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October 12, 2025 54 mins
Larry Lawson's journey from police detective to full-time paranormal investigator has opened doors to the mysterious and the supernatural. Through his captivating radio and TV show, Paranormal StakeOut, and his careful explorations of Indian River Hauntings and other haunted locations throughout the United States and beyond, he leads us into realms obscured by shadows and whispers. With a unique blend of investigative skills, scientific rigor, and heartfelt compassion, Lawson invites us to question our understanding of reality and embrace the enigmatic wonders that surround us.

Listen to past episodes of Paranormal StakeOut at www.paranormalstakeout.org


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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
All Henriy. Welcome to the X Zone, a place where
fact is fiction and fiction is reality.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Now here's your host, Rob O'Connell.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
H m hmm.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
The Reno Gay Brange, Ships of the Barn, some of
who wish they'd ever been.

Speaker 4 (00:42):
Burning or the gay.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Hmmm, saving away the brigger. Don there the goos to
the game board. See them all in say every day,
Demons dance everywhere, Southern Gales, Stantered Seals and lone until

(01:09):
the ten.

Speaker 4 (01:15):
Hello you estay see those.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
To the brands.

Speaker 5 (01:28):
In the.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Man there we are. Welcome back to ex oh Nation.

Speaker 6 (01:32):
I'm Rob McConnell, and we're coming to you on the
Excellent Broadcast Network from our flagship station, your hometown Radio
twelve twenty dot CA a classic twelve twenty dot CA
and streamed around the world on Classic twelve twenty dot CA.
That's was Gordon Lightfoot, Ghost of Cape Horn, and I

(01:55):
played it for two reasons. Number One, we're going to
be talking to my good friend Larry Lawson, who is
in Florida and runs a fantastic paranormal investigation group. He
also is an author. We're gonna be talking to Larry
about his new book, Haunted Indian River County.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
And because my boss going on only Peter Bordley.

Speaker 6 (02:17):
Likes when I do at least one Canadian song per
hour because it meets our CANCN specifications and requirements. So
there you go, Peter. Gordon Light but a good old
Canadian guy who now is a ghost because he passed
away some time ago. Like I said, Larry Lawrence is
lostness with us. And Larry was also the host of

(02:42):
are you ready for this?

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Larry ready? All right? What was the name of your show?

Speaker 5 (02:48):
Oh, paranormal steak out?

Speaker 2 (02:49):
There you go, there you go? Were things in Florida?

Speaker 5 (02:52):
My friend, Everything's fine. I love Gordon Lightewood coming from
originally Toledo, Ohio. I was. I can remember when the
Edmund fitz Jill went down in Gordon Light's foot rendition
of that horrific events, so kind of gad you played that.
I'm a big fan of Gordon.

Speaker 6 (03:08):
Well, you know one thing about Gordon, if there was
ever a national disaster, he was there and he'd have
a million dollar sellar right then and there. And that's
according to Burton Cummings, by the way, from the guests,
who I remember watching the Awards that year and when
Gordon won the award for the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,
and the person who was giving out the awards was
Burton Cummings, and that's what he said.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
You know, leave it to Gordon to.

Speaker 6 (03:33):
Come up with a hit because of a sunken ship. Anyway,
for those of you listening who may not know our
good friend Larry Lawson, he spent over forty years in
law enforcement and criminal justice education. During that time, he
served as patrol officer, detective, detective supervisor, and criminal justice educator,

(03:54):
including time as the director of the Criminal Justice Institute
Police Academy for Regional of the State of Florida, located
in Indian River State College in.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Fort Pierce, Florida.

Speaker 6 (04:05):
Larry holds a Bachelor of Science degree from let Me
See Nova Southwestern University and a master's degree in public
administration from Troy State University.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Larry is a.

Speaker 6 (04:19):
Retired police officer now, but he is now an accomplished
author as well as taking people on ghost tours and
actually taking his crew, the Florida Bureau of Paranormal Investigation
to many spots to continue the investigation of what these
phenomena are, how these anomalies happen, and Larry is still

(04:42):
trying to get the truth out there and find out
what makes the paranormal tick. And yeah, how long have
you been doing this, Nollarry?

Speaker 5 (04:51):
Oh, I've been actually actively investigating since about twenty ten,
late twenty ten orly twenty eleven, been off offering opportunities
for folks to learn a little bit more about it
on our Historical Ghost Tour since twenty sixteen. It's all
about education. It's all about learning, you know. It's you

(05:13):
mentioned all those great thank you very much for the intro,
and it's great to be back on your show.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
My friend.

Speaker 5 (05:19):
This phenomenon is something that folks just nobody's figured out.
You'll get folks out there that are claiming to be experts,
and I submit there are no real experts in this field,
and we're still trying to figure out what the phenomenon
is the only thing I will say to you is
it's got to be something. For millenniums, everybody form, every

(05:40):
social economic level, every education level, every culture that you
can think of, has experienced this phenomenon of contact from
the other side. But what is it really we don't know,
And that's kind of what our goal is is to
find out what it is now.

Speaker 6 (05:58):
The name of your book is Haunted Indian River County.
And for those people who haven't had the opportunity to
be fortunate enough to go down to Haunted, down to
the Indian River County, tell us where it is and
what makes it so unique.

Speaker 5 (06:15):
It's a great story. And a lot of folks they
look at Florida is the land of sand, sun and
Mickey Mouse ears, and we'll throw some orange juice in there. Also,
they don't really realize what Florida as a whole has
done for the history of the United States and the
North America in so many ways. Indian River County itself,

(06:37):
it's centered around Vero Beach. It's the county seat. We're
about for miles thirty five to forty miles south of
Cape Canaveral, where the Space center is, and about fifty
miles north of West Palm Beach. We're located on the
east coast of Florida, right across from Lake Okatachobee, so
right in that area of the central east coast of Florida.

(06:58):
As I said, Vero Beach is the county seat, and
not a whole lot happened here in this area until
the late eighteen eighties. And that's significant because our country
was already one hundred years old before this area started modernizing.
Yet people had been here for centuries before that, either

(07:19):
indigenous folks and the Spaniards. Prior to that, the Spaniards
were in our area into the fifteen hundreds. So it's
a lot of history. Folks don't really get about our area,
and thus it really leaves a really deep, rich history
that sometimes still sticks around.

Speaker 6 (07:40):
As an author and as a former police officer, what
was it that turned you on to the history of
Indian River County that you know led you to sitting
down and penning this great book.

Speaker 5 (07:55):
Well, first of all, I'm a history buff, always had
the history buff, and I love studying the areas that
I live in. And I've worked and lived in this
area since nineteen eighty four, so you know knowing that.
And we call it our area, which covers four counties,
the Treasure Coast, and it's named after a one of

(08:15):
the many Spanish fleets. Well, there was one Spanish fleet
in particular in seventeen fifteen that went down carrying all
kinds of jewels, and that's what made our area the
Treasure Coast, and that history itself of how that happened
was interesting. There's been incidents I've had in the area
as a law enforcement officer that intrigued me. Probably the

(08:38):
one thing that got me curious about what was on
the other side was an incident that occurred actually in
Saint Augustine back in twenty ten with my son, and
that incident got me curious as to what this whole
phenomenon was.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
Can you share that with this, Larry, sure?

Speaker 5 (08:56):
Sure, we were. Actually I'm gonna go back a little
bit further. When I first started in law enforcement, I
actually encountered something I couldn't explain. And I never had
an experience as a kid. A lot of so many
people say they had experiences as children. My first experience
was in nineteen eighty I just started my law enforcement career.
I was working in the Dade County jail in Miami,

(09:16):
and I saw somebody walking down a cell block that
didn't look like a ghost, looked like a person, but
then they were gone. So that always klled my interest.
But it was in twenty ten, in an incident in
Saint Augustine with my son. We were at the lighthouse.
My son had seen an episode of the old Ghost
Hunters show and when they had an incident in the lighthouse,

(09:37):
that really intrigued him. So for his eleventh birthday, he
asked me to take him to the lighthouse, which I did,
and we had an incident there hearing little kids laughing. Now,
a couple children died during the reconstruction of the lighthouse
about eighteen seventy nine, and they'd been reputed haunting the
lighthouse ever since. So we were there, and we were

(10:02):
in the lighthouse and we heard kids laughing. Well, was
a cop. The first thing I'm doing is looking for
wires and speakers, figuring their piping stuff in. Couldn't find
anything that would explain what happened. And that's what kind
of began the journey. Because I lived on the Treasure Coast,
they're a beach in particular, you know. I began to
study and people heard what I did, and they started

(10:22):
sharing stories, and that just opened up the floodgates of
researching and studying not only the haunted history of Indian
River County, but also the actual history itself of what
happened here and what makes us just a great place
to live.

Speaker 6 (10:37):
The name of the book exnation is Haunted India River County.
I guess Larry Lawrence, Larry Lawrence Loss or Lawrence Larry Loss,
So I just call them Larry laws and to make
it easier. But Larry, where can people get copies of
your book?

Speaker 5 (10:52):
They can get it. Amazon has it, Books and Millions
got it. You can also order it from Target. I
also you can get it off my website, Indian River
hawkings dot com.

Speaker 6 (11:06):
You know, I've been to your area. It's a beautiful area.
It's a great place and one of the favorite places
that I loved. Not only is it a haunted place,
but it's got the best food around. And of course
I'm talking about the marsh Landing restaurant. How did you
first discover the paranormal aspect of this great restaurant?

Speaker 5 (11:29):
That's a great that's a terrific story. So I retired.
I had been running the police academy for a number
of years and retired from the state and of course
went right back into police work, and I went out
to Little Old Felsmyor, a very small town that has
a wonderful history. Was supposed to be the gateway to
the South, and it was incorporated in nineteen fifteen. It's

(11:50):
floods because Florida is under the water table. The floods
and everything ruined what the town was supposed to become.
So it remained a small town erful place and I
loved it out there. So once I retired from the state,
I went back into full time police work alt in Felsman,
and I was the detective out there and people heard

(12:11):
about what I did, and next thing I know, folks
are coming. You need to go here, talk to this person,
see this place. So I actually went over to the
Marsh Landing to talk to Frank Adams, former county commissioner,
her husband. Her deceased husband had been a lieutenant governor
of the state of Forta, a very highly educated, well
rounded family, and I asked her about what had happened

(12:36):
there that i'd heard.

Speaker 6 (12:37):
Larry, what I'm going to ask you to do is hold.
I thought, We're going to come back to Marsh Landing
on the other side of this break explanation. Larry Lawson
is my special guest. He is the author of Hunt
Hunted Indian River County. It's available on Amazon dot Com
and of course on his website as well. The excellent,
a place where people dare to believe, dare to be

(12:57):
heard Monday through Friday from ten pm until midnight right
here on our flagship for radio station in Canada, your
hometown Radio Classic twelve twenty and streaming at Classic twelve
twenty dot. Larry and I will return after this break dunk.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
Away everywhere, sundn Gales, Tattered Seals and lon until till
hello you mostay seos.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
Welcome back everyone.

Speaker 6 (14:16):
This is the excell Nime Rob McConnell. We're coming to
you from our broadcast Centerman Studios in Saint Catherine's, Ontario, Canada.
And my guest this hour is my good friend Larry Lawson,
who is the author of Haunted Indian River County. And uh,
if you like you have a copy of they Haunted
at Indian River County, I guess the best place would
be go to Amazon dot com or Amazon dot ca. A.

(14:39):
I wonder if anybody has ever seen a ghost of
Michael Jackson speaking about Michael Jackson song that we played
coming into this break from this break called ghost.

Speaker 5 (14:48):
Mm hmm, it's it's somebody has claimed to I guarantee.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
You really all right. Before we went to the break.

Speaker 6 (14:56):
We were just started to talk about Marsh Landing Restaurant
in Elswhere.

Speaker 5 (15:01):
Great great place and a great story. As I mentioned before,
I've retired from the state. I was a state officer,
a state investigator, ran the police Academy for a while,
and finally retired from the state. Went back to work
out in Fellsmure and folks kind of heard of what
I did on the side, so they began telling me
all kinds of things about spots in Fellsmuir and Felsmuir's

(15:24):
histories were rich. We don't have a lot of time
to go into that tonight, but it's just very rich history.
Well at any rate. One of the places I was
told to go was the Marsh Landing, where I spoke
to the owner, whose name is fran Adams. She was
a former county commissioner. As I mentioned, her husband had
been the Lieutenant governor of the state of Florida. Her
daughter is a current county commissioner. So it's a very
well educated I mean, she's an incredible business woman, highly

(15:49):
educated and no nonsense, just a no nonsense woman. I
went over there and I said, I, you know, I
heard you had some things that go on over here,
and she said, oh yeah, she's matter of fact told
me stories about all the things that had happened when
she bought the building. Now, the building was put up
in nineteen twenty four. It was known as the Fellsmere
States Corporation and it's where they were going to be

(16:10):
selling land out of during the third Florida land Boom,
and it fell. That land boom fell apart real quick,
and then the building became the home of Florida Sugar
Crystals for many years up until the early sixties. Then
it was abandoned. There was a few other things, and
then fran bought it before they tore it down and

(16:30):
turned it into the Marsh Landing Restaurant. That's the history,
and during its reconstruction, if you will, it's changed into
a restaurant. Many many strange things happened there. Some of
my favorite stories is that she's seen this particular incident
several times. It's like what we call a residual type
on She said, there was a lady in white that

(16:51):
went from one the end of the building to the
other and she just sort of floated across it. You
couldn't get her attention. She didn't acknowledge she just went
from point A to point B and Fran just tells
it like it's ye, I've seen it about six times
and she just does her thing. And from there it
was about another guy that was putting in the new

(17:13):
windows and called her about ten o'clock at night, screaming
because he looked up and there's a woman in white
just staring at him. And the guy took off and
would not come back and finish the windows unless she
was in the building with him. Meeting Fran, staff members
began to talk about the many things. A lot of
this stuff is in the book. It's chairs, moving, keys

(17:33):
being thrown, people whispering in ears, all kinds of crazy things.
And we've certainly investigated that place a number of times
and we've gotten some incredible, incredible bits of information out
of it that we can't explain. I'm not going to
sit here and tell you I know exactly what it was,
but I know we couldn't explain it. So wonderful place

(17:57):
and great food.

Speaker 6 (17:57):
I might add, oh, hey, that great food, great service,
friendly people, especially when you're sitting there having a well,
what is it alligatortail? Gatortail, really good gatortail with Larry
Lawson on the other side of the table. When you
were doing the research for your book, or when you
were investigating the different cases that you were going to

(18:19):
put into your book, was there anything that you discovered
that you did not know that just had the hair
on the back of your neck standing up.

Speaker 5 (18:31):
Probably one of the most interesting thing. Yeah, So there
are several things in there. And we'll go back to
Felsmith for just a second. I had a and I
won't say who it was, but it was a member
of the city government, a very high ranking official, pull
me aside one day and talk to me about how
he saw a young man in period dress of the

(18:53):
twenties that appeared sitting on a bench looking down, you know,
just kind of rocking his legs back as if and
he was right in front of where the principal's office
was this building, this is the old school which is
now the city Hall. It was built in nineteen fourteen,
and the kid was sitting in and he was gone,
and this city official came to me on the QT

(19:14):
and said, look, I'm just telling you what happened. So
that one was very very interesting. I had another incident
where the former city clerk who has now passed away,
would not go into the building at all because one
night she was working there late and just heard a
male scream in the attic. Now there's no way to
get to the attic except in front of her office,

(19:36):
and you need like a twelve foot ladder to get
through the hatch to get in there. So there's all
kinds of little interesting little things like that. We had
another incident once again in the old school, where one
of my teammates was just asking this old boy. We
referred to him as Billy. We don't know if that's
his name, but it's just something that keeps coming up,

(19:58):
this little kid. And one day Mark Holtz's name, he
was a member of my team also president of the
Historical Society. Might add just to ask the question, Billy,
is this the room you like to be in? And
they were in the auditorium, clear as a bell, and
it's on our website. You hear a little boy and
there were no kids in the building. I can attest
to that there were no kids in there, but you'll

(20:19):
hear a little boy say yes, sir, I mean it happened.
One are two things occurred there. Rob Either I'm making
this up or it occurred. It can only be one
of the two things, and that we've got.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
And I'll go with it that it actually occurred.

Speaker 5 (20:38):
It did. And so yeah, we've had a couple of
really really interesting things happen out there. We were in
the old library, which is the oldest operating library in
the county in Fellsmere, and.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
We had a chair.

Speaker 5 (20:51):
The chairs were ill locked, but one of those chairs
came loose on its own, and an individual that was
with us saw the chair come up off the table
and float and drop to the ground. Oh my god,
now I mean right in front of it. And you know,
we couldn't figure it out. So yes, tons of things
that we just can't explain.

Speaker 6 (21:12):
When you do your investigations as a paranormal investigator here,
what do you look for? What are some of the
red flags that you look for when investigating a case.

Speaker 5 (21:22):
When you say red flags, are you referring to things
that tell us it's not paranormal? Yeah, okay, we look first.
The first thing we do is we use a very
law enforcement type of approach to all this, and we
are collectors of evidence. We are not purveyors of stories
or thrill seeking. We are collectors of evidence. And what

(21:45):
we do is we look for hot spots for electronics
in a building that might set pieces of equipment off.
A lot of investigators, they'll find a cold spot, and
if we do, the first thing we're going to do
is look for an open window or an In Florida,
windows don't necessarily mean it's going to be cold, so
we'll look for an air conditioning vent or something like that.

(22:05):
So we're always trying to look for the logical explanation
for something to happen before we jump to the conclusion
it's unexplainable, and sometimes it's a little tough. We did
an investigation that was actually just over the next county,
and this is about six eight months ago. This is

(22:25):
a good example of it. And I'm looking at the
I have a trap camera that is set up and
it catches movement and rob I saw a little kid's
face behind it. It was in a storage room and
they had a Christmas tree and there they were storing
and I saw a little kid's face coming around the core,

(22:45):
coming around the Christmas tree. And I'm like, what in
the heck, because I'm looking at it and there's no
possible I mean, there's nobody else around. But because of
the importance of the possibility, this is very important piece
of evidence, we took extra time to scrutinize it and
what ended up happening. And it took a while to

(23:06):
figure this out. And this is what's important. You have
to examine evidence carefully. One of my people had come
in unbeknownst to me and had their young infant on
there on a backpack, like a backpack type of thing,
and they had crossed in front of the Christmas tree
at such an angle that when the trap camera went off,

(23:26):
she was right behind the tree and you couldn't see her,
but what you could see was the little baby looking around.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
You know a lot I.

Speaker 5 (23:37):
Can't see a lot of folks because most folks in
the field are good about this stuff. But some people
would have looked at that and immediately said ghost of
a child. Well, no, it wasn't. There was a logical
explanation for it, and that's what's so very important in
this field is looking for that logical explanation. First.

Speaker 6 (23:54):
You know, I appreciate the way that you conduct your investigations,
and you know, all the members had your team conducted
very professionally because you're being a past police officer, you
know you want it done right. But there are so
many teams out there who go for the sensationalistic aspect

(24:15):
of what they're trying to do, what they're trying to accomplish.
How does that rub with you and your team?

Speaker 5 (24:24):
Well, first of all, let me say the teams that
you hear doing that, I don't think of the majority
any I think there's a lot of folks out there
and that conduct their investigations with the utmost integrity. But
there are some out there, and I call this. You know,

(24:47):
there's different types of investigators. Right, There's there's the researcher
trying to find the answers. But then there's another one,
a group that I call paranormal thrill seekers. Now that
sounds like I'm being derogatory, and I don't mean it
to be. Because people wanting to go out to get
the thrill, that's fine. I mean, why do people jump
out of perfectly good airplanes right for a thrill? People

(25:11):
do stuff like that, But those types of folks cannot
be entered into the same field as serious researches of
the paranormal, if that makes sense. Now, when somebody claims
to be, when they claim to know what a ghost is,
when they claim make substantial claims of the paranormal without
properly investigating, without properly looking at the evidence. Yeah, it

(25:36):
drives me nuts because when they get proven to be
Charlatan's wrong. And sometimes they don't even mean to be.
They're just not I don't want to use the word
educated enough, but not trained well enough, not experienced enough.
It makes us all look bad. People that like to
trespass and go into buildings that they shouldn't be in
and get caught by the police. There's other groups out there,

(26:00):
some of them very famous. On My Dad, We'll go
into a famous venue for their either their own investigation
or for doing it for entertainment like on a TV show,
and they trash the place so they show disrespect to
the to the owners of the venue. That makes us
all look bad. So there's there's a lot of a
huge gamp. There are folks that do the right thing,

(26:22):
but there's just as many that do things that reflect
on all of us.

Speaker 6 (26:25):
All Right, I'm a friend, please stand by you and
I have to take our break and Hyry Lawson and
I will be back on the other side of this
very short break, as the axone continues with Here is
truly Rob McConnell from our broadcast Entrance Studios in Saint
Catherine's and you're listening to us on your hometown radio,
Classic twelve twenty streaming at Classic twelve twenty.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Do something strange?

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Who you're gonna call.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Something with?

Speaker 2 (27:37):
And don't.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Who you gonna call?

Speaker 6 (27:47):
Welcome back everyone. Larry Lawrence is our special Larry Lars
and he's our special guest. I'm looking at his book
title and it's kind of throwing me off, so we
gotta rip off that front page.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
Just kidding, just kidding.

Speaker 6 (27:59):
He's my spect our guest, and we're talking about his
book entitled Aunted Indian River County. It's available on Amazon
and other fine online book retailers. Marie, why do they
call it ghost busting?

Speaker 5 (28:15):
Well, I think that's just a word that came out
of commercializing, especially the movie. It would have been very
disappointed if he hadn't played that song at some point
during our visit today. By the way, I think that's
the wrong term. I don't think that it's I don't
think that's correct. But it's done and fun, and I

(28:36):
think that's I guess how you got to look at it,
because it's nothing about ghost busting. It's about researching a
phenomenon that we just don't understand what's occurring. So I
I mean those I was a cop for too many
years to have names bother me, I guess. But it's
not ghostbusting. I think that's the bottom line there.

Speaker 6 (29:00):
Yeah, just ghost hunting. Ghost busting. To me, that's negative
connotations because once you hunt the ghost down and you
find the ghost, what the heck do you do with it?
You can't shoot it, you can't kill it, you can't
do it do anything.

Speaker 5 (29:17):
Well, there was one TV show that was on a
few years ago where they actually attempted. Part of their
stick was actually capturing a ghost, which obviously you can't do.
And it does add a carnival almost a carnival sense
to it, and that certainly hasn't helped with the research.
And you know, like I mentioned before, it's okay, a

(29:39):
lot of folks think it, don't think it's real, and
that's absolutely fine. It's something that nothing's been able to prove,
certainly through science, we haven't been able to prove it, right,
But at the same token, I mentioned this earlier in
our visit tonight. You can't deny that there's something that
has gone on for centuries because people, as I said,

(30:00):
people from every socioeconomic class, every level of education, people
have experienced things. To say that it doesn't exist is
the silliest saying that every bump in the night is
a ghost? So then again, what is it? And that's
kind of where we're at. We're trying to We're trying
to put away the personal feelings, the emotional feelings of it,

(30:23):
and trying to figure out what the phenomenon is. And
nobody's been successful in doing that yet, but by god,
I'm going to keep.

Speaker 6 (30:30):
Trying the concept of ghosts. It seems that it flourished
in the early early nineteen hundreds and there was a
lot of.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
A lot of trickery going on back then.

Speaker 6 (30:50):
How can somebody who is interested in looking at the
phenomenon in a very organized and professional matter, can they
get involved? Are there any courses online or offline that
people can take to become we qualified ghost investigators?

Speaker 5 (31:08):
Well, see, now you're getting into something that I feel
is very important. Like police work, we have certain standards
and training that is required of us to conduct our
jobs as law enforcement officers in the state of Florida,
for example, There's nothing like that in our business. Heck,
you even have to be a mechanic. You have to
go through certain types of certification training to be certified

(31:30):
and be accepted as a true expert in the field.
We don't have that yet, and part of that is
because we have not solidified how we do things. And
that's the one area that I think that we are
truly lacking, and that's standards and training. Now, once we
get these standards and training to a point where we

(31:51):
can come up with a I don't like to use
the word regulated, but an agreed way on doing things,
then we can start collecting evidence in a similar manner
like we do in law enforcement to prove or disprove
the existence of If that all makes sense to you,

(32:13):
we don't have that yet, and a lot of that
is because none of the equipment that we have definitively
proves anything yet. I think it gives us some really
good indications, but nothing that definitively proves. Until we come
up with a way to do that, we're going to
continue to run into the problems of not being taken

(32:33):
I don't want to seriously ill e's to say it.

Speaker 6 (32:37):
In your opinion, especially in the part of Florida where
you are, do you see more and more interest in
the power normal and people making up paranormal investigation teams
or is it kind of in a middled doubt or
how about I guess describe that is the interest is

(32:58):
still there about us not peaking like you do.

Speaker 5 (33:01):
Well, I think the interest. I think the interest has
began to repeak again. I think people are people have
always been interested in the unexplained because the unexplained keeps
happening for whatever reason. It is now what I think
has been happening. This is just my opinion. I think
we're seeing fewer and fewer thrill seeking teams or coming

(33:24):
coming into play. And I think a lot of the
teams that are staying. War Party paranormal comes to mind
down in Westbom, great group of folks, we've been around
for a long time now. I think it's I think
a lot of the groups are settling down Alan Sloaneker
and Virginia has a great group. Yeah, our friend up

(33:46):
in Nova Scotia has a has a great group. And
I think you're seeing more teams settle down like that,
and that might be the beginning of that nucleus of
folks coming together with the idea of conducting research to
find the answer is to what the phenomenon is. I
don't see as maney, Hey, let's go out and go
to the graveyard and see if we can see a

(34:09):
ghost type of groups. Anyway, don't I'm not seeing as
much of that, if that makes sense.

Speaker 6 (34:13):
Yeah, speaking about our good friend in Nova Scotia Elliott
at Van Dusen, they've got another there's symposium coming up
as well, very shortly. Well when is it in October?

Speaker 2 (34:27):
I believe October.

Speaker 6 (34:28):
So we're going to be letting all our listeners know
what's going on there. And it seems now here you
are a former police officer. Here, I am a former
police officer. Elliott is a former RCMP officer.

Speaker 5 (34:42):
Allen sloanikers retired.

Speaker 6 (34:43):
Exactly what do you think the draw of the law
enforcement community is to the paranormal when it comes to
the investigating of it, Because there are more former police
officers becoming paranormal investigators than I've ever seen before.

Speaker 5 (35:00):
Well, for starters, when you and I first got in
the business, if you talked about this sort of thing.
Your boss sent you to a for a psych exam fits, Yeah,
I didn't talk about it. I love the buddy of mine,
Ikenzi in New Mexico does this stuff. But as time
came on, and this is the one good thing about

(35:21):
the TV shows. A lot of folks in the field
bad mouth the TV shows, but the reality of it
is it did bring it to the forefront of society
and made it more socially acceptable that when that happened,
cops began to talk about a little bit more. One
of the favorite things I love to talk about is Honolulu,
Hawaii PD. They did an entire several years ago now,

(35:43):
but they did an entire series of videos on YouTube.
You can still see them about the paranormal experiences of
their officers. This is the police department doing it. That
goes to show you how kind of change now why
cops also, let's face it, Rob, you know this, we
are in situations are we respond to crime scenes, we

(36:07):
respond to horrible access, We respond to situations that very emotional,
very traumatizing. We end up, Yeah, we see things, we
experience things.

Speaker 6 (36:19):
And we see them and we have to keep a
front up when we're in the public's eye. But I'll
tell you back at the at the station or later
on at home, or when you get together with your
buddies at the local pub to have a pint or
two before you go because you've had a hell of
a night.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
It's there.

Speaker 6 (36:38):
The emotion is there, Like policemen are human.

Speaker 5 (36:43):
Yeah, folks tend to forget that, but when we are
human as anybody else. But we're also in situations where
you know, we're also working midnights. There's just a lot
of circumstances around us that that put us in positions
to experience things. Now, you take all of that, you
add the fact that cops, whether you're a patrol officer
or you're a detective like I was, we investigate. So

(37:08):
you take these experiences, you take maybe what other people
have told you, or other people have you heard, or
things that you've experienced yourself, and I think we just
we've gotten to a point where we want to investigate,
use our skills that we've been trained in, that we've
honed over the years, and apply it to finding out

(37:28):
what this phenomenon is. We are trained at we're trained interviewers, interrogators,
we are trained to look for trace evidence. We are
trained to look for things that a lot of folks don't.
And we also are trained to have the structure to
put an investigation together, to collect the evidence to make

(37:49):
a case. So I think all of those things together
has drawn a lot more folks in our business into
the field. And I think it's hugely helpful because once
you you start investigating things with a very structure, with
a way of doing it in mind, the evidence comes in,

(38:11):
you're able to collect it. You look at it and
it makes sense, and you can put it in early fashion.
For example, you go to an investigation a group that
has no training, they hear a bump in the night,
Oh did you hear that? Yeah, and they don't do
anything with it. Well, then it's not evidence. It didn't occur,
you haven't documented it makes sense.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
It sure does.

Speaker 5 (38:30):
So I think that's why you see a lot more
cops involved, and I think that is going to be
a big part in us maybe finding the answer.

Speaker 6 (38:39):
Something else that police officers do that not very many
paranormal investigation teams do is share the evidence.

Speaker 5 (38:48):
Oh, huge, huge, And you know cops used to be
kind of bad about that too. Yeah, you know, but
that's changed.

Speaker 6 (38:54):
Sure, there's NCIC and Pere in Canada, crp CE pick
and see the information is exchanged because what we want
to do is we want to solve the case.

Speaker 5 (39:07):
Exactly. And one of my big arguments towards standardizing investigations.
And when I say standardizing, people tend to say, you
want everybody to do it your way. No, that's not true,
but there's got to be a standard. For example, a
homicide that occurs here in Vero Beach and a homicide
that occurs in Saint Catharine's, Ontario, there's going to be difference.

(39:29):
Is Canadian laws different than Florida law, right, so there's
going to be some procedures you would have to do
up there that would be different than down here. But
still the basic fundamentals foundations of a homicide investigation are
going to be the same thing in Ontario, Canada than
they are right here in Vera Beach, Florida.

Speaker 6 (39:45):
Larry, here's something else, and here's something else that is
standard in all radio stations is we have to take breaks.
So please stand by. Larry Lawson is my very special guest.
The name off his book is Haunted Indian Riverroad County.
It's available on Amazon or on his website. And we'll
be back on the other side of this very short
break as we wrap up tonight's show here in the

(40:06):
X Zone with your Shirley, Rob McConnell and my very
special guest and very best of friend, Larry Lawson.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
Don't go away.

Speaker 6 (40:12):
You're listening to your hometown radio Classic twelve twenty and
we're streaming on Classic twelve twenty dot.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
A something weird and don't who you gonna come, babe?

Speaker 4 (40:40):
If you ever wonder.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Wondered whatever became of.

Speaker 4 (40:46):
Me, I'm living on the air in Cincinnati, Cincinnati, w
k R. Got kind of tired of hacking and hacking
town in town, up and down the dial.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
Just maybe think of me once in a while.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
And welcome back to the X one.

Speaker 6 (41:19):
We're not on WKRP in Cincinnati. We're on your hometown radio,
Classic twelve twenty in Saint Catharine's, Ontario, Canada, streamed around
the world from our broadcast centers there at Classic twelve
twenty dot CA. Larry Lawson is my special guest, or
as I like to call him, Larry Lawrence or Lawrence
Lawson or Lawson Lawrence as long as I don't call

(41:39):
him late for a for a sit down with me
at the local pub in Sebastian. Yeah, he's easy to
get along with. The name of his book is Haunted
Indian River County. It's available on Amazon dot com. And
Larry always great talking to you, my friend.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
You know, we miss you here.

Speaker 6 (41:58):
We miss you here on the X on Broadcast Network,
you know, one of our main stay shows. And maybe
one day you'll come back, even even if it's to
share the Christmas party.

Speaker 5 (42:10):
Well, tivity, one of one of the highlights of my
life is hosting a paranormal stakeout on the X Zone,
so know that. And yes, little break, little vacation. Who
knows what the future is going to hold because I
love being with you on the ex Well, you know.

Speaker 6 (42:26):
What, You're always welcome here, and I you know, I'm
really happy for you, Lari because you over the years
we you we've talked about, Yeah, you wanted to write
a book, and it's so fantastic to see it and
hold it here in my hands. It's at our studios
and just congratulations, buddy, thank.

Speaker 5 (42:44):
You, thank you very much. It's a it was one
of those things that you know, I had all the
history that I've gathered here, the stories that I've heard,
things that my own team have uncovered. It just it
just the point where I wanted to get this done,
and I did it. I'm very proud of it, And
probably probably one of the things that make me happiest

(43:07):
about the book is when somebody reads it and it's
an old time resident of Vera Beach and this really
has not even anything to do with the paranormal. It
has to do with the history part of it. But
they'll say to me, I didn't know that about Vera,
you know. And I'm not even talking about paranormal. I'm
talking about just the history, because a lot of the

(43:27):
book covers the history of our area.

Speaker 6 (43:29):
But you know something that a lot of people have
no idea about is that true paranormal investigators are also historians.

Speaker 5 (43:39):
Amen. Amen, you cannot. You cannot research this phenomenon without
loving and embracing the history of it, because none of
this is happening in the present time. I mean, if
this truly is the other side reaching out to us,
then they.

Speaker 6 (43:57):
Are in the past, that's right.

Speaker 5 (43:58):
And if you don't understand it past, then what's the use.

Speaker 6 (44:05):
Do you think that they know when I'm talking about
those on the other side, that we are trying to
get the get the evidence to prove that we can communicate.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
With those on the other side. That is not wo woism.
It's not.

Speaker 6 (44:24):
All this fakery and trickery that we've seen go on
in the early early years of the paranormal and that
they actually try to interact with us.

Speaker 5 (44:36):
There is something that is interacting us with us, Rob,
And and yes, I do if if you if you're
going to go with the theory that it is the
other side trying to contact us, Yes, I do think
that there is a some level of desire to let
us know. Yeah, I hear you. The question is is

(44:56):
that what it is? Now? Einstein and talks about dimensions
and his general theory of relativity. Would this be an
issue of dimensional science the quantum physics that that are
coming into play now? Could it even be our own mind? Rob?
Could it be could it be us? We've talked about that,

(45:17):
so we've talked about the many many times and alsem,
I think I bore you with it, some dude. But
if it is truly the other side, yeah, I think
they are wanting to communicate. But part of me always
wonders is if that's what the phenomenon is. Are we
supposed to know? Maybe that's why this whole thing is

(45:40):
so hard. Have you ever supposed to know?

Speaker 6 (45:43):
Have you ever noticed the increase of the paranormal sightings
by people as the advent of cellular technology and cell
towers and the different type of wavelengths that they're using,
you know, G four, now G five, going on to
G six shortly, Has there ever been a correlation with

(46:04):
the paranormal and cellular communications.

Speaker 5 (46:10):
There has not been a study, nor is there equipment
that could without question verify that now. There there is
always been. If you look back at the writings of
nikolay Tesla and some of the other hurts, I believe
it wrote some things that Edison is supposed to have
had some interest in this. Also, there's always been a

(46:34):
correlation between radio waves, radio frequencies, frequency vibration. So frankly,
if we get if we do get a break and
we do make contact, it's going to be through frequency
vibration radio signals. That's just my personal opinion. That's that's
just me. So keeping that in mind, yeah, I do

(46:58):
believe that cell your anything to do with radio waves.
I think has something to do with it. I mean,
we've we've seen stories over the years of people seeing
a dead relative appear on a TV, old analog phones,
and if you'll find this, you can find the stories
of this on the on the on the internet. For example,

(47:20):
people when we had analog phones and regular phone lines,
somebody pick up the ring of pick up the phone
and they hear a dead relative on the other side.
Those are all answers. Those are all things that have
been recorded and talked about. We have yet to come
up with the instrument to definitively prove.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
That, uh, there's a there's what's it called white noise?

Speaker 5 (47:45):
Yes?

Speaker 6 (47:46):
Yeah, white noise? And what is your take on the
mechanism and the makings of an EVP? Like how can
you not hear the person on the other side respond
to a question? Yet when you play that recording back
or that digital file back, the.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
Answer is there. How do you how do you know?
I still bogg on my mind with that one.

Speaker 5 (48:12):
Well, this is a this is a really interesting question.
You opposed to meet Rob because I agree with you,
it doesn't make sense. Yet I've seen it happen that
little Billy in the school is a classic example. There's
there's another EVP we got. It was at an old
prison up here. I was with my son Evan and
a couple other folks. We were scouting it out to

(48:33):
set up an investigation, and we were just running a
recorder while we were in there on the way out.
And this is on my website too. You you hear
my son Evan say the question, it's a shame they
were locked up here in life and they were still
locked up in the afterlife. And then there's a and

(48:54):
then there was a very male voice that came out
and said, hell, we ain't dead. It was there now,
we didn't hear it. So if you're asking for my
hearing my thoughts, it's frequency and vibration. I don't know
quite how to apply that yet. The easiest way for

(49:16):
me to explain frequencies and vibrations like that, it's like
our ears, our senses can't always hear things. A dog
whistle is a very simple explanation to it. You know,
dogs can hear it, but we can't. So there's frequency ranges. Now,
how does it get imprinted on the device, I don't know.
But another quick story to tell you We were in

(49:37):
Fellsmere one time. My oldest son Ryan, very stoic, very
serious minded, no nonsense kid, just like his dad. He's
even more so, trust me. But we were doing an
event in Fellsmere and he had some people. We were
going into the old bank building just now the community center,
and I saw this myself, So I mean this this happened.

(50:00):
Ryan has his iPhone out. Another member of the party
had there. I guess it was a Galaxy, an Android phone,
and they're both on recording. The question is asked, is
there anybody here with us? On both phones, you could
hear Ryan asking the question, but only on Ryan's phone

(50:24):
you heard the answer. But of course, just like that,
on the Samsung phone you heard nothing. Now, how the
heck can you explain that? The only theory that I
have is the calibration between the two and the other side.
Maybe you have to hit it at the exact right
moment when everything lines up the frequency of hitting what'sever

(50:48):
on the other side and the device you have now
and you and this is I'm just throwing this out
here because you can't explain what I just what I
just described to you did. How did you not hear it?
The one guy's will, but you heard it on my
son's and I saw that.

Speaker 6 (51:03):
That is just one of the many questions that paranormal
investigators like you, Larry, are constantly asking. You know, speaking
about equipment, We've got about two and a half minutes
less flack. Has there been any recent spectacular equipment coming
on the market to make your job as paranormal investigators easier.

Speaker 5 (51:29):
There's been techniques that I think that have improved, but
the equipment. Nothing that has really flipped my skirt, if
you will, that has said wow, there is no question
that if we get who wha.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Whoa whoa whoa whoa?

Speaker 6 (51:43):
Hold what do you what do you mean by flipping
your skirt? I didn't know you wore a skirt.

Speaker 5 (51:49):
The second I said that, I knew I opened the door.

Speaker 6 (51:51):
Well, you sure did. Well, you know, like you know,
I guess g Edgar Hoover was your hero.

Speaker 5 (51:56):
Huh. I guess what I'm trying to say is I
have not seen anything yet that has absolutely Okay, and
I'm being serious, you me, you got me. I have
not seen a piece of equipment yet that has absolutely
and equivocally told me that this is absolute evidence. I mean,

(52:17):
I love SLS cameras. I think they have some possibilities possibilities,
but there's too much of it that you get on
those devices that you can't definitively say is an entity.
As much as I believe in what we call instrumental transcommunication,
which is basically EVPs and things like that, I think

(52:38):
that's where we're going to get our hit. But we're
still working on that. There's still been nothing that can
definitively say that voice came from the other side. Right now,
how we get how we get around that in the
last couple of minutes is if you get a voice,
or you get information, can you correlate it with historical fact?
Can you correlate a name or an event that's told

(52:59):
to you through history or events that are documented.

Speaker 6 (53:03):
Well, here's an event that is documented. It's called the
end of the show. Larry Lawson, thank you so.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
Much for being with Larry.

Speaker 6 (53:09):
What's your website where our listeners can go to to
find out more about you and to buy your book?

Speaker 5 (53:15):
Indian River Hauntings dot Com will also get you to
our Ford of Bureau Paranormal Investigation website, so it'll go
to both and you can get my book on Indian
River Hauntings dot com. It's a haunted Indian River County.
You can also find it on Amazon dot com.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
That's the right, Larry. I hate to do this. I
gotta go. My friend so eanks O Nation until tomorrow.

Speaker 6 (53:34):
Once again we meet here in the X Zone ten
o'clock until midnight Monday through Friday. I'm Rob McConnell and
to all my listeners out there, my guests, thank.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
You for being part of this great show.

Speaker 6 (53:46):
And I always remember keep your eyes to this guy
and your heart to the light.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Good Night, everyone,
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