Transcript
Lee Hatfield: Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of SEPA Paranormal Chronicles. I don't think tonight's episode is going to be quiet. I don't think it's going to be normal like normal episodes are. Tonight I am delighted to have Eric Mintle with me. Eric is a professional jazz musician by night, but even later by night, he's a paranormal investigator.
Lee Hatfield: Eric, my friend, it's a pleasure to have you.
Eric Mintel: Hey man, so great to meet you, Lee. I'm so glad we got a chance to get this together. And I know, and I'm always like trying to think, you know, I'm ah i'm a jazz musician by night. What is later at night?
Eric Mintel: But I'm always, ah it's i feel like I'm always working.
Lee Hatfield: so
Lee Hatfield: So you had a choice to either to be a paranormal investigator, a mass murderer, a shoplifter. So you decided to do paranormal investigating.
Eric Mintel: I did. The more sane thing. you know Oh my God. That's funny.
Lee Hatfield: So what I'd like to do with most of my folk is to go back in time. We're now going to do the time like the time travel bit. to When did you first get interested in the paranormal?
Eric Mintel: Well, in a very, very young age, um we live here in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which is about, I guess, about 60 miles northeast of Philadelphia, if your fans and friends are familiar with that area.
Eric Mintel: um And I just, you know, i grew up as a young child listening to a lot of paranormal stories, ghost stories, UFOs, Bigfoot, you name it, in this area.
Eric Mintel: And um so, yeah especially for my father, because he had a lot of encounters himself.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: So I would always hear those. and And being an only child, you know, kind of like really, ah you know, just really kind of like absorbing all of those stories. And um But pretty much made jazz, you know, you mentioned jazz, just and pretty much made jazz most of my life.
Eric Mintel: um You know, for 32 years as a jazz musician ah with my jazz quartet, the Eric Mantel Quartet. And my main mentor with with jazz was Dave Brubeck.
Lee Hatfield: Wow.
Eric Mintel: And, ah you know, just incredible opportunities we've had as jazz musicians. We've performed at the White House, the Kennedy Center, United Nations. um But, you know, and the White House, I should say, when President Clinton was in there in 1998 and 2011 for President Obama. And then we've been at the Kennedy Center several times and um just had wonderful opportunities, but always had the paranormal in the background.
Eric Mintel: So in 2016, going on 10 years now, in October, it'll be 10 years, I started at Eric Mantel Investigates and originally started doing you know stories here in Bucks County, you know ah talking about a lot of the stories, a lot of the things people are passing by every day that they don't realize how much great history that they're passing by every day.
Lee Hatfield: discussion
Eric Mintel: and the paranormal story so we started doing stories and videos and uh it's just morphed into a huge show now we're doing and we're all over the country um you know just telling ah about ghost stories do an investigation of a big foot in the new jersey pine barrens uh elkhorn the big the beast of bray road in elkhorn wisconsin so tons of stories and we've only hit the tip of the iceberg
Lee Hatfield: and
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, i I do actually know, i won't say that I know Pennsylvania well, but I know it a little bit because I've got friends that live a near a place called Moscow.
Eric Mintel: Oh, yeah.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, so I've got friends that live there. And a few years ago, I went to a paranormal convention in ah New Jersey and then stopped in Moscow on the way back just just to see them.
Eric Mintel: Oh, cool.
Lee Hatfield: So I kind of know rough the rough area. But if you said, where's Bucks County? I'll go, i've I've really got no idea. Oh, cool.
Eric Mintel: If you go, well as a matter of fact, in Moscow, I'm gonna be speaking at a library in in Moscow in October ah at the North Pocono Library.
Lee Hatfield: oal
Eric Mintel: And in that area, my my show has now just partnered with Pocono Television. So now we're basically on every single night of the week, seven o'clock. You could see it there in Canada.
Eric Mintel: i I'll send you the app and it's a free it's a free app.
Lee Hatfield: Please do.
Eric Mintel: You could look at it on your phone, your TV, whatever. um But these guys have been really, really phenomenal with us. So, yeah, we're there on every night at 7 o'clock. And new episodes, it's at 8 o'clock on Saturday nights. But if you go from Moscow, where ah where your friends are, go about, I would say, two hours south, ah south the southeast, and you'll hit Bucks County.
Eric Mintel: yeah
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. So just keep going down. I'll be fine.
Eric Mintel: Just keep going down. Yeah.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. So I'm going to dig straight in. And one of the reasons why I wanted to get you on the show was I always like to get a variety of guests that speak about different things.
Lee Hatfield: And I was watching one of Tommy's podcasts that you're on, and and you spoke about the Beast of Bray Road.
Eric Mintel: Yes.
Eric Mintel: Oh yeah.
Lee Hatfield: So if we can dig into that one first, and then we can speak about a lot of your episodes and stuff like that.
Eric Mintel: Absolutely. Yeah. um I'll just start off by going, you know, basically I had heard about this, this cryptid and for your listeners that may not know what it is, the beast of Bray Road is supposed to be a six to seven foot tall, upright canine dog, man, werewolf type creature that has been seen in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. And this goes back to like the thirties and even probably before that,
Eric Mintel: um but i had heard of this this scripted and i didn't to be honest with you i didn't really put too much into it i thought wait that was a story it's a folklore you know um thinking about the along those lines the more i got into it I was like, wow, you know there's maybe something here. And then how it all worked out was um a really great friend of ours and fan of the show, Ellen Collins, she was really the one that got this whole thing together. And she said, look, you know you guys should do a video on the Beast of Bray Road. She lives in Elkhorn in in Wisconsin.
Eric Mintel: And um I said, you know, I would love to do that, but I don't know how to get out there or how we would do it. Who's going to pay for it? I got to edit it and all this. Anyway, Ellen so paid the freight for everything for us to edit it, ah to go out there.
Lee Hatfield: Oh.
Eric Mintel: She paid our flight out there and to do this in great investigation. So once we got that together, um i had met with Lee Hample. ah who is the farmer, the hay farmer, um that it was the the farm investigation that we were on that night where Lee's been getting a lot of all this all this activity on the farm.
Eric Mintel: Um, he, Lee was a math teacher in, in, uh, in Wakanda, Illinois for like 35 years. And all he wanted to do is be a hay farmer when he retired.
Eric Mintel: So, uh, so that's what he did. And, um, one night, I think this was in 2020, I was watching a show called paranormal declassified and had been thinking about, you know, we were talking about the beast of Bray road.
Eric Mintel: Well, all of a sudden they're doing a segment on the beast of Bray road on Lee's property. And for whatever reason, I just reached out. I saw Lee on that program and I said to myself, man, he looks like he'd be really approachable to talk to.
Lee Hatfield: Wow.
Eric Mintel: And that night after the show, i i contacted Lee from his website. He picked up the phone right away and was like, we were on the phone for two hours talking about all of his research, all of these things had been happening on the farm.
Lee Hatfield: wow
Eric Mintel: And I had eventually, then once we figured out that we were gonna be in Elkhorn, I said, Lee, would we be able to do an episode out there and investigate on the farm? And he's like, absolutely, no problem.
Eric Mintel: So anyway, this was all this all happened in October of 2021. To make a long story short, we we got out there on the night of, let's see, the October 2nd, and we met with Lee, went to the farm, and i mean, I'll tell you, Lee, another Lee, we basically had, so he showed us so much information.
Lee Hatfield: Thank you.
Eric Mintel: Our minds were blown. I mean, pictures of this thing, um a weird mist, these weird videos of UFOs going through the trees, um strange orbs, ah very like crazy hair samples under the microscope that are like they were translucent hair samples.
Lee Hatfield: agreed on
Lee Hatfield: <unk>
Lee Hatfield: told
Eric Mintel: So just we were completely just blown away by all of this stuff. And we had been in the barn ah at Lee's property. And basically we're doing like, you know, we wanted to do this investigation.
Eric Mintel: And so the the day before, we were going through all the were going through the field, going through all of his information, and we were getting stopped by people left and right because they knew we were out there to do an investigation telling us their stories of seeing this thing.
Eric Mintel: But Lee, I gotta tell you, man, when I went out there, I thought the whole time that we were not gonna see anything. I thought, I was totally skeptical about the whole thing. I was like, you know what? We're not gonna see anything. We're gonna have a great documentary. We're gonna talk to some great people.
Eric Mintel: Never thinking once that we'd ever actually run into this thing, and we did the next night. And it blew me away, and it was like, changed my whole perspective on everything.
Eric Mintel: Um, so much that we had so much activity out there on that weekend. It was incredible. The day before this whole thing, we did a little reconnaissance in the field and Ellen's son, Scott, he was our cameraman that day and and night.
Lee Hatfield: Thank you.
Eric Mintel: Um, he brought a drone. He builds these really fast drones and really like racing drones. So he brought some drones out and did some drone footage. And when we were in the field with Lee going over to this area called the bait area,
Eric Mintel: We Scott had the drone on us as we were going over the field. As we were in this part of the field over by that area, we completely disappeared off of his screen because he wears virtual reality glasses, right?
Eric Mintel: To see what's going on.
Lee Hatfield: Oh yeah. yeah
Eric Mintel: Well, digitally, we disappeared in that area. ah He took the glasses off. We were still there, but digitally, we were not there. And it was the weirdest thing. so He so and he had to reorient himself.
Eric Mintel: So that was one of the first electronic disturbances that we had there um that happened. um Then that night we were we were in Lee's barn and I said, Lee, can we do an investigation in the field? ah And he said, absolutely. Just be careful. And if you could picture this, it's a huge 35 acre hay farm.
Eric Mintel: So it's a big rectangle. So you've got corn on one side, corn up here, and there's corn on the other side. And that one side on the right hand side was the bait area where we were that night where he's been getting all this activity.
Eric Mintel: um So we had to take four wheelers out. It's because it's about a half a mile trek to get out there. So we went out there, took four wheelers out there. And the minute it was me, Dominic, Ellen, and Ellen's son, Scott.
Lee Hatfield: you.
Eric Mintel: Dominic Sattel, he's my partner, spirit medium in this in this venture. I've known Dominic since high school. And even in high school, never knew he was a spirit medium. he'd spirit you know we We practiced martial arts, did sports, all kinds of stuff, worked on cars and everything.
Eric Mintel: Never knew once he was a medium until he came into the team. and Because you never said that in the 80s, right? It was like a big taboo, right?
Lee Hatfield: Exactly. yeah
Eric Mintel: So um in 2017, he came into the into my life again through a mutual friend because he got married and 29 years went by. And um so he ah he came and into the team and said, hey, I might be able to work with you on your investigations because I'm a spirit medium. I'm like, what?
Eric Mintel: so So it was it was wild. And having him on the on the on the investigations has been incredible because he he goes right to those hot spots. But, you know, invent, ah you know, investigating cryptids was completely out of his wheelhouse. Right. Well, we went out there anyway.
Eric Mintel: And I'll tell you, he was he was just, as we say, just blown away as well, because he gets off of the the minute we get off of the four wheelers. When we got out to the bait area, he looks up and goes what is that?
Eric Mintel: And here over the field, as soon as we got out there, there was a solid orb of light like a UFO, solid orb of light going over the field. And it was silent. It was only about a thousand feet up, if that.
Eric Mintel: And it was going toward these other planes and completely silent. And we're sitting there and this is all on video. We got this whole thing on video from our our video called The Beast of Brave Road Alive and Well.
Eric Mintel: So we're looking at this thing, trying to figure out what it is. And then all of a sudden it does a 45 degree angle and totally disappears. And that was the first thing. And then the second thing was unbelievable. the the So as soon as we saw the UFO, we start hearing these weird howls in the distance.
Eric Mintel: They're like one 200 yards away, very faint. Another one, 150 yards, getting closer The third howl that we heard and everybody that I've had listened to this and people could listen to this and make their own judgment.
Eric Mintel: It's not a fox. It's not an a dog. It's not a wolf, screech owl, anything like that. To me and everybody that I've had listened to this, it's ah like hunters, people that are in the outdoors all the time.
Eric Mintel: They couldn't even identify it. They said, and what I thought it sounded like was a man screaming this guttural scream. And that's what we heard. It just it was monotone. It didn't pitch.
Eric Mintel: It was just one straight howl, deep resonating howl. Well, right there, when we heard that, that was i was like you know we were like, oh you know it was it was that moment it was that moment where we're
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: exactly And but we didn't do that. The thing is, i was more like, what are we hearing? What is this thing? You know, I mean, the fear factor was there. You know, I had been years ago, I was attacked by two Dobermans and I know what that's that was like. It was like that PTS feeling, you know, PTSD feeling.
Eric Mintel: And that's what it was for the second. But then I was like, what are we hearing? What is this? And as soon as it was there, it made the sound, it was stopped and it was completely silent.
Eric Mintel: But um right after that, we had this crazy, also this crazy mist that came up from the field that we were in. And this is another anomaly that Lee is getting from this creature. It's it's weird.
Eric Mintel: So that, and and mixed with like when we've got the crazy mist, all of a sudden our audio started messing started getting crazy. and And then, so that was that was incredible. And the other thing was, the the thing that got us out of there was Dominic said, look, shine the light over to where we heard the howls.
Eric Mintel: So Scott shines the light over to the other side where where the howl was coming from. And sure enough, you know this thing's supposed to be six to seven feet tall. We see eye shine in the corn because the corn was still up.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: It was hiding in the corn and it's going like this. You could see the eyes going back and forth like that. And that was it. I said, OK, we're out here. We're out of here. Because I was like, yeah, first of all, the safety, I didn't know what this thing was going to do, you know, and then the safety of the team was really important. And, you know, Lee wanted to give me a flare gun before I, you know, before we went out there and I didn't take it. And I wish I would have taken it because we could lit the whole field up to see what it was, you know.
Eric Mintel: um
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: But. It was a crazy night. All of us were like, and and all of this happened within like a half hour. It was like, no sooner did we get out there, all of this stuff happened.
Lee Hatfield: Wow.
Eric Mintel: It was crazy.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. It's, I hate people like you that have these experiences because yeah, when I lived in England, I was in a small town and you could drive 10 minutes and you're the countryside.
Lee Hatfield: But I wasn't as interested in that kind of stuff as what I am now. Now I live in a city of one million. You can drive 20 minutes and you're in the forest and Greenland.
Eric Mintel: yeah Wow. Wow.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. But we don't kind of have those kind of experiences here. yeah America seems to be the place that yeah you get Mothman, you get Dogman, you get Bigfoot, you get the Beast of Bray Road.
Lee Hatfield: And there seems to be multiple ah sightings on a regular basis. Whereas when you're in in a city... Yeah. And you work nine to five.
Lee Hatfield: It's very difficult to get out all the time because lives are so busy nowadays for you to actually encounter that kind of thing.
Eric Mintel: you
Eric Mintel: Sure.
Lee Hatfield: So yeah, I am envious and I'm going to cut the call, cut the recording now because don't want to speak to you anymore.
Eric Mintel: Bam. Bam.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, know that's it. That's it. Yeah. You peed me off. That's it. End of the podcast.
Eric Mintel: But you know what? You're right, though, because it's like, i mean, obviously, you know, people have to make a living and you have to do this.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: But um the way we do it is we and believe it or not, there there is i go into a lot of these investigations open minded and on the skeptical side.
Eric Mintel: Right. So I think with that mindset going into it, not expecting to have anything happen. ah That's when things happen. But here's the other thing, Lee, when we bring Dominic on these investigations, something within 20 minutes happens, whether it's orbs, whether it's disembodied voices, shadows.
Lee Hatfield: yeah
Eric Mintel: I think sometimes he brings this in with his energy, brings all these crazy things in. um It happened to us. That was why i think what happened to us in Elkhorn. It happened to us a couple of times at ah a local vampire museum that we have down the street here that ah has got a lot of haunted objects in it, which Dominic will not go back into now because he was what something was trying to attach itself to him.
Eric Mintel: And, um, you know, so, so stuff like that, I try to look at everything, you know, in like a good positive light, if that makes any sense, like as far as like a protective kind of a thing.
Eric Mintel: Um, I don't really go down the dark energy route that those kinds of areas. I try not to go there. Um, but when we were in the vampire museum, we did and, and had some crazy stuff happen, but yeah.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. Yeah. And that it's interesting because, know, SIPA, who I am or who we are,
Lee Hatfield: we If we go an investigation, even if it's one of these pay-to-play places, we always sort of try to do the basics first of, yeah, we we go around and get the baseline observations so that if anything does spike, we can refer to it and, yeah, see if it's if it's natural occurring or if something else is occurring.
Eric Mintel: Mm.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. But it's also really interesting. And yeah I've been to two locations where I personally believe that I've been touched. One was a stroke down the face and one was ah a holding of the hand. Now, in a lot of these kinds of things, and other people will say the same, it's a personal experience.
Lee Hatfield: Nobody can take it away from you because nobody else experienced it.
Eric Mintel: That's
Lee Hatfield: And I also agree with what you said about we go in with ah with an open mind. yet Anybody that's an investigator has to have a certain amount of skepticism.
Lee Hatfield: Otherwise, every creak, every groan would be a ghost, would be a spirit, and it's not.
Eric Mintel: right. Yep. Right. You're right. You're absolutely right. And you know what? you And you know this as well as I, too. When you see something on a video. Right. And you could see it. You could say, oh, that's now that's nothing. But when you get on site and you see what happened in that particular location, then it's like, oh, well, it maybe it can't be anything but that.
Eric Mintel: And that happened that happened to us at a place called the Hanoverville Roadhouse in um in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: It's another maybe about an hour from here. And the owner was upstairs in his in his office doing ah paperwork at midnight Everybody was gone. Everybody who' was out of there.
Eric Mintel: And all of a sudden, he he heard a huge bang downstairs in in the downstairs dining room. He goes down to check it out, doesn't see anything out of the ordinary. But in the back, it goes up to do his work again.
Eric Mintel: But in the back of his mind, it's like, I'm gonna i'm going to reverse the ah rewind the security footage and see what that was, if there was anything on there. And sure enough, you see a chair pop out from the table.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: It just kind of rips out from the table. And there's a wall there. And you could see this chair. And then an orb goes over by the table. And you see a sugar packet container then get thrown on the floor.
Eric Mintel: And now I looked at that. And I said, OK, well, there's got to be somebody behind the wall kicking the chair out, right? But then it completely changed when we got to the seat when we got on site and we went to that area.
Eric Mintel: And you could see right there, there's no way anybody could be behind that because there was a wall, a lower wall that went that jutted out. and you couldn't And I stood there and you couldn't stand there and not be on the security footage camera. So right there, it it we debunked that it could have been faked. It was completely something that that happened there.
Eric Mintel: So that stuff is fascinating to me, you know, and getting stuff, you know, a lot of times, you know, when I'm doing a lot of editing and things like that, that's when we'll see we'll and we'll hear some of the ah activity.
Eric Mintel: ah Sometimes we won't hear it in real time. You know, we may not get anything one night. You know, we may not get anything at all um or very light stuff. And then other times it's off the charts. So it depends. I think you're right. It depends on the location. It depends on are you tuning into it is everybody collectively like looking for something or are they kind of like just kind of like in their own lane and all of a sudden having this collective experience you know it's amazing
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, and that's one thing that I ah find really interesting and amusing. People that don't know what we do, yeah they may know that we're investigators, but they don't know what it entails. They don't realize that yeah if you've got eight static cameras and you're investigating for eight hours, that's eight hours per camera that you have to go through in real time.
Eric Mintel: Oh, yeah.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. And it's like they yeah like, there's not that many hours in the day. unfair Yeah.
Eric Mintel: that's why That's why I keep our shoots to four hours.
Lee Hatfield: And
Eric Mintel: Okay.
Lee Hatfield: for someone like yourself that yeah has got it a full YouTube channel, like it must be absolutely crazy. And like where do you find the time to do the mundane stuff?
Eric Mintel: I do.
Lee Hatfield: Because you're
Eric Mintel: And that's my job. That's my job. I mean, that's, that's what I'm doing. I mean, I spend hours and hours editing, editing, editing all day. On top of it, booking presentations and talks and things like that.
Eric Mintel: ah you know So it's it's constant work. It's a constant workflow. um you know And so it's it's a lot of work. you know And I appreciate you ah you know recognizing that because a lot of people don't realize how much work goes into these things.
Eric Mintel: And you know I'm constantly hammering people on Facebook and all the social medias that check out our YouTube channel because there's some stuff there that's just mind blowing.
Lee Hatfield: 100%. That's it.
Eric Mintel: you know And and it's and we also add a little bit of humor into the show. I'm sure you've seen that before, too. You know, we we don't take ourselves too seriously. We're serious when it comes to the investigation.
Eric Mintel: But we ah we joke we like to joke around a little bit, break it up a little bit because I think humor is a really good thing sometimes to disarm people as far as that goes, you know, um because we're having a good time. But at the same time, you know, we're capturing some incredible footage, which is just mind blowing.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, and yeah you you have ah your partner in crime, Dominic, and a couple of weeks ago, we we always liked to do some sort of experiment at some of our investigations, and a few weeks ago we did one, and my colleague, who's the oos the tech head, he he has all the cameras, he said, I want to film somebody scrying.
Lee Hatfield: So went, OK, so yeah I got the mirror in front of me. I had two cameras behind me. One of the cameras switched itself off, typically.
Eric Mintel: Huh. Huh.
Lee Hatfield: But then I'm talking to a medium, a friend of mine, like about a week ago. And she's like, I've got a question for you. Have you have you done any scrying recently?
Lee Hatfield: And I'm like, what? and she And she's the one that actually she draws things and she went, yeah, i yeah ah I've got a picture of you looking into a mirror. And like, it's that kind of thing. There's that one off comment that blows my mind.
Eric Mintel: absolutely.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. a a deep
Eric Mintel: Amazing. Amazing.
Lee Hatfield: And do you find that Dominic does that to you as well?
Eric Mintel: Oh, yeah. he I mean, i see when I when I go and investigate these places, when I meet with the owners or whoever's their restaurant, bed and breakfast, anything like that. I mean, I'll keep all of that, all the paranormal stuff to myself.
Eric Mintel: I never taint what he's going to go into. um And then it blows me away when he goes like when he gets into the location, doesn't even know where we're going, get to the location.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: And like within 20 minutes is going to those hotspots. And he's getting like 95 percent of what happened there. And then also tuning in on stuff that people weren't aware of, you know, and and then putting all these other puzzle pieces together.
Eric Mintel: So it's it it does blow me away that way, you know. and And it also blows away the people that we work with, too, that are are the owners or the, you know, the one producer of ah PTN comes on the investigations with us.
Eric Mintel: And he's constantly blown away by what Dominic is tuning in on because other people have said that prior to him saying that.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: of
Lee Hatfield: That's it. Yeah.
Eric Mintel: We were at a location, he was he was looking he was thinking of ah a man at a top hat down this one hallway. And that's what everybody in this hotel has seen down this hallway.
Eric Mintel: And he didn't even know anything about that. So it was it was cool. Those kind of things are really cool. And to capture that on video is really great too.
Lee Hatfield: yeah
Eric Mintel: um you know And you said about eight hours and eight hours and eight hours. I mean, there's a lot of footage to go through. um That's why we kind of try to keep it small because there is a lot of footage. I had this conversation with somebody today. They said, you know will we get any activity at like you know between five and 10 o'clock at night?
Eric Mintel: I said, you're goingnna get active if and of a place is active, it's going to be active any time of the day or night. It doesn't have to be midnight. It doesn't have to be 2 a.m.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: You know, it's going to be active. um And it's it's sure. I mean, we so many times we've had that stuff happen. I mean, even in the middle of the daytime. It's it's crazy.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. And it's funny how people always seem to think that hauntings only happen at night, only happened in the dark.
Eric Mintel: Yeah. Yeah, right. Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. Yeah. So what was your very first location for Eric Mental Investigates?
Eric Mintel: The first location we did was actually um over in New Hope, Pennsylvania. It was a um a bed and breakfast called the Wedgewood Inn. And it was really cool because it blew me away because they had been there for years. I mean, they've been there. Carl and Nadine have been there for years.
Eric Mintel: And um they basically, ah there's ties to the Underground Railroad. um The beautiful thing about this place is they bought the house, I think in 1982. In I think maybe 17 years later, ah the owner went outside and he's like, why is my, he wanted to put ah an an addition on. And he was like, why is my foundation crumbling in here?
Eric Mintel: and on the on the ground. So he put a light down there. Here, there was a 17-foot tunnel under the house.
Lee Hatfield: Wow.
Eric Mintel: Also, they found a secret staircase in the house going down to the tunnel and ah with an escape hatch to go out where the freed slaves would go north. So they go to Canada.
Eric Mintel: um
Lee Hatfield: Yay.
Eric Mintel: And, you know, so it was amazing. So that was one of the things. And what blew me away was they were walking over that thing for 17 years and didn't even know it was there. It was just mind blowing.
Lee Hatfield: That's crazy.
Eric Mintel: So that was one of our first ones. And that was kind of like what, you know, we first started doing these videos. that They were a little bit more tongue in cheek than they were now. than they are now. um but But we were getting some really cool stuff. um And then right after that, we started getting into like ah more of the ghost cryptids.
Eric Mintel: And then really, I think things switched when we started doing like the Beast of Bray Road. and um And a week after we came back from the Beast of Bray Road, ah we did an investigation of Bigfoot in the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
Eric Mintel: And this was crazy. I mean, you'd think we'd had enough with the Beast Bray Road, but we go a ah week later. i don't know if you're familiar with the Pine Barrens here in Pennsylvania or in New Jersey.
Eric Mintel: um But it's millions and of acres of dense forest, just dense, dense forest.
Lee Hatfield: Not very.
Eric Mintel: So ah we were in an area called the Wharton State Forest and we're in an area called the Bowl. And it's just what it sounds like. It's high on either sides and low in the middle.
Eric Mintel: And we were there because ah two Bigfoot researcher friends of mine, Eric Spinner and Art Mack, they were getting all these Bigfoot reports of people that seeing this five to six foot tall, hairy creature going into their property, getting the garbage out of their garbage and bringing it back out into the woods.
Eric Mintel: And I mean, not one, but tons of people saying this, getting pictures, getting tracks, all kinds of weird stuff. So we decided to go down and it was in this area in the Wharton State Forest in this area that they were getting activity.
Eric Mintel: So we decided to go down there. And i mean, we're in the middle of nowhere. I mean, Lee, it was unbelievable. We were basically in the middle of nowhere, five miles into the Pine Barrens. We used only night vision, you know, to see anything.
Eric Mintel: And we did a thing in that video where we shut the light, all the lights off. And that's basically we were seeing nothing. You couldn't even see your hand front your face.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: It was that dark. But we're sitting there. We set up. We went about five miles in ah by the truck and we got out of the truck, went about 600 yards in and set up a base camp in this area called the bowl.
Eric Mintel: And as we're sitting there talking about these guys research and things like that, All of a sudden, and I always had to laugh because I would always see these Bigfoot shows and these guys would be whooping and hollering for Bigfoot, right?
Eric Mintel: And well, I'll be damned. and That's what we heard. And everybody heard it. And it was this whoop coming from the woods. So and because Dominic and Art were sitting there talking and we all heard it.
Lee Hatfield: Here's a break. Yeah.
Eric Mintel: So then we yeah Eric Spinner had high powered microphones and he he was able to pick up this this whoop. But the crazy part was Eric's wife, Heather, goes and answers it back and they're having a conversation back and forth. It was the spookiest thing I've ever heard in my life. And it's all and we got it all on video.
Eric Mintel: And it was just, it was crazy. I was like, and that again, changed my whole perspective on what's out there. You know, because there was no one there. We were in a cedar swamp and there's no houses there or nothing.
Eric Mintel: So it was very, very strange. And ah and that the the following year, we did a follow up. I know we did a follow up in 2023. That was 2021. um And we got even more activity.
Eric Mintel: It was crazy.
Lee Hatfield: Wow.
Eric Mintel: um You know, Lee, going back to the ah to the Beast of Bray Road.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: We did a follow-up investigation six months later. Again, thank you, Ellen Collins, for for doing this. um We went back six months later in April of 2022. We didn't encounter at that time.
Eric Mintel: But what we did encounter was ah we had a ah town hall meeting and we had 140 people showed up to tell their story about seeing this creature.
Lee Hatfield: Wow.
Eric Mintel: And I'll tell you what, man, there's something there. They said, when everybody said when it's um when it's on two legs, it looks like it's gliding. But when it's on all fours, it's really fast. So these people are seeing this stuff. I mean, these are these are people and, you know, I'm pretty good at discerning the truth from the BS when I'm interviewing witnesses and they're having like so chills and they're getting a hard time getting this out and they're actually getting emotional talking about it. You know, something really profound happened to them.
Eric Mintel: You know, I'm sure you've experienced that as well.
Lee Hatfield: That's, yeah. Oh, 100%. And one thing I like what you've just said is that when these people try to communicate with Bigfoot or whichever cryptid they're going in for and they make those calls, if that animal or that creature come barreling out of the woods, what are they going to do then?
Eric Mintel: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: I know.
Lee Hatfield: sort of like...
Eric Mintel: That's what we thought. we thought with the be That's what I got also. was like with Even with the Beast of Bray Road, what were what would we do if that thing came out at us?
Lee Hatfield: yeah Yeah.
Eric Mintel: It's the same thing. and
Lee Hatfield: Wow.
Eric Mintel: But we kept hearing. That was the other thing, man. We were blissfully unaware of how dangerous of a situation we were in. And I mean, Lee, I didn't listen to those howls on headphones.
Eric Mintel: And I don't know why I didn't do this. when When we first, I never listened to them on headphones. I just, those howls were so loud. The little lavalier microphones that we had for close micing, that's how loud it was. That's, it picked it up. That's how loud it was on site.
Eric Mintel: Um, but only a few months ago, i I listened to those finally in headphones and I couldn't believe it. On the second howl, there was actually a growl that happens behind us, like ah like that behind us.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: And we were really in a bad situation. And whether this thing was like, uh, afraid of us as we were afraid of it. you know um Thank God it didn't do anything, but it was it was a crazy night.
Eric Mintel: And the same thing with Bigfoot, the Pimares. We kept hearing all this rustling sounds going on and seeing these red pinpoints of light all night, like eye shine in in the Pimares.
Lee Hatfield: yeah
Eric Mintel: So very, very strange. These weird lights coming from the top of the trees down to the ground. Very, very strange.
Lee Hatfield: yeah because Yeah, because just hope that those whoops that you hear are not a mating call because yeah cause you're going to be totally screwed, literally.
Eric Mintel: No.
Eric Mintel: Literally, yes, yes, literally.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: ah
Lee Hatfield: So staying on the subject cryptids, there's a lot of talk that – Crypt is like the Bigfoot, the dogman, that have kind of like a ah paranormal existence. And yeah, that they are are more supernatural creatures rather than, you know, like blood and bone kind of thing. So what's your theory on that?
Eric Mintel: I think, you know, it's it's a good question because I think, first of all, I think it's an undiscovered, it's there and it's just an undiscovered species right now. ah Could it be interdimensional? Yes, I i totally believe that.
Eric Mintel: I know that sounds so out there to say that, but I think somehow, because it's like, it's crazy that it's there and then it's gone. You know, it could be seen.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: Same thing with Bigfoot, Dogman, whatever it is, it's there and then it's gone. It's, almost like liken it to deer, you know, like deer, they're there and they blend in so much with the environment.
Eric Mintel: You can hardly see that it's there. You know, we had a couple of deer across the street from my house and our dogs are barking. like, what are they barking at? And I'm looking, I had a strain to see these deer and they blended in so well. So it could be the same thing with Bigfoot. Maybe it's there and it's blended in so well to the environment that people think you could literally pass right by it and not know that it's there.
Eric Mintel: But the other thing is, though, I think there there is a ah like a portal type element to this thing that somehow these things are coming in interdimensionally somehow, some way. um And, you know, with the Patterson-Ginland footage, you know, from 1967,
Eric Mintel: of bigfoot in california i just think those guys were there at the right time the right place at the right time and to get that footage because that was amazing and it was definitely not a guy in a suit uh nobody had that kind of technology back then
Lee Hatfield: That's it. And one thing that I like about yeah the Patterson Gimlin, like you said, 1967, we didn't have the technology, we didn't have the costumes.
Lee Hatfield: And the only costume that you could kind of relate to was Charles Heston, Planet of the Apes.
Eric Mintel: Right, exactly. Well, they even did they even did an experiment with that. um In one of the scenes, if you look at, I think it's Conquest, or no, it's Escape from the Planet of the Apes, or ah no, Beneath the Planet the Apes.
Eric Mintel: They're in like a sauna area, and it looks like they're just wearing a rug. There's no muscle delineation or anything like that.
Lee Hatfield: yeah
Eric Mintel: And that Patterson-Gimlin film is like, you could see the muscles in the legs. You could see the calf muscles. You could see the butt muscles. And it's obviously a female. You know, for years, everybody thought it was male.
Eric Mintel: It's obviously got breasts. So as a female, obviously, that's why they name it Patty.
Lee Hatfield: yeah yeah and one of the there was a show a few weeks ago that i watched
Eric Mintel: But I mean, unbelievable.
Lee Hatfield: And even though the original movie, clip whatever you want to call it, has gone missing, with the technology nowadays, they were able to enhance it better than the original.
Eric Mintel: Yes.
Lee Hatfield: And that's where they noticed, like yeah muscle tone and breast tone and yeah and all that kind of stuff.
Eric Mintel: Yeah.
Lee Hatfield: So for people to say that's a man in a suit, it's like, okay, okay, fine.
Eric Mintel: And then again, to go up on that site, again, seeing something like that and then being there on site, how could somebody even get into that environment, first of all? it's that It was a crazy environment.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: um And then it that thing disappeared, too. That was the other thing. Yes, they ran out of film, but it also disappeared. and And I know Bob Gimlin is still alive and still talking about it you know and hasn't wavered from the story.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Lee Hatfield: And it's really funny from my point of view. When I first started doing the podcast and stuff, I was kind of a diehard ghosts and spirits guy.
Lee Hatfield: But I wanted to cover as many different subjects as I could.
Eric Mintel: Yeah.
Lee Hatfield: And now I'm even wearing a Bigfoot T-shirt. and start So, yeah.
Eric Mintel: Perfect.
Lee Hatfield: And i some of the books down here I've got of cryptids and I've got of UFOs and because you can't just talk about one subject and keep it at that subject because the paranormal has got so many subcategories that
Eric Mintel: Big time. Big time.
Lee Hatfield: And yeah, and it opens everything up and yeah, and like tonight I'm talking to you.
Eric Mintel: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. it's ah And probably your best show ever.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: There you
Lee Hatfield: Oh, absolutely. I've got two famous people for the price of one. In fact, I've got, I've got fork, I've got ET, I've got Brandon Ralph and you, yeah.
Eric Mintel: there you go what
Lee Hatfield: So, How so out of all the mental investigates, you've probably been asked this so many times, but hey, it's my show, so I'm allowed to ask it.
Lee Hatfield: Do you have any favorites that stand out for whatever reason?
Eric Mintel: Oh, by, i mean, 10 out of 10, the Beast of Bray Road. That was the, that's the one. I mean, that was the one because of all the activity and all of the the crazy stuff that we experienced and captured on video. um And number two would be ah the Bigfoot the Pine Barrens the following week.
Eric Mintel: and And just recently, number three would be ah in the in the ghost situation, a place we investigated called the Harry Packer Mansion in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, which was the inspiration for Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion.
Eric Mintel: and And we got a lot of really crazy activity that night and captured a lot of stuff on video. um So yeah, but the Beast of Bray Road, number one.
Lee Hatfield: Okay. let's kind of flip the coin a little bit and go on to some of the the ghosty, spirited ones. And I know you say that you've been around the country. We've only been into the US investigating once, and it's a place in small place called Casanovia in New York State.
Eric Mintel: OK.
Lee Hatfield: and it's called the Braylock Inn.
Eric Mintel: Okay.
Lee Hatfield: And, like, absolutely oldie-worldie hotel. And second well the the first day were there, this cabinet door creaked open. Of course, the cameras weren't rolling.
Lee Hatfield: And we spent 40 minutes trying to debunk it, and we couldn't. ah Then we had some unexplained orbs. I'm not a fan of orbs by any way, shape, or form. But this was extremely weird and we could not explain it.
Lee Hatfield: And then there's this's two of the most haunted rooms and we were we had we'd booked both of them. I'm in a four-poster bed on the second night. We just called it a night.
Lee Hatfield: And all the old blankets, they kind of settle one year when you're in those kind of...
Eric Mintel: Hmm.
Lee Hatfield: And I felt the blankets settle, didn't think anything of it. And then I felt a really heavy sensation on the bed. And I thought the other other guys had come in and I hadn't heard him.
Eric Mintel: Hmm.
Lee Hatfield: Opened my eyes and I've been in bed literally two minutes and I saw this white apparition go past.
Eric Mintel: o
Lee Hatfield: And it's like, that is... Okay, I've only been to one, but that's my number one place in in the US right now.
Eric Mintel: i would I would have been out of there, man. That's crazy. That's wild. No, I hear you. And i you know and i I can appreciate what you say about orbs, too. um Because sometimes orbs could be just dust or it could be bugs.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. Yeah.
Eric Mintel: But we just had an orb on this recent investigation, which was just mind blowing. It literally had intelligence because it came up to the camera from the side. It came up this way up to the camera and then went off that way. If it's a piece of dust, it's, you know, obviously you're going to see that. This was a translucent thing. It just literally like this and then boom that way. So we tend to do a lot of that way, you know, and I and i even say it in my ah in my videos that sometimes they could be dust. But some of these translucent orbs could be residual energies, something like that. um
Eric Mintel: But most of the time, though, we were catching we were chasing shadows around the other night. I mean, it's just, you know, it's insane. So each investigation is like you're always starting over, right? And it's always new. And it's always like, you know, you're in a new environment.
Eric Mintel: And what are we going to catch tonight? Because going in, like I said, going into it with an open mind and not expecting anything, that's when the magic happens, actually.
Lee Hatfield: That's it. And you can go to the most reported haunted location in the world and get absolutely diddly.
Eric Mintel: Totally, totally. we um We did an investigation, actually in Canada, um in Winnipeg, as a matter of fact, ah Farpoint Films came down and we just shot some documentary with us from their show called Ghosts Off Grid.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: And I think we're going to be on in December. I think that episode is going to be on in December. um But we were at this vampire museum that we were at but previously in Doylestown. And that particular night, we were with the other two, the main investigators on the TV show, and we were the guest investigators, and we were all in the doll room. And again, the doll room that's there is the creepiest room.
Eric Mintel: We got this voice that said, i am here. And it was the weirdest thing. he's got He had an ovelisk, I think, um with him. And I'm not a big fan of all the gadgets, to be honest with you, like the spirit boxes and things like that.
Eric Mintel: I really rely on Dominic and maybe a magnetometer and maybe an EVP every once in a while. um But these guys got something there. And the reason why it was interesting to me is because that's what other people have said they've heard when they've been in that room. And so for us to hear that, it was amazing. And we heard it on the, it was right there and asking questions. And I think we caught it all on video. I think the guys did. I haven't heard it yet, but it's there.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, and it it's funny you mentioned Winnipeg, because like I say, we have a Comic Con there. And one of the biggest hotels is Fort Garry, and that's got reputation for for being haunted.
Eric Mintel: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: Wow.
Lee Hatfield: And some of that some of our guests are guests that have turned up have actually said, oh, it's sort of like I had a really bad sleep.
Eric Mintel: ah
Lee Hatfield: I could hear noises and stuff like that. know you do know it's haunted. Don't be silly. No, no. I'm being serious, being serious.
Eric Mintel: well
Lee Hatfield: son We've mentioned your favourite. What would you say would be the location that you'd be reluctant to go back to that you've investigated?
Eric Mintel: Um, you know, there's really no, no reluctance, uh, to go back and investigate probably not on, not on my part, but probably on Dominic's part would be reluctant to go back and investigate the Vampa museum.
Eric Mintel: Um, because of just because of what happened to him.
Lee Hatfield: Wow.
Eric Mintel: um but he'd want to go in with a little bit more protection, you know, going in there. um And we did as well that night. But ah no, I think every investigation that we've we've had, you know, sometimes we'll get nothing. Maybe we'll get an orb. Maybe we'll get a voice, anything like that. Sometimes there's just nothing there.
Eric Mintel: You know, we did an investigation recently of, believe it or not, a haunted raceway. Yeah. The Pocono Raceway. And i'm I'm still working on that. But that was one that was kind of like, well, there wasn't really a lot of paranormal activity, but there's some great stories, you know.
Eric Mintel: So sometimes the stories outweigh the activity that you that you get.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: And that's something, again, when you're talking to these people and they're their energy you're feeling that energy they're telling the story that happened to them it's amazing and then what you have is a chain effect of people that oh that happened to me too you know and uh i just did a talk last night same thing i was talking about a lot of these things ufos ghosts cryptids and people have had these experiences
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, and it's funny that you mentioned about, yeah, that people always tell you. Because we do the conventions, the the team actually have a booth at the at the conventions as well.
Eric Mintel: okay
Lee Hatfield: And the amount of people that come up to you and go, i want to tell you about the time when. And it's yeah because you're you're out there, it's it's like a ah safe zone that they know that they're not going to get ridiculed when they so when they talk to you.
Eric Mintel: Well, oh, yeah. Oh, cool totally. And I think even more now, you know, you've got the government. I always say in my talks and I always talk to people and say, would we even be talking about this kind of stuff as freely as we are 20 years ago?
Eric Mintel: You know, it's like we're talking about it's open and free and not having that stigma anymore um because, you know, you've got the government saying, hey, folks, the UFOs you're seeing are real. We just don't know what they are.
Eric Mintel: You know, they are. They've made that a fact. So this is a this is a whole new line of communication that's opened up for people that have had these experiences that have been quelched for years. And now they're able to talk about it. And then on top of that, it's letting other people come out with their story. And then you're finding a domino effect of all this, and then people want more, you know, more disclosure.
Eric Mintel: So I think we're in a good environment that way. You know, um, the paranormal is so huge. I don't care where you are in the world. Somebody has had a paranormal experience that they can't explain.
Lee Hatfield: That's it. And yeah even i've I've had people at work. As soon as I find out that I do this, it's like, I'm not a believer, but let me tell you this.
Lee Hatfield: So it's like, okay, so so let's just tell you, you you are now a believer.
Eric Mintel: ah exactly
Eric Mintel: Yeah, exactly.
Lee Hatfield: So if you had to pick... one specific part of the paranormal, whether it be cryptids, ghosts, UFOs or whatever, and you were not allowed to investigate any other the type again, which one would you pick?
Eric Mintel: That's a good question. um Probably UFOs. Only because I've had my own experiences with them, you know, ah more so than ghosts, because I'm more on the skeptical side when it comes to the ghost situation. um Cryptids, yes, I believe I was on the fence with Bigfoot, to be honest with you, for years until we had that experience.
Eric Mintel: um But UFOs, definitely, definitely. um My girlfriend and I had experience 10 years ago in January of 2016, where Right down the road from here is an area called New Hope. And we were, she lived in a farmhouse in Stockton, New Jersey, which was just outside of New Hope.
Eric Mintel: And we had to go over the bridge to get to her place. And it was, and you have to go over the Delaware, you know, we're Washington across the Delaware. We had to cross over the bridge. So as we're going over the bridge and we're going over the water out of the corner of my eye, these five orange orbs just appeared out of nowhere.
Eric Mintel: And when they appeared, it looked like, so like swirling lava coming into the atmosphere. And they were not high. They were only a couple of hundred yards or a couple hundred feet above the bridge. So they were right there.
Eric Mintel: So what do i do initially take my phone out of my, out of my pocket, try to get a picture. What happens? The phone flash goes off in the car. I had to take the flash off. I'm like, ah, but I was able to get one shot.
Eric Mintel: And she's looking at it too. And it looked like, she said it looked like they were doing a search pattern over the river. And then one by one, boom, boom, they just disappeared. Totally silent. These were not drones. They were not flares, anything like that. But I was able to get one picture and you could see it's like a red, like, ah, I don't know, like a glowing orb, ah like a plasma type orb.
Eric Mintel: So that, and we're still wrapping our heads around what it could be.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: it was It was unreal that we were able to get that that night. It was amazing.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. So like say, put put in the the kind of the the skeptical head on a little bit. Yeah. I've served in the emergency services. I've served in the military.
Lee Hatfield: And yeah what some people see with lights in the sky, you know damn well that it's an aircraft that's coming straight towards you. But they tend to be one colour.
Lee Hatfield: yeah You've got your your port wing and your and your starboard wing, and they have a green and a red.
Eric Mintel: Right.
Lee Hatfield: but they're evenly distanced apart, and you and you can pretty much see all three of them and when they're coming towards you. So the fact that people see yeah lights grouped together and yeah all all the different descriptions, you can quickly roll out whether it's like Chinese lanterns or if it's drones and stuff like that, especially by some of the trajectory that some of them fly off in.
Eric Mintel: Right.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, and for people to say, well, yeah we're the only species on one planet, and then you you do one of these, well, yeah a light year would take you this amount of time to travel, yeah a hundred light years would take you, and it's sort of like, how can we be the only species on one little ball in one universe?
Eric Mintel: Yep.
Lee Hatfield: It's it's impossible.
Eric Mintel: Totally. And I totally agree. And the other thing is, too, the ah and they've probably figured out a way to get here. I don't think, here's the thing, ah I don't think that they're coming from vast distances. I think they're already here.
Eric Mintel: I think they're living in the ocean. Because if you look at a gray, don't they look aquatic to you?
Lee Hatfield: I do.
Eric Mintel: They almost look like a fish or something like that.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: So I think it could be some kind of thing. mean And now you're getting a lot of USOs on identified submerged objects.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: The Navy pilots are seeing these things going into the ocean. so and And that was the other thing too. you know You've got Navy pilots coming out and saying that they're seeing these things. So you've got high ranking military people that are like, hey, we're capturing this on video.
Eric Mintel: We can't keep this quiet anymore. you know So that would be my one.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: I would love that. If I he only had that to do, I would be doing that. And actually, and and with this Pocono television, where one of the next videos we're going to do is a UFO video up in this area.
Lee Hatfield: because it's like the Tic Tac video.
Eric Mintel: Exactly.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. Yeah. Qualified pilots that should be responsible and like reliable.
Eric Mintel: And what about the other what about the other one that we just got to the declassified?
Lee Hatfield: What?
Eric Mintel: It was a Tic Tac going over and then a Hellfire missile being shot at it. Did you see that footage?
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, I've not seen that one yet, but I've heard about it.
Eric Mintel: Oh my God, I'll have to send that to you. And here you see a Hellfire missile being shot at this thing. And all of a sudden they think they damaged it, right? But it was totally unfazed. It got knocked about a little bit.
Eric Mintel: And three things they said felt, was like debris. But it was actually three of the same objects, just smaller, that came off the thing and they were going in tandem with it.
Eric Mintel: And it was, oh my God, it was great. And then going all, zigzagging all over the place. and they were able to capture that and so there that's been a huge video that's been going around lately and totally totally unfazed by the by the missile unaffected
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Lee Hatfield: That is crazy.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. And well one thing that I find really funny is that we get obviously commercials for UFO chart yeah TV shows and stuff like that.
Eric Mintel: yeah
Lee Hatfield: And when the guy that was quizzed by the government, when somebody says to him, where's the effect of, yeah do extraterrestrials exist? Well, I can't answer that question.
Lee Hatfield: Dude, du you just answered it by not answering it.
Eric Mintel: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
Lee Hatfield: so yeah don't Don't say i can't answer it because like, okay, so what are you hiding?
Eric Mintel: Hey, what, you know,
Eric Mintel: a what
Lee Hatfield: It's definitely got something to hide.
Eric Mintel: I think and I think people, you know, they're worried about people and all this kind of stuff. But I think, look, we all went through COVID, right? I mean, that was just an insane time and everybody got through that.
Eric Mintel: I think the thing with human beings, we're pretty resilient as far as, you know, having certain information is given to us and having to deal with it, you know? And I think we're the one of the things that we're best at is adapting, right?
Eric Mintel: Overcoming and adapting to these situations. so or adapting and overcoming so that's i think that the thing you know then you got the religious communities that would be the whole other thing that's worried about but i think you know more and more you're going to have a lot more disclosure happening and i can't wait to see the new steven spielberg movie coming out disclosure day that looks really good so yeah interesting
Lee Hatfield: Well, that should be interesting. Yeah. So I'm going to put you on the spot now. We've been speaking about UFOs for a good few minutes. If you was in a position where you thought you'd been abducted, would you tell people about it afterwards?
Eric Mintel: Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. I wouldn't be. Yeah, because it would be something that would be like very traumatic, you know, and some people would not want to say it. You know, trust me, because there's people that, you know, want to keep back that kind of stuff to themselves and who have kept that to themselves for years.
Eric Mintel: Um, but yeah, I would want to know, i think I'd want to know what happened and, and, you know, i would want to get like hypnotized and, and figure out what's going on. Not so much hypnotized, but just like really, I, if I realized something like Betty and Barney Hill, you know, they got abducted and they were having the same nightmare, you know, and they finally said, we got to figure this thing out because how are we having the same dream?
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: And, uh, yeah, so I, I would definitely want to tell people about it.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. i I've interviewed two people that have been abducted, and the first one, just like, just oh, yeah, that was about the time that I got abducted. It's like, what? You can't just drop that into normal conversation.
Lee Hatfield: But I've got to, I'm inviting him back to talk about his abduction. But the second one was Preston Dennett, talking about his abduction.
Eric Mintel: Oh yeah.
Lee Hatfield: And it's, you know, the fact that these people can provide so much detail and so much information, you've either got a really, know, vivid imagination Yeah, you're hallucinating or you were abducted.
Eric Mintel: There's something happening.
Lee Hatfield: It's as simple as that.
Eric Mintel: Something, yeah.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Eric Mintel: There's, you know, the subconscious is a, is a, is a mysterious thing too. You know, um, I never discount people again, you know, their stories and things like that.
Eric Mintel: Um, because, you know, everybody's got a story, right? Everybody's got something personal in their own lives. And, you know, sometimes, you know, the it's hard to say this, but sometimes the paranormal is normal for for people to deal with other traumas that they're having in their lot and their lives, you know, and there's unfortunately a lot of people like that.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: And that's okay. I mean, that's fine. That gives them a safe place to to be and to talk to and to talk to other people. But the abduction phenomena, that's something that I've kind of wanted to get into a little bit more.
Eric Mintel: um You got to tread lightly, right? You have to tread very lightly because that's a very, very personal type thing for people. And there is a couple of psychiatrists and hypnotists that i know that are willing to work with me in situations like that.
Eric Mintel: And if those people would be interested in being, you know, regressed. ah That and be getting all that on video and actually finding out what happened to them, you know. So, yeah, things like that are are a very personal nature. I mean, I've had people come up to me at some of my paranormal conventions that I've had that told me about their abductions. And, you know, and at first you're you're taken aback a little bit, but then, you know, to listen to their story. And, um you know, it's something profound, profoundly affected them.
Lee Hatfield: And that's it. yeah And like you said, you've got to tread extremely careful because it's affected them in such a way your response could flip them over that edge, so to speak.
Eric Mintel: Right, exactly. So yeah, you're you're almost ah you almost have to be a therapist yourself in that in that respect.
Lee Hatfield: And you've got...
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: you know
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: and And being a jazz musician for 32 years, I am a therapist for three other guys.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, but ah I don't think many many therapists like use alcohol to to tonoot to soothe people.
Eric Mintel: Yeah. And thankfully I don't drink or anything like that. So that's a, oh my God. It's like crazy.
Lee Hatfield: i will I will drink your share. i'm quite happy to do that.
Eric Mintel: Cheers, my friend.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah, so we are coming to the end, unfortunately, but ah want to apart from the stories that you've all already mentioned, Can you provide us with one mind blowing situation apart from yeah the ones you've already mentioned?
Eric Mintel: The yeah, the one that we do, I could tell you this um in 2023. Oh, I'll tell you this. so I have i'll I'll talk about this one. I had an encounter with the lady in white.
Eric Mintel: And this was a, i don't know if you've ever heard of this, the lady in white, she's been she's an entity that's looking for something, waiting for someone, protecting someone. um in As a jazz musician in 1997, I was going to a gig in in my area here Bucks County.
Eric Mintel: And it was nighttime on my way to the gig. And I know this road is Pine Lane. And I went down this road, dark road. all woods and I'm going down at a pretty good clip and all of a sudden a deer runs out and I hit it and I felt terrible. I was like, Oh my God, slam on the brakes.
Eric Mintel: And I were sliding like 60 feet together and I get out of the car. I'm looking at this poor deer that's dead. It's in the headlights and I'm i'm feeling terrible. And at now I'm a piano player out of the woods behind me of a woman's voice says, how's your hands?
Lee Hatfield: not to away.
Eric Mintel: And I turn around, I'm like, what? And I turn around and hear this honest God, I kid you not, a lady in white, all these flowing robes comes out of the woods, comes over to this 200 pound deer, grabs it by the ear and drags it off the road like it's light as a feather.
Lee Hatfield: while
Eric Mintel: And then says to me, get in your car and get out of here. And that's what I did. I didn't say anything. I was totally stunned. i was like, I didn't say anything. it was I was like in a trance, you know, it was just crazy.
Eric Mintel: Got in the car, left. I told the guys what happened and they could see the hood of my car was dented in from the yeah from the deer.
Lee Hatfield: There's
Eric Mintel: And I didn't go back home that way that night.
Lee Hatfield: no job.
Eric Mintel: I went back another way. But I came back the next day. Now, in my skeptical mind, thinking, well, maybe there was a woman in, maybe there was a house in the woods. And a woman, somebody was in the woods, and they were in the woods, and they they spooked the deer. And that's how I hid it.
Eric Mintel: But I went back there that next day. There was no houses, nothing back there, all woods. And the deer was gone, by the way. And so that was something. And for years I thought she was my guardian angel. I never thought of her because I didn't even know what the lady in white was back then.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah.
Eric Mintel: But I found out later, just only about two years ago, what the lady in white is. And that's what I i kind of put two and two together. And then come to find out later, my father, i don't know why i didn't put the two and two together, but my father had the same encounter 1975.
Eric Mintel: in nineteen seventy five Now, I don't drink. My dad was a huge drinker. was he would This is the 70s. He was a big partier. He became an alcoholic later. was just, you know...
Eric Mintel: yeah you know it was not the we didn't have the greatest relationship but in 1975 he was sitting on the front porch of our house and basically looking straight across at the delaware river again where we were lived across uh we lived in an area called upper black eddy and we had a view of the delaware river it was only about a quarter mile away
Lee Hatfield: Thank you.
Eric Mintel: So he's sitting on the porch, two o'clock in the morning after he came home, he swears he was sober this night. He's cooking up a steak on the grill. And all of a sudden he looks over at the water and sees this white thing floating on the water.
Eric Mintel: And as his eyes are adjusting, he's like, my God, it's a woman. And as she's floating from a quarter mile away, she turns to look at him.
Eric Mintel: Her face came right up to his face. and then turned back and floated on the water and said, I'm going home, I'm going home. And he could hear her words echo through the valley. Now, he told me that story for years, never wavered from that story. A couple of years ago on his deathbed, I said, Dad, did that happen? Did that really happen?
Eric Mintel: He's like, I swear that happened. So we had that connection together that way.
Lee Hatfield: is in
Eric Mintel: um I think my father was a little bit more psychic than he led on to be. I think he had those abilities. I don't have that, but um but those experiences, maybe, you know, his aura,
Eric Mintel: um He had gone to a psychic and the psychic said, you have a very blue aura, but your son has one even greater. And it was funny because I don't, you know, maybe it's because of my music. I could sit down at the piano and really just play anything, maybe artistically that way.
Eric Mintel: I haven't really delved into that. But those kind of stories, they were mind blowing. And that was really something, those things I'll never forget. I still get goosebumps talking about what happened to me.
Lee Hatfield: I just got goosebumps when you were talking about it.
Eric Mintel: Yeah.
Lee Hatfield: And it's like, what the hell, dude?
Eric Mintel: Yeah.
Lee Hatfield: You're not supposed to do that to me. Eric, I feel like we've only touched the surface of our conversation.
Eric Mintel: Oh, yeah. Lee, I have a feeling we're going to be back.
Lee Hatfield: So right oh I agree because there's so many other stories I want to mention.
Eric Mintel: Part two.
Lee Hatfield: But we'd be here till like 3 o'clock in the morning. And like i've got I've got work tomorrow.
Eric Mintel: I know, I know. and like you got You got to come down to Bucks County one of these days, man. We got to get you on an investigation.
Lee Hatfield: Hey, I will definitely be there. Yeah.
Eric Mintel: You're there and you've got an open invite, man.
Lee Hatfield: let oh
Eric Mintel: Anytime when you're down here, let me know.
Lee Hatfield: Oh, that sounds like a pleasure. yeah and You're not that far over board. It's only a couple of hours. You'll fine.
Eric Mintel: exactly Yeah, that's exactly right.
Lee Hatfield: Yeah. Eric, it's been an absolute pleasure. I've had absolute, you know, the amazing amount of time tonight. At least you turned up on but unlike my other the one, but let's not go there.
Lee Hatfield: But like said,
Eric Mintel: You're welcome. Thank you, buddy. I really appreciate it.
Lee Hatfield: No problem. You have a great rest of the evening, my friend.
Eric Mintel: You're welcome. Thank you, Lee.
Lee Hatfield: Bye-bye.
