October 29, 2024 • 54 mins
Tibetan Kapala skull decorated with bits of coral; Two Charlie McCarthy dolls that may (or may not) be haunted and the incredible memento mori collection of Richard Harris. An actual witch’s door.
Welcome to a world of oddities curated by Regina M. Rossi and Ryan Matthew Cohn, trendsetters and tastemakers who have reinvented what the artifact collectors market looks like. Together, they are the founders of Oddities Flea Market, artfully curating a selection of the best artists and collectors at several events across the U.S. throughout the year, with an eye towards expanding globally. In The Witch’s Door, Ryan, who starred in the reality television show Oddities, and Regina, who comes from the world of fashion, give us a rare peek behind the curtain into the business of collecting the strange and unusual and the cast of eccentric characters they meet along the way.
Welcome to a world of oddities curated by Regina M. Rossi and Ryan Matthew Cohn, trendsetters and tastemakers who have reinvented what the artifact collectors market looks like. Together, they are the founders of Oddities Flea Market, artfully curating a selection of the best artists and collectors at several events across the U.S. throughout the year, with an eye towards expanding globally. In The Witch’s Door, Ryan, who starred in the reality television show Oddities, and Regina, who comes from the world of fashion, give us a rare peek behind the curtain into the business of collecting the strange and unusual and the cast of eccentric characters they meet along the way.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Ourch angels, ghosts, and Bigfoot. Oh why, It's just another
night for Supernatural Girls and real stories, real answers to
life's biggest supernatural mysteries. And now for another exciting interview
with paranormal experts from this world and others. Here's your host,
paranormal researcher Patricia Baker on the One the Only Supernatural Girls.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Welcome everyone to another exciting episode of Supernatural Girls. I
am your host, Patricia Baker, and unfortunately my co host,
who you know very well, Patricia Kirkman, is unable to
join us this evening. She is still dealing with her
back pain, back issues. She was at the doctor again today.
(01:09):
I'm hoping she's feeling better. I know you are too,
and we hope to see her back next week. You've
got to catch up on everything going on in this
crazy world, and I know PK has all the answers,
so hopefully she'll be back and we will all be
together again for another great show. But tonight, tonight is
(01:31):
very special because I have two very exciting people for everybody,
and this is a topic we have never really covered,
so I'm so grateful that they're available and they're here
with us tonight. Let me tell you a little bit
about them. And again this is near and dear to
my heart. I love artifacts, I just love them. I
(01:53):
wish I could buy so many more than I have
that these folks have made a career out of it,
a light style out of it. So welcome to the
World of Oddities. Curated by Regina Rossi and Ryan Matthew Cone.
They are trendsetters, taste makers who have reinvented what the
(02:14):
artifact collector's market looks like. Together they are the founders
of Adity's Flea Market, artfully curating a selection of the
best artists and collectors at several events across the US
throughout the year. And this is with an eye towards
expanding globally. In the Witch's Door, which is their new
(02:37):
most beautiful book there, it is absolutely incredible book. Ryan,
who starred in the reality television show Odities, and Regina,
who comes from the world of fashion, give us a
rare peak behind the curtain into the business of collecting
the strange and unusual and the cast of eccentric character
(03:00):
they have met along the way. Well, welcome to the show,
you guys.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Hi, thank you for having us.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Well, as I mentioned off the air, this book is stunning.
I mean my audience here, everybody who's listening and watching this.
You have the need for a Christmas gift, a Hanukah gift,
whatever kind of gift. This book is absolutely gorgeous. So
I know we showed you the cover here. It is
in real life, real time. It is really beautiful. So
(03:32):
think about that for upcoming holiday gifts. So you two
have gone into some strange things. It has become your
life now. You met, you fell in love, you got married.
So you're doing this all together for how many years now?
Speaker 4 (03:51):
As of November, which I think is in a couple
of days, it's going to be ten years married, congrat
having known.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Each other together, I would say eight years.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
It took me about two years to figure out how
to leave my twenty plus year you know, fashion career and.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Figure out how to work with Ryan.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
So so I would be going on all of these
extravagant adventures pretty much every day because I was pretty
much doing oddities, collecting, buying, and selling full time when
we first met, because the television show had just wrapped,
We had finished like seventy five episodes, and I was
trying to figure out like what my next step was
going to be, so naturally it was like going back
(04:35):
into the field, and Regina would just kind of get
so she'd call me during the day and go, Rian,
what are you doing. I'm like, oh, well, I'm in
California right now because I have to like go pick
up this collection and try to figure out how to
get it here. And she would just get exceedingly jealous
about the fact that I was kind of out having
fun and enjoying myself while she was, you know, working
(04:58):
every single day to get a paycheck. And she you know,
at some point, You're like, why am I making this
company money when I could probably just do the same thing,
apply what you were doing, which was managing fashion brands,
and apply it to what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And that's how we's a great story. And Regina, you
were no slouch. I mean, you were hobnobbing with people
like Betsy Johnson, a fashion icon, a real groundbreaker, and
what she was doing in the fashion world. So you
were doing some great stuff too, but you were just
magnetically drawn hunt to Ryan and what he was doing instead.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
Absolutely, I mean he would tell me like who was
over at the house, and it would be like just casual, like, oh,
you know, Sean Lennon is here and I'm showing him
my artwork. His girlfriend's interested in purchasing some and I
would be at work like what is going on?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Especially when I lived there, I'm like, I'm missing this.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
You started a phone off of work too, Yes, I.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
Started calling out, and then I'm like, okay, twenty years,
I have a great reputation in New York City. It's
time to just resign and figure this out. And that's
actually how the Audity's flea market was born. I just
figured I would take all my knowledge of running a
business and just apply it to something that fit our
(06:14):
lifestyle and could give a platform to all of the
amazing people that we work with.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So you did it. You have done something so unusual
and together. Good for you. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
But I think one of the things that Regina did
in terms of influencing me, just even as a collector or,
you know, my sense of historical knowledge and being able
to apply sort of a fashionis to look to our
place was she started bringing me to Paris because she
was working in Paris a lot of the time, and
(06:48):
so I had never really spent any time there except
for on occasion. And so when I first went to Paris,
Regina would take me to these elaborate historic churches and buildings.
And at first I didn't fight you on it, but
I had never really like experienced them. And it wasn't
until I started to visit some of these locations I
started to become obsessed with that type of decore. And
(07:09):
I think that's truly where like my sense of an
appreciation for death came from. You can blame her Catholic
up for influencing our collection.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
That's great. Well are you proposed in Paris, didn't you?
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Yeah. I'm extremely claustrophobic. It's one of the things that
I think a lot of people know now that I'm
very clusterphobic. But I haven't been in an elevator in
like twenty five years or something, and I lived in
New York City for twenty three.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
You must have walked up a lot of stairs.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yes, yes, we do.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
That's how I stay thin.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
But I'll do it.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
I've made it. I was like, I have to go
down into this catacomb. So most catacombs are relatively open
and you can walk down there and you don't feel
tremendously clusterphobic. But the Parisian one is very, very like.
It's far down below the city, deep and it's very narrow,
and you have to take these winding stairs, which if
there's a lot of people, which there's almost always, it
(08:10):
can get a little clusterphobic. So I panicked while I
was proposing to Regina, but she said yes. In the
long run, it.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Wasn't a very romantic proposal, like a laugh about it.
It happened very fast, and then by the time I
said yes, I looked up, he was gone.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
He was already halfway upstairs and left.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
There's got to be a talisman or something for that, Ryan,
something that can help you.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Oh gosh, I agree, because I always tease them.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
The day I married Ryan was the day I lost
to view because everything like a hotel.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
We're on the first floor, second floor.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
I had up to the fourth floor.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
That's terrible though.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Oh goodness, well we make you know, we have different
considerations for our partners. I know my husband's a big
cloustrophobic also because I have a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and
he can't. He cannot go in it. Yeah she does.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yeah, you saw me in it and you panicked.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
I panicked because what she went into one It was
a cloth one, right, Is that the type that you have.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Yeah, it's like a plastic shell.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Yes, Yeah. The Regina got inside of one of those
relatively recently, and I panicked for you.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
I'm having like the best day, like in here peacefully,
and I could hear him on the outside and I'm like,
what why are you I'm inside?
Speaker 4 (09:36):
Not you made a fantastic Egyptian mummy exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Oh gosh, still times. Well's your book is just full
of remarkable stories and also how you both got into this.
But the exploding skulls, I have never heard of this.
Can we start there? Because can you explain more about
what that is to the audience?
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
So it's so strange, Yeah, well, they're really not that strange.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
They were made as these educational models for people in
the medical field. So when you went to medical school,
and still to this day, maybe they've changed the rules
and like the laws and stuff, But up until about
like nineteen ninety, you would be given a human skull
as part of the curriculum, and you would use that
skull to study every aspect of it, and the exploded
(10:26):
skull was basically created for doctors to learn about each
bone in the skull, because, as you know, the skull
is made up of twenty two bones and then the earbones,
so there's some other bones as well. But during the
nineteenth century, Claude Bushane, a doctor an anatomist, worked with
artists to create this interesting model that showcased each bone
(10:50):
by separating them by a little piece of metal. The
whole skull was placed onto an armature and it looks
or appears to be exploded. All the bones are like
slightly separated from one another, and it gives the you know,
the person learning about the skull, the opportunity to look
at each bone, the interior, the exterior, the cross sections,
(11:10):
and you get a lot more knowledge of each bone
than you would just looking at a cream.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
You were interested in that kind of thing from a
young age, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
I had an interest in anatomy in general. I was
just always fascinated by the human body and the animal body,
and the skeleton in general, and the differences between that
of an animal versus that of a human because you know,
growing up we lived in the woods when I was
a kid, so I would just trek out into the
woods and find natural history specimens all the time and
(11:41):
bring them back. And you know, I have these these
fond memories of this little cabinet of curiosity that I
started putting together before I was ten years old. And
I think a lot of kids do that, especially those
that you know live in the wilderness. But I would
label them and you know, put a little specimen date
on it and what it was. And I have early
memories of doing that, and I still do that today.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So you had a passion for this from the very beginning, yes,
And Regina, this does not creep you out at all, right,
You're just fascinated by it too.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
Yes, So I mean I did not grow up thinking
about anatomy at all. My father was in fashion, and
so I definitely walked in his footsteps. Everything in my
life was clothes and shoes and not human skulls, that's
for sure. However, being brought up very Italian Catholic, I
(12:39):
was very familiar with cathedrals and churches and the macabre
artwork that you sometimes find inside.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Of those structures.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
And so I also was born to very much older parents,
and so death was just something that completely surrounded me.
Like I was very it just became the normal that
like once a month, somebody passed away. My dad was
the youngest of thirteen children, so when I saw that
I was always at a funeral or inside of a
(13:10):
church or people were mourning around me. That is just
how I grew up. And so I'm somewhat very comfortable
with death, and so it was very easy for me
to be death positive and find Ryan and be very
comfortable with all of the objects and the imagery.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Right, you guys are made for each other, there's no question.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
You know. It's interesting. I actually can remember I had
my grandfather died and I remember going to the first
funeral that ever took place that I was invited had
to go to, and that actually had a very big
impact on my life, and I think my mindset and
I didn't really think about it until relatively recently. I
was probably like twelve or thirteen years old, but that
(13:54):
was probably the first time that I saw, you know,
a dead person, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
Most children, I would say, that's probably the first time
as a grandparent or right, yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
And then there was the ritual of a funeral that
went on, and I think it was something that I
thought about a lot after it happened.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, it does have that kind of an effect, a
long lasting one, and it is the great equalizer. So yeah,
because we all go through it. So the Witch's Door
is the title of the book, but it's also one
of your artifacts.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Indeed, so the actual Witch's Door was part of There's
a chapter in the book called Nick Parmesan or it
was like, he's one of the characters that we speak
about in the book. He was this horror of a collector.
He was extremely talented in the fact that he knew
(14:53):
how to cruise an antique show or flea market and
find the one good thing that was in that place
and leave with it.
Speaker 5 (15:00):
And he was unsuspecting. You would have never saw it
coming from him by looking at him.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Yeah, his background was that he was an NYPD sergeant.
He actually got sick at nine to eleven and was
put on leave, and so he was getting these checks
every single month and he was just spending pretty much
all of the money on antiques, and at some point
he got into collecting audities and that's when we met.
And so long story short, he and I did a
(15:29):
lot of business over the years, but he was really
hard to deal with it. I think that his powers
of persuasion as a sergeant, he used them in everyday life,
and especially when he was negotiating a deal, especially two
of us, And so he was really hard to deal with,
almost to the point where I had to stop doing
(15:49):
business with him. I actually blocked his number at some point.
And then we moved. Yeah, we moved to his neighborhood.
And soon after that he passed away. And so when
I got in touch with the family, we made a
deal and they said, look, you can't just buy one
or two items, you have to take everything.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Oh my goodness, yep.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
And that place was filled floor to ceiling, the good,
the bad, and the ugly, so mixed with museum artifacts,
you know, were like stacks of T shirts that had
never been opened, and trash and kitty litter that probably
hadn't been changed.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
It was thousands of light bulbs, thousands of likearoom like
Florida ceiling light bulbs.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
They were Edison filament light bulbs. So he had a
fascination with early industrial lighting and you know, mechanical things.
He just he was a prolific collector.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
So how in the world did you get everything out
of there? I mean, that's it's like months of work.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
Well, we did it in about four to five days.
It was in the middle of the pandemic in New
York City, so it was not easy, but they gave
us a very short window, and so we called everyone
we knew.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Everyone we knew.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
In Brooklyn was helping because also it was a three
story walk up brownstone.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah, it was probably some of the place as.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
I've ever had as a collector, because that's the not
glamorous part. You know, you see the glamorous part afterwards
when you're showcasing an item and it's at its final destination.
But let me tell you, this is the unglamorous part.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Your hands dirty. So with this, this enormous collection, was
this unassuming door that we just removed one day with
a lot of the other artifacts, and we started down
in our storage area at our home in Connecticut. And
it wasn't I think it took us like a good
few months to even get to that door to try
to figure out what it is. And he was pretty
(17:54):
meticulous on keeping paperwork with everyone.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Oh that's a good thing, luckily.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Yeah, and you don't always have that, so Nick right
with this stuff. So about a year later, we finally
had gone through like I don't know, ten banker boxes
filled with paperwork, and we finally found this one. It's
all dirty and beat up and torn, and sure enough
there it was. Seventeenth century witch's door from New England.
(18:21):
Belonged to this like famed collector named Roger Bacon and
gave the basic rundown of where it did come from
and what they thought it was. And so we started
the book out with the witch's Door. We speak about
it again in the middle, and then towards the end
we give all the information that we have obtained to
this point, and there's still a lot more to learn
(18:42):
about it.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
It's so curious because I was listening to some of
your other interviews and it's not clear who was behind
the door. Crack speculation about that still there is.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
And one of the things we didn't notice that until
many years later, because of course we always looked at
the side of the door that has, you know, not
elaborate carvings are actually quite crude. But on the other
side there's what looks like scratch marks from a person,
and they're very deep, and that's sort of the grizzly side,
(19:18):
like the one side is actually relatively pretty, despite the
fact that it has like this crude witch on top
of a cat and it says old Jeff, which means
old Devil. But the back is actually much creepier, and
you can tell that it was probably stored incorrectly or
maybe in New England where it was housed. There's some
water damage on the bottom, so you have this sort
(19:38):
of dark stain, but then these deep scratches on the
other side of the door, which is just have to assume,
pretty grizzly.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah. So my understanding is that there are some artifacts
like this one that you don't live with. You don't
keep that in your house.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
No, and I'm not. I think we don't know how
to live with it. And it's one of the few
items that actually gives me a strange feeling when I'm
in its presence, And so we store it in another
building altogether for now, and I think we're probably going
to put it on exhibit at some point.
Speaker 5 (20:13):
That's where I think it belongs. You know, we're waiting
for professionals in that field to authenticate and just give
us more information.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
That's just going to take time.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, yes, exactly. You're lucky. You got anything at all
that he kept the provenance record of that. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
Out of every I think collector that we dealt with,
he was definitely one.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Of the best. Yeah, Harris.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
So usually when people buy really high end antiques and art,
you'll have the provenance from say Sotheby's, Christie's Bottoms, or
one of like the major auction houses, and with that
you can typically typically trace an item back to where
it originally came from. If it's of a specific value,
it means that someone had it and it was given
to someone else. Then it was given to someone else.
(21:00):
Someone's already done the work for you. But then some
objects which might seem important or have a story attached
to them, have no prominance whatsoever, and you have to
kind of concoct your own based on what you're looking
at and your experience with said object.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Mm hmm. Yeah, it's like going on a hunt to
try to find where it came from and who owned
it and what's purpose was. Like, gosh, you have, how
many objects do you have? Would you say? Over two thousand,
three thousand?
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Oh? Probably like ten thousands? How yeah, And look, you know,
some of it is like stacked early prints that haven't
been framed yet or it's our We have an extensive
antiquarian book collection, which is something that I really focus on,
or I used to focus on a lot more. But
you know, if I'm just like looking at this, the
(21:47):
thousands in this room, just.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Pay attention. It's insane.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
One day it's going to make some great auction when
not here.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Watch. Well, it's wonderful that you've done such a good
job keeping track of everything, cataloging it, taking care of it.
My goodness, it's a lot of work.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
I'm sure it's a lot of work, but it's why
I do this, the adventure that you go on trying
to figure out what something is or learning about something
for the first time. You know, I've been collecting since
I was a little kid, but there's so many things
I'm still learning every time I get an object, and
that can spark interest in something from the beginning. You know,
(22:33):
I might procure something that I never really knew about,
and then suddenly I'm absolutely obsessed and fascinated with that
type of object, and so I go down these rabbit
holes where I start focusing on certain things based on
one piece.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Well, I know what the audience is going to want
to hear more about. And that's the creepy feelings that
you get from any particular object. So you had some
feeling about this door. It didn't quite feel great to you.
Was that both of you? You also Regina with the door.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Yeah, and I think it comes for me.
Speaker 5 (23:04):
It's like because I don't have all the information, so
then you know, there's just too many questions. And also
it's not a genre like that door is not something
that we normally collect or you know, and I don't
think we would have ever had in our collection if
it wasn't for Nick and the way that the deal
(23:25):
went with purchasing everything. So because I don't I don't
know enough about it, it makes me uncomfortable.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
It also has a very dark history as far as
what we know about, you know, people that were accused
of witchcraft. It's hundreds that just screams that it's going
to have negative energy. But that's not always the case.
You know, we have many objects that have an incredibly
dark history that don't give any kind of like paranormal energy.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Or dark feeling or I mean, I would say until
we moved to Connecticut, which was only four years ago,
like in Brooklyn, I never felt anything. I never had
felt a darkness. It just didn't happen for me.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
We tried to. We were, you know, very open to
the idea of you know, paranormal activity and energy presenting
itself in either a positive or negative way, and up
until pretty recently, we hadn't experience that. And so you know,
while we were reading.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
The book, it happened with the vent Philoquist dolls. Was
that the one we were talking about. Please tell about that,
because dolls are, to me are the creepiest things in
the world, because there's a lot of strange energy that
I've seen collect around dolls. So I don't own any.
I haven't owned any. I don't think I ever will
(24:46):
because it just seems to attract some very strange things.
But you had an actual experience with these, So what happened.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
So what happened was it was doing what I've always done,
and that is, you know, procuring things, and dolls are
one of the things that I have an attraction to,
and I think that I always have. Actually, there's a
whole chapter in the book. I never forget what it's called,
but it's it's called like Welcome to the Welcome to
the dollhouse. That's what it is, and that's about my
(25:14):
fascination with dolls, and I think that there's an anatomical
there's something anatomical that I like about dolls, and I
think that's what attracted me to them and what probably
still attracts me to them. But the story is basically this.
I had been offered these twelve ventriloquists Charlie mcarthy dolls,
and I purchased all of them, and I sold ten
(25:36):
of them and kept the two that I thought represented
the Charlie McCarthy doll the best. You know, they had
an interesting matina, they were old but still in very
good condition. They still have their little hats on. And
you know, while I didn't have any interest in learning ventriloquism,
they would. They sat in the library, just sitting on
this little leather chair that we had there, and you know,
(25:59):
they were perfectly gentlemen. They never gave us any any
problems until one day I went into that room, which
is a small room just off of the room that
we're sitting in now, and they were sitting on the floor.
But they didn't look like they'd been knocked over. They
were just instead of sitting in the chair. They were
sitting in front of the chair leaned up against them.
As biggered that Regina moved them and didn't think much
(26:20):
of it. I didn't even ask her about it. I'd say,
like a couple weeks later, a month later, the same
thing that they were sitting on the other side of
the room together propped up. I think one of them
had like fallen forward. The other room was sitting up right.
And then this happened one other time where they were
sitting kind of near the top of the stairs. So
when you would walk in the door, there's actually a
(26:43):
taxiinger made monkey that's sitting on a throne and the
dolls were sitting like right in front of it. So
someone moved them, or so I thought, And I couldn't
really explain it. And that's when I, you know, would
I would say, like Regina, jinedy move the dolls, and
she swore she didn't. I thought, maybe the cleaning person
that helps us out every so often and move them,
and like, there's.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
No way she doesn't touch anything that she doesn't have to.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
She's also creeped out by stuff like that. She just
like leaves alone. I wouldn't say, she's creeped out. She's
used to it at this point, but she does not
touch my things and she's instructed not to. And so
the other thing that happened was what you experienced with
the foot.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
And I also never thought much about it, because if
you've never had a paranormal, you know, incident. And I'm
not sure that I even believed in it at all,
especially because of all the things that have come into
my life. We're really going to talk about dolls, like
bringing some vibe in my house, like it just didn't
(27:41):
make sense.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
But I would be downstairs in.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
The kitchen area and I would hear footsteps and I
would just assume there are my dogs.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
But then there were.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
Times where and then I realized, I'm looking at all
three dogs, and I'm like, okay, so maybe it's the
wood floors, you know, my first time owning a home
in you know, Connecticut, and my god, maybe it's just
like the house settling, Like the house is old, it's
Victoria in eighteen seventy four. So I would just make
excuses constantly because I just didn't pay the dolls any attention.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
We would do that a lot, I think in general,
and I have a feeling that we've experienced these types
of things numerous times. But being very skeptical and being
like just too i think obsessed with scientific fact, we've
always said, all right, well, if this happened, it was
probably this, this, that and the other thing, And instead
of just saying like, oh, maybe it's like the object
(28:37):
giving us some strange activity, we would always try to
come up with a conclusion instead of saying like, oh shit,
these dolls just haunted us. And that's exactly what they
ended up doing. And we don't entirely know what happened
other than we photographed them for the book because we
had spoken about them just in terms of them walking
around apparently and moving around the room, and so when
(29:01):
it came time to shoot them, the photographer said, hey,
you got to ask their permission. We were like, scre
these dolls like they're just made out of cardboards.
Speaker 5 (29:09):
He was a friend of ours, so we were kind
of laughing because how do you go from you just
shot a Tibetan capala'skull to a shrunken head.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
But now it's the dolls.
Speaker 5 (29:20):
That you want to speak to. And we just thought
that was a little funny and I'm not kidding. The
second that we started laughing, the jaw drops right.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
Yeah, both of their mandibles just basically popped out of
their heads, which is very strange because the mandibles are
held in there by a metal rod that goes through
the interior of the head and then it's attached to
a little string. And we noticed that the trains had
both been cut. They were afraid, so they weren't even
like just cut. It looked like someone had like taken
(29:52):
something and cut them like this. That really freaked me out,
And then came an entire series of unfortunate events involving
the house where basically the room where they were in
right above it, water just started leaking down into my
antiquarian book collection. Oh god, the heat went off in
my tenants cottage that we have on our property, Our
(30:14):
venues shut down, our cars blew up, And it wasn't
until basically I packaged these things up to get the
hell out of my house that everything basically went back
to normal.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
But we had been talking to a friend of ours
who is very familiar with haunted objects, because we had
to call all of our friends that were in the
paranormal world because once again we had never experienced anything.
I was told I was doing everything wrong because I
was like taking stage and burning it, and you know,
I was told that actually only annoys them more.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Oh god, it's like you're bringing the fact that they're
haunting you to the forefront or something. I forget how
she explained it, but you know, we basically thought we
were going to need an exorcism. But the other the
coin was that people were really interested about the story,
and so I had this I had this quandary on
my hands, whereas like do I keep them and sort
(31:09):
of exploit them on Instagram? But in the end, it
wasn't worth the terror that they were. They were taking
over our lives and they were making life dangerous amount of.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
Money that we had to spend within the thirty days
that all of these things were happening was absolutely insane,
like two new cars changing the heat and a cottage.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Like we still have a hole in our ceiling.
Speaker 5 (31:34):
We still haven't even dealt with some of it because
there was so much damage.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Gosh, just incredible. Well, this is why I don't like
the doll thing. But you live with it. It is
very challenging, especially when you don't understand what's going on
or why So did they give you the people you
talk to, any explanation for why things turned so dark
with these dolls?
Speaker 5 (31:56):
They said two things to us. So the person that
took them also, so Ryan has never given away anything
in our collection ever, so you know it's a big
deal when he packages something up and he.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Sends it to you.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
They said that either somebody possibly cursed us, right maybe
or what was the second Well.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
Something very interesting that I didn't think about until much
after the fact was the guy that I purchased the
dolls from had purchased them from a woman who had
passed away in Fairfield County near where we live, and
the family was selling her estate and she was a
pretty avid doll collector, and she said something to him,
(32:37):
and he mentioned it to me when I was purchasing them,
but he didn't think about it, because people say a
lot of different things when you're buying things, especially you know,
preaky dolls.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
The daughter of the person that passed away said this,
I'm really happy that you're buying these. My mom always
said these dolls need a place where they can thrive
and have the space to move around that they need.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Wow, those event yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
But you know when someone says something like this to you,
especially when you're buying early in the morning, you're like, oh, yeah, hey,
cool man, whatever theah, they're crazy, I'll put that in
the title when I'm selling them. I just didn't. I
didn't think about it twice until we were writing the book,
and I was like, oh, my god, man, I remember
what Robert had said to me, and sure enough, it
(33:23):
made a lot of sense.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
But we did also contact the buyers of the ten
dolls that we didn't keep, because we would do these
auctions once a month via oddities that became very popular,
and I kept really good records, so I knew who
purchased them, and none of them have had an issue
with any of the other dolls that came from that grouping.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Just what about the person you gifted these two?
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yeah, so that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Well, she's becoming, like was. She already had a huge
following of people that like love to hear her stories
and learn more about objects in her collection because she
deals in like haunted objects. And she actually started to
have really bad luck too, almost right out the gate.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
So at one.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Point she told you she wasn't even driving.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Because she was too scared.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
She was too scared to drive because things like that.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Yeah, my car actually started to glitch tremendously, just I
think the ups story that I took them to to
get rid of them that day. It's probably about a
mile away from our house. My car started like groaning
and the gears were not shifting right. And mind you
have like pretty much a brand new SUV. And it
wasn't until I got this box out of my car.
(34:39):
He never made that sound ever again. So there was
something dark attached to those dolls, and I still don't
know exactly what it was, but I'm glad that it's
out of our lives.
Speaker 5 (34:48):
She had to do as salt bath before we shipped them,
so we had to trade a bath right with a
ton of salt, and then you had to put them
in a box salt.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
I wasn't there for it, so.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Oh goodness, Well, that's some powerful energy that can affect
mechanical things like that and water leaks, and that's really
some powerful stuff, and who knows where it came from.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
At that point, I was willing to try anything, and
so for the salt rich, well, you have to understand,
like I've I have dealt with extremely rare objects, and
then of course it's like these inexpensive dolls that I
purchased that ended up giving me bad juju.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. What about things from Egyptian tombs. I
know you've had some experiences talking with museums that have
had mummies and all of that, but what about actual
artifacts that come out of those tombs in Egypt? Have
you dealt with that at all?
Speaker 4 (35:46):
I have, and I've never had any kind of like
negative experience from them. But I actually had a full
Egyptian mummy at one point, and I dealt with an egyptologist.
He came over to the house and we took everything
out of the sarcophagus and laid it out on table
that's downstairs, and it turned out that it was probably
the mummy of a very poor family because we found
(36:09):
a lot of extra bones in their sarcophagus, so it
was probably like, yeah, it was like the husband, probably
the wife. And I ended up finding the small mummified
hand of a child mummy that was in the sarcophagus,
but I ended up getting rid of it because it
just wasn't in a good enough collection to keep here,
(36:31):
and ended up going to a museum.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Oh that's neat. Yeah, with the museums that you've had
dealings with you, We've heard a lot on the show
from archaeologists and the gentleman Graham that's now starring in
the Ancient Apocalypse series. They differ with traditional archaeology and timelines,
(36:56):
and we've heard a lot of stories from people like
him on the show. How well museums have gotten rid
of things that conflict with their timeline. Did they put
them in the dump or they've done whatever they want
to do to get rid of these things, and even
bones of giants. Have you heard of anything like this?
Do you know about this?
Speaker 4 (37:18):
Not specifically about giants, but what has happened pretty recently,
I'd say in the past five ten years, is that
museums are getting rid of all of their human remains
from their museums. I know pitt Rivers Museum in England
got rid of all human remains. The Museum of Natural
History in New York got rid of all of their
human remains. They are not on display anymore, which is
(37:39):
strange because they have the remains of you know, primates
and next to it is a plastic human skeleton, which
is a lot more difficult to educate yourself about the
human body. I mean, I guess it's relatively similar, but
it's just doesn't compare to the real thing. And it's
the same thing for other museums. You know, things like
shrunk and heads have been repatriated to Ecuador. But many
(38:02):
of those situations are cases where these countries don't want
the artifacts. They don't have a way to really display
them or facilitate them, so they end up being in dusty,
old lockers and storage units and they never really see
the light of day. And I think that's almost more
dangerous erasing history rather than learning something from it or
maybe putting it in a place where the damage is Yeah,
(38:26):
they can get damaged pretty easily, and I think what
happens is the museums don't want the negative press and
so instead of you know, maybe learning more about them
or trying to obtain better provenance, they just get rid
of them. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
I remember years ago in Connecticut there was a lot
of outcry about Native American skeletons that were in museums,
and the museums at the time were told, you need
to get them out of their glass cases and reinturn them.
But Rebury sure these skeletons, and they brought in Slow Turtle,
(39:00):
who was a Native American medicine man at the time,
to conduct the ceremony and give a proper burial to
that skeleton. It was quite powerful. I remember being there
for that, and it had been pouring rain, and two
Native Americans had been tasked with keeping the fire going
as a part of the ritual during this ceremony, and
(39:23):
they had to keep it going all night when it
was just cats and dogs boring. But when Slow Turtle arrived,
they was still raining, and he got out of the
car and it stopped raining, and he walked over to
the gravesite and he did the ceremony and they buried
the skeleton, and Slow Turtle got back in his car
(39:45):
and it started pouring again, and it was just an
amazing experience of power of Native American medicine. But there
was a lot of concern about these things that were
in museums when they really shouldn't have been.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
So in a situation like that, I fully agree. I
think that it deserved a proper burial. If they knew
that it was madeive American skeleton, it certainly didn't belong
I don't know how they were being housed or toted
in the museum, but I'm sure it didn't have any
real significance other than the fact that it was probably
just a skeleton. Use a medical one for that, or
(40:20):
maybe you don't need it at all. I don't know.
It's still up for conversation and interpretation. I'm just not
a huge fan of burying art and history, even if
dark one.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
No, I'm not either. I think it's absolutely horrible, and
I've heard other stories that are very concerning that would
really give us some accurate information about a true timeline,
and the museums don't want to have anything to do
with it because it's just conflicts with what they are
telling everybody to believe. So it's a shame. I don't
(40:53):
know if you're familiar with the dinosaur ceramic artifacts in Akombar,
Mexico that we're discovered, and the gentleman that brought them
here one of them, he was the He was the
person who built the Bell helicopter, designed and built it,
(41:13):
and he was very much interested in paranormal and he
heard about these artifacts. He brought them up from Malcolm
Barro some of them, and the problem with them was
they showed people and dinosaurs together. Oh, and the museum.
He wanted to donate these to a museum, and the
museum wouldn't have anything to do with it. They just
(41:36):
said they've got to be fakes again because it didn't
go along with their timeline. But he did say that
he had some of them in his office and they
creeped him out, and he was not somebody who got
creeped out easily.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
That's something that happens kind of frequently, as well as
that an item will be dug up and say, you
know like Arizona or you know, place where a lot
of archaeological finds are discovered, and if the person who
owns the land did not dig those up and try
to sell them and they don't have the proper paperwork
that's taken out of auctions all the time. I think
(42:13):
it happened to Leonardo DiCaprio or Nicholas Cage had purchased
a skeleton I think it was a dinosaur skull from
Heritage auctions and they had to end up giving it back,
so it was a huge controversy.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Well, here's what happened with this. This is the end
of the story. He gave it to a scientist in Ostening,
New York, and she took one of these ceramics. It
was called a Creator doll, a creator ceramic, and she
put it in a cage with white mice. And when
she came in the next the next morning, she looked
at the mice and she couldn't believe what she was saying.
(42:48):
The Creator doll had fluted ears. All of the mice
had fluted ears. Is it a scientist you know looking
at all this Absolutely no explanation. But clearly these things
carried in energy that was powerful enough to influence a
biological change in these ways. So there's so much to
(43:09):
this that we still have yet to uncover. And here
you guys are on the leading edge with all of
these artifacts that you care take. Very exciting what you're doing.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
Thank you those I would be interested in seeing those
artifacts that you were speaking of, just to see because
of what you were mentioning with people mixed with.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
I can send you a link and you guys can
take a look at it. I was trying to get
my hands on some, but it's not the easiest thing
to find. You probably could, right, yeah, but fascinating, but
things like that the Peruvian whistling vessels, which are so unique.
All of these things are. I know, the audience finds
these just beyond fascinating. They're just great to hear about,
(43:55):
and the effect that they still have after all these
years buried or forgotten and then they're brought out and
there's something to this. There's something to the energy of them.
Speaker 4 (44:07):
There can be. But then with those legitimate artifacts come
a lot of fake ones. And yes, well there's a
rich history of faking antiques and artifacts, and I've been
duped many times over the years. Really, I think it
would have been interesting to keep a cabinet of all
the fake things that I've heard years, just to show
(44:28):
people the difference between hey, this is a fake object
versus one that is legitimate, because it does happen. I
see things at option all the time that are not real.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yeah, and it is hard to tell, isn't it. Sometimes,
because they can fool somebody like you guys, they can
they can fool somebody else who has no training, no experience.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Gas become harder.
Speaker 4 (44:50):
Yeah, Like in the true oddities world, there are gaps.
I mean, I've seen fake shrunken heads sold as authentic ones.
And they were very clearly made out of some kind
of polymer or other.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
What is the deal as shrunk in heads, let's talk
about that.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Yeah, And the deal and heads is they were typically
done by the Ecuadorians and they were a ceremonial process
and quite a grizzly dark one where uh, the hebro
Indians would go and hack the heads off of their enemies.
They would take the skin off of the skull, through
the skull into the river, and then they would start
the process of basically shrinking the skin. So there's this
(45:27):
big misconception that there's a skull like you know, a
little tiny head that's been mysteriously shrunken into this baseball head.
But that's not the case. It's basically like taking the
skin like a taxi, their made skin, but not wrapping
it around the form and not basically keeping the shape,
but taking that skin that's wet, simmering it and then
slowly starting to shrink it over heat, almost like wet
(45:51):
leather and a dryer. Is the best way to explain it.
And these things about.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
What's that It doesn't involve the bones, it's just the
skin of the head.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
It's just the skin. It's basically like sewn up in
the back. The eyes are sown shut and it's sort
of dismorphed. And what the Indians were doing was trapping
the soul inside of the head because they believed in
the afterlife they could still go on battling their ancestors.
They were trapping the soul inside of there, and they
would usually ring around the top of it, and the
would wear it as a necklace to show their prowess
(46:22):
as a warrior.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Okay, I was wondering there had to be some reason
for what they were doing. Did they also use them
in any kind of dark magic or was just to
control them?
Speaker 4 (46:33):
I don't think so, not that I'm aware of. But
they became very popular in the late nineteenth century into
the turn of the century by people looking to expand
their cabinets of curiosity, and as a result, a lot
of different versions of these things came about. So there
was the true ceremonial versions that are mostly housed in
(46:55):
museums in private collections at this point. But then there
was a really dark and there was a dark trade
of people taking cadaver heads and making them look like
authentic shrunken heads. Forest t Yeah, those would be referred
to as tourist trade heads, and I think there was
enough of an urge to buy these things that there's
(47:16):
probably hundreds of them out there. Oh mind, Yeah it's
pretty dark.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Yeah that is. That is. Now what about how about
the prettier stuff like jewelry. If you found some really
unusual pieces of jewelry.
Speaker 5 (47:30):
I mean, I think we when we first met, I
think we were a bit more into mourning jewelry and
hair reads.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
I feel like we don't have as much anymore.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
Well, we sold a lot of it, but yeah, there
was a period of time during the Victorian era where
you know, when someone passed away, you would take a
locket of their hair, or even more artistically, you would
fashion a little braid of the person who had passed
away and you would make either you put it in
an amulet, or there's even jewelry that's made out of
human hair and it would be used to remember those
(48:02):
who have passed away. If you've ever seen a morning wreath,
whaty're referred to as, it could often be an entire
family of people that passed away, and they would be
fashioned into these like little flowers, which were then made
into a wreath and they were framed and put on
the wall, and that was how you would remember the dead.
And they're very artistically rendered, and some are more elaborate
(48:23):
than others. But that's something that people actually collect today,
and it's still actually a process that's done today, but
it's more you know, taking the processes of the Victorian
error and applying them to Now we're very closed minded
to death and today, so I don't feel like there's
a lot of people that do it anymore.
Speaker 5 (48:42):
We have a couple that we work with for the
Oddity's Flea market because I feel like it's a dying art,
like no pun intended, and those artists are very popular.
A lot of people collect their pets hair and they'll
make morning Jilory out of that. Even ashes, right, there's
(49:04):
there's oh yeah, there's a lot of jewelers that work
with ashes.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
I mean, we're incredibly attached. Obviously we're attached to our
family members or friends right passway, but people are also
you know, very in tune with their pets, and so
when they pass, there needs to be a way that
you can remember them besides yeah, tattooing one on your
arm or something, which I find very interesting now because
tattoos are obviously incredibly popular today and people have become
(49:31):
the modern versions of the cabinet of curiosity because now
you can like look at someone and their body almost
tells a story through the artwork that's tattooed on them.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Yes, yes, exactly. Wow. Now is there anything that you
don't have in your collection yet that you would like
to have?
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (49:51):
Yeah, there's I thought you were going to ask is
there anything you won't collect?
Speaker 2 (49:56):
And I will just answer that yes please.
Speaker 5 (49:59):
O killer stuff is not We're not into it period.
But it would never be allowed in my home.
Speaker 4 (50:07):
Yeah, I mean you talk about a dark energy.
Speaker 5 (50:10):
That would be like not glorifying a serial killer here right,
that's not happening.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
But is there there's a piece that you there's lost?
Speaker 5 (50:20):
Yeah, Like there's always the piece that you didn't get
that you're always going to think about.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
Yeah, I think about it. But I also we have
put together like such a cohesive collection at this point
enough that I want to try to do an exhibition
next year on a couple of different collections, including the
Richard Harris collection, the Nick Parmesan collection, and just other
pieces that have collected over the years. I don't really
need anything else. But is there, you know, stuff that
(50:47):
I wish we had in the collection. Of course, I
don't think a collector's work is ever done until they're buried,
and you know, you can't take it when you go.
So it's all stuff that I think about when you know,
I get interested in some thing. I have enough subject
material here that I have my work cut out for me.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Oh, you should do so many mysteries. Still, I'm sure, right, sure,
it's amazing. Oh, I love your lifestyle. It's so neat.
That's fantastic. Well, you've mentioned you have dogs. Do they
react to anything?
Speaker 3 (51:19):
No?
Speaker 5 (51:20):
No, And that's actually why I always said I feel
mostly at peace, And it really wasn't until this last
year that we had any anything out of the ordinary happened.
And I always felt like they would alert me first.
I mean, my god, they know if somebody is pulling
up in the driveway before I do. Yes, they are
the most calm, cool and collected dogs.
Speaker 4 (51:41):
So, but I do think that animals have a sense
when there's something sort of strange in the house. Yeah,
you know, like a dog will stare at a radiator
for eight hours, or they'll you know, start barking at
something in the basement that's not doesn't appear to be anything. Always,
I like bringing the dogs around the past. They give
(52:03):
me a lot of safety.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Even you have a hitsu too, so do I.
Speaker 4 (52:10):
Imperial shits.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
They are like little people, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (52:16):
Such silly creatures?
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Yes, so like little people. They're amazing dogs. I've had several.
I have one now. He's but he's a big boy.
He's eighteen pounds, like seven pounds the mine was supposed
to be. The breeder said, he's not going to be
bigger than the parents are only nine pounds. I'm like,
he's eighteen pounds. What happens?
Speaker 4 (52:40):
If you look at my Instagram, I put up a
lot of pictures of herman.
Speaker 2 (52:45):
I'm gonna go look for sure. Would you please keep
me posted about any any displays you're going to do
when you put your items up, I know people would
love to see them, So if you let me know, oh,
I'll put it up on our Facebook page.
Speaker 4 (53:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Be aware that you're doing this.
Speaker 4 (53:06):
This is something that I've been toying around with for many,
many years.
Speaker 3 (53:11):
It feels like the next step.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
Yeah, I think that would be the next step. And
I think maybe if there's like a second book, it
would focus more on what the exhibition is going to
focus on.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
Which is well, I'm excited to come and see it,
so please make sure we know and unfortunately we've run
out of time. This has been so exciting talking to
you both, so thank you so much, and again keep
us posted on your plans for your exhibitions. Love to
know and will help promote it as.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
Well as Thank you, Patricia, thank.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
You so much, Take care and everybody will be back
next week with another great show. Until then, we will
see you on the Blue Highway. Good Night,
Ourch angels, ghosts, and Bigfoot. Oh why, It's just another
night for Supernatural Girls and real stories, real answers to
life's biggest supernatural mysteries. And now for another exciting interview
with paranormal experts from this world and others. Here's your host,
paranormal researcher Patricia Baker on the One the Only Supernatural Girls.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Welcome everyone to another exciting episode of Supernatural Girls. I
am your host, Patricia Baker, and unfortunately my co host,
who you know very well, Patricia Kirkman, is unable to
join us this evening. She is still dealing with her
back pain, back issues. She was at the doctor again today.
(01:09):
I'm hoping she's feeling better. I know you are too,
and we hope to see her back next week. You've
got to catch up on everything going on in this
crazy world, and I know PK has all the answers,
so hopefully she'll be back and we will all be
together again for another great show. But tonight, tonight is
(01:31):
very special because I have two very exciting people for everybody,
and this is a topic we have never really covered,
so I'm so grateful that they're available and they're here
with us tonight. Let me tell you a little bit
about them. And again this is near and dear to
my heart. I love artifacts, I just love them. I
(01:53):
wish I could buy so many more than I have
that these folks have made a career out of it,
a light style out of it. So welcome to the
World of Oddities. Curated by Regina Rossi and Ryan Matthew Cone.
They are trendsetters, taste makers who have reinvented what the
(02:14):
artifact collector's market looks like. Together they are the founders
of Adity's Flea Market, artfully curating a selection of the
best artists and collectors at several events across the US
throughout the year. And this is with an eye towards
expanding globally. In the Witch's Door, which is their new
(02:37):
most beautiful book there, it is absolutely incredible book. Ryan,
who starred in the reality television show Odities, and Regina,
who comes from the world of fashion, give us a
rare peak behind the curtain into the business of collecting
the strange and unusual and the cast of eccentric character
(03:00):
they have met along the way. Well, welcome to the show,
you guys.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Hi, thank you for having us.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Well, as I mentioned off the air, this book is stunning.
I mean my audience here, everybody who's listening and watching this.
You have the need for a Christmas gift, a Hanukah gift,
whatever kind of gift. This book is absolutely gorgeous. So
I know we showed you the cover here. It is
in real life, real time. It is really beautiful. So
(03:32):
think about that for upcoming holiday gifts. So you two
have gone into some strange things. It has become your
life now. You met, you fell in love, you got married.
So you're doing this all together for how many years now?
Speaker 4 (03:51):
As of November, which I think is in a couple
of days, it's going to be ten years married, congrat
having known.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Each other together, I would say eight years.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (04:03):
It took me about two years to figure out how
to leave my twenty plus year you know, fashion career and.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Figure out how to work with Ryan.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
So so I would be going on all of these
extravagant adventures pretty much every day because I was pretty
much doing oddities, collecting, buying, and selling full time when
we first met, because the television show had just wrapped,
We had finished like seventy five episodes, and I was
trying to figure out like what my next step was
going to be, so naturally it was like going back
(04:35):
into the field, and Regina would just kind of get
so she'd call me during the day and go, Rian,
what are you doing. I'm like, oh, well, I'm in
California right now because I have to like go pick
up this collection and try to figure out how to
get it here. And she would just get exceedingly jealous
about the fact that I was kind of out having
fun and enjoying myself while she was, you know, working
(04:58):
every single day to get a paycheck. And she you know,
at some point, You're like, why am I making this
company money when I could probably just do the same thing,
apply what you were doing, which was managing fashion brands,
and apply it to what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And that's how we's a great story. And Regina, you
were no slouch. I mean, you were hobnobbing with people
like Betsy Johnson, a fashion icon, a real groundbreaker, and
what she was doing in the fashion world. So you
were doing some great stuff too, but you were just
magnetically drawn hunt to Ryan and what he was doing instead.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
Absolutely, I mean he would tell me like who was
over at the house, and it would be like just casual, like, oh,
you know, Sean Lennon is here and I'm showing him
my artwork. His girlfriend's interested in purchasing some and I
would be at work like what is going on?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Especially when I lived there, I'm like, I'm missing this.
Speaker 4 (05:52):
You started a phone off of work too, Yes, I.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
Started calling out, and then I'm like, okay, twenty years,
I have a great reputation in New York City. It's
time to just resign and figure this out. And that's
actually how the Audity's flea market was born. I just
figured I would take all my knowledge of running a
business and just apply it to something that fit our
(06:14):
lifestyle and could give a platform to all of the
amazing people that we work with.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So you did it. You have done something so unusual
and together. Good for you. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
But I think one of the things that Regina did
in terms of influencing me, just even as a collector or,
you know, my sense of historical knowledge and being able
to apply sort of a fashionis to look to our
place was she started bringing me to Paris because she
was working in Paris a lot of the time, and
(06:48):
so I had never really spent any time there except
for on occasion. And so when I first went to Paris,
Regina would take me to these elaborate historic churches and buildings.
And at first I didn't fight you on it, but
I had never really like experienced them. And it wasn't
until I started to visit some of these locations I
started to become obsessed with that type of decore. And
(07:09):
I think that's truly where like my sense of an
appreciation for death came from. You can blame her Catholic
up for influencing our collection.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
That's great. Well are you proposed in Paris, didn't you?
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Yeah. I'm extremely claustrophobic. It's one of the things that
I think a lot of people know now that I'm
very clusterphobic. But I haven't been in an elevator in
like twenty five years or something, and I lived in
New York City for twenty three.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
You must have walked up a lot of stairs.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yes, yes, we do.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
That's how I stay thin.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
But I'll do it.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
I've made it. I was like, I have to go
down into this catacomb. So most catacombs are relatively open
and you can walk down there and you don't feel
tremendously clusterphobic. But the Parisian one is very, very like.
It's far down below the city, deep and it's very narrow,
and you have to take these winding stairs, which if
there's a lot of people, which there's almost always, it
(08:10):
can get a little clusterphobic. So I panicked while I
was proposing to Regina, but she said yes. In the
long run, it.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Wasn't a very romantic proposal, like a laugh about it.
It happened very fast, and then by the time I
said yes, I looked up, he was gone.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
He was already halfway upstairs and left.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
There's got to be a talisman or something for that, Ryan,
something that can help you.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
Oh gosh, I agree, because I always tease them.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
The day I married Ryan was the day I lost
to view because everything like a hotel.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
We're on the first floor, second floor.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
I had up to the fourth floor.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
That's terrible though.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Oh goodness, well we make you know, we have different
considerations for our partners. I know my husband's a big
cloustrophobic also because I have a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and
he can't. He cannot go in it. Yeah she does.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yeah, you saw me in it and you panicked.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
I panicked because what she went into one It was
a cloth one, right, Is that the type that you have.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Yeah, it's like a plastic shell.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
Yes, Yeah. The Regina got inside of one of those
relatively recently, and I panicked for you.
Speaker 5 (09:26):
I'm having like the best day, like in here peacefully,
and I could hear him on the outside and I'm like,
what why are you I'm inside?
Speaker 4 (09:36):
Not you made a fantastic Egyptian mummy exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Oh gosh, still times. Well's your book is just full
of remarkable stories and also how you both got into this.
But the exploding skulls, I have never heard of this.
Can we start there? Because can you explain more about
what that is to the audience?
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Sure?
Speaker 2 (09:59):
So it's so strange, Yeah, well, they're really not that strange.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
They were made as these educational models for people in
the medical field. So when you went to medical school,
and still to this day, maybe they've changed the rules
and like the laws and stuff, But up until about
like nineteen ninety, you would be given a human skull
as part of the curriculum, and you would use that
skull to study every aspect of it, and the exploded
(10:26):
skull was basically created for doctors to learn about each
bone in the skull, because, as you know, the skull
is made up of twenty two bones and then the earbones,
so there's some other bones as well. But during the
nineteenth century, Claude Bushane, a doctor an anatomist, worked with
artists to create this interesting model that showcased each bone
(10:50):
by separating them by a little piece of metal. The
whole skull was placed onto an armature and it looks
or appears to be exploded. All the bones are like
slightly separated from one another, and it gives the you know,
the person learning about the skull, the opportunity to look
at each bone, the interior, the exterior, the cross sections,
(11:10):
and you get a lot more knowledge of each bone
than you would just looking at a cream.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
You were interested in that kind of thing from a
young age, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
I had an interest in anatomy in general. I was
just always fascinated by the human body and the animal body,
and the skeleton in general, and the differences between that
of an animal versus that of a human because you know,
growing up we lived in the woods when I was
a kid, so I would just trek out into the
woods and find natural history specimens all the time and
(11:41):
bring them back. And you know, I have these these
fond memories of this little cabinet of curiosity that I
started putting together before I was ten years old. And
I think a lot of kids do that, especially those
that you know live in the wilderness. But I would
label them and you know, put a little specimen date
on it and what it was. And I have early
memories of doing that, and I still do that today.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So you had a passion for this from the very beginning, yes,
And Regina, this does not creep you out at all, right,
You're just fascinated by it too.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
Yes, So I mean I did not grow up thinking
about anatomy at all. My father was in fashion, and
so I definitely walked in his footsteps. Everything in my
life was clothes and shoes and not human skulls, that's
for sure. However, being brought up very Italian Catholic, I
(12:39):
was very familiar with cathedrals and churches and the macabre
artwork that you sometimes find inside.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Of those structures.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
And so I also was born to very much older parents,
and so death was just something that completely surrounded me.
Like I was very it just became the normal that
like once a month, somebody passed away. My dad was
the youngest of thirteen children, so when I saw that
I was always at a funeral or inside of a
(13:10):
church or people were mourning around me. That is just
how I grew up. And so I'm somewhat very comfortable
with death, and so it was very easy for me
to be death positive and find Ryan and be very
comfortable with all of the objects and the imagery.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Right, you guys are made for each other, there's no question.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
You know. It's interesting. I actually can remember I had
my grandfather died and I remember going to the first
funeral that ever took place that I was invited had
to go to, and that actually had a very big
impact on my life, and I think my mindset and
I didn't really think about it until relatively recently. I
was probably like twelve or thirteen years old, but that
(13:54):
was probably the first time that I saw, you know,
a dead person, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
Most children, I would say, that's probably the first time
as a grandparent or right, yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
And then there was the ritual of a funeral that
went on, and I think it was something that I
thought about a lot after it happened.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, it does have that kind of an effect, a
long lasting one, and it is the great equalizer. So yeah,
because we all go through it. So the Witch's Door
is the title of the book, but it's also one
of your artifacts.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Indeed, so the actual Witch's Door was part of There's
a chapter in the book called Nick Parmesan or it
was like, he's one of the characters that we speak
about in the book. He was this horror of a collector.
He was extremely talented in the fact that he knew
(14:53):
how to cruise an antique show or flea market and
find the one good thing that was in that place
and leave with it.
Speaker 5 (15:00):
And he was unsuspecting. You would have never saw it
coming from him by looking at him.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Yeah, his background was that he was an NYPD sergeant.
He actually got sick at nine to eleven and was
put on leave, and so he was getting these checks
every single month and he was just spending pretty much
all of the money on antiques, and at some point
he got into collecting audities and that's when we met.
And so long story short, he and I did a
(15:29):
lot of business over the years, but he was really
hard to deal with it. I think that his powers
of persuasion as a sergeant, he used them in everyday life,
and especially when he was negotiating a deal, especially two
of us, And so he was really hard to deal with,
almost to the point where I had to stop doing
(15:49):
business with him. I actually blocked his number at some point.
And then we moved. Yeah, we moved to his neighborhood.
And soon after that he passed away. And so when
I got in touch with the family, we made a
deal and they said, look, you can't just buy one
or two items, you have to take everything.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Oh my goodness, yep.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
And that place was filled floor to ceiling, the good,
the bad, and the ugly, so mixed with museum artifacts,
you know, were like stacks of T shirts that had
never been opened, and trash and kitty litter that probably
hadn't been changed.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
It was thousands of light bulbs, thousands of likearoom like
Florida ceiling light bulbs.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
They were Edison filament light bulbs. So he had a
fascination with early industrial lighting and you know, mechanical things.
He just he was a prolific collector.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
So how in the world did you get everything out
of there? I mean, that's it's like months of work.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
Well, we did it in about four to five days.
It was in the middle of the pandemic in New
York City, so it was not easy, but they gave
us a very short window, and so we called everyone
we knew.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Everyone we knew.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
In Brooklyn was helping because also it was a three
story walk up brownstone.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah, it was probably some of the place as.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
I've ever had as a collector, because that's the not
glamorous part. You know, you see the glamorous part afterwards
when you're showcasing an item and it's at its final destination.
But let me tell you, this is the unglamorous part.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Your hands dirty. So with this, this enormous collection, was
this unassuming door that we just removed one day with
a lot of the other artifacts, and we started down
in our storage area at our home in Connecticut. And
it wasn't I think it took us like a good
few months to even get to that door to try
to figure out what it is. And he was pretty
(17:54):
meticulous on keeping paperwork with everyone.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Oh that's a good thing, luckily.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Yeah, and you don't always have that, so Nick right
with this stuff. So about a year later, we finally
had gone through like I don't know, ten banker boxes
filled with paperwork, and we finally found this one. It's
all dirty and beat up and torn, and sure enough
there it was. Seventeenth century witch's door from New England.
(18:21):
Belonged to this like famed collector named Roger Bacon and
gave the basic rundown of where it did come from
and what they thought it was. And so we started
the book out with the witch's Door. We speak about
it again in the middle, and then towards the end
we give all the information that we have obtained to
this point, and there's still a lot more to learn
(18:42):
about it.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
It's so curious because I was listening to some of
your other interviews and it's not clear who was behind
the door. Crack speculation about that still there is.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
And one of the things we didn't notice that until
many years later, because of course we always looked at
the side of the door that has, you know, not
elaborate carvings are actually quite crude. But on the other
side there's what looks like scratch marks from a person,
and they're very deep, and that's sort of the grizzly side,
(19:18):
like the one side is actually relatively pretty, despite the
fact that it has like this crude witch on top
of a cat and it says old Jeff, which means
old Devil. But the back is actually much creepier, and
you can tell that it was probably stored incorrectly or
maybe in New England where it was housed. There's some
water damage on the bottom, so you have this sort
(19:38):
of dark stain, but then these deep scratches on the
other side of the door, which is just have to assume,
pretty grizzly.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah. So my understanding is that there are some artifacts
like this one that you don't live with. You don't
keep that in your house.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
No, and I'm not. I think we don't know how
to live with it. And it's one of the few
items that actually gives me a strange feeling when I'm
in its presence, And so we store it in another
building altogether for now, and I think we're probably going
to put it on exhibit at some point.
Speaker 5 (20:13):
That's where I think it belongs. You know, we're waiting
for professionals in that field to authenticate and just give
us more information.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
That's just going to take time.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, yes, exactly. You're lucky. You got anything at all
that he kept the provenance record of that. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
Out of every I think collector that we dealt with,
he was definitely one.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Of the best. Yeah, Harris.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
So usually when people buy really high end antiques and art,
you'll have the provenance from say Sotheby's, Christie's Bottoms, or
one of like the major auction houses, and with that
you can typically typically trace an item back to where
it originally came from. If it's of a specific value,
it means that someone had it and it was given
to someone else. Then it was given to someone else.
(21:00):
Someone's already done the work for you. But then some
objects which might seem important or have a story attached
to them, have no prominance whatsoever, and you have to
kind of concoct your own based on what you're looking
at and your experience with said object.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Mm hmm. Yeah, it's like going on a hunt to
try to find where it came from and who owned
it and what's purpose was. Like, gosh, you have, how
many objects do you have? Would you say? Over two thousand,
three thousand?
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Oh? Probably like ten thousands? How yeah, And look, you know,
some of it is like stacked early prints that haven't
been framed yet or it's our We have an extensive
antiquarian book collection, which is something that I really focus on,
or I used to focus on a lot more. But
you know, if I'm just like looking at this, the
(21:47):
thousands in this room, just.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Pay attention. It's insane.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
One day it's going to make some great auction when
not here.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Watch. Well, it's wonderful that you've done such a good
job keeping track of everything, cataloging it, taking care of it.
My goodness, it's a lot of work.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
I'm sure it's a lot of work, but it's why
I do this, the adventure that you go on trying
to figure out what something is or learning about something
for the first time. You know, I've been collecting since
I was a little kid, but there's so many things
I'm still learning every time I get an object, and
that can spark interest in something from the beginning. You know,
(22:33):
I might procure something that I never really knew about,
and then suddenly I'm absolutely obsessed and fascinated with that
type of object, and so I go down these rabbit
holes where I start focusing on certain things based on
one piece.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Well, I know what the audience is going to want
to hear more about. And that's the creepy feelings that
you get from any particular object. So you had some
feeling about this door. It didn't quite feel great to you.
Was that both of you? You also Regina with the door.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Yeah, and I think it comes for me.
Speaker 5 (23:04):
It's like because I don't have all the information, so
then you know, there's just too many questions. And also
it's not a genre like that door is not something
that we normally collect or you know, and I don't
think we would have ever had in our collection if
it wasn't for Nick and the way that the deal
(23:25):
went with purchasing everything. So because I don't I don't
know enough about it, it makes me uncomfortable.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
It also has a very dark history as far as
what we know about, you know, people that were accused
of witchcraft. It's hundreds that just screams that it's going
to have negative energy. But that's not always the case.
You know, we have many objects that have an incredibly
dark history that don't give any kind of like paranormal energy.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Or dark feeling or I mean, I would say until
we moved to Connecticut, which was only four years ago,
like in Brooklyn, I never felt anything. I never had
felt a darkness. It just didn't happen for me.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
We tried to. We were, you know, very open to
the idea of you know, paranormal activity and energy presenting
itself in either a positive or negative way, and up
until pretty recently, we hadn't experience that. And so you know,
while we were reading.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
The book, it happened with the vent Philoquist dolls. Was
that the one we were talking about. Please tell about that,
because dolls are, to me are the creepiest things in
the world, because there's a lot of strange energy that
I've seen collect around dolls. So I don't own any.
I haven't owned any. I don't think I ever will
(24:46):
because it just seems to attract some very strange things.
But you had an actual experience with these, So what happened.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
So what happened was it was doing what I've always done,
and that is, you know, procuring things, and dolls are
one of the things that I have an attraction to,
and I think that I always have. Actually, there's a
whole chapter in the book. I never forget what it's called,
but it's it's called like Welcome to the Welcome to
the dollhouse. That's what it is, and that's about my
(25:14):
fascination with dolls, and I think that there's an anatomical
there's something anatomical that I like about dolls, and I
think that's what attracted me to them and what probably
still attracts me to them. But the story is basically this.
I had been offered these twelve ventriloquists Charlie mcarthy dolls,
and I purchased all of them, and I sold ten
(25:36):
of them and kept the two that I thought represented
the Charlie McCarthy doll the best. You know, they had
an interesting matina, they were old but still in very
good condition. They still have their little hats on. And
you know, while I didn't have any interest in learning ventriloquism,
they would. They sat in the library, just sitting on
this little leather chair that we had there, and you know,
(25:59):
they were perfectly gentlemen. They never gave us any any
problems until one day I went into that room, which
is a small room just off of the room that
we're sitting in now, and they were sitting on the floor.
But they didn't look like they'd been knocked over. They
were just instead of sitting in the chair. They were
sitting in front of the chair leaned up against them.
As biggered that Regina moved them and didn't think much
(26:20):
of it. I didn't even ask her about it. I'd say,
like a couple weeks later, a month later, the same
thing that they were sitting on the other side of
the room together propped up. I think one of them
had like fallen forward. The other room was sitting up right.
And then this happened one other time where they were
sitting kind of near the top of the stairs. So
when you would walk in the door, there's actually a
(26:43):
taxiinger made monkey that's sitting on a throne and the
dolls were sitting like right in front of it. So
someone moved them, or so I thought, And I couldn't
really explain it. And that's when I, you know, would
I would say, like Regina, jinedy move the dolls, and
she swore she didn't. I thought, maybe the cleaning person
that helps us out every so often and move them,
and like, there's.
Speaker 5 (27:03):
No way she doesn't touch anything that she doesn't have to.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
She's also creeped out by stuff like that. She just
like leaves alone. I wouldn't say, she's creeped out. She's
used to it at this point, but she does not
touch my things and she's instructed not to. And so
the other thing that happened was what you experienced with
the foot.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
And I also never thought much about it, because if
you've never had a paranormal, you know, incident. And I'm
not sure that I even believed in it at all,
especially because of all the things that have come into
my life. We're really going to talk about dolls, like
bringing some vibe in my house, like it just didn't
(27:41):
make sense.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
But I would be downstairs in.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
The kitchen area and I would hear footsteps and I
would just assume there are my dogs.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
But then there were.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
Times where and then I realized, I'm looking at all
three dogs, and I'm like, okay, so maybe it's the
wood floors, you know, my first time owning a home
in you know, Connecticut, and my god, maybe it's just
like the house settling, Like the house is old, it's
Victoria in eighteen seventy four. So I would just make
excuses constantly because I just didn't pay the dolls any attention.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
We would do that a lot, I think in general,
and I have a feeling that we've experienced these types
of things numerous times. But being very skeptical and being
like just too i think obsessed with scientific fact, we've
always said, all right, well, if this happened, it was
probably this, this, that and the other thing, And instead
of just saying like, oh, maybe it's like the object
(28:37):
giving us some strange activity, we would always try to
come up with a conclusion instead of saying like, oh shit,
these dolls just haunted us. And that's exactly what they
ended up doing. And we don't entirely know what happened
other than we photographed them for the book because we
had spoken about them just in terms of them walking
around apparently and moving around the room, and so when
(29:01):
it came time to shoot them, the photographer said, hey,
you got to ask their permission. We were like, scre
these dolls like they're just made out of cardboards.
Speaker 5 (29:09):
He was a friend of ours, so we were kind
of laughing because how do you go from you just
shot a Tibetan capala'skull to a shrunken head.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
But now it's the dolls.
Speaker 5 (29:20):
That you want to speak to. And we just thought
that was a little funny and I'm not kidding. The
second that we started laughing, the jaw drops right.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
Yeah, both of their mandibles just basically popped out of
their heads, which is very strange because the mandibles are
held in there by a metal rod that goes through
the interior of the head and then it's attached to
a little string. And we noticed that the trains had
both been cut. They were afraid, so they weren't even
like just cut. It looked like someone had like taken
(29:52):
something and cut them like this. That really freaked me out,
And then came an entire series of unfortunate events involving
the house where basically the room where they were in
right above it, water just started leaking down into my
antiquarian book collection. Oh god, the heat went off in
my tenants cottage that we have on our property, Our
(30:14):
venues shut down, our cars blew up, And it wasn't
until basically I packaged these things up to get the
hell out of my house that everything basically went back
to normal.
Speaker 5 (30:25):
But we had been talking to a friend of ours
who is very familiar with haunted objects, because we had
to call all of our friends that were in the
paranormal world because once again we had never experienced anything.
I was told I was doing everything wrong because I
was like taking stage and burning it, and you know,
I was told that actually only annoys them more.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Oh god, it's like you're bringing the fact that they're
haunting you to the forefront or something. I forget how
she explained it, but you know, we basically thought we
were going to need an exorcism. But the other the
coin was that people were really interested about the story,
and so I had this I had this quandary on
my hands, whereas like do I keep them and sort
(31:09):
of exploit them on Instagram? But in the end, it
wasn't worth the terror that they were. They were taking
over our lives and they were making life dangerous amount of.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
Money that we had to spend within the thirty days
that all of these things were happening was absolutely insane,
like two new cars changing the heat and a cottage.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Like we still have a hole in our ceiling.
Speaker 5 (31:34):
We still haven't even dealt with some of it because
there was so much damage.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Gosh, just incredible. Well, this is why I don't like
the doll thing. But you live with it. It is
very challenging, especially when you don't understand what's going on
or why So did they give you the people you
talk to, any explanation for why things turned so dark
with these dolls?
Speaker 5 (31:56):
They said two things to us. So the person that
took them also, so Ryan has never given away anything
in our collection ever, so you know it's a big
deal when he packages something up and he.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Sends it to you.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
They said that either somebody possibly cursed us, right maybe
or what was the second Well.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
Something very interesting that I didn't think about until much
after the fact was the guy that I purchased the
dolls from had purchased them from a woman who had
passed away in Fairfield County near where we live, and
the family was selling her estate and she was a
pretty avid doll collector, and she said something to him,
(32:37):
and he mentioned it to me when I was purchasing them,
but he didn't think about it, because people say a
lot of different things when you're buying things, especially you know,
preaky dolls.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
The daughter of the person that passed away said this,
I'm really happy that you're buying these. My mom always
said these dolls need a place where they can thrive
and have the space to move around that they need.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Wow, those event yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
But you know when someone says something like this to you,
especially when you're buying early in the morning, you're like, oh, yeah, hey,
cool man, whatever theah, they're crazy, I'll put that in
the title when I'm selling them. I just didn't. I
didn't think about it twice until we were writing the book,
and I was like, oh, my god, man, I remember
what Robert had said to me, and sure enough, it
(33:23):
made a lot of sense.
Speaker 5 (33:24):
But we did also contact the buyers of the ten
dolls that we didn't keep, because we would do these
auctions once a month via oddities that became very popular,
and I kept really good records, so I knew who
purchased them, and none of them have had an issue
with any of the other dolls that came from that grouping.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Just what about the person you gifted these two?
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Yeah, so that's interesting.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Well, she's becoming, like was. She already had a huge
following of people that like love to hear her stories
and learn more about objects in her collection because she
deals in like haunted objects. And she actually started to
have really bad luck too, almost right out the gate.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
So at one.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Point she told you she wasn't even driving.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Because she was too scared.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
She was too scared to drive because things like that.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Yeah, my car actually started to glitch tremendously, just I
think the ups story that I took them to to
get rid of them that day. It's probably about a
mile away from our house. My car started like groaning
and the gears were not shifting right. And mind you
have like pretty much a brand new SUV. And it
wasn't until I got this box out of my car.
(34:39):
He never made that sound ever again. So there was
something dark attached to those dolls, and I still don't
know exactly what it was, but I'm glad that it's
out of our lives.
Speaker 5 (34:48):
She had to do as salt bath before we shipped them,
so we had to trade a bath right with a
ton of salt, and then you had to put them
in a box salt.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
I wasn't there for it, so.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Oh goodness, Well, that's some powerful energy that can affect
mechanical things like that and water leaks, and that's really
some powerful stuff, and who knows where it came from.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
At that point, I was willing to try anything, and
so for the salt rich, well, you have to understand,
like I've I have dealt with extremely rare objects, and
then of course it's like these inexpensive dolls that I
purchased that ended up giving me bad juju.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. What about things from Egyptian tombs. I
know you've had some experiences talking with museums that have
had mummies and all of that, but what about actual
artifacts that come out of those tombs in Egypt? Have
you dealt with that at all?
Speaker 4 (35:46):
I have, and I've never had any kind of like
negative experience from them. But I actually had a full
Egyptian mummy at one point, and I dealt with an egyptologist.
He came over to the house and we took everything
out of the sarcophagus and laid it out on table
that's downstairs, and it turned out that it was probably
the mummy of a very poor family because we found
(36:09):
a lot of extra bones in their sarcophagus, so it
was probably like, yeah, it was like the husband, probably
the wife. And I ended up finding the small mummified
hand of a child mummy that was in the sarcophagus,
but I ended up getting rid of it because it
just wasn't in a good enough collection to keep here,
(36:31):
and ended up going to a museum.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Oh that's neat. Yeah, with the museums that you've had
dealings with you, We've heard a lot on the show
from archaeologists and the gentleman Graham that's now starring in
the Ancient Apocalypse series. They differ with traditional archaeology and timelines,
(36:56):
and we've heard a lot of stories from people like
him on the show. How well museums have gotten rid
of things that conflict with their timeline. Did they put
them in the dump or they've done whatever they want
to do to get rid of these things, and even
bones of giants. Have you heard of anything like this?
Do you know about this?
Speaker 4 (37:18):
Not specifically about giants, but what has happened pretty recently,
I'd say in the past five ten years, is that
museums are getting rid of all of their human remains
from their museums. I know pitt Rivers Museum in England
got rid of all human remains. The Museum of Natural
History in New York got rid of all of their
human remains. They are not on display anymore, which is
(37:39):
strange because they have the remains of you know, primates
and next to it is a plastic human skeleton, which
is a lot more difficult to educate yourself about the
human body. I mean, I guess it's relatively similar, but
it's just doesn't compare to the real thing. And it's
the same thing for other museums. You know, things like
shrunk and heads have been repatriated to Ecuador. But many
(38:02):
of those situations are cases where these countries don't want
the artifacts. They don't have a way to really display
them or facilitate them, so they end up being in dusty,
old lockers and storage units and they never really see
the light of day. And I think that's almost more
dangerous erasing history rather than learning something from it or
maybe putting it in a place where the damage is Yeah,
(38:26):
they can get damaged pretty easily, and I think what
happens is the museums don't want the negative press and
so instead of you know, maybe learning more about them
or trying to obtain better provenance, they just get rid
of them. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
I remember years ago in Connecticut there was a lot
of outcry about Native American skeletons that were in museums,
and the museums at the time were told, you need
to get them out of their glass cases and reinturn them.
But Rebury sure these skeletons, and they brought in Slow Turtle,
(39:00):
who was a Native American medicine man at the time,
to conduct the ceremony and give a proper burial to
that skeleton. It was quite powerful. I remember being there
for that, and it had been pouring rain, and two
Native Americans had been tasked with keeping the fire going
as a part of the ritual during this ceremony, and
(39:23):
they had to keep it going all night when it
was just cats and dogs boring. But when Slow Turtle arrived,
they was still raining, and he got out of the
car and it stopped raining, and he walked over to
the gravesite and he did the ceremony and they buried
the skeleton, and Slow Turtle got back in his car
(39:45):
and it started pouring again, and it was just an
amazing experience of power of Native American medicine. But there
was a lot of concern about these things that were
in museums when they really shouldn't have been.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
So in a situation like that, I fully agree. I
think that it deserved a proper burial. If they knew
that it was madeive American skeleton, it certainly didn't belong
I don't know how they were being housed or toted
in the museum, but I'm sure it didn't have any
real significance other than the fact that it was probably
just a skeleton. Use a medical one for that, or
(40:20):
maybe you don't need it at all. I don't know.
It's still up for conversation and interpretation. I'm just not
a huge fan of burying art and history, even if
dark one.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
No, I'm not either. I think it's absolutely horrible, and
I've heard other stories that are very concerning that would
really give us some accurate information about a true timeline,
and the museums don't want to have anything to do
with it because it's just conflicts with what they are
telling everybody to believe. So it's a shame. I don't
(40:53):
know if you're familiar with the dinosaur ceramic artifacts in Akombar,
Mexico that we're discovered, and the gentleman that brought them
here one of them, he was the He was the
person who built the Bell helicopter, designed and built it,
(41:13):
and he was very much interested in paranormal and he
heard about these artifacts. He brought them up from Malcolm
Barro some of them, and the problem with them was
they showed people and dinosaurs together. Oh, and the museum.
He wanted to donate these to a museum, and the
museum wouldn't have anything to do with it. They just
(41:36):
said they've got to be fakes again because it didn't
go along with their timeline. But he did say that
he had some of them in his office and they
creeped him out, and he was not somebody who got
creeped out easily.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
That's something that happens kind of frequently, as well as
that an item will be dug up and say, you
know like Arizona or you know, place where a lot
of archaeological finds are discovered, and if the person who
owns the land did not dig those up and try
to sell them and they don't have the proper paperwork
that's taken out of auctions all the time. I think
(42:13):
it happened to Leonardo DiCaprio or Nicholas Cage had purchased
a skeleton I think it was a dinosaur skull from
Heritage auctions and they had to end up giving it back,
so it was a huge controversy.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Well, here's what happened with this. This is the end
of the story. He gave it to a scientist in Ostening,
New York, and she took one of these ceramics. It
was called a Creator doll, a creator ceramic, and she
put it in a cage with white mice. And when
she came in the next the next morning, she looked
at the mice and she couldn't believe what she was saying.
(42:48):
The Creator doll had fluted ears. All of the mice
had fluted ears. Is it a scientist you know looking
at all this Absolutely no explanation. But clearly these things
carried in energy that was powerful enough to influence a
biological change in these ways. So there's so much to
(43:09):
this that we still have yet to uncover. And here
you guys are on the leading edge with all of
these artifacts that you care take. Very exciting what you're doing.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
Thank you those I would be interested in seeing those
artifacts that you were speaking of, just to see because
of what you were mentioning with people mixed with.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
I can send you a link and you guys can
take a look at it. I was trying to get
my hands on some, but it's not the easiest thing
to find. You probably could, right, yeah, but fascinating, but
things like that the Peruvian whistling vessels, which are so unique.
All of these things are. I know, the audience finds
these just beyond fascinating. They're just great to hear about,
(43:55):
and the effect that they still have after all these
years buried or forgotten and then they're brought out and
there's something to this. There's something to the energy of them.
Speaker 4 (44:07):
There can be. But then with those legitimate artifacts come
a lot of fake ones. And yes, well there's a
rich history of faking antiques and artifacts, and I've been
duped many times over the years. Really, I think it
would have been interesting to keep a cabinet of all
the fake things that I've heard years, just to show
(44:28):
people the difference between hey, this is a fake object
versus one that is legitimate, because it does happen. I
see things at option all the time that are not real.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yeah, and it is hard to tell, isn't it. Sometimes,
because they can fool somebody like you guys, they can
they can fool somebody else who has no training, no experience.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Gas become harder.
Speaker 4 (44:50):
Yeah, Like in the true oddities world, there are gaps.
I mean, I've seen fake shrunken heads sold as authentic ones.
And they were very clearly made out of some kind
of polymer or other.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
What is the deal as shrunk in heads, let's talk
about that.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
Yeah, And the deal and heads is they were typically
done by the Ecuadorians and they were a ceremonial process
and quite a grizzly dark one where uh, the hebro
Indians would go and hack the heads off of their enemies.
They would take the skin off of the skull, through
the skull into the river, and then they would start
the process of basically shrinking the skin. So there's this
(45:27):
big misconception that there's a skull like you know, a
little tiny head that's been mysteriously shrunken into this baseball head.
But that's not the case. It's basically like taking the
skin like a taxi, their made skin, but not wrapping
it around the form and not basically keeping the shape,
but taking that skin that's wet, simmering it and then
slowly starting to shrink it over heat, almost like wet
(45:51):
leather and a dryer. Is the best way to explain it.
And these things about.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
What's that It doesn't involve the bones, it's just the
skin of the head.
Speaker 4 (46:00):
It's just the skin. It's basically like sewn up in
the back. The eyes are sown shut and it's sort
of dismorphed. And what the Indians were doing was trapping
the soul inside of the head because they believed in
the afterlife they could still go on battling their ancestors.
They were trapping the soul inside of there, and they
would usually ring around the top of it, and the
would wear it as a necklace to show their prowess
(46:22):
as a warrior.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Okay, I was wondering there had to be some reason
for what they were doing. Did they also use them
in any kind of dark magic or was just to
control them?
Speaker 4 (46:33):
I don't think so, not that I'm aware of. But
they became very popular in the late nineteenth century into
the turn of the century by people looking to expand
their cabinets of curiosity, and as a result, a lot
of different versions of these things came about. So there
was the true ceremonial versions that are mostly housed in
(46:55):
museums in private collections at this point. But then there
was a really dark and there was a dark trade
of people taking cadaver heads and making them look like
authentic shrunken heads. Forest t Yeah, those would be referred
to as tourist trade heads, and I think there was
enough of an urge to buy these things that there's
(47:16):
probably hundreds of them out there. Oh mind, Yeah it's
pretty dark.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Yeah that is. That is. Now what about how about
the prettier stuff like jewelry. If you found some really
unusual pieces of jewelry.
Speaker 5 (47:30):
I mean, I think we when we first met, I
think we were a bit more into mourning jewelry and
hair reads.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
I feel like we don't have as much anymore.
Speaker 4 (47:41):
Well, we sold a lot of it, but yeah, there
was a period of time during the Victorian era where
you know, when someone passed away, you would take a
locket of their hair, or even more artistically, you would
fashion a little braid of the person who had passed
away and you would make either you put it in
an amulet, or there's even jewelry that's made out of
human hair and it would be used to remember those
(48:02):
who have passed away. If you've ever seen a morning wreath,
whaty're referred to as, it could often be an entire
family of people that passed away, and they would be
fashioned into these like little flowers, which were then made
into a wreath and they were framed and put on
the wall, and that was how you would remember the dead.
And they're very artistically rendered, and some are more elaborate
(48:23):
than others. But that's something that people actually collect today,
and it's still actually a process that's done today, but
it's more you know, taking the processes of the Victorian
error and applying them to Now we're very closed minded
to death and today, so I don't feel like there's
a lot of people that do it anymore.
Speaker 5 (48:42):
We have a couple that we work with for the
Oddity's Flea market because I feel like it's a dying art,
like no pun intended, and those artists are very popular.
A lot of people collect their pets hair and they'll
make morning Jilory out of that. Even ashes, right, there's
(49:04):
there's oh yeah, there's a lot of jewelers that work
with ashes.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
I mean, we're incredibly attached. Obviously we're attached to our
family members or friends right passway, but people are also
you know, very in tune with their pets, and so
when they pass, there needs to be a way that
you can remember them besides yeah, tattooing one on your
arm or something, which I find very interesting now because
tattoos are obviously incredibly popular today and people have become
(49:31):
the modern versions of the cabinet of curiosity because now
you can like look at someone and their body almost
tells a story through the artwork that's tattooed on them.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Yes, yes, exactly. Wow. Now is there anything that you
don't have in your collection yet that you would like
to have?
Speaker 3 (49:49):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (49:51):
Yeah, there's I thought you were going to ask is
there anything you won't collect?
Speaker 2 (49:56):
And I will just answer that yes please.
Speaker 5 (49:59):
O killer stuff is not We're not into it period.
But it would never be allowed in my home.
Speaker 4 (50:07):
Yeah, I mean you talk about a dark energy.
Speaker 5 (50:10):
That would be like not glorifying a serial killer here right,
that's not happening.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
But is there there's a piece that you there's lost?
Speaker 5 (50:20):
Yeah, Like there's always the piece that you didn't get
that you're always going to think about.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
Yeah, I think about it. But I also we have
put together like such a cohesive collection at this point
enough that I want to try to do an exhibition
next year on a couple of different collections, including the
Richard Harris collection, the Nick Parmesan collection, and just other
pieces that have collected over the years. I don't really
need anything else. But is there, you know, stuff that
(50:47):
I wish we had in the collection. Of course, I
don't think a collector's work is ever done until they're buried,
and you know, you can't take it when you go.
So it's all stuff that I think about when you know,
I get interested in some thing. I have enough subject
material here that I have my work cut out for me.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Oh, you should do so many mysteries. Still, I'm sure, right, sure,
it's amazing. Oh, I love your lifestyle. It's so neat.
That's fantastic. Well, you've mentioned you have dogs. Do they
react to anything?
Speaker 3 (51:19):
No?
Speaker 5 (51:20):
No, And that's actually why I always said I feel
mostly at peace, And it really wasn't until this last
year that we had any anything out of the ordinary happened.
And I always felt like they would alert me first.
I mean, my god, they know if somebody is pulling
up in the driveway before I do. Yes, they are
the most calm, cool and collected dogs.
Speaker 4 (51:41):
So, but I do think that animals have a sense
when there's something sort of strange in the house. Yeah,
you know, like a dog will stare at a radiator
for eight hours, or they'll you know, start barking at
something in the basement that's not doesn't appear to be anything. Always,
I like bringing the dogs around the past. They give
(52:03):
me a lot of safety.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Even you have a hitsu too, so do I.
Speaker 4 (52:10):
Imperial shits.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
They are like little people, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (52:16):
Such silly creatures?
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Yes, so like little people. They're amazing dogs. I've had several.
I have one now. He's but he's a big boy.
He's eighteen pounds, like seven pounds the mine was supposed
to be. The breeder said, he's not going to be
bigger than the parents are only nine pounds. I'm like,
he's eighteen pounds. What happens?
Speaker 4 (52:40):
If you look at my Instagram, I put up a
lot of pictures of herman.
Speaker 2 (52:45):
I'm gonna go look for sure. Would you please keep
me posted about any any displays you're going to do
when you put your items up, I know people would
love to see them, So if you let me know, oh,
I'll put it up on our Facebook page.
Speaker 4 (53:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Be aware that you're doing this.
Speaker 4 (53:06):
This is something that I've been toying around with for many,
many years.
Speaker 3 (53:11):
It feels like the next step.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
Yeah, I think that would be the next step. And
I think maybe if there's like a second book, it
would focus more on what the exhibition is going to
focus on.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
Which is well, I'm excited to come and see it,
so please make sure we know and unfortunately we've run
out of time. This has been so exciting talking to
you both, so thank you so much, and again keep
us posted on your plans for your exhibitions. Love to
know and will help promote it as.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
Well as Thank you, Patricia, thank.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
You so much, Take care and everybody will be back
next week with another great show. Until then, we will
see you on the Blue Highway. Good Night,
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