Chicago-based Nicole Tito has been investigating ghost cases for more than 20 years...Her new book tells her story...explains EVPs (Electronic Voice Phenomena) and the "Estes Method"of communicating with "spirits" We discuss the book "Estes Method and EVPs" and get Nicole's tips for ghosthunters and detail equipment that can be used. Plus we hear some fascinating real location recordings.
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.
And I am hoping, very sincerely, that everything is good in your world.
Thank you for all of your emails.
If you need to communicate with me by email, you can go to my website, designed and created by Adam.
It is theunexplained.tv.
Follow the link, and you can send me an email from there.
And when you get in touch by email, please tell me who you are, where in the world you are, and how you use this show.
It's lovely to hear from you with all of your suggestions and thoughts about the show.
My Facebook page, the official Facebook page of The Unexplained with Howard Hughes, is one of the many places that you can discover details of The Unexplained Live 2023, our cruise with Morella, which is on from the 22nd of October, which starts in Florida, then goes all the way up the eastern seaboard of North America, up across the Canadian border and back down to Florida.
So it is 22nd of October in Florida, and then all the way up and then back down.
But the details of that are on a special edition of my podcast, which you will find at my website, theunexplained.tv or your usual podcast providers.
Everything you need to know is there.
And also, if you go to my website, theunexplained.tv, you can find the special booking link and the special booking code, Podcast100, that you need to use if you book.
And if you're going to go, and I'm going to see you there, you will not be disappointed.
The cruises are absolutely stupendously good.
Last year's in the Mediterranean was incredible.
I am a total cruise convert, and you will be too if you've never done this.
And plus, you will get to meet some of the fabulous guests from the Unexplained, including Dr. David Whitehouse and Malcolm Robinson, who we had on the podcast only recently, and David Roth, the man behind the Turin Shroud film, and Andrea Perrin from the Conjuring movie, who will be joining us for one day in Boston when we get there.
So there's a lot of stuff going to be happening on that cruise.
The Unexplained Live 2023 details can be found at my website, theunexplained.tv.
You can always check in also with Morella.
The cruise company, they are providing the holiday, and I will be hosting the events on the cruise.
So I hope that you can be part of it this year.
Because as I say, it's absolutely lovely.
Now, the guest on this edition of The Unexplained is somebody I only discovered yesterday, Nicole Tito.
She's got a book out about the Estes method and EVPs, ways of electronically communicating with those who may have departed, maybe recently or maybe a long time ago.
She has, as I say, this new book out, she is a paranormal investigator, author and creator of the GhostlyVoices.com website.
She's been investigating the paranormal for more than 20 years, participating in over 100 investigations.
I think it'll probably be 110 by now.
100 investigations across the United States.
She grew up on the south side of Chicago, and we'll hear her story and also some of the investigations that she's been involved in.
Some tips also for you if you want to start doing your own investigations of this kind from her, which is what makes her book particularly interesting, I think you'll find.
I think that's everything I have to say, and more than enough, you'll say.
So let's cross now to Chicago, Illinois.
Nicole, all the way from Chicago, how are you doing?
I am great.
How are you today?
Very good, thank you.
I heard, I'm thinking that it's kind of, we call it muggy, it's close here and warm, but I think that you're probably warmer than we are in London.
Is that so?
Yes, we've been warm and muggy and humid.
When you walk outside, I feel like your hair just stands on end this whole week.
So we're getting a cool down soon, but we've been hitting 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
I think, what, 46 Celsius?
I was looking it up.
We had a little bit of that like last year, year ago.
We've had a weird, rainy, cloudy, horrible summer here in London.
But a year ago, we had it up to 40 degrees here.
And it was unbearable because we don't have aircon or anything like that.
But in Chicago, I love, I've never been there.
I know people there.
I love the idea of Chicago, a place where, you know, around the Great Lakes there, you get what, the lake effect snow, and it gets so cold it freezes your eyebrows.
And then in the summer, you absolutely boil and bake.
Oh, yes.
We get all four seasons.
But I love the fall, and that fits well because I like spooky things.
So, you know, the whole Halloween fits very well for me.
But you get sick of a season, then you get another one.
So it's kind of nice.
Now, you grew up in Chicago, and that's where you became interested in the things we're about to speak of, yeah?
Correct.
So I was born and raised in Chicago on the south side.
Chicago has a huge history of haunted tales and things like that.
So funny enough, one of the most famous tales in Chicago is that of Resurrection Mary, which is the hitchhiking ghost.
And she ends up at Resurrection Cemetery where most of my family is buried.
So we would go visit our relatives and hear the spooky tales of Mary wandering the yard at night.
So I just was always intrigued at a young age, went to the library, picked up books that I could find about ghosts and would just read them.
And that continued, you know, on to my adulthood.
Who was just, I've heard the name and I'm sure I've heard the story from another guest in the past, but just remind my listener because they're bound to say, you didn't ask her who Resurrection Mary was.
Who was Resurrection Mary?
So yeah, so she was a younger adult and back in the day, just outside of Chicago, there's a very famous dance hall called Willowbrook Ballroom, and she would go there frequently to dance.
And there's different legends saying that she got in a fight with her boyfriend, or there's another one where she just wanted to leave early, and she was trying to get back into Chicago and hitch her ride.
And in those days, it was safe.
Fortunately, it's a very dark road.
Some accounts say it was raining.
Some say they didn't see her.
And she was hit by a car and tragically killed.
It's called Archer Road.
And that road is actually, it's further down is where Resurrection Cemetery is.
So about like two miles from the dance hall is where she was buried in the cemetery.
So there's a lot of tales and there's been accounts even in, you know, all the Chicago newspapers up until the late 80s.
It's since died down, but the area has become more populated that there would be a woman in white scene walking along Archery Avenue.
And usually men would stop and she would come in the car and really not say anything.
And she would just, you know, motion for them to go like towards the cemetery, and they would start driving her that way.
And, you know, when she got to the cemetery, she would disappear.
So there's, like I said, it's been lots of reports.
There's different tales.
And there are a lot of Marys buried in Resurrection Cemetery, but there's been a lot of research, and they don't know exactly which stone, which individual.
A lot of great books out there on it.
I'm not an expert by any means, but I think that Resurrection Mary is one of the most famous ghosts in the world now that you mention it.
How often is she seen?
Is she still seen right up to this day?
No, I mean, honestly, I feel like the most recent reports have been early 90s that are credible.
But since then, I hate to say that the Willow Book Ballroom has since burned down.
It burned down in 2016, and they did not rebuild it.
And unfortunately, now it's, it sounds kind of goofy, but now they just built and it opened its senior living.
So if you want to go live on the old Willow Book Ballroom that's supposedly haunted, it's senior houses now.
I'm only a few miles from there, so I drive down that road quite frequently, but it's very populated now as opposed to, you know, 30, 40, even 50 years ago.
Bet the residents have a few tales to tell, hey.
Now look growing up in Chicago then, how would you sum it up as to how you got interested in all of this stuff?
Because we all have our ways.
We watch the television.
Or in my case, my dad had a fund of spooky stories, things that he personally experienced.
How did it happen for you?
So for me, once I got old enough, Chicago was very lucky.
There was different paranormal groups.
And I started researching.
And there was a paranormal group that was well respected.
His name is Dale Kazmarek out of Oak Lawn, Illinois.
And gosh, he's been doing it since like 1977.
And I was able to join his group.
And from there, he taught me how to investigate.
I always laugh.
I say that he taught me the right way.
He spent time with everybody in his group, taught us how to use equipment, how to take notes.
I mean, try to follow scientifically as much as you can.
I know ghost hunting is not scientific by any means, but trying to account for things, debunk, be aware of your external environment.
So I got into it right around the age of like 18 and 19, really going to investigations and have been doing that ever since then.
Can you remember with Dale Kasmara?
Can you remember your first investigation?
It was a private home just in the suburbs of Chicago.
He did a lot of private homes as well, free of charge.
So individuals that would have any sort of issues, he would go in there gladly because a lot of the times we found that it could be man-made explanations, you know, high EMF yields from a clock, a fish tank, living under power lines.
So it was a pretty active location.
We had a couple things happen there, but the family was, frankly, too scared to live there.
And we're in the process of trying to move out because they had a lot of shadows that they were seeing, voices, doors slamming and things like that.
And they were scared and wanted somebody to come in.
So did they think that by getting you in to help them understand it, it might make it a little less scary for them?
Correct.
And I feel like a lot of times people want like reassurance or, you know, knowing that what they're experiencing is really happening.
I feel like ghost hunting is not really taboo anymore.
It's more mainstream.
Gosh, when Dale started back in the 70s, no one talked about it as much.
But sometimes, I know, sometimes people want us to go in there and clear it out, whether it be, you know, saging or telling the ghost that they're not wanted and just making sure that they feel safe in their home.
I feel like a lot of people in their homes don't want these entities, whatever they may be, because that's your home.
That's your safe space.
And they're invading that.
So when you go around a place with the sage, sagebrush, saging, do you think that that is actually doing something to cleanse the place?
Part of me, I do.
I think a lot of it with the homeowner's intentions and energy.
If the homeowner asks for these spirits to leave, then they could go and they will leave and they will listen to the homeowner.
I am not an expert by any means if it comes to anything that's a little bit more sinister.
I have not encountered any sort of demons or anything really, really evil.
And to me, that's something where you would talk to get a professional, whether it be someone who's an expert in that or even the Catholic Church.
I would not mess around if you really thought it was something at a much higher level.
I've spoken to a lot of ghost investigators over the years.
Some of them tell me stories of things that they've accidentally taken home with them.
Has that ever happened to you?
Not to me, but that is quite common.
A lot of other my colleagues will do things.
We'll say like a prayer circle in the beginning at the end.
Some ghost investigators will wear crystals, protective religious items, whether you're religious or not.
I am Catholic, so I mean that I'll have a cross on and things like that.
I've also heard that you should always take a shower and kind of brush yourself off with water when you leave a residence, just kind of cleansing yourself.
So I always thank the entities when I leave a house.
I always, when I enter, I say, you know, hello.
My name is Nicole.
You know, I'm here to investigate for such and such time.
And then when I leave, I always, I always thank them.
I don't like to be rude.
I don't like to, you know, really, what's the right word?
Like, I don't like to provoke.
That's not my style.
Well, in fact, one of the things you say, and I was going to come to that later, but we can come to it now because it fits here, is that you have to be respectful.
There are some people who go into these things and they're taunting whatever might be there.
They're taking it all as one big joke.
And that's not the way to do it.
I don't think so.
I mean, everybody has their personal opinion, but if you think about it, I feel that the spirits we encounter were once human for the, you know, most of the spirits I've ever been able to get evidence from.
If somebody walked in and whether they could see us or hear us or how they perceive us, if someone's being rude, I'm not going to want to talk to them.
And that's just me.
I mean, we do go to some bad places.
I mean, we go to jails and things like that.
But still, they were once human.
And I'm hoping that they will talk to me if I talk to them more on a respectful level.
And that's just me.
I mean, you'll see different people do have different styles, and that's each its own.
But again, I fear that attachment.
I do not want anything following me home, nor do I give it permission.
Okay.
You launched something called Ghostly Voices, which you still have your website in 2011.
And I think you also around that time joined the American Spectral Society.
Is that so?
Yes.
So in 2011, I had a lot of evidence.
I wanted to get it out there just for people to listen.
So I created ghostlyvoices.com.
And then, you know, as times change, as people get older, we did create the American Spectral Society.
And we're from all over the country.
We kind of get together when we can.
A lot of us, you know, have day jobs and family, so we don't get together like we used to.
Hold on, you created the American Spectral Society.
Correct.
So, yep, that's our own little group that we created.
It based out of Chicago area, but we have people from all over the country.
Just kind of a loose team of friends that gets together.
And we wanted to give ourselves kind of a cool name.
I just thought this is clearly an august body of people that's been in existence for hundreds of years, but it's something that you created.
How cool is that?
Yes.
Well, my cousin, I'll give credit, my cousin created Joey.
And our friend Jim Graczek, who's well known in Chicago, he's written a lot of books as well on ghost hunting for teens.
They created it.
And I joined on it as well because my cousin did get me into ghost hunting a lot, I will say as well.
He was the one who introduced me to Dale and the team.
I love your book because I thought you got in touch with me.
And sometimes people get in touch with me and they say, hey, I want to come on your show and I'm really good.
And sometimes they're not.
And sometimes they are a gift that keeps on giving.
Your book was a big surprise when you sent me the book because not only is the book, no, the book is really nicely written, but not only that and clearly laid out, but not only that, it's not like, here's a bunch of spooky stories, go and have, you know, have some thoughts about these.
It's actually a guide.
It's a guide to help people who want to do this kind of investigation.
And from that point of view, I think it's great.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I was so excited when I reached out to you and you got right back to me.
I told my husband because he listens to you a lot while he's driving.
And I was like, Howard Hughes wants to talk to me this week.
My husband's like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.
Well, no, I have a feeling that if the master, Art Bell, if the guy who created this genre, Art Bell, was still alive, then you would definitely be on his show, I think.
Oh, thank you.
You're going to have to make do with me.
I feel like this book, and literally it was 10 years in the making.
I wrote parts of it 10 years ago about like the EVP part, especially the electronic voice phenomenon.
Estes method that we'll talk about is a little bit newer, but and I wanted to give something where people could pick it up.
If they had questions, you know, I'd give them some of my opinions, give them some stories, and then let them know that they can listen to what I got on the website.
Like I want people to listen and hear the evidence because my goal is for us to like share evidence, see what people get, and get it out there.
And what else have people gotten?
Because there's too many strange occurrences and things that happen to say that there's not something in the afterlife.
We've all had our encounters and they're getting more and more commonplace, I feel, because we're talking about them more.
Okay, now that's interesting.
You led me right into this.
So before we dive into all of this and we give people a guide to the kind of equipment that you can use, what the difference is between EVPs and the STES method, which is what you're talking about mainly, but not entirely in the book.
You said that everybody has those experiences.
You know, the spookiest experiences, the inexplicable ones.
Have you got a favorite?
And if you have, what is it?
For me personally, that I've experienced, hmm.
I would say it was when I was investigating, there's a well-known jail.
It's called Mansfield.
It's where they filmed the Shawshank Redemption.
So that's in Ohio, if you've ever seen the movie.
Oh, yes.
I always, I don't want to say like on TV when you see people like something went through me.
I always was like, hmm, can that really happen?
I'm still kind of, I feel like I started off like more of a skeptic, but since I've been in this so many years, I'm more of a, I'm quick to believe things a little bit more easier.
But I went to this jail, was investigating, walking down the cell block, and literally I saw like hands gripping the cell bars.
And some of the cells are open.
You could go in them.
So I thought it was somebody from the team playing around.
And I walked by and there was nobody in there.
And I literally felt like a gush of like, I don't want to call it wind because it wasn't windy, but like something go through me where it stopped me in my tracks for a couple of seconds.
And I was like, oh my goodness.
So to me, that was something that was very profound.
And I had been investigating even for a few years, but it just tells you anything can happen in anywhere.
And I love just sitting around and hearing people's stories, whether, you know, they got physically touched, they've seen something, they've heard something.
Everybody's got a story.
They do.
You say in the book, and I quote, my ultimate goal is to further our knowledge of the afterlife.
How do you think you're doing that?
There's a big question.
Oh, that is a big question.
Getting, I think, just trying new things, whether it's new equipment, new approaches to trying to talk to whatever's there and trying to document it.
I like to live in the moment, don't get me wrong, and I have personal experiences, but I try to capture what I can during an investigation to let others experience what I have.
You know, like, obviously they're not going to be in the location.
They're not going to feel what we felt.
But if I could capture a voice and play it to you or anybody else, maybe that's proving something.
You know, maybe it's not.
But I just like to document, document, Document and try to analyze what we get.
What does it mean?
I don't know.
I'm fascinated by EVPs.
Tell me if this definition is correct.
This is a recording device that you take.
In the old days, they used to use cassette recorders and little, you know, Sony handheld microphones, whatever.
They'd go and they'd either leave it in a location or they'd stand there very quietly in a location.
They would then ask questions of whatever they thought might be there, and sometimes they'd go home, play back the tape, and there would be answers there.
In the digital domain, although some people were skeptical that digital would work for this because it's so fragile and sensitive, that is whatever you're, if you're communicating with anything, whatever you're communicating with.
But it works in digital too.
And this is what people do.
And some people like yourself say, I get actual recordings that I take them home.
We didn't hear the replies there and then, but gee, when we played it back, maybe on site or maybe later, when we played it back, there was something answering our questions.
Correct.
So for me, for electronic voice phenomenon, you don't hear it in real time.
So if you do leave a recorder, I often leave a recorder and we may leave the site or we may go to another room.
If you do capture things on there, obviously you won't know if you heard it or not in real time because nobody was there.
But another thing that we've, I call disembodied voices, where we hear it in real time.
And the way you notice is we react to it.
So I always try to have my audio recorder going in a haunted location.
I try to keep it on a flat surface.
I don't like to walk around with it as much because, as you know, it gets like the scratchy noises and things like that.
So that's why sometimes you hear it.
Sometimes you don't.
The big thing is tagging, I call it, and it's in the book.
So if you're in a location and you hear other noises, make sure you say that.
So when I listen back, I know, oh, that was my stomach, or that was a train, or that was somebody whispering, which is a no-no.
Because when you whisper, it never, yes, it never sounds like you.
So when I re-listen, I'm like, okay, my husband was, you know, I'll say Al whispery, you know.
So, yeah, I mean, sometimes I say more than often we don't hear it in real time.
And I hear it when I re-listen to my recordings, whether it be a digital audio recorder, my camera.
I still have an old cassette player, but it's hard finding cassettes because, you know, they don't make them like they do.
And you really shouldn't re-tape over a cassette because that's like a physical, you know, the physical file.
And people say, you know, artifacts can remain if you reuse a cassette multiple times.
Yeah, well, maybe the, what do they call them, the particles, the ferric oxide particles or whatever it might be, chromium dioxide in my day, they might be rearranged and they might stay that way.
I'm not technical enough to know that.
I know you can buy these things that completely erase tapes, but that's another thing.
Of course, you try and get cassettes now.
I think you can get them in some places, but they're very hard to get hold of.
Okay, before we leave this behind then, hearing a voice in real time, what's that experience like?
Exciting.
I get scared.
I'm not going to lie.
I get scared and excited.
Probably in that order.
It's great because it's verifying that something is trying to connect to you.
I say we probably get yells and whistles the most in real time.
We don't really get, I've never really heard a full sentence.
But yeah, we've gotten yells, someone screaming, and then like a whistle before that we all heard and react to.
Do you get what you might call confirmatory noises?
Like if you ask a question that has a yes or a no answer, do you ever get like a more as an EVP, so we don't hear it in real time.
I'll be honest.
And then, you know, sometimes we get, you know, we've done the whole knock thing, but we're in so many haunts or we're in so many old buildings that like knocks and bangs.
Sometimes it's hard to tell, like, is it really something or is it the pipes?
Or did the air turn on?
Or did something shift?
And that's part of the procedure, isn't it?
We're going to go through all the equipment that you use or as much as I can get through.
You say that it's very important before you do anything to have a sense of where you're going and to do a like a reconnoiter of the place.
So if it's got a train track nearby and that might give you low-level rumbling on your recordings, or if it's got like a furnace next door that's very loud that you can hear switching on and off, or there's something that's causing EMF disturbance, there might be, I don't know, a taxi company radio transmitter on a rooftop nearby.
You've got to note all of those things because they might throw you off the scent.
Correct.
Especially high EMF fields, if locations are even just near power lines, we've been able to follow like the high EMF field and just to the source.
And some people are very sensitive to that.
We have an individual on our group that when she walks into a building with like a lot of high EMF, she feels it right away.
She gets an instant headache.
Some people get nauseous.
And if you're around it a lot, some people can hallucinate.
So it's good to kind of note the environmental things, even as well as rain, if it's going to rain, the humidity.
You might get orbs in your pictures and things like that, insects.
And like with the train tracks, with the rumbling, we've had trains go by.
And if you have one of those meters that show, it's not a geophone, but when you walk, it shows the vibrations and it lights up.
It could potentially make that go off as well.
So you should kind of know what's going on in your environment.
And also for safety reasons, I always say be safe on your investigations and know where to go and not to go and go with somebody as well.
I don't really tell people to go off on their own because you never know, especially at a dark location.
It's a lot different at night than during the day.
You know, I like to think of myself as big and grown up, but I would never go and do anything like that by myself.
Mind you, occasionally I have walked into places, maybe on the way home in London, that I thought have been haunted, like graveyards and stuff, and just done it for the hell of it.
But that's something that I've done, and it's not for you to do if you're listening to this.
What is the Estes method?
According to the book, it's to do with sensory deprivation.
You've got to wear isolation headphones, maybe a blindfold, maybe even some LED goggles when you do this.
So what is it, and how does it differ from electronic voice phenomena?
It's pretty much like what you said, sensory deprivation.
So that's been around, gosh, thousands of years.
But with Estes method, it got popular back in 2016 at the Stanley Hotel.
That's where they filmed The Shining, and that's in Colorado.
And there were a few individuals that decided to do things a little bit differently.
I'll be there, their names are in the book, but Carl Pfeiffer, Connor Randall, and Michelle Tate.
So basically, you use some sort of device that creates white noise.
Most commonly, people use spirit boxes.
They're easy to get.
Sometimes they're called SB7, SB11.
That just stands for spirit box.
And you plug in, I say noise isolating headphones.
I don't recommend canceling headphones, like sound canceling, because they may cancel out frequencies or voices that you may want to hear.
I'm not a huge technical expert, but we want to isolate.
We don't want to cancel anything out potentially because we don't know what's coming through.
And you should wear blindfold, although some of us close our eyes and you sit in a location.
So the person who is listening to the white noise with the headphones, they're called the receiver, and they'll plug in.
And there's so many different ways to do this.
You can really make it your own.
I usually run this radio.
It'll just scan radio frequencies very fast.
So you shouldn't hear any sort of words or sentences.
So it makes that white noise like effect.
So you'll sit there just immersed in your own environment.
And anything that you hear coming over the radio that's scanning, you should say to the audience.
And typically there's people that are asking questions from your team.
We call them operators.
And they will sometimes ask questions based off what you're saying.
Sometimes we have multiple people listening to different boxes and we'll talk to each other.
And again, the person that's wearing the headphones cannot hear anything besides what's coming over the box.
They cannot hear the questions.
And we always say like with Estis, if I'm listening, you should say it how it sounds.
So if it yells, I'll yell it out.
If it's screech or if it like is quiet, I'll say it's quiet.
And sometimes I'll make note if it was like a child or a male voice that's coming through, just so the people asking questions know kind of the context behind it.
And with electronic voice phenomenon, usually that's you put your recorder down and you ask questions.
No one's really wearing headphones.
Usually you usually do like a short burst.
I typically do 10 to 15 minutes, ask questions, and then I'll listen to that later on, whether it's that same night or, you know, at home.
So that's the main difference.
So Estes has gotten a bit popular over the last few years.
It's something different that you could do using your equipment.
Right.
And apparently during COVID, I think you and some other people, even though you couldn't meet up in groups, you were able to do this Estes method remotely.
Correct.
So COVID hit, yeah, COVID hit.
I had a newborn as well.
So my paranormal partner in crime, I call her, Lisa Crick, was in a haunted location down in near Indianapolis, which is a couple hundred miles away.
I was in Chicago with my husband and we had another team member in Indiana.
And I live streamed it on my TV.
I filmed it.
So my friend who was in the haunted location was doing the Estes and then my husband was doing like Estes in our haunted, or excuse me, our haunted, our home.
And we were getting results.
They were talking to each other hundreds of miles away.
And I never would have thought.
I will give credit to my paranormal partner in crime.
And you'll see her name throughout the book, Lisa.
It was her idea.
And I didn't think it was going to work.
And I thought it was kind of silly.
And it worked.
So you can have someone else be in a haunted location doing Estes and you're in your home.
And we got some weird things.
So hold on.
It was your husband asking the questions.
We switched back and forth.
But Lisa was remote for most of it.
Lisa was in the haunted location.
So she was under.
She couldn't hear what we were asking via the live stream.
So me and my husband switched off.
Sometimes he was wearing the headphones and I was asking questions.
And sometimes I was wearing the headphones and he was asking questions.
Now, our friend Jim was by himself.
So he never wore the headphones.
And that's one thing I don't recommend doing it by yourself because somebody might not be able, you might not be able to pull yourself out or if something happens in your environment, you might not know.
Because some people get very immersed and they almost get into like the state of meditation with it because they're just listening and in their own little world and environment.
Yeah, no, I think you should always have somebody with you for safety's sake, especially if you're disconnected in that way.
So the idea is to separate the person receiving the information from any external influences that they may misinterpret.
Right.
Okay.
So supposedly those who champion this way of doing it would say that it's more accurate.
Ideally, I mean, I know some people are like, well, you know, the ones asking questions bias.
I mean, they are reacting to the responses they're getting.
But again, it's just another way of investigating.
I mean, nobody knows the exact or correct way.
It's just something that, you know, to try out.
And we've gotten interesting things where if there's two people listening on headphones, they're talking to each other.
They can't hear anything going on.
So it's interesting.
And some of the words that come through, they're not normal radio words, I would say.
Some people say it's just a radio word coming through, but it's different.
So you can have two people who are isolated in this way listening.
You get two, three, four, as many people as you want to do.
Sometimes they can appear to be conversing even though there is no way for them to converse.
Correct.
Yeah, because you cannot hear each other.
Yeah, as long as you have the equipment, we've done three people listening.
Sometimes, you know, if you get more than three, it's a little bit too much.
It just depends on what equipment you Have and what you want to do.
Okay, let's go through some of the other equipment then, because I think the book is useful not only for the stories in there and for your own story, but also for a guide to some of this equipment, because some of this stuff I haven't heard of, and I'm sure some of my listeners won't have heard of it either.
What is a PRIC device?
Oh, the prick device.
I wasn't going to say.
I know.
We did name it like that on purpose.
It's our paranormal research instrumental communication device.
So that's a mouthful.
But joking aside, our friend Craig Talisha out of Pennsylvania made it.
He is like our tech expert.
So he wanted to make something that would scan all the frequencies.
And I'm probably not doing this justice, but as he explained it to me, when you use a digital radio like the spirit boxes, it misses some frequencies.
It's digital.
It can't scan everything.
It's missing frequencies between frequencies, as he put it.
So he used an old analog radio.
I think he got it from a car or stereo.
And he kind of souped it up.
He made it so we could plug in audio devices and record what it's saying directly from there and what people are asking so you can hear both sides at the same time.
And he has just kind of souped it up.
It scans every single frequency, he told me.
It doesn't miss any frequencies because it's manually scanning.
It's not missing anything digitally.
And it could sweep forwards and backwards, AM, FM, things like that.
So it's a souped up version that he created that models the spirit box.
Something really cool.
Yeah, not available.
Yeah, he made two of them.
And he said it was hard to get some of those analog radios.
You know, they're not easy to get as much anymore.
Right.
So you don't want to be hearing from people who want to buy them because you can't buy them.
There are only two and you can't get them in.
You certainly can't get them in the Sears catalog.
Okay.
No.
He may make more.
It's similar to a Frank's box if people know what that is.
That's well known in the paranormal world.
Okay.
EMF meters, we've heard about those are electromagnetic field measurers.
REM pod, radiating electromagnetic field pods.
What is a REM pod?
Sure, it's a newer form of an EMF detector.
So as its name suggests, it's like a little pod with an antenna that shoots straight up.
And the theory there is like the area around the antenna has like a little bit of an EMF field.
So if something comes in close contact with it or touches it, it'll go off.
It makes a light and a noise sound.
So there's a theory that since it's giving off a little bit of EMF, it attracts entities and then it can quickly detect any change in that little EMF field and then make it go off.
So it's kind of a newer souped up version of an EMF, like the old school EMF detectors that's available, widely available now.
Right.
So it's both attracting whatever might be there and also recording it.
Correct.
What about the tri-field?
I mean, I love this one.
You've got a photograph of it in the book.
The tri-field meter, it looks as if it should be held by Captain Jean-Luc Picard.
Yeah, so I mean, trifield, there's still the old school one that's manual.
And they now have a digital one.
So the one in the book is the digital.
And again, that just detects different electromagnetic fields.
If you want to do magnetic more, if you want to do, there's like a guy, like radio frequencies, there's an RF field.
So depending on like the sensitivity in a location that you're at, you could set it to what you want it to detect more, you know, radio waves, electromagnetic waves, magnetic.
And I highly suggest when you get these devices, they usually come with a manual and you could change like the sensitivity settings and, you know, see what's going on.
Very helpful to detect if there's any man-made, you know, cell phone towers, clocks.
Internet modems are very high in EMF.
And then potentially it could go off if there's a spirit or entity nearby, potentially.
Okay, have you got anything that would detect, for example, and I've experienced this, that when something out of the ordinary is present and maybe it hasn't appeared, but you know it's there, the temperature drops.
Are you able to measure that too?
Oh, yeah.
So a flare, a flare camera is thermal, so that does great temperature drops.
If you shoot it down a hallway or things like that, they're a little bit pricey, I'm not going to lie.
And there are some models you could connect to your cell phone now.
There's like a little plug-in.
Those are a little bit more cheaper and affordable, but those can detect temperature drops visually.
You can also use a Melmeter that does temperature probe as well pretty quickly.
It's got a little sensor at the top, and that's a little bit more reasonable.
So there's a wide variety of devices if you know what you want that are pretty reasonable.
So, I mean, I don't suggest you go out and buy thousands of dollars of equipment.
But there's things out there that you could get if you find something you like and you want to kind of play around with it.
What's an EM pump?
EM pump is older.
So this was the days before the REM pod.
An EM pump would just pump out EMF.
So that's all it does.
It just pumps out that electromagnetic field.
So it's just sending that out into the air.
Again, there's the theory that ghosts need magnetic energy are attracted to it, that they'd be able to manifest or do something.
So the theory is if you're putting more energy in the air, you might get a better response.
So that's an older device.
The REM pod is newer.
So that kind of is able to give a little bit of a pump and detect changes.
So, you know, things have evolved.
But again, an EMF pump is pretty useful.
Just, I wouldn't put it by electronics if it sends out a lot.
It could have the potential to disrupt.
There's a thing called the talker, and this is a kind of handy-dandy, super-duper box that's full of words, isn't it?
Or not full of words, full of part words, full of phonetic junctions and phrases.
Correct.
Well, bits of words, I suppose I'm Putting it badly, but bits of words.
Correct.
So that's another older piece of device, but it's still great where it does a lot of phonetics.
It's kind of a precursor to the ovelus, which is popular now.
The ovelus is, you could do a phonetic mode, you could do a word bank, you can add your words.
So the theory is you put it in a place.
You might be doing an EVP session, asking questions, and it'll say it out loud.
So you'll hear it.
We've gotten it to say things.
It did call me the B-word years ago.
We were at an old Catholic rectory in Illinois, and it put together B-I-T, C-H, pretty clearly, like two, three times.
So I don't know what I was doing.
All of these things then are about, and here I am jumping in, sorry.
All of these things are about getting the random world of paranormality to impose itself upon the technology that we have in our organized world and provide you with things that we can make sense of, like words, even if it's a bad word beginning with B. Yeah.
And the thing is, too, is I have a lot of equipment in the book, but it's just a guide.
Don't let the equipment overwhelm you.
Don't feel like if you are interested in investigating that you need it all.
You do not.
Start simple, keep it simple.
I've seen people have so much equipment, they miss like the ghost dancing in front of them.
And, you know, I'm being a little bit sarcastic, but use it wisely, use it how you want, know how to use it, but don't let it consume your investigation where you're just running around with equipment all day and not getting it.
For equipment's for equipment's sake.
So you might have somebody saying, hey, I've just got this for Radio Shack standing there looking at, it's got this, it's got that.
You put the batteries in here, it does that.
And all the time the ghost is looking over the person's shoulder.
Right, I've just seen that image.
Hey, listen, you went to a place, leaving the equipment aside for a second, you went to a place the owner of which I interviewed on my TV show in live video about two months ago, three months ago, the Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky.
A lady called Tina Mattingly gave me a video-guided tour live for the viewers.
It was fantastic there.
You went there.
This place is said to be highly haunted.
Did anything happen for you there?
Gosh, I've been there.
I love Tina.
I love Waverly Hills.
It's about a five-hour drive from where I'm at.
Been there four times?
Yes.
It's just, oh, if you could ever go there, it's just very active, very ominous at night.
I've seen shadow figures there at night, darting in and out of hallways.
I've captured EVPs there.
It's just such a great energy.
I was in the building once and we were kind of shutting it down and most of the team had left and there was three of us just walking.
You could just kind of feel the energy.
Just a very highly active location considering how big it is.
It's huge.
You can get lost.
And, you know, all the death that occurred there from, you know, the years and years of tuberculosis.
Awesome location.
Decising.
The location is like on a kind of ridge, isn't it?
Supposedly to give clear air for people who suffered with TB.
Yep, because back then, yeah, and most, and even during that day, you know, the windows were open.
So it's five floors and you'll just be on the fifth floor and it's open and the breeze is coming in.
It's a really cool building.
It has a really cool feel.
And I applaud Tina.
I know he's doing a lot to preserve it because, you know, it's open to the elements, unfortunately, not having windows, but that's just how it was built because TB was thought open air would help those individuals.
And fortunately, it's.
And they've got some of the original gear there.
I'm sure that when we did the video link with Tina, they have those old wicker work wheelchairs there.
You know, the ones that we're talking about.
And the morgue.
Oh, and the morgue.
Yes, we looked at the morgue.
Oh, my God.
Amazing place.
You also worked with the very famous, and she was on my early shows, Rosemary Ellen Guiley, the late Rosemary Ellen Guiley.
You went to a theater in Illinois with her?
Yes, Lincoln Theater in Decatur, Illinois.
Yeah, week.
Gosh, Rosemary taught us, I taught me and Lisa a lot.
I remember when we first started investigating with her, I used to say, use my energy to manifest.
And she's like, no, never say that.
You're inviting something to come in and attach to you.
So, gosh, I miss Rosemary.
We had a lot of fun adventures.
But yeah, she got a lot of activity at the Lincoln Theater.
It was called in, it's in like the middle of Illinois.
Old theater burned down, rebuilt.
A lot of shadow activity.
It seems like the shadow people like to follow her around when she was going from investigation to investigation.
But yeah, Rosemary left us too soon.
I wish she was still around for us.
Great woman.
A lot of us doing a great guest on early radio shows that I did.
You talk in the book about a barn that was used to hang inmates at Moundsville Penitentiary.
You apparently went there.
You read out the names of people who'd been hanged there.
And I think you got some response to the names.
Correct.
So that's why if you are going to, I see like a well-known location, do a little bit of research if that's your thing.
I think, I personally think it helps if you could, you know, I call them like trigger objects.
In that case, we were reading names of people that were hung.
And we got like a scream on my audio recorder.
Did not hear it in real time.
So it's an EVP.
It's on the website under Moundsville.
So I do say, you know, if you have period clothing, books, toys, if you're going to someplace with children, bring those along because you might get a response.
It like triggers the entity to respond to you.
You might not hear it in real time, but it's something to think about if you're going to a place and you want some activity.
It may help.
And the actual thing about reading out the roll call of names of people who've been hanged, I mean, if you're there doing that, I'm not sure whether I would have the intestinal fortitude to do that.
But, you know, how does that feel to do?
Yeah.
I mean, honestly, when we did it in real time, we didn't really feel anything.
I mean, I'll be honest.
I mean, Lisa read them and I was standing there and it didn't really feel ominous.
It was the two of us.
And okay, we said, okay, nothing really happened.
We'll move on.
And then boom, I listened to the audio maybe a week later and captured it.
So sometimes you don't know if you're getting anything with EVP.
That's why it can be so strange.
Okay, you've given me a bunch of sound files.
There are seven of them.
I don't know whether we'll have time to get through all seven, but you've got a list and I've got a list.
And I'm playing these off my phone here.
So anything could happen.
But they should play instantly as soon as I touch them.
Number one is you're using the Estes method that we talked about at a place called Crown Point Jail in Indiana in 2019.
Before I play the clip, can you talk me through it?
Sure.
So we were doing Estes method.
This is a short clip back in 2019 of March.
So Lisa and I are listening.
So we're wearing the headphones and my husband and other investigator Jim are asking questions.
So you'll hear their response.
Lisa and I cannot hear each other.
Okay, so we have to bear that in mind because of the way the Estes method works.
You're not in communication with Lisa.
You're separated from her.
You're isolated from her.
But you get a response.
Now you've got to listen for this.
I'm going to hit this on my phone and here's what's going to happen.
7, 7, whoa.
7.
7.
Okay.
Yeah.
So what was the significance of that?
Yeah.
We were just in a cell block and walking through different cells and my husband was just asking, you know, what cell number are you?
They're not labeled, unfortunately, they're at Crown Point, and they're not sure of the labeling system that they had.
But he was just asking what cell number and both Lisa and I got seven at the same time.
And again, we cannot hear each other.
Only the people asking can hear what we're saying.
Right.
So she couldn't hear the questions, yet she was answering the question, not just once randomly, but a couple of times.
Yep.
I wonder what that's all about.
Okay, same location.
This is another Estes method.
And this is you and Lisa.
Is that right?
Correct.
It's the same.
We're in a different location.
We're still listening on headphones.
We took a break.
But this is a little bit of a longer clip.
You'll hear responses as my husband's talking about they're going to be leaving soon.
All right.
Well, now I'm just going to ask my listener to concentrate because some of these you do have to listen to quite closely.
Here it goes.
The camera keeps focusing.
It's got like this auto detect.
Yeah.
And it keeps changing.
So now there's something in here that's picking up.
Maybe.
Pick up.
I don't know what you want to call it.
There's like a square bit.
I'll do it.
We're not leaving.
Oh, hear me.
That was a female.
We hear you.
Don't leave.
Okay, now my more skeptical listeners might say, well, that's the kind of thing that you might assume some kind of disincarnate entity might say in a location like that.
So of course you're going to say, don't leave.
What do you think?
What do you say?
True.
I mean, there's always people are going to think that we're saying it or, you know, there's some sort of bias.
And it is what it is.
I invite people, if you ever want to come investigate with me and experience it, come on.
I mean, come on with me.
There's more to it sometimes.
You could just walk in a location and sometimes just feel the energy, but I can't convince everyone.
And that's everyone's right to have their own opinion.
And that's fine.
It keeps me on my toes.
Okay.
Well, the third one is in the same location.
Might be a bit more convincing.
Let's see.
For those who may not, you know, totally believe me, doubt somewhat.
This is somebody else acting as the receiver, conducting an Estes method session in general population cell block quotes.
Is it Al?
It's not AI, is it?
It's Al is telling his friend.
It's Al.
Yeah, Al is, you can call me Al.
Al is telling his friend some instructions on where to go.
Now remember, the people doing this are not connected in any sentient way.
They're not aware of each other because of that isolation.
That's here.
Let me know when you want me to stop.
Okay, you're getting towards the C. Solitary.
Alright.
Alright, Jim's by Solitaire.
Send.
Send, that was clear.
Oh, should you clear us all down here?
No, Jim, you stay.
I can't go any further.
Should you Jim go solitary?
Is it raining up here?
No, he's coupled upright.
Hear me.
I hear you.
Where do you want Jim to go?
All the way up against the bars.
Get right.
Getting all.
What do you say?
Getting it right.
Getting it right?
Did Jim get it right?
Yes or no?
Okay, it's a little hard to listen to, but I think we get the idea here.
Just explain the dynamic, would you, of this interaction?
So Al, the one who's responding kind of loudly, he is the receiver, so he cannot hear anything.
So the rest of the team, we're getting excited because he's getting responses, telling our friend Jim where to go.
So when you do listen to clips, you kind of have to pay attention to who's receiving and listening because it can be hard to follow sometimes.
So a question had been asked for directions, and the person who didn't know that that question had been asked was getting the directions to pass on.
Yeah, don't, yeah.
He was saying, you know, send, come, getting it right.
And if you were randomly throwing out stuff, if you were randomly saying words, I don't think you would instantly hit on giving out directions.
You know, you probably say something.
No, you really don't.
The weather in town is fine.
You know, whatever.
Okay, all right, okay.
I like that one.
Let's go to number four here.
Remember, I'm getting these off my phone.
And this is the same location again, right?
Crown Point?
Clip four?
Correct.
This is while walking around early in the investigation, we captured a weird voice that sounds like it says the attic.
Okay, well, let's hear this.
This will probably throw out for you in my detector.
Yeah, they come.
I got that.
Now, that wasn't what are you going?
The attic.
No.
No, there was three men walking around at the time, and it was none of them.
And that buzzing is a computer server, so it was emitting a lot of energy, EMF fields.
Gee, I wonder if I can just bring that up on my phone here.
Let's just go to the end and let's hear.
There it is.
The attic.
That's absolutely clear.
Very creepy.
And very, very creepy.
Gee, Well, if none of you said it, something did.
Yeah, I swear.
Yeah, it was none of the investigators.
All right.
Clip five, remote Estes clip.
Explain this one to me.
So this is the remote Estes where, like I was saying before, Lisa was in the haunted location listening, and the rest of us were in our homes.
So we captured an EVP in my house, which is not haunted.
And this is what we captured.
All right, you're able to communicate with Al and Lisa at the same time.
Watch.
Here it comes.
It's today.
Huh.
Okay.
It's today?
No, watch actually is the EVP.
And I have a video of this because we recorded it.
You can see it on the website.
None of us say watch.
You can even look at our mouths.
None of us said that watch, but it came over.
I heard that.
That was halfway through, wasn't it?
It was like what?
Yeah.
Very loud.
And it was none of us.
And you can watch all of our mouths because I have it filmed.
I was filming it on the TV as we were doing it.
Like the previous one.
That sounds like a word.
It actually sounds like a word.
It's not just a random noise.
All right, we're probably going to get all seven in.
Number six here.
You say that number six is your saddest EVP.
This is Nemacolin Castle in Pennsylvania.
Is that pronounced properly?
Nemakolin Castle?
Yeah, we call it Nemakolin, but that's just our pronunciation.
Nemakolin.
I wish I'd heard of it.
Nemakolin Castle, Pennsylvania.
And I'm not going to tell my listener what is said here, but it's pretty surprising, really.
Shocking almost.
But hear it for yourself.
Here it comes.
Okay, I think we need to do that one more time.
Okay.
I think we need to explain what it is, and then we'll play it again.
So tell me what you think you heard, and I'll tell you what I think I heard.
Help me.
Right.
Yeah, and this is years ago, and it's on my old camera that used to use disc.
I just had left the room about two, three minutes before to change the disc, and I captured that.
Okay, and it sounds like, I mean, that sounds like a spooky voice.
That sounds like a scary voice, you know, a voice that's been unlike the others, that's been electronically changed to sound like Lieutenant Worf on Star Trek.
Really down there.
It sounds sad.
To me, it's just sad.
Help me.
All right.
Well, you know, my listener may be skeptical, so I'm just scrolling through my phone here to see if I can find this one again.
And the words we're listening for are help me.
And once you know what we think they are, you probably will hear them more clearly.
But have a listen.
Help me.
There it goes.
Help me.
They sound like words, but then they might sound more like words if you've been prepared to hear them.
I don't know.
I'm sure somebody's preparing to email me.
All right, clip number seven, the last one of these.
The screech.
Now, I'm going to control the sound levels on this because they vary pretty enormously.
But basically, what you're saying with this is this is various EVPs, isn't it, where you've caught strange screeching sounds that you can't explain.
Yeah, so if anybody has experienced this, this is a screech noise I've heard since 2009, and we've caught it 32 times, and it sounds the same usually on different recorders.
So I just clip them all together so the sounds do vary a little, but I have no clue what this is that's following us.
Anybody has an idea they need to contact you.
Sorry, I'm finishing your, we work so well together.
I'm finishing your sentences now.
So as we used to say on TV here, for the screech, opportunity knocks.
Okay.
Good evening.
Oh, not so.
So convinced about that, I don't think.
Why should I be?
Well, we've captured it on different equipment.
So at first, I thought maybe it was the same piece of equipment.
I've captured it on my different audio recorders, my camera, another team member.
Sometimes it happens when nobody's in the room.
So it's not somebody breathing.
Because I know people are like, that's probably just somebody breathing.
I don't know what it is.
Sometimes we're in the room.
You could hear us like, you know, that one, we were loudly cackling about something and we got that voice.
So I don't know what it is, but it's something that's drawn my attention over the years.
The screeching.
I don't know.
If you could tell me what it is, if it is something mechanical, I'd love to know.
But again, it's been on my camera.
I'll send you my device names.
I've used different, you know, Sony, Olympus, different things.
And I get it.
And so do other people on my team.
So it's not the same piece of equipment that always captures it.
I don't know what I can say about that.
I mean, they're all different locations, presumably.
So how can you get the same kind of sound in different places?
I don't know.
Yeah, and it's, yeah.
Last one we got was in June of this year at a haunted location.
Our first time was at Waverly Hills, June 2009.
So maybe it followed us from Waverly.
I don't know.
Well, maybe it's a sound from, I don't know, whatever is on the other side if there is another side.
Perhaps, you know, there are some places on the other side that are literally a weeping and a wailing and a gnashing of teeth, as they say in the Bible.
I don't know, but it's interesting.
All right.
What is it now?
We're recording this towards the back end of August.
What is your next big investigation if we look forward a week or so?
We're going to be doing a small historical society where I live now.
It's in Lamont, Illinois, and they have a museum with a lot of different artifacts.
So it's a smaller location, but I'm excited because it's right down the road and huge history.
Our small town is turning 150 years.
And you don't have to do this, but the book is full of interesting tips and guidance.
And not a lot of these books do that, I don't think.
I seem to remember buying in an airport in America, waiting to come home from Boston, I think it was.
There was a little, one of these books that you buy to go on a plane with little tiny books to put in your pocket.
And it was called How to Hunt Ghosts.
And that was the only book of its kind I've ever seen.
I think I've still got it in the bookcase behind me here where I'm recording this.
But there aren't very many guidance books.
I mean, you don't have to say that you would do this, but if there are people listening to this who have a specific question about maybe investigations they want to do and equipment they want to use, would you like to hear from them?
Oh, yes.
Please reach out to me.
On the website, goshillydasvoices.com.
There's a contact form.
Please, please email me.
I would love to chat with you.
And the book is available.
Yeah.
And the book is available.
That was going to be my final question, but you did it for me.
No, we are a double X. What's the book called and where can you get it?
I think that's what we need to say.
Sure.
It's called Estes Method and EVPs, The Search for Ghostly Voices.
It's available on Amazon.
It can be shipped anywhere.
And it's live.
It's ready to go.
Now, we have to say that my listener didn't know this, but I'll explain now.
You are my hero for today because I had a good and regular guest lined up to do this show.
And unfortunately, she's not too well, so couldn't do it.
And you stepped in to fill the breach.
And I'm very pleased that we had this conversation.
Thank you.
And I'm honored.
Thank you.
A new guest to the unexplained.
My thanks to her, Nicole Tito.
And the book is Estes Method and EVPs, as they say, available now.
And don't forget to check out her website, www.ghostly-voices.com.
That's www.ghostly-voices.com, which has been live, I think, since 2011 and is well worth looking at.
Boy, it's hot here today.
I'm sorry if I've sounded slightly off my usual stride.
It's just that it's so dang hot.
Hopefully, it'll be cooler next time I speak with you.
More great guests in the pipeline here at the Home of the Unexplained, so until next we meet, I am Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained Online, and please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch and stay cool.