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March 6, 2023 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:04:47
Edition 707 - Deceased Pets And Wyatt Earp
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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, thank you very much for being part of my show, the worldwide family that we are.
Thank you for all of the emails.
Please know that I get to see them all as they come in, and I'm always guided by them and, you know, often very, very heartened by them.
Now, the guest on this edition of the show is going to be talking about the afterlife, but also animals in the afterlife.
And a lot of other stuff too.
Rob Gutrow, and I think you'll be interested.
Thank you to Adam, my webmaster, for getting the shows out to you, for maintaining the website, all that stuff.
If you want to find out what's going on with me, if anything happens with the radio or TV show, you want to know what's going on, you can always go to my official Facebook page.
That is the official Facebook page of The Unexplained with Howard Hughes, and all of the answers that I have will be there at any time.
It is the best place for me to communicate quickly with you.
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My website is theunexplained.tv.
You can email me through that website.
And of course, if you would like to make a donation to allow the podcast version and the online activities and my activities to continue, that is always gratefully received.
Thank you.
If you have recently, you can do that through the website, theunexplained.tv.
There's a link for that too.
Okay, I think I've said everything that I need to say, apart from the fact that, as ever, when you get in touch with me, please tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use the show.
And if your email requires a response or reply, then please tell me.
And if you haven't heard from me and you expected to hear from me, please let me know.
There's always more than I can handle to deal with these days.
Right, let's get to the guest on this edition of The Unexplained.
Rob Gutrow is here.
Rob, thank you very much for coming on my show.
Well, thank you for having me back.
It's nice to talk to you again.
You know, I've been looking back in my archives, which are pretty extensive these days.
I think if you were to start playing my programs that I've got online today, then they would still be playing a month from now, and they would be playing through that month.
So it's 450 shows and seven years ago that we last spoke.
And there's no reason at all why you would remember it.
Well, at my age, I'm lucky to remember yesterday.
Now, I found a biography for you here, and it says, and this is not your own biography.
I think this is one that's been written by a publisher, but probably with, well, certainly with your involvement.
It says, I'm an author, scientist, a member of Inspired Ghost Tracking Paranormal Group, and I'm the medium on that team.
That's the first line of it.
Is that all that I need to know, or is there more?
That's pretty close.
Actually, I did write that.
But aside from being a medium, I'm also a pet medium.
So I communicate with pets through past.
Indeed, you are.
And I want to be able to talk about that because I think a lot of my listeners are extremely interested in that.
And there aren't a lot of people who are doing that.
They're certainly not doing it in any great depth.
So that's a great field, I think, to probe and get into here.
So when you call yourself a medium, from what I know of talking to other mediums for many, many years, all of them have a slightly different take on what that means.
What does that mean to you?
Well, to me, it means that I am able to communicate with people and pets who pass.
And they do it in a number of ways.
They do it telepathically.
Once in a great while, I can see them.
Usually I can see them in my head, so I sketch them out when I'm on the paranormal investigation.
I can hear them.
I can feel them.
They share pain with me, like pain of death, in order to prove their identity.
And they can share various other bits of information from when they were alive.
Now, I thought of one thing before I did this, and I don't even know whether this is a fair point, okay?
You can tell me, Rob.
I thought that in this life, for example, if you are separated in life, and I've got an example from my own life from a pet, then the pet doesn't remember you.
Now, I had in my life when I was about 16, 17, and 18, a beautiful, as we call them here, golden Labrador.
I know some of the breeders call them yellow labradors called Nishka.
She was a beautiful dog, and I had a huge affinity with her.
And I always used to look at her, and on her face would be such expressions that I almost feel that she was about to talk to me.
So we were that close for a long time.
And because of a divorce, she was my sister's dog, and she married, he, you know, they split and went their separate ways, I think is the way that I'm going to put it.
They divorced.
And the dog was put with a couple of elderly people who lived next door to their home when they got divorced.
And, you know, Nishka lived out her life.
I never saw her again until the point where about five years later, I happened to be driving past in Southport in the UK, this address where the two elderly people who were getting up in years had Nishka.
Nishka was in the garden, and she was clearly older then, five years older, and she didn't remember me.
And it took a little while.
I think there was a little flicker when I kept saying some familiar things to her.
So what I'm saying here is, how can we expect dogs, for example, and I know you do a lot of work with dogs, to remember us in the afterlife when we're separated from them here, they don't?
Well, in the afterlife, they have a much better recall.
When people and pets pass away, we all get kind of a life review.
So we are reminded of everybody that we interacted with.
So that helps, certainly, from the other side.
How long were you associated with her?
Oh, about three years.
Yeah, 16, you know, three important years for me.
So we were both kind of young together, I think, and 16, 17, 18.
And then I went back to see her, didn't purposely, Just happened to be driving past, and I saw the dog in the garden.
I thought, I have to stop because I love that dog so much.
So, five years, five years later, I would have last seen her at 18.
Then I saw her again at 23 for me.
It's a lot of dog years.
It is a very long stretch of dog years.
That would be probably about 35 years.
So, when you look at it that way, Howard, I mean, there are people that I met 35 years ago that I don't remember, and certainly I hung out with them for years.
And there would be, just like people, I think, there would be a flicker of memory, of recall.
So they behave much the same way that people do.
Right.
Yeah, I think that makes sense.
And there was a flicker of recall.
And that I could see, I wasn't there very long, but I could see that that flicker was growing.
But I just wanted to put that past you, that, you know, they appear to, from what you say, they appear to remember us better in the afterlife than perhaps they might do here.
That's true.
And the same goes for people as well.
You know, although there are some people we'd rather forget, honestly.
But we never want to forget a pet.
So that's totally a different story.
And yet people tend to think, don't they, that being Homo sapiens, human beings, that we have a higher vibration, that we are much more than the animals around us, which I think is rather arrogant of us because I live very near one of Her Majesty's royal parks and there is every flavor of wildlife in there, deer, parakeets, all kinds of things there.
And they're much more knowing, I think, because I see them almost every day.
They're much more knowing than people actually arrogantly assume here.
But however, people tend to think that it's all fine for you and for me to, if you believe in this kind of thing, to have our death, having had our life out, then have our life review and then move on to something else and maybe come back here, who knows.
But for animals, they think that maybe animals are of a different order and it doesn't happen for them.
I'm guessing you're not going to agree with that.
No, I am not going to agree with that.
I think that animals are much more pure than we could ever hope to be.
And every living thing has a soul.
And I define a soul as the energies that are within us, the physical energies that combine with our memories of this life, our personalities, and our knowledge of this life.
And that's what a soul is.
And we all go to the same place afterward.
Okay.
Well, I've told the story before here, so I won't tell it at great length, but my mother, age 10, was very ill in an era when we didn't have all of the treatments that we had, you know, we have now.
She had pneumonia.
She was extremely ill.
She went through a crisis.
The doctor said to her mother, my grandmother, she'll either get through this night or there will be an issue.
In other words, she won't get through this night.
And until her death, and I miss her every single day, but until her death in 2006, she told us of the place that she went to, which was beautiful.
There were colors she couldn't imagine.
It was just peaceful and beautiful, and she was welcomed and she didn't want to come back.
And they told her that she had things to do here and she had to.
Is it like, I mean, assuming it is like that, and I'm hoping it is, assuming it is like that, is it like that for your dog or cat?
It would be the same.
Also, I found that when people have a near-death experience, that they come back and they, most of them can't even describe what they encountered.
And then they have to try and put it into words.
So some mediums will tell you that when they connect with people on the other side, that people may have a job or they see meadows or sunshine or something.
And to me, I'm a scientist in my day job.
So it's all about energy.
And we as humans cannot conceive what it's like to be energy free-floating.
So mediums will use images that we are connected to, that we're comfortable with, in order to share peace and tranquility.
But we all do go to the same place.
And it is a place of pure light and love and acceptance.
And that's where we all meet.
So is it likely that, I don't know, is it likely that, you know, none of us is immortal.
When I have my last day, because I have such a bond with this Labrador, is it likely that she might be there?
For me?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
What I have found by connecting with pets, even pets that are, we have dogs who are rescues.
We have three dogs who are rescues, and we've had a lot of rescue dogs.
Love is an emotional energy.
It's a positive emotional energy that acts like a spider web.
So anytime we love someone, we are connected in like a grand spider web.
And that's how it works.
Got to take you back to something that you said, and we'll come back to what you've just said, but I want to take you back to when you said that you were a scientist.
Now, that's in your biography, which I read.
The last time we spoke 450 long shows ago, I have you in the show description as a meteorologist.
Is that your branch of science?
Yes, I am still a meteorologist.
And do you do, you know, I have to say, and to my eternal shame, I've forgotten from the last show.
Does that mean that you do weather forecasts for newspapers, TV, that kind of thing?
I used to do forecasts.
Now I really work in the communications area, so it's kind of a different aspect.
But tropical meteorology was my forte.
And usually everybody that has severe weather calls me.
I'm going to put you in my news contacts for that for definite.
But it's not often that we get people who are scientifically minded who believe this kind of stuff.
What is it about this stuff?
And we're talking about the animals now.
What is it about this stuff that persuaded a scientist there might be something in it?
Well, connecting to people in Pets Who Pass happened long before I became a scientist.
I was 13 years old when my grandfather appeared to me about six, seven months after he died and scared me.
So I've always had this ability since I was a teenager.
But as I went on through life, I kind of pushed it aside and I developed an interest in meteorology.
I grew up in New England, in Massachusetts, where they have a lot of blizzards and hurricanes and so forth.
So that got me interested in meteorology.
And it wasn't until 2005 when my puppy, a Weimar under puppy named Buzz, was tragically killed by a car.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Yeah.
You never forget it.
And you don't really ever get over it either.
But he opened the door for me again.
He reopened the door to the paranormal, if you will, and taught me how pets communicate from the other side.
And as a scientist, I always have to prove everything.
And I have to try and explain everything.
So I do that with the science of energy.
The law of conservation of energy states that energy can't be destroyed.
It can only be transformed.
And that's how I explain the existence of earthbound ghosts and spirits who cross over their energy.
Both human and animal.
Yes.
That's interesting.
And does that communication or that awareness go both ways?
Here comes another story from my life, and I don't remember at all whether we talked about this when we did our last conversation, which was on a phone line 450 shows and seven years ago.
But something that stuck with me always is that I went with a girlfriend of mine in about 1991 or two to Solcombe in Devon, a very beautiful place.
And we stayed at a guesthouse there, a hotel come guesthouse.
And if I'm remembering this right, and this story kind of relates to you, if I'm remembering this right, there was a dog there, a Vimarana.
Now, they are beautiful, gracious dogs.
You know, they're slender and, you know, they are beautifully groomed and they're tall.
And, you know, Vaimarana is a very beautiful dog.
And actually, I think if you're buying, you know, a dog, very expensive dog, but a beautiful, classy kind of dog.
And this hotel had had a tragedy.
The woman of the house had died recently.
Now, this dog kept coming into the room of my girlfriend and I, and we were quite happy to have her there and lying on the bed, which, of course, you know, most animals that are in hotels, professional environments, they're taught not to do that.
And she was sad.
Oh, she would lie on the end of the bed and her face would be, you know, pointing towards the carpet at the end of the bed.
And you couldn't move her and she kept looking around.
And I thought, I was only, you know, I wasn't doing shows about these things.
I did the occasional interview in those days.
I was a news guy.
But I thought there is something happening here.
I never mentioned it to the owner because the loss was raw to the owners of this hotel in Solcombe.
But that dog has stuck with me from now till then.
Could it be, and we will get round to talking about all the other stuff we have to talk about here, Rob.
Could it be that that dog was aware of the spirit or the presence of the woman who had died?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
So animals, living animals, have the ability to see and hear and sense people who passed on, whether they're earthbound ghosts or the spirits that have crossed over.
As a scientist, I wanted to know how that was possible.
So I did some research into the physiology of dogs, and I have learned that they have a different physiology in their eyes and their ears.
That enables them, the cones and rods in their eyes are different from that of a human.
Therefore, it enables them to see faster movement than we can.
As a paranormal investigator, I learned that we use high-speed cameras to catch the movement of an earthbound ghost or a spirit.
Dogs can see them head-on.
In terms of sound, if you think of a dog whistle, dogs can hear the dog whistle, humans can't.
It's at a different frequency.
Spirits can speak at different frequencies that humans can't hear.
So as a paranormal investigator, we use digital recorders.
And when we ask an earthbound ghost a question, sometimes we can't hear an answer audibly, most times.
But when we're recording it and we play it back, then you can hear the answer.
But dogs can hear that.
So dogs can do real-time EVPs.
They can hear real-time EVPs, absolutely.
That's astonishing.
So I wonder all these years on if that beautiful Vimorana, and you had a Vimarana, you know how special they are, was aware of something.
I always believed, because the dog wouldn't keep out of that room that we were in.
And, you know, although she was very pleasant with us, she was clearly terribly sad and she wasn't really interested in us.
She was interested in something that was in that room.
Yes, so it had to be her pet parent.
And that is only supposition, of course, but I've always believed it all down these years, and it's 30, more than 30 years now, unbelievably, in that beautiful place.
Well, you know, I hope that she found some happiness.
She's probably not with us now, the dog, but, you know, it's something that stuck with me.
All right.
So when animals die, and sometimes they die through tragic accidents, sometimes they get sick, sometimes it's just old age that does it.
And because we live longer than they do, we have to go through that and observe that.
What happens to them?
What is the process?
It's really the same as it is for humans.
So when they pass, whether it's being put to sleep or whether it's passing of old age or whether in a tragic accident, what happens is the energy within them combines with their memories, personality, and knowledge.
And then usually, I found 99% of them cross over and they go into the light, if you will.
And the reason for that is twofold.
Number one, because animals can sense good emotions like love and acceptance and peace, they feel that positive energy.
So they're drawn to it.
Secondly, there are people, our relatives in spirit and our other pets that have passed that are all there waiting for them and to guide them across.
And that's usually what happens.
Once in a great while, you will find that an animal will stay behind.
I've only encountered four, I think, in the 12 years I've been doing this.
And is that a kind of earthbound spirit?
That would be, yes.
That would be an earthbound, what I call a ghost.
So ghosts are earthbound and spirits have crossed over.
You know, sometimes people, a lot of times people mistake and confuse those two.
Yeah, well, that's true.
And that was actually the impetus for my first book, because I wanted to clarify that there's similarities, but there is a difference.
And it's all about location.
So ghosts I have found who stay behind stay behind at a fixed location of their choosing, whether they died there, they lived there, or they were tragically killed there.
That's where a ghost will stay.
And they stay for a multiple number of reasons.
Whether they're happy with the place that they grew up in or they died tragically, like when I went to the birdcage theater in Arizona and I encountered 11 ghosts, some of them were murdered there and they woke up and they were confused.
Other people will linger in hospitals or prisons.
And I have found that people who are very, a lot of people who are devout in their religions will also stay behind because they're afraid to cross over.
They remember some bad thing they did during life and they're afraid to cross over and they shouldn't be.
So what about you said that you'd come across, and we will talk about that theater case that I know that is the subject of your most recent book, Ghosts in the Birdcage Theater on a Medium's Vacation, and that's the title of it.
But so have you just given me the reason why there are so few animals who remain?
Because animals are innocent, aren't they?
They're not like us, so they wouldn't be afraid to cross.
They wouldn't have any fear of crossing.
That's exactly right, Howard.
They don't have...
They're not as stubborn as humans can be.
They're not as bullheaded, if you will.
And they are truly more innocent.
They're really all about love.
Okay.
And when those four animals remained, I don't know whether they're wherever they are to this day.
I know of a case in the UK where, for example, a cat constantly, repeatingly walks through the wall of a pub, you know, a bar, as you might call it here.
It's, you know, I think in Derbyshire, the actual location, I'm afraid the old brain is a little tardy today.
But anyway, it doesn't matter.
This cat keeps reappearing to people, and I don't think the cat scares them.
It's just there and walks through the wall.
So is that the way that animals who stay here manifest?
That's one way, absolutely.
But the main question about that cat is if the cat does the same actions over and over again and never differentiates from that.
Because if the cat is seen doing the same thing, that may be a residual haunting, which means it's not an intelligent, interactive ghost.
Residual hauntings differ from intelligent because residual hauntings are usually something that is created by an emotional imprint.
So if that cat loved being there and liked walking in a certain area to perhaps go forage for food or something like that, it's possible that when humans, living people, bring their energy, their emotional energy, that cat appears.
Or it could be an intelligent haunt, which means that the cat is actually there as an earthbound ghost and continues to walk around.
Okay, that's interesting.
Sorry, I keep saying okay.
I just want you to know that I'm here.
Right.
So when you talk about animals that are stuck here one way or another, and there are interactive ghosts, are we talking about the ghosts of these animals, be they very few, actually interact with people on this plane?
Have you got examples of that?
I do, as a matter of fact.
And one of the prime examples I cite is right there in England, just north of in North London.
There is a museum called the Museum of Sir John Soane, the famous British architect.
And have you been there?
No, no, I haven't.
I have to say the one thing about London is that we stay in our little communities.
So I'm south.
And I had to go for a scan, an MRI a few weeks ago.
And I had to go to North London for the, this is really embarrassing.
I had to go to North London for the first time in about 10 or 12 years.
So no, I haven't been there.
Okay.
Well, put it on your list.
So when I had visited In 2013, we went to this museum because my partner is an architect.
So the minute I walked in the door, there was this little black dog that ran right by me when I opened the door.
And I thought, what in the world is a dog doing here in a museum?
So I didn't say anything.
I kept walking through and I saw the dog run again.
And the dog was very happy.
And I thought, okay, it must be somebody that works here that has their dog with them.
Well, as it turned out, I saw the dog disappear, like in front of me disappear.
And then I thought, okay, that's not really a dog.
That's not a living dog.
That is either a spirit or a ghost.
So as I walked through the museum, there was a giant painting in one room of Mrs. Johnstone.
And in her lap was this little black and tan dog that I had seen at the front door.
And I thought, okay, obviously this dog, after the dog passed, the dog stayed behind as an earthbound ghost because she was so attached to her mom.
When I got up to the gift shop on the second floor, I asked the woman who was working there and I said, can I just ask you if anybody has seen like the image of a dog running around in here?
And she said, what does the dog look like?
And I described it.
And she said, yes, everybody that works here has seen little Fanny, that was the dog's name, running around.
And she said, are there any human ghosts here?
And I said, no, there are not.
And she said, that also jives with what we experience here.
We never find a human ghost.
Only little Fanny continues to run and greet people at the door as they come in.
And I presume those people have a whole, because human beings are all different, have a, I mean, I would be delighted if that happened to me, but some people might be scared by that.
Yeah, well, they absolutely would be.
But I think for the most part, most people don't see Fanny.
You know, because my partner didn't see Fanny.
It was just me.
And Fanny only shows up to certain people that have the ability to see her.
Right.
And when you've got the presence of the dog there, is, you know, I mean, dogs make their presence felt.
Sometimes they smell like dogs and sometimes they pant like dogs and they drool like dogs.
Is the experience of this dog realistic?
It was to me because I could hear her nails on the floor and I could see her just running around the way a dog would be if they were happy to see somebody that came to the house.
So it was the same behavior.
And I knew that it was not a residual thing.
It was not just an imprint of energy.
It was actually an actual ghost that was there, that was running around.
Now, you're a medium.
If people come to you and they are distraught, as many people are when they lose a pet, I mean, it's just like losing a human being.
The bond is that strong.
And they say to you, please, can you link me up?
Help me to communicate with Bonzo or whatever the name of the animal might be.
It's probably a poor choice of name there, but can you link me up with this animal that I had such love and connection with?
How do you do that?
And what tends to be the result?
Well, I do pet readings, individual readings for people who lost pets.
And I actually do them by email because I have to do them at home in a very quiet space.
And the way that I do that is I ask them for their pet's photograph, the name of the pet, the people in their home, and any questions they may have.
And then I'm able to connect to the pet and provide them an email reading so that they always have it in email so they can read back.
But if people want to get messages from their own pet, that's why I've written my series of books called Pets in the Afterlife to teach people all the different ways that pets can communicate with them.
It's really about just keeping an eye out or an ear out, if you will.
And there are many, many ways that pets communicate.
Tell me.
Okay, sure.
So I've talked about the visible appearance of little Fanny, for instance.
Also, a lot of pets will use their nails on the floor, especially dogs.
And usually you can hear them at night in a very quiet time of night.
You may hear a jingle of a collar.
You may hear a bark or a meow that sounds like it's coming from another room.
We experienced that when our dog, Franklin, had passed.
All of our dogs were outside, and I was outside.
And the day, the night Franklin had passed, he had passed in the early afternoon, my partner was in the house, and I heard a bark coming from the kitchen, knowing that, and it was, we knew it was, I knew it was Franklin's bark, and we had the other dogs outside.
And it was so loud from the kitchen that I actually had to, I went in the house to see if I could see him.
So those are just some of the ways.
They can also lead you to another pet that looks like them.
They can, gosh, they can come into your dreams.
Dreams are the easiest way for any spirits to communicate because our logical minds are asleep.
During the day, when we're awake, we've been taught from childhood on to just dispel anything that doesn't seem natural.
And what I've learned in communicating with pets and people on the other side is that there's really no such thing as a Coincidence.
Spirits make things happen for a certain reason.
So, some of the other ways that they can communicate with you, they can influence things in nature around you.
So, birds, butterflies, dragonflies, things like that.
They can give you a sign from anything else in nature.
I did a reading for one woman, and I told her that her dog would be sending her a sign of a heart.
And she said, okay, I'll let you know if that ever happens.
Well, she wrote me back a couple of months later, and she said she was in her garage, and she opened the door, and on this towel that she had laying on the garage floor, there was one leaf, and it was in the shape of a heart.
And she was shocked.
So you never know.
You really just have to pay attention.
Of course, some of my listeners, and there are some of my listeners who don't like me saying some of my listeners, but some of my listeners would say, huh, coincidence.
Sure.
And, you know, it's healthy to be skeptical.
It truly is.
And not everything is a sign.
You know, when I wrote my first Pets in the Afterlife book, someone wrote me back and said, this guy is, you know, this guy is crazy.
He says every butterfly that you see is a sign.
And I said, I never said that.
That's not true.
So how it works, though, is if it is associated, if something odd happens, if there's an odd behavior from someone in nature, like a bird, if a bird comes up and stares at your window and stares at you, and it's connected to a birthday, an anniversary, like the anniversary of adoption or the anniversary of a passing of your pet, or any holidays.
Birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays are the times that people in spirit and pets in spirit try to let us know they're around.
The reason that it's obviously it's obvious why people do, but the reason pets do it around those times is because they read our emotional energy.
They know our emotional energy is very high at that time.
And they know that they want to convey their presence so that we will feel good.
And those people who communicate with you and they want to be able to make a connection, and you say that you do this by email or whatever, but it's not in person mostly.
How does a dog send a message?
Presumably the person wants to know, is little, I don't know, I'm trying to think of a name, is little Phoenix okay?
Is little Phoenix okay on the other side?
And did Little Phoenix suffer when Phoenix passed?
Are they expecting to get back a message saying, I'm okay here and I didn't suffer?
That's, of course, every person's dream to get that kind of response.
But when I communicate with a pet, being a medium, they also share pains they experience.
So I have felt when I'm sitting in a chair connecting to them and typing up a message, I can feel like my right rear leg, if you will.
I have to call it a right rear leg because it's the dog's rear leg.
I can feel the pain.
Sometimes I get sharp pains.
Sometimes I get dull pains.
I can feel when the back hurts.
I've felt kidney failures.
I've felt cancer.
I feel heart problems.
Animals will share with me when they're having breathing problems.
And those are the kinds of things that I will convey.
So even though they may want to hear that they weren't in pain, they're going to hear that, you know, these are the things that these animals experienced before they passed.
Do they share with you specifics about, I'm sorry, I think I might have jumped in there, but do they share with you things that they experienced being part of the life of the owner that they had on this site?
In other words, do they say, you know, I loved whoever it might be who's asking you, but I hated it.
I used to feel so alone when every Thursday they'd go out for four hours bell ringing and they wouldn't come back for four hours.
Yeah, they've shared times of anxiety and loneliness and depression, but they also understand that when humans have a different kind of thing to do, a different routine, and they're just appreciative for whatever time that we can spend with them.
So they don't want us to feel guilty for not being there 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
And they certainly don't expect us to pay attention to them.
I mean, they want their quiet time just like a lot of people want their quiet time.
Do they get reincarnated?
They absolutely do.
I found that we all come back connected.
But that's one question that I get asked a lot, especially by people who are in grief.
People in grief have asked me if their pet would come back during their lifetime.
And what I found, and this is a lesson I learned from a little chihuahua, one of my first readings outside of my own dogs when I first started out, that our pets will come back in spirit and train a new dog or cat to do something they used to do,
whether it's sleep in a certain spot, raise their paw, do something, beg a certain way.
And our pets in spirit do that.
They train these new pets to do one or two habits that they used to have.
And it doesn't have to be a good habit.
Right.
Okay, no, I'm just thinking about Nishka, that Labrador who I loved so much.
She was an expert at walking backwards.
And I haven't seen, I mean, maybe I'm missing something, but I haven't seen another Labrador do that.
So I guess if I ever had a dog, I don't think I will now, and that dog started walking backwards, then I'd probably start to suspect something at that point, I think.
Yeah, that's a great example, something really unique.
And that's typically what happens.
So the way I learned that is I was at a session with another medium who was running the session.
This was her session.
And I was sitting in the audience, and I was just there to do support and welcome people and so forth.
And this little Chihuahua came up to me in spirit.
And he was a little beige guy.
And he kept telling me his name.
And he was very excited because his person or one of the persons connected to him was there in the audience.
And I just thought, this was when I first started.
So I was doubting myself.
I kept saying, I am not seeing a Chihuahua.
I am not seeing a spirit Chihuahua.
So during the break, the little Chihuahua pointed out the person he was connected to.
And I stopped the woman and I said, excuse me, you're going to think I'm crazy.
But there's a little beige here.
He says his name is Chico and he's connected to you.
And her mouth dropped open and she said, that was the name of my grandmother's Chihuahua.
And he was a little beige chihuahua.
And what is he doing here?
And I said, well, she's showing me that he's been helping train this medium-sized black dog to be a better dog.
And her mouth dropped open again.
And she said, I have a black lab.
And I've noticed in the last month or two since Chico passed that my black lab is behaving better.
I said, well, now you know why.
Well, I mean, that's, you know, again, we could dismiss this as being coincidence, but I'm not a huge believer that everything is coincidence.
You know, I'm a believer that some things happen for a reason.
It's part of a plan.
And all that you see is not all that there is.
So that's where I come to it.
So maybe I'm a bit of a convert anyway, Rob.
What about cats, Rob?
I mean, look, cats are different.
Not only are all individual cats different, but cats are different from most other animals.
Somebody once described it to me that dogs love you and believe that you're the boss.
And cats love you and believe that they're the boss.
That's the difference, isn't it?
Well, I could buy that.
Absolutely.
Based on the cats that I have communicated with.
And actually, my latest book is Pets in the Afterlife 4, Messages from Spirit Cats.
So I've had the pleasure of talking to a lot of cats, and they do have a much more independent streak.
So does that mean that a lot of cats that I, and cats are all, like we say, completely different.
Some are very affectionate, and some of them give you the impression that they're doing you a favor by being around, I think is a nice way of putting it.
They're all different, and that's part of the wonder of cats.
I do not dislike cats at all, and some cats seem to like me an awful lot here, but they're all different.
Some run a mile, and some of them make a beeline for me and never forget me.
It's really weird.
But, you know, the cat experience, I think what we're saying is a completely different thing.
Now, if cats, many of them, all of them are very independent, just degrees really we're talking about here.
Why would they care about wanting to let you know that actually, even though you might not have thought so some of the time, you know, why would they want to come back or come through you to let you know that they love you?
Or the subject, if you know what I'm saying?
So, well, they very much love their pet parents.
And they, like dogs or any domesticated animal, whether it be a horse or a rabbit or anything, they want them to know that they have that unconditional love for their pet parent.
And that's why they want to help come through and comfort their pet parent.
And they've done it, the cats that I communicate with, the ones that are in this particular book, have done it in so many different ways.
One particular cat was telling me about a fish that was very special to him.
And it happened after he passed.
So he kept mentioning a fish to me in a reading.
And the gentleman that I gave the reading to wrote me back, and he included a painting that was done by an artist friend of his with the cat holding a drumstick because he was a drummer.
And on the end of the drumstick was a little line with an orange and white clownfish.
So the cat was acknowledging this painting done in memorial of him.
That's very specific.
It is very specific, and it was very strange.
I have to tell you, Howard, when I'm getting these messages and I'm writing them down, I think to myself, oh my gosh, these people are going to think I'm crazy.
But this is what the cat is telling me.
So I have to share it.
And that's in the most recent of the books about cats?
It is.
Pets in the Afterlife for messages from spirit cats.
And you can actually see the painting.
He was kind enough to allow me to share the story and the painting.
Is your most recent book, I was told it was Ghosts of the Birdcage Theater on a Medium's Vacation?
That was the one that just came out before.
Okay, so we're talking about the two most current things.
Now, my research about the Birdcage Theater is that this has got a hell of a history, nearly 300 years worth of history.
In fact, more than 300 years worth.
No, hang on, I'm trying to do the math here.
1881.
220, 240 years of history.
God, math was never my strong point.
Anyway, this is a theater, Tombstone, Arizona, and it was very much a part kind of of the Wild West.
And a lot of people say that it's haunted, and a number of these TV shows have gone there and staked the place out.
Why did you write about this place in Tombstone, Arizona?
So I became fascinated with Tombstone when I went to see the movie Tombstone that came out in 1993, which was the story of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday and the Earp Brothers versus the Cowboys in the OK Corral shootout.
So that particular film really struck me as something special.
There was something familiar, if you will, about it.
And I couldn't put my finger on it at the time when I was seeing it.
This was before my abilities reawakened.
So I ventured out there.
I wanted to take a trip out there.
And I became enamored with Wyatt Earp as a lawman.
And I went around the country, to different places looking, you know, following his adventures.
So I went to Tombstone.
And when I went there, I tried to do it in a fun way.
I dressed up as Wyatt Earp, and I convinced a friend of mine to dress up as Doc Holiday, and we walked the streets.
Okay.
And did you not think that perhaps you might be inviting some intervention from those characters?
I didn't think twice about it.
I got plenty of intervention, though, by other tourists who kept thinking I worked there and were asking me about the town.
What's interesting is that when I first walked into this town, the town didn't exist, by the way, until 1879 when a gentleman named Ed Shefflin, he was a prospector.
He was looking for silver in the desert of southern Arizona, and he struck silver.
He named the mine Tombstone because somebody told him he wouldn't find anything but his tombstone out in the desert.
So he wanted to kind of be funny about it.
Then the town came up around it.
So when I walked into the town with my friend, two minutes into the town, somebody asked me for the directions to the courthouse.
And I thought, as soon as he asked me, I just told him.
I said, you have to go down two streets, take a left, go down one block, turn to the right, and it's on your left-hand side.
And my friend looked at me and he said, we've never been here.
How did you know that?
That's exactly the point.
This was 1994.
This was before the internet, you couldn't look anything up.
Tombstone was only a little dot on the paper map that we had.
I had never been there before.
Well, I realized that I was having a past life experience, that I had lived there before in the 1880s.
And that's the only way I could explain how I knew the exact location of this courthouse from the edge of town.
As I...
When I came back to Tombstone, and I've come back, I visited a couple of times.
When I came back in 2019, I brought a friend of mine who had never had a paranormal encounter.
And in 2019, the Birdcage Theater started having ghost tours as well as being open for historic walkthrough tours.
And I took him there.
I took him on the ghost tour.
I will say that in 1994, when I came dressed as Wyatt Earp, the manager of the Birdcage Theater befriended me because he couldn't believe some Yankee from the East Coast would dress up as Wyatt Earp.
So we've had a long friendship.
During the ghost tour of 2019, with my friend who was a non-believer, if you will, he saw, physically saw, three ghosts.
And he walked out of there with a different perspective.
During that two-hour period, we encountered 11 different ghosts that existed in that theater.
That's a hell of a high hit rate.
That's an amazing rate.
And so there's a reason why there are so many ghosts in that theater.
It was only open for eight years, by the way, from 1881 to 1889, but it operated continuously 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, until the silver mines flooded and the town closed up in 1889.
But the Birdcage Theater was known for a number of things.
It was a performing place.
It was a gambling den.
It was a saloon.
And it was a house of prostitution.
So with those four activities going on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there's a lot of emotional energy.
And 26 people were killed there.
And in what circumstances mostly?
Disputes about presumably money, about women?
Why were so many people killed there?
Well, you've hit on both of them.
It was cheating at cards and about women.
As a matter of fact, one of the ladies of the night murdered another one out of jealousy.
But for the most part, they were men that were killed for cheating at cards.
And so who were these people?
They were people that lived in town.
They were actors.
They were drinkers.
They were ranchers.
They were gamblers.
They were prostitutes.
And they were miners.
And some of these ghosts shared violent deaths with me.
I mentioned before, I felt pain of death from animals.
Animals will share that.
But people share it too.
And in one particular case, when I my abilities awakened in 2005, I hadn't been back to the birdcage since long before that.
When I came back in 2019, my full-blown medium Superpowers were in full, you know, they were in full gear.
I walked into the theater area, and suddenly I felt a bullet go through my throat.
And I couldn't speak.
I fell against the wall.
I was gasping.
And my friend was with me.
This was during the ghost tour.
And he looked at me and I just pointed to my throat and I put my hand up to say, it's okay.
Just let me deal with this.
I felt the taste of blood.
I felt copper in my throat.
And then the ghost who was sharing this information told me his name.
And he told me that he was shot in the throat when he got up from the table, the gambling table, because he was cheating at cards.
And he grabbed money and he tried to run away.
Somebody shot him in the throat.
And he died right there.
Well, the ghost tour guide, who's somebody that works there, is also a historian.
She came over to me and she said, are you okay?
And it took me three minutes to speak.
And finally, I shared the story.
And she said, we absolutely know that there was a man who was shot in the throat right here and died where you're standing.
And you'd had no contact with that person at all before that conversation.
Is that so?
No, I had no idea.
I had no contact, no idea.
No.
I didn't know anything about the deaths that happened in the birdcage not until I ran into the 11 dead people that night.
And they are all in my book.
And actually, I think I sketched five or six of them out because I like to sketch.
So hold on.
That's 11 dead people that you encountered when you went back in 2019.
That's correct.
You were on a roll.
Well, when I went back in 2022 to do a book signing at the Birdcage Theater, I met three more that I didn't meet the first time.
Can you tell me about, yeah, I mean, that being shot in the throat thing is both terrifying and revelatory, especially with the conversation with the ghost guide, or rather the guide to the site who said that's exactly what happened here and you hadn't had any contact before.
So that's it's pretty informative.
Maybe it is evidential.
I don't know.
Can you give me some highlights then of all of those, what is it now I'm counting, 14 ghosts in recent years, 2019 and 2022.
Can you give me a couple of highlights?
Sure.
There was during the ghost tour, they sit you behind the curtain.
The curtain still stands, still hangs on the stage from 1889 when the theater closed.
So they bring the group of ghost tour people in the back behind the curtain, and they sit them down at tables and they turn all the lights off.
And then you have the ability to ask any ghosts any questions.
And sometimes you get answers, usually in the form of some of the equipment that they have.
There were two instances there.
One, there was a doorway that came up from the down part of the stage, the front part of the stage, to the stage where we were standing or sitting.
And my friend turned around and he saw a man in a cowboy hat.
And he says, did you see that guy?
And I looked quickly and I saw the guy in the cowboy hat and then he disappeared.
And my friend said, there's only one guy in a cowboy hat in this group.
And he looked around and although it was dark, they had little safety light exit lights.
So you could see the guy with the cowboy hat sitting all the way in the other side of the room.
So he said, well, who was that?
I said, that, my friend, was your first ghost of the night.
So I sketched him out.
There was another woman in white that was standing behind one of the women that were seated in the ghost group, and I sketched her out.
And she told me why she was there.
There was another man in the basement that was shot in the chest from cheating at cards and on the stairway, going down to the basement where the big gambling, where the big tables are located.
And again, I came down the bottom of the stairs, not knowing, you know, who was going to be down there.
Suddenly I felt slammed against the wall.
The tour guide came over to me and she said, are you okay?
And I said, somebody was shot in the chest here and they died right here from gambling.
And she said, yeah, somebody was shot in the chest.
She said, are you going to do this all night?
And I said, I sure hope not.
But those were just some of the highlights.
It's a very visceral thing when that happens, when you feel yourself get shot in the throat or shot in the chest or shot wherever you're shot.
I mean, that is just about as tactile and visceral as it possibly could be.
Are you ever...
Are you ever at any risk because you're feeling the stuff that the victims in history experienced?
Are you personally at risk?
Well, knock wood so far, no, but as I get older, that may change.
I do try to protect myself, though, before I go into a haunted place so that I have some kind of layer of protection so that I don't feel things as extreme as I did when I went to the Birdcage Theater.
Do you encounter things wherever you go?
I do.
Whenever I go on vacation, I seem to run into a lot of dead people who have been around for even centuries that want to talk to me.
And in fact, one of my books is Ghosts of England on a Medium's Vacation.
And that was back in 2012 and 2013.
And Howard, I have to tell you, I talked to so many dead people, and then I confirmed who they were when I got home, looking up the names that they gave me and years that they gave me and all kinds of things.
So that's been, that's a fascinating book.
I mean, that's like an entire topic on its own.
Well, if you haven't done it, two places you gotta go.
And there are many more in these aisles, these sceptred aisles, but two places by the River Thames near a Tower Bridge area, where, funnily enough, on Sunday nights I work these days when I'm doing my radio or TV show.
And also Chester, the city of Chester, Roman city of Chester, not far from the city of my birth, Liverpool.
That is said to be, if not the most haunted city in the UK, one of the most haunted cities in the UK.
Certainly in England.
I think Edinburgh would definitely compete with it if we include Scotland and the entire United Kingdom.
But, you know, those are some of the places that you need to go.
Wow.
So I have been to Edinburgh, and that is actually in that, that is the topic of my next book on a medium's vacation.
Edinburgh and New Vax.
Yeah, and Ireland.
So Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland, and Ireland.
I'm combining the two because both of those places are incredibly haunted.
Well, yes, Mary King's close in Edinburgh, a group in Scotland recently did, and it was a very ambitious thing to do.
They did a live televised online event from there.
And I don't think they unearthed a huge amount, but it was just so atmospheric.
And you could definitely feel that there was stuff going on there.
So listen, Rob, I've very much enjoyed this conversation.
Let's not leave it seven years next time because otherwise that would put you, if we're talking about 450 podcasts, then this one is going to be 700 and something.
That would mean that you wouldn't be on again until 11 or 1,200.
Oh, my goodness.
We can't be doing that.
Yeah, I would love to come back and talk to you about the ghosts of England that I met and the ghosts of Ireland and Scotland.
Well, no, you must.
I mean, can you give me...
I worked in Dublin for a short period.
Presumably, you had to pass through Dublin to go to Ireland, to be in Ireland.
Have you got a ghost story from Ireland that you could share with me to close?
Well, I can tell you that the cover of the book is about a ghost that I actually visibly saw when I was in the Cork County jail in Ireland.
It's now a museum, and they have different corridors fenced off, if you will.
And I remember that when I was walking through there, I saw the shadow.
It looked like a man in shadow.
I thought it was an actual person walking across the corridor.
And I took a quick picture, and I thought, I wonder what he's doing in there.
And then he walked right through the wall.
And I thought, okay, he was not living.
What about the picture?
I have the picture.
The picture is going to be the cover of my book.
And is there something recorded on the picture?
You can see the shadow of the man.
Oh, boy.
Yeah, pretty clearly.
Yeah.
Okay, very last question then, Rob, and nice to speak again.
You talked to me about you had a resurgence of your mediumistic abilities.
I think that was in time for you to go to that place in Arizona in 2019.
What happened and how did they come back?
So my abilities kind of fell off, if you will, after I was 13, after my initial sight of my grandfather, because I got occupied with my life.
I went to college.
I started getting jobs and so forth.
And I didn't pay any attention to it.
But actually, it was 2005 when my dog, Buzz, the Weimar Hunter, was killed by a car.
Once he was killed by a car, and I was in just shock.
He started coming through in many ways.
And I used to keep a journal, a daily journal, a diary, if you will, and I would write everything down.
And that became the basis of my first book.
I had a roommate at the time, and my roommate came screaming out of the house because he saw a sneaker move from one side of the hallway to the other side of the hallway.
And Buzz loved to destroy footwear.
So that was one of the ways.
But he came through in many different ways.
There were all the things that we talked about before, moving things, sound, nails on the floor, jingling the collar, things like that.
I understand.
Once that all happened, I started going to places, historic places, to figure out if what I was getting was true.
And that's how I proved my ability.
Sure.
I understand now this resurgence was after that very close and personal experience in 2005.
I get it now.
Rob, if people want to check you out online, what is your website so they can go there?
They could go to robguttrow, g-ut-r-o.com, or pet spirits, because my last name's kind of wonky.
And they can just type in amazon.com, G-U-T-R-O, and they can find all my books.
Well, I hope that wasn't too much of a trial, Rob.
I enjoyed it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Howard.
That was Rob Gutrow on this edition of The Unexplained.
Fascinating stuff.
A, what do you think?
You can always contact me through the website, theunexplained.tv.
And remember what I said at the beginning of this.
If ever you want to know what's going on, if you can't find shows, if there are any changes to any of the broadcast shows that I do, I'll always be able to tell you first, as far as I know, through the Facebook page, the official Facebook page of The Unexplained with Howard Hughes.
That is the one with the official logo on it and no other website, no other Facebook page.
We have more great guests in the pipeline coming right up here on The Unexplained.
So until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained Online.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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