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S2 E12 Stephanie Bingham - Historian, Paranormal Researcher and Psychic
10 Plays1 day ago
I'm over the moon to have Stephanie Bingham with me. Stephanie is a historian, paranormal researcher and psychic.
From experiencing her first spirit at a very early age, Stephanie had many encounters before she really knew if the people were actually dead or alive.
She experienced a spirit climbing into bed with her, and then experienced a child with Shark like teeth, after her room mate put beads under her bed without telling her.
Stephanie was also given the privilege of being the subject expert on the TV show Mysteries Decoded, when they filmed an episode about the Lizzie Borden House.
We then discussed if people really experience Demons, and being asked to assist a child spirit across a busy Hotel Lobby, and we finished off by discussing why the Fairies of England didn't take to kindly to Stephanie
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Stephanie Bingham
00:00:12
Lee Hatfield
Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of SIPA Paranormal Chronicles. I am your host, Lee. How could you forget this wonderful British person? And tonight I am delighted, more than delighted, I'm over the moon to have Stephanie Bingham with me. Stephanie is a historian, paranormal researcher and psychic. Stephanie, welcome.
00:00:34
Stephanie
Thank you so much for having me.
00:00:36
Lee Hatfield
you No, it's the pleasure is all mine. You're coming on to my show, so I love people like you coming on and talking about the weather and stuff and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
00:00:44
Stephanie
Yeah, absolutely. All the weather.
00:00:47
Lee Hatfield
but but let's stop Let's not go there.
00:00:49
Stephanie
All that.
00:00:50
Lee Hatfield
Let's not go there.
Early Paranormal Experiences
00:00:51
Lee Hatfield
Okay, so like I said, you're a historian, you're paranormal researcher, and you're psychic. But what I'd like to do is to go to the very beginning of your life, not not when you were born, a little couple of years after that,
00:01:05
Stephanie
here
00:01:05
Lee Hatfield
But how did your life start within the paranormal world, shall we say? Hi, cat.
00:01:13
Stephanie
This is Amarna. She apparently wanted to say hi
00:01:15
Lee Hatfield
Hi.
00:01:16
Stephanie
My first experience with paranormal actually happened when I was very young. I was still basically a toddler. i was about two and a half or so years old, and I was staying at my grandparents' house after there'd been a death in the family.
00:01:30
Stephanie
You know, little kid, something like that happens. You don't really understand what was going on. I had no idea. My cat is being obnoxious. awesome My mother had mother had put me down for a nap in a playpen.
00:01:42
Lee Hatfield
it's fine
00:01:45
Stephanie
So I was in a room by myself, didn't think anything of it. Little kid, you know, it is just what it is. And while I was napping, this man came in the room and he was sitting on the edge of the bed next to the playpen and he was...
00:02:00
Stephanie
being obnoxious cat. it He was just talking to me and I didn't really think anything of it. And when my mom came and got me up later, she was like, oh, you know, how are you doing? And I was like, oh, the man came in the window.
00:02:12
Stephanie
and she was like, what? I'm sorry? What did you say? And so I described this man and she kind of, you know, nodded and just sent me on my way and I didn't think anything of it.
00:02:24
Stephanie
And this kept happening where I kept seeing this man who would come in while I was napping, generally come in through the window, sit on the bed next to me. And he was just chatting. Like there was nothing strange about it to me at the time.
00:02:36
Stephanie
And eventually mom got suspicious on some level because of what the man was telling me. And she got this big group family photo and she's like, who is it you're talking to? Like, is the person you're talking to in this picture? And I was like, oh yeah, it's that one.
00:02:52
Stephanie
That's all she ever said. The man who had died was the man in the picture.
00:02:54
Lee Hatfield
Wow.
00:02:57
Stephanie
She never told me that. I was well into middle school before I realized that this man was dead. So that was my first sort of encounter with the paranormal, but I didn't realize it at the time. I didn't know that there was anything strange going on. It was just this family member wants to come in, sit down, chat, and go on about the day. You know, it was just normal to me.
00:03:20
Lee Hatfield
And I get so envious of people that have those kinds of stories because my childhood was pretty normal and boring.
00:03:31
Lee Hatfield
And it wasn't until I was an adult where I had my first paranormal experience. So to hear all these stories about, oh, when I was a child, this happened. It's like, okay, you could stop now.
00:03:43
Lee Hatfield
I don't want to know. when you you mentioned that, it was a few years later that you realized that this guy was dead.
00:03:53
Lee Hatfield
So how did it kind of materialize and how did how did your road open up to to what you are now?
00:03:59
Stephanie
Thanks.
Acceptance of Abilities
00:04:02
Stephanie
So it wasn't just him. I saw other spirits when I was younger and it took me a while and meeting another kid who could also see things like I did to really understand what was going on. There were two ghosts in my childhood home who, they were kids. It was an older girl and a little boy, her little brother. And they were always around to play. And I remember going out to play with these kids and, you know, I didn't really think anything of it. They were afraid of their grandfather you you know, they lived with.
00:04:33
Stephanie
And I didn't think anything of it until the other kids start asking, you know, who are you talking about? i don't remember this person. And until I found someone else who was quirky like me that I really sort of understood, like he understood it at the time, like he hadn't been nearly as oblivious to the fact as I was.
00:04:56
Stephanie
But yeah, because he could see the same things I did, things that nobody else or people that nobody else could see. It just sort of made sense at that point.
00:05:03
Lee Hatfield
<unk> are checked
00:05:05
Stephanie
And, you know, my world kind of crashed in on itself for a little while because, you know, this had all been normal until it wasn't.
00:05:13
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And, and that's what I find really interesting, interesting the fact that people go, i considered it normal. And until I i was told it wasn't.
00:05:23
Stephanie
Yes.
00:05:23
Lee Hatfield
So what kind of age did you kind of understand what abilities you had, and kind of accepted them, and then move forward?
00:05:36
Stephanie
I was, to actually accept them, you're actually looking probably late middle school, early high school, before that actually took place. There were a couple of good years in there where I just, I don't know that I was necessarily in denial,
00:05:50
Stephanie
But I was just confused. I was very, very confused. And I could not work through it. Like i I could not wrap my brain around the fact that not everybody else was seeing the same things I was. And it wasn't like I was seeing crazy things most of the time. It was people that had passed, people that were connected to people, people that were connected to locations. And these things were telling me their stories, telling me what happened or just conveying the normal messages. I'm happy. I'm safe. Tell them I love them. That sort of thing. The very normal... There was nothing really out of the ordinary.
00:06:25
Stephanie
Except for the ones that were vaguely terrifying. And I think that sort of... really was the juxtaposition for me because for years I had had this entity that walked down the hallway towards my bedroom, big heavy booted feet walking down the hallway slowly and I would hear it at night. And for years, that's all it was. I would just hear the footsteps down the hallway towards the bedroom. And eventually, as I started to understand that I was dealing with a ghost,
00:06:55
Stephanie
he would be in the He would be in the doorway. Like you could see him in the doorway. But it took years to get to that point. And I don't know why I did not put two and two together earlier, but my kid brain, it was just, it just was, you know?
00:07:11
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Were you the first person in your family to kind of have these
Family Connection
00:07:16
Lee Hatfield
abilities? Because you mentioned about your mother, know, with the photograph and which one was it. But did she kind of understand what was happening to you at that time? And did she have her own but her own abilities?
00:07:27
Stephanie
If you ask her, she would say no. She would say she doesn't have any abilities. have seen some things that would make me question that a great deal. But actually, that very first encounter I had with the dead relative, he came to my grandfather on the same night.
00:07:43
Stephanie
And he sat and talked to my grandfather for a while as well. And I think that's how she knew exactly who it was, because he visited not only me, but my grandfather on the same night.
00:07:53
Lee Hatfield
Right. So I ask this to all the people that have your kind of abilities. Some people can see, some people can hear, some people can smell, some people can sense, some people draw.
00:08:07
Lee Hatfield
What is your, I don't want to say it, but what's your speciality of communicating?
00:08:14
Stephanie
When I was very little, I could not tell the difference between the living and the dead. They looked solid to me. It took years and years for me to be able to be in a crowd and be able to pick out this one's alive and this one isn't.
00:08:27
Stephanie
So for me, it is a very visual thing. But after practice, I've been able to sort of shift the way I look, if that makes any sort of sense. So it's easier for me.
00:08:35
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:08:36
Stephanie
But I see them and I hear them as a secondary, if you want to look at it that way.
00:08:41
Lee Hatfield
because Yeah, know a lot of people can kind of relate to like the TV show Ghost Whisperer and yeah the movie Ghost.
00:08:41
Stephanie
But seeing is the big one.
00:08:53
Lee Hatfield
And there's one part in the movie Ghost where he walks into the room. There's loads of people. And from the person watching the movie, you don't know straight away who's alive and who's dead until they get up and walk out the walls.
00:09:05
Lee Hatfield
So is that the kind of thing, how how you experienced it to start off with?
00:09:05
Stephanie
hence
00:09:11
Stephanie
Very much so. it i could be in a room and I did not know who was who, what was what. I got to the point, especially in high school, where I would not respond to anybody that I did not actively know. If you were calling my name in a crowd, I would not turn around until I saw somebody else react to you.
00:09:29
Stephanie
Like, it was that bad at certain points. Like, it was just were you alive or were you not? i don't know.
00:09:37
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and yeah sometimes the the kind of giveaway is the clothes that they're wearing.
00:09:44
Stephanie
h It can be.
00:09:44
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, that yeah that yeah all wearing medieval clothing, okay, that's a bit of a giveaway, unless you're in some sort of pageant that that people are all dressed up.
00:09:53
Stephanie
we Yeah.
00:09:55
Lee Hatfield
But one thing that I like to ask as well, And I've completely forgotten what I was going to say to you. So let's but I'm going to come back to that one in a second.
00:10:06
Stephanie
Sounds good.
00:10:09
Lee Hatfield
I've had it on my tip my tongue and it just out went. Oh, yes, there we go. i remembered. I was talking to one medium last year who was saying that she was able to switch on and switch off like a radio station or like a radio, so to
Handling Paranormal Abilities
00:10:26
Lee Hatfield
speak. So if she wants to connect, she can.
00:10:31
Lee Hatfield
But if she doesn't, like she's yeah going in the shower or she's going to the local store and she wants to switch off, she can do that. So can you kind of do that kind of thing as well?
00:10:42
Stephanie
I don't think of it so much as switching on and switching off, but I got very good at ignoring them. And I find if I don't acknowledge them, it's harder for them to acknowledge me. So like if I want to go out and go about my business, I can, but there's always like a cue for me. If I'm getting ready to go out on an investigation, going out on a hunt, going out on any sort of thing like that, I will, you know, get dressed. You're going to put on a certain color of lipstick. You're going to do all the things that signal, okay, I'm okay with this right now.
00:11:10
Stephanie
But if I'm sitting down to do, you know, homework or something, don't mess with me. And it's just really sort of ignoring more so than actually turning on and off for me.
00:11:21
Lee Hatfield
And yeah I can kind of imagine that you're there doing your own work and there's somebody over there going, like is it is it time yet?
00:11:28
Stephanie
Mm-hmm.
00:11:28
Lee Hatfield
Can I talk to you right now?
00:11:30
Stephanie
Mm-hmm.
00:11:30
Lee Hatfield
And i I do get envious about people like yourself that are able to see spirits. I've been told that I'm sensitive and tomorrow night I'm speaking to another medium friend of mine. She went, you mean you need to talk?
00:11:45
Stephanie
Mm-hmm.
00:11:45
Lee Hatfield
And I'm going to explain why, because it's kind of, blew my mind a little bit a couple of weeks ago went on an investigation and one of one of my colleagues wanted to use the mirror scrying believe and we had cameras and it was in a dark location and maybe something happened in the mirror but it was dark there were shadows
00:12:01
Stephanie
yep who
00:12:14
Lee Hatfield
I'm quite a skeptical person, but I do have an open mind. So I want somebody else to do exactly the same experiment to see what they do. And I'm talking to this girl on Sunday night and she went, have you been scrying recently?
00:12:30
Lee Hatfield
And I'm like, what? She lives in Cleveland.
00:12:34
Stephanie
Okay.
00:12:34
Lee Hatfield
And I'm like, why?
00:12:34
Stephanie
Mm-hmm.
00:12:39
Lee Hatfield
And she goes, yeah, me and you need to have a chat. Okay. so Is this a mother telling me off chat or is it a good chat? shit Oh, no, it's a good chat. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. so So that's tomorrow night. So that's going to be interesting. So once you kind of understood these abilities that you had, did you kind of go and search for somebody to to learn and to grow or yeah and to nurture? Or did you just go, yeah, I'm by myself. I'm going to crack on.
00:13:09
Stephanie
I am a very independent person. I'm an only child. i was a very bookish child. So my first thought was to go to the books. I wanted to know the context. I wanted to know the history. I wanted to know that I wasn't alone and I wasn't the first person to deal with this. So spiritualism, voodoo, any sort of sort of esoteric a thing that dealt with ghosts.
00:13:32
Stephanie
I was voracious and all of that was... what I was digging into. I didn't have a teacher per se, as I had books, all the books.
00:13:44
Lee Hatfield
And it's it's cool that you say that because as you can see, i have books and I've got a really big book on ghosts.
00:13:50
Stephanie
Yeah, I've got that book. Mm-hmm.
00:13:52
Lee Hatfield
Have you? I i actually actually went to a bookstore last year and it was it was like a junk store kind of thing. And I saw it and I went, I need that book.
00:14:01
Stephanie
who
00:14:01
Lee Hatfield
I'd got no idea what was inside it. I just went, I need to have that book on my bookcase because it is so so it so stands out.
00:14:07
Stephanie
That's fair.
00:14:09
Lee Hatfield
i went, i I think I've looked at it twice, but it's like it's it's there. It's there. So once you started reading the books, Did your mindset kind of change to go, okay,
00:14:25
Lee Hatfield
I'm not like normal people. i can I can do and see something that other people can't. Did you kind of get that impression once you started reading?
00:14:35
Stephanie
In my mind, I've always been normal. So the ghosts were normal to me. So the idea of not seeing them sort of weirds me out to some extent. But didn't really think of it as normal or not normal, what I could do. It was just what it is. i was arming myself with information to understand it.
00:14:56
Stephanie
But to me, it only mattered that I understood it and I could function with it. Because I was very aware that there were things that were a little less... generous, a little less gentle than some of the spirits I'd grown up with. So I wanted to make sure that when and if those crossed my path again, i had context and an idea of what to do.
Terrifying Ghost Encounters
00:15:19
Lee Hatfield
And you mentioned earlier about some of the not nice experiences. And if it's not too like distressing upsetting, can you mention a kind of example of what you what you encountered?
00:15:34
Stephanie
Oh, well, everybody will, like, I get the question a lot. What's your scariest ghost encounter? And there's one clear answer to my mind. And then there is the answer that people want from me.
00:15:46
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:15:47
Stephanie
So to give you an idea of that dichotomy to me, I was reading a book late one night and I had a ghost crawl in bed beside me and it wrapped its arm around me. That is the most terrifying incident I've ever had with a spirit.
00:16:01
Stephanie
I lost my mind. I was petrified. I went and sat in the bathtub so I could not feel if something sat down next to me. I was terrified.
00:16:12
Stephanie
And everybody's like, oh, that's not that scary. And I'm like, oh, but it was. You had to be there. But it was terrifying.
00:16:18
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:16:18
Stephanie
But the incident that people always come back to with me happened when I was in college. I had this roommate at the time who also had abilities and her mother had gone on a mission trip and had ministered to a group that didn't want to be ministered to and then took a gift from them and brought back this gift and strange things started happening at their house.
00:16:40
Stephanie
My roommate, being the good daughter that she is, brought that gift back to our dorm room. She put it under my bed without telling me. It was college. Things happen.
00:16:50
Lee Hatfield
but yeah
00:16:51
Stephanie
And strange things started happening on campus. I had three different friends come up to me in the course of about a week to tell me that they were having these very strange dreams.
00:17:01
Stephanie
And I was like, oh, that's that's odd, but dreams are not my forte. I don't know how to interpret them. That's not my bag. But each of them told me about this little girl who was smiling down at them. And the first time I heard it, I was like, okay. And the second time I was like, that's not good. And the third time i was like, this is bad. Don't know what's going on, but something bad is happening here.
00:17:21
Stephanie
So I made the decision I'm going to go to the library this weekend because I'm a bookish kid and try and figure out if there's anything about this. And I don't make it to the library that weekend.
00:17:32
Stephanie
It's a Saturday. I'm doing what all college kids are doing on Saturday. I'm going down to the basement to do my laundry because I'm that much fun.
00:17:38
Lee Hatfield
And you do. yeah
00:17:39
Stephanie
You know, I do some time. And I'm walking down a flight and a half of stairs with no landing in the oldest dorm on campus. And you have to walk out of the main building and into this like fire stairwell basically to get down there.
00:17:55
Stephanie
And the door closed. it was one of those big metal doors. And as soon as it did, I could feel the energy around me change. And if you've ever been in the room with a ghost, you know what I'm talking about. Everything feels electric. You can feel that static. I knew something was manifesting. I did not know what it was. I was standing at the top of the stairs and I felt these two little hands on the back of my legs and she pushed me forward.
00:18:17
Stephanie
I fell about a third of the way down the stairs, grabbed the banister, dropped my laundry basket. It was a mess. And I caught myself and I sort of turned around and I was looking back up the stairs and I could see her standing there. And I suddenly knew what all these dreams were about.
00:18:33
Stephanie
There was this little girl, the cutest kid I've ever seen wearing this sort of rose colored nightdress, big dark eyes, and she was smiling at me.
00:18:41
Lee Hatfield
are using.
00:18:42
Stephanie
it took a minute and I looked at her teeth and her smile and they were everyone pointed like a little sharks, like little rows of shark teeth. And that is the moment that I know that my fight or flight response was broken. Because in that instance, I, for whatever reason, decided the best choice I could make was to run up the stairs towards her because I was going to grab her.
00:19:04
Stephanie
I have absolutely no idea what I was going to do when I caught her, but I was going to catch her. So I get to the top of the stairs about the time that my brain catches up to me and says, what are you doing? This is a really bad plan. And so I have this moment of sitting here like, what just happened? And I run back to my dorm room and I tell my roommate what just happened. And she's like, oh, yeah, those beads under your bed. And I was like, would have been great to know, you know, on everything here would have been great.
00:19:35
Stephanie
So then we had to take the beads out, get rid of them, and after that, that particular haunting stopped. But that is by far the most dramatic incident I've ever had with the ghost.
00:19:44
Lee Hatfield
Right. And it's really weird because I spent 25 years in the emergency services.
00:19:50
Stephanie
Mm-hmm.
00:19:51
Lee Hatfield
I get a similar kind of question. What's the worst thing you've been to? And you can ask as many different firefighters or paramedics or whatever, and they will always tone it down because yeah some of the stuff you see, you don't want to tell anybody.
00:20:10
Lee Hatfield
So you you you kind of make it all yeah nice and cuddly and stuff, but you kind of give it give it that emphasis of being dark, but you don't tell them exactly because a lot of people just go, oh no, i can't cope with that.
00:20:22
Stephanie
Yeah.
00:20:24
Lee Hatfield
and just went on So I can completely relate.
00:20:25
Stephanie
Yeah.
00:20:28
Lee Hatfield
kind of, to to to what you've just been saying.
00:20:29
Stephanie
Oh.
00:20:32
Lee Hatfield
But my first paramedic experience, my first paramedic, my first paranormal experience was at a cardiac arrest. And i'd got to replace I'd got a replacement crewmate, and I'm doing CPR.
00:20:39
Stephanie
oh
00:20:45
Lee Hatfield
And he went, oh, you can stop, because the spirit stood behind you telling you that he's not coming back. And I'm like,
00:20:52
Stephanie
That's bad sign.
00:20:52
Lee Hatfield
what Yeah, so I'm okay, please tell him with all due respect I need to carry on. It's my job. And then afterwards it's like, dude, you can't tell me that in the middle of a cardiac arrest.
00:21:05
Stephanie
fair.
00:21:06
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, so things kind of moved on after that.
00:21:06
Stephanie
That's fair.
00:21:09
Lee Hatfield
But at what point did you decide that, number one, that you're going to start writing – and then we'll come on to some of the TV work
Television Opportunities
00:21:21
Lee Hatfield
afterwards. Because obviously, yeah you have to do one thing before you do the other. So I'm assuming the writing came first. Would I be writing wrong?
00:21:28
Lee Hatfield
No, it's the opposite way around. OK. That's it. Pick on me.
00:21:32
Stephanie
So, no, you're good.
00:21:33
Lee Hatfield
go
00:21:35
Stephanie
You are right. Something has to come first. And for me, it was college. I got my undergraduate degree in the study of voodoo and the paranormal history of the U.S. s at the turn of the century.
00:21:46
Stephanie
So I literally went in and I was studying with a cross-cultural emphasis on Egyptian religious ideology and how that impacted American thought and American ghost hunting, if you will. So I literally got my undergraduate and then my graduate degrees in the paranormal history of the US.
00:22:04
Stephanie
There's not a lot of us that have any sort of academic background in the paranormal. So the academics led to the TV, but the actual incident that led to the first TV show is the one I just shared with you. That particular ghost story happening is what led to that very first show.
00:22:21
Lee Hatfield
I can't.
00:22:22
Stephanie
And then the writing started.
00:22:24
Lee Hatfield
Okay, yeah, I can't even say academic, or it's too much of a big word for me. So we'll go there. So what was the first TV opportunity that came along?
00:22:36
Stephanie
The first show that I did was a show on Syfy Channel when it was still Syfy.
00:22:43
Lee Hatfield
Back in the day, back in day.
00:22:43
Stephanie
way back in the day, yeah, it's an old one now. And it was called Syfy Channel School Spirits. And it was talking about all of these college age kids and all of these hauntings that were happening essentially on college campuses around the country.
00:22:58
Stephanie
And it was really wild because the group of people they ended up with on the show, I think I knew about half of them. already like before the show started because we were all sort of on the circuit.
00:23:09
Stephanie
We were all lecturing. We were all ghost hunting and everybody knew somebody. So if you didn't know them, somebody else in this group knew them. You know what I mean? It's very small.
00:23:18
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:23:19
Stephanie
Okay.
00:23:20
Lee Hatfield
So it's really interesting because, know, like you said, that you you've got the academical background and not many people do. I love it on some of these TV shows where they go, paranormal expert. It's all OK. What's your background, dude?
00:23:35
Lee Hatfield
so
00:23:36
Stephanie
I do. Mm-hmm.
00:23:36
Lee Hatfield
But yeah you can technically say that you are because you've got the academical background.
00:23:41
Stephanie
i do
00:23:42
Lee Hatfield
yeah and like Yeah, I'm not an expert, but I've got some experience.
00:23:47
Stephanie
wouldn
00:23:47
Lee Hatfield
and And there's a difference between the having a lot of experience and actually having the academic or background. Because I started, when i first got got into this over here, there's a company in on the East Coast that do paranormal courses. And I did one on ghosts and hauntings. I did one on poltergeist. I did one on demonology. yeah Because I wanted...
00:24:10
Lee Hatfield
if I'm going to talk to people about it, I need to have that background knowledge.
00:24:15
Stephanie
Mm-hmm. Great.
00:24:16
Lee Hatfield
I don't have to know every single thing because you can research it, but I needed to have a comfortable background so if I went to somebody's location, I could explain the A's, B's, C's and D's of what's what's going on.
Fascination with Lizzie Borden Case
00:24:32
Lee Hatfield
So one thing that I would like to ask you about is the reason why you're actually here, I saw you on Mistress Decoded and you were the, that's cally let's call you the specialist for for Lizzie Borden.
00:24:52
Stephanie
Yes. Yes, I was.
00:24:54
Lee Hatfield
So for those people that don't know, can we have a bit of a chinwag about Lizzie Borden and what happened and how you got interested in that?
00:25:05
Stephanie
Absolutely. So my mother, as we've already established, is a fan of the paranormal to some some experience, you know, she likes it. And i was sort of raised with Lizzie Borden shows and things like that. So it's always sort of fascinated me just the case around her and what happened and how much documentation there is for this case and how we don't have an official answer of what happened even though I have my personal theory and everybody has their theory you know but you have all of these like fantastical tv shows that are going to sort of blow the thing up and make it you know crazier or more outrageous more ostentatious they can but I think the crux of the story is two people ended up murdered in a very brutal way and the only people in the house at the time were two women
00:25:54
Stephanie
So it's just a really odd story. And I don't know if you want to go to Lizzie Borden's story first or how I got for that show. Like, how how do you want to do that?
00:26:04
Lee Hatfield
ye yo You're the guest. You tell me.
00:26:07
Stephanie
All right. Sounds good.
00:26:09
Lee Hatfield
its
00:26:10
Stephanie
oh
00:26:10
Lee Hatfield
I've taken away the responsibility. Go for it.
00:26:14
Stephanie
Let's go. Let's do it.
00:26:14
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:26:15
Stephanie
So that show came about in a very... normal-ish way for me, got in contact with a production company. They were asking about a couple of topics, Lizzie Borden being one of them, and eventually was like, you want to come out and do this?
00:26:30
Stephanie
And of course, when they ask you that, you say, yes, absolutely. Let's do that. Let's let's go
00:26:35
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:26:35
Stephanie
And so I did flew out to Fall River, Massachusetts, and we had about a week in the Lizzie Borden bed and breakfast where we had the house essentially to ourselves or a few tours coming in and out here and there, but we had full run of the place.
00:26:51
Stephanie
And like I knew what I was getting into the basics of the story, you know, Andrew and Abby Borden being murdered with an axe in their home. the only people living there were their two daughters, their two adult spinster daughters and their maid. And that being the entirety of the household.
00:27:09
Stephanie
And everyone assumes that Lizzie, because she was the only one there aside from the maid, had to be the one to kill her parents. every Everyone is convinced of this. Not so much, but that is sort of the story going in.
00:27:22
Stephanie
And so I've been to a bunch of haunted houses. I've been to a bunch of haunted locations. I don't know what I was really expecting because this one has a lot of traffic through it. Sort of like Waverly Hills does. just a lot of people, a lot of boots, a lot of energy.
00:27:36
Stephanie
So I go in here and I did not find what I expected because I'm going to Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast. I'm expecting to find Lizzie. And that's not who I found there.
00:27:47
Stephanie
And that really threw me for a loop because the first entities I found there were not associated with the Borden case at all. They were the two little kids that were also related to the Bordens that had been drowned by their mother at the next house over.
00:28:03
Stephanie
Those were the two first ghosts there.
00:28:06
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:28:06
Stephanie
and if you've ever been on set, you are on set for hours. Like these are 18, 19, sometimes longer hour days. It's a lot of hurry up and wait. It's a lot of ghost hunting. It's just a lot of everything. So I had a lot of time to sort of spend with these children.
00:28:21
Stephanie
and then the next entity I found was Abby Borden. And I've dealt with a lot at this point of inhuman spirits, and I know how they function and how they work.
00:28:33
Stephanie
Abby isn't inhuman, but she works a lot the same way. She wanted to press her emotions out. She wanted you to feel her pain. She wanted you to be sympathetic with her. She, you know, it was it was incredibly odd. I have never met another human spirit that did that. It was incredibly uncomfortable.
00:28:51
Stephanie
And she was a big domineering presence at that house. And of course, while we're here filming this, we're getting to talk to other experts, historians who have done nothing but study the Lizzie Borden case, stuff like that. And certain documents come up.
00:29:08
Stephanie
And the one that will always stick with me was a account from that day where a witness said that when he arrived on property, he met Lizzie and her hair was clean, dry and unmussed.
00:29:20
Stephanie
That was the quote. And I think anybody who has long hair knows that if you are doing any sort of strenuous activity, It is not clean. It is not dry. And it is not a must. It doesn't matter what you're doing.
00:29:31
Stephanie
It is going to be a mess. The Borden house.
00:29:33
Lee Hatfield
like I get that all the time.
00:29:34
Stephanie
Exactly. I knew you would understand. I knew it. But the Borden house did not have running water. There was nothing they could do. There was no way for her to clean up.
00:29:45
Stephanie
And that, to my mind, is the best clue that she was not the one who physically did the murdering. And to me, I had an issue with her uncle who was also staying there at the time, but was not at the house at the time because he ended up on a streetcar and he somehow remembered the first and last name of seven different individuals who were on the streetcar with him.
00:30:11
Stephanie
You know, just passing through, but he knew their first and last name to be able to tell the cops, oh yes, I was on this train with this person, this person, this person, this person, all the way down. First and last names, seven individuals.
00:30:22
Lee Hatfield
Mm-hmm.
00:30:23
Stephanie
He had also left town real soon thereafter. So to my mind, I do believe that he was the actual physical perpetrator, though I do believe both sisters were in on the plot because he was their maternal uncle and there had been a fight between Mr. Borden and the uncle the night before.
00:30:45
Stephanie
But I do believe that the girls wanted their stepmother killed, but not their father. So I believe that is why Abby, er that's why Lizzie and her sister had such a dramatic reaction after the murder.
00:30:56
Stephanie
Like they were essentially put on opium afterwards to try and deal with laudanum, I guess, to deal with the emotional upheaval of that. So I believe their uncle took advantage of their situation and then took the scapegoat that Lizzie was.
00:31:11
Lee Hatfield
And you mentioned at the beginning of this, that particular segment, that you felt something different that you haven't felt before. How does that come across, like, in reality to you?
00:31:26
Lee Hatfield
how How does it feel different?
00:31:29
Stephanie
So most spirits, most human spirits act like most people. They want to talk to you. They might want to touch you. They want to communicate. Abby Borden did not. She wanted to enfold. She wanted to press her emotions in.
00:31:45
Stephanie
It literally felt like something was pressing hard, like all over my body, like it was trying to get in, like she was going to force it in. And then i ended up crying at one point because I physically could not stop the amount of just overwhelming sensation.
00:32:04
Stephanie
that was being presented by this entity. She had so much power and so much energy behind her because of the amount of attention and the amount of people that come through there that she has figured out how to function much more like things that weren't people than an actual normal human entity.
00:32:22
Lee Hatfield
If you had let her continue, what do you think would have happened?
00:32:29
Stephanie
I can act as a true medium, if you will, where they can speak through me. I do not share well. It makes me incredibly uncomfortable to do it, especially to do it where I don't have someone there that I trust could bring me back from that. But that's what would have happened. I would have, she would have been talking through me.
00:32:48
Lee Hatfield
And do you think that's what she wanted? OK,
00:32:52
Stephanie
Yes, I do believe that's exactly what she wanted.
00:32:55
Lee Hatfield
and I just want to go back a little bit, because you mentioned the two children that were drowned at the next house down.
00:33:02
Stephanie
Yes.
00:33:03
Lee Hatfield
Why do you think they were at the Lizzie Borden house and not at the location of where they drowned?
00:33:10
Stephanie
So they were actually members of the Borden family as well. They are Borden relatives. So they would have known this house when they were alive. It's a slightly different time period. You're looking about a 20 year difference if memory serves.
00:33:23
Stephanie
But they were aware of that house. They were aware of that people. But I believe that Abby Borden, the entity herself, because she wanted to be loved so much, she really wanted children to adore her the way that children do. And Lizzie and her sister did not. So I believe that these two children have become essentially surrogate children for Abby Borden.
00:33:43
Lee Hatfield
and And did you feel any love between the children and Abbey or did you feel like there was animosity? Did you kind of pick up on that at all?
00:33:55
Stephanie
I didn't feel any animosity between them. I have dealt with, like I said, the two child spirits in my home, and there's a definite animosity between them and their grandfather, but I didn't feel anything like that between Lizzie and the children, or Abby and the children. So I really do think that she finally has gotten what she wanted. She got two actual children, to her mind, that are hers at this point.
00:34:19
Lee Hatfield
that that makes perfect sense. And i a fun fact about Massachusetts. So I'm from England originally. My hometown is Boston.
00:34:28
Stephanie
Oh, okay.
00:34:30
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and it completely confuses all North Americans. But the people the dudes that came across in the Mayflower started off in my hometown, then they went to Holland for a year, and then they went across the pond.
00:34:42
Lee Hatfield
But we've actually got a little village just outside my hometown of Boston called New York. So we have road signs for Boston and New York.
00:34:50
Stephanie
Oh my.
00:34:51
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, so just a little fun fact. So out of all the other different locations that you've been filming, is there anywhere that you felt threatened or you didn't feel comfortable in what you were doing?
Avoiding Negative Energy
00:35:12
Stephanie
I have never been to a location that I refused to go into or had a very negative experience while I was filming. I've only actually come across one house in my entire life that had that sort of entity in it. And that was actually in Savannah, Georgia.
00:35:29
Stephanie
And you could not pay me enough money in this world to go in that house. Whatever that entity is there, it does not like me. It does not want me there. And it has enough... oomph behind it to make me believe that it is correct.
00:35:44
Lee Hatfield
because it's interesting that you know that you mentioned that because a lot of people would definitely go oh that's definitely demonic or that's definitely malevolent or whatever but yeah I was speaking to somebody and know for you to believe in demons it's kind of the catholic church so what is your your belief or your understanding of negative energy energy or entities
00:36:03
Stephanie
Mm-hmm.
00:36:13
Stephanie
So let me preface this with saying that as I have gotten older and the more I deal in this, I generally deal specifically with inhuman spirits. Like that has sort of been where my bread and butter has been the last 15 years of my life.
00:36:27
Stephanie
But i have a degree in anthropology and I come at things very much from an anthropological lens.
Understanding Inhuman Entities
00:36:33
Stephanie
And to me, we need to have a culturally relative or idea of cultural relativity with entities. You need to understand them as they understand themselves.
00:36:43
Stephanie
So as far as I'm concerned, we have to sort of look at it as the ghost would to understand what it is. In my mind, are there demons? Probably. But I believe that is a very narrow category that is describing a specific sort of inhuman spirit from the Middle East.
00:37:03
Stephanie
And that is all, like those entities are from that area. Like you're dealing with a djinn, a different sort of inhuman spirit from a different area. And then you've got the fey in more Celtic areas, the same sort of idea. These can be good, these can be bad, they can be somewhere in between, but it is an inhuman entity that you might look at and misidentify as a demon here, but they're going to identify themselves as a fae. Here in North America, Pukwudgies, things of that nature. Again, an inhuman entity that can be malicious or malevolent even, but is not a demon because it is not culturally to itself a demon, if that makes sense.
00:37:43
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, it's funny that yeah as soon as you mentioned Inhuman Entities, I thought, I'm going to mention the Fae in a minute, and then we'll talk about the Fae. And what did you just do?
00:37:51
Stephanie
Absolutely.
00:37:53
Lee Hatfield
You just come out and started talking about the Fae. But one thing that I find really amusing, let's say, is yeah both of us have seen multiple TV shows where it's not exactly what it should be, and they go, oh, my God, I've got a demon.
00:38:13
Lee Hatfield
And I always try and talk people down when they say that to go, okay, whatever device you're using, the word demons come out. But how do you know that is what they are talking about? They could be calling you demons.
00:38:30
Lee Hatfield
a demon because back in their day, we didn't have half this technology. Yeah. All these flashy gadgets that people use. Yeah. They're calling you the demon for you doing that. Yeah. There's not a demon. A spirit could be calling you. And people go, Oh, I never thought about it that way.
00:38:49
Stephanie
huh
00:38:49
Lee Hatfield
But it, but it's right. It's sort of like, yeah.
00:38:51
Stephanie
Absolutely.
00:38:52
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. If we did back in the eighteen hundreds and the 1700s, what we do now, we'd get burnt at the stake.
00:39:00
Stephanie
You're right.
00:39:01
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:39:02
Stephanie
Entirely so.
00:39:02
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. yeah i did say
00:39:03
Stephanie
I get a lot of strange questions from people being like, I think I have a demon. And as soon as those words come out of their mouth, I can be like, great, I've got great news for you. You don't.
00:39:13
Stephanie
Because if you actually did, the statement would have been, I have a demon.
00:39:14
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:39:18
Stephanie
Because you cannot tell me that the malicious entities from the Middle East that may or may not have been transported elsewhere If you had something that level of malicious coming after you, you would know it. There would be no question about it. You know what I mean?
00:39:33
Stephanie
I think people just scare themselves when they don't understand what it is they are looking at or talking to.
00:39:33
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:39:38
Lee Hatfield
and And that's it. Oh, it's the unknown. It must be bad. It must be a demon. But I also diffuse certain subjects or conversations when people go, I've been
Interpreting Spirit Interactions
00:39:50
Lee Hatfield
scratched.
00:39:51
Lee Hatfield
It must be a negative entity. So, and I've told this quite a few times, but if you and I... are in a room and one of us has passed and you're the other one's still alive, and the one that's passed wants to communicate, the first thing you're going to do is call call the name, if you know what the name is, or you're going to try to get there get their attention.
00:40:14
Lee Hatfield
If that doesn't work, you're going to raise your voice because that's what humans do. They will shout louder.
00:40:18
Stephanie
Yes.
00:40:19
Lee Hatfield
If that doesn't work, you're going to reach your out your hand out and you're going to tap them. Because that's like, you in a noisy crowd. Oh, Stephanie. Oh, Stephanie, am I'm going to touch you. So I kind of tell people that just because you've got scratch, it could be that energy transference of a spirit wanting to get your attention. But it does not necessarily mean it's malevolent.
00:40:45
Stephanie
Yes. I have been scratched, I have been bitten, I've had my hair pulled, I've been pushed down a flight of stairs! And out of all those into all of all of those times, I can only think of one time that I would actually say it was a malicious or a malevolent entity. All of the others were trying to communicate what they wanted me to know, which was generally get out, but, you know.
00:41:05
Lee Hatfield
And it's funny you mentioned that, too, because the the amount of people that go, do you want us to leave? And if they get a positive answer, then they stay. Like, no, you have to respect.
00:41:14
Stephanie
Yes.
00:41:16
Lee Hatfield
You said, do you want me to leave?
00:41:16
Stephanie
Yep.
00:41:17
Lee Hatfield
And then you're ignoring them. So you're not going to get any further correspondence and communication with them as well. But, yeah, i I like to tell people that yeah I've had two instances.
00:41:29
Lee Hatfield
One of them, got stroked down the side of the face, which I thought was absolutely amazing. I was in a freshly decorated room and you could smell the paint, so I knew that it there wasn't the spiders and things. It was just like a nice little stroke down the front and I was so happy.
00:41:44
Lee Hatfield
And then another one just before Christmas, I felt like I got the handheld. But if it had been a cobweb, would have been taken out by my my shoulder and my elbow.
00:41:53
Stephanie
Yes.
00:41:54
Lee Hatfield
But it just felt like it. And it's like I'm happy that I'm experiencing that kind of incident because it means that I'm doing the right thing and I want to do it for the right reasons, if that kind of makes sense.
00:42:11
Stephanie
Absolutely. It's amazing what can happen. Especially when I was little, I couldn't tell the difference between them. But when I was slightly older, i ended up in New Orleans at a hotel.
00:42:23
Stephanie
And there was this little girl that came up to me and we were in this busy hotel lobby and she was little, little thing. And she wanted to go across the lobby to where there's this little restaurant. And she's like, her family was in there. Well, I walk her across the lobby. She reached up and she grabbed my hand.
00:42:39
Stephanie
And I walked her across the lobby to the little guy standing at the little stand being like, hey, this little one, nobody there. But I'd felt her little hand in mine. And he's like, don't worry, happens all the time.
00:42:51
Stephanie
And I just thought it was such a sweet thing because she didn't want anything but somebody to walk her across the lobby. She was scared to walk through it. And I just think it's such a sweet thing when they can reach out and such a small gesture can make a difference to, you know, those that are still hanging out.
00:43:05
Lee Hatfield
yeah yeah and yeah i'm the kind of person that if i go to an investigation yeah i'm polite i say please i say thank you i don't antagonize yeah and i i try to have a normal conversation it's like oh yeah it's a friday night you yeah you're getting another bunch of people trying to communicate with you, which I understand.
00:43:28
Stephanie
Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:28
Lee Hatfield
And you you try to put put the ball in their court kind of thing of going, yeah yes, i'm a regular yeah I'm another one of those people, but I want to do it for the right reasons where there's a lot of people that just want to go out and get scared.
Respectful Communication
00:43:44
Lee Hatfield
But then there's the other kind of people that want to go out and to kind of prove the existence, even though it's a nigh on impossible thing. But yeah, and I like to think of that. i'm I'm in that kind of category.
00:43:59
Stephanie
Mm-hmm.
00:43:59
Lee Hatfield
So you mentioned a few minutes ago about that place that if I paid you a million dollars, you wouldn't go in. But yeah, a million dollars is a lot of money. So I'm sure you'd consider it at least.
00:44:11
Stephanie
know
00:44:11
Lee Hatfield
So.
00:44:14
Lee Hatfield
So out of all the. shows and stuff like that. I know you've you've kind of mentioned this one thing that, okay, 2 million.
00:44:24
Lee Hatfield
write you I can write you a check out right there. but It's in Canadian, so you won't you won't get 2 million US. s It'll just be like 1,500.
00:44:30
Stephanie
Perfect. Yeah.
00:44:34
Lee Hatfield
Do you kind of have... favourites of a place that you, I don't want to say it, but you enjoyed yourself or the experience so much rather than the complete opposite where you won't go back for 2 million?
Favorite Paranormal Locations
00:44:49
Stephanie
There's a lot of paranormal places that I like. I've done a lot of things. I've been to a lot of places. Lillydale is one of the ones that always sticks out to me. I've never been to a location that is so active and so welcoming all at once. And Lillydale is a spiritualist community in upstate New York, and it is just the most soft, welcoming energy and the entities there are fabulous.
00:45:15
Stephanie
I'm going back this year. I mean, like, sort of a week or a yearly thing now where we're just going up there to, like, just spend time basking in that energy with those people and those entities. It's it's really lovely to remember that ghosts aren't always creepy.
00:45:29
Stephanie
It can be fun to be scared, but it's also nice just to know you can go and just exist with it.
00:45:29
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:45:36
Lee Hatfield
See, you mentioned upstate New York. We're only a couple of hours. Keep going. Keep going. Come yeah come over the border. Come and say hi.
00:45:42
Stephanie
I mean, Canada's always fun.
00:45:43
Lee Hatfield
yeah it Hey, you might
00:45:45
Stephanie
Long drive, but very fun. It's
00:45:48
Lee Hatfield
you make it a complete road trip.
00:45:50
Stephanie
true.
00:45:50
Lee Hatfield
Funnily enough, we went to a place in New York State, a place called Casanovia.
00:45:56
Stephanie
Mm-hmm.
00:45:57
Lee Hatfield
And there's a fantastic little hotel, whatever you want to call it, called the Bray Lock-In. don't if you're familiar with it. but We loved that place. it we There was three of us that went and we rented the two most haunted rooms.
00:46:18
Lee Hatfield
And we're setting cameras up and a cabinet door creaked open. And then we spent the next 40 minutes trying to debunk it and we could not.
00:46:27
Stephanie
Mm-hmm.
00:46:28
Lee Hatfield
And we were there for two nights. And on the second night, we we'd finished for the night. And it they've got some really absolutely gorgeous four-poster beds with the old blankets. and you know No duvets, no modern. It's all oldie-worldie.
00:46:43
Lee Hatfield
And I'm laid in bed and yeah I'm in the bed by myself. So you kind of get comfortable as you normally do and you feel that the blankets kind of settle. And after about 30 seconds, I felt a really heavy sensation of somebody sitting on the bed.
00:46:57
Lee Hatfield
I thought one of the other guys had come into the room. Opened my eyes and I just saw this white, obviously an apparition or something, just going past the bed. And I was so excited.
00:47:11
Lee Hatfield
Most people go, oh my God, I'm leaving now. And I'm going, that is so cool. Let me get my phone. It's like, oh, it's gone.
00:47:17
Stephanie
Mm-hmm. Yup. your
00:47:18
Lee Hatfield
i did Yeah. And it's like people think, like you mentioned earlier, that people think that ghosts and spirits are scary. But it's not always the case.
00:47:30
Lee Hatfield
And like you said, the the little girl in the hotel lobby was such a a sweet experience.
00:47:37
Lee Hatfield
So the wife just said, you want drink? No, I can't. Yeah. so So out of all these locations, you've mentioned one already.
00:47:50
Lee Hatfield
How many different locations do you think you've been to?
00:47:53
Stephanie
Oh boy, like public locations?
00:47:53
Lee Hatfield
chief out i was good Well, yeah, I can put my hands up as well to to help if you like if that helps.
00:48:03
Stephanie
Dozens, literally dozens. I've been to a bunch of very, very strange places. And part of that is when I travel, i generally aren't going on vacation to, you know, go to Florida. I'm going to go to St. Augustine Lighthouse. You know, I'm specifically going out and going to these haunted locations and seeing what I can find. Trans-Allegheny, Waverly Hills, Bobby Mackey's, Whispers Estates.
00:48:29
Stephanie
dozens, literally dozens, Brushy Mountain, you know, just all these places. And I don't sort of pigeonhole myself into just the paranormal locations. I will a lot of times end up in places where there have been reports of cryptid activity as well, just to sort of see what kind of crossover there is between cryptid activity and the hauntings and whether or not there is something there that the purely cryptid researchers might be overlooking.
Cryptids and Hauntings
00:48:55
Lee Hatfield
And I'm glad you mentioned that because I know you mentioned it right at the beginning of the show. But the amount of people that I've spoken to that I did not really get this, that there's a good amount of people that think that cryptids are actually on the supernatural spectrum.
00:49:15
Stephanie
Mm-hmm.
00:49:15
Lee Hatfield
yeah They can maybe teleport or they can yeah time shift or and stuff like that. What's your theory?
00:49:24
Stephanie
I don't know that I have an overall theory. I've spent quite a bit of time in Land Between the Lakes, Dog Man territory down there, and in Point Pleasant, and I feel like we have two very different sorts of phenomenon going on there.
00:49:36
Stephanie
I am inclined to believe that whatever happened in Point Pleasant with the Mothman situation, the flap that happened around there, injured cold, all of that, I'm inclined to believe there was something paranormal going on there. I don't necessarily believe that we had a flesh and blood creature running around there. I am not convinced that what's happening in Land Between the Lakes is not at least partially flesh and blood.
00:50:01
Stephanie
I think there is probably some kind of animal running around down there. Whether it's a dog man or whether it is something else, that is another discussion.
00:50:11
Lee Hatfield
And it's it's weird how yep we've been talking mostly about spirits and ghosts, but then you've got this other area where it kind of overlaps, but it doesn't.
00:50:19
Stephanie
Oh,
00:50:28
Lee Hatfield
Like for the example that we've just we've just given. But earlier when you mentioned about inhuman entities and then when we mentioned the fae and you stole my thunder.
00:50:40
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:50:41
Stephanie
sorry.
00:50:41
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. So that way it happens all the time. it's so and i I have a set thing that what I ask is, i oh, you just asked that. OK. And so have you had any experiences with the fae? And if so, what?
00:50:56
Stephanie
yes. They don't like me. that has been my experience with them.
00:51:02
Lee Hatfield
Why is that Stephanie?
00:51:02
Stephanie
okay
00:51:03
Lee Hatfield
What have you done to them?
00:51:05
Stephanie
I don't know. I legitimately don't know. But the one time I was in England, that seemed to be very apparent to me while I was there. But there was also some occurrences that happened in Ohio, of all places, that seemed to be fae based on items that were brought from overseas to here, which is what makes me think that that's probably what it was.
00:51:27
Stephanie
And they were not fans. They did not want me there. They were not going to speak to me. They just wanted be gone. And I don't know why. I don't know what I've done to them. I don't know how I offended them. But they don't like me.
00:51:41
Lee Hatfield
Probably because you talk funny, especially when you're going, yeah, yeah.
00:51:42
Stephanie
That's probably exactly what it is.
00:51:45
Lee Hatfield
yeah You come to England, do you think you know the Queen's English, and you don't.
00:51:48
Stephanie
No, not at all. Not even remotely. It's
00:51:51
Lee Hatfield
It's quite funny. like yeah If ever I get into my colleagues, try and try and put on an English accent. it's guy You sound like Dick Van Dyke. Please stop. Stop now.
00:52:02
Lee Hatfield
So yeah so
00:52:02
Stephanie
always a good sign.
00:52:06
Lee Hatfield
when you started writing, Did you decide that you were going to concentrate on one particular subject to start off with and then it expanded? Because I know, you looking at some of the books you've read, you've got your scary, what's the word I'm looking for? Macabre. There go, it's not scary, macabre.
00:52:29
Lee Hatfield
And you've got those volumes. But how did you decide what you was going to write about to start off with?
Focus on Writing
00:52:36
Stephanie
I started off with what I know. I started off with paranormal experiences that had happened to me, which is all well and good. But those are all things that I've experienced. they're all things I know about. They're all things that have happened.
00:52:51
Stephanie
And there was no real novelty in it for me. And I wanted to know more about what came before. I am a historian. I've got a master's degree in public history and museum studies.
00:53:02
Stephanie
I was trained on how to explain the past to the public. and how to make those stories palatable and interesting. And so I wanted to look at stories from the past and e events from the past that had been forgotten and bring them to a new audience and allow them to understand and experience those mysteries and that sort of little bit of thrill of terror safely.
00:53:25
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:53:26
Stephanie
So that's really what i've transitioned to at this point.
00:53:28
Lee Hatfield
OK. It's quite funny because before Christmas, there's a friend of mine who started he decided that he wanted to do start doing webinars for his company, his paranormal company.
00:53:39
Lee Hatfield
And he goes, I'd like you to be the first one. OK. He went, you're from England. You know about Victorian ghost stories. Talk about that. oh <unk>m like what yeah and then he stole a picture from me and turned it into to like Ebenezer Scrooge and I'm like it's like dude dude it's like yeah thanks yeah so yeah people just like throw you under that bus okay so unfortunately we are coming towards the end your cat has not made another appearance obviously
00:53:50
Stephanie
but Really?
00:53:57
Stephanie
Oh no.
00:54:06
Stephanie
Yep.
00:54:13
Stephanie
She has not. She's gone up and laid down somewhere.
00:54:15
Lee Hatfield
see it so like I don't want to speak to that Englishman. He speaks 20. So what's next on the agenda for Stephanie Bingham?
00:54:24
Stephanie
Working on a lecture schedule for this year, seeing where I'm going to be presenting, things like that. Possibly have something else coming out this year with any luck. So I may have more of that coming, but this year spent writing. That is my main goal this year is writing. So lots of that and less TV, unless something really interesting pops up.
00:54:47
Lee Hatfield
unless you get invited to Canada and do Ghosts of Canada, but in the winter, when it's min when it's minus 40.
00:54:51
Stephanie
Absolutely, I'll absolutely do that one. Yes. Yes. I love the snow.
00:54:58
Lee Hatfield
Great, we could do we go skiing, I've never been skiing before. But okay wait is it it's pizza and french fries, that's what you've got to remember. fuck god
00:55:06
Stephanie
Yes.
00:55:07
Lee Hatfield
Stephanie, it's been an absolute pleasure. I've loved talking to you. was so excited to when you said yes, you'd come on. So I can't thank you enough. And I hope we can stay in touch and probably get you back for episode two when you've released what you can't tell me that you're going to releasing.
00:55:26
Lee Hatfield
But for now, thank you very much. And you have a great rest of the evening.
00:55:31
Stephanie
You have a great evening and thank you so much for having me.
00:55:33
Lee Hatfield
but Take care. Bye-bye.