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S2 E13 Jim Dean Haunted Walks Ontario
26 Plays15 days ago
Tonight I am delighted to have somebody quite local to where I am, Jim Dean. Jim is the creative director for the Haunted Walks in Ottawa.
The Haunted Walks was started in 1995 by Glenn Shackleton, and with Jim starting off as a tour guide in 2003, and 23 years later he is still there.
Jim tells me stories about the Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa, including the stolen Roaring Lion Portrait of Winston Churchill.
We then discuss if house bricks can be haunted objects.
I then give Jim 13 minute (his words) to tell me about his paranormal theories, and what is a ghost?
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction to SEPA and Jim Dean
00:00:12
Lee Hatfield
Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of SEPA Paranormal Chronicles. Tonight I am delighted to have somebody quite local to where I am, Jim Dean. Jim is a creative the creative director for the Haunted Walks in Ottawa.
00:00:27
Lee Hatfield
So I'm in Ottawa as well, so it's nice and local. Jim, welcome.
00:00:33
Jim Dean
Lee, thanks so much for having me. i've been i've been watching episodes here and there, so I was delighted when you asked me to be on the show, and I'm excited excited to have some spooky conversation, that's for sure.
00:00:43
Lee Hatfield
Well, yeah, and it's weird how you guys do kind of the haunted walks and we both do podcasts, but we've never kind of like got together, which is like, why is this Jim? Tell me, Jim, why have we never got together?
00:00:59
Jim Dean
Well, I think the the spirits have deemed it that this was the time. It was destiny has called us forward to this moment. So here we are, let's make the most of it.
The Origin and Growth of The Haunted Walk
00:01:10
Lee Hatfield
So what I always like to do with people is i always like to start at the very beginning. So how did you get involved with ghosts, spirits, and the paranormal?
00:01:22
Jim Dean
Good question. And maybe I'll take you back a little bit even before, well, not before me, but before I get involved as we slow slow dissolve into that.
00:01:27
Lee Hatfield
room looks
00:01:32
Jim Dean
my My boss, the founder of The Haunted Walk, Glenn Shackleton, starts the company in Kingston 1995.
00:01:35
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:01:39
Jim Dean
in ninety ninety five And it quickly becomes something unique, something different, something quite popular. People just hadn't really seen ghost tours in Canada at that time. And I think there was only three, including us in Kingston, Dale Jarvis in in St. John's with the Haunted Hike, and i think Halifax as well were kind of the only three at that time. So for the Canadian audience, this was quite quite different, quite revolutionary.
00:02:07
Jim Dean
And the first year was kind of funny. One of Glenn's favorite stories to tell, which I enjoy telling too, is the first year we're in Kingston doing the tours.
00:02:13
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:02:16
Jim Dean
And all of a sudden this police car with its sirens, you know, going pulls right up on the sidewalk in front of Glenn and his tour group and the cops get out. And apparently someone had reported that cult activity was taking place as we were visiting Skeleton Park, an old former cemetery in Kingston. So,
00:02:37
Jim Dean
glen glenn Glenn gives them, you know, the rundown of what's happening. I think he gave them a brochure as well. And they end up coming on the tour that that summer with their families. So the popularity really starts to pick up quite quickly.
00:02:52
Jim Dean
Glenn ends up starting the Haunted Walk of Ottawa in 1996. same kind of trajectory, you know, Over time, everything feels very fast. I'm sure it didn't at the time, but you know it became more popular.
00:03:06
Jim Dean
Taking us to 2003, when I was at Carleton doing my master's degree in film studies, and I needed a you know a part-time summer job.
00:03:17
Jim Dean
And kind of the Haunted Walk checked off two boxes for me. One, I had a little bit of experience with public speaking, so I felt comfortable talking to people and kind of shaping spoken word presentation.
00:03:30
Jim Dean
But also, I've always been deeply fascinated in the mysteries of life. And the the touchstone for me is kind of in elementary school. i don't know if you remember those time life books they had, but they had one that was like on, you know, cryptids kind of things, one on UFOs, and of course, one on ghosts or the paranormal, whatever it was called. So whenever our class got to go to the library, that's kind of immediately fascinating.
00:03:55
Jim Dean
where where I went to look at you know some of the most famous ghost photos of of all time and that kind of thing. So I had this kind of interest. And I listened to a lot of Art Bell, coastto Coast to Coast AM.
00:04:08
Jim Dean
When I was in high school and even university, it became a little bit of a nightly ritual for me. And you know partly I think that's one of the reasons I still love i love being a podcaster and listening to podcasts today. There's something about your imagination and the role that plays in storytelling.
00:04:26
Jim Dean
Anyway, I auditioned for the Haunted Walk. I get a job and I start as a tour guide. And at that point in my career, I was working on a yeah documentary film about baseball in Canada that I had grand grand dreams of kind of you know putting together.
00:04:43
Jim Dean
When after the first season, Glenn asked me if I kind of wanted to come on full time. And was enjoying it. you know, I'd never really worked inside at that point a small business before.
00:04:53
Jim Dean
You know, even things like tracking how many tickets we sold or where our guests were coming from.
00:04:58
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:04:59
Jim Dean
I found all this stuff kind of interesting. So I stayed on at the Haunted Walk.
Working Culture and Tour Evolution
00:05:04
Jim Dean
And, you know, 23 or so years later, i am still here and have not not had to get a real job as of yet. Yeah.
00:05:17
Lee Hatfield
But the thing is, it's it's one of those cool jobs that everyone kind of wishes, you I wish I could do that kind of thing. and it And no two work days are the same.
00:05:30
Lee Hatfield
yeah I work in an office. My job can be the same day in, day out, where you don't know who you're going to be meeting, yeah what you're going to be talking about from day to day. And that's what makes it really cool.
00:05:45
Jim Dean
You're absolutely right. And there's kind of two, there's two ends of the spectrum responses I typically get.
00:05:49
Lee Hatfield
So they don't knock out.
00:05:51
Jim Dean
You know, when people ask the obvious question at, you know, parties and functions, you know, what do you do? And, you know, I tell them I work for the Haunted Walk, I'm the creative director. And One group of people will immediately ask, oh, is that a part-time job you do?
00:06:08
Jim Dean
And, which of course it is not. It literally takes everything we have to keep you know the company running and doing things well. And then the other group of people are the ones who who you just mentioned, who are like, wow, you do that full-time as your job, that's gotta be incredible.
00:06:24
Jim Dean
And to be honest, it is. I mean, it's hard to imagine moving into a more traditional job at this space, partly because it's, as you say, so varied, so interesting, the topics we get to explore.
00:06:38
Jim Dean
But also, we just have a really we have a really great team. And a lot of us have been working, there's several of us now worked for the company over 10 years. So we all know each other very well, and we work very collaboratively. in you know No matter what anyone's kind of specialty is, we're always kind of consulting with each other as well, which I think has been part of our the secrets of our success. Glenn, our founder, was was never one to say it's you know it's my way or the highway, which I think makes a humongous difference because good ideas you know come from everywhere.
00:07:09
Jim Dean
So yeah, you know, now I spend my days, I might be today, we were having long discussions about a slight change we want to make to our original haunted walk script here in Ottawa. And that's because we want to change the route slightly.
00:07:24
Jim Dean
And changing the route would mean cutting out our walk down the Rideau Canal, which has been on the tour for quite some time. So we've been figuring trying to figure out over the past few months how we could still include the Rideau Canal, which not only just has an interesting history, is this kind of preventative defensive fortification in case the Americans, you know, ever attacked us again and we'd still have access to to the St.
00:07:49
Lee Hatfield
Okay.
00:07:50
Jim Dean
Lawrence. But it's also, of course, it's a dark history as well. the The number of laborers who died building that and ended up being buried along along the banks of it. So you know we spent we spent out maybe an hour today discussing the nuances of how we can pivot from one story as a way we can include the canal kind of in another story and and still get it to work. Well, at the same time today, as i as we were chatting just before we got on about, and I was also doing marketing today, you know trying to figure out how do you how do you sell ghost tours to to the average person, particularly those who've never done one or never tried one? Because for me, I mean, it really belief is not an issue for going on a traditional ghost tour. It doesn't matter if you've you've had a paranormal experience or you don't believe in ghosts.
00:08:37
Jim Dean
The stories we tell are just, I mean, it's so interesting for us to work on them and then have the such an opportunity to share them with with people of how history unfolds in very, very interesting and unpredictable ways.
00:08:52
Jim Dean
And then tying in, of course, to one of the great questions of life, which is what happens to us when we die. So you're absolutely right. I have no, the work can be hard at times and the hours can be long, but I have no complaints.
00:09:08
Lee Hatfield
and you couldn't ask for it to be any better, really. I was actually quite lucky to to go to the jail when the jail was still open.
00:09:18
Lee Hatfield
I've lived in Canada for 13 years. And obviously, when you first come to a new place, you kind of do a few of the local things. And I was, in fact, I still am. I'm very good friends with the Doctor Who Society.
00:09:34
Lee Hatfield
And they invited us to go on a ghost walk.
00:09:34
Jim Dean
Yep. Yep.
00:09:38
Lee Hatfield
And the guy that was doing it, this is a few years ago, I can't remember what the guy's name is, but we ended up at the at the jail. And we was actually walking through the jail and it is actually going, well, yeah, some of these cells are locked because we store things in them, et cetera, et cetera, but some of them are open.
00:09:58
Lee Hatfield
And we walked past the lock a locked one, and then we just heard this noise coming from the locked one. And nobody could understand what the noise was. It sounded like something had fallen, but there was nothing on the floor.
00:10:10
Jim Dean
Yep. Yep.
00:10:10
Lee Hatfield
And it was so cool to actually experience something and as we put it unexplained rather than that's a ghost that's the spirit to actually experience that on one of these walks that that was great and it was absolutely fantastic it's a shame that you've actually yeah for reasons that we won't go into that you've actually had to stop going to the jail
00:10:35
Jim Dean
Yeah, and we we do miss the jail. Hopefully someday we can we can get back there. But what what you're talking about is, you know, what I would call like... the magic of A Great Ghost Tour, the magic of storytelling, where kind of the audience, the teller, and the environment, the atmosphere, the location, all kind of combined together. And then you get that little sprinkle of something, as you say, perhaps it was just a radiator.
00:10:59
Jim Dean
Perhaps there was a completely mundane explanation for it. But the the right mundane thing happening at the right time is gold and just awesome for everyone involved on the tour.
00:11:12
Lee Hatfield
absolutely absolutely and know as paranormal investigators i tell a lot of people that that you've always got the two types of people you've got them that want to go out and get scared and then you've got the other side that want to investigate and what to want to try to understand and actually explain what's going on. So we never say as a team that that's a ghost, this is a spirit, we just go, it's unexplained. And this unexplained pile is getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
SEPA's Foundation and Paranormal Collaborations
00:11:48
Lee Hatfield
Because you can't explain something that you haven't got 100% of.
00:11:54
Jim Dean
Absolutely. And I think you've drawn a kind of a key distinction. So, you know, the Haunted Walk, we say we offer ghost tours and paranormal adventures, which of course share, and under paranormal adventures, we count our own Alone in the Dark Paranormal Investigations, which we run, as well as the events we partner with with Phantoms of Yore, who are an awesome group we've worked with for many years now.
00:12:18
Jim Dean
Elliot and Eric are so much fun to work with and really know what they're doing.
00:12:21
Lee Hatfield
Yep.
00:12:22
Jim Dean
So, but you know, we kind of count those as the paranormal adventures, which are, as you say, mean While they share many similarities and are kind of about the same thing, the intent is so is so different and the bar is so different.
00:12:37
Jim Dean
A great ghost story or a great dark history story doesn't need need proof. It needs resonance. You know, that moment, you spoiler alert here for some listeners, but, you know, one of our one of my favorite parts to reveal is when we tell our ghost stories about the Chateau Laurier.
00:12:57
Jim Dean
in Ottawa. And we have some great ghost stories about about the building, but we wrap it up by talking about the man who built the hotel, Charles Hayes, who was expected to lead the opening as it was about to take place, but he did not make it back to do that because he had traveled to England and then taken a friend's offer to travel at a reduced rate on the maiden voyage of a new steamship.
00:13:26
Jim Dean
the Titanic. So creating that connection between the ghost stories and the Chateau Laurier, the physical structure itself is really right at the heart of Ottawa. And this broader historical context with the Chateau Laurier is is something the ghost stories can do it and work with, whereas the paranormal investigations really, as you say, are are a different, almost more intellectual exercise than the emotional one of the storytelling.
00:13:54
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and this is a really fun fact that I love telling people, and you're going to find this amazing. We wouldn't have been created, SEPA would not have been created if it wasn't for the Haunted Walks, because back in 2003, I went to one of the first Alone in the Dark adventures at Cumberland Heritage, and Logan and Volta, that are now my co-leads,
00:14:24
Lee Hatfield
They were there as well. They'd got a couple of devices, and it was Margot McDonald that was running it.
00:14:28
Jim Dean
Yes.
00:14:29
Lee Hatfield
And because I'd kind of taken over a small team, but they they weren't very active. So I bumped into these two guys, started talking to them. I also spoke to Margot at the end of the night.
00:14:43
Lee Hatfield
And then we met met together in one of the bars a couple of weeks later and created SIPA. So it's all down to the haunted walks and the alone in the dark Cumberland village.
00:14:55
Jim Dean
but That's amazing. I had no idea that that was the case. And it's been fun watching as you're building out your team and you folks are doing all sorts of amazing things. So, wow, that that makes me actually quite quite proud.
00:15:04
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:15:07
Jim Dean
And Margo is a great, Margo McDonald is one of our great hosts.
00:15:09
Lee Hatfield
She is.
00:15:11
Jim Dean
Shout out to Margo.
00:15:11
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:15:12
Jim Dean
But it is it is strange, you know, like we've been doing it so long now. We routinely have tour guides applying, you know, who who did the tour when they were in grade eight or, you know, something like that. So it's it's really, it's it's very rewarding and just really special to think about how this, how we've made an impact on people in a lot of unexpected ways. We even have, you know, like wedding proposals on tour, which is which is always fun or people asking us to, you know, work with them on things like that. So, I mean, we're all about making the cities we operate in kind of
00:15:51
Jim Dean
more interesting and treasured places, both for locals and visitors alike. So hearing you know hearing that that unexpected connection to you folks, I didn't know that.
00:16:02
Jim Dean
and that's that's That's kind of blown my mind.
00:16:03
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And just for the record, there won't be a marriage proposal because all three of us are already married. just just Just putting that out there.
00:16:11
Jim Dean
Okay, well.
00:16:13
Lee Hatfield
But it's really weird because another connection is there was only three of us to start off with. Our first investigation as a threesome was at the SDG jail with the Phantoms of York.
00:16:28
Jim Dean
There you go.
00:16:29
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, so it wasn't yet. So there's been so much kind of behind-the-scenes connections, if you like, without you actually going, oh, I didn't realise that and I didn't realise this.
00:16:39
Lee Hatfield
But, yeah, Eric and Elliot are absolutely amazing guys and they do a fantastic job. There's one story that I've got from Lolliow.
00:16:50
Lee Hatfield
I can never say that right. Lolliow jail in Hawkesbury. I'm from England. I don't say French words very easily.
00:16:57
Jim Dean
That's a tough one.
00:16:58
Lee Hatfield
yeah Yeah, that's it. And Elliot wanted a hand to to set up one night because he'd got a public investigation and he he didn't like going into death row by himself.
00:17:09
Lee Hatfield
So he asked me if I could come. I went, yeah, sure. So I took the wife down with me and I'm in one of the rooms and got a stroke down the side of my face. Yeah, and it's like...
00:17:21
Lee Hatfield
I just got a stroke. at He went, oh, yeah, that happens. And I went, no, this is this is a big thing. And it's like, yeah, it happens. And it's like, yeah we've been to the Millifkin Tale with Elliot.
00:17:33
Lee Hatfield
We've been to yeah a few other locations.
00:17:33
Jim Dean
Perfect.
00:17:36
Lee Hatfield
But they're an absolutely fantastic resource to have and to get yeah your name and their name out there. And but if we get people that want to come to investigations, we forward them to Elliot and to Eric.
00:17:51
Lee Hatfield
because yeah they're the guy they're they're the guys that do the public stuff.
00:17:51
Jim Dean
perfect
00:17:55
Jim Dean
and And you know, some I mean, that's perfect. And it really is.
Haunted Stories and Personal Encounters
00:17:59
Jim Dean
Some people may have the perception from the outside, like there's competition between groups of us, but I mean, we've never felt that.
00:18:08
Jim Dean
We have always thought the more of us who are and you know invested in this work from a a passionate, honest standpoint, and the more we can bring these kinds of questions or experiences to the public, the better.
00:18:24
Jim Dean
You know, because as I'm sure we're going talk about, no one has all the answers here. And a lot of us aren't even sure what questions really to be asking. So I think the more we can get the public engaged in the topic, all the better, whether that be through a private team, a public team, or through through something like the Haunted Walk, a larger commercial enterprise.
00:18:44
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and one thing that i that I can add to that is one of my favorite stories is having an EVP at the SDG jail.
00:18:57
Lee Hatfield
And I had it analyzed by experts in the field, and they go they even broke it down to VoiceWaves to go, that's you, this is the the the EVP.
00:19:10
Lee Hatfield
yeah it It wasn't the same person. And yeah and again, yeah one of your locations. So the fact that real teams can get the evidence, so to speak, once you guys hear about that yeah that, that adds to your repertoire kind of thing.
00:19:28
Jim Dean
For sure. And, you know, even there's even a difference between how phantoms of yore carries out their investigations and our alone in the dark experience. You know, phantoms tend to be extremely well versed on equipment and procedure, whereas our and our our alone in the dark experience, we really tap into kind of more ancient or older techniques that people have used, you know, through the history of humanity. We've got the phone ring in there.
00:19:54
Jim Dean
Maybe we'll just pause for a second.
00:19:56
Lee Hatfield
It's
00:19:57
Jim Dean
Are you able to hear that?
00:19:59
Lee Hatfield
just a little bit, but it's not too bad.
00:20:02
Jim Dean
So what Phantom uses equipment, you know, and has a real specialty there. Obviously, we're more engaged with history and storytelling and kind of bringing new people out for the first time. Some people can find it a little intimidating, as as you well know.
00:20:15
Jim Dean
You know, I'm going to sit in the dark for for three hours in a supposedly haunted jail, you know.
00:20:15
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:20:21
Jim Dean
But we try to ours is more of a guided experience to try to give people a little more confidence, a little more kind of faith in what they're doing. So that's what I love about it. Everyone's got a different approach. I know you folks, obviously, with the S at the start of your name, are pushing science kind of forward, which I think is...
00:20:39
Jim Dean
a very valid approach as well. So I love how all these kind of different thoughts kind of all get weaved together. And I think there's something we can all learn from each other, which makes it really exciting and interesting.
00:20:52
Lee Hatfield
Exactly, like say. and And at the end of the day, it's yeah it's not my my turf and your turf. it's It's one big family, one big family. So let's go into a few locations.
00:21:06
Lee Hatfield
i I actually copied them all down. I went on to the sort of light. But I know that we can't talk about all of them because we would literally be here all night.
00:21:17
Lee Hatfield
So you mentioned the Chateau Laurier. What are a couple of stories that have come from there?
00:21:25
Jim Dean
Well, i could I mean, my ab my absolute favorite. and it's It's true that people continue to have experiences there. Even my my in-laws were there, don't around 10 years ago. And they had the experience of like footsteps running up and down the corridor kind of outside the room. And they keep going to look and they they don't see anyone there. And there was a kind of a door at the end of the hallway they were on. You know, they couldn't hear the door opening or closing.
00:21:52
Jim Dean
But my favorite story, which always gets a great reaction on the tour, is a a newly married couple are staying at the hotel. And the the first night, the woman's removing her makeup in, you know, a large mirror there.
00:22:07
Jim Dean
And in the reflection, she sees a closet door behind her, you know, just slowly swing open. But it's the next night where, or the next day, she's in the shower.
00:22:22
Jim Dean
and everything's going normal, when suddenly she distinctly feels a hand upon her shoulder, which always gets a great reaction. And there's a lot of other stories about the Chateau as well, but it always ties back to a question that's irresistible often to us is like trying to quickly determine, well, who's the ghost? What's the ghost? And it's often never as simple as that. But in the figure of Charles Hayes, the president of the Grand Trunk Railroad, who built the hotel, having him die in such a tragic accident on the Titanic, just so...
00:23:00
Jim Dean
so soon before the hotel was to open, really kind of gives it an extra cachet. Now, I will say one one thing we've been fighting against for years is there's an urban legend, very well known in Ottawa, that kind of furniture or dinnerware destined for the Chateau Laurier went down on the Titanic.
00:23:22
Jim Dean
And while that's a cool story, as far as we can tell, after doing months of research on it, it's not true. But I think the important part here is we don't need the fictional story.
00:23:35
Jim Dean
The, just the, you know, the connection to, I mean, the development of the railroad in Canada, to the Chateau Laurier being built, to Charles Hayes on the Titanic.
00:23:35
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:23:44
Jim Dean
A lot of these stories you don't need to embellish with things that sound great, but aren't true. So, I mean, real also have a, David Vogelpohl-Tour of the Chateau Laurier, more of a historical tour called Secrets of the Chateau, where we talk about, you know, the guests who have stayed there, the history, all this these kinds of things. And if you've never been to the Chateau Laurier, or if you've never been to the other kind of railway hotels like the Royal York in Toronto.
00:24:09
Jim Dean
I mean, it it it just feels so different when you step through the revolving doors and all of a sudden you're in this old world kind of lobby and space. One those places where history, history is no longer in the background, but somehow steps forward in a unique way. So we we love talking about the Chateau Laurier for sure.
00:24:28
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and one thing that i i'm I love my history, I really do love my history, like all of these are from move or a TV show about the Napoleon it was.
00:24:41
Lee Hatfield
and yeah And I've got behind here there's more photographs, but I absolutely adore my history. And being from England as well, you have the like the upper class history, and you can drive past the Chateau Laurier and you can see the dude stood outside with his jacket on, his top hat on.
00:24:58
Jim Dean
Yeah,
00:24:58
Lee Hatfield
And they still do that. And it it looks so nice to see that they still respect the the traditions and yeah how people should be dressed.
00:25:09
Lee Hatfield
And I think that's one of the keys why the chateau is is such a popular location.
00:25:15
Jim Dean
you're absolutely right. it It feels as if from another time. It also feels like a destination, both as a place to go and a place to consider. You know, and for me, you know, i I'm interested in politics a little bit.
00:25:29
Jim Dean
So the political connections as well, where a lot of key meetings over the years have not taken place, you know, in, in, in center block or on Parliament Hill, but have taken place inside the Chateau Laurier.
00:25:41
Jim Dean
And, uh, of course, one of the, one of the really awesome stories with the Chateau Laurier is the, you may have read about it in the news was kind of the heist that took place during COVID when,
00:25:54
Lee Hatfield
The Winston Churchill.
00:25:55
Jim Dean
the the true The Roaring Lion portrait taken by Youssef Karsh was you know so spirited away essentially in the night.
00:25:56
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:26:02
Jim Dean
It may have been during the day, but you know when the hotel was empty and kind of closed, which they eventually recovered and brought back, which is just another interesting layer to the hotel's history.
00:26:12
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, that's it. How did you get that out of the building?
00:26:18
Jim Dean
Hey, it's a good question. How did no one notice for quite a long time?
00:26:20
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, I know.
00:26:23
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, it's like, I'm sure there should be something on that wall, but I can't put my finger on it.
00:26:28
Jim Dean
Something like Winston Churchill.
00:26:30
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:26:32
Jim Dean
hard Hard to miss.
00:26:33
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah. i I don't know him that well, because think he died the year I was born. but
00:26:39
Jim Dean
Yeah.
00:26:40
Lee Hatfield
So let's let's touch on a couple more, because obviously I don't want to spoil it, otherwise you wouldn't have a company if we told every single story. But I've already mentioned the SDG jail.
00:26:53
Lee Hatfield
And yeah we know that the phantoms of yore go there. We've actually had some encounters with a small child in the phantoms of yore. And we've had EVPs and such like. But are there any specific stories that you can mention that are on part of your tour?
00:27:17
Jim Dean
From the SDG jail?
00:27:19
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:27:20
Jim Dean
Yeah, you know, honestly, I'm not even that familiar with the SDG jail. We've never given ghost tours there. So mostly we've been working with with Phantoms of Yore on the investigations.
00:27:30
Lee Hatfield
Oh, right. Okay.
00:27:32
Jim Dean
So just to be upfront about that, I know in in in in talking to Elliot and Eric and a little bit of research on my own, I know there's some great stories there, but I don't know them well enough off off the top my head to mention them.
00:27:45
Lee Hatfield
That's just not acceptable, Jim.
00:27:47
Jim Dean
right
00:27:47
Lee Hatfield
I'm sorry. You should have done your research before you came.
00:27:48
Jim Dean
yes i get I got a lot of ghost stories in my head.
00:27:52
Lee Hatfield
Okay.
00:27:52
Jim Dean
but
00:27:53
Lee Hatfield
In that case, then, I'm going let you pick the next one then so I don't catch you out again.
00:28:00
Jim Dean
One of the more interesting tours we recently have started offering is called Ghosts of the Dawn Valley in Toronto, which takes place at the place called the Evergreen Brickworks today, but essentially it was the Dawn Valley Brickworks.
00:28:17
Jim Dean
when it was in operation. And we started doing a touring tour there last last fall. And there's a couple of really interesting things about the site. First, it's, you know, when we when we get ghost tour locations, often they fall in a certain kind of parameters. You're thinking heritage structures, often Victorian, those kinds of connections, not uniform, but often often pronounced.
00:28:45
Jim Dean
What's so neat about this space is it's very industrial. And the history of the site is isn't i mean there's there's some is more about the violence on the workers who worked there and just the the physical toll it would take in the brick making process. And we you know you'd read about certain workers where one arm was longer than the other from day to day carrying the bricks around and and children used to be employed there, you know working with the kilns. So so very very difficult conditions.
00:29:26
Jim Dean
But what we what I think is so interesting about the site and something we we talk about quite a bit throughout the tour is the idea, of course, about haunted objects. And usually when we think about haunted objects, we're thinking about something very particular.
00:29:41
Jim Dean
you know Maybe it's a painting or, I don't know, a creepy doll or you know something of this nature where you know that's how we think about a haunted object. But the question we kind of posed is, given the site saw a lot of worker death and injury, is it possible that all of the bricks from the Don Valley Brickworks are haunted objects?
00:30:07
Jim Dean
And we know that a lot of those bricks were used to build many of the homes in Toronto. including this one where a family got a very good deal on a house. And this is a lot of great ghost stories. like The house was unexpectedly affordable for the family.
00:30:27
Jim Dean
And this house was made with bricks from the brickworks. And a short time after they moved in, you know everything seems to be fine. And then they wake up one night to a very particular sound.
00:30:43
Jim Dean
which is the sound of their furniture on their first floor being dragged across the floor.
00:30:52
Jim Dean
So they try to compose themselves, get up, see what's going on. And as they make it to the main floor, the husband suddenly is is struck in the chest with with a very kind of violent blow.
00:31:06
Jim Dean
Sends him sprawling. feels like invisible hands are are like closing around his throat.
00:31:15
Jim Dean
Very bizarre. They break free. They get out into to a neighbor's house. And the house eventually gets sold. Without any explanation for this mystery.
00:31:26
Jim Dean
And demolished. But the bricks... are purchased by someone else to build a lodge out in the country.
00:31:38
Jim Dean
And this couple who bought the lodge wake up one night to hear the sounds of furniture being dragged across the floor. Totally rearranging, you know,
Skepticism and Paranormal Experiences
00:31:51
Jim Dean
their setup there.
00:31:51
Lee Hatfield
That's crazy.
00:31:53
Jim Dean
So I love that story. And it ends with that newer house, that lodge, burning down. one night.
00:32:03
Jim Dean
So I love that story just because haunted objects are so are so fascinating and trying to broaden what we think of haunted objects I think is a lot of fun. and for me, it's one of the ones where as we're writing and working on it, like it sends a shiver down my spine. So I know that like if i ever wake up in the night and hear, you know, a coffee table or something sliding across the floor, I'm not going downstairs, Lee.
00:32:26
Jim Dean
I'm just like, people hu
00:32:29
Lee Hatfield
so what So what are you telling me, Jim? You're a bit of a coward.
00:32:32
Jim Dean
boy Well, yes, that's what we learn in this business.
00:32:32
Lee Hatfield
its
00:32:36
Lee Hatfield
That is so bizarre. Because I've only really encountered one haunted object. I call it haunted, but it it got my name in a ghost book in the UK. I was in the military and I was working at the Royal Air Force College where all the officers go through the basic training.
00:33:00
Lee Hatfield
And in their dining room, they have a lot of the famous Battle of Britain, the Dambusters. And one of the paintings was of Douglas Bader, famous World War two pilot.
00:33:17
Lee Hatfield
And by the side of his face, there was like the outline of a woman's face in the painting.
00:33:25
Jim Dean
Okay.
00:33:26
Lee Hatfield
So they would take the painting down, they would clean it, the face would disappear or the outline of the face would disappear. They would x-ray it, there was no other painting under the original.
00:33:39
Lee Hatfield
They'd put it back on the wall and the outline of the face would reappear. And they've done that two or three times, well, probably more now. But whatever they do, as soon as they take the painting down, it disappears.
00:33:51
Lee Hatfield
As soon as they put it back up again, it reappears. And it's nothing to do with the light. It's actually something in the painting.
00:33:58
Jim Dean
That's great.
00:33:59
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and I actually took, it I was probably about in my 20s at the time, I took some photographs, sent it to this guy. What's it? Bruce Barrymore Halpenny was his name, and he used to write about RAF ghost stories and stuff like that. And yeah, he actually put it put it in one of his books.
00:34:16
Lee Hatfield
So that yeah i was quite pleased about that. That was pretty cool.
00:34:19
Jim Dean
That's amazing. Yeah, I mean, haunted objects are so interesting because, you know, why are certain objects haunted but not others?
00:34:22
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:34:26
Jim Dean
What is it that makes them haunted? I mean, we could spend all all all the interview talking about that, but a funny story I'll share, which i don't know if I've ever shared before, is a few years ago, i get out of the blue, I got a package from Green Bay, Wisconsin.
00:34:41
Jim Dean
And inside was a note. It was one of our podcast listeners listens to haunted talks. And they were like, hi, Jim, I got these dolls, but I really think they're haunted. So I'm sending them to you.
00:34:54
Jim Dean
oh So I still have those dolls here in the house, despite my wife's absolute terror that we still have them.
00:35:05
Jim Dean
But really gets to be a question of like, does our belief impact kind of what these objects are capable of? And I love your photo example, because that suggests maybe in that case, no.
00:35:19
Jim Dean
Maybe it's outside of us or our own bias or thoughts. So I love that example.
00:35:23
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:35:24
Jim Dean
Yeah, yeah.
00:35:24
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:35:25
Jim Dean
Which would have been actually too much
00:35:27
Lee Hatfield
I actually took did an interview a few weeks ago of somebody that has some haunted dolls. And but if she's going to go away to to a convention, she will actually tell them that she's going for a couple of days so they don't disrupt.
00:35:42
Lee Hatfield
And she yeah if she gets a new one, she literally sits it down and says to it, right, yeah, apparently you're haunted. You may have a spirit, but any shenanigans and you go into the outside shed.
00:35:55
Lee Hatfield
And she says, so far, touch wood, everything's been, yeah, everything behaves.
00:36:01
Jim Dean
Yeah, yeah, knock on wood. So far, so good.
00:36:03
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, exactly. But I love it how you can go onto eBay or something like that and you'll see like a doll and it will say, not haunted. Sorry. oh
00:36:13
Jim Dean
Well, and there's a whole, you know, We did an episode on haunted dolls many years ago, but like there's obviously a whole fabricated industry about haunted dolls where people just write these these these backstories or or whatever and claim the doll is haunted.
00:36:28
Jim Dean
But i'm mobile I'm a little skeptical of a lot of those claims.
00:36:29
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:36:32
Jim Dean
So it's it's an interesting economic spinoff of Paranormal.
00:36:33
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:36:36
Lee Hatfield
Exactly. So before we go to maybe one or two more locations, before you actually got involved with the haunted walks and you didn't know what to do with your life, did you actually have any paranormal experiences yourself?
00:36:54
Jim Dean
No. You know, I would i would say no.
00:36:58
Jim Dean
Now that's not to say i haven't always felt felt something. And I still to this day struggle to define what that is. But I never had any clear-cut moment where something happens. I always loved ghost stories. I loved going in haunted houses. i loved mysteries.
00:37:17
Jim Dean
but nothing really happened to me until I started working at the Haunted Walk. And you know one story I'll share, which maybe is a location you might you might have on your list, is the Bytown Museum, which is the the oldest building standing in the city of Ottawa, which sits alongside the Rideau Canal between the Chateau Laurier and Parlementel, which kind of makes you wonder if there's a little bit of some type of convergence of energy or something happening right there.
00:37:47
Jim Dean
But one of the well-known stories about the Bytown Museum is the sound of footsteps following you up the stairs with no one there. And we've told that, or we tell that story often on the tours, and I've told it for years. And one Halloween, we were in there setting up for our Halloween season tours.
00:38:09
Jim Dean
We were you know changing the lighting a little bit, putting out some electric candles, that kind of thing. And we were... Very busy, you know, just just setting up and getting ready. So i wasn't I wasn't really thinking about the ghost stories. And it is it is true to some degree that the longer you spent and spend in haunted buildings, you might get used to them a little bit. They often still surprise you, as as was the case with me, where, you know, three of us were in the gift shop. I was heading up.
00:38:38
Jim Dean
to the second floor to take care of something. And as I started walking up the stairs, I distinctly heard someone walking up the stairs behind me, like no question. And it was so obvious that it didn't strike me as anything paranormal.
00:38:52
Jim Dean
you know I just thought, well, one of my colleagues followed me up into this stairwell. And I turn and look and I can hear the footsteps continue like another stair or two, but there is no one there.
00:39:06
Jim Dean
No one there. So since working for the haunted walk, you know, and and that one is kind of in a non-investigation sense. When you're investigating, of course, when you're finely tuned for changes of the environment or, you know, whatever aspects of the paranormal experiment you're running at that time, you're more likely to to pick up on these things. And I've had many weird experiences, you know, with, at our alone in dark experiences, even as we're training or setting up, which seems strange, but that one was just,
00:39:39
Jim Dean
I mean, it just caught me out of the blue because i wasn't I wasn't in a
Exploring the Nature of Ghosts and Consciousness
00:39:42
Jim Dean
mindset. I was like, okay, I got to get things set up before the first group to arrives. And then all of a sudden, you know, there's phantom footsteps involved. So. Mm-hmm.
00:39:50
Lee Hatfield
that's strange and it's when I went to the uh alone in the dark at uh Cumberland Village but Margot was there I'd I'd been watching all the tv shows for a while and I saw people do the Estus method And I got an opportunity in one of the buildings.
00:40:14
Lee Hatfield
So Margot goes, oh, does anybody? and want Yeah, I'll do it. Because I wanted to see. It would be it was my first time doing it. And I wanted to see if it's real.
00:40:24
Jim Dean
Yep.
00:40:24
Lee Hatfield
And I'm sat on this chair and people are all in like a semicircle. I've obviously got the white noise in the blindfold and everything on. And I did hear a few names that i that I said out loud.
00:40:41
Lee Hatfield
And then it it came to an end. And I said to Margot, who was walking up and down? And she went, what are you talking about? I went, there was somebody walking in front of me, kind of like they were pacing.
00:40:58
Lee Hatfield
And she went, there was nobody pacing. We was all stood still. And I went, because I was sat in the chair, i could literally feel the floor move like somebody was pacing back and forth.
00:41:10
Lee Hatfield
And I'm a kind of like, yeah, did it really happen? Because like yeah yeah you have to be to be a proper investigator, you have to have a certain amount of skepticism.
00:41:19
Jim Dean
True.
00:41:20
Lee Hatfield
it's like, did I really experience that? Yeah, because i I felt the floor move. But there was nobody moving. Everyone was still in their original positions when I took the blindfold off.
00:41:32
Jim Dean
And it's one of those things where you're not really expecting it. You know, you're so, if if for for viewers who have or listeners who have done the Estes method, like you're so concentrated on, am I hearing anything? What am I hearing? And, you know trying to be that that neutral filter that allows things to to flow through instead of your internal energy.
00:41:51
Jim Dean
editor kind of monitoring but that exact situation i've seen that several times where someone has indicated they feel physical presence whether that's something like footsteps or something close by and if we have an emf meter out more than once, many times, I've seen it spike exactly as that conversation is is is taking place. So yeah, I love when experiments kind of have you focused one way and then something else kind of creeps in.
00:42:23
Jim Dean
I think that's really interesting.
00:42:25
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And we was at an investigation a couple of weeks ago and Logan wanted to try to see what happens when someone does the just scrying.
00:42:35
Lee Hatfield
And for those people that don't know, you basically got a mirror in front of you. You're sat in the room, you focus on the mirror and allegedly spirits or entities can manipulate what you see in the mirror. And we had two cameras looking at the mirror.
00:42:52
Lee Hatfield
And yet yes, it did feel like things were changing in the mirror, but that could be down to the darkness and the shadows and you mind playing tricks on you. But I was speaking to a medium friend about a week ago, and she's just comes and she's in Cleveland, and we hadn't posted anything about going to this investigation. And she goes, have you been scrying recently?
00:43:19
Lee Hatfield
And I'm like, sorry, what? She went, I've got a picture of you with it sat in front of a mirror. And I'm like, yes.
00:43:32
Jim Dean
yeah Yeah.
00:43:32
Lee Hatfield
id led yeah i Yeah, exactly.
00:43:32
Jim Dean
How do you explain that?
00:43:35
Lee Hatfield
And it was it was really freaky.
00:43:38
Jim Dean
But you know, with that, you know, we the mirror scrying I find really interesting too. We do that at a Alone in the Dark, at Billings Estate in Ottawa, and Black Creek Village in Toronto.
00:43:49
Jim Dean
And you often get a few different responses. Like on the one hand, people feel a bit silly looking at themselves in the mirror, but often people do perceive some kind of change, which again may have a scientific explanation.
00:44:05
Jim Dean
But I think the interesting question is too, does looking in the mirror change your environment or does it change you?
00:44:13
Lee Hatfield
Good point. That's a very good point.
00:44:14
Jim Dean
Who knows? Yep.
00:44:15
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And like say, yeah yes, we do have science in our name. Yeah. We don't admit to being scientists, but we will try to prove something and debunk it as much as possible. So we we have like yeah black mold detectors. We have like carbon monoxide detectors. And we have all that rational stuff.
00:44:39
Lee Hatfield
And then we if we go to a private investigation, we'll use that prior to getting the bells and whistle whistles and the gadgets and seeing if we can actually communicate with something.
00:44:50
Lee Hatfield
So we do try and kind of treat it from a rational, sensible point of view. yeah If you've got noises in your attic, you may have a rodent problem. So, yeah, so we look for like rodent droppings. So we're completely logical. So yeah it is kind of a scientific approach, but it's not.
00:45:09
Lee Hatfield
I'm a scientist. I'm looking for this, looking for A, B and C.
00:45:14
Jim Dean
And those are the best the best cases, right? I mean, we've all seen investigators who maybe are too quick to jump on something without much rational thought. But for me, the greatest mysteries in the world and the greatest ghost stories are the ones that are kind of carefully considered.
00:45:31
Jim Dean
And you know what are the elements here? what can What can we disprove? What can we count out immediately? you know So once once you put it through a little rigor, if the story still stands up or the event still stands up,
00:45:43
Jim Dean
I mean, that's what it's all about for me.
00:45:46
Lee Hatfield
Exactly. And i yeah I was interviewing a girl that could do some astral projection. and in the fall. And yeah if you haven't watched that podcast, that one's actually quite amazing because she blows my mind.
00:46:01
Lee Hatfield
have But it's she she says to me, you see spirits. And I went, no, I don't. She went, don't, don't, don't, don't don't bullshit me. Don't, don't.
00:46:12
Lee Hatfield
And I went, I don't. She went, you do. You just haven't acknowledged the fact. And she went, how often do you things do you see things out the corner of your eye? And I'm like, well, yeah, every now and then she went, exactly.
00:46:28
Lee Hatfield
It's like, what?
00:46:28
Jim Dean
There you go
00:46:29
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. So I know that you've got a little subject that you want to jump onto a soapbox, so to speak, and to talk about. So you wanted, and I've got it written down,
00:46:43
Lee Hatfield
A 13-minute argument. So I'm going to time you for 13 minutes to see how we go.
00:46:46
Jim Dean
go. Yes.
00:46:49
Lee Hatfield
So I know you've got something. So now's your time for this.
00:46:53
Jim Dean
Yeah, thank you for giving me this opportunity. This is something I've been thinking about for a long time, but I've never tried to put into words as one kind of coherent thought. And this comes from someone with a love for the paranormal who has spent now 20 years kind of deeply invested in it. And it's around the primary question, of course, of what is a ghost?
00:47:13
Jim Dean
you know, most people... wouldn't hear that, expect kind of one or two answers. But it's either a spirit or some part thereof of someone who lived and has died and has either an oppression has been left or perhaps we can directly communicate with that person or their spirit or their soul in some other kind of place.
00:47:35
Jim Dean
That or of course, it's nothing at all. It's a trick of mind. It's your brain misfiring. It's telling stories to ourselves. Those two positions have really dominated the conversation in popular culture for decades. And I i think both of those are absolutely wrong.
00:47:55
Jim Dean
Not because the truth is somewhere in the middle, but because the truth is somewhere else entirely. And I think we've been asking the question, what is a ghost inside of a room that's too small, if you will. Our part our Victorian parlor really can't hold this question.
00:48:15
Jim Dean
You're probably familiar, our listeners are, with with the stone tape theory. The idea that buildings and places can absorb emotional events and kind of replay them under certain conditions, like a recording caught in the walls, an imprint, a moment of intensity that kind of outlasts the moments itself.
00:48:34
Jim Dean
At Fort Henry, where we give tours, people often see the gallows that were erected to conduct executions, the execution of Nils von Schultz, for example. People still you know have that experience of seeing something that took place so long ago.
00:48:49
Jim Dean
Now, what strikes me is this maps almost perfectly onto ordinary human experience. We are all haunted by people who are no longer with us, sometimes because they died, sometimes because they left.
00:49:04
Jim Dean
sometimes because we did. We are haunted by places we cannot return to, old versions of ourselves by decisions that still echo with us and impact us, even when the moment is long past.
00:49:19
Jim Dean
Grief, regret, longing, these are hauntings too, something that is over but not quite yet done, something that continues to exert presence.
00:49:32
Jim Dean
Now, I think once you see that connection, the paranormal stops being a niche interest in dark rooms and old buildings. It becomes a way of thinking about echoes, traces, and the strange persistence of things that by all rights or understanding should be gone.
00:49:50
Jim Dean
It becomes connected connected to the human condition itself. Now, I'm not saying this means every ghost story is a metaphor. I do not believe that. The best reports, as we were just talking about, deserve to be taken seriously.
00:50:04
Jim Dean
Not blindly, but seriously. What I'm calling for is less a question of belief and more a matter of imagination.
00:50:15
Jim Dean
Because one thing we have learned, especially through our alone in the dark experiences, is that the people involved in an investigation seem to matter a great deal.
00:50:26
Jim Dean
Their intent matters, their openness matters, their willingness to engage matters. The groups who are most curious, receptive, and genuinely hoping for something to happen often do experience more. Now that doesn't automatically explain the phenomena,
00:50:44
Jim Dean
but it complicates it, I think, in a very important way. It suggests the human mind may not be observing the paranormal. It may be participating in it. And there's precedent for this idea in science, of course. In quantum mechanics, the observer is not a neutral bystander.
00:51:03
Jim Dean
I'm sure some folks know about the double slit experiment, a famous physics test that proves tiny particles like electrons or light can act both as solid objects and fluid waves at the same time.
00:51:19
Jim Dean
The truly mind-bending part of these particles is that these particles seem to decide how to behave based on whether someone is watching them, changing their physical reality simply by being observed.
00:51:35
Jim Dean
No physical, no no tangible connection. And then there's quantum entanglement. The phenomenon where two particles, once connected, continue to influence each other instantaneously at vastly, vast differences and in time, greatly far apart. They can still, you know, connect with each other.
00:51:57
Jim Dean
Now i'm not saying either there's either of these scientific kind of theories or experiments proves necessarily anything about ghosts, but I am saying in a universe where observation shapes outcome and where connection persists across impossible distances is a very different universe than one most skeptics are standing in when they quickly dismiss paranormal experiences.
00:52:24
Jim Dean
And once you admit that possibility, the door, I think, opens very quickly. Could a person or a group of people create the conditions for an experience to emerge?
00:52:35
Jim Dean
Is there some strange interplay between expectation, consciousness, environment, and whatever else may be present the per group that produces what we call a haunting?
00:52:48
Jim Dean
Is the phenomenon, at least in part, something we are doing individually, or together rather than something happening to us? I don't think we can dismiss those questions anymore.
00:53:01
Jim Dean
In April 2024, we ran a series of experiments on our Haunted Docs podcast during the total solar eclipse. You may remember Ontario was in the path of totality and we wanted to use that window, that collective moment of shared attention to try and experiment.
00:53:13
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:53:20
Jim Dean
one of the the one we We tried a few, but the one I'll mention today was inspired by the Global Consciousness Project, a Princeton-based initiative that monitors random number generators for anomalies during major global events.
00:53:35
Jim Dean
Their hypothesis is that the moments of mass human focus can create subtle subtle, measurable deviations from true randomness, as if collective consciousness leaves a fingerprint on chance.
00:53:51
Jim Dean
We did a simpler version. We asked listeners to use Google's random number generator to produce a digit between 1 and 10 at the height of totality, when the when the moon was was blocking out the sun.
00:54:03
Jim Dean
We had 137 people take part in the experiment. In a world of pure or flat randomness, you would expect each number to appear roughly 13.7 times with that many people Instead, the number 7 came up 22 times.
00:54:24
Jim Dean
That's a surge of 60% above the expected average, while the number 4 only came up 6 times. Now, a skeptic might point out, with only 10 possible numbers, the odds of some numbers spiking are not astronomically low.
00:54:39
Jim Dean
And that's fair. And that's true. But the statistics cannot account for the nature of the generator itself. These weren't people picking their favorite number in their heads.
00:54:51
Jim Dean
They were triggering a cold silicon algorithm designed specifically by engineers to be unbiased. A computer has no lucky numbers, and it doesn't know the moon is currently blocking the sun.
00:55:07
Jim Dean
Yet the math fluctuated. If, as in the double slit experiment, the act of measurement changes the changes the reality of what is being measured, then perhaps simultaneous measurement of 137 people looking for a sign caused that computer code to briefly flicker.
00:55:29
Jim Dean
The odds of the spike were reasonable, but the choice of the number I think is interesting. if we If we go down a numerology route, the number seven is mostly closely associated with introspection, spirituality, and the seeking of truth. and And at a moment where all these people are looking up at the sun, engaging in this kind of experiment, could be coincidence, but it is it is interesting, maybe a digital observer effect.
Innovative Approaches to Paranormal Investigation
00:55:56
Jim Dean
But this is exactly the kind of result that makes me question, makes the question of human participation in these paranormal phenomena deserving far more attention than maybe we're giving it right now.
00:56:09
Jim Dean
It suggests that for one brief window of time, our collective awe or interest and the math of the universe kind of vibrated weird or maybe even at the same frequency.
00:56:23
Jim Dean
Which brings me to the tools we typically use in investigations. And wanna pause here because I know the audience must think about this. Anyone listening or watching us right now has probably used some of these devices and the standard toolkit We can all think of, right? You got your EMF meters, you got spirit boxes, you got digital audio recorders, temperature, motion sensors, and all of that has its place. These instruments have really helped to build the field. We use them extensively in our own investigations and we respect the investigators who use them in in a careful and thoughtful way.
00:57:01
Jim Dean
But we may be building instruments for answers we have not earned yet. If we do not know what a ghost is, how can we possibly design the right tool to detect one?
00:57:15
Jim Dean
If the phenomenon is not consistently electromagnetic, reliably environmental, not even external of our minds or bodies the way we assume it to be, then no amount of equipment is going to close the case on this.
00:57:33
Jim Dean
We may be reuring measuring the wrong thing with great precision. the core problem, I think, is we're trying to solve the problem backwards. We need better questions, not better gadgets.
00:57:48
Jim Dean
Let me give an example of what a better question might might look like and what we humbly tried when we ran investigations at the CN Tower in Toronto. not a location that anyone would traditionally call haunted.
00:58:01
Jim Dean
No tragic history in and of itself, some in the area, of course. You know, no spooky Victorian corridors. It's one of the most recognizable modern structures in Canada.
00:58:13
Jim Dean
It's one of the tallest transmission towers in the world, which is exactly what interest that interested us What happens when you do a paranormal investigation or paranormal experiments in a place designed to reach into the sky and broadcast singles signals as well as receive them?
00:58:31
Jim Dean
Does elevation matter? Does the closeness to outer space matter? During one session there, we did a double ESTES method.
00:58:42
Jim Dean
So we had two people isolated from each other with the headphones on listening to the spirit box. One of them said, unprompted, and we didn't have this direct discussion with any of the guests, but unprompted, one of the subjects says, I am not a ghost.
00:59:02
Jim Dean
Our host replied, you're not a ghost? No.
00:59:08
Jim Dean
Are you some kind of spirit passing by? Yes. Where do you normally reside?
00:59:18
Jim Dean
Consciousness.
00:59:20
Jim Dean
Whatever you believe the spirit box is actually capturing capturing, that exchange did not reach for the familiar vocabulary of here, a building, the tower, a name, a year. It said consciousness.
00:59:34
Jim Dean
at the top of a transmission tower during an experiment designed around the idea that mind and environment may interact in ways we don't understand, whether through the location, not through the location or or the place, but in awareness itself.
00:59:52
Jim Dean
So what am I really arguing? Well, I guess what if the paranormal stopped being a genre and became an open question? What if we stopped assuming it only belongs in the darkness, in old places, with the same inherited framework?
01:00:09
Jim Dean
What if the next frontier is not another abandoned asylum at night, but the ordinary world approached differently? Daylight experiments, group intention, unconventional spaces, genuine curiosity of what consciousness is actually capable of.
01:00:31
Jim Dean
because the only place any of us have personally experienced the paranormal is in our own minds. Maybe the answer isn't better technology for a mystery we don't yet understand.
01:00:44
Jim Dean
Maybe the answer is curiosity broad enough to let the mystery change shape. We have spent so long looking for ghosts in the wreckage of the past, in crumbling stone, quiet graveyards,
01:00:59
Jim Dean
if we are participants in this reality then the haunting isn't just behind us it is happening right now as we speak it is being broadcast through the internet through the towers we build the intentions we hold in the very way we choose to observe the world reality is more porous more participatory, and more haunted, I think, than we have ever dared to admit.
01:01:30
Jim Dean
Not just in the dark, but here in plain sight.
01:01:36
Lee Hatfield
How the hell do you expect me to come back with something after that? I love that. That was absolutely mind-blowing.
01:01:46
Lee Hatfield
And I think we can actually connect it, not just to the spiritual world, but when people are talking about UFOs and aliens, you could you could join that together and consider consider both of them.
01:02:05
Jim Dean
Absolutely.
01:02:05
Lee Hatfield
and And a couple of points that I could kind of connect to is what I tell people all the time.
01:02:05
Jim Dean
Mm-hmm.
01:02:14
Lee Hatfield
The amount of people that when they go on these investigations, they heard that they hear the word demon. So they automatically think that there's something malevolent.
01:02:27
Jim Dean
here
01:02:28
Lee Hatfield
In the room. But I always flip that and say, well, how do you know the spirit or the entity is not calling you a demon because the tech technology that you're using, they're not familiar with. So as far as they're concerned, it's all witchcraft.
01:02:46
Jim Dean
Well, that's a great point. And we, know, it's something similar we hear all the time when we're doing Estes methods, is particularly at new site.
01:02:48
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
01:02:54
Jim Dean
Like once we've been doing location like Cumberland, we've been doing for a little while. So it's almost like the spirits get used to it. But you'll notice when you're, if you're a brand new location, you've never been never been to, or session's never been done there.
01:03:07
Jim Dean
Just as you described, there is often this kind of like, oh, this is a weird thing. Or like, look at the, why are the lights doing this? Or how does this work? Or this is an awkward way to communicate.
01:03:20
Jim Dean
So your point about demons, it's right on. And UFOs as well. I mean, if you want to even go further, you would say, well, how do, you know, i do have a little bit of interest in UFOs.
01:03:23
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
01:03:31
Jim Dean
and When we hear abduction stories, they have so many similarities to ghost stories, right? You have these often translucent stories figures unexpectedly showing up in the middle of the night.
01:03:46
Jim Dean
And really maybe this is all about kind of whenever we can dropping our preconceptions about all of these things and kind of trying to relook at everything with fresh eyes like you did with that demon comet. I think it's exactly the kinds of things we as as leaders in the paranormal field need to be encouraging others to you know to take up that torch.
01:04:08
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and my my second point that I wanted to raise, and it also connects with the demon word, the amount of times that people go to locations and they say, I've been scratched.
01:04:23
Lee Hatfield
It must be an evil entity. It must be a bad entity. It must be malevolent, malevolent. I can't even say that word. But I have a theory on that as well.
01:04:34
Lee Hatfield
So if you and I are in a room, and one of us has passed. If I want to try to get your your attention, I will make a noise, I will call to you.
01:04:46
Lee Hatfield
And because one of us is in the, let's just say that, the spirit well realm and one of us is still alive, the alive person potentially is not going to hear the spirit.
01:04:59
Lee Hatfield
So if that's two human beings that are both alive, the next rational explanation is that they will shout louder to try to get the attention. If that doesn't work, the next step is to reach out and touch you.
01:05:18
Lee Hatfield
so my theory and obviously i can't prove it is when people say they've been scratched or they've got a bruise it's not necessarily an evil entity it could be that spiritual energy transference from whatever's there to the human and that is cut that has caused friction or whatever on the skin created a scratch created a bruise And when I try to explain that to people, they kind of look at it from a different way and go, oh, I've never thought of that before.
01:05:58
Lee Hatfield
And it's it's kind of connected to what you've what you've said about the demon and what you've just said.
01:06:04
Jim Dean
No, I like that. I like that framing. And we can even just go one step earlier, because kind of the first question is, is this truly something paranormal that has happened to this person?
01:06:15
Jim Dean
Or again, is there a more obvious explanation? They scratched their arm and didn't didn't realize it or, you know, I know one of the places where that often happens is in the, I think it's the tunnels under Edinburgh.
01:06:28
Jim Dean
We had a storyteller during our virtual campfire series during COVID, you know, and they they would often get these scratches or a cemetery in Edinburgh, maybe they would always, you know, get these scratches, which raises the first question, well, is it paranormal or is this something more regular?
01:06:44
Jim Dean
But if if we say, well, it's not mundane, it has some type of supernatural explanation your question is a perfectly app or apt one which is well okay even if it's spiritual even if it's supernatural there's still a bit of a question of uh of in intent or what what does what does the the scratch mean as you say if this if we take spirits to be a thing outside of ourselves that are operating in the environment, well, we know our bodies react to all sorts of different things in all sorts of different ways. Think about but allergies in in particular, how they invisibly kind of affect us. So yeah, i like I like that thought of, you know, it's often easy and dramatic to kind of go to the most macabre kind of explanation.
01:07:39
Jim Dean
But as you're pointing out, sometimes it's not the most interesting way of looking at it.
01:07:43
Lee Hatfield
That's it. And like you say, and yeah that's that's kind of putting that rational head on that rational body. And one thing that I absolutely hate is when you see it on TV shows or yeah investigations and people go, go and touch that device on the floor.
01:08:03
Lee Hatfield
It's like, look, if this place is haunted by spirits from the 1800s, they are not going to know what that word device means.
01:08:13
Jim Dean
good point
01:08:14
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, so I always say touch the box with the light on or do whatever, but i and i've I try my hardest to never use technical words. Yeah, look, the REM pod.
01:08:27
Lee Hatfield
Okay, got go and touch the REM pod. and yeah You can imagine a spirit going, what what's a REM pod? I don't know what you're talking about.
01:08:38
Lee Hatfield
and yeah And it's the same kind of thing. Don't use complicated words that people, if they do exist from 100 or so years ago, are not going to know what that word means.
01:08:51
Lee Hatfield
Keep it simple, stupid, as they say.
01:08:56
Jim Dean
And I do like the idea too of, you know, when you're doing investigation, obviously it's a highlight. If you get some type of concrete response or something that, and and perhaps most people don't know, but most investigations, nothing happens.
01:09:14
Jim Dean
that's just That's just the truth. And if you're if you think otherwise, i wonder I wonder why, but like, that's just the truth. When you get something that's really kind of noteworthy.
01:09:25
Jim Dean
But what what can change in every investigation is you, right? How you your additional insights, suddenly being able to put yourselves in the shoes of someone who may have lived in this house in 1915 before going off to war, whatever it may be, like,
01:09:45
Jim Dean
Again, that's the kind of haunting I was kind of talking about earlier where you're not getting, you know, the REM pod's not activating, the EMF's not going off, but suddenly inside you, you understand what it may have felt like to be someone heading off to war or living through the Great Depression or these kinds of things. So it would be a shame, I think, if the insight from an investigation is only the technology.
01:10:11
Jim Dean
I think there's a lot more at play and a lot more that we could explore than that.
01:10:17
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, because we do have the technology and we do have some yeah bells and whistles gadgets. But yeah something as simple as a cat ball
01:10:29
Jim Dean
Mm-hmm.
01:10:30
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, some people go, but it's a toy for a cat. Yeah, you're right, it is. However, it reacts to vibration. And if you put it on a floor and somebody stamps on the floor, the chances are that cat ball is going off. That does not mean it's supernatural. But what we do, we have a vibration device and then we put the cat ball on top of that.
01:10:53
Jim Dean
GABRIEL SANCHEZ- There you yeah.
01:10:54
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, so you've not just got one device that is activating. You've potentially got two. So if one goes off and the other one doesn't, then it could that be something more than just if both of them go off together? Because if both of go, yeah, the chances are it could be somebody's like come up behind your yeah one of your colleagues and and stamped on the floor, which is to set both off. But for one to go off and not the other, that's something more to look into.
01:11:23
Jim Dean
Absolutely. And that, in you know, is as I really want to be clear, like the, when we say gadgets, I don't really mean that in a pejorative sense, because we use them. yeah They're the best tools we have right now in our kind of toolkit.
01:11:35
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
01:11:36
Jim Dean
It's really a question of like, how do we how do we expand that toolkit more? Like for interesting, it'd be example interesting to do that experiment with the two ghost balls at a distance, at the the cat balls at a distance. So while you're investigating, leave one in the car or so something you can record or someone else can monitor, you know, then that becomes interesting. How do you bring an investigation out of a can a closed set off environment?
01:12:01
Jim Dean
how can we measure if what you're doing in one place is actually creating anything else and in any other place? Because it could well be. And for us as investigators, <unk>s it's hard it's very hard. And I do think and investigations have to be fun. like or otherwise, like you get bored and you wouldn't you wouldn't do it. So we got to keep the fun. There's got to be a little suspense. There's got to be be some some some some drama as well. So I would never want to lose lose those things.
01:12:31
Jim Dean
I just think we should get weirder. like how How can we get weirder while we're doing experiments and do them purely as experiments? Because we know a lot of the most interesting scientific discoveries are human knowledge.
01:12:44
Jim Dean
come from unexpected experimentation. Like, you know the first person who made a ate a mushroom or something, like, you know, like when that wasn't in the knowledge of the time, that was a very bold step.
01:12:52
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
01:12:57
Jim Dean
So I'm trying to think, and I'm always trying to think, or we are always trying to think, what are some other bold steps we can take, which which may turn things on their head and reveal something unexpected?
01:13:09
Lee Hatfield
i i'm glad I'm so glad you used the mushroom analogy and not like milking a cow because that would have that would have completely changed the yeah the nature of the subject.
01:13:20
Jim Dean
Thank you.
01:13:22
Lee Hatfield
Jim, it's been an absolute pleasure. But before you go, i'd like you to tell people of where they can reach out to the Haunted Walks if they'd like to go on a Haunted Walk. yeah Give us your website and all the normal stuff.
01:13:39
Lee Hatfield
And then people can reach out and come and see you.
01:13:42
Jim Dean
Yeah, absolutely. Well, firstly, thanks so much for for for having me on today. This has been a lot of fun. I love i love chatting with other paranormal enthusiasts, and I love what your team is doing. So keep up
Conclusion and Invitation to Join a Tour
01:13:52
Jim Dean
the great work.
01:13:53
Jim Dean
We have to do some type of joint event, I think, at some point with all of us in in the near future.
01:13:56
Lee Hatfield
Definitely.
01:13:58
Jim Dean
But I would like to invite everyone who's watching or listening to come and join us for a ghost tour. If you want something a little more passive, you just want that great entertainment here, a few great ghost stories, or one of our paranormal adventures, if you want to get a little more involved and try your hand at of at investigating. We have them running throughout March break, which is coming up. I'm not sure when the episode drops, but also every weekend and then more regularly as we hit the summer, as we always then crescendo into the fall with the the Halloween fun or the Halloween shenanigans.
01:14:30
Jim Dean
Best spot for information and tickets is to visit our website, hauntedwalk.com. There you can also find our podcast, which I host, Haunted Talks, and you can also find that on all the major podcasting platforms as well. We'd love to have listen.
01:14:46
Lee Hatfield
And just for the record, this episode will be going out. See, when it goes out, it won't be a week on Friday. But I'm telling you right now, it's going out a week on Friday.
01:14:57
Lee Hatfield
so that so so So that will be the 20th.
01:15:02
Jim Dean
very The very end of March break. There's still time, people. Get your tickets.
01:15:05
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, still yeah. And it's still all the summer. But again, Jim, it's been an absolute pleasure. You have blown my mind. I wasn't expecting it to, but you have. which Thank you very much. And I hope we stay in touch. And I will speak to you very soon, my friend.
01:15:20
Lee Hatfield
Have a great rest of the evening.
01:15:21
Jim Dean
Thanks so much, Lee. And of course, sweet dreams.
01:15:26
Lee Hatfield
Or spooky ones.