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May 4, 2020 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
57:44
Edition 450 - Steve Gonzalves

US tv ghost-hunter Steve Gonzalves on his new documentary "The House In Between" about years of intense paranormality at a house in Mississippi...

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Well, I hope you're bearing up under lockdown, as the world seems to be, one way and another.
Here in the United Kingdom, I think we can see some light at the end of the tunnel.
We're not going to be released just yet, but necessarily we have to remain in the situation that we're in for a little while longer until the retransmission rate of this terrible coronavirus reduces in the United Kingdom.
So we're all looking forward to the day when we can maybe go a little further afield than just the shops.
It's a strange thing, and I know that you may well be in the same position that I'm in, but here in my little tiny apartment, at least I've got some greenery to look out at through the window.
But, you know, sometimes you feel a bit trapped.
I have to say, sometimes I have.
Mostly, I'm very good at getting on with stuff on my own.
I always have been, but just occasionally.
And I did ask on podcasts and the radio show just for you to check in with me and let me know how you're doing.
And we can get a kind of community going here.
And so many people have emailed.
Thank you very, very much for all of your emails.
You can always contact me through the website, theunexplained.tv, or leave a comment at the official Facebook page, TheUnexplainedWithHoward Hughes.
Adam Cornwell, my webmaster, responsible for both of those.
So theunexplained.tv, the website, and the Facebook page, TheUnexplainedWithHoward Hughes.
Catchily enough, don't you think?
Now, I talked in recent podcasts about how good the weather was.
Seems to have taken another turn now.
So we've had a lot of rain over the last few days.
But that is by the by, as they say.
I hope wherever in the world you are, you're getting by and that everything's okay.
And, you know, if it isn't, or if it is, you can always make contact with me through the website, thealexplain.tv.
And just to say thank you to a few people.
And this is by no means all of the people who've been in touch in the last week.
Caroline in Austin, Texas.
Jane, Alex in York, Ross, who sent me some ghost photos.
Thank you for those, Ross.
I'm going to be checking those out.
Ani, Nick and Ronin.
Just some of the people who got in touch through my website this last week.
And it's lovely to hear your stories, to read about your lives, and to know that in this position now during these weeks of lockdown, in many ways, we're all the same.
And that is a fact.
Okay, the guest on this edition, Steve Consalves, internationally known American ghost investigator, a producer of a lot of good material that you may have seen on television, shows that he was involved in, like Ghost Team, about four years or so ago, and other productions that he's responsible for.
We'll talk about some of that.
He's also involved in a magazine, the Taps Para magazine, I believe it's called.
He's a former police officer, has had a remarkable life, and is a really cool guy when it comes to investigating all of this from what I've seen online and checking out his work.
He's got a great approach to it all.
At the moment, he's involved in an investigation, which has been turned into a video presentation.
We'll talk about this.
To do with a house, its owner has not been able to live in it for 10 years or sleep in it for 10 years because of the terrifying and thought-provoking things that happen within the four walls of this house.
It is an astonishing place and a truly extraordinary investigation that Steve has done.
And I saw it today.
I watched all, I think it's about 90 minutes long, and I was absolutely enthralled by it.
So we'll talk about Steve's life, his investigations, and that presentation that he's involved in in this edition of The Unexplained, which did feature on my radio show last Sunday night.
But I wanted to bring it to you here too, because I'm producing everything now from my little apartment, my little flat, as we say in the UK.
All right.
Thank you very much for being part of this when you get in touch with me.
By the way, don't forget to tell me who you are.
Why am I counting this out on my fingers?
Who you are, where you are, and how you use this show.
That's three fingers.
So if you could tell me those things, it's always good to know.
I'm not keeping tracking details of you.
It's just nice to know, you know, for my own, for my own reference.
All right, let's cross to the U.S. now to Steve Consalves.
And we're going to talk about ghosts in this hour.
We certainly are.
Steve, thank you for coming on my show.
All right.
Thank you so much for having me.
Steve, really good.
Whereabouts in the U.S. are you?
Where are you located?
I live in Massachusetts, which is in New England, eastern coast of the country.
And yeah, Massachusetts, right on the western side of the state.
Are you near Boston?
Yeah, well, not very close, but pretty close.
About two hours or so.
The state only takes about three and a half or four hours to drive across.
And I'm about two hours from the eastern side of the state.
Okay, well, here comes the first of a whole barrage of dumb questions.
But I never really associated Massachusetts as being a particularly ghostly state.
I tend to think of Florida, the southern states, and of course, California, those being the places that are most ghostly.
Is Massachusetts ghostly spooky?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you've made a great observation with Florida.
That's known quite a bit.
And, of course, you have St. Augustine, which is probably the first settled here in the states.
So you have that history there.
But New England, anytime you have a longer prospect for things like trauma, tragedy, even love and devotion, these are the sort of things that sort of spark this sort of phenomena.
So New England, you know, we're probably the second or third settled in the country here.
So we do have more history to sort of culminate those sorts of emotions.
And yeah, we do have quite a bit of that phenomena around here.
Well, that's good to know.
You know, I've visited Boston quite a number of times, always love it, and always love the history there.
But I've never come across, maybe I haven't been looking for it, anything paranormal there.
So I need to look at it with a different pair of eyes next time, I think.
Next time you come, let me know.
I'll send you a list and you can do a little bit of a hop around.
We're allowed to have coffee again.
Maybe if you're in Boston, we can have a coffee somewhere nice.
lots of nice places to have coffee in Boston.
100%.
Or maybe even a fish lunch at Legal Seafoods.
Oh, God.
That's another thing I'd like.
Yeah.
Just talking to my listener here in the UK.
There's a fish restaurant in Boston that is famous throughout the world.
It's called Legal Seafoods.
And you have to cue because it's so popular to get in there.
But boy, it's worth it.
But we're not talking about seafood.
And we can't talk about seafood because according to your biography, and I'm just looking at the bottom of your biography, how strange that I should talk about seafoods and going there.
Because the bottom bit of your biography that I've just seen here, if this is correct, we can't go there unless you have a beef burger because you can't eat seafood.
Is that right?
That's in your biography.
That's in your biography.
I don't like seafood.
I don't.
I know I should.
It's quite healthy for you.
Being Portuguese, we're sort of into the seafood thing, but it never got me.
You could eat fried fish.
Okay, well, unless we go separate places, we ain't going to legal seafoods.
That's so funny.
I just got at the bottom of your biography there.
Now, the biggest part of your biography is the way that you got into investigating paranormality, because like my dad, you were a cop.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, your dad was an officer?
Yes, he was an officer.
And one of the things about being in the police, as you will know, I don't know, did you serve in Massachusetts in the police?
I did, yes.
All right.
That's right.
One of the things that I think is true throughout the world, because you encounter every aspect of life and some of the worst aspects of life, things in which people die or have bad experiences, paranormality is something that visits many police officers.
My father had many, many experiences.
And I'm guessing, but it is only a guess that maybe through the police work, it helped you to come closer to realizing you wanted to be a paranormal investigator?
Oh, that's a good question and a really interesting observation through your dad's sort of eyes there as well.
You know, I was an investigator before I was a police officer.
So it came the opposite way for me.
I started investigating when I was, you know, maybe 15 years old or so.
And I didn't become a police officer until I was 22, I believe.
Yeah, I think I was 22.
But it has prepared me most certainly for investigating, you know, in terms of, you know, my police work, put me in a state of mind where I don't just take many things at face value.
You know, someone tells me that they had a certain experience or whatever.
I don't necessarily think they're lying to me like a police officer may.
But in this field, a lot of things are up for misinterpretation or, you know, everybody, we're organic matter.
So my eyes interpret things differently than your eyes may, that sort of thing.
So I think there can be misinterpretation, that sort of thing.
And police work has really helped me stay, you know, grounded in terms of not thinking everything is a ghost or not really taking everybody's stories and claims as 100% factual.
Right.
And obviously that police experience.
You know, if you're doing a police investigation, you're going to get loads of people coming up to you saying, he did it.
You know, we all know he did it.
And you can't say that he did it until you've investigated.
So that, I think, means that being a police officer is the perfect background for doing the stuff that you do.
Wow.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I would tend to agree.
It helps you stay in the world of common sense, sort of, which is very valuable for this field, the paranormal, you know, because you're dealing with the fantastic and it's easy to get carried away.
You know, because if I believe in this black mass that I just saw, I can believe in a whole bunch of other things, but I can't let myself get carried away.
You know, I need to stay grounded and realize that I need to take it one experience and one phenomena at a time.
You know, just because I believe in A doesn't mean I should inherently believe in B, C, D, E, and F, you know, that sort of thing.
So it's almost like a scientific method that you employ.
I try.
You know, it's definitely pseudoscience.
You know, it's not, none of us are scientists by any stretch of the imagination, but I do implement those protocols and procedures.
Two is a coincidence.
Three is a pattern.
If it disobeys the laws of physics, which I've, you know, studied and given myself a good groundwork and a good foundation in, if it disobeys the laws of science and physics, I tend to think that I'm misinterpreting what I'm seeing or experiencing or that it's in my head.
You know, maybe a telephonic or audiophonic sound or visual.
Who knows?
But that's the way I sort of approach it.
And it's very refreshing to hear somebody who does what you do say that I may have misinterpreted, I might have this wrong, it may not be what it appeared to be.
Because a lot of people in this field, because they have various imperatives, maybe they're trying to make TV shows, maybe they're trying to sell books, maybe they just want to be the person who discovers something that is absolutely astonishing and they want to tell the world about it.
Sometimes I get the feeling that there is a temptation to convince yourself before you should actually be convinced if you know what I'm saying.
Yes, absolutely.
You're right.
You know, emotions are contagious.
And what's interesting is they're also contagious from your subconscious to your conscious.
It's kind of crazy.
Your brain can really, you know, mess with you and it can do that with anxiety and it can do that with all sorts of phenomena.
So you may get yourself so pumped up that you want to believe and you're going to believe and all of a sudden you start believing in anything and everything, but you're really just building on your own sort of steamroller, your own snowball effect, which is fine and all, but you need to realize that that could be happening and really sort of ground yourself and get yourself back to reality.
These things can happen and they do happen, but we would be doing a disservice to ourselves and the field if we thought everything that was happening is most certainly paranormal.
Okay, well, that's a good starting point.
15 years of age, According to what you told me, 15 years of age was when you began an interest in this.
Talk to me about how you were thinking about these things, what you experienced back then.
Sure, yeah.
You know, Ghostbusters, obviously, it sounds incredibly silly, but watching that movie as a kid, the thought in my head most certainly went through a hundred times.
This is the coolest thing ever.
How can I be one of those guys?
You know, even though it didn't exist.
But then fast forward in, I was maybe 10 or 11 or 12, and I was sick, but ended up, you know, fumbling through the channels and stumbled upon a movie called The Entity and scared the, you know, scared the, scared, scared the crap out of me, to be honest.
I was trying to think of a nice word.
As always, after midnight, we can say that.
Okay.
It did.
It scared the crap out of me.
And I started crying.
You know, my mom came in the room and she was mortified at what I was watching.
You know, no mom wants their kid to be watching that sort of programming.
And she told me it was, you know, just a movie, calm down.
And I think I pretended to go back to sleep.
And then I saw that in the credits, it said based on true events.
And that blew my mind and my fear quickly turned to intrigue at just that young age.
And so I started reading books right away.
Not ghost story books, but the practical books of the how-to is for whatever reason what intrigued me.
So I was reading books by Lloyd Auerbach and William G. Roll and Hans Holtzer and all of these people that were investigating and looking into the paranormal, not just the stories.
And from there, I started following Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are investigators pretty famous for the Amityville and The Conjuring and these sorts of high-profile movies that are out.
I started working with them when I was, well, I started following them, I should say.
And then I started working with them when I was, gosh, I want to say 17 or 18, just on a few cases.
They were very kind to even tickle my interest because they were very prominent investigators.
And here I am, this 18-year-old just trying to dip into it.
So how were you able to get in with them when you were, as you say, 17, 18?
They didn't...
And I'm not sure it would happen today if either one of them was alive.
But I simply called Ed Warren and left a voicemail on an answering machine and said, hey, love your work.
I've been following it forever.
I'm a paranormal investigator, and I have a case that I don't know what to do with.
I'm a little bit young, and I'm looking for some advice and maybe some help.
And I said, perhaps I've bitten off a little bit too much at my young age, and I realize I'm getting ahead of myself.
What would you suggest?
And he called me himself and talked to me and counseled me through it and then agreed to take on the case himself.
And so I handed the case over to Ed and Lorraine Warren and their nephew, John Zafis.
And he's another investigator, demonologist.
He has a show called The Haunted Collector and a really, really sharp fella.
And then I just kept going with it.
Started my own team shortly after that.
I didn't work with the Warrens very long.
It was only on two cases.
And what was that first case?
What was the case that you put them onto?
It was a case of a haunted person.
It wasn't a haunted house or anything like that.
It was a gentleman who started realizing that something was following him and being really nasty, would hold him down at night and things like that.
And there were a lot of things I couldn't quite explain.
But there was one time where I was talking with him and interviewing him and he started crying.
And I was like, oh man, what's wrong?
And he's like, it's coming around.
He's like, I know when it's coming.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
And then all of a sudden, I saw his jacket kind of get pulled off of him a little bit.
Like literally saw the collar get pulled down.
It exposed his shoulder and just in such a non-organic way, it was really unsettling the way it looked.
You know, it just, my brain just knew that it wasn't a natural phenomenon.
So you were actually like 18 years of age and sitting there watching this guy's jacket being pulled off him by a force that neither of you really understood.
Exactly.
He didn't understand it.
And neither did I. And that was when I realized, like, because he was crying.
And I said, holy cow, I need to take this stuff as serious because this guy is terribly frightened.
He doesn't understand this.
And that's when I realized that this field needs to be taken as seriously as you can ever take it.
Because regardless of what they're experiencing is true or not, or is a ghost or not, they are truly terrified and can't explain it or understand it.
So taking it professionally and scientifically, I feel like, is the better way to go.
But that's when I realized it really needed to be taken quite seriously.
And in the few seconds we have left in this segment, how did the Warrens resolve this, if they did?
They did.
They did whatever their version of a cleansing would be at the time.
I think they did what's called systematic object removal, where they recognized an item that he had acquired over time, removed it from the home, and the activity stopped and stopped falling or whatever happened.
And then they realized, okay, that's what it was.
And the activity sort of stopped.
But at my young age, I didn't even know that technique was a thing.
It wasn't in any of the books I had read.
And I didn't amass much of a database for myself yet.
But that's how we got to the bottom of that.
And I just kept going in the field and going in the field.
All right.
Well, we'll talk more about that.
Just very quickly, though, before I round This bit up.
What did your parents, what do you folks think about you doing this at 18?
It's a good question.
They were, you know, my parents, to be honest, have always been incredibly, incredibly supportive.
My dad thought this sort of thing was silly, you know, and I think he still does a little bit, to be honest with you.
But my mom is a believer in that sort of thing.
And she would tell me, you know, do what you want to do.
But she would actually think that I would bring things home and bring things into the house.
And she would be nervous about that.
But very supportive.
They looked at it as a fun little hobby that I was tinkering with.
My dad at one point was a little concerned that maybe there was some occult type of thing going on, you know, but I'm a Catholic, a Christian.
I've always have been.
There's none of that in me.
And he quickly realized that it's just a paranormal thing.
But yeah, they were very, very supportive.
And let me, you know, tread that.
And it becomes an awful lot more than a hobby.
Okay, we'll talk some more.
Steve Konsavis, famous ghost investigator, known in America, known throughout the world.
Started for him when he was 15, got involved with the Warrens, famous investigators of these things that you don't get more famous than they were, and then went out on his own.
We'll pick it up from there then, Steve.
So talk to me about the journey between working with the Warrens and then starting your own investigations and then eventually getting yourself on the TV.
Yeah, the war, it was a great, you know, very, very fond time of my life.
And I feel, you know, sort of honored to be able to say that, you know, I'm one of, you know, that I was able to work with them and be in their presence and see them investigate without all of the hoop blah that sort of surrounded them.
It was awesome, but it was short-lived.
I don't want to paint a picture that isn't accurate.
I maybe worked alongside them on maybe two cases, but I did follow them and go to their lectures for many, many years and have such great memories.
After that, I started my own team called the Paranormal Research Foundation.
And we were doing cases.
And I was actually teaching a class out of the Boston Center for Adult Education on the paranormal.
And I was in my early 20s.
And at the same time, I had been investigating and working with Jason Hawes, who is from TAPS and Ghost Hunters and now Ghost Nation and the UPRO.
And at the time, that team was called Rhode Island Paranormal.
It wasn't called TAPS.
And so we were just investigating and sharing stories.
And then we decided to join forces.
He knew of my class at the Boston Center for Adult Education.
And then a gentleman named Grant Wilson came along and said, hey, your team is cool and all, but your website's kind of dumpy.
And I'm a webmaster.
Let's get a new website.
And, you know, I'll do it for free because I enjoy what you guys do.
And so Grant actually joined the team, built a whole new website, and then it became the Atlantic Paranormal Society from that point.
And then my team sort of dissolved a little bit.
And I just joined up with Jason and Grant and TAPS.
And I went to the Rhine Research Center at one point and did an energy study with Dr. William G. Roll, which was probably the most informative time in my career in terms of understanding EMF and energy and energy transference and the real deal.
He's a real doctor and takes all this.
He's a believer, but he pioneered the whole EMF correlation.
He wrote the Poltergeist book that the movie is based off of and a real pioneer in terms of the energy science behind paranormal study.
And so now fast forward a little bit and maybe 2002, we disproved a haunting in a court of law that was sort of, we were able to figure out that a woman was actually taking a cocktail of a few different medicines that was making her hallucinate, thinking she was seeing ghosts.
So she wasn't able to sue this real estate company or whatever the situation was exactly.
Right.
Hang on.
How were you brought into a court case then?
How did you get brought into that?
You know, that was mostly just...
I'd have to dig out the actual newspaper article.
It's been almost 20 years now.
But generally, the way that I'm thinking it worked is that the people on the opposition, obviously the people trying to prove that what was happening in the property was not a paranormal phenomenon.
It was something different, which ultimately was proved.
They were looking for somebody to show that that was in fact the case.
So it's the opposite, really, of the sorts of investigations that you normally do.
You're trying to disprove something.
That's right.
We do try to disprove things.
That's sort of what put us on the map is our protocol and procedure.
And it's not that we don't believe.
I believe for sure.
I've seen things.
I believe.
But 80 to 90% of all claims and experiences most certainly can be explained.
And we would be doing a disservice to ourselves, to the field, to our clients if we weren't 100% sure that what we were telling them and showing them was something unexplained.
So that's just our method that we think holds a little more validity, maybe, in terms of our evidence and our experiences.
Oh, I think it absolutely does.
What are the hallmarks, and maybe you can refer to specific cases or not as the case may be, but what are the hallmarks of the genuine ones?
If we accept, and I kind of think you're right, that maybe three quarters of these things can be explained and maybe a quarter of these really can't.
And some of those are genuinely terrifying, like the ghost house.
Your documentary will talk about that very soon.
What are the hallmarks of the ones that really are unexplained?
that's a great question.
And we actually have been able to recognize some of that.
And the only way to really get anywhere in this field, in any field, without any facts, there are no facts in the field of paranormal research.
Unfortunately, there are zero.
But you have to recognize patterns within case studies.
It's really the only way right now, anyway.
And we have recognized some patterns.
For instance, your body's fight or flight mechanism, right?
That's a real thing.
And that is programmed into your brain from the days of when you had to be hunter, when we, all of us had to be hunter-gatherers, get our own food.
While we were out there hunting, we had to make sure that something wasn't hunting us, you know?
And so we have that built-in fight or flight mechanism that we need to know if something is coming up behind us to pounce on us when we're hunting for our food.
And so that is a real phenomena, and it has to do with energy.
And when you're in a place that is, and this takes some time, you know, to really tune into this.
And it's not a psychic or a mediumistic sense.
I'm not sure, you know, how much I really put into that sort of phenomenon, but it is a real physical and scientific phenomena where there's static in the atmosphere, and there is the magnetic field, and there's static on everything that is here.
You know, you pick up a hat, it's covered in static, it's everywhere.
So as we move around, everything that has mass is moving through the atmosphere, displacing all of that matter, and that matter is pushing up on our static barrier.
So if you can imagine two people standing in a room, as I walk towards them, all of those atoms, all of that matter displaces, and the static barrier that's all over all of us start to pick up on that and get that little tingle.
And you can tune into that 100%.
It's the same exact phenomena as when somebody walks in a room behind you, say you have no idea they're there, but somehow you sensed it and you turned around, you see them and they scare the bejesus out of you.
It's sort of that sort of thing.
You know it's there, but you can't really see it.
It's just a mass displacing energy and you do pick up on that.
Right.
And so the energy is there in the cases that are more likely to be the real deal.
And the energy is not there.
I don't know whether this is a hard and fast rule every time, but the energy is not there when it's one of the 75%.
Yeah, it's more a tell, you know, when you first enter and you're walking around and really, you know, if it's been a day or two and I haven't picked up on that feeling at all, I tend to think that my time there, I may not come across much.
But that's also hard to say, too, because we don't know what their perception of time and space is.
You know, I mean, what is a year here in our physical world could be nothing to them, a millisecond, or it could be the opposite.
It could be 15, you know, or it might not even matter.
We have no idea.
So, you know, what seems like a few days here, and we're like, oh, we haven't seen anything in a few days.
It's, you know, you shouldn't really think that way.
But fortunately, unfortunately, we do have boundaries, you know, and we do have to think that way.
But it's a tough line because you don't know when the activity is going to happen.
So when should you throw in the towel and say it's not haunted?
You know what I mean?
Because you may need three years at that place.
You just never know.
So it's not, like you said, it's not an exact science.
Obviously, not much is in this field.
Actually, nothing is in this field, but we're trying, you know, and that is through recognizing patterns that we find in case studies.
Anything scared you over the years?
Yeah, for sure.
Not scared like of the paranormal where, you know, I'm frightened, but it starts as being startled, of course.
You know, if you're in a place and you know you're the only person or me and say my buddy Jay or my buddy Tango, we're the only people in this room.
And, you know, all of a sudden that chair slides forward five feet, you're going to get startled.
It would be impossible.
And you're not just going to stand there and go, oh, that's cool.
Check it out.
Okay, okay.
Over the years, then what has startled you most?
Can you think of one case that has startled you?
That's a good word to use more than maybe any of the others.
Absolutely.
This case was in Enfield, Connecticut, actually, which is part of New England here in the States.
And there was a case.
Now, a lot of people will jump and say demonic or inhuman, but it's hard because it could have just been somebody who was a sour fella or gal when they were alive, and they still have that sour attitude now.
Or it could have been something quite negative and demonic.
But at this case, a coffee table slid forward about five or six feet and flipped over, and a spontaneous fire occurred on a table, which was pretty fascinating.
I remember seeing the char mark and took pictures of it, and I was just marveled.
I was like, how did this happen right in front of my eyes?
And you were sure it wasn't being faked?
You know, that is always going through my head, to be honest, always, at all times.
And I mean, I couldn't figure out any way that it could be unless she somehow, you know, it was a woman who the case was based the client, unless she somehow, you know, squirted lighter fluid on the table when I wasn't looking and I couldn't, you know, smell it.
And she somehow pulled a lighter out and, you know, got lit it up or something, unless there's some other, you know, way to do it.
But that was fascinating.
But one thing that out of all of that, the thing that really got me was something that is known as indusions in the paranormal field where for whatever reason, they don't want you there.
And they know what bothers you.
And it's things for humans like the smell of feces, the smell of vomit, you know, the smell of burning flesh, the smell of sulfur, very strong sulfur smells, temperatures going from 100 degrees to 30 degrees, 100 degrees to 10 degrees, that sort of thing.
It's trying to make it very, very uncomfortable for you so that you will leave.
And that happened.
And I haven't experienced that ever since then, and I never did before then.
And I left the house.
I did.
I went with the family.
We all left together.
I don't blame you.
Did the family go back to that place?
Oh, yeah.
Yep.
We got them back.
I didn't leave like running and like, oh, my gosh.
But I said them, I said, you know what?
I think I'm done for the night.
And it's kind of a funny story, but all four of us, the mother, it was a grandfather and the two kids, we all went to a local hotel and sort of just hung out and like slumber partied for the rest of the night.
It actually became kind of a fun evening.
And then, you know, recouped myself, you know, and went back a few days later.
But that was probably the only time I think I was legitimately scared from something paranormal.
Oh, boy, your forbearance there and going back to the place is more than I would have done.
I don't think I've ever returned.
All right, I think it's time that we set the scene then for the new documentary, which I saw today.
It's about an hour and a half long.
It is beautifully put together.
I was saying to you before we started recording this that it is the kind of thing that you would expect to see in a cinema.
It is so technically well put together, but also you're not throwing the story down people's throats.
You are allowing people to make their own conclusions.
And I love the understated tone of this thing.
But anyway, it's called Ghost House.
And I think in the four or five minutes or so we've got left in this segment, let's just briefly tell the story.
If I just start it this way, this is a house in the U.S. that is owned by a woman called Alice Jackson.
And it is so weird that Alice Jackson, who comes across as a fascinating and really interesting person, I have to say through this, you portray her wonderfully.
But Alice Jackson is not able to sleep in that place.
For a whole decade, she has this lovely house, and she's not able to sleep in it because of the stuff that happens there.
And this stuff began even before the house was, you know, was ready to occupy, while the builders were still there, right?
That's right.
Yeah.
Wow.
You really dug into that thing.
No, I loved it.
Let's just give the location first.
Sure.
This is in gosh, what's the name?
It's in Mississippi, right?
Right outside of Jackson.
And it's a beautiful, beautiful little town, very quiet.
Isn't it called Florence?
It's called Florence, isn't it?
The actual town is Florence, Florence, Mississippi.
It's a pretty familiar-looking house.
We try not to give out the exact city just so people aren't driving by.
But yeah, Alice started reaching out to me through a booking agent I had at the time.
And over the course of a few months or whatever, a lot of things started intriguing me.
One was that I'd never heard of a place that was a controlled study of the paranormal for 10 years straight.
She opened her house up to local investigators for 10 years and said, have at it.
I just need answers.
And the thing with Alice is she didn't really know.
Is it ghostly?
Is it extraterrestrial?
Is it a religious experience?
It just scared her.
Even if it was scientific, she said, I don't care ghosts.
I don't want, I just need answers.
If a scientist would come and tell me that it's something natural like a plasma light, she said, that's fine.
But I don't have the answer, so I can't sleep in the house.
And, you know, she built this house to raise a family and really to be her dream house and quickly fell apart.
She really didn't spend any time in there.
And even though it hasn't been lived in for 10 years, it's not like it, I mean, it's beautifully kept, very well maintained.
And you're right.
She's a beautiful, beautiful person.
I fell in love with her instantly.
We all did.
She is just the kindest, nice.
And I'm saying this from the heart.
She really is the kindest woman I think I may have ever met.
Speaking out of, you know, family, you know, family will always be nearest and dearest.
She's a remarkable person.
But the thing that strikes me about her, just as we conclude this, here we go with the end of another segment.
Time flies when you're having fun, like they say.
But I don't know.
How do I put this?
I don't know how she was able to put up with the things that she put up with.
I think the clincher for her, wasn't it, when she was in bed one night and out of nowhere, and this place is in the country, a piercing white light shafted down from the ceiling in this bedroom of hers.
And she just thought, right, that's it.
I'm out.
Can't do it.
Can't stay here anymore.
That was the kicker.
But all kinds of other stuff was going on there before that.
Lights would turn themselves off and on.
You put a ball on the stairs, which you did as a test.
That ball will throw itself down the stairs.
An awful lot of bumps and bangs and noises and some voices.
The whole nine yards was all erupting in that little house that poor Alice Jackson had built to live a peaceful life in.
That's right.
She did.
And, you know, it's a beautiful little town.
And part of it, you know, and I get a little emotional in the documentary, embarrassingly, but you just feel it when you're there.
It's a beautiful little town.
And she's living with this stigma.
Nobody, you know, and to be honest, we wanted to showcase what people who are dealing with haunting go through.
You know, that's a human experience.
Which you absolutely do.
You absolutely, absolutely do.
So we're going to get back to you in Massachusetts.
Steve Consalves is here, ghost investigator, well known on television and other places.
We're talking about Ghost House.
The story of an astonishing house called the Mississippi House, lived in by a woman called Alice Jackson, terrorized in all kinds of ways into not being able to sleep there.
She brings in a team of investigators.
That's where Steve Gonsalves and his team comes in and they make an amazing documentary.
I think what we should do, Steve, if you don't mind, I've got a couple of Short clips from the documentary.
Maybe we should hear one of them now.
How about that?
Yeah, please.
That'd be great.
All right, let's do it.
This is quite early on in the documentary, and this 60 seconds says an awful lot.
Listen, this house has really grabbed me.
It's got its hooks sinked into me.
There's a lot of things that happen in this house that we can't explain.
Oh, it's wild just being there.
It has this, you know, this aura about it of mystery.
When they started building, we noticed that there were some strange things happening.
And I really did feel watched.
I felt presence.
I felt observed.
I didn't know if it was a religious experience.
I didn't know if it was a UFO experience.
I didn't know what it was.
It scared me to death.
That was a turning point in my life because I decided that I would not stay here by myself at night.
I never mentioned it to hardly anybody in this town about the paranormal activity in my house because I wasn't sure how they would take it.
It's in the Bible Belt.
And I didn't know how they would take it.
Well, they took it pretty well.
In fact, I thought her neighbors were pretty supportive.
But that gives us a flavor, doesn't it, Steve, of what that woman was going through.
Yeah, yeah.
She really, you know, her neighbor who lives directly next door actually had an experience, many experiences in the house.
Very, very sweet lady.
And you could tell she's very, very apprehensive.
But there is a little funny side story.
Kendall, who is a cinematographer and co-director and worked with him on and off for 15 years on Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters Academy, all our shows there.
He was establishing his drone shots, right?
Because we need those overhead shots with the drone.
You see him coming down on the house.
And it's just a common staple in television and motion pictures nowadays.
And the drone actually landed in the neighbor's yard across the street.
And so we just walked over and reached our arm in to grab it.
And the woman came out running, get out of my yard.
I don't want that stuff over here.
I know what goes on in that house, and I don't want it coming over here.
And we're like, well, no, no, we just dropped her drone.
And she did not, she thought by us stepping foot onto her property, the ghosts were going to follow us and come over to her house.
Right.
So it deals with that.
It was that notorious and that well known that people knew about it, even if they didn't speak about it every day.
One of the things that Alice said in that little clip we heard, and one of the things that your investigators, your team say, is that this house is trying to communicate with us.
Yes.
Yeah, that to me is quite fascinating.
I had never come across a situation, and it was one of the main reasons I wanted to do the documentary just from a paranormal study side of things.
I had never heard or never come across a group of investigators who were using one location over the course of 10 years to help teach what's there to communicate with the physical world here and seem to be able to track results.
And that was so fascinating to me.
Oh, this place is used as a training ground to help the, I mean, I'm going to use umbrella terms here that may or may not fit, but, you know, to help spirits communicate with us here in the physical world.
I think that was so cool.
Well, I thought it was as well.
It was an aspect of it all that I've never really seen explained on any documentary and never really read that much about in books.
The fact that there's a two-way traffic, they are teaching you about them.
And if you believe in these things, and they need to be taught how to communicate with us.
And I think this is just a second clip I want to play, and this is the last one.
It's just 30 seconds.
This is when, and you will know who this guy is.
Sorry, I've forgotten his name, but he was somebody who went in there to do electronic voice phenomena.
In other words, to try and talk to the spirits.
Let's listen to this.
We accidentally called an incredible spirit voice EVP, electronic voice phenomena, and that kind of changed me.
So why is that one over there in the woods?
You see that?
It is in the woods.
You see it?
Oh no, I guess trying close to close shine.
What the f ⁇ is that?
What was that?
What?
Did you say placed on the set in here?
No?
No.
Did y'all?
No.
There?
Did you hear somebody say in here?
Did somebody just say in here?
Did you hear that?
You're kidding.
My biggest goal that I set in my mind was to document evidence that was clean, clear, and easy to view.
Well, that was definitely clean, clear, and easy to view.
If you believed it, and if it wasn't a monumental fake, then there was one of the clearest electronic voice phenomena that I've ever heard saying, it's in here.
There's the voice.
Were you absolutely sure that that was not faked for you?
I don't think that was faked.
I really don't.
But because I just need to speak honestly, that particular clip, I do believe that they 100% believe that what they experienced was that.
But if you notice, John has, and his name's John the Investigator, he has earbuds in, right?
Yes, I know that.
Yes.
So when I look at that clip, my brain says, well, how would he know if that voice was really coming strictly through his recording or if that was an organic voice in the environment?
Somebody talking far away or somebody talking there.
He wouldn't know that.
So I'm not sure if he's jumping to a little bit of a conclusion there.
Just to defend him slightly, it doesn't have to invalidate it completely because electronic voice phenomena, a lot of the things that people say are on those recordings, and that goes back To the days when people did it on magnetic tape.
You don't hear them until you play the tape back.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It 100% could be.
And the fact that John believes in it so strongly makes me believe that it is.
But as a skeptically-minded investigator, not a skeptic, because skeptics have agendas.
I don't have an agenda.
But skeptically minded, that's the only thing that makes me scratch my head about that, is that I just wish his ears were free and clear so that he could have, you know, or if you're going to do that where one person listens, you need to have somebody that 100% is there just to tell you that voice was in the environment.
That was a traveling voice coming from a house down the road.
I did notice the earbuds.
You brought in experts.
You brought in people from universities.
There was one guy here who was an expert, I think, in motion.
And in fact, you brought in a number of experts, including an electrician, to check the lighting.
And the electrician found out that the lighting was A-OK.
There was no reason why it should be turning itself off and on like it did.
So he did a proper check, a proper electrician.
And you had a couple of experts talking about the energy in the area, the fact that that place was built on limestone.
And could that affect things?
Could that make that ball move down the stairs like it did?
And could that produce the light?
So you brought in accredited experts.
Absolutely.
Dr. Chillin Dai, who was very, very physicist.
And I chose him out of the few physicists.
We actually, I probably had to contact and talk to maybe 30 to 40 different physicists.
And I didn't mean talk to, like, they wanted to talk to me for days and days just to, you know, which was great because I learned so much, but just to see what we were really getting into.
And they all turned us down because paranormal.
Nobody wanted to speak on behalf or even be.
And I would tell them, like, but no, this is unbiased.
We don't care if it's haunted or not.
We just want your real opinion.
If you don't think it's, we want to showcase that too.
And we found maybe just two or three that would talk to us on camera.
And I chose Dr. Chilandai because his exact expertise is in energy transference and light anomalies and that sort of thing.
So if we're trying to figure out that light phenomenon, he is the perfect candidate for it.
So we were very lucky to get Dr. Dai.
We could not get a geologist.
We tried.
We talked to maybe 30 or 40 geologists all over the country, some in Jackson, Mississippi.
And not one geologist would work with us.
Very political, they said.
I suppose if you say paranormality, that is sometimes the response.
You had a professor of physics as well who was open-minded about this thing.
He thought that there had to be some kind of scientific explanation for what was...
And you try various ways to replicate that by bashing the stairs and all sorts of other things.
And you also checked out how level the foundations of the building were, just in case that was the problem.
And he came up with the conclusion that there has to be something scientific doing this, but he wasn't sure what it was.
Yes.
That's Dr. Michael Dennon, Professor Dennon, very, I mean, obviously, smart as you can get.
And it's funny because, I mean, when you talk to these physicists, I mean, I honestly feel like plankton or algae.
It really makes you feel so, and they don't do it on purpose.
They're just so enlightened in terms of the real world science and how things really work.
It was just so fascinating to get all of this information.
And what I loved so much is I was able to, not prove, because you can't prove anything beyond a shadow of a doubt in this field, but I was able to really cross things off in my own sort of paranormal theory list.
You know, can running water create enough energy to spark paranormal phenomena?
And I found out, no, it most likely can't.
Can, you know, large mineral deposits such as limestone and quartz and that sort of thing hold and harbor energy?
And as you'll see in the documentary, yeah, it can.
And these are people, you know, and I don't mean to say people, you know, physicists, scientists who don't believe in the paranormal.
You know, they just are scientists.
And so the conclusion that comes out from the scientists you involved is that we need to do more investigation of a scientific nature on this place, which was interesting.
You brought in a medium, and the medium was firmly convinced that there were, and one of the neighbors as well, we have to say, that there was a body or bodies buried under the backyard.
Yes.
Yeah.
I believe that the, for sure, has something to do with that backyard, personally, just everything that has come together.
And one thing that is kind of sad, and it's just the nature of making movies, is that some things can't be featured just out of time and out of story narrative not making sense, that sort of thing.
So we weren't able to really feature the history that much, right?
But in the history, the gentleman who founded the town and everything lit the town on fire and did some really terrible things.
And we kind of might believe that he could be behind what's happening there.
But we weren't really focusing that much on that in the documentary because we kind of want the audience to come up with their own conclusion, which is kind of the fun of the documentary by the end.
One theory may be that there was a big fire in that little town.
And people died.
I don't think it was particularly well documented.
And those people may have ended up buried there, hence the activity.
And hence, if you believe in spirits, the spirits want to draw attention to themselves because they were kind of undocumented.
I mean, all of these things, you know, you're going to have to leave to another investigation, I guess.
Before you left there, by the way, tell me if I said anything That wasn't correct back then.
Just now.
No, you're great.
Because we're coming to the end of the hour and I'm trying to move it quickly.
But at the very end of it, your team were packing up their gear.
They'd been filming.
There was one or two cameras still there, but most of the gear was about to be taken away.
And in that last hour or two, there was an absolute flurry of paranormal activity, wasn't there?
Yes.
And you know what's really funny about that?
And it's not in the documentary, just because it may not really make sense because it was more like an inside joke.
The investigators and the homeowner and the local, you know, John and Brad, they would continuously tell us, what you'll find out is the house messes with you, right?
But then when you're ready to leave, it doesn't let you leave.
It doesn't want you to leave.
And I didn't really know what to think of that, right?
But then fast forward, here we are packing up, getting ready to leave, and the house doesn't want us to leave.
All this stuff starts happening, you know, and it was pretty crazy.
And I remember, you know, just scratching my head and thinking, be like, holy cow, those son of a guns were right.
You know, the house does not want us to leave.
It was pretty cool.
But yeah, you're right, at the end there, there is quite a flurry of stuff that So you're going to have to go back there.
Now, this documentary is well worth watching.
It's called Ghost House.
We'll give the details of it at the very end.
But I promised some of my listeners that I would ask you some questions here, Steve.
So I know that you've been asked questions at conventions and things before, so you'll understand this stuff, but we can literally only do a sentence on each one.
Alan, Alan in the Wirrall near Liverpool, who I think was in the police, asks, when you were a cop, did you experience things?
Now, they have a term in Liverpool, the main bridewell.
I think they use that term in Glasgow as well.
The Main Bridewell is like the central police station.
Did you have ghostly experiences in the central police station that you worked from?
That's a very specific question.
That is a good question.
And thank you for your service, sir.
Very kind.
No, not at the police department.
We didn't have any activity in there.
It was a newer building.
Not that that matters so much, but there was just really nothing ever happening.
Well, there you go, Alan.
Brian asks, what do your colleagues that you worked with, the cops who you used to work with, think about what you do now?
Very, very, at the time, a little bit of a, come on, man, you're spending too much time in the graveyard.
You know, you should be writing tickets, that sort of thing.
But nowadays, very supportive, and I hear from them all the time, and they love it.
Okay.
And Adele and Daz both ask, can you recall one experience that you might have had of a paranormal nature when you were a cop that really raised your eyebrows?
Yes, I got called to clear a building, which means that somebody thought there was somebody running around in a building, a maintenance worker.
And I was the police officer going in there to clear the building and heard the running myself.
And you can always tell the difference between clop, clop, clop and actually the cadence of a person running.
And it was running behind me.
I was running after it.
And there was nobody in that building that I could find or any other cop.
Well, you know, those things happen in the police service.
My dad, if he was here today, would tell you.
Sue, regular listener, thank you, Sue, asks, and one word answer would do even, what is the piece of equipment for ghost hunting that you find gives you the best and most consistent results?
Video camera.
Lovely.
Okay, thank you.
Yes.
John in Nottingham, finally.
This is real good.
John in Nottingham, what intrigues you most?
What are the things that fire your interest up most?
Oh, physics, evidence, and first-hand experiences, and I can't explain.
It's like bungee jumping to me.
The most excitement you could ever have.
You are a great guest, Steve Gonsalves, and I've loved this conversation.
And if there's any justice in this world, then your documentary, Ghost House, that is available, you will tell me how in just a second, needs to do really well.
So if people want to see this, where do they go?
It's for pre-order now on iTunes, but also in the UK.
They'll be able to get Vimeo on demand and a lot of different outlets and maybe even really TV at some point.
Not too sure.
Well, working on some things.
It's so good.
It looks so good and feels so good.
It deserves to be on the TV or on the cinema.
And that's just my personal opinion, and I am not involved in it in any way.
Steve Gonsalva says, if people want to check you out, what's your website?
You can catch me at Steve Gonsalv's Official at all of the social media platforms.
I don't have an official website.
I just sort of stay under the radar a little bit.
Right.
Steve, thank you so much.
I hope we talk again.
And please take care.
And my thanks to Steve for a fascinating conversation, I thought.
But your thoughts, welcome.
Please go to my website, theunexplained.tv, and let me know.
And if you want to shoot the breeze, just touch base, whatever you want to do at this time, then I would love to hear from you, as ever.
Theunexplained.tv, that is my website.
And just to correct the title of the documentary we've been talking about, I think I may have referred to it as the Ghost House.
It isn't.
It's called The House in Between.
That's the House in Between.
And as I said, I think it's very, very well worth seeing.
Thank you very much for being part of The Unexplained.
Like I say, please stay in touch.
So until next we meet in lockdown, please stay safe.
Please stay home.
Please stay calm.
And above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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