Welcome to another episode of Walking the Shadowlands.

Today, I’m thrilled to have a fun and insightful conversation with Bob from Static Radio. A podcast that’s been running for an incredible 25 years. In this episode, Bob shares some of his personal experiences with the paranormal. Including a fascinating story about a foggy manifestation at the McPike mansion. And we delve into how modern AI technology has impacted the authenticity of paranormal evidence. Bob also brings his unique sense of humor as we talk about his long running podcast. Exploring the strange and funny happenings in the lives of Midwesterners. His love for spontaneous adventures. And some heartwarming stories about his family.

Whether you are here for the paranormal or the fun stories, this episode offers a delightful mix of both. So, as always, are you ready to walk into this part of the Shadowlands? Then, let’s begin.

Bob from Static Radio Talks Paranormal Encounters

 Marianne: This is a rare one for me. I’m honestly not sure where to go, so I think we could have a bit of fun with it. Anyway, let’s begin. Hi, everybody. I’d like to welcome my special guest, Bob Lamont

Bob: How you doing?

Good. I was just saying to Bob a minute ago that this is a first for me. In that I don’t know too much about the experiences that Bob has had. Or indeed which direction this episode’s going to go in today. So it’s going to be an experience for us all. Bob, maybe we could begin with you telling us a little bit about your background and what got you interested in the paranormal, unexplained side of things.

Sure. I’ve done a a show online for 25 years, if you can believe it. And so most of the time I talk about funny things. As part of the show that I do with my cohost miles, we talk about funny stories that happened in our everyday lives. So the paranormal doesn’t really enter into it all that often, as far as the regularity of what we record for online. But, I have had some experiences that have been quite interesting.

And both he and I are very interested in the paranormal outside of that. And so we both independently, as well as together, have gone off looking at things. And watching things. And reading things. And looking for other experiences. Ghost hunting type situations and so forth.

Yeah, so it is interesting that if folks were to search me out they probably find a lot of funny stuff. Comedy stuff. And so they’re looking at that and they’re like, what? What in the heck is Marianne doing here? Talking to this funny guy. And it’s going to be about the paranormal, but I have had a couple of instances of interesting things happen.

And I would say, historically, I’ve always been interested in the area. Especially since I was a kid, I’m not young by any means. And there has been a big shift in culture over the last, I would say 15 to 20 years because of how the media handles the paranormal, right?

So back 20 years ago, you talk about the paranormal and everybody would think you’re goofy. And they would you’d be mocked. That was the norm. Everybody’s ah, but now. You basically have whole cable channels. And then obviously online that are devoted to this topic and findings.

And I think that over the last, like I said, 15 or so years, people have taken it more seriously. And they have approached it in a different way today than they had before. So I think that’s what piques my interest. Because even as a kid, I always thought that, it should be a little more scientific in the way that people went about it. As opposed to, I went to the graveyard. I think I saw a ghost, right? But there’s no, it’s all anecdotal. And, people’s experiences and everything. And it’s not severely, it hasn’t been severely scientific. Nowadays, I think they’re bringing a lot more science to the field. And it is more of a field. I mean, what are your thoughts on that, as far as that goes. Your experience.

I actually used to run a paranormal investigation team. It’s a while back.

In the past or now?

No. In the past, when I lived in New Zealand. Yeah, I ran a paranormal investigation team.

It wasn’t called Wellington Paranormal was it? There’s a show about that.

It’s a great show, I love that show. That guy was So funny who created it. It’s such a good show. Yeah, and their characters were played, so deadbeat, eh?

Yes.

It’s really cool. No. Not Wellington Paranormal. That was about five hours south from where I live, Wellington was. There weren’t a lot of opportunities to do investigations. Because we don’t have the history that other countries do like you do. And for example, you’ve got Stonehenge on the image behind you. We don’t have the history that England does. Or even Australia does because we were colonized so much later than other countries.

Just an aside I took that picture at Stonehenge.

Oh? Did you?

I took that picture. That’s why I like it. Cause you can’t, if my head moves over, you can see the people. But I actually got a picture where you can hardly see anybody in it. Which was one of my goals because there’s so many people there.

Oh, I can imagine.

Yeah. It’s just lousy with people. I got lucky because you can’t hardly… if I move my head, you can see a few people small in the background. But otherwise you can’t see anybody.

No, and it’s like you can’t get really close to the Stonehenge.

No, they don’t let you anymore. No but it is interesting, though, that now, even Stonehenge is so commercialized as a spot because you can’t. You cannot get close. It’s not that they have a fence up. But they have basically like a little rope that goes all the way around that you can’t step onto the grass. Even that’s near. And they’ve got a ring that goes around where people walk. And you can look at things. But I think it’s interesting that all these, we’ve come so, so far in this kind of area that it’s a little bit more mainstream now. And there are stuff, there’s still stuff out there where people are… The hard part about these kind of what you call more fringe areas, is people hoax it so much.

Yes.

Then people. Who are inclined not to want to be interested in the reality of some of these things. Oh, it’s just a hoax It’s just a hoax. It’s so easy then to let things go that it’s all just a hoax. Because there’s so much hoaxing that has taken place. And that’s sad, right? I would hope that Jonas Salk, who was working in medicine and found penicillin and so forth, wasn’t getting hoaxed all the time. But I’m sure that it was a tough road even back with that. Because people didn’t believe that these things existed and he found,

They didn’t even believe in germs really half the time back then.

Right! Exactly! They didn’t believe in anything that was so small. You couldn’t see it.

Yeah, exactly. I do understand what you’re saying about how television programs work. Because my paranormal team and I were actually featured on a documentary that was made in New Zealand. It was about Mark Twain. And his journey throughout New Zealand. And his experiences that he had. He had a paranormal experience at a hotel that my team and I had just investigated. So the documentary team contacted us and asked if we’d go back and do another investigation for the show. And it was really interesting behind the scenes, to see what they do. We never faked anything. But the editing and it’s all very contrived.

And it cause they need to have something happen, right? That’s they have to have something that they can say happened while they were doing this because they have to get ratings, right? That’s what it’s all about.

Yeah, not so much this documentary that we were in because they didn’t fake anything, but the other ones do. Because you can be sitting for hours and hours and absolutely nothing happens.

And nothing happens exactly.

And you can’t have a show where nothing happens.

To be honest with you, nowadays, I think they do. I think they’ve finally given in. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched… I’m trying to think of the actually, if you watch, I don’t know if you, when it airs down there? But there’s a thing called Expedition X, which is on Discovery Channel.

And sometimes they go to places that are haunted and sometimes things happen and sometimes things don’t. And. I think that they’re one of the ones that’s probably a little bit more scientific in their approach. And sometimes it just doesn’t pan out, Jack Osborne does a lot of stuff and sometimes his stuff is not always super exciting. Other shows where people like I got touched. Or I got this or I got that where it’s. Sometimes, again, and see, I’m on the side of believing these things, but then I see that and I’m like, really, are you baiting the audience a little bit with that? Whereas, these other shows, I think they use more technology in order to view the environment in a different way.

And thermal imaging, and so forth. Where you actually see something. You can see something that’s outside the norm. But I’ll tell you. I’ll jump into my story here.

Yes, please do.

This only happened in 2019. So it was not that long ago. And I’ve always, skewed towards this kind of stuff. But I’ve never had an encounter until 2019. And I wasn’t even looking for this encounter. So just to set it up. I had a house fire and our house burnt down in May of 2019. And yeah, terrible, it was a horrible situation, right?

But nobody was hurt?

I lost my pets.

Oh, no.

But nobody in the family was hurt, which was great. The pets was terrible. It was a horrible time. And anyway, essentially we had to, we went and lived in a hotel for a while. Because that’s what happens right? So you have to find some place to live. Because you can’t live where you were living. And basically we left We it happened and we basically had the clothes on our back and we went to a hotel And we lived in a hotel for several weeks. But then you know, if you’ve ever Experienced something like this.

It takes a long time To get everything straight with insurance. And with rebuilding and everything. So it was probably going to be about a year before we could get back home. And so we couldn’t live in this hotel forever. Because it was very expensive. And so we ended up renting a house. Cause I had one child at home still, my wife and myself. And so we got a house in what would, what you would, what Assume was like a cul de sac neighborhood that was built probably in the early 2000s, at that time.

Maybe the late nineties? If that. So we’re not talking about an old place, or, it was a cul de sac neighborhood where houses are just one right after the other on a road, near a cul de sac .And your quintessential Steven Spielberg neighborhood from the movies. And so we move in there with nothing essentially. And my wife this is the power of technology these days. My wife ordered beds on Amazon where the mattresses come all stuffed in little boxes. And so forth. And that all arrived on the afternoon that we moved in.

So we arrived in the morning, sat on the floor and waited for the UPS guy. To drop off all of our beds. Because we had nothing. And so anyway, we spent the day putting all those together. And then during this time word spreads and the neighbors stopped by and welcomed us and so forth. And one of the neighbors was like a used car salesman type of a person, right? And this figures into the story a little while here. But, very overly friendly, gregarious kind of person.

And he was One neighbor. And then the other neighbors were there and everybody wishes and sorry, your house burnt down. And if you need anything a situation, right? So we get the beds going and so forth. And a couple of days pass. And one night we’re sleeping. Everybody’s asleep. It’s about two o’clock in the morning.

I wake up and I look over at a window that was near the bed. And I see the outline the shadow of a person. That looks like they’re standing, to me in my, sleepiness. Looks like they’re standing outside. Their shadows getting projected onto the blinds. And I, in my head, I’m like, This weird, my weird used car salesman neighbor is outside the window.

And it’s moving around a little bit, but not too much. And so I just write it off. All we had was the blinds. We didn’t have curtains or anything cause it was, we didn’t have anything. I went back to sleep. Then the next morning, my son who was a teenager at the time, he finds me and he goes dad a shadow came into my room last night, tried to grab my leg yeah. So I go, what? And we had gotten him an iPad to have something to do, cause we didn’t have TV or anything. And he goes, this shadow came through my door in the room that he was in and reached out and tried to grab his leg. And he like got out of there! But he didn’t, I don’t know why he didn’t come awake his mom and I up. But he’s a teenager.

So he wants, that’s a weird time. So you don’t want to just run to your parents for everything. Think he just slept on the floor in the living room, or something. But, so he tells me this. And then I’m like, wait a minute, I saw a shadow last night in my head. In my head. I’m like, I saw this thing. I just assumed it was outside. Because you’re exhausted in these kinds of situations, after it. And I’m like, I think I saw what he saw. We can’t go home. The home is burnt. We have to wait. We now are on a lease for this place. So we can’t leave here. And so I decided not to reveal to him at that point in time, that I had seen the same thing he saw. And I said, buddy I’m sure you were just tired. And maybe it was a dream. And just let me know if you see it again. Because, in these situations, you have to keep everything a certain stasis going, right?

Because every, your whole life is messed up. And so you want some kind of normalcy, as much as you can. So I felt bad, because I’m usually fairly direct and honest with my children. And so then he came to me a couple days later. He says, yeah, I saw it walking through the kitchen.

And sorry to interrupt Bob, that was your very first night in the house, right?

I think it was a couple nights after we got there?

Oh, ok.

But it’s a little blurry. But it wasn’t the very first night. But it was within… it wasn’t like a week later or anything like that. It was within the first couple of nights. But we were exhausted. If you can imagine, totally drained emotionally and physically from all this stuff happening.

And so I might’ve just, we may just not have been awake or woke up. The other nights, right? So then now we’re getting a little bit more routined after a few days. And so he’s, yeah, I saw it walk from the kitchen. And it walked through a door out to the garage. So I’m like, okay, right. Now we’ve got, we’ve essentially got two people now with three points of interest there. And again, I didn’t want, not want to.. I didn’t want him to be upset and think that something was going negative, more negative things were going to happen. And at this point, negative things that we have no control over. I’m like, Oh, just tell me if something happens.

I, I reassured him that, it probably was nothing. And everybody’s so tired and everything. And I was playing… played it down quite a bit. And, he told my wife. And I had never told her that I saw anything either. Which later on becomes a bit of a point with her, but I kept it all to myself.

And I think he saw it one more time, out in kind of the open area. It’s like a open floor plan kind of house. Where the living room and dining room and all that kind of run together. But he doesn’t see it anymore after a few days. Now. After that we had pets I mentioned.

And so, everybody wanted to get a dog. So we ended up getting a dog. Now we have this big empty house with a dog. And downstairs is an unfinished basement that is totally empty. There’s nothing down there. Except for the hot water heater, and the regular furnace. And so forth. But everything else is empty.

And so we used to take the dog down there. And throw around a tennis ball. Because it’s just a big open space. And he would run around while he would, there’s one corner of the basement. He would not go into. Even if the ball went in that corner, he would not go get the ball. Everywhere else he would go get the ball. If it rolled over in this one far corner, he would not get the ball. And then, my wife would tell me I heard noises in the basement. And the basement is empty. Everybody’s upstairs. Nobody’s down there at that time. Not playing with a dog or anything. And we live with this. And over that first few weeks, we would hear things and, notice them. But then, it eventually fades away. Nothing continued. It all faded out. And to me though, it was interesting because there wasn’t anything negative, right? But I believe, I’m totally convinced. I won’t even hedge my bets as I did earlier when we were talking. Totally convinced that we were living with a shadow person in this house.

And I think they just checked us out, right? And we were just your average family going about our business. And once it checked us out, it just did its thing. And we rarely encountered each other. But it was fascinating because that would be… that was the, really the first physical manifestation of anything that I’ve encountered happened, right?

You always hear things and so forth, but there’s not anything so concrete. I didn’t get video of it and I, I didn’t get pictures or anything. And, people have asked me when I talk about this, they’ll be like why didn’t you set up a camera and everything? And I’m like, at that point in time, all I wanted to do was to keep everybody You know, on a level, a field. Our whole world has been turned upside down by this. And me going ghost hunting in the house is probably not going to help anybody’s demeanor.

No!

And besides the fact that I didn’t have anything at that point anyway, to do anything with. I didn’t even have a camera to set up. And we had to spend… basically if you’ve ever been in this situation the terrible thing, even if you have insurance, you have to front the money for anything you want, until they pay you back. So All your money goes to essentials. And so I never did follow up on that. But we lived there again, the dog never would go in the corner for the whole time we were there.

And then we left. And then after we left, I finally disclosed to my wife and my son, that I had seen what he saw. And that it was real. I had played it down so much for him, that he was questioning himself. And I felt terrible about it, but at the time I’m like, I don’t know what else to do because… Can you imagine if I would’ve go, yeah, I saw that too! Everybody won’t be sleeping and worried. And you feel you’d be feel trapped in the situation.

And trauma on top of trauma.

Exactly. Now I read during that time, because eventually we did get we all got iPads and stuff replaced. And I did read that apparently there is some research on the fact that trauma can produce these kind of things. But I think they were looking more upon… I don’t know if they’re talking more in hallucination, which I don’t think it was a hallucination. But it was such A real thing that happened. So it wasn’t vague. There was no vagueness to it. Other than my mind jumping to the neighbor, who I thought was a little bit much. That was in my mind, right? That wasn’t the object. That wasn’t the shadow.

That was me inferring of things. And then and my son’s encounters and so forth were. And so it really was really weird. It gave me an interesting, that was a point I suppose where it gave me an empathy. I think for folks who have had these encounters, that talk about them. And then you’re going to have a certain amount of people who don’t believe. People don’t believe the story that I just told you. Everybody always infers that you… were you high? Were you drinking? Were and I’m like, no, I was just trying to live my life at a time that was difficult. But we were still living our lives and this stuff was happening. And so it does make you wonder. It makes you realize, I guess, is what I want to say. That we don’t really know as much as we like to put on that we know.

No.

And things are there that are beyond the norm. And things are there that we can’t explain. To me, I would say There wasn’t anything sinister about it. Never did anything other than he said it tried to grab his leg. Which may have just been a curiosity, nothing was overly negative, right?

It didn’t like, knock things over. Or open cabinet doors. Or anything like that. I think it was just a curious about what was in its environment. Now, the history of the house was It was owned by somebody who had lived there for a while and now is renting it out. And it had been rented prior to us moving in.

And those folks had moved out. And then we moved in. And then when we moved out, they rented to somebody else. But it seemed like at least, the short history that I was involved with the house, nobody really stayed there more than a year. Don’t know if this had anything to do with it and I haven’t asked anybody, but it was a interesting coincidence that there was a lot of turnover at that one place. And so I don’t know if the other people saw stuff. Or what the deal was, but, It was interesting, nonetheless.

I would say. Yeah. Sorry, Bob.

It was weird. No, go right ahead.

Given the turnover, I would say that’s probably the reason. You mentioned earlier that you spoke to that neighbor. After the incidents or after you moved out?

No. Just when we first moved in, we spoke to the neighbors just to say hi and so forth while we were living there. But they never said anything about, anything happening there, or anything like that. It just was… I don’t know that there was anything to it other than I just noted that one neighbor was a certain type of person, that I thought would be hanging outside my window. So that’s why I was thinking that’s who it was. I’m like, Oh, he got up early. Cause I didn’t know what time it was. And I just thought, Oh, he’s up early. Like hanging outside my window for some reason. Cause the houses are all close together.

So it’s not… he could have been walking through his side yard for all I know that, and that was that close because of the area. Yeah, but again, it wasn’t a very old house. It wasn’t like creepy like a creepy old haunted house a situation. It was and that to me, I think that really struck me as something interesting in the sense that, everybody focuses on those things. But, it could be anywhere. Literally, it could be anywhere that this stuff happens and I think my thought was, at least from the limited exposure I had. And, the exposure that my family had. Was this may be just some kind of curiosity, from something that lives among us that we just never see.

It didn’t act like it, you know… you get into those tropes where there’s like things are haunted and if you touch the piano Then the ghost comes and yells at you or whatever. Nothing like that. It was just like it would be the same as if I moved in the neighborhood. And hear these strange people coming into your cul de sac where you know all your neighbors. And now you have to figure out, where do these people fit in?

And that’s the feeling that I got from it was it just was like, okay, what’s this now? I’m here and now there was other people here. And now they’re gone and now there’s these people here. What are they doing here? And, cause it’s not like an ownership or possession of any kind. It was just. I think just curiosity. Just weird curiosity.

I have a point about shadow people and spirits. I would venture to suggest that he wasn’t a shadow person. Because spirit can very often show themselves in shadow form like that. , but shadow people, and I’ve seen shadow people, are very distinct. And they are described as blacker than black.

This, I think this was, that was it. It was just like it wasn’t transparent or anything. It was just, there was this black. Totally black void that looked like a person.

Yeah. Oh, quite often Sprit can show themselves like that. If they it depends on what energy they have. Whether they feel that it’s less threatening to a person to show themselves like that. They can do that. Shadow people tend to, they behave differently. They generally don’t try to interact, as in touch people. I’ve never heard of a shadow person who’s physically, and I did an episode on shadow people. And interviewed quite a few people who had experiences, including my own. They don’t generally try to interact with people like that. They’re more observers, if that makes any sense.

Interesting.

Yeah. And the, and everybody who like even if your room is pitch black at night, shadow people are darker than the pitch black of the room. They’re blacker than black. One person described them as looking like a black cutout.set in the dark room.

I don’t know that when my, I saw it, I don’t think that it was super dark in the room. So I don’t remember that being the case. It was more like, yeah, I don’t know what you’d call it. Like we had there was moonlight and so forth outside. So you can see that in the window. That’s probably why I was thinking it was a shadow, from outside us first. Because it wasn’t like super dark in the room or outside. So it was, I don’t know what you’d call that. It’s not like dusk, but it’s like moonlight. Yeah, The interesting experience.

And did your son ever feel scared or anxious by seeing this being?

He was at the time that it happened. And I basically for lack of a better term, just talked him down. Just say, Oh, you’re probably really tired and all this has happened. And your world is changed drastically. And so I got him thinking about that as opposed to the encounter. Now, only the first encounter was that one where it just surprised him. He was just in there and stuff happened. Whereas the other one, he was more of the observer, like I was was. I think he was going to go get something to eat.

He steps out in that area. We had left the light on in that area in the night. Anyhow, and he had witnessed it as it was going about its business. While he was going about his business. So that only that first thing was really shocking to him. And like I said I was constantly, downplaying things and trying to say, you’re just… because he’s really tight because he didn’t… it was hard.

He’s a teenager, number one. They stay up all night. Anyway Number two, he was you know, we still had to go to school And so he was staying up late at night. And then getting up early and so he was and then this whole incident just compounded everything. It was like, it happened in May, and so he had a week or two left to school before school was out. And it was, the end of the semester and so forth. And they were going to let him not have to go and do finals and stuff, but he wanted to just, persevere.

And so he would Yeah, get up and go and so forth. But it was really tiring because he would stay up and, your whole your whole world’s kind of turned upside down. Because, you one day you’ve got all this… lack of a better term, all this stuff. And the next day and the next basically within, a few hours you have nothing and that really does. It’s a hard, it’s a hard turn for young people, everybody, but for a young person, I think that’s even harder. Because there’s so much. Importance put on possessions.

Oh, yes.

And so forth. Yeah, it was it was tough on all of us, but I can only imagine it was really tough on him because he lost all his childhood toys and everything, which is gone in an instant. Yeah, it was weird. But I have another story if you’d like to hear it.

Love to hear it.

This one’s a little more somewhat humorous. But also as mysterious in a way. And this just happened probably about a, I guess it’d be a little more than a year ago perhaps? Or yeah, it was in September last year. So not quite a year. So I have to travel for work. And so I am at hotels, with some regularity. And I had to travel last September. And so I was at this hotel, which It’s for whatever reason, it sounds funny to me because it was a Holiday Inn. So, it’s like a big chain.

So again, it’s not like some little off the path, old house that was converted into a bed and breakfast. Or anything like that. It was a chain hotel that was built as a chain hotel. And so I I arrived a day ahead for this meeting that I had to go to. And it was a Sunday, so I wore civilian clothes, if you will, shorts and sandals and so forth.

And I brought my nice clothes. with me in my luggage and whatnot. And so I had my dress shoes and so forth in a bag and my clothes and whatnot. And so I get there a little bit late. And I go have dinner and then I get ready to go to sleep. And so I’m in this. I’m in my regular hotel room and I’m laying down to go to sleep and something burps in my ear.

I kid you not. Somebody is almost as yeah, like belches, like leans over me. If you can imagine this in my mind, I’m trying, I’ve got my eyes closed. I’m trying to go to sleep. I’ve got my head on the pillow laying down on my side and something belches in my ear. Oh my gosh. And I, I. Pop up, right? And look around and I’m like, what the heck was that? Because it would be something like, I would imagine like my kids would do that just to be ornery, right?

Yeah, a ghost with a sense of humor.

Yeah, so I’m like, I’m thinking, I’m laying there and I’m like, what the heck? And I would rationalizing again. Is I think that’s like an immediate response. And so I was in a corner room. So the elevator was across the hallway. And there was a hallway, if you can imagine that was behind my head. And then there was a hallway where my door was. So I was in this corner room and I thought it was probably like 11.30 or something in the evening here.

And I like maybe somebody was walking down that hallway and they belched in the hallway. But it really sounded like it was just somebody right over my head. And so I played it off and I went to sleep. If that were the case, we wouldn’t, it’s funny in a way, but it’s not much of a story because I just totally played it off.

So then the next morning I get ready, I get dressed, I go to my thing and I always keep my hotel room until I have to check out. Because I’m just going to meeting in the hotel. And so I can come back up. I put my sandals in, took my dress shoes out of the bag, put my sandals in the bag and then got dressed and then put everything in my suitcase and got it ready to go, but I left it in the room.

And it was if you go to the, these hotels, they usually put like this fake comforter at the bottom of the bed for aesthetics. It’s all sitting on that. So it’s not the edge of the bed. This is like. The bottom quarter of the bed, and I had all that stuff sitting on there. And so I go down to do my meeting and then we have a break and I come up to get my stuff and check it out and my sandals are on the floor out of the bag.

Suitcases is where it was left and only thing that’s moved is this bag with the sandals. And they’re like strewn on the floor. And I’m like, wait a minute again. Something that’s funny, right? It would be childish, right? A childish act, to dump your shoes at. Now these were not on the edge of the bed. They didn’t fall off. They’re fairly heavy. They’re leather, sandals in, in a bag and like a plastic with handles, right? So they’re way in the bag. They’re not like just sticking out the top. These are all the way in there where you can grab the handles and carry them around. And the bags on the floor, the sandals on the floor, the suitcases on the bed, and I’m like, Okay, that makes, this makes sense now, right?

This happened last night. Something happened to where I, I did experience that. And then this all confirmed it. I couldn’t imagine that a maid would have come in and throw my shoes on the floor. It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve stayed in enough hotels that just doesn’t happen. I had the do not disturb sign on the door. They usually don’t come in to do anything in the room until you usually after lunch anyway. And yeah. And so I’m like, okay, that was my confirmation that there was some kind of mischievous thing happening in that room. But again, this hotel, I was trying to think I’ve been there probably more than 50 times for various things over the years. So over the course of 20 some years, And it’s not an old hotel. This is not, this was probably built in the seventies or the eighties. And it’s not an old property. And they’ve got probably like a hundred or more rooms, maybe 200 rooms. It’s a fairly large place.

So yeah, again, to me though, it just confirms that. These kind of things, it doesn’t matter. It could be anywhere. This is just a, your average, hotel, holiday in a hotel room. And now all of a sudden you’ve got this kind of shenanigans going on. In your presence. And I didn’t see anything. But I did see the effects and hear the effects of what was going on. I didn’t get woken up in the night or anything. But, when I was going to sleep, there was a little, I think, playfulness happening. Maybe it moved on to some other area after that. But it certainly was interesting to say the least.

A lot of people, when they.. A lot of people check into hotels to unalive themselves. And a lot of people simply die in hotels. Who knows if it was somebody in your room that actually passed in that room? But he obviously had a great sense of humor.

I’m assuming. I’m assuming. It was really silly. I can imagine when I was younger, my friends doing that, if you were like spending the night somewhere, they would just be on radio. Yeah. They would do that kind of stuff. Yeah, but interesting experience. And again, it’s one of those things where I can’t quantify it. I can’t show you anything. I can just tell you about my experience. And how real it was a real experience. There’s no In my, there’s no debate, right?

This happened and I think as we move forward in time, we talked about technology briefly. I think that there’s going to be something with all of, with your phone and your, the watches and now they’ve got rings that keep track of things I know and stuff for you. That one of these things eventually is going to be the connection for things like this happening. And it will confirm without a doubt that these things have happened to people. And there’ll be some type of technological connection to this that will explain a lot of this. I think it’s bound to happen, may not happen in the next 10 years, but maybe the next 20 to 30 years. It’s just going to be it’ll be found out and it’ll be old hat.

I always, I love that. I do technological work in my daily life. And, prior to COVID people, I can hardly get people to use video conferencing and stuff like we’re doing today. And then afterwards, everybody’s an expert. I was the only one doing this. I was doing this way back in, in the late nineties with various early technologies.

And I was telling people about it and then they’re like, ah yeah, whatever. And then now, After COVID, they’re telling me, Oh, hey, Bob, did you know you can do these video calls? I’m like, yeah, I’ve been doing this for 20 plus years. How are you an expert all of a sudden? But yeah, I think that’s the way it’s going to happen with the paranormal is it’s just going to break wide open. As we configure out as we have some way to document these things on a regular basis. That is undeniable rather than being like, we’re telling, our stories today.

But, and then you’re like, Oh is he really telling the truth? And it sounds farfetched, somebody burping in your ear, he’s just making stuff up. Eventually we’re going to get to the point where yeah, if you look, here’s the, here’s the proof in this. And it’s not necessarily going to be photographic proof. I think it’s going to end up being something that, Happens on a different level.

So maybe it’s going to be some type of frequency. Or some type of a light interaction. Or some type of a something else, to where we’re going to say that it’s undeniable. Once we can start cataloging it, then, that will, I think give us enough data to where people can say, this happens. There’s no doubt about it.

You bring up a good point about frequency. Physics really covers, quantum physics really covers this. And what’s the first law of physics? Energy never dies, it simply changes state. And at our basic level, we’re just energy. Our bodies are masses of atoms and protons interacting with each other with huge gaps between them. And this body that we use isn’t who we are. It’s just the vessel that we’re using in this reality, to experience this physical reality.

You’re right. And so it’s the whole we call it a soul. People have different words for it and so forth. But, where did, what happens? Where does it go? And we, I think we, Religion gives us an outlet to explain some of these things via the religious texts and so forth. But it’s not a scientific explanation. So it’s a faith, It’s a faith-based kind of thing, right?

So you have to have faith that you believe that this is what’s happening. And there’s no hard data behind it to say yes, at your point of of consciousness, when your consciousness leaves your body, then, it goes. In this direction, right? And then does everybody’s consciousness go to the same direction?

Do we all go, the same way? And what happens? And I think we’re not there yet. And it is interesting that if you look at religion, and then if you look at the like native people and their beliefs over the years, As technology is advanced there are bits and pieces of what become definable truths.

Data proven truths to all these things that people have written about and talked about. It just, it goes from a faith kind of a situation into something that’s a little more quantifiable with data. And it’s really interesting. But the funny thing is that your average person …still that trend is happening. And they’re like, eh, I don’t know if I believe that. It, I always find that interesting is that, people can can have experiences. And see things. And then within a certain amount of time, they just write them off and fall in line with popular beliefs.

Of course.

And I find that confusing, to me at least. Because you would think that you would, it’s almost as if, The average person doesn’t believe themselves most of the time, which I find interesting.

Or they second guess themselves and talk them out .Or try to rationalize away what they saw. Because it doesn’t fit in with the collective consciousness, or understanding of how things should be.

Yeah. But it’s very interesting. But as we go through time, as you just see in the media that we’ve got even with UFOs and the paranormal that you’ve gotten a much more buy in nowadays than even 10, 10 to 15 years ago.

A hundred percent. They certainly changed the narratives. Have you found that your experiences have altered your perspective on reality? And what is reality?

I think in a certain way, yes. Because I’m more open. So I’ve always been inclined to believe some things. But I’m still quite sceptical on a lot of levels for things. But with these experiences, I think that I’m a little more open. Like I told you, I have much more empathy for people have experiences. And I am more quick to believe them now than maybe I was prior. But I still have a little bit in my back of my head because I also love the process. So even before I had these experiences I love to watch these shows, not necessarily for the entertainment of it all the time, which it is. Some of them are very entertaining but for the process. So I love the idea of the process. And so things need to be, repeatable or at least have some type of Connection. Obviously we as people are not always repeatable. But we do have repeatable things that we do in our lives, even if we don’t even know it.

And I look for those kinds of things, even in the paranormal stuff. Just because I think that’s part of .The process. And I think that process is fascinating. That we can look at those things. And look for the for the repetition and to find out. And I think sometimes we’re, some of the shows are looking. I don’t think look enough for that repetition, or maybe they’re not looking in the same places that at least when I’m sitting at home watching, I’m like, Oh, you got to do this, right? Everybody loves to do that when they’re watching shows is, my way is much better at home.

Yeah. You shouldn’t be doing that. Oh, that’s incorrect. Yeah. As an investigator myself, and I’m also a medium, I look at it and I go, Oh, Why did they do that? You don’t speak like that. You don’t demand. You don’t go in as a bully and say, show yourself. And then run off squealing like a little girl when something actually happens.

Yeah. And to me those kind of things get into the entertainment factor. And a little bit less into the kind of the science of things to where you have to be sit back and take it all in. And, you’re not the experiment, you’re the observer, and so you need to watch and you need to be mindful of your environment and so forth. And I think a lot of times they’re just, those shows are just there to, for the drama.

Yes! There’s one show I watched that I actually loved because I thought they were hilarious. I think it was called Soul Brothers.

oh the Ghost Brothers.

Ghost Brothers, that’s it.

Ghost Brothers, yeah, that’s on Discovery Channel, I’ve watched that.

Hilarious, when they first started out, I thought they were hilarious. It’s just their attitude, and they didn’t take themselves seriously, really. At the beginning, anyway, I don’t know how it is now, because I haven’t seen it for a while, but, yeah. You know I think most genuine paranormal investigation teams these days do it as scientifically as they possibly can. I interviewed a lady a while ago who runs a team in New Zealand. And she’s amazing. Totally 100 percent scientifically correct. run, even though this lady is Wiccan. She’s spiritually aware, she’s a medium. But her group is 100 percent scientifically run. And they like check, they double check, they by the book. And she’s got some scientists and some really people who are really quite experts in their fields. On her team. So she does really good work. And it’s really good to see a more scientific approach to this. For sure.

Oh, yeah. I think so. I think it to me, I always think even if it is, so you’ve seen things where, chairs flip over or whatever, even if that really did happen, right? I think you have to sit back and you have to say, unfortunately, that the video is not as conclusive. Because you could tie a filament or something and do that.

Exactly!

So it has to be something that is totally outside the norm. But it may really have happened to these folks. But unfortunately, as you are, looking at it, you always have to think could this be something that has been planned? Because, you don’t want to, for lack of a better term, fall for somebody’s hoax. Because then it brings everybody down, right? . It brings everybody down if you do. So you have to be diligent and say that was interesting, and I do believe that, if you experience this and you’re telling me this, then I believe you. There could have been a filament tied to this chair that pulled it over. And, was somebody even spoofing that person to make them believe that something was going on. And they may not even be involved in it and so they’re set up a little bit.

I’m trying to remember. I was watching there’s a show called paranormal caught on camera. I’m not sure if it’s down in your neck of the woods yet. But it’s on discovery channel as well. And they have basically, they just show stuff that people have caught on video. And one of them was in the antique shop and the glass was breaking.

Right! I’ve seen that.

It’s in the UK, I think? And they had security footage of all this stuff happening. And I’m like, wow, that is just wild. The unfortunate, nobody’s in there and you just have to hope, trust the shop owner. And I believe that stuff really happened. But you have to think Can you do that and make it look like that without something being paranormal. Which I believe that something happened there, but you always have to hold back and you have to say… there was a show called Fact or Faked. I don’t know if you’ve seen that one.

Yes, I have seen that. Is that the guy from…?

okay, they would go and try to do stuff. Yeah, and it was I thought it was a great show because essentially that was the, to me, that’s one of those ones where it’s yeah, that’s an interesting model. Because what they do is they approach it to say, can we make that look as good as what it looks like? And then if they can’t, then you’re outside this realm, right? Because they were all professional people who have this knowledge in special effects to make something practically, look real. And just an aside though, they were at a place called? I’m a blank on the name … oh, the McPike Mansion.

There’s a place called the McPike Mansion here in Alton, Illinois. Which I don’t live that far from. That Factor Fake went to, and there was this fog that got produced in the basement of the McPike Mansion. And I’ve actually had the, I actually had the the pleasure of going and being in the basement of the McPike Mansion. We didn’t get any fog or anything, but it was fun. It was fun to go see it because I had seen it on TV. But they had this, essentially this fog just manifested in front of the cameras while they were down there filming. And, very creepy and very weird and had some, EVP stuff and whatnot happening at the same time. And they tried to mimic it.

So they brought a fog machine in and tried to mimic what was happening. And they couldn’t get it to do what Happened that they saw on the film. On the recording. Because it comes up so quickly and dissipate so quickly, the machines that they were using it took a while to get going. And then it didn’t dissipate.They basically were in the fog for a long time before they could clear it all out. They had to turn on a fan or something. Yeah, but what I think though, what bothers me is with all the AI videos and everything. This makes it worse, right?

Yeah, I was just going to bring that up. You can’t even rely on video proof. Or audio proof these days. Because it’s so very easy to fake it. Using AI. You just, so what do you do really? And it’s sad that this is the case. But that’s the reality of it. You can’t… you just have to, take everything with a bit of grain of salt. Unless you’ve been an experiencer yourself. And then you get a feel for what’s real and what’s not. But even then, it’s hard to tell.

It is. It’s getting harder and harder. And people get fooled every day by, just what here in the States, we’re in the political process. And so there’s all these different fake images of the candidates doing things. Those are famous people and people are falling for it, let alone something that’s obscure, where you have no no idea what it should look like. Or what it’s supposed to look like. Or what’s supposed to be happening. So it’s just that much easier to reel people in because you have no basis. You’re just seeing what you’re seeing, right?

You don’t have any basis to know what it’s supposed to look like. So yeah I think unfortunately it’s just going to be It’s harder and harder to have things that are obviously real. That you can get that across to other people. That’s why I think I’ve mentioned before the devices and so forth that are going to take data points and measure things that we don’t normally measure in our daily lives. And that’s where I think it’s going to all come from.

Interesting. I guess… it’s hard to know really, because even if that occurs, I’m sure that there will be people who can find ways of faking it.

Sure. It’s always the case, isn’t it?

Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, for those of us who do have experiences. We know our experience is very real. And Honestly, it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. If you’ve experienced it, you’ve experienced it. You can try and talk yourself out of it. Because, it doesn’t fit in with society’s views. And many people do. But at the end of the day, you know your own truth.

Yeah, exactly. And trust yourself. That’s going to be one of the things. You do due diligence, but trust in yourself.

Yeah, exactly. When you’ve talked with your co host about this sort of things, has he had any experiences that he shared with you?

I don’t think that his has been quite as vivid. So we both have ventured out and separately done our own little ghost hunting in the past. So it was, mine was before this experience has happened and he’s done it even since then. And I think he’s gotten some, weird audio and orbs and in pictures and things like that. But nothing that has been as… I’m trying to think of a good word for this. But . Nothing that seems to be as plainly odd. In your kind of face a situation so far that I have.

And yeah but he’s still interested and he still does stuff and we’ve been out together a couple of times for things. But nothing that really transpired together. And to me, it’s almost like. The randomness of the world makes it happen. There are spots that seem to be more prone than others. I think you just get lucky. You just happen to be in the right place at the right time some, sometimes. And you get to witness, something that’s way out of the ordinary.

Yeah, and that can impact you for the rest of your life.

Yeah, exactly.

That can be a good or a bad thing. It depends, on how you take it.

Yeah, true. I haven’t had a negative. I haven’t had a negative one yet. They’ve all been, I wouldn’t say they were overly positive, but they certainly weren’t negative. I know that other people have had very negative situations. In fact, this is another little trivia piece, the movie, the exorcist was based on A situation here in St. Louis.

Yes.

Yeah. I know where that the house is . I’ve been by there just to, as a looky Lou just to be by that. Yeah, so it, it all transpired here in town and it just interesting. Just little interesting tidbits that between that and I think the McPike Mansion. And then there’s an old brewery, Falstaff Brewery, that’s

Oh. I’ve heard of that.

Supposedly haunted. Yeah, they’re all here in town. The interesting thing, just anything else you have landmarks, right? So then everybody wants to go to these landmarks, to see them and so forth. And and I, gone to a few as I’ve been around the in my travels. I love to see the things that, that. Like Stonehenge and things like that, that are, on the cusp of these kinds of things. And it always is interesting to me to do that. And then also, typically there’s always a lot of history around these kinds of things. And I really enjoy the history of it all. Let alone the paranormal aspects of it.

So it, it really is, it I always think the more you can experience life in these kind of situations, it makes you a fuller person to have these more of these experiences, right? I always tell you, I always say travel. So travel makes people a more rounded person. I think I like to combine that with going to see these kinds of things.

Do you think that your experiences have made you more curious?

Oddly enough, I would say no. It would be the opposite. I think I was a little more curious before. I think I’m a little more apprehensive now. Interesting. Because I don’t want to, I’ve had good experiences, right? And when I came out of it at the end, even though it was stressful and so forth, it wasn’t, I didn’t chalk it up in my head to being severely negative.

And I’m afraid, a little bit, of encountering something that would be really negative. And so I’m like, maybe I should not do this if it’s, if I think that it’s going to end in a negative experience. Because Everything’s been playful and curious, as opposed to anything that would be evil. Because people have encountered things that seem to be very evil in this kind of pursuit.

In my mind, I don’t want to say, Oh, yes, that’s a demon. But I don’t really want to encounter that. I’m trying to remember too many things here. There’s a town right across the border in Kansas from from Missouri across the river. And I can’t remember the name of the town, but it’s supposedly a very haunted place. And there’s this little house. Like a little tiny house on the street there on the bluff. That is supposed to be really haunted. I have to look up to get the name of the house. But it’s the hometown of Amelia Earhart.

And I, we went by that museum as well. Anyway, we went and looked at that house while we were in that town just to go by there. Just from the sidewalk. So we got out and walked the sidewalk and took some pictures and looked around and everything. And at this point, somebody owns it now and rents it out. Actually, most of the time for people to do ghost hunting, yeah. And but it, but that one supposedly was particularly evil. So the whatever people have found in there is a very negative energy. A very negative something. And so yeah, we did that prior to our thing. And nowadays I’d be like, I don’t know if I want to go to there. Let’s go someplace where it’s fun.

Yeah. People like to be scared.

Actually, I don’t want anything to be I don’t want anything super negative.

No. You don’t want anything to follow you home. No, I get that. But I’m just talking generally people go. Yeah, because they want the, fear factor. They think it’s fun until it actually happens to them. And then they certainly soon changed their tune. And a lot of people go in with this sense of bravado, males particularly, sorry. Oh, I’m the big strong guy, prove to me that you’re here, do this, do that. Would you speak to a living person like that?

No, exactly.

Yeah, and spirits are just people without physical bodies. They’re no different to you and I. One of the things that I always impressed on my team was respect. You speak to them respectfully like you’d speak to a living person. You don’t demand, you don’t, you, you’re respectful. And if you’re respectful, then for the most part, you get that back.

I did a quick search to tell you the name of the house is called the Sallie House.

Oh, the Sallie House.

Yes.. It’s in Atchison, Kansas. I couldn’t remember the name, but Atchison, Kansas. And actually the Sally House is right around the corner from Amelia Earhart Museum. But yeah, we went to see the Sally House while we were there. And yeah, it just was That is wild. And it says it’s currently unoccupied. I just did a quick thing there. But yeah, you do. I think you have to be respectful. And you have to treat this as something that is just something that you don’t, you don’t know. And so you wouldn’t be so disrespectful to somebody you didn’t know or somebody you just walked up upon.

So why would you do that in this case? And it I think that it runs the gambit, so I think that, some of them may be souls. And some of them may be something else. Some of them may just be entities that don’t we don’t categorize yet, we don’t have a name for.

Yes.

And maybe don’t communicate the same way or don’t even speak the language. Or, there’s so many things seem to be coming out here. Yeah. Recently about, different dimensions and obviously things that, that move on a different frequency than we do, that it could just be that.

And they just are living their happy lives and they’re encountering us the same way. I always like to think in my head that if anybody sees something that is probably just as startled to see them. Because it’s almost like you’re breaking through that layer of reality into another layer. And those two are just mixing at the moment and you’re like, Oh my gosh. And then the same thing’s happening on the other side of what the heck was that?

That’s a very valid point. And I have heard so many times that oh my gosh, they seem to be as surprised to see me, as I was to see them And I think that’s a very valid point. Now the difference between Spirit and living people is the vibrational rate. You’ve talked about vibration a lot. And that’s actually correct. The reason most people can’t see spirit is because of the vibrational rate that they exist at. Which is different to our lower density vibration. And that’s why also, so many people when they do see spirit complain about this cold. This intense cold feeling. It’s because of the vibration of that being. Of that spirit or entity.

And I hope that people would go into it with open mind. And keeping that in mind to say, that you’re visiting them just as much as they’re visiting you. And you wouldn’t want to be treated that way.

Yeah, a hundred percent. So Bob, tell us a little bit about your podcast. You said earlier that you talk about funny things that have happened to you or around you.

Both. So the concept for the show grew out of a college radio thing that my cohost Miles and I did where we would talk on college radio about funny things that happened during the day. And they run the gambit from, just encountering rude people. Or being waiting in line and they’re people. And cutting in front of lined and just how. Kind of behavior, in a lot of ways. And then we started we did that in college and then after college we miss doing it.

And so that was at the time, this was back in the late nineties. I said I want to learn how to make a website and do some things. And so I did that. And I said, we can do this, we can record ourselves and do this show. And so we’ve been doing it every week ever since. And each week we each bring a story that typically we say the tagline for the show is the strange and funny happenings in the lives of two Midwesterners.

And so if it’s strange, or it’s funny, then we tell the story about it. I we started this before I had kids. And so I have funny kid stories where they’re growing up. And then for, various little things like my my son when he was little, he talked like Mario from the video games.

He did. And he would, he talked like this for quite a while when he was a little kid. He’d be like, I’m Bobby. I want this. And so I always joked that he was a little Mario. And it’s just funny. And then we both have we love pets. And so there’s a lot of pet stories in there and so forth.

But just funny little daily happenings that, that we try to keep it to either things that we’ve witnessed. Or things we’ve been personally involved in. Just because I think those kind of personal, for us, makes it makes it all the more funny and interesting to us because you were there. It’s not secondhand stories or anything like that.

So it’s all firsthand and yeah. So I’m trying to think of… last week we talked a little bit about so my friend Miles loves to get autographs. And he is very much into American football, and particularly Chicago Bears because he grew up in Chicago. And he wants to get all these Chicago Bears autographs .And he was talking about going to get these autographs and unfortunately for him.

So we also make fun of each other. That’s another big part of the show is he dresses horribly. And I’m like, so you went to get these autographs and he’s wearing these stained sweat pants. And like shirts that are too small. And so I was making fun of him. I’m like, I can imagine these, professional athletes see you coming up looking like a slob.

And they’re going to give you an autograph.. And it’s all playfulness and so forth. We have done this for years. And you point out the other person’s slight misgivings, but that’s who they are, right. And they’re not going to change. He’s not going to, he’s still going to go out like that.

And yeah, so some of that. Gets in the mix as well. And you can say things like that. And get away with it. It’s, it all works out in the end as far as that goes. We’ve done this now this is our 25th year of doing the show online.

Yeah. 25 years. That’s a long time.

Yeah. And the funny thing is I’ve done some, other things with other folks. But for whatever reason, he and I have such a rapport that it’s effortless, to have our conversation. You and I have had a really nice conversation and I appreciate that. But as far as the kind of the style of humor that we both have in doing our show is, it is literally effortless for us to just jump into it and talk about, whatever.

If my listeners want to listen to your podcast, where can they go?

Sure. It’s static radio. com. You can find it on all the platforms. iHeart radio has it. And the Apple has it. And but pretty much anywhere has it since it’s been around for quite some time.

And do you have a website? Or are you on social media?

Sure. So staticradio.com is the website and @staticradio is most of the socials. We have a few, I think tick-tock is staticradio4. Cause we didn’t get that quick enough, but Instagram and Twitter and so forth is just @staticradio . Or X. I should, I gotta say, start saying X rather than Twitter. Apparently they’re really going to keep that. So we have to get up to date, don’t we?

Yeah, we do. I still call it Twitter. So for my listeners who are listening, and if you didn’t get that information, don’t worry. You can find it all on Bob’s episodes page, on our podcast website, www.walkingtheshadowlands.com. There’ll be all the links to his podcast, his social media on there. So, you can just jump on and check out this episode there.

There’ll alsobe. A full written transcript of this episode. So you can read if you prefer to read while you’re listening along. And Bob, thank you so much for your time today. It’s been a really interesting conversation and I really appreciate your sharing your experiences. And your thoughts with us. It’s always nice to get a different perspective.

Oh, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.