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S1 E35 Heather Leigh Author and Paranormal Investigator
23 Plays1 month ago
This week i welcomed Heather Leigh, who has more than 35 years researching the Paranormal, and has a PhD in Paranormal Science.
Her experiences started with her seeing her grandfather who was watching over her and having a conflict between her mediumistic skills, and scientific beliefs.
We then discussed her spooky vacations, and seeing a visitation of a Gettysburg Sharp shooter.
One of our prolonged conversation was talking about Project Umpra, and discussing the apparitions of the Hatman. Is he good, is he bad, is he a shape shifter, time traveler or the leader of the shadow people.
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction to SIPA Paranormal Chronicles
00:00:12
Lee Hatfield
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the latest episode of SIPA Paranormal Chronicles.
Meet Heather Lee: Paranormal Explorer and Author
00:00:17
Lee Hatfield
Today, I'm delighted to have a professional name, Heather Lee. Heather Lee is the founder of exp explorei Exploration Paranormal.
00:00:27
Lee Hatfield
She's an author, and we'll get into the rest of it, what she does in a little bit. Heather, welcome.
00:00:33
Heather Leigh PhD
Oh, thank you. so glad to be here today.
00:00:37
Lee Hatfield
yeah And we're just discussing the weather, so we've just been comparing notes, who's got the the hottest weather right now. So you've just moved from Florida, one hot place, to Texas, another hot place.
00:00:49
Heather Leigh PhD
ye
00:00:50
Lee Hatfield
like Are you crazy?
00:00:51
Heather Leigh PhD
relax a And I mean, a little side note, even though I lived in Florida for most of my adult life, we were in Nevada for several years on top of it. So,
00:01:02
Lee Hatfield
Oh, OK. So it's it's all the hot places that you're doing around the US.
00:01:03
Heather Leigh PhD
so i
00:01:06
Heather Leigh PhD
right. I'd rather stay in a hot place than in a cold place.
00:01:08
Heather Leigh PhD
I grew up in Northern Illinois and that's too cold for me.
00:01:12
Lee Hatfield
the Did you get snow there as well?
00:01:15
Heather Leigh PhD
In Northern Illinois, yeah, we would get a lot of snow.
00:01:18
Lee Hatfield
Oh, at least you've had the but the benefits of both worlds, Ed.
00:01:22
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep, exactly.
00:01:22
Lee Hatfield
yeah payment kind of yeah Up here in Canada, we get like yeah nice hot summers and then really cold winter, so we get the best of both worlds.
00:01:29
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep. yeah
00:01:31
Lee Hatfield
OK, so the reason you're here today, this is a paranormal podcast. And we're going to be talking about some stuff that's pretty much paranormal.
Heather's Paranormal Journey Begins
00:01:39
Lee Hatfield
So if you could start off by telling us a bit about yourself and how you got into the paranormal, and then we'll take it from there.
00:01:46
Heather Leigh PhD
Okay. Well, I am actually, it's probably over 35 years that I've been researching the paranormal. more recently, I've taken a deep dive into it and do it, and I don't want to really say full time, but it takes up a lot of my time.
00:01:59
Heather Leigh PhD
But what got me started is I was a teenager and we had moved to a house that we just, I think we've been there since I was seven, but my grandfather had never been to that house because he had died before going, before we had moved.
00:02:14
Heather Leigh PhD
All of a sudden, as a teenager, I started seeing him in the house, in my dreams, in my bedroom, at the foot of my bed, walking the hallway. And it kind of made me curious as to why is he showing up?
00:02:24
Heather Leigh PhD
Because back in the 80s, it was believed that Anytime someone died, that's where they haunted. It was like they were, you know, location bound. So I just was like, okay, this doesn't make sense to me because he's never been there.
00:02:36
Heather Leigh PhD
And from there, it just kind of snowballed. Over the years, I've read a lot of books. I want to say I used to watch a lot of the TV shows. But now that I know the shows are, you know, a little, not all that they appear to be.
00:02:51
Heather Leigh PhD
But they're still entertaining, but it's just a lot of reading.
Science Meets Mediumship in Paranormal Research
00:02:55
Heather Leigh PhD
And I would say within the last 10-ish years, I took a full deep dive into it, went back to school, got my PhD in paranormal science, started my team, worked with several other teams, and here we are.
00:03:13
Lee Hatfield
So it's interesting that you say that you saw your grandfather. So would you say that you've got any mediumistic skills or anything like that?
00:03:23
Heather Leigh PhD
I do believe I have those skills, but for me, it's not something that I wanted to develop further to where I could you know use them more often. So I do know that I see and hear things that most people don't, but I always, I'm more of a scientific type of person.
00:03:40
Heather Leigh PhD
So I don't want what I feel to affect the data. So that's kind of why, you know i know their the abilities are there.
00:03:45
Lee Hatfield
Right.
00:03:47
Heather Leigh PhD
I just don't, I choose not to develop or use them.
00:03:51
Lee Hatfield
Okay. And they always say that yeah if ghosts and spirits do it do exist, let's be a little bit sceptical right now, that if you see one, they do come back for a reason.
00:04:04
Lee Hatfield
So did you actually find out or could you actually discover any reason why your grandfather came back to visit you?
00:04:14
Heather Leigh PhD
The only thing I could think of, because it does tie into a more recent story that I have with my grandfather, is that he was more or less watching over me. because I was real close to him growing up. I was like his little shadow.
00:04:26
Heather Leigh PhD
We had lived with my grandparents when I was before he had passed. So it was like, yeah ah was a big presence in my life and I was a big part of his life. So I really do think that, you know, how teenagers are going through all the drama, high school, you know, dating and all of that stuff. I think he was kind of watching over me, but then fast forward until 2018.
00:04:44
Heather Leigh PhD
two thousand and eighteen I had been diagnosed with kidney disease and hadn't seen him for quite some time. And we were living in Nevada. So of course a place that he had never been with and never been in that home.
00:04:56
Heather Leigh PhD
And he started coming to me again. And I had had a dream one night that he told me it wasn't my time because I was diagnosed at stage five. And I woke up and he was sitting on the side of my bed, rubbing my arm and then he faded away.
00:05:11
Heather Leigh PhD
So I do believe that the connection I have there is he's watching over me more than anything else.
00:05:17
Lee Hatfield
And the fact that it's your grandfather and you know who he is, that's that's kind of got to be pretty reassuring to know that, you the presence that you're seeing you is not there to be malevolent.
00:05:22
Heather Leigh PhD
Right. Right, exactly. Yep.
00:05:32
Lee Hatfield
It's there for a caring reason.
00:05:34
Heather Leigh PhD
right exactly yep
00:05:37
Lee Hatfield
Cool. So moving on after you've seen your grandfather for the first time, What kind of route did you take to to think to yourself, right, I want to do this as like yeah seriously and look into the paranormal?
00:05:54
Heather Leigh PhD
Right. Well, it was a lot of, my family didn't take our vacations to Disney world or anything like that. We would actually explore all the old civil war sites, a lot, you know, north and south. that We would travel the whole East coast, exploring those for our vacations.
00:06:07
Heather Leigh PhD
So anytime i would go somewhere that had a ghost tour, had a paranormal, opportunity to learn because this was before the internet. So there really was no searching, how do I start my own team? How do I do this? How do I it's more or less when you go to a location, you have to ask questions.
00:06:22
Heather Leigh PhD
Throughout the years, I met na Mark Nesbitt up in Ghost of Gettysburg, amazing guy. Very patient, because here he was answering this, you know, mid you know, mid 20s person's 101 questions about ghosts and all the books that he's written. And and Throughout those years, I also had many paranormal experiences that I just kept documenting.
00:06:43
Heather Leigh PhD
And it led me to one day I was watching TV and I was like, wouldn't I, you know, was a writer. So I basically was a freelance writer and worked from home. And I said, wouldn't it be cool if I could turn my writing into something I could do with the paranormal and do that full time.
00:06:58
Heather Leigh PhD
And i ended up finding Dr. Kelly, who has the Institute of Metaphysical and Humanistic Studies, the IMHS. And he teaches classes in paranormal and religious studies and a whole bunch
Writing and Research: Heather's Dual Path
00:07:09
Heather Leigh PhD
of things. And he took me under his wing. I took a whole bunch of his classes and that's kind of where I started putting everything together.
00:07:18
Heather Leigh PhD
So I've written several books on the experiences and it kind of is nice how it all fit together.
00:07:24
Lee Hatfield
So i I like how you say that because when i first got into the paranormal, again, before the internet came came about, there was one TV show in the UK that was pretty much like a scream fest.
00:07:41
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, every time it went dark, there was something and you could not see if things were being thrown by, yeah
00:07:48
Heather Leigh PhD
Right. Yeah.
00:07:49
Lee Hatfield
either spirits or living people to make it look like it was paranormal. But they had people screaming all the time. And after a little while, it did get a little bit annoying.
00:08:01
Lee Hatfield
But then you you jump forward to nowadays, and there's literally a new group every week.
00:08:09
Lee Hatfield
Now, SIPA, Scientific Investigation of Paranormal Activity, we like to investigate the the the stuff that can provide a logical explanation, like electromagnetic fields.
00:08:24
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:08:27
Lee Hatfield
yeah Some people get hallucinations, but you can rule that out as a paranormal experience and and such like. So the fact that you went down that scientific route, was your did you have like a split mind of, okay, I'm seeing this, but scientifically this hasn't been proven?
00:08:48
Heather Leigh PhD
Exactly. And my dad is very scientific, so I grew up in that mindset. And my thing is, is whenever I would either watch the shows or even when I would go on investigations with the team I had joined before creating my own, it was the K2 meter came out and it was like, oh, it's fluctuating. and But if you really take the time to sit back and study how far radio waves and TV waves and ah know cell phone waves, even if you put your phone on airplane mode, it doesn't mean there aren't other waves coming through.
00:09:17
Heather Leigh PhD
And it's, you know, the yes and no's the lights flashing coincide with the waves of all of this stuff. So it was like, okay, well, that's ruled out. So I don't even use the K2 or even I don't even use EMF outside of checking a home to see if there's high levels that could be causing the hallucinations.
00:09:34
Heather Leigh PhD
because there's so much outside stuff. And that's what I kind of drove me to this a little bit more because I wanted to not disprove and say, hey, you guys are doing this wrong, but I wanted to show a more scientific route and that we need to use more critical thinking and not just trust what we've been told by others is, you know, because who said that the K2 meter lights up, it's paranormal, you know, who's the one who said that?
00:09:57
Lee Hatfield
Exactly. And I'm in the same mindset as what you are, because yeah if you have a K2, you've only got lights, pretty little lights that go from green to red.
00:10:11
Lee Hatfield
Whereas my my instrument of choice is a Trifield because it's designed to be used in construction.
00:10:21
Heather Leigh PhD
Right.
00:10:21
Lee Hatfield
So it's a recognized device. It's not a paranormal device.
00:10:25
Heather Leigh PhD
Exactly.
00:10:25
Lee Hatfield
It's a recognized device used for construction. And you can have different different channels that you can measure different stuff. So it's a lot more accurate.
00:10:33
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:10:35
Heather Leigh PhD
yeah
00:10:36
Lee Hatfield
And you've got numbers to go with that rather than, oh yes, I had a yellow the other day. I'm so excited.
00:10:42
Heather Leigh PhD
Right.
00:10:43
Lee Hatfield
so like yeah what is What does that mean to anybody?
00:10:46
Heather Leigh PhD
Right. Yeah. But I mean, to the new paranormal investigators or the ones that are in it, I call them paranormal tourists. They're the ones that like the flashy lights.
00:10:57
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, because yes, we do have a few little gadgets and toys. However, we don't take them as gospel. We put them to the test.
00:11:07
Heather Leigh PhD
Right. yeah
00:11:10
Lee Hatfield
So, yeah, we can have a REM pod. I will go around with a tri-field to to measure all the different levels of EMF. And then we'll put it somewhere where there's no no cell phones, no walkie-talkies or anything like that.
00:11:26
Heather Leigh PhD
yeah
00:11:27
Lee Hatfield
So if it does go off, there's potentially got to be another reason for it going off that's not radio waves or not somebody walking past it.
00:11:36
Heather Leigh PhD
Right.
00:11:36
Lee Hatfield
So I do think that a lot of people have to go down that route
00:11:41
Heather Leigh PhD
and
00:11:42
Lee Hatfield
make sense of what we're studying.
00:11:43
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:11:45
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep. Yeah. and And also know how the devices work because I mean, I'm all for like the Eddie Plus. I love that device as far as capturing enough data in one device, but that's not a device that you walk around with.
00:11:59
Heather Leigh PhD
And I see so many people walking with it when they're, you know, and it's like, set it down somewhere.
00:12:04
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, yeah.
00:12:05
Heather Leigh PhD
but it down and let it do it you know do its job type of thing. and And that's what I don't think a lot of people take the time to do is to learn, you know, and anything can be, you know, used as paranormal, you know, investigative tools, as long as you know how to use it and can think of a way to adapt it to work in the field.
00:12:23
Lee Hatfield
Exactly. And yeah by watching some of these TV shows, there are few shows that do do the right thing.
00:12:34
Lee Hatfield
There's a few shows that do not do the right thing. But then you get those other shows that people send in videos and things.
00:12:45
Lee Hatfield
And it's like, oh, that door moved. Right. But what's behind the door?
00:12:49
Heather Leigh PhD
right
00:12:49
Lee Hatfield
yeah There's no evidence to see, well, that door moved. But yeah the speed that you walk towards that door, somebody could have gone out another door and hid. So there's there's a lot of falsehood on some of the TV shows, unfortunately.
00:12:59
Heather Leigh PhD
yeah yeah
00:13:03
Heather Leigh PhD
but ye
00:13:05
Lee Hatfield
So you mentioned earlier about that you documented some of these
Notable Paranormal Experiences
00:13:11
Lee Hatfield
experiences that you had. Can you share share some of those with us, please?
00:13:14
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah, one of my most memorable experiences that I had outside of my grandfather is we were at Gettysburg. And at the time, I was a photography student in college. And I always just would wander because my dad would get stuck because he was such a Civil War history buff that he would get stuck in a monument and he would sit there forever. So if I was done with it, I would kind of move down my own.
00:13:34
Heather Leigh PhD
And I ended up at Devil's Den. And it was, of course, it was a weekend where there was a Civil War reenactment, so I wasn't thinking anything that was happening, but I came out from between the two rocks and a Confederate soldier walked by me, tipped his hat, didn't say anything, and just kept walking.
00:13:54
Heather Leigh PhD
And I was like, I'm photography student. What was I thinking? I should have grabbed, you know i was just so amazed that he was full dressed full. I mean, look very authentic. And I'm like, I need to go get his photo. And he had turned around the rocks on the backside. And when I ran after him, he was completely gone.
00:14:10
Heather Leigh PhD
And where we were, i would have seen, i checked all the little crevices to see if he was hiding in one of them. And he was just completely gone. You know, I would have seen him running away if he was running or anything like that.
00:14:22
Heather Leigh PhD
So to me, that told me that was an experience that I had. And then the more research I did about what happened at Devil's Den, i found a photo of the sharpshooter that Matthew Brady captured or his colleague had captured and the big famous photo of the sharpshooter.
00:14:38
Heather Leigh PhD
And they figured out who it was. And they had his military enlistment photo there and it was the guy I saw.
00:14:46
Lee Hatfield
wow
00:14:46
Heather Leigh PhD
So and it was like, okay, that you know so that was pretty cool tying those two together. And then I think Gettysburg, i would say I had most of my experiences there. had one experience at Spangler Spring where I went through five batteries because they just kept dying on me and they were all brand new, popped out of the package. And then someone grabbed my shoulder and turned me around.
00:15:07
Heather Leigh PhD
nobody was around me. I was the only one there. So it was like, okay, this is really, really cool. And oh my goodness. It's like, it's almost like there's too many to acknowledge.
00:15:18
Heather Leigh PhD
But one other one that always stands out to me is I was in, was during COVID. We were still living in Vegas and the team I was with, we would go to a local place and we would continually It was like our training grounds. We'd have our team meetings and we would train there.
00:15:34
Heather Leigh PhD
And there was this one spirit. It was a big, tall, but he always appeared as a shadow. Not threatening, not anything like that. Just always appeared as a big, it almost looked like it could have been a big farm worker, but is how I envisioned him. but And we all would see him.
00:15:49
Heather Leigh PhD
And during COVID, we stopped going because everything had shut down. He appeared in our kitchen one day, And then also in our bedroom one day, more or less like I'm checking in on you, making sure you're okay.
00:16:02
Heather Leigh PhD
And once he saw that I saw him, and disappeared. So it was like, and that's the only time I ever had spirits outside of my grandfather in my home.
00:16:13
Heather Leigh PhD
Cause I do everything I can to protect the home.
00:16:15
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, for sure.
00:16:16
Heather Leigh PhD
So, and that's the only other time. And that was real interesting.
00:16:19
Lee Hatfield
But this must cause a conflict because if you're going down this scientific route and there's and there's no definitive evidence to prove that ghosts and spirits exist, but you've had multiple experiences, I'm now going to put you on the spot and go, right, do they exist?
00:16:26
Heather Leigh PhD
It does.
00:16:45
Heather Leigh PhD
That's the tough one because that is what my whole mission is because I know from personal experiences in my heart, I want to say yes. But scientifically, i don't think science has caught up with it yet for us to say, yeah you know, similar to medicine and diseases, science just hasn't caught up to it.
00:16:57
Lee Hatfield
hundred percent
00:17:02
Heather Leigh PhD
And that's my, and it's sad to say that I got a little bit of a late start in life doing all of this, but my goal is to make the paranormal a true science field because every scientific field started as a pseudoscience.
00:17:18
Heather Leigh PhD
And to me, that word still sounds like nails on a chalkboard. I can't stand the term pseudoscience because to me, it's not it's not a pseudoscience. It's a real science to me.
00:17:27
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:17:27
Heather Leigh PhD
And and it's it's never going to happen if people don't take it seriously.
00:17:31
Lee Hatfield
Now, and you raised a very good point because, and I've said this multiple times before, I was at a jail November of last year and I was in a room that was being redecorated.
00:17:45
Lee Hatfield
So it was a completely sterile room, not a very big one. There was decorators, boards and blankets on the floors and you could smell the paint. So it was, yeah, it was fresh.
00:17:56
Lee Hatfield
And I'm in there. It's reasonably dark. So I've got my video camera because it's the first time i've been there. I'm helping a friend out. And then I got a stroke down the side of the face.
00:18:07
Lee Hatfield
there wasn't any evidence of spiders cobwebs because it was a sterile environment because it was being redecorated. So yeah if they'd been whitewashing the walls, there hasn't been time for a spider or whatever to to create a big enough web to hit me on the face.
00:18:27
Heather Leigh PhD
right
00:18:28
Lee Hatfield
And when I'm talking to the guy who showed me around, he went, oh, yeah, people get touched in here all the time. That was my first physical engagement with something of the unknown.
00:18:43
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:18:43
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, I've had kind of experiences, but for something to actually touch me, can i explain that? No. Did it happen? Yes. However, trying to prove the hows, the whys, the wheres, and the whats, et cetera.
00:19:02
Lee Hatfield
You can't because it was only me that experienced it.
00:19:03
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah.
00:19:07
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah. And that's the tough part about this field.
00:19:09
Lee Hatfield
Exactly. And nine times out of ten, all these experiences are individual experiences. It's not very often where you get like a group experience.
00:19:20
Heather Leigh PhD
Right. Right.
00:19:22
Lee Hatfield
And that's the good thing about this science.
Paranormal Research: A Quest for Legitimacy
00:19:26
Lee Hatfield
that yeah let Let's get rid of the pseudo bit, this science, because if there was nothing there, why are these people all experiencing their own paranormal incidents?
00:19:42
Heather Leigh PhD
Right.
00:19:42
Lee Hatfield
There's got to be something.
00:19:43
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm. Yes.
00:19:44
Lee Hatfield
We just don't know what.
00:19:45
Heather Leigh PhD
Right. yeah Yeah. And I just want to figure out what that what is. i mean, and I'm I'm always testing different things. So like one device going back to the equipment is the obelisk.
00:19:57
Heather Leigh PhD
I always view that as like, OK, you know, this is a trick. It's, you know, somewhere in there, there's, you know, X, Y and Z and GPS that we don't know about. And, you know, that's something.
00:20:07
Heather Leigh PhD
One of the members of the team I was on had one and I'm like, OK, well, let me play around with it. And I'm so like looking at this like, oh, this is a piece of crap. It's not doing anything. It's not talking. See, it's not doing anything.
00:20:18
Heather Leigh PhD
And I didn't realize that I had walked away from the group I was with and had turned a corner. And just as soon as I turned that corner, all of a sudden, all these words started popping up. It was death, devil, demon, sacrifice popped up on there.
00:20:31
Heather Leigh PhD
And I was like, well, that's weird. So I'm like, okay, well, I'm just going to ask. I'm like, who are you going to sacrifice? And it said you. And then a finger ran down from the bottom of my neck all the way down my back.
00:20:43
Heather Leigh PhD
And I turned around, I'm like, did you guys see? And I realized nobody's here with me. like, I gotta to go find my group.
00:20:51
Lee Hatfield
yeah Okay, I'm out of here. And it's funny funny you mention about the Ovilus because there's a another app that we have just, to but we have it on our cell phones.
00:21:04
Lee Hatfield
yeah Cell phone apps yeah you take with a pinch of salt.
00:21:04
Heather Leigh PhD
Right.
00:21:07
Heather Leigh PhD
right
00:21:08
Lee Hatfield
However, we went to a private house a year last May, and there was three of us in two cars. So i was in a car by – no, I actually got picked up. So so three of us in one car. And we're driving towards this guy's house, and there was a cemetery.
00:21:31
Lee Hatfield
There was a graveyard. Didn't really mention it, but yeah we did say, oh, I wonder if any anybody related to the house is in the graveyard.
00:21:41
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm.
00:21:42
Lee Hatfield
Pulls into the driveway.
00:21:43
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm.
00:21:43
Lee Hatfield
The guy comes out of the house, meets us, and we're talking to him. And he goes, oh, yeah, this part of the house was built in 1875. This part was built in 1950. And he'd been experiencing noises coming from his basement.
00:21:59
Lee Hatfield
but it only kind of occurred, he's a bit of an author, and he was writing a new book on demonology.
00:22:05
Heather Leigh PhD
who
00:22:07
Lee Hatfield
So, yeah, a rational human being would go, well, your mind's working overtime, you're hearing things, all this. So he goes down into the basement, we turn the app on the phone on, and the first few words that come out of it were, cemetery graveyard 1875, come and find me.
00:22:26
Lee Hatfield
It's like, hang on a minute. Yeah. What are the chances, unless it's got a built-in microphone that is listening to you all the time, which yeah a lot of these things you literally have to press them on on the app, are going to come out with those words at that precise time?
00:22:35
Heather Leigh PhD
and
00:22:40
Heather Leigh PhD
Right.
00:22:44
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:22:45
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. So from a scientific point of view, oh yeah, it's just coincidence.
00:22:45
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah.
00:22:50
Lee Hatfield
Like, seriously, coincidence?
00:22:53
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah. but
00:22:55
Lee Hatfield
It doesn't make sense.
00:22:56
Heather Leigh PhD
Right. Yep.
00:22:58
Lee Hatfield
So do you now trust the Ovalis, or are you still slightly skeptical?
00:23:04
Heather Leigh PhD
No, I'm still skeptical. It's I want to play around with it a little bit more. But and shortly after that is when COVID hit and we stopped investigating together.
00:23:15
Heather Leigh PhD
So
00:23:16
Lee Hatfield
so what What came first, the the forming of the group or you starting to write all these stories about southern Nevada, Florida, ah all all these kinds?
00:23:29
Heather Leigh PhD
Right. i I've actually, i joined a group out in Vegas and just so I can get my feet and, you know, and test things out and try to play around. And then it was, want to say towards the end of COVID, I had already started writing my first book.
00:23:43
Heather Leigh PhD
was the Haunted Southern Nevada Ghost Towns. And I'm sorry, my son keeps walking back and forth behind me.
00:23:48
Lee Hatfield
i like I like it how he tries to duck under the...
00:23:50
Heather Leigh PhD
like
00:23:51
Lee Hatfield
yeah You're going to have to duck further, dude.
00:23:53
Heather Leigh PhD
yeah
00:23:55
Heather Leigh PhD
of But yeah, so it's, I was in the process of writing that one and then COVID kind of hit, the group I was with kind of fell apart during that time. And that's when i was like,
00:24:07
Heather Leigh PhD
you know what, I really need to want to continue investigating and doing stuff. But of course, I didn't want to go alone. My son had been interested and had been on several paranormal investigations with me. And then my husband is the skeptical of the group. And we kind of just formed our own team.
00:24:20
Heather Leigh PhD
So it kind of all started around the same time.
00:24:24
Lee Hatfield
Okay. So, yeah, I've got a a few of your, the names of some of your books in front of me. And yeah, it's not just one location. So you've got, yeah, Ghosts and Legends of Florida Pirates, Haunted Florida, the Vegas Valley, Nevada,
00:24:42
Lee Hatfield
So what kind of put you down the road to decide which which book was going to come first and what what made you write about that particular subject at that particular time?
00:24:55
Heather Leigh PhD
Right. Well, in Nevada, I was doing all the research for actually it was for Real Hans Ghost Towns already was the documentary that my family was in.
From Ghost Towns to Pirate Legends: Heather's Books
00:25:04
Heather Leigh PhD
So a friend of mine said, hey, why don't you put all of their your notes into a book? Because I had already started writing a little bit here and there, and I never thought of putting two and two together.
00:25:13
Heather Leigh PhD
And so that's how that one came out. And living in Vegas or just outside of Vegas, I had heard all of these stories and I'm like, I need to put these down because it's just meeting people on the street. They'd be like, hey, have you heard about this happening at this hotel or this happening? So that kind of is where that one came from.
00:25:30
Heather Leigh PhD
Then the shift was we ended up moving to Florida. And the publisher, we were talking about different experiences that I had when I had lived in Florida previously, you know, at different lighthouses. And so that's where the lighthouse book came from. And I wanted to kind of my favorite thing about the first book I wrote was exploring the different ghost towns.
00:25:48
Heather Leigh PhD
So that's why we did the Florida one. And it kind of, that's where that idea came from. But then the pirate one, that one was probably one of the most fun ones to write because of all the pirate stories and and the publisher and I, when we were brainstorming, we thought that's a story that tying the paranormal to the pirates is something that hadn't been done yet in Florida.
00:26:10
Lee Hatfield
And it's and it's it's good that you mentioned the pirate one because yeah you watch some of these TV shows. The amount of pirates that was in yeah in and around Florida and the East Coast and the Southern Coast, like there was thousands of them.
00:26:26
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:26:27
Lee Hatfield
So why shouldn't there be residual energy
00:26:27
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:26:33
Lee Hatfield
all some of these people? because
00:26:36
Heather Leigh PhD
right
00:26:37
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. People can say again that, you know, ghosts and spirits don't exist, but how are people seeing, know, these apparitions? There's got to be something you know, for this to happen.
00:26:48
Heather Leigh PhD
yeah
00:26:52
Lee Hatfield
And not everybody's crazy.
00:26:54
Heather Leigh PhD
Exactly.
00:26:54
Lee Hatfield
Not everybody's having, you know, you're not having like a midlife crisis. yeah If you see something, you saw it.
00:27:01
Heather Leigh PhD
Mmhmm. Yep.
00:27:03
Lee Hatfield
So,
00:27:03
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah.
00:27:04
Lee Hatfield
Kate, what kind of order did these books, because I've just got the list, so I don't really know what order they come in.
00:27:08
Heather Leigh PhD
Okay.
00:27:10
Lee Hatfield
So which was your first your very first book? And like say, yeah just talk ah ah talk to us about that one.
00:27:14
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it was haunted Southern Nevada ghost towns that explored areas like Goldfield, Gold um I even included, you it's not really a ghost town per se, but I categorize it as one because it's not as popularulate populated as it used to be, and that would be Boulder City where the Hoover Dam is.
00:27:32
Heather Leigh PhD
So there's a huge chapter on that one. And holy cow, the endless... places that we found that were considered ghost towns out there. know when we went to Goldfield, we found significant connections, Nevada to the Civil War, the Southern portion of the Civil War. Then Confederate graves were out there. When we went to Nelson, Nevada, it actually had its own mini Civil War because deserters from both the North and South went out there and they ended up fighting out there instead of, you know, they're like, okay, wait, you we're from opposite sides.
00:28:01
Lee Hatfield
but
00:28:07
Heather Leigh PhD
Let's, you know, and they just continued that and all of that energy. from those mini battles that they had, mining accidents, collapsed mines. I actually explored a collapsed mine and partway through the investigation, and that this experience is in the book, but I felt like I was being crushed.
00:28:26
Heather Leigh PhD
Just I couldn't breathe. And at the same time, I was hearing screaming of men. And when they got me out of that area, we were talking to the mine owner and he's like, oh yeah, that collapsed in the 1920s and they didn't get everybody out. So that meant every there were still bodies buried in the rubble where I was exploring.
00:28:44
Lee Hatfield
but This goes back to your mediumistic skills again.
00:28:48
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah.
00:28:49
Lee Hatfield
So don't tell me you're not, because you are. You just won't admit it.
00:28:53
Heather Leigh PhD
I don't push it because I want scientific proof.
00:28:54
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:28:56
Heather Leigh PhD
why am i Why is this happening to me?
00:28:59
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And like yeah and i i don't I don't think you're quite ready to go into a laboratory to be tested on just yet.
00:29:00
Heather Leigh PhD
yeah
00:29:05
Heather Leigh PhD
Nope.
00:29:06
Lee Hatfield
she
00:29:08
Heather Leigh PhD
I want to do the testing.
00:29:08
Lee Hatfield
So...
00:29:09
Heather Leigh PhD
no
00:29:10
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, so i I'm getting the theme that wherever you live, you decide to write about the paranormal.
00:29:18
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:29:19
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm.
00:29:19
Lee Hatfield
you You lived in Nevada.
00:29:21
Lee Hatfield
yeah You wrote about Southern Nevada ghost towns. You lived in Vegas, ghosts and legends of the Vegas Valley. You've been in Florida, ghosts and legends of Florida pirates and haunted Florida roadside attractions so and haunted Florida.
00:29:38
Lee Hatfield
So the million dollar question now, you've just moved to Texas.
00:29:42
Heather Leigh PhD
ye
00:29:44
Lee Hatfield
I'm assuming that Texas will be the next batch of How long have you been living in Texas now?
00:29:48
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep, but I'm working on haunted Texas ghost towns. yeah
00:29:55
Heather Leigh PhD
A month and a week.
00:29:58
Lee Hatfield
So five weeks.
00:29:58
Heather Leigh PhD
Or actually a month and two weeks now.
00:30:00
Lee Hatfield
Okay, so okay six weeks and you've already started the book on the new location.
00:30:04
Heather Leigh PhD
and Yep.
00:30:08
Lee Hatfield
OK. Yeah,
00:30:09
Heather Leigh PhD
But between that and working full time, and that's why my house isn't unpacked yet.
00:30:14
Lee Hatfield
well, we can't see it from the camera, so we're OK. So this is a bit of a random one that I'm intrigued about. You also self-published a book called 13 Things Ghost Haunting Taught Me About Network Marketing.
00:30:26
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:30:30
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:30:31
Lee Hatfield
Now, I can actually relate to that because yeah to be networking, you're talking to loads of different people.
00:30:40
Heather Leigh PhD
and
00:30:41
Lee Hatfield
And since I've been doing this podcast in february since since February, the amount of people that I'm now talking on both sides of the pond, yeah everybody wants to talk to each other within this field.
00:30:50
Heather Leigh PhD
and
00:30:55
Heather Leigh PhD
yeah
00:30:56
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, you get some, I don't know, sports teams where you've got, okay, we never speak to them because they're the opposition and stuff like that. But in the paranormal world, it always seems to be that everybody wants to speak to each other because we've we've all got similar stories.
00:31:11
Heather Leigh PhD
Right.
00:31:12
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:31:12
Lee Hatfield
and everybody likes talking about these stories and if you're talking to somebody with similar stories but in different location you're you all is yeah yeah you want to you want to learn a more and for you for someone like yourself that's got a scientific approach to it it makes you understand more would i be right in saying that
00:31:20
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm. Right. Yep.
00:31:32
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm.
00:31:34
Heather Leigh PhD
Oh yeah, exactly. Yep. Yeah.
00:31:37
Lee Hatfield
so At what point did a TV network reach out to you?
00:31:45
Heather Leigh PhD
It was on our Facebook page when we had just, we were starting to dabble with the idea of launching our team. We hadn't officially announced it, but I did create a Facebook page. And actually they had also reached out to the other team that I had been a part of, but I was their social media marketing person. So the email came to me.
00:32:03
Heather Leigh PhD
And the director of that team was out of town, so he told me to handle it. And so I responded to them and motion picture video. They're amazing. It's a husband wife organization for documentaries. And we had a blast.
00:32:15
Heather Leigh PhD
They started talking and they wanted to feature the team that I was on originally. But then when they learned that we have a ah ah couple and their son and they all go ghost hunting together, they loved that idea. So that's when they ran with it.
00:32:28
Heather Leigh PhD
And so we had a lot of fun with that. We've been in three of their films now, and we're in the process of talking about doing a fourth one coming up soon. Prior to that, what I loved is just so a producer from Discovery Channel had reached out.
00:32:44
Heather Leigh PhD
We filmed a pilot up in Goldfield, but that one, course, didn't make it to the TV screen, but that was with an old investigator of mine that I used to partner with, and we it was the two of us up there investigating, and that was a lot of fun.
00:32:59
Heather Leigh PhD
And then more recently, it's just, i one thing I always tell people is don't get in this field to get on TV, which is what a lot of people do. And we're proof of that.
00:33:10
Heather Leigh PhD
We never reached out to producers. We never anything. The documentary crew reached out to us. you know Discovery Channel reached out to us. I had Ghost Adventures reach out to me.
00:33:21
Heather Leigh PhD
And then i had Coming Out Soon. I don't have a date yet, but I filmed with ah Brandon, Elvis, and Mustafa on Haunted Discoveries. And they were the ones who reached out to me. So, you know, as long as you're out there networking, know, they're going to come to you if if you're authentic with your, with your, what you do in the field.
00:33:34
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:33:39
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And it's interesting that you mentioned haunted discoveries. I interviewed a good friend of theirs, Austin Lawrence, a few weeks ago.
00:33:47
Heather Leigh PhD
Okay. Yep.
00:33:49
Lee Hatfield
And one thing that I do like about Brandon and Mustafa is that the way they approach things, they they do things the right way, so to speak.
00:33:56
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:34:00
Heather Leigh PhD
Exactly. Yep.
00:34:01
Lee Hatfield
and to watch them do their investigations I like to think that we can do our investigations the same way because you're yeah yeah if something is not of a paranormal nature, like I mentioned earlier, we can rule that out as a paranormal incident.
00:34:18
Heather Leigh PhD
Right.
00:34:21
Lee Hatfield
And that's the mentality that people have to have. As like you said earlier, we're not going to be taken seriously if if you sort a like...
00:34:29
Heather Leigh PhD
Right.
00:34:32
Lee Hatfield
either fake evidence or, yeah, OK, I know this REM pod's going to go off if I press my walkie-talkie.
00:34:39
Heather Leigh PhD
Right. Yep.
00:34:41
Lee Hatfield
And they'd go those guys actually yeah demonstrated that in an episode, which is really good.
00:34:48
Heather Leigh PhD
And what makes them amazing too is they're down to earth, they're humble, and they they don't act like they're better than anyone else.
00:34:48
Lee Hatfield
So
00:34:55
Heather Leigh PhD
And I've run into quite a few people that do that.
00:34:55
Lee Hatfield
no.
00:34:58
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, which, yeah, unfortunately, you get that in, every line of work, to be fair.
00:35:05
Heather Leigh PhD
Oh, yeah. Yep.
00:35:06
Lee Hatfield
yeah And it doesn't matter what you do, you you always yeah you always get that.
00:35:08
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:35:11
Lee Hatfield
So one thing that I would also like to talk about, and I hope I say this right because it's a weird word, Project Ompra.
Project Umbra: Investigating the Hat Man
00:35:20
Heather Leigh PhD
Umbra, yep.
00:35:21
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, so if you'd like to tell everybody what Project Ompra is, please.
00:35:26
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah, a friend of mine, Philomena, she came reached out to me a couple years ago because she was working on at the time it was called the Hat Man Project. And but we changed it because we do more than just Hat Man research.
00:35:38
Heather Leigh PhD
And what it is, is where she had experiences with the Hat Man in the past.
00:35:43
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:35:43
Heather Leigh PhD
And she's trying to find answers. And she wanted someone, she had done amazing research and I'm still digging through data, but she interviewed hundreds of people, has collected data from everybody's experiences that has encountered the hat man, including everything from, you know, blood type to, you know, medical records to, um, to,
00:36:05
Heather Leigh PhD
exact locations, latitude longitude locations that we're trying to correlate what's happening because her ultimate goal is to find the hat man and try to define who he is because it's so many different definitions.
00:36:14
Lee Hatfield
That's strange.
00:36:20
Heather Leigh PhD
And the one of the biggest things that we've found so far is that hat man encounters coincide with missing 411 cases.
00:36:29
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:36:30
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah. And then a lot of RH negative people would say about more than 50% of the people we've interviewed are age negative.
00:36:39
Heather Leigh PhD
as far as their blood work.
00:36:40
Lee Hatfield
that's great
00:36:41
Heather Leigh PhD
So, and that's what we're, so, I mean, we have a few things that we're working on. Our next step, once we get out, we have a couple of books that we're ready to release. We're just finding a publisher to do them. if we don't find a publisher, we're just gonna self publish, but we'd rather go the publisher route for this, cause it's a huge project.
00:36:56
Heather Leigh PhD
And then we're even trying to find locations that are public, not just someone's home, that we can actually go and investigate and try to not so much call him out as antagonizing him, but just to see if he makes an appearance.
00:37:12
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and it's it's interesting. If you are the kind of person that wants to do this the right way, when you are doing your your research, you will find the commonalities. So you've got the residual energy.
00:37:32
Lee Hatfield
You've got the intelligence. You've got the poltergeist activity.
00:37:36
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep. Mm-hmm.
00:37:36
Lee Hatfield
yeah the The very small percentage of of demonic activity. But the only kind of character that gets multiple reports is the hat man.
00:37:50
Heather Leigh PhD
yep
00:37:52
Lee Hatfield
No matter where you are, there's multiple people that have seen the hat man.
00:37:57
Heather Leigh PhD
and
00:37:57
Lee Hatfield
So putting your scientific head on, try and explain to me why the hat man is such a prominent figure.
00:38:09
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah, in the beginning, i was probably, i even joked with her and I told her that I'm probably the worst person that she wants on on this researching with her because my theory in the beginning was he was Tulpa.
00:38:21
Heather Leigh PhD
He was a thought form. because especially once she presented me data that in China, he appeared with a little Chinese style hat. In New England, he peer appeared with a a pirate hat.
00:38:34
Heather Leigh PhD
In the Southwest, in Mexico, he had a cowboy hat. It wasn't just the standard fedora that most people saw him with. And I was like, okay, they're thinking this up and they're relating, you know, he's, but then the more we start hearing these stories, people are truly scared.
00:38:49
Heather Leigh PhD
they're They've had physical encounters, they've been touched, they've been pushed, they've been pulled. And there you can see the fear in their face when we interview them. So something more, I mean, I get thought forms can take their own form eventually, but to have this kind of fear, it's gotta be more than that.
00:39:03
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:39:10
Heather Leigh PhD
And so now I'm almost shifting my research to figure out, if he is a real entity and not a thought form, is he changing his appearance to try to make people from different cultures feel comfortable with him?
00:39:23
Heather Leigh PhD
So, and that's where it's one of those, I'm still, and that's why I stick with this one because this project, I want, this this I really want answers is, you know, come show come yourself.
00:39:37
Lee Hatfield
Exactly. So from the evidence that you've got so far and the research, do you find that he's more benevolent or malevolent?
00:39:50
Heather Leigh PhD
I would say it's probably an 80-20 split, 80 bad, 20 good. Because we have had some stories where people feel that he's just a watcher.
00:40:02
Heather Leigh PhD
But those stories, I feel those might be the ones that are thought forms.
00:40:08
Heather Leigh PhD
because there in it's just weird. Because how can you have, and I mean, the person that I'm doing this with, she actually was picked up by him and I'll i'll have to get you in contact with her because her story is amazing.
00:40:12
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Please, Dave.
00:40:22
Heather Leigh PhD
But she had said that all of a sudden in the middle of the room after she was being picked up and thrown, a white light filled the room and he vanished.
00:40:23
Lee Hatfield
please say
00:40:33
Heather Leigh PhD
So she thinks that there was some divine intervention that saved her and her sister with this whole thing. And that's when she started researching all of this. And when she tells her a story, it's like, I'm sitting here thinking, trying scientifically, how is this you know os this possible?
00:40:50
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:40:50
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:40:51
Lee Hatfield
And there's been a few episodes of this podcast that I was kind of expecting to have my jaw dropped and they did, depending on the subject.
00:41:04
Lee Hatfield
I wasn't expecting it to happen today until you just come out with that that particular story. And it's like, okay.
00:41:13
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep. Yeah.
00:41:17
Lee Hatfield
And it's like, there hast again, we're going back to the there has to be something, but we just don't know what it is.
00:41:26
Heather Leigh PhD
Right. Yep. I mean, and we have, we probably have a hundred theories that we toss back and forth. You know, is he a shape shifter? Is he a time traveler? Is he, you know, interdimensional? Is he an alien?
00:41:37
Heather Leigh PhD
And these are all, all the avenues that we're researching to try to try to get, but yeah, it's
00:41:44
Lee Hatfield
i Please let me know when these books come out because like I love these specific subjects.
00:41:47
Heather Leigh PhD
okay.
00:41:52
Lee Hatfield
like yeah i'm I'm a big fan of the afterlife stories.
00:41:53
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:41:55
Lee Hatfield
I'm a big fan of specific symbols, i.e.
00:41:56
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:41:59
Lee Hatfield
the hat man and stuff like that.
00:42:00
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah. Yeah.
00:42:02
Lee Hatfield
So, yeah.
00:42:03
Heather Leigh PhD
yeah
00:42:04
Lee Hatfield
Not that I do much reading, but if it's got pictures in it, I'd be great.
00:42:09
Lee Hatfield
ah
00:42:10
Heather Leigh PhD
visuals yet.
00:42:10
Heather Leigh PhD
But the one thing that she did tell me, and that's what I'm working on because I have all the stories, they were all formatted, they were all ready to go.
00:42:12
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:42:17
Heather Leigh PhD
And then she's like, you know, what would add to this? She's like, if you had added like a paragraph or two after each story about what a scientist would think of these stories. And I'm like, okay, so now I'm going back through and rereading every story and giving my interpretation
00:42:28
Lee Hatfield
Ooh.
00:42:33
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:42:33
Heather Leigh PhD
of what could be causing it, what could they be going through. And, but and that's tough because I'm still trying to be respectful because I know these people, it's real to them, even if it's not real to me.
00:42:38
Lee Hatfield
and
00:42:42
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:42:45
Lee Hatfield
Exactly.
00:42:47
Heather Leigh PhD
So it's, it's a, it's a tough one.
00:42:48
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. and
00:42:49
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm.
00:42:50
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, that's it. And that's when you've kind of got to be devil's advocate kind of thing.
00:42:55
Heather Leigh PhD
yeah
00:42:55
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. But one thing that I did kind of remember about the Hat Man is there used to be it was either a wine or a port or some kind of like like wine yeah drink that had a symbol.
00:43:05
Heather Leigh PhD
right, yep.
00:43:12
Lee Hatfield
of a black-hearted shadow man. And there's been quite a few reports of it being this individual or some the outline being extremely similar.
00:43:23
Heather Leigh PhD
and
00:43:25
Lee Hatfield
But yeah it's weird that yeah if he hasn't got a hat on, they just call him a shadow figure and leave it at that.
00:43:31
Heather Leigh PhD
yep
00:43:31
Lee Hatfield
But like you said, he's wearing different kinds of headwear in different locations.
00:43:36
Heather Leigh PhD
Right.
00:43:39
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:43:39
Heather Leigh PhD
yeah
00:43:40
Lee Hatfield
Is it, yeah yeah, it's something that you just can't answer. So like, yeah, is it, is it the, yeah, the, the angel of death, so to speak, or yeah, is it, said yeah.
00:43:52
Lee Hatfield
But yeah, it doesn't always do a bad thing. It's just, but so, yeah, I know, I know I'm kind of mumbling now, but it's, it's, yeah, but it's, it's kind of, it's an unknown entity of what it is and trying to get to that,
00:43:57
Heather Leigh PhD
right
00:43:59
Heather Leigh PhD
ah you fine
00:44:08
Lee Hatfield
that clarification, that's really hard.
00:44:11
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah. Yeah. And that's what our goal is. That's why we're taking so many different different avenues and different paths for researching. I mean, even one of her theories is is that he's the leader of the shadow people.
00:44:24
Heather Leigh PhD
And that's why he sends them when he can't go is, you know, another theory that she's working on. And it's, we're, hit it's a lot. It's, it's truly a lot.
00:44:32
Lee Hatfield
Jeez.
00:44:33
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah.
00:44:34
Lee Hatfield
There's going to be some parental guidance on that book. I can see it coming.
00:44:38
Heather Leigh PhD
but we've So far it's in four books. We have two books with personal experiences from everybody we've interviewed that has agreed to let us publish their story. And then we have a book on that we've outlined and we're working on as to who he is and what he is and all of our different theories are all in there.
00:44:55
Heather Leigh PhD
And then the middle book is we're going to be doing ways to protect yourself against him.
00:45:01
Heather Leigh PhD
So, yep.
00:45:01
Lee Hatfield
That's cool.
00:45:03
Lee Hatfield
And when are you hoping realistically to have these in these books in black and white, so to speak?
00:45:11
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah, realistically, I have three to four publishers that I'm going to reach out to probably towards the end of the year once we get them a little bit more finalized. And if not, then we're going to self-publish probably next summer to next fall.
00:45:23
Lee Hatfield
I can't wait for that because I'm
00:45:24
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah. Our original goal was this Halloween, but my move kind of threw a wrench in it.
00:45:30
Lee Hatfield
Well, how inconsiderate, deciding that you're going to move to Texas.
00:45:34
Heather Leigh PhD
you guys got to wait another year.
00:45:36
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. OK, so at the beginning, we mentioned exploration paranormal with you, your husband, and your son.
Family and Paranormal Investigations
00:45:47
Lee Hatfield
Your husband being the skeptical one, what's your son's kind of approach towards the paranormal, apart from what mum and dad do kind of thing?
00:45:57
Heather Leigh PhD
He believes to a point because he's he doesn't really talk about any personal experiences that he's had per se, but he's always coming up with different theories.
00:46:08
Heather Leigh PhD
And he's the one who'll come to me, have you heard of this entity? Because he found you know something on YouTube or something like that. And then we both start talking about it and figuring out you know what's going on. So he's more of the curious one.
00:46:21
Lee Hatfield
So have either of those two experienced things that they cannot explain?
00:46:29
Heather Leigh PhD
I know my husband has. We were actually at a museum that we used to volunteer at and we would do, we actually did ghost tours there to help out raise money for the museum. And he had one experience where were it was a hot day out. So he went inside and it was a above ground replicated mine.
00:46:45
Heather Leigh PhD
So once you walked through the front door, it looked like you were underground in a mine. So he was in there cooling off and knowing that there was a spirit in the room, he had said, you know, thank you for letting me come in here and cool off as he was getting ready to leave.
00:46:58
Heather Leigh PhD
And he says he swore he heard someone say, you're welcome, was one experience as he was leaving. Another one, and I know he's in the living room and can hear this, and he's going to be like, no, it's not.
00:47:09
Heather Leigh PhD
but But we we were laying in bed one day, and I told him that we had a spirit in our apartment and that he would you know always, you know when you walk around a bed and you like kind of bump into the bed frame and it shakes the bed because you misguide?
00:47:21
Heather Leigh PhD
Well, it felt like that. We were watching TV, and it felt like someone kicked the side of our bed. And I was like, oh, that's George. He got completely white and he's like, no, that's not what happened. And he's probably out there laughing right now.
00:47:35
Heather Leigh PhD
But, you know, he still doesn't think it was paranormal that happened. But I because I had experienced that so many times, I know that that's what was going on. And then my son has said that he's heard some things here and there and experienced some things that he can't explain, but he never really goes into detail.
00:47:55
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, yes. when you When you kind of get that kind of person, it's like, yeah, you've experienced more than what you're letting on.
00:48:03
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm.
00:48:05
Lee Hatfield
OK, so I know that we've spoken about some of the books, yeah books that you've brought out and books that are coming out. What else, apart from on unpacking all your boxes after you move, what's next on the agenda for Heather?
Future Endeavors: Education and Retreats
00:48:22
Heather Leigh PhD
I'm not sure. i do know that we are relaunching. I host Ghost Education 101. We took a hiatus because my co-host and I both had life got in the way and we just really haven't done it this year, but we are relaunching in October.
00:48:36
Heather Leigh PhD
I know we're going to be doing that and that's on Wednesday nights. And after that, part of Ghost Ed and partnering with my team, we're going to be hopefully, I don't know if it's going to happen in the next year or two, but we're going to be working on some paranormal retreats.
00:48:51
Heather Leigh PhD
which are gonna be different than an actual Paracon. It's more or less, it's, I don't really wanna say by invitation only, but those who want to attend the retreats need to meet certain criteria and be willing to learn because the whole purpose of Ghost Education 101 is not so much to treat people the right way to investigate, but teach people to have an open mind and be willing to learn more so than what you see on TV.
00:49:21
Heather Leigh PhD
So we're all about educating and you know offering that education. And these weekends are going to be more than just, oh my goodness, we're going and we're meeting all these big pair celebrities, but it's not going to be anything like that. It's going to be an actual learning weekend.
00:49:35
Lee Hatfield
and it's It's interesting that you mentioned Ghost Education 101 because pop here in Canada, I help out a ah ah company that do paranormal courses.
00:49:46
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm.
00:49:47
Lee Hatfield
And that the the head of the company is ah ah is an ex-police officer. So he's got a rational head on his shoulders.
00:49:53
Heather Leigh PhD
and Right.
00:49:55
Lee Hatfield
But he asked me to do a paranormal equipment course. So yeah being logical like yourself, I broke it down into four weeks. So the stuff that everybody uses, audio and cameras, that was all the first week.
00:50:10
Lee Hatfield
The second week was a diagnostic. So the true diagnostic. yeah your Tri-Field and other, like your Anomometer, stuff that is designed to specifically do a job in the real world.
00:50:25
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm.
00:50:25
Lee Hatfield
My third week was on the pseudoscience equipment. So you run pods, you cat balls, that kind of stuff. And then for the fourth week, I i went into old school.
00:50:31
Heather Leigh PhD
Mm-hmm.
00:50:35
Lee Hatfield
So dowsing rods, pendulum, Ouija board and stuff like that.
00:50:35
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:50:40
Lee Hatfield
And i would whenever I tell people, I am 100% honest with people. Okay, you've got that device. However, Yeah, it's a cat ball. You can buy them in pet stores.
00:50:52
Lee Hatfield
yeah It's not a paranormal piece of equipment. However, in the right conditions, you can use them to your advantage.
00:50:55
Heather Leigh PhD
Right.
00:51:01
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep. Yep.
00:51:02
Lee Hatfield
And that's what that's the way that I explain to people ah about equipment.
00:51:05
Heather Leigh PhD
Yep.
00:51:07
Heather Leigh PhD
But it's knowing those right conditions. People think you can just set them on the floor and oh my goodness, it's going off, but a truck drove by and the wood floor is vibrated.
00:51:14
Lee Hatfield
Exactly, exactly, exactly. And i I know that a friend of mine put one on the floor of a jail. I didn't know where he'd put it and literally kicked it down the corridor. So get all these pretty lights going off as it's rolling down the corridor.
00:51:29
Lee Hatfield
Heather, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for your time today.
00:51:33
Heather Leigh PhD
Yeah.
00:51:34
Lee Hatfield
Thank you for your son for making a cameo appearance. yeah We just need your husband to pop his head around the corner now.
00:51:40
Heather Leigh PhD
yeah no
00:51:42
Lee Hatfield
at But like say, please keep me posted about when yeah these books are coming out because I would absolutely love to read them.
00:51:51
Heather Leigh PhD
perfect
00:51:51
Lee Hatfield
They sound absolutely fascinating. But again, thank you for your time. And it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.
00:51:56
Heather Leigh PhD
Thank you so much i had a great time.
00:51:58
Lee Hatfield
Thank you. Bye-bye.