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S1 E47 Eric Freeman Sims paranormal researcher, investigator, and author
13 Plays7 days ago
Introducing Eric Freeman Sims, from ghostly apparitions, to connecting with his parents when they had past, Eric has experienced a lot of paranormal Activity in his life.
Eric has done over 20 years research into the Paranormal, and is the author of “Small Town Haunts and Legends of Tennessee,” He was also the host of “The Unseen Paranormal Podcast,”
Eric spoke about him being the proud owner of the Knight House Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where he (and other paranormal teams) experience plenty of activity, from a boy in the basement, to poltergeist activity to hearing footsteps this location has it all.
Erics current projects include writing of two further books, as well as boosting the income of the Knight house, by doing public ghost tours and historical events
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Eric Freeman Sims
00:00:12
Lee Hatfield
Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of Sea for Paranormal Chronicles. Today i am delighted to have Eric Freeman Sims with me.
00:00:23
Lee Hatfield
Eric is a paranormal investigator, a researcher and an author and he is also the owner of the historic haunted mansion called the Knights House in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Eric, welcome to the show my friend.
00:00:40
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah, thanks for having me, Lee.
00:00:42
Lee Hatfield
You are most welcome. So I always do try and do a good introduction and hopefully there's not not too many big words that I just kind of fall over and and the podcast podcast goes downhill from then on in.
00:00:56
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah, the one that everybody has a problem with this Hopkinsville.
00:00:57
Lee Hatfield
so
00:01:00
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah, yeah.
00:01:02
Lee Hatfield
Well, I'm originally from England so I can say Worcestershire with no problem whatsoever.
00:01:06
Eric Freeman Sims
right
00:01:07
Lee Hatfield
North Americans always have a problem with Worcester, Worcester, Worcester, Shire.
00:01:12
Eric Freeman Sims
yeah
00:01:12
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, so i do most of those words that I'm pretty good with. So again so before we we talk about anything else, what I always like to ask my guests is to tell me how it all started.
First Paranormal Experience
00:01:26
Lee Hatfield
So you your first paranormal experiences, how you got involved and how you got interested in the paranormal, and then we'll take it from there.
00:01:35
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah, so I've kind of been haunted my whole life, I like to say. the Being an empath kind of runs in my family. and And so when I was eight years old is the first experience that I can remember, like predominant experience.
00:01:52
Eric Freeman Sims
And I was asleep in my bed. And i was I was a weird kid. I like my door shut and no lights on. Like I like to sleep in the dark. is Most kids like the door cracked open or, you know, something like that.
00:02:02
Eric Freeman Sims
But always when my door shut, always felt safer that way. To this day, I sleep with doors shut and all that stuff. But I woke up in the middle of the night, sat straight up in the bed and looked at my door and the door was wide open.
00:02:13
Eric Freeman Sims
And there was this glowing lady, like his goldish white light standing in my doorway, full body apparition. And course, as a eight year old, it scared me. So I jumped up, slammed the door, flipped the lights on and didn't sleep the rest of the night and, didn't really understand it at, at eight years old.
00:02:33
Eric Freeman Sims
And so then I got to talking to my mom and my family And they kind of became more open about their experiences living in different places. and And before I was born, living in a haunted house where an older lady, really, really nice older lady spirit, kind of like a grandmother spirit, would watch over the kids and and kind of take care of them.
00:02:51
Eric Freeman Sims
And so it just kind of snowballed from there. Fast forward to
Motivation for Paranormal Investigation
00:02:55
Eric Freeman Sims
when I was 14. My father passed away when I was 14. My summer between middle school and high school. So going from eighth to ninth grade.
00:03:04
Eric Freeman Sims
And kind of a pivotal moment in life because that's when you're kind of going from a kid to a teenager. You know, you're going through all of the hormones and all that stuff. And my dad just suddenly passes away in sleep. And I wasn't particularly raised religious.
00:03:17
Eric Freeman Sims
My mom was religious because she was raised by a Southern Baptist preacher. But she didn't go to church. And I was never made to go to church. And my dad was agnostic. So he believed in something beyond us. He just wouldn't prescribe to any religion.
00:03:29
Eric Freeman Sims
And so they let me make up my own mind about religion. And I kind of took on more of my dad's stance of being agnostic. of making my own mind up and and kind of trying out religions and things. And then when he died, it just kind of threw me into, okay and I had the need now to go out and prove that he didn't just cease to exist.
00:03:48
Eric Freeman Sims
so, and this is before the TV shows. I didn't even really know that people went out and did this as a hobby back then. This is in 1997. So, uh, for reference ghost hunters didn come out until like 2003, 2004.
00:04:00
Eric Freeman Sims
two thousand three thousand and four and But me and I got, had some other of my weird friends who I convinced to go with me to some cemeteries. And we just had a basic actual tape voice recorder and,
00:04:15
Eric Freeman Sims
Pretty much just went out there to see what we could experience. And then there was a place and about 20 minutes from me that's a an old plantation that is open for historical tours and things like that.
00:04:26
Eric Freeman Sims
That as a high schooler where i live, it just kind of, you snuck in there. it Mostly as a dare to scare each other. But we went in there seriously trying to see or experience something.
00:04:38
Eric Freeman Sims
And for me, it was, so like I said, to prove to myself that there there was something beyond us. And because I'm a very analytical kind of scientific minded person, i'm I'm a seeing, see to believe type person.
00:04:50
Eric Freeman Sims
And I've been kind of chasing that ever since. But what really kicked me into, yeah, it was when my dad died and and trying to, and we had some experiences at my house, me and my mom after died, it was just me and her.
00:05:00
Eric Freeman Sims
And he made himself known. i mean, he would turn the TV on and off and we'd hear tools in our garage kind clanking around because it was his garage. it was his tools.
Encounters at the Nursing Home
00:05:08
Eric Freeman Sims
We'd see shadows and things. And it was always comforting to know that it was him. He never did anything to scare us or anything like that.
00:05:16
Eric Freeman Sims
But that kind of threw me into of the research and going out and investigating different places and finding places to investigate, like going to different cemeteries and stuff. And, you know, we never vandalized anything or anything like that. And don't condone trespassing. But at the time, it wasn't a big deal either.
00:05:32
Eric Freeman Sims
And then once the Internet started coming around in high school, you kind of get the more resources, you know, to to find other people's stories. And kind of figure out, well, I'm not crazy for being an empath. and I'm not crazy for believing in all this ghost stuff and in life beyond us outside of Christianity, because I was raised in the Bible Belt of of Tennessee.
00:05:54
Eric Freeman Sims
And so constantly surrounded by religion, the Church Christ and the and the Baptists, Southern Baptists, and they hate each other and they're always fighting. and But everybody went to church except for me. The majority of my friends went to church every Wednesday, every Sunday.
00:06:08
Eric Freeman Sims
And so I was kind of the a weird kid in that way, too. But was also the weird kid that went to the book fair at school looking for Bigfoot alien books, you know, supernatural stuff.
00:06:18
Eric Freeman Sims
I watched Unsolved Mysteries strictly for like the ghost stuff, you know, when they have a ghost or Bigfoot cryptid something like that on there. But yeah, that's that's how I got into it. And it's just grown and grown and grown as I got older.
00:06:33
Lee Hatfield
Did you ever do any research or look into this ghostly woman was?
00:06:42
Eric Freeman Sims
i've I've talked to some people because my parents rented that house or this house. they nothing they rented They bought this house. It was brand new. and And I inherited my parents' house. My mother passed away in 2009. So I still live here.
00:06:55
Eric Freeman Sims
And we still have things happen. I've never seen that woman ever again. The only thing that I've learned to maybe attribute that to is the empathic part of me and my family because my mom was a really strong empath as well.
00:07:06
Eric Freeman Sims
And so I always like to say we're like a lighthouse in the dark for spirits. Now I'm not a medium. I don't talk to spirits at all. I'm good with energy. I can feel when they're around. Sometimes they show themselves in different forms of me, but, but as far as like straight talking to like a psychic medium, no, no, it just, it doesn't happen.
00:07:26
Eric Freeman Sims
Never. It's never happened to me. And, So I think she was just somebody that recognized that I could see her or sense her that she was there and and just wanted maybe the acknowledgement of it.
00:07:38
Eric Freeman Sims
like I said, never, nothing with her ever happened again, never seen her ever again. but also I think maybe it could have been a spirit guide of mine. That, you know, as a kid getting older and learning about these abilities in my family and they're kind of emerging in myself to maybe saying, hey, you do have these abilities. you're not crazy, you know, type of stuff as well.
00:08:00
Eric Freeman Sims
So it's it's it's interesting. Like I said, we've had I've learned that we're like a lighthouse the dark because we have transient experience that come through my house all the time. that are just passing through, you know, and, and so things happen, things will happen for six months, uh, you know, weekly, and then we'll have three or four months where nothing happens. So.
00:08:22
Lee Hatfield
and I always get jealous of people like yourself because when I was younger I never experienced anything. and know You get all the people like yourself coming on and go, oh yeah, when I was eight, this happened.
00:08:35
Lee Hatfield
When I was 14, it's like, damn it, just stop saying that.
00:08:39
Lee Hatfield
you i'm I'm jealous of this thing.
00:08:39
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:08:41
Lee Hatfield
So obviously it was comforting to know that your dad was still with you because you could you could hear what yeah that he was tinkering in the garage and stuff like that.
00:08:54
Lee Hatfield
But when your mother passed in 2009, think he said, Have you actually felt your mother being in a house as well or have you seen or heard anything like that?
00:09:05
Eric Freeman Sims
I have actually.
Sensing Mother's Presence
00:09:06
Eric Freeman Sims
i Every once a while, I'll smell her perfume. And she wore a really distinctive perfume that now is kind of like an old lady perfume, but it's called Jovan Musk.
00:09:15
Eric Freeman Sims
And she always wore it. And we've completely remodeled the house. So for anybody say maybe it's stuck in the walls whatever, we've completely remodeled our house. So it's all brand new. I mean, I'm talking down to the studs. It's all brand new drywall.
00:09:28
Eric Freeman Sims
There's nothing in here that that smell have stuck in. what I'm saying? So for me to just be walking through the house and catch a whiff of that distinctive perfume, it just, I don't have any other explanation for it.
00:09:38
Eric Freeman Sims
Also during her celebration of life, she didn't have a funeral. She planned her own, her own services before she passed away, like a few years before she passed away. And she did not want to be in a casket where people come and view her body or whatever. So she was cremated before we ever had a service. That was her wishes.
00:09:56
Eric Freeman Sims
And so then we had a celebration life. Well, I made me and my mom like the same music and I knew what she wanted. played at a funeral. So I made a CD. I burned a CD right before we went, I'm talking 10 minutes before we went to the funeral room and I played it in the car, make sure there's nothing wrong with it. You know, and I give it to the funeral director and they put it in their CD player.
00:10:19
Eric Freeman Sims
And the very first 10 seconds of the first song, it skips. And every song after that skipped. and And one of my friends leaned over because we're all laughing at this point, right? Everybody's sad, but then this CD skipping. And one of my friends leaves over and said, you know, you're much your mom messing with you, right? I said, oh, I know. i I completely know. So it just kind of completely changed the mood of like she was making her presence known that to everybody that she was there.
00:10:44
Eric Freeman Sims
And so things like that.
00:10:45
Lee Hatfield
Right.
00:10:45
Eric Freeman Sims
I've had very lucid dreams about her too, where she's come to my dreams and and where you know you're dreaming. And I've had conversations with her about that she's okay. And then when when my aunts passed away,
00:10:58
Eric Freeman Sims
I had a lucid dream of my mom. And then she told me your aunt is okay. And then my aunt kind of appeared from like behind a tree. was like in a park setting. So yeah, she's, she's definitely kind of me. And we have those conversations too.
00:11:12
Eric Freeman Sims
because for a long time it's just me and her and we have this conversations as well of, you know, something happened to her that she would come back and, and, and let me know that her and my dad were okay. And, you know, And so, yeah, every once in while, I think especially when I kind of need it, you know, because I'm 42. And so for both my parents to be gone is rough at times.
00:11:34
Eric Freeman Sims
It still is. You never get over You just learn to deal a little bit. And so especially on the holidays, I think sometimes when I really need it is when she kind of pops up and lets lets me know that she's still around.
00:11:46
Lee Hatfield
It's interesting that yeah even your friends acknowledge the fact that she she was messing with you with the CD. It's sort of like, yeah, I'm still here and I'm going to screw you today.
00:11:53
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:56
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah. yeah
00:11:58
Lee Hatfield
Okay, so
00:11:58
Eric Freeman Sims
yeah
00:12:00
Lee Hatfield
After the age of 14 and you're getting towards adulthood, how did your life then transgress into I want to be a researcher, I want to be an investigator, and how did that kind of plan out for you?
00:12:15
Eric Freeman Sims
So I, throughout high school, like I said, we went and investigated different places and had different experiences at different places, different cemeteries, and especially the the plantation I was talking about had few really amazing experiences there.
00:12:28
Eric Freeman Sims
But when I was 18, I became a nurse tech. And it's a nurse's aide. I was allowed to do a little more than like a nurse's aide. But I went to work at a nursing home just 20 minutes down the road.
00:12:40
Eric Freeman Sims
And I worked the night shift Monday through Friday, 11 to 7 a.m.
00:12:46
Eric Freeman Sims
And I worked on the Alzheimer's lockdown unit. And what that means for anybody that don't know is that all the patients had Alzheimer's and you had to put a code in to get in and out of the doors.
00:12:57
Eric Freeman Sims
So that way none of them could wander off, right? Because they all had memory issues and things. and And so our job was to basically go around every two hours and check for the incontinent patients that need their diapers changed and things like that and give them baths early in the morning and get them ready for the day.
00:13:12
Eric Freeman Sims
So we walked around in the dark a lot and this wing of this nursing home was built in the 1940s and had always been a nursing home. And then they come in and built in the eighties, a modern building on top on onto it.
00:13:24
Eric Freeman Sims
And so there's no telling how many people had, been in that nursing home when it was just that wing from the forties up until 2001, when I started working there who had passed away there to begin with.
00:13:36
Eric Freeman Sims
and it was definitely haunted and I didn't, because back then people still didn't, it still wasn't popular in pop culture, you know, like it is today with, we're doing podcasts and TV shows. And so I didn't say anything to the two nurses I worked with, i had a partner at another nurse tech partner that I worked with. and then we had a nurse.
00:13:53
Eric Freeman Sims
And it was just the three of us in that entire hallway. And we were separated from the rest of the building by huge dining room and physical therapy. So we're a good way away from anybody else in the building. And so i just kind of like, you just dealt with it and until one night, the nurse and my partner were going to lunch about three o'clock in the morning.
00:14:13
Eric Freeman Sims
So I was the only person on the hall. And if you picture like a hospital in a horror movie, the only light on It's like a T. like So you have one one that come into a T. And right in this corner was the nurse's station. And that's the only light on on both hallways.
00:14:29
Eric Freeman Sims
And then at the very end of the long hallway, there was a, if you got those doors, you go to the employee parking lot. So were streetlights out there shining in. That's the only light. Put your eyes, get accustomed to it. Going into the patient's rooms when it's dark, you don't want to wake them up because some of them are difficult because they're so far gone with Alzheimer's, things like that. Also, you don't want to wake them because some of them are fall risk. They try get bed, whatever.
00:14:48
Eric Freeman Sims
So i was on the hall by myself and I am going to do a round and check on the patients. So I walk up to that team in the hallway and I look down to the left and there is a gentleman about six foot five skinny younger guy in a black suit all black suit standing at the end in of the hallway facing me.
00:15:08
Eric Freeman Sims
He's the very last set of rooms. There's a room on each side. And he looks at me and I look at him and he smiles, but it's not a creepy smile. It doesn't make me creeped out. And he turns and goes to the room to his left, the room to my right.
00:15:24
Eric Freeman Sims
And so I'm like, it's three o'clock the morning. Like, there's no visitors. Like, who's this guy that's wandering around the halls? You know, and I didn't think he was one of the patients because this was young guy.
00:15:34
Eric Freeman Sims
So I get down there and I walk in the room and flip the light on. There's nobody there. It's just the four women who are in that room. There's two beds on each side. and that experience made me ask the nurses, all right, what, what is really going on?
00:15:47
Eric Freeman Sims
Like I've had these experiences where I've heard footsteps. I've walked into rooms and, and seen what looked like people sitting in wheelchairs then you turn a light on. There's nobody sitting in the wheelchair. you know, things like that where you think patients are up because you see what looks like somebody pop out doorway.
00:16:00
Eric Freeman Sims
I started talking about all these things and they just kind of shrug it off. They're just like, yeah, it just happens because they both worked there for 20 years and they're both like, oh yeah, just something happens around here. And they're like, we didn't want to tell you because we don't scare you off because we like you, you know?
00:16:13
Eric Freeman Sims
And after that, they were very open with me about the experiences and stuff. But, But that's, and the one of the ladies in that room actually died the next morning. And so I always call that, the only thing I could think of was angel of death.
00:16:25
Eric Freeman Sims
Like this guy came to ferry her to the next, you know, Anubis, angel death, whatever even call it, ferry her to the next life, to the next realm. And so I was calling that guy the angel of death, but it wasn't scary.
00:16:37
Eric Freeman Sims
It wasn't anything scary. It it scared me once went down there saw nobody was there, you know, because I'm like, what the hell's going on?
00:16:43
Lee Hatfield
That would make perfect sense for it to be somebody who is going to assist her with moving on to the afterlife.
00:16:51
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:16:52
Lee Hatfield
That would make perfect sense.
00:16:53
Eric Freeman Sims
Also working in the nursing home, you get hospice patients and things. People who are dying that talk about people that are in the room that you can't see. I mean, a lot of the majority of people who are still somewhat with it, who are in that process with cancer or whatever,
00:17:09
Eric Freeman Sims
A lot of them talk about people that aren't that you can't see. And so you just go along with them. you know You never try to tell them you know it's not real or anything. Because to them it is.
00:17:20
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, exactly.
00:17:20
Eric Freeman Sims
But it may be real. you know We just can't see it.
00:17:23
Lee Hatfield
Exactly. So, like I said when we were offline, I've been doing a little bit of research into who you are, what you've done, and this kind of stuff.
00:17:24
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:17:34
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:17:34
Lee Hatfield
So, but being in Tennessee, for those that people that know and those people that love music, have you ever been to Graceland and experienced anything there?
00:17:46
Lee Hatfield
Because people do say that Elvis is ghost. walks, it is frequently seen at Graceland. Have you actually visited and experienced anything?
00:17:53
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:17:57
Eric Freeman Sims
I have been to Graceland during the day and and not really experiencing anything, just more as a tourist. I mean, but not really experiencing anything there. Most the places like that, for one, they don't talk about it. If it is going on. i mean, you hear stories like you're saying from some of the famous places around around Tennessee, like Graceland or in Nashville, you have like the Ryman Auditorium, and which is the mother church or country music, which is notoriously haunted.
00:18:19
Eric Freeman Sims
And you can take haunted tours downtown now where they're walking around and and tell you all the different ghost stories. but I've never experienced anything in a place like that, like a famous place like that. There's a lot of historical places around here that, that allow investigating that I've i've experienced a lot.
00:18:34
Eric Freeman Sims
but especially because we have such a huge civil war history, uh, in middle Tennessee, uh, Nashville was a really important place, uh, for the North and the South because of the railroad.
00:18:37
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:18:44
Eric Freeman Sims
There's a huge railroad convergence. So you have a lot of battles around here. And then 20 minutes down the street for me is, uh, a town called Franklin, Tennessee, and they call it the five bloodiest hours of the Civil War because more men died in five hours than died in a lot of the battles that happened.
00:19:01
Eric Freeman Sims
But that was kind of right on. They call it five bloodiest hours, too, because it's kind of right on pace with or what it would have out if the battle lasts longer, would outpace like even Gettysburg or Shiloh, where tens of thousands people died.
00:19:12
Eric Freeman Sims
But I think there was like something like seventy five hundred soldiers died in five hours in Franklin, yeah Tennessee.
00:19:17
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:19:19
Eric Freeman Sims
and so that ground is just bloody. And so the whole town is haunted because it happened in the middle of, uh, of downtown. And so, I've experienced lots, lots of things in a couple of places over there.
00:19:29
Eric Freeman Sims
I mean, people experience things there. even when they don't know it, they'll, they'll think that, okay, well, you know, that's a reenactor. Well, that wasn't a reenactor. The reenactor is only in town in November, which is the anniversary of the battle of Franklin.
00:19:42
Eric Freeman Sims
You know, you don't get a lot of reenactors just walking around in July, but people will see soldiers, you know, full body apparitions soldiers the middle of the day and think it's reenactored.
00:19:46
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:19:51
Eric Freeman Sims
And then they'll find out that now we don't have any reactors in town that we know of, you know, yeah. Things like that.
00:19:56
Lee Hatfield
yeah i I spoke to some some guys that were from Gettysburg and they basically just said exactly the same as what you just did with regard to the reenactors.
00:20:07
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:20:08
Lee Hatfield
So I was like, oh that was a reenactor. No, no it wasn't.
00:20:13
Eric Freeman Sims
yeah
00:20:13
Lee Hatfield
yes so What came first for you? Was it the the fact that you decided to do a podcast or was it the fact that you decided to write your your first book?
Launch of Unseen Paranormal Podcast
00:20:25
Eric Freeman Sims
So i started the podcast in 2020. And that kind of snowballed everything else over the past five years. I never always thought about writing a book, like growing up, like, you know, there's something I would like to be a published author.
00:20:38
Eric Freeman Sims
I've always been a voracious reader. I read many, many books a year, whether be paranormal or Stephen King horror, or you know, whatever. And so when I started the podcast, I started with the intention of talking to all these other authors and on different subjects from ghosts to cryptids and especially because I'm a ghost guy and I've done it for, you know, since I was a teenager for over 20 years.
00:21:01
Eric Freeman Sims
I mean, even going into the podcast, you know, I had almost 20 years on my belt as a, as a researcher stuff, but my focus has been ghost. And other than watching things on TV or YouTube or whatever about Bigfoot and cryptids, I really didn't know anything about that stuff or aliens or dog men or any of the other you know topics in the paranormal umbrella.
00:21:18
Eric Freeman Sims
So I started the podcast with the goal of educating myself through talking to people who I thought were interesting, whether they're author authors, they're on TV, whatever. And hopefully people would have the same interest as me and the curiosity to to listen to the show.
00:21:32
Eric Freeman Sims
And so the more of the authors I talked to, I became friends with a lot of them, like Sin Schrader Hill, who who you know.
00:21:38
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:21:38
Eric Freeman Sims
I met her through the podcast.
00:21:39
Lee Hatfield
i think
00:21:41
Eric Freeman Sims
And, you know, she's a player for the author. She's working on like her seventh or eighth book now. And so she kind of pushed me like, you should write a book. And then my buddy Steve Stockton, who's a big paranormal author about the missing person mystery stuff.
00:21:53
Eric Freeman Sims
national parks and all that, he pushed me. He's like, you're very well-spoken. You, you'd be a good author. And I'm like, really? And so I thought I wanted to come up with something that, kind of wasn't done in the way that I, that I put it together. And so I decided a couple of years ago that I write small town haunts and legends of Tennessee.
00:22:13
Eric Freeman Sims
And I wanted to write it to where it could be a series of, if I want to go to a different state, it'd be small town haunts legends of Kentucky, you know, things like that. So i it took me two years to write the first book because i didn't know what I was doing.
00:22:27
Eric Freeman Sims
And I kept going back and editing myself and rewriting. And I wrote Small Town Haunts and Legends of Tennessee. And the point of it was was to find locations that had an interesting unknown history that's not taught in history class. You can't really find readily available on Internet or in history books.
00:22:41
Eric Freeman Sims
Places that were haunted but had this history to back it up. Because for me, I think, especially with Ghost, 80% of what we do is history. The other 20% is the paranormal part of it, of connecting to that history.
00:22:54
Eric Freeman Sims
But it's still all about the history and connecting to those people. And so I thought if I write 80% history and then tell you the ghost stories that go along with it, then you understand why a place is haunted. So I could tell you the ghost stories. Well, that's entertaining.
00:23:07
Eric Freeman Sims
But if I teach you something about history that you never would have known, you know, that's even better. And so trying to find these places that aren't well-known that have never been on TV, but have these fascinating stories from from history and these fascinating paranormal stories.
00:23:20
Eric Freeman Sims
and And so it's fun to write because I love researching. And when I say I'm a researcher, I'm not joking. Like I really dive into all the stuff and read books. And and yeah like you you commented out on my library, those are all paranormal books.
00:23:33
Eric Freeman Sims
There's all reference books or paranormal books. There's reference books on Native American culture and things like that because I want to understand where their beliefs come from. I have books from Rosemary Ellen Giley that are reference books for different cryptids and things. And, but, you know, books like that, I collect them and and I actually read them. They're not just sitting on the shelf.
00:23:50
Eric Freeman Sims
And so I really dove into the research and had fun doing that and then writing to, to, and to tell other people about it. So that book is definitely like a reference book where you can go look at this town in Tennessee There are these places that are haunted.
00:24:05
Eric Freeman Sims
Now they may or may not allow you in to investigate, but the, this is the history and the hauntings of these places that you've probably never heard of that are there. To me, they're fascinating.
00:24:14
Lee Hatfield
So did you actually manage to to visit all the locations that you wrote about?
00:24:20
Eric Freeman Sims
I did not. A lot of them, like i said, won't then a lot of my private residences. I visited many, many of them. I did not put my own kind of opinion or conjecture in to them.
00:24:32
Eric Freeman Sims
it just added to my knowledge of the paranormal stories and the history of what I was writing about because I'd been there before. but probably i'd say probably 30 or 40 of the locations I've been to, whether on just a history tour or investigating them, there's quite a few in there that I've actually investigated, and have a good relationship. Most of them I've been to several times and investigated.
00:24:58
Lee Hatfield
And do you have any favorites in the book?
00:25:01
Eric Freeman Sims
my favorite will always be carton plantation, which is a plantation that I started when we used to sneak into when I was a kid. they don't want anything to do with the paranormal. Uh, they're there. Last I heard their tour guides were instructed that if they told any paranormal ghost stories that they'd be fired.
00:25:18
Eric Freeman Sims
yeah, the director who is the director over that and several other locations, it's, they're all owned by a nonprofit to save the history of the battle of Franklin things.
00:25:28
Eric Freeman Sims
he does not, he's a historian and he cares nothing about the paranormal and he doesn't want to hear about it. Doesn't want to anybody investigating. I mean, even around Halloween, they don't even do like liner and tours.
00:25:38
Eric Freeman Sims
you know he's there's strictly history but that place the the history to me has always amazed me since i was a kid and uh because even even when i was before i started sneaking in there looking for ghosts i mean we would go there on field trips so you know in school we would go there to learn in the history and tour the house and And the place for one is amazing, has an amazing story. The family, the McGavicks that built it were an amazing family too.
00:26:06
Eric Freeman Sims
But I was always fascinated because there are these giant bloodstains still in the hardwood floors, specifically in an upstairs bedroom where they did all of the amputations and all the surgeries from the wounded soldiers.
00:26:20
Eric Freeman Sims
There were so many of them that one of the soldiers' diaries said that the limbs stacked from the ground to the second floor window where they were throwing out the window. Yeah. and And there are these, and when I say bloodstains, I'm talking massive bloodstains that still are just soaked into these, these hardwood floors.
00:26:37
Eric Freeman Sims
And so I think that, gives it more of a human connection. It's not just history. history I think that's people's real blood there, you know?
00:26:46
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:26:46
Eric Freeman Sims
And I think working in medicine for 20 something years also, i have that connection, you know, we're in emergency medicine and and blood is kind of the lifeline, you know, too. But, I would say probably carton plantation. I wish I could go in there and actually do a, an official investigation.
00:27:00
Eric Freeman Sims
Uh, the other place that I've actually investigated many, many times that allows investigations a place called the Thomas house and red bowl in Springs, Tennessee. And it is still bed and breakfast. And when you go, the owners are amazing.
00:27:13
Eric Freeman Sims
When you go there, they feed you dinner and then you do your ghost hunt all night and then they feed you breakfast next morning and you get your own room and things.
00:27:18
Lee Hatfield
Thank
00:27:19
Eric Freeman Sims
And the place is extremely haunted. We've had, I've had so many experiences there. But it was for, it was a hotel for a hilly mineral spring back in the 1920s. Excuse me. So people would come there with cancer or whatever horrible disease they had thinking they're going to get healed.
00:27:34
Eric Freeman Sims
Well, they get healed because it was just spring water. And so they died. and Many, many people died there. And, but just a fascinating history there and just an amazing owners and and just the whole atmosphere. But that would be the place that I've actually investigated officially would be the Thomas house.
00:27:53
Lee Hatfield
and It's weird how when you go to the US there are so many different locations that you are allowed to investigate.
00:28:03
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:28:03
Lee Hatfield
Where once you come north of the border there are so many city owned properties. yeah Some of them are hotels or whatever. It's sort like, nope, nope, you can't come and investigate here.
00:28:13
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:28:14
Lee Hatfield
You're not interested. and it It kind of sucks because you get the reports that yes, this this room or this building is haunted but you can't go anywhere near it.
00:28:27
Lee Hatfield
It's kind of disappointing. A lot of people that are investigators this side of the border frequently go to the US s because the locations are more readily available.
00:28:41
Eric Freeman Sims
I just recently met a Canadian who came down, to do an investigation with us. Uh, his name's Adrian from Wolfpack paranormal. And, you know, Adrian, great guy, but he came all way to Tennessee.
00:28:49
Lee Hatfield
Oh yes, I know Adrian. Yeah, yeah. That's
00:28:55
Eric Freeman Sims
And, uh, Sorry, I to tickle my throat.
00:28:59
Lee Hatfield
okay.
00:29:00
Eric Freeman Sims
But yeah, he came all the way to Tennessee for a weekend to hang out to do an event with us. And so it was very cool to talk to him, but he was talking similarly. And also there's not a lot of investigators up north of the border, no matter where you're at in Canada.
00:29:15
Eric Freeman Sims
cause I hate to do the stereotype of like, well, you must know each other Everybody must know each other. But he was telling me, no, we all do know each other because there's not many of us that do this all the time or have groups whatever.
00:29:20
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:29:23
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:29:26
Eric Freeman Sims
And so I found that fascinating, but yeah, Adrian's great guy. Yeah.
00:29:30
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, he is. and one thing that he's very good at, he likes to get different groups to connect with each other.
00:29:38
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:29:39
Lee Hatfield
And yeah, every day on Facebook, you'll go, oh, yeah, this group started, they haven't got many followers.
00:29:42
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:29:44
Lee Hatfield
Can you just like like them and all that kind of stuff? and He is really good at doing that. Absolutely fantastic.
00:29:50
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:51
Lee Hatfield
that's one you forguda so yeah You've already mentioned the fact that you wrote Small Town Haunts and Legends of Tennessee. but Let's now speak about the Unseen Paranormal Podcast.
Impact of the Podcast
00:30:06
Lee Hatfield
How did that come about? I know you mentioned we kind of touched on it earlier, but can we go into a little bit more detail?
00:30:12
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah, it it was kind of seamless, really. In around 2018, I reconnected with a high school friend who hadn't seen a long, long time. Her name is Melissa. And she had started a podcast with one of her friends that had nothing to paranormal. It's called My BFF Podcast.
00:30:28
Eric Freeman Sims
And she invited me to be a guest on the show. And I had listened to podcasts for for quite a few years, but never been asked to be a guest. And so I went on there.
00:30:40
Eric Freeman Sims
And like I said, it had nothing to paranormal.
00:30:42
Eric Freeman Sims
It was just about life and friendship and, you know, mental health and things like that. So we had a good time. And then she had some technical questions because I've done sound for a long, long time. was also trained to do live sound audio engineering for live bands.
00:30:56
Eric Freeman Sims
And so she had some audio issues at one time that she helped that she had me help her fix. And then she asked me to produce the podcast. And so be a behind the scenes producer.
00:31:08
Eric Freeman Sims
So I started producing the podcast. It became pretty popular. It was on new and noteworthy on Apple podcast and was on some of the in the top 50 podcasts on Apple for a while. And so I helped with that for a couple years until 2020.
00:31:21
Eric Freeman Sims
And she decided to her and her co-host decided to part ways. And, she did the podcast for by herself for a little while. And then they decided to end it. And when she did that, I was like, well, maybe I should start my own, you know, but talk about something I know about like the paranormal.
00:31:37
Eric Freeman Sims
and something that interests me, being the, even with it being a small niche, it was more about doing it for myself. and enjoying the guests that I talked to than it was about anybody ever listening.
00:31:47
Eric Freeman Sims
And especially I didn't, realize it would grow into what it did grow into over five years. But, so yeah, that's kind of how it got rolling because I've learned kind of behind the scenes over like a year and a half, of how the podcast world worked and and how to, the production aspect of it, of putting one together, but also the ins and outs of podcast hosting and and all those things.
00:32:07
Eric Freeman Sims
And so that's also why I kept, always kept mine, for the most part, was all, it has always been audio. never The video stuff has just come about kind of in the past couple years where Facebook did live and just made it easier to do the video stuff. But I've always stuck with the,
00:32:22
Eric Freeman Sims
with the audio kind of the old homage like the old radio talk shows that are kind of disappearing slowly and i just decided this year to kind of end it after five years and 170 episodes 170 guests i've just got it's just i've got a lot of other stuff going on and the podcast has allowed all of that to happen So ultimately me and you were talking because of the podcast and what it's allowed me to do the five years that I did it to not only open doors for me to do things, but also for me to be on TV shows, magazine covers to my profile the paranormal and ultimately for me to buy the night house and own my own location.
00:33:05
Eric Freeman Sims
so yeah, I have all of it to thank, for a second, I'm very, very blessed to do the paranormal for a living. I really am. I understand that's the dream of a lot of people.
00:33:14
Eric Freeman Sims
I'm very blessed to do that being a location owner for sure. And the podcast did really, really well, with advertisers and things like that. But yeah, it's just time. It's time to move on from the podcast, but i will leave it out there for people to listen to and go back. Yeah. There's some great guests on there. I had some great conversations with people, but yeah, owe all this to, uh, to the unseen paranormal podcast.
00:33:35
Lee Hatfield
I can so relate to what you've just said because I started this podcast in February of this year. and I think I'm now at episode 46. forty six I decided that i was going to start doing it bi-weekly but then I just reached out to so many people and then I had so many guests I'm thinking I'm going to have to do this weekly.
00:33:46
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:34:00
Lee Hatfield
That was a big decision for me because it's like Okay, I've got a lot of guests now, but if we go to weekly, yeah, how's it going to pan out?
00:34:06
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:34:10
Eric Freeman Sims
Right.
00:34:11
Lee Hatfield
And then it went absolutely mental. And in July, I've got so many pre-recorded episodes. I did two a week because I've got so many. And it was like absolutely crazy.
00:34:22
Lee Hatfield
But it's right what you say about it opening doors because, like I say, we have a joint friend with Synth.
00:34:26
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:34:30
Lee Hatfield
and she literally dropped 15 names to me after our first episode of Added On Twice. And it's like, oh, reach out this person, reach out to Eric, reach out to this. here And it's like so many people, it's funny how that we've got other people in common, like Tommy Cullen, for example, in the UK.
00:34:49
Lee Hatfield
yeah He's also a joint friend. But since I started doing this, I'm doing my second webinar on the 18th of December.
00:35:01
Lee Hatfield
I've got a thing in January where it's like a 48 hour paranormal thing and everybody talks for an hour. I've got involved with that. and the We've been on a couple of radio stations and supplement and it's so it's opened so many doors.
00:35:16
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:16
Lee Hatfield
and i'm only I'm only in the and the infant stages of this podcast but I've had some crazy people on it and some really interesting conversations have been had. so I'm going to ask you the same question as what I asked you about your book.
00:35:31
Lee Hatfield
Are there any particular episodes in the Unseen Paranormal podcast that really stand out? And if you get asked this question, these stories are the ones that tend to come to the forefront.
00:35:43
Eric Freeman Sims
One of the biggest that stands out is Andrea Perrin. I have the privilege of, i did a two part episode with her and for people who didn't recognize her name, her family was in the conjuring house family.
00:35:57
Eric Freeman Sims
In the Conjuring House movie, the original one, they used the parents' name, and Andrea was actually a consultant on the on the film. But to hear that story from her that I've heard for so long throughout my life of being one of the, you know, old, crazy paranormal cases, and actually get to talk to her, who's a spokesperson for her family. She's written three-volume book series on it.
00:36:26
Eric Freeman Sims
and talk to her and hear the story from her mouth, but also talk to her about the movie and when she thought about the movie, and how accurate the movie was and things like that. But we just had a great conversation, like two and a half hours and she was just the sweetest lady.
00:36:37
Eric Freeman Sims
And in turn, I went on her paranormal show, uh, spiritual awakening when she was doing it. She invited me on her show, which was, blew me away. I'm sitting here. I'm, I'm friends with Andrew parent. Like, you know, like it's crazy.
00:36:50
Eric Freeman Sims
that episode, really really loved there's an episode i did not get to ever put out that i absolutely i so wish i could have but i had audio issues with it so bad that it just couldn't be safe but i talked to dr raymond moody for two and a half hours as well uh dr raymond moody he coined the term near-death experience in the seventy s he is a he has a PhD in psychology and sociology.
00:37:16
Eric Freeman Sims
he has seriously studied near death experiences and past life regressions and all these other things. And, uh, sorry about that. And so to talk to him and pick his brain from a scientific standpoint and how his, from when he first started researching that back in the seventies and wrote his first book about near death experiences up until now and how his thoughts have changed from when he first started doing it as a scientist and a researcher,
00:37:43
Eric Freeman Sims
just a fascinating man and he's in his eighties. And so the fact that he said yes for me to talk to him was just a complete honor. And like I said, I wish the audio would have been good. it was just those technical issues that you have. And, and, but to talk to him and pick his brain when, you know, he's in his eighties, it's not gonna be around a whole lot longer. And he just put out a new book too.
00:38:04
Eric Freeman Sims
But yeah, incredible, incredible man. to And such a wealth of knowledge when you, talking about near death experiences and and, life after death and things that have people seen. And, and he's interviewed like thousands of witnesses who have had near death experiences and things. So just incredible conversation with him.
00:38:21
Eric Freeman Sims
but to get to talk about icons like that, that I've seen on TV shows, you know, in search of back in the day and unsolved mysteries. And, you know, he's, he's the go-to guy for that topic. just kind of, you know, blows my mind.
00:38:36
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, and again, i can i can so relate to what you just say because I'm involved with the Comic-Con world and I can walk past so many different guests and just go, hi, and not give them a second thought.
00:38:51
Lee Hatfield
But then if I get somebody who's quite high profile in the paranormal world or in the UFO world, I'm like, oh, my God.
00:38:51
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:39:00
Lee Hatfield
And you start fanboying kind of thing because it's yeah this is your main interest.
00:39:01
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:39:05
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:39:05
Lee Hatfield
So you're having people that you want to speak to. So yeah all these celebrities that have been on movies, it's like, yeah, hi, okay, whatever.
00:39:13
Eric Freeman Sims
yeah
00:39:14
Lee Hatfield
But when you get somebody that you really want to meet, it's completely different.
00:39:19
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah, and for me, it's not, I don't care if you've been on TV. Don't care. I've been on TV. I've been a couple episodes of shows. Don't care. I've been on magazine. Don't care. Because famous people are exactly the same as we are.
00:39:29
Eric Freeman Sims
Big deal. Like Jason Hawes and all the ghost hunters, I respect them. But, okay, you're on TV. You still have a life. You still kids. You still have a daily, you know. But it's people like who, and your parent who really really went through all that crazy stuff the Conjuring House. Dr. Raymond Moody, who has researched this stuff for 50 years.
00:39:48
Eric Freeman Sims
as a serious researcher and has brought credibility to what we do as one of the first scientists to ever take any paranormal subject seriously, and got laughed at for it.
00:40:01
Eric Freeman Sims
uh to talk to those people that's what excites me that's what I fan out about like you're talking about the celebrities whatever want to talk to the the people that are the experts the people that we really can call the experts like Dr.
00:40:06
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Exactly.
00:40:09
Lee Hatfield
exactly
00:40:12
Eric Freeman Sims
Raymond Moody like Andrew Perrin who went through it not saying there's there's there's any experts in paranormal per se because I've been doing it for over 25 years but I'm not an expert I mean, I don't know everything. i We have no answers, you know, but to talk to people who are so experienced and, and that, yeah, that's, those are the people that I just have some mad respect for and just so excited to talk to you.
00:40:33
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, I always tell people that in this line of work, if you want to call it that, we don't have experts, we just have people that have got a lot of experience.
00:40:43
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:44
Lee Hatfield
And it's completely different.
00:40:46
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:40:47
Lee Hatfield
So, moving on, you decided to buy the Knight House in Hopkinsville.
Acquiring the Knights House
00:40:54
Lee Hatfield
How did that come about?
00:40:57
Eric Freeman Sims
it's interesting. I was having a conversation on the phone with a, another, investigator friend of mine. And, uh, me and him were talking about how fun it would be to own your own location.
00:41:12
Eric Freeman Sims
Well, everybody knows how your, your phone listens to you. Facebook listens to you. So I started giving these, these, pop-ups for, this group.
00:41:22
Eric Freeman Sims
old houses, $1,000, $100,000 and beyond. So I got to looking on there and i'm like, man, does it like, nobody wants to own these houses anymore. Like the younger generation, they don't want to fix them up.
00:41:36
Eric Freeman Sims
And i saw how cheap they were as opposed like new houses and especially the history of some of these places. And the fact that I love history so much that if I could save a part of it would just be awesome.
00:41:49
Eric Freeman Sims
And the journey of renovating it, rehabbing it, restoring it, that whole journey I found fascinating too. So started looking and I found a couple.
00:42:03
Eric Freeman Sims
And i mean, this is just a crazy out there idea that I had. I had no idea that I didn't formulate a plan to pay for it or nothing like that. but I went and talked to my husband about it and we've been together for 20 years.
00:42:18
Eric Freeman Sims
And so and went to him and I said, look how cheap these older houses are. And he got into the idea. And so in the beginning of 2024, we started looking at some, uh, and we had a criteria.
00:42:33
Eric Freeman Sims
it had to be certain distance driving distance from where we live. Cause we're not moving anywhere. And, had to be within two hours driving distance. And I told him, I said, it, if the house already has a name, there's a history there.
00:42:47
Eric Freeman Sims
So if they've already named the house, like the night house after the night family, then I know there's a history there that will be fascinating.
00:42:50
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:42:56
Eric Freeman Sims
And so we just happened to come across the night house on that website. and they wanted $115,000 for the house and three acres, but it had to be cash.
00:43:09
Eric Freeman Sims
it didn't have a kitchen. So no mortgage company would touch it. There are a lot of things that had to be done before it could be even insured.
00:43:20
Eric Freeman Sims
So we talked them down quite a lot. Actually, it was, they're asking 150. one fifty We talked them down to 115. And, through negotiation and and tactics that we use to ignore them. And until they, they they actually dropped their own price from, from one 45 to one 25. And then we counted with one 15 and they took it.
00:43:44
Eric Freeman Sims
So it just kind of happened really quickly. We started looking at houses in February of 2024 and we bought the night house in April, 2024.
00:43:52
Eric Freeman Sims
And so the first time we went and looked at it, for one, we had to sign a waiver saying that if you got hurt, it wasn't their fault or their problem. and so was like well that's interesting the realtor wouldn't even go in the house because she was under impression the floors and shit were falling in but that wasn't the case at all it really wasn't the case at all so she wouldn't go in the house but uh so yeah we ended up getting it for a price that we were comfortable with that we could afford and that was our nest egg our savings and so night house is the retirement plan uh not that we're ever going to get rich off of it or anything like that paranormal investigations and history tours but it's it's done well it pays its own bills and we put all the money right back into restoring it and fixing it and
00:44:40
Eric Freeman Sims
but from the moment that we left there after
Paranormal Activities at Knights House
00:44:43
Eric Freeman Sims
looking at it for the first time, we both, me and my husband both found each other talking like we already owned it.
00:44:50
Eric Freeman Sims
So just naturally we talked like, oh we're going to this, this, and this first, you know, we got to do this to get insurance on it. We got to do the, you know, type of deal. And we were just, I don't know, in both of our heads, we were convinced we already own the place.
00:45:03
Eric Freeman Sims
And so I think it was, it was somewhat meant to be spiritually. And I think maybe the spirits kind of nudged along. They wanted us to be the owners. And so, yeah, so we bought it and it's it's kind of been a crazy almost two years now.
00:45:17
Eric Freeman Sims
april April of next year will be two years, so a year and a half. But it's been awesome at the same time.
00:45:22
Lee Hatfield
yeah how many stories did you know about the night house before you bought it with regard to the paranormal?
00:45:31
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah, not many. There really wasn't any information online about it. now I've, I've built it up to where if you Google the night house, it's, it'll be, it's on the first three or four pages of Google and other search engines, but there wasn't much out of there about it. I called the County historian and talked to him about the nights and the other families that live there.
00:45:52
Eric Freeman Sims
And it was it's it's been a residence for 210 years. It was built in 1815. It's the oldest house still standing in the entire county. One of the oldest still standing in Kentucky, period.
00:46:03
Eric Freeman Sims
So I knew that there was a history there. And you just kind of got a feeling when you went in there that you're kind of being watched. Not anything eerie, and they don't make you feel weird. It's a very comfortable feeling.
00:46:17
Eric Freeman Sims
But it was a residence for 200 years. The Knights lived there for 85. And pretty much their entire family died there and had their wakes there, you know, in in the dining room. And so you just kind of got a sense that there were still people there.
00:46:32
Eric Freeman Sims
And the people loved the house so much. there's never There was never any murders, no suicide, no crazy tragedy. it was just people living their lives and they love this house. And that's why they stayed there for so long because they absolutely loved it.
00:46:45
Eric Freeman Sims
And so it, I told Roger from the gig of my husband, I told him from the get I said, if there's not much activity, there's not much activity. It's a historic house. You know, I want to run off the merits of it's a historic house and we're saving and preserving the history.
00:46:59
Eric Freeman Sims
Now we do that through, renting it out for paranormal investigation. And we've gotten very lucky that the spirits that we have are wonderful. They love talking to people. They love hosting people in the house.
00:47:11
Eric Freeman Sims
i I don't force them to do anything. And I've even told them that when they're ready to, to cross over go, go You know, I'm not asking you to perform like a circus act, you know, but these people want to come in and talk to you and talk to you about your house. They're coming to enjoy your house and the beauty, the beautiful house that you created and that we've just got to be the custodians of.
00:47:34
Eric Freeman Sims
And I've said from the get-go that the history of that house is not mine. It belongs to Hopkinsville. We just have to be good stewards of it. And most people never knew the history of that house. And and at least four of the owners were big in creating Hopkinsville and making Hopkinsville what it is today.
00:47:53
Eric Freeman Sims
It's not a huge town. it's town of about 50,000 people. but But these are people that brought the railroad through and did other things in town that made the town what it is. And so just getting that history out there. Also, one of the biggest things that we heard buying the house from people when we put on social media, people in the community found out, they're like, I've driven past that house my entire life and always want to see inside.
00:48:17
Eric Freeman Sims
Well, until we opened it to the public to history tours and the paranormal, they didn't have that opportunity.
Public Engagement and Tours
00:48:22
Eric Freeman Sims
And so now we give people opportunity to come and enjoy that history.
00:48:23
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:48:25
Eric Freeman Sims
and And hopefully I think we're snowballing into possibly getting maybe the schools to come do field trips, you know, and do a history tours and things like that. And I would, I would love that. It would be wonderful. I just love sharing the house of people in the history.
00:48:39
Eric Freeman Sims
and people people have been so responsive and love it. We've got, i mean, we're going on a year and a half and we have two different teams that have already booked their third night to come and stay at the house and investigate.
00:48:53
Eric Freeman Sims
You know, that's how much I love the house, so.
00:48:56
Lee Hatfield
So one thing that you said that yeah you've now got it on the top three or four pages Google.
00:49:03
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
00:49:03
Lee Hatfield
So I did my due diligence and I did Google the night house. And I know that you've experienced quite a few things in some of the investigations.
00:49:15
Lee Hatfield
So can you talk to us about some of those please?
00:49:19
Eric Freeman Sims
So we, experienced stuff all the time when we're just there working on the house. started pretty much day one. first day that we got the keys, once we signed all the paperwork, got the keys, went to the house.
00:49:30
Eric Freeman Sims
I was actually in the restroom using the restroom and somebody knocked on the door and I said, I'll be out in a minute because I thought it was my husband or his parents or his aunt that was with us.
00:49:40
Eric Freeman Sims
And when I come out, they're completely on the entire other side of the house and they didn't knock on the door. So it started the 10 minutes after walked in the house. And then a couple of days later, Roger thought that he locked me and my brother in the kitchen.
00:49:56
Eric Freeman Sims
And cause somebody knocked on the door, from the kitchen into the dining room, he was closing latching it for the night. And this is why we're still renovating. So we're locking things up pretty tight. And, But then he opened the door. There's nobody there and he could see me and my brother out the window in the yard and there's nobody else there.
00:50:12
Eric Freeman Sims
So it's just been things from that. Like my, my in-laws, my mother father-in-law have really been instrumental in helping us work on the place because we do all the work ourselves.
00:50:22
Eric Freeman Sims
My father-in-law has been a contractor for 50 years, so you can do anything construction wise. So they've been great. And he's even talked about being in the cellar and hearing conversations in the parlor of people talking or it sounded like they're arguing.
00:50:38
Eric Freeman Sims
And he's come out and said, we're all outside. And he's like, what are y'all arguing about? And like, we ain't been in the house. We've been outside, you know, mowing or whatever. And he's heard these people arguing. so started from the get-go and then with teams coming in it's just kind of snowballed even more and more and that makes me happy because it seems like like i said the spirits are happy to talk to the people as long as you're respectful when you come in with good energy they they tend to respond pretty well and and The teams get, we've had some incredible EVPs.
00:51:09
Eric Freeman Sims
We did a couple months ago, I was leading a group during a public ghost hunt, and we're down in the basement, and we believe we have a 15-year-old kid down there named Jack from all the investigations and the and the things that we've we've caught.
00:51:23
Eric Freeman Sims
And also through a psychic medium friend of mine named, and sends Mark Elliott Fultz. And he likes marbles. So I was asking him, do you want me to we have this bag of marbles on the pool table. And I said do you want me get the marbles out? And he says, no, really loud.
00:51:38
Eric Freeman Sims
That's one of the loudest EVPs ever caught. Other people have caught various other EVPs. We had a team in, a very experienced team. They've been a team since I think 2008 and four guys and two of them were upstairs in the parlor the house is six levels so i mean when i say mansion it's huge it's 5600 square feet six levels massive place and so two of the guys were upstairs investigating the other two were in the kitchen and the kitchen modern kitchen so that's kind of the base station for teams where they hang out set up equipment dvr systems whatever they're doing
00:52:10
Eric Freeman Sims
The other two guys were in the kitchen going over some EVP stuff on a laptop. So they shut the door that goes from the from the kitchen into the dining room. When they tried to get out of the kitchen, we have an old baby carriage that had moved itself in the door and wedged itself between the door and the buffet.
00:52:26
Eric Freeman Sims
And they thought the other two guys playing a prank on them. And so they walkie talkie them, they come and let them out. And those guys swearing down that they did not move that baby carriage. And so they had the house until three in the morning. So I in there about two 45 as they were packing up.
00:52:41
Eric Freeman Sims
And I was like, how'd everything go? And the first thing he said was, you ever had the baby carriage move on its own? Nothing I know of, you know? So, and also the kid in the basement, one of my friends teams, a nice long paranormal, Barbie Buffy. They're awesome. Their team's great.
00:52:56
Eric Freeman Sims
they had told the kid in the basement, you know, the cat balls that we have that light up. They said that big marble over there that lights up, you can have it.
00:53:06
Eric Freeman Sims
Well, when they went to collect their cat balls in the basement, there was one missing. And so they're like, well, we guess he took it. And I said, I'll show back up. So, I was giving a tour to a couple who came by themselves and they were in the house from seven to three.
00:53:23
Eric Freeman Sims
And, uh, I was going to tour to them before they started investigating. And we go down in the cellar and this cat ball out of nowhere is sitting right on the furnace at eye level. And it hadn't been there in two weeks.
00:53:34
Eric Freeman Sims
So, yeah.
00:53:35
Lee Hatfield
Wow, that's crazy.
00:53:35
Eric Freeman Sims
yeah I could go on and on. i mean, there's, we capture sounds on the, on the cameras of furniture moving in the master bedroom. Well, the master bedroom right now has carpet. So you wouldn't hear furniture moving period. Uh, we have a ghost parrot that I've caught on, on, on the video sound squawking and whistling. I've even, heard I've heard the whistling myself and so of other people, but it doesn't sound like a person. It sounds like a bird, like a, like a parrot.
00:54:00
Eric Freeman Sims
we have furniture move. We have doors open and close on their own. I mean, just the whole thing. Footsteps. That's been a big thing lately that I've heard from many of the teams is footsteps. They've they've heard really dominant footsteps here lately in the attic and things. So just, yeah, it's it's it's insane.
00:54:17
Lee Hatfield
It sounds like you've absolutely fell on your feet with having that perfect location to do investigations.
00:54:24
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and and I think it was ripe for the spirits to want to tell their stories and to be recognized. and And recognized in a respectful way of carrying on their history because their history has not been told.
00:54:38
Eric Freeman Sims
The Knights were such a prominent family in town.
00:54:38
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:54:41
Eric Freeman Sims
And to just be forgotten in 1945 when their kind of immediate family died off. And that's when the house was was sold and everything they owned in it was auctioned off. And to not really be acknowledged They were socialites.
00:54:55
Eric Freeman Sims
They were rich. You know, they're used to being part of the community and in the paper.
00:54:56
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. 100%.
00:54:58
Eric Freeman Sims
and And so not to be acknowledged like that or your house, your beautiful house that you worked so hard on. Because the Knights did a lot of changes to it to make a Greek revival with the big porch on the side that you see now with the big columns and they changed the fireplaces and a lot of stuff in the house and made the house bigger.
00:55:14
Eric Freeman Sims
And so they're really proud of it. And so to have people coming in now appreciating it, I think they like that. I think they that's why they've responded so well. Yeah, it's just been incredible.
00:55:26
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:55:26
Eric Freeman Sims
And also to have a place, I mean, you know, we go to places, we try to go to places over and over again, you know, because sometimes you don't get anything at the location and you might go back the next time and it's crazy.
00:55:27
Lee Hatfield
what
00:55:37
Eric Freeman Sims
It's been very fascinating for me as an investigator researcher, as far as research, To see the same things, it's also validating because we'll have experiences and I won't even tell the teams about them.
00:55:50
Eric Freeman Sims
And the team will come back and say, oh we just have the same experience. yeah we have these So it validates my experiences as well, which is wonderful to have the validation in the paranormal. But that's been a big thing too, with like I said, with the research of just the ongoing teams on Friday and Saturday every night and see the similarities of what they get without knowing each other, without putting it online, anything.
00:56:10
Eric Freeman Sims
but seeing the similarities. And for me, if that doesn't prove to you that the afterlife exists, you're crazy. You know, there's no coincidences when five teams in a row tell you they've talked to the same spirit, you know, through various methods and they don't know each other. They're not putting this online, you know?
00:56:27
Lee Hatfield
I'm definitely going to have to speak to the team and see if we can arrange a road trip. i think think I think it needs needs to be done.
00:56:34
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah. It'd be amazing to have y'all.
00:56:36
Lee Hatfield
so Were you able to to validate who Jack was at all? Was he a family member on the night? do you know
00:56:46
Eric Freeman Sims
He wasn't from the Knights. He's from previous to the Knights. And from what we can tell, he was probably the son of like a farmhand. he's He's a white kid. And he's he's a son of a farmhand.
00:56:58
Eric Freeman Sims
Probably from the 1820s, 1830s. The Knights bought the house in 1860. So the house was built in 1815. So probably one of the early early families. And yeah, probably his you know dad, his parents lived there because they were farmhands on the property.
00:57:14
Lee Hatfield
OK, cool. So unfortunately we are coming towards the end, but apart from making the Knights House bigger and better and opening it up for historical tours, what's next on the agenda for Eric?
Future Projects and Events
00:57:32
Eric Freeman Sims
So in 2025, this year, I was the event coordinator for GoblinCon, UFO and Paranormal Expo in Hopkinsville. it was the very first GoblinCon. And I am happy to say that I will be the event coordinator for GoblinCon, excuse me, 2026. If never heard of the Hobbinsville Goblin incident, that's what it comes from, is the Kelly Greenman or Hobbinsville Goblin.
00:57:54
Eric Freeman Sims
Back in 1955, a spaceship landed on a family farm, and these little men, these little things, attacked the the family. If you've ever seen the movie Gremlins, Gremlins were based off of these creatures.
00:58:07
Lee Hatfield
yep oh
00:58:11
Lee Hatfield
wow
00:58:12
Eric Freeman Sims
Also, Steven Spielberg wrote ET based off of the Hobbinsville Goblin incident. So, yeah, they had pointy ears, just like the Gremlins, long spindly legs and arms, big OIs.
00:58:22
Eric Freeman Sims
So, anyway, it's it's something that's worldwide, known worldwide, the Hobbinsville Goblin incident, Kelly Greenman. And we this year, we celebrated the 70th anniversary, and that's why we we started the big convention.
00:58:32
Eric Freeman Sims
I got hired to be the event coordinator. So, I'm doing it again this year. It huge success. This past year, we for a first-year convention, was huge success. We had almost 1,000 people. uh, attend. had 50 something vendors and we had two full days of amazing speakers.
00:58:47
Eric Freeman Sims
So sin was one of our speakers. Uh, we had Ken Gerhardt who is the cryptozoologist. If you watch any of the TV shows, he's with the black cowboy hat that's been on over a hundred TV shows. We had Tim Swartz, who is on Ancient Aliens and a lot of the the shows about aliens as as a talking head.
00:59:04
Eric Freeman Sims
We had Ron Murphy, who's an amazing cryptozoology guy. David Eller, who's a Bigfoot guy. Just Geraldine Sutton-Stith, who the Kelly Hobbins incident happened to her family back in 1955. So just amazing lineup of speakers. So we're hoping to do that again this year and make it even bigger. So I have that. that that's That's in August, and that's going to take a lot of my time.
00:59:26
Eric Freeman Sims
on top of the night house being booked every weekend.
00:59:26
Lee Hatfield
Sure.
00:59:28
Eric Freeman Sims
Cause we stay there when we have people in the house, we have our own quarters that we stay with our own bathroom and everything. So we're there all night when, when teams are in the house. so that's pretty much every weekend. And then i am working on two other books right now simultaneously. One is Small Town Haunts and Legends of Kentucky.
00:59:44
Eric Freeman Sims
The other one is called Strange Chapters, Stories from My Haunted Life. So it's kind of autobiography from the get-go, from the even before I was born, the the some of the experiences my family had.
00:59:57
Eric Freeman Sims
And then my first experience when I was eight, like I told you about, and then all the intricate details leading up to us buying the night house. And then in the future, there will be a book about the night house on its own.
01:00:11
Eric Freeman Sims
But, uh, so yeah, it's going to be autobiography. I'm, I'm 70 pages in on that. probably 40 pages into the small town hot cities in Kentucky. So got a full plate and there's no telling what else will come up. we've got some, well, I know we got some, some paranormal shows that are wanting to come and film at the night house. I know at least of three, we may have the opportunity to have some major motion pictures filmed at the night house, uh, 2026.
01:00:34
Eric Freeman Sims
We have lots of events. We do events all the time, public ghost hunts. In Valentine's Day weekend, we actually have Mark Elliott Fultz is coming up, the psychic medium. Sin will be there.
01:00:45
Eric Freeman Sims
Friday, we're doing a gallery reading with him. We're selling tickets for that so people can come do a gallery reading where he may connect to your loved ones. And then on Saturday, we're doing a public ghost hunt. We're calling the seance and soiree, Victorian Valentine's Day.
01:01:00
Eric Freeman Sims
So we're going to a seance, and then we're going to a ghost hunt, and then we're going to do old-fashioned table tipping with Mark. So that'll be fun. We have a bunch of public ghost hunts coming up. Booze and barbecue January 31st. uh the middle of january 16th and 17th we have 10 dollar ghost hunt tickets and there's four different ones on there but all of that is at the night house ky.com and people can go there and check out the tickets and and come see us or you can rent the house out if you're a team you know seven to midnight seven to three a.m or seven till nine a.m
01:01:28
Lee Hatfield
When do you rest?
01:01:30
Eric Freeman Sims
if Right. I sleep about, and I'm completely serious. I'm insomniac. I have ADD and ADD is my superpower. It allows me to do 18 things at one time. I sleep about four or five hours a night.
01:01:42
Eric Freeman Sims
from about 10 until about three in the morning, I'll be up wide awake. I'll go ahead and have my coffee. I'll have breakfast and about 10 o'clock in the morning, I take an hour nap and I'm good to go until 10 o'clock at night. And that's, that's my pattern every day. So,
01:01:55
Lee Hatfield
That's crazy.
01:01:55
Eric Freeman Sims
Yeah.
01:01:57
Lee Hatfield
Just finally, when are you hoping to have your two current books published?
01:02:04
Eric Freeman Sims
So Strange Chapters, Autobiography is probably gonna the first one out probably in March or April. Sen is going to be my editor. She's my editor. So once I get it finished to get it to her, it'll take her a little while to edit and then i will get it out to be published. So um'm I'm shooting for April, 1st of April.
01:02:21
Eric Freeman Sims
Once I know an exact date, i it'll we'll do a pre-sale and all that stuff. uh, small town haunts, legend, in Kentucky will probably be more towards, uh, Halloween next year, probably September, October, spooky season, uh, is when I'm shooting for it.
01:02:34
Eric Freeman Sims
Cause it's a, it's much more extensive. It's because I have to do all, which I've done all the research, but it's done compiling all that history and the hauntings. Like was talking about the Tennessee book, compiling that all into cohesive stories, uh, to put in the book and make sure there's nothing on the bone and things write about.
01:02:49
Eric Freeman Sims
the autobiography, I just sit here and write, you know, it's my life and things that's happening me. So,
01:02:55
Lee Hatfield
That's cool. Eric, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. I've learned so much about Tennessee and a little bit Kentucky.
01:03:03
Eric Freeman Sims
yeah yeah that'd be a lot of fun i'd love to have y'all and thank thank you so much lee for having me on the show it's been a blast yeah you too
01:03:04
Lee Hatfield
So, like say, and I will seriously speak to the team to see if they want to go on a road trip. and We you may come and visit you in 2026. You are most welcome. And again, we can thank Sin, because she's got her fingers in so many pies.
01:03:25
Lee Hatfield
But for now, like say, thanks very much and you have a great rest of the evening my friend. Thanks a lot, take care, bye bye.