Hey everybody, welcome to Splintered Spirits, the podcast
hosted by me, Gary. And with me, as always, is John.
Going on hi. John, we got a good we got a
good episode here today joining us.
Yeah, it's going to be really great.
It's a fun one. He's a pro.
Joining us today is Dan Sturgis. Dan is an award-winning actor
turned respected paranormal investigator.
A graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Dan's
face has popped up in countless commercials.
You know, as an actor, Dan has been seen in in tons of them
from national, regional cable. If you can drink it, eat it, or
drive it, Dan try to get you to buy it.
And you even may have seen his face in a few classic Law and
Order episodes as well. But his childhood fascination
with ghosts and Civil War history eventually pulled him
into the paranormal world. After joining a local team in
New York, Dan dove in head 1st and never looked back.
He went on to form Sturgis Paranormal, a research group
known for investigating some of New York City's most haunted
historic sites, including the Ed Sullivan Theater, the restaurant
One If By Land, 2 If By Sea, and of course, one of the some of
his life's work here at the Merchant's House Museum where
Dan and his team have been conducting an 18 year ongoing
investigation. He's made appearances on Good
Morning America, The Late Show with David Letterman and of
course, he's an on camera panelist for paranormal caught
on camera shooting. Now where our own John Santa was
once featured. He's got the ghost cred and the
stories to back it up. We are about to welcome Mr. Dan
Sturgis. Dan, let me bring you on camera
and thank you so much for joining us.
Dan. John, what's going on, fellas?
Dan, it's a pleasure. Thank you to thank you for being
here. You've got so much credit.
We love it. We love.
Thanks, man. Thanks.
You guys talked me up. Well, I'm feel bad that I'm so
drunk right now. Gatorade mom.
It's Gatorade, mom. We don't know what's in it
though. Someone will test it later
getting. Jealous, Dan, I'm getting
jealous. I know it's right for you guys.
It's it is happy hour, I mean. You know, Yeah.
And you're not far from me, John.
You're right up the road from me.
Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, definitely.
Well, we'll, we'll get into this because I think you guys share a
lot more in common than you may even realize.
So Dan, I'd like to start everything off with this
question with all of our guests, because what splendored Spirits
is about is, is not just about spirit communication, but it's
really testing. You know, we're sort of really
curious about what John's theory of spirits are.
He has a very specific theory. He thinks spirits are the
fractured memories of the living that our energy, when it
dissipates from us, those memories are attached to it and
travel, however they travel to where they need to go, what's
important. So I like to ask our guests,
Dan, what do you think spirits are?
Well, guys, you know, I, you know, I, I basically agree with
John there. You know what, when I talk to
people and they may ask me, Dan, you know, what's a ghost?
They asked me the same question. I tell them it's, it's
consciousness that has survived bodily death and, and meaning
that, you know, this, this shell, these, this, this body
that we're, we're renting for a little while.
When that stops working, you know, whether it be naturally or
tragically, where, where does our consciousness go?
Does it just fragment? I think it stays intact.
I think consciousness bounces around.
You know, I believe in reincarnation.
I don't know if you guys have done any research into that, but
that's a fascinating subject. I don't think we've even touched
that one yet. Yeah.
We'll get there paranormal in a in a really, really unique way.
So, so I believe that consciousness survives bodily
death. And what as a paranormal
investigator, what I'm trying to do is are we able to communicate
with that consciousness that can that consciousness communicate
with us? You know, it is it aware that,
OK, I don't have my physical body anymore, but hey, I'm going
to go talk to John. I'm going to go talk to Gary.
I'm going to try and communicate with these guys and, and if
they're able to, are they able to interact with the physical
world? Are they able to, you know,
touch things? I've been touched on an
investigation. How did that happen?
Yeah. So, so it, it it's, it's similar
to to John's take on it. I just think consciousness stays
intact. That's what I believe And and
I'm so. So that and you, no, it's fine.
It's great. Now you know, we our, our first
guest was someone you know very well, Lloyd Auerbach.
Oh my God, loud arm himself, himself.
So do you look at how do you distinguish between I, I assume
you know how he defines A haunting versus an apparition
and a haunting is an imprint. How do you distinguish between
what is a haunting versus what is an apparition in terms of are
you really communicating or are you just catching echoes of
spirit? Oh, great question.
I, I, you know, Lloyd's my mentor and when I was starting
out learning about all this stuff, I read all of Lloyd's
books and I was lucky enough I went to go see Lloyd in a, a
lecture here in the City and, and we struck up a friendship.
So a lot of my things line up with what Lloyd says, but an
apparition for me and in parapsychology, and I'm not a
parapsychologist, but I know a lot of people claim that they
are, but they're not. Lloyd is.
But I think, you know, an apparitional type of haunting.
It's what the cool kids on TV call an intelligent type of
haunting. And, you know, residual
haunting. You hear people talk about
residual hauntings. Parapsychology is called a place
memory haunting and then poltergeist effects and, and,
and stuff. Like that's a whole different
type of haunting. So, so I go down the line, I try
and, and, and use the verbiage of parapsychologists and the
people whose books I read 'cause that's what makes sense to me.
So apparitional haunting kind of is equal to an intelligent
haunting. What?
People call it. And how do you distinguish it?
How do you know when you're out there?
You know, like, OK, this is a conscious, you know, what do you
find? How do you Just how?
Do you sure, sure, sure. Well, you know, if if I'm doing
an EVP session and you know, I'm starting to get answers, I've
gotten direct answers to questions on on an EVP, you
know, do you play the piano and we'll get I strike the keys in
succession. Somebody will look in a mirror
and say, you know, do I look pretty?
And then when we play back the EVP we'll have we have pleasant
enough. So these are direct answers to
questions that we're throwing out there.
So for me that, you know, absolutely rings as an
apparition or intelligent type of haunting or any, you know,
can you open the door? Can you give me a knock?
If, if you're getting an answer, an intelligent answer, can you
knock three times? Can you knock three times again?
Can you nap once? And that happens, you know,
that's, that's, that is somebody that's consciousness interacting
with you somehow. And, and they're aware that
they're doing it. They're aware of you.
That's where I would run knock 3 * a year.
It's like it's like Gary runs one time.
If so, where do you stand on this 'cause you know the idea of
do you think spirits are stuck or they want help or do they
want recognition or what do you think?
What do you think is going on? Right.
Well, you know, again, when we're dealing with spirits, we
have to remember we're dealing with people that just don't have
a body. So we're dealing with people.
I don't believe spirits get stuck.
You know, if you're just consciousness, how do you get
stuck? You know, you have your own free
will as a human being. And if you want to, you know, go
to visit your, your family, all you have to do is think of it
and you're going to be there. And so I don't believe spirits
get stuck where, you know, it's really putting the cart in front
of the horse. You know, we haven't been able
to prove that spirits exist. And so how can we put
limitations on them? You know, I, I don't think, I
think it's short sighted to be putting limitations on a spirit.
I mean, that's, you know, that's crazy.
How many times, John, do you get on your feeds and your lives?
People saying they have unfinished business.
So, yeah, and, and I'm, I'm sorry, you know, listening to
Dan, me and Dan had very similar views, it seems on, on all this,
but it seems like it, it's logical, you know, that's the,
you know, we're thinking in places of logic when it comes
to, you know, spirits. But yes, I get that constantly.
Spirits are stuck. Spirits need unfinished
business. And I try to tell people that,
listen, these are people we're dealing with human beings
without the meat sacks. Right.
And who's finished all their business, who's finished all
their business? Everybody's just unfinished
business. That's funny, man.
My dad, my my dad, I was with my dad.
We were all around him when he passed and you know, 2 hours
before he passed away, he was telling me what to do.
You know, he was like, hey, go down here to my toolbox and get
this and get that he he had unfinished business.
He was still taking care of things so.
Oh my God. So Dan, you've been doing this a
long time and you've seen a lot and you've seen a lot of change.
Now technology is a big part of what John does.
And I think it's a big part of, as I'm getting into this world,
understanding a lot of things that John is a big promote
proponent of the apps, right? He uses them and listen we
understand we are not delusional about the spirit apps and what
they do and how the the pareidolia involved or the
messages. The thing that I as a noob find
amazing when John uses it is one hit the I got the same apps on
my phone and I don't get what he gets.
Sure, I get some of the same. There's some certain ones have
certain built in phrasings, you know, get out of here, run, you
know all these stuff. But when John when John uses it,
they get specific. He gets real Q&A, they get
names. He's they say things that gets
him kicked off TikTok for bullying because one of them is
mean to him and it's like and people get offended.
It's and it's, it is too. It happens too often to be
explainable, in my opinion, right.
And it's it just, it just happens too often.
So you've seen the sort of evolution of tech in your field
as an investigator. What?
What are you know? How has it changed the way you
investigate, if at all? Again, thank you for a great
question. You know, as far as the tech,
when I first started out, I can always tell somebody who's just
starting out. When I first started out, I used
to have to rent a van to bring all my stuff on an
investigation. I had miles of of cable, I had
monitors, DVRSI had every all the crap that you see on the
ghost shows, especially when the ghost shows came out, I was
like, I, I got to get some of that.
I got to get me a FLIR camera. I got I didn't know any of this.
Can I curse? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sure, you know, I didn't know any of this shit where you know,
and and but I was throwing it out there because I saw I saw
chasing a grant doing it on on on the ghost hunter.
Show the original ghost hunters, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and there's nothing
wrong with that. But now all these years later,
you know, my, my, my backpack has like dirty gym clothes and,
and, you know, an EMF meter and a, and a recorder and that's it.
You know, I think your best piece of equipment is a level
head, you know, and, and just understand that, you know, you
may bump into things that you can't explain.
And it doesn't mean that the paranormal, it just means you
haven't been able to explain it. Remember, Thunder and lightning
were paranormal a lot longer than they've been normal, you
know, for so. So maybe this stuff, we'll just
figure it out. But you know, we have to
remember Harry Price. You know, Harry Price is an
amazing guy. He investigated the Borley
rectory, which is over in the UK and he did this back in the
early 1900s. He rented this rectory for a
year and he had a pencil and a notebook and he investigated the
crap out of that place and had amazing result results.
So, you know, you don't need a lot of the, the gadgets and the
techie stuff. It's good to use as backup, but
I wouldn't rely on that entirely because, you know, as far as the
apps go, you know, I was just two weekends ago, I was, I was
in Ohio with a, with a bunch of the guys and they had these apps
and I was like, did you just figure out, you know, the, the,
the lifelong question of humanity?
Did you just figure that out with like $1.99 app you got off
the, the store 'cause that's pretty freaking amazing.
You can, that stuff can help. It could back you up, but I
wouldn't, I wouldn't. A phrase coming out of an app on
your, on your phone is not something that would keep me
going back to a place if, if I got EVP, if I got EMF spikes, if
I got all kinds of other stuff. I always work with a psychic
medium always. And if I have this person and
they're they're backing up what the app says, all right, then,
then, then I'll think of that. But you know, the app alone does
not a haunting make. Is there is there a piece of
tech though that now you bring that you do sort of trust and
you like and you? I use AI have a a few Tri field
EMF meters, natural Tri field EMF meters and what they do is
they filter out man made EVP. You know, sometimes when you see
these people walking around the shows and they have that little
black EMF meter and they're going 02 milligaws, that's
picking up man made electricity. It's not what human beings give
off. So why would you use that?
You can use that to get a baseline people who are
hypersensitive to electromagnetic fields.
Michael Persinger up in in Toronto, I think he's passed
since then, but he did a lot of experiments on how EMF effects
people and he is able to recreate a religious
experiences, UFO abductions, ghosts, you know, just by
manipulating where the EMF is affecting this person on the
side of the brain. He had like a God helmet, it was
called, and he would put it on, put somebody in an isolated
room, everything is all controlled and suddenly they're
floating out their window going up to a spaceship.
So and they're not, you know, but but they're able to, yeah,
they're able to trigger a response from, from somebody's
brain. And then that just tells the
story for this person. Based on electromagnetic fields.
Electromagnetic fields. I've been on plenty
investigations where, you know, the people say, oh, I'm laying
in bed and I hear all these weird things and you look on the
corner of their bed back in the day.
I'm giving my age way. You know, there's a an alarm
clock, you know that you plug in alarm clocks give off a ton of
EMF, a ton of EMF and EMF dissipates very quickly.
So I tell the people, I say you want it, you want your hunting
to go away, Move your alarm clock, put it on the other side
and and it goes away. You know it stops.
So. So a person could be more
sensitive to that. That then triggers false
positives if you will. False positives exactly and
especially if you're on a paranormal investigation and you
have somebody this happened to me who who happened to be and
you don't know if you're hyper sense John, you know, if you're
hyper sensitive to EMF, are you possibly are you?
No, I do, No, I, I know for a fact.
So let me, let me break this down.
It's cuz I'm, it's funny that you're, you're saying this.
I used to do a lot of like service work.
I went up to a place up in Armonk called Wright's Mill.
It's a, it's a very developed community, right?
Very lots of money. They were constantly building
homes and whatnot. There was 2 houses in particular
that constantly, constantly birds were flying into windows.
People would get headaches if they were there.
I would step on the property. They thought the property was
haunted. I'd step on the property and my
stomach would start to turn. I'd start to, you know, when you
get the when you go, you're going to puke.
And I'd have to, I wouldn't be able to service the property at
all. So, So, yeah, I, I, I that
that's how I know that I am sensitive to, you know, such
things, Right, Right. And I actually don't use a lot
of the gadgets and whatnot that a lot of investigators use for
those reasons. I I've always and part of it,
you know, speaking to what you're, you're talking about
Dan, I think some of the reactions he get is, gets his,
you know, we haven't tested him and put him in any sort of God
helmet or, you know, checked his, you know, wired him up or
anything. But I feel like he might be
giving off something that makes that gets the responses he gets.
From. Spirit, whether you know from
spirits, you know or however it works via the app we joke
around, we call him the tech medium, you know like he's like
you know it's it's like he hates it, but it's like I mean I don't
know how else to explain it I. Don't know.
You look a, you look a little extra large to me, John.
I don't mean that in there. I'm saying I'm a triple X.
Dan, I'm a. Triple X right on man right are.
You are you concerned Dan or or anything about where tech is
going in what you do, you know, with you know, AI coming out or
like the apps that John uses, Do you think that'll hinder or help
you? Know what?
You do 'cause you're still active, you're still actively
investigate. Yeah, it, it depends on the
person using it. And you know, if the person
using it is, is going, OK, well, I've got this coming up.
Excuse me, I've got this coming off the app.
What else is happening? You know what else is happening?
I, I, I don't think you can just go into do an investigation with
an app on your phone. You can, you can.
But if you really want to do something scientifically or as
close to scientifically as you can, because we're not
scientists, you know, we're all using scientific equipment that
we really don't know how to use. This doesn't mean.
We're cooks, right? Exactly.
And that's so easy. That's so easy.
So, you know, as far as like equipment, I, I, and I'm excited
about this stuff. And, and yeah, you know, the,
the stuff that's coming out is really cool and it's, it's, you
know, people are thinking about how to do this, what's the best
way to do this? And, and, you know, maybe they
come up with an idea for an app, maybe they figure out how to
modify a piece of equipment. When I do, when I do
investigations and I'm recording EVP, I never hold the recorder.
If I'm holding the recorder, nothing ever comes on that
recorder. I let other people hold it, but
I always take a recorder and I disengage the microphone, right?
'Cause like what we were talking about earlier, you shouldn't
need a microphone to pick up EVP because a spirit doesn't have
the body doesn't have the tools. Now, how do, how do, how do our
ears work? You know, somebody says
something, I'm talking, I'm creating sound waves and it's
going into the microphone. It's coming out your end.
It's tickling the little cochlea that are in your ear and sends a
signal to your brain. Your brain goes, oh, this guy's
talking. If the spirit doesn't have a
voice box or a tongue to manipulate sound waves, what's
going in the recorder? You know your questions.
So, so I like to use one or two recorders that have the
microphone disengaged and you know, everything is correctly
time stamped. So you use the other recorders
to hear your questions, not to hear the answers.
And then I listen to the to the recorder with a disabled
microphone. I haven't gotten full sentences.
I've gotten noises, I've gotten murmurs.
I haven't gotten a, a, a, an answer to a question that I've
asked. But I think I feel like I've
gotten close. And, you know, maybe I just got
a crappy recorder and, and you know, that's the reason why, but
you shouldn't need the microphone engaged.
Yeah. What's the wildest thing that
you've like, you know, some of this tech or things that you've
used has you picked up on like what was a wow?
What are what's a wow moment for you?
Instigations, you know, with? You using the tech?
Yeah. Or, you know, like where even if
it's something happened with that tech that you weren't
expecting or, you know, you just, you know what I mean,
where it was. Like I got AI, got a good one.
I was, you know, I was in upstate New York at a old
funeral parlour that a guy turned into a house.
It was beautiful right on the Hudson River.
And I, you know, I was spending the night in the embalming room,
as you do. And I had AI had a old tape
recorder. Yeah.
Yeah, right. And this, this embalming room
was, you know, it's like they shut the lights off 100 years
ago, turn the lights back on. And that's what the embalming
room looks like. So it's very echoey.
It's all tiled, it's all stainless steel.
And I had this old, had this old tape recorder and you have to
push record and play in to record, you know, one of those
old ones. And you know, I'm big tough guy
and I was powerlifting at the time.
I was freaking jacked up and, and, and I said, I'm going to go
down to the embalming room now. Meanwhile, I'm, I'm shitting my
pants down to the embalming room.
There's nobody around me. And I had a tape in and I had
the, the tape recorder was on the stainless steel Gurney that
would hold the body that had all of the the drains and everything
for the bodily fluids. It was so creepy.
And you know, it was a 90 minute tape, so 45 minutes each side.
So 45 minutes, I'm 44 minutes and 30 seconds I'm sitting down
there and then 30 seconds later it pops ends and then the tape
sort of buttons pop out and it hit the metal, the metal table.
And it just echoed in the towel room.
And I screamed and jumped out of my chair and landed in like the
other room thinking, Oh my God, something just banged the table.
But it was my stupid tape recorder, you know, so, so you
know, you got to be aware of of some of that stuff.
But yes, I. Would say that.
I would say that's not in the manual for how tape recorders.
Are supposed to work. And therefore it worked
differently. Than I know you can't take it
back to Best Buy and go yeah I was hanging out in a bombing
room and the. Ghosts sort of broke it and.
Start coming under the warranty, you know.
You know, I got to agree. I got to agree with Dan.
There's like, especially like going back to the apps, One big
thing that I noticed that, well, look, because a lot of people
use these apps now. Yeah, they'll sit, you know,
they'll sit in in a room. They'll they'll be, you know,
wherever they are. And let's say they know that
other people have investigated, let's say hypothetically, a
spirit named Mary, right. Very common name.
I get it all the time. They'll say the name over and
over and over. Mary, can you hear me?
Mary, how are you feeling? And then you know, the app will
kick out the name Mary, you know, and they'll people will
get so excited over it. But and it's like, and I listen,
I support the apps. I use a bunch of different ones,
but there has to be some form of logic when using them where it's
like somebody programmed that to happen.
You know, it's, it's constantly these things access your
microphone, they access your phones, you know, And so those
things have to be kept in mind. So going back to that, for
example, like if I'm at a cemetery, you know, I have these
phones on my wrist. So I'll have one phone on my
wrist facing usually out into the into the darkness.
And if I go up to a headstone and I say spirit, may we have a
conversation and I get a yes or a yes answer this next question
I always ask. It's repetitive.
I know it bores people sometimes, but I always ask,
what is your name? And they will say and you know,
I'll get the name sometimes. And usually if I get that yes
answer and I get that name, I get a conversation afterwards.
That's awesome. You know, which is, which is
which is wild. But you, you, you're right with
anything, whether you're using the apps, whether you're using
any sort of equipment, we have to have a logical mind.
We have to be able to, you know, really not draw conclusions
without, you know, the proper evidence to back it up.
And we have to be able to admit to ourselves sometimes evidence
could be, you know, what's the word, Inc Inconclusive.
Inconclusive. And, and just to just to support
what John's saying, because I've seen it, seen him do it.
It's not like he asked what's its name?
And they'll it's not like a another common name, John.
And then he looks around and like, oh, there's a John.
It's sometimes it's like. A weird talking about a very.
Yeah, like a weird, like a Murray Head would not be
programmed in. And then with within the
vicinity of the headstones, you find the headstone with that
name and it's really quite odd. And it's wise.
It's wise. It's still Dan.
It still blows my mind and I've been doing it for years now.
It's still it still blows my. Mind, I'm coming up there and
hanging with you in a sanitary John.
Man, Dan, I would. You will love it.
I love it.
And here's the thing. This is what's this is another
great thing about the two of you that you both love because Dan,
you have a love for history and a love for historic locations.
And look, both being in New York, John, John goes to a a
couple of these places. So let's get the let's just sort
of the gossip stuff out of there.
You've explored a ton of famous haunts.
Are there any locations you think are overrated and others
that deserve more attention? Overrated, You know, I think
every place has a value to it, whether or not it ends up being
haunted or, or you just have an old building.
Overrated Now I'm going to say no, none of the places I've been
to, I'm sure there are. You know, you go to Eastern
State Penitentiary, which I've had a lot of luck and they don't
do the ghost stuff anymore. But you know, if you're, if
you're no, I'm going to say no, no, not.
Well, then what for the for the places that for these historic
locations? What?
Why? Why do you think that they
retain such spiritual energy? Well, you know.
Is it trauma? Just age.
I, you know, I, I know we're, we're giving off energy right
now, you know, and, and who knows where this energy is
going? Lloyd, Lloyd Auerbach tells a
great story. When I hope.
It's going to the bank one day, to be honest with you.
I can use a little bank energy. You know what I'm?
Saying tell me about it. That's that.
But anyway, go ahead. Sorry, you know, Lloyd tells the
story of a place, memory haunting that he was involved
with, where people were hearing other people having sex.
Oh yeah, we did that. We covered that.
Yeah, we. Did.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's one of my
favorite Lloyd stories. It's a great one.
But that those people weren't dead, you know, they just moved
to another house. So, you know, it's it's oh, man,
we went off on a tangent. What was?
The tell me this Let's let's. Let's.
Yeah, yeah. But let's jump to because look,
let's talk about the merchant house is a good point to bring
it up. That's when you're, it's one of
your, you know, obviously 18 years, 19 years now. 19 years
studying this place. What, what?
Why do you why are you so fascinated with it?
And why do you think that place has such a spiritual energy?
Let's talk specifically about specifically about this place.
Yeah, I, I, I believe that the merchant's house is as active as
it is because of the people that run the merchant's house.
The merchant's house was, you know, owned only by one family,
lived in by only one family. And it, and again, I don't want
to get you can look up the merchant's house online and find
all the dates. But but when, when they closed
doors to the merchant's house, it was sat empty for, for or
unlived in for a couple of years.
And then it opened back up as a Museum of 19th century living,
which would be like us making a Museum of the 1990s.
You know, it's, you know, 30 years ago and, and the people
that take care of the house, the people, the staff that runs it,
love the house. You know, they love the house.
They respect the house. When they come in, they go, good
morning, Mr. And Mr. Treadwell. When they leave, they say, have
a good night. You know, Treadwells, you don't
swear in it. You know, I've never.
I'm cursed at the merchant's house.
I curse all the time. And, but, but I respect the
merchant's house and, and I choose not to.
And I think the spirits appreciate the respect that
their house receives. Now I've brought in some really
amazing medium psychic mediums and they've all to a person have
said it's mostly the servants that are haunting the house.
If you want to call haunting when you say haunting, it sounds
scary and evil, but you know, they, they, they pop in from
time to time. The the Treadwells, the family
that own the house pop in from time to time.
They love the way when it's decorated around Christmas time,
you go in there with an EVP, you know, to collect them EVP.
You get them all night long because they're enjoying being
there and it's a happy place. Merchants house is in a scary
place. So I love going there because I
had these strange sort of connections, you know, with the
Merchant's House. It took me about six months to
get my first investigation. And they, they were on the
original season of Ghost Hunters.
And after that show aired, they got thousands and thousands of
letters and they had a bad experience.
And they were like, you know what, screw it.
We're not letting any of these dopey ghost people come in here
anymore. And, you know, the, the,
everything in the house, the Merchant's House is an original
to the house. If you're looking at a chair at
the merchant's house tomorrow, that chair was sitting there in,
in the 1840s, you know, people were using that the sheets on
the bed or the sheets that they slept in, the, the, the plates
and the cups in the kitchen or the plates and the cups that
they ate off of it. It's all original.
Everything is where it was.
So, so it's, it's, it's priceless, this place priceless.
And you know Mr. Treadwell, Seabury Treadwell, he here's a
little connection which which gave me goosebumps when I found
out he was passed away on March 7th, 1865, right.
So I was born when I give my age away on March 7th, 1965, a
hundred years to the day. I don't believe in coincidence.
You know, there's a reason I'm at the merchant's house.
First time I walked in there, after six months of buying
everybody freaking lunches and donations and all kinds of crazy
shit. First time I walked in, I, I was
waiting for, for a member of the board to come from the offices
upstairs and I'm sitting in the middle of the parlor and I
started to cry. I'm not a crier, you know, like
out I cry when I watch commercials sitting in my
apartment by myself. But but when I'm out being
tough, big guy Dan, you know, I don't do that.
And I was bald, the guy, the guy came down and I'm staying in the
parlor, just a mess. He's like, are you OK?
I'm like, I don't know. I just never happens to me.
This never happens to me. It just I connected to it.
I connected. You now you, you brought up
first thing. One of the first things you
brought up today was reincarnation.
Do you feel there's some connection there with you in
this place? No, no, I mean, you know, I
can't say for sure, but I had never heard of the merchant's
house till, you know, maybe 2021 years ago.
I've never had any kind of past life memories or anything like
that. I, I just dig the house.
I think the house digs me. The, the spirits are aware of
me. They know my name.
I have never caught my name on on a recorder on an EVP.
But the psychic mediums I bring in, they're going Oh yeah, damn,
they, they're comfortable with you.
They're cool. Now do you?
Do you have you, you have, have you decided that these are
apparitions as opposed to like a haunting, an imprint as you
would put it, or what do you think's going on?
Yeah, I think, I think there's a little bit of both.
We recorded footsteps one time. I was standing with a colleague
whose name was Dan as well, to make it all confusing.
But these footsteps walked right between us, you know, standing
on the second floor of a house right between US.
And I looked at him. He looked at me.
I'm like, you heard that right? And I don't think, I don't
think, you know, the wood was squeaking.
I think we were meant to hear that, all right, and it was
getting going to get weird. Now it was imprinted for us to
experience that. All right.
I don't think they were footsteps again.
Ghosts don't have a body. How do they make, you know,
footprint sounds, you know, and, and is that even a word?
Footprint sounds. I get it, but we all understand.
How do they create that noise? Yeah.
How do they create that noise if they don't have a body?
So they have to imprint it onto you what they want you to hear.
This is what Lloyd will tell you too, is, you know, a, a spirit
or an apparition when it's in, when it's interacting with you,
can appear to you whatever way it wants to show you.
So did did Lloyd talk about a case of an old woman and a young
boy in San Francisco? No.
And oh, man, that's my favorite Lloyd story.
But he was interviewing a young boy who was having apparitional
experiences with an older woman. But this woman would show up to
him at his age, as a teenager, as an adult, as an old lady, you
know, it was just whatever she felt like projecting to him.
That's what she projected to him, you know, And And so again,
went off on a crazy tangent, but no, it's great.
No, it's great. Yeah, Yeah.
Yeah. It's, it's, you know, as as far
as the intelligence stuff, when, when you're getting interactions
like that, when Lloyd is sitting across from a boy who's sitting
next to an empty chair and he asks the empty chair question,
Little boy looks at the chair and then answers Lloyd.
And he got a phone number. He got a phone number where this
old lady who has passed away, she's in spirit and she's
communicating with this, with this boy whose family moved into
the house that she once lived in.
He rattled off a phone number. They dialed it.
It was an assisted living home where this woman's brother
lived. Dude, wow, that little boy's a
witch. And he continued to see that
woman when he grew up. His children saw that woman.
So and and and. And Dan, you said that the the
child was seeing this woman in different stages of her life,
like she would appear as like, middle-aged, Right.
And the next time, older. OK.
Yeah, yeah. That's why she, she, she, she
appeared to him first as an old woman.
And when Lloyd asked, why do you only communicate with him and
nobody else, she said her answer was, he's the only one that
waved back. And then this little boy's
parents were like, I remember seeing an old lady wave to us.
And I just thought it was a lady like, you know, you know, out on
the lawn or walking around. But the little boy was the first
person to wave back and and and say hello.
John knows my theory on this too, if the movies are to
believe those old woman goes to the scariest there are.
I think any little kid spirits little kid goes to my.
Room right off listen, I got I got to recap on something that
Dan said, which is so important and I try to stress this when
I'm doing my documentation to so many people because you know, I
do this on social media. I get an array of questions.
I will go to a place like the Algonquin hotel, OK, or the
Southern mansion in Cape May all right, two very beautiful places
that do not have a bad vibe or a bad bone in their in their
bodies. You know what I'm saying?
Like they're just pleasant places to be and we experience a
lot we experience I was the cat I thought herself back there.
It was the cat. I experienced all these
incredible, you know, things happening.
And I try to stress to people, hey, listen, these places can be
haunted and it doesn't have to be evil.
It doesn't have to be bad, it doesn't have to be malicious and
it doesn't have to be angry. Sometimes it could be pleasant
and happy and above all, normal. Yeah, like you, people are
afraid of what they don't understand.
And if if you walk into a place and a door shuts, how do you
know that that's not a spirit or somebody that's in spirit trying
to get your attention 'cause they want to talk to you, you
know? But if you don't understand, you
know that, that, you know, when you pass over into spirit
doesn't make you one, doesn't make, you know, all the answers
to the universe. It doesn't make that.
We tried to ask them that. We tried to ask them for the
March Madness NCAA picks and they did me dirty on it.
I did my bracket this year and I absolutely got hammered.
They picked. All the wrong.
Teams. It was a terrible choice, so
yes. Never done brackets.
We've oh, I love the brackets. It's my favorite thing, but it
was anyway, yes. We sorry to interrupt you.
Go ahead. People are afraid of or of what
they don't understand. So if they walk into, say the
merchant's house and you know, they hear footsteps running down
the stairs. I've had people just.
Turn around and walk right out. You don't walk in and walk right
out. I'm going put it, it's not that
place. You know, you have to try and
understand that, you know, we're dealing with some nice people
and you know, they're people. Maybe they're having a bad day.
You know, people talk about evil spirits.
And you know, if a guy's a Jackass when he's alive and he
passes away and somehow he comes back, odds are he's going to be
a Jackass. He's he's not going to be.
Yeah. 100%, yeah. Yeah.
So, you know, maybe these evil entities, these demons which I
don't buy into, maybe, maybe these people were just Dicks
when before they died, you know? Yeah.
Dan, look, Dan, you are speaking my language.
Right on, man. You are speaking my language.
I can again dealing with the social media aspect of it.
You know a bunch of people in the chat.
People are always screaming demons, people are always
screaming all this wild stuff. And it's like I, I like to call
it paranature almost, you know, like it's, it's a, it's a form
of nature we yet understand. Yeah, paranormal is a is a
terrible word. You know, I mean, it, it, it's,
it's beyond normal, you know, that's what it translates to.
But when people say something about paranormal, it it
immediately conjures up got to get The Conjuring word in there.
It really like brings up evil, you know, paranormal activity,
all these scary movies when it's just something we haven't
figured out yet. It it doesn't have to be scary.
I've, I've gone on investigation on 29th St. in a an old
warehouse and I got creeped out, man.
I, you know, we, we had set cameras up to let run for like
an hour, hour and a half. We were going to go get
something to eat and and I forgot my phone, right?
I hate phones. I hate these frigging phones.
You're tied to them. And so I was like, I know I got
to go up and go get my damn phone.
And, and I was walking across it was the whole floor of a
building on 29th St. and I was walking to where our stuff was
to go get my phone. And I just got creeped out.
I was like, man, something bad is going to happen right now.
And part of me was like, time to go.
But part of me is like, you know what?
You got to stay. You got to stay to see if
something happens. And I was, I, I was shaking.
I was so sure something was going to happen and nothing.
Did you know, I texted the guys that said, man, something's
brewing up here. I'll, I'll see you guys in like
15 minutes, half an hour. Nothing happened.
But I got really, really
spooked. And it's difficult to, as an
investigator to kind of put all to not be influenced by a
feeling, a creepy feeling. Who knows what happened.
Maybe it was a little EMF was bugging me out, I don't know.
But but you have to put all that stuff out and say I'm just here
to collect data, you know, I'm going to, I got this creepy
feeling. What time was it?
What was the temperature? What was the barometric
pressure? All that stuff.
And you got a data log, all that stuff to see if there's any kind
of patterns or, or correlations with, with, you know, the, the
gigabytes of, of information that I have on my computers
here. So, so Dan, let let me, let me
ask you this, because when I, when I document, I don't even, I
don't even consider myself an investigator at this point.
I'm, I'm more on the documentation side of things.
When I choose places, the document, I, I go for history
and it doesn't even, and it doesn't even have to be popular
history like where I'm at right now was the factory that started
in 1865. And you know nothing, you know
nothing crazy will happen. I've spoken to spirits here, 1
spirit in particular named Peter and very prevalent, always
talking about money, always talking about working.
And when I asked management about it, I said, hey, do you
guys know any, any Peter that worked here?
They, they turned pale. They turned pale.
They said we had a, a bad experience with a Peter here
that was a, a maintenance guy that worked here all his life
and he felt like he was being robbed and he tried to break
into our office and then he fell to his death.
And I mean, they turned. I wish I had the reaction.
They turned pale and then I said that name.
Kathy felt that we have our Kathy Nadal in Yeah.
Oh, Kathy, she's amazing. Yeah.
And she? Was like brought up, she's like,
I'm seeing splat. I'm seeing this.
And it was about, you know, like the guy who fell from the wind.
It's was I'm getting chills thinking about it.
To be honest. Because that's weird.
That was. Really crazy stuff.
Yeah. So, so that's what I'm saying.
So what would would you say that history plays a big role and
even like micro history, like a place that had just a lot of
people or a lot of emotion or, you know, just a lot of living
in it, if you will, whether it was work or home.
Sure would would that give more of an opportunity for some kind
of haunting, either an apparitional or like a place
memory type of haunting? Well, yeah, sure, sure.
You know, the, you know, the more you know, you go fishing in
a, in a, in a pond that was just created and there's no fish,
you're not going to catch anything when you go fishing,
You know, you go fishing out in the Long Island Sound, you know,
odds are you're going to catch something not every time, but,
but you might not want to eat it either, said you.
Might not want to eat it either. Yeah, oh, the Long Island Sound.
I my dad was a fisherman and when that's all we ate was out
of the sound. How nice.
That's why he can hear ghosts now.
It's you. Know, Dan, one thing you do that
I definitely want to bring up and John, I think this is a good
person for advice. You visit a lot of theaters.
Yeah. From the Ed Sullivan Theater to
the Belasco Theater. You know what?
Let me see. So you know, what is it about?
What is it about a a stage or a movie house?
Why do you think that has, you know, that kind of energy?
What attracts you to the theater for this?
OK, well, you know, when I moved to the city, like you said in
that really cool intro, thank you.
I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and I was I, I
made my way as an actor in New York City for a long, long time.
And, you know, doing those silly commercials, which afforded me
to be able to do lots of theater where you don't get paid.
And like experimental theater, new theater actors are, are, are
hate actors. They're, yeah, they're
narcissists and whatever. Let's not talk about it's a
different podcast. But I, you know, I, I think
there's a lot in a theatre. There's a lot of emotional
energy, a lot of emotional energy.
There's a lot of superstition in theatre too.
You don't say, you don't say Macbeth in a theatre, ghost
lights. You leave a ghost light on.
It's called a ghost light. It's not to keep ghosts away, to
keep the guy cleaning the theater from falling off the
stage. That's what it's for and what
people you know, it becomes a ghost light.
So you, you, you said the Belasco Theater, which was
haunted by David Belasco. It's a rite of passage for when
there's a play in the in the house for the actors to sneak
into his David Belasco's apartment.
He had a duplex apartment above the theater.
I got to spend the night in there.
It's really, really creepy and really, really cool.
And he was out of his mind. But it's a rite of passage for
these actors to sneak into his into his apartment after the
show and see how long they can spend up there.
So, you know, there's a lot of folklore.
Oh, you're going to get scared by David Belasco.
You might punt into David. You might, you might what, you
might just hear a rat knock something off a wall.
Suddenly that's paranormal and it freaks everybody out.
But, you know, old buildings, the old architecture, there's
lots of history to theaters, especially the big giant
Broadway theaters in New York City.
I, I don't know when the Belasco Theatre was built, but it was,
you know, in the early, early 1900's, the first, first theater
in the first theater in the world.
I had an elevator and they, they had that so Houdini could
disappear an elephant below the stage.
And there was an elevator that would bring the young ingenues
from backstage all the way up to David Velasco's apartment where
he had a grotto and a confessional.
He used to dress, he called the Bishop of Broadway and he would
dress as a priest and he would bring these girls into their
confessional, hear all their sins, say, OK, you're all clean
now and then take him out and then give him a whole bunch more
new sins to to confess next time they come up.
He was a wild man. Wild man sounds pretty.
Sounds pretty gross the 1st. Yeah, yeah, the.
Original Harvey Weinstein that's.
Exactly what he was doing. Exactly.
Yeah, I. Mean that's that makes sense.
So let you know what so we have in our, in our hometown, you
know, in Westchester, the Capitol Theatre, right.
And John has now been given access to go in there.
What what's some advice you have like what's your approach?
What's the first thing you do when you approach a a theater to
to investigate or? To walk around, I try and get as
much history, I try and get somebody that's had an
experience there, you know, an incredible experience you're
going to bump into. Cause actors are actors.
Everyone's going to have an experience.
But you find like a stagehand or a stage manager who says, yeah,
yeah, this happened to me. It's legit.
There's weird stuff going on here.
I would have that person on the investigation.
I don't understand why. You know, when you go on an
investigation, John, let's say, you know, you're having
experiences in your home and you call me in.
I'm not going to tell you to leave.
You're the one having experiences.
They're attracted to them. Somehow Gary gets the hell.
Out of it. I put that thing on the market.
Exactly, exactly. The Capital is known for is is a
rock'n'roll theater, right? Like that's this.
Is like you know some of the. Action shows up there.
I've I've gone up there first. I think I thought of Black Rose
up there. Yeah, yeah.
You know, from Janis Joplin to, you know, it's, it's a famous,
famous rock rock club. Yeah.
In rock, Yeah. And.
You know, theaters are mysterious.
You know, there's, there's dark corners, there's strange
shadows. There's backstage, there's where
the orchestra pit, the lighting booth, there's all kinds of
little creepy places where where you can go and, and, and just be
quiet. And Sullivan Theater was the
coolest theater. I mean, it's Elvis performed
there, The Beatles. But for me, the coolest place
was on the top of the theater behind where they would just
store all kinds of crap. And and I sat back there and I'm
not a person that feels spirits, but I was like, this is where I
should be. This is where I should be.
I was supposed to like being on. I was about to, I was about to
ask you like where is the most energy?
Is it directed towards the stage where they were or like where do
you think? That the, the energy is, is
wherever you find it. And especially when you're
dealing with like spiritual energy, you know, I, I try and
filter that stuff out and not be influenced by my feelings and
just kind of go with what I'm collecting or watching all the
other people. You know, when you go on an
investigation, John, bring somebody who's never been on a
paranormal investigation before, 'cause it's a whole different
energy. And you know, maybe they're
scared, maybe they're laughing, maybe they're having fun, maybe
they think it's all BS. That energy is good.
Who knows? If you bring somebody in there
and says, you know what, John, this is all bull crap, what's
the spirits going to say? Oh yeah, watch this.
Who knows what's going to happen?
I again, like I told you, I used to powerlift and I would go to
the gym and, and for a long, long time, I didn't tell anybody
that I did this. And you know, around Halloween
time, the Daily News or one of the newspapers would want to do
something and they'll do a Google search, come up with me
and suddenly I'm in the paper. And so, so one Halloween where
I'm training, working out and, you know, these big giant guys,
300 and 43150 LB power lifters go, is that you?
They go, yeah. And they're like, is that real?
You go, well, come on, I got keys to the, I got keys to the
place. Let's go.
And we'll go in there and you hear a door slam upstairs and
they'll go, who's upstairs? I go, why don't you go take a
look, big boy? And they're like, no way.
I'm not going up there. It seems, you know, it seems not
that it happens on command, but it seems like just spirits, at
least at the merchant's house, play along.
Dan, I got a couple more questions for you.
You've been a great guest. I really appreciate your time.
Have have any of your investigations and I and you may
have answered this, but like, you know, in certain things have
the reactions or the interactions rather with the
spirits felt very personal or impactful.
You know, did was it like really, did you feel this was
directed to Dan Sturgis for your benefit?
Again, you know, like, like I just said about actors, I was an
actor. So of course, I think
everything's for my benefit. And but, you know, I'm trying to
think, I believe sometimes some of the stuff at at the
Merchant's house, in particular that story I just told you.
I thought that was for me. Like, all right, Dad, we'll,
we'll, we're going to throw you a bone and scare the crap out of
this big gigantic guy. Probably the most meaningful
interaction I had and it was with my grandmother and you
know, I had had a really big back surgery and I don't know if
any of you guys have had like a major surgery, but the recovery
after that, a major surgery really messes with your head and
you get low self esteem. And you know, I couldn't, I
couldn't do anything. I have people pick up my laundry
and no, and I'm not that guy. I'm used to doing things on my
own. So I was feeling really down
about myself and went to sleep one night in my living room and,
and, and this was a dream. It was 100% dream.
My grandmother came in from the kitchen into the living room.
The first thing she said was don't be afraid.
She told me she's in heaven with Cha Cha, who was her little
Chihuahua and and with her husband and her family.
And she gave me a pep talk. She said, listen, you, you, you
got to keep doing this, you know, don't give up.
She gave me a pep talk and it was great.
And she said exactly what I needed to hear.
It was a dream, 100% dream. But I think she came to me in my
dream. And when she left, after she
gave me this pep talk, she got up off the chair in my living
room, walked past me into the kitchen where it was dark.
And that's the entrance of the apartment.
But when I woke up and I didn't wake up because I was sleeping,
I was on one elbow and I was turned and I was looking into
the kitchen. So in my sleep I trapped her,
you know, going into the kitchen.
So was did she come to me? Because that's the only way she
had available to come to me was when I was in a dream state.
Your mind is running on a different frequency when you're
dreaming. And was it easier for me for
easier for grandma to communicate with me through a
dream rather than manifesting or, or doing something that I
might not even, you know, register to me?
I miss most of the paranormal things that happened around me.
I'm like, oh, that was real. That was nobody came up the
stairs. So that was really meaningful
for me. And, and I was telling my mom
about it the next day it happened, you know, like after
midnight, I'll tell my mom, come on, the craziest dream.
Grandma came to visit me, told me all this stuff.
And it was Grandma's careful about.
That wait a second, Dan, someone's another spirit's being
made, we think, and it's sort of drowning you out.
It's so active around here, it's not funny.
So when I was telling my mom about this and she said when you
have this dream, I said I had it this morning at like 2 o'clock
3:00 in the morning, you know, in the middle of the night and
she was doing today's grandma's birthday after midnight.
It was Grandma's birthday, so, you know, did she?
I, I'm, I'm going to say, yeah, she came to visit me and that's
how she chose to visit me. You know, Grandma and I were
very, very tight and, and, and she was a person I needed to
hear from. And she said the things I needed
to hear. Did that make that all up in my
mind and, and, and give it an avatar, which happened to be
Grandma? Maybe.
But what's the difference? You know what's the difference?
Right. And you know, with that, I mean,
is it what's you look at that at that event and write you, you
analyze it and you sort of I, I assume now, because you've been
doing this so long, a lot of events now you look at them and
analyze them. What, what other, you know, what
are some of you know, your personal beliefs have how they
evolved as a result of being in this paranormal game for so
long. You know what, what is what,
what is the how, what's that look like, you know, for you
now? And where do you think it's
going for you? You know I'm.
Really, really love dealing with psychic mediums like Kathy and,
and I've got a couple that I work with, you know, like,
unfortunately, see Kathy, when you're dealing with a medium, a
psychic medium, it's, you could fall into a trap and, and become
like best pals with this person cuz you're going on
investigations with them. And, and you shouldn't.
I am, I am best pals with this medium who, who I brought to the
merchant's house for the very first time.
And I didn't believe in psychic mediums.
I live in New York City. There's more psychos and
psychics out there. And, and, and I wasn't buying
into it. I met so many freaking weirdos
in New York City who were telling me that they're psychic
and I'm psychic and, you know, OK, whatever, you know, you're
not. But so I was against all that in
the very beginning. And I meant 2 and one was a
gentleman named Richard Scholler, who I'm still very,
very close with. And another was like an 8 year
old girl who I was doing. I was shooting an episode of ATV
pilot with Lloyd and, and she was on the set and she was a
medium we were using. She was a little girl and she
was pulling stuff out that there's no way she could know.
No way she could know. I had to go back and ask my mom,
you know, did, did, did Dad's parents sent him away, Send him
away when he was a little boy. And she was like, yeah, he
doesn't talk about it. This little girl brought it up,
you know which? Talking to a spirit or, you
know, I've got my dad's DNA in me.
Was she getting it from me? I don't know, you know.
It's it's funny you bring that up because one thing you know
that we talk about here is the my theories on spirits, because
I do deviate from the norm, the normal ideas.
I believe that, you know, when we die, our consciousness, it
has no vessel anymore. It go, it spreads.
So for example, when someone says to me, hey, John, my
grandmother came to me in a dream, I turn around and I say,
I don't think they did. I don't think they ever left
you. I think that you got some of
that consciousness in you. And for most people that are
normal, the only way they can access you is in dreams.
Now, other people are sometimes luckier.
They'll hear the the sound of like their mother, father,
grandparents calling them or they'll smell them.
Like one person I know was like, it's funny.
Was like, hey. You know, my father always smelt
a certain way after work, you know.
Great. Like a martini, Yeah.
You know, just like he smelled. He smelled like menthol
cigarettes cools. And hookers.
He smelled, he smelled like cools and.
And and coconut body oil. Yeah, yeah.
And. Motor oil and everything, like,
'cause he worked in a garage and he was over smoking pools and
then all the sudden like they'll get hit with that smell.
Yeah. And they're like, where does
that even come from? And I think there could be a
scientific explanation to that. Sure.
Sure, sure. Maybe.
Maybe when your father passed, some of that energy went to you.
And we kind of see a little bit of this.
And I don't know if you've ever like read the studies of people
who had organ transplants. Like they get like a heart from
somebody and the next thing you know, they start developing the
tastes of the that person, memories of that person, like
wild stuff like that. Weird connections with people
they never had. Hey, I had AI, had I?
I got a crazy one for you. I had a friend of mine.
I love it. I love, I love it.
Yeah, a friend of mine had a son from a previous marriage and and
the kid was like I guess at the time 10/11/12 years old and
lived with his mom but spent a lot of time with his dad.
Anyway his dad, my buddy started dating a girl who was from
Russia and this kid met her for the first time.
He was staying with his dad, woke up the next day and could
speak Russian. And this kid is Japanese, you
know, and, and he could speak Russian and he had a song.
He, he sang it to me and my buddy did a bunch of research
and it turns out that this song that he was singing it, it's was
like a very an early version of their like would be Star
Spangled Banner, but from like 100 years ago.
He's like, nobody knows this version of this song, but this
kid was like, I know the song and you can still speak Russian.
And, you know, he's talked to people that speak Russian and
they go, yeah, you're speaking like a Russian and not like
somebody who learned Russian, you know, book studied Russian.
But you, you're talking slang, you know, and it's old English,
you know, like old Russian slang.
So, so, yeah. You know, I, I think we're, we,
we've got so much in this. I've got, you know, I, I've got,
you know, my, my parents, my family, all their DNA is in me.
You Walker, especially New York City, you're breathing in dead
skin cells from somebody else. Who knows if you're going to be
able to pick up some of some of their traits.
Bro you should start hanging out on Wall Street then I would like
to get some. Like if I get an organ.
Like a Lehman Brothers organ or someone in investment banking.
Hopefully some of those memories will stick with stick with me.
You know what I mean? I wake up one day and just get
I. Don't know if it's Lehman
Brothers you want, but have an instinct, right?
Right. Have an instinct for some stocks
and how to play it a little better, you know what I mean?
That's so funny. That's so funny.
Dan, look, it's, it's a real pleasure.
You're a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of experience, you
know, and it's fun to hear your perspective on how you look at
it and your approach. And it's, you know, the more
it's what's really, I find fascinating, being new to all
this, the more I speak to experienced paranormal
investigators or experienced mediums or scientists, they are
not like, you know, they're on the John's wavelength, you know,
in terms of how they look at things.
And it's like there really is a very objective perspective on
what spirits are, a belief in them for sure.
But it's not, I have, I haven't come across yet.
And I'm sure I will. And I'm kind of looking forward
to it, to be honest with you. Someone who's been around a long
time, who finds it very evil. I like those people.
They make me laugh a lot. But it's like, you know, it's
like just like the demonologists or the curses and the spear and
the but. I was at a conference couple
years ago and and, you know, I don't buy into the demonology
and that's not my bag. You know, it's, it's, that's
religion and, and you know, I'm, I'm, I'm more about, you know,
trying to figure things out and not having the faith I want to.
Dan, Dan, I am sorry to cut you off.
The more you speak, the more and more I like you.
You are awesome dude. Are we going to be life
partners, John? I think we best friends
partners. I can feel it normal.
Life Partners Man is coming. We might be best friends.
You guys got to hang. It's like John.
Look, John is not. He is not, as you say, he's not
an investigator. He likes to go out there and do
his thing and have conversations and sort of learn by doing this,
you know, not. And you don't have to become a
paranormal investigator. You know, I take my friends, I,
if I'm doing an investigation, sit down at the house and hey,
what are you doing Friday night? What are you doing Saturday
night? You want to, want to have a cool
night and hold a recorder and then, you know, I'll buy you a
beer afterwards. And, and it's, it's fun, you
know, and, and you know, you don't have to be, I said, you
don't have to take any of the data log or anything like that.
It just come and have fun because it's, it's an energy,
you know, that you're, you're giving out to the spirits and
you know, if you're a spirit, because we, we've already
established these are just people without a body, right?
Would you call it a meat sack? And and that's great.
This is, this is the bar room logic.
It's the bar room. Logic of it, right?
We're not. John is.
John is raw in terms of his every, every theory and all of
his things. Sure, he's read a couple of
things, but he's basing his right.
And correct me if I'm wrong, John, you're basing everything
you've come to through the way you categorize things is because
of all of the evidence that you've accumulated.
Am I wrong in saying that, John? I mean.
It's like his theories. Are his own he didn't study
under Lloyd I don't even think John knew who Lloyd was until I
introduced you know, until I until I told him I was
interviewing him, you know so it's.
Like the only thing, the only thing I I've heard the name
before and the only thing that I knew about him was that he was
into chocolate. Oh yeah.
Oh man, that's. It because I've heard of that.
I've heard of him before and I'm like.
Wait, bacon wasabi chocolate? That's what Lloyd makes.
Bacon wasabi chocolate. Oh.
I love wasabi. Yeah, right.
So, Dan, I'm I'm so sorry I cut you off before with your
thought. What?
What were you? You were you were talking about?
What were you saying? I wanted to hear what you were.
Saying, oh, we were talking about, you know, about like the
approach when you go on an investigation and no.
No, with the the demonologist. With the demonology, yeah, OK,
yeah, yeah, it's, it's again, like I said, it's not my bag,
but I was at this, I was at this conference in somewhere in
Pennsylvania and. And I went to go listen to a
demonologist and because it would be a cool lecture to go
see, right. And the lecture he was giving
was great. And I didn't want to be the
asshole on the back ass and trying, you know, giving him a
gotcha question or anything like that.
That's not. Yeah.
And and, you know, he probably could have just buried me
anyway. This guy's been around forever.
But, you know, he said, OK, you're on.
Oh, my God, I got another creepy story to tell you.
You're you're on our radar, OK? He told us.
There's 300 people in this, in this auditorium.
The devil knows you're all here and he's going to send his
minions to check you out and see if you're a candidate for
oppression. Because they want to oppress
you, possess you, and then they want you to die.
They want you to kill yourself, which is the biggest affront you
can do to God is commit suicide, which I don't believe but.
Yeah, I would say that's not it. Yeah, and, and but, you know, I
was back in my I was back in my hotel room thinking about these
little minions running around checking me out, going this is
kind of creepy. But then I started thinking, why
did I wait till I was? How come I had to wait till I
was in my 40s to find this out? You know, like don't use a Ouija
board. Really.
Shouldn't they tell you that, you know, early on, if it's
going to be, you know, demon possessed, why are they selling
it at Kmart? Why are they selling?
I just bought a spirit board at at Target for clearance for 499.
You know what all you want, nothing bad's gonna happen.
Nothing. I've interviewed.
I've interviewed the guy. And I believe they're for ages 8
and up. Let's.
Just be clear. Exactly, it says it on the box.
Yeah, you shouldn't be afraid of something you could find at a
garage sale. Yeah, and but I talked to the.
I called the factory where they build them, which is up in,
well, it was in Salem, MA And and I talked to the guy that I
guess runs the plant and and I said, just can you just answer
me one question? He goes, yeah.
I said, what stage of the process do you put the magic in?
Because apparently it's magic. You know, it's late board
plastic and a brass pen. And that's going to open a
portal to hell. Come on, that's wonderful.
Tattoo a Ouija board on my back and go to the scariest place
ever and nothing would happen. Oh.
That's wonderful. Now I just got a visual.
I just got a visual of Dan with the Ouija board on his back,
right? And a bunch of people like, you
know, covered over. You with the plant yet?
Like finding that I told you that story and I gave you what I
I, I told you like all that stuff and and demonology is not
my bag. I respect.
I respect the people that that practice that and and and use
that. Not my thing.
Well, to be honest with you, Dan, and I'm going to, I'm going
to say this and it's going to be very polarized.
I have a big gripe with both religion and spiritualism.
When it comes to any sort of investigations.
I think the best way to look at it is through a logical lens and
leave religion and spiritualism out, at least in the beginning.
If you're if you're documenting or investigating a place, I
believe those I've seen those things just.
Absolutely. Loud people's minds and.
Just. To be clear, when you say
spiritualism, it's not sort of. You mean more religious?
Religious lens not. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, while I'm talking about when I, when I, you know, when I
mean spiritualism, I mean the wannabe mediums and psychics,
not the credited ones, but ones that, you know, the wannabe, you
know, the wannabes, and there's tons of them.
What was the word that Claire vagueness.
Claire vagueness, right? And also just like the, you
know, as I like to joke around on my live streams, crystals,
Jesus, salt and sage, you know, like, like that whole like keep
it away from me, keep it away. Deathbed apparitions, right?
When they, it's when somebody passes away and, you know, they
come and they check on family or loved ones just to make sure
that they're OK. And, you know, that's why people
will say, oh, you know, he died, you know, the day before he came
to visit me the next day. Deathbed apparition usually
happens within 72 hours, right? So on the third day, he rose
again. How many hours is the third day?
It's 72 hours, so you know, your religion is based on the biggest
paranormal event that probably has ever happened.
So you can't other girls break up with me because that I'm
going to hell, you know? Zombie zombie.
Jesus, we can have fun right now and then, you know, take off
when I go to hell. But yeah, people get so wrapped
up in that. And those are the people that
are close minded, you know, and, and I've got to tell you this
demonology story because it's stuck in my.
Head let's let's close it on a on a great one.
Let's hear. All right, so so you know, I
told you guys want to be want to be actor and and I wanted to
write a play, right? What's the scariest movie you
guys have ever seen? I'm.
Going to say this is. Probably The Shining.
Shining exercise for me, yeah. For me it's a toss up between
the classic BLOB. Right.
Because that was just awesome when I was a child.
And Night of the the Creeps, which is the one with those
little black, you know, like slug things that turn people
into Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So.
But what's, what's the scariest play you've ever seen?
Nobody's got an answer. There's no scary play.
So I was like, you know what? I'm going to write a scary, you
write about what? You know, I'm like, I know
theater. I know this kind of stuff.
Let's put them together, write a scary play.
And it was turning into like an exorcist type of thing.
And I said, let me call a friend of mine who's a demonologist in
Texas. And I called him up and I said,
listen, man, I don't want to. I don't want it to seem like I'm
making fun of this or if I think it's bullshit or anything like
that, What how do I approach this and not in a disrespectful
way to you or the OR, or other demonologists Because you know,
I don't want to. I don't want to, you know, shit
on anybody. So, so, so he was like, no, Dan,
it sounds cool and I'll be there opening night and all this and
all that. He said.
But listen, Dan, can I call you like an hour?
I was just going to run to the walk in clinic.
I got a really bad headache. He had a stroke and died.
Now he was telling me, Dan, we got to be careful because the
demons know that we're having this conversation and they're
going to be really upset with me.
Really, really upset with me. They're critics.
I have to be careful. And I was like, yeah, OK, all
right, Thinking, no, no, you don't.
And then he never called me back.
And I was like, what the hell, man?
The next day, I see a Facebook post from his daughter saying,
my dad passed away unexpectedly last night.
And I was like, oh, my God. I hope that wasn't because of
the conversation we were having. And I just killed my friend.
That's that's quite the review your play got before it was even
written. It killed man.
It killed it. Killed the.
Pleasure. If we're going to hell, we're
laughing about Oh my. God, Dan there.
Dan, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for your time.
It was. A real man.
My pleasure guys. A lot of.
Pleasure. That's it, man.
Thank you. I'm I really?
We're so close to each other, we got to link up.
Absolutely. And and I want to get you down
to the house too, if you ever want to do one of your live
streams or something at the house, at a real fucking house.
100% hundred. Percent.
Yeah. Awesome.
It'll be fun guys, I'll. Hook you guys up.
I will, absolutely. Put your your e-mail together.
Yeah, because I'm, I'm pretty sure John's my new life partner.
Yeah, yeah. Hey, awesome, Dan.
What do good looking guys have? Beards, right?
Yeah. Come on, Settle.
Down. Sorry, sorry be so.
Jealous. Come on, Yeah, you got hair too,
so. Not much, that's why do you
think I wear this thing to cover?
That yeah, I'm going to have to get a big one.
Big the Bush gun. Dan, I appreciate you so much.
I appreciate you guys and keep up the great work man, keep up
the great work man, and and you know, good for you guys.
I'm, I'm so happy for all all your success with this.
It's great. Yeah.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
That was great. I mean, it was really fun,
right? Yeah, yeah.
Oh yeah. Great guest.
You know, he remind, I mean, I feel like that's, you know, I
don't know how old Dan is, but you know, he's probably like
maybe, but it's like, you know, you can see your future a little
bit. In terms of investigating.
Yeah, well, you know, he's just. He's very you could tell he's
he's he has a very logical approach.
So you know, to just everything he speaks about and you know
what he does. And I mean that's, you know, I
very much the same as far as logic goes, you know.
Yeah. I love, I love his approach.
Listen, that was everybody. That was Dan Sturgis.
This has been splintered spirits.
Thank you so much for listening and watching.
Yes please, if you like this, follow subscribe like everywhere
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Check it out. Yeah, it's fun.
That was a little loose, a little loosey goosey, a little
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Go to splinteredspirits.com. Everybody, please, we would love
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splinteredspirits.com. You will find Dan.
You can find dan@sturgisparanormal.com.
I will put that too in my link tree for all our guests.
But again, go to splinterspirits.com, like,
follow and subscribe and we will see you next.
Time, John Gary. Always.
Always my friend, always, always, always.
Nothing like family and ghost. That's it later.