just leave. Yes.

(44:16):
Enough on Google. Yes.
Well I too and they do that too,which is, which is really fun
about that show is that.
Yeah.
Sometimes it'll be likeliterally in the flight line
and they'll be able to findwhat plane that probably was
so they can match itto the right.
And it's like,oh, that's really cool.
But then there's other oneswhere they're like, oh,
we think this is a real UFO.
Like we there's a plausibleUFO Howard. Yeah.

(44:37):
However they phrase it that nothis doesn't make sense.
Yeah.
So it's it's funwhen you do that and then
you still have the open mindbecause then you don't just go
oh that's you knowI think someone was trying
to saysome of the stuff that maybe
you guys were seeing.
It was a balloon like, oh,what's you're telling me this
guy saw a balloon in traffic?
But yeah, come on.

(44:59):
Like, I mean, who'sthe bullshitter here exactly.
And and, you know,these are Top Gun pilots.
Not to mention,I think in that one
with the Tic TAC,the USS Princeton was, you know,
had tracked these on radar.
They have the mostsophisticated,

(45:21):
tracking and monitoring.
And if the guy you have inthat seat
doesn't know a balloon from.
So we are in deep, deep shit.
He's.
Oh, really?
there I what do you think?
Because I do like thethe current kind of

(45:42):
materialistic or materialismkind of view is
we just want to, you know,prescribe, like, all UFOs
or just their technologyof some sort. Right.
Anything goes. The technologybubble.
You know, not too long ago,we probably would have said
they were like,you know, gods or angels
or something, right?
Well, enough though, right?
It's just kind of whateverthe world views of time,
do you have any theorieson what you think
they might be or.

(46:04):
I clearly think a lot of themare nuts and bolts because,
you know, they breakbranches on trees
and crush grassand light reflects off them.
And, you know,but there are some the,
the really highstrangeness cases where,
you know, everybody talksinterdimensional. Now.

(46:25):
And I guess physics is provingthere's umpteen dimensions.
And, you know, that's I thinkeverything's on the table.
and until we havethat explanation,
sure, I'm open, but I don't seefor me, I don't see the problem

(46:49):
with the technology explanation,because even though
if they're fromanother dimension
or who knows where, they'reprobably using technology
to get here somehow. So,all speculation, but, I'm, I'm
still in the nuts and boltscamp.

(47:11):
sir. Well,I always wonder, like, you know,
why is it more fantasticalto things
like there was a breakawaycivilization on Earth
when they, like,almost like there's
a Black Panther movie, right?
Like we're kind of there.
It's like.
And they they're little, like,more technologically advanced.
Oh, like,why is that less plausible
than aliens coming from?
And I don't know, I justI just think about these

(47:31):
things. Right?
I'm like, why is that lessplausible than aliens coming?
Yeah, I was there as a landto a civilization
that just got so far aheadthat they were like, yeah,
we don't really want to botherwith people.
And that's why you see themover nuclear plants
that like, well,we're not going to let
you blow the planet.
That's right, that's right.
They have a vested interest.
If they live here, too.
yeah, that's certainly possible.

(47:53):
we've been around long enoughthat there could have been
a real advanced civilization.
and imagine somebodywho even had a hundred
or thousand yearsmore than what we've done now
that could account for it.
A lot of people say, you know,that what we're seeing

(48:14):
is us in the future.
Futureor it is, is a break away.
So, you know,it can make your head hurt
when you thinkabout all the possibilities.
Yeah.
so, you know,I don't usually get into
the speculation of it all.
My real interest.
And what I focus onis interviewing witnesses

(48:37):
and trying to piece together,you know, similarities
and, you know,just get the history
and the informationof these cases
out into the public.
Yeah.
I mean, that makes sense.
You said you were interestedin history
right before things like that.
And then,if this is modern history,
you know, I'm Half Moonright now, so,

(48:59):
yes, it's a ton of sense.
And then the other witnesses,before we move off
the UFO topic hereis the animal witnesses.
Right. And I know that you hadthe book.
They notedit was animal reactions.
Do you have those.
what did you know,what did you learn
in that research process a lotbecause

(49:20):
when interviewing witnessestime and time again, they said
my dogs were going crazy.
They were barking like maniacsor the cats were howling.
And so I looked outsideand saw this.
And one dayI'm giving a lecture,
and I told a story like that,and I paused.
I said, you know,if it wasn't for our pets,
we'd miss half of these UFOs.

(49:42):
And so, you know,the proverbial little, light
bulb went off over my headand I'm like, wait a minute.
I feel like I need to geta book on animal reactions
to UFOs.
There were none.
There are.
I don't know how many scoresof UFO and books.
People had written articlesand papers.

(50:03):
And I was like, oh no, this isthis is too important.
So I really delved inand really everything
from insects to elephants,every continent,
around the world, you, you namethe species, the era.
there are these severeanimal reactions usually fear,

(50:25):
they want to get awayfrom whatever this is.
And so I was gettinginto the science,
naturally of it as well.
Like, I,I think one of the big things
is, animals have somethingcalled magneto reception.
They're very sensitiveto magnetic fields and a

(50:47):
a rather,interesting example of this.
If you I don't know if youhave a dog or ever had a dog.
They want to face Northwhen they do
their business, right?
Yes, absolutely.
If they're not on a leashand you know,
you have them in a threatif you just
let dogs out in the yardor in the field,
you'll see them spinning and,you know, there

(51:12):
there have been timeswhen I yelled,
yelled at my husband,stop the car, and I jump out
with my compass, and Ibecause I see a dog
and, in the yard and.
Yep, there you go.
And, you know, I think, yeah,I think if cows who
want to face a certain thingand you can do Google Maps
and see huge herds of cowsand they're all facing

(51:33):
they they use it for hunting,they use it for survival.
birds use it to navigatebecause there's something
called magnet.
magnetite.
Just magnetized iron.
It's in the brain and in birdsit's in their beaks.
So it's like a millionlittle compasses for them.

(51:54):
You like homing pigeonsfor the migrating, you know?
Right.
And actually, carrier pigeonsand other birds,
they physically seethe magnetic fields.
I, I talked to a group at,at Urbana-Champaign,
university in Illinois.

(52:15):
They're studying this.
There's something calledcryptochrome in the eyes
which allow these birdsstill see it.
Like they thinklike a curved gray, line.
So if they see a curvedgray line
going off to the right,they know that's east.
If it's curved that direction.
So they arephysically seeing road

(52:36):
maps in the sky.
So then, all animals have this.
Humans have it too.
They're finally admittinghumans have magneto reception.
so if you introduce a UFO,which we know
can turn off your car,it interferes with radio
and television.

(52:58):
Lights go out.
Very strongelectromagnetic fields
to these animals.
It must be like being ona roller coaster blindfolded.
It just totally upsetstheir natural order of things.
And I think that's causesa lot of the.
This could be a lot of otherthings.

(53:20):
High pitched sounds,all kinds of things.
But I think that's probablya lot more science
than you wanted to hear.
No, that'sreally interesting. Right.
For that.
No. it's funny.
And I'm going to have to watchbecause how the
how the bar set up was rightover here.
There is a the wall is basicallya sliding glass door.
so it's kind of indoor outdoor.

(53:41):
But the real privilege isI get to watch my dogs
go to the bathroomwhenever they do, because.
But you're left out, right?
Oh, it's so embarrassingthrough a pool.
And then you see a dogcircling everywhere.
You know, and it'sreally easy because,
that's north.
It's just right over hereis where the,
San Gabriel Mountains are.
If you ever see the Roseparade and. Yes.
Yes, that's.

(54:02):
I'm along those same mountains.
Oh. Nice.
North.
so it's really easy there now.
So now I'm like, oh, so that'sprobably why they face
and they're not staring at methis way. I'm.
Oh, as much as they like you,that's not the reason.
but yeah.
So as strange as that is,what does that tell you?

(54:23):
That is a comfortlevel for them.
That is how they feel at easeto to do their business.
It's and and they, they,they're doing studies
now that the slightest deviationbecause magnetic fields
deviate slightlythroughout the day they,

(54:43):
they adjust to iteven minute changes.
So it's really likewhen an earthquake's
coming and animalstake off before the earthquake
or sound alarm state,they know they have
they have senses that we needto pay attention to.
Right? Right.

(55:03):
Yeah, I believe it.
I was, where,where my wife and I worked
was, medical device companyfor insulin pumps.
So for people. Oh, this.
And, there was a lot of people,a lot of diabetics
would have service dogs.
And the and the companynow has a little sensor
you put on your body,it measures your,
glucose, and things and sends itover to your phone and

(55:25):
they insulin pump and things.
But the service startedto pick up on them
having a low blood sugarbefore that was, that's what
the dog would be for meto kind of alert them
and then alertanyone around them, you know,
but preferably alert themthat, oh, you, you know,
you're a lifesaveror whatever, right?
This, you know, sugar.
and so you'll see,they'll be at work

(55:46):
and then the diabetics thereand have them and I've seen them
other places too.
But the the dogs at work.
And that was just a job.
And I don't you know,I feel the same if it's,
if they can smell, you know,you know, they can smell a lot
more than us.
so if those. Yeah.
The differencein your chemistry or what.
But that's it. Yeah.
They are amazing.
They can even smell cancers,in people.

(56:08):
so yeah, we really need to.
It's not just a novelty.
Oh, look what you know.
Look what Fido is doing.
It's very important information.
Yeah, they have access to, So.
Yeah, for medical,for everything from medical
to UFOs.
It's something we really needto pay attention to them,

(56:30):
right? Yeah, absolutely.
Was there anything elsethat surprised you or anything
when you did that research,or was that the big one?
The science behind it was,you know, the,
birds have these, Herbstcorpuscles
that detect vibration, like,you know, when you see,
see a wading birdstanding in the water

(56:50):
and all of a suddenthey dart down, it's because
when a fish goes by,it's a tiny little vibration.
They feel it in their legs.
And, you know, it was.
Yeah, it's amazing.
You have to read the book.
I'll send you a copy.
I have toyeah, I have to read that.
But it's just sothe science behind it
but also the variety.
There's a great case from,Phoenix, Arizona,

(57:10):
the Phoenix Zoo.
I think it was back,probably about 15, 20 years.
And this, UFO came overthe zoo at night
when it was closed, thethe guard's, truck, he was
driving around, stalled.
Everything went out,and they said

(57:31):
there was this lightbeaming down.
This bluelight said there were sounds
of alarm from every animal.
Now you've got, you know,you have reptiles to lions
and tigers and bears and,animals from around the world.
I mean, if that isn'tthe prime case, you know, and,

(57:54):
and a lot of them, they said,oh, they were disturbed
by the lights.
Well, a lot of animalsare in at night.
They're not, you know,they're in enclosures
or they're inside.
So it was animals insideor out, regardless of what
they were seeing.
They were feeling something.
They were sensing something.
They had to actually get the vetbecause they were so worried
they had been harmed.

(58:17):
The animals were okay.
But sometimes these animals,it takes days
or weeks to recoveror they never do.
They?
Yeah,they get this PTSD over it.
It's so traumatic.
Right? Right.
Yeah, I believe it.
I, I had on, Matt Pruitt,he wrote a book about,
the Sasquatch callthat the phenomenal Sasquatch

(58:39):
thrown up the differentsightings and things.
And, and so we've talkedabout that.
And one of the thingsthere was a, I'm in recovery
that thereor there's also a podcast
he knows the guy calledSasquatch Chronicles,
and, the host just bringspeople out.
They just tell their stories.
So if you're just interviewingwitness after witness and,
you know,he'll ask questions to things,

(59:00):
but mostly he just lets them,you know, talk and,
you know, tell their story.
And you hear that all the time.
It's like they'll be hunters.
They're hunting dogsand the hunting dogs
will hide under the carand refuse to come out.
Right.
It's the weirdest behavior.
I mean, it's like these dogsopen up
after bears and things andhid under the car, and
it's like, what is like that?

(59:21):
It's like true fear forabsolutely versus their job.
They love that duty of it.
That is knowledge.
Just too afraid to even like,oh, that's it goes
are great examples. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
That's just,you know, I've, you know,
German Shepherds,you know, they'll run
through a brick wall for you.
And when, you know,there was one case

(59:43):
where they, these two womensee something over a school
and the it was a big GermanShepherd name Hans.
And Hans startswhimpering and trying to dig
a hole to hide in,and they were initially,
oh, this is cool.
We should go closer.
And then that,Hans is scared out

(01:00:03):
of his freaking mind.
They ran.
So yeah.
You know, your pets andand hunters know
the animals in the woodsand they're hunting dogs.
That's interesting.
I'll start looking into thethe hunting dog.
yeah. angle of it.

(01:00:23):
Yeah.
And so I wonder then so I knowyou mentioned you
that your, you know into historyand things. Right.
And so is that justwhat I've always told people
is what I loveabout their stories.
And then we go somewhere,I like to go
do the ghost walks and things.
so much the good onesgive you the history of the
place, too.
And it's kind of anot not trying to be punny,

(01:00:44):
but a living history of it.
Right.
So the ghost is kindof a remnant in some capacity,
is telling the story.
Right?
is that what got you into,you know, ghost stories
with the different books or,I was always fascinated.
I don't know if you everheard of Hans Holtz or.
He was,very popular decades ago.

(01:01:06):
And, you know, I was the.
I was the unruly childreading under the covers
with a flashlight.
You know,ghost scares the ghost stories
to scare the heck out of me.
And it wasn't anythingI ever thought I would do.
And then,my boyfriend at the time, now,
husband decades ago.

(01:01:26):
I wanted to go to Gettysburg,you know, for the history.
And he said we should stay ata haunted bed and breakfast.
And I remember turning to himand say, are you crazy?
There is no wayI am going to spend the night
in a haunted placeand I got hooked.
it was fascinating becauseevery case is different.

(01:01:50):
And, you know, I've been in manyhistoric homes,
prisons, battle fields,you know, restaurants,
you name it.
And it's likethe ultimate question,
what happens when we die?
And you'regetting a little preview

(01:02:11):
when you do thisand you know, you do
you do find thingsthat you can tie in.
can justvery simple case there were
family moved into a house.
It was an older house.
And they kept smellinglike, pipe tobacco,
which is very distinctive.

(01:02:35):
And, you know, the placehad been completely stripped
and repainted in this,and they were seeing a man
in a dark robe.
And the kids are getting scared.
What is what is going on?
And, so one day this old ladyknocks on the house door
and she says, oh, I'm sorryto bother you, but, you know,
I lived here as a little kid.

(01:02:57):
And so they said,do you know anything about,
you know,this is scaring my kid.
Oh, that was dad.
He was a judge.
and he wore the black robe.
And I think he died oflung cancer because he smoked
his pipe too much, sir. But,you know, there's
no way these peoplecould have known this.

(01:03:19):
And so this guy is there,and he's giving clues.
Look, I'mwearing a judge's robe.
here's my pipe tobacco.
a lot of these, hauntings, it'sthey're giving you clues.
And to you, it's terrifyingbecause you don't know
what's going on.

(01:03:39):
And most of them are benign.
They just.
There's something unresolved,and they're trying
to get their message across.
sir, I believe that there wasone time, and this was.
And this was many,many moons ago.
my ex-girlfriend.
So maybe 20 years ago.
this is before, I was datingand married my wife.

(01:04:01):
We went to a haunted hotelin Ventura, California, and,
I got us the haunted room,but I forgot, actually, we also,
I think about it and things,and we got there like.
Oh, so did you get did you geta haunted memory thing?
I'm like, no, I don't think so.
You know, I have like, kindof forgotten and and also
when that's all there anywaysis that there's no fire.

(01:04:25):
And this is why she'syour ex-girlfriend like that.
It's why she left me.
This is one moment.
but we got there,and there was a little closet,
and so we got.
And we'rejust throwing our stuff down,
and she goes to the closet,and she just steps back,
and she goes, are you surethis isn't the haunted room?
like. Yeah, I'm sure. Why?
So, I don't know, I justI don't see anything.

(01:04:46):
I just open the closet and got,like, this
real feeling, like dread.
And I was like, oh.
And she said, that'sall right. No, no it's not.
I'm like, no, I rememberthat's the story is that lady
hunted herself in the closet.
Oh, 000, she said, I was like,that's right.
And that's the story.
And so then the otherpart of that story was like,

(01:05:07):
they she was like,pull your covers off at night,
right? And I can'tI didn't think anything of it.
I tend to kick the covers offa little.
I q I get hot right thereloosely on me all the time.
But I remember that nightnot being on me at all,
and I felt like grabbing itand things, and I was like, oh.
Then the next dayshe was like, okay, so tell me
the truth.
And I'm like, no, I think it is,you know, well, that's like

(01:05:27):
there are some things. Wow.
So and, you know,we didn't see anything or
hear anything, but it was thatand this never happened.
All of the other timeswe've gone
and that was never this.
Oh feelingbecause she wasn't someone
that was like,I, I'm an empath or something.
Right.
Sudden weirdnessthat that moment.
So those are the best caseswhen you're not expecting

(01:05:47):
something, you don't knowthe story and it's something
happens to corroborate.
Right.
And what others have felt.
Yeah.
How do you feel about thelike the, you know, what
the term like the quote unquotekind of the ghost
hunting equipment,you know, people have like
the little light things thatcome on or you get the,

(01:06:08):
the voices like, come on,what do you think about those?
It's gotten absurd.
you know, when I,when I started, I was, I had
a, you know, ages ago beforeeverybody had a, had a group.
It was meand a 35 millimeter camera
and a cassette recorder,you know, just interviewing
people and taking picturesand, you know,

(01:06:30):
some of the thingsthe EMF meters, you know,
electromagnetic fields.
I think that's good.
cameras that can see infrared,you know, applying the science.
And then some of these thingsare they're just ridiculous.
And there they are.
And people spent.
You know,I can't even watch these shows

(01:06:51):
because they spendlike four hours
setting up all the equipmentand they're focused on I mean,
nobody has in in 30 years,nobody's ever called me.
And my REM pod went off.
I think it's haunted.
No, you sit there and you listenbecause people hear footsteps.

(01:07:11):
They hear voices,they see it that they're
using their 5 or 6 senses.
And that's the experienceof a haunting.
Once you establish that, sure.
Bring in some technology,see if you can locate it.
It, you know, I'm absolutely allfor the science, but

(01:07:32):
some of this stuff has no basis.
And there wereI was at, Eastern State
Penitentiary in Philadelphia.
I had agreed to speakand be part of a group hunt
event there, like a weekend.
And somebody had oneof these things that it just
it just scrolls back and forthbetween all the radio stations.

(01:07:54):
That's all it does.
And you'reyou're supposed to ask
questions and get get messagesand somebody,
you know, asked a questionand I don't know, they oh,
it said William, I said,it also said it's 73 degrees
in Detroit, you know.
Right.
I mean, it'sjust random nonsense.

(01:08:15):
A lot of this.
So, I'm, I am the last personto be anti-technology.
But when you takeadvantage and come up with
baselessgadgets that people spend,
you know, tons of money,I there's one woman,
she thought,oh, I'm going to get it.

(01:08:36):
And she wentand ran and spent $2,000
on all this equipment.
And then shefinally went on a ghost hunt
and nothing really happened.
But she was terrifiedand then sold everything,
you know, at half priceto a friend of mine.
All right.
Because she. It's not for her.
you know, people are.
What should I get? What?
I, I was like, you know,get a digital recorder.

(01:08:58):
You have a camera.
I the best way to conducta ghost hunt.
Sit down and be quietand see what
I see and start from there.
Right. Yeah, I believe it.
When we were, I was bornin Morgantown, West Virginia.
Oh, there you go.
And, and I,I wish I had never been here.
I was born as we moved before.

(01:09:19):
And, you know,we've never gone back. This.
My dad went to WVU,which is there, but,
you know, we live live there.
and my dad was Air Forcewhen I was a kid,
so we moved around.
So this past summer,I was like, oh, you know,
when we go visitmy grandparents and stuff
that are like Pittsburgh and,you know, suburb of Pittsburgh
kind of area, I was like,oh, let's go to Morgantown.
You know,it's only an hour away.
And I'm like,I hear it's beautiful.

(01:09:40):
There's Cheat Lake by there.
It's really gorgeous.
So I went and said, okay,let's, let's go do this and be
my brother, my wife, his wife,my niece and her husband.
And I'm like, I'll seeif I can find a ghost tour,
because then you can go.
They'll take us around the city,you get to see the city,
they'll tell us,you know, different stories.
And so we did it.
And they have some of those.
I thinkmine was like a ghost box.

(01:10:00):
And with that, I was like,oh, look, it's being very active
and I'm like, I,I don't know, it's like ghost.
That's a nice sunny day to me.
Like you said.
Yes. And like,it could have said
any number of things to me.
Like, I can't hear whateveryou're trying to tell me, but,
I always wonderedif there was ever like, to me,
I was just like, oh,this seems like some goofiness
you're throwing at me.

(01:10:23):
yes. And I love ghost stories.
I used to be haunted historyon the History Channel.
Yeah, those were good,because you got the story
of The Haunting.
What is not interesting to meis the number
you get on your EMF meter.
It's the storyof the people who lived there
and died there.
And, the cause of the haunting.

(01:10:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah,I agree with you completely.
Was there, anything you learned?
So about hearing, like,the stories and things
did that teach youanything about storytelling?
Did you take anything awayfrom, like,
hearing all these ghoststories, UFOs, like, you know,
all the different thingsyou researched, the people
just telling their stories.
Did that does that impact youryour actual,

(01:11:06):
like fiction writingor just writing in general?
It yeah, I think it allkind of evolved together.
because I used to loveto write stories as a kid,
but you'rewhen you're creating fiction,
you know, you'rekind of making up
people, places and things.
But when you're interviewingpeople like I said,

(01:11:28):
I like to be at the locationand interviewing it just
it just fleshes it all out.
It just gives youthe whole experience.
What the place looks like,feels like, smells like,
and so youcan do richer storytelling
in these in these cases.

(01:11:48):
And there's somebody at the fairwho goes, I just love the way
you don't embellish.
I was like, you don't have to.
When you have a genuine UFOor a ghost case,
there's no reason, you know,you need four page of flowery
philosophizing.
Tell the story.
And and then the other.

(01:12:08):
I was happy to say, he said,you make us feel
like you're there with it.
So that's that's always my goal.
Whether I'm writing about UFOsor history, zombie novels,
you know, whatever it is,I want the reader to feel like,

(01:12:30):
oh, holy crap, I feel likeI'm in the middle of this.
so that's that is my goal.
Whether I'm successfulin that, you know, depends.
But, that's what I always tryto do, tell a good story.
Right.
Well, and,before we transitioned, like
I told you before the show,and I've said it on the show
a million times,like what they've been called

(01:12:52):
writers drinking whiskeyand ethically mandated
to talk, some writing talk.
So, before we transitioncompletely there,
I did want to ask youbecause I noticed,
so you had the,mysterious stone sites,
in the that's also HudsonValley based, right.
so maybe wonderingwhat you could tell me, like
just about those in general.

(01:13:12):
What makes them mysterious and.
Yeah.
so across the Hudson Valleyand throughout New England
and really all overNorth America, there are
big standing stones,there are chambers,
there are massiveglacial erratic
that's, you know, bouldersthat fell out of the glaciers

(01:13:34):
that seem to be pushedinto different lines.
And many, many of them,have astronomical alignments
there.
If you stand behind this rockand look at the pointed
rock down there, it'swhere sunrise on winter
solstice is going to come.
And it's fascinating.
I, I've been an amateurastronomer

(01:13:55):
since I was a little kid.
So with thisI get to hike in the woods,
study historyand use my astronomy.
And then there's weirdnessthat goes on
at these places, too.
But, I mean, I can't tell youhow many miles
I've hiked, and they're alwaysat the top of mountains.
Damn it.

(01:14:16):
It's like, you know,you're always out of breath
by the time you finally findthe thing.
but, you know, again,you bring science to it. You.
If you can't be there on theactual date, there are apps
that show you wherethe sunrises and sunsets are.
And the mainstreamhistorians in this area say

(01:14:39):
Native Americansnever built anything in stone.
Well, that's just crap.
You know, it'slike they weren't smart enough
to put one rock on topof another rock.
It's really it'sreally insulting.
But when, you know,if it was one site, fine.
But when you find a dozensites, when you find 100 sites

(01:15:00):
and they're not allastronomically aligned,
but they'remostly aligned to something
just because we don't knowwhat it is doesn't mean
they didn't move those rocksfor a damn good reason.
To them,it was an important thing.
So, there are groupsthat study this,
and but they keep everythingsecret.

(01:15:21):
We don't want to tell anybodywhere these things are,
so a lot of them get destroyedbecause let's not
bring public awareness.
So I kind oftook this up as a quest
because I don'thave anything else to do.
I don't have any other projects,but no, I, you know,
this was important to mebecause this is a huge piece

(01:15:43):
of our pastwhere ignoring and destroying
and there's so muchwe could be learning for this,
but it's like pulling teethwith,
with a lot of the historians,and they, they can just like
I used to teach astronomyjust in, adult education.
But still,I did my own curriculum.

(01:16:05):
And, you know, I had to knowsomething about astronomy.
And I've been an amateurastronomer.
And we did observing and things.
And so it was a,historian at a local
Suny State University collegeand somebody had said,
oh, you, you know,you should talk.
So I sent a bunch of photosand some great photos of, like,

(01:16:30):
spring equinoxsunset over this magnificent
pointed stone,which was in a line of other
stone eyes.
And so I'm like,maybe this will break the ice
and somebody will get the clue.
Yes, these are legitimatearcheological, historical sites.

(01:16:51):
Well, I have never beenso insulted in my life.
I get this condescending thingnow, Linda, you know
you need more than onerock to take. He.
He just ignored everythingI had written, all the data
I had written.
He just looks at the picture.

(01:17:12):
You can't just stand behinda random rock
and photograph the sunsetlike you don't what I'm like.
And he went on, and and thethe glacial erotics
that are pushed into line.
He goes, nowthose are just big rocks
that fellout of the ice of glaciers.

(01:17:35):
I used to lectureon the impact of the ice age
in the on glaciersin the Hudson Valley.
So again, justoh, I was so steamed.
And so I wrote back.
Thank you so much for,for looking at the data I sent.

(01:17:55):
And just to let you know,I used to teach astronomy
and do understandthe concept that you need
two points to draw a line.
And, you know, so I was I,I really just wanted
to tear him a new one, butI was just I just pointed out,
you know, my background,my science background

(01:18:18):
and and you know that hehe did not respond.
I think he realized, oh.
But that's so much of thereaction, unless,
you know, you have aPhD in archeology
and you try to suggest anythingto anybody in academia.

(01:18:38):
you know.
Yeah, you, you know,get away, peasant, you know?
Yeah.
Look, even if you have a PhD,if you don't agree,
you know, I think there's,I forget the, the
the fellow's name,but he was a PhD, geologist.
And he went to the,Sphinx in Egypt.
And so this is likewater erosion.

(01:19:00):
That was a big everyone,you know, criticized him.
They went on to mewhy he says that things.
And now I think over the years,more people have started
to agree with them to whereit's not such a wild idea.
And they've tried to the tofit it into their narrative.
You know how it makes sense.
Maybe if it's water erosionor and whatnot.
But it's you know, they it'sI always think of it

(01:19:20):
as, intellectual humility.
Right.
Like I try to be like,if you're humble enough,
then you can actually listento what people are saying
and, like, be open to it.
And then maybe you can pushback.
Maybe you can disagree,maybe you can, you know,
not think it makes sense.
But if it's justI have this narrative
and it's like,it's like if you're talking
to someonewho's a super religious.

(01:19:41):
Right. Well, yes. Okay.
Yeah. It's not real.
This is what I think.
Well, third,there's a coming from a place
I'm never going to agreewith you. Right, right. right.
It is. It's more religionversus.
No. It's supposed to be this.
The science must be thoughtbased, supposed to be a concept
based.
Can we talk?
Supposed to be looking at it?
yeah. So often it's not so.
So, you know, you hear, like,a lot of these talking

(01:20:03):
heads, and I don't putany particularly one on blast.
But there's a few scientistsyou see on TV all the time,
and there's a talkabout everything.
Like, they know like they,they're the, like,
smartest human that knowsall information, but, you know,
they're they're basically.
I am father, you know, like,oh, no, no, that can't be.
It doesn't really say no.
And I'm like, okay.

(01:20:25):
And like you said, they'llnever talk to a witness.
They'll never actuallylook at the data.
It's just know from afar theyjust, you know, poopoo it.
And yep, they. Yep.
so one of the Hudson Valleysounds like a magical place.
It really it has it all.
It is the Disneylandof the bizarre.

(01:20:45):
it's true.
And, you know,we have the history.
We have the ancient NativeAmerican history.
And of course, you know,we have the Dutch here so
early, you know, 1600s and,you know, all the succeeding,
you know, the Britishand you name the ethnicity
coming into this area.

(01:21:05):
So culturally, history wise.
And thenyou put the paranormal and
the stone sites and the UFOs.
No wonder I don't have timeto sit down and watch a movie.
I mean, do you have any ideaswhy it might be such a hot
spot for everything?
Or is there everany connections between,

(01:21:27):
like, the UFOs and otherkind of paranormal phenomena?
Yes, andI fought that for years,
but it seems, and again,we go back to Pine Bush.
one of the biggest concentrationof UFO sightings.
And you can stand in themiddle of this main street
and say that place is hauntedand that plays this on it

(01:21:48):
and that place.
So the, the weirdness seems tocongregate in certain areas.
And and why the HudsonValley in particular?
I have no idea.
I think a lot of it is peoplehave been here
long enough to documenta lot of it.
you know, some of theseother areas of the country,

(01:22:10):
you know,like 1890 is new to them.
I mean, it's old to them, right?
That's like, whoa,you write something
100 years old is like,that's super old.
And yeah,we go to the Pennsylvania.
My grandparentshouse is 100 years old.
You know, that'sthat's just one of 100 year
old houses on the streets. So.
Right, right.
So I think maybe the it'sjust that

(01:22:32):
there have been people hereto pay attention to it.
And, build on the stories.
But there isthere is something very unique
to this area.
I don't know what it is.
It's beautiful.
I don't knowif you've ever been here,
particularly in the fall.
it's just a beautiful, diverse,you know, like you

(01:22:54):
said, magical place.
Right.
and I love how you keepyour sense of humor about it.
You know, too, you know,sometimes you'll see people
on, you know,the different shows and let's
just be very like, yeah.
Because they want to be takenseriously
and they haven't been right,through the years.
And you kind of loseyour sense of humor about it.
I appreciate thatyou keep it right.

(01:23:15):
Yeah.
Thank you even to, like,talking to you anyways.
But then alsoyou can see it in your work
with, bad scienceand that's too.
So I think that's a real boon.
how do you live?
So just generally like,so that there's,
like, the mundanekind of day to day life.
Right.
and then there'sall of this kind of fantastical
stuff you deal with.

(01:23:37):
Is it does it ever.
Is it hard, everlike doing the day to day
or is it just kind ofthis is just your life
because you don't thinkanything of it or.
Yeah, it's it isinextricably intertwined,
obviously.
And, you know,I'll, I'll go on like,

(01:23:57):
like Saturday, you know, spentall day at this UFO faire
conference, you know, speakingand interviewing witnesses.
And, you know, you have tocome home and do your laundry.
I mean, it's just like,you know, there is
there is the lifeaspect of it, but, yeah, it's,
it's my life now, soI don't really

(01:24:20):
I don't really differentiatenow because it is
so interwoven with it'snot only what I do, it's who
I am.
So it's just partof everything that, there
you go.
Has it.
So in a the ghost I knowwe've touched on a little bit
like kind of life after,you know, this one, right.

(01:24:43):
how's it just the culminationof all of that?
How has it affectedyour views on death?
And you know,what happens after?
I think I always believed inghosts
and some sort of afterlife.
And I was always fascinatedby, you know,
stories of reincarnation.
You know, kids who remembersomething they have

(01:25:04):
no way of remembering.
But I didn't realizehow pervasive it is.
It's rather common.
And even if you know, a ghostto me is something stuck
in a location,whereas there could be like
just the spirit of adeceased person, you know,
your grandmother comes to sayhi to you on your birthday

(01:25:26):
or something like that.
She's not stuck there.
It's just and how oftenit happens to so many people
and so there's a very,you know, they say
the veil between worlds.
It's very thin and there'sa lot of holes in it. So up and.

(01:25:49):
Yeah.
And that's just another,just just one quick story.
several years ago, my,mother in law passed away,
and it was a very beautifulfuneral.
And at one pointthey played one song.
It was,Let the Circle Be Unbroken.

(01:26:09):
I had never heard it before.
And we're all standing thereholding hands, and it's like,
you know, a moving moment.
But the song went onand on and on, like,
all right, we're not going tobreak the circle already,
you know?
So I didn'tI didn't say that, but,
I had enough of that already.
So, I don't know,it was like 2 or 3 days later,

(01:26:30):
I'm, in a library in Nyack,New York, because it's,
it's an old librarythat's haunted.
And they invited me to comein, and I'm
with a friend of mine, BarbBarbara, who's, psychic.
And she didn't know anythingabout my mother in law.
The funeral, whatever.
We just got together andwere in the children's room.

(01:26:52):
It's like midnight andit's dark, and then she stops
because there's an old womanhere.
I'm like, okay, I don't knowwhat an old woman's
doing in the children thing.
She's like,she wants to talk to you.
And I'm like, what?
And she looks right in my eyes.
And she said, yeah,she keeps singing this song,

(01:27:12):
Let the Circle Be Unbroken.
I gasp, and I put my eyeback up like,
no, no, no, no no no,you know it's what.
And and then she goes, yeah.
She said you know what.
That she knows what you do now.
And she just wanted youto tell everybody she's okay I'm

(01:27:32):
going to get like choked up.
And I'm like,I'm covered in goosebumps now.
It was one of the most intensemoments that she knew.
I wrote about ghostsand probably was like,
yeah, okay, that's my crazydaughter in law.
You know, something like that.
Sure.
But then she comesto see me on a ghost hunt and

(01:27:54):
and so I'm like, sayingto my husband, I was like,
should I tell your sister?
Like, yeah, go ahead.
So, I told this, you know,he told them the story
and it helped them.
You know, itbrought them some comfort.
But, you know, there'sabsolutely no way I.

(01:28:15):
She knew anything about this.
And, you know, the psychic.
And it was justone of the craziest moments.
And it's like, okay,they're around us
are they're our loved ones.
They're around us all the time.
They see everything.
They know what's going on,which is a little creepy.
You know,when you're living with us,

(01:28:35):
you're living with her son. And,but yeah.
So I thinkthat was a huge lesson
I learned that it's notjust the creepy old house
on the other sideof the railroad tracks.
It's everywhere with everyone.
If you just pay attention to it.

(01:28:58):
All right? Right.
Amen. That is. Yeah.
That is a powerful story.
It's funny too.
How much?
you know, it's so easy.
It's almost like the guyswith the ultra lights, right?
It's so easy to go.
Oh, psychics.
They're just using a mindtrick, and they do this. I'm.
So there's a bunch.
That's not exactly suredoing it, you know, and. Yep.
And but when you likeyou mentioned
reincarnation stories obviouslywhen you actually just

(01:29:20):
listen to some of themand they go through it, it's a
no no.
And then you realize there'sso much other, you know, there's
so much going on.
Like,how can you not be curious,
you know, interested inwhat's going on here?
you have to kind ofput the blinders on.
There's no no, I had this,you know, worldview.
And when we die, we,you know, it's darkness
and we go into the ground,and that's just the end,

(01:29:40):
you know, the end of everything.
Yeah. Surprise, surprise. No,what you do now matters later.
Yeah, yeah.
Amen.
So, So so then,let's transition to the poetry
and talk here.
so what I was curious about,I think I mentioned to you,

(01:30:02):
this beforethe show is that, with the
the great variety of thingsyou write, right?
There's like history,there's science,
there's the paranormal stuff,and then there's
the fiction writer,the zombie story.
how do you likewhat does your process,
your writing process,is it different
from kind of one typeof writing to the next?
Is it all basically the same?

(01:30:23):
Could you describe that for us?
Yeah.
history and science.
You can do the story telling,but it is a real discipline
because you needto have your facts
absolutely corroborated,particularly, well, in either
science or history.
And, you know,I do, do, I have done

(01:30:44):
a lot of writing in Civil War.
And if God help you, if youget the number of buttons
wrong on somebody's jacket,or get the regiment wrong,
you know, they'll rideyou out of, town on rails.
so there is a much strict yearin a strict guidelines,

(01:31:05):
whatever it isyou're writing about, make sure
it's in the frame workof the truth and the facts,
and then you knowyour take on it.
When I do my fiction,I feel like I'm kind of
let out of schoolfor the summer, you know?
because that's my facts.
That's my fiction.

(01:31:26):
That's,that's the world I create.
And I really got intowriting for fiction.
I knowI've done a lot of nonfiction,
but I always say fiction.
My fiction is where I liveand breathe
because it's my imaginationgoing out there and, creating

(01:31:47):
whatever it isI want to create, whatever
helps my storybe more compelling.
so that'sthat's the difference for me.
Sure.
that that's lovely.
I love the way you put itthere. Just, you know,
fiction writers and poets,we like to talk.
Well, I don't know thatwe like to talk about,
but we do talk about, like,truth and beauty, you know, and,

(01:32:13):
you know,and I think it's a real thing.
And I think that's part ofit is like
when you're writing fiction,there is a truth.
I sometimes hatewhen people go my truth
and it's like, I'm.
I'm getting rid of objectivefacts with it.
But there is a like, emotional,like a personal truth to things.
and you find thatand there's an emotional
and personal beauty to them.

(01:32:33):
has, do those ever interweaveslike when you're,
when you're writing something,you know, about the Civil War
versus, you know,how do you find the truth
and beauty in that story, versuswhen you're, when you're
working on infection.
I yeah, I,you know, certainly in,
in any war situationit's horror.

(01:32:54):
But the bravery, the fortitudeof the individuals, the,
the compassion in the middle ofjust absolute carnage, you know,
you see the best come out in ain a lot of people.
And that's somethingyou can always cling

(01:33:14):
to and amplifyin, in a situation.
So, sometimes it's hardand there are no good
characters and you just haveto tell the truth of that.
But I'm certainly alwayslooking for those bright spots
and very dark momentsfor my life.
I think, it's funny,I always say, like,
I'm on the fence about people,you know, like some people

(01:33:36):
I think are like, oh, you know,humans are so bad.
We we cast, you know,we cast a shadow.
but you see that a lotis everyone goes, oh,
you know, an apocalypse.
Everyone would just be awful.
So, you know, a lot of peopleare going to be great to their
is going to be awful people,and there's going to be a lot
of people that band together.
And so the reasonwe're still alive is

(01:33:56):
if we didn't band together,like we would have died out
a very long time agobecause we're not
that exceptional of animals,you know? No.
but, but we band together,you know, and things.
And so you see thataltruism and, you know,
the real spirit of you,someone is, you know, yeah.
And people discover, thingsand in themselves,
they didn't knowthey were capable of doing so.

(01:34:19):
you youyourself can be surprised.
And then peopleyou think would be wonderful
or horrible.
So, you know,I mean, you know, it's this,
this Shakespearean drama of,you know, extremes
and characters of all sorts.
And so you can take thatand drop it

(01:34:41):
into any sort of situation.
And then that's, that's againpart of the, the fun of fiction,
the adventure of, okay, I'mgoing to create this character
that people think areX, but it's really y,
sir. give me back to you.
So you had, ghost investigatorsthat was made into a comic.

(01:35:03):
I was wondering, were youinvolved with the process,
like, the writing processof turning it into a comic?
I was stunnedat how many different components
there are to doing a comic book.
I was like the story consultant,you know, telling them
the story.
Excuse me.
And then there's someonewho writes the script,

(01:35:25):
who does the pencils,who does the inking,
and who does, you know,I had no idea.
I was amazed, and these areall very talented people,
you know, whowho bring together,
something like a comic book.
So, yeah, it wasit was very fun.
You know,they would run things by me,

(01:35:48):
just to make sure, you know,I'd want to say accurate, but,
you know, in line with whatthe story was, so that was
that was a really fun processI had I had a blast with that.
Right. Awesome.
And they had to make an actionfigure out you at some point.
They do.
I, I don't understandwhat's taken so long.

(01:36:12):
I would buy it too,I think I have,
so I have Mothman up here.
I saw your Mothman.
That's great.
Yeah.
I've been to the moth MothmanMuseum.
Oh. Very good. I want to go.
I haven't,I haven't been yet, but yeah,
West Virginia kids.
I will go there.
Yeah, yeah.
baby, I would love to have,All right.

(01:36:32):
I'll let you knowwhen I get my action figure.
Oh, do you rememberthe one that had the
the real kung fu?
action cards for action?
Yes. I want to kung fu.
I don't know kung fu,but I would just.
If I'm going to be an actionfigure, I want the cool things
and all kinds of gadgets,you know, to hold the stuff.

(01:36:53):
So that's true.
And you have all of the gears,but equipment
for your actions? Yes.
All right, all right.
We're putting that out thereto the universe.
Get in touch with me if.
You do you, so with yourso and then, you know,
I mentioned the humor earlier,but I wonder, as far as,

(01:37:13):
you know, infusing humorinto your writing.
Is that something that, I knowthat science is,
is comical, right?
you know, isis part of the making of it.
Is that somethingthat you infuse a lot
in the fiction of things,too, and,
you know, the other stories,or is that,
you know, just kind of a oneby one scenario?
Yeah.
It's something I can't helpinfusing in everything

(01:37:35):
because again, it's just me.
And I found out,even with the ghost stuff,
if you stand upand give a lecture about death
and destructionand hauntings for an hour
doesn't go well,you need to break it up
with a little humor hereand there and, you know,
have lighthearted moments and,you know, then you zero in.

(01:37:57):
It's, it's that play of emotion.
You can't in anything.
You can't have a monotoneemotion running
through the whole thing.
You need to break it up.
so, I mean,I even used to give lectures
on Civil War humorbecause, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, soldiers are salt,men are men.

(01:38:19):
You know.
You know, you get a few thousandguys in camp, things happen.
so, yeah,I like to look at the humor
because for me, it's it'sa huge stress relief.
It's just I'd much ratherlaugh and cry.
So, it's just somethingI've always, gravitated to, and.

(01:38:43):
Yeah, I think it'sprobably part of of everything
I do, whether I,I can't help it, whether I,
whether I want to or not.
but yeah.
So that's and I like I said,I think it just breaks
things up and, you know, shiftsyour moods
and, and everything, so.

(01:39:07):
Right.
I have on a, a naturewriter, Michael
Branch was on the show.
what do you say?
You know, humor is going to benature writing and things.
And he had described itas that humor
is a survival techniquethat's like we use us to survive
tense momentssince the earliest days. So.
Yeah.
Yeah, that the ideathat you shouldn't joke about

(01:39:27):
something is like,that's the wrong thing.
Like no matter what it is,you should be willing to,
to still have some,some light heartedness
to it because otherwiseyou'll never bear it.
You won't survive it.
Right? right.
Yeah.
I think you're more resilient.
If you can laugh about things.
Right? Yeah, absolutely.

(01:39:48):
So. Okay. Thank you for that.
So I think that it's timefor some shots.
so, Casper, it's,it's almost 2 p.m.
West Coast time, so,so just rapid fire questions.
so are you ready?
Oh, shoot.
All right, there we go.
So, are all dogs haunted, oris it just mine?

(01:40:11):
There's a lot of haunted dolls.
Yes, many are.
okay, so not just myget to know I'm not alone.
That's what I was.
That's what.
Yeah.
I do have a somewhat haunteddoll store, but let's
go through the shots.
worst advice I've ever received.

(01:40:34):
it I, I don't knowif you call this advice.
It was kind of criticism.
I think it was my fourthgrade teacher who said
if I did not improvemy penmanship,
I would never amount toanything.
So. Yeah,because I didn't have I.
Yeah, I didn't have the greatestand I still don't

(01:40:55):
have the greatest handwriting,but that is
that is quite a thingto put on a nine year old.
right.
Right. Aspiring writer.
Right?
Of course, if word processorshadn't come out,
I might have made out itto nothing.
So, you know better for God,for technology.

(01:41:18):
what's a guilty pleasure?
Chocolate choco.
Chocolate.
Chocolate,chocolate and chocolate.
Those are the top three.
Yeah.
I can't goa day without chocolate. Yes.
I don't know if that'sa that's pretty a guilty
pleasure.

(01:41:38):
I think, you know, that'sthat's fine.
if aliens came off their highhorse, you know, like, pun
intended with this one.
Hoover, high above us, right?
High horse presentedthemselves to us tomorrow.
What's one piece of artyou would give them
to teach them about humanity?
Oh, boy, that's a good one.
What would I give them?

(01:42:01):
to teach about humanity?
I might you might havestumped me here.
probably some beautifulmountain or ocean scene.
Just something,something magnificent
that we've been ableto recreate about our
our planet.

(01:42:24):
sure. I'll go with that.
Yeah. Very good.
frogs.
Disgusting abominationsto be avoided at all costs.
Or proofthat the aliens are malicious
and should be avoidedas we are plagued
by peeper frogs in theI mean invasions of them,
I'd saythey're evil demons from hell.

(01:42:46):
So if I know that wasn'tone of the choices.
But that's okay.
Okay.
There's no hard choices.
For you.
So that's what.
I don't know what it is,but I've always had
an irrational fear of frogs.
Oh, really?
I can't look at it.
I don't know why.
I just, like, creeped me out.
Like, there can be,like a mountain lion.

(01:43:08):
I would be fine seeing it.
But if you put a frogthere, like, oh my God,
that's when I push my wifein front of me.
Like everything else.
Like,everyone get mad over frogs.
I'm like, no, you guys and allthis is what I mean about,
oh, well,you don't want to be here
because there's a swampin the back and in the spring
they just start peeping.
You can't sleepand then they come.
We have a pooland they want to come start
breeding in the pool.

(01:43:30):
And if you try to get in,if you try to, like,
get them away, they will jumpand cling to you.
And you're like coveredin frogs and they're peeping
and there's,you know, there's very loud
and they're everywhere.
It's just like a nightmare.
You just, I don't know, notsleep tonight, like I'm sorry.
Well, my job here is done. Then.

(01:43:55):
burger one I've neverI've never heard that before.
Like. Yeah.
Cheers. Floats.
Yeah. That is not fun.
No. Yeah.
so and finally,favorite podcast.
And why is it writers drinkingwhiskey?
I just discovered it.
It's rapidlybecoming my favorite.
Oh, it will be after thisepisode.

(01:44:19):
can I, can I say my own podcast?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I canI have two of them.
I have murder in the HudsonValley because I also do, too.
True crime.
Because I don't haveenough else to do.
And then I have a UFOheadquarters, so I go,
I have a real kickdoing doing those.

(01:44:41):
Right? Yeah.
I have to tell my wifeand my wife,
we went on, I like this.
I didn't noticethe Unsolved Mysteries podcast
when it started.
So we had done,I think, just two seasons.
Unfortunately,I should keep going, but,
we took a drive upto Central California
and for anyone of notwhere like California is like
you have the LA Chinaand then South

(01:45:02):
is like people live thereand they have San Francisco
area like all the Bay areakind of Silicon Valley area.
People live there.
Central is is barren, right?
There's people,but it's it's it's rural.
There's there's not much,it's where
all the farmland and stuff is.
And, okay, so we took a drive upthe coast, this little village
cooking embryos where,we got engaged and things.

(01:45:24):
Oh, for our anniversarythis, this past year.
Listen to them song.
This is on the way up.
And we got there,and we got the nice room
with the ocean view and things,and we have this
sitting there, likeso, some unsolved mysteries,
and we just sat there.
It was fantastic.
Obviously we fell asleep.
We tooka nap, woke up some morning
and sort.
When I told heryou were coming on the show.

(01:45:44):
She was so excited.
So so so I don't know thatshe watches mostly shows because
she gets quite enough of me,but this will be
when she watchesand I'll have to tell her
because she loves murderlike true crime.
Oh, there you go.
Yes. Yeah.
Murder in the Hudson Valley.
We started out withjust Hudson Valley,
and we started getting listenersall around the world.

(01:46:05):
So it's a podcastare just amazing.
So I started branching out to.
And now it's basicallyanywhere in the world.
I'll, I'll cover.
Oh very cool.
Yeah, yeah, we'll definitelycheck them out.
Thanks for thatI mean, trust, besides it
being a self-serving,you know, question on
my end, I also like to likeshed light on other podcasts.

(01:46:28):
So it works out both ways.
So, so thank you for that.
So, then I think we can getto, the review
and then you have a pieceyou're ready to revise today,
but, yeah,just just about a page.
Is that good?
That's fine.
Okay.
So, Yeah, I've got backto the the bad science.
One of my favoritestories was about,

(01:46:51):
William Harvey,the one who discovered.
Well, I'll tell you whathe discovered. So.
the first half of the 1600swasn't
the safest time in historyto propose original ideas.
Men of science in Europewere being threatened, tortured
and burned at the stakefor trying to disrupt

(01:47:12):
the old school of thoughtwith new theories based upon
observations and experiments.
In other words,they were in peril
simply because they werebeing good scientists.
So it was with some trepidationand 12 long years
of deliberationthat Englishman William Harvey
finally published his theorieson the heart and blood.

(01:47:36):
In 1628,he presented a 72 page book
with the big name exaltationanatomical demo to Cordis.
It's sanguinees in animal abuse,
the anatomical exerciseon the motion
of the heart and bloodin living beings,
and what was in Harvey's bookthat caused such a ruckus.

(01:47:57):
Here's the monumental,earth shattering revelation
the heart pumps,the blood that circulates
through the body.
No, really. That's it.
Harvey said that the heartis a pump and blood circulates
through the veins and arteriesthat was it in a nutshell.
Doesn't sound like anythingto get upset about, right?

(01:48:19):
Wrong.
For over 20 years after Harvey'sbook was published,
he endured scathing criticism,with some learned men going
so far as to declarethat his theories
violated the very laws of Godand nature.
No, really.
People were quite upsetby the idea of the heart
pumping, circulating blood.

(01:48:40):
The reason they were so upsetwas that over
1400 years earlier,the legendary Greek
physician Galen had writtenthat blood was created
in the liver, wentone way through the veins out
to the edges of the body,where it just disappeared.
According to his theory, bloodwas essentially disposable.

(01:49:02):
Use it once and throw it away.
And the heart was not a pump.
It was the seat of a spiritualforce, and arteries
were not meant to carry blood.
They were designedto transport air.
And this mythicalspirit, mystical spirit
Galen, becameso revered over the centuries
that his work was takenas gospel.

(01:49:25):
And anyone who challengedGalen was a fool and a heretic.
If you conducted experimentsthat produced evidence
that went against Galen,it could only mean one thing
your experiment was faulty andyour conclusions were wrong,
and you were a fooland a heretic.

(01:49:46):
Wow, that isn't me.
I haven't heard that storybefore.
but geez, that,you know, it reminded me of
when you said it.
is that an.
I'm sure Einstein's better,you know, in the long run,
because he keeps getting provenright on certain things.
But if you ever anyonewants to go against Einstein,
it's like you're a fool.

(01:50:07):
And a heretic.
Yes, and there you go.
As much as he can knowat the time you would think of
something, right?
But find other things.
You know, maybe some ofhis stuff gets disproven.
And then I say, no,we can't go against Einstein.
It's like he'sthis revered, kind of godlike,
you know, character.
So that that's interesting.
And then Beyondthe Spirits is pumped around.

(01:50:27):
I don't know why the spiritis pumped around
through your veins, but yeah.
And plus, if you look at that,somebody, did
the number of heartbeatsand the capacity of the heart
and realized you would needto generate 65 quarts of blood
every day, which.
There you go.
There's the end of Galen start.

(01:50:48):
Well, yeah, but that'sif the heart was a pump
and it, you know.
So they just it was ridiculousfor the longest time.
And he was genuinely,genuinely in fear of his life.
Sure.
there was once thisa long time to.
Yeah. About something.
I mean, it could.
That's a lot of deliberation.
That's a lot of fear. Yeah.

(01:51:09):
Unfortunately,he didn't live long enough.
there was an Italianscientist, Mel P.G.,
who, was looking at, frogs.
There you go. Frogs.
under microscopesand discovered capillaries.
And they couldn't explain,you know, because until
capillaries were discovered,they didn't know how

(01:51:29):
the blood came back.
They knew what was beingpumped, but they didn't know.
They couldn't see untilthe microscope, revealed it.
but he knew he was.
He knew he was right.
And finally,by the end of his life,
you know, 20 years later,people begrudgingly.
All right,maybe the hard part of your.

(01:51:55):
So that's basically what thethe book.
That's the.
I thought that was a goodrepresentative.
and the, the Agassiwho, was the one
who came up with the Ice age.
Well,that was the stupidest thing
in the world, you know, Iceage, the continental drift.
Well, that's ridiculous.

(01:52:15):
Continents don't move,you know, it's you name it,
these scientists have put upwith.
And, you know,some of them have been tortured
and lost their lives over it.
Right. what is so funny?
Because we don't learnthe lesson either. Right now.
We knowyou think we know everything.
You know,there's going to be something
we're going to get provencompletely wrong about.

(01:52:37):
Of course we're no, no,I'm asked of you this way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had let'ssee if I can quick find.
I think I ended the book with,yes. Seneca.
the Roman in, he was oneBC to 65 A.D.
he said our descendantswill marvel at our ignorance.

(01:53:02):
very.
So I included that, and,that's the last thing
I wrote in the book,because, yeah, it's.
Yeah.
Oh, well, yeah, they were wrong,but now we know everything.
Right.
Yeah. Oh, that's right.
Yeah. Okay.
Well, as you see it with kidstoo, which is always funny,
but, I likeI love seeing it with the kids

(01:53:23):
because I go when I'm a parent.
I'll never do that with my kids.
and then you see him.
Me and my wifejoked about this, like,
I don't point it outbecause I was going to do it.
Like, I was like a five year,but I might.
I see it like I see it too.
But keep a little notebookso you can remind them.

(01:53:44):
Yeah.
On October 12th, 2024,do you remember
you saying this right?
exactly.
Parents need revengeonce in a while.
Are we? Do we really do?
Awesome.
So I wonder then what'swhat's next for you as far as,
a a rather serious project.

(01:54:04):
30 years ago,I was going through
a collection of documentsfound in an old trunk,
and it was basically from,the 1700s through to the
present, almost.
And there was a lot of CivilWar letters and material.
And there was one soldierwho just caught my attention.
His name was Albion.
Brooks waswith the eighth Connecticut,

(01:54:27):
and he was just such a nice guy.
And all these other letters,everybody.
Have you seen Albion?
Do you know where Albion is?
Do you have any news of Albion?
I'm like, oh we buddyfolks, this guy and it's
you know, you're readingall these letter and I'm like,
I really like Albion.
You know, guy had died100 years before I was born.

(01:54:49):
Excuse me, but he was just such.
He was intelligent.
He was compassionate.
He was, you know,in all these fights and.
And then I pick up a letter,dated June 4th, 1864
from Cold Harbor, Virginia.
And it's like I regretto inform you,
your dear friend AlbionBrooks was severely wounded.

(01:55:10):
And it goes into he was shotthrough the abdomen,
and we knew it was mortal.
But we tried to keep himcomfortable and
in fact, today is the 106.
I'm getting goosebumps.
The 160thanniversary of his death.
He died on June 3rd.
And it's said, you know, hehe closed his eyes, said,

(01:55:32):
I am and goingand quietly breathed his last.
I, I was crying my eyes out.
I feel like crying nowbecause I knew this, you know,
I didn't know.
But you get to know a personand, you know,
at this point my husband callsand I'm in tears.
He's like, what's the matter?
Like like Albion Brooks is dead.

(01:55:54):
There's this pause.
Yeah, I guess he knewhe was in the Civil War.
Did you really think he wasstill alive?
I said, no, you don't get it.
I just picked up that letterand to me,
it just it just happened.
So I have spent three decades.
I finally tracked downa photo of him

(01:56:15):
so I could look him.
I have him,I, I keep him, I keep
him by my, desk here.
he's a handsome fellow.
He was.
And he was just 21 years oldwhen he when he died, you know,
his whole life ahead of him.
And I kept finding more and morelittle clusters of letters.

(01:56:36):
And I finally,just a few months ago, came
upon a huge collectionof his letters.
I've read his diariesand it's like,
all right, now's the time.
I'm going to write this,this man's story.
but I'm not it's notgoing to be a strict biography
because I was like,I don't know quite

(01:56:56):
how to approach this.
And, you know, a historianshould really keep themselves
out of the history.
And my husband said, you'rethe whole reason his stories
are going to be told.
You'rethe one who's been running
around the country for 30 yearsgathering this information.
And I said yes.
So it's going to be calleda Civil War soldier.

(01:57:17):
And me and it's, you know, no,because I'm,
I can't tell you how manyyears and hours I've devoted
to this man's story.
And so it's it's interestingthat we're on the anniversary
of his deathhere, talking about it,
but, Yeah, honestly, historians,they can't help

(01:57:43):
but put themselves in it,even if it's masked.
And, you know,they have their own opinions
and the waythey write the story.
So I'm just going to be honestabout it, and I'm
just going to talkabout the process.
And anybodywho does something like this,
it's so much of their own time.
you know,whatever it is you're doing,

(01:58:05):
you really pour yourselfinto it.
So I'm justit's going to be his life.
But kind of a shout out to all,like I talked
a couple of weeks ago to,a woman who runs a small museum
and she's getting on in years,and she doesn't have enough
help,but she she and her husband
started this museum decadesago, and she's,

(01:58:28):
you know, it's her owntime, her own money.
And it's important to herto keep it going.
And it's people like that,you know, who are dedicated to
whatever cause it is,whatever subject.
you know, it'snot a job to them.
It's not.
I'm going here9 to 5 and getting a paycheck.

(01:58:50):
It's pouring yourself into itnight and day,
round the clock, you know?
so, so that's, I'm going to,you know, shout out to people
who have helped me with thisand then my own story of,
you know, lots of timesI kind of sat down
and you know, watched a movieor gone out to dinner.

(01:59:13):
But no, I need to readabout the regimental history
of this, you know,or I found another letter.
so it's beena real personal quest.
So this is going to be avery personal project for me,
That's lovely.
I love the, you know, the twothings to remind me of.
One is that there was the the,I think it was,

(01:59:35):
I think sort as a blog,but like Julia and me or some,
like Julia Childsor someone that when they made
a movie about it later,you know, Julia and Julia
or something like that. So.
So yeah, that was. Yes.
and that wasreally interesting kind
of seeing the relationshipthat gets built,
you know, between, you know,like she's Julia Child
and then her, but thenin this case, you and,
and the soldierand then the other layer of it

(01:59:58):
being just the,the people in general
that do these things, right,like you mentioned, the lady
with the museum things andthe care people take
with like their history. Yes.
You know, with the past,is, is is lovely.
Anyway, I always think, like,when they, you know,
funeral rites.
All of this is really lovelythe way, you know,

(02:00:19):
people care for,for their loved ones
and then continue to care forthe, the past at this point
that's, you know, yeah.
Maybe there might besome graver related to
but mostly like you'renot there at some point.
Right, right. So.
Right.
It's just some,you know, young man
who had an extraordinaryway of writing.
Had he not written the lettersthe way he did or the diary?

(02:00:42):
he was just a captivatingindividual.
you know, certainly caughtmy attention and,
you know, again,he was just three weeks
past his 21st birthdaywhen he died.
And, it's a way of honoringpeople who went before us.

(02:01:03):
so I, I am privilegedto be able to do this project.
Yeah, absolutely.
I yeah, I look forward to it.
So, so thank youso much for coming on.
if people want to find outmore about you,
what's the best placefor them to go?
I have, all sorts of Facebookpages, Hudson Valley UFOs.

(02:01:23):
If you're just interestedin that, I have to.
Linda Zimmermann, author.
You know, and non author pages.
I do have a website.
I don't keep it up any more,but it's still there.
Go to zem.comand then my podcasts, the,
UFO headquarters or murderin the Hudson Valley.
Oh, very good.

(02:01:44):
And I'll link them up with,the description of the show
here, too.
Great.
Thank you.
Plug those in thereso they can find them.
So, thanks again.
This has been a real,you know, thrill for me.
It's been great timing.
Besides, I've been excitedbecause if you're on Unsolved
Mysteries, you'rea celebrity to make this up.
But I was super excitedabout this.
you know, it was great meeting.

(02:02:05):
You know, it is super, supergreat talking to you.
Thanks so much for comingon. This is thank you.
It's been one of the most funpodcasts I've ever done.
So my pleasure.
Extra shots.
Question for the audience.
As always.
If you watchedafter a certain point.
Does. I didn't do it before.
At that point.
have you ever witnesseda UFO slash UAP slash?

(02:02:28):
Whateverwe're calling them these days?
let us know down therein the comment section.
I will let you know mine.
I actually experienced tonot that while cases,
but I'll read them.
And as always,if you are interested
in, you know,supporting the show, please
consider picking up a book.
We went overa bunch of lenders today.
I'm really excited.
I got to get my copy of the,bad Science,

(02:02:49):
but also the animal book,because now I need to know.
I think my dogs aren'tjust going nuts out there.
They're alerting meto some kind of phenomena,
and I need to pay attention to.
you know, consider that Iconsider my dog to be so kind.
that's really the trulythe best way to support
the show is we don'thave any advertisements
or anything else on here.
You just get, you know,unabridged writers drinking
whiskey or coffee or tea.

(02:03:12):
thanks again,everybody, for tuning in.
You know, stay safeso you stay tipsy and, cheers.

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UFOs, Ghosts, and Whiskey - OH MY! Authors Linda Zimmermann and William R. Hincy

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}UFOs, Ghosts, and Whiskey - OH MY! Authors Linda Zimmermann and William R. Hincy