I met Dan through my blog. He left a comment about hunting with the Zak and the gang and piqued my curiosity. Jeez, ya’all know me well enough to know that I am intrigued by everything that possesses a hint of mystery.
I was lucky enough he emailed me and I found out he’s here in my own area! How freaky is that? I’ve been blogging for 2 years and have only met 3 people in all of AZ interested in the paranormal! With a little coaxing, I hope to have Dan out hunting with me and the miscellaneous gang around our own state and perhaps other wild adventures outside of the state. Poor guy—he doesn’t know what he’s in for!
It’s great to find someone so intelligent, with a level head about hunting, and willing to go do the field work. So, I’m pinning him down now for an interview about some wild adventures he had recently with my favorite team; Zak Baggy Pants and the Scooby Douche Gang. I know, I know. “Ghost Adventures,” but you know I just have to call them by my pet names. Everyone who knows me knows that eventually you get a pet name. In fact, I recently gave Dan one when he emailed me from Eastern State to inform me of what a blast he was having. I now call him, “Lucky Bastard.” Its official, he’s now in the inner circle.
AUTUMN: You recently have had the opportunity to hunt at two of the big sites in the US with the “Ghost Adventures” team; Waverly Hills Sanatorium and Eastern State Penitentiary. Having done them both, which one did you personally encounter more activity at?
DAN: Waverly Hills was "off the charts". Although there was a ton of interesting activity at Eastern, the encounters at Waverly have me still amazed and thinking about just exactly what I saw. At Waverly there were scratchings, shadow people, flashes of light, temperature changes. I ended up in the Waverly "death tunnel" alone for a couple of minutes, and was kind of happy to get out of there. It felt like I was being bombarded in the face with cobwebs, and expected to look like a walking dust mop when I got back outside. Curiously there was no hint of webs or anything on my shirt or in my hair.
At Eastern I witnessed shadow people in two different cell blocks. I had one charge right at me from the end of cell block 12 before moving into one of the cells. Two other people that were standing next to me witnessed this as well. In cell block 4 we had a laser light grid set up down the block. There was a clear silhouette that we were able to coax into moving a couple of cells closer to us. It behaved much like a stray dog, it would appear to move slowly closer and then jump backwards.
Eastern also presented lots of fascinating EVPS. There was one person there that even seemed to suffer a bite mark. She said she felt her arm "tingling". Teeth marks showed up clearly on the thermal imaging device that we had as well as in the photos afterwards.
AUTUMN: You’ve seen the show and now you’ve been with the team. How did you feel they handled themselves? Anything you were surprised about how they went about it? Are they just as enthusiastic and kid-like as they seem when they do the show?
DAN: Zak, Nick, and Aaron are actually very down-to-earth guys, and have a genuine love and interest in what they are doing. As you know I had the opportunity to hunt privately with them at Waverly. It was pretty cool as Zak kind of set up the session exactly like they would for the show complete with prologue. Zak is definitely the "alpha dog" of the group, in fact he was a bit "bossy" with Nick and Aaron at times. Nick is very genuine, and really exhibited some talent with his camera work and equipment. I would actually peg him as the best investigator of the three. Aaron is absolutely like everyone's kid brother. He's a lot of fun, humble, and yes I got to personally witness 2-4 "Aaron freakouts". (Once when a bat flew into the room right at his camera, and once when he and I were in the back of the group filming and there was a sudden noise right behind us!)
At the request of the owner of Waverly we were asked not to "taunt her ghosts" as they were simply people who had died from a horrible sickness and deserved some respect. This was no problem for me as I believe taunting should be used very very sparingly, although I think Zak had to bite his tongue a couple of times!
AUTUMN: Some new equipment was tested at these sites, what sorts of things did you see in action and did you make any conclusions about their efficacy?
DAN: Andy Coppock was at Waverly. Andy is an MIT graduate who owns a company in California that builds lasers and imaging equipment for the medical industry. Andy demonstrated the use of what he calls and "Induction Probe", which basically allows you to hear EVP in real time. Although I did not witness much activity on the night I used that at Waverly he did play some very intriguing sessions that he has recorded at other locations. He is also developing a high quality full spectrum video camera that is receptive to a deeper portion of the ultra-violet spectrum. I'm pretty excited about some of the results he's been getting with this and am firmly convinced that as this technology becomes more prevalent we will be able to capture more phenomena on video. I have witnessed first hand a veritable "chorus line" of shadow people and flashes of lavender colored light that occurred at Waverly. About 10-12 minutes worth. Did even one hint of that show up on my infra-red video camera? Sadly, not one bit. Here is a case where we had 5 people all witnessing and reacting to the same exact phenomena, but could not record it with 4 different video feeds pointed right at it. We all have 10-12 minutes of footage of an "empty" end of the 4th floor hallway.
AUTUMN: Did you have a personal encounter that baffled or surprised you?
DAN: Yes. In the same event that I just described, there was a large burst of lavender at the end of that hallway. In that flash of light there formed the perfect silhouette of an angel. Head, wings, body. It was absolutely beautiful, humbling, and perplexing, all at once. I'll never forget that, and wish I could know more about what I saw. This all happened in the midst of what appeared to be two shadow people "waltzing" at the end of the hallway, shadows peering out around the doorways in between us, and shadows making charges up the hallway at us before retreating back.
Earlier in the night we had started an EVP session in the surgery room. Within about 5 minutes a guy named Jason was standing next to me, and complained that he could not move his hand. I looked over at him, his arm was contorted in what I can best describe as a "policeman's lock". He then started complaining that his arm was burning, and looking at his arm there was a freshly made scratch, about 8 inches long. I asked him if his arm was cramping, he said no. On a whim I stated "who ever is grabbing Jason's arm, you need to stop right now. You have no right to do that". Jason (who I found out later professes to be an ordained minister) did an open rebuke in the name of Christ. In just a moment his hand seemed to relax, and he apparently regained use of his arm. Zak restarted the EVP session. I kept my video camera on Jason. Zac asked the question "Did somebody in this room just scratch him?"
We reviewed the recorder and very clearly got a voice that said "I gave him a scratch!!!", followed by what appeared to be a voice in a mocking tone that said "I can't move my hand". It was pretty compelling stuff.
About a minute later Jason's hand contorted outward in a very strange way again. 2 more scratches show up on his arm appear. I had my camera on him constantly. He did -not- do this to himself, and I have no logical explanation for those scratches appearing.
After that the room felt like it got about 20 degrees warmer, and there was a distinct odor of rotting garbage, feces, and what I would describe as "burnt electrical wiring". Zac started feeling dizzy, and at that point we decided to move from the room. Once outside the room the air was immediately cooler, comfortable, and no smells.
This event took place over about 50 minutes. I can't tell you exactly what was going on there, but it definitely wasn't nice.
AUTUMN: Describe the moments when you most believed you were making contact?
DAN: At Eastern we started an EVP session down in solitary (The Hole). I should clarify that the unique thing about Eastern State as a prison is that virtually every cell was designed as a solitary confinement cell. The Hole was dug out underneath cell block 4, and was nothing more than a row of crawl spaces with dirt floors behind iron grate gates.
I sat down in front of the cell where the girl had been bitten the previous night. I could hear scratching noises in the cell behind me. I then had a distinctive static "crackling" sensation on my left hand, and a brief feeling of being tapped on the hand followed by an isolated cold spot in front of me. I say isolated because there was a definite area of cold, if you moved your hand to the left or right it was definitely warmer outside of the area in front of me. I'm fairly certain this was the first time I feel like I was touched by something.
At the end of the night at Eastern we had an interesting session in the guard tower. We were doing a private hunt with Mark and Debby Constantino, Debby opted to start an opening session with a "Shack Hack", which is a version of a "Frank's Box". (These are basically devices that scan the AM or FM spectrum in a series of short partial-second bursts.) Sharon, you and I have discussed these devices before, and I know that we are both sceptical of the efficacy of these. We did get some intriguing results from this session, however. To kind of paraphrase the session, it went basically like this:
DC: Is there anybody here who'd like to communicate with us?
Box: Yes.
MC: Do you work here?
Box: Warden.
MC: You are the warden here?
Box: Assistant.
MC: What is your name?
Box: Brailey.
At this point the prison guide who accompanied us got excited and said that there was a deputy warden at the prison in the '50s by the name of Joseph Brailey.
MC: Is your name Joseph Brailey?
Box: That is correct.
MC: And you are the deputy warden here?
Box: Yes, that's right.
MC: Thank you, Mr. Brailey. If you'll just stay with us a moment, I'd like to switch over to our audio recorders to see if we can speak to you and hear you more clearly.
Mark and Debby then ran simultaneous recorders and started asking more questions. If anybody is familiar with their EVP work they like to run short 4-5 minute sessions and then immediately review for results. It seems to be much more effective than running continuous 2+ hour sessions and then having to go through the drudgery of listening to 2+ hours of...nothing?
DC: Mr. Brailey, are you still with us?
Response: Yes, I am here.
DC: Mr. Brailey, we appreciate you taking the time and talk to us. With your permission would it be okay to allow a few of the prisoners up here to talk to us as well?
Response: They'd have to -beat- me! (This was very clear and sounded angry.)
Prison Guide: Does it make you angry that some of your guards were complicit in allowing objects and sometimes weapons to be thrown into the prison over the walls?
Response: That's not right.
So, it was definitely an intriguing session. We finished the night with an EVP session down in cell block 1 which was used to house the sexual offenders and homosexuals.
DC: Hi, I am Debby and this is my husband Mark, we'd like to speak with anybody that may be here.
Response: Bitch, you are in the wrong place!
So....direct contact? It kind of sounded like it to me.
AUTUMN: So, now that you’ve got these under your belt, what’s the next dream location to hunt?
DAN: Hmmm. As you probably know, once you experience some of this stuff if it doesn't change your life somewhat it certainly changes your thought process. I think about this constantly. Trans-Allegheny in West Virginia is right up there. I'd like to do Rolling Hills in New York. I have an opportunity to go to Mansfield Reformatory in September, not sure if I'll be able to pull that off, though. I want to experience Bobby Mackey's in Kentucky. (The conventional wisdom currently out there about Mackey's is that we're not dealing with run of the mill spirits....it's something darker. The Ghost Adventures gang revisited Mackey's a month and a half ago. That episode will be aired this fall. They wouldn't tell me how it went, other than...."it blew us away, just watch"!) Gettysburg, Virginia City, Preston Castle, St. Augustine.....Wolfe Manor in Clovis, CA. I guess I better get busy! Europe will have to wait! :)
